The Truth To Soft and Hard Vore.

[Base54]

For the few months that I have been registered on this site and many more years actually browsing the site, something has always struck me as odd. And this is that some users and visitors get confused when an item here is tagged soft vore also has digestion. They presume that an item tagged soft vore means that it won't contain digestion since it isn't tagged hard vore. Now, the majority of the users and visitors of this site already know that just because an item isn't tagged hard vore doesn't mean that the prey isn't going to escape unscathed, but there are still people who think otherwise. And I will explain why.

The reason people believe that soft vore means the prey will escape alive stems from the fact that in non-fetish material, soft is often synonymous with safe. For example "The soft hand of the angel" soft here is synonymous with security and safety. As apposed to say "The hard/rough hand of the devil" hard/rough here is synonymous with danger and pain.

However, while in most literature safe and hard can be synonymous with safety and danger, vore does not carry this quality. Soft vore does not mean the prey will come out of the ordeal unscathed, it simply means that they arrive in the stomach of the predator unscathed. Unless an item is tagged non-fatal along with soft vore, the chances are that the prey will die at the end of the ordeal. Hard vore doesn't carry the quality as hard vore 95% of the time is also fatal.

This is all my own observation and I just wanted to write about it.

[MaxTwenty]

This was a conundrum a while back as I understand it, and now we do have the term extra-soft vore to imply safety. Though the whole thing can be handled with a quick adjustment of assumptions.

[sweetladyamy]

The very simple fact that there's confusion at all still boggles me, but I don't think about it much.

[JackNoName]

Soft-vore is swallowing someone's entire body, while hard-vore is biting/crunching/chomping, then swallowing.

I guess the people who get confused about soft-vore having full on digestion, are actually looking for soft-vore/endo or soft-vore/all-the-way-through. Both would leave the prey unharmed in most cases.

[Humbug]

I know of a few people who've been in the community who STILL get this wrong, which leads to all sorts of confusion in conversations.

But yeah. It's bizarre nomenclature, but it's not too hard to understand once you know what the community has decided on.

[Dekkard2]

I believe the term for vore that involves non fatal is "safe" vore

[GramzonTheDragon]

Safe vore and endo are much better terms yes, where soft and hard are used to refer to chewing or lack thereof. and then you go in the middle and things get frickin hard to explain.

[RuffledFerret]

This is how I've always seen it, soft/hard tags applying to the ingestion process and digestion being rather self-explanatory. Digestion can be split between reformation/perma as well.

[Thagrahn]

I'm noting that there is ~5% that unfortunately survive hard vore according to the OC.

Also, yes the terms are less clear when dealing with core due to it being a series of stages. Capture of willing or unwilling, hard or soft consumption, storage or digestion, and excretion.

Each part has it's own set of terms that all add up to the full depiction, and some seem conflicted based on how the others in the list are implicated.

[fieldmousse]

But yeah. It's bizarre nomenclature, but it's not too hard to understand once you know what the community has decided on.

This is exactly it. There may not be perfect rhyme or reason to why we use the words that we use but the fact is that it is correct to say things the same way that everyone else does because you will be understood.
It will always be the case that smaller or different subgroups of the community will adopt different jargon, maybe even using the same words to mean different things.
For example, many use "endo" to describe situations where the prey is not harmed whereas some use the adjective "soft". A similar confusion that I've encountered is with the adjective "feral" and the degree of sentience that it implies. Some interpret "feral" to mean "like an animal in every way" whereas others take it to mean an anthropomorphized animal that has not been altered physically.
These issues with language will not disappear. They are just the result of speakers moving between parts in a highly fragmented community. The "correct" way of speaking is whatever the majority does.

[Ray]

Back in the old days (as in some 20 years ago) Soft Vore simply meant swallowing someone whole and Hard Vore meant chewing them up. Along the way, as the community got bigger, people got confused. Terms tend to change that way over time.

[sweetladyamy]

Back in the old days (as in some 20 years ago) Soft Vore simply meant swallowing someone whole and Hard Vore meant chewing them up. Along the way, as the community got bigger, people got confused. Terms tend to change that way over time.

This right here, is one of a VERY LONG list of reasons why I'll always say that English is such an oh-so VERY odd language...

[Gutlover]

I've pretty much always assumed hardvore=cannibalism, and softvore=nongraphic.
With graphic digestion showing the realistic side of vore.

[NightRoller]

I'm glad you posted this clarification! This is what I had had in my mind but not put into words! I had been not putting the 'soft' or 'hard' tags as I was worried that, according to many definitions of those kinds of vore, that digestion does not fit into soft, but without Gore it doesn't go into hard either.

Now with this clarification to cite, I can add 'soft vore' to my tags at whim, because none of my works yet have involved chewing or tearing.

Thank you!

[bella747]

Soft or hard vore can always have digestions no matter what.