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dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/39uTPw4
I just got plotbunnied for what to do about the weird consent issues with Yennefer and the djinn. featuring my middle-aged Jaskier. fuck.
on the downside, it’s more writing and i wasn’t going to take this long a break from original stuff. (i got feedback on the novella and it was. Real mixed. Sigh. Mostly what I expected but like. No simple answers, there: the real answer is that i have to write the novel. Which I have failed at, over and over again, for fifteen years now. Oh, seventeen years. Even better.)
But. On the upside, probably threesomes, which like. How do I resist that???
And people have been so dang nice about the Witcher stuff I’ve posted. Comments, reblogs, feedback, happy squee. How do I push all that aside to slave away on something I feel compelled to tell but which clearly does not feel compelled to be told? And then I could publish it, for what? To sell it for money? Listen I’ve looked into what authors make and it’ll be like, if I’m lucky I’ll eventually earn enough in royalties to have paid myself something like a quarter of minimum wage for having written it. Yes, it’d be something entirely new and different and I’d be able to bring this thing into the world and finally share it, but it’ll be so much work, and not that many people will eventually read it, most likely. And authors don’t really get paid, so it’s not like my tiny audience paying money for it will somehow do anything other than complicate my taxes and give me some weird little veneer of respectability that won’t make a lick of difference to anyone who matters. (I am not even contemplating trying to shop for an agent because I know my ADHD ass is not even remotely capable of dealing with that; it’d be selfpub or it sits in a drawer, so.)
Or I can write fanfic and get feedback.
Sigh. So, I guess I’m pumped for weird threesomes.
I just got plotbunnied for what to do about the weird consent issues with Yennefer and the djinn. featuring my middle-aged Jaskier. fuck.
on the downside, it’s more writing and i wasn’t going to take this long a break from original stuff. (i got feedback on the novella and it was. Real mixed. Sigh. Mostly what I expected but like. No simple answers, there: the real answer is that i have to write the novel. Which I have failed at, over and over again, for fifteen years now. Oh, seventeen years. Even better.)
But. On the upside, probably threesomes, which like. How do I resist that???
And people have been so dang nice about the Witcher stuff I’ve posted. Comments, reblogs, feedback, happy squee. How do I push all that aside to slave away on something I feel compelled to tell but which clearly does not feel compelled to be told? And then I could publish it, for what? To sell it for money? Listen I’ve looked into what authors make and it’ll be like, if I’m lucky I’ll eventually earn enough in royalties to have paid myself something like a quarter of minimum wage for having written it. Yes, it’d be something entirely new and different and I’d be able to bring this thing into the world and finally share it, but it’ll be so much work, and not that many people will eventually read it, most likely. And authors don’t really get paid, so it’s not like my tiny audience paying money for it will somehow do anything other than complicate my taxes and give me some weird little veneer of respectability that won’t make a lick of difference to anyone who matters. (I am not even contemplating trying to shop for an agent because I know my ADHD ass is not even remotely capable of dealing with that; it’d be selfpub or it sits in a drawer, so.)
Or I can write fanfic and get feedback.
Sigh. So, I guess I’m pumped for weird threesomes.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-13 02:22 pm (UTC)The weird djinn thing is something I do not love, especially not since so many people think it's romantic and I am SO glad the show seems to handle it otherwise. One of the best things the game does is allow you to take away the wish. And it's a great scene that always breaks my heart because I don't ship Yen and Geralt at all and so the spell is the only thing keeping them together. It's so well written and so far I have never not cried about it.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-13 02:41 pm (UTC)Having a couple of years wherein I wrote half a million words of fanfic was better for my writing than the year I wrote a literal million-word draft and convinced myself I could never write at all.
I look really longingly at published novels' dedication pages; many of these authors have teams of people, communities of people, who read their works and cheerlead for them. I have sometimes one of my sisters, whose feedback is, "I liked it", and once in a while one or two other readers, but I never feel I can ask for much.
If I want readers, I have to write fanfic; I got literally a dozen people to beta Home Out In The Wind, when I was writing Star Wars, and it made such a huge difference to that story.
I don't know how to get people to read my original stuff. If you just ask for readers, you get people like my sister, or other well-meaning people who are happy to do it but don't have a great deal of insight for you. But fanfic-- oh my gosh, they'll analyze for you, they'll suggest, they'll chime in with ideas, and the work is its own reward. Gosh it's so nice.
Sigh.
I am tying myself into mental knots to figure out how Geralt, who is shown to be so fair-minded and concerned about doing the right thing, would see this woman he barely knows, and whose clearest motivation is that she wants control of her own life and choices, and decide that the thing to do is to inextricably entangle himself with her. now, we frequently see him do well-meaning but profoundly stupid things-- such as invoking the Law of Surprise at Pavetta's betrothal, like how fucking stupid do you have to be-- so I can just stretch to him poorly wording a desire to help and winding up with this. Just barely.
So the germ of this fic is that Yennefer, in a rough state after the Battle of Sodden, comes to Jaskier because she figures out that he's genuinely in love with Geralt and she wants to know what could possibly possess someone to do that, since she's cursedly entangled with him and cannot possibly begin to tell whether she has any real emotions for him at all. And really, it's me trying to work out an ass-backward way for that to make any coherent sense given Geralt's characterization.
I don't know if it would end up with Yennefer and Geralt ever really being together, but I do want to involve Yennefer with Ciri, that's something I like a lot. And the current thing I'm doing, which is just fun, basically erases Yennefer, and I hate that-- it's easier, but that's always what happens in slash fics my whole time in fic, the thing where the canon female love interest is either ignored, sidelined, or villainized. And I don't want to do that! Yennefer is a fantastic character, I love that she is not "good" (because what IS good??) and I love how vicious and self-centered she is, and I love the contrast with Geralt who claims to want nothing for himself, seems to genuinely believe he deserves nothing...
and then fucks her up.
I don't like how he fucks her up, though. And that's where I get tired and want to write original stuff, where I can start off with characters that make sense to me and make them do things that make sense, instead of how fanfic forces you to write yourself out of boxes canon writers that care a whole lot less than you have put you into and nailed shut.
no subject
Date: 2020-02-15 08:21 am (UTC)But as someone who loves to pick apart relationships, especially the unhealthy ones, Geralt and Yen are very tasty indeed.