[Report This]Date: October 03 2013 9:28 AM Title: Chapter 11 The Slaughter
Following up on the previous post:
First, thanks for all the information. Knowing how the age of a Ryujin translates into its Earth equivalent really helps with the visualization of the various Ryujin characters.
Regarding "she cannot tell the gender until the baby is born", what about baby movement in the womb? From what I've read, a mother will start feeling her baby's movements around halfway in the pregnancy. But with Ryujin I think that would only apply to female babies, not to male "eggs". Therefore I'd expect a Ryujin mother to be able to determine the gender of the upcoming baby around the halfway point of the pregnancy by the presence or absence of movement in the womb.
Author's Response:
Sorry for the late reply.
The information I mentioned will be in the story soon, maybe sooner than originally planned. Shouta will no doubt be the focus of the next chapter, as soon as I get some time to focus on the next chapter.
I wanted the Ryujin's pregency of a male to be an unsure thing. But as you have pointed out, that's most likely not the case, unless the fleshball can mimick the humans movements inside the flesh egg. I'll have to think about it more.
[Report This]Date: October 02 2013 10:28 AM Title: Chapter 11 The Slaughter
I finally had a good opportunity to reread the story and catch up with the last two chapters. Here are my thoughts:
I'm a little confused by the ages of the various Ryujin. The previous chapters had led me to believe that Earth years and Watatsumi/Ryu no Yo years are similar, and that Ryujin live approximately twice as long as Japanese people. But now I read that Nobuto, a Ryujin man, is fully grown at the age of five, while his twelve year old sister apparently wasn't fully grown yet. So do Ryujin men grow very fast, are Ryujin years longer than those on Earth (with Ryujin girls growing very slowly compared to Earth girls) or was Nobuto supposed to be nearly fifteen instead of five?
Something else that had me puzzled is that Vice Admiral Ito ordered the attack while as far as I can tell he was only told that the possible hostiles were four demons approximately 200 feet tall armed with clubs, with nothing to indicate that they're endangering the exploratory fleet. Am I overlooking something? If the Vice Admiral was told that they were slaughtering (giant) women and children I'd understand his decision, but I saw no mention of such a thing.
I liked the battle scene. You did a good job describing things, at least in my opinion. Why did you think you'd get criticism for it?
Author's Response:
First off in third person is sometimes hard to write, since I have to decide what information is to be revealed or left for later exposition. Some of my early chapters have been to heavy in exposition, so I've tried to move away from this.
There are 219 days a year in Watasumi. A days length is 40 hours. A day consists of 28 hours of light followed by 12 hours of darkness. This means their year is equivalent to ours. The Ryujin have a lifespan nearly twice that of a human, but they develop twice as slowly. Now I understand why you're confused about Nobuto. It has not been explained yet in the story, but when a Ryujin woman is pregnant she cannot tell the gender until the baby is born. Pregnancy lasts about 2 years, this is the same for male and female pregnancies. In the case of females, they are born as toddlers like us, but unlike humans Ryujin males are born as a big protective egg, "or you could say inside them". The egg is opened after birth, as the egg "Giant flesh ball" merely served as a vessel to protect the unborn male child from the mother during pregnancy.
Originally there was exposition planned to explain this during the chapter Meet The Parents Part 2, Maki was going to explain this to Shouta. But I decided at the time to hold off on it." By the time a male Ryujin is taken from an egg he is already fully physically developed and only requires a short period to accumulate into their society. This period is roughly five years, after such time a male Ryujin is able to mate. So a female Ryujin takes 30 to 40 years to become an adult, while a Ryujin male only takes five, as a result Ryujin males are expected to live a max life of around 150 years, 50 years less than a female Ryujin's life expectancy.
All of this was meant to be explained shortly in expositions, and I still intend to. It's partly the fault the story is slow paced and the IJN fleet has not properly spoken to any Ryujin on this subject matter. Since the reader perspective is from the fleets perspective, there is no way they could have known yet. In third person I state some things which I suppose really do need more explanation to prevent headaches for the readers.
I agree that I should have shown more provocation to lead up to the attack. While it was never explicably mentioned, the Yamato was in constant communication with the exploratory fleet, so Ito would have been aware of the situation. This part of the story might need an edit.
I feared criticism because it was a very short battle. Also it gave favor to the humans, even if they ended up retreating. On Giantess World it's often that people side with the Titans. I felt I might get criticism for letting the humans win too easily.
Anyways, thanks for your thoughts.
[Report This]Date: September 27 2013 7:59 AM Title: Chapter 11 The Slaughter
Great battle scene! Reminds me of all the vintage Toho daikaiju flicks I used to watch on Saturday afternoons (usually old Channel 9-NJ).
Author's Response:
Thanks again for the review.
I regret the battle was so short, but in the end it played out how I thought it would. These giants were not really that intelligent, and were caught by surprise. So let's not set a precedent for future battles. Despite how powerful the IJN is here, it cannot replenish its ammo and they are isolated. Meaning they will eventually need to adapt to this world.