A siren takes your form to lure Boorman into the icy depths.
A/N: *slamming fists on the table* give me boorman fics!! Is this possibly the first ever thraxus boorman fic? Quite possibly (i dont claim that i just couldnt find any so i wrote one myself) The shattered sea is such a cool concept i just started thinking about all the sick creatures that could exist
Contents: Boorman being horny and also deeply in love with you, gender neutral reader, no use of Y/N, nudity, language
the way ofmd deals with masculinity is so fascinating. we have stede, who’s about the least masculine a character could possibly be in the traditional sense: he gets sad instead of angry, he refuses to engage in physical violence, he encourages talking about feelings, he likes fashion and interior design and romanticizes everything. he likes picking flowers. and he has been told for his whole life that he is worthless because of all of this. he has been bullied and taunted and abused for it, but that didn’t keep him from adding a secret closet to his ship (lmao) to keep his excess fineries. he is still outwardly himself.
then we have ed. ed who is the pinnacle of the idea of masculinity, part of why he was remembered as history’s greatest pirate in the first place. he’s violent, ruthless, quick to anger, hierarchical, and his name, blackbeard, even emphasizes a symbol of masculinity. he’s revered for his masculinity. his performance is so powerful that people surrender before he even shows up in person. but it’s not him. blackbeard is a character ed has played for as long as he could remember that served to protect him from harm. you can’t get hurt if you’re never vulnerable in the first place.
when he meets stede, he finds someone he doesn’t have to present as blackbeard for. he can indulge in the frilly colorful clothes, the dancing, the emotional honesty that stede treats as normal. ed lets stede hold his heart in his hands and stede calls it beautiful. and stede, for the first time, has met someone who doesn’t see those things as hateful or embarrassing. everything stede has been mocked for unequivocally delights ed. in the reverse, stede sees blackbeard as the man stede never was. the ideal of a pirate that he read about and romanticized before he became one himself. to stede, blackbeard is everything he could never bring himself to be.
when ed begins to outwardly become interested in stede’s way of life, izzy serves to try to force him back into that hypermasculine presentation of Blackbeard. izzy hates stede for all the same reasons stede has been hated his whole life, and he sees stede as poisoning edward with his embarrassing foppish behavior, emasculating him. this comes to a head when ed signs the act of grace, shaves his beard (the symbol of his performance of masculinity), and kisses stede. all of those go against traditional masculine norms and by extent, the idea of Blackbeard. but ed isn’t performing anymore. he smiles more after the kiss than he ever does in the rest of the show.
then, stede is held at gunpoint by chauncey, who calls stede a monster, a plague for ruining the greatest pirate in history. ruining through emasculation, which in countless other media has been presented as horrific. think about other media that puts masculine characters in prison or the army (the similarities are staggering)—the threat of beating the character down until they’re submissive and emasculated is ever-present. losing the appearance of masculinity is by and large seen as one of the worst things that could possibly happen, and is often paired thematically with the loss of autonomy.
so stede agrees. he’s horrified with himself. he himself was already not traditionally masculine, and he spread it to blackbeard like a disease. everything he (and, interestingly, the viewer) has ever been told is that ed’s shift throughout the show is something to be terrified of. ed shaving his beard, in stede’s mind, confirmed his worst fear: stede had made ed into everything stede hated about himself and wanted to change; he killed blackbeard. but what he and chauncey and izzy can’t see is that stede actually gave ed more autonomy, more freedom and comfort to be himself and do what makes ed happy.
so stede runs. he runs back to where he once performed masculinity as a father and husband (regaining his own beard, so to speak), now sure that blackbeard would have been better off not knowing him. on some level, stede does want parts of blackbeard’s edge to stay (he’s like izzy in that way) and is scared he’s somehow excised it permanently. ed doesn’t want to leave it all behind either, but he’s terrified that stede could never accept the side of him that still exists as blackbeard. i also think this is why ed didn’t try to kiss stede until he was the least like blackbeard he could be; he saw it as being less likely to get rejected for the ugliness he saw in himself.
it’s interesting that ed doesn’t go back to being blackbeard immediately after stede abandons him. at first, he goes all-in on the emotional vulnerability, trying to hang on to the hope he had allowed himself to experience when stede had agreed to run away with him. hanging on by a thread. the thread snaps when izzy mocks him for pining after stede, for lacking the masculinity izzy required in order to maintain his respect. in quick succession ed was rejected by stede, whom he loved, and izzy, whose respect he’d had since before the show began. so he threw his walls back up. he painted his mask back on, closed himself off, and removed every reminder of when he had allowed himself to be vulnerable.
ed’s return to masculinity is not presented as a good thing. it’s a trauma response, a defense mechanism, and it’s toxic. the show experiments with defining a line between toxic and non-toxic masculinity; izzy, calico jack, the kraken, stede’s father, the admiral twins, they all represent the ways toxic masculinity enforces a culture of violence and punishes any emotion except anger. stede and his crew represent a healthier version of masculinity: emotional honesty, encouragement and care for others, kindness, and love. it’s not an accident that as ed allows himself to love and be loved, he begins to leave behind the toxic aspects of masculinity he had before. i’ve used the word emasculated to refer to ed’s transformation throughout the show, but in truth that’s not entirely accurate. it lines up with how many people would view what happened to him, but in reality he did remain a man, he just became a healthier one.
Lol yeah this is what modern au jaskier would wear to renesaince fair
LMAO HE WOULD TOO
excuse you, canon Jaskier would wear the crap out of this. imagine Geralt trying to function around Jaskier while he wearing this??
imagine him sitting in the corner of a tavern literally frozen in his seat as he watches Jaskier singing his bawdy songs with filthy lyrics.
imagine Geralt sitting there unable to tear his eyes away from him because he’s never wanted to be between someone’s legs so bad before.
and Jaskier, the little shit, knows that they drive Geralt insane. he wears them all the time, especially when he has a set of dirty songs planned. he always makes sure to sway his hips as he leaves their table to perform.
and Geralt has to put on this facade like he’s completely unbothered.
imagine Geralt leaving half way during Jaskier’s performance because he can’t fucking take it anymore.
Jaskier notices and lets a filthy grin appear on his face because he knows exactly where Geralt is going and exactly what he’s going to do.
imagine Jaskier walking into the room and instantly being hit with that familiar scent that he love to smell oh so much after a particularly dirty set. the fading, but still present, scent of arousal and lust and sex. he casts a look over at Geralt who is visibly disheveled and lets a smirk dance across his lips.
and he sets himself up to bed like nothing ever happened.
he looks over his shoulder at the frustrated witcher and simply says, “Goodnight, Geralt.”
and Geralt has never been so sexually frustrated.
fucking imagine.
@dinahdarling you’re so much better at writing, please, by the gods, can you write this???
i’m always a slut for jaskier teasing a sexually frustrated geralt! <3
but darling, please know that what you’ve written is simply delectable - honestly, have more faith in your writing abilities! you capture an impish jaskier so divinely, i adore it!
The character I first fell in love with The character I never expected to love as much as I do now The character everyone else loves that I don’t The character I love that everyone else hates The character I used to love but don’t any longer The character I would totally smooch The character I’d want to be like The character I’d slap A pairing that I love A pairing that I don’t
