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A Strange Feeling In Her Tummy? Yeah I Usually Get Those Two Places Confused Too.
Or, Vore in the DDS verse: Is it canon, how blatant, and also omgwtf.
First, because going over old IRC logs last night reminded me that the term isn't common knowledge: What is 'vore'?
Essentially it's the eating of a living creature for sexual gratification. Although perhaps best associated with human beings devouring bits of each other as a fetish (thanks, infamous German case!) it technically also includes watching, say, the discovery channel's features on hyena feeding habits, as long as someone's getting off on it. Devouring of 'food' isn't generally considered under this fetish; it seems to involve a lot of the "omg you're eating a living creature alive" thing. Don't you feel edumacated?
So when you hear jokes about fatal vore in CFUD? Now you know.
(N-no it's not my fetish boy howdy but I'm still perfectly happy to write it with characters whose fetish it IS, because I tend to be more interested in writing what the characters go for. Now you know that too. Yeaaaaah.)
Oh gosh, you're thinking (possibly with more swearing unless you're Katy -- love you baeb!), and this is a series about cannibals. Is the vore canon? Is it on screen and brutal?
The answer is... Yes, and no.
Yes, the cannibalism is on screen and brutal, at least at first -- they let you know within the first 20 minutes what is gonna be going on in this game, complete with wet chewing noises and blood spatters across the screen. Even that isn't as brutal as it makes it sound; the entire bit where they all freak out and attack each other is done with fever-dream angles, digital overlay of words, and fast-paced cuts between moments so it's a surreal montage and not, you know, slow drawn-out cannibalistic whatever. But yeah, it's there. From that point on in the game, it's referred to often but not shown directly. For example, early on when they decide to consciously engage in cannbalism, Heat tells Argilla off for not understanding that things have changed, and then walks forward; we don't see what happens but we get the message "Heat and Serph devoured the bodies." And then Heat talks about what a pleasant experience it was. Likewise, at the end of combat the particpants all receive atma from the bodies they eat, so you're constantly aware that they're engaging in cannibalism but after all that it's not on-screen.
They also talk about cannibalism a lot, and about getting hungry. They talk about the experience -- whether it makes them feel sick or feels good, whether they can devour another rookie or if they're too full, how safe it is to be around each other like this. Cannibalism has abruptly become a basic and important detail in their life. Strategic plans often come down to "Do we devour them one by one or PLOT DEEPLY" and in the end, the intensive planning still boils down to having to eat people. Although the plot isn't essentially about the cannibalism, it is not something the game lets you forget is constantly occurring. There are people who play this game and go "Awesome!", there are people who play it and go "Ew." That's life!
B-but Haru, you point out, that's just the cannibalism. It doesn't include the other aspect!
--Well, that's canon too. Less graphic than the cannibalism, it's nevertheless there. And there's a lot of important points playing into it.
First thing to know is that these characters all start out with little or no memory, and that these characters start out with little or no emotions. Both come back in uneven rags and tatters as the games progress -- for example, you'll have moments of "I know that 'solar' refers to the sun, even though I've never seen it" or a character who says she does not understand what "sad" is will learn to recognize tears, and be moved by the feelings behind them. Basically, start with a group of people with egos but who are otherwise empty selves, and have them awaken to persondom early on, but still have to go throughout gathering up the normal associations. The ones we take for granted.
These are things they don't have, and are a big point of why lust -- which, like all personal emotions, can only be really felt after someone's "awakened" -- is tied to hunger. Because it is a desire, and for them, hunger is their biggest desire. We see other yearnings referred to as 'hunger' as well.
And yes, it's canon that this confusion between lust and hunger occurs. There's a scene where, attempting to express his feelings, Heat kisses Sera. She starts to cry, and when he lets go in shock she runs away, where she slowly calms down and says she's okay. Immediately after this scene, one of the women in the Embryon comments, "Heat is desperate for Sera. You can tell just by looking at him! I don't get why, though -- I'd taste way better!" Meanwhile Argilla, watching Sera afterwards, comments that Sera's finally looking like she's starting to get hungry.
THAT, when I refer to vore in DDS, is almost certainly what I'm referring to. Not the literal devouring of people for sexual gratification, but the fact that the point of sexual interest and satisfaction is completely tied up and confused with the hunger for food for these people.
These are not the only incidences. If they were, it'd hardly be worth commenting on. Others include, but aren't limited to: a hungry Maribel tribe member viciously commenting on wanting to eat Argilla's breasts and legs; a female member of the Maribel tribe holding herself and gyrating while begging Serph to go ahead and eat her; a soldier of the Embryon admiring the different forms of devouring and admitting that they "excite me"; Heat using come-hither gestures and a bedroom voice when calling over someone he refers to as a 'snack'. It is (probably for the best) never shown on-air if it actually happens; mostly it's just desires that they place in the, well, wrong part of the body.
For these people, who never knew lust (there are no children in the Junkyard, and certainly no desires to make them, pre-awakening; they're never even referred to back then), just calculations and warfare, it's not surprising that sexual desire would get tied to another form of physical hunger, especially when it seems that to many, if not all of them, the sensation of devouring another person is an incredibly pleasant one. (Heat refers to it as a "good feeling" long before he's even awakened to emotionally impulsive responses. Admittedly, it's Heat, who looooooves his own cannibalism, but it seems to be a relatively common thing, that it's not something to dislike. There are two characters who openly and actively dislike it -- well, three if you count in the blond Member of the Embryon who keeps having concerns about the thought of killing people being necessary to get into paradise -- and one who seems to withhold mostly out of a sense of honour about giving people a clean death. But other than that, NPCs, baddies, and PCs alike respond to it without it being seen as physically unpleasant).
So basically: For them, is cannibalism a sex act? No, not so as we see. But for them, sexual desire is seen as hunger; it's more like sex is a cannibalistic act.