#BUT IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

[dreamweave01]

Had a thought and went with it.

In other words, Shadow finally comes home.

[celeluwhenfics]

Ok, a random fact about my preparation for fieldwork

I will be working with an all-male team in a very remote, conservative area, and I've been advised to present myself as a married woman to avoid all kinds of questions and trouble.

So I went to a cheap jewelry store to get myself a fake ring.

But they only sold rings in packs, and there was no way to try them, and I didn't know my size, so I tried to guess.

Turns out none of them fit me.

And my partner laughs at me because they look fake as heck, asking where are my handful of very very cheap husbands 🤣

Now I feel like those orcs collecting rings in WotR 😆

Anyway, back to square one on my quest for the Ring!

[burrito-fight]

i'm most excited for the iris message in the next episode because i, a person who cannot visualize things, has had no idea wtf an iris message looks like for like fifteen years now

[unicornbeck]

There was love

But see, here's the thing: I didn't want the love of my life physically, because he didn't want that. I could never have imagined anything sexual with him, because he wasn't into what I was. There was love there. I know there was. But it wasn't an attraction kind of love. Wasn't like that. The longing that I felt was overpowering and nebulous, a fierce desire to shelter and protect and uplift and revere, maybe to worship sensually, but sex wasn't ever directly a part of that. I think that I knew, or sensed, even then, years before he came out, that he was gay, and I was the wrong configuration for all that. I loved him solidly, like a tangible object. It was something I could touch and taste and smell... I could trace the shape of that forever with my fingertips, read it like braille. It was so close--

But it wasn't mine.

[rioblitzle]

working retail

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[juiche]

They accidentally cut the last shot of the show, but I drew it for ya, you're welcome <3

get your own print here

[stealingpotatoes]

The real reason Ahsoka left the Jedi was bc she loved the beach but her master was Anakin (sand) so she left for a well-needed vacation

conspiracy what conspiracy they’re all fine no I’m not in denial

you're so right!! good thing that nothing bad happened and the extended skywalker fam all got to go on that beach trip ahsoka wanted!

(commission info // tip jar!)

[kwadlayns]

talk to me in french, talk to me in spanish 🍒

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

hero/villain showdown but one of them has a spontaneous medical emergency and the battle gets put on hold while their archnemesis drives them to Urgent Care

[tearlessrain]

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.

[1794]

john green if you're reading this you should play proverbs of hell available now for the low price of $10,000. anyone else if you're reading this you should play proverbs of hell available now for free

[nzchance]

evan buckley and the terrible horrible no good very bad season

(insp.)

[elucubrare]

there's this horrible school of attempted literary criticism on here that holds that 1. everything in any given author's work is autobiographical, especially if it seems "real" and 2. those themes seeped into the work subconsciously, revealing something about the author that they're either trying to hide or unaware of themself. it drives me up a wall, since it seems to deny the fundamental skills that make people good writers: the empathy to imagine and portray experiences that one hasn't had oneself and the ability to take one's personal emotional experiences or worldview and fold them, consciously, into the unworked clay of a narrative.

[casscainmainly]

Guess who's still thinking about them