@littlest-lily
Yeah, if you look at it as a tool for romance stories, the main pairing is usually pre-established, even if it doesn’t happen until the end, so there’s no real drama when X character is torn between character Y and Z, because the summery spells out it was always going to be Z. It especially doesn’t help if Z isn’t that good of a character for whatever reason, and Y, who is much more sympathetic, seems to be written in only to be used a tool to fuel Z’s relationship.
@Olo
It’s what frustrates me about that movie when I think about it; hell, it bugged me when I first watched it, though I didn’t understand why: they set up the narrative of ‘an ogre is a scary monster’ for the entire movie run off of, and then do nothing to make that make sense, even though they acted like it was a thing. If they had gone for a different take, and made it so ogres were misunderstood or something, it would have worked with the Shriek we got, but it seems to be saying ogres are scary monsters, but Shriek is a lazy bum so it doesn’t matter?
It’s sort of doing both at once and neither, so the point kind of gets lost beyond ‘Shriek isn’t bad’.
@SmolChlo
Oh, I’ll be getting my sprinkles one way or another, I think.
@SmolChlo
Me? Scary? Never! Why, I’ve never scared anyone in my life, I’ll have you know!
Oh, I’ve startled my far share, of course, but it’s not my fault; I"m just a lot lighter on my feet that people would expect of man my size, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Is that what you’ve been telling your friends? That I’m scary? Slander! I insist you invite a few of them over, just so I can undo the damage you’ve done to my reputation! We’ll have a nice chat, some drinks, and then they’ll see there’s nothing scary about me at all.
…By the way, how do your friends feel about Chinese? It’s just- I’ve recently discovered Mongolian Chicken, and I love it, I really do. I’ve found that there’s a bit too many peppers in the restaurants nearby for my taste, though, so I found a recipe I’ve been wanting to try. I’m not a great cook, don’t get me wrong, but I have cooked a mean dish or two in my time, and it’s a pretty simple recipe, really; I’m not sure how I could mess it up! And from what I’ve seen, it’s not just good with chicken. In fact, it seems to go well with just about anything!
Don’t worry. I’m sure your friends will love it.
@SmolChlo
Bold words for someone who so very shaped like food.
@littlest-lily
A lot of gentle SW scenarios, where the SW is a stranger, is often built around something like Nightingale Syndrome, where they devote time to caring for them and get attached, and the SW in turn gets used to being cared for and grows attached in turn.
Rather than her being nuts right away… you could play it as a sort of… slide, since he is her world, honestly. Food? Water? Safety? Comfort? All of them come from the Friendly Giant. It becomes common sense for her to rely on him for everything, to call him for every worry. At the same time, the fact she has nothing else, no real way to spend her time, no others to talk to (or, if there’s other SWs, they’re only competition for the FG’s time), the fact that the FG has other options than her grates at her, even as the sheer helplessness of her situation eats away at her sanity; people aren’t made to be so helpless, after all.
And so, more and more, she demands more and more from the Friendly Giant, growing slowly crueler and more abusive, until on some level she starts thinking that she owns him, and isn’t afraid to throw a fit if he breaks that world view.
@SmolChlo
Of course, that’s a dangerous game, because most things with yanderes end with the person noticing they’re being obsessed over… and the giant is the one holding the cards. You need to balance your stick usage with your carrots, otherwise your giant horse is going to walk off to do whatever he wants, with you stuck for the ride whether you like it or not.
…
‘You’re saddled up; there’s no recourse
It’s, “Hi-yo, silver!”
Signed: Bad Horse.’
I never thought Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog would feel topical to SWs, lol.
There’s also the inverse of growing, though. Both the more normal undeserved giant rampage growing kind of dynamic, but also, like, revenge growth. A boss lady put a guy down, calls him pathetic?
He grows. Maybe it’s just a bit, a few feet, and suddenly he’s super popular, the big man (sorry, I had to) on campus. Maybe she’s the only one to notice that he’s now inhumanly tall, maybe he’s suddenly her boss.
Or… Maybe it’s a lot. Maybe he’s a security guard who ‘confiscates’ her car, and pretends she’s too quiet for him to her. Or maybe he just plucks her from inside of the building, and walks away…
So, as a sort of follow up question, much much later, lol…
I’ve got the idea for a dragon story, and I’m not talking one of the half-human things where it’s a giant person with, like scale gauntlets built in. No, the main character is just a normal, scary dragon, who views humans as probably too small to be worth the effort snacks, the woman is Classic Princess 
(with a twist), and a supporting character that is a dragon who polymorphs around a lot, but prefers various shades of ‘human with draconic features’ up to the classic half-human dragon.
If I ever end up writing this… would it be good to post this here? Because I’m not sure what I’d do with it otherwise, lol.
Plus, there’s always the fun dynamics of an unstoppable force bending the knee to a queen (or princess, or hell, just a lady knight in authority), who can’t even touch the tip of his armored boot.
Bonus points if he’s so big that that kind of action should naturally send her flying, but it never happens, and it’s not until she sees him actually run, and leave holes in the countryside, that she realizes just how careful he’s been even for the little things. …Heh.
@blehb said in Lesser Known Inconveniences of Being Giant/Tiny:
I am the same way. I dwell too much on the details and fail to make a single cohesive story, and at some point give up on writing anything at all!
It’s just so easy to spiral on it! I think, ‘Oh, I like this idea, and I want it in the story’, but then it’s like… why is that there? What caused it? How would that work on a biological/societal level? What are the repercussions of this change and it’s like-
I just want to write about a giant hugging a woman shaped robot piloted by his normal sized girlfriend so they can still have physical contact even if it’s really hard for them normally, is that so hard?! I don’t want to wholesale make up a setting-wide backstory to explain it!
So, how is the bathroom handled? After a certain point you can probably do hamster cage thing, maybe put an area aside, but when they’re bigger? Or if you’re not doing the hamster cage?
Best I’ve ever figured is the defacto built-into-the-seat child’s tiny’s toilet seat I used once, where between the lid and the usual seat is one with a much smaller hole so the little lady doesn’t fall in. That, and ladders. So many ladders.
@littlest-lily
Well. Now I need to work it into a story somewhere that a tiny keeps getting thrown around, but is always fine, so she loses all fear of heights and/or gets super traumatized.
I think the problem is the plumbing, hooking it up and all that.
@wildxpixie
Honestly, that sheer difference in power informs a lot of how a GT/sw dynamic works, and how, in anything close to a ‘fair’ relationship, the giant has to accommodate the sw, make allowances for her, respect her fragility and how delicate she is, that many things that aren’t a threat or obstacle to him may be serious problems for her, while the sw has to acclimate to the fact that they aren’t in control, in many ways.
Sure, she may be in charge, or telling them what to do, or even manipulating him with pleasure until he’s weak in the knees, but the second he just… reaches over and picks her up all of that goes away; they don’t get to choose what happens to them, where they go, anything. It’s all the giant’s choice, and even the fact he’s not making that choice is, in fact, him choosing not to choose; he allows her that control, it’s not something she has herself.
In reminds me about what people say about Superman vs Batman fights, that Superman has to not use all his natural advantages (like just blasting Batman from space or something) to even allow Batman to get to a situation where they fight at all, allowing him to even be able to have a chance to fight. That those big, dramatic fights are still Clack accommodating his strength against Bruce’s frail humanity.