There are many things that qualify for the subject: I don't quite understand and nobody can explain it to me. I often wonder why Giants in fiction move at such a slow rate. First we must dissect the relativity of speed. Ants, humans, and elephants all exist, and they are each fast in their own regards, yet the difference in scale changes how we understand that. Elephants are much larger than humans, and have been clocked running faster than most, at up to 25 miles per hour. How many miles per hour can an ant move? When I asked myself that was when I realized, at least colloquially, that we measure speed not in parameters of speed itself, but of how quickly a distance is traveled. If an ant were scaled up to be similar to a human, would it be faster, similar, or slower than ourselves? I do not have the faintest clue of how to figure that out. When the question of fictional Giants is introduced, it becomes even more difficult. We see Godzilla trudge through Tokyo, the size of a skyscraper. Menacing, imposing, but also able to step several blocks at a time due to his size alone. I have to imagine his size alone allows him to travel at least 50 miles an hour at a walking pace. Is he faster than humans or just bigger?
Either way, my initial query is about their motor function. In depictions of the Titans from Greek mythology in popular culture that I have seen, they are positively enormous. Yet they will throw a punch or try to stomp on someone, and it is an unbearably slow, telegraphed, and laborious process. They will lift their foot and groan like a zombie, as humans underfoot simply run away before they can get stepped on. More questions spring up. Loads and loads of questions that either nobody cares to explain or doesn't know. Why would it not be more comparable to myself stepping on an ant? If I went to step on an ant, I wouldn't raise my knee to my chest and then slowly drop my foot over the course of an entire minute. I'd riverdance upon the ant with gusto and be on with it. Why, then, does every iteration of Giants have them be slow, lumbering buffoons when they would be enormous, destructive, terrors? Is it all bad writing, bad storytelling? A horrid understanding of their mechanics? Deliberate misdirection or depictions made unscientifically?
Something I have speculated, quietly in my own head where nobody can make fun of me, is that time is also relative to size. By that I mean that maybe an ant sees us like we depict fictional Giants. Far-fetched, I know, as there is no real way to test or understand this, and the basis for the idea comes from fiction. Nevertheless, it is interesting to think about, and fake-reason about, as far as speed and size go. Many problems arise from that. I am still able to stomp the ant. If they experience time differently, and I look like I am moving slow to them, then there is a disconnect between our different time dilations. I look slow and pedestrian, but the foot drops nevertheless, crushing them. So they are not actually moving slower in time, only the appearance of time moves slow.
Extrapolate this to anything else. What if the smaller you are, the longer time lasts? What if the larger you are, the quicker it flashes by? At least in the sense of how time feels. Well that would mean the universe feels like it could be just days old, at least to itself. Ants feel like they've been around longer than time has, in their own ant minds. This only brings more questions, namely the concept of "feeling" itself, and the very concept of relativity. Both of these being human created concepts. The universe doesnt feel anything. So if there is an unfeeling entity also experiencing time, it cannot interpret it differently. A mountain doesn't feel like humans are slow moving and itself is quick, for it is un-emotive, un-alive (in the interest of discussion this will not be discussed currently), and uncaring. It simply is a mountain, existing throughout. The Earth as a planet does not feel as if the mountains on it are changing faster than the humans. There is a clear timeline of those events.
I'd like to backpedal to the nature of Giants in the first place. The scale we created is still rather small. Imagine a Giant so big, that it floats in space and the Earth seems like a soccer ball to it. Would it not be able to dribble us like Ronaldo and kick us into the sun? Humans cannot comprehend or imagine this type of speed. If it were ever depicted in fiction, each dribble would last for hours as we slowly drifted across space and the foot connected again for another bounce. This depiction constrains our thoughts and encourages us to think slowly. Everything is faster than we think, so fast we don't have words or ideas for them.
This disparity that defines relativity itself is also but a question. While scientific studies are not popular culture, I have to imagine there is a formula somewhere that encompasses what I am saying. But maybe there isn't. There are a multitude of factors that go along with size, some probably will remain questions forever. First and foremost, could something that large even exist? Godzilla-esque or larger. Probably not, based on meal consumption alone. It would have to eat a church full of people twice a day to sustain itself. Anything bigger wouldn't be able to live very long. BUT! What if it could? Are there theoretical devices to see how they could move?
That's too many questions. I already have an answer. This Giant would move quickly, deftly. If it wanted to be deadly we would be at it's mercy. To a Giant, a monstrous, planet-sized space demon, we are smaller than the pesky ants. Poor ants. They are the first thing we think of when we imagine something very small. They are constantly stepped on just for existing where our feet are. Let's leave them out of this. My theoretical Giant would blast us across the cosmos like a child throwing a bouncy ball as high as it can in the air for fun. We'd careen through space, dead as fuck, an empty planet, slam-dunked further into the universe.
I stopped caring about relativity when I realized it doesn't matter. Somewhere along the way I started feeling bad for the ants. I hope the cosmic giant who finds has the same compassion.
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