Recently, I've watched a documentary about fat activist Aubrey Gordon, her writings candidly talking about how society is monsterously biased against fat people while offering grounded ways we as a society can do better and her life during the time she gets a publishing deal for her first book.

Its name, like her formally anonymous internet persona, is "Your Fat Friend".

I'd liked to think that I did good by "fat acceptance", but that documentary taught me things about this that even after all these years in the fatfur community that I hardly had that much of a good idea on. Needless to say, I think its one of the most important documentaries out there right now and worth checking out when its avaliable where you are.

I bring this up because I'm finally planning on making good with doing new, original stuff with my 'sona soon and off the back of that and starting on Aubrey's book "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat", I think it'd be a good idea to use this opportunity to re-evaluate how I portray Nell's day-to-day life, how much focus her condition should get (while taking extra care in ensuring it doesn't seem mocking or degrading) and how I present her generally as a character.

Not a lot of crucial surface things will change with her I don't think. She is still an immobile-fat (or "infinifat") fennec woman with a positive life outlook and some colourful, comforting pop-cultural interests. There will never be a canon version of Nell without her fatness. But that should be the point, I want it organically obvious that Nell is more than just her weight but Nell...IS Nell, y'know? She's always been fat, she's more than just her fat but she'll never not be fat and *that's okay*.

Whenever I make anything with Nell, I always wanted to make it seem like something that any actual Infinifat people could look at and find representation of. It's hard to guage because I don't know how many there are in this community who actually are that and I admit that Nell speaks for me only so much, as while I *am* fat IRL I'm on the smaller end of the fat size spectrum, but I always yearn for there to be positive stories and representation of much fatter people than what's set as the "new accepted limit" of sizes after the Powers that Be moved the goalposts in light of increasing calls for better body positive media. I hope after incorporating the things I'm learning from fat activist writers like Aubrey Gordon, I can be better with those intentions than I once was.

I'm thinking of fleshing out stuff regarding other characters around Nell's life too alongside all this, but the big priority is ensuring that I don't just maintain the facets of Nell that serve as alternatives in their own ways to a limitingly fatphobic media landscape and society, but improve them enough that actual Infinifat people could see themselves in Nell too and feel unjudgmental acceptance. Because Nell happens to be disabled. And happens to not be the healthiest. And DEFINITELY happens to be fatter than most...but she's herself and can't be changed. And I think that should be appreciated as valid rather than judged beyond simple surface gazes, personally.

So yeah, watch out for that stuff and I highly recommend Aubrey Gordon's writings *and* the "Your Fat Friend" doc. I also invite people who watch me who may care about fat activism/acceptance themselves to guide me where necessary on getting this stuff right too. :3

Take care for now, thanks for reading.

- Nell