you came back wrong and i am racked with guilt because i cannot bear to see you like this and i should have let you rest. i loved you so much that i defied death itself but i do not think either of us are happy

Since the OP made their post unrebloggable (and blocked me. Both actions they are well in with their right to do)

I'm going to make my response it's own post because I think the point is important

-

As someone who is autistic and has BPD and CPTSD and loads of trauma yes you sometimes need to change how you interact with others to keep people around

When I was 13 I hit the few friends I had when I was angry

I had to change that in order to keep those friendships

When I was in my early 20s if I was losing an disagreement with my husband I would threaten to kill myself. My husband told me it hurt him and was cruel and manipulative behaviour, because it was.

So I worked hard to change that to keep my relationship

It's easy to say "I shouldn't have to change for others" and that's true to an extent. You shouldn't change your interests or passions or dim your light. And you should have space to be imperfect and flawed and not have to pretend your ugly bits aren't real. But if something you are doing it causing other people harm you kinda need to change that.

That's called "living in a society"

People adapt to each other and make space for each other in their lives. You adapt to them and they adapt to you

You start being more diligent about throwing away the empty toilet roll because it really bothers them. They start warning you before they run the blender because you hate loud noises

I stopped threatening to kill myself because I was mad I was losing an argument and my husband stopped being so vocally judgemental amount media he personally dislikes

There is a certain type of person who heard the phrase "your emotions are valid" and took that to mean "my emotional reactions and my behaviour are always objectively correct because my emotions are valid and if you have an emotional response or react to what I'm doing negatively then you are wrong and you can't be hurt because my emotions are valid"

And that's a recipe for disaster

Your emotions are valid to feel. They are how you feel and there are reasons you feel the way you do

However, your reactions and behaviour are something you can learn to control and can be irrational

We live in a society and we as people change each other as we interact and that isn't necessarily a bad thing

I just…people still really don’t get it. We don’t get to direct the lives of public figures. We don’t get to tell them who to be, who to date, what causes to be vocal about. Because public figures are still just people. Real people. And internet keyboard warriors not only don’t see it they don’t give a fuck that bullying these real actual human beings does nothing to further whatever agenda they have but does wound the real person behind the persona. All they care about is the illusion of moral purity and that just. Isn’t real. No one is morally pure. Do your best but it’s not black and white. You’re fucking up too, just like whoever you’re attacking.

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.

source

Martin Starr · Party Down 1x06

Things that work in fiction but not real life

torture getting reliable information out of people

knocking someone out to harmlessly incapacitate them for like an hour

jumping into water from staggering heights and surviving the fall completely intact

calling the police to deescalate a situation

rafting your way off a desert island

correctly profiling total strangers based on vibes

effectively operating every computer by typing and nothing else

ripping an IV out of your arm without consequences

heterosexual cowboy

I think the most ridiculously stupid thing about the current western anti-Zionist movement is how much they hate my actual stance on the I/P region. Not the war, necessarily—but the longterm solution.

Because, like, my only criteria for a “good” longterm solution to I/P is one which honors both peoples’ (Jews and Palestinians) cultural ties and rights to the land; one that takes both their concerns—especially that of safety—seriously and accounts for it. The details? That’s something people better and smarter and more powerful than I can debate and hammer out—but anything less than the unwavering commitment to respecting the rights and humanity of all affected parties is an unacceptable outcome, and I cannot for the life of me understand how that could be offensive to anyone.

And YET.

It finally occurred to me today as I was rolling my eyes at yet another post calling for a bloody uprising against the oppressors and saying "peace was never an option!" exactly what bothers the crap out of me about this mentality. By saying "peace was never an option" and contrasting it with violence, what they are really saying is that "pacifism, the negative peace that comes from an absence of conflict, and inaction were never an option." Which is true! Oppressed people have never gained rights simply by complying and trying to please their oppressors.

However, that is not only not the only option, but it's not even what is being proposed by the people arguing for alternatives to either inaction or violence. Diplomacy, protest, well organized strikes, mutual aid, incremental change through within-system advocacy, and coalition building are all things that exist outside this false binary. (And annoyingly to many in the mob violence fandom, these things tend to work better and get fewer marginalized people killed.)

But people are referring to both pacifism and diplomacy as "peace," and thus conflating them to make people feel like their options are either make peace with the boot on their neck or set the world on fire.

Katara: We can't lose. Because we have this. *points to her chest*

Zuko: We have heart?

Katara: Heart? No, me. I'm pointing at myself. I'm going to win this for us.

I really don't think the majority of kids online are overwhelmingly sex negative or puritanical, I instead think that most kids who don't think like that probably aren't going to be posting about sex positivity on public accounts with their real ages listed. for very obvious reasons.

if you think what happened to John Green on this site was cool and fun then I don't like you

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ALBUM OF THE MODERN AGE

rewatched atla

People are always saying things like “you shouldn’t do this because it removes a characters agency” and other variations of.

And i just want people to understand that removing a character’s agency is not inherently bad. Sometimes that’s what the story is about!! People in real life often lack agency and control of their own life and even actions in cases of extreme manipulation. It is a thing that happens to people and sometimes it is a thing depicted in fiction on purpose.

“Don’t write him like that, it removes his agency” - that’s the point. That IS the point. Some of us enjoy exploring what it does to a person to be manipulated or controlled in whatever form that takes and also how you might heal from it.