Reviewer: Quicksilver Signed [Report This]
Date: March 18 2013 11:46 PM Title: Cat vs Mouse (Part 1)

I personally enjoyed this chapter in and of itself, not just as a teaser to the "action."  Partly because I find what happens in a character's imagination, like Lena picturing Paula pinned beneath her breast, just as effective as what actually transpires between them, but also because seeing creative solutions to the challenges of a world in which people differ so greatly in size enhances the fantasy for me.  I'm speaking in this case of one waitress carrying a tray with another waitress on it.  I actually do recall seeing a picture along those lines, but I've never seen it in a story.  I figure Paula would only pick up her tray once the tray she was on got set down, because that would be a heck of a feat to balance her own tray while being jostled by the movements of someone 13 times her height (a rough estimate using averages).  It would be an even greater feat for, say, an Indonesian waitress on Paula's tray, since even Paula would have a tough time serving the world's smallest people.

Regarding Wauster's comment, I think your story does, to a large degree, reflect a world in which a country's wealth correlates with the height of its citizens, since the tallest countries on your list tend to be the "first world," like Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.  Some obvious exceptions to wealthy countries on your list being tall are Japan and Singapore, and they are not dwarfed just a few times over: a Scandinavian would be a feature of those nations' skylines.

The funny thing, though, is that in the modern global economy, the countries with the tiniest citizens would probably not be poor.  Not only would they need so much less food and many other resources to survive--one Dutch person would weigh more than four BILLION Cambodians--but the giants would no doubt rely on them to make the most miniature microchips possible.  The Cambodians would export and/or tax all this stuff with a high value added and could import nearly all their relatively cheap food.  One would think that the size of the plants and animals in this world would vary pretty closely with the size of the humans, so rather than Cambodians milking all sorts of cows that are to their scale, why not buy milk from the Dutch, where a single 200-foot high cow would probably supply enough milk for the entire Cambodian population with just a few squeezes of a teat?  I'm sure there would be some sort of international body regulating the price of items depending on the size of who produced it and the size of who's buying it, though, so that a Dutch family who stock their fridge with 22,000-gallon cartons of milk isn't paying thousands of times what Sarah paid for the carton she spilled in the last chapter, which probably held about 8 gallons.  While it doesn't seem fair to the Dutch to charge the same rate per volume to someone much smaller, it's also not fair to Sarah if what she's charged for a carton of milk she can hold in her hand is the same as what someone else pays for a carton whose contents could fill a Lebanese family's backyard swimming pool.

I warned you that I like thinking about the world behind the size differences!  Seriously, while you obviously don't need to cover every aspect of how this world works and take too much attention away from the "action," even small details like the team of waitresses in this chapter add a lot to fleshing out your world and making it more "real."

Author's Response:

Hallo:

First of all, thanks again for another deep comment. It's also very rewarding to see that you're actually giving it a good thought. I also appreciate that you liked the chapter by itself. I was worried some people might find it a bit boring, but I'm glad it's not the case. I also agree with the little details giving the story a little more depth and flesh. I definitely will try to do that more often, although to be honest, there are a lot of things that I didn't even think about until you mentioned them, like the waitress picking up her tray only once the bigger one is set down. I really appreciate you pointing them out, though. It helps a lot to enrich the story.

I'll definitely give a thought to everything you wrote here, and as always, thanks for commenting and I hope you continue to enjoy the story.

Wholia.