Let Me Get This Straight

[Olo]

@SmolChlo You’ve got ten friends, though, right?

[SmolChlo]

@Olo Ooooooh no no no It seems I’ve been bamboozled. I wouldn’t give up my friends so you’ll have to settle for your 10 carry out orders and ME

[littlest-lily]

@SmolChlo I will join you in this noble effort! So make that twenty meals and 2 volunteers

[SmolChlo]

@littlest-lily eating us would be like eating two tiny grapes …hopefully the 20 extra meals will make a dent in his appetite

[[[global:former-user]]]

@Olo This sounds like the beginning of a villain origin story.

[i am insane]

I mean, this is the giant problem in a nutshell. The world isn’t made for giants, and you can either accept being a second class citizen, or change things to fit you better, if you can.

[littlest-lily]

This is getting me wondering… Is this kind of problem posed in the world of giantess? I don’t actually know the answer to that, but it feels like it’s different somehow if it’s a woman growing and I’m not sure why… Am I alone in thinking this?

[i am insane]

@littlest-lily
Nope. I mostly go searching GTS content looking for F/f content, and never once have I really seen logistics addressed even slightly in a GTS fic. At the end of the day, I honestly get the impression most GTS fics, or pictures or comics or whatever, are all just someone venting something, and it’s only about the power and crushing and worship, either doing it themselves or by being the one crushed. Once a woman goes giant, everything goes perfect and they are unstoppable forces of nature, instead of being doomed to probably starve if the military doesn’t blow them up first for the massive casualties they always seem to cause after they promptly lose their minds and personalities they had before growing and turn into murdering psychopaths.

Honestly, the reason I’m so anti-SM/GTS is just that side of the fetish is so… toxic with whatever that is. In theory, giant boobs and legs and whatever sounds great, women are hot so more woman to be hot is good, right? In practice, me as a man reading them feels like indulging in self hate for my entire gender.

[SmolChlo]

@littlest-lily I feel like we would face the same problems as Giant men but maybe the tiny people down below would feel less afraid of us? You would find me trying to subtly tip toe around the city lol like Ope pardon me, I’ll just scoot past ya

[littlest-lily]

@i-am-insane Yeah it’s already rare for me to read something F/m, but if I do it’s always a shrinking story (which I will say I’ve seen some variety and depth there). I honestly can’t think of anything I’ve read with actual giantess. But even from other media I’ve come across, I’ve very much gotten that impression of GTS = murderous rampage and little else. Not to kink shame anyone, but yeah the whole thing doesn’t appeal to me either.

I do feel like I see a lot of GT rampaging content too though, but a lot of that is more in the M/m circles, just from my experience. 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. So on the GTS side that perhaps means more focus on the power and majesty of the giant lady. And on the SW side there’s more focus on the tiny one… and that the “power” she has as the object of desire kind of balances out the fact that the giant has actual power. Maybe that balance is what helps things be not so focused on purely reveling in the destructive power of the giant? And thus we’re able to think about other things such as these kinds of logistics?

I hope I’m making any kind of sense haha.

[littlest-lily]

@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

[SmolChlo]

@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

[i am insane]

@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.

[Olo]

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:

1. Size fantasy is no exception to Sturgeon’s law.

2. 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.

[miss-lillipants]

@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