Dragon Age Tomfoolery @redredribbon - Tumblr Blog

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Fic Link List

Click below for links to my fics for each pairing.

Dorian/Iron Bull

Fenris/Male Hawke

Nathaniel/Velanna

Lucanis/Rook (NB)

Zevran/Alistair

Merrill/Orana

Randy Dowager/Female OC

Oneshot Collection (Dorian/Iron Bull, Nathaniel/Velanna, Bianca/Varric, Carver/Merrill, Isabela/Aveline, Fenris/Male Hawke, Ashaad/Saemus)

#pinned post #fic link list #my writing

zazrichor

STEN • THE CHARIOT

two forces pulling in opposite direction • I had the pleasure of painting Sten with the tarot card The Chariot as inspiration for 2026's Dragon Age Annual: ARCANA!

#WOW #this is absolutely stunning #sten #dragon age origins #art

dearhadrian

Josephine I painted for @joshduun last year ☀️ Companion piece to @badbadsloth's Leliana!

#dragon age inquisition #Josephine #art

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.

dykepuffs

I love this framework, especially since just as a cultural thing a LOT of Anglophone leather stories written in the second half of the C20th (of the sort that appear in mags like HIM or Drummer, as well as being published independently), will have both diegetic and non-diegetic BDSM elements, and that's often what spooks more modern readers off reading them.

So the ruff tuff biker cop will tie a guy up with rawhide cord and stick nipple clamps on him (diegetic BDSM- The patrolman is implied to be involved in leather culture, and to understand what he is doing as kink) but will also have flagged him down for speeding and thrown him into the mud and kicked him around first (non-diegetic BDSM- Within the story it's police brutality, but the reader is understood to read it as part of the kink, those details are included because they're hot.)

And I think there is often a misunderstanding that the writers didn't understand what they were doing, or would fail to recognise it as abuse in the real world, rather than that it was just a genre convention, the same as how a bodice ripper has kidnapping.

#bdsm #thank you for putting this so well

doraingrid

You came through.

#dragon age the veilguard #neve #art

mother-giselles-hat

Watching the healthy conflict resolution in newer Dragon Age games is crazy because it used to be the little things that would tear your found family apart. If Alistair had told Morrigan that water is wet she would have probably just straight up killed him. The Amell Estate could be spewing furniture out of shattered windows and unholy screams might be emanating from inside and some tired NPC would be like "yeah the spirit healer told the lyrium warrior that a hot dog is a sandwich again."

#soooo true #dragon age

nixmori

Date Night

Emmrich checks his appearance in a mirror before heading out for a date with Rook. Inspired by Leyendecker.

#dragon age the veilguard #Emmrich #art

lynaiss

Duncan, the regretful 💧 Five of Cups

Had the pleasure of painting this piece and two others for @dragonageannual 2026 zine! It was so much fun working on this and seeing other people's art and writing!

Process under the cut