[Report This]Date: May 03 2024 8:11 AM Title: Chapter 18: Hate
The first thing that stuck out to me after finishing this chapter was a particular line of dialogue that I thought was particularly on point and cleverly placed:
"I'll come back for you, I swear. I'm sorry! Uh, you started it!"
First of all, this line made me crack up, given the context of the situation. But more importantly, and I think I used this same phrasing for something in my last review, it was probably the most Trish thing she could have said here. That's particularly meaningful, I think, as we're kind of breaking into some new territory with her as this chapter progresses. Getting a little reminder about who Trish really is, despite the heat of the moment and how much she was getting into the "game" of catching and, uh, incapacitating the assassins, helped make the transition she briefly makes here feel more natural.
I also thing said transition has been subtly set up in the past few chapters, particularly in Here to Please. In that chapter, between dealing with the rude frat boys, making her breakthrough by wishing Thomas was her size instead of wishing herself to be his, her inner thoughts when Thomas was bossing her around in the bedroom, and her thinking that there was no way the shackles could hold her down, it became clear that she was getting quite comfortable being big and even thinking of herself as above the "little" people around her. We saw more of the same last chapter with her handling of the crunchy camp crisis, where she geeked out mentally over how cute they all were and basically used them to get Thomas hard.
Of course, she wasn't consciously enjoying her growing height advantage over the world during any of that, but those feelings were definitely there. It just took chasing down a group of "anonymously" (read Agent Grisham) funded bargain-bin assassins to wake her up to what her subconscious was almost screaming by that point.
And it was an interesting transition to see unfold. After hating the fact that most of the world saw her as a monster for most of the story up until this point (even when she could still fit in the hospital), she's starting to thrive on it, at least when those on the receiving end of that treatment deserve it (I know the term "deserve" is subjective, but I think most people would agree that trying to kill Trish was deserving of a few injuries and some smug taunting).
And now that she has awakened these feelings and acknowledged that she suddenly understands what Thomas sees in all this, it should be pretty intriguing to see where things go from here. Will Thomas be subjected to too much of a good thing? Is he going to embrace this shift in attitude from his future wife? Is she going to even tell him the truth about how she feels now? I really have no idea which way you're going to take this, but I think it should be a fun journey regardless.
As for the action of the chapter (as opposed to just the philosophy behind it), I think you nailed the descriptions of the scene! It was really easy to picture while still keeping with your mostly shorter, quicker-feeling paragraph style. I think that's harder to do when you have more going on in a scene; it's easy to get caught up in longer paragraphs that try to hit every little detail but are less inviting to the reader.
You also did an excellent job of conveying the contrasting moods of Trish and the would-be assassins with each perspective shift. The desperation of the latter blended extraordinarily well with the playful, almost light-hearted at times thought process of the former. It's a formula that works well in giantess stories in general, but I think your narrative style gave this dichotomy a more personal feel, which greatly enhanced those feelings.
Much like Trish's line mentioned above, Thomas telling the initial four captured assassins, "Uh, don't move" while holding a gun naked and his lower half covered in Trish's juices was absolutely hilarious. I love that you inserted a couple bits of humor into this action-intensive chapter.
Lastly, there's that whole thing with Trish's hand re-growing. Putting aside the poor planning of the assassins to use a bomb too weak to kill Trish unless they placed it near a vital organ (I think it was clear by the end of the first few paragraphs that these guys weren't the most competent bunch in the world), seeing her hand get blown clean off only to come back just the same as before brings to the forefront a question that has mostly been hanging out in the background up until now: What exactly is happening to Trish?
The focus of this story has been divided between the mental states of Trish and Thomas and their growing relationship, and rightly so. But because of that, it's easy to forget that this mystery is still very much in play. Now that we know there's more to this than just her growth, there's suddenly more room for speculation.
When I got to that part of the chapter, my first thought was, "Fuck, are those crunchy hippie jerks actually right?" Even though it would be cool if Trish was becoming a literal goddess, on principal I have to root against this, as I can't get behind the hopes and dreams of crunchy people (real or fictional).
In all seriousness, though, that has all of a sudden become the best working theory we have, which is actually kind of funny. I mean, if there was a scientific explanation for this, you would think that something weird would have had to have happened to trigger this in her. And since she hasn't said anything about anything like that up until now (I have to think she would have admitted to something like that well before reaching 50 feet tall, as she would be doing anything she could to try and fix this once she started getting inhumanly tall), I have to think it's something supernatural or otherworldly, and goddesshood fits nicely in that world.