dragonlady7 | Jul. 3rd, 2020

Jul. 3rd, 2020

via https://ift.tt/2C5KDTh

chapter 16 (s i x t e e n what the fuck) A Threefold Remove, at AO3.

Witchers aren’t exactly trusting folk. During Jaskier’s visit to the keep, all of them attempt to deal with their feelings about trusting mages with dangerous knowledge.

Also, Jaskier does Lambert’s makeup. And Geralt’s.

Sorry, this one ends on kind of a cliffhanger, but I had to get it out, it was like torture to write. The next one should be much more fun.

Lambert frowned, thinking that over. “Wait, is he fucking you both at the same time? How does that work?”

“He hasn’t so far,” Jaskier said, “but if you don’t know how threesomes work at your age I’m not about to be the one to explain those facts of life to you.”

“I,” Lambert said, but then incredibly enough his mouth failed him and he didn’t have anything to say to that. “I mean, that’s not the point,” he said, but Jaskier’s mouth twitched and he knew he’d lost on that one. “My point is, we don’t want any more fucking mages knowing where our fucking kid is.”

“Our,” Jaskier said, raising his eyebrows. “Wait, she’s yours too?”

“Of fucking course she is,” Lambert said. “I’m sorry, if you don’t know how families work at your age I’m not about to be the one that explains it to you.”

Jaskier stared at him, mouth slightly open, and blinked twice. “A fair hit, sir,” he said, and gave Lambert a courtly bow. “A fair hit.”

via https://ift.tt/3ix9qkf

IDK how much aspiring writers read the Turkey City Lexicon anymore but it does remain a solid primer for writing SF/genre fiction, and actually, fiction in general really. (I was given a photocopy of it in college…)

but anyway, there was a lurid romance novel on the shelf in act, er, chapter 14, and now in chapter uh 17 or so it’s got to make its appearance: it’s time for a visitor (maybe Jaskier) to encounter one of the trashy books on Geralt’s bedroom bookshelf. [in chapter 14 of Ancient Sea, I described them with And sure, many of the books were obscure academic tomes but there were, well, probably a lot of battered novels of embarrassing subject matter in there, from his younger days. Who was he kidding, he still fucking loved stupid romantic novels with knights-errant and salacious descriptions of bosoms in them.]

This visitor browses until they find a book with a promisingly worn cover, and then plops the book down in their lap, and it obligingly opens to the extremely hottest part of a suitably memorable scene, one that a reader might conceivably have revisited several times, and possibly might have had to put the book down during a reread, as one might, if one got distracted in one’s, er, contemplation thereof (especially if one’s contemplation suddenly required the use of one or more of one’s hands), and so now the book just falls open to that scene.

But my question is, I suppose I’m taking prompts here, as close as I ever come- what should be in this scene?? I want it to be embarrassingly id-tastic which is kind of my specialty but I’m sort of spoiled for choice and want ideas.

(yes, this visitor is absolutely going to slip the book back onto the shelf and then in the midst of having sex with Geralt make some reference to it and he immediately recognizes it and is simultaneously mortified and turned on beyond all enduring.)

via https://ift.tt/2ZsBA76

Songs from the Path, by Rion Sanura:

rionsanura:

It’s the last Bandcamp Friday, when all proceeds go to the artists!

You may have noticed that I jumped headlong into the Witcher fandom, and

bomberqueen17‘s magnificent Meet Death Sitting series, particularly the 5th chapter of The Ancient Sea, inspired a tudor-style dirty lutesong the story mentioned in passing: Love, Stay Thy Hand.

Then, I felt like just writing the big ol’ plot outline of three of the threads (you can probably guess which three) of the multi-book-and-game story, so I made a jaunty little tune out of that: The Lilac, the Wolf, and the Dandelion.

This evening I felt the need for a slightly disturbing ceremonial country round dance with drone and the occasional Balkan-style ornament, and I knew Bandcamp Friday was coming, and I knew I had two other Witcher-inspired songs I could put it with, so I unearthed some alchemical herb names from my memory of potions and wrapped them in mysterious advice for use: Alchemy Dance.

Like my other Bandcamp Friday releases, this little fandom-soaked EP is a fundraiser, this time for the ACLU. Here are just a few of important things they’re currently working for:

racial justice

voting rights

preventing mass evictions

disability rights

immigrants’ rights (and more immigrants’ rights)

trans rights

So I hope these weird little fandom-blooming, Witcher-adjacent songs tickle you enough to consider spending $3 on some civil liberties. I like to think Geralt and Jaskier would both approve. And so would Yennefer.

AH look at this!!!

I have had Love, Stay Thy Hand stuck in my head for like, however long it’s been since you first sent it to me, and I have a handful of tabs open somewhere that I was going to make a post about how amazing it is but never did because what is linear time. It is amazing. I need the rest of this pronto.

via https://ift.tt/3itvbkz

whiskeywitch reblogged your post and added:

Why would you take an extremely cute, lighthearted piece of fanart and info dump this on it? Let Geralt crochet. It’s fantasy, ffs.

If it’s so inappropriate for fans to be inspired by fanart like this, why would you then reblog the whole info dump with this shitty comment? What the fuck is wrong with you? I’m sorry, you hate, what, imagination and information in your fantasy? I wrote a whole essay here because I was so inspired by this cute little piece of light-hearted fanart. If you don’t like it, why would you reblog it onto your own blog?

Maybe this is a dumb thing to post but I genuinely can’t wrap my mind around this turd of a comment. Infodumping is so wrong that you need to reblog it to scold the person who was info dumping.

via https://ift.tt/3f9qVFb

I’ve been enjoying people’s responses to the question last night about what should be in the lurid romance novel on Geralt’s shelf, on the page it falls open to. The reply-to-replies thing only semi-works currently and I’m tired of what merry hell it plays with my crossposter so I’m just going to list salient points for compactness.

mikkeneko sent an ask with a suggestion for an extremely This Author Doesn’t Know How Dryads Work sex scene, hilarious both for tropiness and some light bondage, and for how embarrassed a later, more knowledgeable Geralt would be.

2nico, whom Tumblr won’t let me tag, who OMG I love your Lambert stories and I’m stealing the idea that he’s a genius at pickling things that is so good, votes for something courtly and overwrought with incredibly flowery language and also tournaments.

astroloquacious who Tumblr also won’t let me tag (am I misspelling these or something) (ok suddenly I don’t know how who/whom works, I need coffee) suggests High Courtly Romance, a knight freed from fears of abuse of power to finally be able to consummate his love with a maiden he had rescued, OR maybe two buddies having survived a battle together tenderly consummating their love under the stars, OR maybe a lady knight coming home to her lord, but the overarching point of all of them being that it’s all super tender and lovey-dovey. AND that Geralt’s biggest fantasy is being accepted and not being abandoned holy shit why would you point that out 😭 you’re a monster.

I like all of these ideas and all of these things definitely, definitely are on that shelf.

The idea is growing on me that this visitor, this reader, is expecting it to be an explicit sex scene (or, as

2nico so fantastically imagined, it’s the kind of explicit sex scene where you’ve got to really invest yourself in it to figure out what the fuck is actually supposed to be happening, and I actually laughed out loud like a crazy person just now as I imagined teenaged Geralt attempting to get his rocks off to, like, amidst the petals the nectar showeréd or some shit) and is astonished to discover that instead it’s, like, an emotional payout. Like, oh god, there was this one fic back in my [redacted earlier fandom] days, that was mostly a huge fluff A/U kidfic, and there was this one paragraph I would go to in like the fifteenth installment on the like ninth chapter, and it was just this moment of a, like, beloved/respected older character saying something the main character was horribly hurt by, and the MC concealing his reaction really super well but not quite well enough and the other character noticing and being like no oh my god that’s not what I meant, you’re not bad you are good and it would give me that actual feeling of pain in the chest like you get, you know, where you could maybe actually make yourself cry and have it actually work like, cathartically?

ah fuck that’s more embarrassing than showing someone your porn, I’m not linking to it because that’d be too much. But you know what I mean. A different kind of release, there. Listen sometimes crying works more reliably than orgasms for a hard personal reset.

IDK, it might be too much because I’ve already pointed out Geralt’s bulletproof praise kink. But is it??

Another hilarious plot twist would be to have the book fall open to a loving description of someone’s armor or something. Or, it turns out, Geralt wasn’t the book’s only owner, so the super-worn pages are from his dead idiot best friend Gweld who really really liked to read about feast descriptions so it’s like, Redwall-level feast scenes every time.

Sigh, maybe I need a bonus scene with all the various outtakes. Maybe Yennefer and Jaskier need a rainy afternoon to just comb through and find all the pages that are dog-eared so they can collate them, and then Lambert’s gotta point out that decades of adolescent Witchers read those books so you think you’re getting an express ticket to the inside of Geralt’s head but actually that’s like, several generations of wank fodder for a disturbing spectrum of abused kids actually, probably don’t try the [insert really hard/specific/unusual kink here] on Geralt because that was definitely, definitely somebody else’s book when those pages got stuck together and Geralt’s just too sentimental to throw it out. [And of course Lambert knows because he spent a lot of his formative years sneaking into Geralt’s room to browse his porn while the older Witcher wasn’t around, so he can tell you every book that was original to the collection and ok a lot of the wear on the pages is from him but he’s gonna leave that unsaid.]

(Vesemir’s like oh hey that [super-kinky] book was mine, how’d it get in here and everyone immediately Drops The Subject.)

via https://ift.tt/2Zw5xmU

cuddlyss:

Funky concept - your height reversed is how tall you’d be as a cryptid/fantasy creature ✌️

via https://ift.tt/3dUyuOf

argh oh my god, TW menstruation

listen I have basically been celibate for all of quarantine for purely logistical reasons (I don’t think it’s TMI to admit that like, existing scores-to-hundreds of miles away from my partner of nearly two decades is having an impact on my sex life, not even getting into any details about why I haven’t had a pregnancy scare in like, well, a real long time okay, basically never), and yet, somehow, my period was a week late just now, and like, I’m not the sort of person who has that happen so even though I know it can’t be the obvious reason, I’m not excited about all the other possible reasons it could be. (I mean, I’m 40. It’s coming. It’s just… ought not to be coming soon, given my family history. I mean, like, sooner than it was before but like. Come on. Not right yet.)

Anyway it was just because of stress, it turns out, given my current state, so guess what here it is and oh my god it’s the level of pain where I have to fidget because it hurts too much if I sit still, and also moving sucks, so like

anyway this is just me whining but also I am 40 and the surest way I’ve ever come up with for tracking my menstrual cycle is whining about it on my blog.

Like, I guess it sure was nice of it to give me an extra few days to have a lil reunion with my dude and all but I don’t know that it was worth it given the ferociousness of the current moment. Oh my fuck, I wish I were the sort of person cannabis helps. (I tried it once, for cramps, and hoo boy not only could I still feel them I also could feel them through space and time and that was not a pleasant time, I get that tons of people love weed but I am not one of them.)

via https://ift.tt/3irSo6T

nogling replied to your post “squid on the mantelpiece”

I see your ridiculously overwrought tenderness between the Hero and the damsel, and raise you the idea of a genre of Ye Olde Trashy Romance dedicated to Witchers and their terrible, brutal lusts (and secret hearts of gold) a la Every Terrible Viking Romance Ever. The most read steamy bit is the one where the damsel/lordling/battle bro has realized mid-coitus that they are madly in love with this (brutish, misunderstood) Witcher.

Oh man. IDK. I love this idea but I also sort of can’t buy that anyone would really write a trashy romance novel with a sympathetic portrayal of a Witcher in it. Have you read the Murderbot books? I feel like it’s kind of like how there’s never any media where SecUnits are anything like accurately or sympathetically portrayed, and like, Murderbot and ART have an ongoing thing where ART loves watching serials about things that are similar to its life as a spacegoing ship (but not too realistic– wildly fantastic is best) and Murderbot would rather not watch anything containing any kind of portrayal of anything that’s germane to its life experiences because it’s never handled with any kind of nuance and nobody’s got good fantasies about that shit.
I suppose, though, there’d be cause for a Witcher to get romanticized a time or two, they do get around and sometimes kind of get to be heroes and over [edited to add] oh I forgot to finish this sentence. Well. Like. I suppose over time somebody’d have a sympathetic enough regime that there’d be a Witcher romance novel or two. I wonder, maybe they’re tropes in other kinds of romances. Never very accurate but possibly entertaining, you may be onto something here.

2nico replied to your post“ more brainstorming about Geralt’s Formative Porn Experiences”

also i’m now into the general idea that kaer morhen had one terrible bodice-ripper harlequin witcher novel that was totally niche in the real world but absolutely became its own in-house meme amongst generations of witchers because they found it hilarious like. references to lines and scenes and stuff will send a whole group of witchers howling in laughter with no context for an outsider. like its own diction-level in house meme and shit

“geralt why did you wrestle lambert for calling you "such a lady du astre” geralt: you… wouldn’t understand

it’s “the room” for witchers basically

picture a hall full of witchers and one bystander. they’re all chilling. dead silence. suddenly from the back a single voice rises and says, with great solemnity, “but why a *horse*?” the uproarious laughter shakes the windows. the bystander is at sea.

Since I don’t know what “the room” is, I also am at sea, but I love this concept. (Ohhhh the Tommy Wiseau joint. Yeah yeah, I’m vibing now.)

I mean, they’d have memes about all kinds of stuff, for sure. I had a coworker a while ago, who had this annoying verbal tic of prefacing almost every statement with a high, nasal “well,” before he proceeded to waste everyone’s time for like, an hour, with a long prevaricating thing that he refused to wrap up into any kind of conclusion. For ten years now, six since he left, I have been able to immediately make anything I say hilarious to my remaining coworker by waiting a beat after he speaks, and then saying “Well” in that exact tone of voice before I begin my reply.

So there was definitely a Witcher instructor who would make this “harrumph”ing noise and occasionally Eskel will just make the noise and the others will have like, Pavlovian responses about it and it’s worn a little thin now but for a while there he could really get people going.

But yes. Definitely there is Some Awful Novel that literally everyone read. Probably it has some extremely improbable sex in it and the older ones would try to get the younger ones to believe sex really works that way, and part of the fascination was that there was something somehow still compelling in the dirty bits, somewhere, and yet, nobody was going to actually admit to actually getting off thinking about it because it’s so poorly written, and yeah– but oh that book doesn’t live on Geralt’s bookshelf, it was kept in a particular spot somewhere semi-hidden, like in high school how out back near the cross-country trail there was this tree that they kept a bong in and it was a rite of passage to go out and use the bong (I stole that from a friend, I did not go to that school) (that tree is gone now because they tore out the cross-country trails to build a new parking lot) (listen I am in a fugue state from these cramps so this is the most coherent I can be)

So like. Somewhere near the stables there’s a passageway with a secret niche and this terrible book is kept in there along with some, idk, drug paraphernalia probably, and for a solid half-century the young Witchers would fish out this book and do dramatic readings to one another and it would go missing for a week here and there while various of the boys read it, but it always got put back in that chink in the wall, and probably after the pogrom somebody, maybe Lambert, pulled it out of there and it’s in a box in his room now and he’s reread it a few times and maybe Geralt had mostly forgotten but Lambert’s keeping the meme alive and Geralt can’t help but finish the sentence if Lambert starts it…

via https://ift.tt/2VI0PBp

tanoraqui:

brawltogethernow:

some human: What pronouns do you want me to use to refer to you?

Murderbot, appalled: Why would you refer to me

#the mortifying ordeal of being acknowledged (

brawltogethernow)