#and spent the last season unlearning her toxic behaviors

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

got called an abuse apologist today lads :(

[karaspal]

kara danvers is so ace-coded they should've just confirmed her as asexual. she values friendships over anything else, she gets grossed out by sexual stuff, she can easily make friends with dragons! it's basically canon.

kara spent the entirety of s1 wanting to date james but they became great friends in the meantime, so when it was finally time for them to change their relationship, kara didn't want to date him anymore. she didn't want to lose the connection they had, and a failed relationship would've done that. i think this is the reason kara doesn't want to date people who are already her friends. if it fails, you lose the person. and with ace people wanting to date allo people, it's a real possibility.

in s1, kara also (kind of) faced some aphobia from leslie during her supergirl slander piece. there is also a thing she says in the podcast itself (iyky), but i don't really want to include it because it's very icky.

(this should go without saying, but since this is the internet and nothing goes with a disclaimer, i do think leslie's "lack of sexuality" comment is bad, and i do think it could be seen as aphobie if that's how one chooses to interpret it)

kara spent the first half of s2 not only not showing any interest in mon-el, but outright saying she wouldn't date someone like him (who is, for example, openly a very sexual person. not that there's anything wrong with that, but seemingly not kara's cup of tea). she also rejected him twice. twice.

(the following part i kinda copy-pasted from another one of my posts, but don't judge me too hard, okay. it just already has the points i want to make.)

i honestly think kara dated mon-el because she felt like everyone was pulling away from her and she was scared to be alone again. it was during the time she was fighting with her best friends, and her sister was preoccupied with her own (toxic) relationship. on top of that, part of kara's story in the early seasons is unlearning all the harmful behavior jeremiah and eliza forced her to do so she could "fit in" ("don't be too smart", "make sure not to stand out", "go on dates, find a partner. it's what humans do"). so her abandonment issues, mixed with her belief that you need a partner to fit in and be happy because "that's what humans do", pushed her to mon-el. it also doesn't help alex decided to push the last of her internalized comhet on her sister ("well, mon-el likes you so are you sure you don't like him either?" no. no, she doesn't. this is not slander to alex tho, it's the writers fault. alex is my girl, and i love her very much. it was also said in s1 eliza would get upset with alex if kara didn't date enough so alex pushing kara towards mon-el maybe could be seen as a leftover effect from their mother's unfair treatment.)

i'd also like to say that sleeping with a guy once (if that's even what happened since we didn't really see anything) doesn't really prove she's not asexual. since she also left after (which is so funny to me because she got so bored she left her own loft) and explicitly told him not to tell anyone (which is even funnier to me).

and, on top of that, technically, for kara, mon-el was the closest thing to a kryptonian. in a way, he reminded her of her home (even if he was the furthest from that). she romanticized him a lot (she said so herself in 3x15). she felt like she could be herself with him, because he was also an alien. but the thing was, mon-el hated his planet and didn’t miss it at all. and for all of krypton’s faults, kara still missed her home a lot. mon-el couldn’t relate to her the way kara thought he could.

all these factors - 1) kara’s abandonment issues (because almost everyone was pulling away from her), 2) the belief installed by her adoptive parents that you need a romantic partner to fit in and appear normal (eliza would get upset with her if she didn’t go on enough dates), 3) most of her friends looking genuinely happy in their romantic relationships (happiness kara wanted to experience too and she didn't realise until later in the show that happiness looks different for different people so she assumed a relationship would make her happy), 4) last of alex’s comphet telling her that maybe she likes him too because he likes her (even if there were no indications and in fact, kara said she didn’t like him and looked disappointed when she found out he did), and 5) mon-el being the “closest” to her home (even if that was far from the truth), resulted in kara reassuring herself mon-el would make her happy and that he is good for her. even though he wasn’t.

i mean, forcing yourself to date someone because 1) they like you, 2) almost everyone else around you is in a relationship, and 3) you've been taught dating is the norm, and if you don't, you're weird, is pretty much the standard asexual experience.

in the s3 crossover, kara's conversation with barry can also be seen as asexual-coded.

being asexual can truly feel so isolating sometimes. so i get it.

the end of s3 is so so great because kara finally accepts herself the way she is and is happy with that person. and guess what, the second she does so, her "need" to find a romantic partner disappears. she doesn't have a love interest in s4, and it is so refreshing to see.

also, here are some moments that scream ace!kara because why not.

in conclusion? kara is asexual CANON. have a nice day!

[anony-mouse-writer]

well if netflix is allowed to give us a crappy washed out edgelord version of winx, then im allowed to post my weird worldbuilding takes on winx club that ive been making for the last year and a half since i rewatched the show. (also i watched the 4kids version so apologies about the names)

general worldbuilding: the three schools of magix are there to train the defenders of the realms.

red fountain trains paladins and knights to protect the kingdoms and their people.

alfea trains magic users to protect the magic of the realms with a concentration on personal transformation and growth.

cloud tower trains magic users to protect the realms themsleves with a concentration on study and magical artificery. because of the rogue witches who tried to steal the dragonfire, there has been a certain amount of tension between the witches and everyone else for a few decades.

bloom: is slightly... odd growing up. sometimes her eyes glow and her base temp is a few degrees higher than is strictly healthy and she is drawn to warm spaces like lizards or cats. her mom invests in a greenhouse extension for her flowershop and no one comments on the hammock bloom strings up to sleep in. she says she’s never picked any major or job in the future because she’s okay where she is at the flower shop, but really its because she feels like shes missing something important and can’t figure it out. it doesn’t go away completely when she gets alfea either, but when she finally gets to sparks/domino, she realizes its because she is carrying the embodiment of an entire realm’s magic in her and that kinda messes up your magic a bit.

stella: solaria has several branches of royalty, but they are mainly split into the three solar courts and the lunar and stellar courts. her father is the king of the first solar courts and her mother is the queen of the lunar court. after their divorce, stella spent far more time dealing with courtly intrigue than she did practicing magic and she ends up getting held back a year at alfea due to missing several fundamental lessons. she tends to be more concerned with official standing and presentation than power or magics, but her alfea/red fountain friends are helping to teach her how normal non-manipulative friendships work.

shes sort of friends with prince skye and squire brandon and when they were kids they came up with a half-cocked plan where she married skye and dated brandon in secret and skye could fall in love with whoever he wanted and then they would be stella’s attendent so it was all covert. it was not a great plan, but it did involve several awkward third-wheeling dates on skye’s behalf and he has so much friendly blackmail in the two of them.

tecna: tecna comes from a planet where instinctual magic is a dying art. if anything, most magic users end up at cloud tower to study artificery, but tecna is determined to learn about raw magic and its applications in magi-tech. magi-tech is different from artificery because artifacts are meant to be used by magic users usually for magical or combative purposes whereas magi-tech is mean to be used by anyone for everyday applications (ie scanners, holograms, etc)

tecna’s species dosn’t have innate genders, but instead pick their gender presentations as they grow older (if at all). tecna picks female so she can attend alfea, but eventually realizes that female feels right and starts to wear less androgynous outfits on ocassion.

musa: musa’s mom used classical instruments (chinese classical, not western) and her dad used a lot more contemporary styles and tools, but together, they produced beautiful music. when her mom died, her dad grew to resent the classical instruments that reminded him of her and musa grew up with only contemporary influences. musa meets galitea (the other fairy from harmonix) in her second year of school and they have long discussions (and eventually jam sessions about musa’s inexperience with any classical or traditional instruments. musa starts to learn the flute and a few of the instruments her mom left her in secret and only tells her dad about it during the concert where she performs with them for the first time. she goes on to make fusion classical/contemporary music.

musa still has an arc with riven, but after season 1 when they break up, she spends season 2 out of any romantic relationships and season 3 realizes she has feelings for galitea. im still not sure if i want her coming to terms with her bisexuality to be tied to her coming to terms with classical music or not.

flora: floras people can talk to plants. this makes eating plants awkward. ergo, floras people are obligate carnivores who also gain energy via photosynthesis. flora is a scientist first and foremost. she studies and wants to develop new ways for plants to thrive in foreign environments without becoming invasive species and is working with both magi-tech and pure magic to find ways for people to get the most out of plants for various medicinal and magical purposes without causing any harm to the plants.

she also works on humanoid-floral communications and spends a lot of time with pumpkin-mytra and later human-myrta learning to break curses which was not her original plan but it was Very Important and so she learned it and ten it was kinda fun so she stuck with it.

layla/aisha: her parents traditional views and ideas are important to them and to ruling tides. aisha has little choice but to accept them and has no outlet for her true self for a long time, leading to some heavy suppression and anxiety. when she gets to meet the pixies, she makes friends for the first time and they teach her a bit about being herself. she still has struggles with expressing her true feelings and swings between respecting her kingdom’s traditions and resenting them for making her be someone she’s not for so long. as she develops as a person and a fairy, she learns eventually to reconcile the two in a way that might not please her parents entirely, but allows for growth and tradition both. she gets along weirdly well with stella who helps her on this journey a lot.

aisha also spends time with fairies and red fountainers (and later possibly even some witches) coming up with better communication lines and various protections for magical creatures who don’t necessarily have specific realms (ie the pixies) since they lack any kind of protection from larger threats besides their own.

other characters:

daphne is a from the fairy school of magic so her job was to protect the magic of sparks/domino when the rogue witches attacked, so she stuffed it (aka the dragonfire) into the crown princess and hid her on a null planet so the coven couldnt find it.

myrta not only moves from the witches school of magics to the fairy school of magics, but she is trans. she gets an arc where flora and later helia help her to figure out her powers and also how to be comfortable as her own person outside of her friendships with lucy or even flora.

riven is a good fighter but a better mage. he wants to best his peers in fighting, and hates that he feels he call of magic pretty strongly. darcy takes advantage of this and encourages him to abandon his magic while draining him of his power. when he is chased from cloud tower and falls, he uses his skills in tandem with a bit of magic to survive. he remains wary of his powers, but eventually learns to accept them and learns to be a mage and a fighter which is Simply Not Done, but honestly at this point riven is done listening to everyone else so he does what he wants and becomes great at both.

the trix spend season one pretending to be regular witches. they play up the ‘mean girls’ routine and spend a lot of time stirring chaos and malcontent at cloud tower. when they finally give up the pretense and try to take the dragon fire for real, they lose a bit of the mean girls vibe and work towards the rogue witch coven’s goal of stealing the magic of various realms. their work in cloud tower does not dissapear and there is a time where a lot of witches have to unlearn a lot of toxic behavior and it sucks a lot.

[meta-squash]

God’s Own Country and the importance of major character flaws

Here, have yet another long analytic ramble about God’s Own Country and the incredible characters in this film.

An aspect of God’s Own Country that I really appreciate is how realistic and human the characters all are. It’s going to seem strange to say, but I think some of the most “problematic” (for lack of a better term) flaws in Johnny are the most important. I’ve seen criticisms about how his actions are unhealthy or toxic or problematic but I don’t think that’s quite true. I think it’s a good indication of how and why people use unhealthy behaviors as coping mechanisms, and how and why they start to unlearn them.

We are introduced to Johnny at an extremely low point in his life. Now, obviously, we don’t get a huge backstory for him. We know Martin had a stroke, and that now Johnny has had to take over most of the duties of the farm when before he presumably was just a second hand to his father. We can infer from his conversation with Robyn outside of the pub that he had some kind of dreams for the future and getting out (even if they were vague) that were dashed when his father fell ill. And we can infer from that conversation that Johnny had been much happier as a child or teenager and has gotten more depressed and hostile as he grew older. We know his mum left when he was very young, young enough that he doesn’t really remember her.

So he’s very low at the opening of the film. It seems as though this lambing season is the first major event on the farm since Martin’s stroke, and it’s only serving to make Johnny feel worse. He’s angry, he feels stuck, he’s lonely and depressed and overwhelmed. He feels pushed by Martin’s demands and criticisms and inferior whenever he makes mistakes but he’s clearly trying to hold it together. He cares, deep down--I think his reaction to the dead calf is a big indication of that--but I think he also desperately wants to keep those walls up. His coping mechanisms are drinking and lashing out at anyone and everyone around him, regardless of who they are. He keeps everyone at arms’ length by being a hostile, angry person because he can’t handle it. He feels like shit about himself and about his situation and he doesn’t really know how to express his feelings except through unhealthy coping mechanisms and lashing out.

This lashing out is connected to my next thought.

Francis Lee said in that livestream interview last week, and another article as well, that part of the film was inspired by a Romanian friend of his and that friend’s experience with xenophobia in the UK. The first few interactions between Gheorghe and Johnny are characterized by Johnny making casual racist remarks towards Gheorghe. It’s already been established that Johnny is angry and hitting out at everyone, so I think it makes sense that he’s going to try his best to push this stranger away. Especially because he sees the addition of Gheorghe as evidence that he’s inadequate and a fuckup, and it makes him desperate to prove himself by trying to be as independent as possible. I mean, he’s literally refusing gloves and a jacket from his nan. He’s defensive and angry to the point of being completely unable to accept any help or kindness, practically self-destructive via the elements, and yet we can tell it’s got nothing to do with the actual people he’s lashing out at and everything to do with his own fears and insecurities and depression.

So he’s lashing out, calling Gheorghe “g*psy” and “g*ppo” and aside from the racist names and the rude, brusque way he makes comments, he barely talks to Gheorghe. And yet Gheorghe completely sees through him. The “I know what you’re doing” scene isn’t just Gheorghe calling him out on his racism in general, it’s also Gheorghe calling him out on the way he’s trying desperately to use racism to get Gheorghe to leave because he wants to prove he can do it on his own. As soon as he’s confronted, Johnny doesn’t just stop saying racist comments, he also relaxes considerably; before that moment he literally won’t even look at Gheorghe. Once that confrontation goes down and it’s obvious Johnny is all bark and no bite, he starts looking Gheorghe in the eye, glancing at him as he’s working. The little racist comments I think are really important because they’re an indication of how fucked up Johnny is, that he would go that far, but also that they are just a tool to push people away, and not necessarily something he actually feels. Or if it’s comments he makes out of a sort of “back-country” ignorance, he fairly quickly unlearns them. The calf scene, the conversation with Robyn, Johnny’s obvious depression, all indicate that at heart Johnny is caring and gentle and sensitive, but he’s built all these walls of anger and defensiveness and spiky bullshit in order to keep himself from getting hurt, in order to protect himself from more disappointment.

And I don’t think Gheorghe intentionally breaks down those walls, either. That confrontation is just that, a confrontation. It’s Gheorghe telling Johnny to stop his bullshit. But Gheorghe is also a natural carer and his gentleness in the scene where Johnny hurts his hand plus his no-bullshit way of dealing with Johnny’s projected anger and hurt I think solidifies into something in Johnny. It’s the beginning of him realizing that touch and connection can be a comforting thing.

Similarly, it’s established at the beginning that Johnny uses both sex and drinking as coping mechanisms. He absolutely does not let emotion in, everything impersonal and anonymous and quick. He doesn’t allow himself to be touched by others in sexual situations; he is always the one in control. Gheorghe changes this for him, allows him to open up and enjoy touch and enjoy emotional connection and general recognize sex and intimacy as something good and comforting.

But people don’t just change overnight. Or in a couple weeks, as it were. Johnny has spent who knows how long using casual sex and drinking to cope and to keep himself aloof and distant from people. And in the week or so with Gheorghe he’s had so much of his perspective changed around and has learned so much about himself and human connection and emotion and being able to let someone else in. He has built up this happiness inside himself for the first time in probably years. And it all comes crashing down with Martin’s second stroke. I think at first Johnny is unusually optimistic because Gheorghe is there and he’s kind of lovestruck in a way. He has these little ideas of Gheorghe staying on and being with him and the two of them working the farm together to help Martin. But when he realizes that Martin isn’t going to get better, I think that balloon of happiness pops and reality comes crashing down and Johnny can’t deal.

He’s spent so long building up this spiky carapace of rude reticence and aloofness and supporting it with a layer of unhealthy coping mechanisms, that when the shit hits the fan he doesn’t know how to deal with his own vulnerability and desperately returns to his old ways.

The conversation in the pub between Gheorghe and Johnny where they talk about their relationship is Johnny desperately trying to cling to that happiness and hope he had before his conversation with Dierdre. He wants so badly to be with Gheorghe and work the farm with him, but he’s also just had this crushing realization that he can’t really have any other dreams but that. So when Gheorghe presses him to think more about the consequences of what he’s thinking, presses him to realize that it won’t work to hide their relationship or keep working on the farm the way he’s been doing, it’s another added weight to the reality that’s already crushing him. He knows Gheorghe is right, I think. But he’s regressing back to the beginning of the film, those old coping mechanisms, that inability to accept help or advice no matter how good it is, that inability to think reasonably about what he wants because it’s hard enough for him to accept that he wants it in the first place.

He’s upset, and he’s worried and scared and hurting about Martin, and confused about his relationship with Gheorghe as well because he wants to be with him but doesn’t know how to move forward with that in a way Gheorghe will like. So he does what he knows has worked in the past: he reverts to his old coping mechanisms of drinking and anonymous sex.

Johnny is absolutely to blame for his actions, and they’re unhealthy behaviors in the first place, made worse by the fact that only moments ago he had been talking to Gheorghe about wanting to continue and potentially advance their relationship. But Johnny’s own insecurities and hurts get in the way.

I think at this point, Johnny isn’t really intending to hurt Gheorghe, not directly. I think the only person he’s intending to hurt is himself. He spent the whole first part of the movie with such self-destructive coping mechanisms, and who knows how long he used them as a crutch before Gheorghe got there. He’s not going to be able to rid himself of them in just a couple of weeks, just like he’s not going to be able to rid himself of his depression and self-hatred in just a couple of weeks. And I think most of his negative emotions here have more to do with Martin and the farm and the future and his ability to “manage” than his feelings for Gheorghe. So he fucks Robyn’s student friend in the toilets because it’s a coping mechanism that’s familiar, because it’s a way he’s used before to distance himself from his own vulnerability and his own emotions. He can’t revert to anger because he knows Gheorghe’s right, upset as he is. So he reverts to trying to shove his feelings away and hide them in impersonal physical gratification.

He’s not really thinking about anything but killing his thoughts and feelings until he gets out of the toilets and sees Gheorghe gone and even that I think doesn’t quite jar him out of it, especially considering he’s probably about as pissed as we saw him at the beginning of the film. When Gheorghe rushes him at the front of the car, Johnny absolutely knows what he’s done. He knows he fucked up, but I think he has no idea how to fix it because he has no idea how to express all the things tangled up inside him. He also has no idea how to fix it because I think he’s just resigned himself to his previous tendencies of fucking up his relationships (romantic or not) with people--as Robyn seemed to hint at--so that he just kind of absorbs it in the “I fucked up again” kind of way that he absorbed the calf death and the fallen wall. He’s upset, because he feels like he should be able to handle it and manage, but he’s not surprised, because he’s got this track record of people telling him he fucked up, and him knowing he fucked up, and having no idea how to communicate apology or even how to tell people what caused the fuckup or what his feelings are about it.

But, like he started to unlearn his racist hostility bullshit, Johnny also starts to figure out that he has to learn how to communicate if he’s going to get Gheorghe back. That’s where I think this stops being unhealthy or toxic.

Because it takes longer than a week or two and the beginning of a romance to unlearn unhealthy behaviors and coping mechanisms. Especially in a time that’s already stressful and upsetting. But Johnny does realize that in order to even have the potential to get Gheorghe back, he’s going to have to talk, to communicate his feelings.

And this time I think they’re a lot simpler than the more complex emotions regarding Martin and the farm and his responsibilities and seeing himself as a fuckup regarding all that. I think the reason this is his jumping off point for starting to learn how to communicate is because he knows what he’s feeling and he knows what he wants the results of his communication to be. He loves Gheorghe, he wants to have a proper relationship with him, and he wants to Gheorghe to come back so they can work the farm together. That’s something he’s able to express, both because his feelings about it are so, so intense, and because they’re fairly straightforward. I don’t think he’d be able to really talk about everything regarding Martin and the farm at this point; it’s too complicated and tangled up and I’m sure there’s more there from before the point where the film jumps in.

I think it’s also really interesting to see how different his apologies are in the beginning of the film and the end here; you can see how much he’s grown and learned and you can see him being able to actually express himself.

Because the other apology we kind of see is after he and Martin argue in front of Gheorghe in the barn. Johnny says Martin is “fucking fucked” and then immediately goes quiet and dismissive. We don’t hear the conversation between Martin and Johnny outside the barn, but I imagine whatever sort of apology Johnny might have issued to Martin was awkward and stilted. Even if he simply said he was sorry, his apology or at least his guilt is fairly obvious in his body language. But whatever apology he gave, while clear and probably fairly simple, it pretty obviously also held a fraction of resentment.

There’s a big difference between Johnny’s heartfelt but poorly communicated apology to Gheorghe and his somewhat communicated but less heartfelt apology to Martin. His apparent apology to Martin is awkward, resentful, but simple; it gets the point across but it’s also not totally genuine because Johnny is still angry and feeling inferior about himself.

But his apology to Gheorghe in Scotland is stumbling, rambling, kind of poorly communicated, but totally genuine. This is the first time we ever hear Johnny mention even considering trying to talk to someone. It reminds me of the hospital scene when Gheorghe prompts, “Don’t you want to speak to the doctor?” as though he’s encouraging this kind of communication that Johnny isn’t used to. Now he’s understanding the need to speak in order to get his feelings and desires across and to mend things with others. He’s still learning how to communicate his emotions verbally, and I think Gheorghe knows this; he’s seen how much he’s grown in the past two weeks. But the effort Johnny makes is also important because it’s the first healthy thing he’s done that hasn’t been sort of gently guided or encouraged by Gheorghe. It’s certainly influenced by Gheorghe’s past encouragements, but it’s a decision Johnny makes all on his own. If this had happened at the beginning of the film, he probably would have gotten angry, kicked something, and given up. Now, he’s grown enough to realize that he doesn’t need to give up, but he does need to make an effort.

It’s hard to make that much progress in a couple weeks. There’s no indication of how long Gheorghe is gone for, I imagine it’s probably a week or so, but I think it was long enough that Johnny’s feelings solidified into something he could not only acknowledge, but actually communicate (unlike his more nebulous and complex feelings about Martin and the farm). But it’s also his first time ever really saying this much, and being this openly emotionally in a purely verbal way: his entire monologue to Gheorghe involves no physical contact between them. I said in my last post that I think that’s deliberate on Johnny’s end; he knows that if they have physical touch between them, he won’t be able to get out what he needs to say. His apology to Gheorghe is so confused and stumbling. He almost doesn’t even get it out because he’s so upset and yet so uncertain about how to express himself. And yet he does apologize, and he does explain himself and his desires and in doing that, expresses a desire to grow and change and get better. “I don’t wanna be a fuck-up anymore” isn’t just about the farm. It’s about his ability to express himself, and his coping mechanisms, and his relationship with his family as well as Gheorghe.

This extremely long ramble is basically my roundabout way of saying I think the really big flaws in Johnny: his racist comments, his fucking around and cheating, are really important parts of the storyline and aren’t toxic or encouraging toxicity at all. Instead, they’re there to show the growth and development of the character and they’re important because of the way he unlearns these behaviors. Those flaws are there to show how hard it is to change, but how important it is to want to change and to work toward it. They’re also there to show how hard communication is for Johnny, and how far he’s come since the beginning. Even if he’s not perfect, even if his style of communication is still very basic and fumbling, the fact that he’s trying at all, without outside encouragement, shows a desire to change and an initiative and hope and openness that Johnny absolutely did not have at the beginning of the film.

[pennyslug]

This analysis hit the nail on the head with the idea that Geralt and Jaskier’s friendship was the only real relationship she’d ever even seen. All of her own relationships in her life were based on abuse, competition, manipulation, or power. Yes, even Istredd because while he did love her he betrayed her by spying on her for Stregobor and contributed to her later becoming a victim of racist prejudice.

She has an extremely cynical worldview (which is one of her coping mechanisms) and she was probably waiting for it to all come crashing down, because in her mind it was too good to be true to begin with. I think that’s why she was so ready to walk away before even trying to talk to Geralt about it. And I think it’s true that she would be upset if she found out Geralt and Jaskier’s relationship was damaged too, because I think it would only reaffirm her existing worldview that love isn’t real, like ever, and people are always out to get something in the end.

She was literally taught by everyone around her that she was not worthy of love, and had to do/give something in order to achieve it. She has spent her life up to this point trying to make herself into what she believes is a person worthy of love, but obviously she can’t figure out what that looks like because she’s already fundamentally misunderstood the truth to begin with (that she was ALWAYS worthy of love from the moment she was born and it wasn’t her fault that the people who were supposed to love her failed to do so—aka classic child abuse).

And then here comes Geralt who 1) has a genuine friendship and demonstrates in front of her what actually caring about a person looks like, and not just pretending to care/using them because you want something out of them, 2) genuinely gives a fuck about morality and doing the right thing just because it’s right and not because you’re expecting a reward, and 3) actually risks his life to save her when he had no obligation to do so, for no other reason than he cares about her/couldn’t just let someone he knows is traumatized hurt themselves. And of course she couldn’t accept this at first (“you only want my success so long as you command it yourself”—-aka “i can’t accept that you would actually care about me so I’m going to tell myself you’re out to get something from me like my abusers and toxic relationships have taught me to believe”). But I think after repeated interactions with him she started to realize that wasn’t the case and was forced to acknowledge the alternative, which was 1000% scary for her and she did an incredibly brave thing allowing herself to be vulnerable with Geralt. And it has to be Geralt, because as a witcher, he doesn’t need or have any use for her power, influence, etc and so is really the only person she can trust to not have an ulterior motive for giving her affection. That’s why the moment he went back into that house to save her was the start of her healing journey.

And like all healing journeys for traumatized people it’s come with relapses into familiar but unhealthy patterns of behavior. But in the last episode with returning to Aretuza, the refugees and the battle at Sodden Hill we can see that she’s trying so hard to unlearn those behaviors and find a sense of morality (WWGD/what would Geralt do) and I’m rooting for her so hard in season 2. She’s going to overcome it. She’s flawed and messed up and traumatized and literally every choice she makes comes from her attempts to cope with that trauma, but Geralt sees something genuinely beautiful and worthwhile in her and it’s going to be so satisfying to watch her discover it herself next season.

I know how everyone is like the djinn episode is where Jaskier and Geralt fall for each other and Jaskier gets hurt and Geralt rescues him blablabla. And while I loved the episode and their interactions here this episode clearly is for the development of Geralt and Yennefer and not for Jaskier and Geralt. That was the episode before.

I mean tbh the first moment when Jaskier approches Geralt all I could think was “Oh wow Jaskier is drunk.” He sounds drunk. He has a flask in his hands. He probably tried to drown his sorrows because the countess of stael ditched him. Again. Poor bard.

I think it’s part to that drunkness that he gets into the squarrel with Geralt about the djinn and not letting  go of the amphora. This and because Jaskier knows that Geralt is just ditching the real problem here. The child surprise and what it means. Jaskier is smart and he knows Geralt (oh no friends then, so this needs another decade. So I guess they roughly know each other for ten years, now.) They are friends (or well, something. Because the whole episode is dancing around the subject of the term friends. Yennefer ask Geralt multiple times and she never gets a straight answer and I love that. The creators really are onto something here and all Geraskier fans love it, me included.) they can jib at each other and squarrel and be rough and honest with each other. But they are far from being in a romantic relationship state.

The interactions between Yen and Geralt are gold. They have the same power of wits. Geralt is sassy, Yen is sassy and there was chemestry even before Geralt uttered his last wish. And lets be honest. We don’t know what he wished for and while Yen assumes it was to bind them together on the mountains Geralt didn’t admit it. He could have wished for something else. He could have wished simply for her to live, or for the djinn to leave or or or.

I found it very interesting during the episode that Geralt is obviously drawn to Yennefer but whenever she reveals she isn’t honest Geralt draws away. When she tells him the conversation was payment enough (because really it wasn’t the conversation, it was bringing her the djinn and Geralt senses she plays a false game. He wants to take Jaskier and go) or when he realizes that she placed the sign on the amphora with the candles. I think what ultimately is their downfall is that Geralt has morals and Yennefer has yet to learn them. She wants everything, Geralt claims he wants nothing.

I also thought that when Geralt showed deep concern for Jaskier and she asks if he lacks trust in her abilities, she realizes what she’s missing. Someone to care for her, like Geralt cares for Jaskier. She is jealous of the affection. And she wants the child because she wants affection. Real, deep, honest affection. It’s why she’s so mad at Geralt on the mountains because his affection was but the stupid wish (or so she thinks). If she finds out what Geralt said to Jaskier she will probably be mad at him because Jaskier and Geralt and whatever they have is the only real relationship she knows and Geralt that idiot destroyed it.

When Jaskier thought Geralt was dead, he expressed it in a way only he knows to do, by writing the best song about him and only ever sing it. Poor bard, he really didn’t know how to deal with it. When he sees Geralt and Yen together, going at it he doesn’t seem too heartbroken tbh, more really into it. It makes good for a eventual OT3 tbh. I know Jaskier doesn’t like Yen, but mostly because of how she treats Geralt and not being true and honest. If that changes and I hope it does I can see them be friends. They have wits and could be good for each other because Jaskier loves so freely and love is what Yen needs.

While the three are all intermingling in this episode my heart bled a little bit for mousesack. I love that man. And he dies in such a cruel way. And Ciri is so young and doesn’t see the trap (not yet at least).

Also truely interesting is that part about destiny having two sides. Ciri could chose. If she had stayed in Brokkilon everything would have went differently. It shows that destiny doesn’t define you, but you define destiny. It would Geralt and Yen do good to realize that. I think Geralt does when he decides to search for Ciri in the end of the season. Yennefer needs more time to do so.