I don’t really want to, mostly because there are some things I no longer like about it. Ever since it was first brought up though, people who haven’t actually read that post have been trying to poke holes in it anyway and that’s annoying, so here you go.
Everything surrounding this debate is incredibly stupid. You aren’t even beating a dead horse anymore. You are beating the saplings growing from the soil the horse decomposed into a year ago. Every time it rears its ugly little nub of a head on my dash—or anyone else’s dash, when they inform me of it—I die a little more on the inside. Because despite all the whining and defending and complaining and the HEY SOCK I’VE GOT YOU NOW, FATFEF IS OFFICIALLY IMPOSSIBLE, do you know what everyone forgets? That Feferi’s existence is impossible. No matter what body type is, or special organs, or anything like that, she would be dead from the enormous water pressure. It’s also impossible for her to drag a whale down to the twilight zone, because it’s simply too big. And no matter what body type she has, her hair and clothes would create a huge amount of drag, not to mention that human-shaped things are just not meant to swim very fast.
The point in the original post about them meant for endurance over speed still stands. This will always stand. I’m not usually one to assert my opinion like this, but if you’re going to debate biology shit while under the impression that the most important bit is speed, you are wrong and you should stop talking about things you clearly don’t understand.
And I guess it should be noted that I don’t talk about blubber at all in that post. That’s because it’s largely irrelevant. Yes, fat is buoyant, yes, it’s harder to dive if you are really heavy because of that (also because you are less streamlined), and no, it really won’t make much of a difference whether Feferi is thin or fat in respect to temperature because of surface area. The human body shape doesn’t allow this unless, again, you’re extremely heavy. And I left it out because there’s no way to explain why she is really able to survive in the ocean depths like that with bare skin. Should she have blubber? Should she not have blubber? It doesn’t matter, she wouldn’t be able to do this either way—she’s got the same chance (zilch) of surviving thin as she does the way I draw her (which isn’t really that fat, I don’t think?). There is no point to debating this aspect at all, using it for or against theories about body type. I don’t think of this so much as a failure to crack it, because everything has limits, and authors frequently don’t care about whether awesome things their characters do are biologically sound, because they are awesome. I think that’s a perfectly valid thing to do. Sometimes I get the feeling that people don’t believe you can play with and explain stuff in speculative fiction etc. while still maintaining a sense of humour about it and being able to take a step back and realise yeah that’s just for the cool factor, there’s no way I’m going to be able to get at that. That’s false. You totally can.
That being said, if someone wanted to prove me wrong about it being impossible I’d want to hear it. I’m kinda jealous how people will take things I’ve said and try to prove or disprove them, but they never come to me directly. It’s always far away, and I don’t like butting in. Am I scary or something? Or too delicate to handle criticism? I just want to talk about ideas you guys. I don’t want it to turn into a shitshow every time a theory shows up, I just want to talk about the things I love ): And I am still learning, I’m not infallible, I’d really like for somebody to tell me I’ve made errors. Same goes with art, really.
Sorry for the essay, you weren’t asking for a rant, but it happened anyway.
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OH ALSO PS. THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE I HAVE SEEN ASKING WHY SOLLUX ISN’T THE SAME/FEFERI IS STILL “FAT” AS CERULEAN. That’s because they are more recognizable to me when Feferi is voluptuous and Sollux is a bobbledheaded broomstick. It’s the way I’ve drawn them since they were introduced, it’s been so long since that it feels awkward and foreign to do it any other way. I’m allowed to break my own rules or just not use every fan theory I’ve cooked up ever in a fanfiction I write. Though Eridan is actually less pudgy as a tealblood, Sollux just kind of has health problems, and seadwellers do have pressure suits this time around to cope with it. How the suits work I don’t know and I don’t really care, that would be passed off to some other nut to figure out. They are basically there to look cool.
the end
