Glitter Jelly:
I've often wondered about that, since this theme is so prevalent in the stories section...
Letters And Numbers:
If I had to guess, there might be 2 things going on:
1) That kind of revenge-by-getting-fat trope is common in a lot of media, it's been around forever, and I'm sure there are quite a few people in this community today who discovered they liked weight gain (or erotic weight gain media) because of tropes like that in "straight" media -- they just liked it for a different reason than how the author intended, maybe. Maybe not.
2) A lot of the stories on this site are taking well worn tropes like this one and putting the author's own take on it, and the author might not be thinking that hard about the origin of the trope they're mimicking, because it's something they always thought was hot. They might not have seen it the way it was intended to be seen, kinda subverting a problematic trope, but maybe inexpertly making that clear. Or not. It's amateur art, though, people trying things out.
Munchies:
I think this is true in terms of surface level, individual reasons. But the popularity also speaks to feedist culture. As much as feedism is countercultural, feedist still live in a fatphobic world. I do not think a lot of feedists have interrogated these influences as a whole.
I noticed revenge weight gain stories follow a general beat. Mean person is skinny and hot. As punishment for their sins, they get fat. Society rejects them, their life is ruined, and then they get fatter. Bonus points if the mean person joins the other loser fatties or the loser fatty they bullied become skinny and hot.
Notice how this frames fat as bad and skinny as good. There are, of course, variations on an individual level, but this is how the bulk of them go. From where I sit, this suggests feeling ashamed of their kinks and fetishes. They find fat sexy (the porn part) while also negociating some level of fatphobia (the revenge part).
But I suppose it makes sense. A lot of people sexualize what they find taboo.
Letters And Numbers:
Yeah, I don’t know that a lot of people think that hard about it, they just know they like what they like. Some people are also very into the teasing/humiliation part of the fetish, which plays into stories like these, too.
They might not be thinking that hard about it but the themes are still present and it can still lead to stigmatization. I'm a feedee and I don't have a humiliation fetish, so when I hear other people's real stories or read people's fictional ones about how fat is bad and fat people are ostracized for their weight, but actually they're sexy but actually they should feel ashamed. It demotivates me from wanting to gain even just a little bit because I don't want to be humiliated.
I'm not saying this to say "we need to ban these stories because they hurt people's feelings", because a lot of people do enjoy the humiliation factor. I just think we need to be careful how we judge people who don't share this fetish and who don't want to gain weight but just have due to other circumstances. Because even though they aren't part of our circle, the way we treat and view them, affects how we treat and view feedees/gainers in our circle.
