I don't know if I'll write more Witcher fic, but since I once finished a fic eight years after I started it, I keep hoping, like a dog that found a steak in a bush once upon a time. Plus! A/B/O is a greasy cousin to fuck or die and we all know I love fuck or die.
"Come lie down," Geralt says. "You're tired." There are shadows under Jaskier's eyes too, different than the ones cast by the fire.
He expects Jaskier to fight him on the command, either out of shame or pride. To his surprise, Jaskier folds onto his knees and slowly tilts over onto his side on the bedroll. He closes his eyes for a moment - his eyelids are bruisy; rut isn't all arousal and fucking - but opens them again.
"Sorry," he says, lifting his head off the ground. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine now," Geralt says, watching Jaskier's head drop again, and his eyes close.
They fly open again when Geralt touches his face. It's only a fingertip on his eyebrow, anchored by Geralt's thumb on his bottom lip, but Jaskier looks like Geralt's about to run him through.
"It's fine," Geralt tells him, rust in his voice. He turns his hand, brushes the back of his fingers over Jaskier's cheekbone. Proper grooming would involve his mouth on Jaskier's face, but Geralt can’t make himself do that. But he can rub his fingers over Jaskier's chin and cheeks, mimicking grooming behavior. Jaskier watches Geralt's face closely, sucking on his lip with worry. He finally closes his eyes again when Geralt cups his cheek so he can stroke his thumb over the corner of Jaskier's mouth.
like a crow putting a cigarette butt in a machine to get a treat, ask me about my wips and receive a snippet in return
urban legend has it that when you debug an existing issue long enough it will start to debug you in return and only by accepting it as a feature can you reach mutual acceptance
Lost Scenes Thursday! Get to know your favourite authors better. Show five scenes from either abandoned fics where you regret they will never see the light of day, or five scenes from WIPs where you are impatient to see them out there. Long, short, one-liner... it's all good reading. Tag five other authors where you are curious.
Here is a messy witcher snippet from 2021 which was part of a longer plotty story that never went anywhere. But this mostly was me embracing Jaskier as a Disney Princess and finding my way to Jaskier and Geralt's netflix dynamic and voices. Only remembered this because @littlestsnicket and I were talking about jaskier and geralt and music recently.
the original fic title was actually called Counterpoint of Disaster and got too big and messy for me to deal with. but this snippet should whet your appetite!
jaskier & geralt. case fic vibes. 850w. rated T.
Jaskier ambled along the stretch of road beside a fence, strumming his lute and humming. The sun was easing itself behind the peaks of the Mahakams and the shadow was creeping along the meadow. At the top of a sloping hill, Jaskier noticed a dot that resembled a cow.
He perched himself on the fence and he resumed his song, uncertain he could project his voice enough for the cow to hear him.
But it did. The cow moseyed down the hill towards him. By the time it was half-way to Jaskier on the fence two more cows appeared at the top of the hill.
Amused, Jaskier sang louder. The ambling cow continued its approach with its companions making their way to Jaskier’s little stage. His fingers danced along the strings. Swing that scythe dawn to dusk with weary shoulders, to home and hearth your wife… All variations on a satisfying theme. A hard day's work followed by ale and love at home only to wake up and do it all over again. Music to rejuvenate oneself for the next day’s work.
The cows mooed upon their approach and Jaskier played on. Three more cows appeared on the horizon and they herded each other down the hill towards him.
“Not my usual audience,” Jaskier said and laughed. He tilted his head and adjusted his posture, a smile tugging at his lips. “I wonder…” he murmured. He began playing a lighthearted song of a young maiden’s carefree day.
He was halfway through the chorus and was deeply amused by the nearly dozen cows standing in front of him. By the time Jaskier was on the final verse another three cows had joined them, shouldering their way closer.
Jaskier continued to hum and sing, plucking a cute little melody for the attentive audience. He received some lowing in return and he laughed. “Happy cows indeed. Who knew I had fans afield. Will a good song produce sweet milk?” he asked them.
His fingers danced along the strings, improvising nonsense and one of the soft-eyed cows wandered right up to the fence and offered him an insistent moo before nudging his knee with its snout.
“I would definitely consider tips in the form of cheese,” Jaskier said and gave the cow a gentle pat on the side of her face.
His hand came away wet and he was about to wipe the cow snot away when he saw his hand was crimson.
Jaskier gagged and nearly wiped the blood on his clean trousers. He stopped himself just in time and wobbled on the fence.
“Uh, Geralt?” Jaskier called. “There’s some bloody cows over here.”
“There’s a farm nearby,” Geralt said, sounding like he replied without looking up.
“No, I mean they look like they rolled around in a pool of blood,” Jaskier said.
Two of the cows pushed forward as if to ask why he’d stopped playing. They crowded Jaskier enough and pushed at his knees with soft blood-covered snouts. Jaksier unwound his legs from the fence to lean forward for a closer look. Then they were all at his knees at once.
Jaskier wobbled.
The cows mooed.
Jaskier flailed and threw up his arms with his lute, instinctively protecting it as he fell.
He landed hard.
Jaskier wheezed. Pulled the lute close to his chest, cradling it amidst the pain.
He opened his eyes, not realizing he’d closed them. Geralt leaned on the fence, looking at the assembled cows.
“I think they were going to take a bite out of me,” Jaskier rasped. Geralt held out an arm and when Jaskier grabbed it he was heaved upward like it was nothing, again reminding him of Geralt’s effortless strength. He spread his feet and tried to gain his bearings but he’d fallen harder than he realized because the ache persisted in his chest and back. He rubbed the back of his neck and the back of his head and took a step backwards from the fence.
“Wouldn’t be the first creature to try,” Geralt said and climbed over the fence for a closer look. The frown on the witcher’s face worried Jaskier. The eager brown cow, hungry for more song didn’t appear blood-thirsty in the slightest despite the blood-matted fur indicating otherwise.
“Did they make a grand escape from the butcher? One last dinner before they became dinner?” Jaskier said.
“I doubt it,” Geralt said. He was reaching out to the animal and touching the side of her face, peering at her eyes and ears before doing a cursory check of her mouth before moving on to the rest of her body. She paid Geralt little heed and when she mooed it started a chain reaction from the others.
“The blood is human. At least a day old,” Geralt said and moved on to examine the other eager cow who hung her head over the fence like she was waiting for Jaskier to resume his song.
“So they were trying to take a bite out of me. This is definitely a mystery in the making: The Mystery of the Bloody Cows,” Jaskier said.
Lost Scenes Thursday! Get to know your favourite authors better. Show five scenes from either abandoned fics where you regret they will never see the light of day, or five scenes from WIPs where you are impatient to see them out there. Long, short, one-liner... it's all good reading. Tag five other authors where you are curious.
Ohhh hi and thank you! I really had to do some digging for this because, sadly, I simply don't write that much, but I managed to scrape together an assortment of fragments of some unfinished/not-yet-finished works. Sorry it took so long, I had to translate them into English :)
1.from back when I was trying to make that Peaky Blinders!AU a proper fic
The skeleton stared at her with its empty sockets. Ellington glanced at the label – clouded leopard, Neofelis nebulosa. She loved cats, big and small. She loved the Natural History Museum too, that fairytale maze full of silent specimens, fanciful seashells, horns, and fangs, tranquil in its orderliness, homelike in its permanence. Her father took her there countless times when she was just a little girl, and showed her the impassive dead fishes on their mounts, the dried starfishes, the records and drawings done by famous scientists. Every turn and every nook were familiar, and Ellington couldn’t fight the feeling that Father was about to come in from another room, wearing his usual worn-out long coat, and take her by the hand, and they would go on together.
Of course, Father wasn’t there. Instead, another person slipped out from the room dedicated to ungulates, a much younger man in a nifty suit but with a totally pig-like face. He approached the same stand as Ellington, and spent a moment or two studying the exhibits for appearances’ sake. As if knew a single thing about zoology. Ellington clenched her teeth.
“Now that’s a funny place,” Steward Mitchum said without looking at her. “All these beasts with their glass eyes. Should I offer them the deer’s head my dad keeps above the fireplace? It’d fit right in.”
“Let us skip small talk,” Ellington moved towards the next stand. He followed her, a couple of steps behind. “That’s not what we’re here for.”
“Can’t argue with that. Tell me what you’ve learned.”
2. unused scene from my DCEU era No. 1, I never did anything with it but I'm fond of it
“No but it’s so cool that we have our own witch now!” Harley reasons out loud on the way to the helicopter. She’s holding June by the hand, and it must be a little strange considering they only really met today, and in such haste at that, but June does not feel any discomfort whatsoever. “We’re getting closer and closer to being fairytale characters! We have a dragon…”
“That me?” judging by his voice, Croc is not too happy, but it’s hard to tell for sure when it comes to him.
“…who’s actually a cursed prince! We have a fire genie…”
“That’s a first,” mutters Diablo.
“…an outlaw who steals from the rich and gives to… himself…”
“You bet,” Boomerang grins.
“…a fearless knight…”
“Me, I suppose?” Rick asks. Harley shakes her head.
“Obviously not! That would be Katana.”
June looks back and notices that Tatsu is smiling – a fleeting ghost of a smile, blink and it’s gone, but it was there, June saw it with her own two eyes.
“You’ve another role, Colonel.”
“Which is?” Rick asks patiently.
Harley smirks. “Why,” she drawls, “the princess, of course.”
3. unused scene from my DCEU era No. 2. I assume it must've been for the same fic the previous scene was intended for, or maybe it was going to be another fic also based on the premise of June Moone not losing magic powers after the Enchantress was destroyed. I don't even remember anymore
“Enchantress,” June whispers. “Enchantress. Enchantress.” Still, she’s alone, and the mirror still shows just her own reflection, and a nervous laughter drops from her lips because she’s standing in front of a mirror in the twilight, trying to summon a witch. Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary…
Yeah, she could do with a glass of Bloody Mary.
“If you’re still with me, just say so,” June says. “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t try to drive you away. I’m just tired of not knowing what’s going on.”
Two glasses.
“Are you still here?”
She isn’t sure who she is asking, the Enchantress or herself.
4. from the attempt at a post-canon From Dusk Till Dawn fic - didn't manage to write it, but another bit of this became a drabble I published on ao3, so at least there's that
“Are you superstitious?” Richie asks her the first time he brings her such a present, a necklace with large pendants that looks heavy and expensive at a glance.
“Well, I am talking to a mythical creature right now, so…”
“No, not like that. I mean, some people don’t like to wear second-hand shit because they fear it might have bad vibes or something. Are you one of them, by any chance?”
Kate narrows her eyes.
“Richie, who did you take it off?”
“A very rich and successful lady. Who sold girls like you and even younger. I realize this is not your style, but I thought you might put it to some use,” he explains calmly. Kate thinks about cats that bring their owners dead birds. Mrs. Higgins, their neighbour back in Bethel, had such a cat. In the end, other neighbours made her stop letting it out on its own, threatening to call the “relevant authorities”.
Kate lifts the necklace up, watches the pendants sparkle in the electric light, reflexively scratches a drop of dried blood off one of them with her nail.
“Diamonds?”
“What do you take me for? Of course they’re diamonds.”
“Well, I definitely can put some diamonds to use. Thank you.”
When she was a kid, she really wanted a cat, but Mom was allergic.
5. not an abandoned fic this time! This is from a crossover between BBC's The Musketeers and La Morte amoureuse by Théophile Gautier, which I really hope to go back to one day
The first victim was a prostitute. The owners of a shop located at the street where they found her identified her as Justine la Roux. She had long and lush red hair – that must’ve been where the nickname came from. When Aramis saw her lifeless face, particularly grey against her hair, dirty and yet so bright, he remembered another girl who earned her living the same way and got her name for the same reason – Renardette from the house his mother worked at. Aramis barely knew her; when he was six years old or so, Renardette went to visit her aunt in another town and never came back. No one found out what happened to her. All he could remember of her besides her fox-like name and just as fox-like colour of her hair was that she taught him to press plantain leaves to fresh scratches and gnat bites, but that was enough for the ghosts of his past to surround him as soon as he laid his eyes on Justine.
Ghosts, ghosts, ghosts. Each passing year brought new ones.
what is your favorite snicketverse fan theory that you don’t accept as a headcanon?
OHHHH THIS IS A FASCINATING QUESTION!!
And a hard one bc usually If I like a theory I’ll adopt it as a headcanon.
So I’m gonna speak ~generally~ and say that any theory that poses the vfd/vfd aligned adults as like. Ultra nefarious is a no go for me. I could probably think of examples if my head was better screwed on today
ahh a little idea I had set immediately after thanedd:
Fringilla gently wiped away the blood from her face. Francesca's fingers dug into her arms tight. She didn't need to say anything, the haunted expression in her eyes told her all she needed to know. All they had was each other.
That's kind of all I have at the moment but god I really need to write these two
So I saw this post and I was like “haha nice, very good very funny.” And then I saw that OP actually linked the interview (which is so appreciated seriously tysm), so I went to read it. And it was just as charming and fun as I expected! My personal favorite bit was:
I love this. Obsessed. It is my dearest wish that this pattern will continue. Give Every Witcher Cast Member an Emotional Support Animal 2022.
HOWEVER......
I literally hate this question! It makes me want to fight God!
I’m just. I’m so tired, yall. It’s 2022, are we still STARTING conversations (particularly conversations with actors) by talking about their bodies? Especially in the past tense??? Are you fully aware that an actor is not a separate entity from their body? Have we not been having the whole ~body positivity~ conversation for like 2 decades at this point? Are there really people who haven’t heard ScarJo’s comments re:rabbit food on the Avengers press tour? Has no one been paying attention to ANYTHING Zac Efron has said in the last 3-4 years?
And the thing that killed me is that this interviewer only got to ask like 3.5 questions. Bro, you had to be so intentional and selective about what to ask and THAT is the most important/interesting thing you could come up with??
And like, I’m aware that I, personally, am probably much more sensitive to shit like this than Mr. Batey, himself. And that’s good! Healthy, even. And I swear, I do know that that dude is a grown-ass man who doesn’t need a random tumblr user to fight this one interviewer that was just doing their job. Particularly over a question that really didn’t seem to bug him lmao. But, it still makes me want to
💜✨commit arson✨💜
Just??? Stop making unsolicited comments about other people’s bodies??? It’s simply not that hard. Even if you’re just trying to flatter them, there are a million other ways to give someone a compliment, I swear to god!
