Reviewer: iHategiants666 Signed
Date: January 02 2016
Title: Chapter 21: Epilogue
I give you an A minus review for your story.
This was a rather well-thought-out plot without too many scenes of masturbation or worshipping. It did have however, a considerable overdose of violence and waton destruction of cities. Total massacre, with the army not strategizing enough. The girls' motives were all reasonable, though I felt that Lisa's overall role was somewhat diminished, and not as explored with as much as with the other two.
As for Casey, well her role in this volume started with promise of a major smackdown between herself and Kelly and I was somewhat dissapointed when that didn't happen. Kelly's only real adversary was the FSD, though it makes sense that they were the ones to bring her down.
Kelly turned out to be my favourite character to read because she was the only one with major character developments. Her perceptions of herself in contrast with the rest of humanity became warped and to see it happen was beautiful. Losing touch with her own humanity, K found it easier and easier to trample humans until she felt no feelings for them at all. She even enjoyed it. And when she was finally defeated, all her ideals and beliefs of her godesshood shattered and she broke down, dramatically.
Her death also made sense... no one gets spared for committing the murder of over 1-10 million people or more.
(She IS dead right? It would be stupid if she wasn't.)
One last minor complaint was of course, not wrapping the story up. But if you think you can build upon this trilogy, then by all means... go for it.
P.S.
My story is somewhat behind, due to a brief trip to Saint-Sauveur, where I celebrated the last days of 2015. I am also resuming classes so I now have no idea when I'll be finished.
P.S.S.
Happy New Year!
Author's Response: Happy new year!
Well, I'm happy to get your review for the story and to see that in the end you are looking at it in a quite positive light! Thank you!
As I mentioned some times during our discussions, one of my objectives with Side Effects was to have a plot that had certain consistency. I'm happy to see that you thought it was well though-out. Of course, this is intended to be a giantess story, which implies having plenty of giantess action. I did not want the sexual part (masturbation mostly, due to the women's size) to be the main argument driving the plot though. Sure, we are talking about young women enjoying a power that in some cases turns them on, but this only meant that I had to address how they overcame this need, not that I had to focus the story on that (it would have become very boring pretty soon). I'm glad to see that I achieved the right balance. As for worshipping, this is not what I wanted the story to be. Kelly, who is the one with the God-complex, is not actually interested on being worshipped. She is more "practical" (if I may use this word). To her, her goddesshood does not have a religious implication; in the end, she sees herself more as the ultimate absolute ruler than the ultimate goddess.
I know that we have not agreed about the amount of violence on the story. It's a matter of tastes, I believe. Casey's character required it, and the evolution of Kelly's character required it as well. We can always discuss about the dose, of course.
I know we have typically disagreed on the approach from the army. In the end, my starting point was simple: they were not ready for that, the chain of command was broken pretty soon and they did not have too long to strategize. When they did, they organized a pretty effective attack (the navy and the nuclear bomb); they could not have known that it would be ineffective due to the nature of the women.
The girls' motives where the main element driving the plot, so I'm glad to see you thought they were reasonable. I also agree that Lisa's role was diminished. The fact that she has not had enough attention (and probably the same could be said about Ron) is probably one of the main shortcomings of the story (of course, there are others), and it's something I would need to address if I ever re-wrote it.
As for Casey, I set-up the possibility for the smackdown with Kelly on purpose, knowing that I would not use it. It's one of the elements I used to keep the story unpredictable. Hopefully I achieved that in an elegant way. To me, even if the story used plenty of common places in the giantess genre, it was important to keep it interesting enough to read because what would happen could not be taken for granted.
As you mention, I set things up so that just the FSD (i.e. the regular humans) could fix the mess they had created when making Kelly big. It felt better. During a lot of the story many readers (including you) felt frustrated that Kelly was so utterly powerful that she could not be stopped. This was the way to show that it did not require another giant to stop her. People could do that, even if the cost was dire.
Of course, the story was set up in a way that Kelly was the most interesting character. Seeing the amoung of "hate" you professed for her during part of the story, I'm surprised that she ended being your favorite one, though :P Of course, Kelly is the one whose character has the biggest evolution, and the brief moment where she realizes what she has done and, with megalomania now gone, feels the weight of her actions on her, was intended to close this loop. I hope that it was effective enough. If you may, I used Kelly to explore a potential "path" of evolution for someone as the rest of the world starts appearing smaller, weaker and less consequential to that person. There are, of course, other possibilities and I may explore them in future stories.
The story does not clarify if Lisa and Kelly are actually dead. I agree with you that it would be quite fitting. I don't plan on re-using them right now, though. I think they're done as characters. I left the open ends with Stella and Casey on purpose, in case I decided to return to this world in the future. Who know?
Anyway, I've enjoyed reading your reviews and commenting the story with you. I Hope that you will continue letting me know what you think if I write new stories in the future.
Cheers!
P.S. I'll wait to see when your story is done :)