#having moments thinking thoughts

[naivety]

in my black sails rewatch, i was tempted to say i was noticing a pattern of two kinds of characters in it, but as i continue to watch i think there are mainly three. three, but two of them take up the most room, and they are the storytellers, and the characters in the story they're telling. the third is the audience, and it's the place we see the most intimacy in. it is a role associated with being an audience to a truth, not a story. it's bearing witness to someone once they trust you with their truth in place of whatever story they tell for everyone else.

when silver first meets flint, he clocks him as our main storyteller right away but it's not until he directly cues flint he can see straight through it that flint pays him any attention at all. silver doesn't see his storyteller status because he's a character becoming self aware, like gates, or even billy, or because he yet loves flint enough to be his true audience, like miranda, but because silver's a storyteller too. gates is too smart not to be aware he's in a story, but he can't quite breach the containment of character into storyteller. they have just enough awareness to judge the story, but not to escape it, while someone like miranda, who plays the role of audience, sees through the narrative enough not to judge it, but to love it. for it's honest truth alone, not for it's ability to tell a compelling story. she loves it enough to want to live it, not tell it. she loves flint the man, not the storyteller, and yet he is a storyteller, and so she loves him too much to end it either. almost, when flint is willing to cede his storyteller status himself, for her, who he loves in return. however brief it lasted, almost.

after flint kills gates, he starts becoming too self aware to continue, he becomes aware that he too is a character in it and he's the villain. he becomes aware of the story and so it must come to an end, as stories eventually must from the audience's perspective. for the audience, there is no way out for a character like him, and he's too aware of which character he is. in the moment he kills gates, he becomes him; sees the story being told and his role in it, and that it's a story he doesn't want to be a part of, not in that role. there's no way out for that role. little does he know, it remains true even after he rescinds the awareness to become storyteller again. there's no way out for him anymore, not in that state. then silver walks in. and he sees not flint's story but flint's truth, crying over a man he just killed because he hates his character, hates being that character, and silver reacts not like another character, not like the audience, but like a storyteller too. he offers him the way out, and the next we see flint, he is walking back out on deck, and he is telling a story again.

i didn't even see the significance of this kinship on my first watch, how even a match it is, and how not just important that moment was for the story, of course, but how intimate for both silver and flint. it's the first scene that establishes their equality in the narrative to each other. fellow storytellers now telling a joint story, and because of it, it starts to become a story only both of them together can tell. if one loses the other in the finale of season one or the premiere of season two, the story would end. they need each other because they are equals, both refusing to let their story end against all odds.

which is why i also believe flint genuinely lost silver's respect after he lost his leg! silver's decision to protect the men had nothing to do with telling a story, he was subject to one. he wanted to be a part of the crew and that story, he wanted to live it, and the crew are just characters to flint. for a moment, he let someone else write his story. silver, as we later find out, lives life uninterested in joining stories, but telling different ones of his own, one after the other. until flint's crew. until flint! flint had him there too. he wants to be a part of that story because it's the first time in maybe forever he's felt like he could be a part of something, not just see the parts and create more favorable shapes to survive in. he is a storyteller by necessity, not an artist. it's just as likely flint loses respect for silver after the season two finale because he suspects silver backed out of their joint narrative to start telling a different one, one in which flint is just another character to right off and no longer an equal to write with. either way, it's not until silver rescinds that threat and flint believes in silver's desire to keep writing a story with him that they see eye to eye again.

it's not until they genuinely care about each other that flint lets silver see the truth of him, not just his story, and it shifts their balance of power immediately. flint gives up his storyteller position for silver and silver alone, to tell him about thomas. it is no story, it is just the truth only miranda had ever born witness to, and he tells it to him! and silver can't do the same in return. he can't be an even match to that, he can't be an equal to it. whatever his truth is, he can't tell it. he offered himself as flint's audience and flint accepted the vulnerability and offered to be silver's audience in return, but in silver's own words, there is no story to tell. the narrative falls apart for him as soon as he tries to make enough sense of it to speak out loud to someone. he can't speak of it without giving up the position of power as storyteller. he refuses flint that intimacy of stepping out of the story with him, he refuses it even to madi. the closest intimacy he can offer is to write a story in which he can pretend he's just a character in it existing alongside them. a character who loves them.

by the end of the show, silver must pretend he is more like gates and less like miranda in order to end the story. gates was at one point one of the biggest threats to flint's narrative throughout because his self awareness as a character in a story he didn't like threatened the story being told at all. the self awareness of being a character threatens to kill the story altogether, just as the self awareness of being an audience threatens to end a story for the sake of letting truth be a fact, not something to convince everyone else of, which is why both gates and miranda are killed for the story to continue. you need the mutual agreement to suspend your belief, and gates' struggle is that he couldn't make peace with that and still be in the story which is why it becomes his end, just as miranda loved the storyteller too much to not either be its end or be ended by it herself. silver, on the other hand, as a storyteller himself, knows how to be both. furthermore, he loves flint enough to try. especially if he thinks it will save madi's life. as much as flint changes to him throughout the show, he can't give up his storyteller position either, not even to just live it. so silver tells one final story, and it's the last chapter of flint's. he ends it and himself as the author, and becomes a character he is himself constantly in the process of writing. a character to himself. he becomes all three; storyteller, character, and audience. but then again, isn't that what he always was from the start?

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[puppyeared]

renaissance dogys

characters belong to @canisalbus

[bacchuschucklefuck]

beautiful! majestic!

[egophiliac]

WAIT when did he get FANGS

[choccy-milky]

💖🎊the end, & thank you for reading!!🎊💖

im so thankful for all the support i got on this story, and i wouldn't have finished it if not for all of you, and for the love i got for seb and clora. so thank you again for giving me the motivation to write this 600k+ monster, and to see it through to the very end. LOVE YALL💖🫶 (ao3/wattpad)

[kittykalliarts]

For decades, the blank vision that Iudex Neuvillette wears near his heart has been subject to much discussion in Fontaine. Nobody remembers who it had once belonged to or why the ancient dragon protected it so jealously. It is said that if the Chief Justice would to stare at it for a long while, it would be sure to rain right after. Oh, how beloved that person must've been.

[aliosne]

Saw a post about working class butches in physical labour jobs and wanted to make my own, so: I love you butches who do childcare or early education. I love you butch nurses. I love you butch house cleaners and janitorial staff. I love you service industry butches. I love you butches who do sex work. I love you working class butches who do “feminine” jobs you are cool as hell

[masterwords]

1x08 | 2x02 | 5x15 | 10x05

quiet everyone, hotch is telling us a story. (because the writers never did.)

[ashleys-doodle-corner]

ACT 2 "You're... me?" "That's right, stardust!"

You know I've been drawing Loop as their Siffrin form so much that it's got me thinking. I've read and seen so many fics and artworks of Loop eventually getting back to looking like their old self, but I don't think I've seen any so far of Loop already being a mirror copy of Siffrin. So uh, yoink?

ISAT AU where the game plays out the same way (plot-wise at least) but Loop looks like Siffrin the whole time and while Siffrin is extremely perplexed that there's another him, he's still gotta accept their help because how else are they supposed to escape the loops? Good ol' Loop is here to help, helpful friendly Loop!

Siffrin is going through it still but Differently.

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

forever obsessed with dynamics between vampires, specifically that of a maker and fledgling, as a way to explore abuse. the creation of a vampire itself can so easily be a literalization of the lasting impacts of trauma and also much more simply the ways a perpetrator might shape their victim’s very identity. the extremes of isolation in the way that the new vampire, in most narratives, must cut all ties to their mortal life, or else go through an elaborate charade to maintain the facade of humanity, while forever still being removed from it. and the sheer dependence and vulnerability of being in an entirely new state of being, wholly uncertain of what it entails, and relying on another person to define… everything.

[edwinisms]

george rexstrew deserves awards for many things but i have to say. edwin’s bloodcurdling scream as niko gets killed deserves a whole award unto itself. like. that scream did not feel at all like a tv show scream. to a somewhat jarring degree. and i can’t express how much I respect that

[torchstelechos]

I think Binghe deserves to know about SQQ's past life as SY, not because I think he deserves to know why he got shoved into the abyss but because I think he deserve to know SQQ's fucking weird ass little mind. Wife plots and all. I think this would give Binghe some enrichment for his Shizun enclosure, cause nothing would make his little bingpup hamster wheel of a brain spin faster than realizing that SQQ is thinking about him 24/7 and is as obsessed with him as he is with SQQ

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

oh hey! i was reading a fic the other day where Wangji was once misspelled as Wangu. which leads me to: MDZS Pingu-style??? noot noot!

Do you think love can bloom on the sea ice?

[ohitslen]

*Vampirizes your Vashwood*

keep reading for more :)

If there needs to be much closer close-up please let me know!

[egophiliac]

redesigning my headcanon for Sebek's parents, based on important new information (SCALES)

(you can't see it but they're both wearing crocs)