Lexicon

Aftercare

Aftercare is what happens after a scene: the coming down, the water, the blanket, the checking in, the person who was in control taking care of the person who gave it up, or sometimes the other way round. The catalogue describes it as the part after, where the scene is put down and they come back, and practitioners will tell you it is not optional. A scene without aftercare is not finished; it is abandoned.

In fiction it is the part most often cut, usually with a section break. Readers who tick this theme want it written, because the comedown is where a BDSM story says what it meant. What is said afterwards, what the body does, who holds whom: that is where the characters become people again, and often where the romance is.

How the engine handles it. Aftercare is written into most BDSM scenes on DesireBorn Bound whether or not the theme is ticked, because the it is part of the genre's craft rules: the comedown belongs in the scene, not in an epilogue. Ticking the theme goes further and makes aftercare a subject of the story rather than a coda, so the plan gives it its own weight and the story state carries what was said and done afterwards as facts the next section knows. The engine writes it plainly, what the body does, what is said, who takes care of whom, without therapy-speak. It is the theme that most clearly separates fiction written by someone who understands power exchange from fiction written by someone who has only seen the costume.

Your stories are encrypted at rest. We can read them to write them. Nobody else can read them.