hope is a skill
hope is a weapon you are trained to wield
favourite additions
You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.
trying on a metaphor
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
dirt enthusiast
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

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#extradirty
Mike Driver
KIROKAZE

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
taylor price
DEAR READER

⁂
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
Claire Keane
No title available
sheepfilms
Sweet Seals For You, Always
$LAYYYTER
d e v o n

seen from Italy
seen from Tunisia
seen from Brazil
seen from Kosovo
seen from Germany

seen from Germany

seen from Spain

seen from United States
seen from Uzbekistan

seen from United States

seen from Venezuela

seen from Jamaica
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@djsilvertouch
hope is a skill
hope is a weapon you are trained to wield
favourite additions
You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.
I haven’t seen this said yet, even though I think it’s vital: if you’re a Neil Gaiman fan who is freaked out by the sexual assault allegations against him, Tumblr and Twitter are not good sources of information.
I spent five minutes looking to see what the public opinion was after reading several articles about this, and there was a lot of misinformation and shaming being done on every side of something that we shouldn’t be arguing over. It’s honestly not worth it to look, and if you’ve been at it for a while, consider taking a break to regroup. There’s a lot of misplaced anger and it sucks to see innocent fans get caught in the crossfire of a situation that, quite honestly, has nothing to do with them.
Can nobody see nuance on this site? Yes, Neil Gaiman is a famous author who has, surprise surprise, just been accused of horrible and awful things. “Burn his books” “if you watch good omens you support genocide”. The world is not black and white. Let’s look at the facts:
Neil Gaiman is very rich, very famous, and a very cishet guy
Neil Gaiman is very vocal about his support of transgender people
Neil Gaiman fingered his son’s 22-year-old Nanny when he was 61, when they were in a legal sexual relationship
The journalist who broke the news is a transphobic radfem and the sister of Boris Johnson
The podcast discussing this story with the is very anti-BDSM (something very much present in the relationship between Neil and the first victim)
Texts and emails between Neil and Scarlet (one of the women) were expressions of mutual sexual desire/enjoyment
The two women said they were both in their twenties when the respective sexual relationships began, with Neil several decades their senior (61 with Scarlet and mid-forties with K)
The victims have accused Neil Gaiman of raping them via digital penetration and have shared very similar stories
You are not a horrible person for still liking Neil Gaiman media. Stop telling people to burn their copy of good omens. Stop telling people that reading the Sandman means they support genocide. Stop turning this into a chance to spread antizionism. Stop trying to get David and Michael to speak on this. You don’t know anything except what has been written. You do not have the moral high ground.
Take a deep breath and get off of tumblr.
Go touch grass.
(edited because of wording)
(please see my other post where I reblogged with more info)
Both parties are not the same. #VoteBlue 💙
No joke you guys NEED to get more comfortable blocking people. No more insulting people in public over different blorbo opinions no more making 2k long posts on how whatever ship you don't like shouldn't exist we've grown past that shit. Consistent posts about shit that make you uncomfortable? Block. Rancid blorbo opinions? Block. Is mildly annoying in your replies? Block. Pisses you off for reasons so petty you could never admit it publicly? Block. YOUR mental health will improve from not being upset 24/7, THEIR mental health will not be at risk of you lashing out because you happened to catch their posts on a bad day, and EVERYONE ELSE will benefit from not seeing the most embarrassing arguments known to man on their dash. "Oooh but they didn't deserve it-" dude you're presumably running a personal blog as a hobby not a public service. Who fucking cares.
no u cannot leave this hidden in the tags oh my LORD
Make sure the bit is body-safe before committing to it
you heard him
JK Rowling has used her billionaire legal team to silence a Jewish woman for telling the truth about her contempt for trans victims of the Holocaust.
Scotland’s network of “freedom of speech” organisations, as per usual, have nothing to say about the use of wealth to gag critics of the wealthy.
However fast they race to condemn the LGBT+ community for saying the names of those who harm us. Statements at the ready to insist that transphobes no one wants to work with anymore must be given every possible opportunity to gain from their bigotry.
But it's not the billionaires who are being silenced, as our media breathlessly echo their every hateful proclamation.
It's journalists and activists forced to publicly humiliate themselves under the weight and the threat of billionaire legal teams or be driven into destitution.
We deserve better. Freedom of speech needs to mean something
The Streisand Effect strikes
This will swiftly become one of the primary things JK Rowling is remembered for. Trying to erase crimes of the Holocaust against trans people and then silencing Jewish journalists for calling her out.
With your help we can make sure JK Rowling is known as a Holocaust denier first, author of mediocre children's books second
Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.
I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”
It broke me.
Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.
When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.
I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!
“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.
Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?
I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”
He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.
Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.
people need to realize that sexual harassment & assault can happen in women's only spaces. and cis straight women can and are frequent perpetrators (sexual harassment & assault do not require attraction). & the idea that women are just naturally safe to be around makes it harder for victims to speak up and be taken seriously because "but we're all girls! it's fine if I deny your autonomy if we're girls it's just a fun joke :)"
if you want to make women's spaces safer for victims of sexual assault, you need to focus on empowering ALL victims & not making sweeping generalizations based in bigotry.
hey call me crazy but I don't think any sexual assault is "insignificant."
i don't think the 27.1% of lesbian, 25.8% of bisexual, and 10.4% of straight female victims of contact sexual violence who have been victimized by women are insignificant.
i don't think the 48.4% of lesbian, 17.9% of bisexual, and 15.3% of straight female victims of stalking who have been victimized by women are insignificant.
i don't think the people in the notes of this post describing how their sexual victimization at the hands of (cis) women, and the victim-shaming reactions they've experienced, have made them feel unsafe in supposed "women's safe spaces" are insignificant.
maybe instead of going "but men!!!!!!!!!!" on this post for the millionth time, y'all can actually learn about why "female-on-female" sexual harassment is underreported & underresearched.
#Sorry half of lesbians have been stalked by a woman?????? Holy shit.
Just to clarify these statistics:
It is not that half of all lesbians have been stalked by a woman. It is that, of lesbians who have been stalked, half of them were victimized by women (exclusively or alongside men).
Please return us to a world where Notp and squick are used for a ship you don’t like instead of just making up a load of bullshit about how immoral it is or w/e lol
a short selection of concepts and phrases that used to be commonplace in fandom and we’d really benefit from making that a thing again:
NOTP: the opposite of an OTP (One True Pairing). It is a ship a fan strongly dislikes. The word is a portmanteau of ‘no’ and ‘OTP’ and thus is not a contraction of any particular phrase.
Squick: anything that is a deep-seated, visceral turn-off. Squicks may be shared by many fans or be specific to one; one person’s kink may be another person’s squick.
YKINMKATO, or kink-tomato: Your Kink Is Not My Kink, And That’s Okay: used to indicate support for fannish diversity and to distinguish between disapproval or kink shaming and simply having different taste.
DLDR: Don’t Like, Don’t Read: a phrase used to warn against complaints about an aspect of fic or meta. A “live and let live” philosophy of fandom, which places the responsability for avoiding content one doesn’t want to see on the side of the fanwork consumer, rather that on the creator’s.
SALS: Ship And Let Ship: similar to the above specifically about shipping tastes.
YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary: a phrase used to acknowledge that any given individual’s personal opinion on the topic at hand may differ due to their own tastes, standards, values, experiences, etc.
As the OP points out, all of these crucially imply no moral judgment of what they’re designing.
(definitions lifted more or less wholesale from fanlore’s relevant pages)
bring the healthy fun back to fandom!
If ever a time comes when I don’t reblog this when it appears on my dash, assume I’m dead
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
Might I add:
The defeat of the wizard who made people choose how they’d be to be executed
The woman who raised the changeling alongside her biological child
The human who died of radiation poisoning after repairing the spaceship
The adventures of a space roomba
Cinderella finding Araura (and falling in love)
I don’t know a snappy description but the my nemesis cynthia story certainly lives in my head
hilariously, these are almost all in my fic tag. so, a compiled list from the notes (and some extras):
The God of Arepo (graphic novel 1 / 2 / 3) (ebook)
The Monster of Sentan
The Witch’s Cat
Raise Both Children
Stabby the Roomba (honorable mention)
Cinderella Marries the Prince (comic)
My Arch Nemesis Cynthia
Pirates and Mermaid
Eindred and the Witch
The Demon King
The Cornerwitch
Grandmother Beetroot
Apocalypse Daycare Worker
Grandmother Accidentally Summons a Demon
New Year Saga
A Story About Changelings
Ranger in the King’s Forest
The Difference Between a Hare and a Rabbit
Goblin Men (Canines)
I am in love with you /p
What about the one with the princess locked in a tower learning to become a wizard? That’s lived in my mind for years and I haven’t seen it in a long time
Oh, love that story, adding it to the list: 20. Princess Talia and adding a few more contenders 21. Thyme 22. The Monster under the Bed 23. A Meaningful Death 24. Humans are unstoppable…until they aren’t 25. The Monster under the Fridge 26. Antler Guy 27. Cleric slamming healing spells
Adding a few more I remembered: 28. The Frog and the Scorpion 29. HSTHETE 30. The First Witch in the World 31. Imagine that Oceans were replaced by Forests 32. A Faerie taking a Name 33. The Dragon on the Farm 34. Synovus & Menace 35. Raising the Anti-Christ 36. Aliens vs. Flora & Fauna of Earth (pretty sure there are even more additions to the original post but I had this one saved) 37. Doctors without Borders…in Space! 38. The Villain-Wrangler 39. The Last Contact 40. The 100 Parent-Point Children 41. And the Heavens Wept 42. The Night Gentleman 43. The Serpent God and their Priestess
44. No One Showed Up for the Last Storytime
Wow! @writing-prompt-s contributing to like half of these!
I can hardly take any credit for these stories! But I love sharing them. Unfortunately I cannot read all the prompt responses so please tag me if you want me to reblog a story that resonated with you so I can give it a little boost :)
i am violently clear [emphasis on the violent]
I MEAN QUEER I DON'T KNOW HOW I TYPO'D THAT
you cant fucking do this to me
I SWEAR IM NOT TRYING
@fishyfishyfishtimes can you ID the cephalopod?
A person on Reddit said it is a species of genus Leachia, a type of glass squid!
I'm not a teuthologist or a marine biologist but that looks more like some kind of a reef squid (Sepioteuthis) to me! The shape of the fins wrapping all the way around the mantle.
I'd bet @sarahmackattack could say with more confidence than myself though!
There are a lot of video game fandoms that absolutely lose me at the very shallow end of the pool, but the Sims fandom always makes me feel like I'm absolutely drowning in an inch of water
It's because they let you in and then removed the ladder.
An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’
Peni Delina Bedard · August 31, 2019 · The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don’t… That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.” That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.” That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.” That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.” That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you chirped, “He sure knows me.” That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, “That’s cool!” That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw. That when you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?” That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.” That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, “Yes!” That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “What a great guy!” That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!” That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.” That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!” That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, “That’s smart!” That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, “That makes sense.” That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, “falling in love” with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, “That’s statesmanship!” That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.” That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. What you don’t get, Trump supporters in 2019, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it’s also…hear me…charitable. Because if you’re NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I’m sure I reblogged this before, but it’s well worth reblogging again.
SO WELL SAID! 👍
idle Jaskier-related notion:
Joey Batey is really approximately the same size and shape as Henry Cavill, and there are a number of clever techniques in pretty much all Jaskier's costumes to hide this fact and make him look about three or four inches narrower than he actually is. The costumers work really really hard to make him look that twinky, often with cleverly cut shoulder decorations that pretend he's trying to look bigger than he is and have the actual effect of making him look a lot lighter.
On a Doylistic level this makes sense, because it's hard to make Geralt look Huge and Imposing next to your non-combatant harmless sidekick if said sidekick is a jacked six foot burly man.
On a Watsonian level, however, the notion of Jaskier as this big meaty dude aggressively arguing with all his tailors to ensure that he looks as non threatening and foppish and entertaining as possible while also looking as sexy as he can (for a Jaskier definition of sexy, at least) is generating considerable entertainment for me this fine morning.
"No! My shoulders must look slender!"
"But, sir, you could look ripped!"
"Absolutely not! I must look slim and gentle and unassuming!"
"As you wish, sir... So do you wish it to be cut with much excess fabric, so that you look small and also very wealthy to afford so much?"
[howling] "No! I must look slender and gentle and also above else very attractive!"
Geralt doesn't notice any of this until they try to share a tiny hostel bed on the road and Jaskier cuddles up to him and abruptly there is no more room in that bed
I need a full picture costume run down of this by someone in the fashion field stat
Ask and ye shall receive! I may not work in the fashion field but I do work in the costume production industry for theatre/film so this is totally my area. Using clothes to change someone’s appearance is super common, and Tim Aslam’s costume design for The Witcher is actually a really good example of this, so buckle up because this is a long ride!
Creating an illusion like this has two main components: shape (the style lines created by the clothes), and fit (the way the clothes hang on the person’s body), and is the result of close collaboration between the designer and the production team.
We’re going to talk about season one, because that’s where the difference is the most obvious. Take a look at Geralt:
First, let’s talk about shape. The goal here is to make Geralt look strong and imposing, and the best way to do that is to exaggerate the triangle of his upper torso. See how much broader his shoulders look than his waist in both images? A loose shirt over tight pants is a classic way to establish this, because the shirt blousing at the waist (note that the pants sit high up at the natural waist) makes the hips looks narrower in comparison. Note also that his shirt has an asymmetrical closure - a centered vertical line down the shirt would make him looks slimmer, while the off-center one adds width.
His armor does this by giving him those massive shoulder pieces, which both lengthen and raise his shoulder line. I would estimate that they raise Henry Cavill’s shoulder line by a good two inches just from the bulk of the leather alone. His torso armor also does a really clever thing by having a very subtle V shape to the vertical lines, making his waist look smaller. If you count the number of stripes above and below his belt (again, sitting high at the natural waist), you’ll notice that the narrow stripe at the front edge of the armscye disappears, which allows the side stripes to make that V shape.
Now let’s talk about fit. The fit of Geralt’s shirt looks simple but is actually super specific. It’s very easy for an actor to get lost in a shirt that is too loose - if there’s too much extra fabric then it will just make the actor look smaller by drawing attention to how baggy it is. This shirt fits just right: the sleeves are full enough to allow for movement but still relatively fitted (and rolling up the sleeves actually also helps add breadth to Geralt’s torso by continuing the horizontal line at his waist). The body of the shirt fits smoothly across the shoulders and chest, and has just enough fullness to drape at the waist without feeling baggy.
Now let’s look at Jaskier.
We’ll start with this look. Shape and fit are very interconnected here so it’s just gonna be a jumble. First thing I notice: the jacket. Unlike your traditional fantasy/historical doublet, all of Jaskier’s jackets end at the waist, rather than continuing into a peplum/skirt like Geralt’s armor does. This cropped jacket is evocative of childhood/immaturity, an association that is generally considered to have its roots in schoolboy uniforms of the 19th and early 20th century (see the image of schoolboys wearing “Eton Jackets” below)
Jaskier also tends to wear his jackets open. This creates a vertical line down his torso, which is generally slimming, but it also totally obscures the shape of his torso. The brain is going to take the line of his hip, which we can see, and the armscye of his jacket, (which actually looks to be cut ever so slightly artificially narrow but it’s hard to tell) and fill in a line between them, which is likely going to end up being slightly narrower than his actual ribcage. He does have poofs at the top of his sleeves, which can be a technique used to add width, but if they’re cut and fit carefully you can actually hide some of the breadth of the shoulders inside the poof and make it look like the fullness comes from the poof and not the body.
Note: the “armscye” is the technical name for the armhole, but specifically the torso part. The corresponding sleeve part is the “sleevehead.”
Again, we have another open jacket, this one with strong vertical lines. See how the line of Jaskier’s hip flows up through the edge of the doublet all the way up through the armscye? This makes his torso look narrower despite the jacket’s shoulder tabs. In contrast, this line is always broken on Geralt’s outfits, whether at the waist with his shirt or with the giant shoulder pieces with his armor. Jaskier’s pants also tend to fit more loosely, which de-emphasizes the triangle of his shoulders to waist.
Okay this is my favorite image to illustrate everything we have going on here. Look at Jaskier’s jacket. What’s the first thing you notice? The bright yellow inset slashes in his chest. The high contrast in color draws the eye inwards and distracts from the breadth of his shoulders, where we have another cleverly cut poof. His jacket is again cropped, with strong vertical lines, over the baggiest pants he wears in the season.
Now look at Jaskier and Geralt together. Jaskier is all about long vertical lines, while Geralt’s predominate lines are either horizontal or diagonal. Additionally, Jaskier’s hips look even to his shoulders, even if they’re not, and Geralt’s shoulders are exaggerated. The two characters have a very different presence, even if the actors underneath are similar.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this introduction to costume design! Creating the illusory effects like this is one of my favorite things and I am excited to share!!
…ok I love this but … why didn’t they just hire a real twink?
They hired Joey Batey because he showed up to the audition with an actual lute upon which he played and sang a song he’d written the night before called “The Lion Cub of Cintra” based entirely on the role he was auditioning for. Batey happens to be basically built as a fairly meaty guy, one of those people who seems to put on both muscle and fat fairly effectively, although judging from his music he is often worried about being seen as fat. He is not a small man and will never be a small man, but he is very committed to the role, a musician in his own right when he’s not playing Jaskier, and generally plays the role fairly well. Personally I am glad we went with “musical talent” as a higher priority in our casting than waifish slimness.
one thing the tags have been quietly driving me nuts about on this discussion is also... look okay, my original shitposting from last year? is very much based on the belief that the body you’re born with does not define who you choose to be. Jaskier’s costuming choices are most interesting to me as a conscious choice for several reasons, and I’m gonna rant for a sec because look I had a point there I wanted to jokingly but very seriously talk about and the costuming shit is all very well and good but I wanted to talk about what it means for the character to choose to dress and present himself this way. what does it mean in story fucking terms to have a big buff dude that presents himself as non-combatant, as vulnerable, as gossipy and a little swish but not a physical threat?
see, masculinity is often defined negatively, as “whatever isn’t feminine”, and the constructed artifice of deliberate appearance modification is pretty clearly coded feminine in mainstream Anglo culture (which is what I have access to, gender is complicated, but I’m going off here). what this means is that visibly trying to control your appearance and the way that people perceive you is something that is often assumed to undermine masculinity, which has all kinds of super special social drawbacks for men/AMAB folks who don’t perform masculinity well because misogyny+sexism+transmisogyny do fun things together.
you’re allowed to control your appearance if you pretend that the reason you’re doing so is totally divorced from the way you look (I’m lifting weights to be strong/lifting weights because I want to be hot) and the artifice you use to execute the effects is completely invisible to the viewer (not wearing any kind of visible makeup, for example). so just from that perspective, the fact that Jaskier dresses consistently to make himself seem a certain way is interesting to me. his gender presentation is a deliberate choice, and it is a deliberate choice that erodes his social status in masculine posturing rather than shores it up.
the fact that Jaskier’s size also makes him a potential threat to other people and that he acts to minimize that is also interesting in the context of the way he earns his income. it’s heavily implied that he probably secures some of his patronage through a form of sex work (i.e. his patron the Contessa, who is both paying him and sleeping with him, which ends when she throws him out of the sexual relationship). moreover, he’s an entertainer, and being muscular and large isn’t very helpful when you earn your living via your fine motor skills: damaging your hands is potentially devastating if you earn your bread playing a lute, and getting into fights is therefore dangerous for his livelihood. threatening entertainers don’t relax people into parting with money and food and shelter.
we think of being threatening as an asset in all circumstances but that is fundamentally not the case. a large, hulking, threatening Geralt will incur a certain amount of posturing from dudes who want to feel big and scary and important in their home communities; Jaskier is likely to get ignored by coming across as meek and fairly non threatening. it’s a deliberate strategy, and we know it’s deliberate because he has the bulk and body size to present himself the way Geralt does if he wants. so he doesn’t want to do that, he must want to be perceived as expressive and a little swish and not dangerous at all and approachable, and he has clearly worked hard enough to get that across that it fooled a really ridiculously high fraction of the folks in my notes here.
this post has been really resonating with delighted surprised trans folks among other things and hey! I see y’all! you are still whatever gender you feel most comfortable in even if your body isn’t cooperating right now. you can choose a lot of the way you will be perceived by thinking about your clothing, your movement, and your postures, and you can learn to do all those things with practice and thought.
and I just think it’s neat seeing a character who easily has the body type to do a very normative gender thing choose to do a non-conforming thing in a way that you absolutely do not see much in media, because usually they fucking hire the twink instead of doing all that work to get the right gender presentation, and the story fucking suffers for it and people who aren’t naturally skinny waifs don’t get to see nice things that look like them in the show.
so.
that’s why.
I already reblogged this for the fascinating costume design, but adding this because it's important.
I've friends who are exceptionally tall and/or more beefily built fellas, who do some of this. My one friend (let's call him Willy) is 6'6 with wide shoulders, so even if Willy never goes to the gym, he's gonna be perceived as a Big guy. He almost never stands up straight, he leans a shoulder against a wall with his ankles crossed but otherwise open body language. He purposefully chooses clothing to try to look friendly and cut down on his height. Another friend (lets call him Cay) is 6'5 and his natural build is a bit heftier/big boned, so his hands are massive and his shoulders are two miles wide. Dudes puff up around him, women tend to shy away from him, despite his doing everything in his power to downplay his perception as a threat.
So Cay and Willy try, as much as possible, to look as unthreatening, non-confrontational, and as friendly as possible. In Cay's case, he is also very soft spoken and has a softer face (he is 36, no one believes he's a day over 22), so even though he looks like Drax-the-Destroyer's stunt double, he is a bit disarming with his kind face, quiet voice, and his general gentle manner. Willy tends to use body language/clothing, because his voice is rougher (think Sam Elliott) and his looks are a bit hawkish/sharp with eyes that miss nothing. Both of them do these things to appear less masculine, less bulky, less intimidating, and less threatening. They aim more for what are considered feminine traits, despite their super masculine appearance.
I personally love the idea that Geralt is mostly utilitarian, but likely does think, "I want to look as unfriendly and imposing as possible" like wanting to look big to scare off bears in the woods - while Jaskier chooses, "Make me look like a waify entertainer, flashy and elegant but make sure no one would ever believe I've brawled in my life". Especially when Jaskier takes up his work as the Sandpiper. He needs people to see only what he wants them to see, the guy with a big smile, dextrous fingers, swishy coat, and dancing boots. He's the Scarlet Pimpernel.
I get the multi layers, dealing with gender expression and such, and I love it. But as someone who has larger male friends, I see Willy and Cay, when I see Jaskier. I see the guy who is, at heart, kind and empathetic who realizes that he will be perceived a certain way based on being a tall, more muscular male of status and he doesn't wish to be perceived that way. He wants to be seen as friendly, approachable, sexy, and a little flashy (he wants those colours that draw your eye to him, he's an entertainer). He wants people to feel safe with him.
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is such a weird theory because it's like there's a very obvious explanation for why middle school kids who didn't have dysphoria before might suddenly have dysphoria. Like huh weird I wonder what very obvious and widely known change that could cause kids to suddenly become very uncomfortable in their gender or sexual identity starts in between the ages of 10 and 14. Guess we'll never know. Must be peer pressure to *checks notes* become the only gender minority in your whole school singling you out for harassment by your peers. Couldn't be puberty suddenly giving you new body parts/bodily functions that are wrong for you.
Turns out Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria is a natural consequence of the often comorbid Rapid Onset Gender