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.
