Implicating breathplay → asphyxiation
Link to implication

Reason:

Asphyxiation is when a submissive character's lungs are not getting fresh air (or usable oxygen) - essentially, they can't breathe. Breathplay is when someone controls whether or not they can breathe, where at least part of the time they cannot. Therefore, breathplay is asphyxiation.

I am not suggesting an alias, because not all asphyxiation is breathplay. You could probably twist things around to where they are effectively the same thing (minus accidents like falling into a pool and not being able to swim), but people searching for posts might have specific desires associated with the two different terms.

Breathplay usually implies that the submissive character doesn't actually die, but not always. The mechanism behind this, however, is almost always due to the dominant party's whims - that is, the dominant character controls whether they live or die, and could choose either way.

Essentially, if the picture implies that the submissive character might be let free at any time, or even *could* be let free at any time, it would be breathplay. However, if the dominant character isn't going to do that, or simply can't, it's just asphyxiation.

Many pictures are ambiguous - leaving a mechanism in where the dominant character could release the submissive, but it's not shown in the picture whether they intend to or not. I know of at least one comic (that is DNP unfortunately) that has the dominant character talking about how they ARE going to kill the submissive, but at the end it's revealed he's just acting that out - and he does let the submissive breathe again.

Here are some ideal scenarios:

1. Those who are into both death and survival of the submissive character could search for 'asphyxiation', and get pictures of both.

2. Those who are squeamish towards actual death, but still like breathplay and *like* the idea of the risk and danger, could search for 'breathplay' and get just the ambiguous images, but also the images that look like they're going to include death, but end up letting the submissive survive.

3. Those who are only into it when someone definitely dies, could search for 'asphyxiation -breathplay' and get what they want.

The problem, of course, is that some people get a bit disappointed if the person survives... But also really like the ambiguous pictures, because they can imagine that the character does not survive. Many pictures indeed imply that the submissive won't survive, but they don't actually show any death. Would that be tagged as 'breathplay'? If so, how would someone search for images that either include or imply death from asphyxiation, but leave out images/comics where the character does survive?

The only suggestion I have is a compromise, where if it seems the character will probably survive, tag with breathplay. If it seems the character will probably not survive, tag with only asphyxiation. If it appears to be a 50/50 chance, use breathplay.

There could also be a new tag that's like, 'possible_death' or 'potential_snuff', but that complicates things further.

And of course, in all of the above scenarios, having 'breathplay' automatically and always add 'asphyxiation' is a good thing and will only help people find what they want.

I personally don't think the implication is a good idea.

"Potential_death" I've always seen tagged elsewhere with peril

I'm not even sure the reverse implication is a good idea. Breathplay has a willful component to it. Either someone is actively inflicting it or someone is deriving sexual pleasure from it. That is, breathplay is an actual sexual fetish.

Drowning, asphyxiation, strangulation are purely descriptive of actions going in the pictures and may not necessarily involve breathplay proper.

Circeus said:
Drowning, asphyxiation, strangulation are purely descriptive of actions going in the pictures and may not necessarily involve breathplay proper.

This is why it is an implication, and not an alias. Breathplay involves asphyxiation, but asphyxiation is not breathplay. Therefore, while a picture tagged with breathplay will also be tagged with asphyxiation, a picture tagged with asphyxiation will NOT necessarily be tagged with breathplay.

I suppose the 'willingness' factor is indeed another important one, and could be used to decide if a picture is breathplay or not. If the submissive seems willing, or at least if it's not obviously rape/murder, it could be tagged as 'breathplay'.

If it is, it'd also be tagged 'asphyxiation' automatically. However, if a picture is obviously not showing mutual consent, it can be tagged with 'asphyxiation' - and it would never be tagged as 'breathplay'.

I don't see how this can possibly be a bad thing, at least for the scenarios you seem worried about.

Tynach said:
I suppose the 'willingness' factor is indeed another important one, and could be used to decide if a picture is breathplay or not. If the submissive seems willing, or at least if it's not obviously rape/murder, it could be tagged as 'breathplay'.

But both drowning or hanging could be tagged with breathplay, yet neither would qualify for asphyxiation.

choking, hanging, asphyxiation, breathplay, drowning - I think they all need a good clean-up before considering any implications.

I don't think breathplay or drowning always imply asphyxiation.

hanging -> asphyxiation maybe. But does hanging involve the act itself, or could it also be tagged on pictures where a character is at the gallows but not in the noose yet?

edit - sorry, I was arguing something completely different there at the end. But I think I brought up a good question: when does any act become asphyxiation?

And doesn't breathplay imply some sort of consent, while asphyxiation doesn't always involve consent?

Circeus said:
But both drowning or hanging could be tagged with breathplay, yet neither would qualify for asphyxiation.

Knotty Curls said:
I don't think breathplay or drowning always imply asphyxiation.

Why not? When you drown, the actual cause of death is from asphyxiation. From Wikipedia :

Asphyxia or asphyxiation (from Ancient Greek α- "without" and σφύξις sphyxis, "heartbeat") is a condition of severely deficient supply of oxygen to the body that arises from abnormal breathing. An example of asphyxia is choking. Asphyxia causes generalized hypoxia, which affects primarily the tissues and organs. There are many circumstances that can induce asphyxia, all of which are characterized by an inability of an individual to acquire sufficient oxygen through breathing for an extended period of time. Asphyxia can cause coma or death.

Basically, asphyxiation is any time whatsoever when you are not getting the oxygen you need. Whether that is consensual or not, and whether or not it is from drowning, being choked, having a bag over your head, or whatever. Under any circumstances where you are not getting the oxygen you need, you are asphyxiating.

Heck. Take a look at the list of things that cause asphyxiation on that page. It includes drowning, breathing carbon monoxide, strangling, hanging, and even drug overdose.

I want to try to draw Parasprite's attention to this forum as well. Part of this discussion revolves around consent, similar to what's going on over in forum #158750.

Asphyxiation is really a medical condition, the shut down of tissues due to lack of oxygen. That is something you cannot see. I think I would prefer
Alias: asphyxiation -> oxygen_deprivation
Implication: breathplay -> oxygen_deprivation.

I would also suggest, at least, that breathplay imply BDSM.

RedOctober said:
I want to try to draw Parasprite's attention to this forum as well. Part of this discussion revolves around consent, similar to what's going on over in forum #158750.

Asphyxiation is really a medical condition, the shut down of tissues due to lack of oxygen. That is something you cannot see. I think I would prefer
Alias: asphyxiation -> oxygen_deprivation
Implication: breathplay -> oxygen_deprivation.

I would also suggest, at least, that breathplay imply BDSM.

The difference is that asphyxiation is an already established tag, and even has a wiki page (asphyxiation).

On the other hand, oxygen_deprivation doesn't actually exist. It's not a tag that's in use, anywhere. On top of that, it of course doesn't have a wiki page (oxygen_deprivation does not exist).

If they'd just be aliases of each other and effectively mean the same thing, why not just use the tag that currently exists? On top of that, 'asphyxiation' is the general term used in the breathplay community (as far as I've been able to tell) for when the submissive subject isn't able to breathe. I haven't exactly been an active member in the community directly, but the times I've been active in #breathfur on Furnet it seems everyone understands the term.

On top of that, it's generally the term I can search for on most furry porn sites to find things ranging from drowning, to hanging, to plastic bags over people's faces. It seems to be a very well established term (especially since e621 already uses it heavily).

Edit: I'd also like to point out that asphyxiation is *not* the damage of internal tissue. That would be 'generalized hypoxia'. Asphyxiation causes that, but asphyxiation itself is not that.

Tynach said:

Edit: I'd also like to point out that asphyxiation is *not* the damage of internal tissue. That would be 'generalized hypoxia'. Asphyxiation causes that, but asphyxiation itself is not that.

Can partially confirm. In layman's terms they might as well be the same thing. Medically, "asphyxia" is rarely used outside of the cause of death. Hypoxia is a low oxygen state which can be induced by suffocation, but is more relevant to things like heart failure or opioid overdose (↓ respiratory drive). Technically speaking if someone wasn't breathing at all the most correct term would probably be "they are anoxic" but it's probably much more tactful to just say "they're coding" because it will get the point across quicker. :P

That being said, asphyxiation is probably the better term for what we use it for. I'm not sure that I would throw drowning into that, but the two aren't completely incompatible.

There's also snuff. I wouldn't implicate either of them to it, but it's worth mentioning.

parasprite said:
Technically speaking if someone wasn't breathing at all the most correct term would probably be "they are anoxic" but it's probably much more tactful to just say "they're coding" because it will get the point across quicker. :P

So THAT'S why I'm into asphyxiation - I was already into programming!

parasprite said:
I'm not sure that I would throw drowning into that, but the two aren't completely incompatible.

Well, my drowning fetish led me to a general 'asphyxiation' fetish, and that's my main motivation behind this other tag implication suggestion. I'd like to be able to search for a single tag that would include both, especially since drowning does seem to imply asphyxiation in most (perhaps all?) cases.

It's worth noting that 'drowning' and 'underwater' are two separate tags, and both are used in different scenarios. I would suggest a 'drowning → underwater' tag, except that you can drown in fluids other than water (cum, urine, slime/goo, etc.), so it wouldn't fit all drowning pictures. However, in all drowning pictures, the subject is indeed left without oxygen - so would imply asphyxiation (for the purposes of our use of the word as a tag).

parasprite said:
There's also snuff. I wouldn't implicate either of them to it, but it's worth mentioning.

I always thought 'snuff' was reserved for when a character actually dies, and is pictured as dead (or in the process of dying, in a way that it's too late for them to be saved) in the image. However, I know that people who like snuff would probably also like images that imply 'immanent' snuff.

I suppose some breathplay and asphyxiation images would have snuff, but far from all of them. I don't think it's appropriate for 'snuff' to be implied from asphyxiation, since death is only one possible scenario of asphyxiation - even if it's non-consensual.

Besides that, if this (breathplay → asphyxiation) does become an official tag implication, having 'asphyxiation → snuff' would mean that all breathplay pictures become tagged as 'snuff' - which is VERY far from true, since most (or all) depict consent of some form, and usually not actual death.

Doing a quick search, it seems that the majority of drowning and/or asphyxiation images (at least, the ones tagged as such) are not tagged as snuff.

Tynach said:
So THAT'S why I'm into asphyxiation - I was already into programming!

:V

except that you can drown in fluids other than water (cum, urine, slime/goo, etc.), so it wouldn't fit all drowning pictures. However, in all drowning pictures, the subject is indeed left without oxygen - so would imply asphyxiation (for the purposes of our use of the word as a tag).

Yeah there's a surprising amount of those, actually.

I always thought 'snuff' was reserved for when a character actually dies, and is pictured as dead (or in the process of dying, in a way that it's too late for them to be saved) in the image. However, I know that people who like snuff would probably also like images that imply 'immanent' snuff.

I suppose some breathplay and asphyxiation images would have snuff, but far from all of them. I don't think it's appropriate for 'snuff' to be implied from asphyxiation, since death is only one possible scenario of asphyxiation - even if it's non-consensual.

Besides that, if this (breathplay → asphyxiation) does become an official tag implication, having 'asphyxiation → snuff' would mean that all breathplay pictures become tagged as 'snuff' - which is VERY far from true, since most (or all) depict consent of some form, and usually not actual death.

Doing a quick search, it seems that the majority of drowning and/or asphyxiation images (at least, the ones tagged as such) are not tagged as snuff.

Oh no an implication definitely wouldn't work, and I wouldn't suggest that. The tags just overlap enough to be worth mentioning (more in a "tag cleanup" sense).

parasprite said:
Oh no an implication definitely wouldn't work, and I wouldn't suggest that. The tags just overlap enough to be worth mentioning (more in a "tag cleanup" sense).

Ah, gotcha. What are the tag guidelines for snuff anyway? The wiki page gives a different description than I've heard in the past; usually I think of 'guro' when I think of extreme torture/pain, and snuff if it has death.

Tynach said:
Ah, gotcha. What are the tag guidelines for snuff anyway? The wiki page gives a different description than I've heard in the past; usually I think of 'guro' when I think of extreme torture/pain, and snuff if it has death.

There isn't really a whole lot at this point. I had written the wiki a while back while organizing the blood/gore/death-related tags and based it mostly off of what it was being used for at the time.

Considered creepy and weird even among the Furry fandom, "snuff" images and animations depict characters being killed (usually murdered) in such a way as to bring fans of the concept sexual pleasure. (source]

This was what it was before I touched it, which didn't seem like a particularly clear definition based on what it was being used for, so I rewrote it.

'guro'

This is probably where I would stick that too, however guro was aliased to gore, which isn't exactly the same thing. I'd almost think an implication from guro -> gore and guro -> snuff might almost work, but there are probably cases where it wouldn't (also I'm not really sure how I feel about bringing guro back since it's meaning overlaps with gore so much).

Between the discussion above and the related discussion in forum #159097, the following changes were made:

• Alias: breathplay -> asphyxiation (denied) - forum #146664
• Implication: breathplay -> asphyxiation (OP approved)
• Implication: choking -> asphyxiation (approved)
• Alias: strangle, strangled -> strangling (approved)