#castillon plotbunnies

[castillon02]

what if there was a Butcher of Blaviken gwent card and Jaskier made it his personal goal in life to 1) burn all of them to ashes so Geralt’s one and only hobby never betrays him like that 

and 

2) get the Continent’s gwent card manufacturers to replace them with Geralt of Rivia or White Wolf cards 

Jaskier gets good at gwent FOR THE MISSION 

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Witcher Shanties

The crudely sweet one about the succubus who turns into an incubus when they come, and vice-versa, and instead of reacting poorly, the Witcher enjoys them no matter their form 

The incubus shanty has several possible extension stanzas that mostly involve them half-heartedly making trouble in order to attract the Witcher’s attention and the Witcher being like “oh no, I guess I’ll have to physically satisfy you again in order to save this poor village,” and the lyrics vary from dirty to romantic depending on the singer   

The repetitive one about drowners, inescapable drowners, whose hands curl around your ankles and never let you go, and it’s superficially about drowners drowning you but mostly about the stultifying kind of danger they represent not only to life but also to sanity with how repetitive the contracts are, HOW DO DROWNER CONTRACTS NEVER END AND WHY WON’T THAT BREED DIE OUT LIKE WITCHERS ARE 

(answer: drowners breed in frozen mountain streams and then their young wash down with the snowmelt, so unless there’s someone who’s able to get to all the cursedly remote, high-altitude waters and dump a bunch of drowner-specific poison in there, the Continent will continue to be drowner bait) (There is also a shanty about a Witcher who tries to do this but any reference to Trygga’s Quest is shorthand for an unending fool’s errand.) (According to legend, Trygga is still out there.)  

The darkly humorous one about the various farming and townspeople implements that a villager might try to kill a Witcher with; the trick here is to sing the stanzas in an order that leaves you surprised and satisfied about what actually kills the Witcher, so if you start with a pitchfork then the Witcher has to get accidentally killed by some neurotic scribe’s bizarrely sharp quill, and if you start with the quill then you have to have a bunch of other pathetically minor ‘weapons’ before you come in with a surprise pitchfork or blacksmith’s hammer. There’s a refrain about always being on your guard.

“99 swipes of the sword on the whetstone, 99 swipes of the sword!” this one is about literally making sure your sword is sharp but also masturbation 

The one about the Witcher who goes to a brothel and keeps getting passed along to various different rooms because the prostitutes keep making up obviously fake maladies and terrible excuses, until finally the Witcher ends up with someone willing to bed them only for them to later realize that they’re both customers who thought the other was the whore. There’s always a different reason for the other customer to have been passed off to the Witcher; in some versions the other customer IS another Witcher.   

The one about the Path that compares it to the sea; it makes some Witchers misty-eyed 

The one about the Path that’s a parody of the sea one and compares it to a shitty boat that you have to keep bailing out but you need SOMETHING to keep you afloat and sure as shit no one’s gonna give you any alternatives (Lambert wrote this one) 

The one where a Witcher tries to get drunk on various types of liquors but it’s only good old White Gull that will work; this one is a bit educational as it goes into which liquors work well in which potions when the Witcher realizes he needs to use the alcohols for something other than their initial intended purpose of getting shitfaced   

The one that’s a game where there’s a different stanza for killing every kind of monster and if you try to sing about a monster that’s already been done then you’re out and you can only sing the chorus about how if you don’t know how to kill it then chopping off its head is usually a good bet. This usually ends in a singing trivia duel between two Witchers with increasingly esoteric creatures getting featured, and the winner gets to mime chopping off the loser’s head in the final chorus 

The one that’s just the life story of a typical Witcher: a Child Surprise, a Got Through the Trials Surprise, a Still-Alive-After-Fighting-This-Monster Surprise, and the only thing that isn’t a surprise is when he dies on the Path.  

“Toss A Coin,” which gets hummed enough by Witchers that it’s an honorary entrant to the Witcher Shanty collection; no one ever tells Jaskier this. 

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Jaskier secretly writes a “Dear Milly” column in Ye Olde Weekly Pamphlet of Notices and Sundries in Oxenfurt (commonly abbreviated to “Oxenfurt Notes”). When Geralt finds out, he is aghast that Jaskier of all people is giving advice, and Jaskier dares Geralt to take over then if he’s so much better. 

Geralt does. “Just tell the boy what you want,” he writes without self-awareness. (“Yes, obviously, but if she were going to do that, she wouldn’t have written to me, Geralt! She wants a hare-brained scheme that she can giggle about with her friends!” “Hmm.”)

When Yennefer finds out, she is aghast that Geralt of all people is giving advice. She takes over without asking. (“Inform your abusive peers that you will kill them if they continue. Follow through.” “You can’t just advise someone to commit murder,” Jaskier points out. “It’s not murder when it’s bullies,” Yennefer says sharply.) 

When Ciri finds out, she is aghast that any of these people are giving advice. She makes up some bullshit about “practicing royal decision-making skills” and claims the job as part of her studies, which Yennefer is fine with because she rapidly got bored with it. Ciri actually does give reasonable advice and she has a friendly but authoritative style, which is helpful for the letter-writers but doesn’t sell very well. Ciri happens to be at Kaer Morhen when Jaskier’s publisher strongly suggests to Jaskier that whoever is ghost-writing for him needs to be ghost-written out of the job.

...Anyway, it turns out that Lambert is the most popular writer because he always roasts the hell out of idiots while sarcastically but undeniably reassuring people who deserve comfort. Pamphlets with his “Dear Milly” letters usually sell out and Lambert makes a tidy side-income from the publisher, with Jaskier taking a small percentage as the middle-man. 

Lambert occasionally winters in Oxenfurt with Jaskier now so they can bond over the foibles of humanity, and also so Jaskier can provide an alibi for when Lambert takes care of certain situations that aren’t going to get published but are going to get some Witchery attention. Rumors of “Avenging Milly” haunt the city, which Lambert gets a kick out of. 

Vesemir gets a chuckle out of most of Lambert’s pamphlets, but he avoids the ones about child-rearing, which are filled with passive-aggressive asides.

Eskel buys Lambert’s pamphlets whenever he can for the sole purpose of feeding them to Li’l Bleater in front of Lambert and getting Lambert to wrestle with him over it. He claims that he’s stopping Lambert’s head from getting too big for his neck to carry. However, he’s secretly proud that Lambert has found a positive way to express himself. <3 

[castillon02]

Look, we already know from W3 that Jaskier and Ciri can rob high-security places... 

What if they just. Did that recreationally. Just really enjoyed pissing off evil rich people and doing some Robin Hood wealth redistribution. 

And then Geralt and Yennefer find out and they are 1) pissed off bc of the danger (“We didn’t rescue you for this!”), and 2) pissed off bc JASKIER gets to BOND WITH THEIR PRECIOUS DAUGHTER IN WAYS THEY DON’T?? 

Anyway, Yennefer adds shape-shifting abilities and glamors to their arsenal and Geralt is really good at sensing traps, and they’re both getting a little bored in Toussaint, so...  

Gay Crime Family. 

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Headcanon: Q used to live in Bond’s flat

Q bought Bond’s flat after he was presumed dead, but felt bad and sold it back to Bond when Bond came back. 

However, when Q is really tired, he accidentally wanders back to his old flat, overrides the security system when it seems to give him trouble, and collapses on the sofa bc he’ll deal with this strange furniture business in the morning. 

Bond’s flat is really calming! Q wakes up and feels completely safe and secure even though everything’s strange? He realizes what he’s done, but luckily Bond is on a mission, so he can hide his indiscretion and definitely never do this again. 

Except Q sort of definitely ends up coming over again a few times, just missing Bond each time. 

Meanwhile, Bond comes home from missions and is like, ‘Does this flat smell different? I’m not crazy, someone was in here, right?’ until one day he comes home early from his mission and finds Q curled up on his sofa. Thoughts that flash through his mind: “Is he in danger?” and “What the fuck?” and “He followed me home, Ma, can I keep him?” bc Q looks so cozy and lovely on Bond’s sofa. 

Q embarrassedly explains that...well...he used to live here and Bond’s flat is better than his new one, and he didn’t mean to intrude but sometimes this was the calmest place to be after a terrible day/week at Six, and it had been an accident at first but now it was semi-deliberate, and obviously this was horrible but! he hadn’t looked through any of Bond’s things! and he always tried to be out of Bond’s hair before he got home...but he’ll go, of course he’ll go, terribly sorry, please don’t tell Psych...  

Bond is just like... Well. It is a pretty great flat. He bemusedly wonders if this is how M felt when Bond made himself at home in her house. And he finds himself thinking about what he secretly would have wanted M to say, and he tells Q that it’s okay if he wants to use the flat while Bond’s on mission; it’s not like Bond is using it. Q beats a quick retreat. 

They start communicating with notes, and Bond starts leaving little presents for Q to find when he visits. Slippers bc Q doesn’t have any there, tea stocked in the cupboard, that sort of thing. Bond starts coming back early (read: on time) from missions so he can catch Q and talk with him. They start getting to know each other at home. 

They start realizing that they don’t have a home, not really, but they might be building one here. 

Bond eventually starts Operation: Download Q, sneakily hoping to move Q in with him without Q noticing. Part of that involves him putting the shoe on the other foot, sneaking into Q’s flat bc “Fair’s fair,” and also he needs to scope out Q’s belongings. 

They cohabitate for a long while before realizing that love isn’t always a grand declaration on a sail boat, isn’t always a secret message written across the cyber-skies for you to see. Sometimes love is slippers and tea, sometimes love is bandages and morning runs together, sometimes love is letting someone into your life and feeling like you’ll always have room for them.  

[castillon02]

what if Kaer Morhen’s fanon hotsprings weren’t natural but were only heated bc there were enough Witchers around to keep it collectively Igni’d, with various Witchers topping the heat up throughout the day, so in the winters the room would always be steaming, and so after the sacking, Kaer Morhen literally got colder 

[castillon02]

Eskel is so good at magic that it seems like he would be a prime candidate for extra Trials. I have to imagine that his reaction to the first one was particularly horrible in order to keep him excluded from the pool of pupils considered for a second round. 

Either that or Eskel was so extraordinary they didn’t want to risk losing him, while Geralt and the other potential trainees were hardier but also less exceptional, more disposable.  

The Kaer Morhen folks probably framed it like the trainees in the second round were special; how many died thinking that, and how many of them figured out that really they weren’t special enough? 

[castillon02]

Witcher Dogs

Should be a thing! They are

not for combat purposes, cannot stress this enough, they always Stay With The Horse

often very good at tracking by scent! sometimes a smell is too subtle even for a Witcher’s nose, but you know what can track that? a good good Witcher dog 

swift hunters! are you too tired or injured after a monster fight to catch your own supper? A Witcher dog will do their best to come back with a rabbit or a duck or a rat! or sometimes just an onion they dug up! but they tried! 

occasionally they will be really ambitious and drag home a deer and you will have to make a big fuss over their accomplishment 

skilled at Helping Injured People! trained to do things like help you stand up, physically support you while you stumble back to camp, gather firewood for you, retrieve various objects, etc.        

fairly good at discouraging people from attacking you, because for some reason the multiple swords on your back don’t do that sometimes?? but a big fucking dog makes people back off??? 

also good at discouraging wild animal attacks for the same reason  

adept at looking soulfully at monster attack victims and letting the victims give them scritches so they feel comforted enough to talk to you about what happened 

team players who follow the buddy system and work in packs of two or more, usually a larger mobility support dog and a smaller tracking and hunting dog     

dogs protect the horse. horse protects the dogs. symbiosis. 

numerous Jaskier-sponsored Oxenfurt studies show that companion dogs are beneficial for your mental health even for people who claim not to have feelings   

Anyway thank you for coming to Jaskier’s TED Talk, which he gives right before introducing Ciri to her new and beautifully trained dogs so Geralt won’t be able to say no to having them

[castillon02]

Headcanon: Forest God Bond

Forest god Bond sparks wildfires to germinate new seeds for the trees, culls the herds when they get too big for the land, shepherds the lost back into the fold, guides those who wanders to their homes (old or new), befriends wolves who are relentlessly loyal and fierce and tricksy. 

He makes the perfect shaded grassy copse for young lovers from the nearby village to go to have some privacy, leaves wounded deer in the paths of the starving and plants fruit trees near the homes of people who have pleased him, releases mint into the gardens of people who deserve a petty vengeance, kills or seduces anyone who needlessly threatens his land or the creatures on it. 

He can be placated with offerings of books and alcohol, and he has a ridiculously large house in the heart of the woods because he keeps getting bored and adding onto it 

When he brings a run-ragged Q to his home, he expects to bring the man back to the village the very next day, or at least to transport him somewhere else

Instead Q suggests some kind of modern improvement to the house---an orangerie, maybe, because he knows how to work with glass. They’re in the middle of designing the project by the time the sun is high in the sky, and Bond can’t very well send him away while they’re in the middle of something. 

‘Tomorrow,’ Bond thinks, only then Q’s thinking of something else, or he’s asking to see something else, and he’s done Bond the favor of improving his oven, so Bond can’t very well refuse to let him stay for the bread he means to cook in it tomorrow morning... 

Most things Q sees, he can think of things to add onto them, and Bond’s not going to refuse when he’s so curious to see what will happen.  

It’s all very Arabian Nights, and as Q gets closer to Bond, he finds that certain things come easier to him: fire burns at the temperatures he needs, wood bends without breaking, and he finds himself without burns when he forgets himself and grabs at the hot tea kettle with his bare hands.  

“If you keep staying here,” Bond warns, “the forest won’t let you go.” 

“Is that what happened to you?” Q asks. 

“A little,” Bond says. “We held onto each other with equal strength, I think.” Bond had needed a purpose; the forest had needed a caretaker. 

Perhaps he needs something else now: a partner. 

Q grips Bonds hand in his. Bond grips back. “I won’t let go if the forest doesn’t,” he says, looking into Bond’s eyes, and he stays. 

The next litter of wolfpups is raised alongside a clowder of wildcats, and the local villagers learn to leave tea and spices alongside the bottles and books. 

[castillon02]

I was thinking about Eskel and Scorpion and Lil Bleater, and then I remembered that goats are used to help keep horses calm? Horses are herd animals and they can get anxious when they’re isolated, you know, as a horse might tend to be when traveling long distances with a Witcher, especially when the Witcher has to leave the horse alone for hours or days to go hunt a monster. But a goat helps with that!  

“I’ve always believed in goats for nervous horses,” Sherman says. ... You get one that’s skittish and you team them up with a goat, next thing you know everyone is happy.” --- (x)

Eskel has Lil Bleater partly so Scorpion won’t get lonely!!! <3  

(...Does Jaskier perform the same function for Roach? Is that one of the reasons Geralt keeps him around at first?) 

[castillon02]

7 different coffee shop AUs for AU Week

1. Bond is working undercover as a barista to investigate cyber-threats coming from the coffee shop. He thinks frequent customer, conspicuous laptop-user, and attractive speccy nerd Q is his hacker target. Q is a hacker, but really Bond and Q are both after the same person: the coffee shop’s mercurial owner, Raoul Silva. 

2. Q actually is a barista at Bond’s favorite coffee shop. Unfortunately, he’s also into some sketchy computer stuff on the side. When some hired toughs threaten Q, Bond saves him and takes him back to his own flat. Once he reports in to Six, they decide he should take Q abroad and use him as bait for the Secretly Very Evil Organization that Q’s got himself involved with. “Don’t worry,” Bond says, “I’m good at protecting bait.” 

“I’ve read your file, and you’re terrible at it,” Q says. “Luckily for you, I think the possibility of unleashing you on someone who really deserves it is worth the considerable risk.” Q, it turns out, is a vengeful little fucker who’s taken the attack personally. Bond approves. 

3. Bond owns a dog cafe. Q owns a cat cafe. Their shops are next to each other. (Blame @azure7539arts for this one, it was all her idea.) There’s snarky courtship via messenger-cat/messenger-dog. They start taking lunches at each other’s cafe. The relationship develops adorably and also at a glacial pace. Then when Bond’s favorite samoyed is dognapped, they have to work together to get him back, and the trust and hurt/comfort makes the slow-burn finally boil over. 

4. Q runs a gourmet coffee shop. Bond is his special coffee bean supplier, roaming the world to search for the absolute best coffee beans. It would all be adorable and domestic except for the fact that they’re also secretly fighting a guerrilla campaign against Big Coffee (including nemesis Spectrebucks) in an attempt to increase coffee farmers’ and workers’ rights. Q hacks. Bond explodes things. Together they fight crime make those corporate assholes raise the minimum wage.  

5. Coffee shop customers Bond and Q grow closer over shared beverages, chess (and then other board games), and more and more meaningful flirting, while working together to popularize Tanner’s coffee shop. (Thanks to @roseforthethorns for helping with this one.) Tanner runs the coffee shop. M is his financial backer and Eve is his right-hand woman. Loelia is a barista. Domestic fluff. 

Subplots: Bond and Q help save the shop by intentionally being Really, Ridiculously Good-looking together and drawing in customers. They also help popularize the board games, which leads the shop to gain a new customer base. Meanwhile: Will Loelia get up the courage to ask Eve out??? 

6. M’s coffee shop is on the brink of closing because of rival chain Spectre Coffee and its dubious business practices. Former Navy officer Bond goes undercover at Spectre headquarters, with young but unmotivated genius Q offering technological assistance. At first Bond thinks he’ll just try to sabotage Spectre from within. However, he quickly learns that Spectre isn’t what it first seems, and that there’s some very real, very dangerous criminal activities going on. After all...what could be a more harmless front than a coffee shop? 

Can M’s two pining coffee shop employees manage to bust a worldwide criminal conspiracy without getting killed and/or confessing their feelings for each other? 

7. A tale of two predators. Q’s hackerspace cum caffeine parlor gets shaken down by a local crime organization. Q hires hitman Bond to take care of the problem. Bond goes to do so, but he finds them easy pickings when he gets there, terrified by something that they got...in their emails? Intrigued, Bond finds himself having coffee at the hackerspace more often. Q finds himself looking for excuses to hire Bond to kill more people. Flirting, deadly displays, inappropriate gifts, and other killer courtship behaviors ensue.  

[castillon02]

okay but. petty revenge crack: 

Bond actually gets hounded almost to death by the fact that he has the Aston. 

Q reports it ‘stolen’ and no matter how many times Bond gets the matter ‘fixed’ it somehow gets back on the police records again whenever Q has a bad day and needs a pick-me-up in the form of Bond getting pulled over and flipping him off via the nearest security camera 

Bond’s break-up fight with Madeleine is sparked by the fact that the Aston has been pulled over--again--and Madeleine has had it up to here with these Aston-related shenanigans. ‘So get rid of it!’ she says. ‘Buy a new car!’ And so rang the death knell of that relationship, after which Madeleine resumes her practice, adopts a cat, and starts dating the lovely woman who runs the animal shelter and drives a sensible Honda Civic. 

Q lists the Aston on some kind of classic car show and Bond has to field phone calls from TV people and ~somehow~ (Q helps) they find him and he ends up on the air with his face blurred out bc he’s legally not allowed to be filmed. the car, however, is clearly visible bc Bond didn’t exactly get around to signing all those ‘sure I won’t put the car on TV’ contracts before he breezed out of the garage

and now everyone knows that the classic Aston is a spy car 

and ‘spot the spy car!’ blogs pop up 

Bond gets spotted by really enthusiastic classic car fans all the time. they come up to him and start talking about complicated engine things that he doesn’t know about. a lot of them are older dudes. some of them are younger folk. Bond doesn’t fuck most of them. 

the remnants of SPECTRE track him via his car’s fan blogs but their kidnapping attempt goes awry when a passing gearhead beans one of the Spectre goons over the head with a spanner at a critical juncture. the gearhead is like. nineteen. totally down for ‘hey guess I saved your life’ sex. Bond feels so old. So so old. 

The Curse of the Aston Martin. 

Bond returns the damn thing himself. 

(Then he sets about trying to put ‘The Curse of James Bond’ on Q, which turns out to be much more fun for both of them than either were anticipating.)     

[castillon02]

5 James/Felix AUs

1. Historical AU: Felix is a U.S. Marshall who decides to retire to Scotland with his black mare, Charger, after Texas gets too hot to handle. Unfortunately, his crooked ex-Marshall boss and the sleazy millionaire that Felix exposed for a water-stealing bastard apparently have the gumption to follow him across the ocean. And it turns out they have friends in Europe. Fortunately, Felix meets James, a man who’s as good with a gun as he is easy on the eyes, who’s as much an enemy of this “Blofeld” as Felix is of Mr. Greene, and who has some incredible friends and allies. Together, they work together to put their past enemies to rest once and for all.   

(Bonus: for Wild West AU, consider the same plot but have Bond fleeing Scotland and arriving in Reno where he meets Felix instead.) 

2. "does it look like we need the money"--Sugar daddy AU: Felix is the rich exchange student at Oxford and James is the languages student struggling to make ends meet with only the monthly stipend from his inheritance. Together they negotiate James’ pride and Felix’s generosity and discover a mutual love for fast cars, good food, other people’s secrets, and each other. 

3.  Serial killers AU: James searches for new hunting grounds in Texas. He invites his target, Felix, out for dinner--his usual seductive modus operandi--only to find that he is, to his surprise, actually enjoying himself with this one. Then Felix tries to kill him and James enjoys himself even more--at least until the cops get involved. As James and Felix fuck and kill their way across the continental U.S., they negotiate more than a detente, and eventually trust and love start worming their way into James and Felix’s murderous hearts. 

4. Postal worker/pet owner AU: James is the postal worker on Felix’s block. He first makes friends with Felix’s pit bull mix, Charger, who likes to carry in the mail, and then with Charger’s handsome owner. When Denbigh and his clique try to get pit bull breeds banned from the neighborhood, James and Felix band together with the rest of the MI6 Squad neighbors to stop him, but stumble onto a shadowy conspiracy. 

5. Journalist AU: Felix and James frequently collaborate but also try to one-up each other with their exposés; they’ve always had a beautiful camaraderie and a simmering sexual tension, but they’ve both been too wary of disrupting their journalistic partnership and friendship to pursue a romance. When James disappears after going undercover, Felix has to follow his trail and save his ass. In between dodging death, conducting interviews, and blowing a worldwide conspiracy wide open, Felix and James also navigate their changing relationship with each other.