#this is kind of meandery but i know what i meant to say

[bomberqueen17]

snippet post

I'm in the editing mines, lol. But I was writing a Lu POV chapter and Morvran was acting funny so I was like ok I have to know why he's in this mood or whether I need to rewrite this, so I went in and wrote, just to throw away, his immediately-preceding conversation with Kalia, Ciri's household manager and a fellow Intelligence operative.

And this is something I'd put in earlier in the series, from Ciri's POV, but it seems relevant that Morvran is aware of it now. So I'm putting it here to preserve it, as this isn't a scene that's going to go into the main continuity anyway. And I wanted to post something as a proof of life, LOL.

Kalia considered that a moment, then snorted. “Morvran, it’s not like she’s going to marry someone else.” He glanced up at her, startled by her bluntness, and Kalia gestured widely with one hand. “You think any of the other candidates haven’t committed war crimes?” Morvran blinked, trying to determine whether he knew that for a fact or not. “Well,” he said. “Would any of them write up a report about them?” she asked. “Have any of them even made an effort to get to know her?” “Kalia,” he said, exasperated. “I’m not competing with the other candidates.” It wasn’t until he said it that he knew it was true. “I”m competing with her not choosing anyone. She doesn’t need me. She doesn’t need anyone. If she doesn’t find someone to marry she can just leave. And then we’ll have another fucking civil war.”

For a separate conversation I had to go look up the name I'd made up for Morvran's little brother and in so doing I wound up rereading most of the FFP series so I'm finding all kinds of shit I've already said in there. Ciri had the exact thought above very early on, before she even arrived in Nilfgaard I think. But she didn't say so. (And yes, i'd meant initially to have there be more suspense over the other candidates, but then I just didn't create any good characters, so that fell by the wayside. It's fine, LOL, I don't think anyone really needed that to be a side plot. There's still room for someone cool to pop up. We'll see if I get to it.)

As I was rereading, I remembered that I made a deliberate choice sometime during the pandemic: I realized that it would take longer for me to edit and cut down the story to make the pacing taut, and given the givens of what was going on in the world, I wasn't going to do that. I was just going to post the long sprawling story as it was. And I've stuck to that. So it's just. This long sprawl with all these meandery side bits, and as part of that yeah, some stuff is kind of repeated.

I know it's working for a bunch of readers, and it's working for me, but sometimes I'm like oh my god why is this so long why didn't i make myself a style sheet why didn't i edit anything down ever. So, LOL, if you've ever been like hmmmm this story is getting kind of long, well you're not the first to have that thought. I used to treat fanfic as like, "practice" for "real" writing (publishing original works), which is still a thing I'd love to do and may well someday, and I know nothing published as an original work is going to sprawl like this, and the worldbuilding would be all different, but you know, it's not like I'm not learning stuff from sprawling like this. It's been a fun ride and I'm not done yet. But that doesn't mean there won't be deleted scenes; I can't include this conversation with Morvran and Kalia simply because the pacing of the chapter works better starting with the other POV, and it's not worth trying to shoehorn in a flashback.

(This is also making me remember another decision I made in the fog of lockdown, which was that I had to stop replying to comments temporarily, because I had such limited time and realized I was spending it all in lovely conversations in the comments instead of writing more material, and while that wasn't bad per se, I really needed to tell the rest of the story. And I still haven't gone back to catch up on replying to comments and I feel guilty about that. So if you've left lovely comments and I haven't answered that's why, there's a three-year backlog at this point, and I've answered a few but it's not necessarily because they were the best, it's more that they came in during a moment when I had time, spoons, attention, and mostly, just happened to click through and do the thing and hit post. Alas.)

[wiredalienvampire]

My Thoughts on Retinal Bloom!

I finally listened to Liz Lehmans new album after eagerly waiting for it for so long, I listened to it twice actually. And I'm gonna talk about what I thought about it because wow,I have a lot to say on this album.

To start off, I loved it,like I really really enjoyed listening to it. When Liz released magic hat early back in March (I think) I was immediately sold on their new project.

But what I noticed when listening to it and seeing what the album cover looked like,I knew this was going to be way more different from their past works, admittedly, I couldn't help but be conflicted about it after being so used to the synthpop/bedroom pop music they made, but I couldn't help but admire that they were going to be more aesthetically experimental with their music and I was on board none the less, also magic hat was a banger, and it was a new tsj album, you know I was gonna by hyped no matter what. I followed the release to retinal bloom so closely for a while, listening to the early releases of the songs of the album and reading the articles they premiered in.

And I honestly wished I pre-ordered the vinyl and cassette tapes,cause my excitement for the album was So worth it, hands down.

For starters, the world ethereal comes to mind when listening to this album, it has such a spacey and dreamy feel to it unlike any other tsj album which had a more child-like,nostalgic and zestful feel to it, Since Liz was going for a more psychedelic pop kind of direction with their album. And with this album also being said to be more personal, dealing with liz's struggles and their experiences with the real world, it also has a more darker and even dreadful tone, especially once you get to "forever in you" . I really like how the melodies are more mellow and melodic, like with how "riptide" has this fluid harmony to it that I can't properly describe. I also noticed that the lyrics are more poetic than their past works, usually they would be more of a combination of being metaphorical and literal, with Burn Pygmalion straight up having a narrative involving the relationship of Jeanie and Sylvia. It kinda makes alot of sense with the overall sound of retinal bloom being more abstract, and I really love that.

In terms of the songs,I have plenty of favorites, a few even stood out to me even.

Magic hat is just amazing, Uzumaki is really good, riptide is memorable, our murderous decent is a bop, forever in you is literally in my top 10 of favorite tsj songs of all time,liz has the voice of an angel, rage is weirdly comforting and retreat to celestial bodies... that.. that is the song that stood out to me most in RB, unlike every other song in the album, its only an instrumental, no lyrics, and it polarizes you and the song has a moody,noisy and even slightly depressing tone to it, and when combined with the rest of the album, it gives of this feeling of dread and lonliness, but in an oddly comforting way as the song slowly and quietly ends, its kind of my #1 favorite song in this album.

The few complaints I have (which are not much tbh) is that some songs feel like they go on for a little too long and while I do like pathogenesis, it is my least favorite, it's not a bad song by any means,it's a good song, but I feel like the melody can get a bit meandery in some parts.

But overall,i loved retinal bloom, its a genuinely great album and while I do perfer the older tsj albums,it's mainly due to preference and well I have listened to those albums so many times and got attached to them eeeeee. That aside, I'm would like to thank Liz lehman (and even Angel Marcloid)for making this lovely album, their work has meant so much to me and helped me go through the darkest moments of my life and if you haven't listened to retinal bloom yourself pls do.

TLDR: retinal bloom is a great album and I really wish I pre-ordered it and I'm upset at myself for not doing so sooner

[kaitkerrigan]

On Perfect Bites, the Tonys, and Happiness

I was in Japan last week and I loved my experience. Tokyo, especially, was like New York in that it rewarded you for engagement. The more you trusted the city, the more it offered you. We were only there for three days so there’s a ton of the city that I didn’t explore, but again and again, we found ourselves in secret little corners of the city, up or down a staircase, in a hidden quadrant that seemed to be waiting for you to find it. 

This made me think of Haruki Murakami. I’ve read a lot of his writing but I’ve always found the way characters move through space to be foreign. Most specifically, the way an anonymous elevator leads to an anonymous hallway which leads to a different world, but that was my experience of Japan - whether it was visiting shrines in Kyoto or sidewinding through alleys to find a bar or restaurant. 

On our first night, we walked less than five minutes from where we stood in the bustling Harajuku neighborhood through a few alleyways and finally up an outdoor staircase to a third floor, past a 2nd floor that looked a bit abandoned and sketchy and through a door that led us to a simple sushi restaurant with eight seats and no one inside. We ordered omakase - chef’s choice - and ate the best sushi meal of my life. We paid about $75 each. 

That sort of thing kept happening. My favorite shrine in Kyoto was on a 3 mile walk we took to a restaurant we’d agreed to meet friends at. It was raining lightly but we had the time so we walked instead of taking a cab or train. We meandered through residential neighborhoods and along the edge of a park until we saw the spire of a buddhist shrine. We walked towards it and found a beautifully kept “unnamed” buddhist shrine, where the sign said to take off your shoes. We walked along the burnt-black floorboards of the outside of the shrine. It was clean and cool and dry on our feet. We found a pond filled with frogs and watched them from a bridge. We smelled the jasmine in the rain. We found a nearby cemetery and discovered that there were so many tended graves, fresh-cut flowers, even bushes neatly trimmed around a lost loved one. Then we continued our meander along a canal and crossed three tiny bodies of water. 

Osaka felt more like the wide streets of Beijing but a bit more empty, a bit less chaotic. There were fewer restaurants on each block but there were good ones. We wandered through a grocery store and looked at all the fresh fish and the prepared foods. We bought some crackers and cookies for the flight home. Then we went next door to what looked like a hole in the wall, literally. But when we walked in, we were faced with a gorgeous small restaurant with a sushi bar and low tables in the back. They said they didn’t have an English menu, which we said was fine (it wasn’t - we were a mess). They stuck with us through our translations, and even gave us an English menu eventually - which made us wonder if they were trying to politely get rid of us when we first walked in. 

I love being in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language. I love the daily challenge of trying to get by and the feeling of relief when you’re talking to your friends who speak your language. I didn’t go abroad in college and on this trip in particular I regretted that. I should have gone to Japan. The language is interesting and beautiful. The people are kind but also don’t want to speak to you in English. They appreciate your efforts at trying to speak Japanese. 

I often think about what I would have done if I hadn’t become a writer at the precise moment I did. It was right at the end of of college. I finally liked New York and knew why someone would stay. I was looking at Fulbright scholarships when I first graduated, assuming that I wouldn’t stick around for too long. But then three years passed and ten.

One of the maddening things about theater is that you always feel like you’re on the brink of breaking through. I’m sure I’m thinking about this because of the Tony Awards. So many of my friends are nominated tonight and I’m so excited for them but I know that if they win (or if they don’t), they’ll still have that sense of starvation that we all have - that perhaps you’ll never work again. The highs are so high that the lows can be incredibly difficult. 

I remember the first time the Tony Awards disappointed me. It was the year I wanted Caroline, or Change to win. I actually can’t believe I ever thought it could. Isn’t that funny? My understanding of the industry is so much darker than it was right after college. I believed that something like that strange and beautiful show could break through and win. Of course it didn’t. And I remember being so deeply disappointed - reality hit for me at that moment. I’ve never enjoyed the Tonys in the same way again - with that purity of belief that in our industry, the best show will win. It might. It may not. 

I’ve had too many conversations with too many “successful” people who feel like they’ve been thwarted, that they will never get to just make what they want to make, that the industry will never give them the latitude they deserve - or trust their taste. Many of the people who have been shocked by this are white men. I’ve never been under the impression that I’d ever hit “easy street” in our industry. I never thought it would be easier to get the next job. I just cross my fingers that once I get the job, it won’t disintegrate like so many particles of dust after I’ve spent two or five years writing a show because of a producer’s incompetence. Yes, that’s happened. 

I guess this meandery post is meant to say: hi, I just got back from Japan. The world is vast and beautiful and there are a million different reasons to enjoy it. There’s no such thing as happiness or satisfaction in the grand sense of these words. 

There’s momentary happiness: the perfect last bite, the feel of smooth burnt-black wood under your feet, the moment of reuniting with your 2 1/2 year old where you both freely talk about how much you’ve missed each other and snuggle in the bed. These moments are broken up by tile fish (I’m not a fan), a disappointing and touristy-heavy 100 meters of bamboo forest, and when your toddler screams at you at lunch time. Stoppard says - my mantra - “Happiness is equilibrium. Shift your weight.” 

I think the deaths of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade this week hit somewhere deep in the American soul because we always equate success with happiness but it is deeply wrong. Many people are successful because they’re filling a void, because they’re chasing a thrill, because they need more and more and more. 

The Tony Awards and other competitions like it do not breed happiness - not really. They create moments of extreme joy for some people, but they are often followed by a sense of frustration that there’s no silver bullet. And that’s just for the lucky winners. The high of almost winning is nothing compared to the disappointment at not winning. And then there’s the rest of the industry - measuring their artistic achievements up against what is very much about commerce and not art. In these moments, we have to remember that some art ages well and others don’t and that has basically nothing to do with the Tony Awards.  

Lest we forget, Wicked was derided by the NY critics and lost the Tony. Sunday in the Park lost to La Cage aux Folle and Modigliani and Picasso died penniless. The list goes on and on. 

The world is not anyone’s oyster. It is just the world. But that’s beautiful. That’s wonderful. The pressure is off. Live your life, make things that make you happy, make as many perfect bites as you can, and enjoy the pretty dresses at the Tony Awards. Bask in other people’s moments in the sun. Do not concern yourself with the moments you find yourself in shadow. 

And if you find yourself in unending shadow, if you can’t crawl out of it, if you can’t find any moments to be grateful for, please please tell someone. Your life is worth just as much as the lives of fancy people doing fancy things. A perfect bite doesn’t taste any better to them than it does to you. 

If you have no one to call and you feel on the brink, call the national suicide prevention hotline 1-800-273-8255. You are loved. You just might not know it today.

[bomberqueen17]

defecating to the sunrise

So I went back and tagged all of my Witcher 3 recaps with “wee precious flower prince geralt” since that seems to be an ongoing theme, and I wanted to be able to find them all again too. 

DF had an office day yesterday so he was home early and spent some time in the afternoon Warframing, so he fired up Witcher 3 while MM was still putting the kids to bed. He figured he had a bunch of boring quest-grinding to do and she wouldn’t miss anything.

But that meant that as we were talking to a man about a cart full of plague victims, the 7-year-old came down to ask for medicine for his stuffy nose. I noticed him first, as the screen had just gone to a cutscene; Geralt standing there looking disapprovingly at a man standing next to a cart full of bodies, glowering skeptically at him, and the 7-year-old boy, standing in the passageway from the kitchen, watching it in entrancement, a faint line of confusion between his eyebrows. “Kid,” I said, “what do you need?” “My nose is stuffy,” he said, still staring entranced at the brightly-colored video game screen. “You gotta burn that cart,” Geralt growled at the carter. (Geralt knows about germ theory. HM) “Then get a stuffie,” DF said, not having heard him amidst the sounds of getting out of his chair to physically interpose his own 6′1″ body between the child and the unskippable cut scene. But it’s a really large television, so this wasn’t super effective. “No, my nose,” Boy said. “What are you watching? Who’s that?” “Come on,” DF said, putting the controller down and leading Boy to the kitchen, to give him a completely placebo-level underdose of allergy medication, which, spoiler alert, completely sorted him for the evening.  (Boy is, after all, the original Flower Prince; he’s very sensitive, and it’s sweet and lovely but occasionally you want to kind of grab him by the shoulders and intone furiously not all sensation is pain, child, it is okay to exist in a body but we do not do this very often because it isn’t particularly effective. But it’s true, child, it’s true.)

(behind the cut: hide and seek, and a reply to a reply about a bookverse allusion. this is kind of a long meandery one, i always mean to make these more concise but i’m just having too much fun. sorry.)

Anyway, we ran around and killed a random wyvern and also cleared out a monster den full of wraiths that proved to hold a level 11 ekimmara and the grave of a guy named Witcher George, and the diagrams to make some higher-level armor. Also, it proved to have a cave full of explosive poisonous gas, which we figured out by walking in there with a lit torch and then flying the fuck back out, on fire, when it exploded. (Geralt makes fantastic “Argh!” noises when this happens, and occasionally intones, “Ow!” or “Shit!” really clearly, which is unintentionally hilarious and makes me feel bad for laughing.)

(Ah, a note for Netflix-only fans: In the games, Geralt has an American accent. All the Witchers do. The villagers all have various terrible impressions of semi-British-ish accents, but all of the Witchers have very whitebread American accents, and it’s kind of entertainingly weird if you pay attention. Geralt’s accent is invisible-to-Americans dialect; Vesemir has a Generic Old Man American accent, and Lambert sounds kind of Californian but mostly in tone of voice. Eskel hasn’t talked enough for me to really place him, but it’s fair to say none of them are supposed to sound like anything in particular to an American-- it just registers as words. I mean, I guess I get it-- Witchers don’t sound like the locals-- but it’s weird.)

At this point, given enough space to work in, a second to oil his blade, and a single application of the Quen sign [optional], DF can kill a level 7 wraith in about six seconds. So, to those of you wondering why this insane motherfucker wanted to play on Death March mode, that’s why. Sometimes he casts an Yrden, but he hasn’t leveled it up and the initial-level Yrden sign is so ineffective as to be entirely useless, so he does it for the aesthetics occasionally but it doesn’t actually affect the outcome of the fight at all.

The level 11 ekimmara, which is a sort of vampire, took a couple of minutes but it tends not to pursue, which is great because then there’s time to heal from the damage before re-engaging. The only time enemies are really a problem is when there’s 1) more than 2 of them and 2) not enough space to roll away. (Higher-level boss creatures are not included in this analysis.) (And, again, I note, I could not even navigate through the fucking menu options to turn the Xbox ON in the first place, so absolutely 0 of this actually includes me, and I’m just saying “we” for the aesthetic. I am on this ride solely to provide background lore and color commentary, and I rely on MathMom for a lot of the color commentary.)

“We need Beast Oil,” DF said, and not three minutes later we came upon a treasure guarded by a level twelve bear, which was super super super annoying but bears are slow enough that you can just kind of run around and hit them and run away and Axii them and come back and hit them and hit them and run away and Axii them and so on and so forth. 

“Dumpling, crunch crunch!” DF chirped at one point, and when I was like what he was like “I’m eating a dumpling to regen health, that’s not like, my cute name for the bear or whatever.” He was out of Raw Meat, which is what he usually puts in that slot. Fortunately, having killed the bear, he was soon replenished with additional Raw Meat. 

Then, while moving on, we met another bear, ran away from it, fell off a cliff directly onto it, and still managed to escape without fighting it. Victory!  When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled I mean, we could’ve fought the bear, that one was only lvl 6, but like, we didn’t need to fight the bear, so why fight the bear, it’s just doing bear shit in the woods and like, we don’t need to get into it with that bear except for having landed on it. Sorry, bear. 

We also took out some bandits and in the loot they dropped was a bunch of Fisstech. “I’m just gonna see how much fisstech I can collect,” DF said. 

“Can you snort it?” I asked.

He poked through inventory. “No,” he said, “it’s not interact-with-able at all. But wow, I have a lot of it.” Envision, if you will, a spectacularly unwashed Witcher with muttonchops and metallic gold boots running around the wilderness with like two kilos of coke on him. Why the fuck not! Maybe you can use it for a quest. Maybe you can sell it. Who knows: we’re just gonna keep collecting it.

Anyway. Some running around later, MM joined us, just as we did some bullshit little thing that pushed us over the threshhold to level up! to level 8!

“I got a new slot!” DF said excitedly, and MM and I snorted and giggled until he gave us a dirty look and went back to his point allocation nerdout. 

Scrolling through the open quests, DF noticed Ladies of the Woods. “Kiera gave you Ladies of the Woods,” I said. 

“Mm,” MathMom said, glancing up from her sewing project. “I think they call those... isn’t that a euphemism for scabies?”

Anyway. We went to do Ladies of the Woods. It was dusk as we arrived, and we saw that there were donuts on the ground. “DOn’t trust them,” @akilah12902 said (I generally livetext her about the playthroughs, which is both amusing at the time and also gives me notes i can write these recaps with, multitasking yay!) and I was like I mean, it doesn’t let you pick them up. There were also... strings of donuts hanging from the trees? DF tried to light a torch so we could look at them better but it wouldn’t let him choose the torch in the selection wheel so he Aarded the strings like five times before giving up.

“Those are human ears,” @akilah12902 eventually explained, which, well, okay, yeah, that’s a good reason not to trust the donuts, but also that’s a lot of fucking ears. Like... we got that this was a creepy swamp, though.

We met our first Water Hag. Oh, it was big and ugly and had like, a posse of Drowners with it, but like. They really don’t like fire, and conveniently, Geralt can make fire with his hands and throw it, and like. Yeah. Igni, it turns out, is super-effective for Water Hags. 

Then we met a bunch of kids. The kids were sort of... I mean, kids, but sort of creepy? (Also they had the voice actor just doing a really high voice for the littler kid and like. not convincing. cute attempt, and probably for the best not to actually hire a tiny child to say lines with shite and arse in them [he does get put in time-out for that], but like.) Geralt asks them about Ciri, an ashen-haired lass. ”no lasses here,” said one kid, to which one of the girls was like “what am I then?” and the kid’s like “lasses have tits, you don’t” and then there’s a whole diatribe about tits, which is fairly hilarious coming out of this tiny child. Geralt’s expression remains politely incredulous throughout, which is my favorite expression of his, and one he wears a lot when he talks to little kids who, I might mention, are never ever afraid of him, even when the adults around them seem to be. 

Gran puts Foul-Mouthed Kid in time out but the thing that kid had been so foul-mouthed about was some... one or thing named Johnny, who’d told him about an ashen-haired lass. So Geralt needs to talk to Foul-Mouthed Kid, but Gran won’t let him. The other kids are like, make a deal with us and maybe we’ll help you.

I was like DF you must absolutely do what those kids want because I want to know what they’re going to make you do

and the answer is THEY WANT YOU TO PLAY HIDE AND SEEK

and Geralt, sure enough, straight-ahead just plays hide and seek with the kids, puts his hands over his face and counts and doesn’t peek. But then of course, he’s got Witcher senses, so he tracks the kids to their hiding places, and they grumble about it but keep their end of the deal, and Foul Mouthed Kid tells you all he knows about Johnny, who... probably isn’t a child, and maybe isn’t real. 

“I think these kids aren’t real,” DF theorized. “I think maybe one of them’s real and the others are imaginary.”

“I think it’s a cult,” MM said. 

“I think Johnny’s dead,” I guessed. 

We were all wrong; Johnny’s a godling, blue and two and a half feet high with giant yellow eyes, and you have to go find his voice before he can tell you anything, but once you kill some harpies and get him a fancy little bottle with an exclamation point on it he gets his voice back and swears a lot, which is entertaining. And yes, he has seen Ciri; she interrupted his morning shit, which annoyed him (”Defecating to the sunrise,” he says, waxing rhapsodic. He is truly, genuinely, flagrantly eccentric, which, I mean, good for him). 

So he intercedes for you with Gran, really puts himself out-- I’ve done you favors, and never asked for payment, but I’m asking you now, help this witcher, because otherwise he’ll bother me. Which is big of him, as Geralt helped him out and insisted on help in return but hasn’t actually threatened him or harassed him, really. Johnny’s putting it on with Gran, to get Geralt what he needs, and Geralt’s expression indicates that he’s pleasantly surprised at this.

Anyway-- Gran relents and invokes the crones for Geralt, and they prove to be extremely creepy. Geralt asks them after Ciri and they’re like “ohh yes she’s very pleasing, you’re after that hm” and he’s like “no umm that’s my daughter” and they’re like “why should that stop you” and he’s like “uh-- no-- that’s fuckin’ gross, ladies” and they’re like “suit yourself” and give him a silver dagger to take to an alderman about a quest to do so that in return they’ll give him the information he wants about Ciri.

Geralt literally rolls his eyes at this, but it’s par for the course-- nobody can fuckin tell you shit you need to know without making you jump through hoops first. They see a Witcher, they want that Witcher to do them a thing. Nobody cares about his lost daughter, nobody cares if he’s got a sob story, he’s just got to listen to theirs and solve their goddamned problems. 

But when it’s kids who want to play a game, he plays the fuckin’ game, and if it’s an old lady who needs her pan back, he gets her the fuckin’ pan, and if it’s a fisstech dealer who then turns into a bandit and loots refugees, well okay then now it’s time for swording, asshole, but up to that Geralt will pretty much just put up with anything. 

We got as far as the conversation with the alderman (I’m spelling that wrong and don’t give a shit, guys) but MM had gone to bed so we did too, and then I stayed up way too late avoiding figuring out the climax of the second chapter I just thought of for Fugitive so now I’m a zombie today. (I’ve learned more about Axii and have thought of a super angsty way to use it! I’m terrible.)

In closing, here’s a response to the writeup about the swineherding quest:

kaijyuu reblogged your post and added:

risking the possibility of being that person, the ‘curse someone cast with their feet’ bit is most likely a reference to the dragon hunt in the novels, where yennefer is tied up and unable to use her hands for gestures, so she throws spells with her feet, turning guardsmen into various animals, which is actually fucking great.(what is not so fucking great is that she is lacking a shirt, dandelion is creepily staring, and there are some very uncomfortable comments made by the dwarves– sapkowski is very obviously A Man, and some parts of the novels are very on par with the baron questline) #the witcher#oh boy there are some moments i would like to unread

Mm y’know, sometimes I’m just glad that the moment I idly looked at the library to see if any of the Witcher books were available, there was a huge waitlist and I decided I did not need to read them. Occasionally I’m like ah there might be something cool in there nobody’s told me about, but then I’m like... no. No, I don’t think I’m really missing that much.