Let Me Get This Straight
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@SmolChlo Can I just say that is adorable Egads, I’m such a SW through and through, the mere thought of being the large one makes me want to hide underground lol
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@littlest-lily same here, I’m forever a tiny at heart ️ If I grew, I’d dig a hole in the dessert and hide. I would feel so embarrassed being that enormous and naked in front of so many people a Giantess who’s afraid of the tinies
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@littlest-lily
It’s something I’ve talked about on this site before… somewhere, but I get the impression that a lot of GTS writers are men, and it’s as much about desperately needing to feel not in control as it is ‘women are sexy! Big women are more sexy!’, only it’s escalated with them to the current GTS fetish status. SM stuff still falls under similar ways, from what I’ve seen, it just seems less extreme because it’s focused on a small group of small people, rather than just the entire area, so the woman seems more rational when not interacting with the SM, and it’s often more about control than just destruction.SW/GT stuff, meanwhile, does have men treat SWs like women treat SMs, but it’s only some of the content, not all of it, which is interesting. There’s as much gentle SW stories about men or women taking care of SWs as there are of SWs being oppressed. If we’re accepting my previous logic of ‘a lot of GTS/SM stuff is about men needing to not feel in control’, then the men writing it don’t feel that need, while the women involved, who have similar needs, are… handling them better? Societally, I think men wanting to feel in control is ‘acceptable’, so it’s easier to manage it, while women not wanting to feel in control is ‘acceptable’, so it’s easier to manage for them?
Most GT pics I’ve seen are similar to GTS in that they just destroy everything around them, but GT stories, in my experience, are almost as much a mix as SW stories, while GTS stories are generally the same as GTS pictures. I agree about the focus thing; GT/GTS fics focus on how powerful the big person is, while SW/SM fics focus on how weak the small person is, though by nature of the content that seems largely inevitable. GTS pictures and comics overwhelmingly show the women from an outside context, while stories, without the pictures of big women and boobs and legs, are often more balanced in their perspective, while SW pics focus almost entirely on the SW most of the time… and all of that feels like it’s focused on the male interest on the topic, rather than the female interest.
Though maybe my own perspective as a man are skewing my perception on it, I don’t know.
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Really glad people are taking these issues up. My original post was primarily a joke, but it also highlighted some of the challenges I’ve had with writing about true giants (and giantesses), and I suspected others might be thinking along the same lines.
Two things to keep in mind when criticizing size fiction:
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Size fantasy is no exception to Sturgeon’s law.
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Many people think that writing smut is a shameful or at least unserious activity unworthy of thoughtful plotting.
While I’m all about SW/GT on this forum, some of you know that I have a longer history with the SM/GTS genre. I’ve skimmed through more GTS stories than I care to admit, and you are correct that stories that give a single thought to where a true giantess came from, what she wants, and how she’s going to endure are rarer than hen’s teeth.
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that for these (almost entirely male) authors, giantesses are valued solely because they destroy and kill. It doesn’t matter if she has no more personality than an earthquake or a tsunami. What matters is that she destroys the world and the men in it. Sometimes there’s the additional irony of being destroyed by someone who, at one point, might have been described as delicate or alluring, but once she’s gone giant she’s fully on board with the author’s agenda of homicide, rape, and cannibalism. It’s not called Conversations With The Fifty-Foot Woman, after all.
Several books could be (and probably have been) written about why some men feel they deserve to be destroyed by women, and I certainly wouldn’t deny the validity of such feelings. I just challenge the notion that they should be considered the foundation of all size fantasy.
The neglect of what has been called the “ecology” of giants is a major obstacle to me enjoying a lot of true giant|ess smut. I need to know how all of the needs listed in the OP are going to be met if I am to relate to a giant at all. No human society that I’m familiar with would tolerate a giant for long, much less accommodate them, and any society terrorized into providing a giant with food and shelter would be unable to provide that giant with any social comfort.
To preserve a giant’s humanity, the easiest solution is probably some sort of dimensional portal that would allow regular visits with same-sized people. Perhaps they live on different planets (although that invites questions about how everyone evolved so similarly except in size). I could see a giant spaceship or dimensional shuttle parked out in the desert where the giant could get their food/shelter/communication needs met, but then wander out to meet the tinies someplace where the giant wouldn’t cause (too much) destruction.
I guess one reason that I get so hung up on these concerns is that when an author hand-waves them away, they’re signalling that their fetish thirst is more important than a coherent story. And that bugs me enough to take me out of the fantasy.
@ThumbLoverVer2 said:
This sounds like the beginning of a villain origin story.
“Anti-hero,” please.
@littlest-lily said:
Perhaps there is an element of it being largely straight men on many of these sites, which inevitably leads to a lot of focus on sexy women.
Indeed. This is what I was talking about in an earlier thread.
I’ve been toying with some terms for categorizing size fantasy tropes, and the most hopeful of these is the Indifferent v. Intimate spectrum. This criterion depends upon the focus of the story, whether the protagonist(s) have relationships that are affected by the size differential or if they are just exploring the size differential itself.
On the Indifferent end you have people encountering an environment that is fantastically smaller or larger than themselves, discovering what this allows them to do, and processing those experiences. On the Intimate end you have people encountering people that are fantastically smaller or larger than themselves, meaningfully communicating with those differently-sized people, and (re-)negotiating those relationships.
Rampage scenarios belong on the Indifferent end of the spectrum, whether the protagonist is a giant or a tiny witness. I’d also include unaware scenarios here, where a tiny is navigating a giant world and unable/unwilling to communicate with the giant people around them. The Intimate end of the spectrum, of course, is where giants and tinies interact over a dramatic period of time and determine what they mean to each other.
I place no judgment on any point of this spectrum. I just think it would be a useful way to label stories and help size pervs find what they’re looking for.
@SmolChlo said:
If I grew, I’d dig a hole in the dessert and hide.
That’s the kind of dessert I’m looking for.
I would feel so embarrassed being that enormous and naked in front of so many people a Giantess who’s afraid of the tinies
See, this is where the male GTS-rampage authors fail; they can’t imagine a woman becoming a giantess and not turning into a homicidal psychopath.
@i-am-insane said:
I get the impression that a lot of GTS writers are men, and it’s as much about desperately needing to feel not in control
Absolutely. I resisted it for a while, but clearly the most helpful analogy is to BDSM, where tinies are subs and giants are doms. And just like subs outnumber doms, tinies outnumber giants. Once I embraced this, it was a lot easier to switch between SM/GTS and SW/GT.
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@Olo said in Let Me Get This Straight:
The neglect of what has been called the “ecology” of giants is a major obstacle to me enjoying a lot of true giant|ess smut.
I’m also glad to see others notice the difference is demands/expectations for logistics between SW/GT and SM/GTS content. I totally understand and appreciate wanting to rationalise an improbable thing into reality - magic, science (known or unknown), aliens, etc. People are so creative and amazing with what they know, but sometimes I just think, “why is this important?” Sometimes I just want to enjoy a giant for the sake of him being a giant - the practical side of being a giant in a world that probably can’t support him is interesting, but sometimes not crucial. At the risk of sounding dismissive, it is a fantasy after all.
In the end, the giant man is my object, and what he does is what I wish for him to do, and what I wish to witness - just as giantesses, despite their position of power, are the object of someone else’s (mostly men’s) desire. I think a lot of straight men find being literal giants hard to reconcile because of how so many fantasies are tailored them - they don’t need an excuse to put women into positions, but when those tables turn and men become the focus of someone else’s fantasy, it’s got to work for them, which centres them again (even if it’s got nothing to do with them). There are exceptions of course, and the beauty of fetishes is how varied and diverse they are.
Your original post was cute and funny but it really does reflect the push-back I’ve read from guys who are clearly very resistant to the idea. In saying that, I go back to my initial response being:
Yeah, nice try convincing us that any of that bothers you at all
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Cw / tw: self harm
@Olo I’ve thought about this a lot.
One of the reasons I keep on going back to Gulliver’s travels is because, (maybe since that story is actually some extended allegory about British politics in the 18th century), all these practical concerns are at the center of Gulliver’s life when he’s in Lilliput. Reading that an early age has has made me think about these concerns every time I write a story now.If I’m writing a giant character who’s empathetic like I am in real life, I realized, the most realistic reaction they’d have to being turned into a giant would HAVE to be suicide. There’s no ethical way for them to remain alive, as their enjoyment of life would be destroyed, by being completely alienated from everybody else.
This is one of those stories that lives as a seed in my head. I’ll probably never actually write it, since it wouldn’t be a kink story at all. It would just be a tragedy with sci-fi elements.
There’s already a graphic novel with this tone about a giant man who’s not enjoying his experience. It’s called “3 story” by Matt Kindt.
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@miss-lillipants said in Let Me Get This Straight:
In the end, the giant man is my object, and what he does is what I wish for him to do, and what I wish to witness - just as giantesses, despite their position of power, are the object of someone else’s (mostly men’s) desire. I think a lot of straight men find being literal giants hard to reconcile because of how so many fantasies are tailored them - they don’t need an excuse to put women into positions, but when those tables turn and men become the focus of someone else’s fantasy, it’s got to work for them, which centres them again (even if it’s got nothing to do with them). There are exceptions of course, and the beauty of fetishes is how varied and diverse they are.
This is my experience as well, and why a lot of giantess and shrunken woman content doesn’t appeal to me. In terms of giantess content, there isn’t a lot of content that focuses on how desirable the tiny man is; the focus is usually on the woman because the creator can’t imagine himself as being the object of desire. I see the same thing with a lot of shrunken woman content, where the man isn’t supposed to be desirable and is often just depicted as a hand or other faceless non-entity.
That said, I don’t want to judge anyone for their desires. I know that many men like their focus to be on the giant or tiny woman. Meanwhile, I’ll be shamelessly dreaming about giant men striding through cities
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You know, I’ve seen talk that men, as a whole, aren’t sexualized, at all. That is to say, societally, men aren’t looked at as desirable for being a man who looks attractive, but because they’re doing something to be desirable. Men aren’t complimented for being hot, or looking good, or… anything like that.
And personally? I can believe it. It’s mixed up with me, I think, because I’m a bit too unimpressed by men for it to be normal, but outside of like, fan girls, I’m not really sure I’ve seen examples of people saying, ‘this man is hot!’ beyond poorly written porn/power fantasies, and even then it’s rare. Meanwhile, women being viewed as attractive is all over the damn place.
And again, it’s probably a bit mixed up with my own stuff, but as a man I’m not sure how I’d write a man as being attractive. Part of it is I don’t get it, true, but it just feels weird at some level to even think that way. Ironically, GT would make it easier, because it can be disconnected from just being being masculine and rely on the attraction of raw power, but the problem remains.
On giants as a whole, a big part of the reason I’ve never written a GT story is that because getting it right in a setting is hard. The easiest way is magic, but having them in any sort of modern setting just comes with whole lists of logistical problems its hard to resolve. I’ve been brainstorming a setting for awhile, and I think I’ve gotten it pretty close to having it viable, and it involves wars/uprising to get giants into a high place in society, improbable stuff like parts of their biology being environmentally advantageous, food/water needs not matching what you’d expect, and actual stipends for them to stay in their homes or giant designed areas. I’m putting all this work into a making a setting where giants and humans exist in the same places as semi-equals, and that just says a lot, I think.
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@miss-lillipants said:
At the risk of sounding dismissive, it is a fantasy after all.
At the risk of sounding snobby, I’m hoping to meet a higher standard.
Yeah, nice try convincing us that any of that bothers you at all
It bothers me quite a bit, actually. I’ll work on expressing myself more convincingly.
@tiny-ivy said:
I’ll probably never actually write it, since it wouldn’t be a kink story at all. It would just be a tragedy with sci-fi elements.
I’d still want to read it.
@Nyx said:
This is my experience as well, and why a lot of giantess and shrunken woman content doesn’t appeal to me. In terms of giantess content, there isn’t a lot of content that focuses on how desirable the tiny man is; the focus is usually on the woman because the creator can’t imagine himself as being the object of desire. I see the same thing with a lot of shrunken woman content, where the man isn’t supposed to be desirable and is often just depicted as a hand or other faceless non-entity.
I see this as an artistic failure on the part of the author. As a writer it’s my duty to make my story accessible to everyone, not just the people who share my specific kink.
@i-am-insane said:
outside of like, fan girls, I’m not really sure I’ve seen examples of people saying, ‘this man is hot!’ beyond poorly written porn/power fantasies, and even then it’s rare. Meanwhile, women being viewed as attractive is all over the damn place.
This is exactly what is meant by “the (straight) male gaze.” You can also see it in the cultural assumption that men who work on their body, their clothing, or their grooming must be gay.
as a man I’m not sure how I’d write a man as being attractive. Part of it is I don’t get it, true, but it just feels weird at some level to even think that way.
As far as I can tell, the best way to learn how to describe an attractive man is to read writing by people who find men attractive.