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demetriandelibinaryboyfriends · 3 years ago

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Well, ladies and gentlemen, I spent 4 years studying ecology, behavior, and evolution an accredited university...and now I use it to write gay fanfiction about a karate soap opera. Granted, my school’s career services were pretty shite, and they never quite made it clear what I should be using my degree for, but I’m pretty sure it’s not this.

AND YET.

Anyways I have a long-standing headcanon that Eli has a special interest in “badass” animals (namely raptors and reptiles) that really intensified around the time he got super into Cobra Kai. And now, naturally, I’m going to subject the rest of you to it, AND use it as an excuse to infodump all the random-ass animal facts I know!!!

(Also credit to @asphodel-storm because part of what really solidified this headcanon was seeing her use it in her fic Second Chances and I was like :O Yes!!! Hawk loves badass animals!!!)

Ever wondered why Demetri just had random knowledge about snake pupil shapes queued up to lecture Kreese about??? Like how on EARTH would you know that off the top of your head unless you either a) had a specific interest in snakes or reptiles (which I haven’t really seen from Demetri other than that) or b) you had someone in close proximity constantly infodumping to you about reptiles, and you hung on their every word OR you independently researched reptile facts to impress/better engage with that person??? Because take it from me, niche snake pupil trivia is NOT something that any “science nerd” would know. Like I was none the wiser about the round vs. slit snake pupil thing, and I was in a bio-adjacent major!

Also like. Dem and Eli should probably talk about the fact that Kreese apparently shattered Dem’s nose to the point of him needing stitches??? So here I make them! Angst (but also some much-needed closure) ensues.

“He’s a man of few words...unless you bring up reptiles or birds of prey. Then he will have far more words than you’re prepared to handle.” --Demetri about Eli, at some point prior to the show probably

Chapter 1: Here

Chapter 2: Here

Chapter 3: Here

All 3 are also posted on my AO3, SummerPhlox!

CW here for homophobia and some sexist talk/language at the end (sadly, the teachings of my problematic fave Johnny Lawrence don’t die easy). Be warned, this is the longest of these bad bois yet!!! A whopping 7k+ words! Keep Reading at your dash’s risk!

***

The Nature Center

“Come on, come on, come on!”

Demetri lets himself be unceremoniously dragged through the cactus gardens, Eli’s grip around his wrist stronger than some of the rock formations they’ve driven past. Saguaros and organ pipes and barrels alike whip past at alarming speeds, and Demetri considers telling Eli he could be very grievously injured if he hypothetically were to be rammed into one. Say, for example, if he had a friend yanking him into a desert wildlife nature center at roughly 40 miles per hour.

He sighs wearily. “We’re on an urgent mission to save our best friend from certain doom, and you still want to stop here and dick around.”

“It’ll only be a couple hours,” Eli mumbles as he maneuvers them around a particularly frightening-looking cholla patch.

Demetri grinds his feet into the dirt, pulling his friend back. Eli stumbles and loses his balance, nearly sending them both careening into the chollas.

Demetri frowns. “A couple hours?”

His friend turns, giving him a pair of the big, sad eyes that have caused him no shortage of trouble over the years. “One hour?” he says, a little too hopefully.

Demetri sighs. “Okay. Not a second longer, though. And you’re doing all the night driving we inevitably get stuck with. All the way to Mazatlán!”

“Deal.” Eli turns back to the faded adobe building, and the dragging resumes.

Something soft brushes against Demetri’s leg. He tenses, suddenly concerned about the number of wild tarantula species in Mexico. His eyes flick down, and he slackens with relief when he catches sight of nothing more than a sprig of breeze-battered pink wildflowers.

They’re almost to the doors—and out of the unforgiving heat—when Eli lurches to a stop.

“Dem, look!” Eli tugs on his arm, pointing at a nearby rock. “Looklooklook!”

Any annoyance in Demetri abruptly drains out, replaced by a soft warmth. It’s been a long time since Eli’s called him Dem. Maybe even longer since he’s seen Eli this excited about something.

Demetri squints, spotting a mottled brown lizard doing enough push-ups to make Eli’s workout routine look shabby. As the little creature goes up and down, he catches glimpses of bright blue under the chin—a tiny, puffed-up dewlap, probably. The color reminds him of a certain mohawk that once made his life very…interesting.

Across the sun-baked rock are two slightly-smaller light brown lizards—presumably females. They both stare vacantly out into the desert air, the male’s exuberant display lost on them.

Eli nudges him, snickering. “Look, he’s trying to get babes.” He cups his hands around his mouth and hoots. “Work it!”

Demetri smiles sadly, shaking his head. “Doesn’t seem like a successful endeavor thus far.”

Eli scoffs. “Their loss! Who doesn’t want a guy who works out?”

As if to demonstrate, Eli strikes a pose and flexes a bicep. Demetri groans.

“Oh, great. I thought you were past this.”

“You wish. The Power of the Hawk is never finished!” Eli spreads his arms and lets out a bellow. Despite himself, Demetri laughs.

“How am I best friends with such a hammy idiot?”

“That’s a two-way street, my friend.” Eli smirks, slapping him on the back.

Eli’s hand lingers on his shoulder blade as they glance back at the rock. The male lizard has sped up his push-ups substantially, as though achieving supersonic pace will at last impress the ladies.

Currently, it is not. Both female lizards have closed their eyes, the male’s dramatics having apparently put them to sleep.

“You see his dewlap?” Demetri asked.

“He has a dewlap?” Eli squints. “Wow. I totally clocked his species wrong.”

“Barely. I’m just getting little flashes of it.” Demetri breaks into a smirk. “I guess blue is the color of overcompensation.”

“I gue—HEY!” He laughs as an elbow collides with his ribs. “Don’t make fun of the blue ‘hawk! It got your dumb ass, like, 7 beers!”

And I needed about 3 more to stomach you swapping spit with Moon.

Demetri thinks better of saying it aloud.

He really shouldn’t be bad-mouthing the color blue, anyways. Blue is the color of so many nice things.

Miyagi-Do. Ravenclaw house. The TARDIS. Spock’s uniform. Obi-Wan Kenobi’s lightsaber. Captain Marvel. Eli’s eyes. Stuff like that.

“It wasn’t the worst look for you,” Demetri admits. “I think that award goes solidly to the firetruck rooster hairdo.” His smirk widens. “Didn’t help that you were being such a cock.”

Eli groans. “Get that on one of your stupid pun shirts, why don’t you?”

“Maybe I will! Just a picture of you doing that wannabe scary scowl of yours and a big caption that says ‘Don’t be a cock!’”

He does a sweeping motion with his hands as he says it, and earns a reluctant snigger from Eli.

“Oh, my god. I hate you.”

“I’ll make one, and wear it to graduation instead of robes.”

“You’d better not. I’ll sob to Counselor Blatt until she withholds your diploma.”

“Ah, yes! The woman who singlehandedly stopped bullying at West Valley High! I’m sure she’ll be completely proficient at navigating high school bureaucracy to prevent me from graduating.”

Eli snickers. “Yeah, okay, fair. I guess I’ll have to make an equally embarrassing shirt of you.”

“Well, good luck finding an embarrassing aspect of my personality that I don’t also embrace wholeheartedly.”

On the rock, the two female lizards decide they have seen one push-up too many and skitter off. Eli lets out a disappointed cry, looking genuinely a little sad.

“Aw, little buddy! They didn’t deserve you, anyway.”

Demetri snaps a twig off a nearby shrub and starts toward the rock. “Maybe we can give him a free lunch to help him feel better.”

Eli sneers at him, snatching the twig away and chucking it over his shoulder. “Lizards don’t eat wood, you idiot. They’re insectivores like 90% of the time.”

The lizard’s head shoots up as they approach, pondering them for a moment. Before Demetri can figure out how to go about acquiring a dead bug, the reptile scampers under the branches of a creosote bush and is gone.

“Anyways.” Eli’s hand slides down and fastens around Demetri’s wrist again, returning to yanking him toward the nature center. “There’s lots of other shit to see. Come on!”

As they head toward the entrance, Eli’s gaze flicks back to the now-empty rock.

“Can’t believe that fucker had a dewlap,” he muses, half to himself. “No idea what he was supposed to be. I really thought whiptail. Maybe alligator lizard, but I don’t think they live this far south. Besides, the markings aren’t quite right. And he’s too dark to be a brush lizard.” He curls his lip. “It’s going to drive me fucking nuts.”

Demetri smiles, fondness starting to trickle through him. Apparently the “badass animal” special interest is cycling back around again.

Better that than karate cults.

The wave of cool air hits Demetri as soon as Eli opens the door, so eagerly it nearly smacks the taller boy in the face. The nature center is surprisingly crowded, the air filled with tinny animal noises that can only come from several small children pressing every display button at once. Kids are being chased by many a stressed parent, snapping at them in both Spanish and English. Nonetheless, there’s no entrance fee, so perhaps Demetri should count his blessings.

“You sure about this?” He raises his eyebrows. “Seems like a tourist trap.”

“Demetri! They have a tarantula section! We are going!”

There’s no time to argue before he is being pulled along once again. Demetri wonders idly when Eli went from an arachnophobe who hid in baggy sweaters every time Aragog came on screen to thinking tarantulas were the coolest shit he had ever seen, apparently. Probably a particularly brutal brand of exposure therapy while trying to be Cobra Kai’s toughest fighter.

It makes Demetri’s stomach churn, thinking of Eli bullying the terror out of himself, but he shakes the thought away. It’s months behind them, and Eli is okay now.

Besides, Demetri hardly minds Eli being a fearless force of nature, when he isn’t using that energy to break arms and commit felonies and such.

“Oh, shit! They literally liquify their prey and start digesting it! That’s so metal. And apparently there’s this really fucked up species of parasitic wasp that lays eggs inside tarantulas and then the larvae eat them from the inside out—”

Eli begins eagerly feeling up a large, hairy model of a tarantula leg. Demetri passes.

Before he knows it, he’s being yanked to the scorpion information panel on the other side. “Oh my god, these things can fucking kill you if they sting you. That’s so cool. And they have these weird hairs on their legs they can detect movement and shit with, so if you go anywhere near one, you’re already screwed, and they also like—”

Demetri starts to worry that it may be difficult convincing Eli to leave.

“—and venom in general is so wild, man. Like that shit goes in and fucks up your spine so you’re just frozen as you die. What a way to go. Although if I was a mouse or whatever, I think going out to a Gila monster would be pretty sick. Like at least you die with dignity. Better than a cactus falling on you. And I mean—”

Eli opens up little boxed information panels with reckless abandon, commentary not ceasing the entire time.

“—are you fucking kidding me? They really called this asshole an ‘earless lizard?’ All lizards are earless, idiot! I mean, unless you count earholes, but there’s a difference between those and ‘ears.’ And the lesser earless lizard, too?! Like it’s bad enough some dick is calling attention to the fact that you don’t have ears, but now these poor fucks can’t even have self-esteem? It’s depressing, Demetri, I’m telling you—”

He stops mid-rant, suddenly turning to gape at something behind Demetri. Demetri feels his friend’s finger ram into his side several times.

“Oh my god. There’s a snake room?!”

Demetri chuckles, shaking his head fondly. “You are so predictable, Eli Moskowitz.”

“Look, just because Cobra Kai are assholes doesn’t mean actual snakes aren’t still sick as fuck.”

Demetri is once again being tugged across the tile floor and into the next room. At this point, he simply lets it happen.

“I read up on it a while back, and there’s actually a shitton of rattlesnake species,” Eli goes on. “They’re not even the most badass ones, though—kingsnakes will just fucking wrap them up and eat them. Rattlesnake venom doesn’t do shit to them. It’s insane. And that’s not even touching on gopher snakes—those things can get like 10 feet long, and like that’s not enough to get anyone to fuck off, they can reshape their damn heads and pretend to be rattlesnakes and I think—”

Eli’s rant fades into the background as Demetri squints at the artwork on the snake information plaque. A vast, starry sky stretches out behind silhouettes of mountains, cacti, and shrubs. In the foreground, a moon-washed creature appearing to be a nightsnake is poised with his head raised and his little forked tongue extended. His orange eyes, sliced by black slits, are glowing eerily in the darkness.

“Hey, Eli.” Demetri nudges the other boy. “Did they get the pupils right on that one?”

“—and the reason sidewinders do that whole creepy ribbon candy-looking thing is because it doesn’t move the sand around as much, so they won’t slide down the dune or whatever. Probably also mimics the wind so they can disguise movements and hunt better. Or not get eaten by shit hiding in the sand. You know, like that sand walk they do in Dune? So the sand worms don’t—oh.”

Eli cuts his ramble short as Demetri’s question finally processes. The shorter boy studies the painting, gaze flicking to the information panel a few times.

“Yeah, vertical pupils are right,” he says finally. “A lot of patterned snakes have them. Something about making their eyes not stand out by having them look like scales or something.”

Demetri nods approvingly. “I do see how that could be unnerving. You know the thing’s looking at you, but you can’t tell from where. The kind of constant, invisible surveillance only seen in the bleakest of dystopias.”

Eli snorts. “You should write some desert wasteland Mad Max-type shit where the government uses automaton nightsnakes to spy on everyone. People would eat that up.”

Demetri chuckles. “You know, maybe I will! It’s not a bad backup plan, if the computer science career doesn’t work out.”

He looks again at the snake painting’s slit-pupiled eyes and sighs, shaking his head.

“You know, I still can’t believe that war criminal ex-sensei of yours is going around proclaiming to be a snake aficionado when he’s got such a blatantly incorrect king cobra on his arm.”

“Right? It’s kinda sad.”

Eli laughs, but it sounds forced. He looks away from the nightsnake display, shuffling awkwardly and not meeting Demetri’s eyes.

“I, ah…” Eli’s hand comes up to rub nervously at the back of his buzzcut. “I shouldn’t have been such a dick to you when he punched you in the face.”

Eli Moskowitz is not one to apologize over and over. Demetri figures that the first time gets the point across, in Eli’s opinion—no need to keep repeating it. It helps that Eli has always sucked at bullshitting. It isn’t hard to tell when the man is being genuine, if you know him well enough.

Nonetheless, Demetri knows that all the lingering guilt from Eli’s Cobra Kai fuckery didn’t just dissolve.

The fact really should not fill Demetri with as much smug glee as it does.

Perhaps “glee” is too strong—and too sadistic—a word for it. Perhaps it’s only relief. The ever-present relief that Eli really did mean it when he said he was sorry, and it wasn’t all some elaborate act (Eli has, regrettably, gotten a little better at bullshitting since the Hawk shtick). The relief that Eli is back with him—and works every day to make up for the very, very shitty 6 months he spent away from Demetri, terrorizing him and the rest of the Valley. The relief that Eli regrets his time spent being an asshole, and not the choice to turn his back on Kreese and all his bullshit.

Still, Demetri can’t resist being a little petty. Not when Eli Moskowitz peed in his bed at sleepovers for over 10 years and then acted like such an absolute shithead for several months.

And broke his heart. That too.

He nudges Eli’s side. “Are you just now realizing that?”

“No, I just, uh…I always felt a little bad about it.” He keeps rubbing his buzzcut. “You couldn’t admit that kind of thing in Cobra Kai. ‘The weak don’t belong’ and all that.”

Demetri snorts. “Charming sentiment. I do wonder what the endgame was for being ‘the baddest dojo in the Valley.’ Another secret, even bigger karate trophy? World domination?”

Eli laughs, seeming to relax slightly. “More like continuing to boost Sensei Kreese’s ego.”

“It gets much bigger than it already is, and he’ll be releasing some herpetological virus that makes all snake pupils shrink to slits, just so he doesn’t have to be wrong about something.”

Eli looks up at him, suddenly grimacing. “Did you really have to get stitches?”

“Oh, yeah.” Demetri winces at the memory. “I came home with my nose bleeding everywhere and my mom freaked out and rushed me to the ER. She yelled at like…7 nurses in Greek. It’s kind of funny, thinking back on it. Anyways, I probably didn’t need all 12 of those stitches, but you know how my mom is.”

“Sure do.” Eli chuckles softly. “I’m honestly surprised she was cool with us hanging out again, after…you know…”

He trails off, looking away. Demetri frowns.

“You know I didn’t tell her that was you, right?”

Eli’s head snapped back to him. “Huh?”

“She thinks it was some random new kid whose name I didn’t know.” Demetri rolls his eyes. “She already worries about anything and everything as is. Where do you think I get it from? I wasn’t about to tell her my wayward and misguided best friend is going around assaulting me.”

Eli winces, and Demetri feels a stab of guilt.

“Hey.” He lifts a hand and quickly squeezes Eli’s shoulder. “You know I’m not still mad about that. Frankly, though, I am a little insulted that you really think I’d snitch on you to my mom and get her on some kind of witch hunt after you. Besides, I’m not looking to collect another round of stitches, thank you very much.”

Eli breaks into a smile, sniggering. “Snitches get stitches. Anyways.” His face turns serious again. “I, uh…I owe you one for not telling your mom about…that. I don’t think she’d ever be able to look at me again.”

“She might plot your murder. Or worse, press charges.” Demetri made a face. “Listen, no matter how pissed I was at you, I didn’t want you getting beat up in juvie or six feet under.”

“I would not get beat up in juvie!”

“Oh, please. Juvie is full of people who don’t need karate to be scary. There’s always going to be a better fighter, especially if they were raised somewhere they’ve needed it all their life.”

Eli pouts defiantly. “I could take them!”

He still looks so young when he makes that face. Suddenly they’re 8 years old again, Eli on the verge of tears after the mean kid in the class took the last of the popsicle flavor they knew he liked. Even with the added muscles and the gritty back tattoo, it’s hard not to still see some of that sensitive little boy when Demetri looks at him.

He imagines that elementary school kid locked up in a prison yard, and he feels sick to his stomach.

“People get traumatized in there, Eli.” His voice drops, and he takes a step closer to his friend. “Doesn’t matter how tough you are. I don’t want you anywhere near there.”

“I could kick ass if I wanted to.” Eli grunts disapprovingly. “Besides, Cobra Kai can get away with whatever. Kreese has a bunch of the city officials wrapped around his finger because he’s a Vietnam vet. I figure that’s how he didn’t get arrested for aggravated assault, because there’s no way your mom wouldn’t have called the cops on him.”

“Oh! So you admit it! You admit it was aggravated assault!”

Demetri stuck a taunting finger in Eli’s face. Scowling, his friend ducked away.

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I looked it up too, and I didn’t want to admit you were right.”

“As I so often am,” Demetri added smugly.

“Not all the time!” Eli retorted. “What about…um…”

Demetri breaks into a conniving grin as Eli struggles to remember an instance where his supergenius best friend was, in fact, incorrect about something.

He hums mockingly. “That’s what I thought.”

Eli groans, slapping a hand to his face. “You were acting like your life was over after one sock to the face. You act like your life is over when you stub your toe. What was I supposed to think?!”

“Many people go their entire lives without a broken nose, Eli. I’d even managed to avoid getting any from Kyler so far.”

Eli’s hand drops, lip curling up in a hint of a smile. “He sure tried. You were always too quick for him.”

“Ah, yes.” Demetri shook his head at the memory. “The tried-and-true strategy: Squirm out of Kyler’s gross, sweaty grip and haul ass out of there. Quite the high drama. ‘Alexopoulos and Moskowitz, on the run for their lives!’”

He sweeps a hand for emphasis, and finally gets a chuckle out of Eli. “God, we were such sissies back then. Always just caving and running to our moms whenever there was trouble.”

Demetri shakes his head.

“Not always,” he argues. “You found out soon enough what happened if your mom caught wind and tried to meddle. And I never actually told my mom Mr. Anatomically Incorrect Cobra Tattoo was the one who broke my nose.”

“Really?” Eli looks up at him in surprise.

“You told me not to get your crazed karate teacher a year in prison and a $10,000 dollar fine, so I didn’t.” Demetri shrugs. “I went and vagued about my grievances via Yelp instead. Of course, that was still too much for you, but it seemed like the option that would cause you less distress overall.”

Eli raises his eyebrows. “I think the issue there is that you weren’t vague enough.”

Demetri only rolls his eyes. “I certainly could have gone into more gory detail if I’d wanted to—no pun intended. I simply chose not to.”

“I guess I should thank you for that.” Eli sighs, looking down. “I never realized that’s why you didn’t snitch. I just thought you were…” He trails off uncomfortably.

Demetri snorts. “What, scared of you? Don’t give yourself so much credit. I mean yes, you did kind of give me the heebie jeebies later on, but not after making a handful of douchey comments and yelling at me once over FaceTime. I have a slightly thicker skin than that.”

“Maybe it’d have been better in the long run, though. If you called the cops on him.” Eli shakes his head, smiling forlornly. “Could’ve saved us a lot of grief at the All Valley.”

“Yeah, right. I’m pretty sure you would have drowned me in the ocean and left my body for the sharks.”

“Would not! The ocean doesn’t need more pollution, Demetri.”

“A body isn’t pollution, it’s fresh food! An ecosystem contributor!”

“Your clothes, dumbass. You get eaten by eels or whatever and then everything on your person ends up either in something’s stomach or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

“Well, I’m glad marine health is important enough to you for you to cancel your murder plans, Eli.”

“What can I say? I’m a California progressive.” He smirks a little before his face falls again. “In all seriousness…yeah, I would’ve been really pissed, but I’d get over it when I heard how full of shit he really was. It’d be okay in the end.” Eli bristles slightly. “He deserves it.”

Demetri feels his friend tense up beside him, and a wave of concern ripples through him.

Demetri knows he’ll never admit it, of course, but Eli is scared of John Kreese. Scared of what a man who has seen war and clawed his way out to the other side and knows how to twist people any way he wants might still do to a traitor.

“He’ll get his just desserts eventually.” Demetri reaches up and gives Eli’s shoulder another squeeze. “The cops can’t always turn a blind eye to…well, whatever he does in that cursed dojo of his. I’d wager only about…maybe 30% of it is actually legal.”

Eli laughs softly, leaning into his touch. “30%? That’s generous, Demetri. I doubt it even tops 15.”

A distinctive piercing screech runs through the nature center, made tinny and artificial by poor-quality speakers. Eli’s eyes widen.

“Oh my god,” he breathes. “They have a raptor section?!”

Demetri raises his eyebrows. “How do you know the soundtrack isn’t just queuing up for you to fight someone?”

Eli snorts. “Because if I had a soundtrack, it’d have way better sound quality than that. I live in LA, not some midwestern shithole with terrible production design.”

He starts frantically looking around, head whipping in every direction as he tries to locate the source of the cry.

“Where is it?” he demands to no one in particular. “Where’s the bird of prey room?!”

“Calm down, Harley Qui—”

He isn’t even able to finish the statement before his wrist is once again being tugged to the exit by an insistent (but nonetheless very warm) hand. Eli is relentless, wrenching him from room to room with the drive of a persistence predator with unlimited stamina. Demetri wonders idly if this is how humans managed to rise to the top of the food chain—i.e. dragging their long-suffering friends all over the place with no end in sight.

It's a wonder, really, how the Nature Center Society of Mexico or whatever-have-you has the budget to make so many rooms in a tiny building in the middle of nowhere. The electricity bills needed to cool the place down to a reasonable temperature must be astronomical. Demetri feels like he’s in some anxiety-inducing fever dream, rushing around a strange, unfamiliar location and being utterly unable to find what he’s looking for.

Or at least he would feel that way if Eli wasn’t holding onto him like a damn lifeline once again.

That seems to be happening a lot lately. Demetri is not going to complain.

The hawk screech sounds again, louder and even more grating this time. Eli lets out a triumphant bellow and pulls Demetri down one last hallway. They burst into a sunlit room, panoramic window giving an excellent view of some distant, dusty mountains.

That isn’t what catches Eli’s attention, though.

The ceiling is spangled with hanging birds. Plastic and stuffed models alike are suspended by delicate wires, beaks parted and wings spread wide. Demetri looks up and sees everything from owls to eagles to ospreys to falcons to kestrels to grackles to woodpeckers to tiny doves and finches.

It’s like walking into an aviary where some all-powerful wizard has managed to freeze time.

And, of course, there’s no less than 3 different species of hawk. He braces himself to get a massive earful about each one.

Eli looks around—mouth hanging open, more than a little starstruck. He breaks into the biggest beam Demetri’s ever seen, so large that Demetri is honestly surprised his face can contain it.

He probably feels like he’s flying as much as the dangling birds are.

Demetri remembers the dumb bit from Titanic where Kate Winslet stands on the edge of the ship and excitedly tells Leo DiCaprio that she’s flying. Certainly not on the level of actually having wings, he’s sure, but still perhaps worth re-enacting if he and Eli ever find themselves on a boat. (And they live 30 minutes from the ocean—it’s not an outlandishly unlikely possibility.) Still something Eli might enjoy.

“Oh, dude!” Demetri is tugged across the floor as Eli points up at a mass of deep brown feathers tinged with reddish-orange. “They have Harris’s hawk here?! These fuckers are so cool. They hunt in packs. Imagine being lost in the desert and you finally see buildings in the distance and then you get mowed down by a hoard of these guys. It would suck, but it would be a sick way to go. And—oh, my god! They have these too?!”

Demetri can only follow as Eli’s attention is captured by another type of hawk. This one is a bit smaller, underbelly a brown-speckled white.

“I read about those,” Eli says importantly, pointing. “They actually pounce like cats. Like they’ll hide in the bushes and just explode out at you. It’s weird as hell. Pretty badass, though. Oh, shit, Demetri, look! These little fucks!”

Demetri barely has time to get a look at the strange pouncing raptor before Eli has already yanked him to the next one. It’s nearly identical to the last, but it’s the smallest yet—barely bigger than the jays that frequent his mom’s birdfeeder.

“I read somewhere the males help raise the chicks, but they’re deadbeat dads.” Eli sniggers. “They eat all the mouse heads before they even get back to the nest, and apparently that’s the best part. So they hog all the good shit for themselves and bring their kids a bunch of saggy leftovers. Birds can be dicks, man.”

“I don’t know.” Demetri nudges him playfully in the side. “Out of all the ones we’ve seen, that’s the one that reminds me most of you.”

Eli’s head shoots up to glare at him. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Well, he’s certainly small enough to be you. A tiny hawk that eats mouse heads—sounds about right.”

“Hey!” Eli lifts a leg and kicks his shin—soft, but firm. Enough to make him wince slightly, but not enough to stop his chortling. “You’re just mad I know more about raptors than you.”

“I promise you, I am not.” Despite himself, Demetri smiles. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I am quite impressed. However, the fact that you’re some kind of amateur bird expert doesn’t exactly fill me with an envious rage.”

Eli smirks at him. “It will, after I tell you all the shit I know about gray hawks.”

Demetri chuckles. “All right, Professor Moskowitz, take it away.”

Their next stop is near the back corner of the room, underneath an admittedly very pretty bird. This hawk is a sleek silvery gray, belly interspersed with tiny white stripes. Eli is talking before they even arrive.

“—and the really cool thing is they’re actually super good at flying through trees, and sometimes they just snatch shit right off the branches. They basically only eat reptiles, and it’s fucking badass. Like they can eat fucking spiny lizards and somehow not like…gash up their throats at all? They’re going around swallowing the animal equivalent of spiked maces several times a day, and they don’t give a single shit about it. They can also catch fucking whipsnakes, and I mean, have you seen a whipsnake?! They’re fast as shit! And whipsnakes can eat rattlesnakes, it’s insane. And then a fucking gray hawk can swoop in and snatch them up like it’s nothing. I think they eat horned lizards too, and it’s like—”

Eli’s enthused presentation fades into the background as Demetri becomes acutely aware of something.

He’s fairly certain that not once since they stepped into this godforsakenly huge building has Eli let go of his hand.

Sure, having a grip on Demetri’s wrist was best for optimal yanking and making sure Demetri didn’t try to escape the onslaught of desert animal fun facts. Also ensuring they didn’t get separated in the oddly large crowd. The interesting part, however, is that somewhere in their jaunt around the nature center, Eli’s fingers have slid down to clasp Demetri’s.

Demetri wonders when it happened. Judging by how warm his hand feels, probably a while ago.

Strange that he didn’t notice. Demetri guesses it somehow felt so natural that when his synapses informed him of it, it only stayed for a moment before being casually dismissed. He didn’t even give it a second thought.

Demetri and Eli used to hold hands when they were much younger. In elementary school, it was one of the few ways to calm Eli down when he was on the edge of falling into a panic or succumbing to a meltdown. Sometimes when things got to be too stressful and overwhelming and Eli got caught up in his head, it helped to give him a concrete link to the physical world. It helped with the bullies, too—a small gesture of physical affection to remind him that even if no one else had his back, Demetri always would.

Perhaps it had been a little possessive, too. A way to assure that if someone came along, friend or foe, and tried to grab Eli Moskowitz away, there would be resistance.

Demetri smirks, amused by the memory. He imagines a younger version of himself shooting threatening glares at the kids who came anywhere near Eli.

He hadn’t trusted the lot of them. They were quick to feign friendliness and put a knife to your back. Nonetheless, he meant to send another message as well.

Find your own friend! This one’s mine!

Regardless, it currently seems that it also felt so natural to Eli that he either hadn’t noticed they were holding hands (and had been for some time now), or he was doing it on purpose. Demetri isn’t sure which possibility he likes better.

“Eli?” He breaks into a slow smile.

“—and they’re insanely good at what equates to like…bird air acrobatics, like they can swerve through basically anything and so even if you run into some really tangled thicket or whatever, you’re still probably fucked, and—yeah?” Eli cuts himself off to look at Demetri, eyes curious.

“Are you planning on letting go of my hand anytime soon?”

Brief terror flashes across Eli’s face, like he was hoping Demetri either wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t say anything. (No such luck.) It quickly fades, however, to be replaced by a sharp cunning Demetri didn’t expect.

“No.” He lowers his voice. “Because it’s really pissing off those people over there.”

His eyes surreptitiously flick to the side. Demetri glances over to see an elderly couple, looking to be plucked straight from a conservative Arizona retirement home and glowering at them like they just took a knife to the vitals of several children. He gives them the most pleasantly passive-aggressive smile he can manage. They scoff, in almost perfect we’ve-been-married-50-years type sync, and turn to study a nearby cactus wren display.

“So it is.” Demetri’s smile widens. “How long have they been watching us, exactly?”

“A while,” Eli says smugly, refusing to specify further. “I followed them over here. Thought I’d get our gay contaminants even closer to their Christian Family Values.”

Demetri chuckles. “That was a very good call.”

Eli’s eyes twinkle with mischief. “You know what would piss them off even more?”

“Do tell.”

Eli, apparently, would prefer to show. He stands on his toes, wrapping his free arm around Demetri’s neck and pressing their lips together.

He tastes like fast food hash browns, espresso, raptor trivia, and spite. He kisses hard—and Demetri knows he’s doing it to put on a show, but he can’t help but relish it anyway.

A little egotistical of him, maybe, but he likes to be shown off. Even if it’s only to stick it to a couple homophobes who look to have been around since the fall of the Roman Empire.

Demetri wraps his untethered arm around Eli’s waist, pulling him closer. If Eli wants to make this into an elaborate performance, far be it from him not to join in.

It’s honestly a shame his heart can’t run the infamous gym class mile in his place, with how fast it’s going right now. Its time would rival the cross country team captain’s.

He tilts down to dip Eli slightly, and the other boy leans into it. They move in the same unspoken sync they did at the Christmas house fight, the same sync that linked them at the hip for 10 years. It’s not difficult to feed off each other’s body signals, to move together like they’re one creature.

It’s something so integral to Demetri’s being that it nearly destroyed him when he lost it.

And now Eli Moskowitz might well destroy him again, by kissing him just a little too eagerly in the middle of a Sonoran desert nature center. Demetri wonders how many times it will have to happen before he gets a grip on himself.

Maybe he never will.

When Eli finally pulls away, his grin is blinding. The two of them turn to see the elderly couple now regarding them as though they set several orphanages ablaze. Eli beams at the pair, giving them a bird to go with the rest of the room. They storm toward the exit, the woman muttering something about how “there are children here.”

Ironic, really, given that the subjects of her grievances are far from legal adults themselves.

***

“Eli. Eli.”

Demetri receives no reply aside from continued huffs and pants.

“Eli, I am begging you to stop doing push-ups on my dashboard.”

“Absolutely not.” Eli puffs out the words in between heavy, overdramatic breaths. “How else am I supposed to get swole and land Mexican bitches?”

Demetri sighs. He tries to push away the part of his stomach that twists itself in a sad little knot.

“I really don’t think you should be basing your strategy to ‘land Mexican bitches’ off a lizard who lost the interest of both bitches he was attempting to land.”

Eli snorts. “Those bitches just had bad taste. I could find better ones in my sleep.”

Demetri rolls his eyes. Eli’s probably just messing with him, but he still feels a prickle of annoyance.

“Since when do you still care about this inane alpha male stuff again, anyways? I was really hoping you joining Miyagi Do meant Johnny Lawrence would stop rubbing off on you.”

“A guy’s gotta get laid, Demetri. And if we do it in Mexico, it’s no strings attached. Besides, I haven’t been in so long.”

Demetri wrinkles his nose. “You whiny baby. Just jack off like the rest of us. Look, a center of education is one thing, but I refuse to let us get off track on our very important rescue mission because you’re thinking with your dick.”

“You’re such a fucking nerd,” Eli sneers, although probably not with as much malice as he was hoping for.

“There, there.” Demetri takes a hand off the wheel to grab onto Eli’s ever-moving shoulder, giving it a couple squeezes. “I’m sure there will be plenty of time for acquiring ass after we make sure Miguel isn’t in mortal danger. We had our fun half an hour ago.” He gestures behind them. “The fun of a more…carnal nature we can save for later.”

“Get off, man! You’re messing up my rhythm!”

Eli roughly shakes his hand off, and Demetri sighs again.

“You’re ridiculous. You’re telling me that little make-out sesh we had in there didn’t tide you over at all?”

“Didn’t we establish that kind of thing doesn’t count?”

“As I recall, your qualification was ‘no witnesses.’ We had at least 20 in the bird room.”

Eli splutters, determined dashboard push-ups slowing for just a minute. “But I was just—I was trying to—fine! But it’s not the same as getting pussy.”

Demetri resists the urge to gag.

“You know, you don’t have to use all your ‘badass cool guy’ buzzwords here. It’s just me. You sound ridiculous when you say ‘getting pussy.’”

Although the push-ups start again, Eli seems genuinely crestfallen. This only makes Demetri more annoyed.

“I just figured while we’re here…” Eli starts, trailing off.

Demetri scoffs. “What, you think the locals are going to be racing to get a piece of the two California white boys who just rolled into town?”

“Maybe!” Eli snaps. “I don’t know. We might seem exotic or something. Or they could be impressed with the karate skills.”

“Look, while I’m sure not everyone in Mexico knows karate, I’d bet enough people do to make us not seem like much of a catch.”

“Do you always have to be like that?!”

“Like what?”

“Assuming the worst of everything!”

Somehow, no girls wanting to have sex with them in Mexico seems far from the worst-case scenario. In fact, Eli not getting naked with a member of the opposite sex for this entire trip is a scenario that brings Demetri more joy than it should.

I’m such a bad friend. Damn.

Demetri wished he knew why Eli was so hung up on girls. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. Exploring the female body was mildly interesting, but he couldn’t fathom how it could be such a potent motivator—especially after the lackluster way things had fizzled out with Yasmine.

Girls were fun, sure, and relaxing to spend time with after you’d been around a little too much testosterone. But it perplexed him how they were such an all-consuming force in so many guys’ minds.

“Ah, yes,” he says. “Contemplating us taking no sex stops on this trip truly is the worst-case scenario. Forget arriving in Mexico City and realizing that Miguel has been brainwashed and quickly risen the ranks of the local Mafia chapter and now has an ever-growing body count, Eli Moskowitz not getting laid would be a disaster.”

Eli scoffs. “I’m not just doing it to get laid, you know. I need to be in good shape to fight off Miguel’s dad’s goons. Or anyone who gives him trouble.”

Demetri frowns, feeling a sudden prick of dread. “You think Miguel’s dad is a big enough name in the crime world to have goons?”

“Any scary criminal worth half his shit has goons.” Eli scornfully growls the words as he continues to grind out an exercise routine the car is much too small for. “Sensei Kreese did. Heard he had guys pull sketchy shit with some land managers who tried to reclaim the dojo.”

Demetri winces. “Did we say 15% legal activities going on in that hellhole? Let’s bump it down to 10. Anyways.” He sighs. “If we’re going up against an entire army of goons, I don’t think a few car push-ups are going to make much difference. And no, I truly believe it will not get you laid, either.”

“Shut up,” Eli grumbles. Sadly, his push-ups still have not ceased. “It’s not like you’re any better than me. If you had a chance to get it on with some hot Mexican babe, I bet you’d take it.”

“Quit being gross.” Demetri reaches over and swats Eli’s shoulder. “And I mean that in more ways than one. You’re going to get sweat all over my mom’s car, and it already smells questionable enough from the remains of those nachos we spilled yesterday.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I accounted for that.”

The sound of push-ups—bless all the powers that be—finally ceases. Demetri hears a plastic rustling and glances over.

Eli is digging around in his footspace, brow furrowed slightly in concentration. He pulls out what appears to be a small paper cutout of a prickly pear cactus.

Demetri snorts in surprise. “Where did you get that?”

“At the gift shop,” Eli says airily. “When you weren’t looking.”

He tugs a wide string from the back and loops the trinket around the rear-view mirror. A tart, floral scent begins to fill the car.

“An air freshener?” Demetri tsks disapprovingly. “What, you think that gives you a free pass to dump perspiration and gas station food all over my seats? I’m still getting an earful from my mom, desert-flower-smelling car or not.”

“Sorry, I had to buy it.”

Demetri glances over to see Eli simpering in a very self-satisfied and aggravating way. “And why’s that?”

“Cactus Blossom’s the perfect air freshener for you,” Eli says smugly. “Because you’re such a dainty little flower, but you still somehow manage to be a total prick.”

Eli broke into snickers as Demetri’s fist collided with his shoulder. “You’re just mad ‘cause it’s true!” he cackled out.

“I am not a prick! Besides, cactuses are badass. They can go up to two years without hydration because their water storage is just that good.”

“Oh, I’m not denying that.” Demetri glances over to see Eli’s smirk hasn’t faded in the slightest. “It actually makes it all the more impressive that you manage to be this resilient, hardened drought-tolerant little shit, and you’re still somehow a total pansy.”

“My god. Why do I hang out with you?” Demetri shoots another punch into Eli’s shoulder, and his friend only laughs again.

“And you’re stuck with me all the way to Mexico City and back, babeyyyy!” To emphasize the direness of this situation, Eli slams both his hands into the dashboard and resumes his workout.

“I will throw you out of this car, Eli Moskowitz.”

“No, you won’t. You wouldn’t have anyone to tell you which of the snakes are venomous.”

Demetri lets out a long groan as huffs and pants once again fill the car. “Fine. Fine. You can stay. For now.”

***

SMH at Eli’s atrocious lizard identification skills, like that’s CLEARLY an ornate tree lizard??? Idiot

Disclaimer that I actually have no idea if ornate tree lizards are one of the species that do push-ups, but like. Something something Artistic Ecology License + Rule of Comedy has to trump accurate science sometimes

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brokenmoonsongs · 3 years ago

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In Defense of Jaskier, Not Your Average Sidekick

(Original image of Jaskier in the Netflix Timeline site. You could find him playing in a forest, and then below was the list of season one songs.) Summary: My analysis of Jaskier in Netflix's The Witcher, stemming both seasons but an emphasis on season two. His character, his relationships, his portrayal and representation in media. This will touch on fandom and beliefs topics surrounding toxic masculinity, queer platonic relationships, queer bait tropes, and heteronormativity in the media. Word Count: ~11.7K

This is going to be extremely rambly, and probably will be tons of points already mentioned in the the Tags and other parts of Fandom. But I've been stewing over this since I saw season 2 and just need to get it all out. I've only read one post on tumblr, and plenty of author notes through fanfics produced in the last few weeks.

Final disclaimer, while I've only consumed the show, I have read summaries of the books and researched as much as I can of the games/books and talked to a few IRL friends who were fans of the book first. My focus here will be of course on the show's portrayal.

EDIT: Apologies, somehow queuing this up fucked up the formatting?

First Impressions & Jaskier Season 01 vs the Books

I had managed to avoid playing the Witcher Games ever since I saw an interview with the studio in a magazine back when the first one was supposed to come out. Even though Fantasy hack and slash RPG was (and is) totally my jam, I hated how misogynistic and racist the studio interview was (surprise, surprise with what we got from Cyberpunk, lol) so vowed to just ignore.

Flash forward to a few years ago (what is time anymore) when GOG.Com came out with Gwent as a standalone game. Up to that point, I've seen some random scenes of the video games from watching friend streamers play it, so I knew of Gwent. It felt like it was supposed to be as difficult to figure out as Triple Triad from Final Fantasy. But I had a chance to play a beta version of the game. There was a storyline/lore component to learn the game, which was of course narrated by Dandelion. I loved everything about him, even though I didn't know much, but totally my type (I've been a Gambit fan since the Saturday morning cartoon). And already, I was like hmm... What if Dandelion and Geralt? I didn't play the beta long as I got distracted with other stuff and then again Witcher was far from my mind.

Until the Netflix series. Being a fan of Henry Cavil, I was willing to give it a shot. It wasn't until the person I was dating at the time (Jan 2020) insisted on watching it that I finally did. They were a HUGE fan of the book series, having read it all and played the games. So it took a while for me to realize Dandelion was Jaskier, and then things were filled for me as we watched the first few episodes together.

I watched the rest of the season on my own. And again, I was captivated by Jaskier. I don't think it was obvious in season one what was definitely set up on season two. I'm definitely a shipper type of person. But for me, in tv shows? It's almost never the canon ships they want people to see. So it was Istredd/Yennefer and Geralt/Jaskier almost immediately. I didn't know at the time that twenty years had passed from first and last appearances of Jaskier. At least the amount of time that Cirilla was born, for sure.

Look, the barker/bard trailing after the big macho fighter and being the plucky best friend/sidekick is not new. We had Hercules & Joxer, Xena and Gabrielle, He-Man and Gwil-dor, Sherlock & Watson, Robin Hood & Much, Blair & Jim. And in a lot of these, there's a fandom for the pairing. It's just as good as rivals/enemies to lovers. And nearly in all of these, the canon states (except for Xena & Gabrielle) that they are all straight people who only love each other in a platonic way.

We'll get more on that later.

But here are two good friends, complete opposites in nearly every which way who's managed to not kill each other (intentionally) for two decades. And there was Jaskier, reaching out for Geralt, to give us that hint of "hey it's been twenty years, is what pleases us still the same" in Jaskier's demeanor. Geralt was cranky before the mountain, maybe it was the beginning signs of a friendship that needed to adapt/evolve. Nothing can stay the same for that long span of years (at least for humans). And Jaskier, being a very perceptive person, was feeling that out, was realizing maybe something needed to change.

Having slept through an important battle and missed out on a very important discussion regarding his best friend, Jaskier then tries to to do what he always does best. Be an outlet for Geralt, with humor and annoyance. Problem is, he misjudges and gets a verbal lashing that actually affects him. It's the fact that Geralt NEVER said "go" in this that makes it even worse. Because even when they first met, Geralt had tried to leave Jaskier behind and never see him again. It's the words never said, but all in the actions and feeling that Jaskier gets the message. It's not like old fights or yelling.

(What's even MORE frustrating, is in the season two recap we get before starting the first ep, we don't see Jaskier until a little over halfway of the 3minutes. We see everything that Geralt claims is Jaskier's fault, except edited in a way where Jaskier is not shown. And then we get the shit shovel line and Jaskier's heartbreak. AND, super imposed audio of the first meeting: "This is where we part ways, bard, for good." implying he said it in the mountain.

Now, being a video editor and social media marketer myself, and having worked with game marketing departments, one hand doesn't listen to the other. So can't blame this on the writing/editing of the show itself. But it's very telling that they make this scene worse than it is and imply Jaskier's part in Geralt's life was miniscule compared to everything else.)

And then it's the last we see of Jaskier. Obviously, between the pain on Jaskier's face and the vitriol spewed by Geralt, the heartache and heartbreak is where it really cemented this relationship.

It's meant to be platonic heartbreak. And believe me, I know. I've had friends I've loved (in a friend/platonic way) who've betrayed me, who've broken my heart in worse ways than actual relationships have. It's powerful, and it's not often showed or talked about. Especially in fandoms where we're grasping for more queer content that we'll translate this. It's still just as important and meaningful even if we just kept this at surface level.

But what makes this hard to swallow sometimes too, is the book fans crying out about how their relationship in the books wasn't like this. That Geralt was always sweet to Jaskier and they were obviously best friends and yeah Jaskier got on his (and other's) nerves as is the way of being a loud, flamboyant bard. While it was in the books and games that they didn't spend all twenty years together, Jaskier having his own life and pursuits, and probably stupid petty fights too, they never had a break up like this. It never got to this point. When you adapt texts, you have to be mindful of what you change and what that implies.

In theory, this meant that Netflix!Geralt cared less about this friendship than Book!Geralt. And up until the viewing of season two, most fans didn't want to believe this. We gave excuses for his more recalcitrant nature and even more silent demeanor. We still believed and hoped that Netflix!Geralt cared just as much and regretted it immediately. It's unsure whether that final look we get is of that, or if Geralt was just in his head too much (could be both).

INTERMISSION. FRIENDSHIPS VS BROMANCE

Now, there's an argument I've heard a few times, both from online people I know and from just general commentary on media... "Why can't we just have good platonic relationships? Why can't they just be friends?" when talking about a presumed same sex couple. And there's definitely some validity to that and truth to that. But in media, everything's extremely heteronormative. People are always saying "men and women can't be friends" and using that as an excuse to romance two people of different genders. You never hear that about "same sex" friendships.

(I apologize at keeping this in the restrictive binary. Relationships of all sorts are much more complicated and nuanced, and there's not the same tropes with transgender, nonbinary and other minority identities. And while I'm currently questioning my cis-ness, I'm not capable of expanding this conversation with confidence.)

I've watched only a handful of interviews about season two since watching the season, mostly Joey's, and it's emphasized of course about the friendship they have, and being able to celebrate just the closeness and intimacy they have. As friends. Who just happen to be two guys. And that's great. In the very online world that we live in now, we don't actually see a lot of positive male intimacy in American/Western society/media.

There's always the idea of #NoHomo and the marketable #Bromance that's thrown around. There's a lot of toxic masculinity going around that affects everyone, about not showing feelings to other guys, not showing how much their guy friends mean to each other. Usually when we see some form of male intimacy between seemingly straight guys, it's usually quickly played up for laughs, or it happens after some very traumatic event. Sometimes it's the pat on the back type of hug, sometimes it's an actual, genuine full hug. I always think back to the FRIENDS episode where Joey and Ross become nap buddies. They fall asleep together and curl up with each other. They accept it when they're alone. But as soon as anyone else finds out, it's "oh shit!" and they pull apart and then it's known to the group, so they stop doing it.

So no, we really don't get enough positive reinforcements of this. And on the other side, while women friends are more accepted and not questioned, whenever a guy is involved and there's that misnomer love triangle, then suddenly they can't be good or close friends. We get them competing for attention of the guy, or being jealous of each other. Or if one's in a relationship and the other isn't, their friendship usually turns into either complaining about the guy or complaining about being single. And in the few shows that have women as the main characters (such as Rizzoli & Isles) it's very much more about them being independent and not needing a guy and how relationships interfere with their dynamic. We rarely if ever see that particular situation when a show is comprised of mostly male lead characters.

And that's the problem. So many shows, "genre" and modern, are comprised of mostly male leads and casts and are mostly straight. So the whole "why can't they just be friends" argument doesn't hold up that well when we have queerbaiting/bromance marketing going on all the time for shows like Hawaii 5-0, NCIS: LA, Psych, Lethal Weapon show, or even shows not marketed like that like Sons of Anarchy, Cobra Kai, The Boys, and others. And even in non-Western media, we have to contend with shows based on actual LGBTQIA+ works being transformed into "just good friends" like Sleuth of Ming Dynasty because of censorship and other things.

Wheel of Time has some of the best queer rep I've seen in a studio made fantasy adventure show. It fails in other departments, but goddamn, did it make me happy to see polyamory, and queer people, especially queer people of color. And it was a mix of having to hide it (because of politics not favoring relationships of any sort) and being proudly open about it. It's not there as shock value or to titillate or prove a point about someone's proclivities (looking at you, Yennefer orgy scene in season 01).

So when the first season of Witcher came out, it was always marketed as Geralt and Yennefer as the big romance. It was never doing the bromance thing with Jaskier, even though we got more scenes with Jaskier & Geralt together than Yennefer & Geralt making their supposed romance/lust for each other seem very contrived. Even me with knowing how it was years of back and forth with the two in the books, couldn't really see it.

All we get in the show is sexual attraction. It's there in spades between Geralt and Yennefer. There's only implied emotional connect at the end, right when they force the issue in the Mountain scene. It was too little too late. A little bit of this gets fixed in season two, but we'll get to that (sorta).

And this is an issue in a lot of heterosexual "romances" in media, both on TV and in movies. It's always about sexual attraction and then a relationship and then maybe if one's lucky, there's emotional/romantic/mental attraction between the two. And usually it's lopsided.

One gregarious example is with Big Bang Theory. While I liked Leonard mostly in the first season (playing shy nerdy dude who seemed to be a good guy), it was more and more obvious (and tech obvious from the get-go), that he really only cared about Penny's beauty and his attraction to her. This is supposed to be the extreme case of opposites attract. But what Penny first fell for in Leonard was the whole "not like other guys" which was the masculine definition, someone taller than her, strong, and conventionally sexy, but almost always an asshole. She liked that he was sweet and kind to her with not really expecting anything else. Aka the "friendzone." She eventually learns to like him and feel attraction to him because of who he supposedly is. We really never get that from Leonard's side. And while he never cared about her being as smart as him, things really didn't get serious until she got a more reputable job that was science-adjacent. And in one of the many seasons when they were broken up and "just friends", they go out on a friend date and he admits that when they were dating, he only pretended to like the things she was into to get sex. He even lauded it over her. Meanwhile, she suffered with Sheldon's tutelage so she could feel a little smarter. She wasn't a geek, but she tried to get into his geekdom. (We'll ignore the only time this ever worked was when Sheldon got her into things like Star Trek, MMORPGs, and a few others when she felt genuinely interested.)

So here we have Geralt and Yennefer who do actually have a lot in common but we don't get it in the show. I'm sure it's in the books, and fandom, even Geraskier fandom, fills in the blanks about why they should have worked but also why it makes sense that they don't. They're both opposites and yet too much alike. But because they're straight (supposedly, orgy scene aside), that means they're just supposed to fit and it be unquestioned. We get no romance, just some possible romantic lines.

Now here's an interesting thing. In a lot of "bromances" or buddy cop shows, there's always the line of "you act like a married couple", (this also happens in Hallmark Romances with het characters), and usually it's regard to friendly or not so friendly bickering/teasing/light fighting. It always felt like a wink wink nod nod kind of thing. It also is part of that whole trope that's SO excessive in het romances (especially Shoujo manga) that fighting and hiding things and pulling pigtails is indicative of love, and it's "just so obvious guys". So with straight couples, it's a sign of true love, but with generally two men? It's just a joke and they're "just bros" or "good friends".

As a writer, I do my best to do research even for throwaway lines. The Netflix site for the Witcher Timeline is invaluable as I want to stay true to Netflix and then sprinkle in game/book stuff when there's not enough information. I keep forgetting sites like these are VERY ephemeral. I luckily took a cap above before season two hit. There wasn't much about Jaskier in the last iteration of the site before season two (the events of the animated prequel were added then). We had his date of birth which confirmed 20 years went by, and that he came from Oxenfurt and Lettenhove (no mention of Viscount). Now, I don't remember if one of the entries was always like this, but only when I checked last did I notice the paragraph about Jaskier and Geralt. And instead of using the tried and true phrase of "bicker like an old couple" it actually said "they fight like brothers."

That's... not a phrase I've seen often in shows with two main leads, unless they were previously "brothers in arms" in the military or something. I thought this was very choice wording, especially considering that Geralt does have his own brothers and we see he treats them in season two way differently than we've seen him treat Jaskier. Granted, one main difference is that when Jaskier is in trouble, Geralt doesn't hesitate to help him. But this is more I believe because Jaskier is just human and needs that protection than the other Witchers.

I'll touch more on that odd line from the older Netflix entry later, or at least tie it in with what we'll probably get in season 03. Mind, I know we'll never get canon Geraskier. It feels like we'll get bi Jaskier at least, and then quite possibly confirmation of a queer platonic relationship. (I do worry though this will play out like how The Rock handles any queer guys in his last two films: Jungle Cruise & Red Notice, which isn't great.)

Again, we do need more instances of queer platonic relationships, especially in a healthy, positive, affirming light. I just don't think that'll happen here given how poorly Jaskier is treated in the show and related media (like in the updated Netflix timeline site). It would just be nice, you know? It's miserable we're still desperate for crumbs in 2022.

Treatment of Jaskier by Others in Season 01

The Bard is almost always treated as a comedic sidekick in shows, or the supposed best friend of the main hero. They're the ones to lighten up the situation and give some softness to the gruff/angst-ridden lead. They're the wingman. We see this often in Joxer, Gabrielle, Ron, Poe Dameron, Danno (his stories are always second to McGarret), Riley (of National Treasure), Goose, Gus, Donkey, Genie... Usually, the only one that sees their worth or that they're more than just there for comic relief is the audience and the hero. But not always.

Understandably, Yennefer cares not for the bard (and vice versa). We don't get confirmation till the second season that a lot of it is jealousy/rivalry based, and not just Jaskier's personality. But it makes sense, more sense than Yennefer and Geralt's romance.

When we first meet Jaskier, the Posadans don't care for him at all for his shit songs, and that makes sense. He's 18, doesn't know how to read the regular folk, and is very academic. The Sylvan and Elves? Hate humans, especially naïve ones who only know of the hateful rhetoric.

Now, it's roughly 6-8ish years after Posada that Jaskier is invited to play for Calanthe. No matter her opinion of him (which is low) she still invited him. And this is Cintra, where EVERYONE on the continent was afraid to mess with politically or otherwise. So it's definitely high praise if she's seeking out entertainment OUTSIDE her walls, especially from a possible Redanian. (Still unsure where Lettenhove is but, still at least very north of Cintra.) So while Toss a Coin has become an earworm that everyone loves to hate, or hates to love, it's still has brought him fame. Along with every other song he's created since then. Jaskier is already becoming extremely well known. And he plays with the court band well. In the briefest of cameos with the court band, they don't hate him, they like him, and there's at least musical/professional respect going on.

Frankly, this is the only time we see anyone treat Jaskier with respect that's not connected with either his flirtations OR with Geralt (like when the villagers were eager to tell their tales to Jaskier). We get the angry cuckolded noble, we get Mousesack who sniffs at the ridiculous outfit, we get the Queen who sniffs at anyone really who's not a warrior. But at least she enjoys the music when Jaskier changes it up.

I'm not sure about Chireadan, who was hard to watch in his scenes, and doesn't necessarily look down at Jaskier, but it seems like it was more like "we're both lowly people who should bow to the awesomeness that is Yennefer and/or powerful people like Geralt" than anything. Again, here it was more playing for laughs.

Up the mountain, Yarpin and his lot obviously don't care for Jaskier, and neither do the rest of the adventuring party. They just see a foppish fool of a bard. And yeah, Jaskier isn't at his best at his poor flirtation with Téa and Véa. This really reminded me of all the attempts Gus does around Shawn in Psych, skating the lines of creepiness. Again, despite us being told he gets around easily and is the "typical bard" who flirts with anyone, we don't see him being smooth and suave. This could be because he's distracted with Yennefer's presence, or the fact there was again some tension going on with him and Geralt in the beginning of the episode. And then Borch also pays him no mind, more interested in the destiny and chaos surrounding Geralt and Yennefer.

Despite the fact that we're now at twenty years of Jaskier following Geralt around, he still acts like he doesn't know what he's doing for an adventuring party, talking to an unknown and possibly deadly creature. Showing up his supposed incompetence and buffoonery. We can meta this as him just being that goodhearted person that we know, that he's still naïve (and harkens to a famous book quote about him still acting like a child of 10), and that it's not necessarily a bad thing. He's with Geralt, he technically doesn't have to worry about anything.

But, the whole "what pleases me" scene and his reaction to witnessing a traumatic "death" was fantastic and sobering and we get that hint of him realizing it's been YEARS at this and maybe, just maybe, something should change. Like what I wrote at the beginning where he's realizing this subtle shift with Geralt, he's possibly realizing now a shift within himself.

And then we have Geralt. Who barely tolerated him in the first adventure, punched him for mentioning the Butcher, tried to leave him for good after selflessly trying to sacrifice himself for him. Next, we see him barely tolerating him after a nasty hunt, making faces at him (and the bartender which was hilarious), but relying on him for a good bath and the possibility of good food and drink. He then lies to a noble to save his friend, doing it in such a way that yes would make the noble feel bad for the man, but also again, to belittle Jaskier (and emasculate him despite his supposed reputation of being a pleaser). Still, he does his due diligence and even after the end of everything still tries to warn Jaskier to play it safe. The djinn situation makes it seem it happened within a year of Cintra (1249) but it was actually 7 years later. Obviously it wasn't seven years since Jaskier seen Geralt but they definitely hadn't spent most of that year together. We can't fault Geralt's demeaner here with Jaskier, as both aren't in their best of minds. But here we see that he does care (even beyond just helping a hapless human), willing to make a deal with a powerful rogue court mage. Once he's assured that Jaskier will be fine, he relaxes. This is not necessarily a bad thing but when it comes to Jaskier, we see in season two that Geralt is shit at follow through/ups.

I really wish we had gotten one more episode of their adventures to see their friendship more, and hell, more of Geralt and Yennefer interacting that wasn't just sex, but showing how their brilliant minds could solve problems.

But no, despite seeing this care and then kind of discard of Jaskier (Geralt finally getting sleep and who knows if Jaskier stayed around that time or not), we go right to the mountain. Where Geralt again is irritated with Jaskier who's just trying to write a new song and waiting by Roach. Like I had mentioned earlier with Jaskier seemingly not have changed in 20 years, Geralt's treatment to Jaskier here shows similar to Posada. He again mostly ignores Jaskier, worried for Yennefer. And especially when Jaskier tries to not be his bardic self (maybe showing that noble upbringing), to console him and open up to him, Geralt takes it as sign to just go to Yennefer and not realize what Jaskier was attempting.

Who knows why Jaskier isn't woken up by the morning activities, that he misses all the action. Is it because Geralt's so focused on Yennefer? Possibly. Is it because Geralt thinks Jaskier would be safer away? Maybe. More likely it's the Yennefer thing AND that he knows Jaskier would be pretty much useless in a fight. And then the final interaction. Jaskier, not knowing the context, trying to be what was always expected of him, someone to make light of the situation, to get Geralt's mind off of things, and maybe he expected annoyance, but not the anger and vitriol.

Overall, Jaskier is not treated with kindness and respect. We're told that he's loved by a lot, and his songs are famous and revered, and beyond everyone enjoying Toss a Coin, we almost see none of that. He's just here for the comedic outlet, for the songs. Never mind in the books, he's treated better by most everyone, that he's done a lot of respectable things including being a famous musician. He has many flaws, and we see them, just despite it all, he's a good person, he's doing his best, he's HUMAN. And one of the best humans out there for anyone considered or is non-human. Jaskier is a contradiction in so many ways but we shouldn't be getting so much of that in the show and supplements related to the show. But, at least season one ends with the final song Jaskier was working on with Geralt.

I am weak my love, and I am wanting.

Season 02: Where's Jaskier?

The writer(s) seemed to realize that hey, Jaskier is a HUGE fan favorite. We do get more depth to Jaskier in season two, at least more obvious than all the implication in season 01, but again, there's so much contradictions and so much ERASURE done to ensure we're all reminded that this is the Geralt and Ciri and Yennefer show. This part here is just me as a fan's feelings (I mean all of this is but I've been trying to analyze and talk it out with facts we know), but I feel like we were punished in ways for wanting more Jaskier (and possibly Geraskier fandom being one of the loudest? I'm unsure, I kept myself in a grief bubble for most of last year) for what we do and don't get in season two.

Mainly, we had to wait for FOUR episodes for Jaskier to appear. He's not even MENTIONED or referenced in the first three episodes. His part in season one of the recap was erased to JUST show Jaskier being tossed aside, despite his importance to the events in Geralt's life. How does Geralt not bring Jaskier up when talking to Ciri? Even just a passing "I was at your parents' betrothal cause I was protecting a dumb bard" or something. This bothered me so much I wrote a character study about that first episode lol. It's tossed in our faces too when Geralt mentions who his friends are but never once called Jaskier a friend, or admitted it.

There's a possible chance that Yennefer again was the first to mention Jaskier in an offhand way when she picks up that the elven songs have actual lyrics. That's what I was hoping on. This is still a possibility given what we now know will be happening in the prequel mini-series (which I hope turns to be a full on series on its own right). I haven't scoured every single interview for everything, so maybe that's been confirmed? I'll go on the current presumption it's not.

In the original Netflix site timeline, it indicated that between the mountain and Geralt finding Ciri was just nearly a year. It seems like the show writers forgot about that (and what is distance, crossing the continent back and forth like it was only a half day's ride without portals but I digress), and tries to make this entire season fit in just winter?? So three months? Man, music must've spread like wildfire for Jaskier to have THREE BANGERS hit across the continent (Her Sweet Kiss, The Golden One, and now as the Sandpiper, "Man of a Thousand Grunts"). Which we all agree on is impossible again to make such connections with Ciri and the Witchers and just... I'm still going to go with at least a year in between and then maybe 3-5 months with Geralt & Ciri together.

I bring you that tangent because it's related to what we do learn of Jaskier this whole season. Of what he did before we FINALLY see him.

Even the above snippet from Netflixpedia (as I'm going to dub it from here on out) is truly too short of a summary of Jaskier's escapades the past twenty years. Granted, we get a few extra in the locations and events around the continent, but it's still sparse. This is I believe one of the few entries not written as Jaskier (which is common across all media that most of the narration done is by Jaskier/Dandelion himself).

Going with the belief of about a year in between seasons, we know this. Jaskier made it safely down the mountain. Jaskier did not stop composing or performing. Jaskier believed that when Cintra fell, possibly the Witcher did too, temporarily (How disappointing). For a time, instead of going straight back to Oxenfurt, he went to Bleobheris. Although we got "Her Sweet Kiss" at the end of season 01, I don't think he finished it first. I think "The Golden One" came out first. Like "Toss Your Coin", it was a surprise hit, and much similar to one hit wonder pop songs like "Friday" where it's just an ear worm. It's not Jaskier's best, musicality wise still good, but he wrote it cause he needed to get the Mountain out and make himself feel better. Maybe working out his feelings.

I believe he finally released "Her Sweet Kiss" when he thought possibly Geralt and/or Yennefer was dead (Battle of Sodden taking out so many sorcerers and sorceresses). Mind, he's still heartbroken and hurting and the anger building. But Bleobheris happens. We figure he was there at least long enough for it to really make an impression. Was it his first time there? Who knows. Maybe he was even starting to heal a bit, being among others like himself. And then he witnesses an atrocity first hand. I'm sure Jaskier has witnessed a lot, but he's smart to keep himself out of anything military wise. And in this Netflix version, he hasn't done any spying (as far it feels like) prior to the Mountain. But this, similar to what happened in Posada is possibly the first time he's seen anything like it. It's scarring. He knows he's lucky to have been considered "safe" and not a "danger". We'll get more on this below. That affected him deeply, both as a compassionate and empathic person, and knowing it could eventually come down to him. He gets enough out of his rut to be willing to do anything to help. To not shovel piles of shit and be a useless bard. To have a purpose that aligns with his heart and head and abilities.

So he becomes the Sandpiper.

"The common sandpiper is a migrator, but it frequents similar habitats year-round. When in upland areas, sandpipers live along river, ponds, or lakes."

Seems fitting, no?

Between the raid and Oxenfurt and his new identity, he pens what we call "Burn, Butcher, Burn" but technically at last check on Netflixpedia, it's actually called "Man of a Thousand Grunts". His heartbreak and hurt manifested into this song when he realizes that Geralt is still alive. And after all this time, has not come for him. I won't necessarily fault Geralt for this (even most of Geraskier fandom doesn't, we love parent!Geralt), and to a point not even Jaskier later on. But it doesn't mean it doesn't sting, it doesn't hurt. No check ups, no letters left, nothing. And he's dramatic, he's admitted this. With his new purpose in life, he needs to do his best to get past twenty years of history. But it's not easy. He writes this break up song as a way to move on and of course like all his other songs, it's a hit.

Jaskier has been a popular artist for at least a decade. This isn't recent. It may be the most music he's churned out in a season—it helps if he's not on the road dodging monsters and taking care of Witchers, but he's consistent.

Let's not also forget that it seems like he singlehandedly came up with this idea of the Sandpiper or at least put it into execution. That's no easy feat. To use his charm to get several benefactors and to keep the chain going. It had to be working for a long enough time, and he's managed to DISGUISE himself as Sandpiper without a real disguise in the city where Julian Alfred Pankratz/Jaskier, master of the seven arts and occasional teacher is FAMOUS. Granted, yes, it seems like one of his biggest benefactors is freaking Sigismund Dijkstra, but still.

He could've gone back and gone to court or just stayed in the bubble of Oxenfurt Academy. But he doesn't. He does this work as often as there's ships to give enough passage. He's holding a lot of hate and hurt in his heart for what happened on the Mountain, for what is happening to the poor Elves and others. And he's drinking. He's drinking constantly, even before Yennefer gets to him, and definitely after. I believe the drinking isn't necessarily due to the heartbreak but also what he witnessed at the raid. He's no one to confide in, to rely on, even when he reunites with this new Yennefer, and eventually Geralt.

But all this? We learn in a few choice sentences and references. What we get on screen of Jaskier is perfect and wonderful and Joey Batey is probably now one of my most favorite actors and singers out there. All the little things, the subtle the looks and touches he does.

We can see through his quips and expressions and mannerisms that he hasn't moved on. He was ready to be just as nasty to Yennefer as he always was, not caring that she could literally hex his balls off. And I'm sure he had a whole speech ready for Geralt too. But she comes and hugs him, relieved for something resembling normal and safe for her. Her whole demeanor is different. We know she's grown and learned and matured (at least a little) to realize Jaskier's worth before even getting to the Sandpiper business, but I'm sure that helped too. And especially after his explanation. Finally, he has someone who understands, even if it's his rival.

I love their relationship, their dynamics. I wish we saw the cattiness of them in season one even more than what we saw, the in betweens, when Geralt and Yennefer were on a good footing for a bit. But still, this is great, and we can see that Jaskier is touch starved/friend starved. He latches onto Yennefer but is smart enough to know when to let go, to know that he still has a lot of shit to work through. Yennefer brings memories of what he could never have, and if he can save her, and never see her again? Then at least he'll feel accomplished.

I also LOVE that little bit. That he knew. That it was a conversation had either with Yennefer or with Geralt, about her family origins. And it was never a thing lorded over her cause of course Jaskier isn't like that. That despite everything he hates of her, it's not and never been her heritage.

Now, every time we see something serious or mature done by Jaskier, it has to be "balanced" with him giving into his flaws. This is where we get to learn that he did write a song about the mountain, and meeting a fan of sorts. His ego and hubris gets to him, and even admits to himself that he's doing the stupid thing to argue with this guy, potentially ruining this night's run of getting the Elves (and Yennefer) to safety. We have to presume this is a rare occurrence since no on seems wary on relying or searching for the Sandpiper. So that means he has to be consistently helping.

Quick aside. While the writing overall was much better this season as a whole, there are so many easy/simple parallels going on and the writers patting themselves on the back. They're consistently setting things up for an easy win (much to the detriment of characterization when it came to the Witchers and their Keep, or that we can get across the continent conveniently in a day when needed) without good follow through. This scene is to set up Jaskier is beholden to his pride and to give another elf the chance of redemption for the death of a young black elf. It's very contrived and frustrating.

"The Golden One" isn't his best work, not even better than "Toss a Coin" but it's popular and loved and it's possibly one of the few songs (Dandy Lion aside) where Jaskier's inserted himself. Yeah, it's an easy line of him getting the girls, but it's deeper (calling my right of death of the author here) than that. It's him trying to prove to himself and the others that he's not a shit shoveler, that he's a "worthy travel companion" to others. It's a small bit to the rest of the song about the greatness of a dragon. It's technically not supposed to be noticed or called out, just a silly little bard insert, yet it hurts when it's the main part being criticized, along with it being apparently one of his weakest songs. But it's his first song he's written post Geralt fully. So obviously it's still a dear song to him.

And as us who are content creators know online, or even just being professionals online in social media, sometimes it's the straw that breaks the camel back of being told how to do what we're trained to do by people who have NO idea what's it like. (Being a game dev person, a writer, a video editor, and worked manufacturing, it's amazing what Twitter & YouTube commenters think they know about in these industries. Amongst other parallels.) While Jaskier is a well known artist, a rock star in his own right, he doesn't play just the big venues (court, festivals), he plays taverns and bars. For the Sandpiper gig, it has to be that way. I mention this cause it gives the illusion that anyone can come up to him and talk to him like a professional when they're not. Jaskier also is someone who thrives on people liking him, praising him, or engaging him meaningfully so it's not like he's going to keep his distance either. So this, along with what he says to Rience, shows that it's an extremely common occurrence. And he's at that part of his career where he doesn't have to listen to just anyone about his music.

Despite that hiccup, he gets the elves on, meets Dara briefly (and hopefully inspired him), and says what he hopes is final goodbye to Yennefer.

And then he gets hit over the head, knocked out, and loses his lute, for good. Fitting final scene of seeing it broken. The end of an era.

Now the torture scene with Rience is apparently longer and more brutal than it was in the books. All we know is that he gets beaten for a few hours (anywhere between 2 and 4 or more depending on the tides of the ship leaving and it being early morning when he's finally rescued), not spilling anything. And then the fire and his fingers are burned. Not by REGULAR fire mind, but mage fire. Probably burns hotter than we expected. And all it takes is those few seconds to get serious burns.

And despite it all, Jaskier holds out, still has his wits about him. If we take what he says at face value, and later scenes sort of reinforce it. Sadly twenty years of being Geralt's companion yet Geralt never shared anything to Jaskier? Fanon of course had it that Jaskier did see Cirilla a few times after she was born. It's believable (if albeit sad) that Jaskier never went to Kaer Morhen, but man, maybe if he was a sex worker he would have since they were frequent visitors apparently. What he slips out could be coincidence of him making it up, and yes we know Jaskier is brilliant with words. Or it could have all been a ruse and Jaskier did know more but managed to keep it to himself.

Did we ever figure out HOW Rience found the keep?? Man that keep was so easily found by so many this season. And The Killer pass wasn't so murderous.

But guh, that speech was great, and how he's able to go from the pain of torture to improving with Yennefer AND at the same time be scared for her since she has no magic and seemingly as defenseless as him. Fantastic scene there. We see both of their vulnerabilities, we see Jaskier's quick-wittedness (along with Yennefer's), we see how well he knows Oxenfurt by the back of his hand, knowing which way to go and where, and willing to goad men to follow him. Despite being "a humble (human) bard", he's fast on his feet, nimble for his age. And he knows his worth, that he's the damsel and even without her powers, Yennefer's still formidable.

I would've loved to see how Jaskier rescued Yennefer from the brothel, we saw his mind working quick before she escaped herself. And then he's thrown into a prison. For how long? Who knows, a few days, a week. Even without the flashback timeline shenanigans, time is still wibbly wobbly in this season. It's enough that his untreated burns have healed a bit.

Writing nitpick. Oxenfurt is his home. Why didn't he use his name or his place at the Academy to get out of Jail? We know he has a large network of people, outside of the Sandpiper business, and this is his city, not a foreign land. Other than for plot sake, it's weird.

You can on Spotify hear the whole rendition of Whoreson Prison Blue's but I still love the "live" version we hear in the jailcell. Here's Jaskier's beautiful mind always composing, always coming up with something to wile away time or piss off people to his advantage. When he's not alone (truly) or have access to alcohol, he remains pretty stoic and unflappable. We see the charm and Disney princess like quality of him befriending some mice. Played to comedic effect of course, but it works, shows more of what kind of person Jaskier is.

Again, commending Joey Batey's fantastic acting here, giving us so much in the span of a few seconds. He sees Geralt and the relief of him being there, being alive. The "Fuck it" and the hug is so good, and we get Geralt showing a positive emotion and glimmer of guilt (not enough). We get to see Jaskier not be a push over (sort of) when he tries to get Geralt into an actual conversation, an actual apology, because we know and he knows that Jaskier's forgiven him already. Not forgotten, but forgiven. And while Geralt doesn't say "I need you" (again it's Yennefer first) it's close enough for Jaskier.

It's frustrating that we don't get to see the fallout of everything Jaskier's been through, to show anyone have any concern for him and what he went through. We do get a lovely fan service scene of Jaskier and Geralt falling into their old dynamics, with Jaskier cleaning up and doing a bit of exposition and comedy. We see that Jaskier isn't an idiot at all, gullible maybe because he constantly tries to assume the best of people, even Yennefer. But despite the strides he and Yennefer made into amending whatever their own dynamics are, he's of course going to take time to get through those feelings he's harbored for almost a decade when it concerns her. It's easier to slip, especially with Geralt around, to snarking about her, to try and ensure that Geralt doesn't fall back in love or forgiveness for her. But we can see that even Jaskier knows he's fighting a losing battle about it.

The scene with Yarpen and his crew again showcases how little is cared for about Jaskier, but granted, he couldn't remember their names or faces. I do say though he's been nearly drinking himself to oblivion since the mountain, and they didn't care for him back then so why should he do the same?

We get the high horse apology and immediately Jaskier cuts Geralt off, quipping with him and putting Geralt at ease. It's a sweet scene, even if most of fandom doesn't think it's enough (it's not). Jaskier was the one tortured and rotting away in a cell and yet he's the one walking having to look up at Geralt. We see Jaskier sympathizing and empathizing again, learning what Geralt's been through, and putting Geralt (and Ciri) and his needs first and foremost. Jaskier knows Geralt best, knows that the Witcher carries so much on his shoulders, both deserved and undeserved. It's easy to ensure there's one less burden there.

But we can see in the lingering looks and the mannerisms when Geralt isn't looking at Jaskier, that Jaskier still hurts, still aches. His heart is still shattered into a million pieces. But he's a good person, and he won't hold it over Geralt now. He tried in the jail cell to get what he desperately needed. Not the time or place, but will Jaskier ever get what's owed him at least? I doubt it.

Do we even know why Geralt needed Jaskier's help? Just to have someone with him to look for Ciri? To get the Yennefer information and that's it? Or simply for the escort mission to the apparently short distance from Cintra to Kaer Morhen? (Which should've taken weeks.) Jaskier's there though not really in the escort back, no one knowing that Ciri gets possessed.... And then the next we see him is him drunk in a cold bed, sleeping nearly the entire big event away (again). Except Yennefer searches for him.

Yennefer is the one that says she needs HIM. Not his help but him. Seriously their dynamic is so good this season, through and through, and I hope in the next we'll get more of it. Jaskier shows again that he believes he knows his worth, he's not a coward, he's smart. What can he, a human do? So Yennefer gives him a McGuffin.

I really feel like Jaskier was made to be a McGuffin to us fans, teasing us with all this potential. At our grasps yet the follow through is never quite there. (I feel the same with Dara and Istredd. Like the writers knew the fans cared about these characters but they weren't important enough to do much but muddle around in the plot. I love these two and what they tried to do for themselves and others but again, frustration.

Because yeah, in the end, even though Geralt did hear Jaskier, how much of that was really needed? Geralt and the other Witchers were kind of being really stupid in this fight (and in Eskel's fight too) just for the sake of it. Jaskier risked life and limb to the one job he was given. He was determined. But the Jasper, like he, was useless, wasn't needed, truly.

Though we are teased with Dijkstra's reveal that he's one of the Bard's benefactors. That he's of some use and Dijkstra's going to come collect. I fear this means we'll have Jaskier separate again just so that Yennefer, and Geralt, and Ciri can interact and be the DESTINED TRIO. Jaskier will be bardnapped and pressed into spy services, hopefully being actually more crucial to the political plots going on. It may also mean like it seems like a betrayal to Geralt, but we know Jaskier won't do it so willingly. It's been teased in an interview that he'll have a more significant part, and this could be why. I just want him and the other three to have some good adventures together and not suffering.

The final two times we see Jaskier are both meaningful but also contradictory. When the trio comes back from another Sphere, Jaskier goes to Yennefer first, cause she's without chaos and "technically" the weakest of the three. He's genuinely worried for her, for her potential sacrifice to make things right again. The soft touches, the looks at each other before he looks at Ciri and Geralt. He may not be able to do much, but he's able to do this.

Jaskier's an outsider. The only human up in the keep. Everyone knew of Yennefer and Geralt, but we have no indication Geralt talked about Jaskier (like how he wasn't mentioned at all in the first episode this season). He technically didn't help in the fight (he tried). And all he wanted was to feel like he belonged. But instead, we had to be reminded on how little people think of Jaskier, that he's just the comedic sidekick. And so he gets pushed roughly away from Lambert, and is told he's not part of the family. Which Jaskier accepts. Cause it was always this way for him. He takes it mostly in stride, as he does every lump he's been given. And paralleling last season, he is dismissed and that's what we last see.

(Jaskier's) Respect Doesn't Make History

There were times in season one mostly where Jaskier seemingly breaks the fourth wall. The most obvious example of this in season two is when he tells Yennefer that he's supposed to be the damsel in distress. We get these small snippets of Jaskier knowing his place in the grand scheme of things. And he accepts it. He's not the main character. He's the storyteller, he's the one that gets to tell everyone else about the main characters, create scenarios where the real heroes get to prove that they are heroes. I think partially that's why he doesn't push for the respect owed to him beyond his music. It's why that he clings to needing to be right about his music, his craft, which becomes his detriment at times, or his folly. It's why he hides his pain in a breakup song and drink, and lets Geralt believe everything is okay.

Fandom wants a proper apology, wants proper acknowledgement of everything Jaskier's done for and been through with Geralt. Even as friends, brothers, this is just as important than if they were lovers, and in some ways even more important. Especially if the hints thrown this season gets cemented with Jaskier being bi (even if it's typical TV!bi like Lucifer and not atypical!bi like Constantine). Because queer platonic relationships demand respect and love and courtesy and importance as others.

I don't think we'll get this. We may get one more acknowledgement from Geralt, either before Jaskier is taken by Sigi or maybe after he needs rescue again, but it won't be enough. I worry we'll get the typical masculine portrayal of forgiveness (something that's shown frequently between Geralt and his Wolf brothers) of blowing up and then it's water under the bridge. We sort of already got that, but we'll probably get one more of it from the other half too (burn, butcher, burn after all).

I've already mentioned it a few times but emphasizing here, that we get a lot of fantastic writing and acting with Jaskier in this season. Yet also, with the writing, just all these teasers and failed stopping points. We have to be constantly reminded that Jaskier is the side kick, the best buddy friend, the support, but most importantly... The comedic relief. If not through jokes than through his pratfalls. This in essence isn't a bad thing as it's a lot of Jaskier's charm, a lot of why we as the audience love him. He brings levity and joy and innocence, and the human experience. He's surrounded by Destined Ones^TM and people of awesome power, and he can still stand up with them.

But he must always know his place.

Especially in the Netflixpedia, in the dock worker who had an opinion, in the prison guard, in Yarpen and his crew, and in Lambert and the surviving Witchers. And, in Sigismund Dijkstra.

They are all people who don't know Jaskier and takes him and his antics at face value. Despite most knowing of him, of hearing his deeds or songs for the past couple of decades.

We see the maturity of Jaskier, of him figuring out who he could possibly be if he could no longer be the Witcher's anything. And it was working, being the Sandpiper. He was respected, not that he was looking for that, and looked up to. He was still Jaskier the talented lutist/lyricist, whom most of the crowd loved and adored. He still strikes a dashing figure, catching the eyes of women and men in the tavern, in the ship, and even a lovely bearded female dwarf of Yarpen's crew.

I already mentioned most of these characters in the review of the season and their disregard of him. The dock worker's opinion was unprompted. Yarpen threw an axe not between Geralt and Jaskier but to Jaskier's shirt specifically. Ignored and dismissed his introduction for a second time. Sure, maybe like the elves in "Toss a Coin" with "The Golden One" they felt pissed at the portrayal in song. Especially as Jaskier didn't necessarily do anything during the Dragon hunt compared to Yarpen and them.

But that puts in a dichotomy of sorts, with Jaskier's songs being popular and loved by the people, but not by anyone who's opinion that really matters to Jaskier. Again it's not recognizing that Jaskier is more than a one-hit wonder, is a pop star/rock star, yet not treated as anything with respect. Because he's not constituted with doing masculine work, like being a Witcher, being a Knight, being a band of bandits, or anything that would be considered more salt of the earth. Even Yarpen makes a comment on why they didn't stay being lords of the land. Never mind that Jaskier gave up his nobility at a young age and has been traveling on the Path with Geralt on and off for twenty years.

We get the waitress who's sick of the song and seemingly of him, giving him a dirty look when he drinks any of the discarded ale before meeting Yennefer. Of course the prison guard is purposely being annoyed by Jaskier.

Now, between the extreme hubris "Jaskier" writes of himself in Netflixpedia and of course his persona as Jaskier on the show whenever he sees someone pretty, it makes sense to knock him down a little. Even Geralt gets knocked down time again for his own hubris and refusal to learn and grow. But with Geralt, he's always seen on a level playing field. It nearly never is with Jaskier.

Jaskier who can slip into being the Sandpiper and help others, truly selflessly, is one of the only times he has respect and awe. The only one who truly gives him respect as himself is Yennefer. She's happy for him, that he hasn't changed so much to be unrecognizable to what she knew of him, and learns more about him in one evening than all their time together. All because the barrier of Geralt isn't there and they're both nursing their broken hearts. There's a kinship, and I'm glad it's not lost after Yennefer reconnects with Geralt, even to disastrous effect. She finally understands him and when she's without her chaos, she cares and respects and needs him.

She saves Jaskier not for any ulterior motive. Not to help her, or to get on Geralt's good side again, or anything. She takes her time in telling Geralt about Jaskier, and sort of plays down the fact he was tortured for a few hours. I think that's more her juggling with the decisions and and promise she made with baba yaga—I mean, Voleth Meir and her own conflicting feelings with Geralt. Her and Jaskier both tossed their hurt feelings aside to forgive and give into Geralt. And then with the battle at Kaer Morhen, Yennefer relies on Jaskier, believing that he's the best chance to get through to Geralt, that only Jaskier is still trustworthy enough. She accepts his kind touch after coming back from the other sphere and it's sweet and touching. She's the only one in all of season two to see Jaskier, to respect him, to care about him.

Geralt? Did worry about Jaskier when someone finally mentioned him. Did think of him first when Nenneke said he couldn't do this alone. Admitted he missed him and hugged him back. And.. he did try to apologize after [timey wimey travel time], and he trusted Jaskier with Ciri (along with Yarpen). He gave Jaskier a chance to bathe and rant without really pushing him around.

But again I must mention how the writing fails, with Geralt needing Jaskier's help and Yennefer just needing him. It comes to naught, as much as Jaskier tries to be good and useful. But he's only human and of the few GOOD humans in this show, the writers don't know what to do with that.

Geralt has respect, but not a lot for Jaskier. It's better here than in season one to a point. But Geralt has so much more on his mind so much other rightfully important things. He hasn't had time to mourn Eskel, his horse, or the other Witchers dying before and after Ciri's reveal. He barely allowed himself time to mourn when he thought Yennefer was dead. We just unfortunately did not get a lot of interaction between them because of other events that were more pressing. We can only make a lot of assumptions.

With Lambert's remark and Jaskier's final onscreen scene, there is no other context to see if this is just regular joking or the other Witchers seeing Jaskier as less than. This is why it was frustrating that Jaskier is not mentioned for three whole episodes. No one asks about Geralt's Bard, or mentions the new songs going around since before the fall of Cintra. Everything points to Jaskier never been brought up to Geralt's family in the last twenty years. This could have easily been fixed with a single line or two from any of the Witchers, the way that the line of Jaskier knowing of Yennefer's heritage spoke volumes.

Now, granted, in a time of war and politics, everyone's being used as pawns and being seen as useful, threats, or disposable. Dijikstra only sees a pawn of a bard, an investment he put in so he can be used in the future. But aside from Jaskier, every other human who's moving pieces around who seems to be of importance, are kings and queens and of politics. We don't see other human rebels trying to fight the good fight. But understandably so, in this story, in this series they are the bad guys. In most fantasies, it's the case, with maybe a group of plucky young heroes being the exception.

Now, maybe it's the long con, the long game, the hints in interviews that Jaskier will be thrusted into importance in the 3rd (and future??) seasons. We know now he'll be the narrator for the prequel series, but again playing the dumb human who has to be corrected about what really happened. (I'm hoping we won't have Jaskier human!splaining for comedic effect, but... we'll see.) We have the spying come up, and hopefully more political intrigue. This is what I thought would happened this season when we had gotten the season two trailer and Geralt needing Jaskier's help. It's what made sense to me, to navigate the courts.

This could all be buildup for parallels that were set up here for season 03. One can truly hope, but I'm not holding my breath.

We have two seasons of Jaskier being disrespected left and right, having his best friend throw him away when angry and only seek him when he's needed. He doesn't have the respect from others as he should, to the point where he makes it up on his own in his hubris and ego and in the logs of Netflixpedia. When it really matters, Jaskier is always putting others first, always putting himself in harms way to help others. And he swallows his feelings down, transforming them into songs that people listen, and enjoy, but never truly understand.

He's a human, through and through. He is both cowardly and fearless, brilliant and childish, compassionate and ambitious. And the show keeps punishing him for it, for not being more. Yet that's the brilliance of him. Of this single human having shifted destiny so many times, all for the love (platonic or otherwise) of one misunderstood Witcher.

Jaskier, Bi Fodder

I thought this section would be majority of this post, haha. But I've explained a lot of my thoughts on this through the other parts. I apologize for my rambling. While TVTropes isn't the definitive of what is a consensus on media and representation, it does support a lot of what's been written here. Like with any canon or perceived bisexual guys, they tend to have both "Ambiguously Bi" tag and "Camp Straight". Short of us seeing Jaskier with another man, or him straight out saying it, everyone can still explain away that Geralt and him are just brothers, just friends, that the heartbreak was borne of friendship shattered. He flirts only with women on screen, we only hear of his escapades with married women and running from straight men.

And yet, here we are. We know he was heartbroken, he said it. He and Yennefer can sympathize together. In his singing scene, a few of the male patrons look at him with something a little more interesting, and so does one of the male elves. The way he looks at Geralt in this season speaks volumes. Joey's alluded in interviews on how he was surprised and happy that the script took his character into new and dark and surprising situations, to be bold.

"As many of you will know, the story of Geralt and Yennefer's rocky romance is chronicled in 'Her Sweet Kiss, one of Jaskier 's most famous ballads..."

— From Netflixpedia

Yet TVTropes and fandom saw this song as a bit queer, as Jaskier looking in and longing. It was teased and joked in Twitter after what we lovingly call "Burn, Butcher, Burn" that of course "Her Sweet Kiss" wasn't obvious enough in heartbreak so they had to make it more obvious with the break up song of the century.

But what really cinched it for me with the show trying to tell us *wink wink nudge nudge* that Jaskier is more than he seems? The quote above. When he talks about why he's helping the elves.

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

— Martin Niemöller

It was a parallel to this famous poem. Combined with the fact that if one had studied American/Western Media in the 50s through the 80s with regard to LGBTQIA, artists were considered Queer. Majority of the blacklisting that happened wasn't just to do with communism, but anti-Semitism, homophobia, and other prejudices. One had to look between the lines, to see the subtext here. This is both overt and sub text going on.

It was Jaskier alluding that he was other for many reasons, and not just for being a "humble bard" considering we've been shown time again that they're not respected. So where would the fear come into play? Unless he was doing or saying something revolutionary. And this was before he became the Sandpiper. The way he hesitates, pauses, looks at Yennefer... Jaskier is the sort of person that talks all the time and says everything in his mind but not nearly everything in his heart. It's fantastic deflection that's hidden in the expectations of what a bard should be. But here, he's very careful with his words, with not saying too much.

When speaking of hubris this time, I'm pointing at the head writer and others in that team. They think they're so clever, being ambiguous in interviews and social media (and I know, part of it is you have to, you just can't spoil an upcoming season, duh, or promise something that hasn't been written or approved of). There's a lot of "pat on back" moments in the season, not to just Jaskier but others where they think they've done something different and new.

But the fantasy adventure bar is so goddamn low, especially in TV and Movies. Especially when it comes to any sort of MEANINGFUL representation. Wheel of Time did queerness real well, but failed in other marginalized representations. Witcher? Maybe because its origin is Poland, where real people are fighting for their lives to just be queer freely. I'm not saying the author is phobic, but he is very cisgendered straight, and it shows. We have fantasy homophobia, because it always parallels what we perceive history to be (even though history didn't have the right words for this discourse, and in some places were more queer friendly back then than we are now).

Why can't we have fantasy stories where queerness is normalized? It's still treated as something explicitly sexual and weird. We only see it in Yennefer's orgy scene (which was made fun of for such poor choreography), just to show that Yennefer is a "worldly" woman. All the sex workers that came up to Kaer Morhen were visibly women (and presumably cis, but easily could be otherwise).

We can argue what Fringilla and Francesca had as possibly queer too. It was lovely to see their friendship grow and how they helped each other. It's probably the only other sort of representation we can conceivably grasp for in the show.

So yes, I do believe they're setting up Jaskier to be bi/queer. Maybe it wasn't something he even realized till later in life, or something he always hid. One could argue that in the book's version of events of him running from his family cause he messed with the wrong noble, it could've been a male one. They may leave it continually ambiguous. We'll never get Geralt as anything but straight, especially as Henry keeps on insisting that all he wants is the show to be as close/true to the books as possible. While this would bode well for a more friendly happy companionship with his character and Jaskier, it's a continual insistence that the only true love for Geralt is Yennefer. I don't seem him as one of the actors who would be comfortable with anything but straight roles. Mind, again, I don't watch every single interview of this show or of the actors in others. I am a geek and a general fan of Henry, but it's not something I look to often.

And, if the best we can get out of this is a queer platonic relationship, fantastic. But as I've harped on throughout all of this... We need a healthy one. We need Geralt to acknowledge the pain he caused, for Jaskier to admit to that pain to him, to get them to an understanding, one that is full of love and hope and friendship and family and importantly, respect.

I don't know if the solution is to keep him forever pining (please no Supernatural ending here), or to create a new character (or gender swap one we haven't seen yet) for him to have a happy queer relationship. I've always hated "pair the spare" last minute kind of endings we get when a series comes to a close. I think, we just need more of him with the others in meaningful situations. Not empty ones that lead to no where (the jasper, the following possessed!Ciri) but ones of his choice and of others too.

We should be beyond the token bi/queer, the little scraps and hints and that is all we can get from these big shows. Granted, the best option is to have queer media be adapted and created from the get-go. But we should get that and get rep in the popular shows too.

Jaskier is a wonderfully complex character in all versions of him. I just wished the Netflix creators could see that.

“The richness, beauty and depths of love can only be fully experienced in a climate of complete openness, honesty and vulnerability.” – Anthony Venn Brown

Sources Used: Witcher Game Fandom Page - Jaskier & Various Witcher Netflix Site (Media Heavy) Witcher Jaskier TVTropes Page Wikipedia - "First they came..." Various Official Youtube & Tumblr Interviews with Joey & Lauren & Henry

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morning-softness · 3 years ago

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Tag game!!!

tagged by @voiceless-terror thank you!

1- Why did you choose your url?

It’s a reference to the quote “I don’t know what the point is to life, but in the early quiet and the softness of this morning, I am at peace with not knowing” by Gabriel Andreas of StoryPeople.

2- Any side blogs?

Nope!

3- How long have you been on tumblr?

I actually only joined in 2020. I lurked for a while first, because there were several artists whose work I liked, but I thought if I made an account I’d have to regularly produce original content. Once I found out it was acceptable to have an account that mostly just reblogged other people’s posts, I joined and immediately spam-liked and reblogged the artists I’d been lurking on.

4- Do you have a queue tag?

No. My writing posts and ramble/vent posts are the only things I post in the moment. Pretty much all my reblogs are queued. You know how frequently I post already? It would be so much worse if it wasn’t queued. I have 221 posts in my queue right now.

5- Why did you start your blog in the first place?

I got into tma and wanted to 1. see more art, fanfic, meta, and jokes and 2. contact artists for commissions (like this comic based on this post about Martin running into Jon outside of work).

6- Why did you choose your icon/pfp

It’s me.

7- Why did you choose your header?

Martin being a mood. What’s not to like?

8-What’s your post with the most notes?

My JonTim ace fic, “Netflix and Chill,” got 43 notes.

9- How many mutuals do you have?

10- How many followers do you have?

55 (which seems surprisingly high given that I’ve only been on here for a year and mostly reblog other people’s content)

11- How many people do you follow?

202

12- Have you ever made a shitpost?

Maybe? I don’t think I’ve tagged anything as such, but I’ve said some pretty random things on here.

13- How often do you use Tumblr each day?

I usually scroll in the morning and evening, and then check notifications throughout the day.

14- Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once?

No, and I’d like to keep it that way.

15- How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?

I will not reblog them, no matter how much I agreed with what was being said up until that point. If it’s an issue I care about, I look for someone else who’s made a post about it and reblog theirs instead. I don’t automatically unfollow if you reblog one, but probably will if you’re the OP.

16- Do you like tag games?

Yes! They’re fun.

17- Do you like ask games?

Yes, but I don’t tend to get many asks.

18-Which of your mutuals do you think is Tumblr famous?

I really haven’t been here long enough to know how to judge.

19- Do you have a crush on a mutual?

I don’t know any of my mutuals irl, but I think they’re all really cool. I’m always happy when I post something and one of my mutuals likes or reblogs it.

tagging @wordsintimeandspace @martinbelovedblackwood @lycanlux @stavroginova @notilucent @imstillsleepy @thekisforkeats if you want to

#tag game

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an0nymousghost · 3 years ago

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simblr asks v2

here are my answers! find the questions here.

i wrote soo much ahaha. like however much you think i wrote, i wrote more than that. imo everything i write is gold though

1. are you going to buy the new pack (cottage living) when it comes out? no, it looks really nice but i legit never ever buy packs at launch, especially cause this one is a expansion and it will probably go on sale at some point

2. do you p*rate your dlc or buy it legitimately? buy it legitimately 👌

3. what’s your favorite world? brindleton bay, it gives like seaside cottage vibes. willow creek is good but it’s boring.

4. if you use a queue, how many posts per day do you set it as? 3 or 4. i used to do like 12 lmaoo what even was wrong with me

5. do you watch sims on youtube? yes, i watch mainly malixa, oshinsims, and msgryphi

6. what are your thoughts on the most recent pack? (dream home decorator) those sectional couches look good! but honestly im kinda annoyed because now it’s even harder to have all the items filled in when i place lots from the gallery. like i’m just saying like a lot of builds will use that pack probably and if i don’t get it then i can’t really use builds/save files

7. how many packs/kits do you own? lemme count

expansion: all - 10/10 game: 5/10 stuff: 9/18 kits: none xo

24/38 - 63%

8. what’s your origin id? is it the same as your url? 🤗 it’s in my title, it’s celeschul. it doesn’t look that nice in my title but i use celeschul in my package files and i’m guessing people search things like, “celeschul penny hair” or something like that in order to find my cc- so i keep it in there so the search results are easier. i do want to change it though..

but no it’s also not the same! well i mean it’s the username i use for cc. my origin id used to be an0nymousghost but i changed it. i wonder if anyone’s taken that one?

9. is your simblr your sideblog or main blog? main blog ✌️ my old blog @stardze is a main blog as well.

my old old simblr was a sideblog but it had like 1 follower and it literally a bot so i don’t think that counts. i have a multifandom sideblog though

10. do you have a cc finds blog? i wish. i was thinking bout it earlier and that would be sooo neat but sometimes i download stuff that doesn’t have a tumblr post attached to it, and also it’s stressful to keep up with so nah

11. are you wcif friendly? yes sir. in fact i bring the trouble of wcifs onto myself but doing them even when nobody asked.

12. what’s your favorite sized household to play with? (ex. 1 sim, 4 sims) gonna have to think on this one, honestly 1 sim is really fun and stuff goes by so fast. doing stuff with astrid when she was on her own, it was much more efficient.

for families, i haven’t done that in a while actually. 5, 2 parents and 3 kids is cute tho. why did i write this this is honestly such a hard question

13. if you have c&d, do you play with pets? i feel like i haven’t played with cats and dogs in forever. honestly i just have no paitence. noelle fae was supposed to get a cat (there’s a food bowl + cat bed in her house) but when summer vacation started, the amount of time i spent playing ts4 decreased a lot. (this doesn’t really make sense, i have a lot more time. honestly it just has to do with my recent obsession with a certain anime/manga and some other personal thing)

i did random nightmares in may though and i had pets frequently. g5 didn’t because sofia scarlett lived in an apartment, but g2/3/4 had cici, and g1 had all the cats. but that was back in march so it’s been a while.

14. what lifespan do you use? i really want to do aging off but then i feel like it drags on. but aging legit stresses me out, sometimes i just want to sit down and do some cas stuff but i only have 2 hours in real time and there’s like 4 days left till one of my sims’ birthdays.

15. if you own a lot of packs, how many of them have you actually played through? just so everyone is aware this question was made for me

i feel like eps require a specific save made for testing them out, but the only save i’ve ever made for an ep is noelle fae’s get famous save.

that is literally a lie - i made a save for island living with one of my 100bc kids, maisie acapella. i did actually post it on tumblr BUT then i deleted all the posts BUT i reblogged them on my alt account BUT i privated my alt account so i honestly forgot about it

i have never played through discover university or watched anyone do it on youtube, i’ve read gerbits’ story about it so i think i’m pretty qualified. i’ve always wanted to do one with periwinkle acapella but i never got around to it

another ep i know nothing about is get to work

i tried doing a eco life playthrough but i hadn’t watched any videos and i was like..what is going on. so i quit lolx d ;;;;; i mentioned it but the whimsy stories legacy was the first time i had played with the eco lifestyle features so technically i think i know what im doing

i got outdoor retreat literally on monday of this week so i haven’t played through it yet.

jungle adventure i still don’t know what’s going on. i remember last year before i bought the pack i was brainstorming, and wanted to do a ja playthrough with luna and cedar, who are a couple who i did a random legacy with and it was all queued to post when i deleted everything (if you’re wondering why, it’s because my queue was literally 200+ posts). except this time i didn’t save them to my sideblog so i lost them.

i still havent had a restaurant in dine out

also never did the vet thing from cats and dogs

i have no idea what that rock climbing thing is from snowy escape but i did most of the other stuff because rn g5

city living i did through psc stage 5 and also it was the first pack i bought anyways

the rest of them are either stuff packs or i ended up playing them through casual gameplay (seasons, parenthood)

16. what do you do as you play sims? (ex. listen to music) i listen to music most of the time, or listen to commentary youtube videos because i am an alpha chad. i also used to talk with my friends on voice call but i don’t do that anymore 🥲

17. which sims challenges have you tried? random legacy, whimsy stories, perfect sim challenge, 100 baby, legacy (just the plain get-to-10-gens one), random nightmares, berry zodiac, astrology legacy, apocalypse

i feel like im forgetting some.. honestly most of the stuff i did before simblr was either 100 baby (i love that challenge) or random saves that lasted for 2 seconds.

18. do you like the new(ish) hair swatches? nah.

i do appreciate that most cc hairs have a true (ish) black, thank god! and the fact that the hair update is what inspired me to update and fix a bunch of hairs with different issues is pretty nice. but will i use them? no.

plus it takes up like 5 gb? depending on how many packs you have.

19. post the latest screenshot you took 📸

i live in cas

20. what is the cc/ingame hair that looks the most like your own? i think that dream home decorator side part hair looks a lot like my hair. honestly i havent see much like my hair but that one is kinda-? close

21. who is your favorite sim of yours and what is their story? noelle and alari fae i think!

link to post

noelle is blonde and has blue-grey eyes. she wears purple contacts pretty often though (because she wants to 😌)

alari has light brown hair that is kinda curly, and she’s got pretty vibrant blue eyes.

they’re sisters, alari is 3 years older than noelle. noelle was 19 and alari was 22 when they got spotted

they worked as models when they were young adults. their jobs involved dyeing their hair blue/pink, and they would model like clothes and stuff. anyways, they were pretty successful. like not ultra famous but they had enough money to not work for the rest of their lives.

their modeling group was made of 4 girls, the others were named paisley autumn and they were green and red, respectively. some things are:

paisley and alari started dating during this

autumn was a single mother to a little girl named destiny

noelle dated many people during this but never ended up finding the one <3

when their contract ended after like 6 years, paisley and alari went to go live together and noelle decided to get into acting. so thats when get famous playthrough started!

there’s more but basically they’re like oc’s with sims on the side. xoxo

22. if you use cc, are there any cc creators that you have like ALL of their items? this is such a good question! i hoard hair very heavily (my folder is 11gb) i so i have like 97% from most of the popular hair creators.

i think i had legitimately EVERYTHING from simstrouble though, i went through multiple times to check and i also have all of her retired stuff.

i have everything from ridgeport i think-? because of the fact that she uploaded all her stuff in one big zip.

i think that’s it.. for a long time i also had everything by clumsyalienn, but then i ended up deleting it and only keeping my faves.

and looking at my collection, maybe ah00b? i might be missing a couple but i at least have like 99%.

23. what’s one pack you think is underrated? dine out, it’s laggy af yes but it’s such a nice thing for my sims to do.

24. what are your favorite sims stories/legacies? melons by gerbits always and forever

this question was inspired by this ask anyways so

25. if you could change one small thing about ts4, what would it be? most of my suggestions are pretty complex but literally just - when you add tray files, they appear at the top. my life would be so much easier

this took me literal hours to answer

#replies #replying to MYSELF

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causticsunshine · 3 years ago

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twenty questions

tagged by @are-you-quite-finished-giovanna thank you babe!! 🥰

1. why did you choose your url?

simply put i adore louis and i like purple and it just rolled off the tongue lol, but i also had a list of possible urls i also liked and i had to snatch this one up while i could!

2. any side blogs?

yes i have four....i'm not one of those 'everything goes on main and you can deal with it' type people.... but i have an inspiration blog @prickelndauge (art insp, lots of fashion, cool photography), an art-only blog @swmpwxtch, one just for spooky/creepy content because i'm really into horror manga and scary movies and that kind of stuff but i keep it off of main because i know a lot of it can often be triggering to others! (i also don't post much there but @bonepickng) and one for art references, life tips, random resources, and more donation sharing @am-ref!

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

soooo long i thought i'd be gone by now tbh. i know i signed up in 2011 after just browsing the site through random blogs and tags for ages, but i didn't start actively using my own account until early 2012!

4. do you have a queue tag?

when i actually remember to tag things i have queued i'll use 'i'm sleep queue' because all my early morning posts everyday are queued....i am an insomniac rip

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

keeping up with my interests better! i was like 15/16 at the time so it made sense. back in Ye Olde Days much like now—i really have come full circle lmao—it was mostly just for 1d and then some random tv shows/franchises i just to see content of semi-often, as well as finding cool art!

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

rn it's just a regular pic of louis! as much as i like using my collages or little edits as my icons, you can't see much of anything and it looks too busy sometimes (but also the photo i have rn....i am always thinking thoughts about it soooo)

7. why did you choose your header?

it's pretty! i wanted everything to follow a color scheme + i love embroidery and fancy gowns!

8. what's your post with the most notes?

ok i thought it was gonna be one of my old larry chibi doodles because i know a few of them hit 1k+ notes, but i deleted those in 2017 and apparently now it's this 6 year old like....funky photo study i did of dan howell from 2015 when i still watched him and amazingphil a lot?? i mean at least it's something i was once proud of lmao....there's a few art posts i have with semi decent notes that i pretend i Do Not See

9. how many mutuals do you have?

i think rn 40 something so not very many, although i unfollowed a lot of people i was moots with when i left my last fanbase so that's probably why 😬 i've been meaning to check out more HL/ot5 people though!! i love mutual interaction but i'm afraid of being annoying if i'm any degree of attentive

10. how many followers do you have?

overall i have almost 2.4k rn, but there's a decent amount that are totally inactive or at least don't interact with me so it feels like....a lot less lmao but since re-joining 1d i've already made up like all the people i lost when i left my other fanbase of almost three and more so thank you for actually liking my work and maybe me as well 🥺💗

11. how many ppl do you follow?

around 370 rn!

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

half of the stuff that comes out of my mouth is a shitpost fdngjkdf like my tags are bad enough lmao, no one needs to properly share the bs i have to say

13. how often do you use tumblr?

pretty regularly rn but there are times i'll go completely MIA depending on what i'm into/how busy i am!

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog?

in the past i have had some....issues with other people i've met on here but never directly had confrontation with them? most of the time that's happened i figure it's been one-sided though because i can get irritated with certain behavior really quickly—like i always say my heart is big and open but my bullshit tolerance is dangerously low—but when that's the case i'll just unfollow or block without saying anything?

although back in the day there was one instance (and seriously if anyone remembers this you deserve a medal because this shit was Ridiculous) where i kinda but not really called out another 1d fanartist who posted untagged noncon fanart they'd done of at least two of the boys, and then acted like it was no big deal (like. 1. those are irl people my dude and 2. untagged noncon art?? in front of my salad??) and their friends kept defending them for it and tried to come for me claiming i was a proponent of Purity Culture when i'm not and literally all i said in my post on it was that in my own opinion it was kinda fucked up to draw noncon art of real life people—not characters played by actors! but actual real people as themselves—in the first place, but if you felt the need to post highly triggering content like that the least you could do was tag it accordingly

but i think that was the last time properly so i guess times within this fanbase are still chaotic as ever just in a different way?

15. how do you feel about "you need to rb this" posts?

Annoyed™️ like don't guilt trip me over a post lmao i do what i want !!

16. do you like tag games?

YES i love to talk about myself after years of trying not to show any personality online out of fear of judgement dfjkngdf

17. do you like ask games?

yes! i want to do them more but i'm always afraid of reblogging one and then getting nothing and looking like a Fool :'(

18. which one of your mutuals is tumblr famous?

i guess i have a few moots that are kinda well-known or at least get good interaction within the community we're a part of? also isn't that phrase kind of an oxymoron at this point adfjkdf

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

not past platonic friendly affection lmao but honestly what is it like to have a realistic crush on an actual tangible person versus someone in the public eye who doesn't even know i exist.....it's been so long and i am so lonely please send help

20. tags?

@niallnailme @bolitodequeso @milkcurls @exzouis @ialwaysknewyouwerepunk @got-my-devotion @aliensyndrome uhhh anyone who'd like to please consider yourself tagged by me! literally if there was an 'all my moots' button i'd just pick that lmao and as always no pressure/sorry if you've already done this and i haven't seen!

#twenty questions tag #tagged #oh geez that's me

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razanartuk · 3 years ago

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about me tag game thing

i was tagged by the wonderful @nothingunrealistic! thank you very much ily <3

under read more bc i was not capable of keeping my answers brief this time around

why did you choose your url?

this...was supposed to be a short explanation but it turned into quite a tale so strap in i guess because we are going on a ride. back in 2017 i was just getting into musical theatre rp and i was still feeling too shy to really talk to anyone ooc so i would just wait for people i wanted to interact with to post starter calls so i could just do things in character with them the easy way. So i did this with my friend cam, who posted a starter for me using a lyric from If I Could Tell Her. she linked the song so i could listen to it, so i did and i went ‘wait a minute, is that Ben Platt from Pitch Perfect?? (and other things too, but i only recognized his voice at the time bc of the acappella girl movies)’ and yes it certainly was.

i had zero idea what the plot of Dear Evan Hansen was about at that point, and for some reason based off Just That One Song and the poster art of who i assumed was Some Guy in a Polo Shirt i started to think it was about some jock guy who broke his arm and had an emo/goth friend who had either died or gone missing under mysterious circumstances. also i intuited that Evan had a crush on his friend’s sister but he couldn’t tell her that directly or his emo friend would kick his ass. so i was like mostly wrong, but a little bit right.

oh and i knew jared and alana were characters from the show bc cam said that they were i think?? but i had no idea what their role was. so after listening to if i could tell her, i listened to good for you and all i really got out of that was that evan the apparently not-jock guy had done...something... that really hurt jared and alana. and at that point i finally decided to go look up a plot synopsis and i found out i was waaay off base. but honestly this is why cast recordings should include scene dialogue in the songs bc otherwise you just get soundtracks like dear evan hansen where the songs have like. zero context. we really just go from waving through a window to for forever to sincerely me without like. any reason as to what is happening huh. It’s honestly not a surprise anymore that all those people on twitter had no idea the plot isn’t about gay teenagers.

anyways. cam was writing jared and she made a post at one point about wishing somebody would write alana and i was like ‘oh i could do that!’ (after i had actually Seen a bootleg and finally knew what the whole story was, of course) so i made a multimuse rp blog featuring alana beck, nabulungi hatimbi, chloe valentine and some other characters, and cam started sharing her headcanons with me that alana is trans, jared and alana were close friends when they were little kids but they sort of drifted apart as they got older and their priorities in life changed, jared was the first person alana came out to when she realized she’s trans, etc.

one night i started talking about wanting to pick a more theatre-relevant url for my blog and trans-[character name] urls were getting pretty popular, and at least 3 of the friends i made through rp had changed theirs to coordinating trans-[character name] and i think it was cam suggested i should make mine be trans-alana so i did. eventually i realized the unhyphenated version was available so i changed it to transalana with no hyphen and i have lived here ever since. sometimes i think about changing it but i feel like transalana has become a part of My Brand and i am not so great with coming up with cool names for things.

any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them

in theory, i have sideblogs... i don’t really use them, but of the ones i do have, there is:

emsbookblog - this was supposed to be where i would post excerpts of the book that i’m working on, but i think i did that maybe one time roughly 2 years ago and then promptly forgot about it/got nervous about my writing and was scared to share anything else. the rest of the stuff that is there is assorted writing tips. i don’t really know what to do with it now. i probably should post all my little thoughts about em and anita and caleb there instead of infodumping on my main from time to time, but if i do that then i have to promo a sideblog and direct people over to it which is always annoying to me when i could just do it on this blog which is much easier

dearnovelhansen - this is basically no longer used, but was a sideblog i made specifically to talk/complain about the novel adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen which was about 3 years ago?? maybe? i can’t be trusted to understand the passage of time. but to summarize: i thought it was an honor just to have the story be made more accessible since many of us couldn’t see the stage performance, but i hated a lot of the creative liberties that were taken. my main grumbles are that everyone who isn’t evan or connor is done so dirty in the novel. connor’s still kind of done dirty in the book, but not as much as like. heidi, alana, jared, and zoe are.

horseisle3 - this one was meant to be a place where i could just enthusiastically post screenshots from hi3, but instead it turned into a blog where i occasionally reblog other players’ hi3 content and bitch about how bad the game admins are bc hi3 is the tumblr famous (infamous?) homophobic horse game. the game where it was once okay to call your club store the gulag bc according to their head of hr, ‘it’s just a russian word for prison’ but you can’t say ‘im gay’ without somebody accusing you of corrupting young children who play the game. unfortunately there aren’t very many good interactive horse games out there, so this one is still about as good as it gets. it’s either that or star stable and i don’t care about star stable.

mlaenie - i’ve had this url saved for i don’t even know how long. way way way back in the day when i wanted to escape from the clutches of the onceler fandom i abandoned my first blog where i basically had an alter ego i guess?? and i decided to just be myself on the new blog. i don’t fully remember who came up with it, but one of my sister’s mutuals suggested that if you scrambled the letters in your name you could come up with aesthetic-looking urls. so lauren’s url became lrauen, and to match with her mine became mlaenie, which i abandoned on tumblr after about a year or so? but have continued to use as my main username on twitter, reddit, youtube, xbox, steam, and discord. i barely ever use any of these accounts aside from twitter, steam, and xbox, but yeah. so i’ve decided to try and turn this empty sideblog into a place for video game thoughts maybe. we’ll see how long it lasts this time around.

how long have you been on tumblr?

i made my first tumblr account in december of 2010, but i didn’t understand how to use it at all or how to customize my theme to look cool and unique so i quickly abandoned it. i made a new account in september of 2011 after some kids at school and my sister told me i should and i have been trapped here with varying degrees of activity/inactivity ever since. i have witnessed the rise and fall of the lorax/onceler fandom, hyperfocused on lord of the rings, star wars and back to the future all at the same time, and for the past 4 years i’ve mostly been a musical theatre blog with assorted other fandom stuff mixed in. i feel i have seen everything and nothing, but mostly i’m just tired and bored.

do you have a queue tag?

no bc i don’t use a queue. i’ve tried using it in the past but i irrationally feel pressured to sustain a coherent theme to queued posts and my brain simply does not vibe with that so i just don’t use it at all anymore. Instead i instantly reblog or post several unrelated thoughts in succession and then don’t post again at all for 3 days. the way god intended

why did you start your blog in the first place?

my very first blog was intended to be a place for me to post all of my petz 5 animals’ profile info, but i didn’t have any understanding of how coding worked at all and i don’t think i really wanted to learn, either. so it just sat there, unused. my second attempt at blogging was as a classic rock fandom person, so as you can probably imagine i was pretty pretentious about ‘modern pop’ vs the beatles, the rolling stones, the who, the monkees, and so on. and then i slowly devolved into a lorax fandom blog and everything went to shit so i made a new blog for lord of the rings/the hobbit which later evolved to include star wars and back to the future blogging. and then for the past 4 years i’ve been mainly a musical theatre blog with other random stuff i like thrown haphazardly into the pot. wonderful.

why did you choose your icon/pfp?

because my url is transalana and two of my most prominent lgbt headcanons are that alana beck is trans and a lesbian. i gotta be shouting out @kinqmike though bc she’s the one i adopted the trans alana beck headcanon from in the first place!

why did you choose your header?

in 2017 i was hyperfixating on Dear Evan Hansen (and Be More Chill, but there weren’t many gif-able videos then considering it ran for a month in New Jersey in 2015 and there was only one yet-to-resurface 35 minute bootleg) so i just grabbed a random gif off of google. i really should get to replacing it with a new header of my own though. i just don’t know what i should do for it.

what’s your post with the most notes?

i have lost track of how many notes it has (i think it’s somewhere around 200 now?) but when Will Roland and George Salazar performed Two Player Game on Good Morning America, i posted a screencap of their Jeremy and Michael along with that one quiz answer meme that says stuff like ‘i want to see it grow up healthy’. i didn’t tag it with any ship names or anything because i was anxious about having it show up in the tags, but somebody who reblogged it from me did tag it as boyf riends and i firmly believe it took off because of that. i don’t think i make posts that are relevant enough to amass thousands of notes, even by accident. which is probably a good thing bc if i did i would have to block so many of them.

how many followers do you have?

on this blog? 175 according to the counter. how many of those are still real people and how many are bots and abandoned accounts? i have no idea.

how many people do you follow?

i try to keep it somewhere around 200. i think i’m sitting at 180 right now but i kind of need to go through and clear out the really inactive blogs.

have you made a shitpost?

let’s think about this for a second. i’ve been on tumblr for nearly 10 years. you might even be able to say i’ve made more than one. they’re just not what you would call...popular shitposts.

how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ post?

that stuff makes me so incredibly anxious that i have to fight the urge to want to yeet my laptop or mobile device through the closest window whenever i read it, so i try very hard to avoid any sort of ‘if you don’t reblog this, i’m judging you’ posts. i find them very manipulative and not particularly helpful

do you like tag games?

yeah babey!! i just frequently forget to do them, but please know that if you have ever tagged me in a tag game i felt incredibly touched by the gesture and the @mention even if i completely forgot to do the thing afterward

do you like ask games?

i do! but also rip to literally anyone who has ever sent me an ask meme bc it takes me so long to answer them. i’m still working on a micro fic prompt from a few weeks ago. also, horrified to realized that it has in fact been a few weeks and not 3 days anymore.

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i don’t know that any are tumblr famous as a whole. but probably @neverheardnothing

do you have a crush on a mutual?

in any sort of romantic connotation? no. not that i’m aware of. there are mutuals that i have friend crushes on where i want to be friends with them but i get so anxious when it comes to meeting new people that usually nothing ever comes of it. i’m really not good at small talk or other casual conversation either which, as you may or may not be able to imagine, sucks. i just wanna skip over all of the awkward introductions and ‘hey how are you, how is life, what are you doing with yourself?’ stuff. not because i don’t care about it. i do, but i think most of my friends/the people i want to be my friends are also depressed and anxious so asking these basic questions about life tends to uh. make us all nervous. and i don’t do much with my life so i always have the most boring answers anyways.

i’m not tagging anyone officially bc the @ thing has just completely given up on me at this point, but if you want to do it, go for it. and then say i tagged you so i can read it c:

#mel.rtf #abt me #tag games

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artificialqueens · 5 years ago

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Blue Neighborhood Series: EASE (Jan-centric) - Mac

AN: Again, nothing I do would ever come to completion without Meggie being my rock and betaing this monstrosity. I love her and I hope yall like this one!

Summary: The students of Eastview Highschool are still reeling from a post by their school drama account. Jan is too busy with auditioning for the school musical to pay much mind to a bit of teenage angst. Jan is too busy in general. But she’s not overworked. She’s totally fine. She can handle it. She has everything under control.

6:00am: Wake Up

Jan’s eyes slowly adjusted themselves to the morning light just beginning to peek through her curtains. She didn’t groan, didn’t add five minutes to her alarm. She rolled up and out of bed.

She pulled the sheet taut where she had messed it up while sleeping and tucked it back under her mattress, doing the same to the blanket. She fluffed her pillows and set them upright, and finally placed her little stuffed bunny in the center of the pillows.

She knelt down to pull the drawers from under her bed. She selected a random combination of shorts and t-shirt before queuing up her morning run playlist. She noted a text from Gigi and about eleven other people.

G: no idea.

G: u sure it’s one of our girls?

J: Looks like our uniform.

7:00am: Shower

Jan didn’t fuss too much in the shower, rinsing herself down quickly, but making sure to apply her favorite body soap generously along her legs and arms. It smelled like peaches and always reminded her of summertime.

She brushed her teeth in the shower too. When she mentioned offhandedly to Jackie one day the older girl had looked grossed out. Jan didn’t mind.

It was more efficient that way.

7:20am: Breakfast

Jan kissed her mother on the cheek as thanks for another delicious meal.

She fussed after Jan, telling her to be safe on her way to school and to text her when practice was over. Jan assured her mother that she would and skipped out the door, bookbag in tow, without another word.

7:30am: Walk to School

Jackie had taken to walking in the morning with Crystal and her weird art friends recently, so it was just Gigi and Brita that met Jan at her door.

Jan greeted them with a warm smile and made it about halfway down her porch steps before Brita launched into her many theories about who on the cheer team was sleeping with a basketball player.

The picture had made the rounds last night. Jan was up doing an online lab for her college chemistry course when she got the notification.

Yes, she had her notifications on for the school drama account. Sue her, but she liked to be in the know about things.

She immediately recognized their cheer outfit and hadn’t hesitated before contacting every single girl on the team to inquire about who was making out with Eastview High’s All Star basketball player.

No one on the team fessed up.

Jan wasn’t concerned per se. It was their prerogative to make out with whoever, but if this was about to be a scandal, she’d rather be ahead of it.

“When I first saw it I thought it might be you, J,” Brita said, turning to shoot a look at Jan.

“Oh my god, Brittany!” Jan shook her head as if it were the wildest idea she’d ever heard.

“I’m just sayin’.” Brita held her hands up in surrender. “My first thought was good for her. She needs some stress relief.”

“I don’t need that kind of relief.” Jan chuckled.

Brita just hummed skeptically.

Jan turned to look at Gigi who was being awfully quiet that morning, “Who do you think it was, Gigi?”

“I have no idea.” Gigi just shrugged.

Jan wasn’t convinced. Gigi was staring at her shoes like they were the most interesting shoes on the planet. She clearly knew something she wasn’t telling them. Jan made a mental note to prod her for details later.

“Well, the tall one was definitely Hall. That’s for sure,” Brita continued rambling.

“Why do you say that?” Gigi asked innocently.

Now Jan was sure Gigi knew something. Everyone with two eyes and half a brain cell knew the person not in the cheer uniform was Hall. Jaida was the damn captain of the team. The most lauded person in their highschool. Everyone knew what she looked like.

Brita looked at Gigi confusedly. “Besides the obvious, it’s her truck in the picture.”

“It could have just been someone else on her car,” Gigi spoke quietly, clearly losing her nerve.

“I doubt it. Did you see how tall the other person was?” Brita shook her head. “No, it’s definitely Hall.”

The conversation lulled a bit as the three made their way into the school building, through the metal detectors, and headed down the hallway to their lockers. All conveniently located next to each other.

When Gigi had asked how that had happened Jan had just shrugged and said that being student body president had its advantages.

As they sifted through their lockers for their books, Jan mused. “But which one of our girls would be sleeping with Hall?”

Brita thought a moment before holding up a hand to count off her fingers. “Well, start with which ones are gay. Jackie, Gigi-”

Jan cut her off. “You don’t have to be gay to wanna sleep with Hall.”

“Okay, true.” Brita giggled.

“For straight girls, you both sure talk about how hot Jaida is a lot.” Gigi gave them both pointed looks, before continuing. “Besides, half the squad is gay that doesn’t help.”

Brita and Jan agreed and gave up theorizing for now as they waltzed into homeroom with their arms linked.

7:40am Homeroom/Announcements

Jan shot their homeroom teacher a smile before excusing herself to the front office.

While being the student body president did have its perks, it also had its responsibilities. Namely, the announcements every morning.

Jan greeted the ladies at the front desk and spent the better part of ten minutes cooing at pictures and videos of their young children that they always insisted on showing her. Jan never minded. It always made them smile and it made her smile, so it was a win-win.

Principal Visage came by a few moments later. She gave Jan a warm smile and ran her through the announcements for the day, handing over the slip of paper with the same information.

Jan took it eagerly and attempted to strike up a conversation with her principal. But Mrs. Visage wasn’t one for small talk and excused herself shortly after the homeroom bell rang. She gave Jan an encouraging smile, though, before disappearing into her office.

Jan readied herself by the microphone and smiled as a couple of students filed into the office to make announcements for their various clubs.

Bryce showed up at 8:00 on the dot and Jan chastised him for giving her a heart attack. Her VP slash boyfriend of two years just smiled. “You know I’d never leave you hangin’.”

Jan didn’t have time to retort before the bell rang. She took a deep inhale and exhale before pressing down on the intercom and putting on her cheeriest voice.

“Good Wednesday morning Eastview High! I hope you guys are ready for the football game this Friday. Get excited! Go Eagles!” Jan paused to look over at the students in line. “We’ve got quite a few student announcements this morning so I’ll let them take it away.”

Jan moved back and allowed each of the line of students access to the mic to plug their after school activity or club. It was still early in the semester so there were quite a few. Jan herself made plugs for both the cheerleading and soccer teams.

“Now to your VP for the most important announcement, lunch.”

Jan turned to Bryce who smiled goofily. “That was a Jan-mazing joke there!”

Jan could hear groans from the nearby homerooms. She just smiled. Early on in their relationship, Bryce had somehow decided that making puns out of Jan’s name was peak comedy. Although, he had a weird grasp on what counted as a pun. She had tried to explain to him that the joke wasn’t funny unless the word already had an ‘an’ in it. He still didn’t seem to get it.

He even got her a necklace for the anniversary that said Janmate. Like soulmate… but… her name.

She took it all in stride though and forced a laugh anyway.

“For lunch we’ve got chicken and pizza-”

Jan spaced out for a bit as Bryce went on about the menu for today. He cracked a few jokes and the ladies at the front desk practically swooned. Jan rolled her eyes fondly. Bryce had that effect on people.

She closed out the announcements with her encouraging quote of the day and a reminder to get tickets to Friday’s game.

8:15 - 12:20: Classes

Jan was taking all AP classes this semester which meant she had to work ten times harder to keep up with everyone else. Yes, she was still in line for salutatorian, and yes, she could probably get As in every class without lifting a finger, and yes, she was taking college courses in addition to her current course load, and no, she wasn’t overworked.

12:25: Lunch

Jan threw her pile of books in her locker with little regard to how they tumbled against each other at the bottom. She grabbed her purse and Gigi’s hand and the two made their way down to the lunchroom.

Jan waited until they were in line, trays in hand, boxed in by students on either side of them before finally asking, “So what aren’t you telling me?”

Gigi tensed immediately and tried valiantly to keep eye contact with Jan, “What are you talking about?”

Jan grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and turned back to face Gigi. “You know who’s in the picture don’t you?”

“No,” Gigi answered too quickly.

Jan wasn’t convinced. “Well, you know something.”

Gigi grabbed two slices of pizza while shaking her head, “I really don’t, J. Honest.”

They made their way up to the register and Jan smiled warmly at the lady running the machine. She gave her a glare in response. Jan paid for her lunch and waited patiently for Gigi to do the same.

Jan knew she wasn’t going to get anything more out of Gigi. They had grown up together and Jan knew better by now than to keep pushing.

But a little part of her did wonder. “Who are you covering for?”

“No one. I’m not covering for anyone!” Gigi exclaimed.

“I know, I’m teasing.” Jan gave a giggle.

Gigi huffed but allowed a small smile to grace her face.

The two sat down at their usual table. Bryce, Brita, and Brita’s boyfriend Bruno all came and joined them a bit later.

Lunch passed in a blurr. Jan half-listened to Bryce talk about the football team and their upcoming game. The rest of her time was spent worrying her bottom lip between her teeth and mentally running through her lines for her audition tomorrow.

1:25-3:30: Classes

The afternoon always seemed to pass slower to Jan. She noticed three times that her mind had drifted off and away from the work in front of her. She really needed to get a grip. And maybe some more sleep tonight.

4:00pm: Cheer Practice

Jan led the girls through another grueling practice.

Ten laps to start, stretching exercises, pyramid clean up, full routine until they got it perfect.

It was nowhere near perfect when six o’clock hit, but there wasn’t time to dwell on that. There wasn’t time for much of anything.

Roll up the floor mats, change for soccer practice, eat a granola bar on the way to the field.

6:10pm: Soccer Practice

Jan had been playing soccer since she was 5.

Her parents swore she came out of the womb juggling. Jan always laughed and told them that was anatomically impossible. Her father then would say she got her mother’s humor.

Practice was fairly uneventful. Tiring as hell, as usual, but it always left Jan feeling accomplished.

8:00pm: Dinner and Homework

Jan was thankful for the light load today. When the spring musical started up, she would really be stretched thin. Luckily for now she only had cheer every school day and soccer three days a week and soccer games on weekends and her college class every other day and being student body president every day and keeping her 4.0 GPA…

It was manageable. For now at least.

Jan scarfed down the leftovers her mother had set aside for her and started on her pile of work. She was usually good about keeping on top of homework, so it only took a few hours to get everything done. She checked in on her college chemistry course to make sure she had turned in her lab quiz. She had.

When Jan looked up it was already 11pm. She sighed and knew her parents and brother were most likely asleep by now. She would have to practice her audition song outside.

Jan hopped in the shower and rinsed herself off, hoping the steam would help her vocal chords and the grime coming off her like a sheet would help her feel better.

She tiptoed down the stairs and out her back door. She walked to the edge of her backyard and perched herself up on the fence, trying to get distance away from the houses so she didn’t bother anyone.

She shivered as the cool air bit at her exposed ankles.

She started humming softly, reaccustoming her voice to its own music. She took her time, running through warmups softly until she felt secure enough. She let herself get a bit louder and heard their neighbor Rock shut her window pointedly.

Jan sighed. She needed to practice.

She kept going, letting the notes extend past her mouth and fill the night air around her. She counted off in her head and hit each beat perfectly on cue with the music forever spinning in her mind.

A window opened from a nearby house, but it was too dark to see who it was or where it was.

Jan kept going, getting into the chorus and letting her control slip and her voice do what it wanted to. The air around her seemed to crackle with electricity and her heart rate increased as she hit the high note and this… this was what Jan lived for.

The crickets, an appreciative audience continued their chirping as Jan finished the last lyrics.

Somewhere, much closer than was comfortable came a soft clapping. It startled Jan at first.

She looked over to see none other than Jaida Essence Hall leaning over Jan’s fence to applaud her. Jan, ever the performer, gave a mock curtsey and Jaida chuckled lightly.

“Hey, Jaida,” Jan said in greeting.

“Hey, Jan.”

They didn’t do this. They didn’t talk like this. Like friends.

Not that they weren’t friends.

They had grown up together.

Although, Jan grew up with everyone in this neighborhood so that wasn’t really saying much. Although they had all grown up playing games in the middle of the street, running around in the heat slick sun and scraping their knees on solid concrete. And that meant a lot as a kid. It still sometimes meant a lot.

“How are you?” Jan asked.

Jaida’s demeanor suddenly changed and she let out a bitter laugh. “Oh you know.”

“I really don’t.”

There was a pointed pause. “No, I guess you don’t,” Jaida mused.

The silence stretched between them and the once calming air of the outdoors suddenly felt stifling.

“I’m sorry.”

Jaida looked up. “Why? You take the picture?”

“No!” Jan shook her head. “But still. I’m guessing this isn’t how you wanted things to go.”

“You’d guess correct.” Jaida sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “You gon’ ask me who it was? Has she told you yet?”

Jan bit her lip. She wasn’t going to ask, no matter how much she wanted to know. “No. And no. No one told me anything.”

“Hmm. Weird. I woulda thought you knew from the start.” Jaida seemed almost… shocked. Like she figured Jan already knew. Like she figured Jan had this dirt on her and oh, now Jan understood what this was about.

“I don’t know who it was. And even if I did, it’s none of my business.” Jan spoke firmly. “Is that why you came down here then? To make sure I wouldn’t tell?”

“No! Well yes, and no.” Jaida looked down at her feet guiltily. “I knew you weren’t the type to go spreadin gossip, but I wanted to make sure.” Jaida looked back up to meet Jan’s eyes “plus I hadn’t heard you sing since we were little.”

At Jan’s confused expression, Jaida laughed a bit, “You tellin’ me you don’t remember when we were growin’ up and you and Jackie would put on these elaborate plays and keep us all hostage til we clapped?”

“We did not keep you hostage!” Jan exclaimed.

“Roxanne nearly pissed herself one time!”

“She did not!”

A voice rang out above their heads. “Did too!”

Jaida and Jan looked up and over to see Rock leaning out her window to gaze down at them.

“Rock, what the fuck?” Jaida asked in between confused chuckles.

“Sorry, I was just listening to Jan singing and I heard my name so I thought- I just thought I’d- I’ll just go now.” Rock made a show of closing her window, but the shadow of her head was still visible through her curtains, making it clear she was still listening in.

Jan just laughed at the ludicracy of it all. She found Jaida doing the same.

It was strange. That after all this time. All the ways life had changed them, they still stood here, laughing in spite of it all.

Jan and Jaida’s eyes met and for a brief moment it felt a bit like lightning. A bit like they were supposed to be here right now. Together.

Jaida must have realized she was staring because she coughed a bit awkwardly. “Well, I should let you get back to it.”

Jan felt her stomach drop at the notion, but she nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah.” Jaida smiled before turning on her heel and disappearing back into her yard. Jan found herself surprised to be missing the other girl’s presence.

She shook it off and went through her song a few more times before deciding to call it a night.

She made sure to shout a goodnight to Rock, who she was sure blushed at being caught out, but returned the sentiment nonetheless.

Jan tiptoed back up the stairs to her room and set her alarm for the morning.

7:22am: Wake Up

Jan woke up like a flash. As if her body instinctively knew something was wrong. The light filtering through her curtains was way too bright for it to be 6:00am. She looked over to her phone and her heart leapt at the time.

She bolted out of bed and threw on the outfit she had laid out the night before. She didn’t have time to do her makeup, a pre-audition ritual she always partook in. She didn’t have time at all before she heard a knock at the front door.

She raced down to see Jackie, Gigi, and Brita all looking at her concerned. She looked a mess probably. Jan tried to give them a reassuring smile and said she’d be right down and she just had to grab her bag and her sheet music.

She closed the door lightly and sprinted up the stairs, grabbing the aforementioned items and giving herself one last onceover in the mirror.

Jan knew this wasn’t the end of the world. In reality, she had only missed her morning run and shower, which was fine. Everything was fine. It didn’t feel like her world was suddenly crashing down around her.

7:35am: Walk to School

The group walked in relative silence. At least for Jan’s part. She was running through her lines over and over and over in her head, while Jackie encouraged her softly and Brita and Gigi talked in hushed tones all the way to school.

Jan hardly even registered the fact that Jackie was walking with them today. When she asked about it, the older girl just shook her head and said not to worry about it. Jan agreed to drop it, if only for the fact that the nerves in her stomach were making it hard to talk.

Jan bid Brita and Gigi goodbye at the auditorium doors. Jackie hung back, clearly sensing that something was wrong.

“Are you okay?” she asked, genuine concern creeping into her voice.

Jan nodded. “Yeah, I just woke up late and it freaked me out.”

Jackie nodded but seemed unconvinced. “Well, you got this.” She gave Jan’s hands a squeeze. “Don’t worry.”

Jan gave her a small smile and nodded.

She did. She totally had this.

She walked into the auditorium, greeted the director and the stage manager and got all the way up on stage before she realized that she actually didn’t have this. That maybe for the first time in her life, Jan really wasn’t going to do well at this.

It was a stupid thought. A silly voice that she could usually shut out.

But now it was the only thing she could hear.

She couldn’t hear the lines being read out to her or the start of her music. Something inside her had snapped and she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread creeping up on her.

As if to further rub salt in the wound, right as she was about to hit the high note, her voice cracked.

Jan wasn’t delusional.

She had known this balancing act would come to an end eventually. She was doing too much. Everyone said so.

But she couldn’t seem to stop herself either. She just had a lot of love in her heart. And she needed to show it somehow.

Or maybe she just wanted to be good at something. So she had tried a bit of everything and when she found that she wasn’t truly exceptional at any one thing she just kept doing everything. Maybe she had been hoping that no one would realize how lost she truly was if she just did everything.

Because Jan felt lost.

And it hit her like a truck everytime she stopped moving. So she hadn’t stopped moving.

She had known this balancing act would come to an end eventually. She just didn’t think everything would come to an end now.

Jan ran out of the auditorium and into someone. She opened her mouth to apologize but a familiar voice cut her off before she was able.

“Hey, I was just gonna come wish you luck-” Jaida took in Jan’s frazzled appearance. “Are you okay?”

Jan looked up at her, tears blurring her vision that much more. “I-I-” Jan could hardly speak, let alone explain all that was wrong with her at that moment.

“What do you need?” Jaida said seriously.

“I don’t know.” Jan’s voice sounded strange in her own head and she couldn’t stop gasping for air. She hardly noticed the crowd that was quickly forming around them.

“Okay, come here, people are starin’.” Jaida grabbed Jan’s hand and led her out the nearest doors and out to the back parking lot.

Jan was still breathing heavily and doing her best to articulate the fact that she still had to go do the announcements.

“Nuh-uh, baby, you gonna stay right here till you can breathe again,” Jaida asserted.

Jan tried to insist that she had things to do, places to be. Jaida just sat her down against the cold brick wall of their high school and assured her that everything was going to be fine. Jan went to argue, but the sight of familiar red curls coupled with unfamiliar dark ones caught her eye.

Bryce, Jan’s boyfriend of two years, came stumbling out from under the bleachers with a petite brunette following close behind him.

Jan recognized her immediately. Dahlia.

Bryce had this giddy smile on his face and looked to all the world like he had just had the time of his life. Dahlia was just laughing at him and clutching the strap of her book bag like it was a lifeline. The pair didn’t see Jan and Jaida at first.

If Jan had any more pride left in her; she’d feel remorseful for yelling at him.

But she didn’t.

She stood up and started screaming at the top of her lungs about how much of a scumbag he was. About how he never really cared about her and was only ever in their relationship for the VP position. It made perfect sense to Jan why he would cheat. And with Dahlia no less. A girl she looked nothing like.

Jaida had to steer her away from the pair of lovebirds or Jan was going to do something really stupid.

“Hey, hey, it’s not worth it.” Jaida tried to speak calmly.

Jan wasn’t having it. She pulled out her phone with every intention of recording her cheating boyfriend and his side chick when she saw a notification from the school’s drama account.

She had been tagged in a picture.

Before she could think too much about it, Jan clicked on the post. She felt dread seeping into her stomach. The picture was of her and Jaida standing awfully close outside the auditorium. Jan’s heart nearly gave out at the caption.

A player on and off the court.

Before Jan could process what the hell that meant her phone lit up with notifications.

She managed to single out Brita’s name from the bunch and opened their conversation. Jan could feel hot tears pricking the edges of her eyes, which only served to blur her phone screen more.

B: y didn’t u tell us u were the one making out with Hall?

That was the final straw.

Jan broke down.

She broke down. At 7:58am on a Thursday morning, leaning against a dirty brick wall with a girl she hadn’t spoken to in years dabbing at her eyes with the edge of her shirt.

#rpdr fanfiction #jan sport #jaida essence hall #gigi goode #brita filter #jackie cox #high school au #lesbian au #cisgirl au #fluff #angst #hurt/comfort #blue neighborhood series #ease #mac #s12

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letting-them-take-liberties · 4 years ago

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VolFes 2020 Shop Event Report

That got intense so fast.

Crossposted at Wanderlust.

Because of the current situation and the company probably not wanting to risk it, VolFes 2020 got cancelled and instead was turned into a pop-up shop so that they can sell the goods meant for the event.

Around an estimate of 99.5% of Japan events are mostly all about buying merch, so it felt like a bloodbath of sorts as everyone around me was spending money like it grew on trees (someone I know spent at least USD2,000 for merch alone). I’ve been attending Voltage events for three years now and it always amazes me how far the fangirls will go to spend for their favorite character (I’ll be calling them ‘oshi’ [推し]) from this point forward.

As mentioned in this post, it is always good to go to an event on the very first day to avoid disappointment and loathing when the merch you’re eyeing gets sold out.

I took a leave from work for Day 1 of VolFes 2020 Shop as I knew that it would get crazy; the last few merch buying events I’ve been to left me exhausted, even if all I did was buy. It can get pretty intense at times since the people I hang out with can really get wild with the buying spree.

It was announced in the website that they would allow a free-for-all-entry to anyone wanting to buy goods after 2PM. My friend Y and I took this opportunity to eat lunch and relax since it’ll take time; between her and I, she was more tense and kept checking Twitter for any announcements. As for me, I was a bit more chill, knowing that if they run out of goods, I could still buy online.

If you’ve read my past entry, Y is a huge Saizo fan, so she’s more into this merch buying than I since she has to compete with a lot of fangirls for Saizo goods. I’m happy that with Masamune and Ieyasu, the competition for merch for the both of them isn’t as tense as Saizo’s.

The Chara announced on Twitter that the free-for-all entry would be delayed by an hour, so we took our time to have some dessert, then head off to Ikebukuro Marui. While waiting for the distribution of the designated timeslot tickets, Y and I decided to go to the nearby bank so that I could get some money (thought to pay in cash to keep the expenses lower), and on our way back, Y met an acquaintance who was just on their way out as they were done buying merch.

The acquaintance started asking Y what she would be buying this time around, and Y confessed to not buying anything related to Ouji/Be My Princess series as she had gotten disappointed before with her merch pick.

(Spoiler alert: her oshi is Ivan Chernenkov, she tried to get can badges of him by buying up to the maximum number of can badges allowed in one transaction (20 for that event), and ended up with no Ivan. That traumatized her that she swore off buying merchandise from that series.)

Acquaintance was with a friend, who then started asking Y if she could buy 20 (!!!) can badges from Ouji-sama no Propose EK (Be My Princess 2) 10th Anniversary art plus a bromide from MiraPuri (Kagami no Naka no Princess Love Palace), with 20 being the limit for can badge purchases.

At that point, Y turned to me, who was simply listening to the conversation, and said, “Kiyo isn’t buying any Ouji trading can badge merch, right?”

I gave her a confused look. “Yeah, I’m sticking to KoiRan and Ouji, with hardly any trading merch on my list.”

The acquaintance’s friend then straight-up asked me, “If you don’t mind, would you buy me 20 more can badges for Ouji EK 10th Anniversary art? I’ll give you some money to cover for the expense.”

I then took out my list (in Google Sheets); the acquaintance’s friend started dictating to me her wishlist. Upon seeing my list written in English, she gave me a look and then said, “Oh… uh, I can’t read English–”

“No worries, I got you covered and I wrote it down. So you want 20 can badges for Ouji EK…”

“Yeah, the ones with the grandsons! 20 of those, and one bromide from MiraPuri!”

Total cost of the merch was JPY9,020, enough for her to get three bonus postcards from MiraPuri.

We then promised to meet up after the buying so that we could hand over the goods, then off we went inside the building to wait for the ticket distribution.

This is the part when my friends and their other friends (at that point, I didn’t know them) got really disappointed and pissed at the free-for-all entry system that had a designated timeslot entry ticket.

If you didn’t know by now, if there’s one thing that sets off a local in this country, it’s the horrible queue/entry ticket system. It’s no exaggeration when someone says that queuing is a national sport/pastime, so if an event is crowded but has a good queue management system, a lot of people would be willing to put up with that.

However, if there are fewer people but the management is horrible, people would really criticize the hell out of it.

Which brings us to Day 1 of VolFes 2020: the website states that the entry ticket they will be handing out will be given at random, which means that even if you arrive late during the distribution of the entry ticket, there is still a chance for you to be able to secure an early timeslot.

Ex. Person A arrives at the venue at 1:30PM and has been waiting for the entry ticket distribution to start, which is an hour away. There’s a chance that they’d be given an entry ticket for the last time slot, which is at 7:40PM ~ 8:00PM.

Person B arrives at the venue at 2:30PM, the designated start of the distirbution of the numbered tickets. There’s a chance that they could get the earliest time slot to buy goods, which is at 3:00PM ~ 3:20PM.

What upset my friends was that when it was time to distribute the tickets, everyone made a run for it as soon as we were asked to queue, and when they gave us the entry ticket, we got a really late timeslot since we were positioned at nearly the end of the line.

In other words, the entry tickets they gave us was based on how "late" we got to the line; the ones that got ahead of us got an earlier slot, despite the fact that the website mentioned that the time slot on the entry ticket would be shuffled and handed out at random.

Everyone around me was ranting about how half-assed (they all kept throwing the word 中途半端 [chuu’to han’pa]) the whole system was (they could have stuck with a full online timeslot reservation system for Day 1 and Day 2), and how they didn’t go through with the promise of giving out the entry tickets that shuffled the entry time of the attendees in the spirit of equality and fairness, while I figured out the loophole of the system.

No matter how early you arrive, if you’re not fast enough to queue for the entry tickets as soon as they ask you to, high chance of you being given the last timeslot.

Since we had two hours and twenty minutes to kill, we all headed for dessert at a nearby cheap restaurant and just chatted with one another until it was time to go in.

Unlike last year, VolFes 2020 is smaller, more compact, and you had less time to have fun and enjoy.

Admittedly, the merch line up is better and much more gorgeous, but goodness, there’s just too many of them that it was difficult for me to decide which one I should purchase.

In the end, I decided to skip out on buying the maximum number allowed for buying random merch and stuck it out with getting 3 ~ 4 can badges.

To prevemt the spread of the virus, anyone who enters Ikebukuro Marui and the building had to wear a mask, sanitize their hands, and had 20 minutes to complete their shopping, from picking out the merch to paying at the checkout counter. They only allowed up to 8 people at a time at the shop so you had to plan your purchases. All of us shopping had a list that we referred to while searching for the goods because entry to the venue was controlled and you are not allowed to go back in anymore after paying.

If you missed out on an item, you’ll have to ask someone whose timeslot to buy the goods is different from yours to buy your merch, you go back the next day, or you order online, which means there’s a three-month waiting period before you receive the item.

Day 1 of the shop was on a Friday so I still had another day to think about any additional purchases, so even if I missed out buying merch, it’s not really a big deal.

[I’m chill that way]

With the buying done, my friends and I headed to another cheap restaurant across the street. Just like last year, the majority of them used that time in the restaurant not to eat, but to open their merch in blind packaging to check and see who they got. If it’s their oshi, they keep it, but for the ones that are not their oshi, they carefully place both the item and the shining packaging inside a ziplock back so that they could trade it with the others.

After we ordered dinner, Y got a message that her acquaintance was at the restaurant we were at, which meant it was time for me to hand over the merch. The girl who asked me to buy for her was so thankful that I think I actually got really shy over it haha.

When I got back to my table, the food was there, so I ate dinner and continued chatting with Y, who also took the time to multitask by eating and opening the merchandise she got. Sad part was, not one of the items she bought for Day 1 contained Saizo, which made me feel sad for her. It’s really rough when you spend so much and end up with no oshi; it’s really the worst feeling in the world.

Y had an early day for Day 2 of VolFes 2020 Shop so we all parted ways early as everyone was exhausted from stressing out whether merch would get sold out on Day 1 and from simply buying goods.

Day 2 wasn’t that eventful, aside from us buying more goods (I bought Ivan’s goods this time around as my priority was Yakov’s), and I ended up trading all my Saizo goods with Y for other characters. Nothing against Saizo, but I know that someone who isn’t me would actually cherish him more than I will ever do.

———-

Not sure if anyone’s interested to see what I bought, but let me know if you’d want me to post photos of my haul.

———-

More event photos:

#volfes2020 #volfes 2020 #personal #voltage inc

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thewindsofsong · 4 years ago

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@cross-d-a tagged me like 2 days ago. This took me waaay too long to do

rules: answer 30 questions and tag however many blogs you want!

name: thewindsofsong, wind, windy, song, twos, but mainly thewindsofsong. Pretty much everywhere I’m on the internet I am thewindsofsong.

gender: she/her

star sign: aries

height: 5’4”. I think?

time: 12:46 pm

birthday: april 10th

favorite bands: uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…………. I dont even know anymore. Is florence and the machine a band or solo artist? Pentatonix?

favorite solo artists: Regina Spektor, Mitski

last movie: Legend of Loulan (with Liu Chang)

last show: Ultimate Note. Very good, highly recommend

when did i create this blog: 2012? I think?

what i post: mostly reblogs of very random stuff (hence the blog name) but increasing the amount of original posts, mostly centered around

last thing i googled: how to translate “old cat lady” into chinese

other blogs: There’s twoscats where i reblog all the cute animals on my dash. I used to have that queu filled up to the brink, but its lucky to have 1-2 posts a day now...

do i get asks: Not really. The one’s I’ve gotten are usually the “pass this on!” type which are really sweet to get, but then I never remember to do anything with….

why i chose my url: thewindsofsong has been my online username since basically forever. I think of it as my online self’s name. To use anything else would almost feel like misnaming myself at this point.

following: 128. I go through and unfollow inactive blogs pretty regularly and I like keeing the number around 100. I don’t think I’ve ever gone over 150.

followers: 642. More than 2/3s of them are probably deactivated/dead blogs that haven’t been active in years. Its what happens when you’re tumblr is old i guess

instruments: I did learn piano but haven’t really played in years. Did percussion back when i was in school, but haven’t been able to do that in years either. I have a ukulele that I pick up every once in a while

what i am wearing: pjs. I’ve been wearing pjs for months now. I don’t want to start wearing regular cloths again.

dream job(s): housewife? I was working like a productive human until covid happened and I burned out of my job like a sparkler. I’d think being an artisanal soap maker would be fun.

dream trip: Japan would be a lot of fun. My Japanese is a horrible, terrible thing, but it’d be enough to get around with a good translation app. I’d like to go back to China some time too to visit family, but that side of the family is SO MUCH and I am easily overwhelmed.

favorite foods: I don’t know if i really have a favorite food? I like garlic a lot. Mushrooms are also really good but my partner hates them. Tomato and egg stir fry on rice is a comfort food from childhood

nationality: american

favorite song: None currently, mostly because I’ll listen to anything in particular at the moment.

last book i read: Does fanfic count? If not, then I’m currently reading a translation of ChongQi. I really don’t read books anymore… just fanfiction….

top 3 fictional universes i’d like to live in: star trek because capitalism doesn’t exist there any more. I could be the lazy bum I’ve always wanted to be there. Next would probably be the Unsleeping City from D20. Magical NYC just seems like it would be so much fun; not to mention that if I managed to learn prestidigitation, I’d open a laundromat and clean laundry at very low costs and therefor, very low price. Considering my current obsession, I feel like I have to say DMBJ for the last one. I’d never go down into a tomb because I’d die instantly. I’d go to school and specialize in grief counseling and then make bank specializing in tomb robbers. Last would be Yuuri on Ice universe because then I could see the epic romance between the world’s top male figure skaters happen in real life.

Tagging: whoever wants to do this?

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revengeisalwaysanoption · 5 years ago

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FICS: PROPOSTE INDECENTI + AMO GIA’ IL FINALE

I posted these on AO3 back in January. And I really wanted to have something brand new for today, but I am trying as hard as I can to have the fairy tale AU finished by tomorrow, so... Hope you’ll like them! They are BOTH IN ENGLISH ;) !!

PROPOSTE INDECENTI Seconds

10 - 9

The longest ten seconds of his whole fucking life. Maybe Niccolò really is considering turning it down, given the time and setting.

3 a.m. McDonald's. Sitting on plastic chairs. Lazily eating cold fries and a hamburger that tastes like cardboard with one hand, stroking each other's thumbs with the other. Feeling like the last men on Earth, in a deserted place that would normally be buzzing with life in the daytime.

He should have sticked to his plan, given him his scripted speech this Sunday at the Bioparco. But he didn't, and now...

8-7

… now he's screwed, isn't he? He fucked it up, and Niccolò is going to carry on and pretend this has been nothing but a bad dream.

He couldn't help it, though. Not when Niccolò was glowing with pride and elation as he showed Martino his first - published, finally!! - illustrated book.

The one Nico had lovingly renamed 'our baby' - and damn if Marti's heart didn't skip a beat at that - even though all he didn't do much but offer his moral support.

How was he supposed to resist?

6-5

He looked more beautiful than ever, in an old tracksuit and with a ridiculous headband holding his wild curls at bay. Buzzing with enthusiasm, while he told Marti about how Naima the giraffe who had her head too high in the clouds learnt from Mabel the red panda that she shouldn't fear what's in her heart. That her feelings are never too much, like so many others have been telling her.

Niccolò had always been very secretive about the plot, saying 'It's a surprise' with a mischievous glint in his eyes whenever Martino asked for more details… and right in that very moment he could see why.

"Children emotions tends to be heightened, and therefore often dismissed. I hope this can tell them that they matter, you know? That they're gonna find someone willing to listen, someday. Just like I found you."

It was their story. Edited, tweaked but still the same at its core. Shared to offer some hope to whoever might need it.

How could he not stop Niccolò right there and fumble for the box in his bag?

4-3

Flinging it into his hands and dropping on one knee felt too predictable and cheap, however.

"I… I think I'm gonna get a milkshake. Would you like me to get you anything? An ice-cream cone? A Flurry?" Then, raising a voice a couple of octaves to make it sound childlike he adds "A Happy Meal?"

"Ahah. You're so funny, have you ever considered a career as a stand-up comedian? Get me a Happy Meal, you ass." And he would have sucked on that raised middle finger, without any shame, had it been a night like any other.

But it wasn't.

Niccolò kept on gloating, until he opened the Happy Meal. His face fell, indeed, when he found the giraffe and red panda wooden figurines connected through a red silk thread and carrying a ring.

Ebony black, like his hair. Adorned with amber and aventurine, which both reminded Martino of his eyes.

Eyes which were now boring into him with a mixture of confusion and… disappointment?

Not exactly the reaction he had been wishing for. The silence between them felt a bit uncomfortable, for the first time in maybe ever, but Martino forced himself to speak.

"I know that I told you, so many times and in so many ways, that nobody knows a fucking thing about what's gonna happen tomorrow but... I am certain about ONE thing and ONE thing only: that I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, as your HUSBAND. Don't you wanna spend the rest of your life with me?"

"That's two things, Marti. Maybe even three. I believe so… but let me just have ten seconds to think it through, okay?"

"Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. " He finally says. Each yes said before a kiss, his smile getting brighter and brighter as they both start crying. Tears they brush away with gentle fingertips, with soft lips.

"A thousand times yes, Marti." Niccolò reiterates, resting his forehead against his fiancé's. Not an old fashioned to say 'boyfriend' when you significant one is not exactly a boy anymore, but the real deal now.

Fiancé. Betrothed. Soon to be husband. He can't wait to refer to Martino using those term with friends, colleagues, guests, relatives. With all those random people he ends up talking to while queuing up at the post office - on the bus, on the train, on the subway. The whole world needs to know, and he is certain that Marti feels like the same.

"Once is more than enough."

-----------

Minutes

It still doesn’t feel real, even though he has had some minutes to let it sink in. Despite the weight of the ring dangling from his necklace - "how very Frodo of you…" "Are you calling your future husband a fucking hobbit, Mr Rametta?" - and his proposal still echoing in his ears, he fears he might wake up any minute now. Alone.

He has to take refuge in Marti’s arms, grounding himself in his warm and tight embrace. Nothing can touch him, when he’s there. Nothing can reach him, apart from Martino’s smell and the palpable solidity of his body.

"I can take it back, if you’d like." Marti mumbles, against his helix piercing.

"Don’t you dare!" Niccolò protests, first jabbing his ribs with his forefinger and then flicking his nose.

"I mean… you don't sound positively thrilled about it…" He points out, puzzled to hear Niccolò chuckle.

"Well, we're talking about spending the rest of my life with the most boring gay I've ever met…" Nico sighs dramatically, but then he gets dreadfully serious. He is so overjoyed, so full of love he could burst, and Martino better not end up thinking otherwise. "I couldn't be happier… You know that, right? I simply wanted to be the one to propose."

"Well, maybe you still can. Fifteen or twenty years from now, when we'll feel like renewing our vows or some shit…" Martino suggests, standing up and cleaning their table. They must go now, if they want to have some time left to spare to celebrate home before heading out again to work.

"Sounds lovely. You have such a way with words, Marti." Niccolò shoves him playfully, but files that piece of information into a secured corner of his brain. Might come in handy, in the future. "And how do you know about renewals, anyway? Don't tell me you've been bingewatching 'Say Yes To The Dress' on RealTime!"

"Whaaat? Me? Nope. Never. Must have heard something from Filo. Or was it Edo?"

*************

AMO GIA’ IL FINALE

Hours

Hours have gone by. It took them twice longer than usual to reach their flat, unable to walk more than a few steps without stopping for a quick peck. Or a full on make out session against a couple of closed, sturdy, doors.

Clothes were discarded on the floor as soon as they stepped inside, and they had made love until dawn. Exhausted, by then, they had fallen asleep.

Fear has had time to come knocking, and with it the painful reminder that people always leave. Or get sick of each other, and stay together only to keep up appearances.

No. That's not gonna happen. Not to them. Not when they are perfectly aware that gonna have to make a promise to each other not only on that day… but every second, every minute, every hour they spend together. Or apart.

Not necessarily with words. Which little gestures, too. Cherish their love. Never take it for granted.

"I promise you that we can make it. From now, to infinity." Martino says, softly, as he lays a kiss on Niccolò chest. Right where his heart is, just like Nico did so many years before under those red lights.

"To infinity and beyond."

"Don't start quoting Toy Story when I'm trying to be deep, Ni."

"It doesn't suit you. Now, up up up. Put something on and come with me... I don't want to miss watching the sunrise and cuddling with my betrothed on my cozy balcony."

"You are unbelievable."

"And you love that."

"I sure do, don't I?"

Imagination

This is absolutely not what Niccolò or Martino had in mind.

The unnecessary opulence, the stifling atmosphere in spite of the marvelous outdoor venue.

"It's not like you had a clear picture of what you wanted, anyway." Anyone would argue, and they would be right.

It had been easy enough to picture it back in Milan, where having a wedding in their birthday suits had sounded like the coolest idea he had ever had… But now Nico can't really see how that would go down, can't imagine it wouldn't be a complete catastrophe.

Like any other scenario they came up with. Some are too over the top, and would make Martino feel uncomfortable. Some are too dull, and would be an ill match to Niccolò's eccentricity.

Someone had to take the matter into their hands, and it wasn't like Silvia had done a bad job with the very little input she had from the grooms.

Maybe they could settle for this?

***************

Instinct

Or maybe not.

Martino refused to make this day, their day, about anyone else but themselves.

His in-laws were probably going to hate him for this, as firm believers of a time and a place for spontaneity, and their own friends were surely going to hold it against them for the next fifty years or so… but who cared?

Not him. Not when he was witnessing the first real smile of the week from Niccolò, merely by showing up on his old bike.

"Get on." It took him some fumbling, since a tight fitting tuxedo wasn't really the best attire for riding a bike, but eventually he managed to sit comfortably behind Martino.

"Where are we going?" He asked, presuming to be filled in about Marti's plan for the next few hours.

"Wherever the fuck we want." Martino said, instead, refusing to tell Niccolò anything concerning their destination. Or what they would do, once they reached it.

It didn't take too long to get to a church that Niccolò knew all too well. He had often joked about getting married in its crypt, surrounded by skulls and chandeliers made of human bones. Too bad it was hardly ever opened to the public, and totally unavailable for any kind of celebration.

"And how exactly are you planning to get in?" He inquired, walking over to the locked door.

"I might have asked Filippo to make me a copy of the key, when he got one for his photography project. Off the record." Because he knew Niccolò would love to stroll through the building undisturbed. Taking in its macabre allure, appreciating the fleeting nature of his own existence.

"Uh… Martino Rametta breaking the law by owning something he's not supposed to? A man after my own heart, I must say."

"I thought I already had it. Your heart, I mean." He commented, offhandedly, as he cursed and kicked against the rusty old door. "Oh, come on! Jesus! You were working just fine last time!"

"And this wonderful hint of blasphemy, right in front of a church. Wow." Niccolò reached out for him, then, pinning his open palm onto his own chest. "You're not mistaken, by the way. This has been yours for years."

"Same here." Marti turned to take his hand, and l let him feel how fast his heart was beating.

And then, as Marti was leaning in for a kiss, Nico moved back and brazenly snatched the keys.

"You know I've got the magic touch. Don't know whether it's in the fingers on in the wrists…"

"You better leave those innuendo at the door, Ni."

"Or what? You'll punish me, Father? You'll drag me into one of the confessionals and…"

… and he might had been tempted to do that, to drop on his knees and worship this man… Before he was basically challenged to reign in his wildest fantasies. Oh, he knew Niccolò wouldn't even try to play fair but still… He was so going to win this.

******

Memory

"... and then?" The kids asked, trying to get Mr. David's attention.

"Mh?" He had been distracted by an old lady coming to congratulate him on finally tying the knot a couple of weeks before. Shoelaces were a challenge for anyone, indeed, so it made sense he got praised for achieving that goal… Even though it took him so many years.

And that hadn't been the only interruption. For same weird reason their parents kept butting in to tell them shouldn't bother Mr. Fares. Or his 'partner'. They don't say 'husband', for some reason. Despite it being the word David uses for Michelangelo.

Grown up are so, so dumb.

"You ran away from your own wedding, got to a spooky church… and then? What happened?"

"Did you find a body and have to solve a murder?"

"I'm afraid not. We walked inside, and I read him my vows. He gave me his. I can show them to you, if you'd like? I always carry them in my pocket." Most didn't quite understand what was so great about two stick figures on a badly drawn giraffe, but the words written on the side sounded nice. Especially the closing line.

Per quanta strada abbiam fatto, e per quanta ancora ce n'è da fare… Amo già il finale.

"Booooring! I bet you went back to the ranch for the actual ceremony, after that?"

"Wrong. Remember that I started telling you all about this day because Meni asked what was the biggest prank I've ever pulled on my friends and family… That's it: making them all believe they would see US getting married and then have two other people saying 'I do' that afternoon. And this day I'm still quite proud I could pull that off. And so is my husband. I mean, our old folks were THIS close to believe we had been kidnapped."

Impressive. Kind of. Perhaps grown up can be cool, once in a blue moon?

"Ni? Nico? Earth to Niccolò Fares?" Not fair! He was a grown up! Why was he getting sweets before dinner?

"Yeah yeah, I can hear you loud and clear Marti." He gulped down his candies in a heartbeat. And then gave him a quick kiss, saying "Thanks, love."

Huh? Nico? Marti? Then why their moms - and a couple of their dads - referred to him as Michelangelo's David?

Grown ups are so, so weird.

#skam italia #final countdown weeks #week 2 #day four: share the love

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tjkiahgb · 5 years ago

Text

Listen, I got so caught up in Tyrus Week, spending hours and hours going through tags and liking posts and queuing reblogs, that I pretty much pushed everything else to the side. (Plus I’ve also been working on the next thing I’ll tell you guys about in the next few days.)

All that is to say, I got a lot of stuff in my inbox this last week, so I’m just going to tackle a bunch of them in... A LIGHTNING ROUND.

Let’s go.

And before you ask, yes, I made a graphic for it.

Looks like this Andi Mack finale party has turned into... a death party.

Would’ve been a strange choice for Terri Minsky to turn the finale of Andi Mack into a murder mystery, but if that’s what she wanted, I’d trust her.

I don’t watch that show but I know some people who do and they’ve told me it’s just light and airy and pleasant, so, yeah, sounds right up Cyrus’s alley.

You guys are shouting Lightning Round! every time the graphic comes up, right?

I, like TJ, am just some guy. I tell everyone who asks to call me Jay. Jay is long for “J”, which is short for another name that I, also like TJ, only let people related to me by blood or my soulmate know about. I will say it’s not Jagger, though. I wish.

That wasn’t my intention while writing TJ and the Gals, but as with all art, or whatever TJ and the Gals was, once it’s out of the creator’s hands, it belongs to the people.

No.

Thelonious Jagger Kippen Is A Hashtag Good Boi.

Shoutout to my FAQ page, where you can find information like this and more. Not blaming you, anon, I’ve gotten this a lot and the FAQ page is hard to find. I mostly just delete the question and let the anon live in mystery because I’m chaotic something. I’m only answering this now because it’s the

You know the shook_bitch? Thank them from me for getting Disney Channel to respond to them, and congratulate them on being the subject of the best comment the Disney Channel Instagram account ever made.

Yeah, I went back and checked and Jonah only says in 3x12 that his dad made a bad investment, not lost a job or anything.

It really seems like he’s been managing the Judy Bartholomew fortune all these years. We don’t know anything else of him other than he was once a background workout video guy and he has at least enough knowledge about baseball to coach little league.

Hopefully the new job is providing him with a solid salary, but if not, I think the world is ready for a Judy Bartholomew comeback.

Judy Bartholomew: Still Trottin’ After All These Years

I’m not entirely sure exactly which girl we’re talking about here. I think this one:

I will say, she does seem into it. She’s like, oh, things are about to get gay in here.

Honestly, there were so many background actors killing it in this scene.

You’ve got this guy...

...who hears the beginning of “Born This Way” and reacts like it’s ruined his evening. I mean, I was a little tired of it, too, when it was being played on the radio over and over and over, but it’s been some years. It’s not overplayed as much anymore and it definitely wouldn’t make me this upset. (He pops up later in the song and is happily dancing, so maybe he thought it was the beginning of a different song?)

Then there’s this girl...

...who is feeling it. She’s like, hell yeah, this is my jam!

And there’s this girl in the goggles...

...who, after TJ and Cyrus sing the “be myself, respect my youth” part, is like, okayyyy. I see you.

Here’s a fun(?) behind-the-scenes thing for this blog. A few months back, I was thinking about ways to replace “Moments” if we had, by some miracle, gotten a season four, since I would’ve run out of moments weeks after the finale. What I came up with was “The Random Andi Mack Extra of the Day.” It would’ve just been screenshots of random extras throughout the show’s run. Upon some reflection, this was a bad idea.

The first problem here is that I get the feeling those posts would’ve gotten, at most, 20-30 notes each, because no one really cares about random, out of context extras and it doesn’t seem like a thing people would want to reblog.

The second problem is, knowing myself, I probably would’ve spent hundreds of hours during the hiatus between s3 and s4 making 1000 of them in the first place, just so I could have them ready to go. I would’ve absolutely done this without testing the waters first to see if there was any interest. (Just like with the “Moments.” I made like 300 of them before I made the first post about them.)

So, the most likely scenario was going to be me, two weeks into “The RAMEotD,” looking at flopping posts, then looking at my folder of 800 screenshots of Andi Mack extras and going, “Well, what am I going to do, not post them? I already did all the work!” And I would keeping queuing them up, and they would keep appearing on this blog every day, and they would taunt me with their 22 notes. You remember the work you did? IT WAS FOR BUT A PITTANCE!

So I guess what I’m saying is maybe it’s for the best. The cancellation saves me from myself.

Hey, though, heads up. If and when you go back and watch the series again, pay attention to the extras -- the unsung heroes of the entertainment industry. There are some extras reallllly putting in work on this show. It absolutely adds to the delightful quality of Andi Mack. Every time I would spot someone in the background being goofy or really overselling whatever they were supposed to be experiencing, it filled me with joy.

It’s a fun show. Everything about it is fun, including the little details.

Ooh, a serious one. This is going to be my first ever hybrid Discussion/Analysis post.

Okay, so I think we’re talking about two different things here.

I won’t argue that I think Tyrus could have absolutely happened sooner and been explored more.

I obviously can’t say with certainty, but I assume that was at least somewhat the plan leading out of season two. The setup for their relationship was all already there by the end of it. They’d met, they had bumps, they grew really close, and they capped the whole season off with TJ looking back at Cyrus. All the elements were in place that you could jump right into this storyline in TJ’s next appearance. (Not necessarily them canoning, but at least the exploration of TJ’s feelings or some movement towards canoning.)

When Cyrus’s lookback happened, it was addressed in the very next episode (granted following a break in seasons). I don’t know that TJ’s would’ve been as immediate, but I don’t think you have him look back in the season two finale if you don’t intend on truly paying it off for 21 episodes. (Or, at least 13, if you want to say 3x13 was the real start of a storyline involving TJ’s homosexuality.)

So, yeah, look, I’m speculating wildly, but I would imagine the original creative idea was to address TJ’s lookback early in season three and start getting into it, and that, yes, that idea was likely kiboshed from above.

What I will argue is that the bench scene is subtle but not ambiguous. We’ve made the semi-joke constantly around here that there’s “No heterosexual explanation for this!” but, truly, there is no heterosexual explanation for the bench scene: two boys, one of whom has already explicitly stated he’s gay, slowly reaching for and holding each other’s hands, intertwining their fingers while they sit by the fire and stare into each other’s eyes, nervously smiling. This is something that has been built towards for multiple seasons. If you’ve been watching the show, if you’ve been paying attention to it, if you care about the characters, especially TJ and Cyrus, it’s very clear what’s happening here.

This feels like talking about people who weren’t sure Cyrus was gay after the first two times he came out because he didn’t use the word. Or people who thought Cyrus wasn’t gay anymore after he said his crush on Jonah was gone. I sympathize with some of the younger set who maybe don’t have the world sense to follow along with this, but, come on, at some point, we’re three seasons in and you have to keep up with the level of the storytelling. I don’t mean this in an insulting way, but if someone can’t get what’s happening here, then maybe this whole thing isn’t for them. Maybe if all they know right now is that Cyrus is gay and accepted and happy, then that’s good enough, and they can hold onto that idea and grow with that and catch the next train, whenever it comes along. Maybe this moment is for all the people who get it.

That’s about the kids in the casual audience. Now, if we’re talking about an adult homophobe -- one who would express the kind of outrage that we believe Disney fears -- it’s a different story. If an adult homophobe is really watching that scene and thinking, “Seems pretty straight to me” then it feels like it doesn’t matter what they would’ve done in the finale. They could’ve said “gay,” they could’ve said “boyfriend,” Cyrus and TJ could’ve lead a pride parade down the street outside Celia’s house while blasting -- well, I was going to pick a gay song here for the joke, but probably “Born This Way” would be the most appropriate one, so -- “Born This Way” from loud speakers, and that homophobe would’ve been like, “Nice parade.” As ignorant as homophobes are, even they are not that dense. An adult pretending Tyrus isn’t a couple after the bench scene requires a level of impenetrably willful ignorance.

Anyway, the truth is that angry homophobes aren’t watching the show. They never do. They like to read headlines and get mad, but they’re cowardly and, most of all, lazy, and they don’t like to put in the actual footwork. They like to leave comments on articles they haven’t read, about shows they haven’t watched. They like to post reactions to stuff they see in their Facebook feed or send one sentence responses like, “There goes Disney Channel!!!” or “What is happening to our country?!?!” And then they like to scroll on to the next thing that will feed their sad rage about how the world is changing around them.

If you want to think about Disney censorship as a way of preventing those homophobes from being outraged, it’s not the textuality of the scene itself, it’s the placement at the end. Delaying them canoning until the finale just makes for less work. Show’s over. There’s nothing to defend. No one’s signing a petition to get a show off the air that’s just aired its last episode. Most of the articles written will be about everything happening in the finale, and Tyrus would just be a part of it.

And that is more or less what’s happened. Just about every major article I’ve seen about the finale has discussed Tyrus, and discussed them as textually getting together -- again, there’s no ambiguity there -- but has also brought them up in conjunction with what happened with Andi and Jonah, with Muffy getting together, and with Andi getting into SAVA. And the articles themselves tend to largely be about the show ending as a whole and its impact. (No one needs to send me articles trying to prove or disprove this. I’ve been over a lot of them. Some are more Tyrus focused -- the ones in the gay media for sure -- and some just mention it -- more traditional media sources. This is the general gist of most of them.)

So the article headlines mostly read “Andi Mack Finale” or “Andi Mack Ends Run” or something like that. The homophobes -- who, again, aren’t watching the show and are getting all their information about it via article headlines -- see those headlines and don’t even remember Andi Mack was the show they hated from two years ago because their rage is mostly performative and short-lived. They get mad in the minute but forget about the specifics of the stuff within a day.

Like I said in the recap, I won’t argue that there’s a scene with more that wouldn’t work, but I personally don’t see the bench scene as not having accomplished everything it needed to.

Oh, that went longer than I thought it was going to be. Not very lightning round of me.

This actually got sent a while back but it was still in my inbox and I figured I’d throw it in here in case the anon saw it. Lightning round!

Sorry, anon, I wasn’t ignoring you and I appreciate you reading my old recaps, but you were the second anon to piece together that I am actually blessed with psychic powers.

I don’t really have any plans to, sorry.

I had only planned to do one set before and after the finale for Tyrus Week, but I will point you and anyone else interested in making their own TJ and Cyrus texts to this post I made that should give you the basic tools needed for the job. (Use them! You wouldn’t believe what a pain in the butt it was to get that background clean like that!)

Thank you, honestly. That’s so, so sweet. But I have no plans to do that.

Like I mentioned at the start of this post, I’m working on something now that I’ll tell you guys about shortly that’s look-backy and will hit on some stuff from those seasons. (Though not in the same vein as the recaps.)

The recaps take a long time to produce, and as much as I’ve loved this show and this fandom, I will be honest and tell you guys I am sort of planning my exit.

This blog has become something of a part-time job for me. Not in the work sense because I have truly enjoyed all this, but just in the time sense. I’ve put a lot of time in and I would like to rededicate that time back toward other things I’ve put on hold for the last year and a half.

It’s starting to feel like making you shout Lightning Round! each time was a mistake now that I’m answering stuff seriously or sadly.

I was getting emotional multiple times while writing it, because of the show, because of the fandom, because of this whole journey we’ve all been on together.

I appreciate you saying this so much because that’s what I’ve always hoped has come through in the things I’ve written about this show. That I’ll make jokes or point out holes or goofy details or whatever, but that I couldn’t do this -- I couldn’t commit myself to this as much as I have -- if I truly didn’t love the show. That everything I’m doing here comes from a place of love and celebrating the show and embracing it for its good stuff and its silly stuff.

It wasn’t a perfect show, but that was always what made it kind of perfect.

Thanks for the asks. Thus ends the lightning round.

#Andi Mack #analysis #discussion #blog stuff #LIGHTNING ROUND!

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