{"id":25225,"date":"2019-09-02T15:28:41","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T22:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=25225"},"modified":"2022-09-10T13:37:24","modified_gmt":"2022-09-10T20:37:24","slug":"cartoon-what-i-wish-i-said-what-i-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=25225","title":{"rendered":"Cartoon: What I Wish I Said \/ What I Said"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If you like these cartoons, help me make more by supporting my patreon<\/a>! I make a living because lots of people support me with $1 pledges.<\/p>\n

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Although I draw this strip from the perspective of a fat man, I think everyone who is in any marginalized group has experienced moments like these. Moments where someone says something that stabs you a bit, and then you have the choice. One option is to be the party pooper: To speak up and bring down everyone’s mood and make people uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

And it’s hard! For me, it goes against my strongest social instincts, to get along, to make things easy for people, to try and be liked. I think a lot of people share those instincts.<\/p>\n

The other choice is to just swallow what I might say, and withdraw from the situation, either in my head or (like the character in this strip) by walking away. And I do this a lot – not (just) out of cowardice, but also out of self-preservation, conserving energy, picking my battles.<\/p>\n

The art for this was fun to do. To draw three characters in full-figure in four panels is actually significantly more work than, say, if I had made panel 2 a close-up of the fat character’s head with no background. But I’m happy with how it looks. I’m especially pleased with panels 1 and 3, because both of them have foregrounds, middle grounds, and backgrounds, and I really enjoy that feeling of a world with depth.<\/p>\n

The bad part of that is that the more extraneous stuff that’s in a panel, the more likely readers are to find it a mess visually. I just have to hope that I’m skilled enough to keep that from happening!<\/p>\n

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON<\/strong><\/p>\n

This cartoon has four panels, plus a small panel underneath the strip. The first and last panels are colored in shades of purple; panels 2 and 3 are colored in shades of blue-green. All four panels show three people walking through a hilly park. There’s a thin short man in a striped shirt; a thin woman with glasses and black hair in a ponytail; and a bald fat man wearing a button-down shirt.<\/p>\n

Panel 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stripes and Glasses are cheerfully chatting, and Baldy looks back at them, looking concerned.<\/p>\n

STRIPES: I ate too much on vacation and now I’m so fat and gross!<\/p>\n

GLASSES: I know just what you mean! Let me describe my new diet in mind-numbing detail!<\/p>\n

Panel 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

A large caption at the top of the panel says “WHAT I WISH i SAID:”. The three of them have stopped walking; Baldy has turned around and is talking to Stripes and Glasses, who are listening.<\/p>\n

BALDY: Hold on a sec. Neither of you are fat. But I am. When thin people call themselves fat and gross, what does that imply about me?<\/p>\n

Panel 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

The three have resumed walking as they talk. Glasses is thinking as she speaks, a hand on her chin; Baldy has his hands spread in front of him as he talks, Stripes, looking perhaps a bit nettled, is raising a finger to make a point.<\/p>\n

GLASSES: I hear you, but isn’t this just how an anti-fat and misogynistic society has conditioned us all?<\/p>\n

BALDY: But it still feels like you’re co-signing anti-fat bigotry. And I’m sure I’m not your only fat friend you’re making uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

STRIPES: That’s not what I meant to do….<\/p>\n

Panel 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

This panel has a large panel at the top, which says “WHAT I SAID:”. In the background, stripes and glasses are happily chatting with each other. In the foreground, Baldy is walking away, with a hand on his stomach as if he’s got an upset tummy.<\/p>\n

STRIPES: Diet talk calories lifestyle change blah blah<\/p>\n

GLASSES: Carbs keto diet talk blah blah blah<\/p>\n

BALDY: Gotta go. Bye.<\/p>\n

Small “kicker” panel under the bottom of the strip<\/strong><\/p>\n

Barry the cartoonist speaks directly to the reader.<\/p>\n

BARRY: The funny thing is, at one time or another, I’ve been all three of these characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you like these cartoons, help me make more by supporting my patreon! I make a living because lots of people support me with $1 pledges. Although I draw this strip from the perspective of a fat man, I think … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-fat-fat-and-more-fat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25225"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26891,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25225\/revisions\/26891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}