A celebration of Joey Batey offering TV show writers a pure masterclass on how to write a queer character with a queer audience in mind.
Can I just say how much respect and appreciation I have for Joey, that he went above and beyond in term of queer representation, by bringing some much needed attention towards people on the aromantic spectrum, and making gender a complete romantic/sexual (and even queerplatonic) non-issue?
I mean, imagine that you are part of a show with a young and powerful canonically bisexual lead, Ciri, who is at an age where people might start exploring their own sexuality, slowly figuring out who and what they like, etc.
And suddenly, you're offered to also be playing another queer lead character, with a male love interest - while knowing it will be the very first time that the audience will be officially introduced to the idea of Jaskier being queer...
And, instead of going with the more familiar, and often expected:
"A man that's always been with women before, now finds himself romantically and sexually attracted to a man, and starts questioning his own sexual identity..." coming out story...
You find yourself with a unique opportunity to go a bit further, to explore more specific and lesser known LGBTQ+ themes, and to delightfully surprise your queer audience!
You can take a full dive into the wonderful world of Queerdom, by exploring a different - yet just as equally important and significant - coming out story!
i.e.
"A usually aromantic person, that has always experienced squishes, smushes, and possibly meshes before, finds himself experiencing a (sapio)romantic crush for the very first time, and starts questioning his romantic identity..."
Of course, a lot of people in the audience will probably miss this.
The monosexuals that have been conditioned to believe that gender must always play a role in how one experiences romantic and sexual human attraction - will likely be paying more attention to how Jaskier is showing an interest in a man.
People that are used to equating "falling in love" with "romantic attraction", might miss the significance and importance of Vespula specifically using the word crush to refer to Jaskier's current attraction towards Radovid.
People that typically see non-gender-related orientations as "mere preferences", or have simply never heard of them, might miss how Jaskier goes on and on about how "emotionally intelligent and insightful Radovid is" , with a look of vulnerability and wonder, putting emphasis on how different he feels about him.
People that were taught to see emotional relationships according to the "platonic vs romantic" binary - with a strict idea of what each means and implies - may not be familiar with what queerplatonic relationships are, and will interpret Jaskier saying that he loves Geralt "platonically" as meaning that he's not as deeply and strongly in love with him as one might usually expect a romantic partner to be.
They'll be unaware that there are committed life partners out there - that would go to the end of the world for each other and perhaps even share sexual intimacy together - that don't have any romantic feelings for each other whatsoever.
Romance does not mean "being in love", romance means "being in love in a romantic way".
And it is not the only way.
To aromantics and greyromantics - and even to romantic people that also have the capacity to fall in love in non-romantic ways, such as yours truly - queerplatonic and alterous relationships aren't "lesser than" romantic ones, they are different.
And Radovid... is different.
Radovid is no better, nor worse, than a hammer...
But he's a spoon.
He's a romantic connection that is completely new, exciting and intriguing to explore for Jaskier!
According to Joey Batey, as a sapioromantic panromantic pansexual, Jaskier finds himself developing a strong sapioromantic and sapiosexual connection with Radovid.
Jaskier is representing people that aren't romantically or sexually affected by a partner's gender in the way that they experience sexual atttraction, and people that experience a lot of tertiary attraction when falling in love, while very seldom ever being able to love others in a romantic way (sapioromantics / greyromantics... ).
Jaskier is a queer character that was truly created with a queer audience in mind!
He was created so that all of us that don't see or experience love according to the platonic vs romantic binary.
All of us that are hyperaware of those other forms of attraction (tertiary, aesthetic, sensual, etc.) that one can experience for another human being.
All of us that don't see or experience romance or sexuality as something that ties into their partner's gender.
Could finally see themselves in a character on screen.
Of course, you still need characters that experience their sexuality while feeling like the gender of their romantic and sexual partners matters - including those that love all genders... Desperately so!
First, because all members of the queer community matter and are equally as important and valuable. Rejoicing over Batey diving into lesser known and familiar representation doesn't mean that familiar and better known representation should not be encouraged and celebrated as well!
This is not a "there should be less gay character on TV to make room for more aromantics and asexuals instead" post.
This is a "we need queer identities people are less familiar with in addition to proper gay, lesbian and bisexual representation" post.
And second, because you still need characters that don't stray too much from the platonic v.s. romantic binary, too - and the usual social conventions tied to romance and sexuality - so that non-queer audiences can more easily connect, and empathize with, the queer community.
Because, when the existence of bisexuality already is something that monosexual people often have a hard time understanding, acknowledging, or even believing in...
Well, going:"By the way, I'll have you know that you can totally want to have sex with, live, and raise children with someone you've got platonic feelings for, too!"
You might accidentally lose them.
And if you try to explain that some people are unable to romantically connect with anyone, unless they get specifically attracted to their intellect (often combined with their aesthetic looks)!
That's likely going to be even worse!
And this is where Batey's pure genius comes to light.
Because he's just shown that you can find a beautiful and organic way to explore queerness more in depth - totally stepping away from the usual relationship conventions and specifically addressing your queer audience - simply by using a vocabulary that said queer audience will understand and connect with.
You can make it clear that the character is on the greyromantic spectrum, by having Vespula state that she's never ever seen him with a crush before!
You can put the emphasis on him being more specifically sapioromantic, by having him dreamily go on about how Jaskier perceives Radovid's intellect.
And, if Batey is to be believed - and he's been exploring the idea of Jaskier being queer since the very beginning of the show (without any clear response from the writers or producers regarding Jaskier's sexuality) - then, by making it clear that he loves Geralt platonically in Season 3, he's also allowing us to revisit all the scenes between Jaskier and Geralt from Season 1, while enjoying them through an aromantic lense.
Someone on the aromantic spectrum watching that scene might thus find themselves deeply connecting with the strong platonic squish (although it could also be a mesh) that Jaskier immediately experienced the very first time he saw Geralt...
You can see Jaskier as specifically believing himself to be Geralt's best friend in the whole wide world, and instinctively reading into Geralt allowing him to physically/sensually touch him (rubbing chamomile onto his lovely bottom) as him possibly desiring a queerplatonic connection with him also.
And, the scene where he's suggesting to Geralt that they could get away for a while, head to the coast together...
Where he mentions that life is too short not to do what pleases you, and admits that he's trying to work on what pleases him...
Look, the fact is that there's always been aromantic and greyromantic people experiencing tertiary forms of love and attractions for other people long before we had any words to put on those emotions, desires and needs.
So, it's rather easy to see Jaskier as someone that is experiencing a powerful alterous attraction for his best friend, and realizing that what pleases him the most, is the idea of them sharing a queerplatonic or alterous relationship together...
It makes sense to interpret what Jaskier is saying as him trying to express and articulate the love he feels for Geralt the best he can - implying that Geralt is what pleases him - while trying to ask Geralt if he also feels the same way...
Sadly, Geralt doesn't quite get it; likely because he's also romantically and sexually attracted to Yennefer and, when he loses her, instinctively throws all his own hurt and heartbreak at Jaskier - blaming him for everything that (he believes) lead to that loss!
And just because the break up Jaskier experienced wasn't a romantic one doesn't make it any less devastating.
Poor loving bard was making plans for them to continue to travel and enjoy their time together as the platonic boyfriends he believed them to be, and Geralt told him that all Jaskier had to offer him was a giant pile of shit that he kept shoveling his way!
There's been a lot of alterous and/or queeplatonic subtext since Season 1 (that could also read as romantic, but should never be used as evidence or proof of romance if we were talking about a real life partnership).
And, while I do acknowledge that queerbaiting has been messing with our ability to perceive and appreciate those relationships as such, I do think that, canonically establishing Jaskier as a sapioromantic, at the very least, clearly addresses the reasons why Jaskier was behaving in such an amorous way with Geralt without being romantically in love with him.
For once, instead of mocking the queer audience for "having mistakenly read two same-gender close friends as being romantically attracted to each other" (while doing as much as they can to suggest romance to keep them hooked!), they are canonically establishing Jaskier as a sapioromantic, with him experiencing his first romantic crush with Radovid.
The show's dialogue is telling people on the aromantic spectrum that "Yes, Jaskier is one of you. He gets squishes, meshes, lushes, and can desire a queerplatonic relationship with a best friend he's got strong platonic feelings for also."
You can speak to your queer audience, without fully risking alienating your non-queer audience, by simply using clues, and a language that your queer audience understands.
And I will forever be grateful to Joey Batey for having understood it, and having so skillfully managed it.
As someone who is ambiamorous, panalterous, panromantic, demisexual, and pansexual, all the nuances and details he brought to Jaskier's queerness was a pure delight, and spoke to me in a way that no TV show character has ever spoken to me before (except, perhaps, in "Sense8", but the whole show itself was about what it meant to love and be human, with main characters sharing a supernatural psychic bond making them more likely to open themselves to all the queer forms of love... whereas shows like "The Witcher" is of a more mainstream fantasy show).
I wish I had a way to contact him to tell him thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for breaking gender boundaries, and "platonic vs romantic" boundaries with Jaskier, and offering us a character that is one of the purest, most beautiful, and most perfectly balanced love song to queerness that one could have written and sung about!
Jaskier is a queer representation groundbreaking masterpiece on a show such as this.
That representation is as intelligent, insightful, and sharp as Prince Radovid himself.
And Extraordinarily Things said more about Jaskier's feelings, issues, and vulnerabilities than any piece of dialogue ever could have, and had me weeping my eyes out by the time Jaskier sang about how he finally felt like he was enough...
Well done Joey, you absolutely brilliant and deeply empathetic real-life bard and poet, well done...
Anyways being lgbtqia+ in a system is constantly blurring and questioning your idenity send tweet
Im completely aromantic, and consider myself cisgender (i apologize for my crimes), but as I spend 79% of my time in co-con, Im rarely either as other alter's idenitys subsume or alter my own. Its such a weird experience and it leads to a lot of questioning, but its also intresting how these things interact.
My aromantism can consume another alters romantic attraction, or be consumed entirely, or we can both become grayro, or demiro, or one of us could.
*UPDATE: After more research into how other sapioromantics/sapiosexuals experience their own sexuality, and diving a bit deeper into my own romantic and sexual attraction patterns towards "geeks", turns out I am very much both sapioromantic and sapiosexual as well as demisexual.
i.e. My romantic attraction is exclusively intellectually driven. I don't need any prior emotional bond with a person to be romantically attracted to them, but I do need to be highly interested in the way their brain works and they actively intellectually express themselves when they start "geeking out" to experience a crush (sapio).
But I can only experience sexual attraction with:
a) very close friends that I feel a strong emotional bond with (demi) and with whom I strongly intellectually connect and/or whose minds fascinate me (sapio); or
b) sapioromantic love interests (sapio) that I've developed a very close emotional bond (demi) with as well.
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Gotta love when people tell me sapioromantism/sapiosexuality isn't real...
While at the same time acknowledging that demiromantism/demisexuality exists.
So... You're telling me it's okay to be exclusively able to romantically fall in love with/be sexually turned on by an emotional bond you share with someone.
But you can't frakking be exclusively able to romantically fall in love with/be sexually turned on by an intellectual one?!?!?!
I mean I'm a frakking demisexual (not sapiosexual*), and you've got zero problem convincing me sapiosexuality is real!
I feel a sexual rush SPECIFICALLY over the way I am emotionally relating with another person (regardless of the type of emotional relation), for frak's sake!
Imagining how it must feel to want to fuck someone over the way our brains work/connect together is super easy, barely an inconvenience! How is that not real?!?!?!
For the romantic aspect, all I've got to do is replace "wanting to fuck someone" by "having a crush on them", and voilà! Sapioromantism!
And yeah, I know that it's often phrased as "being attracted to highly intelligent people", but that's like saying that demi is "being attracted to highly loving people".
Guys, the way we perceive intelligence and emotions is a very intimate phenomenon. And I personally find friendships as sexually attractive as romances.
I've never been more likely to want to fuck a person I've got romantic feelings for, than I've been likely to want to fuck someone I've got platonic or alterous feelings for.
But I need to emotionally connect.
And there are many different types of intelligence a human being can express that makes them romantically or sexually attractive.
It's much harder to quantify intelligence than it is to qualify it, and sapiosexuals do have intelligence preferences.
On the TV show "The Witcher", sapioromantic Jaskier appears to have a romantic preference for (or be strongly romantically attracted to, at least) emotional intelligence and insightfulness, if you're wondering how sapioromantic attraction might look like.
I'm actually exclusively sexually attracted to people that gives off what I call a "geeky vibe". You know, that look like they tend to get really passionate about a specific subject/discipline they deeply enjoy (videogames, movies, series, science, music theory, rocks... Whatever it is!) and "geek out" about it on a regular basis.
My partner is insanely into electric cars technology, and each time he starts talking about it, the research that's being done on recycling batteries, etc., he goes from a usually introverted personality to really animated, passionate, and expressive one; his eyes get that light and happiness to them, his skin gets slightly flushed, there's a unique musicality to the verbal flow of his words, etc.
He's also a D&D player, and that's insanely hot to me (although I've never personally played D&D)!
Seriously, do yourself a favor, and watch a bunch of people play D&D together. If they're really into their characters, their quests, and have a good DM, it's pure geek porn!
Those are huge turn ons! You want to have sex tonight? Get your geek on, babe! That's what I'm talking about!
I don't care whatever gender you have, as long as you're a geek!
That's what I'm sexually into. Geeks. Not men, women, or people outside the binary. Geeks.
Actually, if "geekiness" is considered as a form of intelligence, perhaps I could be considered somewhere on the whole sapiosexual spectrum* (I just can't say specifically what type of intellect geeks display that triggers the attraction), too!
Because developing an emotional bond with a non-geek fails to trigger any sense of sexual attraction.
I need to find you aesthetically attractive (let's face it, demi-pansexuals can be as "shallow", when it comes to being attracted to someone's looks as people from any other sexual orientations. There's just a secondary delay for us to get there), feel those "geeky vibes" emanating from you*, and be emotionally bonded to you based on high levels of trust (specifically), in order to find you sexually attractive.
Those are the mains patterns I've noticed are a constant for me.
So yeah... Sapioromantism and sapiosexuality not being real? Get out!
