A Deep Void

"Letters - we get letters. . ."

Truth to tell, I don't get that many correspondences, a good thing since I'm notoriously slipshod when it comes to responding to 'em. But when I recently received an email from a reader, I actually felt the need to respond. The note, from a "Luvbbw1123," was short and to the point. It read:

"LOL you are a joke. These stories are ridiculous. When does anyone ever go to the bathroom?"

Now, my first reaction to this pithy li'l bit of literary criticism was not - I'm afraid - very kind. For one thing, I'm not a fan of nethead acronyms. (They're a bit of an affectation, IMHO.) For another, I was totally unprepared for the possibilities that a reader might find one of my fantasies "ridiculous." Hey, buddy, this is serious literature here!

I wrote a cursory email ("I dunno. Why don't the characters in erotica ever get any serious diseases?") and fired it off. But as many of you know from bitter experience, a fired off email cannot easily be recalled. Pondering Luvbbw1123's email further, I realized I should have taken its question much more seriously.

Creation involves selection, and as a writer, I need to be aware of what my audience wants me to select to keep my fantasies believable. This is the decade of Ace Ventura and South Park, after all - an era when toilet matters are of endless interest to a significant number of people. I owed it to these inquiring minds to address this pressing issue in my stories, and since I'd already blown it with all my earlier tales, I obviously needed to backtrack and fill in the blanks.

To this end, I reviewed the archival tales currently available in Fat Magic. I only focused on the freebies (don't wanna give anything away on the pay-per-view pieces). This left a total of twenty-six tales.

Of these reprints, five were "realistic" stories, while twelve were fantasies with an end gain not unheard of in the real world. For these seventeen, the toilet question was easily answered: "'When does anyone ever go to the bathroom?' As often as any other person their size, I guess." Which left nine stories devoted to what I would call "mega-gains" - growths so exaggerated that they could only exist in fantasy. These were clearly the tales that had spurred the original email.

For the record, these tales are: "The Camera," "Maxfed," "Tabloid Life," "Makeup," "A Short-Term spell," "Door in Golden Mall," "The Recipients," "A Small Percentage," and "The Layered Look."

"Maxfed" is easily answered. One of a series of s-f tales set in a future world called Adipost Zone, it describes characters who become mega-sized but retain their ability to get around. (There is - in a forgotten file somewhere in Dimensions Central - a story that makes this more explicit, but I don't know if it will ever see the light of day.) "A Short-Term Spell" is also quickly dispatched: though its mega-sized heroine is weight-bound, we also learn that her environment has been modified to meet her every need. There's even a reference to plumbing in the story.

Five stories concern themselves with heroines who become mega-sized at the deliberate hands of others. "The Recipients" gives us a family who regularly do this sort of thing, taking care of their benefactors once they've changed; "Makeup" has a mad makeup artist transforming his love into the gal of his dreams, bringing her back to a home that's been rebuilt for her; "Door In Golden Mall" and "The Layered Look" are connected by the same primitive magic adapted to the twentieth century, while the manipulator in "A Small Percentage" works for a special service devoted to meeting the needs of the mega-sized. In all these tales, the figure behind the change possesses remarkable resources and is ready to use these to accommodate the story's protagonist. I think it's safe to assume there are no toilet issues here.

Which ultimately leaves us two tales: "The Camera," my most recent reprint, and "Tabloid Life." In the later, we clearly see our heroine move off her usual place of repose - though it clearly isn't something she does frequently - so I'm willing to suppose that off-stage toileting takes place between paragraphs. Because she is living the life of a fictional tabloid character, it also makes sense that her life would only connect to those details in the tabloid story that inspired her change. Few of the tabloids that I've seen focus much on elimination issues, though I've got to admit my knowledge in this area is pretty limited.

"The Camera" is another matter. One of my earliest mega-gain tales (only "Makeup" predates it), this cartoony piece was the product of a kinder, gentler period: the early nineties. In those more innocent days, none of us ever went to the bathroom, so it's not surprising that I forgot to let my fictional characters do so. (If I were writing that story today, I'd know what info to include.) But from the evidence in the text as written, I suppose the answer to Luvbbw1123's original question is: "I guess she doesn't."

I can only hope that I've adequately answered this thoughtful critical question.

June, 1998