#so much is happening!!!!

[hearteyesmcgarrett]

"Steve Carlsberg did you just accuse my boyfriend of being a secret operative?"

"Yeah."

"because that would be *cool*"

the old oak door eps of night vale are swinging me wildly from laughing to anticipation to anger to tears

[rioblitzle]

working retail

[beif0ngs]

THIS SPECIFIC SHOT OF JINX HOLDING ISHA TIGHTLY IN HER ARMS, AND SEVIKA INSTINCTIVELY USING HER ENTIRE BODY TO SHIELD THEM FROM THE EXPLOSION HAS A COMPLETE AND UTTER CHOKEHOLD ON MY HEART 🥺💔

I SWEAR IF ANYONE HURTS THEM I’M GONNA 🔪🔪🔪

[perrieedwards]

i feel like people are skimming over the uk riots in a way that makes me want to tear my hair out. muslims in the uk are in active danger. immigrants in the uk are in active danger. refugees in the uk are in active danger. people of colour in the uk are in active danger. asian communities in the uk are in active danger. black communities in the uk are in active danger.

there are massive far right riots throughout the country right now and people like fucking elon musk and nigel farage are inciting it and still have a platform to speak. people have used three young girls deaths, people's genuine grief in southport, to try and gain traction for their own racist bullshit and it's working.

a lot of refugee charities have been forced to close leaving many people without support, homes, funding, food, etc. if you aren't able to donate please consider sending a message via the conversation over borders campaign! it will send a hopeful, welcoming letter to a refugee in the uk. there is also a guide to staying safe here.

please do your own research and donate to refugee charities, anti-islamophobia charities, mosques who are trying to rebuild after being destroyed, counter protesters, here are some i've heard positive things about but the list is extensive; southport strong together (support for the southport victims and their families), southport mosque rebuilding, riot repair fund, middlesbrough vulnerable residents, nasir mosque rebuilding, hull help for refugees, bristol welcomes migrants,

[gongyussy]

(✿◕‿◕) die (ꈍ ꒳ ꈍ✿)

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

bumblebees first day out of sublevel 50

[thebeloathed]

I love flirty Stan that becomes a flustered mess the second it's reciprocated

[zenathered]

I just found out the most hilariously amazing thing.

[ninjasmudge]

last night i had a dream that i was playing minecraft and i noticed i had 77 blocks of cobblestone in one slot instead of it being capped at 64 and it was so jarring to me that it literally booted me out of the dream. like sure you can fly now and your childhood home is a pharmacy but 77 pieces of cobblestone? unthinkable. wake the fuck up.

[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.

[bioethicists]

every time a new SA allegation of a favored celeb arises, i'm reminded of the absolutely soul-crushing experience of the depp/heard trial in which i learned that dozens of ppl i loved + respected + trusted were also willing to engage in the basest form of misogyny if the woman Seemed Crazy Enough. there was a horrifying 2ish weeks on this website + much longer irl where i genuinely felt unsafe voicing my discomfort as i relived something eerily reminiscent of the aftermath of my own assaults playing out on screen, commented on by true crime youtubers like it was a red sox game.

it happens time + time again with every new allegation + it's truly the most agonizing + exhausting part of being a survivor. i am begging you all to consider that survivors are watching you engage with this stuff like theater + it erodes our trust in all of you + compounds our grief.

[casgirl]

people cosplaying on public transit are the backbone of our society and i am SO serious. there is no greater omen of good fortune than seeing hatsune miku on the bus.

[meticulousmaker]

another random thing that stands out to me rewatching Steven Universe as an adult:

throughout the show there's this clear Vibe that Steven has inherited some big magical destiny, right? and it makes sense narratively: he's the son of Rose Quartz, leader of the rebellion, now being raised by her friends who were the last remaining survivors of an interstellar war. he's like a human child in most ways, except he has magical powers that start to become more obvious as he's getting older. no one like him has ever existed before. it's a big deal. raising him and figuring out how he's going to grow is its own unique challenge, because nobody knows what to expect. so of course there's this magical destiny vibe, given all that.

What's interesting to me, though, is that this magical destiny is in no way literally, physically present in the story, it's just something everyone kinda feels. Like, there's not some ancient prophecy about a half-gem, half-human savior. He's not the Chosen One in any literal sense, he just happens to give off Chosen One vibes. And I say that's interesting because it means that the fact he was kinda raised with this Chosen One vibe is completely a decision everyone around him made, for better or for worse. And the show is aware of this, because the weight of Rose's legacy and everyone's expectations of him is a constant theme, and as Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl all grow and develop, they also realize the downsides of them putting those expectations on a child. Like, Steven spends his whole childhood being told about how great Rose was, and how because he's inherited her gem he will probably inherit her powers - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Imagine how awful things could have been if Steven had no exposure to the Gems and no knowledge of what they were or how they worked, and then his powers started coming in? It was hard enough even when he was surrounded by the most qualified Gem Experts on Earth. But being primed for all of this "you're going to have your mother's magical powers" stuff put a heavy weight on his shoulders, and then the fact that nobody else quite knew how his abilities worked meant he was constantly faced with the adults in his life looking to him with concern because they didn't know what was happening with him. That's gotta leave an impression on a kid - and, well, throughout the show and especially in SU Future we definitely see that it does.

I like the way the show handles the pressure that's put on him, and the fact that everyone is just... trying their best in a completely unprecedented situation. Nobody knows what to do or how to raise this kid, and that inevitably causes problems but everyone is trying. And Steven can feel that everyone is trying without knowing what to do and he just wants to help and not be a burden and none of his caretakers have said that he's a burden but he can feel everyone's confusion and concern and the expectations he's not living up to and he cares so much, about everyone, about everything. He's in an extremely unique position that grants him opportunities to help that nobody else has, and he feels like he's failing everyone if he can't fulfill that, and in the end it never should have been his job to fix things but somebody had to try. Somebody had to try, and he was one of the only people with the ability to stop the Diamonds, stop the war, stop the lies, stop his world and everyone on it from being destroyed... and he was just a kid.

[rozer0ry]

CW blood, violence

Rage .

[fabiansociety]

da2 isn't the best dragon age game *because* it's openly a tragedy, but being a tragedy forces a level of narrative coherence that the other games in the series don't have, and *that's* what makes it a better game.

okay, so. dragon age 2 runs on nested foreshadowing and a limited set of themes that almost every character and plot beat fall into: love is not enough, wealth is not enough, power is not enough, good intent is not enough. the problems you run into are structural, rather than individual, and your ability to resolve them as one person is strictly limited. the arishok is a central figure for this, because he prefigures every other tragedy and makes the game's thesis statement as clear as possible. he doesn't want to be in kirkwall, but he is compelled to remain until he gets back what was stolen. he doesn't want to lead a coup attempt, but he is compelled by qunari codes of justice to act. he does not want to die and fail his duty, but but he is compelled to by the other two impossible demands. every tragedy in kirkwall is the result of too many people with wildly different definitions of justice crammed into one place specifically designed to maximize human misery and suffering, and so you get a wonderfully nested narrative onion where each quest reinforces that idea, where there are no good options, just positions you can take — even the affinity system plays into that, where constantly gassing up your friends or constantly pushing them to change are equally correct ways to go, but ones that won't ultimately make a huge difference in their lives or characters, because no matter how much they like you, they're not under your control.

this coherence is even justified by the framing device. of *course* the moral of the game is "insisting on a dogmatic, narrow idea of justice destroys individuals and societies," it's a yarn being spun by varric the con artist to a chantry cop!

neither origins or inquisition play with that sort of narrative complexity. origins is a jaundiced hero's quest, certainly, but it's still basically a hero's quest; inquisition has a number of characters who question what you're doing and why, but the multitude of voices pulls the game in too many potential directions. DA2 was so constrained in its production that it pulled on decidedly ancient theatrical traditions, and it worked so, so well