OH I really need your opinion about Louis being so emotionally intelligent, I think it's barely even talked about it here
ARE people not talking about it? What a funny thought! As a post-hiatus fan, I'm accustomed to thinking of myself as something of a newcomer, even though it's been years now, so it's weird to realize I've been here long enough to see patterns and trends come and go and come again. It's even weirder the way trends in fandom can be completely forgotten and erased when the boys, in contrast, eternally exist in all times at once, everything they've ever said considered to be equally valid to their current lives whether they said it 12 years ago as teens or just yesterday as whole ass adult men! Anyway my point is, there was certainly a time when Louis' emotional intelligence was discussed a lot, AS IT SHOULD BE. For sure so much when Walls came out it was... those LYRICS!! Yes, without that gift he's still gorgeous and smart and embodies a unique and bewitching gender presentation and has a beautiful and captivating singing voice… I guess there are a lot of other reasons people might like him. But to me the thought of that not being the top of anyone's "why Louis" list is bananas, it feels so absolutely central and necessary to understanding what makes him special!
It's certainly a lot of what makes his songs resonate with people- he's a skillful lyricist, he could craft clever little twists of phrase and metaphors regardless, but it's his emotional intelligence that sets him apart imo. He describes it as honesty, and yes- the willingness to be vulnerable and reveal your feelings is special, but what I don't know if he even really realizes is that for so many people it's not just an unwillingness to open up honestly like he does, it's that they are genuinely unable to identify and understand and name what's happening inside them like that. I think it comes so naturally to him that maybe it can be hard for him to recognize that that experience isn't universal.
I really appreciate that you used the words emotional intelligence specifically, I love that phrase; I think framing it as a form of intelligence is correct and important. It's a skill set that is dismissed as "feminine" and so less important or easier to access than intellectual intelligence, but it's none of those things. And it's a minority of people who, like Louis, are both intellectually and emotionally very very sharp. I'd say it's a reason he was been able to stay such a good person in the face of things that can easily ruin people (being rich and famous from a young age, trauma and loss), and it's certainly what enables him to be so good at his job. It elevates his songwriting above the ordinary, but also it gives him the tools to do the dance of giving the public something to connect with and making it feel like he's completely open and present without actually giving away too much, which would be absolutely impossible without emotional intelligence- if you don't know your own boundaries or can't intuit on the fly what people respond to, it simply falls flat and seems forced. We've been seeing him exercise those skills close up and in person over the last few days in the signings, making everyone feel special and held and like they got a personal special moment without actually telling anyone anything much or going overtime or getting sucked in to any weird interactions! Again, something that would be nearly impossible without those kind of people skills.
It's actually really funny the way the discourse recently (speaking of changing tides in fandom) has been focused on the idea of Louis presenting himself as masculine (is there a relationship between that and the lack of chat about his EI? hm), when I feel like in the past he was the most feminized by fandom, and not because of his mannerisms or look, but because of his willingness to embrace his emotional intelligence- to cry/ talk about crying openly, to share readily about his feelings and be vulnerable, all these things coded as feminine. He himself has said that he doesn't think he's anything special in this regard (or especially feminine, I think is part of the subtext to that) because Northern Brit men are just like that. I'm from the US so I'm not the one to really respond to that, but it seems to me that does contain some truth- I have seen a willingness to cry openly, to talk about vulnerabilities, etc, in other men with public personas from up there- but I think that again, what we're saying is that's he's showing more than just that, that we're talking about his emotional intelligence quotient being unusually high, which is not a regional characteristic, but a personal one.
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I, a hearing person who likes subtitles just as a preference, shouldn't have to read a subtitle that's obvious nonsense, go back a couple seconds, and listen again in order to figure out what's going on. An accessibility feature should not be the most half-assed part of a professionally made production. Scripted media has absolutely no excuse for not having subtitles or having subtitles that aren't perfectly verbatim. Professional captioning services should be ashamed of the shoddy work that they put out. Captions should be treated as a part of the production, just like filming, editing, audio balancing, etc - and anything that releases with missing or bad captions should be seen as unfinished
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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.
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lead balloon (the tumblr post that saved me)
if this comic resonated with you, it would mean the world to me if you donated to this palestinian family's escape fund.
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no creative notes because this isn't that kind of comic.
I know I don’t owe any of you anything but I still felt compelled to write about my long term absence. And I feel far enough away from the dangerous spot I was in to be able to make this comic. I have a therapist now, and she agreed that making this could be a very cathartic gesture, and the start of properly leaving these thoughts behind me. I am still, at seemingly random times, blindsided by fleeting desires to kill myself. They’re always passing urges, but it’s disarming, and uncomfortable. I worry sometimes that my brain’s spent so long thinking only about suicide that it’s forgotten how to think about anything else. Like, now that I've opened that door for myself, I'll never be able to fully shut it again. But I’m trying my best to encourage my mind in other directions. We'll see how that goes.
I am still donating all proceeds from my store to Palestinian causes. So far, I've donated over $15K, not including donations coming from my own pocket or the fundraising streams which jointly raised around $10K. In the time since I made my initial post about where this money would be going, the focus has shifted from aid organisations to directly donating to escape funds.
If you'd like to do the same, you can look at Operation Olive Branch, which hosts hundreds of Palestinian escape funds or donate to Safebow, which has helped facilitate the safe crossing and securing of important medical procedures for over 150 at-risk palestinians since the beginning of the genocide.
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