New Format, New Future
Thanks to everyone who participated in the feedback form! I don’t like to publicize such navel-gazing too much, but it was time for me to stop and question where my effort was going. That’s useful for me, as I enter the winter of my life and time becomes increasingly precious.
The results so far are illuminating: the people who follow me, do so because they’re into what I write.
You just can’t buy that depth of analysis. At least I didn’t.
But seriously, it was reaffirming to hear, to know, that the things I’m into are the things you’re into too. Sometimes I think I go way out on a sequoia-like limb with my interests, like, I’m all excited about Scandi myth and giantesses, and now I know that most of you are open to my updates on what I’m learning about them. That’s encouraging!
Now I want to try out a new format for these newsletters. They will include Giantess News (if there’s any), focus on Scandinavian giantesses, and a little flash fiction. My goal is to put this out twice a month, and I think that’s doable and should fit with everything else I want to try.
Thank you again for sticking with me on this winding journey, where the path is only revealed with each step.
Giantess News
For everyone keeping running tabs on my spirituality and politics, I used to consider myself an agnostic leftist. I believe in a Divinity though I’m reluctant to define it (I believe we lack the faculty to perceive it, for starters), and I’m leftist in that I believe in feeding all the babies, abolishing billionaires, and giving people room to explore and develop who they are. I mean, shit, creative writing is an internal journey, and when groups like PayPal/Stripe or Barnes & Noble censor me, they’re inhibiting and casting judgment on my growth as a person.
Now, however, I’m a giantess-worshipper, and to me the leftists have lost their way and are prone to in-fighting and virtue-signaling instead of building real connections (you know, inclusion in practice). I don’t know what group I belong to. I can only focus on individual issues. And yes, I recognize they took the idea of “wokeness” and used it like a weapon, but the core concept of it still stands: waking up from the American dream, being considerate and respectful of others. Anyone who speaks against that … well, fuck, I don’t know why you would.
I hope you understand why, for me, creative writing and the Size Fantasy kink are inextricable from politics. We’re living under a regime that is targeting me and my friends directly, because we’re exploring the ways in which we’re human.
So I was reflexively defensive against this Catalan “article,” more a cowardly op-ed by a nameless team of editors. “The latest woke delusion in Catalonia” rails against what they see as an intrusion into their tradition of gegant parades, gigantic statues that represent iconic figures and moments in Catalonia’s history. Artist Joako Palomar introduced a “queer giantess,” La Perla del Llobregat, a figure that pays homage to local culture with significant tattoos but also stands for contemporary social movements. The statue clearly bends gender and calls heteronormativity into examination.
Predicably, the artist and event organizers, Agrupació de Joves, began receiving hate mail—which, creatively, they’re attempting to spin into a song. The article is unsympathetic with this, however, and yet they don’t attempt to logic their way out of it and explain why it’s wrong. Line after line, they express contempt for it because it’s different, and then assert that this is why their population will reject progressive values.
Real talk: I’m not entirely comfortable with some of the radical advances we’re seeing in queer and trans culture. I don’t know whether that’s because I’m aging, or if the internet has enabled social development to race well past my capacity to digest it. But I would never say it’s wrong, and I would never discourage anyone from exploring it, especially when it represents people becoming truer to themselves. I don’t believe my personal hang-ups should be rules for anyone else to live by, and I will always advocate for civil liberty and freedom of creative expression. I just … bite my tongue, and live and let live.
And as an editor, if someone comes at me with “this is the way we’ve always done things,” they had better be prepared to block or dodge quickly.
Scandi Giantess: Angrboða
Bear in mind that Old Norse was not an institutionalized religion: it’s the umbrella term for the beliefs and practices of a broad range of tribes across vast geographical distances. It’s like fanfic, in that everyone knows the main characters, but everyone tells their own stories of their adventures. The stories don’t follow a coherent timeline, the characters have no specific ages, and there are plenty of contradictions between tellings.
So when I talk about a giantess, I’m necessarily going to bring up conflicting information, because the ancient Icelandic documents recorded everybody’s versions of the myths.
Angrboða
Anglicized as Angrboda, this giantess’s name means “grief-bidder” or “grief-announcer.” In a corpus where large figures can get conflated as giants, ogres, trolls, or other monsters, Angrboða is consistently identified as a giantess (gýgr) throughout the Icelandic texts. Her formidable nature is underscored by her name being listed among those that designate unhappiness, terror, and danger.
Angrboða resides in Jötunheimr, the icy realm of the giants. First and foremost, she is notable for her relationship with Loki. Remember that giantesses can procreate without sex, and when they do choose a mate, they give birth to either gods or heroes. In Angrboða’s case, however, she did more. Her children:
Hel, goddess of Hel, the underworld for those unworthy of Valhalla.
Fenrir, the monstrous wolf who would break free of the bonds the gods placed upon him and slay Óðínn at Ragnarök, the end of the world.
Jörmungandr, the Miðgarðsormr or Miðgarð Serpent who encircles all of creation, biting its own tail. When it releases its tail, this is one of the signs of Ragnarök.
Yet the Eddic poem Hyndloljóð specifies that she is the mother only of Fenrir! This merely means that this poem represents a variation of the Old Norse myths.
It’s theorized that Angrboða shares identities with other giantesses throughout the Eddic myths. Some scholars suggest that she originally appeared as Gullveig (“lust for gold”), the giantess whose mere presence initiated the Æsir/Vanir war of gods. Gullveig was slain by fire three times, reincarnating each time, which makes it not impossible for her to also become Angrboða.
In the Eddic poem Baldrs draumar (“Baldr’s Dreams”), the beloved god Baldr has a series of nightmares foretelling his own demise. To prevent this, Óðínn consults a vǫlva (seeress) for advice on how to protect him. The vǫlva is described as “þriggja þursa móðir,” the three-giant mother, which strongly suggests this was another form of Angrboða.
Giants and giantesses were the personifications (and enforcers) of the forces of chaos, the natural order of the world that defied the rational or divine order of the gods. As I love to say: the giantesses were a group of women that the gods themselves could not control. Throughout Gulfaginning, Hyndluljóð, and Vǫluspá, and many other texts, Angrboða is very much entwined with themes of destructive forces, creating children who govern the dead and contribute to the end of the world.
Flash Fiction: Tattoo
On a promontory some distance from the village, Thrand tightened the waist of the linen wraps covering his lower body; his chest was bare, not yet warmed by the rising sun. The air had to be cool for this exercise. It would’ve been better to try this in the ocean or a lake, to cool Vargrygr’s body down, but there were none within easy walking distance, even for her. None that could contain her, anyway.
This was a temporary point of departure for for both of them, a rest on the side of their roads. Thrand (Þránðr, “to struggle, to thrive”) was taking a break from his travels and storytelling to earn some money in a village, and Vargrygr (“wolf-maiden”) wanted a tattoo.
He walked up to where the great barbarian perched upon the cliff, wearing nothing but her arm-wraps. Her bark-colored hair wound back in two plaits along the sides of her head, meeting in a robust braid down her spine. Axes hung from her earlobes, either donated by or purloined from past encounters. She stared thoughtfully across the landscape, across the specks of farmland, the stubble of great forests that led to misty-hued mountains, Ymir’s Eyebrows, ringing the horizon. Her bare ass bulged plump and shiny in the morning condensation, and Thrand patted one massive cheek, smiling at the hint of a ripple even his little hand could send across her flesh.
“Morning, Vargrygr.” He unshouldered a hide bag, containing his supplies for the morning’s task, and she slowly turned her head toward him, nodded, and returned to the countryside. He unpacked several long wooden poles, some sharpened and some mounted with hollow steel pipes ending in points, as well as a broad wooden bowl. In the bowl was a large black block, softer than coal and harder than charcoal. Kneeling in the damp grass, he began to grate the block against the ridged interior of the bowl. “Hey, big girl? Could you help out with some moisture? However you like.”
There was a pause before the giantess twisted her body and bent her head, carefully aiming a large globule of her saliva to strike the center of the bowl. He complimented her aim and resumed grinding, turning the spit and dust into a thick ink, into which he dipped a horse-tail brush. “Tell me more about what we’re doing today.”
Her huge chest swelled with a long, slow inhale, and Thrand did not insult her intelligence by pretending he didn’t notice. “Bjarni’s men, ravaging some northern farms. It was nothing, twenty of them at most. I want this to be a warning.” Vargrygr wouldn’t desire to brag about killing a large raiding party. It would’ve been shameful, for those like her, to unleash her power against so pathetic an opponent, so her tattoo was as much a cautionary statement as an apologia for her actions.
He stepped up to her left buttock, fat and firm, and began to paint: Wunjo, Ansuz, Raidho, Nauthiz, Ansuz, Nauthiz. The morning air was cool enough to preclude her sweating, though a woman of her size burned hot all the time, and the runes sat clear enough.
“Bjarni, huh? Think that’s the end of him?”
Her body whoofed with a chuckle. “The only thing thicker than his encampment is his skull. He’ll try again a couple times before autumn.”
“Have you thought about going to the source? Rooting him out once and for all?”
Just above his head, her huge arm swayed with the shrug of her shoulders. “That would look even worse than just stamping out his forces. Imbalance. The big girls abusing their power. Wouldn’t go well. It’s annoying, but we just have to address it as it happens.”
Thrand pursed his lips. If anyone else knew how the gýgr held themselves back, things might be different. Instead of looking at them as an ever-present threat, they might learn to … He shook his head and continued writing. “Twenty, you said?”
“Maybe more. Twenty’s enough.”
He painted tiughu menni, rubbed it out with a handful of her spit, and amended: tiughu stór-menni. Twenty strong men, to leave no doubt and offer Bjarni a little honor he didn’t deserve. The sentence he worked on wound its way from a foot past her ass crack to where the ball of her femur locked into her pelvis; he crawled over the grass to start the next line by her crack. “Bjarni. Too many like him. I think it would send a message for these gold-hungry trolls to stop tempting your Sisters.”
Her hip shivered as he resumed painting, her buttock swelling and rolling in place. Ticklish, probably. His heart pounded to see the sphere of flesh churn before him, so heavy and full and succulent … He grit his teeth and measured the heights of the runes as they traded information: where the farms were located, how Bjarni’s raiders were armed, what the farms produced for the local warlords, so on and so forth. There was no use asking Vargrygr the details of the conflict. There was nothing to brag about in feeling an armed and armored man’s bones crushing beneath her heel. There was no glory in kicking a few of them into the sea, as easily as a child in the village would boot an inflated goat’s bladder for amusement. Other men, yes, they would revel in the carnage, the shudder of a mighty woman’s thighs as she trampled hapless, arrogant men into paste. But that always led to questions of whether it aroused her, whether she enjoyed it, and whether she’d do the same to them for enough goldgubber. That line of questioning went one of two ways: either the Sisters would avoid that region for a few years and leave them to their fate, or no one would be left to tell the tale of the consequences of such impertinent inquiry.
“It would send the wrong message.” Vargrygr’s voice was low and tired. It took a lot of energy not to do exactly as he suggested. “They’d come after us. They’d die, they would not be replaced, and the world would be imbalanced.” The gýgr, the Sisters, existed to enforce the ecological balance, even when that meant tolerating these arrogant little bugs who labored to destroy it. It was maddening, even from Thrand’s perspective, and he respected them all the more for it.
“I think we’re done. Check it out and let me know what you think.”
This time, the giantess turned to him fully and frowned. “You know I can’t read your people’s scrawling.”
He winced at the stupid oversight. “Well, do you trust me?”
“You’re trusting me. You know what will happen if I find out you’re fucking with me.”
He stared up straight into her searing, glacial eyes. “Upon my boots, I would not dare.” She grunted her assent, and he took up the first pole to begin the impressions.
There you go, that’s the new layout. Reach out to me through my website and let me know what you think of it. Please feel free to respond to anything I’ve shared: the most important thing, in this day and age, is that we continue having conversations.
In Her Shadow,
Aborigen
©2025 Aborigen/Size Riot