#relever

[blakbonnet]

peak philosophy in ao3 tags

[littlemut]

[muffinlevelchicanery]

[dxsole]

Esme doesn't really dance anymore outside of classes. Dancing, in her world is indicative of both actual ballet dancing and fighting— due to her current agreement with the High Table, she is not in the field and thus her abilities are only utilized for teaching.

Esme doesn't enjoy being forced to fight outside of a working environment and should she be attacked, her method is to as quickly as possible subdue and knock out her opponent or flee. She is not going to engage in a long-winded battle when she could just leave.

That being said, she does still dance ballet, usually after hours in the practice room. She always loved it, hence how she got started with the High Table in the first place. Esme doesn't usually allow an audience during these times, not even her students. If you are ever invited to watch one of her solo practices, that usually indicates that she feels comfortable enough around you to let her guard down, which is saying a lot for an assassin.

[problemnyatic]

While we're on the subject of swinging our fists at God

The ACLU is gonna take action against Mastercard for their anti-porn schtick! Y'know, one of the major reasons the internet turned to shit in the last ten years? It's literally like 95% of the way there, we just need a few more signatures and the petition Gets There. You have to be USAmerican to sign, but there's enough of us here to fill in the last few signatures needed several times over, so go on over and throw your name on there!!

[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.

[ftmtftm]

You all realize Feminists have been critiquing "women only spaces" for decades right?

I think often about Audre Lorde's critique of a women only event that welcomed her wife and daughter, but not her son. Because she questioned it - the function and purpose of barring even the sons of Feminist women from Feminist events. Especially the barring of her young Black son, who would otherwise be left alone in the city where he would be more prone to the very violence those same Feminist women claimed to want to change.

Because what functional, forward thinking Feminist purpose does it actually serve to do that? What message does that send to women with sons, husbands, brothers, lovers, friends, who want to involve the men and boys in their lives in their activism? Who want to build a functionally better world for us all outside of the oppressive grasp of Patriarchy? Especially for the marginalized men who often sit at their own intersection violent Patriarchal oppression, that still happens to be Patriarchal oppression despite it not being distinctly misogyny?

What purpose does it truly serve to sequester yourself away into a pocket of the world, detached from those you share it with? What bright and shining future does that really promise you?

[cosmicredcadet]

Sometimes...characters being in a romantic relationship is worse.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

oh to live in only mildly interesting times

[great-and-small]

Bird identification is so fucked up in a really fun way you can’t understand until you get into it. For example, there is a type of goose called the cackling goose that looks exactly like a Canada goose except smaller and “cuter”. The cackling goose is way, way, more rare in most places than its relatively common cousin, so it’s on tons of birders life lists. Everyone wants to see a cackling (look in any bird ID group to see lots of hopeful people posting petite Canada geese). The two species regularly commingle, so sometimes a flock of those common parking lot birds will have the equivalent of a Pokémon shiny just hanging out in the middle of them.

How ridiculous and fun is that? I can never look at a big group of Canada geese without scrutinizing their ranks for an adorable little extremely rare cutie pie cackling goose. It reminds me a bit of mushroom harvesting minus the risk of death if you get it wrong

[atinystraykid]

“If you have time to be on social media, you also have time for…” “If you have time to watch Netflix, you also have time for…” Yeah, but do I have the energy for it? Do I have the emotional and mental capacity for it? Am I pain-free enough for it? Can I focus on it? Can I do it without leaving my bed? Can I safely do it without risk of (physically or emotionally) injuring myself by pushing past my boundaries?

[muffinlevelchicanery]

[soliusss]

Funniest thing I’ve seen on tiktok are those sigma male boys getting mad that American psycho was written by a gay man and going “well I like fight club better” buddy I’ve got some world ending devastating news for you