Grinning and Sinning

Cuprian Smithsonite

The Fakes like lazer tag.

Okay, let’s reiterate, the Fakes love lazer tag.

It started out as like, a joke, take Geoff to the lazer tag place for his 40th birthday just for shits and giggles, it’s not going to be anything serious. They rent the place out to themselves for two hours, it’s Lads versus Gents. Everybody has their chest pieces on and they’ve got the guns and the announcer tells them the rules and they go into the arena and it’s twenty minute rounds.

It’s not just lazer tag anymore.

It’s a fucking heist. Gavin is running around, crawling through tunnels and giggling like a fucking idiot, poking his head out and tripping Geoff and sending him tumbling down a ramp, screaming. Michael is running around singing the James Bond theme and making ‘pew pew’ noises as he pokes his head from behind a wall and nails Jack in the back a few times, her chest piece vibrating and lighting up. Ray has managed to crawl himself into the fucking rafters of the ceiling and is hanging on with one arm, hunting Ryan with the other. It’s like a mad house, Gavin shrieking at the top of his lungs when he almost slams into Ryan and Ray diving from some tall obstacle, landing on top of Jack and sending them both to the ground. Geoff puts Jack on his shoulders, claiming it gives them a height advantage and they’re hunkered behind a wall, Jack taking potshots on all of the lads and giggling like a kid in a candy store.

At one point, Gavin gets shot and Michael is there, catching the lad as he falls over, chest piece flashing and cries escaping him. “Gav, my boi, stay with me buddy! Oh my god, don’t leave me!” “Micool… Tell Geoff… He’s a fucking knob.” Gavin’s head goes slack and Michael wails, Ray tugging on their clothes and telling them to ’fucking get up, Jack knows we’re here, we’re gonna’ fucking lose!’.

Ryan gets glow-in-the-dark face paint, looking like a fucking floating skull as he slinks around in the darkness. He turns a corner, Ray is there. Ryan hooks an arm under his throat, a loose choke hold, the barrel of the lazer gun coming up to just below his chin. “Any last words, Narvaez?” Ray has a fucking joint in his mouth and turns, blowing smoke into Ryan’s face. They stare at each other for a solid minute before Ray offers him the spliff and is like ’you want some of this? It’s OG Kush dude, shit’s fucking good’.

Between breaks, they sit in a little party room together like kids, all of them wearing stupid birthday hats - even Ryan - and Geoff sitting between his Crew with tears in his eyes as they sing happy birthday to him. The birthday cake is shaped Mr. Blobby and Gavin won’t even eat any of it. Geoff’s presents include a very fancy knife set from Ryan, a pack of underwear from Gavin, a (stolen) antique tattoo gun from Jack, mustache wax from Michael, and a mug from Ray that says ‘World’s Best Dad’ with Dad crossed out and Boss scribbled in with sharpie.

Back in the lazer room, Geoff is sitting on top of Gavin, covering his shrieking mouth with one hand while the other tries to shove the gun up his ass outside his jeans. Michael is nearby, laying on the ground and making himself sick with laughter while Jack is Geoff’s personal cheering squad. Across the room, Ray has ended up on a tall pillar, Ryan trying to encourage him to get down safely rather than jump and break his god damn neck. Ray jumps. He does not break his god damn neck.

IM SO EMO OH GOD

a skinny girl wanting to love herself and her body isn’t less valid at all, and girls of all sizes (including skinny girls) deserve self love

but like. look i’m sorry that you get shit for being skinny, i really am, nobody deserves that. but you have the luxury of looking pretty much anywhere in the media and seeing people who look like you.

you don’t have to worry about going to a special “skinny size” store in case stores don’t have your size. you don’t need to pay more for clothes. you aren’t slammed with constant ads for workout equipment and diet pills and diet plans and stretch mark/loose skin creams that make you feel disgusting for not spending a ton of money trying to appeal to some fucked-up standard. there are no “skinny sized” models bc the normal expectation for models is that they’re skinny.

you can look at any movie or tv show and find characters who are your size, and you get to be the default body type in books unless it’s otherwise specified that the character is fat. and yknow what? fat characters in media usually only serve one of several purposes:

-either there is a main/leading character who is fat and their storyline revolves around them being fat (like my mad fat diary)

or

-the fat character is evil (ursula from the little mermaid, the dursleys in harry potter, peter pettigrew in harry potter, i mean there’s an entire trope on tvtropes called ‘fat bastard’ so you can look that up)

or

-the fat character is comic relief (many of melissa mccarthy’s characters, monica geller in friends, augustus gloop, there’s also a tvtropes trope for this called ‘fat comic relief’)

like again i really don’t think it’s okay that you’re shamed for your body type and i think everyone deserves to love their bodies but . you’re not seeing the bigger picture. fat people have to deal with not only individual people saying shitty things (which they do!!!!!!!!!!) but a (western) society-wide expectation that’s unrealistic for most people and is straight up pushed to make fat people feel bad about ourselves.

as far as thinness being associated with mental illness - this isn’t okay but i think partially the reason for that is because with cases like addiction people do tend to get emaciated? like it’s not okay but i think that might be a part of why, as well as the fact that when mental illness is portrayed in movies/tv it’s usually thin people lol

alternatively though like…being fat is associated with depression, with not caring about yourself, with “letting yourself go” so fatness is absolutely associated with mental illness.

tl;dr - everyone deserves to feel good about their body but fat people are disproportionately targeted in a society where fatness is deemed unacceptable and disgusting, so it’s not fair to expect as many ‘thin positivity’ campaigns in social activism spheres as there are for fat people because all of society is a ‘thin positivity’ campaign lmao