I'm still learning quite a lot, as we go. Sometimes it feels like every time I make a proclamation or a statement on how things are, who the giantesses are, what Scandinavian culture was like, I learn something in the next week or two that enhances or even undoes what I believed, and I have to issue a correction. Well, that's fine, it's only a little embarrassing.
Last week I took a train out to the west coast to attend SizeCon, a gathering of macro/microphile fetishists and creators. I was incredibly excited to go in the beginning. I missed the first one but have attended every in-person one since. I started out as a Size fetishist, when I wrote my first stories 30 years ago, and like I like to repeat, I started exploring social justice themes in my work. Women with real and conflicting agendas, tiny men who represent the Other, struggling in a world not built for them. I've said it a hundred times. And then last year I began exploring the spiritual aspects of the giantess, researching ancient heathen giantess-worship cults. Obviously there's not a ton of documentation from an oral-tradition culture, but there are hints in the 14th-century texts by Snorri and various historians. I'm reading the researchers who perform that analysis, and I share what I learn with the readers of my blog and newsletter, sometimes with the Size community. Mostly they're there for free porn, however, not learning about the actual giantesses we worshipped over four millennia ago.
Attending this SizeCon clarified some things in my mind. I don't need to see most of the sessions, they're on topics beyond my interest. I enjoyed the Silver Size Social, talking with age peers about our perspectives and experiences. I greatly valued the time I was able to spend with other creators, writers, filmmakers, actors, artists. Real, substantial conversations are my thing. I had long talks with friends, people I've known online forever but still hadn't gotten a grasp of yet in that one essential way you do when you look them in the eyes and watch their face change.
So if I go again, it'll be to see people I know. Maybe even teach a course on Scandinavian myth, summarizing the deep dive I've done while pursuing ancient giantess cults.
I'm sitting in on a 3000-level class on Scandinavian Myths, where the instructor provides material that serves as extensive footnotes to what we're reading in the texts. He explains why Oðinn has a hundred names, why everything's grouped in nine so often, why everything has to have a name, etc. It's fascinating to me, and I take extensive notes though I'll never take a test or write a paper. I could, for fun: one of the topics is on giantesses, but of course my knowledge spans far beyond the required reading in class. Makes me feel I missed my calling.
I'm also reshaping this website. I've updated the front page so I sound less like a whipped dog. Gýgratrú isn't a rebellion against the Old Norse gods: it is an examination of what existed before the gods. The giantesses were in Norway and Sweden first, and then the Icelandic immigrants brought their pantheon with them. The giantesses were there first, and they called to the heathens. Now I tell myself they're calling to me and I'm learning as much about them as I can, through scholarly texts and through developing my intuition, an atrophied muscle that nonetheless responds to exercise.
Next, I want to explore Gýgratrú more thoroughly here. I thought about starting another WP blog to track my findings, with a better interface to organize everything, but what's the point of that? I'll just keep adding to this blog on this site, updating it the old-fashioned way, with a means of calling out what I think are the important topics. My time away at the convention showed me how I have a different interpretation of magic than the conventional thought, for example. And that may cause some trouble, decreased acceptance in the pagan community, but what of that? I'm only here to speak my truth.