As I get older, I’m beginning to see something that has me a little worried. More and more, I find people, of all ages it seems, attempting to apply realism logic to something fictional. I mean, sure, there’s got to be some point of reference, some familiarity to the world so that our minds can grasp it, but it seems fewer and fewer people are willing to suspend their disbelief.

While playing dungeons and dragons, several times now the game has to be stopped to clarify to one individual or another what the rules are because he can’t understand the rule. Not because it’s necessarily complex, but because he feels that’s not how it would work in the real world. I mean, it is fantasy. If it was going to simulate reality, few people would play because you would be making a new character every other weak because that “hit” just went through your gut, or the loss of a limb causes an early retirement. Seriously, why are you trying to simulate reality when the other characters are throwing around fireballs and ice javelins? These people never even touch on these aspects. At least on (the DM) is figuring out that house ruling everything closer to reality is only making things a lot harder to play and to run.

Then there’s the people around here, that I’ve only actually heard about I’ll admit, that have let go completely the innocence of watching cartoons. I’ve read more than one journal where the author/artist showed their concern over this criticism. People complaining, either politely or not, about the nature of the work, through the perspective of real life. Inflation, popping, growing, macros and vore seem to be the main targets. Most of these pieces are done within cartoon worlds of whimsy, where no one really gets hurt. So a micro got stepped on, ten to one he’s just been pushed into the pavement and is thinking “ouch”. Or maybe it’s like what happens when an anvil falls on a cartoon character’s head; usually their just annoyed and hardly hurt. Most vore I’ve seen uses reformation and mostly insinuates zero pain. After all, if they were in pain, there would be all sorts of raw screams of pain coming from the distended belly that the artists would be obliged to draw. But they are not there, meaning the whole process is relatively painless and is more of an annoyance to the one being eaten.

That, at least, is how I view things through my suspension of disbelief, even combined with a little logic. They are cartoons, and in the whimsical world of cartoons anything is possible, and few things are truly harmful. Now, should such an artist draw with realism and mind, it therefore becomes much harder to suspend disbelief, but I have yet to see fetish material drawn with realism in mind. I just hope that our ability to see and “comprehend” the impossible and the whimsical is not slipping away, as that would truly be a shame. Heh, I guess I’m starting to see why they say “youth is wasted on the young”, and I’m only 22.