Rename fat zombies to obese zombies

[Blueflowerss]

Summary

None "Rename fat zombies to obese zombies"

Purpose of change

This felt long overdue. I personally feel this descriptor doesn't belong in modern CDDA.

Describe the solution

change the "fat" to "obese" in two monster files. I haven't changed the monster id, due to holy shit amount of work that would require.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Removing obese zombies, or skipping obese zombies straight to their evolved forms (boomers or gluttons).

Testing

Additional context

[XygenSS]

"fatty zombie" (or similar) avoids using a rigid clinical term and treating it like a living thing. "obese" implies that the zombie is fat because it made poor life choices while it was alive. However a zombie with 1.5x the size and resilience of an average human can just as likely have been mutated to become that oversized as it has been morbidly obese before dying.

Edit; I failed to address the description of the zombie which is also problematic as @RedMisao pointed out. If we're implying a degree of anomalous to the fat zombie, I imagine it with bubbly, rancid, unnatural globs of fat, bursting and tearing from the seams, slowly pulsating and growing long after its death. Laboriously stumbling around as it struggles to cope with the additional weight that its once-living pair of legs were never meant to handle.

The current description is just "haha this guy was overweight before he died." And two weeks later it suddenly turns into a living bomb full of toxic gas?

[RedMisao]

I mostly agree with @XygenSS. Renaming it obese makes it worse, from the derogatory aspect of the issue. They also mutate into not just boomers, but the pupating zombies too.
However, a thorn in this argument is that their description says they're "overweight", not just big or large.
My two cents is that, if the goal is to remove a bad descriptor, to also change their description to reflect they're not merely obese because they were so in life, but that they entered a pre-mutating stage, which is causing their increase in size after death. This would also put them in line with the other pre-mutating day 1 zombies.

[Blueflowerss]

I do admit, "obese" didn't sit well with me either. However I don't have the energy to rewrite these zombies to imply they're heavy as a result of post-zombification mutations. If someone wants to undertake that, feel free.
I just wanted to get rid of the word "fat", as it didn't sit well with me.

[Aerin-of-the-Toast]

I appreciate the attempt at being more accommodating, but I don't think implying the zombies only became large after death is the right call either. There are people, quite a lot in the US that are overweight, if they became a zombie you'd end up with an overweight zombie and I think it's worth representing that rather than pretending obese people didn't exist.

If anything I could argue the concept of larger zombies also being gross, flesh-bursting bubbly rancid boomers or w/e is perpetuating a negative stereotype of obese people as being gross, but on the other hand body horror is a core component of zombie mutations and they're all kinda meant to be gross. So.

Not really any easy answer I'm afraid. I'm also not entirely sure "obese" is better than "fat" in this case either, but I'm hardly an arbiter on this.

[Holli-Git]

I agree with Aerin, it feels odd to have obese zombies specifically evolve into boomers and such. I'm fine with it being changed to obese zombies though, I find not only does it help in terms of fat not being the most comfortable term, but also obese is a lot more specific and useful to a player to identify a zombie as rather than fat.

[Daved27hundred]

I think "fattened zombie" sounds better than both obese and fatty because "fatty" is also a somewhat juvenile term for an overweight person. Also I'd like to propose the new description imply that the zombie became fat after it turned, possibly from eating people/animals
example: stumbling as it moves, this overweight corpse appears distended and engorged with whatever it devoured.

[IdleSol]

Are we still talking about zombies? That monster that's trying to eat us? And we're trying to give it a name and a description that won't offend anyone?

Politely referring to something that wants to eat me is... weird, but okay?

Use words that imply unnaturalness or have something to do with further evolution.

... this human corpse, with unevenly bloated body parts....
... this human corpse, with a disproportionately enlarged abdomen ...
... this human corpse with strange bloating....

Or any other variations. I'm not very good at English.

And you can use the word big for a name. It doesn't seem to be busy. Big can be either fat or tall.

P. S. This zombie has class 2 obesity. BMI is ~37.7. If we assume his height is 180 centimeters.

[Holli-Git]

Are we still talking about zombies? That monster that's trying to eat us? And we're trying to give it a name and a description that won't offend anyone?

This is not about being "PC" towards zombies, it's about not using a term that makes people uncomfortable. This isn't a one time thing, I've seen plenty of people be off put from it.

[sonphantrung]

Ehh, why care about an adjective being "uncomfortable" whilst having some gross creatures/terrains + being "survival horror"? (looking at u, gangrenous crawlers, meat cocoons)

[Kantonine]

Well, the way I personally see it, is that the current descriptions don't really scream fatphobic to me, and that changing it just seems to be introducing a non-existent problem. Body horror is a big part of cdda, and when it comes to fat zombie evo lines, they all make sense from that point. I will concede that the Boomer Glutton likely teeters on the "Is this Fatphobic or Body horror" line. This just seems like a new version of the "Now with less Racism" moment that was in 2021. (Granted, making the name generic was a decent idea)

[Holli-Git]

Ehh, why care about an adjective being "uncomfortable" whilst having some gross creatures/terrains + being "survival horror"? (looking at u, gangrenous crawlers, meat cocoons)

There is quite a big difference between "I am uncomfortable because this is gross and disturbing" vs "I am uncomfortable because this uses a term that's been used to insult me". One is clearly intentional and adds to the game, and the other is (hopefully) unintentional, and can make people not want to play the game.

[KeremBabaG]

at least 42% of americans are obese and 30% are overweight so instead of this we should change the "fat zombie" to "zombie" and "zombie" to "thin zombie"

Jokes aside I have literally never seen anyone take an issue to neither the description nor the name. Admittedly I am a fatso as well, and this has always been nothing more than a gameplay gimmick to me, the boomer thing can easily be solved by making them turned from bloated corpses(i.e maybe decayed zombie) instead of the fat infected, no mutations or whatever needed