James is tiny, Laura is his caretaker and friend. They make a deal and James ends up getting more than he bargained for.
Excellent. Short, sweet, and well written. I'm going to go look through your other stories now!
It has been nearly five hundred years since Gulliver first made his famous voyage. The divergent world’s of Gulliver have merged to become one. Improved technology has recently proven the Brobdingnagans, the Lilliputians, and the Humans are all in fact genetically human. The only difference is that certain size genes are expressed more forcefully in some strains of people then in others.
This new technological enlightenment hasn't quite made it into the law books. The bigger sects of man still look at their smaller cousins as less to the point that the Brobdingnagans actually consume the Lilliputians as a type of garnish. This story is a prequel to all of the stories so far completed in this universe.
You are an amazing writer, possibly the best on Giantess World. I prefer gentler giantesses, so I really liked the first few chapters and some of your other stories set in the Gulliver universe. I wanted to start out by saying that because everything else is nitpicking, which in my opinion is something a great story deserves (to make it better) but can be confused for derision (which it is not intended to be).
My main criticism is that you've mangled the size scales. In Gulliver's Travels the human : Lilliputian scale is 12:1, the Brobdingnagian : human scale is also 12 : 1, thus the Brobdingnagian : Lilliputian scale is 144 : 1. This would make all the tiny people in that universe about 1/2". Small, yes, but not nearly as small as in your story. As you make no use of the other qualities of Brobdingnag or Lilliput it might be better served just calling this the Minuss Universe
The scale in your story seems to be about 6000 : 1 (6" statue is 3000 feet). Manhattan has about 1.5 million people and would be 20' by 2', not near the size of a small TV tray. Even if you assume a population density similar to Macau (50000 /sq. mi), you'd need about 15 square feet to fit a million people at a 6000 : 1 scale. And that's just dense urban land. To fit what amounts to a small country (~10000 sq miles) in a basement (~400 square feet) would require a scale of about 24000 : 1 (or higher). That may be a better scale to work from.
Alternately, you could just ignore this nerdy stuff and keep with what you've got, because it works well even with minor scale inconsistencies.
Thanks for the compliment and critique I welcome both. I will admit, as I have before, that I altered the stated scale in the original Swift classic. The scale is closer to the Milo Minera Gullivera drawings where the scale looks closer to 1-2 inch tall Lilliputians. I could have called it the minuss universe I suppose, but I liked the concept of the three sizes and as Gulliver's Travel’s is in the public domain and universally familiar I decided to lean on it. Having said all that, it is difficult to maintain consistent scale across all physical objects in an altered size story throughout a large story. My guess is that Gulliver's Travels does not even succeed at it completly. I realized while writing this story that the population density somewhat defied credulity when compared to the real world, but I don't think it is physically impossible at this scale for this density. I tried to address the density issue with some explanation in the story. I guess the comparison should be to an ant colony and not to Manhattan, in my opinion. Despite all this I know that probably in all my stories there are some minor scale issues as I think all stories of this ilk face. I suppose if enough effort was applied all scale issues could be eliminated, but then my already slow pace would be reduced much further, not to mention any detriment that much math and modeling would have on other aspects of the story. Please don't view this response as overly defensive. All of your critiques are valid and I enjoy discussing them. I am simply trying to provide rational and maybe just a little defense of the story development decisions made. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
minuss
