Upload Notes: Massive Mermaid Part II (Patreon)

Heywhoa, bit late on these upload notes! Time has been flying by lately. I only meant to wait a day or two to write up these notes, and somehow, all of October is just gone. This whole year has moved so quickly...

Anyway, giant mermaids -- a more important topic. I hope you all enjoyed this two-parter! As I've said a few times in various places, I struggled to find the right rhythm with this one. I wanted to explore a different dynamic, where the interaction are very indirect: the giant mermaid plays with a ship, and the focus is on what's happening inside. So I had two characters basically living in different worlds, and only one is responding to the other in any way. lol, it was pretty weird to juggle~ In hindsight, I could've kept this a much simpler story, but I'm glad I did things the way I did. Even if it's very imperfect, I'm happy to have at least tried something new.

There's definitely fun advantages to this kind of dynamic! On the plus side, I can give even a one-off character like Eliza some good emotional depth, since everything is through her lens. I could really sink my teeth into those gritty details of being in a sinking ship and flinging yourself to safety, and eventually onto a giant fishwoman body. At the time when I started Massive Mermaid, I had happened to be really into sinking ships (shoutouts to the sinking ship fandom!!!!) having watched the Titanic recently and also a documentary about submarine warfare... I really had these images in my head, very detailed scenes of all the flooding and crowding. Unfortunately, I think I have a long way to go to capture the same effects as James Cameron or Actual World War I Naval Warfare.

A lot I can learn from this story... For one, I should really think to get "to the point" faster. I spent so much time with Eliza flopping around a ship, only for everywhere she went to to be for nothing. It felt like a lot of time wasting. Remember those pillars I mentioned in another upload notes? You don't. Well. I relied too much on trying to be immersive/realistic, that I ended up pushing aside aspects that would be sexier or more fun. Some stories benefit from that, sure, and I think that's what Massive Mermaid was meant to be... but it's not totally my style lol. I think I prefer having more character-based interactions, more chances to develop engaging personalities. Clo, she's cute and all, but she doesn't stand out, does she? I mean, try to describe her personality to me that isn't just "generic giantess but she's in the water." I had so much imagined for her at one point, but as I was writing, I just kept finding my head empty with ways to express her -- she's just a fishwoman, alone in the ocean, playing with toy ships.

I think there's just something about mermaids that makes me think of the logistics of their... existence, and by extension, the existence of giants lol. I was fine enough creating a setting where a giant mermaid can just exist and not be known about in the rest of the world, but it does beg a lot of questions about where and how she lives, what she does and thus why she is the way that she is.