Vampire porn vs snuff ban

[WeShallUnclench]

This is framed as vampire-specific, but it's really that I want to navigate and understand writing on this site a bit better.

We have a general "no snuff" rule, elaborating further that death can happen in any story, but it's not supposed to be sexualized.

Vampires seem a pretty obvious way to explore this - the act of a vampire attacking their victim is often framed in a very sensual way, and in darker versions of the tale, it does indeed end with the victim's death.

So what I am asking this, if you have experience both with writing and reading vampire erotica, what is the vibe you are getting on lit, on how to navigate this?

 

[Bamagan]

This is framed as vampire-specific, but it's really that I want to navigate and understand writing on this site a bit better.

We have a general "no snuff" rule, elaborating further that death can happen in any story, but it's not supposed to be sexualized.

Vampires seem a pretty obvious way to explore this - the act of a vampire attacking their victim is often framed in a very sensual way, and in darker versions of the tale, it does indeed end with the victim's death.

So what I am asking this, if you have experience both with writing and reading vampire erotica, what is the vibe you are getting on lit, on how to navigate this?

A while back there was a person who came on the forums because their vampire story got rejected... or part of it did. They ended one chapter with a vampire apparently killing another character: exsanguination during sex. It was intended to be a cliffhanger of sorts, as I understand, with the victim returning as a vampire in a later chapter, but was sent back for being snuff. I believe the author reworked it to show clearly it was a transformation, not a murder, and it was subsequently accepted.

The general consensus seemed to be that the decision to try to 'tease' the audience by putting a chapter break there was getting too cute with the 'surprise' and making the earlier chapter mistakable for snuff if considered by itself. It seems to paint a lesson that skirting the rules is more acceptable when the story is complete and Laurel can judge it as a whole, instead of just writing a segment that presents itself as including one of the handful of prohibited topics only to reverse course in a later segment.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Mary, @theWollstonecraftWoman, has a series of vampire stories. The first one ends with the vampire making love and feeding off a woman who's tricked him into staying too long. Once daylight has come, she kissed him, and pushed him into full daylight on the balcony, and he is destroyed. She subsequently leaves the house, dies in his coffin, and returns as a vampire. It wasn't rejected here or at Amazon, but Smashwords refused to publish it because the vampire died after a kiss.

 

[ronde]

As I understand the rule, the key to inviting story rejection is to couple any reference to sexual desire or sexual gratification with the actions that resulted in death of one of the participants. I would think a vampire could kill any number of victims as long as the death of the victim occurred during the vampire only feeding. Having the death occur because either of the participants is getting any sort of sexual pleasure, probably including fantasizing about sex will probably result in a rejection.

 

[Voboy]

I've written two specific vampire stories and set several others in that same vampire universe, and all of them involve both sex and death. I've done witches and werewolves as well, and those feature plenty of supernaturally dangerous fuckin'. I've never felt any anxiety about getting rejected for mixing sex with supernatural violence, and my stories have done well.

It's not anything to be worried about as long as the death is not sexually gratifying for the reader. That's a very easy line to skirt in practice, even if you choose to make some of those deaths sensual. In short, you'd describe those deaths as pleasurable or even orgasmic without any lingering description of sex, of the sort designed to get a reader horny.

Then? When sexytime does arrive in the story? Just don't kill that fuck-partner.

 

[MillieDynamite]

If you read this story, you might see just how close you can get to the line and still get published in non-human, A Kiss Before We Part! What I mean is here's the line, and just the other side of it is my story.

 

[ElectricBlue]

It's not anything to be worried about as long as the death is not sexually gratifying for the reader. That's a very easy line to skirt in practice, even if you choose to make some of those deaths sensual. In short, you'd describe those deaths as pleasurable or even orgasmic without any lingering description of sex, of the sort designed to get a reader horny.

Then? When sexytime does arrive in the story? Just don't kill that fuck-partner.

That's the key, not to sexualise the moment of death, but to quickly pass it by. You can be graphic on Lit, with extreme violence (I have a disembowelment, for example), but if you don't dwell on or sensationalise the moment, and show some restraint, then I reckon a death scene will pass.

But if you then go on and fuck the corpse, maybe not...

 

[TheWritingGroup]

... extreme violence (I have a disembowelment, for example) ...

!

 

[Bramblethorn]

!

One of mine has a comical flaying sequence

In response to OP's question, I'll give the advice I always give, which is to search relevant categories (in this case Erotic Horror and maybe Non-Human) and see what kinds of stories on this subject have (and haven't) been posted in the last few years. As well as searching on "vampire", "succubus" might also be relevant.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

The rule of thumb I tend to use is whose perspective it is. If it's from the perspective of the 'prey' getting completely overloaded with sexual pleasure while being drained of life and soul by a sexy succubus, it's probably okay. If it's from the perspective of the vampire/succubus getting sexual gratification from taking the life of a poor whimpering 'prey' human who isn't enjoying it all that much, it's probably a bit too close to the 'bad' snuff (people getting off on strangling people) for a website like Literotica to want to take a risk on it.

Other rule of thumb is 'could some weirdo copycat this in real life and writer/website get in trouble if it turns out weirdo has their work on their laptop and was getting off on it'. The more fantastical the death, the safer. Pretty sure it's impossible to suck the life out of someone by making them come too much, so classic succubi stories are probably slightly 'safer' than vamp stories in that regard.

Those are my rules of thumb, and I tend to mix horror with erotica a lot. Not sure where Lit's line is, I've got plenty of stories on here, but I'm not sure what would happen if I was submit them today. Hopefully okay, because they are harmless fiction at the end of the day, but ultimately it depends what the people running Literotica are comfortable with.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

Mary, @theWollstonecraftWoman, has a series of vampire stories. The first one ends with the vampire making love and feeding off a woman who's tricked him into staying too long. Once daylight has come, she kissed him, and pushed him into full daylight on the balcony, and he is destroyed. She subsequently leaves the house, dies in his coffin, and returns as a vampire. It wasn't rejected here or at Amazon, but Smashwords refused to publish it because the vampire died after a kiss.

This is true.