Posted by newenglandee 11 years ago Report

...it's fantastic. There's huge depth crafted in the mythology behind the story, the bond developed between Autumn and Lincoln is sincere and touching despite how it ends, and it's really very beautifully done. I cannot honestly bring myself to criticize this.

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Thank you! And, frankly, I'm relieved to avoid the critique!

Posted by Littledude 11 years ago Report

Bit of a downer ending there at the end, but Autumn was pretty hell-bent on not keeping Lincoln as a pet. You have a talent for writing, sir, and I hope to see more stories from you in the future.

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Thanks! I have a bunch of other things in my gallery here, if you enjoy reading.

And, yeah - the ending is certainly not a high note. But it can't be that unexpected... ;)

Posted by Ka-Atis 11 years ago Report

Cute. Touchingly cute. Lovely. :D

I did expect something more creepy, shocking or heartbreaking to happen, but at the other side - this too was nicely surprising. I didn't see that coming, and yet it makes sense in its own way. ..Perhaps creepy too, depending on how you see it. ;)

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

In the end, it's a pretty low-key story - more an exploration of the setting than anything else, I guess.

Posted by Ka-Atis 11 years ago Report

that makes room for further stories and spin-offs then ..? :D

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Possibly! I have an RP partner with whom we use munchkins a lot since they prefer macro/micro and it's an easy default. We've progressed forward a few years, though, where there's an exploratory market for talking munchkins, and some farms raise them that way intentionally. ;) Also, a lot of the wild munchkins can talk, if they grow up around humans rather than around squirrels.

Posted by Ka-Atis 11 years ago Report

Cool. Intriguing. Should that RP turn into a completed written work, I may want to read it. Got sort of hooked on munchkins.. :D

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

<grin> Then it worked! I was trying to come up with a concept that other people could RP in or write in, too, if they wanted - something not too complicated. There aren't really any good "plausible" human/micro settings that don't involve someone with a shrink gun. ;)

Posted by Ka-Atis 11 years ago Report

In a way, munchkins are more plausible than the shrink gun. They have developed naturally, therefore adapted to their small size (different organs, metabolism, etc), while shrunk people would fall victim to the square cube law and die. ;)

Anyhow, they sound very tasty :D

Posted by Marked 11 years ago Report

A fine conclusion to the tale. I don't feel sad for Lincoln's date, as it was more or less the best end he could ever meet in the setting. Rather, I'm sad that he and Autumn had so little time to explore what made him special. Also, I couldn't help getting the vibe that Dinah had and interest in Autumn more than as a friend. I may be reading to much into it, but the way that Autumn continuously rolls over for her doesn't make much sense without her also having feelings.

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

<grin> I wondered if anyone would catch on to what was happening between Autumn and Dinah. It's not exactly as you described, but yes. :)

As I mentioned to Ka-Atis above, to some degree the story was written more to flesh out the idea of munchkins for RP than for anything else. That doesn't mean that the story and conflict and drama portion of it don't matter, but I did leave a lot of room for other kinds of interaction for that reason. :)

Posted by Marked 11 years ago Report

For something that is a simple RP concept, this story does a great job of world building. You solved one of the tricker problems of having vore a normal part of the world; namely why would anyone not into vore as a fetish want to eat something live? Answer, to get high! Brilliant. I loved how the eating of munchkins wormed its way into everyday life.

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Thanks! I appreciate that! It -is- a fun setting to RP in. :)

Posted by French_snack 11 years ago Report

Ah, why do I risk depressing myself by reading your stories? :) This is beautiful. One of your best - among your most engaging and most moving. The moment where Lincoln cries and says he's lonely...

The irony is, of course, he could have lived out his life quite happily and contentedly in his artificial environment, if he had never been removed and confronted to the truth. The conclusion that Autumn seems to draw from all this is interesting: that she shouldn't put "over-ripe" munchkins in that kind of situation again, but that there's nothing wrong with eating them early enough to deny them the possibility to evolve as he did. The possibility to become people (as she sees it).

And then the fact that she can't ever know what exactly he was thinking or feeling at the end, and nor would she want to. And we find ourselves in the same position at her: we don't have Lincoln's perspective at the end, and in a sense that's a relief.

The whole concept of the munchkins is fascinating. Have you ever read Mukat's story "A lady's delights"?. You and he have both hit upon an idea that I'd never thought of: "semi-conscious" tiny humanoids. Creatures that are capable of feelings, but who are not fully self-aware. (In Mukat's case, they're originally humans, whose consciousness has effectively been bred out of them.) He has a scene slightly similar to your scene where Dinah first enters the room and Autumn is worried that she might scare them: in Mukat's story, the woman who tends to the "delights" lets her employer see them in their cages, and the little beings are wary of her, whereas they naturally trust the "big woman" whom they see every day.

Anyway... Definitely a memorable story!

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Admittedly, most of my stories are pretty depressing for fans of willing prey or kind predators. A lot of times I'm trying to capture a an unusual angle on the relationship between pred and prey that really isn't tenable without some back-of-curtain insidiousness. Especially with both this story and Anxiety, it was important that the pred eat sapient (or mostly sapient prey) regularly - that it was completely normalized - but that the pred could still be 'nice', not a monster. I pushed Autumn back into something vaguely like the 1950's because it let me pretend she'd be less aware of social consciousness movements - or at least made it so I didn't have to deal with a society that hadn't had them.

I am a firm believer in the fact that the morality of our society is far from perfect, and dealing with topics like this - what is right and wrong, and what is just a matter of being normalized - helps draw that out where it can be investigated. That was the purpose to In Real Life to some degree as well. I hope it doesn't sound like I think I have all the answers as I write stories like this; I kind of write them to try to figure out the answers myself. But this -was- kind of an uncommon opportunity to write the entire story from the predator's perspective and make her empathetic. I'm glad some people have enjoyed that and have bought into the conceit of munchkins.

And I -have- ready Mukat's story and enjoyed it very much. That could very well have influenced this one to some degree, though it wasn't intentional.

Posted by TheWiking2000 11 years ago Report

This is officially one of my absolute favorite giantess/vore stories to date!

The pacing is perfect, the 1960-ish setting is unusual but in a good way and the characters feel real and are likeable. Autumn is a really lovable character and Dinah adds both drama and spice.

I really like how you incorporate the vore into the story. It comes naturally and the act of eating isn't overly described and elaborate on (which many times ruins the pacing).

Like French_snack wrote above the "munchkins" are similar to Murkats "Delights". You've made these, however, more industrial, more part of your every day groceries, than his rare and exquisite treat, cultivated illegally and secretively. If anything, the "munchkins" remind me more of the clones in Ladyprey's story "The Clone" (illustrated by Karbo) in which tiny "clones" are bought by woman, taken home and eaten. One of which the main protagonist falls in love with, yet still eats at the end (because he will expire anyway).

I'm so glad I stumbled upon this story. I've already read it twice and will probably do so again. Very well done, good Sir!

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Thank you very much! I'm always pretty thrilled when someone reads a story and has a strong enough reaction to want to comment, but I can't tell you the thrill I get when someone wants to read it *twice*.

I'm also really excited about how well it was received. At the time I was afraid the pacing was going to be far too slow and boring.