ha, she says to herself, it’d be okay if you

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ha, she says to herself, it’d be okay if you poked around at that idea you had, you could write a short fluffy oneshot in that new shiny tv fandom everyone’s super into, that’d be fun, ha ha ha, sure

five thousand words later: oh no i haven’t even established the premise

One would think that wartime would be a good opportunity for a bard. So much material, and so many people hungry for meaning, and who better to combine them than a man with a gift for poetic imagery? 

But Jaskier was no bright-eyed youth anymore, and hard experience had taught him that wars were as terrible for bards as they were for anyone else. No, the good time to be a bard was after the war was over, as the dust was settling– you figured out who’d come out on top, and made nice songs for them, and they rewarded you for it, and then you also could use all that material and meaning-analysis-giving to make beautiful songs so people would cry and feel better and give you money. That was all well and good and could be a great boon to any bard’s career.

But first you had to survive the war, which involved several things Jaskier was good at but did not really let on about: common sense and keeping one’s mouth the fuck shut.

tolstoyevskywrites:An absolute icon oh also i watched several...

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tolstoyevskywrites:

An absolute icon

oh also i watched several episodes of Kipo And the Age Of The Wonderbeasts with the kids at my BFF’s house this weekend and it was freaking hilarious so there’s that, a rec, even though I think I only saw 3 episodes? anyway, punchy and entertaining and the 5 and 7 year olds found different parts of it hilarious than the 39- and 40-year-olds in the room but we did all enjoy it, which is unusual. so. Absolutely bizarre. Rather compelling! 

Imagine a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of terrifying giant mutant creatures and also the power of Friendship™ with unexplained dubstep bees, vaporwave interludes, and a rap by some morally gray wolves about the origins of the universe? Also all of the humans are apparently POC though the main girl, despite having a perfectly normally-depicted Black father, is actually purple, so maybe that’s a strange stylistic choice or maybe there’s some plot there, I’ve no idea. It’s cool, don’t tell me!

My friend’s son kept repeating the part where the cat’s name was somethingorother Hammerpaw like he thought that was very funny, and the dad kept repeating the part where the rapping wolves had a portrait on the wall of one of their ancestors and his name was Ol Dirty Billions (and the two main wolves were Billions and his brother Billions, presented in a way that made it transparently clear it was a Carl Sagan reference).

AAAHHH! I am so stoked that you're writing something for the witcher! i've fallen so far down this r

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Aw, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I am so fried currently that to my astonishment it seems like this fic’s sole content is going to be to fulfill my fantasy of people having adult conversations and treating one another’s boundaries respectfully, which is absolutely not the smut I wanted to write OR the crack the canon really deserves. 

I’d gone the entire way through writing what passes for an outline in my sad little world and then was like “oh no but Ciri should probably be in it” and started writing and now she’s most of it. Whoops. Listen I’ll still publish it but this is not going to be The One that taps into the zeitgeist.

“Fantastic,” Jaskier said. 

“You’re not going to help me,” Fiona said. 

He shook his head. “I don’t know what help is possible,” he said, “but I’m the most likely sucker in this village. Listen, the alderman has been killing people who make a fuss, just because he’s afraid and doesn’t know what else to do, and I’m terrified out of my mind that one of these times he’s just going to start killing people and not stop, so I’m going to be honest here and tell you that my first priority is keeping you from frightening him enough that he starts killing.”

“That’s awful,” Fiona said. 

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Jaskier said, feeling harried, “but literally everything that has happened in the last month and a half has been genuinely awful and I hardly think me exercising a little pragmatism even rates, on that scale.”

“Oh,” she said, “I meant, the killing is awful, not–- you.”

He mentally went over the conversation they’d just had, decided she might be genuine about that, and said, “Oh. Well. Right. It is.”

well

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Well the story is 10k words long and involves Jaskier telling Geralt either “Fuck you” or “go fuck yourself” or “tell him to go fuck himself” through a proxy, no less than thirteen times. Other instances of the word are probably mostly directed at him as well, but not directly.

Also it involves Jaskier being middle-aged and really fucking tired, in those precise terms, so it’s really a Big Mood. (Oh, I did not expect to be self-inserting in that way! Fuck you, subconscious.)

[image description: a screenshot of the find-replace window in Gdocs, showing the word “fuck” and gray text next to it indicating the highlighted instance is 1 of 44 occurrences of the word] That’s how you know it’s a good story. 

Now I have to figure out what to do in the second chapter of it, because I’ve ended at an ending place but the resolution has been, well. Unsatisfactory. 

two tiny snippets: 

“You should run,” Geralt whispered hoarsely, after a long time.

“No,” Jaskier sighed. “This is the thing, Geralt. I’m middle-aged and tired and I just think I’d rather meet death sitting down and facing it rather than from behind while I’m running. You know?” He contemplated that a moment, and finally added, “Especially if it’s you.”

and number two:

“Fuck you,” Jaskier said, and then bit his lip very hard so he wouldn’t cry. “Fuck you for making me do this.”