dragonlady7

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So I did the Tortured one in the previous ask so I can just explain Sauerkraut here. That one is nonfiction and a collaboration, and I’ve only just remembered that I didn’t actually contribute any writing to it! I did some formatting, and then I did the materials acquisition part of the project. (Not the cabbage, but all the fermentation paraphernalia, since we ewre doing it up nicely.) That was my dude and I making a birthday gift for MM, the friend I quarantined with whose husband was playing Witcher 3 for our delectation.

So Dude has taught himself how to do basic lactofermentation, mostly during quarantine though he actually started last summer before it was trendy, and MM has an abiding love of sauerkraut, and so he wrote a basic manual on how to pickle things in brine. It’s in my WIP folder because I formatted and printed it, and i was going to excerpt the part I wrote but I only just realized I didn’t write any of this one. It’s a WIP because MM has reported back with unusable results so it needs some tweaking to make it foolproof. (You have to pack the cabbage tightly into the fermentation vessel!! she may not have chopped it finely enough. Must readjust wording.)

Here is a snippet, but the credit is not mine, it’s Dude’s writing, and this is how he writes everything, from Christmas cards to emails to the comments on the code he produces professionally. I actually would like to write a series of recipe books with him because he genuinely does produce better copy than I do, and more succinctly, LOL.

First you need lactic acid bacteria (LAB), which is literally everywhere.

Secondly, you need a head of cabbage. It’s okay if it’s a little bit wilty. Wash it thoroughly, but don’t cook it or otherwise sterilize it - cabbage is covered in LAB and you don’t want to disturb them. Finely shred the cabbage and maybe a carrot too, if you like, into a nonmetallic bowl. (A mandoline makes this easier, but beware: they crave human flesh.)

I’m helping one of my sisters put together a cocktail manual to sell in the gift shop of a museum she’s a volunteer for, and it’s got me thinking of selfpubbed recipe zines, I think it’d be fun to make those, so that may be the ultimate destination of this little piece.

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mikkeneko replied to your post “sabra-n replied to your post “ancient sea progress: Geralt’s…”

god, bondage as a kink for geralt has the potential to be so characterization JUICY for him given his general control issues

oh gosh, and here we could get into some sort of… autochorissexual issues too. I mean– not to digress and self-insert too much, but I’m on the ace spectrum [like, for sure on the sex-pos side but like, still definitely on it] and have never quite been able to nail down how to describe it, but I definitely have a ton of things I think are super hot in porn that I would never ever ever ever ever want to actually do in real life in any way*? and so a lot of times when I consume porn I do not do so as myself, right? Like, ok, I should explain that– I think of this as perfectly normal, so it’s hard for me to imagine what “””””normal”””” people must think/feel, but like. Just as most people, I guess, take the gender of their intended partner into account primarily when looking for a sexual partner, which is super alien to me but seems to be genuinely the case for the majority of people, so too I am led to assume that most, or at least many, people connect pornography to arousal by imagining themselves as one of the participants?

But, see, I think a lot of people do feel like I do, where most erotica/porn isn’t particularly consumed #1 directly for titillation or #2 with the reader projecting themself directly into the role of one of the participants. But those two things are, I’m led to believe, super common.

(cut for length, and i digress about Geralt’s ability to consent given his incredibly low self-esteem as well, and the complicating factor that Yennefer can read minds and is not exactly what you’d term an uncomplicatedly good person)

Anyway– I think it’s likely that a lot of things Geralt thinks are hot are not things he has ever imagined himself doing. Like, I feel like he’d be super-practiced at compartmentalizing in such a way that like, he can read a book where there’s something he finds super-hot and maybe even actually literally gets off reading about, without ever imagining it really happening to himself the way he exists physically in reality. 

[*footnote: This is distinct from the issue of liking things in porn that are too Problematic to pursue in real life, like noncon or logistically-impossible or morally-indefensible things. Like, that’s a separate issue and no I am not arguing that people who self-insert in rape fantasies are immoral or anything like that– again, sexuality is not moral, and me being demisexual does not make me morally superior {like, by my orientation i have no real impetus to cheat, that does not make me pure somehow, anymore than being naturally skinny makes someone healthier than me} {not that anyone has said anything like this, I’ve just seen some Bad Takes.}]

So like– the idea of someone being restrained during sex can simultaneously be something he finds incandescently hot to contemplate, and also not something he wants to do or have done to him. 

BUT. I also feel like he’s possibly compartmentalized too much, and that a lot of the things he finds hot are things he would actually enjoy having done to him in real life (like… all the cherishing and being loved and whatnot). And so, yes, it’s perfectly likely that he would actually really really really like being handcuffed to the headboard (or entirely tied up like in the elaborate rope bondage thingies fandom loves) (which, just for another example and not to be TMI, I like reading about and like looking at but have never so much as seen in real life and have zero interest in ever actually trying, given my poor RL communication skills and hypermobile joints and suchlike, absolutely no thank you– just for an example!) – so, yes, this was a long way of saying you’re super right about that and I completely expect to find this fascinating to explore.

Ah yes, and I’d forgotten– earlier in the series I’ve had Geralt’s POV point out that he’s not super into masturbation, which could partly be a valid, like, ace thing, and could partly be a kind of trauma response, where he’s convinced he’s so disgusting that he often can’t even bear to pleasure himself, or just that he finds it too distressing because it makes him realize how unfulfilled he is (which is at least the motivation I’ve had him state to himself). 

Side note: in every canon Geralt loves sorceresses and in most of them he seems pretty goddamned whipped by said sorceresses, and while that surely says a lot about him and his pretty well-established deep-seated belief that he is fundamentally unlovable and must make up for it by being as agreeable as possible in every scenario he can manage to do so, does it not also say a lot that his preferred sexual partners are people more powerful than he is? Does that not seem to indicate that he is afraid that he could hurt people and wants to protect himself from that by seeking out partners who are more powerful so that he can’t? And so, just to riff on that, having Jaskier, who is innately much less powerful than he is, both physically and, like, personally, have physical power over him by tying him up– well, I just think that’d be interesting, but unfortunately having Yennefer there shifts that balance quite a bit. (Well, and there’s another question– would Jaskier even be capable of actually restraining Geralt in a way he couldn’t escape? but Yennefer sure would.)

Which leads to a fascinating issue to contemplate, which I was discussing with akilah12902, which is that a gentle, loving partner for Geralt would really have to struggle with a lot of this, because 1) Geralt’s bad at boundaries and can’t meaningfully differentiate between Hard No Because No vs No Because He Thinks It’s Not Allowed, and 2) Geralt’s fucking terrible at consent anyway and hasn’t got a great boundary between Yes I Want That and Yes I Will Do This Even Though I Don’t Want To Because I Fully Believe That If I Ever Tell You No You Are Absolutely Never Going To Offer Me Anything Again, and he seems to invoke that latter one for shit that makes no sense to be like that about. 

Which brings up the side issue that 1) Yennefer can read his thoughts, 2) he knows Yennefer can read his thoughts and hates it, but 3) if she reads his thoughts she can tell the difference between the four above conditions and so he is more likely to get what he wants, except that 4) of course #3 violates his consent in a huge and fundamental way. Which is fodder for a really, really juicy fight between Jaskier and Yennefer, who is used to not being trusted and yet is really going to be hurt by Jaskier not trusting her that 3 is the least worst option she feels she has, there. 

And akilah12902 was good enough to share that she’d been having a convo with laurelnose on that topic, and he’d pointed out that given Yennefer’s own past she certainly isn’t great at understanding boundaries either, which is certainly a good point and also is separately fascinating to contemplate– would she even have the framework to understand that Geralt cannot generally enforce most of his boundaries in any meaningful way because of his absolute terror of rejection, and so while talking him into things he wants but doesn’t think he can have is reasonable, overriding his clear non-consent for something important like his fundamental right to privacy in his own mind is not even if her intentions are good. You could really, really, really do some fantastic and juicy character work with that premise.