decafvillain

[decafvillain]

“blue” 👁️👁️

[decafvillain]

i think we’re hunting each other for sport. in another universe

[decafvillain]

'he would not fucking say that' maybe he would if he knew he was starring in his very own porn fic for the sole purpose of delighting some freaks on archive of our own dot org. maybe he'd play it up for the cameras. ever consider that

[decafvillain]

[decafvillain]

10,000 years ago, someone carried a baby through the rain and left their footprints in an ancient lakebed. Whether they were the baby’s mother, sibling, stranger, we can’t know. Only that they walked one way together, but the footprints on the return were alone. What separated them, we cannot know. Only that they were together for a moment. Only that in the lakebed, they’re together forever.

30,000 years ago, an infant was buried beside its identical twin, having only survived a few weeks longer than the stillborn sibling. What happened to them, we cannot know. Only that perhaps one could not stand life outside the womb without the other. Only that they were apart for a moment, Then together forever.

In 100 years when the dam breaks and the lake where we learned to swim becomes a river again, will it wash us away?

In 10,000 years I don’t think anyone will find imprints of our flip-flops Or the grooves where our little hands dug motes in pebble-sand To protect mud-drip castles.

You asked to be ashes in the sea. And so we scattered you.

If I’d had my way, we would have walked together much farther. And you’d have been tucked into the soil, waiting for me.

They would have found my footprints beside yours, both ways. They would have found a lock of my hair clutched in your hand.

Your name, they could not know.

Only that, for a moment, you were someone’s sister.

[decafvillain]

Not that there's anything wrong with having something wrong with you

[decafvillain]

In fact, based on the evidence, I find it highly unlikely that Sasha ever even existed at all.

[decafvillain]

A young girl lying on a statue of a blacksmith, Bismarck National Monument, Berlin, 1961 - by Floris M. Neusüss (1937 - 2020), German

[decafvillain]

I love personalization. I love stickers on water bottles and on laptops. I love shitty marker drawing on the toes of converse. I love hand embroidered doodles on jeans. I love posters on walls. I love knick knacks on shelves. I love jewelry with goofy charms. I love when people take things and make them theirs.

[decafvillain]

ive decided to become a Lawful Good edgelord abt driving a car. *looks broodily away from you* what's wrong...? no, you wouldn't understand. I've been burdened with a great and terrible power. a lethal metal machine that obeys my every whim but which whispers dark things to me...tempting me to move ever faster, to grow careless in my movements... I've seen this power corrupt many others. my father. my great-aunt veronica. I've seen them neglect the wisdom of the turn signal. I've seen them text while driving. every day I must remain vigilant lest I become over-used to this dark power......

[decafvillain]

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.

[decafvillain]

White goats - Lionel Lindsay - 1925 - via National Gallery of Victoria

[decafvillain]

Richard Misrach. Untitled, from The Mysterious Opacity of Other Beings, 2012.

[decafvillain]

James Zamora, The Egg Aisle, 2024

6 x 6 in

[decafvillain]

they should let you kill yourself if you have to go to work in a few minutes

[decafvillain]

Gay Times: The Power Issue (2025) photos by @lindsayperryman from their series Tops, a photo series and film capturing moments of life after top surgery