Tag: giants

This post marks my two week hiatus from Q10.  Lets see if the distraction-free environment effects my writing.

So.  Giants?

Let me disregard cultural elements of giants and humans and return to the physicality of it all (write the word one more time and I’ll not be certain of it’s definition any more).  I suspect that I’ll not be able to separate such things much longer, but I’d like to build from what I feel is the easy part.

Currently, I’m operating from an all else remains the same perspective.  Trees, dogs, cows, rivers, grass, lakes, ocean waves, whales, lions, icebergs, rain, rocks, and elephants all stay the same size.  Giants are just bigger humans, not lumbering, not stupid, not less in any way.  This makes things odd.

Giants won’t necessarily feel dwarfed by a tree.  Won’t find forests daunting for their size.  I think a giant would react similarly to how humans react to bushes and bushwhacking.  They’d find them annoyingly in their faces and frustrating to traverse.  As a building material wood might not be a first choice.

Dogs are going to be cute, but not appealing or useful as companions.  Same with cats—not that they are useful.  Imagine not having a pet or no one you know having a pet.  A panting id with no ego you could guiltlessly confide in.

Humans rely heavily on cows and cattle for food, but how would a giant feel about them?  Their really more snack sized than meal sized.  Probably giants would have a relationship similar to ours with chicken.  But what fills the spot for cows?  Buffalo aren’t big enough.  Hippo, rhino, and elephant have got to be tough.  Maybe giants wouldn’t have killed off mastadons?

I doubt many rivers and no smaller streams would give a giant much pause.  This seems to be one of the things that would diminish exponentially in terms of perception rather than linearly with my 4x rule.  Sure large rivers would be difficult to traverse, but I doubt many would be impossible.  Many rivers commonly twarting human progress would be jumpable or trod without getting one’s shirt wet if you were 25 feet tall.

The weekly growtrh of grass wouldn’t even register in a giant’s world.  Even most tall grass would be ignorable or amusing.  Lawn care in general takes on a bonsai tree sort of feel.

Lakes.  Here I think we have an easily scalable geographic feature.  Most interactions with lakes would be nearly identical to our own.  I’ll have to think about boating though.  Tying logs together to create a raft might not be somehting a giant would redily consider.  Would you be willing to ride a raft made of broomstick handles?

As a young teen I recall getting swept under a Pacific wave and being ground into the sand.  Not having ever been to the ocean it terrified me.  Most waves would be inconsiderable to a giants.  I suppose this relationship would be like that of lakes.  I think it would be less equivalent though.

Shit I didn’t initially mean to turn that list into a working list.

Whales might be an excellent source of food or even companionship for a coastal tribe of giants.  While dolphins would be food.

What would even be able to successfully predate a giant?  A pack of lions could take a lone giant down but I don’t know if they’d bother.  Would lions be the same as cats are to humans.  I doubt they domesticate well.  There’s more to explore regarding predation though.  What’s it like to really really be at the top of that chain?

Icebergs would be the same.  Exact same.

Rain would be 4x less annoying.  It might even qualify for exponentially less annoying.  Though I can see it being an equivalency as well.  Rain gets as close to tempurature as I put on the list.  I wonder if a giant—made of the same materials—would react any different to tempurature differences.  Seems like they would be happier in the cold because of their need to dissapate heat from their core.  Their skin though wouldn’t be impervious to changes though since it’s just skin.

Screw rocks.  They scale.

Aside from whales elephants would be the only animal to match well with a giant’s scale.  Since whale swim I think there would still be useful mysteries that keep them at a distance, but not elephants.  I think elephants might even successfully replace dogs as companions.  Or food.

That was fun and will become my longest post ever I imagine.

It appears that writing creatively with plot and characters and all that mess is not primarily how Giant Week is going down.

Yesterday, between that morning’s post and this morning’s post, highway workers installed tens of signs on the overpasses.  These sign indicate the minimum height of the opening under the overpass.  I have no idea how they did this all in between my trip on Monday night and my trip out on Wednesday, but a big thanks goes out to them.  These signs certainly came in handy for estimating purposes regarding all my giant questions from yesterday.

It looks like most gaps were 17 feet with the elevated roadway and safety wall making for another 5 feet.  At 22 feet overall I think I’m safe in saying that many 4x giants would be able to peer over the wall with ease and that climbing from one to the next would not be out of the question for most.  However, considering overpasses aren’t usually spanning huge distances a giant would be more inclined to just walk on up where the overpass runs into the bank.

The bridge issue resolved, I moved on to the lamp post thing.  Near as I can tell a 4x giant changing the lamp in a streetlamp would be like me changing one in the ceiling of my home: he or she would rather have a step stool.  Though maybe they just wouldn’t be that high because giants would be employed to change them out?

Now that I’ve sorted out my initial foray into the physicality of giants I have been drifting into the culture.  This is tough.  Twining the cultures of man and giant resists going deeper than giants just popping up in human culture and being redily accepted and put to work building stuff for us.  Even when I ask questions about what the construction industry would be like I run into trouble.  Sure having giants around would obviate the need for forklifts and bulldozers for humans, but wouldn’t giants have just as much reason to use 4x forklifts for their needs?

Making the simple assumption that a 4x giant requires 4x resources, wouldn’t you have to pay one a 4x salary to match their 4x output?  Except that formual might not translate to less physical tasks.  But what if it did?  What if a giant’s 4x brain contributed 4x output?  Then how the hell do I justify them working for us?  Or them even deigning to work in harmonious equality with humans.  Why would they put up with that?

So now I’m thinking of ways to diminish giants to create a symbiotic realtionship with humans.  That just seems like a cheat.  Though it feels bubbly with tension and potential plot in the same way a teenage chemist looks at Poprocks and Coke, “That’ll do something for sure.”

Hmmmm

Day 261

So I’m driving home from aikido the other night trying to imagine the proper scale of problematic giant but not a call-the-national-guard sized one.  What comes to mind is four times a normal human.  So 6 feet goes to 24 feet.  But then I start realizing I have no idea what 24 feet really means.

Can someone that tall climb up a highway overpass?  With ease, some difficulty, or not at all?  What about changing the light’s in a highway street lamp?  Any guesses where I was driving?

I considered finding some photos on flickr to scale giants next to regular sized folks.  I haven’t done this yet, but something tells me it won’t be as illustrative as I’d like.  You know, since I bet there are no pics of people standing next to overpasses and streetlamps.

I’m thinking four times as big might be able to wriggle into a normal sized door sideways and slow and painful as long as the interior room was large enough to lay down in.

A giant that size would still be reasonably hideable too.  Especially in the woods or among houses.  Not just standing out by the mailbox, but laying down in a backyard actively trying to hide.  They just couldn’t move around from one place to the next without notice.

Food and other required resources wouldn’t be too difficult to come by.  Unless these were raving giants that ate human flesh.  Depending on the culture even clothing and shoes would be doable.  It’s one thing to have custom made boots for a large footed person and another to give Godzilla flip-flops.

I’ll be driving again his evening.  WIll think more about it along the way.

Day 260