non-binaryprince - Tumblr blog

[non-binaryprince]

veneer and matt friendship where veneer is matthew's gay mentor

[non-binaryprince]

good read for teachers.

[non-binaryprince]

the climax of Dungeon Meshi is basically "the Devil thought Laios was locked in a room with him, but he was in fact locked in a room with Laios"

[non-binaryprince]

[non-binaryprince]

My friend explained the spoon theory to our DM and he was like “ohhh so it’s like when you’re out of spell slots and you need to take a long rest to regain them all” and now I keep thinking of myself as being out of spell slots instead of out of spoons

[non-binaryprince]

[non-binaryprince]

Laios the person that you are

[non-binaryprince]

HEAD CANON: What if walking mushrooms sat on decaying corpses to get their nutrients. A useful tactic when they roam dungeon areas that aren't their typical environments and can't provide them food so this is how they adapt 👀 hufhufhfuf

alternatively:

[non-binaryprince]

Supernova ✨

Based off the fic Red Wine Supernova by @mono-chromia which in turn is inspired by the song (same title) “Red Wine Supernova” by Chappel Roan - a banger you need to listen to at least once.

[non-binaryprince]

What I find really really compelling about Laios' special interest is this:

As a person who's special interest is dogs, I'll tell you right now that I fucking love them. I live in a city full of strays, and I actively go out of my way to pet, play with, and interact with them. It brings me a lot of joy and comfort to be able to be surrounded by puppies.

I will also be the first to tell you that, like it or not, dogs are animals - and animals, ultimately, can be unpredictable. They can be scared, they can be territorial, and they can be impulsive. And while I genuinely believe that there's no such thing as a bad dog or an angry dog - only a scared one - I also don't believe it makes a functional difference once a dog has bitten you what intentions it may have had.

Dogs are dangerous. I've seen people get bitten, I've been bitten, I've had close calls, some of which were my own fault and others which were not.

And Laios reflects this so beautifully, especially in the Kelpie arc. He's not blinded by his love for these creatures, he's not overtaken by baseless empathy - he understands, understands better than anyone, that these are at the end of the day monsters, and they are dangerous, and when push comes to shove sometimes you've just got to kill them. In fact it's his love for them that lands him this knowledge and understanding in the first place - just as I know that there's no room for fear and weakness when it comes to interacting with dogs, he knows there's no room for hesitation and empathy when it comes to interacting with montsers.

It's so fucking realistic of someone who genuinely researches and cares about these creatures, rather than superficially "liking animals" and then trying to assign human qualities to inherently inhuman creatures.

God.

Laios is fantastic fucking representation.

[non-binaryprince]

What I find really really compelling about Laios' special interest is this:

As a person who's special interest is dogs, I'll tell you right now that I fucking love them. I live in a city full of strays, and I actively go out of my way to pet, play with, and interact with them. It brings me a lot of joy and comfort to be able to be surrounded by puppies.

I will also be the first to tell you that, like it or not, dogs are animals - and animals, ultimately, can be unpredictable. They can be scared, they can be territorial, and they can be impulsive. And while I genuinely believe that there's no such thing as a bad dog or an angry dog - only a scared one - I also don't believe it makes a functional difference once a dog has bitten you what intentions it may have had.

Dogs are dangerous. I've seen people get bitten, I've been bitten, I've had close calls, some of which were my own fault and others which were not.

And Laios reflects this so beautifully, especially in the Kelpie arc. He's not blinded by his love for these creatures, he's not overtaken by baseless empathy - he understands, understands better than anyone, that these are at the end of the day monsters, and they are dangerous, and when push comes to shove sometimes you've just got to kill them. In fact it's his love for them that lands him this knowledge and understanding in the first place - just as I know that there's no room for fear and weakness when it comes to interacting with dogs, he knows there's no room for hesitation and empathy when it comes to interacting with montsers.

It's so fucking realistic of someone who genuinely researches and cares about these creatures, rather than superficially "liking animals" and then trying to assign human qualities to inherently inhuman creatures.

God.

Laios is fantastic fucking representation.

[non-binaryprince]

a BIG part of the lore of Dungeon Meshi is how ageism is bad. About how the long lived races treat the young lived races like children and thus infantilize them and do not show them the respect and understanding they deserve simply because of their looks or short life spans. Whether its because to them they look like children in their eyes (like half foots and gnomes) or because the adult ages of the younger lived races are still in the child ages for the longer lived ones and so they get treated/viewed as children (we see otta receive comments about getting with minors when in reality she dated adult half foot women. so we already see this view towards things like this are a thing in the lore) We see this with chilchuck, senshi, and marcille where the two later view chilchuck as a child and treat him like one even though he is a full grown man who drinks (and is supposed to have grey hairs) all because he looks young and in the newest episode its revealed he is 29 which is still young children to the two of them. We see how perspectives that characters are children because of their age being a childs age for a different race as opposed to their race or because they look like children is a completely infantilizing and disrespectful behavior that causes so many problems in the long run. a theme that is completely flying over the average tumblr users head.

ive seen people get furious at other people because they sexualize chilchuck and even marcille

“oh they look like kids so dont do that you freak”

you absolute fool you missed a major theme of the fucking story. But because they look young suddenly they are children? have you paid no attention to the story? did you just ignore how the ageisim and weird mindset about ages like that causes so many issues that could easily have been avoided. and as for the age one i see people getting furious at others for being into and sexualizing izutsumi even though she is a year past adult in tall man years, but because she isnt in the adult age range in real life (wild your applying real life society standards to a fictional medieval fantasy world). even though even in lore she would be well an adult able to get married and everything tumblr really does have the media literacy of a toddler.

[non-binaryprince]

please help me- i used to be pretty smart but i’m having so much trouble grasping the concept of diegetic vs non-diegetic bdsm!

gfkjldghfd okay first of all I'm sorry for the confusion, if you're not finding anything on the phrase it's because I made it up and absolutely nobody but me ever uses it, but I haven't found a better way to express what I'm trying to say so I keep using it. but now you've given me an excuse to ramble on about some shit that is only relevant to me and my deeply inefficient way of talking and by god I'm going to take it.

SO. the way diegetic and non-diegetic are normally used is to talk about music and sound design in movies/tv shows. in case you aren't familiar with that concept, here's a rundown:

diegetic sound is sound that happens within the world of the movie/show and can be acknowledged by the characters, like a song playing on the stereo during a driving scene, or sung on stage in Phantom of the Opera. it's also most other sounds that happen in a movie, like the sounds of traffic in a city scene, or a thunderclap, or a marching band passing by. or one of the three stock horse sounds they use in every movie with a horse in it even though horses don't really vocalize much in real life, but that's beside the point, the horse is supposed to be actually making that noise within the movie's world and the characters can hear it whinnying.

non-diegetic sound is any sound that doesn't exist in the world of the movie/show and can't be perceived by the characters. this includes things like laugh tracks and most soundtrack music. when Duel of Fates plays in Star Wars during the lightsaber fight for dramatic effect, that's non-diegetic. it exists to the audience, but the characters don't know their fight is being backed by sick ass music and, sadly, can't hear it.

the lines can get blurry between the two, you've probably seen the film trope where the clearly non-diegetic music in the title sequence fades out to the same music, now diegetic and playing from the character's car stereo. and then there are things like Phantom of the Opera as mentioned above, where the soundtrack is also part of the plot, but Phantom of the Opera does also have segments of non-diegetic music: the Phantom probably does not have an entire orchestra and some guy with an electric guitar hiding down in his sewer just waiting for someone to break into song, but both of those show up in the songs they sing down there.

now, on to how I apply this to bdsm in fiction.

if I'm referring to diegetic bdsm what I mean is that the bdsm is acknowledged for what it is in-world. the characters themselves are roleplaying whatever scenarios their scenes involve and are operating with knowledge of real life rules/safety practices. if there's cnc depicted, it will be apparent at some point, usually right away, that both characters actually are fully consenting and it's all just a planned scene, and you'll often see on-screen negotiation and aftercare, and elements of the story may involve the kink community wherever the characters are. Love and Leashes is a great example of this, 50 Shades and Bonding are terrible examples of this, but they all feature characters that know they're doing bdsm and are intentional about it.

if I'm talking about non-diegetic bdsm, I'm referring to a story that portrays certain kinks without the direct acknowledgement that the characters are doing bdsm. this would be something like Captive Prince, or Phantom of the Opera again, or the vast majority of bodice ripper type stories where an innocent woman is kidnapped by a pirate king or something and totally doesn't want to be ravished but then it turns out he's so cool and sexy and good at ravishing that she decides she's into it and becomes his pirate consort or whatever it is that happens at the end of those books. the characters don't know they're playing out a cnc or D/s fantasy, and in-universe it's often straight up noncon or dubcon rather than cnc at all. the thing about entirely non-diegetic bdsm is that it's almost always Problematic™ in some way if you're not willing to meet the story where it's at, but as long as you're not judging it by the standards of diegetic bdsm, it's just providing the reader the same thing that a partner in a scene would: the illusion of whatever risk or taboo floats your boat, sometimes to extremes that can't be replicated in real life due to safety, practicality, physics, the law, vampires not being real, etc. it's consensual by default because it's already pretend; the characters are vehicles for the story and not actually people who can be hurt, and the reader chose to pick up the book and is aware that nothing in it is real, so it's all good.

this difference is where people tend to get hung up in the discourse, from what I've observed. which is why I started using this phrasing, because I think it's very crucial to be able to differentiate which one you're talking about if you try to have a conversation with someone about the portrayal of bdsm in media. it would also, frankly, be useful for tagging, because sometimes when you're in the mood for non-diegetic bodice ripper shit you'd call the police over in real life, it can get really annoying to read paragraphs of negotiation and check-ins that break the illusion of the scene and so on, and the opposite can be jarring too.

it's very possible to blur these together the same way Phantom of the Opera blurs its diegetic and non-diegetic music as well. this leaves you even more open to being misunderstood by people reading in bad faith, but it can also be really fun to play with. @not-poignant writes fantastic fanfic, novels, and original serials on ao3 that pull this off really well, if you're okay with some dark shit in your fiction I would highly recommend their work. some of it does get really fucking dark in places though, just like. be advised. read the tags and all that.

but yeah, spontaneous writer plug aside, that's what I mean.

[non-binaryprince]

-Recording begins-

Spider-Man: Hi folks! I’d like to give a PSA to my usual villains, and anyone else with ideas for the next two months.

Spider-Man: *holds up a brick sized lump of metal* See this? It’s titanium!

Spider-Man: *starts flattening it out and shaping it*

Spider-Man: See, we all know that I’m crazy strong, but I never wanna really hurt anybody right? Right. While that hasn’t changed, something very important does right around this time of year.

Spider-Man: *pulls off a glove and pulls a chunk into a long stem with his nails carving lines for added texture*

Spider-Man: See, this is what we like to call exam season. Anybody who knows anything about college can tell you that it drives people up the wall, and I already climb mine when I’m antsy.

Spider-Man: *starts winding the thin sheet around the stem, delicately crimping petals in place*

Spider-Man: I do wanna be clear that this isn’t a threat, okay? I’m still not interested in crossing the line, which brings me to my point.

Spider-Man: *throws the titanium rose at the brick wall behind him, stem first, and embeds it all the way through*

Spider-Man: /That/ was restrained because I could focus enough to have full control. If I’m extremely tired or otherwise distracted, there’s just as much risk of me slipping up as someone operating heavy machinery. I’m probably not going to remember what sleep is for two whole months, so remember!

Spider-Man: *pulls out a brick and snaps it like a cookie*

Peter fucking Parker: Don’t.

[non-binaryprince]

young me especially would have hated hearing this but networking is literally the most important thing you can do to improve your situation like forget economic barriers to education etc just keep making friends with different people and eventually someone will offer you a hand up just because they dig your vibe and that is exactly all that's happening when undeserving people surpass you anyway

[non-binaryprince]

Maybe I missed it, but there's a bit of foreshadowing in Laios' nightmare that I don't see mentioned often. Namely, on these two pages:

I was reading this again, and I noticed that this monster has got to be Laios' "perfect monster" that he would later transform into, sans the wolf head that he adds later.

What struck me about this moment is a) he uses this made-up monster to literally squash the haunting memories of his dissappointed parents and all the negative human interactions that came before them in this moment. It's an early hint at the infamous moment later in the story, where the winged lion reads him like a book:

That insight completely reframed what he's doing in the dream. He's using his interests and fantasies to quite literally crush his negative feelings about humans and the terrible ways they've made him feel.

Not only that, but the moment he's dispelled it, Laios immediately rips his own human appearance to shreds, becoming a different form. Reading it for the first time, I assumed that he used his knowledge in order to think up a convenient way to change scenes and track down who he was looking for; using his insight in a utalitarian way inside the dream world.

However, what about now, that we know that Laios really wants to become a monster himself?

With the later context, it reads far more like he takes this route because within the dreamscape, he can shed the form he hates to become something more comfortable in order to do what he needs to.

It also made me think though, the fact he became the canine, instead of the monster... what does it mean? It could be utility sure, but it makes me think of something else, first.

Laios famously does an amazing impression of a dog, and demonstrates this at one point in order to scare a shapeshiter. It is convincing enough to scare the monster and have both Chilchuck and Senshi clock what he's impersonating immediately. Notably, he mentions that they "taught him how to hunt" which is kind of unusual for a dog to do. However, knowing Laios' intersts, it makes sense for him to have extensively studied their behaviors.

Perhaps the canine form is chosen in the dream because behaving like a dog is something he is simply so comfortable with doing it comes natural to him to take the shape. And perhaps it is so, because long before he chased down the monsters in the dungeon, he found a safe haven away from the humanity he hated with the dogs, and longed to be like them, much like he wants to be a monster now. But that's just my speculation.

Either way, I think that's a cool little moment foreshadowing some of Laios' true feelings about humanity at large and how he's coped by being mistreated by other people from a young age.

Possible disproval of this theory of course, with Laios reaction to Marcille's retelling of the dream at the end of the chapter:

Though, the objection he gives on the page is that he was a white WOLF, not a dog, rather than objecting to not being seen as a person during the chase in the dream.

[non-binaryprince]

what are exploring parties for if not for polyamorous shenanigans