#like brief-ish discussion of misogyny and shit that kind of not totally positive

[mootmuse]

So, I was suddenly overcome with book!Jaskier feels and wanted to ramble about him. Here it is!

First of all he’s horrible to women, in a really blatant way that from my particular corner of my particular culture (the US) comes off actually feeling old fashioned. (I bet y’all were expecting me to start out with something positive, weren’t you. XD Welp.) It isn’t that men who treat women the way he does no longer exist in the corner of society I live in, but most of them - especially fictional characters you’re supposed to like - are aware that they have to try to get away with it. Not saying that’s better, just that it’s different, and makes Dandelion’s behavior come off as all the more blatant and shocking for it. Dandelion doesn’t try to ‘get away’ with the way he acts toward women because he has no need to hide it; both he/many of the characters and the narrative seems to see blatantly shitty (often at least a little disturbing) treatment of women as unremarkable and expected.

Gathering up enough examples of this to thoroughly prove that the narrative itself feels in on it is more than I’m up to, but have one brief example from Last Wish:

Dandelion chuckled loudly and rested his head against the bookshelf, on the leather-bound volumes.

“Millet and mosquitoes! That reminds me of our first expedition together to the edge of the world,” he said. “Do you remember? We met at the fete in Gulet and you persuaded me--”

“You persuaded me! You had to flee from Gulet as fast as your horse could carry you because the girl you’d knocked up under the musicians’ podium had four sturdy brothers. They were looking for you all over town, threatening to geld you and cover you in pitch and sawdust. That’s why you hung on to me then.”

and then they carry on with their reminiscing without commenting on Dandelion getting a woman pregnant and leaving her. That’s how they met. That’s an absolutely horrible thing to do to a person and it’s treated like a funny little memory.

I do love Dandelion. Jaskier. Whoever he is. Believe it or not, I do. I’m getting to it.

I’ve seen a gifset where Joey Batey says they decided, in Netflix!Witcher, to reinterpret that misogynistic quality as Jaskier falling in love with everyone he meets, genuinely falling in love with them and genuinely liking them, because characters who do what Dandelion does (Dandelion=book!Jaskier, Jaskier=show!Jaskier, for clarity) are tired, character-wise, and uninteresting to watch. This is the only reasoning for changing that character trait that I could have actively approved of (and for the record, I approve of it quite a lot). I don’t like Dandelion’s lack of respect for women, but I’m not going to pretend it isn’t there just because I like him. In fact, that’s why I didn’t want to like him. I have a memory of realizing mid-scene, with some dismay, that he was my favorite character; he has flaws that step a bit too far into what reads to me as real life problems for me to have expected myself to gravitate to him.

The scene, I think, where I fell in love with the character was set just outside Brokilon forest, a piece of land its dryad inhabitants defended so violently that even the toughest of the humans who lived nearby were terrified to go close to it. But Dandelion knew his friend had been injured very badly; he knew Geralt was in that forest being treated by those dryads, and he had a plan. He was led to the no-man’s land that no human dared approach and was left alone to cross it, and as he walked he got more and more frightened. He knew the dryads were there - he walked past bodies of other humans who’d been as dumb as he was being right then and he was genuinely convinced that he was going to die. And he kept going. He sang a song that he’d translated into an ancient language himself just for the dryads, still mostly convinced that it wasn’t going to work and that he was absolutely going to die, and he kept doing it and he saw it through, just because he was worried about his friend and wanted to be there for him.

This isn’t an isolated incident; earlier, in the first book, Dandelion is the one we see visit Geralt while he’s recovering from a different injury, having had to actively work out where Geralt would go and track him down to do it. He is the only person (at least in the earlier books that I paid more attention to) who we see make the attempt - much more difficult with the slow, unreliable long distance communication and dangerous, snail-slow travel inherent in the setting -  to locate and travel to a recovering Geralt in this way.

And later on in the series, when things get grim and Geralt gets very grim himself, and insists things are so dangerous and dark that he has to go on solo and is willing to drive his friends away to do it, Dandelion refuses to leave him. He isn’t the only one who refuses to leave Geralt alone, but he is the only one who insists on it with absolutely no way to physically defend himself. Dandelion, whenever he travels with Geralt and Geralt’s Friends, is surrounded by people who can kill as easily as they breathe, and he never picks up a weapon himself. He’s so unused to battle that he’s glanced by an arrow and loses his shit, freaks out - and still stays. He’s seen the ugly realities of war and he’s seen slaughter, he knows the horror of violence, and he not only continues to put himself near a man who makes his living through violence because that man needs his support, but he never becomes numb to it. Let’s see an example of that in Baptism of Fire (warning for brief mention of gore and some vomit):

Next to him, Dandelion hauled himself up, throwing off the corpse with a mutilated throat which was weighing down on him. The poet’s face was the color of quicklime.

Milva came closer, pulling an arrow from a dead man as she approached.

“Thank you,” the Witcher said. “Dandelion, say thank you. This is Maria Barring, or Milva. It’s thanks to her we’re alive.”

Milva yanked an arrow from another of the dead bodies and examined the bloody arrowhead. Dandelion mumbled incoherently, bent over in a courtly - but somewhat quavering - bow, then dropped to his knees and vomited.

“Who’s that?” the archer asked, wiping the arrowhead on some wet leaves and replacing it in her quiver. “A comrade of yours, Witcher?”

“Yes. His name’s Dandelion. He’s a poet.”

“A poet,” Milva watched the troubadour wracked by attacks of dry retching and then looked up. “That I can understand. But I don’t quite understand why he’s puking here, instead of writing rhymes in a quiet spot somewhere.”

This part of Dandelion matters a lot to me. The part of him that can be exposed to that level of violence sort of repeatedly, can be near it as a matter of course, because in that kind of world traveling with that kind of person is going to get you up close and personal with some really horrific shit even if the war doesn’t, and yet he never changes himself into someone who will respond to violence with violence, he never becomes okay with being face to face with it.

That’s one of the big differences I’ve noticed between Dandelion and Jaskier, at least when it comes to how fandom interacts with Jaskier because honestly I haven’t watched the show, I'm pretty much just here for fandom shit. Netflix!Witcher fandom is pretty great. Anyway, the difference: there are a lot of fics where Jaskier learns a bit about fighting. Which makes sense, it’s the practical thing to do when you’re traveling with a man who often gets into very violent situations. But that being a tendency in fic about netflix!Witcher does indicate to me that the show likely doesn’t put as much emphasis as the books do on the idea of Jaskier as a man who is so different from the fighty-badass types who are usually the focus in stories like this - the idea of The Most Badass Witcher’s companion being a man who’s not just untrained in combat, but averse to it right down to his soul.

That’s not a negative, not a positive. It’s intended as a neutral observation, just a thing I’ve noticed and been thinking about. I feel both versions of the character, books and adaptation, are true to the heart of him, and I find it fun to look at them both. They have similarities, they have differences. Dandelion is an interesting character because he has qualities that mean a lot to me, that confident nonviolence, that deep loyalty that drives him to be brave in ways the more physically capable people around him might not even recognize as bravery. He believes in beauty and love and the equality of all people, not just humans - and then he turns around and treats the nearest cute girl like an object that exists solely for his entertainment, and so doesn’t get close to living up to some of those lovely beliefs and ideals he’s got. I want to see him grow from that - of course, that’s not a need the book series recognizes, but there’s some potential, at least, for growth there that could make fandom interaction with Dandelion particularly compelling. Fandom activity does tend to gravitate toward the things which we want to fix.

tl;dr dandelion is a character who exists and I love him. Also, AU where Jaskier and Dandelion meet, initially really get on until Jaskier starts to notice the particular difference between the way they treat their lovers/women in general, this is sort of the last straw on top of his already existing jealousy over the easy affection Dandelion gets from book!Geralt-

(not that netflix!Geralt doesn’t act like book!Geralt in any particular but he does seem to act more similar to book!Geralt near the middle/end of the series, after his life had been going to shit for years and he felt horrible and became thoroughly unpleasant - the interesting approaches to book vs show Geralt is a tumblr essay of its own, to be made by someone who remembers more of the books than I do, but even when he was acting like a shithead book!Geralt had already long since established that he cared for Dandelion and appreciated him. If I were Jaskier, I’d sure as hell be jealous of that shit.)

-cue climax of the AU after which Dandelion realizes he should start figuring out how to not be shit to women, show!Geralt learns to treat his friends as if he actually values them, everyone learns from one another the end. I can’t write that AU but I sure as hell would read it.