#side effect of my whole routine honestly. I'm not going to fight aging because that's a losing battle and also idc and I'm not going to

[chussy]

oh! one thing i want to say about skincare people™!

a lot of the "skincare community" is OBSESSED with sunscreen, like full "you should be applying SPF50 even if you're staying indoors on a dark winter day" type statements, and it's honestly crazy. SPF is constantly talked about in the context of anti-aging and wrinkle prevention when it's got a much more important use - preventing fucking SKIN CANCER!

now, as a man who's fighting with my mother and grandmother (gma especially because she's already had skin cancer) to wear sunscreen when out in direct sunlight, at least in the summer, it is true that as long as it gets someone to wear sunscreen it's a bit whatever what argument you use, however. I feel like pushing the "sunscreen = anti-aging product" thing turns a lot of people off of it, because even with beauty standards being the way they are, most people our age aren't obsessed with avoiding fine lines at all costs, and the constant anti age push can be fucking annoying to put it politely

so can we maybe talk about skin cancer prevention? I'd like to talk about skin cancer prevention!

[veinereastath]

hi there again (I'm the anon from the Eredin age ask, btw, thank you for the answer!! I like your theory). i wanted to ask one more thing - how did you play around with pairing aen elle with a human? not that I have something against it, hell naw, but I'm wondering whether making Rhan a human was somehow important for your plot, or did you just decide it for no bigger reason?

I like your questions, Nonny! I really do~

~ Also, sorry in advance - this is a long answer. I wanted to make it short, but.. I guess I usually go to far with asks, probably because I’m just too excited, duh.

Okay, first things first - pairing Aen Elle with a human is sick. :”) To some extent, I presume. I would never go for it if not for the canon Lara Dorren x Cregennan of Lod story, because that gives some mild suggestion that, technically, such a relationship is possible. Even more interesting, the romance between them was more bothering for humans than elves, so it’s also a little point for my evil little abomination that I created.

About how it started - I created Rhan (or, actually, loose concept of her) in late 2015 / early 2016 [I started my journey with this universe in September 2015 where I played Witcher 3, and after finishing it I swallowed the whole saga by Sapkowski in less than two weeks]. Fun fact - she was an elf at this point, Aen Elle, actually, with a totally different backstory than what we have now. But me, being me, always digging human x elf / demon / whatever the hell you can come out with relationships - it wouldn’t work, it was too boring for me, so I scrapped that early concept and started nibbling, slowly and lazily, at something new. I think that the first ideas that are actually what Rhan is today started appearing in my head during summer vacations in 2016 (gosh, why am I giving so many pointless details, sorry anon).

Let’s get back on the grid - the main problem I have with Eredin is that he’s one of that characters that doesn’t have much screenbooktime. The whole Tir na Lia plot takes about 40 pages I think, and Eredin has maybe 15 pages in total. It’s not much when we have 5 books + about a dozen or so smaller stories [and Season of Storms, but it came out much, much later]. But what I could pick up was that:

Aen Elle are a fucked up race, and that’s a fact, but, honestly  - 90% of the Witcher universe is either genocidal, racist, or both, or worse,

Eredin is genocidal and racist, and, even more... complicating, the whole "Ciri in Tir na Lia” plot puts Eredin, Avallac’h and Auberon in position of rapists, because putting a woman in someone else’s bed without her permission is rape,

he’s that lovely, dark and highly intelligent manipulative type. :”)

It’s quite a feat, because everyday I get around 3-4 new little ideas for their story, but only 1 at best makes it to the “next step”, because there are many things I have to consider - first is, 98% of soft and fluffly things just won’t work with Eredin. They just won’t, but somehow I’m fine with that, I was never a fluffly-tropes kind of person. Second is, Rhan x Eredin relationship is difficult on every level: the race difference is obvious, but there is also age, for example, and all the time I have this little devil in the back of my head reminding me of the “the old, kinda supernatural being falls in love with a young woman” trope: *cough* Twilight *cough*. The worst thing that could happen is making Eredin OOC somehow. But that’s always the biggest fear when shipping OC x canon, I presume.

So, in order to make myself feel better, in nearly every piece of story with them I write I put that huge doubt, mostly on Rhan’s side, how the hell this could work and her little panic when after some time she realizes where her feelings are going, because while Aen Elle x human might have indeed a chance of happening again, even after Lara Dorren x Cregennan, it’s still wrong on nearly every level. When that Aen Elle is Eredin, it’s even worse.

The very definition of “falling in love” itself also kinda feels weird when Eredin is taken into consideration, imo, so that’s another thing I have to live with every day (but hey, I love suffering, so it’s all good, right).

Moving on - I decided that if this is supposed to work, Rhan should probably be as most non-human human as I can, while still somehow keeping that “humanity” in her, because... If I wanted to de-human her entirely, why not just make her an elf and be done with it? That’s why I decided that while yes, she was born on Skellige and is 100% human, I will put her in Brokilon, make her live and learn from the dryads, and then put her right in the middle of Scoia’tael to give her the deep understanding of elven culture and way of life. The final effect is that while Rhan is human in terms of how she looks like (no diamond-cutting cheekbones in her, baby~) and tends to show a more fiery side of her temperament here and there, she behaves like an elf in about 85% of the case - to make it more “real” I added small headcanon things that could potentially fit elves, at least Aen Seidhe, the way the greet each other, thank eatch other for help, share their emotions etc., so after just a few days Eredin realizes “well, she’s human, but she does not behave like one, and does not move or fight like one”. It’s barely a deal for him at this point, but it’s the first, microscopic step towards moving their relationship onto some normal ground.

Another thing - this relationship could not happen fast. While Rhan is a sorceress and, indeed, has an increased lifespan thanks to magic, she is still a human and the biggest human thing in her is that she perceives time like humans do - every minute, hour, week is important to her, while Aen Elle can wait decades and not be too much bothered by it. So something long and lazy from Rhan’s perspective would be a blink of an eye for Eredin, especially since I stick to that headcanon that he must be at least 300 years old - at this age elves are pretty much done with everything, they’ve seen nearly everything, and they just don’t care that much about time, and they get quite bored with each other (sex-wise, as Avallac'h said to Geralt in Tower of The Swallow).

Though, on the side note, the books heavily suggest that Eredin is, indeed, impatient; something that kinda costed the Aen Elle losing the Elder Blood and Auberon at the same time, because he would probably live if not for Eredin’s hasty attempt to speed things up.

Huh, what else could I say... Ah, right, time. I wanted to mention that I made their relationship take a long time to just go from “you’re just a trophy” to “you’re tolerable” to “alright, I consider you to be a living being and slightly appreciate what you’re doing to Aen Seidhe elves in your world” to “I respect you” to “I would not die for you, but I would kill for you”. I’m still not entirely sure how much time I want it to take, but one decade is an absolute bare fricking minimum. Recently I’m kind of going more into putting it into a span of 20-25 years, actually. And it’s still not that much for Aen Elle elf.

What else... Ah, to figure out how the hell would Eredin even consider taking her alive, instead of killing her on the spot after she got trapped in Tir na Lia for the second time (in case you don’t know - I gave Rhan a highly unstable magic; she can’t create portals, because they always throw her to the place that is full of powerful magic, and doesn’t care for worlds barriers - and Tir na Lia is literally full of it), I went with the very long and tiring chase sequence; Rhan was able to run away for 5 days before she got captured, with barely any sleep available at that time, to kinda give this whole thing a vibe of an exciting (for Eredin, that is) chase, that is something new and interesting after the routine that is unicorn hunting / raiding human villages. The Raven Haired Bastard managed to be slightly, just sliiightly impressed by how long she was able to play this game, slipping from his riders by mere inches. Slightly. But that’s already some kind of a start to make it at least somehow believable. At least for my mind and my imagination.

And yes, I know he chased Ciri as well, but in her case it was a matter of life and death, because Eredin needed her blood, it was a matter of survival of the whole race, not chase for fun. In case of Rhan, it's more of a free-time challenge, a hunt for a difficult, but not that important prey. Aaand I don't like Cirilla, but that's another thing, yikes

... God, it was not supposed to be this long, I’m sorry. I just couldn’t make it shorter. And there are still probably things that I would like to mention, but just can’t think about them right now.

 

Moral of the story is - I dig complicated, dark and difficult relationships. I always go for them. Well, in 99% of the case.