I saved the background for this image a long time ago… many months. I found it at Flickr after I had started saving information about the sources for my collaging material (which is—after that point in time—clearly marked under Creative Commons as work that can be remixed).
It is the original work of Konrad Roziewski, and it has always seemed to me to be such a sweet image, the capture of a woman’s tender smile in a way that makes me think the photograph was taken with great care, perhaps with love. I kept it, and every once in a while I thought I should leave it alone, because I was never going to be able to find elements that would help me tell a story with it.
But I found a little guy. I spotted him at one of the best places to find collaging material: a gay blog sans nudity. It is perhaps unfortunate that the greatest admirers of the male form (via the Internet) seem to be men, as that leaves us women way behind in the race for objectifying respectfully drooling over the opposite sex through Internet websites and galleries.
As it’s generally the case when I’m collaging something, a story with dialogue began to play in my head. Once upon a time there was this woman, and she was in bed, not because she was tired, or sleeping, or sick. She was well physically, but in emotional turmoil. As she lay there, she was wondering what to do next. Her little man had lied to her, you see.
It hadn’t been a big thing. He isn’t capable of big things, she half joked to herself now, but it stung nonetheless. As she remained there, almost not moving, she saw the slightest tension stretch a section of her bed cover. He was scaling up the side of the bed.
Slowly, she thought. Hah! There have been plenty of times you’ve made your way to the top much faster than that… but now you don’t really know if I’m about to flush you down the toilet, or pack your little things, which I made for you, you little rat- And then she stopped herself. C’mon, he’s not a rat. That’s mean.
To rats.
They are bigger than him, after all.
She had to contain a giggle compounded by the emergence of his little head by the side of the bed. It was blue, covered as it was by a beanie she made him from one section of a toe sock, and it matched his eyes. His lying eyes. The Eagles song attempted to begin playing in her head, and she smothered it with a mental punch as she watched him take toy steps toward her.
She moved a hand and derived great pleasure from seeing him stagger from her movement as she tucked it under her cheek. Maybe he had thought she had been about to slap his body, or maybe it was just instinct driven by remorse, or fear. She allowed herself a little smile. She wanted him to be sorry, not frightened for his life.
He reached her side and stood on the bed, only inches away from her face. He was still panting from the climb, and any other time she would have scooped him up into her hand and placed him on the softness of her chest for a nice pretense of rest, but now she remained still, and waited.
His hand traveled the minimal distance to his forehead, where he wiped sweat off his brow. He then pressed his knuckles on his beanie-covered temple, as though that would help him think. His hand was still there when he muttered softly, “I’m sorry”.
Another old entry from my defunct blog I found in my Jedi archives! And the same as with the fictitious “computer series“, Theth has never mentioned anywhere that the following collages are part of any set of images, much less that the shrunken men in them are bots. It just so happens that my mind classifies them that way, but either way they are wonderful images.
* * *
"mpbed_a" by Theth
Of all the images I have added to my collection, Theth has created over a couple of dozen, and I can see a story behind every single one of them. The tale behind the image above came to me partly because of Jar Jar Binks.
Unlike what seems like the majority of Star Wars fans, I love Jar Jar. I was never one of those people that claimed George Lucas had “raped their childhood” with the way A Phantom Menace and Attack Of The Clones developed the story of the earlier films. There are other things in life I choose to be upset about.
Before APM was released, I did my fair share of Star Wars-related shopping, and one item I had to have was this:
Muy muy, I like it!
He measures nearly twenty-four inches in length, says a great number of phrases when I squeeze his hand, and vibrates to wake me up. Or used to, before I got tired of being snatched from slumber thinking a wrestling raccoon had slipped between my sheets. The most important thing is that it makes me smile.
Theth’s image made me think of a woman and the life she shares with her little toy robot. It inspired a poll about robots at GDC, and the following scene.
Little One
Amanda woke up at once, and the dim light in the room told her it would still be another hour before she would hear music coming from her alarm clock. Her cheek rubbed the pillowcase’s soft fabric as she cast her gaze on the small shape that lay next to her. Wrapped in her arms and legs, he looked asleep, but was not. Robots did not sleep.
She stared at his back, and the way it rose and sank in a way that emulated slow human breathing. She knew he would stay in that exact position until she moved him, and would continue to act as though he slumbered until the alarm clock went off. She had programmed him that way seven years ago.
Pleasure models could do almost anything these days. Hers was not one of the latest versions, yet she could have fixed it so he would wake her up; but after the first few mornings of his inhuman-yet-human hands pressing on her shoulder and his lifeless voice whispering in her ear, she had gone back to her clock radio, which didn’t begin to pretend to behave as a human.
Is this how it feels to go insane? she wondered. To know that I’m functioning at a normal capacity, and then it all snaps into disarray when I start thinking about him? It. IT! Dammit. There I go again. Seven years with no repairs, not even one maintenance check, no oil changes for you, she though. No wonder you are malfunctioning. But I’m “malfunctioning” too. Who’s gonna fix me?
"kk-lax02a" by Theth
Little One had always malfunctioned, though. Pleasure models were never supposed to ask “why” or its derivative questions, neither as factory preset, nor after customizing downloads. Only Logic models could do that, and Amanda could have never afforded one of those, but when she brought Little One from the store and began to dress him, he looked at her with those deep dark eyes, and asked her why.
“Why are you dressing me?” he had asked. She had been squatting like a mother tending to her child when he spoke, and the shock caused her to fall backwards. She could have sworn she heard him giggle but when she straightened her body and looked at him, his face was calm. Then he started dressing himself.
Itself.
All those years ago Amanda had thought of taking him back to the store to get a replacement, as she was sure they had given her a Logic model by mistake, but in the end she kept him, and she always thought her feeling of guilt over keeping something she had not paid for prevented her from having his processor checked.
His brain, as she helplessly thought of it. His behavior had been startling since the beginning, and she had always thought she should feel more alarm than she did. She had tried to feel some kind of revulsion at his random displays of humanity, but maybe her loneliness and the fact that he had made her writhe with pleasure in bed as no fully sized human ever had, made her decide to put up with what must have been a bored assembler’s joke.
"as_6" by Theth
Now she looked at his neck, at the code imprinted on it, bars and dots that meant nothing to her. She was dozing off again when he rolled over into her, startling her into a scream.
“Aah! What are you doing? You are not supposed to move yet!”
“I’m sorry. Amanda. I woke up, and felt you were awake too. Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
Surprised, Amanda felt her mouth open in the shape of an ‘o’, but no noise came from it. When she thought of her morning breath and how it would bother him, she felt anger, and pushed him away, fighting with sheets that seemed to wrap around her legs like moving vines.
“Listen, Little One, you don’t move until the music comes on, alright? That’s what you are programmed for! And you don’t ‘feel’ anything. You are a thing, like the teddy bear my dad gave me on my eleventh birthday. I talked to it, but it was just a toy! It couldn’t smell my breath, and- STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!”
Little One was rubbing his chest where she had shoved him, his face expressionless, but his eyes… was that pain? Was he hurt?
“I’m sorry, Amanda. I won’t do it again.”
“Will not.“
“I don’t understand.”
“‘I do not. I will not. I am‘. Why have you dropped your contractions? I never programmed you to do that.”
He was silent a second too long. She could have sworn he looked as though he had been caught lying. A very human response. But he was supposed to be silent when faced with input he had not been programmed to process, right? She slapped her forehead with frustration. He imitated her. It was so unexpected, to see him do that, to hear that little hand hit what felt and sounded like skin, she burst out laughing. She rolled onto her back and did not stop laughing until tears filled her eyes.
“Little One, you are driving me to madness.”
“Are you angry?”
She wiped her tears with the balls of her hands and stared at him for a moment. “Yes. No. I don’t know. You confuse me. None of my friends’ toys act the way you do. Not even the Logic models. Do you understand what I’m saying? You act in a way that’s completely unexpected.”
“Have I displeased you?”
“No. But sometimes you frighten me.”
“Will you send me away?”
"eh-hug054" by Theth
“Of course not! I would never! Why would you think a thing- See, this is what I mean. You aren’t afraid I’ll send you away. It doesn’t matter to you. You don’t have feelings.”
Little One said nothing, and Amanda hated to think she had hurt him, his heart, whatever part inside of him that made him behave in this way. She shook her head, disgusted with herself.
“I’m not going to send you away. I paid a fortune for you. You are mine forever. And you keep costing me a fortune with all the metal you eat! Man, what a thing to do, to design a toy that runs on metal. I suppose I should be thankful my energy bills are low, and that stainless steel is so cheap these days.”
A whisper from him.
“Because you love me.”
“What?”
Amanda stared at him, at his unmoving lips, and thought she had imagined what he said. Did she imagine it because it was true? She pushed away the thought. It would return.
“Fix me some breakfast, Little One. Oh, and I got you these handcuffs. They were on sale for five dollars a pair at the pawn shop. I got you enough food for a whole year. Here!”
She stretched over the side of the bed bed and picked up a pair from the floor, where it had fallen from a cardboard box filled with them, and tossed it in his direction. He caught it effortlessly, his hand moving in a blur common to hummingbirds.
Such speed. Of course he’s a robot.
She smiled to herself and tossed his little tuft of hair before she got up and walked to the bathroom.
She did not see the distant smile on his face as he examined the cuffs.
This is a stretch, but I see what I see when I see it, and I couldn’t help but seeing little shrunken men moments during this Duran Duran video. I was a huge fan and remain so to this day, but that’s not the reason I’m posting this video.
I hadn’t watched it in a long time, but just a few minutes ago I logged on to my YouTube account to answer a message when I noticed a recommendation for the Is There Something I Should Know? video. I hadn’t watched it in a length of time I’m not about to foolishly disclose, but it’s been many years.
I bet that tickles!
So I clicked it, and 41 seconds into it I watched Simon Le Bon walk into what appears to be a badly made, ’80s video-style forest of hairs.
Being who I am, I instantly pictured a shrunken man doing exactly that, taking a tiny stroll on my scalp, or… I don’t know. Somewhere else there might be feminine hairs. Eyebrows, armpits, whatever.
At 1:04 minute and then again at 3:02 minutes, Mr. Le Bon can be seen walking up steps so large they make him seem half sized or less. Did I like that? What do you think?
And then there’s a bunch of POVs of the Duran Duran group members as seen from above (in other words, the sort of POVs women such as myself like). Did I like that as well? Fine, since you insist on knowing, I’ll tell ya: I definitely liked that!
And when they do, one can only hope they are lucky enough to have a very tall woman there for them to hug them, love them, change their little diaper and give them a pacifier if it will help.
I came across a YouTube video about fetishes, and how “disgusting” and “crazy” some (or all, I didn’t watch but a minute of it) of them are. It was supposed to include the giantess fetish, but I didn’t get that far into it. I did catch a few other fantasies that are relatively new to my knowledge, such as the fart thing, and the nose fetish. That has absolutely nothing to do with this blog entry, but I know some people get off on watching others cry.
While that’s not my thing at all, there is a certain appeal to collages that depict a shrunken man in some emotional distress, while at the same time he’s being comforted by a woman that holds him in her arms as though he’s a little baby.
I’m going to sound like a broken record now, but Theth and trinket999 have created excellent related images… although trinket’s collage shows a man on a woman’s lap, and her arms are not around him, and there’s an expression of calm indifference on her face that creates an impact of a different kind. It calls for compassion for that sad little man.
What can possibly be hot about compassion, you ask? Well, it brings to mind the scenario of another woman seeing that poor little guy in a state of unhappiness, and she takes it upon herself to remove him from his current situation (the idea of abducting shrunken men is… wow), to rescue him and make him a happy little pet.
This image is about two things: comforting a shrunken man that feels blue, and the playful irony of protecting his dignity by making sure no one around them notices he’s weeping, while exposing him to the humiliating chuckles of passersby because she’s visibly holding a baby pacifier that clearly belongs to him.
Honda is releasing commercials that would otherwise go unnoticed by me except for the fact that there are little people in them. Every time I encounter something in the world that shouldn’t mean anything to me but it does, I can’t help but smile and wonder what it was that made me this way.
Was it God?
Aliens?
Myself? Past life? What? Why do I sit here and watch an online commercial and then I feel the unmistakable tingle, the buzz of that radar that tells me Little Things have entered my sphere, that Something That Makes Me Feel Tall is about, and then I look at it, and it might not show me directly what’s in my fantasies, but it’s somewhat related, so I can’t help but be affected by it.
In other words, a car commercial with little people building a car or maintaining a car or inside a car much larger than they are reminds me of shrunken men and my own scenarios. Completely Pavlovian, my friends. Ephemeral, figurative, and vague, but stimuli nonetheless.
I can deal with it very well, yes. The punch-packing moment for me comes about 75 seconds into the commercial:
I want little people to build me a car too.
There’s a second commercial with little people shown in a cross section of a Honda, but I can’t find it anywhere. Didn’t look too hard, though.
Edit: Score! I found a link to images of the cross section, and there’s a link to view the commercial as well.
A shrunken man kept in a birdcage, or maybe trapped there for a certain amount of time: As far as scenarios go, it’s a usual dish in my mind’s menu, but every once in a while I try to put myself in someone else’s shoes, someone that might have no idea these thoughts exist, and I bet that someone else figures the thinker of such thoughts has to be insane.
But… no. After all these years exploring the Internet and every so often encountering things that seem crazy, I have to say I’m as normal as anybody ever is, at any given time.
Here are some online activities I think are truly bizarre:
Flame wars. There are many things in my life I prefer doing in order to waste time. Provoking others to type words so I can retort with other words seems outlandish.
Comments in news articles. There are very few people in this world whose opinions have any weight with me. Complete strangers beseeching others to leave a celebrity alone or bickering about spelling… man, it makes me tired just writing about it.
OK, I lost interest in typing about that. The point is that everybody falls into weirdness when beheld through the spectacles of other people. What others might perceive as my weirdness happens to be loving the idea of a shrunken man in various situations often precipitated by me. Thinking of him in a cage, any cage, especially a birdcage, seems mundane to me, normal as normal can be, and nothing at all extraordinary.
So next time you are out on the street and catch a woman eyeing you intently, it’s possible she’s pondering how well you’d look at only two inches in height. Think outside the box and imagine maybe she wants to put you in one. Perhaps she’s remembering that cage in her living room, the one with newspaper on its bottom, a little swing that dangles from the top, and a door that barely fits her hand, but ample enough to fit your body.
Then she’ll forget all about you and get on with her errands, because she’s normal, you see. As normal as you or me or the rest of the world.
Except those vore folks. Dem is far-out wack, man.
Maybe it’s because I’m out-of-my-mind tired, but I find the above ad freaky. I found it online—the way I find dang near everything—at the Flickrs: Take the dog! Spare me!
I don’t like it but I’m posting it because I could have liked if only he would have a lower body, and would lose the puppy, and not have a cell phone for legs. I don’t care how much it vibrates, some things are irreplaceable.
So I’ll pretend he’s some sort of cell phone genie that comes out when she rubs it, and that when he offers her three wishes she says nothing about world peace or the end to hunger, and instead she commands him to lose the puppy and have legs and all the stuff in the middle.
Giant mouth-to-mouth kisses should have him up again soon.
Today is Saturday, so that means…
RANDOM COLLAGE TIME!
This collage is a shout-out to the event of finding a shrunken man, of suddenly seeing a small man come into view, without warning and certainly without knowledge that such little creatures exist. It’s a fictional setting about the beginning of a shrinking fantasy, as they all have to start somewhere, and some of us like to imagine them from start to finish, slowly and with a great deal of detail.
For me it sometimes starts with a walk on the beach, the kind I’ve enjoyed since childhood, but during those nothing extraordinary happened, and the only things I ever found on the sand were shells, seaweed, tiny crabs, and polished pebbles.
The woman in my imagination (who always happens to be me) finds much more than that when she sees a little body sprawled on sand darker than the rest, and she quickly comes to understand that every wave that rolls into shore played a part in pushing him to land. So where did he come from?
And why in the world is he so small? Is he alive? Is he real? He certainly looks real, but she invariably asks herself if he is exactly, in every way like men her size, and maybe she should rescue him and then he’ll be so grateful he’ll show her how real he is.
And sometimes she finds out whether he’s grateful or not. Sometimes his little chirps of protest and fruitless struggles are all the thanks she needs after bringing him back to life and taking him to her hotel room, but the kind of gratitude she prefers are words that sound like capitulation, and surrender. In my mind, sweet acceptance always follows futile resistance, if the latter is ever there at all.
Yes, he’s just a pet, and that’s just ketchup. This poem came to be because I forced asked little squid to write it over two years ago. He kindly acquiesced and posted it as an entry on his blog, together with the collage above. I was so obsessed with shadows (I still am) that I forgot vampires cast none. I’ll just leave it there as a lesson to me.
This was a very amusing collage to work on. I changed her head three or four times until I was satisfied with the amount of red paint and deceivingly vacant expression. In honor of tomorrow’s full moon, I’m posting both collage and little squid’s poem today.
EVIL LIL DRACULA
‘Tis I dear Violet, we meet once again,
My spell of evil darkness, you’ll be helpless to defend.
The fact you’re so Tall, can intimidate the many,
But I have no fears, for my powers are such sweet candy.
Oh you’ll try to resist, you’ll try with playful jest,
You’ll denounce me by size, you’ll use your words to your best.
Giants are so arrogant, they believe themselves so Superior,
But I know about you dear Violet, You can’t resist me thought inferior.
Just my size makes you weak, why I can see your knees trembling,
Am I such a little toy to you Violet, my undead spirit so interesting?
Do I tempt you to reach, to show me such colossal comparisons?
Why now your words fail you, can’t your Giant Mind find its direction?
I am eeeevil don’t you know, it is MY power you can’t resist,
I’ll convert now to a bat and buzz the tower of your fist!
I’ll giggle and laugh as you swat with mighty blows,
Why I’ll even tease you at first, with tiny bites to your toes.
Oh you like that idea? As I’m vacuumed in torrent tumble,
Hurled about in midair, nothing but a fly in your turbulent rumble.
But I’m faster than you, and I have you right where I want,
Standing 203.5 feet Tall, Your towering neck shall I haunt.
Like a mosquito I take aim, your fingers seeking so adeptly,
And my mouth begins to water, to the pulse of your throbbing artery.
But before I take my purchase, I send you a spell-casting gaze,
And in that instant your eyes close shut, and your world becomes a haze.
I mount your column neck, like a window-washer clinging to a building,
Then sink my sharp teeth into you, and drink of your elixir; red, warm and filling.
“You are MINE now,” I speak, “You’ll be slave to me for all eternity, ”
“And your size will strike fear, in all those mortals so unworthy. ”
“You’ll live through the ages, undead and all Mine! ”
“And I will RULE THE WORLD with you, One Continent at a time.”
“You’ll awaken now Violet, and hear only MY commands ,”
“You’ll do what I say, and fulfill all my demands. ”
But something I hadn’t thought of, caught my attention without a chance,
A soft booming chuckle, took me by surprise as I glanced.
Upward I saw, you awake and startlingly wide eyed,
A gleam I did see, a curled smirk you didn’t hide.
Before I could react, I was plucked like a fly,
Carried up and away, from my prize in the sky.
I dangled and twisted, caught in your finger’s giant capture,
And all that I saw, was the Mountain of your face’s sculpture.
“Oh Dracula, so cute, so tiny your little display, ”
“Now be a good little bat and show me, how you’re not afraid? ”
“Your powers are no match, for my kind so Giant,”
“It is YOU that is MY slave, It is YOU who will be compliant. ”
“Now tell me again, how eeeevil you boast to be?
“You said you have power, are you Dracula or just a flea?
“How DARE you?” I spat, “I’m the Prince of Darkness!”
“Shhh… say no more my little thing, your power is now MINE to harness. ”
This is such a cool Sunsilk ad campaign! Sure, there isn’t a giantess or a shrunken man in it, but it’s the idea of the slogan “Wash out your hair monsters” that makes me think of alternate scenarios. The images of the ladies dangling those little critters from their fingers’ hold while considering them with something close to disgust only gives fuel to my imagination.
I can see myself finding not a monster in my hair, but a shrunken little guy as I perform my morning ablutions. At first I wouldn’t know what I’ve captured, but when I realize what I have in my grip the expression on my face would shift from WTF to OMG Gr8!
And that’s why I saved the original images shown above. Eventually I will replace those monsters with real little men, and when I do, I will stand mistress of all I survey and whisper thunderously, “‘Tis as it should be.”
Advertising Agency: JWT, Paris, France
Photographer: Vincent Dixon
And a YouTube ad starring those cute hair creatures:
