#stages of negotiation

[quixotin]

When Neil Gaiman said season 2 would be quiet, gentle, and romantic he forgot to add, "for everyone except that pair of bastards, Crowley and Aziraphale."

[rosekasa]

there is something so. intensely frustrating about feeling incapable of showing up for people the way that they want you to

[unopenablebox]

my mom recently reminded me that when i was in 5th grade my teacher would periodically report to her that i was "sneaky" because i would ask to use the bathroom during class and instead go retrieve things from my locker that i had forgotten to bring with me

and even at the time she thought this was ridiculous and obviously not representative of an intrinsically deceitful nature, fortunately for me. but it's really extra ridiculous looking back on it now as a 28-year-old research professional who has to double back into the room i just left for some combination of gloves, tube rack, ice bucket, or samples at least once a day, a quality absolutely no one cares about or would ever make me justify to another person and which i therefore don't have to tell contrived lies about

[clonehub]

i wonder at what point it was that the republic/gar decided to be lax with clone's curfew and things like that. like maybe they said okay everyone back to base by 10 PM sharp every night. and then the clones discovered benders.

[pulse-oflife]

Prompt #11 // Surrogate

Kirah was currently upside down on a sofa, head dangling near the floor as she stared off into the distance. G'raha was sitting normally across from her, reading a book and ignoring the small, somewhat annoyed, noises she was making. She looked rather ridiculous, hair fanned out messily across the sofa and floor while the tip of her tail flicked back and forth. Eventually she tired of being pointedly ignored and rotated herself back into a normal sitting position. "But why can't you go this meeting?" she asked, containing a conversation they'd been having prior to her sulk. "I don't want to! You're better at talking to people anyway." G'raha looked up from his book and smiled a bit.

"My friend, I have attended many meetings regarding minor administrative details over the course of my time as the Exarch. I rather think I am due a respite from them." Kirah's ears flattened a bit in embarrassment at forgetting this - she'd drawn a distinction between the Crystal Exarch and G'raha Tia in her mind, which not the case. He was, despite the often excited exterior, still the same man who'd essentially led the Crystarium for decades. "I do understand your frustration, however. This particular meeting does not seem to be one that truthfully requires your presence. I would venture that the organizers invited you merely for the cachet of having the Warrior of Light attend." He looked at her with a very mischievous expression, eyes twinkling. "I think it would be best to send Tataru in your place, as this is ostensibly a meeting regarding a budgetary request." 

Apparently G'raha read her correspondence with more attention than she did, as Kirah hadn't realized what this was supposed to be about. "That's an excellent idea! She can send my apologies for not attending as financial matters are not my strong point." Her expression brightened. "I think some lunch would be a much better idea. Would you care to join me?"

[deus-ex-mona]

last stage: coming soon next week… probably lmao

[goodobservationshirley]

seeing as the start of the race is at the time the broadcast started all week i thought we might get to see the whole stage today but no... the broadcast will start at 4pm...

[phagodyke]

was gonna say smth else but this turned into a vent sorry everyone just ignore. typical weekend post on this blog u know how it is here we go👍

[cowboyhorsegirl]

Steve is most likely to end up in a lavender marriage and Tony's most likely to end up in a “married for tax/immigration/inheritance fraud” reasons.

They meet as married men and pine for each other hardcore and are also trying not to read too much into how their interest seems reciprocated and oh nooooo both Immigration/the IRS and the the Church/in-laws/DADT era army dudes or whatever are snooping around at the same time at each of their marriages and they have to be so good at being married at the people they are married to oh noooooo and they other guy doesn’t know why they are suddenly being iced out and maybe they were just imagining things? maybe it’s for the best with all these eyes around on them…

[jmjkjjk]

Aziraphale: [shows him heaven reformed]

Crowley: You did that?

Aziraphale: Yeah just this morning.

Crowley: Fuck off!

Aziraphale: What?

Crowley: You did not reform heaven this morning!

Aziraphale: Yes I did!

Crowley: You DID NOT reform heaven this morning!

Aziraphale: I DID!

Crowley: I don’t believe you!

[mariocki]

Edward Woodward guest stars as Jack Liskard, Prime Minister of an unspecified African country and the target of multiple assassination attempts, in The Saint: The Persistent Patriots (5.15, ITC, 1967)

[ksclaw]

In case anyone outside my circle of regular folks wonder about my personal life, this has been me since late june.

[vampirecatboy]

was trying to decide whether i want my trio to be a hinge situation, where Wyll and Astarion are with Aja but not with each other, or if i want it to be a full triangle from the get-go

then i realized how funny it would be if it started as an Aja hinge, and they're sort of like "I'd rather not... with him" because they're so different but Aja gets more and more invested in getting them together and they like reluctantly (kicking and screaming for Astarion) try it out "for Aja" because they both care about him

but then oops they catch feelings like absolute idiots

[definitely-not-an-alb]

reading and indi-rpg that actually seems to have math core concepts instead of blindly copying things, and has some crunch in the places that need crunch, but also has the messiest version of baked into the rules ‘failing forward‘ I’ve seen yet

[flovverworks]

this is just me wanting to ramble for the billionth time, but my key points for gran aus are always 1) seemingly out-of-reach goal the average person would call impossible 2) preferbly about some kind of travel 3) their dad has succeded, or is off doing it, or similiar. putting gran in either a position where they do not meet their dad at all or meet him very, very rarely.

FOR AKIRA its less....specific situation and more feelings based....??? which is why i end up introducing the wizards in aus anyways & why putting akira Solo in things is so difficult for me, because the wizards are very important to akiras overall character(mental). akira prior to meeting them is a lot more timid and avoidant, very 'the days are simply passing by' stuck in a loop of menial tasks. they do enjoy things & they do lov their friends, but they struggle w 'one of many' and supporting their own heart. post-mhyk akira is more confident in themself and does more clearly speak up & take the first step, even if theyre still hesitant. lots more appreciating things & better navigating when things goes wrong, and in general just seeming more secure in themself. which makes aus ssoooooooo difficult cuz 1) akira will always be a Normal Little Guy (aside from the times when i can make their role as sage & sages wizards relevant) 2) my most important akira thoughts r about what they learn from the wizards. which means ill always have to fit a few of them in there, whether thats them being w akira or akira having met them. 'just take them out' I CANTTTT MY HEART WONT ALLOW IT...FREQUENTLY BOUGHT TOGETHER........

aka for gran i just need a travel scenario & for akira i am fighting my brain cuz im making everything harder for myself

[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.