Throwback Thursday - 1/13/22 - The Santa Cause

Let's breakdown this comic shall we? Would have loved if I could completed this *during* Christmas time but better late than never I suppose. 

I trust that I don't have to tell anyone in this community how much of a seminal piece of gainer inspiration that the movie "The Santa Clause" was for so many folks. Myself among them. However, my age makes this movie and its impact on me unique in a way. The Santa Clause came out in 1994. I wouldn't be born yet until  the year 2000. The Santa Clause 2 came out in 2002, I was a young baby so I wasn't really "watching" movies yet. The 3rd one came out in 2006 and I remember going to see that movie in theatres. Even at that age I was still drawn to large men in an inexplicable way. There was just something about Santa as an idea that really enamored me. The notion of the comfort he provided because you sit on his lap and he listens and he's there for you. He has this big belly and warm inviting presence so all the associations of size, comfort, safety, etc rolled together. His being a quintessential part of all these good things embodied in his giant belly. And of course his impressive eating habits. Consuming so much milk and cookies on that one night, my brain started for form the semblance of the idea around eating more and more and getting bigger and bigger. And that made sense to me because well, as I mentioned, Santa's bigness was among his best qualities so naturally an even bigger Santa just means more fun to be had. Its basic logic folks!

I knew by way of it being the 3rd movie that there were other Santa Clause movies, but I had not seen them. I remember watching the 1st Santa Clause all the way through when I was 7 and something just clicked. Having already seen the 3rd one and acknowledging that in some inexplicable way I was drawn to Santa for the aforementioned reasons. all my feelings were vindicated within that movie. I don't think I need to go into detail talking about how amazing and profound the "does this look like a little weight to you?" scene was nor the scene of him ordering copious amounts of sweets at his important office meeting wearing sweats because he was too fat for anything else. Just so many of what are nowadays common gainery joys and ideas were explored in that movie. Now I can firmly identify this as being Santasexual but at the time it was just a weird fixation I had that was quite precious to me. I felt like I had unlocked something or understood something in me, which again, was the beginnings of an understanding of my overall fatsexuality and in general love for fat daddy bear types. 

So we arrive at this piece specifically. Please acknowledge my pun on "The Santa Clause" by titling this work "The Santa CAUSE" (seriously, please I'm very proud of my pun. Pity laugh for me). Watching the Santa Clause as an adult, as much as I have fond memories of it for what it did for my younger self it doesn't really hit the same anymore. I could go into how there's a rather weird non-consensual element to his gaining and overall transformation that Tim Allen's character Scott Calvin deals with and how its never really something he embraces or comes to enjoy but just has to deal/live with. But that is another topic for another day. Instead, what is so disappointing is that young me's perception of fat was so heavily skewed compared to what it is today and its SO jarring. Naturally being young, I'm a lot smaller so any adult looks big to me. And a fat adult man now THATS huge. Scott Calvin in all the gainery scenes looks no bigger than his low-mid 200s. The "Little Weight" scene stands out so much because of how tight the shirt is and how much they make the fat suit wobbly but watching it as an adult I felt almost like my younger self was bullshitted the whole time. I scolded and cursed my younger self for ever thinking that *that* was fat. But people change, tastes grow and refine and you come into a greater understanding of yourself. As a gainer artist I have the unique ability to actually rectify this wrong. I can make Scott Calvin genuinely quite fat, as fat as he should've been in that scene. So the top part of this comic was part horny-brain, part rectifying a past wrong, part catharsis of seeing such a beloved character so fat. 

But that wasn't enough for me personally. I wanted to do more than that. Such an important gainer media deserves more than that. So I thought how cute it'd be to play and poke fun at the almost universal collective reaction to this movie from members of this community and how it impacted or affirmed their love for fat men. At this point the movie is approaching 30 years old and yet it is still so loved and highly regarded by members of this community. Jokes are always made about how it affected them. And I just find that funny, like these handful of scenes from a movie in our childhood affects and shapes us all these years later. That's fucking amazing and I love it. So in this comic I set it up as myself dreaming about an idealized version of the iconic scene where Tim Allen is much much fatter. Only to be rocked awake at the dream and pondering why I'd be even dreaming about that movie in the first place. I recall how, indeed, yes a young me did watch that movie and that scene did have me staring wide eyed, slack jawed and totally entranced realizing parts about myself and confirming so many thoughts in my head.... only for it to be shrugged off as if like "yeah right no way that a movie has this much of an impact on me". Only for me to immediately contradict myself by way of Bubba donned in Christmas attire very much resembling Santa and Tim Allen's character specifically. Bubba obviously drawing many qualities from Santa and serving as one of the templates used in his construction. The comic ends here because that's really the name of the game right? This movie clearly shaped my taste of men in some level and obviously impacted how I desire to relate to them and interact with them and its neatly portrayed here. Santa as this quintessential masculine figure of comfort and warmth and security and sweet indulgence and so many other good stuff.

I hope you enjoyed this work. I certainly had fun drawing it as an homage to this great seminal work and as a love letter to a younger me. I especially hope you enjoy the detail put into the detailing of Tim Allen's face, I think I captured him quite well and while it was painfully time consuming I do think it paid off!