#also the folklore!!!!!

[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.

[spyres]

[its-tortle]

— taylor swift albums as months of the year —

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

Summer – Thomas Dewing // The Hermit Thrush – Thomas Dewing // The White Birch – Thomas Dewing // seven – Taylor Swift

[minnesota-fats]

So I was looking up myths and such and found a Cù-sìth, found in both Irish and Scottish folklore. The Cù-sìth is described as a large dog like creature that has shaggy green fur and is as large as a small cow.

And I thought: Thats Cujo!!!!

The Cù-sìth are known for taking dying souls to the afterlife.

[miesozernacma]

lajkonik miku.

[turnipoddity]

A Scent of Jasmine

[marzipanandminutiae]

I've gotten some interesting responses to my post wondering if Um Actually 3 AM Is The REAL Time For Supernatural Occurrences was a traditional thing before I first noticed it in the creepypasta boom of the late 00s-2010s, as many of those creepypastas claimed. some of them along "guys. please. reading comprehension" lines, I admit

"Lots of cultures have a Witching Hour!" yes, true, but that's not 3 AM specifically. for a long time it was usually midnight, or an unspecified late night/wee hours of the morning period

"This author says 3 AM feels like depression or vice versa!" that is not about Spooky Things Happening; try again

"early Christian beliefs say-" "well, in traditional Japanese folklore-" sources??? (also from what I've seen while looking into this, the Hour of the Ox in historical Japanese timekeeping was between 1 AM and 3 AM- 3 AM specifically was the end of it, not the beginning. but it was a traditional time for curses)

A mention of 3 AM as a particularly bad time of night re: health, sleep, nightmares, etc. in Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), which DOES seem reliable and close enough to what I'm talking about

Apparently the 1974 Amityville murders happened at 3 AM, and of course that house had a highly public (probably faked) haunting. So that could have contributed

I haven't yet found anything earlier than that Bradbury reference that SPECIFICALLY mentions 3 AM as a time when scary and/or supernatural things happen, WITH ACTUAL SOURCES

Interestingly, the Bradbury quote doesn't seem to refer back to an existing cultural belief in the idea of Evil 3 AM(TM). rather it's framed as the narrator's personal feelings around that particular time of night:

"Oh God, midnight’s not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two’s not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning, there’s hope, for dawn’s just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three A.M.! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You’re the nearest to dead you’ll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you’d slaughter your half-dreams ... And wasn’t it true, had he read somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 A.M. than at any other time." [I can't find any credible studies of this, for the record]

so it seems like the seeds of the idea were floating around in the cultural consciousness for a long time, between unspecified Witching Hours and the Hour of the Ox curses and this probably erroneous but popular belief that most people who die in hospitals do so at 3 AM. but as for the very strictly-defined notion that Supernatural Things Are Most Likely To Happen At 3 AM...the earliest anecdotal reference I saw to someone having heard that was from the 1980s, and it doesn't seem to have really entered the zeitgeist with force until the late 2000s, earliest

unless someone shows me a source on something earlier, that's what I'm going with

which leaves my takeaway, as a paranormal believer, being: there's nothing supernaturally special about 3 AM, unless it has individual significance to a specific entity or haunting (ie residual apparition of an event that took place at that time). it's something people came up with for interesting fiction, as a fresh take on the longstanding western idea that the Witching Hour is midnight, and not even that long ago

[vela-pulsars]

not enough stonjourner art out there

[stillgotscars]

in honour of the one year anniversary of the eras tour, put your top three sets in the tags

[breakbleheavens]

TAYLOR SWIFT The Eras Tour — Sydney, Australia (Night 4) | February 26, 2024

[show-tunes]

Scrybeswap

I have a lot of scatterbrained design notes for each of them but generally I wanted them to look similar to their original designs but with different themes. I also imagine that they have the same inscribing tools as their original counterparts but just use them differently (i.e. Magnificus paints animals, Leshy takes pictures of people as they're dying/about to die, I'm not sure what the magic equivalent for P03 would be besides maybe a spellbook that copies the essence of things, and Grimora's quill would either "write" code or write directly onto the hardware of robots).

[radyo-kabaw]

THE BROTHERS BASONG AND BALIW

-Ayuquitan/San Jose: Baliw, in Negros Oriental and Siquijor Island: Legends, Beliefs and Folkways (ed. Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez)

[valdevia]

Happy Krampusnacht! Don't go to the forest alone tonight.

[likeadevils]

do we know the writing order for the songs off evermore?? i feel like taylor hasn’t ever really discussed the bts of that album a lot :(

taylor hasn’t (i mean she has a little, but kinda skattered all over), but aaron has! so we know some things (this is all mostly taken from these three interviews, if you want sourcing on something specific lmk)

dorothea was the first song, with closure following soon after. both of them were written “around folklore” but “after [it] came out”, so i’d guess sometime in mid july

in “late july” aaron sends the instrumental for willow over to taylor, and it kicks of another round of writing between the two of them (here's a full interview about the making of willow, but fair warning, it is extremely inside baseball)

no body no crime was confirmed to have been written remotely, sometime after aaron visited her in rhode island in early august and gave her a rubber guitar, but before she goes to lpss in mid september.

tis the damn season was explicitly written at long pond, on the second day of filming for folklore lpss (september 17)

champagne problems, gold rush, tolerate it, no body no crime, ivy, long story short, marjorie, evermore, and it’s time to go were all recorded at long pond studios, meaning taylor recorded them sometime between september 16-26, when she was there filming for the folklore lpss

sometime in early october, taylor leaves easter eggs for tolerate it and ivy in her interview with paul mccartney for rolling stone, confirming they were written by this time

coney island and cowboy like me were likely written in october/november, because they were recorded at marcus mumfords home studio in england (they also added joe playing the piano on evermore here). she does an interview from the studio for gma on november 25

right where you left me and happiness were the last two songs (happiness being The last), written one week before the album came out (this is extremely abnormal and insane of everyone involved)

[thegreatkarma]

the anti hero, the archer, this is me trying, mirrorball, nothing new, castles crumbling, foolish one girlies