Creating a relatable world of vore

[porky11]

I started writing on stories taking place in a fantasy world I invest into for years. I only finished a few smaller stories, I even think, some of them may be good.
The world is pretty complex and has many interesting components, but when writing a story in this world, every decision I make starts to feel random. "Why use exactly this race/gender/age for my main characters? Why let them live in this place? Why write about this topic instead of the many other interesting things in this world"

Recently I started creating a new world, which was forked from that world. It started with magicans traveling to foreign planets. This idea was interesting in itself. They can travel with almost light speed, so when they travel a distance between two planets, that are many light years away from each other, the magican will feel like just a few seconds or maybe minutes went by, but when coming back to a previously visited planet, many years are gone by.
They will start to colonize some of the planets they visit and only come back every few hundred years. On some planets, magicans seem like gods. They come down to the planet every few hundred years. After a few generations, they may become a legend. Some of them even say exact dates to come back, and not everytime they even come back. They may have died or made another mistake.
Since most of the time, these magicans are time travelling because of the high speed travel between planets, its very difficult for them to meet anyway. Relative to the people living on planets, magicans disappear and don't do anything most of the time.

Whatever, one of the colonized planets was created by a few magicans. They tried to create an interesting ecosystem. They had different opinions, which races to breed there, but they decided for a specific humanoid race.
There are probably no other animals on the planet. Maybe a few very small animals and a few humanoid visitors from other planets, normally magicans.
A society, pretty similar to human society, arises there.
Some live in villages, some live in cities, and there are many different life styles.
They are also not human, but just similar to humans in the important ways.
But there's one important thing, that is different there: It's widely accepted to eat children there. There is no other source of meat anyway, so many interesting differences to humans arise in society, mainly based on this fact.
You probably can imagine, what could happen there.
It's also common for a family to have many children. So the number of children in this society is much higher than the number of adults.
There are a bunch of other diferences to humans, but I don't want to go into detail here. The culture is also different to most human cultures, mostly because of the different biology, but also some unrelated things.

I already wrote a bunch of vore stories in this setting, but now I'd like to write a longer story again, a story you can connect with.
There is a reason, I started to prefer this setting over a more typical fantasy world: It's a very interesting setting, it's more focused and it's not just something, that already exists in a very similar way.

The difficulty now is, how to create a world, you can relate with, when vore is a common thing?
Most important: I don't want vore to be the topic for the story. The vore part should feel like a normal part of the world, nothing special.
So when vore is not important, what will be the topic then?
Things I'd like to include are revolutions of children against adults and stories about the mighty magicans, who created this world, which come back here. But that's probably not enough.
So best is probably writing a story, that could also happen in a world without vore in a similar way.

My current idea is letting the main character be a boy coming from another planet. He should not be aware of vore first.
I'd like to set it up like a kids story first, where the main character has adventures with some kids from this planet.
That's probably a good way to create a relation to the world and the characters.
Letting the characters speak a different langauge will allow to hide many of the differences between the races, especially the culture.
Some of the friends will disappear, and for the other kids it's just normal, when some of their siblings has been eaten, but the main character probably doesn't get it yet (and also the reader, except when assuming vore beforehand).
The first adventures could really be simple things, like in a kids story. The difference is, that when being caught by an adult, when doing something stupid, it can really get dangeruos.
Later I'd like it to become more like a fantasy story. Legends about the creators and some other legends may help there.
I could also add subcultures, which deal different with their situation. And most important is probably having interesting personalities anyway.
But it's difficult to create strong attachments to persons, when knowing, they may soon be eaten anyway, so vore shouldn't be too common.
I don't really like the alternatives, like reformation (maybe if there is a good explanation), and non-fatal vore wouldn't be that useful in a world like this.

Do you know of existing stories, trying to create a realistic world containing vore, which one can relate with? Maybe even some without focus on vore or sexual arousing things in general?
Did you even try to write one yourself maybe?

[Nalzindar]

Hi, it sounds like you are getting into a highly developed world building here, if I can come with a couple of suggestions for you for settings where people gets eaten somewhere into the story then think of ore being just a side-effect or just an unfortunate result of an accident or a wrong choice. Think about Red riding Hood for example. You can also have a party/gang of friends/adventures which you follow through different stages of life where somebody are lost to for example a dragon they fights, a carnivorous plant they pass when going through a swamp etc. The vore part could also be a result of somebody''s heroic sacrifice to help the others advance or escape from danger, nothing of this needs to be more elaborate than what you are comfortable with within the frames of your world.

[DrakentheBlack]

Being honest, these types of stories do not seem to get a lot of feedback, but if that's not what you write for, then have fun with whatever you want to write.

For the past couple of years I've been writing my own series taking place on a fantasy world. Vore, sex, and fetish-based-activity are common occurrences throughout it. Along with this, there are a lot of action scenes ranging from a couple people dueling to a battle between armies. Even though people get digested all the time, there are a handful of main characters that the series follows that - obviously - do not die even if they are frequently in peril of being some monster's dinner. The main plot of the series focuses around two points: a love story between a human and a giantess, and a war to prevent a tyrant queen from taking over the world and oppressing all races under her rule.

You might not be too into it since there is no child vore, but here's where you can find my story. https://aryion.com/g4/view/417258

[Artemis]

Well, first thing's first. Casual vore and relatable vore are mutually exclusive. So if you want vore to be "normal" you're kinda giving up on it being relatable because that's simply divorced from how we as real people would ever look at it. And if the vore isn't going to be relatable, you might be better off working to make the rest of the world relatable around it.

[Bradleymiddler]

Just as Artemis said: If vore is fatal, there's no way to have casual/frequent occurrence of it and still maintain a familiar atmosphere, and doubly so if there's a bunch of other fantastic elements in the mix.

[porky11]

I didn't expect so many answers that fast when writing such a long post

@Nalindar

That's an interesting concept, and I already know something like this to exist, especially in games (Monster Girl Quest is comparable).
But that's not what I have in mind. I was thinking about some world, where being eaten is not an accident, but kind of normal. In some cases, situations like these may work, but in most cases not.

@DarkentheBlack

Maybe I'll read some of it, but I don't think, I'd like it that much.
When main characters just don't die, even when they are eaten, doesn't sound realistic enough. And I also don't like giants that much.
Not being child vore isn't that much of a problem. The situation is most important anyway.

@Artemis

Thanks for pointing this out. When someone points out, it's not possible, just motivates me even more ^^ (at least as long as I don't believe it)
I know it's difficult, especially when having a world, that has more differences than just being the real world with vore.
That's why I think the approach of a outsider, who could come from a more relatable setting, but now lives with people together, difficult to relate with, the relation can slowly be built, so after some time, stating to build on the personal level, since it's easier to relate to persons, and then slowly explaining how the world works.

(Offtopic:)
Reminds me on an idea how to write a story to introduce a concept of a futuristic city (futuristic is more about lifestyle, law, politics, than about technology): By writing about a village person coming to the city for the first time, but gets confused and disappointed by many weird changes, so basically becomes a "squidward" type of personality, so even less progressive people may relate better to the description of the city.

[Artemis]

If you want vore to be relatable, you have to be willing to have characters react to it in a relatable fashion. And I don't just mean your protagonist. You can't have the overwhelming majority of your characters ignore the absurdity of vore, the moral qualms with digesting someone, the moral qualms with violently imprisoning someone, the degrading nature of becoming food, the horribly degrading nature of getting out, the uncertainty of ever getting out, and rely on just one character to bridge that gap y'know? There are a lot of relatable ways to react to all of those things but "casually" is simply not one of them. A person reacting casually to vore not only implies that they don't care super duper much about any of those things but that they don't just feel neutral about vore either. Because when you stop to think about it, even if you apply complete apathy all the details that normally make vore weird, they should still view it as violence and react to it the same as any other violence right? A casual reaction only really makes sense if they not only don't care about any of those things but also have a fetish and are lowkey enjoying the show.

If you're following me, what I'm getting at by going that route, only people with a casual vore kink and shonen villains will be able to relate to casual vore. And that's a decently small group even within the greater vore community. I wouldn't call that success at being relatable, y'know?

[Speedyblupi]

I think it's very common for people trying to make vore make sense go at it from the wrong direction (or at least, the more difficult direction).

We already live in a world where predation exists, and where most humans eat meat - you just need to make all the characters civilised, and (assuming that's what you're going for) humanoid. You could even look at primitive human society, which occasionally involved cannibalism. There are plenty of stories in the world which aren't even supposed to be vore, which have societies where civilised characters routinely eat each other (mostly children's stories, interestingly).

I can't possibly disagree more with what Artemis is saying. It is entirely possible to have relatable casual vore - though that's me, and it's entirely possible Artemis wouldn't be able to relate to characters in any of the stories I've read where characters casually hunt and eat each other, but for me at least, they're often the stories which I find more relatable than any other.

Dinotopia, Watership Down, The Mouse and His Child, Astrosaurs, Mortal Engines (though that's a bit of a weird one, where the predators are cities rather than people), and that's just off the top of my head...

[Artemis]

Well, the thing is... unless you plan to go back in time and show the story to cannibals, they're really not relevant to a story's relatability. And if you think animal rights activists are a bit aggressive about their messages now, just imagine if animals were anywhere close to humans in terms of sapience and the ability to communicate. The most likely outcome of this theoretical world you've proposed is actually... a very bloody civil war. That is almost definitely what would happen if animals were more like humans and we still went around hunting and eating them. There's just no other way that would realistically go down. Don't believe me? Imagine if, in real life, you stole and ate someone's dog. That's pretty bad, right? You would not be surprised if the owner tried to put you in jail or worse, attacked you to try and save their dog or even in revenge. If that dog talked like a human and had the nuances of a human relationship with that family, the reaction would be 10x worse. You might as well have gone after the owner's children for all the difference it would make.

Don't let your kink cloud your vision. If it's truly your intention to make a relatable story this is the sort of thing you have to consider. And also why a lot of people probably don't bother trying. It's quite a bit harder to write a story that way.

Of course I could never relate to casually hunting down and eating another person. What from my real life experiences would I relate that to? I'm not even the type of person to enjoy hunting, and I'm not violent in general, let alone a murderer. If I were to do something like that in real life, it would not be a casual experience for me to say the least. To relate to a story, I need to be able to picture myself doing/saying/feeling these things in these situations. That's basically what relatable means. I feel like maybe you're confusing relatability with enjoyability. It's possible for a story to be unrelatable but still enjoyable. Frankly, most vore art falls into that category. It just comes with the territory of a fantasy that would be murder IRL.

[porky11]

My main point, when mentioning "relateability" is, that the reader cares about the world and people.

I think, most important to relate to vore happening casually is knowing a reason. So enough people have to be born, so normally more people get born than eaten, and there have to be reasons, why this is accepted. Some biological reason seems best.
It also isn't necessary, that everyone likes it, but even if some don't like it, they probably have to accept it. A few might even want to make revolutions, so it could be a story about trying to overcome a weird situation. In this case, we don't empathize with people, who find vore normal, but with people who think, it's weird, but that's not a problem.
But explaining the views of persons, who have weird views (pro vore), can also help to relate to them, even if not liking, probably (that's what "Lolita" is about, I assume). Or understanding the ones, who have accepted their fate.

[sevensix]

It started with magicans traveling to foreign planets. This idea was interesting in itself. They can travel with almost light speed, so when they travel a distance between two planets, that are many light years away from each other, the magican will feel like just a few seconds or maybe minutes went by, but when coming back to a previously visited planet, many years are gone by.
They will start to colonize some of the planets they visit and only come back every few hundred years. On some planets, magicans seem like gods. They come down to the planet every few hundred years. After a few generations, they may become a legend. Some of them even say exact dates to come back, and not everytime they even come back. They may have died or made another mistake.
Since most of the time, these magicans are time travelling because of the high speed travel between planets, its very difficult for them to meet anyway. Relative to the people living on planets, magicans disappear and don't do anything most of the time.

Sounds kind of like the "Lines" in Alastair Reynolds' "Thousandth Night" setting.

Whatever, one of the colonized planets was created by a few magicans.

Is that significant, since it's so rare for them to meet?

There are probably no other animals on the planet. Maybe a few very small animals and a few humanoid visitors from other planets, normally magicans.

Who else?

A society, pretty similar to human society, arises there.
Some live in villages, some live in cities, and there are many different life styles.
They are also not human, but just similar to humans in the important ways.
But there's one important thing, that is different there: It's widely accepted to eat children there.

I can't imagine what the "important ways" are if they don't include not wanting to eat children.

There is no other source of meat anyway, so many interesting differences to humans arise in society, mainly based on this fact.

Such as?

Clearly meat isn't needed to survive here, or the children wouldn't exist in the first place.

There is a reason, I started to prefer this setting over a more typical fantasy world: It's a very interesting setting, it's more focused and it's not just something, that already exists in a very similar way.

I'm skeptical of this; but I also think you should write what you want regardless of whether something similar already exists.

The difficulty now is, how to create a world, you can relate with, when vore is a common thing?
Most important: I don't want vore to be the topic for the story. The vore part should feel like a normal part of the world, nothing special.
So when vore is not important, what will be the topic then?
Things I'd like to include are revolutions of children against adults and stories about the mighty magicans, who created this world, which come back here. But that's probably not enough.

I like the concept, but can't help you with ideas of how to do it; sorry.

I hope you can find an editor if you're writing in English, though. For one thing, you don't seem to quite have the hang of commas.

My current idea is letting the main character be a boy coming from another planet.

That raises the tricky question of how, though. The premise seems to depend on the world being totally isolated.

Letting the characters speak a different langauge will allow to hide many of the differences between the races, especially the culture.

Sounds tricky to write, though.

Do you know of existing stories, trying to create a realistic world containing vore, which one can relate with? Maybe even some without focus on vore or sexual arousing things in general?

Not much comes to mind, but maybe:

• Soylent Green
• Bill Holbrook's Kevin and Kell
• Eliezer Yudkowsky's "Three Worlds Collide"
• the Doctor Who episode "The Beast Below"

And without the vore:

• the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon"
• Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"
• Lois Lowry's The Giver
• Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass

Most of the above is second-hand, though.

I was thinking about some world, where being eaten is not an accident, but kind of normal.

Do you mean that some children want to be eaten? I feel like you didn't make that clear if so.

If you want vore to be relatable, you have to be willing to have characters react to it in a relatable fashion. And I don't just mean your protagonist. You can't have the overwhelming majority of your characters ignore the absurdity of vore, the moral qualms with digesting someone, the moral qualms with violently imprisoning someone, the degrading nature of becoming food, the horribly degrading nature of getting out, the uncertainty of ever getting out, and rely on just one character to bridge that gap y'know? There are a lot of relatable ways to react to all of those things but "casually" is simply not one of them. A person reacting casually to vore not only implies that they don't care super duper much about any of those things but that they don't just feel neutral about vore either. Because when you stop to think about it, even if you apply complete apathy all the details that normally make vore weird, they should still view it as violence and react to it the same as any other violence right? A casual reaction only really makes sense if they not only don't care about any of those things but also have a fetish and are lowkey enjoying the show.

If you're following me, what I'm getting at by going that route, only people with a casual vore kink and shonen villains will be able to relate to casual vore. And that's a decently small group even within the greater vore community. I wouldn't call that success at being relatable, y'know?

Seconding Speedyblupi's disagreement. When people feel that they can't change something, they accept it. Even people about to be executed don't thrash and scream in their last moments; never mind people just hearing about it secondhand.

if you think animal rights activists are a bit aggressive about their messages now, just imagine if animals were anywhere close to humans in terms of sapience and the ability to communicate.

They already believe that. They still eat and sleep and socialize like anyone else, because (unless they're completely schizophrenic) they recognize that the society around them accepts animal exploitation as normal.

How about abortion? Fetuses literally are human. Half the US considers it murder. Been legal for decades; still no civil war.

The most likely outcome of this theoretical world you've proposed is actually... a very bloody civil war. That is almost definitely what would happen if animals were more like humans and we still went around hunting and eating them. There's just no other way that would realistically go down.

And after the cannibals won the war?

Don't believe me? Imagine if, in real life, you stole and ate someone's dog. That's pretty bad, right? You would not be surprised if the owner tried to put you in jail or worse, attacked you to try and save their dog or even in revenge.

And if you ate your own dog? Which some people literally do?

[GeneralUrist]

Let's face it, a relatable world featuring copious somewhat-casual fatal vore is likely a fool's errand. You can make it believable maybe, but NOT relatable. (the 'Baby Eaters' in "Three Worlds Collide" linked above are such a society, their morals are consistent and their origin in-universe is justified but they are very not relatable).

Crux of the matter is, fatal vore is a method of killing. A very slow, excruciating, inhumane, and (in the case of same size) frighteningly IMPRACTICAL and INEFFICIENT way of killing, even with magically-sped-up digestion (I hope I don't need to explain why, at least for human-like beings). So you have the twofold problems of 1)making a world where people kill each other often relatable and 2)explaining why everyone is killing people in such inefficient ways.

In what situations can you swallow someone whole, where slitting their throat and hauling them off to the butcher's shack is not more practical?

2) is the more insurmountable problem from a worldbuilding standpoint, but 1) is the bigger issue for making things RELATABLE. You could write a historically accurate story about white dudes exterminating Tasmanian natives and you would have a believable situation of people getting treated like nuisance wildlife, but you are NOT going to get your 20th century readers to relate to those colonials.

[C107galaxytachyon]

Maybe I’m looking into this wrong, but aren’t most of CratedCheese’s works involving Eve just about as ‘down to earth’ as you can possibly get with this stuff?
https://aryion.com/g4/view/288050