![]() Many were doxxed, others targeted for prolonged campaigns of abuse, subject to the terrifying and detailed fantasies of people who genuinely believe fat bodies should be exterminated. In the subreddit, pictures of fat people - almost exclusively young women - were shared for open ridicule. Although r/fatpeoplehate drew from the same well as Gamergate, its scope was wider. Before Trump and the Alt-Right, we forget that one of the largest and most naked displays of hate was once a subreddit devoted to terrorizing fat people. “Games often reflect the culture they’re made in,” wrote Kiva Bay, a fat activist and writer, in a conversation over Google Docs. “The only one I can think of is Fat Princess… and you don’t even control her in the Fat Princess games! She’s the football!” “When fat women appear they’re almost exclusively never player controlled actors,” said Todd Harper, an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore's program in Simulation and Digital Entertainment and an advocate of fat acceptance, over Skype. At best, you observe her from a distance, her power fantasy pushed further into the future. That developers MachineGames chose to devote so much screen time to her is extraordinary - AAA development is costly and every element must be accounted for. Over the course of Wolfenstein II’s campaign, she joins the resistance, pleads for her humanity, and eventually earns the trust of her fellow rebels. It also means that Sigrun is unusually important to the game’s narrative. Domestic violence, the game argues, is where fascism takes root. The abuse Sigrun endures at her mother’s hands is a mirror to the abuse your character - the handsome, white, straight William "B.J." Blazkowicz - suffers from his own father. Preston’s likeness was the literal scaffold for Sigrun Engel, the fat, possibly queer daughter of the chief antagonist of Wolfenstein II. What Preston alludes to is the opening hour of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, the sequel to the critically acclaimed Wolfenstein: The New Order and reboot of the wildly popular anti-Nazi series. ![]() As a fat person in real life, you have to have a healthy disinterest in what others think of you to get the job done.” ![]() “You walk in and your character is being told how worthless they are for having a large body in this intense torture scene. Preston brought up one of her first experiences in the motion capture studio. “I have stood on stages doing a nude scene and felt completely safe,” she said. ![]() The sophistication of AAA game development was new to the veteran stage and TV actor, but that had never stopped her before, especially as a larger woman. “I kind of thought I looked like a Teletubby,” Preston told me with a chuckle over Skype. ![]()
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