Favorite Characters: Alistair Delgado (Huge)

Though Alistair is cut from similar cloth as Rickie, the fantastically loveable queer Latino kid from another Winnie Holzman teen drama (My So-Called Life,) the character is executed in a way that’s wholly his own.  And he’s just lovely.  Terrific writing aside, I’m glad that Huge existed so an excellent actor like Harvey Guillen had the opportunity to play this rich character.  A few Alistair-related spoilers.  (Note:  I think it’s entirely possible that, had Huge lasted longer, Alistair would’ve come out as trans.  However, since that never happened on the show – what we know for sure is that Alistair likes boys and dislikes labels – I’ll stick with male pronouns.)

Making his first appearance at fat camp, Alistair demonstrates optimism and resiliency almost right away.  Despite his friendly openness, the other boys in his cabin avoid him and make fun of him behind his back.  They auto-assume his sexuality, they have secret conversations about who should tell him he smells (Alistair is uncomfortable with the communal showers,) and his unhip hobbies, like knitting and magic, win him no favors.  But Alistair is no stranger to bullying, and he doesn’t let it get to him at camp any more than he lets it get to him back in the real world.  He has a c’est la vie attitude to it, pointing that he is fat, and he is weird, so there’s no benefit to wring his hand when people call him out as such.

None of the misfits on the show, Alistair included, spend much time longing to join the cool group, which I love.  Like Ian, Alistair does have a crush on one of the cool kids, and there’s the added discomfort of his popular twin sister Chloe not wanting people to know they’re related.  Still, there’s no big yen on his part to “fit in;” like I said, it doesn’t bother him when other kids give him a hard time.  But Alistair is a little different than his friends, who are either too shy to approach the cool kids or actively dislike them.  Alistair doesn’t have anything against anyone.  Instead, he’s amiable to all, almost unquenchably positive and sunny.

Furthermore, Alistair is wonderfully confident.  One could argue that, as a teenager who’s both obese and non-heteronormative, he’s kind of had to – see the resiliency and optimism mentioned above.  When the kids are asked to “choose new names” as part of an activity, he has no qualms about calling himself Athena, smoothly shutting down the haters who get incredulous about him picking a female name.  Plus, he has an endearingly geeky enthusiasm that he’s 100% unapologetic about.  Whether it’s the aforementioned knitting or the magic, the LARP Becca creates, or his mad Risk skills, he’ll share his zeal with anyone who will listen.

Finally, this is tied up in all the other traits I’ve mentioned, but considering the crap people put Alistair through, he’s incredibly forgiving.  Even though Chloe’s refusal to acknowledge him is a majorly uncool move, he only tells one person about their relationship, in a very unguarded moment.  When people are mean or insensitive to him, it usually rolls off his shoulders immediately, and when he says no hard feelings, he means it.  There’s no running tally, no list of who’s nice to him and who’s not.  It’s completely water under the bridge, and the one time he gets into it with another camper over a serious betrayal, he just keeps to himself until he cools off and then moves on to detached civility.  While the other kids are having enormous falling-outs every other week or playing passive-aggressive games with each other, Alistair just kind of gets on with things, displaying an impressively-mature level head about all the drama around him.