utaoutauhito - Tumblr blog

[utaoutauhito]

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.

[utaoutauhito]

[utaoutauhito]

my mahoyaku fanart log 2021-2022

[utaoutauhito]

yuki machi quick doodle

[utaoutauhito]

[utaoutauhito]

[utaoutauhito]

(source)

Unsplash -  photography, illustration, & art

Pixabay - same as unsplash

Pexels - stock photos and videos

Getty Images - photography & illustration

Veceezy - vectors and clipart

Gumroad - photoshop brushes (and more)

StockSnap.io - stock photos

Canva - needs login but has lots of templates

Library of Congress - historical posters and photos

NASA - you guessed it

Creative Commons - all kinds of stuff, homie

Even Adobe has some free images

There are so many ways to make moodboards, bookcovers, and icons without plagiarizing! As artists, authors, and other creatives, we need to be especially careful not to use someone else’s work and pass it off as our own. 

Please add on if you know any more resources for free images <3

[utaoutauhito]

"their relationship is romantic" "their relationship is familial" "their relationship is platonic" you're thinking too narrow. their relationship goes beyond labels. the family is inherently queer. their platonic love is romantic. the erotic is familial. each one is the other and the other is them

[utaoutauhito]

When I’m reading smut and the author breaks the flow of the story so that the characters can tell us that they have enthusiastic consent it feels exactly like when Dora the Explorer looks directly into the camera and says ‘Seat belts so we can be safe!’ anytime she gets into a motorized vehicle.

[utaoutauhito]

“the arts and sciences are completely separate fields that should be pitted against each other” the overlap of the arts and sciences make up our entire perceivable reality they r fucking on the couch

[utaoutauhito]

what are those. you know. the hiding places in english houses they used to put catholic priests in when that was illegal. what are they called. anyway kirkwall hightown needs those for mages. do you guys know what i’m talking abt or is this post unintelligible

[utaoutauhito]

Reblog and put your rare pair in the tags/comments! I want to see the depths people will go to create, for the most random two characters in the most obscure media.

[utaoutauhito]

one of the best academic paper titles

[utaoutauhito]

A former stray very happy to be inside

[utaoutauhito]

i must ask you reblog this so said beast, you know. actually has attributes

[utaoutauhito]

I don't want to put my thoughts on the "is necrophilia gross, immoral, both, or neither" poll in the post itself cuz I wanna talk about it but not with potentially literally everyone who engages with the post ,

this is a post about the logistics of necrophilia please keep that in mind before opening

anyway interestingly it's hard for me to just answer the question "is fucking a dead body immoral in and of itself" because I think it's like. almost impossible to strip away all of the other actions around that act in reality. like if you got the corpse by graverobbing, graverobbing is immoral. and while the dead person could consent before their death, and then the act wouldn't be a transgression against them... the window of time between when a body dies and when it needs to be dealt with in some way is pretty small. are you going to fuck in the hospital bed where they died? then the hospital employees have to deal with that. are you going to fuck in the morgue? then the morgue employees have to deal with that. I also think funerary practices are really primarily for the good of the living, so... like, if they had loved ones who would be pretty upset if someone had sex with their corpse... even if the dead person agreed, I have kinda mixed feelings. the fact that it is so deeply upsetting to the families, who entrusted the care of their loved ones' bodies to a professional institution, is why morgue employees getting caught fucking cadavers is immoral imo. and outside of that kind of circumstance of abusing a job position for access, there would just need to be so much planning involved in a real world situation if it were going to actually avoid alerting or involving anyone else in knowledge of what happened. if the person's loved ones knew it was that person's wish to get fucked after they died and they were actually chill with that then that makes everything a lot easier though

[utaoutauhito]

5 simple exercises to awaken dormant muscles

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