What’s It To You?

Why do we share our size fantasies with others, and why do we care what others enjoy in size fantasy? I suppose everything on this blog is an attempt to answer one or both of these questions, but a couple of recent posts have me looking at them with renewed urgency. Aborigen asked himself what he still hopes to achieve with his size writing, and in one of those recurring “What would you really do?” threads on the Shrunken Women Board Azureeyes talked about the importance of hearing about the real people behind the fantasy. I’ve been watching the online size scene for 25 years and an active participant for almost a decade and I still don’t know exactly why I keep returning to it.

The first and simplest reason is social validation for one’s size enthusiasm: Someone else likes (almost) the same thing as I do.  Most of us thought we were all alone in our size fancies and some of us even thought we were maladjusted or perverted for having them.  Finding each other was a relief and a boon, and finding an audience for one’s size creations was an almost undeserved blessing.  Hearing new voices discover size fantasy for the first time remains a delight, one that outweighs all the repetition and rancidness that can accumulate over the years.

I suspect the other primary reason for engagement with others is size roleplaying.  I haven’t gone in for this much, and I’ve long told myself that the reason for this is that I am too controlling to really let go and embrace the improvisation necessary for mutually-fulfilling roleplay.  Now that I’m writing this, however, I wonder if I simply don’t trust others either to appreciate all the places their fantasies can take them or to express them unreservedly.  I certainly don’t always trust myself to do so.

While I didn’t immediately see my particular desires and preferences reflected in the online size scene when I first discovered it, I eventually found enough resonant stories and images to stake a claim to my patch.  So why do I continue to write and post new stories and hang on every “like” and comment?  I know who I am and what I like.  Shouldn’t that be enough?  Similarly, since I recognize that people come to size fantasy from many different paths and derive gratification from many different elements of it, why do I continue to scrutinize others’ posts and comments, trying to infer precisely what scratches their itches?  I’m not planning on roleplaying with them, so what’s it to me?

Back when I thought I was the only size perv on the planet, I did my best to conjure characters in my head that would react plausibly to size differential, based on my personal experience of people both real and fictional.  I never thought to give any of my characters a “latent” size fetish, because I had no idea such a thing was possible.  I wanted my differently-sized characters to ultimately arrive at sexytimes, but there had to be a plausible, non-fetish-based reason for getting there.  This remains my primary aesthetic, and I struggle to appreciate scenarios where one or more characters “just happens” to find size-differential attractive or arousing.

Now that I know that there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of people out there who have spent as much time as I have obsessing over size scenarios, however, I find myself doubting my own standards for “plausibility.”  The whole conceit has become both more urgent and more precarious.  It is no longer enough for me to get off to my own creations.  To justify the time and effort necessary to extract the fleeting visions and sensations from my head and knead them into a compelling narrative, I now have satisfy both the skeptical ambassador to the normies I occasionally aspire to be as well as the dozens of fellow size fantasists whom I have come to know and love.

While I enjoy it and am grateful when others read my size stories and even tell me what they like about them, what I really want to know is whether if I touched their fantasies directly, if I took them to the same thirsty place that inspired me to write it.  Unsurprisingly, I am particularly interested to learn if I stirred something in female size fantasists.  I have a fair idea of what brings most dudes to size fantasy and how to scratch their itches, but it seems a bit of an empty exercise if I don’t somehow reach the gals in this fetish.

I need this kind of affirmation for reasons beyond simple kudos.  I need to leverage others’ experiences and desires in order to give my characters and narratives the complexity they deserve.  If I were the only size perv out there, then there would be no way to reality-check my characters, which could be nothing more than pure creatures of my imagination.  I could never shake the suspicion that I was warping their motives and reactions for my personal convenience.  And that makes it less real for me.

One doesn’t have to be a writer to need to hear how other size fantasists appreciate these ideas.  Responsible roleplayers will always inquire about how the other parties see size fantasy and what they’re looking for.  Every piece of size art is in conversation with those that preceded it.  But even the most casual interaction or discussion will reveal assumptions and inclinations about why someone is drawn to size fantasy, adding to the accumulated mosaic of tropes and desires.

One such discussion is the perennial “What would you really do?” thread, typically directed to size fantasists who indulge in cruel, nonconsensual, and/or destructive fantasies.  In a recent example over at the Shrunken Women Board, Azureeyes stressed the need to communicate awareness of the difference between reality and fantasy:

I remember back, way before Min’s board a discussion that started off asking the direct question to those who liked the VSW genre if they would truly be like that if they had an actual tiny women. I remember the majority of them who answered said, “WTF?! Of course not! I’d take care of her and try to help her!”

Which I think is important to hear. Because it is a fantasy and it can be anything and anyway you want. For some being in control, even to violent extremes, is satisfying because of their own personal lives. Not necessarily because they aren’t in control, but let’s face it, there’s always that boss, coworker, person you have to deal with who very much deserves a dirt nap and even better if you could help them with that. But it doesn’t mean you are ever going to actually do any of that and often, when presented with a reality, find, you have absolutely no desire to move on with the fantasy ideas.

I think it is easy to speculate and imagine the worst and most violent ideas because shrinking isn’t real and isn’t even close to potentially becoming real any time soon, if ever. Therefore, it is easier to distance one’s self with a reality. And that’s perfectly okay to do! That’s why it’s fantasy.

As an SW, sometimes, it is hard to determine intent. Just because it is fantasy doesn’t mean there aren’t very real people who would use the fantasy as a way to lure a potential victim. Particularly in this day and age with incels and other types of toxic behaviors. So it’s often nice to hear from the giants that they are aware it is fantasy and is not a true reflection of their real selves.

The threat of malicious and abusive personalities in the size community is very real, and I, too, see certain images, stories, and statements and wonder at the intentions behind them.  I’m the last one to police others’ fantasies, nor am I saying people need to justify their desires to me or to anyone else.  But even between size fantasists with orthogonal desires, who don’t really get off to the same thing, there should be mutual respect and an acknowledgment that everyone has a right to their own take.  Sharing personal feelings and perspectives helps this recognition, helps remind us that we are real people with real passions and not just tourists or bots.

One aspect of my inquiry into asymmetry and reciprocity is what obligation we might have to consider how our “opposite numbers” receive and process our shared fantasies.  When I was very young and entertaining fantasies of being a shrunken man, I didn’t dare share them out of shame over the undeniable nonconsensual element.  It would have been helpful in the extreme to hear from female size fantasists who also appreciated nonconsensual fantasies.  But what would have been even more helpful still would have been the extra discussion and reflection that testified to how much they had thought about these scenarios and relationships, about how their desires had weighed against their morals.  Knowing that someone else—someone in the “opposite position”—had considered all the implications of size differential and still found it attractive would have been a tremendous relief.

To take Azureeyes’s M/f example, whenever I am writing an M/f story or commenting at a place like Daddy’s Dollhouse, I am supremely conscious of both what kind of male giants I am describing and how they relate to the tiny women they encounter.  It is never simple or caricatured.  My giants might be cruel or callous or selfish, but it’s always (I hope) for a narrative purpose.  If my tiny women experience terror or degradation, I never want to leave the impression that I think they deserve it.  Horror can be arousing, but it’s all the more effective when the creator shows that they have put themselves in their subjects’ place.

Another concern of mine is that I leave no doubt that these are fantasies and desires that I genuinely share, that I’m not simply performing what I think others want to see.  I think this makes the smut better, and I hope that it is appreciated by my “opposite numbers.”  It is said that the greatest cruelty requires the highest degree of empathy.  In my experience, both the most fiendish and the most caring giants are those who have clearly considered what it must be like to be tiny.  Not only do I consider such devotion a vital element in creating compelling size fantasies, it seems the only proper course for the curious and conscientious fantasist.  To do anything less would be flippant.

I keep saying I’m not into roleplaying, but there is an exchange going on here, over time and through many iterations. My motives are quite selfish, serving both my kinks and my insecurities, and I am grateful for your forbearance and generosity. I hope that I’m contributing to your size world, making it as real for you as it you are for me.

So I’m going to keep size maundering, writing size stories, and reading each and every thing y’all say about what scratches your size itches until the Pornocalypse finally puts a stop to the music.  Since I first heard your voices, I’ve needed you to be real.  You don’t owe me anything, but I’m here for whatever you choose to put into the world.