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The Witcher from Temu

You know I don't use to complain on Tumblr but I just couldn't hold it in anymore: I. Can't. Believe. I. Waited. For so long for the 4th season of The Witcher to only get… get… that. I was pretty indifferent when Henry Cavill said he'd leave, I (naively) thought it would be fine either way. Oh well. His Geralt was owning the shit out of every shady swamp or dirty watering hole, with a stick deep in his ass and a resting smug face. Then comes morosely trotting Liam Hemsworth wearing a mismatched oktoberfest party wig and a hangover look, mourning inside for his exhausted alka seltzers. And can't you production folks even dye a damn beard? Then there's the hogwash direction of every laughable scene, like you'd get a Big Ass Witch Bitch getting stabbed by some random wino, or running fugitives shouting - in enemy soldier filled woods mind you - jolly songs from the top of their lungs? And Ciri doing irrelevant stunts on fast forward only to take 'shrooms right after that? This is giving even The Acolyte a serious run for their crappiest direction trophy… yes I'm fully aware I'm attacking already a third fanbase but people, you deserve better! You had better, and deserve better! Not this Witcher from Temu, a way too expensive school semester project which I couldn't stand beyond the first half episode. Yes, I'm a masochist and will probably sit down some day to watch the rest but I'm telling you, there's not enough alcohol in the world to make me also enjoy it.

PS: Unless it gets much much better, which I so highly doubt - movie stuff can only get downhill, and if you don't believe me go ask about Game of Thrones last season.

PPS: I'm afraid to call mom, that fan who read twice all the books and was even more curious about the new season. I actually think she didn't watch it yet, or I would have had already a dozen missed calls and voicemails of the kind I never listen to.

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Hi bestie I always adore your posts 🥺 they make me yearn to see somewhere new again. Do you have any great travel stories?? Something that embodies what it’s like to be in a foreign place perhaps? 💗

There's this tag #nobeertexts but not that much used anymore...

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Hi, how are you?

Fine and you?

Also fine. What are you doing?

Nothing, and you?

Also nothing.

Nice.

Yeah.

Did... did your conversation die? Oh, not today, not yesterday. Hopefully not tomorrow either, although it sometimes feels like a silent agony is here to stay

Surprised? Wasn't it obvious that by putting ideas and differences behind you, dissecting favorite books and matching color preferences, there will be less and less steps to plan, stages to look forward? Didn't you know stories after being told will wilt and die? Royal castles will lose their auras of power and fear and morph into mere tourist attractions? Or that building intricate schemes without making them happen will litter your common path with the ugly skeletons of could have beens?

Did you think humans were infinite, fascinating mind universes to get lost in them? Have you hoped love can unlock new dimensions for adventures and understanding? Finding out everything about the other can for sure only mean falling into a Black Pot of burnt sweetness and faint moss, thick and rich darkness but with nothing else to discover, every question asked and every treasure dug out...

So what good did that do, to join your minds until there's only one mind until there's only your mind with ups and downs and moods and crashes and sometimes with dark crystals of loneliness which,

weirdly enough

feels...

warm?

...feels comfortable, peaceful. Shared. A shared loneliness because a look, a thought, a touch, a smile or a hug, a written line or a startling notification is all you need, you suddenly realize, to know that you're not alone anymore.

And this is everything.

(royal castle of Peleș, Romania)

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The giants are still watching us from beyond rooftops of sumptuous buildings. Distant bodies hidden in autumn fog, none of the few tourists mixed in evening street crowds will get freaked out by such immense legs of cold glass and heavy steel.

Their glacial blue gaze moves slowly, sweeping the streets in a never tiring consideration. Why are they staring? You can't read anything in their huge yet expressionless eyes. Is it icy and remote curiosity for the colorful and chaotic patterns of our holiday errands? Could they do it for protection, maybe against ourselves? Are they studying us like a foreign species of minuscule ants?

Locals don't ask such questions anymore, they learned to live along concrete giants, to ignore their omnipresence and carry on the nightfall rush. Only tourists notice sometimes a minor shift in the expression of a giant, stop to take a foggy picture to show back home, then walk away towards a dark weizen Schöfferhofer beer, to warm from inside, to forget the shivers of those chilly and piercing looks coming from far away and far up, from the tops of the steel giants of Frankfurt.

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If ghosts are not real how can you feel that faint squeeze on your hand? How can you close your eyes and see the loveliest smile bringing warmth to the coldest corners of your heart? Tell me, how can you hear the soft echoes of that voice in the blanket of silence covering your hotel room? How, if ghosts are not real?

How can corridors faintly shine with the trails of her presence and how can the potato swirls still taste of innocent joy, how can the bittersweet licorice and bourbon Honey Laku beer smell of togetherness? How can you sit at the dinner table, alone yet sharing a tarte tatin with a shadow, if ghosts weren't real? What is the blue impression of a fluttering coat and a dark eeriness of shining hair, if not a presence in your mind, from your retina, on your heart? How can ghosts not be real, when you feel like drowning again and again in the music of a silent laughter, of a restrained breath, of the sweetest hug?

If ghosts are real, they live in our hearts. And they come out only when we close our eyes, to pour color again in our drab days, nights, seconds and lives.

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Kilometers or miles, feet in pain but it doesn't really matter, distance is an abstract measurement and rain puts a good fight against perspective. Oh, the lights are beautiful though, like all street lights, like all night lights, like all fantasy lights... Rain in the city can offer much more than reflections but you still search and tell yourself just another turn, just another alley, just another lamppost, because in fantasy, fantasy is always close and deserted streets always lead you there.

Every step hurts, the few distant passersby are maybe hurting as well but for sure not like you - they don't walk like you to not go back. Because back there there's nothing, there's just life and your heart is aching for more. A beer you say? Maybe a Kremlin yes, dark bitterness with chocolate and sour cherries and timid sparks of alcohol warmth yet standing no chance against the agitated surface of liquid cold engulfing your traces. Pouring echoes, messing with your confused senses, numbing your hesitant thoughts and hypnotizing your tired eyes... For an instant the road in front of you shines golden then turns darker again, thrills morphing into ominous alternatives. Maybe you should return to the ritual called reality, to the two dimensional hotel room with a flickering desk light and a faint air conditioning whirr?

The lamp back home paints that same yellow while your thoughts keep meandering somewhere else, on rainy streets but not on these, losing their path on the streets of that imaginary town of Lucerne where every turn is another illusion and every shadow promises another story

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The town of your memories... familiar faces, just younger. People too soon disappeared from your life. People you wanted to know better but never got the chance. People you met and admired only in old family photos. People who wanted to love you their way, and failed.

A street turn you took long time ago and nothing was the same afterwards. One eye contact, leaving behind a scarring thought "if she was the one? Or, should have been the one?" A friendly voice, oddly familiar, calling that nickname nobody used since... and another joyful voice answering instead. School kids as colorful as then, quarreling over the same subjects as then. The same tired building with the same dusty walls, new cracks across plastered cracks. Everywhere traces, just different than the ones you left.

Warm aromas, old yet without smelling ancient, only recognizable. A beer spilled over the hot asphalt, quick to be replaced at that time yet still fresh in your memories. Soft Jazz pale ale, sunny and light. Same seagulls screaming above your head, are seagulls maybe living forever?

Worries you thought you forgot say hello from the shadow of the same fountain green with the same moss. You thought you'd visit a new town called Konstanz but you found yourself in the town of your memories. Or are all towns the same?

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The chocolate shop windows are cracked and a gust of wind blows out without carrying any smell, because the smell was the first thing to go - and the ghosts cannot smell anything anyway. Old vines and fairy lights climb on the forgotten walls, giving them the shine of bygone days, those days when careless people were strolling joyfully on what was once a well known shopping street... The ghosts loved those times. They loved those times as they loved chatting and window shopping and visiting, as they loved holding hands in awe at a colorful electric rainbow, at a charming game of light and shadow, at distant fen fires inviting to a peaceful midnight stroll.

So they recreated the lights and the feelings and the world they once lived. They missed a few things though, and it's not only the burnt chocolate crunch of a Kremlin imperial stout imprinted on a dusty glass. If they had their hearing as well, they might have noticed the uncanny silence but the ghosts can only see, they can only remember and they can only play make believe.

The street is inviting like it once was, the windows are shining in glamour once again, everything is like before... except it isn't. People have left this world and only ghosts live there, walking memories in their imaginary worlds of shine and happiness on the streets of old Ascona.