reddit:

literally every other WOT viewer in the world:

There’s something about duality of fandoms, on one hand there’s so many cool metas and gorgeous arts and you meet your friends… and at the same time so many shitty opinions and the fandom literally giving you creeps at certain points - to the point that you’re starting hating some ideas and they’re ruining your mood and you realise you need to step away because soon you won’t even be able to look at that tv show anymore.

small brain: the scene where jayce gets it on w mel and the scene where sky asks viktor out and he refuses are paralleled to show that jayce has decided to focus on politics (mel) and neglect his partnership with viktor, while viktor continues to focus on science and experimentation (as well as poiting out viktors growing isolation from those around him).

big brain: the scene where jayce gets it on w mel and the scene where sky asks viktor out and he refuses are paralleled to show that viktor is not interested in women and is gay. and in love with jayce.

i saw the “erin kellyman should play scottie from She Drives Me Crazy in a movie remake” discourse on my twitter but i am not active enough on twitter to echo this sentiment there but SHE TOTALLY SHOULD FUCKING PLAY SCOTTIE FRIM SHE DRIVES ME CRAZY THIS WAS SUCH A GOOD TAKE

but also absolutely love that we are at a time in sapphic rep that on two major platform tv series we have two queer actors, playing canon queer characters, and are BOTH redheads so like really even if erin didn’t get it i would be elated if liv hewson got it

Eve: Bottling up negative emotions is bad for your health, so you shouldn't do it.

Seto: I know, that's why I bottle up all my emotions, both positive and negative, so it cancels out.

Eve: Th-that's not how that works-

Actually, the two are pretty open with each other.

Been thinking about puppets and strings of fate recently and am channeling that into my two Holy Lady™ DnD characters

Etsy

girls literally only want one thing and it's fucking disgusting

[life size replica of Courier's bike]

you people are so fuckin annoyinggggg when will it end

.

I don't understand why the hell HBO Rome (or as I call it, Game of Romes, since it feels like a re-skin of Game of Thrones ngl) needs to significantly change historical events.

The show takes place during the fall of the Roman republic! AKA one of THE most interesting, densely packed 15-year periods of history to ever take place!!!!

There is shit that happened during that time that is unbelievable except for the fact that we have proof! And if you as a writer want us to be able to believe those moments, you can't just randomly change shit to make it so actually it was your special OCs who brought down the Roman Republic!!!

Special shout out to Roman Cersei AKA 'Octavian's mom but for some reason she is literally just Cersei from Game of Thrones' [edit: I have just been informed this show came out like 10 years before Game of Thrones. So I guess Cersei is actually the new Atia!]

if i really scratch my head i think maybe the one thing all of this could stem from is mere discussion of the fact that talia and selina's histories with bruce sort of operate in the reverse and inevitably that factors into any contention with either relationship. like it can't really be helped that bruce and talia were married very early on into the latter's history and that this is integral to analyzing talia's entire dynamic with bruce, her evolving perception of her own place in the world, and her eventual decision to break free of bruce entirely. the constraints of a marriage with bruce as desired by her father are foundational lore to the early aughts of her character in a way that selina's settled domestic life with bruce is not. if we're talking about the golden age what was foundational to selina's dynamic with bruce was his ability to recognize above everyone else her consistent capacity for mercy despite her villainous goals on the surface. in post-crisis that was translated along the lines of a class struggle specifically. the villainous goals were interpreted to represent a defiance of men and the state and their collective violence, and they also formed a means of survival. what was initially merely a recognition of selina's capacity for mercy now became a potential recognition of bruce's own hypocrisies. selina acted as a symbol for petty criminals in gotham whom bruce would otherwise have written off as immoral wholesale bc to him the law was the law. and the remarkable thing about it was that none of it required selina giving even an inch to bruce. she was who she was and that was what made her utterly compelling to him. it's not a slight against selina that neither marriage nor a close civilian relationship formed the basis of her relationship with bruce and i don't understand why anyone would take it as one. marriage and domestic life for talia was a mark of the utter tragedy of her relationship with bruce. it was a fantasy and a delusion and it could never have given her what she wanted nor lent her any kind of agency in the long term. and i think when we meander into the realm of comparing the relationships we really start to diminish why certain aspects are important to either. why are the various patriarchal restrictions on talia's agency so integral to her character arc and its exploration of freedom? why is selina's existence in a sphere of life entirely distinct of bruce so integral to her character arc and its exploration of class? the constant back and forth between shippers on either end trying to equalize in terms of what either relationship has gone through in canon like it's a checklist to romantic validity is a bit absurd and i wish we would move away from it when analyzing the relationships or the characters

love how they just refuse to tell us anything about gman. “yeah that’s the guy who’s employed by some mysterious cosmic beings and constantly meddles with earth. he looks human but very much isn’t. he’s just kinda normal here yeah ignore him” WHATS HIS DEAL

the nature of reading essays about tmags is that i'm always left vibrating with the need to write my own tmags essay, because every other person on the planet is incorrect about the show.

god pearl's new double life,,, i get how people were so insane about desert duo now i'm just going crazy about her

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.

if i don't watch episode 24 until there's a proper s2 announcement then it can't hurt me :)