#The Witcher Season 2 spoilers

[mylarena]

suddenly feeling emotions abt jaskier again.

the way geralt has always insisted hes not jaskiers friend, that he needs no one. the way hes disregarded jaskier for all 20 years that they traveled together. the way he was thrown away on the mountain. jaskiers learned that geralt doesnt make friends.

so why is it that he treats everyone at kaer morhen as if they are?

he clearly loves the other witchers, cares for them and protects them. he can understand that- theyre family. he cant stop the pang of pain he feels knowing that he was never close enough to get that.

he clearly loves ciri, slipped into his role of her father despite the years of strict denial and refusal to take the place destiny had demanded of him. he sees the way he dotes on her, makes sure shes fed and warm and as comfortable as she can be. an she deserves it, melitele does that girl deserve all the love an care in the world, but it still hurts, knowing that he didnt matter enough to the wolf to be treated half as good as her.

he can see that geralt still loves yennefer, despite their fights and conflicts. he sees how he lingers, how he treats her softly even when hes coping with the things she did. he sees how fast he started to forgive her after coming back through that portal with her. he heard their conversation on that bridge.

it hurt more than he could ever imagine to hear that he wasnt a part of their future.

he can see the way he treats triss, treated mousesack, even the dwarves.

maybe geralt does make friends.

maybe jaskier just doesnt make the cut.

[feykrorovaan]

It happened AGAIN.

Me:*casually rewatching the second season of the Witcher, when the dock master starts critiquing Jaskier's songs*

BLACKWALL!

[elythegardeningbard]

My progress

[deannamb]

Some Jaskier moments

[the-odd-shu]

So, *grabs your hands* lets be delusional together for a moment. Where do you think Jayce and Viktor ended up after the rune teleported them?

(Does Viktor keep his Herald form? Is he as he is in his astral form? Does his body return to how it was before he absorbed the hexcore? Is he partially purple and full of metal? You decide.

It Jayce back in his normal body? Does he keep his astral form and the white hair look? Does Jayce keep the beard and the scars?)

Personally, I love the idea of thrusting them into video games after being teleported out of the Arcane Universe.

Maybe they load into Minecraft. Blary eyed and confused after being ripped atom from atom and feeling the other's hand slip from their grip. I would eat up them awkardly collecting resources, building themselves a cute little cottage together and figure out how to work redstone, all whilst talking out what happened in Season 2 and learning to forgive and move forward.

(For some reason they can hear the relaxing music in the background, and it definitely makes it hard for them to fight. I also like to think that the cave noises scare the shit out of both of them).

Maybe they wake up in the resurrection shrine of Breath of the Wild, shoulder to shoulder, as the water drains out of the bottom. And they end up having to go save some random woman trapped in a castle. (This of course could be an AU and you can replace the various BOTW characters with Zaunites and Piltovern citizens). They both have amnesia, but somehow know they want to stick together rather than split ways after the tutorial. And the memories they regain through the Sheikah slate remind them of Season 1 and 2.

Fuck it, put them in the Witcher: Wild Hunt. I want Witcher!Jayce and Witcher!Viktor travelling together. (Remember this isn't necessarily an AU where their personalities and/or morals match up with the character, this is a continuation straight from Season 2, so I love the idea of these two waking up, and having weird, uncanny, supernatural hunting instincts, and bright, cat-like eyes and having no idea why everyone in every town is being so mean). Astral, white-haired Viktor and Jayce for these witchers because HELL YEAH juicy angst. Which school would they be in? Maybe Jayce being a Wolf because he's a heavy hitter, and more grounded in his combat style, and thrives when in company (like a member of a wolf pack). Whereas I'd see Viktor as a Cat, with his poisons and sneaky/stealth fighting style. He's slight and on the smaller side, so a Cat Witcher's tactic would work better for him. On that note, what happens during winter? Is Jayce drawn to Kaer Morhen. Does Viktor have an instinct to seek out the carvan? Do they collectively fight the instincts and remain together, unwilling to separate after what happened last time they left one another?

[renegadesstuff]

Jaskier cheering on Geralt during his fight is just too cute 🥹🥺

[patroclusdefencesquad]

literally no one fucking talk to me.

[hanzajesthanza]

the training montage in crossroads re-ignited a headcanon i had of geralt waking up and doing gymnastics, performing kickflips and mid-air spins around on a fencepost outside an hour before sunrise to ‘limber up,’ and bleary-eyed dandelion wrapping himself up in a blanket to be like "heyyy... what the hell are you doing 💖"

[astaldis]

Why is House of the Dragon allegedly so much better than The Witcher?

Just watched House of the Dragon S2 and I must say - I found it pretty boring in many parts?

Sorry, but the whole thing mostly and disappointingly feels like a very long and repetitive prologue to what might come in S3. And they do many things that are loudly criticised in The Witcher, some even a lot worse, but with HotD people seem to not mind? Honestly, this really puzzles me. Yes, the costumes and make-up might be better, but:

It's all over the place on the whole continent of Westeros and even outside of Westeros with people traveling from place to place in no time at all. OK, on dragon back, you can do that, but they also do it on foot and by boat. I remember some of the geography of the continent because I was very much into Game of Thrones some years back when it aired and also read all the Song of Ice and Fire books that were available (not the ones HotD is based on though), but the constant jumps from one place to the next are really confusing imo and you'd need to have a map by your side all the time to remember where is what. When the Witcher does that, it is criticised heavily.

Same with people, there are so many main and minor characters, some even with similar or the same names, how the fuck are you supposed to remember who's who and who is related to who and how, who belongs to which house, and who's allied to who and who's feuding who without looking it up again all the time somewhere on the internet? With all the incest and extramarital activities resulting in a host of illegitimate progeny, I found this extremely confusing, a lot more so than in The Witcher.

And does anybody have a shimmer of an idea of how much time has passed since the old king's death? Must be at least months but you hardly ever get any hints about it. And this poor girl, how long is she wandering around the desolate highlands alone trying to find the wild dragon? Must have been weeks judging by the other things that happened in the meantime ...

Maybe it's just me, but I did not find any of the characters really compelling. Not that they are not well acted, the acting is good enough, but emotionally they did not really leave any impression on me. Maybe the only character I find a bit interesting is Queen Helaena and this very young Lord Tully who shows unexpected spine and stands up to Daemon in front of the Riverlords. There are so many seemingly random new side characters popping up all over the place, too, miraculously gaining importance that one is supposed to keep track of, but also none of them that was in any way inspiring it me. And the poor cute Bracken knight only drew his sword and was already dead in the mud on a battlefield with hundreds of men hardly a second later ...

Rhaenyra suddenly and out of the blue kisses this lowborn woman (was her name even mentioned? I cannot for the life of me remember it). I don't have anything against women kissing, not at all, but why? There is no mention of anything going on between those two at all afterwards. Are they in a secret relationship now or not? I haven't read the book and don't know if it's in there, but how is that kiss, as it seems to have no relevance to the plot at all, not 'woke' catering to the LGBTQ community? But everything the Witcher does is?

Then there are the dragons you have to keep track of in addition to the many people and places. How many dragons are there? And who rides which one? And why the heck would a dragon in its right mind choose this dubious Ulf character who accidentally stumbles into its cave as a rider???

And the plot? Honestly, was there, beside the one fight between the three dragons, anything that was really exciting? I remember nothing, no battles, no good sword fights, nothing but TALK. At lest 90% of the plot is repetitive talking about politics and plotting and scheming. I have nothing against a nice political intrigue and of course that's what happens at courts and it can be interesting too. It was in Game of Thrones where you had really interesting characters, too. But here I found it mostly boring and uninspired. And The Witcher is criticised for having too much politics and too many side characters although it has a LOT less so than this season of HotD.

They also seem to have conveniently forgotten that in GoT they established that Targaryans would not burn from fire. In the books this happens only once because some kind of blood magic was performed, but in the show it happened several times, so it seemed to be the rule, not the exception. HotD thus kind of refutes their own made-up lore, which I found confusing and had to look it up online. (They could easily have made Aegon suffer from bad injuries due to the fall instead.)

The music was rather uninspiring, too, imo, except for the intro which is the well-known one taken from GoT and the music at the end of E8 which was partly based on the Rains of Castamere, otherwise there was not a single piece of the soundtack that would make me want to buy and listen to it. The Witcher has quite a few that I listen to again and again (including, of course, Jaskier's songs, but many more).

What I also like a lot better about The Witcher: It does not take itself that seriously and there is quite a bit of humour in it. In HofD S2, the imo funniest piece of dialogue was: "I want you to fuck my wives." - "How many wives do you have?" (that was between this pirate commander, don't remember his/her? name, and Lord Tyland, was that his name?) . And maybe the truest sentence in the show by this random braggart in the tavern who miraculously turns into a dragon rider Ulf: "A sense of humour would do you all good."

All in all, the only thing that I have found to be really good and outstanding about HotD S2 are the dragons. Without them, it would be less than mediocre. I don't think I would want to rewatch it and feel no desire to look up any of the characters and their relationships etc to find out more about them. I cannot say in how far it is or isn't faithful to the source material as I have not read the book(s?) HotD is based on, but even if it's more faithful to the source material, this has failed to make it a great watch like GoT (minus the ending, that was worse than the poorest fanfic could have thought it up). With the dragons it is alright to watch once, hoping for a more exciting S3, but there is absolutely no way it deserves higher critic/audience scores/ratings than The Witcher S3, the contrary.

Update: To clarify, I don't really mind many things that I mentioned about HotD, I can totally live with an unclear timeline and many characters, even if it's not easy to remember every name, relationship etc. If I really like a show or character, I simply look it up, no problem. But these are all things I have seen people criticise The Witcher for on social media, and then they say HotD is so much better. That's what really puzzles me. What I definitely liked about HotD is the diverse cast and that there are many female characters with a lot of screen time and importance. It's not a bad show, only I like The Witcher much better despite its flaws. This is not meant as an anti HotD post but a pro Witcher post.

[disdaidal]

Eamon Farren as Cahir THE WITCHER SO3E06

[endiness]

"As to whether there's hope, I think that's a question for Lauren and the writers and seeing where they go in season four. But I certainly think that Jaskier thinks there might be hope there [for their relationship.] He's a very hopeful human being and will find the light in the darkest, darkest days."

"I have no idea [if they’ll be able to have a future together.] I have no idea what happens. I'd like to think so."

joey and hugh, respectively, about the future of jaskier and radovid’s relationship.

[abbiewith2bees]

OK we've all seen the comparison of the ofmd shot, BUT WHAT ABOUT THEM??? GERALT AND JASKIER ARE LITERALLY THE SAME AS AZI AND CROWLEY BUT NOT PG 13????

[remuslupinscumslutt]

I’d like to think I’m a mentally stable person, but then I realize I cry over fictional characters on a regular basis after creating thousands of fake scenarios in my own little head…

[thedragonqueens]

Yennefer: you were right, we should have been-

Jaskier: what?!

Ciri: She said you were right

Jaskier: I know. It's the first time she does that. I hate it. Go back to say im wrong and useless

Yennefer: You were wrong and didn't helped

Jaskier: Not so soon

[sparrowsparadise]

it's been 3 days since I watched vol 1 and I have not stopped thinking about them since

[isimady]

This trope will kill me one day