#yknow!!!

[natjennie]

so like obviously we the audience couldn't have known about the ghosts' deaths before the show introduced them to us, largely via alison as an audience surrogate. but the way they're presented so often means that they are mysteries to the ghosts themselves. some of them are pretty unmistakable and obviously the ghosts that were there when it happened know, but even then. it seems like they just don't talk about it.

for example, when fanny opens up about being pushed by george and thomas says "I did know that, I was there" but like. you never brought it up before? in the couple hundred years of knowing her, you never mentioned it. and in the thomas thorne affair, which is all about the ghosts having different perspectives on thomas' death, the information each of them reveal is like. new to the other ghosts. which implies that they've never really talked about it together before.

which is fascinating because it could read either as like. being respectful of their privacy. which is sweet. or you can believe the sadder version which is that they just didn't talk to each other. hundreds of years together and they never asked. they never said "do you want to talk about it?" they never offered comfort on a death day. never shared the details of their own deaths. this read is corroborated pretty solidly by the bone plot and pineapple day.

and then there's also the aspect of the order the deaths are revealed making perfect sense with each of the ghosts' personalities and openness as people.

pat is an open book, trusting and genuine, and his cause of death is unmistakable. and his death day flashback is the earliest in the series. humphrey's cause of death is obvious but the circumstances are not, but when asked he's willing to share. and then most of the ghosts stop listening when they think he's a hero. hesitant to initiate conversation because it was so drilled into him by sophie's disinterest, and forgotten as soon as he's not important. thomas believes in the most romantic version of his own story, editorializing and glamorizing his betrayal to alison and being devastated when the truth is pieced together, mirroring his constant attempt to make things more idealized than they are, and his rare and poignant moments of sincerity. kitty's naivety and optimism made her truly believe she just fell asleep, never bothering to question the details of her death, and the ghosts knew just enough about eleanor's bullying to suspect her, but would never confront kitty about it directly. her episode comes late in the series and has a lot of intrigue and staging for a very mundane truth. and the captain!!! the last death reveal of the show, holding on to his attempted deception and secrecy until the very end, trying to bolster his image as a leader to the other ghosts and only succeeding in looking silly, being made to perform a role he isn't very good at for the chance of acceptance. and oh, look at that, that's exactly how he died.

anyway, this post got away from me but like. the utter craft that went into this show astounds me it's all so perfect. are you hearing this.

[dnangelic]

i don't keep a wishlist tag or anything but i always think it'd be fun if dark had an antagonistic relationship with an older muse only for him to turn back into daisuke at a critical moment, leaving the older muse surprised bc that's a whole ass Baby.

[ilostyou]

enough for you 🤝 pretty isn’t pretty

[isthattetofrommesmerizer]

*𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐋 𝐏𝐈𝐏𝐄 𝐒𝐅𝐗*

[thekidsare-not-alright]

Pete Wentz and the Lil Screamy Screams

[ind1c0lite]

I have so many thoughts abt Franziska getting shot in farewell my turnabout- A year after she finds out her own father is a murderer and months after he dies she gets shot in the EXACT same place he was, the exact same injury that condemned Von karma

[silvercaptain24]

can also has hug?

Yeah!

[sunlit-mess]

niffty styled his hair for sure

[mr-malumm]

Caught spying on his hate boyfriend

[meowydoe]

FORTY THOUSAND NOTES OLIVE OSTROVSKY????

[perenial]

sorry for finding it hot when people's hair goes grey. as if im wrong

[ilostyou]

and i wake with your memory over me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[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.

[socksandcrocs]

Charlie would definitely make her dad participate in the hotel exercises lmao

[thesinglesock]

in a modern AU Link would be Zelda's only friend with a driver's license and their chat history would look like this

[t00thpasteface]

these are my thotz as someone who has been directly exposed to 2022 and 1966 batman within less than a month: there's a sweet spot between silly/gloomy ways to write bruce wayne, there's unpleasant extremes, and then there's the real extremes that are such weird little freaks that they make perfect sense