I agree with you, typically a story shouldn't continue after the pop, but only for the sake that the conflict has been resolved. A post popping scenario really is a standalone story.
It's a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, but I love heartbreaking stories the most. I go into post popping sparingly, partly because it's not as filled with ideas as one would hope, partly because its extremely unpopular because of how depressing it is. The story I consider to be my best (The Teacher) is meant to be a heartbreaker. In general, the stories I write have a very solemn/serious undertone to them. It's probably what's holding me back, but I can't change who I am. Popping itself is a serious matter to me. I dislike stories where someone pops without consequence, or the matter of popping is just a non-issue. It doesn't really give credit to the fear, the tension, and the whirlwind of other emotions caused by someone at that knife's edge between survival and becoming a pile of scraps. So yeah, almost all of my stories end in popping. It might be a problem child, or it might be the opposite. I don't know yet. But I do love popping.
I can't and I won't try to influence you on that draft. It's your story, so you should call the shots. What might be the reason why post popping is heartbreaking is because there's really nowhere to go but emotional realism, which is people dealing with a loss of life. That within itself is depressing. Couple that onto the fact that the person's life ended because of the fetish of the reader, it gives the person an uncomfortable (and understandable) guilt. Inflation is (to me, anyway) an inherently sexual thing. It's meant to be erotic, at the very least to the reader. Which could be sadism, but is mostly lighthearted fun.
It's a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, but I love heartbreaking stories the most. I go into post popping sparingly, partly because it's not as filled with ideas as one would hope, partly because its extremely unpopular because of how depressing it is. The story I consider to be my best (The Teacher) is meant to be a heartbreaker. In general, the stories I write have a very solemn/serious undertone to them. It's probably what's holding me back, but I can't change who I am. Popping itself is a serious matter to me. I dislike stories where someone pops without consequence, or the matter of popping is just a non-issue. It doesn't really give credit to the fear, the tension, and the whirlwind of other emotions caused by someone at that knife's edge between survival and becoming a pile of scraps. So yeah, almost all of my stories end in popping. It might be a problem child, or it might be the opposite. I don't know yet. But I do love popping.
I can't and I won't try to influence you on that draft. It's your story, so you should call the shots. What might be the reason why post popping is heartbreaking is because there's really nowhere to go but emotional realism, which is people dealing with a loss of life. That within itself is depressing. Couple that onto the fact that the person's life ended because of the fetish of the reader, it gives the person an uncomfortable (and understandable) guilt. Inflation is (to me, anyway) an inherently sexual thing. It's meant to be erotic, at the very least to the reader. Which could be sadism, but is mostly lighthearted fun.
Unless you're a professional writer with a family to feed and a publisher to please, you should first and foremost write what you love. This is just a fun hobby for most of us. I doubt your solemn tone is holding you back.
There's nothing wrong with exploring the dark and depressing side of inflation. I think it's a refreshing change of pace. Although I don't believe that emotional realism is the only place to go. Popping, like inflation itself, is fundamentally absurd. It lends itself well to absurd storytelling. In Gassing Up, Carol cracks jokes about Lauren's inflation, then her popping. In Trapped, Lilly seems shocked but not terribly disturbed by Kirsten exploding. The epilogue is delivered with cheesy humor.
That having been said, the farther you stay from emotional realism, the less impact a story has. I think that's part of the appeal of the darker stories. They feel more authentic, so they leave an impact. So (for me, at least) it's not the darkness per se. It's that, in the vast majority of cases, the sensible response to a person who finds herself inflating out of control is unbridled terror. It's that her feelings toward the person who did such a thing to her would be hatred and rage. And the witnesses and loved ones left behind by someone who popped would be distraught and horrified that something so terrible had happened. So if you really want to make the audience feel something, you have to go there.
As I've observed before, inflation is so impossible, over-the-top, and cartoonish that people usually gloss over the implications in their heads. If those implications materialized you'd get -- well, you'd get this story, for starters.
As for the sadism, I feel no worse about enjoying popping stories than I do about enjoying popping people with the Inflatoray in Saints Row IV. It's fiction. Amusingly enough, in that game you get the Inflatoray from a character who's trying to cheer you up. He basically tells you to take it and go have fun with it.
There's nothing wrong with exploring the dark and depressing side of inflation. I think it's a refreshing change of pace. Although I don't believe that emotional realism is the only place to go. Popping, like inflation itself, is fundamentally absurd. It lends itself well to absurd storytelling. In Gassing Up, Carol cracks jokes about Lauren's inflation, then her popping. In Trapped, Lilly seems shocked but not terribly disturbed by Kirsten exploding. The epilogue is delivered with cheesy humor.
That having been said, the farther you stay from emotional realism, the less impact a story has. I think that's part of the appeal of the darker stories. They feel more authentic, so they leave an impact. So (for me, at least) it's not the darkness per se. It's that, in the vast majority of cases, the sensible response to a person who finds herself inflating out of control is unbridled terror. It's that her feelings toward the person who did such a thing to her would be hatred and rage. And the witnesses and loved ones left behind by someone who popped would be distraught and horrified that something so terrible had happened. So if you really want to make the audience feel something, you have to go there.
As I've observed before, inflation is so impossible, over-the-top, and cartoonish that people usually gloss over the implications in their heads. If those implications materialized you'd get -- well, you'd get this story, for starters.
As for the sadism, I feel no worse about enjoying popping stories than I do about enjoying popping people with the Inflatoray in Saints Row IV. It's fiction. Amusingly enough, in that game you get the Inflatoray from a character who's trying to cheer you up. He basically tells you to take it and go have fun with it.
You know, I write and read such a disproportionate amount of solemn material (both inflation and printed literature) that I forget that cheery, upbeat material is the more common of the two in inflation. If there is any real fear in popping, it's not until that typical moment of realization halfway through the inflation. I've built this bubble of solemnity around my writing that is so ridiculous in itself that it gets stifling. But I find it so difficult to write humor that I don't have the confidence to push myself.
That whole argument, that inflation is fundamentally absurd, gets used to justify far too much, in my opinion. For example, I read a story (I don't remember the title unfortunately, because it was an enjoyable story) where at one point the inflatee was described as "being in her twelfth month of pregnancy", which really bothered me, because a pregnancy has nine, not twelve, months. And I brought it up, to which the response was a very dismissive 'inflation is so absurd that I can use that description.'
I think I worry about the realistic implications too much. I'm almost obsessed with it. I've never taken the position of "Well, inflation is ridiculous so whatever." It's never been sufficient reasoning for me. It feels more like an excuse for not working hard enough (for me. I don't care if other people use it because I'm not them) I do like the more ridiculous, cartoony aspects of inflation, but I always need a justification for its existence. A 'just cuz' isn't right to me.
I feel like there's something inherently sadistic about inflation. The threat of death the further along it goes, the loss of movement and self defense, the increasing fragility of the body, and just how often the inflation happens against the person's wishes add up in a way that makes it difficult to say otherwise. I don't feel guilty about it at all. Again, the inherent absurdity of inflation guarantees that I will never pop a human being, which I am more than glad is the case.
That whole argument, that inflation is fundamentally absurd, gets used to justify far too much, in my opinion. For example, I read a story (I don't remember the title unfortunately, because it was an enjoyable story) where at one point the inflatee was described as "being in her twelfth month of pregnancy", which really bothered me, because a pregnancy has nine, not twelve, months. And I brought it up, to which the response was a very dismissive 'inflation is so absurd that I can use that description.'
I think I worry about the realistic implications too much. I'm almost obsessed with it. I've never taken the position of "Well, inflation is ridiculous so whatever." It's never been sufficient reasoning for me. It feels more like an excuse for not working hard enough (for me. I don't care if other people use it because I'm not them) I do like the more ridiculous, cartoony aspects of inflation, but I always need a justification for its existence. A 'just cuz' isn't right to me.
I feel like there's something inherently sadistic about inflation. The threat of death the further along it goes, the loss of movement and self defense, the increasing fragility of the body, and just how often the inflation happens against the person's wishes add up in a way that makes it difficult to say otherwise. I don't feel guilty about it at all. Again, the inherent absurdity of inflation guarantees that I will never pop a human being, which I am more than glad is the case.
I'm with you on inflation's absurdity being used to justify too much. It annoys me when I read an author who clearly thinks that just because the idea that humans can inflate is absurd he has the license to include all manner of absurdity.
And you managed to touch on one of my pet peeves. I'm not into pregnancy fetish stories, but I imagine the tolerance for such things is much higher in that audience. But inflation stories where the inflatee is described as looking "x months pregnant with y-tuplets" really fails for me when x and y are absurdly large values. "She looked like she'd swallowed a basketball", while equally as impossible as "twelve months pregnant", makes much more sense to me. I know how big a basketball is, so I can envision that. I can't easily visualize how big a woman would be with a three month old infant in her belly (do you know how big an infant is at three months? I don't) so it's not an effective descriptor. So my problem with it isn't it's impossibility, it with it's lack of effectiveness.
Recently in one of the discussions on Bodyinflation.org about vore stories, I pointed out that neither vore nor inflation lend themselves well to authentic emotional responses. I think you're right; when dealt with realistically, inflation tends to have a strong sadistic streak to it. Regardless of whether it's being inflicted by a sadistic character or a sadistic author, it's still something that would be terrifying and traumatizing in most scenarios.
I ran into this again when I was outlining a potential sequel to Blow. This is another case of a character developing a mind of her own. She starts inflating and one of her friends tries to reassure her. She's having none of it. She was at the club when during the events of Blow and she remembers how loud the explosion was and how it nearly blew the door off the bathroom. So she's crying uncontrollably because she's convinced she's going to die and she's begging her friend to run so she doesn't get caught in the blast when she explodes.
It's a recurring theme. The more real my characters become, the more disturbing the stories become. I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing, but it's definitely a thing.
And you managed to touch on one of my pet peeves. I'm not into pregnancy fetish stories, but I imagine the tolerance for such things is much higher in that audience. But inflation stories where the inflatee is described as looking "x months pregnant with y-tuplets" really fails for me when x and y are absurdly large values. "She looked like she'd swallowed a basketball", while equally as impossible as "twelve months pregnant", makes much more sense to me. I know how big a basketball is, so I can envision that. I can't easily visualize how big a woman would be with a three month old infant in her belly (do you know how big an infant is at three months? I don't) so it's not an effective descriptor. So my problem with it isn't it's impossibility, it with it's lack of effectiveness.
Recently in one of the discussions on Bodyinflation.org about vore stories, I pointed out that neither vore nor inflation lend themselves well to authentic emotional responses. I think you're right; when dealt with realistically, inflation tends to have a strong sadistic streak to it. Regardless of whether it's being inflicted by a sadistic character or a sadistic author, it's still something that would be terrifying and traumatizing in most scenarios.
I ran into this again when I was outlining a potential sequel to Blow. This is another case of a character developing a mind of her own. She starts inflating and one of her friends tries to reassure her. She's having none of it. She was at the club when during the events of Blow and she remembers how loud the explosion was and how it nearly blew the door off the bathroom. So she's crying uncontrollably because she's convinced she's going to die and she's begging her friend to run so she doesn't get caught in the blast when she explodes.
It's a recurring theme. The more real my characters become, the more disturbing the stories become. I'm not convinced that this is a bad thing, but it's definitely a thing.
It can get obnoxious, especially when it's used over and over again. Typically, if I use it it's initially for a pseudo-baby bump and then at "full term". Then I base the size off that (double, triple, etc.) and go off into diameter in feet. The funny thing is, so many people have used the pregnancy "x weeks" analogy that I have partially memorized the sort of sizes a woman's womb is at during varying points of time, just from the amount of times I've looked up pregnancy progression videos and the like. I don't like that system very much to be honest, because they're really nothing more than coordinates. There's nothing real in those numbers, despite their relation to pregnancy. Like you said, hardly anyone can know at the top of their head the size of a womb during the 23rd week of a triplet pregnancy. Fruit and sports equipment work so much better, especially in my case. I've touched a soccer ball before, but the same cannot be said of a woman's pregnant belly.
That ugly truth about inflation is precisely why I dislike eroticism taken to an extreme/hyperbole in the fiction. It takes a suspension of disbelief that I find hard to achieve unless in the right mood. I prefer good storytelling, because often times the overt erotica sacrificed for better storytelling is made up for in many ways (good characters, dialogue, description/events) that can make the story just as sexy. Not erotic per se, but definitely sexy.
That's exactly how I'd picture it going. She knows both the events, the result, and the aftermath. And none of them are good. They say that ignorance is bliss, and nothing could be more true for that scenario. Better to hope that the ambulance has nitrous than accept your fate. Of all the emotions that characters express right at that moment before the bang, I have to say that I like sheer terror and stoic acceptance the most. Like in the story Popperchicks, one of the main characters states matter-of-factly "it's me" and then explodes. (Could aforementioned sadism be a factor?) That sort of feeling of just throwing in the towel and accepting the inevitable also seems very real. Many people have many different ways of reacting to things. To think that not a single person would have an 'it doesn't matter, I'm doomed' epiphany toward the end isn't right. Surely it would be rare, but not impossible.
That ugly truth about inflation is precisely why I dislike eroticism taken to an extreme/hyperbole in the fiction. It takes a suspension of disbelief that I find hard to achieve unless in the right mood. I prefer good storytelling, because often times the overt erotica sacrificed for better storytelling is made up for in many ways (good characters, dialogue, description/events) that can make the story just as sexy. Not erotic per se, but definitely sexy.
That's exactly how I'd picture it going. She knows both the events, the result, and the aftermath. And none of them are good. They say that ignorance is bliss, and nothing could be more true for that scenario. Better to hope that the ambulance has nitrous than accept your fate. Of all the emotions that characters express right at that moment before the bang, I have to say that I like sheer terror and stoic acceptance the most. Like in the story Popperchicks, one of the main characters states matter-of-factly "it's me" and then explodes. (Could aforementioned sadism be a factor?) That sort of feeling of just throwing in the towel and accepting the inevitable also seems very real. Many people have many different ways of reacting to things. To think that not a single person would have an 'it doesn't matter, I'm doomed' epiphany toward the end isn't right. Surely it would be rare, but not impossible.