Way back in the day, when I emerged from deep freeze and rejoined the size-fantasy world at large, I knew that the world had changed and few things would be familiar. My favorite writers and artists had gone into “retirement,” and the landscape would be populated with new creators I’d have to learn more about. I was looking forward to discovering the new writers that had come out and established themselves during my 20-year hiatus.

One of these was Nyx, I realized right away. I saw her name everywhere: people spoke of her with reverence and admiration, assuring me she’s a wonderful human being, and after a few mentions like this I began to wonder why that was necessary to have appended. If you’ve read her work, of course, you’ll realize the stark contrast between the shy, friendly, thoughtful “5′ 6″ nerdgirl,” as she recently summed herself up, and the towering, imperious giantesses she writes about, whose cruelty is in constant competition with their size.

Over the course of a few conversations we talked about SizeCon (which I’d just missed and where she’d hosted a booth and led a panel) and the size-fetish communities. I also learned about many things I’d assumed without real substantiation, and not just because I was out of the scene: Nyx has gone out of her way to reach out and learn as much about people as possible, while I didn’t let my antisocial tendency impede my forming conclusions and deciding how the world worked.

Aborigen: Hey, hello. This is me initiating a conversation, awkwardly. I’d like to talk about the Mega-observing-M/m thing, learn a little from you.

Nyx: Hello! To be honest, I’m relieved that you weren’t totally turned off by the giantess-watching-giant-torment-tiny-guy thing (many people are whenever I mention it). I wouldn’t mind chatting more about it.

Aborigen: Not turned off at all! Mostly I’m curious because the whole thing’s so unfamiliar to me. Also, it’s rare for me to talk to a woman who got into the giantess thing on her own, like, not introduced to it by a man she’s dating, for example. I’m wondering if you’d talk a little about how you got interested in this.

Nyx: Well, I’ve been into micro/macrophilia for my entire life, although I had no idea that such a thing even existed until my parents bought a computer and I discovered the various size-fetish communities. Before that, I just thought that I had some sort of mental disorder and I was embarrassed that I was turned on by size-related fantasies.

There are certainly other female macrophiles (I’ve spoken to quite a few of them), but most of them prefer the shrunken woman (SW) role. I’m unusual in that I prefer the dominant/giantess role most of the time. While I do have an appreciation for giant men, my personal preference is to be huge myself. You could say that my online persona is my dominant, ruthless side given free rein.

Aborigen: So, what do you like about it? What’s your preferred size(s), and when not watching man-on-man sexual combat, what does Nyx enjoy for a pastime? What does it mean to her, to step the life out of someone or to assault a city, where does the charge come from in all that?

Nyx: I tend to prefer the power and domination aspects of the fetish. I can’t claim to speak for all women, because female macrophiles are as varied in their interests as men. Some like to be tiny, others like to be giant-sized. Some enjoy gentle scenarios, others prefer violent ones. I’m at the extreme end of the spectrum, and my fantasies are often inhumanly cruel. The irony is that I’m a pretty nice person in real life, and so it took me a long time to accept my fantasies.

I also prefer growth over shrinking scenarios, although I certainly enjoy shrinking scenarios. For me, being a giantess is about power, and the thought of being the most powerful being on Earth is exhilarating. I could rule as a benevolent empress or conquer all of humanity and have the leaders of the world grovel at my feet. It’s exciting to think of that sort of power, and the freedom to do absolutely anything. To me, growth is about gaining power and becoming something more than a mere human.

I’m not much into being shrunken myself; if anything, being shrunken is terrifying to me and so disrupts the fantasy. I do have a fascination with male giants, though. I’m attracted to the idea of both tiny and giant men.

Aborigen: You’re terrified by being shrunken! How interesting! I’m wondering if you’d be frightened by a gentle giantess you could trust, or if a male giant-qua-giant just couldn’t do anything to put you at ease. And it sounds like you’ve examined your own origin story very well and are quite in touch with it at this point. I’m intrigued by the internal work you had to do with reconciling who you knew yourself to be with a giantess fantasy involving violence, but I don’t even know how to frame a useful question. It just sounds like a really good story.

Nyx: One of the downsides to being a woman into gts is that I get lots of attention, and not everyone is respectful. So it’s nice whenever someone approaches me and they treat me like an actual human being.

As for being frightened around a gentle giantess or giant, yes, I most likely would be. I’m easily terrified in real life, so being around someone so large would be unnerving until I learned how to trust them. That’s one of the appeals of being a giantess… I become the most terrifying thing in existence.

As for being shrunken myself, I think that it’s the loss of power that I dislike. I’m not much into interacting with other giant women, and even if my best friend found me, I’d still be upset. I’ve tried imagining being at a giantess’ mercy, but it bothers me at a fundamental level. I can handle male giants, but even then, I imagine them being immense rather than myself being shrunken.

Aborigen: My premise is that women are besieged by messaging on social media, whether solicitations for sex or death/rape threats in response to comments, discussions, etc. I used to play a female mage in WoW, and I had a guy introduce himself to me as being recently divorced and having a lot of time for masturbation. Because 1) of course I must look like the character I’m playing, and 2) there is no way a woman would not immediately be turned on by this talk from a total stranger.

Nyx: Your experience while playing a female character is quite close to the sort of messages that I’ve received, although the harassment only gets worse when people find out that someone is actually a woman. Most people are very nice, but some are unbelievably disrespectful.

I like learning about other people’s experiences with this fetish, and how they were affected by it. I honestly thought that I was a weirdo for so long that it’s comforting to hear that others have had similar experiences (for example, your fascination with Attack of the 50′ Woman and Village of the Giants). I had a fascination with those movies, and I’d watch anything that involved growth or shrinking. Even as a child, I liked to imagine what it would be like to stride through a city as a giantess or interact with a shrunken person.

Aborigen: What did those interactions look like with normal-sized people? Did you enjoy striking fear in them? Did you revel in their awe and wonder? Were you knocking down buildings or just playing with the little people?

Nyx: There were darker aspects to it. I loved to imagine growing Godzilla-sized and toppling buildings and stepping on cars. In first grade, we were allowed to draw whatever we wanted, and I mostly drew pictures of giant and tiny people. It didn’t become clearly sexual until I reached puberty. The fascination with cruelty and power has been there since I was a teenager, and I spent years trying to come to terms with my own darker side.

Aborigen: It’s an interesting dynamic: men who fantasize about being shrunken and having all power and control stripped away from them, and women who fantasize about being all-powerful and answerable to no higher authority. I wonder if this is entirely a Western construct, a retort to conservative social structure? That would be the most obvious hypothesis, I guess.

Nyx: A reaction to Western civilization is one possible explanation for the fascination with giantesses. My own theory is that macrophilia is something deeper, more primal. I’m quite active in the giantess community, but I also hang out in the other size-fetish communities, so I’m exposed to a wide variety of people. For example, I get to see the perspective of homosexual men on Coiled Fist, or other heterosexual women on DeviantArt and Tumblr. Regardless of gender or sexual orientation, there is a common fascination with a larger (or sometimes smaller) partner, and a focus on how power affects a relationship.

Aborigen: I love your primal response theory. I was immediately reminded of a novella from 1945 by Richard Sharpe Shaver called I Remember Lemuria, an extended story that was supposed to be truth disguised as fiction, a kind of giantess roman-a-clef. He wrote about an ancient civilization called Lemuria and small people called Dero who lived in the earth and surfaced to kidnap our women. He described bizarre ray guns: the stim-ray that could induce a woman to orgasm, and the Dero would sit on her like a huge erotic couch.

He published this, and a surprising amount of people wrote back and said they too remembered this ancient culture (psychics, past life, whatever explanation), as though there had been tiny people at some point, and two parallel universe paths merged and one history got wiped out, but some of us still remember it? That would be a reasonable short story by itself.

Nyx: I’m glad that you liked my theory. I’m not a sociologist or a psychologist or a biologist, and my theory comes just from my observations. I may be completely wrong. As for my exposure and research, I have a wide range of interests, and I find that most sites cater to only one of them. I haven’t read that novella that you mentioned, although it sounds like something would interest me. Science fiction and fantasy have always appealed to me, and they’re even better when size differences are involved.

Aborigen: How do you reconcile with your destructive side now? Do you permit it because it’s entirely within the realm of fantasy?

Nyx: I’ve come to accept it. It helped that I spoke to others who also had a fascination with the darker side of the fetish. I came to realize that such fantasies are fine, since they are merely that: fantasies. I allow myself to explore the darker side of the human heart in both my imagination and my writing. There’s no holds barred in those areas.

Aborigen: How does your giantess see herself in the world? She enjoys having no physical, legal or moral limitations to her actions. Does she have much consideration for the tiny people? Can she develop a favorite person, would she ever form a relationship with one? (And can she capriciously snuff them out as the mood suits her?) I guess I should also backpedal and ask how she got that big, and whether she questions her place in the world.

Nyx: I imagine myself as being completely free from moral and legal obligations. For me, it’s all about the power, so absolute power is the best. I’m fine with most methods of growth, including science and magic-related methods, as long as the power can’t be taken away from me. I know that some macrophiles enjoy the growth process, but I’m mostly interested in the end product, which is being an omnipotent giantess.

I also imagine myself as being inhumanly cruel most of the time, although I do occasionally have fantasies in which I have a tiny partner/sidekick/assistant. Whether my partner lives depends entirely upon my mood, and that’s part of the thrill for me.

Aborigen: So what happens when a giantess realizes there’s no more ceiling? When you realize that’s it, you’re at the top and nothing can stop you, is there still a thrill?

Nyx: While I love the thought of rampaging through cities and conquering the world, I’ve also given a considerable amount of thought as to what happens next. As you probably figured out, I like unstoppable, godlike power, and I’ll admit, it would become boring quite quickly. I’ve explored the idea in some of my fantasies and stories, and often, the characters turn to psychological games to amuse themselves. It becomes less about rampaging, and more about mind games.

Aborigen: Now, I want to ask about your writerly influences. What made you want to start writing these visions out, and how old were you? What did those first stories look like, and when did you start sharing them with other people?

Nyx: I’ve written since I was a child, although I used to destroy my work before my parents found it. I came from a religious household, and so I was terrified that I would be rejected for my strange fascinations. This idea showed up in a lot of my early work; for example, I wrote about a Victorian woman who reads the Marquis de Sade’s work in an attempt to understand her own desires, and who hides her interests from her family. At first, I was very shy about sharing my work online, and I only posted to a few sites. I eventually started sharing more, especially when people didn’t leave comments like “OMG U DISGUSTING FREAK.” Even now, I’m a bit shy about my stories, because I know how ultraviolent and sexual they are.

I wrote because I couldn’t find the sort of material that fascinated me. Most stories and television shows didn’t involve as much interaction as I would have liked, so I turned to writing. Even now, I write because I often can’t find the sort of content that appeals to me.

Aborigen: It requires much more thought on my part, but I think why I prefer your giantesses over others is that they are more or less drunk on their own power.

Nyx: “Drunk on power” is certainly how I’d describe my giantess characters, and how I’d describe myself in my own fantasies. There is something horribly exciting about having that much power and control, and knowing that you can choose to be a benevolent deity or a malevolent one. Of all of my giantess characters, I relate to the Tyrant to the most. She is someone who rules with an iron fist and who is feared by everyone. Yet she still remembers what it was like to be human. As you noticed, she may or may not be telling the truth; most of the story involves mindgames, and Ambrose questioning her and himself.

As for comments, I’ve only received a few scathing reviews. I sometimes receive PMs that I shouldn’t include certain things in my stories, such as male giants, but most people have been respectful.

Aborigen: I’m so frustrated when I hear creative people pursuing their passions being put down by small-minded, anonymous assholes. If someone’s not into the size fetish, they should just fuck off and put their energy into something else. On Tumblr [a year ago] I believe a group of kids held their “Giantess Prom,” mainly through collaborative artwork I think. One guy was enjoying himself and writing his review of it, when some anon jackass aggressively insulted him repeatedly, including telling him to kill himself. Way out of line, this conservative hegemony.

Going back to influences, who were some of the other influential authors from your childhood? What did you like about your favorite stories?

Nyx: When I was really young, I loved Roald Dahl, and as I became older, I read more science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction (my favorite authors included J.R.R Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin). As for more general fiction, I like Holly Goddard Jones, Flannery O’Connor, and Gillian Flynn. My favorite stories had well-realized worlds and characters, and I’ve always respected writers who are willing to take chances with their writing and explore new concepts.

I’m a nerd when it comes to literature, so I appreciate when a writer is skilled at their craft beyond the fetishy (not a real word, I know) aspects. I’m trying to work on leaving better comments, especially on stories. Stories are what stick with me; I still remember size stories that I read fifteen years ago, and I can’t remember any drawings or collages. So I’m trying to communicate that to writers.

Aborigen: What is your writing process? Do you draw up an outline, or do you just whip it out in a passion? How much revision do you do?

Nyx: I usually begin with one specific scene or character, and I build the story around that. For example, I imagined someone who could bestow power upon others but who was too hesitant to use that power herself. This is how I came up with my story “Vicarious.” My idea can change as I write the story, though. Many of my giantess characters become giants, and vice versa. The Tyrant in “Assistant” was originally going to be male, but I liked the character so much that I wanted to imagine myself as her and so I changed her to a woman.

Depending on the complexity of the story, I may or may not use an actual outline. For very short stories, I write the story in sequential order (beginning, middle, and end). For very long stories, I’ll often write certain scenes and then stitch them all together.

I’m a very slow writer and I often take long breaks between stories, which helps me to consider new ideas and to edit what I’ve written. I’ll revise as I write, and then I’ll edit the completed draft a few times before I publish it. Of course, I’ll often notice a typo or two (or three) after I’ve posted it.

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Much gratitude to Giantess Nyx for consenting to the interview, putting up with months-apart installments, and giving the go-ahead after a concise edit. I hope you all out there have learned a little more about one of our beloved (and feared) giantesses and truly talented authors.