Formerly delirieuse. He/him. 40-something disabled queer. Also jackironsides on AO3. I have a ko-fi (sindesiecle) that you can donate to instead of telling me my identity is a slur.
Hello! Welcome to my pinned post. I update this as I go, so if you’re seeing it on a reblog, you might find extra fic links in the one on my blog.
FYI, I write a lot of comments and jokes in the tags. I love it when people enjoy them enough to include them in the reblogs (like I cannot express how much), but I’d prefer if you could attach my username to it, whether it’s just adding (via @jackironsides) or whatever. It’s clear to anyone seeing it on your blog, but I’ve seen my tags circulating unattributed on posts that have like six more reblogs after them often enough, and it makes me sad. I toiled hard in the joke mines for those, dammit.
If you’re interested in my fic, the tag is, obscurely enough, #my fic. Also my AO3 is jackironsides. Below the cut at the bottom of this post is the current list of my main WIPs that are being posted here, which are (mostly) not yet on AO3. They’re all Geraskier Witcher fics.
I have chronic pain, chronic fatigue, ADHD and histamine issues, and sometimes I talk about this.
Tags to blacklist
If you have any kind of issues with disordered eating, or you find it upsetting, you might want to blacklist the tag #disordered eating, because that’s what I talk about my difficulties with food sometimes, such as the bad days when making food is hard bc of my chronic fatigue, or ADHD, or both. Or the ways I’ve had to heavily restrict my diet for chronic illness reasons.
I have a tag called #bitch session, which is for when I’m grumpy and probably being petty, or just want to complain about how Hard things are in that moment. Feel free to block it.
Below the cut is my list of WIPs (with links!) and meta. x
WIPs
For Flowers May Fly If They Wish (part two): the semi-platonic sex pollen fic. The rest coming soon! It needs editing.
I Need No One (parts two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven): Sequel to We’re Not Friends. Geralt’s perspective on his friendship with Jaskier.
Don’t Let Me In With No Intention to Keep Me (part two, part three, final): sequel to Honey, That’s How It Sleeps. Geralt takes Jaskier to Kaer Morhen, where the wolf witchers spend the winters nesting. Geralt is definitely not having any urges about wanting to drag Jaskier into his pile of soft things.
To Become the Water’s Foam (MerMay fic. chapters one part 2, two, three, four, five, six, seven): Geralt gets sent into a bubble of magic where he finds Jaskier as a merman who seems to already know a different version of him. Also now on AO3.
Don’t You Know You Can’t Go Home Again (part two, part three): Jaskier has a large, happy family; fake dating
A Scientific Treatise on Witchering (contents page here with the first part of chapter three coming; the first two chapters archived on AO3 here): After the Mountain, Jaskier gets drawn into monster hunting against his will
Cuckoo (parts two, three, four, five, six): Jaskier gets forcibly taken home to Lettenhove. Geralt follows to find out what Jaskier has been keeping secret.
Afterword (part two, part three, part four, part five): The third fourth part in the series of the Kaer Morhen Book Club, where Jaskier has secretly been writing romance novels about witchers. Part two is an interlude focusing on Lambert called Starcrossed.
Ball Games (part two, part three): The one where Jaskier takes Essi’s place at a ball. Complete with dress.
The Narnia fic (part two): crossover AU. Ciri has just found herself in a mysterious other world, and meets a blue-eyed faun.
WIPs on a bit of a hiatus right now:
The True Art of Swordsmanship (parts two, three, four): Geralt tries to teach Jaskier to fight; both attempt not to self-combust from suppressed desire
Folkie Jaskier (parts two, three, four): Modern-day AU where Oxford PhD student Jaskier decides to run off after a witcher to avoid completing his D.Phil in early music.
Outswing: Modern-day AU where Geralt is a ballet dancer, Jaskier is a cricketer, and they go on Dancing With the Stars.
Park Ranger Geralt (part two): AU. Geralt has to show Jaskier, a TV presenter, around the national park where he works
This is last year’s post running down many of my WIPs and giving little blurbs of them. Some of these haven’t been posted yet, but I often still talk about the progress I’m making in my #liveblogging my fic because reasons tag. This is this year’s WIP list, which also includes some excerpts of stuff I’m working on.
You can find my finished stories up on AO3 (same username as here), although these are some little ficlets that aren’t up there:
A Victorian circus AU (which will hopefully turn into a full fic at some point)
Geralt’s Companion
Unmanned
Lacquered
Jaskier’s lute case
‘That’s not your name.’
Jaskier went to seminary school
Seminary school sequel, where Jaskier gets into trouble with the Eternal Flame
The one where Jaskier is the Abhorsen (probably going to turn into a full fic at some stage)
‘Make me three more shirts,’ he says, ‘just like this one.’
The dragon ships it.
‘I was under a curse at the time and was unable to consent to any contract.’
What if the Drones Club were a gay gentlemen’s club like the Hundred Guineas? (Jeeves & Wooster)
‘I thought that witchers didn’t have dæmons.’
A Victorian AU for The Witcher where Dandelion becomes an Aesthete (which I am absolutely going to have to turn into a full fic once my WIP list is shorter)
I also have a fic-only blog now, at @jackironsidesfic, which would be the easiest way of keeping up with fic updates.
I’ve written a bunch of meta, mostly for The Witcher. It can be found at #my meta, and I’ve got a #my fic meta tag for meta about stuff I’ve written. There’s also #how to write a bard for me exploring things that people might not know about music/musicians etc. These are some of the meta I’m proudest of:
The Sad Silk Trader
Geralt is a Moral Person
Steve Rogers v. Yennefer of Vengerburg: Disability Rep and Erasure v. Fantasy
Just Call It A Shirt (It’s Historically Accurate, I Promise)
Doublets Don’t Have Laces Please God Stop Saying They Do (okay, this is less one I’m ‘proud’ of than one about something which gets under my skin)
(Netflix) Jaskier might be a tenor, but Joey is a baritone
I have chronic pain, chronic fatigue, ADHD and histamine issues, and sometimes I talk about this.
Tags to blacklist
If you have any kind of issues with disordered eating, or you find it upsetting, you might want to blacklist the tag #disordered eating, because that’s what I talk about my difficulties with food sometimes, such as the bad days when making food is hard bc of my chronic fatigue, or ADHD, or both. Or the ways I’ve had to heavily restrict my diet for chronic illness reasons.
I have a tag called #bitch session, which is for when I’m grumpy and probably being petty, or just want to complain about how Hard things are in that moment. Feel free to block it.
it's a good thing mensah is already married with kids by the start of all systems red because can you imagine trying to make a new longterm relationship work when you have to explain to potential partners that murderbot will be there. no not romantically or sexually. but it is there.
doing all the post COVID exposure stuff (saline sinus rinse, azelastine nasal spray) just to be careful bc we didn't mask today, and wondering why it's so seldom talked about to people who won't mask for whatever silly reason like "I don't like them on my face" or "they make me claustrophobic" or "no one can hear me talk" or whatever like... I've never heard anyone who refuses to mask say "and because I don't do that, I do all this other stuff to ensure I am lowering my chances of spreading respiratory disease." its always "I can't mask and I don't do anything else either" and no one ever goes "well, have you considered all of these other things you can do post exposure?" because those things aren't as effective as masks, I guess, but THEYRE WAY WAY BETTER THAN NOTHING if you do then right after you go somewhere unmasked (you can do the spray before, too, and it will help even more. even if you contract COVID the spray reduces viral load and symptoms.) it's weirdly absent from discussion of this kind of thing
I genuinely didn't know there was anything other than masks and vaccinations to help prevent covid transmission. OP says in the replies that its too exhausted tonight to get into it so I started looking on my own and the top ten results are all Isolate, mask, get tested, vaccinate.
Searching for "azelastine nasal spray covid" did get me this study though. I wonder if my pcp would prescribe me some for after I spend time around people unmasked, since I've got long covid already.
Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as “problematic” in class and our professor was like, “That’s cool, but ‘problematic’ doesn’t really mean anything. It means that the thing you’re describing has a problem, and in and of itself that’s not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else it’s not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like you’re trying to say that this is bad, but you don’t want to say ‘bad.’ Is that right?”
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”
Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I can’t help but think of this professor being like, “Good starting point, now let’s get specific.” I think when we have to commit to saying “that’s ___” it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever we’re claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes it’s art, and it should be full of problems, because that’s what art is.
#'this is present in the text' is often a good first step #but those second and third ones (naming it; describing its function) are vital (via @elucubrare)
The most important next step, I think, is 'why is this there?'. What is the author trying to convey?
Is it the character that is racist/misogynistic/etc. or the author?
If the 'problematic' part is the character's viewpoint, what is the author trying to convey about that character? If it's a pervasive theme, how is the author treating it? What is the work as a whole saying about the 'problematic' topic?
My brother had lost the right to mock my deeply unwise vending machine purchase because he's spending his weekend driving to Iowa to buy a 1954 Cadillac limousine.
He doesn't have an explanation for this other than the fact that it's cool. And honestly, that's a pretty compelling argument
Wait I just remembered that ai books exist and the empty spectre of being a writer without writing anything suddenly gave me the urge to eat nails. Post rescinded. I'll write the fucking chapter.
Old man 1: Do you really think Amy is manipulative?
Me: (Oh this sounds juicy. Who is Amy. What did Amy do.)
Old man 2: I don't know. I think Laurie is a liar though.
Me: (The plot thickens, keep talking boys)
Old man 1: I don't think Amy should have burned Jo's papers, but I don't blame her for marrying Laurie. I don't think she's a puppetmaster. Jo said no. How is Laurie a liar?
[ gently takes young and / or newly out binary trans people by the hands and looks you directly in the eyes with compassion and understanding ]
Nonbinary people are not your enemy.
Nonbinary people are your siblings in the struggle that is systemic transphobia. Our collective pain, our collective erasure from society is the goal. We are allies to each other.
Gendered liberation is not your enemy.
Gendered liberation as a goal is there to allow us all to exist freely in the ways that are most comfortable for us all. The goal is to uplift us all, to liberate us all, to give us the ability to have autonomy and agency over our own expressions, lives, and bodies — this inherently includes you and your right to find comfort in your identity and presentation however it may manifest.
Gender abolition is not your enemy.
I know that's a scary sounding one. It used to scare the shit out of me too. Especially right now. Especially when, if you are a USAmerican trans person, our government is directly attacking our right to exist publicly and privately. Especially when TERFs and other radfems have completely bastardized the concept of abolition into a blunt anti-trans weapon.
Gender abolition is not about telling you that you have to stop being a woman or a man — especially if you're a trans lesbian or gay trans man. Gender abolition is also not about reassigning coercively assigned physical sex as the "true" marker of someone's identity.
The goal of gender abolition is the dismantling of the roles and structures we forcibly and coercively assign to gender identity, often with a focus on the impact of imperialism and settler colonialism on those structures (when done within a solidarity oriented framework). Much like other forms of abolition work — like prison abolition — it is a practice meant to dismantle and repair generations of systemic harm and trauma.
I know that that seems lofty, especially if you are white. You may feel especially disconnected from that struggle and simply want to exist in the world you're already familiar with in a way you are already familiar with — but this fight is bigger than just you.
Audre Lorde — notable black, lesbian, feminist scholar — once said "I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own." and in that same spirit, you are not free while any trans person is unfree, even when their shackles are very different from your own.
We must exist in solidarity with each other — it is vital for our collective survival.
I know ice hockey skates don’t have toe picks. @jackironsides - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
