baixueagain: baixueagain: baixueagain: baixueagain:

and was like, oh, this is WWII, oh he was born 1948 in poland, that's probably relevant

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baixueagain https://baixueagain.tumblr.com/post/188858091339/the-sjws-have-already-ruined-the-witcher-netflix :

“The SJWs have already ruined the Witcher Netflix series” oh no did the SJWs ruin it for you, buddy ol pal? It was their fault that the show will be full of messages about how racism is destructive and sexism is foolish and classism is bullshit, and not, I dunno, King SJW original author Andrzej “Intolerance is the domain of the stupid” Sapkowski?

Spoilers but when your main character fucking dies defending racial minorities during a yes-Sapkowski-specifically-used-the-word pogrom because he has finally learned that neutrality in the face of oppression is absolute bullshit, IT SURE WOULD BE AWFUL IF THE SJWS INSERTED A MESSAGE IN THERE, HUH? BECAUSE THERE CERTAINLY ISN’T ONE ALREADY, NO SIR.

Hmm a Polish man who grew up in post-WWII Poland wrote a series in which the people of the northern kingdoms are being invaded, slaughtered, and oppressed by an imperialistic southern kingdom, and the northern people then express their rage and hopelessness by scapegoating local minorities in waves of violence that the author quite literally calls pogroms.

Huh I wonder if there’s a message or political allegory or something in there.

Hmmm.

No, I just can’t think of one.

Anyway the SJWs are going to ruin this show by putting political messages in it.

Reblogging bc this is apparently relevant again bc you fuckers refuse to use your god given brains when you read a book (Your picture was not posted)

sometimes adhd is good actually

iorveth/roche, saskia's polycule, it's not actually crack, anything to spite francesca findabair, piss in her goldfish pond, she can't deploy the attack ocelots on one of the regents of temeria, it'd be an international incident, so they have her over a barrel, iorveth's best revenge is living well and also destroying things, and semi-accidental baby acquisition, yennefer is l i v i n g

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Well, so I was trying to nail down Iorveth a bit so I could have him talk to Yennefer to advance the plot, and then I…

I don’t actually remember how I got onto the topic, but, well– I mean I sort of do, I was working through the theoretical politics of the.)

Hm, I thought; the absolute best fuck-you I could have Iorveth give Francesca would be for him to come into possession of a baby somehow, though. So I put a pin in that and started thinking.

You know, Saskia being an actual literal dragon, I’m quite sure she doesn’t have like. Anything boring like a hetero monogamous marriage. The list of facts we know about dragons from canon is fairly scant, but one thing we do know is that they Like to Fuck. (One of the reasons I was like I should read the books was when I discovered that instead of what we got in the Netflix series, in the books the dragon hunt begins with Geralt, Borch, Tea, and Vea having a foursome in a hot tub. Like— there’s no coyness there, they fuck. Offscreen but expressly. Netflix could never.)

Anyway. Queen Saskia’s apartments include a bedchamber with not so much a bed in it, as that the whole chamber is full of cushions and mattresses, and she has a cuddle pile in there. Iorveth’s expressly invited to the cuddle pile. And then I was like okay, there should be more to this, and I have now made up an ancient elven tradition of collaborative group marriages which no fear I will give a pretentious Welsh name, and that’s more or less what this is, with a cast as yet to be determined. The point is, what Saskia has is a lovely and perfectly respectable group marriage, some of the members of whom are reproductively or sexually compatible with the others and some of whom are not and only they are really concerned with the details and even those are subject exclusively to the consent of the people directly involved and are nobody else’s business.

Now the only part of this that is actually cracky is a premise I’m stealing straight from the books. This shit is bonkers, and I was figuring the speaker was unreliable and clearly pushing a vendetta here, but then I determined that it was way more hilarious to solemnly take him as correct and telling the truth. Avalla’ch the Aen Elle sage very ponderously tells Geralt at one point in I think Baptism of Fire that really the reason humans were allowed onto the Continent by the Aen Seidhe who could have annihilated them at any time, it’s important that you know that, is that elves are only fertile intermittently, and yet the “powerful orgasms” (I am not making this up) male humans could give she-elves meant they ovulated more (I am not making this up), and became more fertile, and could make more babies, and so they kept humans around because she-elves Wanted To Fuck. Which like, what the fuck bro, but. SURE. FINE.

So let’s take that as a fact: Firstly, Elves are not that fertile and grow less-so with age and stress. Sure. Fine. Secondly, Elves get more fertile when they have sex with humans. WHY NOT.

If you’re not following where I’m headed with this, don’t worry, I promise it’s getting good.

So let’s get back to Iorveth. Listen, he was a Scoia’tael for a long time, and he did some horrible shit. He committed a lot of war crimes. There was a lot of that about; his people got pretty genocided in there for a bit. There was no mercy to the elves, and so the elves had no mercy right back, and it was horrible. War is horrible. (That’s mostly what the books are about, incidentally, if you were wondering. War fucking sucks y’all. Also something something neutrality in the face of oppression is taking the side of the oppressor. Mumble.)

Iorveth is in the Saskia Cuddle Marriage but mostly thinks of himself as somewhat peripheral; he tends to stay on the outskirts of it, mostly mopes, feels like he’s got to protect them, and so on. He’s very Noble Sufferingy about the whole thing (the dirty secret the Dol Blathanna elves threw away after using his blood to buy their safety etc etc, a monster haunted by the screams of his innocent victims equally with the screams of his comrades he couldn’t save, so on and so forth), and Saskia tolerates him fondly and only sometimes calls him out for moping and makes him come do something fun. But at one point one of the women in the marriage really wants a baby, and Saskia good-naturedly bullies Iorveth into getting in on the action (he is not exactly unwilling, his loner schtick is pretty transparently him needing to be reassured). He is, of course, not likely to be fertile; he is not old, but he’s not the youngest of the elves, and during the war he went through a lot, and anyway, it’s pretty safe to say he’s not likely to do anybody any good, but he’s just there for everyone to have a nice time.

So their attempts are successful, and the woman is pregnant and the expected things progress. Her time comes and they’re good-naturedly betting on who the biological father will wind up to have been– and of course, they’d all be co-parents, it doesn’t really matter, technically and legally they’re all Saskia’s so it’s Her Baby and that’s chill, and meanwhile Iorveth is like sure sure yeah I’ll be a co-dad but of course is planning to be mopey and uninvolved because He Is A Monster and such Beautiful Lifetime Events are not for him whose legacy is slaughter and so on and so forth, and also there are several candidates who are dwarves and they’re laughing that they won’t be able to tell and Saskia is like oh no I’ll know, because you know, dragon, she knows things. Actually she already knows but isn’t going to tell them. Anyway–

you see where this is going, this child is born and is clearly not a dwarf at all, she’s Iorveth’s, which of course blows his mind and is a huge revelation and so on, but the real crack comes in, thanks to Sapkowski’s weird canon thing–

yes the only reason Iorveth is fertile is that he’s been so regularly ploughing Roche in their closet-hatefuck trysts, and Saskia can tell this and in fact knew it all along and is like oh no, Vernon Roche is in our polycule now and gets co-dad credit. Like… 30% credit at least, buddy. That’s your kid.

Anyway this is how Vernon Roche wound up with a pureblood elven daughter (listen i’m not committed to the precise lineage but it’s vastly more hilarious if she is genetically zero percent human), and now Temeria has to split his fanatical devotion considerably less than 50/50. (Listen his daughter is adorable.)

This might also make him the only human in Saskia’s polycule, but that’s– she doesn’t really discriminate by species, really, who’s to say there aren’t others on thin fucking ice. He’s in there, though; he co-sired their firstborn, that’s a pretty powerful tie. (And yes, for the record, that makes him married to Iorveth. Like, specifically.)

So the bonus scene is that while Yennefer is present enough to find out about all this more or less as it unfolds, she quite naturally realizes that it is far, far more entertaining to not breathe a word of it to Geralt, and when his business finally takes him up to Vergen, he is astonished to encounter Vernon Roche walking the castle corridor in the middle of the night gently bouncing a fussing infant elf, and when Geralt asks him in astonishment whose baby that is, Vernon gives him a square-jawed glare and says “mine”, and Geralt, taken aback, asks who the mother is, and Vernon glowers and says “Iorveth’s the father”, and Geralt is left realizing that whatever he thought he knew about reproduction is quite possibly entirely wrong.

So anyway I wrote like 1500 words of this, featuring a lot of unexpected Roche’s Childhood feels out of nowhere, and i have no idea how much is directly getting included in the Ciri story and how much is just gonna be background, possibly incompletely-explained, but I just had to make sure that y’all knew the cracky Avall’ach shit in case all I can manage is oblique references. I just really really really need everyone to know that I am not making that up.

SINCE YOU READ ALL THIS, A SNIPPET:

“Oh, did you have a bet on the birth date?” Vernon asked, amused. This was a custom he was familiar with; it was a good way to raise money for the expectant mother, and so it was tradition in the brothel where he’d been born, that everyone would lay a wager on what date the impending babe would be born, and the winner would take half the pot and the mother the other half.

The dwarf laughed. “No,” he said.

Unexpectedly, Iorveth’s expression closed off suddenly, the beautiful smile replaced by a more customary haughty expression. “You wouldn’t understand, dh’oine.”

It shouldn’t have stung. They were mortal enemies. Vernon realized his mouth had fallen open and closed it, collecting himself for a sharp rejoinder, but found himself without one ready to hand.

The dwarf, unexpectedly, interceded. “Iorveth, don’t be a prick. He’ll understand it just fine, won’t you, friend?”

“Try me,” Vernon said.

Iorveth rolled his eye. “Dynan, dh’oine don’t know what a deulumor is. He’ll think it’s something degenerate and salacious.”

“Ach,” the dwarf, apparently named Dynan, scoffed. “It’s an ancient form of family structure where several adults band together to raise children. Is that so hard to convey?”

Vernon thought of the brothel where he had been born, and said, “No, I– I was raised in something like that.” His face went hot at describing it that way, but it was true. “Where there are– more adults than children, and whose children they are is– not all that important?”

Iorveth, disarmed, blinked at him. Dynan laughed. “That’s it exactly,” he said. (Your picture was not posted)

just say good enough and go

creators, and think before you give advice

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I saw a post, I won’t link to it and don’t need to, where someone had sent an ask to a person whose specialty is elaborate scientifically-justified headcanons about fictional creatures.

and I’d say probably the asker was well-intentioned, but the gist of it was, “why bother making up such elaborate things! Just, you know, make up something plausible, and say it’s good enough, and get on with your life!”

Of course the person who takes all this obvious joy in making these incredibly scientifically-justified complicated backstories about how fictional creatures could plausibly work in the real world was furious at this, and justifiably.

And it just made me sort of mad and sad. I mean, let’s back up, the asker probably didn’t mean any harm, and yes, there is something to be said for not getting oneself hung up on the nitty-gritty of a project. This is, in fact, how I, with a learning disability and a shockingly inadequate scientific education, do most of my creature-building. I make something up, I make sure it has some kind of consistent rules to it (because, as Asimov(?) said, “if everything is possible nothing is interesting”– you must always put limits on things, if only to make the story have some genuine interest to it, some real stakes), and I move on, and only refine it if it’s not sturdy enough to bear the story.

But– there’s nothing wrong with devoting more effort to something. Sometimes, the harder you work on it, the more interesting it is! And if you have the capability to really pour a whole bunch of talent and interest into a thing, why the fuck would you not do that??

Can you imagine, if someone said to me, “I don’t write longfics. There’s no need. Just do a oneshot, and go!”

Come on. Or, “I don’t write fics. Just do a headcanon post, and call it good!”

oh my god. “I don’t color my art. just do linework, and call it good!” “I don’t do linework. just make a sketch and go.”

Like. There’s no wrong way to do art, and absolutely, if you’re an artist with an ambitious vision who realizes that the project has ballooned in scope and is in danger of overwhelming you, scale that shit back! Break it down a little! Don’t hurt yourself! Do manageable chunks! Don’t overcommit! This is all fine and sensible advice.

But like also. if you’re a person who likes art. Don’t tell an artist not to do their art. Don’t do that. Goodness sakes, don’t do that. (Your picture was not posted)

roguesquirrel:according to some religions, we are ma

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according to some religions, we are made in god’s image. but like we made funkopops in our image & look at how horrible those little things are, so obviously theres a lot of wiggle room involved here. (Your picture was not posted)