Lexicon

Voyeurism

Voyeurism is the pleasure of watching. The theme belongs to the person on the other side of the window from exhibitionism: the one who sees, whether by arrangement, by accident, or by choosing not to look away. In fiction it is an unusually interior theme, because the watcher is often not touching anyone, and the whole scene is what watching does to them.

Readers tick it for two distinct kinds of story. In one, the watcher is invited and the watching is part of the arrangement, which sits close to group and to power exchange. In the other, the watching is secret, and the story is about what the watcher knows that the watched do not, which is a plot as much as a scene. Both are legitimate; they are written differently.

How the engine handles it. With Voyeurism ticked, the engine writes the watcher's interior with the same weight as the scene being watched, and keeps the spatial facts exact: where the watcher is, what they can and cannot see, whether they can be seen in turn. The story state records who has watched what, because a secret watcher is carrying knowledge the story must keep track of, and a later section in which the watched find out is a section that has to know exactly what was seen. In a forbidden affair the theme often stands for the fear of being watched rather than the pleasure of watching, and the plan treats it accordingly. As with every theme, everyone watched and everyone watching is an adult.

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