Posted by Aickavon12 11 years ago Report

A lovely story, something of high quality, though I expect that from your skill :P

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Thank you! I appreciate that!

If only I could figure out how it got that wonky formatting!

Posted by Aickavon12 11 years ago Report

wonky formatting? HA! I use notepad *ftw*

Posted by Littledude 11 years ago Report

Interesting concept for a giant: perpetually hungry but can't starve, doesn't want to eat friends but has no choice if they're afraid. Of course, given how most people would react to a giant, it's a real Catch-22, as if Jimmy wasn't safe in the end.

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

<grin> Nobody's safe!

Posted by XDDX 11 years ago Report

That was a lovely and cute story. I feel a little sorry for Jimmy but his fate is kind of a signature of you anyways XD

Thanks =)

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

My pleasure! I'm glad you liked it. If you felt sorry for Jimmy, then yay!

Posted by XDDX 11 years ago Report

Wonder what happens with Maribelle now..

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

She starts her own travelling circus. Nothing scares her any more. :)

Posted by French_snack 11 years ago Report

Quite fascinating! Ara is said to be intelligent, but she's also like a force of nature. She can't be reasoned with (it seems), and although she (presumably) has a sense of reason her mind must be very alien.

And the "don't be scared if you want to live" is an instruction that's impossible for most people to follow, of course!

I'm intrigued as to what it is that leads her to view scared humans as food, and not-scared humans as not-food. Something purely random in her species' evolution, or a distant memory that humans who aren't scared may somehow be dangerous?

I assume that she identifies individual humans by smell / taste, and that if they become scared when they weren't before, she literally does not realise that they are still the same person?

Posted by 4ofSwords 11 years ago Report

Well, partly it's was the request of XDDX, but the way I was thinking her thought process *is* kind of alien, and doesn't really bother with permanence to the extent that we're used to. Humans are ephemeral to her - their lifespan is similar to an insect's to us. If things change - if they go from friend to food - well, they weren't going to last forever anyway.

Posted by Donotlike13 7 years ago Report

I would love for another story set in this world

Posted by Donotlike13 7 years ago Report

I second the idea of another story in this world. Either with ARA or without. Maybe just some world building?

Posted by Donotlike13 4 years ago Report

As we discussed on The Director story post, I'll post some more questions about this setting.

First off, are there any more details/stories anywhere that I can peruse?

What are giants in this setting, just females or both genders? If just one sex how do they reproduce as their not immortal? And is their any way humans can kill them?

I don't think the story tells us how tall Ara roughly is, or for that matter her hair and eye color?

Considering she throws up pine trees, would it be accurate to say giants like her are solely carnivores? And even more limited (in their minds at least) to still living creatures as she didn't eat any dead bodies despite them outnumbering those on the battlefield still alive?

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

No more stories in this setting at the moment, and I don't anticipate any. Though who knows if inspiration may strike in the future?

I imagine the giants in this setting to be humans who never died. For one reason or another, they just kept growing and growing (and maybe she's growing still), until hundreds or a thousand years later, she's not really human any more. It could be a curse, or a disease, or just some weird think that happened to some people in the past. So reproduction happens pre-giant. At this point she couldn't reasonably impregnated, so no giant babies. I prefer settings with only female giants, but I'm not sure that actually works as well in this setting, so there may be some of each.

Ara is ~120 feet tall, give or take 10-15 feet. My go-to macro size is that the average person will be about the size of a finger, which is about a 25:1 ratio. She's blonde, and has greenish eyes.

Pine trees are particularly bad for eating. She's generally omnivorous, but living things satisfy a craving that extends beyond simple hunger, or maybe a non-physiological aspect of her hunger.

Posted by Donotlike13 4 years ago Report

You know when it comes to sizes I'm a bit of loss figuring out specifics. How tall does someone have to be to put a 6 foot human in there mouth (and close it with them total inside)? How tall to eat swallow that same person? And not just swallow but survive the trip (i.e. not crushed to death by the throat muscles or choke the giant eating them). How many could fit inside the stomach, squished together versus having enough room to breathe and struggle?
Any thoughts?

Yeah but the story says they don't die no matter how long they starve for, so does Ara and the other giants even need to eat?

Maybe they get a primal satisfaction from feeling humans struggling in their bellies?

For that matter the narration implies some giants are part of the military, how does that work?

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

What you want to do is figure out what size you think you could fit in your own mouth and swallow. hold it up and look at it. A lego man? Your own finger? A baby carrot? Measure that, and compare to your own height, and that's ratio you'll work with. I can fit something solid that's about 3 inches long into my mouth, but people are flexible and can scrunch. I couldn't SWALLOW something three inches long, but I know it's possible with practice.

Throat muscles generally won't crush anything to death. I'm not sure where that idea came from, but I've seen it on Eka's before. They can get a good pushed down your throat, but if you swallowed a hot dog, when it was whole, it would still be whole when it got to your stomach.

On the other hand, dying of asphyxia or shock before getting to the stomach is a possibility. And the atmosphere inside a stomach is not very breathable. A person would be lucky to survive more than 10 minutes just because of the gas-content inside a stomach. It's no very close to the atmospheric mix - it has much lower levels of O2 and much higher levels of CO2 because the stomach wall works just like your lungs do.

Ara needs to eat like you need to scratch when you're covered in mosquito bites. You can resist for awhile, but the need builds and builds. Imagine it like that, but with the intensity of needing to breathe.

Giants in the military are trained, just like soldiers are.

Posted by Donotlike13 4 years ago Report

First off let me know if I should slow down replying.
Is 3 inch like some kind of world record out of curiosity?

Well I got the idea from For Hire by Happiest in Shadows, first and really only story I've read that has it. Shortish version- giantess increasing her growth rate by digesting beings with magical potential, people in other words, and at first is only big enough to eat them by biting off limbs first. Later in the story she gets big enough to swallow them whole, but their crushed by her superstrong throat muscles, which keeps her from absorbing their life force since they die before digestion. Cue contest between her and another giantess to see who grows big enough first to swallow someone alive.

Where did the Hot Dog example come from? Otherwise just because a human body arrives in the stomach intact (not squished to a pancake) doesn't mean the muscles didn't squeeze hard enough to suffocate them.

Yeah breathings another thing most stories seem to think about.

So Ara and her fellow giants don't NEED to eat in manner of doing so to keep on living like normal creatures do? They NEED to eat like an urge or addition?

Training these giants must be BIG task. Considering what happened here with a friendly giant, surrounding troops are as liable to be eaten by their allied giant as an enemy if they so unavoidable fear on the battlefield.

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

I'm not sure what you mean by three inches being a world record, but I've seen people put much, much larger things in their mouth - and swallow them - then I think I ever could. My mouth is pretty normal.

A hot dog is just soft enough that if a tiny human body was going to show trauma (broken ribs, bruising, etc.) you'd likely see some damage to the hot dog as well. We don't really have any good examples of shrunken humans to ask how it feels, but as a crude example, deep throating often is accompanied by swallowing on the cock, and it's not really particularly forceful or unpleasant - it's sort of like lips closing, and maybe at the most lips pinching.

Sort of. Ara feels like she needs to eat to survive - her body tells her that, just like ours do. But if she doesn't eat, she won't die, just keep getting hungrier.

And, yes. I imagine it's a lot like training a dragon! :)

Posted by Donotlike13 4 years ago Report

Does Ara eat anything besides people by default, not in the sense of cows and other farm animals, as the story states they'll eat them as payment when offered.

How about plants?

Does Ara expel what she eats?

For that matter do they ever chew or just gulp them down as fast as possible?

And do giants fight each other if their in opposing armies? Can they be killed at all?

Posted by 4ofSwords 4 years ago Report

Yep, she'll eat plants, and other things. Some things stay down, some don't. Not everything will sate her hunger.

Waste hasn't really ever been a big part of my stories unless they were commissions or gifts for people into it, so I don't really worldbuild that aspect.

It's been awhile for this story, but my very vague recollection were that things that reached the stomach alive tended to sate her appetite better.

My memory is also that giants were mostly just trained by one army, but that doesn't mean others might not steer a rogue giant in a favorable direction.