Vore
| Tropes and genres | |
|---|---|
| Synonym(s) | vorarephilia |
| See also | Kinks |
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
Vore is a fairly well known kink/fetish found within fanworks that involves sexual gratification at the idea of being eaten, or eating others.
Fandom
Terminology and Subcategories
The vore community uses niche lingo to describe and categorize their works. The terms "predator" ("pred" for short) and "prey" are used to describe the characters which eat others and are eaten, respectively. There are many different subtypes of vore, including:
- Soft vore, in which the prey is swallowed whole and alive. This is by far the most common type of vore content. It may or may not involve the death of the prey.
- Hard vore, in which the prey is killed before being swallowed. This overlaps with traditional sexual cannibalism.
- Safe vore, in which the prey survives the experience. Writers and artists of this type of vore will employ a wide array of McGuffins, plot devices, and magical anatomies to explain why the prey remains alive.
- Fatal vore, in which the prey is killed by the pred, either before or after being swallowed.
Vore content can also be characterized by the orifice through which the prey enters the pred's body. Most vore is oral, involving the prey entering via the mouth, but other types also exist.
Overlap between vore and other kinks, such as BDSM, macro/microphilia, or pregnancy, is common[1]. Because vorarephilic fantasies are impossible to enact in reality, they are typically expressed via art, including but not limited to written and drawn works. These works are often shared via the internet.
Prominence
A large amount of vore content exists on the internet, much of it fannish in nature. Fandoms which seem to contain a large amount of vore include Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon, and Undertale. As of May 2022, almost 2% of all works on AO3 in the Half Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware fandom are tagged for vore, making it one of the most vore-saturated fandoms on the site.
On AO3, a substantial amount of vore content appears to come from non-voreaphiles, who create short crackfics and/or badfics containing vore as a joke. Often, most of the sincere vore content in a fandom will come from one dedicated individual or a small group; for example, most of the vore works (11 out of 16 total, as of June 2022) in The Owl House fandom on AO3 come from a single author.
The popular art website DeviantArt has a reputation for its high quantity of vore content. Given that vore art does not need to include nudity or genitals, it may be at a lower risk for deletion than other forms of pornographic art posted to the site.
A recent trope from Japan, the Butterflyverse is an eat-or-be-eaten setting with cannibalism and vore.
Memes
Though vore appears to be relatively well known within fandom at large in comparison to other kinks, it is still not particularly well known in the mainstream. As a result, humorous instances of creators unintentionally evoking it often turn into memes or in jokes within fandoms, such as Chris Chibnall apparently not looking up the term before deciding to name a company VOR (pronounced identically) in Doctor Who.
It appears that jokes about Glimmer from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power being a vorarephile became a minor phenomenon in that fandom around July of 2018, concurrent with jokes about Catra having rabies and Bow being into toes[2]. Notably, this all transpired before the first season of the show had even premiered[3], with only promotional images having been released at that time.
The popular podcaster and former Polygon video producer Griffin McElroy has also been the subject of numerous vore jokes from his fandom, stemming in part from his video series Griffin's Amiibo Corner (in which he judged Amiibos by sticking them in his mouth), and in part from an incident in which he "ate a banana funny once"[4]. These jokes eventually escalated into Big Gulp, a real episode of a fictional vore-centric podcast, recorded before a live audience by Griffin, Travis, and Justin[5].
Example Fanworks
Art
- Owl House Poll Winner by da~blueguy (The Owl House)
- teal means needs a meal by jumpinjohnnyjumble (Half-Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware)
- teeth teeth teeth teeth by ves-doodles (Half-Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware)
- Undertale Vore by drifteryt12 (Undertale)
Fic
- Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Carbonara (Dec 2010) by pavarottixii (Glee)
- Eat Me! by lovelycatreads (Half-Life VR But the AI is Self-Aware)
- Hubris and Hunger by self_aware_weirdo (The Owl House)
- Red Under the Bed by Sephypsychologist (Undertale)
Resources & External Links
References
- ^ Lykins, A. D., & Cantor, J. M. (2013). Vorarephilia: A Case Study in Masochism and Erotic Consumption. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43(1), 181–186. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-013-0185-y
- ^ …i am going to need you to explain 'bow likes toes, glimmer is into vore and swoft wind fucks' for me
- ^ i cant believe the second fucking meme of the she-ra fandom is glimmer vore discourse
- ^ An animatic of Griffin talking about his banana vore reputation.
- ^ An animatic of an excerpt from the Big Gulp Podcast. The full episode is only available to donors to the Maximum Fun Network.