WB Rants: Fat.

 Werebelushi:

I'm just going to say that the reason we dislike weight gain transformations that are essentially just skinny/non-fat characters becoming slovenly versions of themselves is that these transformations either fall into the category of gross-out consisting of flatuence/gas and other things that Adam Sandler would roll his eyes at,  but also because on the whole becoming fat and slovenly is good for you thing, which I don't agree with. I'm a heavyset dude myself and most if not all these are just gross typecasting.  My friend Nathan responded to an article by someone that accused director Tim Burton of villifying overweight people, and i'm going to respond to that based on the examples mentioned.  First there's the Beetlejuice example, uhhhh...Otho is not the bad guy, yes...he and Delia are total snobs although Delia is a weirdo,  and he was the one who did the seance that almost caused Barbara and Adam Maitland to age up to the point of being living corpses, and he and Delia did ruin the the aforementioned's couple house, but he's not portrayed as a slob or even disgusting or brutish, he is a snob who is essentially a 'smug snake'.

Beetlejuice himself is the actual villain and he's not that fat, at least not from what i've seen in the pictures of him. The next example is Francis from Pee Wee's Big Adventure, the person acts like Francis is picked up solely because of his weight, you do know that Francis is a bully who stole Pee Wee's bike, right?   Because there's nothing redeemable about him.  Danny Devito's Penguin in Batman Returns, is SUPPOSED to be grotesque because this incarnation of the character is essentially a humanoid penguin, a literal bird-man (Yep, that reference to another Michael Keaton movie was intentional),  he has webbed flipper-like hands for feet, he's short/stout and he has sharp teeth.  He is a villain, yes but he's only one of three villains in that movie, the other being Catwoman and the other is Max Shreck.  And yes Penguin does run for Mayor which some will definitely think eerily foreshadowed the Trump presidency (even some people think Max Shreck is based on Trump),  but he is really a tragic figure.

He after all was rejected by his own parents for being deformed and throw into the sewers where he was raised by penguins (being raised by animals isn't all that uncommon), and that's why he pretty much tried to kidnap all the first born children of Gotham (it's basically the Moses story and the plague of Egypt).  Plus you gotta give Danny Devito kudos for actually eating raw fish, not even kidding, he did that.   And then they talk about Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas.

Out of all the Nightmare Before Christmas characters, why Oogie?  All the complaints I ever heard about Oogie were that some think he's a racial stereotype. How can he be a negative racial stereotypes of African Americans when he has an actual African American voice actor, but this guy's complaint is that Oogie is vilified because he's fat. Uhhh, Oogie is a living sack-monster, of course he's huge...because you know, he's full of insects which he eats and adds to his body and if you open him up/unravel him, all of his bugs spill out.  Also I feel it's cheating putting this guy on the list since Nightmare Before Christmas isn't even a Burton film, yes...Burton's the one who wrote the poem based on it has name is all over the marketing,  but it's Henry Sellick who made it.

Next we have Augustus from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory...which is a Roald Dahl character, and I can't say whether or not Dahl actually hated children given how some of them are treated (mainly the other 4 kids in CATCF that aren't Charlie,  Luke and the other boys in The Witches), but I can say that Augustus isn't a villain, he certainly isn't the worst of the 4 kids.  The worst would be Veruka or Mike Teevee,  Augustus's flaw is that he's just obsessed with chocolate and eating it.  Mike is an aggressive brute who doesn't listen,  Violet is competitive and fixated on winning,  and Veruka is a brat who wants everything to be hers, Charlie is the only good one in the bunch.  Augustus isn't a villain. Also if you're going to do Dahl characters who are grotesque and villainous on purpose, aren't you going to talk about The Twits? You know, where the more horrible you are on the inside the more it reflects on the outside.  Or  Bunce from Fantastic Mr Fox?  Or Aunt Sponge? Okay, both Aunt Sponge and Spiker are horrible people but still Sponge is the overweight one. But they're SUPPOSED to be horrible, you're not supposed to be routing for them.

I personally don't think the person who wrote that knows what he was on about. Especially regarding the characters he picked.  My problem with weight gain transformations that are just non-fat characters becoming fat versions of themselves with gross table manners is that it's not much of a change. If it was Rey or Leia being turned into a Hutt like Jabba, yeah that would work and it would also count as a species change,  but just having Rey or Leia as humans but with a positively hutt-esque build and only acting as slovenly as Hutts are wouldn't be much of a change.   

And also if it goes into the category of being all about the butt and belly worship, i'm not against that...have you seen the Aykroyd stuff? It's not my fault Aykroyd has a nice THICC behind.  And also if it goes into the creepy catergory of having a food transformation in it, I see so many monsters/monster characters who sole goal is to fatten their victims up and then turn them into food to be eaten? Vore wasn't bad enough so now we've got people literally becoming food.  Like with what I said about inanimate transformations, you can romanticize this all you want but in the end, you're becoming something that only exists to be used or eaten.   Also what use would turn into a lemon cake do anyway? I mean turning into a cake would be a useless superpower to me.  *sarcastically* Oh but it's totally okay to turn someone into a pie and eat them because hey...they're not a person anymore, they're just food and it's not like food has feelings, right?

It's okay to have a character be fattened up or turned into a portly creature via food, but it's not okay for said monster to ACTUALLY turn said character into a living pizza and consume them...yeah, you went too far. You could have just stopped right there with the supernatural pizza making your victim into a fat-monster like you are but noooo...you just had to decide...'i'm going to eat this guy up for real' and you transformed into a living pizza that can still talk and cry for help, the poor guy.  That's basically vore only hey...it's totally okay to do it because I guess that piece of pizza was never a person anyway.

And like I said it's not much of a change, it's like if you made Donkey Kong a Saiyan, which wouldn't work since Saiyans are technically from an another planet, he wouldn't be able to use any Sayian abilities since you know, he's not one, he wouldn't go oozaru because he's already an ape and also doesn't have an ape, he'd just be DK but wth some slight Super Saiyan abilities.   It's like making Jason Voorhees a zombie,  he's already undead, and technically nearly unstoppable, it wouldn't be much of a change.

I find these kind of transformations where it is just a skinny character becoming a fat slovenly versions of themselves to be demeaning to actual overweight characters and i'm a heavy-set dude myself and let me tell you,  even though my family in general is the champion of grossness, there's more to me than just being a slovenly party-animal with fur and anger issues, i'm not a crass stereotype.  Most of these fat-self transformations come across as stereotypes to me and that's why I think it is demeaning.

And also...the pig transformation thing, why? Why am I supposed to hate pig transformations? Oh it's because some jerk who has barely even met me thinks that pig transformations that involve women are disgusting, maybe he just thinks of it as 'body-shaming'.  It's not my fault the majority of humanoid to pig transformations are female centric.  Oh I get it, he thinks it's okay for men to be turned into pigs because ha ha men are total pigs anyway so it's normal, but it's not okay for women to be turned into pigs because he thinks it's bodyshaming.   Yet when I see pig transformations or transformations involving women becoming animals I don't see anything insulting about them at all,   I don't see any negative stereotypes,  I don't see anything that would offend, I just saw something really fun.  

I suppose that the creep who wants to be Jade Harley probably likes the idea of literally being part-dog because he'd be someone's bitch, literally.    I suppose this guy would think a woman being turned into a dog is sexist because bitch is a swear word used to describe a particularly horrible type of female and also the name you call a female dog.  I wouldn't, I would find it funny because it's ironic.  Like if you have a child who refuses to eat his vegetables turning into an anthro version of an animal that is known for being a herbivore, or a man who is way too obsessed with his body to the point of going to extremes to make it look good and physically fit being turned into something like an elephant.  That's how irony works. I'm so sorry if you think pig transformations are demeaning, I guess I shouldn't watch Willow anymore or Spirited Away or that one Charles Band movie with the pig transformation.

If this person doesn't understand irony, he clearly needs to learn about it.  Also, what's wrong with racial changes?  I have seen tons of those and none of those have offended me in the slightest, because there were no negative stereotypes, no 'Blackface' type ordeals, and no jokes made at the expense of said ethnicities.  Am I supposed to find this offense? Because it's harmless to me, what's this dickhead's problem?