post #2583154

In late January and early February of 2021, an artistic meme arose on Twitter (now X) wherein the character Stitch, a canonically short, blue, male alien from Disney's Lilo & Stitch franchise began to be depicted in an anthrofied, barazoku, manly, muscular and/or sexually provocative manner. The image above by MineDoo is believed to be the start of this trend. Himbo Stitch (also called Bara Stitch) became the informal name given to the character when drawn in this style and is thus as much a name for the meme as it is for the character when drawn with himbo characteristics.

Though examples of Stitch in the style previously described predate the picture above, the posting of this image coincided with a marked increase in both himbo and anthrofied depictions of Stitch, as well as depictions tagged Explicit as opposed to Safe. These depictions generally bifurcated into two related, but separate styles:

Muscular or Athletic

This variant often depicts the character as a manly and either muscular or athletic male, often with a big penis/big balls or a big_bulge as shown in the popular examples below:

post #4832061 post #3361922 post #2613084 post #4986851 post #2587693 post #4267256

Musclegut or Overweight

This variant often depicts the character with a body type anywhere from musclegut to obese, and often with red shorts or underwear, with the spectrum represented from left to right below:

post #3065890 post #2598209 post #4557881 post #3509912 post #2899370 post #2592302

The trend also had a small halo effect where some of the genetic experiments other than Stitch, including Reuben and Leroy, were also drawn in such a manner; those two have their own himbo character tags in Himbo Reuben and Himbo Leroy. It also led to a small increase in fan art of Gantu, the one canonically tall and muscular alien character of the franchise (although he's not an experiment).

The peak of the trend passed quickly, partly due to several people both in and out of the furry fandom not wanting to see a Disney character traditionally seen as "cute" depicted in such a manner, but inasmuch as it popularized a new variant of the character, tagging variants of Stitch matching one of the above categories remains appropriate. However, as this tag does not automatically implicate the appropriate copyright and character tags, always tag stitch_(lilo_and_stitch) and lilo_and_stitch (the latter implicated by the former) as well.