Reviewer: pixl8ed Signed 
Date: June 03 2017
Title: Chapter 24: Chapter 24
Okay, I appreciate your thoughtful response to my review. It convinced me that I should give your story a re-read with your thoughts in mind. I have to say, that you clearly have a great talent for story telling. But as a reader, I find this work particularly unsatisfying.
While i am a writer who is also fond of experiments, it is a bold choice to embrace material that “makes no sense, is boring, or fails to develop the character,” which is not the case in your story, most of the time.
I’m not sure what kind of relationship you feel like embracing with your audience. Or what you feel your responsibilities as a storyteller are. I have a personal feeling that as a writer, you need to keep earning your audience. That characters, story elements and sub plots are promises you need to keep.
I completely understand the desire to be a pantser, the spontaneity of creativity can be intoxicating. But even a panster can be agenda driven and his work can become predicatable to the point of frustrating his audience. The prime example would be the works of John Norman. His Gor books used to be a sort of kinky rip off of the John Carter books set on a world that had a subtext of sexual slavery. They were popular and just literary bubble gum from a less PC age.And used to feature women that were actual characters. But then his agenda took over and every time a female character shows up the reader goes “how long til she’s enslaved and likes it?”
As someone who has made the mistake of investing in Eli and even rooting for him, I see the same effect in this piece. “Oh look, a new story element, how long til it makes Eli wrong or humiliated or lessens him in some way?"
Now I have no delusions about what site this is. There is an audience here that will delight in Eli’s failure an humiliation. If I am simply not your intended audience, it will be very easy to tell me that and I will go away. No hard feelings. Good luck in your future efforts...you can stop reading my review now. Because we are speaking from such different places in the world of writing that I might as well be communicating in Esperanto. (You don’t speak Esperanto, do you?)
Let’s clear the air about binding. Aside from being horrific in principle, it is poisonous to real character conflict and development. You are basically making sure your giant characters are never required (never given the opportunity, if you wished to challenge or develop them) to use compassion or logic or reason. They are never required to see the ugly side of there behavior, because Eli just grins while they are being evil. It also comes off as lazy writing. Like a magic button that you push to alter the character, or soften some truly ugly themes.
Overall this story is a horror story. It is about a character being ground down. Having his character and integrity slowly stripped away from him along with his dignity and his standards. To me it harkens back to the existential horror of the seventies, The Stepford Wives and the like.
Now, I am not about to espouse Eli as some kind of idea human being. Though, I think some of his flaws defy belief or are simply glaring holes in the narrative. The idea that he refuses to research anything seems more like a case of a writer who doesn’t want to talk about (or simply is not ready to explain) aspects of the world he has created. He becomes annoyingly passive and lazy. But for a character his age and in his depressing circumstances these are understandable, even typical, and certainly not fatally flaws. It should be interesting to see him overcome them through maturation and character development. Instead, these perfectly normal aspects of someone his age are used as excuses for those who should be at least supporting him, to destroy his soul and remake it into something that is pleasing to them.
The cruelty with which he is thwarted by those around him is just awful and is treated as casual interaction. Let us say that Eli has been diagnosed with a disease like MS that will render him wheelchair bound. In that light, the other character’s actions become much less forgivable. Winter;"I’ve always wanted a crippled brother I can push around. Wheelchairs are cool!" Alley: “uncontrollable leg spasms made the neighbor girl uncomfortable ...time for a spanking."
Overall his desires to hold on to his dignity and some semblance of his life are ones most people can identify with.
Hooked by the character, I have to say, that I was at first, very much pleased and even compelled by the story. You know, slow shrink has always made the most sense as a mechanic for these stories, so you you made your world no more credible by trying to combine fast and slow with these “spurts.” It is a device clearly intended to make the process simply more embarrassing. But your well crafted narrative had me suspend my disbelief and I felt well rewarded by chapters 6 and 7. The shrinking scene was both heartbreaking and beautiful. It showed such promise. I knew things were going to be rough for Eli, I wanted to stick around to find out how rough. I wanted to know how he was going to deal with it.
Unfortunately I don’t know, neither does he. I cannot understand why you would create a character who is the only one who can give us perspective on his struggle and then have him “check out” when the most important part of his trial is happening. Mental age reduction? Amnesia? These are very useful if you want the character to be undermined for the rest of the story. If you want other characters to know things he doesn’t. If all you want to pursue an agenda of a humiliated Eli. This was simply awful and annoying as a reader, a ridiculous concept that cost the narrative depth and drama, serving only your agenda.
Though, at this point, it does signal the most important change in the story. Eli stops being the protagonist. Everyone else in the story takes up that duty. It is the giant characters that have goals. It is the giant characters who get them. They are driving the narrative and are not working at all to get what they want. Really. How many chapters do you have to give us “Winter wants something, Winter gets something” and call it a story. Eli is just a prop, his desires are just an obstacle for your true protagonists to overcome. And no challenge. There are no consequences for their actions and no possibility of failure.
The story has become a stage on which the giant people enact cruelty upon a character that is slipping away more and more. And they have zero consequences for their inhumanity. Winter attacks Eli’s dreams and goals (I would say his very soul) right in front of their Mother. What does she get? Her level 3 status yanked? Her access to the helpless Eli limited? Some form of punishment to teach her the gravity of her actions? No, their mother talks to her in a stern voice. Wow, moral conflict at it’s best. Of course, all Eli has to do is be an inconvenience or displeasing in some way and he gets subjected to soul destroying mind control. So someone has consequences.
The worst device in entire pieces is the doctor. At best she is much like the Doctor Device of a 50‘s creature feature. “It makes perfect sense that LA is being attacked by giant grasshoppers because I say so and I have a lab coat.” But on a more thoughtful level she is something much more vile. She is not an advocate for her patient. She is an advocate for his disease. She has a vision of Eli as achieving his true potential: as the living equivalent of a Furby. “Cripples make real people feel better about themselves, Eli. Isn’t it nice the disease has given your life a purpose?”
And now we have this travesty that is Premoria. Does it on any level make any sense that a bunch of entrepreneurs would say “We have a potential 2 million customers. People who would be our clients for the rest of their lives. Let’s make this as sucky as possible. We can have rude pushy people introduce our community and hold premies responsible for the behavior of their watchers, cuz that makes all kinds of sense.”
Haley’s comments about Premoria seem confirmed in the more recent chapters. Illusions of purpose. But do you really think that there would be no use for a group of people, ready and willing to work, who can operate in the near-micro scale with ease? Who would be capable of rendering devices with a degree of precision unparalleled in modern manufacturing? Companies the world over would be lined up to engage their services.
Now we have only seen the smallest part of this world, but when the people in control want to show it off, we see desperate premies, incapable of self motivation. You are serving your agenda by making sure that Eli has no choices.
The previous chapter is particularly illustrative. Eli has his chance to, succeed or fail at his current task, show your audience how much he wants his stated goal. How he will struggle to prove himself. Instead it is about Winter calling him stupid. You’ve made my point for me.
Premies would also be the ultimate in quality control Any maker of small, precise items would rush to have them working for them.. Lets not forget this doctor you mentioned. What? He works as a doctor but his wife hoovers over him ready to bind him. And of course she gets all the money he earns and he sleeps in a gerbil cage. What are you trying to tell us about the world you’ve created? What are you trying to tell us about the victims of the shrinking gene? What are you trying to tell us about Eli?
Haley is particularly obnoxious, because her rants imply there is one right way to be a premie. Then why are we reading your story? Just tell us what “the right kind of premie” is and that Eli was in denial until he became one. That’s the story you’ve been telling for the last 15 chapters.
Look, I see so much going on that is intriguing. So much that is compelling.
I feel for Winter on a certain level. She’s had her father figure just leave and the idea of Eli leaving must be terrifying to her. It would be so destructive to her self esteem, it would leave a hole in her heart. But you have, in service to your agenda, indulged her and all the other characters far too much. It is well past the point that Eli should have looked at all of them and said “You. You are the reason I need to leave.” They need some consequences.
If Eli doesn’t push back in an effective manner, (please, no more contrived, agenda driven scenes like the bit with the stuffed animal) if he continues to just be someone who is “allowed” all his actions or is just a prop with POV, you are betraying readers like me who feel they were promised an interesting protagonist at the onset of the story. If you want to make a story about him becoming a sissy sub you should probably just write a sex story.
I’m not someone saying, “give Eli super powers" or “give Eli a cure, now" (though a dangerous cure could be an interesting development....would people be more thoughful if they saw that the premies in their lives would take a, say 35 percent, chance of death rather than continue on in their situation?) I just want to see Eli be a driving part of his story.
You hooked me. You created Eli and his situation. You are telling a story that is capable of great depth and drama. You have more than one kind of audience and I don’t want to keep coming back to your story out of morbid curiosity, I want to see some story happen.
Of course, what I want is not what matters. What matters is what you want. You are the creator, the storyteller. You have an engaged audience it seems, based on your reviews. And deservedly so. So, all i can offer you is a point of view. I hope I have made myself understood and not been too mean. I feel I have right to be honest because I have invested my time and attention in your work. Please don’t let the ramblings of one opinionated reader spoil your fun or undermine your enthusiasm for writing. Even if i were to give up on Eli’s story I would still check out any future story you might post, your work is that intriguing and well imagined.
I thank you for your time and your efforts.
PixL8Ed
Author's Response: Well, that has to be the record for my longest review ever! Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Obviously you care enough about the story to write a miniature review/story in resopnse to it, so I'll do my best to reply to a few things you bring up.
As for embracing experiments, that's what I try to do with every story I create. I like the thought of a 'boring' scene. For example, a giantess and her pet man watch paint dry. Literally. Such a scenario is still exciting to me because she's a giantess (and she's not trying to kill her 'pet'). Yet the burden still falls on me as the author to introspect and determine 'why' I'm excited (or whatever I'm feeling) and convey the emotion to the readers. Perhaps she's exhausted from painting the room and wants nothing more than to sit with her pet for a few minutes, admiring her handiwork while he jokingly points out imperfections visible only to him.
As writers, we're always told 'gotta have conflict in every scene', 'gotta keep promises to the reader', 'gotta have character progression'. I can't watch 80% of Netflix because of these hallmarks of storytelling. It's so predictable, I get bored in the first thirty minutes. In real life, we don't have conflict every day (some days are just boring -- though I'm sure one could use a broad definition of conflict to 'prove' me wrong). Promises certainly aren't kept. 'Character's (people) come in and out of our lives, never to be seen or heard from again. There's not always happy endings. Sometimes things just get worse and worse.
Now, I realize folks often read fiction to escape. It's fiction -- i.e., not real. However, I like to define the unrealities and limit them. A giantess is unreal enough and I'm extremely interested in reading stories where the rest of the world is as real as possible simply because I'd love to see/experience a giantess relationship in real life.
As for the doctor, she's pro-binding. I still haven't shown much of the binding free zone in Premoria. It's entirely possible that there's ideological differences, much like pro-choice/pro-life divisions in our own society. You're clearly anti-binding so of course you'd find the doctor detestable. And you're not alone. Perhaps there is something sinister at work behind the concept of binding, it's too early in the story to tell for sure. Either way, it opens the door for a deep seated conflict that splits both humans and premies.
Unfortunately, I cannot really argue against many of your other points. I agree I broke my own realism rule by adding too many unrealistic concepts (binding, age regression, amnesia, etc). And honestly, I've got too many dangling promises. But I do like the characters and I'm curious about them. I do see Eli as having goals, well at least one goal of getting to Premoria. Binding is simply an obstacle in his path. Perhaps it is a 'horrific' obstacle since it has the potential of changing his very thought process, but it's an obstacle nonetheless.
You appear to be rooting for Eli, you want to see him have a victory as you define it. But back to the 'reality' concept, very often the 'protag' in real life simply fails. What if Eli became his sister's 'pet' or a 'sissy sub' as you put it? To me, that too is fascinating, though it would likely need a strong twist of some sort since I've read too many pet stories. I like not knowing how my own stories will end, though the drawback is that many of my stories simply never end and sometimes I end up in situations where I'm stuck.
But if I experiment and fail, sometimes that's even better. I forget the quote, but it's something about failures being more important than success in life if you learn from them.
I've learned a few things.
1. I still love chaos, experimenting, and breaking 'rules of storytelling.' BTW, watched re:zero anime recently and is one of my top 5 favs now. They broke tons rules. So many broken promises. Main POV trained but never became proficient. Failed again and again. Some did NOT like it, but many LOVED it. Most couldn't help but admit it made them FEEL something. That brings me to my second point.
2. Put characters first. Readers will follow compelling characters through anything. I love characters that feel alive and make me feel the same.
3. If I'm going to experiment, I need to be less lazy. I'm not sure lazy is the right word, but I do need to keep more promises. I.e., I feel guilty about not having more scenes with other characters, e.g., Ally, Perker, Zoey. By introducing these characters and especially giving them some POV time, I made the promise to include them in future chapters. So in my process of breaking rules and letting things flow, I've made some promises that I may have trouble keeping. So lesson learned: It may be ok to break some promises, but do not neglect a character you introduced especially if given a POV.
4. More reality. This one I got from your review(s). Ultimately much of what you said boils down to this. The Dr., binding, amnesia, etc are simply not believable. So I'm going to try to learn a lesson here and improve. It coincides with what I want anyway in all my stories (at least I want them to avoid devices/dues ex). I've got some ideas for how to achieve this, one of which is to introduce all unrealities in the first chapter or as early as possible.
5. Give the main POV periodic victories toward his goal(s). I suppose this is another of your main points. I still really like to break this 'rule' tho...depending on the story. However, from your reviews, I am learning that it can be a huge turn off for readers if the main POV never gets a break or even a minor victory. So I'll keep that in mind.
Thanks again for such a long and detailed review!
