sometimes it's so very draining that the majority of aro content is about fictional relationships.
irl, i live alone. irl, i am disabled. irl, that intersection and my lack of interest in partnering actively makes life really hard. everything is expensive. i can't always cook when i want to or have fresh ingredients, because my symptoms don't care if I want to cut up vegetables and eat something homemade before they go bad. if I have a bad flareup and getting up is not in the cards, that's it. i have what's next to me. the lack of social support for single folks, for disabled folks, for folks whose family care is inadequate or damaging... it's impactful.
I talk about how i once visited a place with an ex partner. i mention how our relationship started because i was pressured into it, and i wasn't really into the level of seriousness and 'forever' she treated it with. everyone says it's weird that i agreed if i didn't want it to be serious. i remember being 16, saying no, and a chorus of people telling me i was stupid and immature, that her family was rich, that we would be cute and to listen to them, not my heart. my heart was saying nothing.
i look at my current age and life goals. for many of my peers, dating and marriage and eventual kids are common goals. i am watching my rights erode and trying to practice good mental hygeine. my five year goal is to be alive. my next major life milestone is a nebulous desire to find a life i can tolerate living.
being aromantic significantly impacts my day to day. i want to see aro people living their lives, and doing so with joy. i want to see aro adults making it, ones like me. i want aro people to thrive. i want to live, aromantically.
i scroll the aro tag. it's fandom and shipping and asexual posts.
Having a traumatic childhood means you cannot talk even objectively about your basic foundational experiences without it being "venting", even if you're not actually venting. You just straight up have a huge chunk of your life you can't talk about, full stop, without it being trauma dumping.
And it not being socially acceptable to talk about your own childhood is super alienating. Sometimes people want to know why, and any answer you can give them is going to be off putting.
It's to the point I get irritated when something I said is framed as venting when I'm literally just talking about my life experiences, doing my best to keep emotion out of it.
when I was in high school, I overheard two older students talking about a friend of theirs.
One of them said something like, "it doesn't bother me that [Friend] was in residential mental health treatment, I just wish they wouldn't talk about it ALL the time".
The other replied, "Well, that was all of last year for them. So when they say 'when I was in treatment,' it's like when you say 'last year'."
I try to remember that any time someone says something that sounds Shocking to me. sometimes one person's scary special crisis is another person's last year.
A few imperfect thoughts about writing fat characters respectfully
By me :
A short (5'2"), fat (approx 300 pounds), middle aged (turning 42 thank god), married to not a fat man, mother of a pre-teen, white, CIS, Anglo, Canadian, upper-middle class woman who writes fic (including smut) about a character who is fat by TV and Hollywood standards (Penelope Garcia)
Note: fat hate or debates about whether being fat is healthy or not will not be tolerated on this post. That is not what this post is about. This is about giving some insight into what writers may want to consider when trying to respectfully include more fat characters in their work and generally moving towards writing doing less harm to fat people.
This post started with me wanting to respond to someone honnestly asking "how do I write good descriptions of fat people" because they wanted to write more fat characters and write them authentically (and I assume in a way that would be respectful to fat people) which is an awesome! ...Or maybe it started a few months ago when a writer friend asked about whether a fat character in a fic borrowing a shirt or hoody from her fit boyfriend made sense. ...Or maybe it started way back when I started writing my first fan fic featuring Penelope Garcia partly in response to being irritated about how so many writers wrote her as a young woman and were often silent on her size or spent a lot of time on her insecurities about her body... anyhoo that's where I come from... doesn't make me an expert except maybe on my own unique experience with a fat body...rather more a fellow muddler / fat character writer enthusiast.
THE BASICS
This first part is a quick list of basics you'll read in other posts about writing characters in general - but we'd better get them out of the way because they apply:
Every character is unique and they way they act and think and feel tends to be a product of some mix of what they look like, how their body works or doesn't, how their brain works and doesn't, their "personality", what they were taught, their unique experiences, and the situation/society they are currently in. There are patterns (which is why we get tropes) but the fun thing is that small things can make big differences. So to write an authentic character, it helps to have a fairly clear sense of at least some of those elements and do some imagining about how all of that would funnel into the moment your writing.
The amount to which you describe character bodies and the style which you use to describe them tends to depend on genre, what the heck is going on in your story, the pov you're writing from, the reason you're writing etc. So their are no hard or fast rules. There may be norms for certain styles of fiction, but then it's up to you to decide if it's stronger for you to lean into those norms or to write "against" them at a particular moment.
In order to be more respectful and less harmful to fat people (especially if you see value in actively challenging the anti-fat status quo), you may have to change how you describe all bodies in your work, as well the attitudes both fat people and non fat people have about bodies in general.
Now that that's out of the way... let's get specifically to my thoughts on writing fat characters. I'm going to divide this part into tips for DESCRIBING FAT BODIES, FAT BODIES IN SPACE, and THINKING AND FEELING IN A FAT BODY.
TIPS FOR DESCRIBING FAT (OR OTHER) BODIES
I would say that both consistency and diversity across the work is important, by this I mean :
Consistently describe bodies in about the same amount of detail across your work for the same type of character regardless of body type. So protagonists should get about the same depth and breath of body descriptions as each other regardless of body type. Same goes for vilalns, supporting characters etc. Sometimes people are mute about the look and shape of "strait sized" character bodies (because what's to describe - they are just "normal") but then spend a bunch of time on "other sized" bodies or vice versa (in this case, the fat body is erased usually because of some form of internalised fat hate or phobia paired with "if you can't say anything nice" don't say anything at all.) If you're doing either of these things, I'm not saying it's wrong and has to be fixed- I'm just saying it's a flag that you may want to think about why you are writing differently about different body types and what your work is saying about what bodies have value and which don't.
Diversity Bodies in the real world come in a lot of different shapes and sizes (I know I know obvious woman strikes again) but if you are writing stories with fairly large casts and everyone has the same body type - there better be a good reason for it within the narrative. Truthfully there are cases where this does make sense to some degree... if you're writing about a group where there are physical requirements and standards for the folks in that world (ballet dancers, fire fighters, cops, soldiers, fbi agents) there may or may not be less diversity in body type and more homogeneous attitudes to body norms within the group - and certainly those who are outside of the norm may be commented on or feel like they are "other". But if you are in a more free setting - if you write without a diversity of body types - especially in settings where there is diversity - that is probably a clue that you're not thinking enough about what your various characters look like and may be "normalizing" one type of body over others. Similarly, if you are writing about a real time and place where there is evidence that there were fat bodies and you have none...that's another flag to ask yourself why.
The magical tools in your toolkit for describing fat and other bodies: Body neutrality and POV
Body neutrality is about not loving bodies and not hating bodies just accepting bodies as they are....or in this case describing them as they are. No poetic language. No judgement. Just this is what this character looks like. If you're struggling to do this, I suggest doing a body map for at least two characters with different body types - possibly one that you find easy to think of positively (in this case likely someone thin or at least fit) and one that you find more difficult to describe positively (in this case someone fat).
Describe them head to toe, naked and then clothed, in detail - acurately but not poetically. Start with their feet and then work up bit by bit. Pay attention to things like hair, scars, shape of joints, acne, tightness or looseness of skin, colour of skin, nails, fat, lack of fat, muscle tone, where do they hold their stress, what's in the bowels, how well they do or don't work, do they have their appendix, what they ate last, proportions (is their torso long or short compared to their legs), lungs - how much do they hold, are they healthy? - now describe their throat, shoulders, hands, hair, then end with face.
The only rule is no positive or negative connotations to anything. it's neither good nor bad that they have stretch marks - they just do and they have faded to silver. Now that you "see them' clearly - now look at them through the eyes of someone who loves them in a familial way...what do they see most? what words do they use? now through someone who is attracted to them sexually and love them and aren't ashamed...what do they see most? what words do they use? Now through the eyes of someone who hates them or wants to change them? or a child? or a dog? Now... how does your character feel about these descriptions? Now you have a variety of words you can draw on to describe the body and you also should have a fairly good idea of what is a more skewed view of the body and a more realistic view.
Also...it can be helpful to remember there are no consistently good or bad words to describe bodies - it depends on context and who is using the words. It's a lot like how sick can be used to describe something negatively or positively depending on the agreed upon meaning of the word by a group.
DESCRIBING BODIES IN SPACE/MOTION
Ok here's the thing - for every activity you can think of - there is a fat body that does it well and a fat body that can't do it easily or at all and there are a lot of reasons for both. Often it has to do with the fact that a lot of equipment is built for people who are 250lbs or less; and anything for bigger people tends to cost a premium. Also, if it's not an easy new skill to acquire with the body you've got...it may take longer and more bravery to keep pushing through to achieve mastery. People may try to discourage you from pursuing things. Sometimes out of prejudice, sometimes out of impatience, sometimes out of caring.
So deciding what your character's body can do easily and what it can't and why is more important than me giving you a list of words for how to describe fat movements.
My suggestion is: do your research. What sorts of body types have done the activity in the real world? What are the exceptions? What changes? So for example if a fat person is climbing a mountain - do they need more help? Different equipment? A different route?
Things to consider:
- equipment / things that can have weight limits: bunk beds, roller coasters, scooters, waterslides, camping chairs, elevators, trampolines, some bikes, life jackets (finding one that fit was a nightmare), exercise balls, airline seats (learning to ask for the seatbelt extender without second thought or shame was a lifesaver)
- not all fat people have pain, those who do will move taking into account the specifics of the pain - same as a lean person
- when I was pregnant I just got more cylindrical and did not get a classic belly. I moved well and easily all the way through my pregnancy, I had none of the back pain or ankle pain some people get. I stood for a lot of my labour. I gave birth on my hands and knees. Other fat people will have had different experiences of pregnancy...but that was mine.
- clothing can have a huge impact on what bounces or jiggles and what doesn't
- most (but not all) fat people I know are particularly sensitive to appearing sweaty or smelling bad
- how winded someone gets is not directly correlated to body size, neither is heart rate or breathing style; I have theatre training and grew up swimming - I breath very slowly and very deeply normally - so when I talk a slow deep breath...it is very slow and deep indeed. I have always been fat but can swim forever - I have always gotten winded and kind of dizzy running... Other fat people may be opposite.
- people do not "see fat" consistently. People regularly underestimate how fat I am (by 100+ pounds or many clothing sizes) because I am short, well spoken, proportioned in a way that is seen as fairly typical, and very mobile and very light on my feet. Someone who weighs less than me but is slower moving, dull witted, in a sour mood, is illl, or poorly dressed may be perceived as much heavier than than someone the same weight or heavier who is behaving/clothed differently (which can change how much fat hate someone experiences) and definately heavier than they are. Height also changes how people perceive weight.
- many stores still don't carry plus sized clothing, but eventually i sort of got used to it - although some days it makes me angry and other days sad
- chairs with arms or the occasional booth can be uncomfortable or just plain impossible to sit in, it's probably partly my ADHD but I often forget this until it happens; for taller and fatter people than me this can be a much more regular occurrence.
- once (if) a character figures out how to dress/move their body in a way that feels comfortable and meets general standards (or at least theirs) of respectability - they may not think that much about their body...or at least until something external draws attention to it
- I don't like feeling like I'm squishing people, so I will make myself small and still on buses or at the theatre, I also don't like sitting on laps or being lifted or carried.
- I often feel much taller than I actually am - except when I am standing right beside someone taller or am trying to reach something on a high shelf. The same principle applies - I feel larger next to smaller people and smaller next to larger ones.
- clothing and what I'm carrying also changes how I move (just like my lean counterparts)
- I don't lounge, my car seat is set almost straight but I sit further back than my brother in law who has a similar height and weight - he leans the seat back but pulls closer. I don't nap. My leaner husband both lounges and naps.
- some fat folks eat, walk, and move quickly - some slowly; figuring out which your character does, when they behave "out of character", and why these are their preferences will go a long way to creating an authentic feeling fat character
- acne is a thing and learning to accept ones rolls and tummy aprons (and thus take care of them properly) is a common challenge; although many do it naturally without thinking much of it. You lift your breasts and wash underneath - you lift you belly and wash underneath.
- fat bodies have the same reactions as everyone else: they tingle, burn, get numb, get goose bumps, like to be touched in certain places and in certain ways, feel the breeze, get hot, get cold, shiver, stretch, relax, get aroused, feel release, hold tension, feel capable and strong, feel weak...no matter who you are sitting in a chair that's too small for you will put pressure on your body and feel uncomfortable or safe ..you can explore what that is like. Sometimes it is a reassuring sensation. Sometimes it is uncomfortable. This is the same for fat bodies. It just may happen more frequently and depending on your character's context and experience the emotional reaction / thoughts that are generated may be a bit different.
THINKING AND FEELING IN A FAT BODY.
I think I touched on some of this in some of the earlier sections...but here I want to talk a bit about my experience of being fat and my thoughts about it - your fat characters may or may not feel similarly...but my hope is that you at least think about options as opposed to only writing one or two types of fat character.
I mainly "feel" fat in moments when it is pointed out to me or I am limited in what I can do because of it
I quite like my body, it is my home and I feel very connected to it's features. In my experience this is unusual for many people in North American society regardless of actual body shape or weight. Sometimes I feel guilty for not hating my body the way "I am supposed to" and wonder vaguely if my body would be different if I could hate it more (although as I get older I doubt it).
I do feel some pressure to be a cheerful "good" fat person as a way to stay safe and survive.
Nothing makes people more uncomfortable than me calling myself fat without judgement or asking for accomodation matter of factly. It took me a long time to feel comfortable doing so, but I do it now all the time and it makes my life better.
I felt some pressure to be the fun friend who people feel comfortable eating whatever they wanted with and I often felt like I was depended on to order dessert so they could too. This may have been all in my mind though.
Fat bellies can be very intimate places.
Not all fat people have dieted, but many have. I was lucky enough to never be forced into a diet. I did try keto once but it was a bit intense and nuts so I stopped. I learned a bunch doing it though.
Medical people not treating you appropriately when your fat is 100% a thing.
Internalised fat hate and fat phobia is a thing for many fat people and it pops up at weird moments.
I don 't.give a damn about being in a bathing suit. As long as it fits and my boobs and butt.aren't.falling out - I am happy and feel very attractive. In fact I am probably at my most comfortable in a bathing suit or naked. My body is mine in both those instances.
To reach the "healthy weight" for my height - I would have to lose half of my body mass. That is a lot of me to loose. Embarking on something like that would be totally different than loosing 5 or 10 pounds. Trying to navigate the various medical opinions about whether being fat is bad or not is exhausting.
For me, being fat and older is easier than being fat and younger. This could easily be the opposite for someone else.
Some fat people are into sex, some are not . Some folks are into sex with fat people and some are not. Some are nice about it. Some are not. Some want nice. Some do not.
Fat people are all around you living their best life or their worst life or somewhere in between. We know we are fat. We sometimes care and sometimes don't.
Ok that's it. I don't know if it will help anyone or if it's just a collection of rambles - but at the end of the day...fat people are just people. We are not going to go away. We are all sorts. We are the heroes of our own stories. We are people who are loved, depended on, hated, ignored, and/or spotlighted.
Some fat people think about being fat all the time. Some rarely. Just please don't erase us or other us.
Just by taking the step to interrogate your own biases and any feelings / assumptions you have about fatness/thinness is a huge step and will help limit the harm you could unintentionally do to fat people...actually to all people. Like all forms of hate and intelorance - Fat hate hurts EVERYONE. I would argue it privileges a few...but even that can be excruciating for the individuals who strive to retain that priviledge. We need to dismantle it.
No but the Hunger Games really said "what do you hate more- the atrocities or the people who commit them against you? Because like it or not there IS a difference. If you hate the people who commit acts of pure evil more than you hate the acts themselves, what will stop you from becoming just like your enemies in your pursuit of justice? What will keep you from commiting those very same acts against THEM when the opportunity arises? And what then? The cycle of pain and suffering will never stop. Round and round it'll go. Nothing will ever change. But. BUT. If you hate the atrocities. If you hate the vile, senseless acts MORE than you hate the people who did them to you. If you are able to see that evil is evil regardless of who does it... The cycle ends with you. No, you may never get justice. But you will never be responsible for making others, even your enemies, suffer the same crimes you have. The atrocities will never be committed by you, never by your hand. And that's the way you change the world. It's the ONLY way" and that's why I am sure it will never stop being one of the most relevant works of fiction ever created
every time i get close to someone i feel like a stray dog trying to live in a house. like i don’t know where to put my body or how loud i’m allowed to be.
one of the most challenging skills i've had to learn as an adult is the art of figuring out whether i'm proportionally annoyed with someone or just tired and overstimulated and looking for reasons to be pissed off
ICE has executed a man in Minneapolis today. The video is horrifying. There were five ICE ‘officers’ against one man who was on the ground and they shot him repeatedly. This was caught on video and I watched it.
They will try and spin this. They will say he was armed (which is his legal right). They will try and say he was a paid agitator or part of some horrible left wing terrorist organization.
DONT LISTEN.
This was an execution clear and simple. Whether or not he was armed has nothing to do with it, he was subdued on the ground when he was shot.
I truly don’t know what the country/world is hearing from Minnesota right now but I’m fairly certain it’s not the whole story. We are angry, we are afraid, we are helping our community in unprecedented numbers, we have been peaceful, we know our rights and have followed the law.
Fifty THOUSAND people were in the streets yesterday with almost no police presence and the whole thing was peaceful and lawful and filled with hope and love.
The thugs hate that and they are scared so they decided to execute a man in retaliation.
Yeah I said something similar yesterday but we can NOT let what happened to Renee Good cloud what happened to everyone else at the hands of these SS Demons!!!
Because we can’t disregard one person if we’re for human rights!
My 43-year-old son, Keith, was tragically killed on New Year's Eve in Northri… Keith Porter needs your support for Support for Keith’s Daugh
The above screenshot reads:
A Black man was killed by ICE (off duty) in Los Angeles on New Year's Eve. And like Renee Good, he was an American citizen. But most people have not heard about Keith Porter.
I need y'all to realize this. Black people experience this lack of visibility all the time when it comes to being victims.
(Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com)
The second screenshot above reads:
Renee Nicole Good wasn't the first killed by ICE...
In 2025, ICE murdered:
Silverio Villegas Gonzalez
Carlos Roberto Montoya Valdez
Genry Ruiz Guillén
Serawit Gezahagn Dejane
Maksym Chernyak
Juan Alexis Tineo-Martinez
Brayan Garzón-Rayo
Nhon Ngoc Nguyen
Marie Ange Blaise
Abelardo Avellaneda Delgado
Jesus Molina-Veya
Johnny Noviello
Isidro Pérez
Tien Xuan Phan
Chaofeng Ge
Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas
Oscar Rascon Duarte
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes
Miguel Ángel García Medina
Johnny Noviello
Santos Banegas Reyes
Ismael Ayala-Uribe
Norlan Guzman-Fuentes
Miguel Ángel García Medina
Huabing Xie
Leo Cruz-Silva
Hasan Ali Moh’D Saleh
Josué Castro Rivera
Gabriel Garcia Aviles
Kai Yin Wong
Francisco Gaspar-Andrés
Pete Sumalo Montejo
Shiraz Fatehali Sachwani
Jean Wilson Brutus
Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir
Delvin Francisco Rodriguez
Nenko Stanev Gantchev
In 2026, ICE has murdered 2 people:
Keith Porter [New years eve 2025]
Renee Nicole Good
-From the ICE_Raids Community on Reddit
And to all of our lovely WWC Followers, particularly those in the United States:
Take care. Take care of each other, your community, yourselves.
Travel in groups and make sure your loved ones know where you are. And absolutely know your rights.
And even in troubled times, try to find a spark of hope, creativity and comfort and hold onto it. For even joy is resistance.
Resources
Immigrant Defense Project
City of Mpls website: Know Your Rights (Minnesota)
For those who can support:
I've included the verified GoFundMe for Keith Porter's daughters.
psychosis needs to lose its negative connotation, its a thing that happens. you are far closer to psychotic episodes than you think and we need to all know how to deal with them properly
I always say that psychosis is a natural part of human experience or state of mind. And guess what, non psychotics get MAD when I say that. "No, its not natural or normal at all! Dont normalize it!" Guess what happens when you haven't slept in a few days? Psychosis. Guess what can happen when you're too stressed? Psychosis. Guess what can happen from physical conditions? Psychosis. Psychosis is the same type of normal that any other negative state of mind is. Someone experiencing depression due to circumstances? Normal. Someone dissociating during a stressful event? Normal. Psychosis isn't different. ANYONE can experience psychosis and it doesn't even have to be a disorder. Psychotic disorders are disorders due to the frequency and intensity of psychosis.
People need to stop demonizing normal human experiences
allo people gotta understand that to some of us "that stranger doing a random act of kindness for you was actually trying to hit on/flirt with you!" is actually a horror movie scenario. 1000x worse if the person is not a stranger but an acquaintance. an alloro person having a romantic crush on me makes me feel the same way a deer does when being stalked by a mountain lion
"it was suicide" how does someone w broken arms and broken legs climb a tree to hang themselves? how does someone w broken arms and broken legs tie a noose and put it around their neck? how does someone w broken arms and broken legs do that?
they don't.
it's called lynching, it's called murder, and anyone telling you otherwise is a racist who would watch Black people die for entertainment before so much as lifting a finger against the police, against the politicians, against white supremacy. a young man's life was snuffed out by white supremacists, but you people will not talk about it bc you'd sooner watch Black people suffer & die so that you can keep your "safe space".
Trey Reed was a student, only 21 years old with his entire life ahead of him; he was found hanging from a tree near his university's sports court. the racist police said there was "no evidence of foul play", despite his body being beaten and his bones broken.
Ashleigh Walls, who represents the Reed family publicly has already had to put out a statement BEGGING for you sick cunts to not share the footage of Trey's body, because even in DEATH, Black people aren't human beings to you, but fucking entertainment objects.
“On behalf of my family, I ask that you please not share the very graphic video of Trey. For some of you it’s information, entertainment even but for us it’s a living nightmare. At this time we ask that you keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we navigate through this difficult time.”
Ben Crump, a civil rights solicitor, is also representing the Reed family, and is putting pressure on to conduct a full, independent, investigation into the death of Trey; they are going to pursue justice and transparency so that Trey can be properly put to rest, and his family don't go through even more trauma.
“Trey Reed was a young man full of promise and warmth, deeply loved and respected by all who knew him. His family and the campus community deserve a full, independent investigation to uncover the truth about what happened. We cannot accept vague conclusions when so many questions remain. I stand with this family, and I will lead a team of civil rights leaders and organizations in pursuing transparency and answers for Trey’s family.”
Black people do not lynch themselves, and given the history of hanging publicly and the history of Mississippi itself, there is no way that Trey would've committed suicide by doing that, especially with broken bones; a three to five minute walk from where he was living. During the celebration of the university turning 100, a public spectacle. 48 kilometers from where Emmett Till was murdered. that's not a suicide.
Trey deserves justice. Trey's family deserves justice.
do not let another Black body become "true crime" entertainment, only to be forgotten about when the next murder that you can turn into some salacious, anti-Black, whodunnit comes along; do not let Trey Reed become some "true crime" campfire story that dishonours him, dishonours his life, and glorifies racist violence. do not let Trey Reed be forgotten and swept under the carpet.
do not let another Black person's life and love be swept away and covered up by white supremacist media, police, social media and talking points. do not let Trey Reed become another statistic, another number, another object. Trey Reed was a student, a family member, a friend, a living, breathing, person who was murdered; do not let him fade into silence. do not let his family go through that.
remember his eyes, his hair, his face, his name. remember HIM, and fight for his justice.
"Isn't it obvious?" or "It's just common sense" are terms that have been used on me time and time again, and they always irritate me. No, it wasn't obvious, that's why I asked. Common sense isn't common to everyone. Different things are common for different people. It really annoys me when people believe that everyone thinks exactly like them.
This is the message being said when people say they won't vaccinate their kids because they think it'll make them autistic. They're saying they'd rather their kid die than be autistic.
