The money/power, looks, charisma thing you've mentioned for high school relationships is, I suspect, oversimplified because it's high school, as there are countless reasons why people of any age fall into a relationship; things like geography, convenience, loneliness, companionship etc. To put it another way, Jack would look at those three things, and think he had no chance of ever getting with an Alpha girl, ever. If he is able to have more varied and fulfilling life experiences than just staying indoors wishing the world had stayed still, he'll begin to realise that those things aren't everything, and not every girl, Alpha or otherwise, is looking for that in a partner. He might get rejected by a Beta girl because she doesn't share any of his interests, and he might even have an Alpha admirer who thinks he is too cute and is, ironically, too shy to let him know. But, the crucial thing is, he doesn't know anything, he's too scared to engage, and that's kinda what this is about.

Penny is an option for a healthy relationship, yes, but it's more important to note that she's the first Alpha to truly be nice to him, which shatters the preconception he carried that all Alpha girls don't give a shit about Beta boys. Alex too, has shown enough to merit a rethink on even the Alpha girls who have treated him like shit - and that maybe, this is more about it being high school, and shallow, and shit and unfair for the kids at the bottom, but it will get better. At the same time, he's also learnt that some Alphas, like Caitlin and Amber, can be monstrous, and wield their comparative power to devestating effect. These are all major extremes that he has never experienced before, and they are challenging his preconceptions at both ends of the scale. Some of this information is good, and comforting, and optimistic, some of it is fucking terrifying and makes him fear for his safety - very... bittersweet.

Totally spot-on about the masturbatory fantasy - Caitlin is the physical embodiment of that. She's the thing that inhabits every macrophile's dreams, but could easily become a nightmare if pushed to a logical conclusion. As I've mentioned, that's exactly what she means to me, I know nobody anything like Caitlin in real life, and if I did, I'd be utterly conflicted about her. Fantasy is safe, reality isn't - that's what I'm exploring with her - Jack's fantasy versus reality - my own fantasy versus reality.

Caitlin's light-switch stuff is a way of creating conflicting feelings within Jack. If she was just 100% evil and, let's say, straight-up broke his legs, used him to pleasure her, then stuffed him in a cage and kept him as a pet, 1 - I'd write myself into a big corner, 2 - there would be no intrigue at all, she's evil - tick, 3 - he would, in my opinion, lose all latent feelings of attraction towards her very quickly, so instead of retaining the occasional feeling of 'if only she wasn't so cruel' around her, it would be more 'I would rather be dead than suffer any more'. In terms of an explanation as to why she's like that, other than because I've written her like that for selfish, living-out-your-fucked-up-fantasy reasons, there are a few factors which may come to light in future chapters, and nature, nurture, her wealthy father and experimental GH-X2 will all feature prominently.

Spanks.

Thank you so much! I've tried to make each chapter long enough so that something actually changes, whether it's moving the plot forward, or learning something about one of the characters, or even just a bit of exposition so you know how people are feeling. It can be hard to find convenient places to break from the story, as it's not designed to flow as a load of chapters, I'm trying to write it as if 'real' even though, obviously, I have control over it and no the other way round (oh yeah, I forgot)!

Deffo don't have what it takes to be a published writer! One word - deadlines! But thank you, it's high praise; I like to think I'm good at what I'm trying to do with this. If I ever get the opportunity to do anything that realises this type of story in film or animation, or whatever, I will carry over this approach into it and try and do it justice, just as I have done with every other bit of giantess content I've produced.

I'm super thrilled that you remembered the uncomfortableness from Chapter 3, I put in that seed SO early on, knowing that eventually it would make sense.

Penny's a very wholesome character, in fact, it's hard not to see her as almost artificially kind, like something's being covered up, or not quite right. I don't like one-dimensional characters, though it's not like I'd want Penny to be in any way cruel or mean just to avoid being too 'nice', so from the very beginning I tried to plant the seeds of her having a difficult history that explained how timid and shy, and kind, she was. In the 'revelation', you begin to see that she was quite a bold, headstrong child, but her experiences due to GH-X2 actually undid all of that, turning her into a cautious, conscientious, introspective character - which I think is a realistic and sympathetic way to explain why she has such a kind soul. Jack as well, through his flashbacks, can be seen as someone with quite a strong moral compass, and a running sequence of injustices running through his life ever since GH relegated him to the second tier of society. It's not about having, or not having the treatment - Penny would perhaps have been happier without it, Jack would perhaps have been happier with it, but it's now what they make of their situation that counts.

The decision to make Alex into a bit of an antihero(ine) was actually a kind of forced-hand thing that to happen simply to get rid of the stalemate at Caitlin's house. It never came out of the blue, however; I'd toyed with an early plotline where she would take pity on Jack because he could not get in touch with Penny yet, before the kidnapping plotline was implemented. I agree that it's a very interested development, she's an inside woman, and when the story returns to that side of things in due course, a fuller picture will emerge of what Alex has had to do.

Just for the sake of interest - the backstory is super detailed due to the way this story came to life; it evolved from a number of half-formed ideas I'd had for years and years, I just needed to refine these ideas down to one narrative that encapsulated everything I'd been thinking about. My first draft of GH-X2 actually had the revelation much much earlier, when Penny was walking Jack home, but I realised immediately how preposterous that was, for her to suddenly blurt it out like that unprovoked. As a writer, I just wanted that emotional hit to come straight in, as I felt like it was a really strong twist, but I knew that if I pushed it back to much later, and could take the story somewhere first, that it would have a more resonant impact. Ultimately, I ended up conceiving the kidnapping, and had to spend a long time figuring out how to make that fantasy scenario of being trapped around a dominant, but incredibly sexy girl work - writing erotic stuff well is actually much harder for me than working on the 'plot'... In the end, the stuff with Caitlin has ended up being the main body of this story, and that's cool with me - it's a major turn-on and, as I say, kind of wish-fulfillment, fantasy scenario stuff, but now the story has opened up again, it gives breathing room for a lot of the ideas I had at the start, but now with added drama and anticipation.

I've written short stories of debatable quality since my teenage years, some exploring the Penny role, and some exploring the Caitlin role, but this is the first time I've actually tried to make both sides work as part of a bigger narrative. It's because it's based on giantess, and real life musings I had back then, that this story is about 17-year-olds, and the drama revolves around that kind of not-adult, not-independent, but scared, confused, emotional, no-longer-innocent time in your life, that everyone claims is amazing, but I found quite daunting. I felt very insecure, especially with girls, and this just builds on that feeling, in a giantess NWO setting. This is what I would have written then, but never did.

It was meant to be a bit of a surprise, I think a lot of people expected him to get destroyed by Amber - tried to do a bit of a curveball there!

Deffo stone cold. It's not her fault though, it's the just way she's... written (Jessica Rabbit style).

The answers to your questions may well have been answered in the next chapters, suffice it to say, your thoughts are/were very much along the right track.