#but ikd man if it was liu sang or xiaoge saying those things they'd probably either get instantly excused for them or applauded

[pangzi]

THANK YOU for talking about pangzi in the tags of that post ur so right it makes me soooo happy to read fics where he's is fat and happy and hot and loved and it sucks when other people can't see that because of their bias

thanks again for bringing it up because i do think its something the fandom as a whole needs to look at more critically

<3

I'm glad it's not just me and a handful of people close to me seeing that it's an actual big issue in the fandom! ♥️

Especially because so many people will say they love him, he's their favourite but then never actually include him or just treat him awfully.

I get very fed up about it quite often because it's just so obvious to me. I see a lot of people asking "Why is this idea about Pangzi so common it makes no sense" or "Why is this Pangzi ship not as popular as this one while it makes way more sense" and then never actually thinking about it while the answer is so obvious... It's also extra frustrating because none of the actors playing Pangzi are actually fat. They're completely normal men who are just surrounded by extremely skinny boys. I don't even want to imagine how Pangzi would be treated if he were played by an actual fat man. (The closest we get is Liu Tianzuo in TLT1 and it's not surprising to me that he's fandom's least favourite and most criticized Pangzi)

Because this bias also becomes most obvious in headcanons like 'I can only imagine Pangzi as asexual/cishet/in a QPR' (because they're so so fucking common and casually thrown around) it's really hard to point it out to people without them getting really defensive about it.

I have three separate posts about it in my drafts/notes app that I wrote after spending weeks and weeks working on video lectures about diversity and inclusion, many focusing on bias but I couldn't get the tone right so I never posted them.

I just want people to understand that everyone is biased and it's not something that makes you a bad person. Nobody wants to be biased, you just are. You get taught things by the world around you and your brain learns it whether you want it or not. It's up to you to look at what you have learned and think about it at least twice and then unlearn the harmful untrue things like gender bias, fat bias, race bias. It's not easy to address your bias but it does get easier once you accept you are biased and (not to use the terms I learned in my diversity lectures) start overriding your fast brain and start listening to your slow brain. I was once told that your first thought is what you have been taught by the world around you (fast brain) and your second thought is what you, yourself, actually think (slow brain). It's hard and a bit exhausting, especially with something like fat bias that has been so deeply ingrained and normalised, but god when i tell you it makes your world so much more beautiful.

Fat people deserve to be fat and still be loved and happy and seen as sexy and a potential love interest. Pangzi is fat and hot and a wonderful lovely competent man who is strong and funny and kind. He is extremely loved by the people around him, especially Wu Xie and Xiaoge. He has so so so many good and wonderful traits but he also has his quirks and he says the wrong things sometimes and he's impulsive at moments but that's what makes him so interesting and beautiful and dynamic! He deserves to be portrayed like that more instead of just the mother hen who cooks and cleans while the rest has sex or as the wingman for his two besties or the annoying clumsy fat man who once again triggers a trap because of his greed or just the comic relief or the creepy straight man.

ANYWAY I'll shut up now! If you ever want to talk about how how beautiful Pangzi is and how beautiful other characters think he is and how sexy it is of him to be fat, my DMs are always open!