Reviewer: Senital2011 Signed [Report This]
Date: August 18 2024 7:20 AM Title: Rescue Me

I loved this chapter. Finally some retribution and justice for Mateo. My brain had a glitch because of the shit his mother pulled. The rest of this story has been great though.  I absolutely love what you're doing with it.

Wait... there was a movie?!?!‽, (I know there was) it was trash., I watched, and minus the some of the story bits, it was just *rages* I'm better now.

I hope you keep writing it, I sold my soul a long time ago to some shady corporation or some shit, but I hope your deal turns our better. I have long lost ambitions of writing stories for this site again but it's not on the foreseeable docket at the moment.  

I'll do my best to share this. But I don't have anyone to share this with. Apologies about that. Keep up the great work, the Downsizers everywhere need you. Also Hollywood,

If you're listening this is how you do a proper story ffs.

Author's Response:

Thank you for your comment! I'm sorry Sofia pissed you off! She doesn't know what she's doing, and is coming down as a heavy-handed mother. We'll see if she learns how trauma-inducing she's been.

Thank you for the stars, it'll help me in hell, lol.

Reviewer: rrclover Signed [Report This]
Date: August 17 2024 5:34 AM Title: School Days

Holy c*** I really do like your story. The world been building. Please do not end it any time soon. I hope that you keep writing more. Happy fun times too I like how you mix it in and tell other stories too I love how not all characters are evil one-dimensional characters too like the main character's mom. I understand why she was very possessive.  It's very easy to see why I don't like how you didn't clear up. The fact that he was partially at fault like he never contacted her when he was with his friends until she picked him up. I would at least text and call her and let her know. She was fine. She was in the right there, but the brain washing was too far and with her husband she should never have been mad with him if she knew her breast milk. I'm assuming she'll find out later.  Had a effect on him.Maybe she doesn't think bodies.What does the interesting to see what happens, especially with Luna if she brings it up and says yeah, he was pretty much high when that happened.Will she feel guilty?Will they make up?I can understand why she was angry at the moment.She just doesn't understand

Author's Response:

Regarding Sofia, I'm a fan of show and don't tell. I'm showing you her actions and it's up to you whether you like her or not. I don't mind if she's unlikeable or even hated. She is who she is. And Mateo and her Miguel just have to deal with it. She kinda understands her milk makes downsizers cling to her, but she doesn't fully understand what's going on. It will be cleared up soon.

Thank you for your comment and I'm happy to hear you're enjoying. The world building has been fun and I wouldn't mind living there myself, haha.

Reviewer: darkone Signed [Report This]
Date: August 17 2024 12:36 AM Title: School Days

I almost did not read this story based on the description, but I am certainly glad I did. I've enjoyed it very much and am definitely interested in how Sofia and her husband end up. Keep up the great work! (BTW your request to comment motivated me and you have the honor of being my first comment here. I've been in the shadows for many years here :)

Author's Response:

Well, I do feel honored anytime a lurker gives me their first comment! Thank you for taking the time to let me know what you think. It means a lot to me. I'm curious about how I can improve the story description. I've been fiddling with it for so long, trying to capture the essence of the story. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears. Thank you again for commenting!

Reviewer: TinyGuyyyy Signed [Report This]
Date: July 29 2024 9:51 PM Title: Tricia

We need more! Pleaseeee

Reviewer: It Was Me Signed [Report This]
Date: July 21 2024 11:49 PM Title: Tricia

I want to be annoyed that the story diverged from the epic cliffhanger, but I can't be. This chapter was beautifully written, and finally getting some insight to Tricia's backstory was so eye-opening. So I suppose I can keep hanging until we find out Miguel's fate. Maybe Sofia just hit the "HOLD" button instead?

But yeah, Tricia is such a delightfully complicated character, even moreso than Sofia. I feel a bit validated in my assumption that the excuses Tricia initially gave for hating downsizers amounted to talk at the sizist dinner table. I mean, Tricia's not paying taxes!

But I was so distracted by this thought that I didn't even stop to considering a deeper underlying reason serving as the real source of her anger. In some ways, I came away from this chapter feeling sorry for Tricia. Her life was upended and her family was destroyed by what happened to her father. Of course she's going to be resentful about that.

But her anger is misplaced, likely (based on the fact that Tricia has to hide him from her mother and stepfather) from the way the rest of her family feels about downsizers. It seems clear that her current parental units wouldn't consider him a person, and Tricia's friends certainly wouldn't, and that's what guides her frustrations. It's not her mom's fault for being closeminded about her dad's downsizing (if she even knows about it; there's still a lot of questions around exactly what happened with him, including his leg). It's not the fault of a seemingly decent-sized pocket of society looking down on downsizers.

No, it's her dad's fault for being duped and becoming downsized. It's the fault of downsizing in general and, therefore, all downsizers.

From the start, I got a sort of "illusory crime" vibe from Tricia, like she was the victim of a sort of social conditioning to hate downsizers. While that's true, I think, this is so much worse than that. That illusory crime by those around her has altered the way she views her own father and dashed her hopes of having a happy family (there are ways she could be happy with her dad, even if her mom just wanted a normal-sized husband and wasn't a full-blown sizist, which it sounds like she might be).

We see the results of this play out in a couple ways here. First, it's obvious that Tricia loves her father. She's clearly not keeping him out of some sense of obligation or a refusal to let go of the past or even because it's cool or fun to her to have a downsized pet. She likes comforting him. She gets pissed when he's too scared to tell her when something is wrong and chooses to suffer instead. She even kept him with her when she slept for comfort once. She loves him even now that he's a downsizer.

However, that love actually seems to make that resentment even worse, as we saw in his latest round of punishment in the chapter. His mistake destroyed her family and, in some ways, took her father away from her, as he's now a downsizer and not a person. So she cruelly punishes him for it, truly feeling as though he deserves it. But even then, when she goes too far and is worried that she actually hurts him, we see that her love for him is still there. It's an internal struggle between what her heart is telling her and what she has been raised to believe, and it's so intriguing to watch it play out.

Then there's how Tricia vents her general frustrations from school, with her dad having to take the brunt of her anger from that as well. And that ... that doesn't subside so quickly. It's much more aggressive and cruel, too. He just happens to be a downsizer she has access to, someone she can punish for no reason and without consequence, so he just has to deal with it.

I like how Tricia becomes super sweet toward him after that venting subsides, though, even if it takes a month or so sometimes. It's not stated in the chapter, but I get the feeling this is because she realizes that the things she does to him when she gets like that are wrong and feels shitty about it, but at the same, she won't lower herself to apologize to a downsizer. So she pretends it never happened and treats him especially well as a way to make up for it. Or that's my theory, at least.

I do want to note here that I think it's a bit ironic that it seems as though everyone else in Tricia's life is so judgmental, that she needs to have certain standards (hating downsizers the appropriate amount, for example) in order to feel accepted, but her dad clearly still loves her even after dealing with all of this horrible shit from her. Despite everything, it's a downsizer who truly accepts her no matter what.

I also love that Tricia is so self-centered. Yeah, I feel like everything I said above is true and that, in some ways, she's a tragic victim of that social conditioning, but her way of thinking is also very selfish and short-term. She wants to punish her dad for what she did to him, even though he was scammed into being downsized. And now Mateo has to pay for her losing her boyfriend, even though he didn't want to downsize and it's her choice not to date him. So while I can feel sympathy for her at times, she has really good villain traits like this at the same time.

And while we're on the subject of Mateo, I was a bit surprised to see that Tricia actually misses him. And we got to see that there were things about him that she really liked; she wasn't with him for status or just because she thought he was hot. He actually made her feel good about herself, and a part of her regrets not having that anymore. This completely changes the type of threat I view her as toward Mateo going forward. I thought she was just going to try to kill or torture him out of anger before, but now it seems like she wants to keep him under her bed and under her feet because she has similar mixed feelings about him as she does her father. I don't think she loves Mateo, as the things she mentioned about him were all about how he made her feel (there's that self-centeredness again), but I do think she feels something for him.

I also believed her when she said she wouldn't have flushed Emma and him down the toilet if Beth hadn't shown up. I wasn't sure at first, but between her reflection on their relationship and what happened at the end of the chapter, I think her trying to stomp Emma and him in the bathroom was blind rage and that pissing on them was just teaching them a lesson. I don't think a calm, rational Tricia would have purposefully killed a downsizer then.

Things are certainly different now, though.

Tricia stepped over one of those proverbial lines with what happened with the unregistered downsizers (I could say a lot about them as well, but this is obviously already pretty long, so I'll just say , "Man, that's fucked up," concerning their living arrangement). I feel as though Tricia's hatred of downsizers is different from Lin's, as Lin came off to me as just a normal sizist who hates downsizers just because they're different. I say this largely because of the way in which Lin taunts downsizers throughout the chapter.

I also feel like it was peer pressure that drove Tricia to warm-bellied murder. Based on what we saw from her earlier in the chapter, the way she reacted to Lin squishing the first downsizer, how quickly and without tasting him she ate the Mateo lookalike, and the admission later that she initially only ate him to impress/one-up Lin all convinced me that, despite her hate for downsizers, she wouldn't have killed one without someone there to add pressure. Of course, that mantra that downsizers aren't really people surely helped as well, but this was Tricia acting well beyond her norm, I think.

But then she felt the tiny moving around inside her and everything changed. She liked it, and it would be shocking if she didn't eat one again! And that bit with the X-Acto knife and the tape, I found myself wondering if she would have done that before. There has clearly been a shift in her. Whereas before it was hate guiding how she felt about downsizers, she's starting to truly enjoy treating them cruelly. This doesn't bode well for Steve and probably not for Mateo as well!

Finishing up on Tricia (finally, I know), I found another bit of irony here. She hates downsizing and the people who choose to downsize, but it seems like the only people she's punishing for it are those who didn't have a choice. It seems like Steve got scammed, Mateo didn't have a choice, and poor Kamilla got fucked over hard as well, not to mention the other unregistered. It's tragically funny that she's taking out her frustrations on the downsizers who have it so well on those who are struggling or didn't want to downsize in the first place.

Lastly, it was nice to see Hazel and Beth again! It's been a while, but I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. For me, I was really happy to see them mentioned, even if it was mostly background stuff. Having them out of the story for so long has built some anticipation for when we see them again. Hazel and Emma seeing Mateo again is going to be a huge feel-good moment. Mateo reuniting with Beth is going to be a major one as well. And when Beth is finally able to make good on some of those things she said she wanted to do to Mateo, that scene is going to be so much more effective after all this buildup and delicious frustration.

I was also glad to see Hazel tell Beth happened to Mateo, even if we didn't get to see it firsthand. It also makes sense why she chose then to do it. Seeing Beth so worked up about him being missing, any doubt Hazel might have about Beth's feelings toward Mateo were erased. It's clear now that she cares about him, and that was why she stepped in to tell Beth what happened.

It sure as shit wasn't to save that "sizist cunt." I loved that line coming from sweet, innocent Hazel. It was so perfect for that moment, the first time she saw Tricia after the incident that never happened.

Reviewer: jfgts2022 Signed [Report This]
Date: July 20 2024 1:14 PM Title: School Days

Anticipating the next chapter, I hope it isn't to far away.

Reviewer: suce57 Signed [Report This]
Date: July 12 2024 12:42 PM Title: Discipline: Part II

Wow excellent chapter. 

Reviewer: Jsmith20 Signed [Report This]
Date: July 11 2024 10:41 PM Title: School Days

I realized I came across as a bit rough in my review and I didn't want to be bashing you like that. I'm not calling this piece garbage, but there definitely were some misplaced expectations when I picked up this story and it's not necessarily meant for me, which is fine. (I think maybe you should consider expanding the story's description to make it more clear about some of the elements of the story.) 

Sofia does make sense for the most part, but what makes her feel wrong to me is how she just doesn't seem to consider how she's impacting Mateo. It would make more sense if she was jumping through hoops justifying her actions to herself and at least considering how much she ruined Mateo's life like this. He never wanted to be downsized in the first place and that should be in the background of everyone's minds at least. The reason why I have my opinion of her is that she forced her son to be downsized, kidnapped her son, and is definitely abusing Miguel. This is all just my thoughts: the best way I can characterize her is as a villian/person she is Umbridge not Voldemort. And that's cool, but part of the appeal (to me at least) of Umbridge style characters is how they'll get their comeuppance and it doesn't seem like that's the direction it's going. And again, that's fine but it's not for me. (I'll also admit I don't like overbearing mothers as a character in any story, that's again my personal preference. )

Author's Response:

Sofia may or may not understand the trauma she's imparting on Mateo. As someone who was raised by an immigrant mother, and has seen firsthand accounts of overbearing mothers treating their kids, the punishments she's inflicting on Mateo are realistic. Obviously, they're wrong. Sofia thinks her actions are best for her son, but I'm sure everyone reading the story understands it's not. She's permanently scarring Mateo and Miguel, and once those two survive this, they'll probably have lifelong PTSD.

I don't understand your Harry Potter reference, but I get the need to have the protagonist getting their comeuppance in the end. Will karma catch up with Sofia? I don't know. In real life, bad guys just get away with evil shit all the time because the world is a cruel place. And as someone who writes in the moment, I really don't know what will happen to Sofia. We'll see if her character changes for the better.

With all that said, you're probably right that this story isn't for you. It's going to remain gritty and probably get crueler as time moves on. I have written some endearing, heartfelt moments, but downsizers are going to get hurt before this story is finished.

I took your advice and updated the synopsis so that people are 'tricked' into reading a different kind of story. I've been meaning to do this, and this was the perfect opportunity to fix that.

Reviewer: Edoardo Signed [Report This]
Date: July 11 2024 5:35 PM Title: Discipline: Part II

I agree with Jsmith20. Too many violence focused garbage here on this website as if this is a gore sadistic fetish site and not giantess. Very few stories are original. The turn you are taking is gonna be the same as others unless you add some giantess heroes like Beth for Miguel. Like imagine a new adoptive family composed of females saving him. Keep in mind 99% of this website is like that turn with Sofia. fosmat, a creative story writer here, had opportunities but let down because he didn't ask for reviews and felt alone. 

Author's Response:

If I understand you correctly, you're saying this story is violence-focused? Let me just say that this story is more about Mateo navigating this universe which has its best intentions for downsizers, (from the MHIP and laws and such), but the extreme size difference and power imbalance will always cause issues. There will be a mixture of people from really gently to cruel. Sorry, not sorry. Sofia's character is acting as her character would: relishing as being the new matriarch and not having her full-sized husband to temper her emotions. I wrote a long explanation on my discord and will paste it here:

• In this chapter, Sofia didn't hit the start button on the microwave. (Just want to make that clear.)
• Sofia's temperament was always balanced by her husband (pre-downsizing). [redacted] picked up on this and is correct with his assessment.
• Sofia no longer has that 'check' to doling out punishment, thus the power 'balance' in the family is heavily skewed. Non-existant, if you will. Whether Sofia realizes it or not, she's falling into that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely' idiom.
• Sofia never got her downsizing training of MHIP! She's ignorant with her actions.
• If you don't think a woman would kill their partner after being cheated on—all I can say, is that you've lived either a sheltered life, or have a rosy, coddled view of the world. The majority of woman, I hope, would not kill after being betrayed. Sofia, however, does not fall in this group.
• I am uninterested in making characters likeable. The characters are, who they are. I don't follow archetypes when I write. That is to say, my characters are complicated and will have their own belief and morality systems that may clash with yours, and thus look erratic. This is fine. This is what makes reading stories fun.
• To add to this, I don't care if Sofia or Tricia win you back. Or undergo a redemption arc. The main focus on this story is how awful the power imbalance is when extreme size difference is involved. Everyone here, from the gov't to the characters, have good intentions. Despite the laws and safeguards there are, shit happens.
• I talked to my wife again about this, and she sees nothing wrong in Sofia's action. She admits her actions are mean, but despite this, my wife likes Sofia, lol.

Reviewer: Jsmith20 Signed [Report This]
Date: July 11 2024 4:50 PM Title: Discipline: Part II

To me, this story just jumped the shark and lost what made it interesting in the first place. It start off grounded with the life of Mateo in high school and that's where it seemed like it was going to stay, learning to live as tiny in a world where some already do and others don't while going through the growing pains of high school. Mateo and his story is what made this worth reading.

Sofia is reprehensible and deserves prison and to be abandoned by her family. I can't even see how she ever understands what she does is wrong. 

Author's Response:

Sorry if I misled you on the type of story this is (?) This is more of an adventure story for Mateo navigating the universe and not necessarily about school life. And it won't 100% be about him being stuck with his mother, neither. There will be future school scenes.

Sofia is who she is. I won't try to defend her or anything. I'm a big fan of show and not tell, and if you interpret her as a reprehensible person who deserves prison---cool. Doesn't make a difference to me. I'm not trying to write her as a likeable character, but more as a realistic person.