Huh. There's something I never thought I'd see.

Thinking of inviting me to dinner sometime?

Tender.
Loin.

Oh, you are a chewer, I can tell. Well, I'd go through those ouchies… if only to know you'd have a pot belly full of Iksar like that afterward.

He looks kinda scared in that last panel, though. Even with all that being said D:

Vorelord is one of the few stomachs that is bioluminescent inside. It's exactly as bright as it seems in the illustration. A luminous, dusky blue. You can read by it once your eyes get used to it. They don't digest all that fast if you arrange for them to gulp air for you or bring your own supply (but digesting a scuba tank is asking a bit much).

I can say from experience many other dragon bellies can be a lot more caustic and smell downright vile, but Vorelord is actually worth paying to get inside. I have - twice! And I feel pretty great… and I reckon they're feeling stronger (if a bit fatter for the time being) for having me.

I really do want to get inside  danza, but the queue stretches around the globe for him. And look at the nice, svelte figure he maintains on that carnivorous diet… gotta love them dragons!

That's for sure, you look truly SEXY TOGETHER! He even kisses you being within him. Aww, that's so sweet!
I must include, speaking of colors, that the shading is breathtaking. The sky-blue of the eyes is BADASS too!

I think Vorelord's bioluminescence includes their eyes as well. Very glowy dragon.

Mmm, now that you mention it, it's true! God, that's a great concept. Also, I have confirmed an idea because of that too...
You should admit it, dragons not only can be glowy; they possess so MANY properties...

It's specifically because a dragon is a creature of the imagination that they can be the full spectrum of wonder and delight (even to the dark disgustingly cute end of that spectrum) through to the horrific terrifying monstrous gamut of terror and fear. Just about every wavelength in between has been portrayed over the ages in one way or another, by one culture or other - although they may not have formally used the term dragon. It may be flying serpents, gigantic land-based reptiles, or some other legendary creatures also gifted with speech and an intellect at least as great as man's own.

For one reason or other, persecution or because they embodied a metaphorical fault in a base nature civilization cannot live with, dragons are not particularly with us today, except as huge monitor lizards and other innocuous reptiles. Whatever capacity for speech, flight, wisdom and intelligence seem missing from today's breed.

It's a pity. I might have liked to know one of the less predatory ones.

It'd be funny and kind of nice to see VoreLord carry you around like that, keeping you around, in a sense :3

He still did a great job, nonetheless cx

No rule against a predator appreciating their meals, or being thankful for having been so well fed… and let their prey have some time riding around in the cushy, bouncy warmth… The dragon sort of feels good with such a heavy, distended stomach, too. Makes them feel quite successful, VERY well fed… it's beyond satisfied. Beyond stuffed, which for them is not uncomfortable, but rather… erotic in some way, best I've been able to work out. Or intoxicated, like wolves get meat drunk. Maybe something in between. I don't last THAT long in there… but I sort of get some sympathetic sense of what's going on… probably because I'm becoming assimilated as I digest.

Why am I still here? Iksars resurrect in a new body, nude, devoid of anything on the previous carcass at the moment its life functions stopped. Whatever memories, personality, soul if you want to call it, moves to the new version, leaving a dead body behind. This can be repeated indefinitely, so it's theoretically possible to feed a dragon an infinite amount of Iksar meat. But the time between resurrections would increase exponentially if you tried to abuse this function. A few a day is usually the limit otherwise. And I don't pop in right where I died, sort of defeats the purpose of dying in the stomach of a predator or the heart of a volcano - usually it's some distance away.

And if I can foresee a deadly situation (like being swallowed), I remove clothing, jewelry, etc. I've learned to possess very few things just for this reason. I've had too many things be burned up, swallowed, what have you, over countless deaths, so even clothing, armor, and weapons I don't really go for much of anymore.

I counter with "Where the Wild Things Are" by Spike Jonze - perfect way to hide from someone. Way to talk to a friend in privacy. Many creative, interesting possibilities - if you have imagination.

Taking the thing literally is forcing something unreal and fantastic to fit reality, rather like expecting to work out how Santa Claus physically can deliver presents all over the world in 24 hours.

It's a metaphor for intimacy. See also, Robert Heinlein, "Stranger in a Strenge Land" definition: Grok.

Looking down that gullet is scary. Being in the belly wasn't bad, and he rubbed me and patted quite lovingly. I was a BIG meal for him that time... so I was sort of grateful he didn't chew. I definitely admire a dragon who likes the unique, heavy stretch of a very heavy stomach with a live meal inside.

I'm able to avoid asphyxiation for half an hour, so I got sort of an interesting hammock swing, pendulously swaying in his gut as he waddled about carrying me in his low-hanging gut. Only later when I did kind of drift off and my body's release of 100 extra gallons of "soup" did he have to lie down and digest, almost doubly fattened. Eating an Iksar like me has certain post mortem surprises.

Not the least of which is me returning to see if I'm digesting well... He'd seen that trick before, so just belched and had be massage his stomach, for he had DEFINITELY overate... my intention at the outset.

Of suffocation, before that. I'm somewhat acid-proof, but not that proof, correct. Dragons like VoreLord can have a gastric response much like some humans get heartburn or acid reflux, but all the way to the point where their acid is shut off and flushed out. It makes it fairly much like a mucus covered rubbery sleeping bag (warmth makes a lot of difference to how creepy that sounds) getting in their belly. It's slick, but just to the point of being something you can almost summersalt in and roll in, which of course is what digestion dows.

It's muscle on all sides, so it's a hug unlike all others, being in a sac that probably is 2nd only to the womb, which also is a lot of mucus, but in the womb, you are floating in fluid and in yet another sac which is not a muscle. So the stomach allows you some air, therefore cooler and warmer spots as you choose, rather than a fluid all the same temperature. And some dragons can swallow air, so you can respire almost indefinitely.

Then they can pw at you through their gut, feeling and pressing at you through the stomach wall and their hide. They can feel over your body, massaging, squeezing, rubbing, rolling, patting, and of course shifting their weight and yours as now you are indeed part of and inside their body. They can swallow liquids or even items for you; some are quite versatile in digestion and what can pass through it. Some can even let you back up and out later relatively unharmed after a jaunt.

The post-digestive process is a nattative few go into, for it either requires the prey have some form of consciousness that survives yet lingers after death, or not perish despite the body becoming subject to all these acids, bile, and other degenerative processes.

Yet as has been shown cinematically in "Land of the Lost," a man (Wil Farrell) passes completely through a T-Rex digestion, mouth to smelly pile, fairly unharmed save for some wear & tear on his clothing and an awful stench. It can be done!

Vore is a running gag in cartoons. Big predator walks off, or simply rests with paw across distended belly, suggesting consumption of one or more characters from the previous conflict scene. Sometimes these are shown with cutaway views to make plain the facts of the case. Even at times, the predator walks away happy, fat and content with perturbed, wholly swallowed protagonists jiggling heavily inside holding up small "DON'T eat at Joe's!" signs or whatever as the last gag of the Bugs Bunny picture.

Somehow, these images show an intellectual impossibility - a fantasy that cannot be realized yet when depicted in such ways, has an aspect that evokes both a sense of fear and allure. Awe is the emotion that describes this simultaneous emotional response. Most of us are driven by curiosity despite danger, or sometimes even MORE curious because of dangers involved. It is why exotic, dangerous pets from tiger cubs to pirahna are popular.

The sense of awe regarding finding a creature completely capable of your most gruesome destruction, most painful and heinous, terrifying and horrible - that of being eaten alive - flipped on its head so completely that even residing inside its stomach is desirable, even erotic - there's evoking the sense of awe. Allure overcoming fear, so that curiosity is satisfied, the terror turns to the most intimate of friendly acts, better than the head in the lion's mouth.

There you've created the voreaphile. Someone who can enjoy viscerally, perhaps intimately, images depicting one fantasy sentient creature eating another. The means and method vary, for some like the fully graphic detail of ripping, tearing, shredding, chewing, swallowing; others, including myself eschew blood, guts and gore, wishing only a smooth, rippling transit from mouth to belly.

From there, again there are differences as to whether and how digestion progresses. As a writer, I object to there being much past this point since there's no narrative basis for the prey/food to understand its point of view from that moment forward (and the predator can indulge themselves in their continued digestion without me reading much of it if I had my druthers).

Beyond this, there's not much to say about it. You have to have some like of gluttony, excess, extreme eating, body distention, unusual trips into tight, claustrophobic spaces; perhaps of force feeding. Vorelord is a little less claustrophobic inside since he's bio-luminescent inside, always glowing an eerie, electric blue.

That's a visceral/realism voreaphile. Death soon after swallowing. This is more of a worship-based kind of vore, where the prey actually is a willing sacrifice to their predator, seeing them more like a god figure they must feed, sacrificing the ultimate sacrifice to - body and soul - perhaps because in that way, they literally become part of a bigger creature by assimilation. Perhaps the soul or mind isn't assimilated per se... sometimes in certain ways and means, dragons or other life-force consuming creatures aggregate all knowledge and experience and become a supersoul, or collective mind of everything it consumes. It varies.

Unk has become assimilated in certain quasi-similar ways, yet maintained an ago identity "self" separate from the host. This keeps him from resurrecting into a new body, but affords him some collaborative functions with the greater (often MUCH MUCH greater) sized creature. In one instance, the creature spanned galaxies!

Yeah, you have to remember furry has its roots in cartoons, where physics and realism are given a Disney makeover to a kinder, gentler family-approved alternative. Where Jonah can be swallowed by a whale and exit either the mouth after some indefinite period of time, or blast out of the blowhole, where in reality, neither is really realistic as a possibility - yet people strongly believe in one possibility. Again, you might ask them why. Faith, belief, God told them so, scripture, miracles, tall tales exaggerated by the telling over the centuries…

So we have cultural heritage of this going into a beast of some fearsome nature or other and coming out unscathed. Because the beast is so terrifically vast, or because you ignore normal laws of nature and describe an exotic creature whose digestion doesn't follow regular rules.

It's the people who insist on realism in a fantasy setting that irk me. Wanting their cake while eating it too. They might as well want a klein bottle digestive system, like a möbius strip except in bottle form, where there is no inside or outside to the bottle, just one surface - inoutside. Jackal people don't exist, so why insist everything else about them follow regular biology? Or that dragons do? They're fricken magical - they're big (and often fat) and fly AND breathe fire that can melt stone! Certainly something rather impossible to most scientific explanation. So I hate going into chemistry and biology on fantasy creatures. I prefer thinking of them as fully placed in the medium we see them in - 2-dimensional illustrations, elaborately shaded maybe, but cartoon paintings.

The fantasy of being swallowed (which really is the vore prey fantasy, not especially being eaten, unless the prey prefers hard vore, which is the visceral kind) is more akin to being trapped in a boa constrictor's embrace, just squeezed a lot, hugged all over, compressed and warmed (ok the snake doesn't do that) and the other attentions I mentioned once in the stomach sac, which can stretch 50 times starting size in standard nature, who knows how much more in a dragon, naga, what have you.

All the other rather visceral and nitty gritty digestive detail is something I've found not narratively pertinent, for either oxygen would be running out, or system shock might cause loss of consciousness. Again, further narrative impertinent.

Those who have more of an interest in the visceral process are acting out a more S&M kind of scene with pain being dealt and endured, so I have to put it in that context. Soft vore is more of a B&D, where the prey is bound and disciplined by the external actions and constrictions of the predator eating them. Just how rapidly the swallow goes, where the tongue plays about during passage down the throat and into the mouth, that's all part of the playfulness going on. As well, there's a bit of rubbing, pushing, and stroking the prey into the mouth, down the throat, as a lump in the gullet, and finally as a bulge in the belly. Then as I mentioned, more shifting, bouncing and flopping about once seated fully. Plus if acid control and air swallowing can be exercised, and various liquids used, well it's quite a complex game.

With hard vore, unless there's some bound spirit that can suffer beyond where the brain would otherwise be digested and destroyed, you have a point of no return - several, actually - as with most forms of torture, you must be careful not to kill your victim by bleeding them out, strain on the heart, stroke, heat stroke, electrocution, hypothermia, blood poisoning, and on and on. You have to find a good match between the level of detail and extreme the predator will go to, and prey will allow their carcass to process. Some do want mouth-to-poop narrative. Not my bag. At all, not at all. Noooo.

In either case, this is a vicarious thrill in witnessing a predator really enjoy eating someone who wants to give themselves up as a meal, because it's all pretend without any real danger. They'll have one reason or another to be around sometime later - cloning chamber, or resurrection point as I have, or just spawn point. One I know has something that reconstitutes them out of the available biomass in waste after the meal, drawing resource out of the environment as needed for whatever's still missing.

But the narrative itself is a back-and-forth of detailed inching into and down the gullet and eventual collection inside the stomach of a predator intent on eating the prey. The difference between hard and soft vore being the chewing, tearing, crunching, and gulping of bits and pieces and gory innards, thereby killing the prey in the process if they weren't already cooked by then. In soft vore, the prey wishes to be awake and alive for experiencing all the muscular ripple and roll, pressing, tugging and pulling, peristalsis at work as it inexorably pulls them down the gullet as the tongue caresses them, and saliva washes over in warm waves gushing down ahead of them down the throat.

Narrative continues as more of the prey gets swallowed, to the ultimate moment where the head passes the teeth and is shut in darkness as they chomp down just past it, closing the mouth for the last big gulp, throwing them fully into the gullet, fully distended and wriggling with their body stretching it from the inside… however, the feet push through the stomach's own sphincter, making an odd looking chandelier in its roof so to speak, and its well-lubricated walls from all the saliva that had been washing down now lets the prey slide more and more as they wriggle, getting pushed and tugged by the rings of muscle in the throat as gulp after gulp threaten to crack bone!

Unceremoniously, they end up curled into a ball in the stomach, lending a rather pot-bellied look to the rather satisfied-looking predator, who leans back, rubbing the meal contentedly, repositioning its head further down the digestive tract, and belching loudly, expelling most of the free air from the stomach, which should suffocate the meal in moments. Their gut shows some outline of the prey, wriggling softer and softer, strangely murring contently in its last moments, and as is common at the last moment of death, releasing all body fluids and waste… just shifting its mass that was inside to the outside.

The predator's stomach acids up a bit in reaction to some of the irritating fluids and solids, which will be neutralized with the carcass somewhat, the hair and nails and some of the skin, slipping into the duodenum. He pats his fat gut and rubs it around, content with his heavier weight for now. It'll pass in time, but for now, he likes this new meal.

So that's a somewhat cleaned up and abbreviated metaphor that stops with duodenum, one step farther than I usually go.

I am quite squeamish with blood, talking about it or seeing it especially, so hard vore causes a visceral reaction similar to that with me. Sorry it actually created regurgitation, but a purge is helpful for the body every once in a while. Once you rinse the bad taste out of your mouth.

Drink some water or have an antacid (alka-seltzer works great for me; worsens it for my best friend's wife), things are better. The actual anti-emetic on the market is cola syrup, really. Or lemon-lime syrup. If you have neither, just pour a 7Up back and forth between glasses until it goes flat. (Sprite, Sierra Mist, store brand lemon-lime is OK.) Then drink that. Beware caffeine. Beware fats and bread for a while (so bread and butter or PB&J is right out).

Thanks. It's all I'll care to commission, unless I have a moment of rage I need to express, which happens very rarely, just to remind people that Unk can use a very barbaric form of termination where you have earned his extreme contempt - a very dangerous thing to do...

Generally speaking, a soft vore image for me is like unto finding some internal hammock with a big brother or even father archetypal figure, and playing around with them while situated in that curious juxtaposition. The way down is like unto a water slide, but a bumpy ride with close twists and turns you have to roll past on your way through. Some corkscrew past; some wait for pressure to wash them down; some bump and wriggle their way… it varies.

*Good thing I wasn't yawning! I'm kinda big this time, as is the dragon! *sets you beside him, you're about as tall as a pectoral on his torso, bottom to top edge* Kinda interesting shade of blue in here, huh? You can rub the stomach lining - it feels good to him and won't burn or anything! *boosts you up*

(Vorelord isn't watching, but would be sure to chime in with some rumbles, pats or rubbing back, even a chuckle which would jog us about a bit.)

His insides are bioluminescent. I think body fluids as well, so whatever might wash down as saliva may lend a patina of shimmer. But you can see the way out - up there, where that lining gathers together like a cinch sack. You have to poke a finger through that, then it should let more and more through and then you climb up and he'll sort of reflexively do the rest. A small bit of wet, but no sick - just saliva and a bit of mucus, nothing really worse than being in the path of a sneeze. Quite clean, as dragon immune systems are potent!

If you have a practically impervious body, where acids and bile cannot chemically assault it, and lack of oxygen will not affect you, and being in increasingly snug but still well lit passages that twist, turn, loop, ascend and descend, finally packing you in some unpleasant waste matter, then you can conceivably pass through Vorelord unscathed, if a bit soiled and rank for the experience. I'm sure he has some shower or bath you may use to tidy up afterward…

But you would have a singularly intimate, turn-by-turn, foot-by-foot, fully detailed examination of his whole digestive tract. And perhaps opportunity to retrieve any objects lodged where they don't belong, like the odd bit of sword or dagger stuck in an intestinal wall or veinous node. I'm sure for the operative procedure, you'd get a reward - a good one, since he'd know already you are inedible.

You could put on a helmet, some astronaut suit or hazmat suit maybe… something so the smell and icky is kept off you, and do the full colon tour. Maybe bring some brushes in your rucksack and earn some coin scrubbing up some of the filthier spots, taking before and after pics of necessary.

Now now, as a Star Child (and we all are, aren't we?), we are all made out of star stuff... When you look down at the bonds holding the atoms together, and the distance between the electron relative to its nucleus, and the relative size of the particles... there's mostly nothing there. Just empty space. Little wavefronts of energy rippling and juggling across each other in what most likely are 11 or so dimensional planes of existence, and where the crests and troughs meet we have particles and dark energies, vacuum and quanta - all forming these other material wavefronts in harmony of the 3 physical dimensions which created this macroscopic organism with its own sentience that are you and I. So what about this clump of bio matter returning to hydrolyzed proteins and sulphur hydroxide? It's all going back to another universe of star stuff again...

I think that is the main question brought up by vore. What if there were 2 or more sentient species on a world, and the food chain pretty much put one sentient under the other? Ever see the grass analogy? How much grass a sheep's brain needs to survive per day (it can fit on a plate) versus how much grass a human's needs? (It is bushels' worth - so it spills over the table, making a pile that you couldn't eat in one sitting, to say nothing of being able to eat at all day.)

The amount of energy and nutrition necessary to power a predator brain goes up significantly the bigger and more complex it gets. If the predator only ate the same foodstuff as a prey species, they might die out - if not for omnivorous abilities. (I don't use this as proof vegetarians should eat meat, but certainly a counter-argument that their ways are unnatural, as likely man's survival up to this stage was a function of hunting meat and not cultivating the right crops with B13 content.)

If a sentient predator eats, they can make a conscious choice - against the suffering of another creature. But all creatures suffer, which is why we have vegans.

Vore isn't so much a political statement, though.

It is about knowing you have something greater than yourself that is a predator, higher up the food chain. Not evil, not your enemy. Perhaps actually a friend or lover. (Don't you just love certain foods? Or at least like to have them? Or over-indulge in some of them, because they're so good?) So you become part of animal magnetism. A deadly attraction that nonetheless is functional, suits a purpose, and during the final moments, accommodation is made to provide pleasure during the transition - perhaps so even up to the moment of death, all is wonderful and you just end up asleep.

The prey then realizes they're becoming part of something greater, bigger than they were, nourishing this huge predator, helping them thrive, building their muscles, or perhaps increasing their fat. Changing an attribute they feel to the better.

Cruel and evil are judgment calls. It can be satisfied and happy. Certain characters (like me) just have 'evil' features and therefore evil grins.

Yeah. Willing to swallow me when I'm hard to get down all in one piece, just for our mutual pleasure at being in there.