Reflection #11 - Willingness and Me

Posted by Doku 12 years ago

 

You may all blame Deviantart for this particular discussion. Ever since appearing over there, I have re-encountered the "Broader Vore Community" beyond what is merely here at Eka's (not that this locale doesn't contain a massive chunk of that, mind you, but moving on...), which has caused me to encounter one of those curious quirks in the midst of discussions about "What do you like in Vore?" After a few narrow escapes from engaging in shouting matches with a few people over the legitimacy of calling X variety of vore "Stupid" (Those familiar with me know I'm not a particular fan of insulting other people's preferences within the kink, even if I don't share them.), I noticed that I was recalling something about my own preferences, which led to this reflection (It also doesn't hurt that the fiction I'm reading for a group over there is heavy on willing scenes).

Note, and this is a very important note: Reflection #11 deals with my personal preferences, a thing which not everyone shares. Do not feel condemned by my personal hangups in the realm of 'vore. They are merely my own personal desires and lacks thereof. Y'all enjoy what you like.

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I do not like Willing Endosomaphilia. For some people, that's the bee's knees and more power to them. I wish them well, but I have noticed over the years that it is nearly impossible for me to successfully play with all but an extremely rare few players who frequently do Willing scenes. In order for me to do them, a variety of caveats are usually required to open me up to the idea of the scene, and it is almost never what you can traditionally call a 'normal' willing scene. When I encounter people who have a preference towards Willing art and willing fiction/RP sequences who are interested either in my work, or in RPing with me, I will politely hear them out but warn them that it is unusual for me to do willing sequences. On some occasions, we manage to put something together, but it's unusual.

Mind Controlled willingnes? I'm fine with it. It's usually a touch too soft for my tastes, but I can handle it just fine.
Forced Submission where they agree but aren't happy or really willing? I'm fine with it. In fact, it matches some of my kinks reasonably well, though I go pretty heavy handed on the "Forcing" part of it.
Dupery, Trickery, Chicanery, Illusions and the like? Fine with it, do it quite frequently.
Master/Slave Relationships where they've been broken mentally until they willingly accede? No problem at all. They're broken after all.
Willingness to be hurt, abused, cut or even lightly tortured? Depends on the level, but if it's not permanently mutilating, I can deal with it.

But just open, straightforward "Willing," where the person either with only a bare minimum of convincing takes the plunge, or is actively seeking out a predator, or the act is openly fetishized in some ways is actually a good way to ensure that I am uninterested in the scene, if not actively squicked out by it. I'm more than happy to enjoy letting others have their scenes, and particularly well written ones please me to watch as they play out, but as a rule I am almost incapable of handling it, and the nature of the caveat I usually demand has come to explain to me why I have such an issue with willing scenes and cannot really do them myself.

I generally insist that the victim be somehow insane. Certifiably, in point of fact.

The simplest way to explain this to anyone is that I cannot, outside of someone who has a psychosis of suicidally epic proportions, wrap my mind around the idea of a person willingly putting their hands into the mouth of a giant predator and letting them eat them without so much as an "Excuse me?" I can grasp people fetishizing the experience. I understand them personally being fascinated by the idea of dying in that gruesome of a fashion (or becoming united in someone's womb or what have you). I can understand the "Last fling in the gut" to an extent when all else has failed and "Might as well masturbate or fuck." But, for me, to intentionally and actively pursue an activity that is basically guaranteed to be fatal if played through to digestion, even with the promise from a predator "I can bring you back to life" (to which my character's universal response would be "And I'm supposed to believe you why? One step closer and I slice your balls off.") is a sign of a literal mental disorder.

I must make a caveat here. Notice that I am NOT calling anyone with a fetish for willing scenes crazy. NOT AT ALL. After all, I have yet to meet a single endosompahiliac who has EVER at ANY point in their life actually walked out into the swamp looking for a gator to roll them until they lost consciousness and chow down on their suffocated corpse (or whatever other variety you prefer). I have only heard of a single incident out of Europe of a pact involving a person offering to be cooked. For 99.99% or more of us, this is all fantasy, 100% fantasy, and is not something that, however fascinating we might find it, however erotic, must never ever actually happen, and we know it. It's like the ghost of Daffy Duck said when he blew himself up to get a job as an entertainer. "It's a great trick. Problem is I can only do it once." It's an experience that, as we would be dead in the process, we can't even directly enjoy and thusly can only intellectually appreciate beforehand. So, the untold bulk of us would never ACTUALLY be a willing person as one sees in most of these scenes.

And that's where the rub comes in. It's a simple suspension of disbelief thing for me. If a character is actually not insane on a level that matches a suicidally crazed activity or level of risk-taking (or some other arrangement for the scene I can handle is not made), I can almost never get past what is a fairly clear mental block for the scene. When they come up and attempt to reasonably offer or just smile and take it, my characters are universally confused by the scene. If they cannot obviously see the mental defect in the person, they become convinced that something is horribly wrong, and the scene generally descends into major difficulties.

Where this comes up is sometimes people will voice a lack of understanding of why someone could either have a particular hang up about a specific variety, or where someone will say "Couldn't you try...," and for me the answer is "No, this really is something I can't handle in scenes and fictions other than to clinically comment on writing style," and "Yes, I've tried it, and it is just too hard for me." It has rendered about half of the RP'ers I have encountered over the years int the fetish completely inaccessible to me, and on rare occasions led to a few hurt feelings. At the same time, I'm more than willing and happy to say that, if the fantasy is theirs, and they enjoy it, and want to play it out within their own suspensions of disbelief, then the more power to them. They should own and enjoy the fantasy of the fiction as much as they like. However, while I am willing to make some accommodations for folks, there will always be some things I can't quite get past. This is going to be true of everyone, and it is important for us to remember that there will be things we need to be respectful of in others. My way of getting that across is to share with my fellow endo participants my major hangups with a very common form of Endo. It is best for us to respectfully acknowledge when each other's preferences don't match what we want, and keep our inquiries to those who most match our interests.