#because it just works

[jamesisasimp]

I did it

"Even if this all ends up in a puddle of burning goo," Barty gesticulates wildly, "we can... go off together."

It took a while for him to get those last three words out, and it took Regulus just as long to fully understand them. "Go off together?" he repeats, like it was stupid. It was stupid. "Are you even hearing yourself?"

"We've been friends for over six thousand years-"

"Friends?" Obviously Barty can't hear a word he's saying because he's standing there acting like the most ridiculous thing in the world is a perfectly normal assertion to make. "We aren't friends."

"Well then what are we then?" Barty insists, throwing out his arms. "Huh? What? Lovers? Boyfriends?"

This is ridiculous.

It's all so fucking ridiculous.

"We are an angel and a demon," Regulus reminds him, since apparently he's forgotten. "We're on opposite sides of a war that's only hours away." In case he's forgotten that too.

But no, Barty hasn't. He wouldn't be here pleading with him like this, like such a complete, ignorant idiot, if he didn't think- no, know it was all about to end.

"Sides? We don't belong to them, Angel, we're on our own side-"

"There is no our side!" Regulus explodes. Then, softer, "There never was."

"Well now you're just lying to yourself," Barty, the expert on lies of the two of them, being who he is, sniffs him out in an instant.

"We're done Barty, it's over," he tries again anyway.

Even with those stupid glasses on, Regulus knows he doesn't believe him. He knows and it's making him desperate because he can't just abandon Armageddon all together. Not because he particularly fancies being at war, but because of the opposite. He's not the coward Barty seems to think he is - he's not the one trying to run away from this. He's the one trying to fucking stop it from happening entirely, if not for his own sake then for all those innocent humans that aren't ready to be judged yet. That never asked for this. That are caught in the crossfire just so good and evil, whatever the fuck those even mean anymore, can figure out who's best.

And he can't tell him, of course he can't, because... because Barty is still a demon. A demon who cares about him but a demon all the same, and he'll tell Regulus he's stupid for having hope, for trying to fuck with fate. And maybe he's right.

But Regulus has to try. If Sirius taught him anything it's that hope is worth the plunge, no matter what's waiting on the other side.

But that's not enough for Barty, of course it's not. To him, he's still just a stubborn coward that still believes in God's Plan. To Barty, he's given up on them, and he can't tell him that he'd never do that, not in another six thousand years, not in eternity if they ever even make it there.

He can't tell him.

And it breaks his heart, if he's even got one, because Barty looks just as desperate as he feels.

Then his jaw locks and his face hardens, he rips off his glasses and stands up a little straighter.

"And suppose," he grins, wicked, unkind, "when the war comes, that your side forgives every un-angelic thing you've ever done and mine forgives me, and you meet me on the battle field," he proposes, radiating cruelty because he knows. He fucking knows. "What then?"

And what can Regulus say?

That if he'd ever been put in front of Barty and asked to bring him to extinction he'd sooner find a way to throw himself into hell fire than do it?

"Then I will kill you," is what he says, because he can't say that. Not now, likely not ever.

"Can't kill a demon," Barty replies, yellow slitted eyes more fierce that he's ever seen them. A man, a demon, an... entity that's about to lose his best friend, his lover, his... something. Maybe his everything.

He's fighting with everything he's got, and Regulus can't let him win.

"What do you want me to say. That I'll pour holy water on you and watch you fucking melt?" he asks. "Is that what it'll take to make you fuck off?"

"No! Because you wouldn't mean it," Barty replies without missing a beat.

He's winning.

Regulus can't let him.

"Well I mean this," he says, or starts to say.

He regrets the words before they even get past his lips. But he has to say them. He has to hit where it hurts. He has to get Barty off his arse so he can do this- so he can fucking save them.

"You were never anything but a warm mouth to me, Barty, and you want to know why? Because you are fallen. You are damned. You are nothing." And the final blow. "Did you really think an angel could ever love a wretched from Hell like yourself?"

The words strike Barty hard, and the air around them freezes as they absorb into his skin.

Because, you see, the trouble with loving someone is that, in doing so, you give them a step my step guide on how to destroy you. Not with holy water or hell fire, but deep deep within. You don't even realize it, Barty certainly didn't, at least not until right now.

Barty hates, more than anything else, being a demon. He hates that he fell. Or rather, was pushed. He's ashamed of it, and Regulus was the only one who ever made him feel normal with those slitted yellow eyes.

Oh, it hurts. It hurts because there's no taking it back now, no coming back from this.

But there won't be anything to come back to anyway if he doesn't get this stupid war put off.

"You're lying," Barty tries, voice breaking, tight as a string and unnaturally still. He's not asking, but begging for it to be true.

He can't tell him that it is. So Regulus says, "Am I?" and then it all crumbles.

The softness that accompanied the desperation hardened once more, his eyes got sharp and his jaw tightened, the perfectly procured, emotionless demon mask sliding right back into place. Barty reached up and slid his sunglasses back on his face to cover up his eyes and took two steps back, wearing his betrayal and rage underneath it all without shame.

"Fuck you, Regulus."

He means it.

"Not anymore, you don't."

Regulus does too.

Barty doesn't look back but flashes a sarcastic wave over his shoulder as he stalks off. "Have a nice doomsday."

[werewolf-transgenderism]

keep seeing undergrads on social media saying “oh if a prof has a strict no-AI academic integrity policy that’s a red flag for me because that means they don’t know how to design assignments” like sorry girl but that just sounds like you’ve got a case of sour grapes about not being allowed to cheat with the plagiarism machine that doesn’t know how to evaluate sources and kills the environment! I have a strict no-AI policy because if you use AI to write your essays for a writing course it’s literally plagiarism because you didn’t write it and you’re not learning any of the things the course teaches if you just plug a prompt into the plagiarism generator that kills the environment, hope this helps!

[cemeterything]

every so often i just think about how good it was that the most foolproof one-size-fits-all solution for dealing with basically any horrifyingly evil supernatural monster of the week in the magnus archives was just. burying them in concrete. like yeah i can believe that a few tons of grey brutalist slop would stop the wolfman or pretty much anything in its tracks to be honest. they use that shit on nuclear waste. do you honestly think you're stronger than a nuke? a fucking nuke?

[cozylittleartblog]

cant tell you how bad it feels to constantly tell other artists to come to tumblr, because its the last good website that isn't fucked up by spoonfeeding algorithms and AI bullshit and isn't based around meaningless likes

just to watch that all fall apart in the last year or so and especially the last two weeks

there's nowhere good to go anymore for artists.

edit - a lot of people are saying the tags are important so actually, you'll look at my tags.

#please dont delete your accounts because of the AI crap. your art deserves more than being lost like that #if you have a good PC please glaze or nightshade it. if you dont or it doesnt work with your style (like mine) please start watermarking #use a plain-ish font. make it your username. if people can't google what your watermark says and find ur account its not a good watermark #it needs to be central in the image - NOT on the canvas edges - and put it in multiple places if you are compelled #please dont stop posting your art because of this shit. we just have to hope regulations will come slamming down on these shitheads#in the next year or two and you want to have accounts to come back to. the world Needs real art #if we all leave that just makes more room for these scam artists to fill in with their soulless recycled garbage #improvise adapt overcome. it sucks but it is what it is for the moment. safeguard yourself as best you can without making #years of art from thousands of artists lost media. the digital world and art is too temporary to hastily click a Delete button out of spite

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

being a student during peak pandemic was so fucking surreal like. "it's not an excuse to fall behind" I cannot stress enough to you how much A Worldwide Plague Upending Life As We Know It is literally one of The Top Three Reasons to fall behind

[bereft-of-frogs]

There’s that post that’s like ‘everyone should get into a tiny niche fandom at least once’ fully agree, that was really fun -- but I would like to add that everyone should get into a fandom where their opinions run counter to major fanon because it really teaches you about sticking to your guns and trusting your interpretation of the text without having to rely on peer validation

because WHAT are people talking about sometimes

[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.

[artkaninchenbau]

A h-heartfelt reunion..?

Bonus

[shay-creates]

Apparently, my decision to be silly and make fanart of someone's writing (because I genuinely enjoy the story the person is writing and I was struck with inspiration upon reading a particular scene) has benevolent and wildly unforeseen consequences.

I apparently gained a bit of control of the canon because said writer really loved the art and decided what I drew/draw is canon.

2. Writer put said artwork into the document of his story right below the scene, so now it's IN the story where people who read the story will see it (with a link to me)

3. He sent the artwork to all his friends and people he knows because he was so excited

Wholesome interaction and I watched him do all that in real time, good stuff. However...there are two more consequences I was notified of today...nearly a full week after I gave the artwork.

Seeing the artwork caused his friends to become interested in reading and hearing about his story, which means more people are reading what he's writing and giving him critique on the story (which he actively asks for).

Apparently, upon seeing the art, his writer friends got a sudden second wind to pick back up writing they'd abandoned for a few months. Because, I quote, "seeing that someone enjoyed {his} writing enough to take the time to make art of it gave them the motivation that maybe THEY can write something that will inspire someone to also create something." I have accidentally caused a writing frenzy among his writer friends and my silly idea to make art for someone has had a butterfly effect for people who I don't even know.

Uhh...I'm pretty sure there's a moral here but I am tired and have a great deal of emotions about this.

[july-19th-club]

seriously have been thinking about this all night long. call me autistic but the fact that 90% of workplaces the point is not to get your work done and then be done doing it but to instead perform an elaborate social dance in which you find something to do even when you're done doing everything you need to do in order to show your fellow workers that you, too, are Working . because you are at Work . disgusting why cant we all agree that if there is no work immediately to be done. we just dont do anything

[blueskittlesart]

i hope everyone in nintendo’s management department dies and goes to hell no matter what and i’m not kidding

[beaft]

fascinated by tumblr's new trend of placing a Mature label on every single post that acknowledges, however obliquely, the existence of sex and sex byproducts

[fairydriver]

if you post an image in discord itll round the corners, but once you hit a certain smallness it rounds into a circle. so basically if you make an image that is 32x32 and you post it in discord itll go from this

to this.

so you basically can just draw a little face in mspaint or something and paste it into discord and itll look like a little emoji. you can potentially mess around with this a lot, its proportional to your image going smaller and it doesnt have to be a square either.

[lgbtlunaverse]

There's a version of the "don't go grocery shopping while hungry" rule specifically for writers where you should never under any circumstances be allowed to touch your draft within 3 hours of reading a really good story. Because sometimes when you read something great your head goes "fuck this is so much better than my stuff I should make that more like THIS instead!" Look at me. That's the devil talking and you should close the document NOW.

[cozylittleartblog]

"content creator" is a corporate word.

we are artists.