[ SECRET POST #5044 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5044 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #722.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Eh. I think it's less useful to deny that for most authors and in most cultures "unremarkable = not fat" is truth and can usually be handwaved to thin in terms of authorial intent, regardless of how you or I feel it should be morally speaking.

[(Anonymous)]

I also don't think that "thin" and "not fat" mean the same thing!

[(Anonymous)]

Cool? Like that is 100% good for you and I mean that?

I don't think this conversation is going anywhere though because I'm trying to talk about general cultural perceptions of unremarkable here in which most fictional characters are intended to be thin by authors who write them, and you keep giving me your personal interpretations as though I'm arguing with you or something.

More canonically fat characters would be cool but let's be real, half the reason they would be cool is because there currently are so few, and being like "but the author didn't say this character was supposed to be thin" is a real reach when we all know their intent is usually unremarked = thin.

[(Anonymous)]

we all know their intent is usually unremarked = thin.

I don't think that there's any way to know what their intent is, and if we did know that their intent was to make the characters skinny, it still wouldn't be a good reason to treat that as though it was canon.

My whole point that I'm trying to make is that I think you're treating cultural perceptions that thin == normal as though they're facts, and they're not facts. I don't agree that pervasive cultural assumptions are a good reason to assume that any character whose body is not canonically described should be assumed to be thin. I don't think it's a good justification. I don't think it's a useful, accurate, or good assumption to make.

[(Anonymous)]

I am not doing that, I was saying "the cultural perception that thin = normal exists" and that is a fact, not that thin = normal is a fact. This being a fact means that, probably, the author in question imagined the character as thin.

I do think that is a good, useful, and probably accurate assumption to make, or else you realize you are erasing tons of people's complaints that there are no characters that look like them by going "but the author never said the character is thin, so you're in theory represented! Tons of non-thin characters exist in theory!"

I don't think that's what you intend to do. But that's what you're doing here.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. Representation is representation, it's different from interpretation, and that's what I think we're talking about here. Characters whose body type is indeterminate are open to interpretation, and can be conceived of as having a range of body types - it's equally reasonable to say that they're skinny as it is to say they're fat, or anywhere in between. Interpreting characters as fat not the same as having textual fat characters. But the need for textual fat characters is not a good reason to think that we should headcanon characters as thin instead, either.

I don't really agree that an author's headcanon should be something that we have to agree with. But I think that's especially true in the case where we're just assuming what their headcanon is based on prevalent cultural perceptions, not on anything that they've seen or written. And even more so when those prevalent cultural perceptions are bad, harmful ideas that we should reject anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

If any theoretical headcanon is valid to you, and author intent doesn't matter to you at all when trying to portray the character accurately to a third party, then I repeat that there is no point to this conversation because that is all I am talking about.

See you later.

[(Anonymous)]

Setting aside those points, I still disagree that conventional societal norms are a good enough reason to think that we know an author's headcanon about their characters

But OK

[(Anonymous)]

DA... and I think it's a perfectly reasonable assumption, given we can't know for certain

[(Anonymous)]

You're right. AYRT is just being persnickety.