#I actually have this for my cover for the witcher 3
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♥️Lambert/Aiden Fic Reclist!♥️
For anybody and everybody interested in Lambert, Aiden, and/or their relationship! I've been obsessed with these two since the start of the pandemic, and they inspired me to start writing my own fic, so making a reclist has always been an idea in the back of my head. Plus, it's come to my attention that the tag can get crowded sometimes, so, Laiden fans, this one's for you.
Parameters: I've decided to divide my recs based on common story types that explore Laiden both in and out of canon. Other ships are allowed, but the focus is Lambert/Aiden. Additionally, I put a cap on 3 fics max per author. These are not arranged in any particular order beyond the categories.
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♥️Lambert's Revenge/Aiden's Death or Return♥️
(i know dead people, and you are not dead) by @brighteyedjill (Explicit/5,940/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Lambert finds Aiden after ten years of torture, maimed and broken. They retire and learn each other once again, mind, body, and soul.
I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory by CamilleDuDemon (Mature/2,327/Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death)
Aiden dies on a beautiful sunny day, while Lambert waits for him in their usual meeting place. Witchers cannot love and witchers never die in their beds. If only neither of those were true.
No Grave by @blackberrywars (Mature/2293/No Archive Warnings Apply)
A shameless self-rec, because I'm very proud of this fic. To the tune of Hozier’s Work Song, Aiden crawls from her almost-grave, determined to see her baby wolf again.
Fair Trade by Anoke (Mature/40,373/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Karadin sells Aiden to a mage, and he becomes an experiment, trapped in his own head while searching for a way out. It's a series, and this is the part where shit gets ugly.
Very Dark Magic by @bomberqueen17 (Mature/23,683/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Aiden is once more getting tortured and mind-controlled by a mage, but luckily enough and via the power of psychic beams, Keira and Lambert find him. And Lambert's pissed.
Roses Fall but the Thorns Remain by @t4tlambert (Teen/1,458/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert holds Aiden's medallion in his hands, and he knows what it means. He pays for the privilege of having this last piece of his lover, and falls apart for just a moment.
No Grave Can Hold My Body Down by @t4tlambert (Teen/14,414/No Archive Warnings Apply)
A fellow Hozier-lyric-title user. Aiden crawls out of his grave and is found by Eskel, who begrudgingly decides to not piss off his little brother and does his best to keep his Cat alive.
Fortunes of the Fearless by @tumbleweedtech (Teen/627/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert is a vicious bastard, and Aiden is lucky enough to be around to appreciate it, even if Lambert's victim is long dead and drowned.
Survival by @kitdubhran (Teen/1,278/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Aiden wakes up in enough pain that he kind of wishes he hadn't. But he does wake up. And we all know who he's gonna go find.
♥️Getting Together & Being Together♥️
Intent by tnico (Teen/18,551/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert does everything in his crotchety (open to interpretation) power to get Aiden to reveal his devious plans and fuck off, except all he wants is to be by Lambert's side. Incredible characterization, funny as hell, and awesome research footnotes.
Bad Blood (Runs True) by @fairytrashmother (Teen/8,368/No Archive Warnings Apply)
The Tournament never happened, and the Cats and Wolves are actually trying to make peace. A young pup and a young kit might just solve their problems
Silver for Monsters by @crimsonherbarium (Explicit/108,559/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
A canon-compliant look at the development of Laiden with awesome cover art and plenty of angst in later chapters. Lambert is slow to trust, so the burn follows thus.
Lacebound by @heronfem (Mature/39,391/Graphic Depictions of Violence)
Lambert and Aiden as young witchers in winter, lacebound by the fucked-up system they live in, and soon, lacebound to each other. Extremely nuanced politics, people, and circumstances, but also something like a college AU, if Bombs 101 was a class
Denial by tnico (Teen/16,989/No Archive Warnings Apply)
This fic quite possibly wins the award for bitchiest Lambert dialogue in existence, and no one loves it more than me and Aiden. They go a-curse-breakin' and have a grand old time together. More awesome research footnotes
Therapeutic Effects by @laurelnose (Teen/900/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert finds Aiden purring himself back to health, and it's mad cute (but also hilarious because Lambert is Lambert)
Fuck Off: A Love Story (In 5+1 Parts) by @skaldingrayne (Mature/17,080/Graphic Depictions of Violence)
Despite all his efforts to appear the contrary, Lambert is just a bit too noble (and then a bit too horny and a bit too in love) to let this mangy Cat die by his own stupidity. He's still gonna bitch about it tho.
i won't say i'm in **** by @purpurred (Mature/5,848/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Keira arranges for a Cat to fulfill one of Lambert's more private fantasies, and Lambert takes it in the worst way possible. That doesn't mean he can stop thinking about the way Aiden held a poisoned knife to his throat.
ease me of its fever by @inexplicifics (Mature/5,226/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Omega Lambert has spent so many years saying absolutely-the-fuck-not-i'll-rip-your-cock-off that it's more than a little difficult to say yes. Aiden is so, so patient.
mountains that are stacked with fear by @xianvar (Mature/11,171/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert, being Lambert, assumes the beautiful love confession he found in Aiden's bag was actually a prank, and lashes out accordingly. He gets his shit together, and his Cat, eventually.
♥️Meeting the Family♥️
Lambert's two orens' man by Ledgea (Teen/1,861/No Archive Warnings Apply)
One part in an incredible series about the slow development of Aiden and Lambert, but it's just a fun bit of Eskel getting to see his baby brother happy
Hide and seek by Ledgea (Mature/6,617/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert sneaks Aiden into Kaer Morhen, and his whole cohort of bastard pups work hard to cover his ass while causing as many problems as witcherly possible; part 1 of 3
a promise to keep by @all-hail-the-witcher (Teen/983/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Tooth-rotting fluff of Aiden in Kaer Morhen, appreciating the effects of good, regular meals on Lambert's physique. Cutagen biscuits are made.
Winter with the Caravan by @damnbert (Teen/14,229/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert goes home with Aiden for a while, and all the other Cats take the opportunity to take the absolute piss out of them both (and maybe do a little matchmaking on the side)
Lambert's Family by @freudensteins-monster (Teen/5,901/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert hides his biological family until he finally feels safe enough not to. They might be growing up around him, but they still welcome him home every year, and they welcome the Wolves and Cats too.
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? by @tumbleweedtech (General Audiences/1,461/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Being the (asshole) older brothers that they are, Geralt and Eskel constantly rib Lambert about being the littlest wolf, and that his mysterious cat must be pint-sized to match. Lambert is happy to prove them wrong.
♥️Good Old Fashioned Smut♥️
wild green wonder by elizabethgee (Explicit/42,554/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Laiden smut in just about every configuration you can think. Sweet and tender, rough and wild, this one has it all. If you like a dom!Aiden and repressed sub!Lambert, this is stellar
Lambert's (Not-So) Mysterious Vial of Oil by @on-a-lucky-tide (Explicit/11,291/No Archive Warnings Apply)
The Lambert-kicks-ass-at-alchemy headcanon applied to sex. He receives (heh), and then passes his glorious knowledge of lube onto a his student, Aiden
Sweeter Than Pride by @blackberrywars (Explicit/2524/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Another self-rec for the f/f lovers. Lambert is a sweet brat and earns herself a spanking so good she cries. Aiden freaks out a little, but after it all, they fall asleep spooned together
An Evening of Frippery by @bard-llama (Explicit/3,105/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert being a power bottom whose gender is "mind your fucking business," but who nonetheless looks fantastic with his exquisitely tailored skirts hiked to his waist
I Like how the day sounds through this new song by Lynge (Explicit/9,222/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Some porn with plot where Aiden forces Lambert to confess to petty theft and also his deep and abiding romantic feelings (in that order).
Problem by elizabethgee (Explicit/1,977/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
In a fic I've just now realized has the exact same premise as one of my wips, Aiden is obsessed with Lambert's thick ass thighs and will do anything to ride them
Cut You Clean by GreenBird (Explicit/4,203/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert loses a bet and has to let Aiden shave him. It has some... interesting effects on him.
Thicker than Water (and Other Poetic Bullshit) by @kushielsmercy (Explicit/2,835/No Archive Warnings Apply)
A mini-character study of Aiden and Lambert through the lens of some filthy blood-play. They're both far more possessive and codependent than they'd want to admit.
Puppies Don't Talk by @damnbert (Explict/8,725/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Very kink-heavy fic of Lambert going fully into subspace and getting to be taken care of for a while. He can't bring himself to really ask for what he wants, but puppies don't talk anyway.
all dressed up (with no place to go) by @childoffantasy (Explicit/6,707/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert fulfills the redhead contract of wearing green and killing it dead, and there's just enough room under his pretty skirt for Aiden to crawl right up it
Thief's Reward by @inexplicifics (Explicit/1,592/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Maybe Lambert shouldn't reward this handsome Cat for stealing his kill, but it's been awhile, and he might as well get something out of the bargain (it's orgasms. and 60% of the corpse profits)
Dichotomy by @tantumuna (Explicit/25,054/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Extremely kink-heavy fic where Aiden and Lambert switch to see whose methods can get Aiden pregnant the fastest.
Kneel For Me by @alllthequeenshorses (Explicit/2,269/No Archive Warning Apply)
Lambert can only really let go with Aiden, and as soon as he can, it's a freefall. Aiden's there to hold him tight. It's some kinky reunion smut, come get a helping.
Catch and Release by @top-notch-swords (Explicit/9,570/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Aiden is deeply possessive and more than willing to manipulate the situation to remind Lambert exactly who he belongs to. Filthy alley sex and a little codependency that they should probably talk about but actually just fuck about
♥️One-Shot Roulette♥️
A Logical Conclusion by @heronfem (Mature/18,674/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Essentially the thesis of Laiden shippers, seeing Lambert's prickly ass and knowing the only logical conclusion is that he must have loved Aiden very deeply, even across space, time, and AUs
Wheel of the Year by @crimsonherbarium (Explicit/20,717/No Archive Warnings Apply)
A series of Lambert and Aiden celebrating the holidays on the outskirts of society, but finding twice the joy for it. Lots of smut, but also sweetness and angst.
You and I (and what we get up to) by @iwillpooponthefloor (Explicit/19,396/No Archive Warnings Apply)
ABCs of Laiden that focus on them as a team of two. They pull off contracts, schemes, and each other, from time to time.
Purr For Me by @round--robin (Explicit/8,407/No Archive Warnings Apply)
A whole bunch of short and sweet snapshots into Laiden. I couldn't put them on this list, but Robin has a lot of other fics combining Laiden with other ships.
♥️Modern AUs♥️
A Beginners Guide to Exploiting the Kaedweni Tax Code For Fun and Profit by @heronfem (Mature/167,193/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Lambert and Aiden get accidentally married and decide to make it work for the tax benefits. And then they fall in love. And work through trauma. And get a cat. And it's gorgeously written.
What Happens at Waffle House by Anoke (Teen/1,993/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
The rituals are intricate, and Lambert's sometimes involve mutual combat with the Waffle House line cook. Somehow, the feral gremlin gets a date out of it.
All those wonders sit in wait for us by Theladyknight23 (Teen/14,847/No Archive Warnings Apply)
My fellow fem!Laiden crusader with a delightful modern take on witchers as a combination between truckers and pest control workers. Americana themes and the best additional tag ever: "love is like bread."
The Bark that's to Your Bite by @theimpressionablelizard (Explicit/12,976/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Where Lambert is Deadpool pre-mutation and he falls in bounty hunter love with Aiden, who I personally imagine looks like Dev Patel from the Green Knight. A little romance, a little co-worker wolves, and lots of swearing.
Three Cats Walk Into A Bar by @halehathnofury (Teen/2,607/No Archive Warnings Apply
Inspired by the lovely @whyzowl's art, it's the Wolves + Ciri dressing Lambert up to get him laid, and Aiden taking the bait.
Helpless, Feckless, Far Too Young by @keirametzbrassknuckles (Mature/14,605/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
The Wolves are a traveling group after a death in the family, and Lambert is so fucking sick of them acting like nothing is wrong. He meets Aiden, and they get on like a fairgound on faire. Written by my personal mistress of angst.
♥️Miscellaneous♥️
Once, Again by @brighteyedjill (Mature/4,521/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Aiden has to save Lambert in a time loop without explaining anything, but we all know Lambert doesn't trust easy. Sometimes the simplest solution is the right one.
The Art of Living by Ledgea (Explicit/25,636/Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings)
Lambert loving people as the story of an art gallery, a skill honed from his cohort to his brothers to Aiden, The Damn Cat, when he makes his appearance.
Fields of color by @witcherscrane (Mature/2,057/Major Character Death)
In the wake of Aiden's death, Lambert follows a beautiful illusion with a smile on his face. His brothers help him find rest.
Give Us A Smile by @etcorsolus (Mature/2,945/No Archive Warnings Apply)
A 5+1 of Aiden making Lambert smile. Textual adaptation of that one post "look at you! you're so handsome when you're not being a bitch."
The Basics by @kushielsmercy (Mature/375/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Aiden gets possessed, and Lambert has a choice to make. Ambiguous ending.
Ashes in His Mouth by Faetality (Mature/3,924/Graphic Depictions of Violence)
Fear makes humans cruel. It makes them not care who gets tied to the stake, so long as they can breathe easy while the victim drowns in smoke. Or, Lambert suffers, and Aiden watches.
remember me as i was not as i am by @all-hail-the-witcher (Explicit/40,248/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Aiden has been dead for a very long time, long enough that Lambert has long since forgotten his face. It's just in time for a beautiful man with green eyes to break in through his window and ask for his services.
Deafening Silence by @wolf-and-bard (Explicit/13,230/No Archive Warnings Apply)
Destiny is a stubborn bitch, but it hasn't Lambert, who doesn't give a rat's ass that he's never meant to see Aiden again.
A Spot of Blood by MsThunderFrost (Explicit/3,440, No Archive Warnings Apply)
How the phrase "Pops didn't raise a quitter" turns into a "sex sent me to the ER" story for Lambert, because he's a stubborn bastard who would rather injure himself than communicate.
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Let me say a few things outright, because I want zero drama.
This reclist is for the benefit of Laiden fans, and is not meant as a criticism of any other ship or fic.
The fics chosen for this reclist are only ones I have read. It is by no means comprehensive, and definitely favors older fics, since that was when I was deepest in the fandom.
I actually had to cut this short because I hit some kind of content block limit, which. Oh welp. If anyone wants me to remove their fic from this list for any reason, PM me and I'll do it asap
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Some more snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from some older Mark Darrah on Games YouTube videos where he was livestreaming playing Dragon Age: Origins some months ago. (Multiple videos are covered in this post, so the source video of each bullet point is included there) -
"I'm pretty sure that the [in-world] Dragon Age will be an age that lasts a suspiciously long time, as long as there are Dragon Ages being made. I don't think they will drop 'Dragon Age' because it's such an identifiable part of the franchise". [source]
"I totally cannot spoil what the original Black City was supposed to be. I'm pretty sure that the approach to lore in DA has always been to leave it ambiguous to allow the future to go where it needs to go. Though that being said, DA:O was definitely built with the assumption that it was not getting a sequel." [source]
"The Calling is presented as taking decades to kill you on its own. So Alistair would still be alive in DA:I and DA:D if he went that way. I think, if I remember the lore correctly." [source]
"DA:O introduces a lot of hanging plot threads that aren't necessarily resolved. Orzammar potentially sets up a civil war, there's potentially werewolves running around. There's a lot of stuff we've been able to kind've ignore, but there's a lot of stuff that's still out there. The line of succession for Ferelden is open isn't it." [source]
[on the Warden's quest for a cure for the Calling] "I don't think it's established that the cure is actually found is it. Or just that they're looking." [source]
"Likely any cure for the Calling would be to extract the Taint from the person, so you would basically cease being a Grey Warden at that point." [source]
"I think they're treating the Trespasser epilogue slides as canon." [source]
[during DA:O epilogue slides] "You can see, this leaves a lot of threads in a lot of potential different directions that Dragon Age has been dealing with since then, since 2009." [source]
"The resistance that there was for toolset for Frostbite was a feeling like, 'this engine is proprietary, it does a bunch of stuff that we don't want other people to be able to steal'. That's basically not even true anymore. There's actually a feeling now within EA that user-generated content, UGC, is incredibly good, that it's basically free marketing. Like you say, Skyrim has been going forever. So that's why, EA has a really complicated relationship with UGC. What they want is basically, everyone to make TikTok videos and things about how great the game is. They don't necessarily want you to make DLC or Twitch stream the thing but they also recognize that this is not a, you don't get to have one without the other really. Yeah, the 'cost of free ads from fans is fan DLC'. That's pretty much, sums it up perfectly." [source]
"CD Projekt uses slightly different language than BioWare did for DLCs, expansion packs etc. I would not classify the free DLCs from The Witcher as expansion packs, they're DLC. They called them expansion packs but from my perspective, an expansion pack is larger than that but it's a spectrum for sure. The thing I would say about CD Projekt in general is they're amazingly good at picking the right language. So what they did on Witcher 3 is they said, they added a tiny bit of content to each of their patches and said 'this is DLC, we're going to give it away for free, aren't we amazing?' And then they made their DLC a little bit bigger and then said 'these are expansion packs, we're gonna charge for that', brilliant. Honestly brilliant. Because it makes them, it's a great PR move, it also meant that they got a, every time they released a patch they essentially got an article on the gaming sites. It's something that BioWare and frankly DA in particular is pretty bad at, like, naming things, and using language that makes things sound better." [source]
[on The Sims] "'Buy a thing and then later they release more stuff to add to your thing', it's an amazing business model. It's also a business model that EA does not understand, they, like BioWare, suffer from being a thing that exists within the sports-focused EA ecosystem that, constantly trying to explain that 'our players are not the same as your players, you need to let us do what we know how to do'." [source]
"We had a free-to-play version for DA multiplayer, that was Hendrix. It's not on the, EA didn't want it to exist so it was only on the servers for a little while, a couple of months, but it was actually there. I'm sure it's not up anymore." [source]
"I don't know if Frostbite is gonna die. I think there's a very good chance that what's going to happen is, it may become the next sports engine. FIFA is a monolith and has taken over the driver's seat for that engine. I don't think they're gonna be very interested in switching again. Even if active Frostbite development in general goes away, FIFA will keep going and then a bunch of other games live in the rain shadow of FIFA, like NHL." [source]
"If it was up to me, I'd probably have forced Mass Effect onto Frostbite. And I would be strongly inclined to keep Dragon Age on Frostbite for at least one more game because you've built the foundation. The best engine to use is the one you just used. But I don't know what's gonna happen after DA:D to be honest. BioWare seems to be addicted to throwing away work they've done in the past. And it was never up to me." [source]
"Frostbite isn't a recruitment negative but certainly it's a lot easier to find people that already know how to use Unreal. What you actually see in programming is some people, it's not a universal, but some programmers, they don't wanna work in Unreal because they feel like someone else gets to do all the cool programming bits." [source]
"The question for Awakening is should it have even been an expansion pack, or is a different solution to have made it, say, 40% bigger and made it a full-sized game. This is, I think, the reason why expansion packs are so rare these days is because, it's easy to imagine a path from an expansion pack to a $60 or $70 game and then you're getting somewhere between 80-120% attach as opposed to 30% attach. I suspect this is the primary reason why expansion packs have kind've faded away, because 'I'm gonna ship every year' is fairly accepted within games these days. So honestly the pitch for Joplin's live service was 'we're not gonna do a live service, we're gonna do a game, and then we're gonna do another game in 18 months and another 18 months after that. And maybe we'll do one piece of DLC in there, but we'll just be like dunk-dunk-dunk' and the economics for that are great. So that's why expansion packs are gone I think." [source]
"That's the fundamental problem of DA:O not knowing it's gonna have sequels, it leaves the world in a very quantum state. There's still stuff that's hinted at in those [epilogue slides] that are happening sometime in the future that I think are gonna probably at this point be ignored. Probably the biggest issue of DA:O is that it leaves the world in a state that probably wasn't intending that there would be a sequel." [source]
"When we were discussing doing a remaster for the trilogy, my pitch was to essentially retcon it [DA:O, DAII and DA:I] into a trilogy, to make it the 'Champion's Trilogy' or something to that effect, where you group the three games together, imply that they were always intended to be a trilogy kind of, and then that does a couple of things. It packages them into something that stands on its own a bit better, but also lets you potentially change what you're doing with the player character going forward. If you've decided that, okay, we've changed player character every single game up until now, but maybe we're not going to do that going forward, by packaging them together in a remaster you kind've give yourself permission to do that. Certainly DA:D is gonna have a new player character, given that the one from DA:I is missing a limb." [source]
"We probably oversold the Wardens in the marketing for DA:O. Because essentially, what we did was establish them as the coolest thing in the world and then yeah, so the series has definitely been dealing with the aftermath oh 'but not Wardens? Therefore not cool' forever since then." [source]
"But a new player character means you have a harder job every single game, because you have to get people interested, you don't get the shortcut of 'Shepard is Shepard, you know Shepard'." [source]
"Anders is the one that made us rethink how we introduce romances, because a lot of people ended up in romance with him that didn't mean to. We'll see if they come back to that in DA:D, but I think that because of Anders in DAII, DA:I was definitely trying to not 'accidentally do anything to you'. But it does mean that it is very player-controlled and very player-initiated. But maybe they'll be willing to go back to that a little bit." [source]
"Tevinter Nights does a really good job of staying away from violating canon. The thing with, the further you go away from what's in the games the more you are, the less well it's gonna do, so that's not necessarily a problem but it is something to keep in mind that you don't, you're trying to make money with your novels. Setting it in a time period that people don't know is great for the core fans but isn't necessarily gonna do super amazing. The advantage that Tevinter Nights is, because it's an anthology, you're able to just, everything kinda just stands on its own and therefore you're able to just stay away from the major characters to a large degree." [source]
"Varric's definitely not quantum, he's in good shape. Dorian, I feel like Dorian is guaranteed to be around [as in quantum], but maybe not, maybe I'm wrong about that. But the games have gotten better or at least more conscious of what they do with companions as it's gone on, in terms of trying to, being at least aware of the fact that you might want these people to come back, so maybe at least understand the quantum you're putting them in. There's a bunch of followers in DA:I that you might just not recruit. Like Blackwall's pretty easy to miss. Dorian can show up but he doesn't die if you don't recruit him, he's alive. The biggest thing for quantum is 'are they alive', in which, in DA:O there's a lot that don't make it. Then you have to deal with, well they might be [killed/not recruited?] or something but the biggest thing is, if they're alive you can probably make it work." [source]
"I have a feeling that Desire Demons are going to be just, ignored, or, honestly I mean one way to, I think, Desire is seen in a very narrow light in DA:O. I think if you go, if you move into Desire being a much broader concept, you have a lot of options there. I think if you approach Desire in a broader sense I think you have some opportunities. But then you kind've end up with the DA:I problem with the Fear." [source]
He also talked more generally about DA:O and the franchise and things in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length -
"Orzammar is definitely the place in DA:O that actually looks like Dragon Age. Everything else is kind've generic late 2000s fantasy, pretty much the same as The Witcher. For example, Ostagar has a more generic fantasy visual" [source]
"You know, other than DAII, DA does involve a lot of crossing the entire country to turn around and go back doesn't it" [source]
Chat asked "How well does the vanilla game DA:O play on modern hardware?" Mark replied, "I'm playing it on modern hardware, I don't have everything cranked way up and currently I'm running it in a window. It's running really well. The only thing that happens is if you turn the graphic settings up too far it will blow up because it will run out of memory. It's a 32-bit game and so if you cross 4 gig it will explode. But there are some mods out there that get you around that. That's the only problem with it is that, if you turn it up too far it will become unstable. I'm worried about stability problems during the [Battle of Denerim] part of the game" [source]
"I always found Redcliffe Village in DA:O a bit confusing to move around" [source]
Chat observed that the soil in Redcliffe would be be bad because of all the darkspawn and undead that were there. Some users theorized that the people there moved to a different part of the nearby land to make 'Redcliffe' again. Mark commented, "One of the reasons we felt okay pretty much redesigning Redcliffe in DA:I, because it's kind've broken. You know, we don't show it completely destroyed here but certainly it's hard its struggles" [source]
"I don't know who came up with the ogre-sync kill. Sync kills are really cool for bosses, they become a lot less cool for things when they're constantly happening but they're usually, unfortunately sync kills are often something that end up being de-prioritized as a feature, because they don't actually have a gameplay effect so they're kind've just aesthetics. So they often actually get cut for time reasons" [source]
Mark mentioned that he "certainly [has] some degree of lingering crunch trauma" [source]
[during the Battle of Denerim, when many creatures are on-screen] "DA:O does a good job of selling large groups for a game of its time. We must be doing a trick, something to get all this, because this is way over the creature count limit for DA:O. It's possible that we made special creatures that are way cheaper. Or it's a mixture. Waves is part of it. They aren't dropping any loot so there's definitely something going on" [source]
"Shouldn't there be people in the Wardens who have a bit more training in dragon killing?" [source]
"We probably should have auto-levelled unlevelled party members before the Battle of Denerim" [source]
[on the elves in the alienage during the Battle of Denerim] "Where'd they get the bows? Pretty sure it's frowned upon for elves to have weapons in alienages" [source]
"People do play DA solo which makes it difficult to have any sort of puzzle or anything that requires a group" [source]
[on Sandal] "I told the team if you put him in DA:I you gotta put him in everything because he basically then becomes a central figure of the franchise. So they gave him a rest. So you can blame me for him not being in DA:I" [source]
Chat asked "I'm curious why BioWare never brought back the army spawning mechanic from DA:O to DA:I, I always thought it was epic and underrated". Mark said "We talked about it in DA:I, it was actually a UI thing, we didn't have time to do the UI properly. I mean there's a lot of reasons why you don't get to play with your Inquisition well in DA:I, like to play with the organization, which is actually too bad" [source]
[while fighting baby dragons during the Battle of Denerim] Chat asked "Why are the baby dragons there in the first place?" Mark said "Someone wanted another addition to the combat. But it doesn't really make a lot of lore sense" [source]
[on lock bash] "I like what we tried to do in DA:I, giving you different things for different classes. Didn't really get used effectively. But it does strike me as weird, it didn't at the time, but playing through this, is like, you go into a space, all the chests are locked, you kill everyone, no-one has a key. Like, whose got the key to that chest?" [source]
"DA:O really does do some impressive army stuff given the chunkiness of its engine" [source]
[at end of DA:O] "Probably should have shown Morrigan leaving" [source]
"Alistair would be a fine/adequate king. He just needs a policy wonk to give him ideas" [source]
[during DA:O epilogue slides] "These are the ones that set up the quantum for the rest of the game" [source]
[during DA:O epilogue slides] "It's interesting that we called Dagna a mage" [source]
"I think DA:O still holds together. I mean it wasn't a very attractive game in 2009 and certainly it doesn't look better now than it did then, but I think it holds together. Some of the storytelling choices are problematic from a now perspective, almost everything in the Pearl, and then the whole broodmother bit could be, I mean it's a bit too far, it was probably a bit too far even at the time honestly. The combat holds up pretty well, because it's not 'push a button and immediately do an action' it has aged pretty well. The animations are kinda clunky and things don't line up very great but that's not that bothersome. It would be much more noticeable that it was a problem if things were a bit more direct" [source]
"DA:O has WASD in large part because Oblivion had WASD controls. I remember the transition and being kind've confused as to why you would do that, but yeah it's the right call. In the time that this was in development it became pretty universal" [source]
"How involved was I in Anthem? I was in charge of Anthem for the past 16 months. So a damaging amount" [source]
"Will I do an Anthem stream? I will probably do at least 1 Anthem stream. I might play through the story, I'm not gonna play multiplayer. I might play through the story and play it in pure dark pattern, forcing it to let me play it by myself, but we'll see" [note this video is several months old] [source]
[on Awakening] "Other than Destiny, this is pretty much one of the last expansion packs there ever really was with a retail presence. It's honestly a way better business than DLC. DLC you're attaching, maybe 10% of your people are gonna buy it, whereas expansion packs, 30%. You can spend a lot more money and make a lot more money with an expansion pack" [source]
"I think the idea for DA multiplayer getting harder when somebody died was to try to make the match start to end so that you weren't waiting. I don't know how effective that is, probably not very, but I think that's the thinking" [source]
"I don't think we really were, pretty much I think DA became a series when BioWare got bought by EA. I don't remember the exact moment but you can see by the slides at the end of DA:O there's a bunch of stuff that isn't really completely thinking about the fact that we're gonna have to pick up this ball in future" [source]
"Frostbite shares a lot with Unreal as well from a tools perspective. It wasn't done quite as intentionally. It's funny because the tools for Eclipse for DA:O, there was a specifically-designed wall between the two project streams to prevent this engine from taking too much from Unreal. There was a worry that Epic was going to get mad at us and sue us. Which given everybody elses' engine development was probably unfounded" [source]
"I imagine that a Blight probably increases Warden recruitment. I think it makes sense that people would be interested [right after a Blight was stopped] because you're the heroes on the block, but given what the Wardens know about Blights and things you would think that the responsible thing would be to actually cut recruitment way down, keep the order alive and then as they sense a Blight starting to come, ramp the recruitment way back up again. But I don't know that they know that a Blight is coming early enough to do so, so I guess the worry would be that if they don't keep their order relatively large then they wouldn't have the forces necessary to fight a Blight. Though of course you wouldn't expect another Blight right now, we just finished with one [Mark was playing Awakening's opening sequence at this time]. I think it's, there's darkspawn to fight and despite what they may claim, it's about being big enough to have a political impact on the world so that everyone doesn't ignore their existence and then they show up and no-one remembers who they are. Duncan talks about knowing it was coming but everyone not believing him so it does imply that they know at least some time beforehand. But you probably don't wanna wait til 1 year before it starts happening before you start rebuilding your forces" [source]
"The reason why Awakening was able to ship so close to DA:O was because DA:O moved a huge amount really late in development to do the consoles. So Awakening was pretty much mostly built in 2009, you know in the last 9 months of DA:O development, which was mostly porting it to the consoles. There's no way you were getting an expansion pack out within five months of that size without [this]" [source]
"Awakening is a masterclass in 'people who are familiar with the fools using the tools at their disposal to do some amazing stuff" [source]
"One of the challenges with expansion packs is they kind've have to fit inside the umbrella, even if they're taking place afterwards like this one does [Awakening], they can't raise the stakes too much. Whereas if it was a full-fledged sequel it could kind've do something new, kind've has to. Which is part of the problem with Awakening, given where DA:O leaves the world it's kind've hard to, we didn't really know where we were gonna go for our sequels yet, so that's probably why" [source]
"The problem with not sequel-ing Dragon Age is then what you would have been doing is probably trying to make a fantasy RPG in a new setting and then having this impossible comparison to DA constantly happening, and every single difference being a potential criticism, you can see why that, being a potential big problem. Much as I wouldn't want to wish it upon other dev teams, DAII is what allowed DA to be a series, because it kind've is the one that eats the rock of 'this is not like my previous game' and it kind've gets rid of the worst bits of continuity errors. And so to a large degree I would say that by DAII being this sort of thing that's rushed out to fill a financial gap, it allows the series to become a series. But you know, I wouldn't say that's the fix that everyone should take" [source]
"The problem you have to remember with DAII and 'more time' is very quickly you run into Skyrim releasing, and releasing DAII then, regardless of much much extra effort you put into it, after Skyrim is not a good thing. It has to kind've live there in a pre-Skyrim world. There is stuff that can be done for sure, but there's a limit to what you can do" [source]
"Mass Effect has, Shepard is too tightly associated with ME, so what do you do? Do you just keep bringing him back and making clones of him or something? That was definitely a problem in the case of Mass Effect: Andromeda because you had a younger player character, so therefore the tonal differences were seen as problematic. So it's something that you definitely have to think about" [source]
"With Justice, you do a pretty good job of explaining away anything that happens to Anders" [source]
"Oghren is here in Awakening in part because of again, quantum. Because Wynne could be dead, Leliana could be dead, Alistair could be dead, Sten could be dead or not even recruited. So you don't really have a lot of choices if you wanna bring a companion back." Here chat mentioned that Oghren can be dead. "Oh, so they do [in-game] respond to it [if Oghren was killed in DA:O]. He must have been the least quantum then. The place that you were most likely to kill Leliana in DA:O was at the Urn of Sacred Ashes, and I think we just sort've were like 'the Urn's right there so. She's fine'. Yeah, there needs to be a warrior [in Awakening]. I mean, we could've made a brand new character but. Sten was really likely to die. Lots of people didn't even recruit him. Hers [Leliana's death] is probably the most plausible retcon" [source]
"One of the things that kind've frustrates me a bit about the lore in DA moreso than ME is because it's so quantum, is the linear stuff in the comic books and novels have had, just picked canons on occasion. Which I get because you wanna have Isabela or Sten in the comics, but it does mean that it undermines the player agency there because it's like 'what you did isn't real, because here's what's real because we put it in a comic book'. I really don't like that but given the branching in the games you would've just had to have stayed away from those characters completely, which undermines the storytelling, so I don't know. I don't know what the answer is honestly. It's a good point that it's hard to imagine that Leliana's gonna be like 'sign me up for the Wardens' [source]
[on secondary media] "I don't disagree that you could do lots of prequels, but I think there's a limit" [source]
"The biggest reason why the darkspawn design changed from DA:O to DAII is that the DA:O darkspawn, mainly honestly the ogre, but they don't quite fit into our artistic palette, and there was a strong push from the art team on DAII to move the art direction into something that was ownable and so that's the main reason. It's really just an ownability perspective. But you can kinda see it in Awakening, because like The Withered is starting to look a lot like the DAII darkspawn, or at least he's headed in that direction" [source]
"One of DAII's big art direction things, Eclipse is really good at pushing polygons, so a lot of things in the art direction of DAII are pushing polygons. So they're spikier and they just have a lot more polys in them because it's one of the things it's really good at" [source]
"If you were doing a remaster you would keep the same engine. If you were doing a remake you would switch engines. It's not a remaster if you're switching engines, that's for sure" [source]
"I still maintain that Dog was essentially put through the Joining, but whatever. Technically probably everyone who has had contact with darkspawn blood is not a Warden, but it is a bit, I do think it's one of the things where the Taint and the Blight is a bit, is presented as being more bad than really is pulled off in the games" [source]
(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context)
#dragon age: dreadwolf#dragon age 4#the dread wolf rises#da4#dragon age#bioware#video games#alistair theirin#fav warden#long post#longpost#morrigan#queen of my heart#anthem#mass effect#next mass effect#mass effect: andromeda#tevinter nights#random spaces sry bc the bullet point list text blocks got too long
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nothing in the world is mine, but my love, mine
hey hey I did a one-shot for once, I've posted it on Ao3 here but I know some of y'all like to read fic on tumblr so it's below the cut
Comments and likes always appreciated <3
He clocks the bard as either noble or a romantic the moment he sees the gloves on his hands. They're subtle, as far as the custom goes, a dark olive colored kidskin with a simple flower button wrapped around his wrist and covering only his thumb.
The Witcher always wears gloves of a kind, Jaskier determines after a few weeks on the path together, though out of utility.
a quick soulmates AU where soulmates have matching marks on the sides of their hands // title shamelessly stolen from Mitski's "My Love Mine All Mine"
Rated: T for swearing
Fandom: The WItcher TV
Pairing: Geraskier (Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier), background Yennralt (Yennefer of Vengerber/Geralt of Rivia)
Language: English
He clocks the bard as either noble or a romantic the moment he sees the gloves on his hands. They're subtle, as far as the custom goes, a dark olive colored kidskin with a simple flower button wrapped around his wrist and covering only his thumb.
It's not satisfying when the bards confirms both to be true on their way to investigate the devil but when they're being kicked by Toruviel, he thinks that if the bard was a full gloved wearing hack then they'd both be dead.
Which also isn't satisfying.
.
The Witcher always wears gloves of a kind, Jaskier determines after a few weeks on the Path together, though out of utility.
Apparently the most dressed down the witcher ever gets is a pair of fingerless gloves worn even to sleep. Something about improving his grip and tendon injuries- Geralt tenses up when he can sense Jaskier wants to ask if witchers even have marks. Jaskier can feel how fragile their friendship is. He doesn't press the issue.
He hopes that puts a mark in his favor.
.
By the end of the season, Geralt determines the bard has no less than seven pairs of gloves- yet only two of them are permitted to actually get dirtied. Two suede pairs to match the colors of his "lover's eyes" (unoriginally brown and blue), three pairs for wearing in town, and a scant two pairs for all his bathing, cooking, and laundry.
It's utterly ridiculous.
Before they part at Ban Glan for the winter, he tells the bard to get more sensible gloves before spring on the Path.
He's at Ard Carraig before he realizes he planned for the bard to join him again.
.
When he returns to Oxenfurt, the two pairs of gloves he has for washing are nearly worn to shreds- he throws them down on the table at the Wishful Warbler with a grin when Shani asks about his travels. He's going on real adventures with his-maybe-friend-Geralt and getting dirty and everything. He spends the winter as a research assistant to Professor Berlyn and learning to make stacks of washing gloves.
His friends, who largely only own a pair or two or have entirely dispensed with the custom, are overrun with gloves of varying quality. Priscilla generously accepts a stack whose thumbs must all be split open to accommodate even her dainty digit.
He manages to barter for a pair of amber saffron dyed kidskin gloves- painstakingly transcribing Metz's treatises on celestial calendars small enough for Valdo Marx to use them as crib notes.
It's worth it.
It's a true lark to set them along with his brown and blue gloves and he whistles when they meet up in the spring and he waggles them in Geralt's face and thinks Geralt is about to strangle him- before the ludacris stack of washing gloves topples out of his bag onto the witcher's lap and he can't help but bark a laugh into Jaskier's delighted face.
.
He knows the bard is, at least, serious about walking the Path when he drops the stack of gloves on Geralt's lap. It's a bit of a child's attempt at adulthood, he admits to himself because he knows it would crush the bard to know twenty years of life does not make a man.
Still, it dampens his concerns of noble nonsense a bit to see where the calluses from needlework have made his fingertips even more knobby alongside the ones from his lute. For all the work Jaskier puts into his hands- carefully filing down his calluses and nails when they crack and rubbing ointments in before he beds down- Geralt can see it's a dedication to practicality and not vanity.
The bard is unconcerned by the healing scars where broken strings have cut into the flesh or the uneven tan marks across the backs of his hands where the different gloves have sat.
.
Jaskier wonders, just a teensy bit, if Geralt's glove wearing excuse isn't a little... weak.
Always needing his full grip strength?
It's a lighthearted solstice evening where he's helping Geralt in the bath when the witcher turns his head to the side, immediately stands up and storms over to the next room (nearly cock out and everything if Jaskier hadn't thought to throw the bath sheet at him) and throws an unwanted suitor off the serving girl.
There's suds dripping out of Geralt's hair all over the floor that he knows he'll wipe up later with the very gloves he's wearing now and Jaskier thinks he is maybe falling in love, for real this time.
.
A handful of times, he catches the bard cooing over marks in taverns. He wonders if it's a bit- some flirtation over how a lass or lad with such lovely signs could possibly take up with a scoundrel like him.
It's not the most rakish bit he could suspect of the bard- though he notices the bard never takes off his gloves in return. He wears them even in the cities and hamlets where the custom is less common or replaced with simple patches of dyed skin.
It makes him seem damn right virginal to keep them on all the time.
Perhaps the bard's mark is something obscene- it's not unheard of. If that were true though, he suspects the bard would leverage it into some pickup line about his prowess in bed.
Perhaps the bard has no marks- a person blessedly free of obligation or destiny.
He thinks it would be a kinder fate for Jaskier to be free of those kinds of concerns.
.
Jaskier knows his fastidiousness with wearing gloves is a little unusual for the current fashion but he commits to the bit.
He thinks it's more romantic to have them revealed and thinks his are especially gorgeous; a simple sun on his right hand and a moon on his left, a small comet arcing over each and a few lines he thinks are wind or perhaps clouds. He's seen more ornate or filigreed marks- even the occasional mark with a splash of color- but his marks are so curiously endearing.
When he links his bare hands together he sees a miniature of the universe and hopes that one day, he may hold his soulmate's marks against his own and feel the world between their hands.
He'll admit he's kept the privilege of the reveal to himself; but he'll be a little selfish if it means he can know to watch their delight when he reveals a world in his hands- a world to share.
He's not sure where his soulmate will fit in this life he's made in Oxenfurt and on the Path, but he never could have predicted the love that's already sprung up in his life already.
.
It's a very late night, or a very very early morning, when Geralt asks Yennefer about her marks- the marks erased when she became a mage.
"Never had one," she says, teasingly tracing the edge of his gloves, "I never needed fate to find love."
In the dark, between a sigh and a moan, his gloves are cast away.
When the sun has properly risen and midday creeps closer, she holds hands between her own.
"Rather provincial, aren't they?" She brings the tender pale flesh of his palm to her mouth and bites playfully, "I'd expect nothing less of a Rivian."
"Not quite a Rivian," he says and gently wriggles his fingers against her jaw, smiling as she can't help laugh and let the marks out of her teeth, "are they to your liking?"
Her answer comes as a carafe of apple juice.
.
It's a hard day: starting with Geralt stumbling through a portal smelling of lilac and gooseberries and ending with Jaskier dragging a nearly-drowned Geralt out of a waterhag's shack.
Two baths were called- a rare luxury in a rickety town- for Jaskier knew a shared bath would end up with at least one of them more disgusting at the end. Geralt is, Melitele be praised, uninjured besides a black eye that blooms stark against the lingering potion-pale pallor he'd had earlier.
The two strip and Jaskier climbs into his bath: Geralt casts a look at the door and cocks his head and throws his pus-soaked gloves straight into the chamberpot.
They soak, side by side, and chatter tiredly and Jaskier thinks nothing of it when Geralt offers to perk up his water and he sees the moon and comet and dappled lines on Geralt's right hand as he casts Igni into the bath.
The smell of lilac and gooseberries and fucking are starting to sweat out of Geralt's hair and the memories of the wedding feast cut through him, unbidden, and Jaskier should have won another master's degree in performance for the way he blames the jump in his heart on the scalding water.
The curling misery he later blames on the thought of ridding the swamp stench from his boots.
.
Jaskier learns to knit gloves sometime around when Geralt forces himself to admit the bard is past boyhood. It's a rather domestic skill for Jaskier to learn in adulthood, though he claims they're easier to make and repair on the Path: which isn't a lie exactly and the bard does earn them a few coins fiddling with the needles in town and selling the gloves.
The knitted gloves seem to be his preference now- less prone to tearing as they wear and able to go longer without laundering. It's the threads of anxiety beneath it that give Geralt pause, he's been presuming Jaskier was unmarked entirely and wore the gloves for attention, but the longer he guards the little span of flesh the more Geralt thinks a tragedy must lie beneath the scraps of fabric.
Perhaps the person he shared his marks with had rejected him- though Geralt thought that unlikely given how firmly Jaskier had attached himself to Geralt's side despite him trying to outrun the bard for a year. Whoever shared his marks didn't stand a chance against Jaskier's persistence. Against his smile.
Perhaps the person he shared his marks with was already dead. Geralt didn't believe in the machinations of destiny or soulmarks, but that too twisted at him. Jaskier was a scoundrel, yes, but didn't deserve that so early in life. At the very least, it would explain why the bard wasn't concerned to muck with his fate by sharing his time with a witcher.
At the very least, he counts their time together as a blessing now, even if it's stolen from another.
.
Jaskier thinks it's finally time to come clean about his marks- their marks really. Not all marks are about just two people, he knows that, and Yennefer isn't the worst person to share a life with.
Honestly, he already does- Geralt's adverse to destiny but Yennefer would be sensible working out some kind of custody schedule if they didn't want to invite him in. He shares his life with Geralt, which is more than many soulmates get. He's not even sure he wants more of their lives shared, but the longer he keeps the marks hidden- the more the omission feels like a lie.
The more he knows he's lying to Geralt.
He figures it's an even shot Geralt that he'll never see him again or he'll be invited to winter at the Kaer.
It turns out he didn't even need the marks to drive Geralt away, being himself was enough.
"See you around Geralt."
.
A week after the dust settles and the Deathless Mother has been banished from their plane, Geralt notices Jaskier's gloves stretch from wrist to fingertip and when Jaskier is pulled into what is rapidly becoming Yennefer's lab, he can hear a sympathetic pained groan from Yennefer as Jaskier's fingers are rebroken.
.
Geralt knocked against the open door of Jaskier's room: Jaskier kicked another log into the fire-
Geralt should have thought of that.
"Come in," Jaskier said and settled back into the chair before his diary. Geralt saw a page with very few words and many drops of ink smeared across it.
Geralt took the poker and rearranged the wood of the fire to burn more evenly, "Yenn says you haven't been caring for your burns," he coaxed the fire into a more even burn and pressed it further back into the hearth.
There was a long silence, "I can't open the jar," Jaskier admitted.
"You know anyone here would help you, Jask-" he dragged a hand through his hair, had he really fucked it up that badly?
Jaskier's silence said what it needed to.
"I'm sorry I didn't make that clear, Jaskier," he said and saw Jaskier's gaze drop lower, to the page in front of him, "may I help you now?"
"I would like it if you opened the jar," Jaskier said, "I don't want to trouble you any further. And thank you for the fire-"
"It's not trouble, I should-" Geralt huffed a sigh, "I should have thought of it sooner. Thought of you sooner- please, let me help you."
Geralt could have heard a pin drop on the opposite side of Kaer Morhen as he waited for Jaskier to say something- anything.
He opened the jar of ointment and held on to it, even when Jaskier put a trembling hand out to grasp it, waiting for Jaskier to permit him to tend to the burns. Jaskier gave him a worn look.
Jaskier carefully took his gloves off- his fingers still wracked with the persistent tremors that made the single button at the wrists take an achingly long time to unfasten.
"The draughts help," Jaskier said softly, "but they will take time to subside."
They do not speak of the lute calluses that have started to thin and peel off entirely.
The gloves came off Jaskier's hand- revealing two palms and thumbs soiled by burns. There, amongst the gnarled scars, laid the burst remains of a sun and a moon.
Metz's treatise on the formation of the celestial spheres says the bursting of a sun creates a black hole: swallowing whole planets into its gravitational pull.
Geralt thought, perhaps, he should have considered his own marks when he wondered of Jaskier's for how often their hands touched.
"Don't-" Jaskier started, he took a deep breath and looked at the marks and not at Geralt, "please just the ointment, Geralt," he held out a hand again to take the pot from Geralt.
Geralt took the little pot of ointment, preciously carried in his saddlebags from Cidaris to Gulet to Kaer Morhen, and tugged off his own gloves as well. He carefully scooped out some of the ointment, the smell of dusk campion faint and familiar, and he warmed it between his palms.
He gently dragged his palms over Jaskier's before nimbly working the oil and medicine into his skin, taking care to rub into the creases between his fingers and the bumps of his remaining cuticles.
Yennefer says the draughts will help the nerves return and the ointment will smooth the burns.
Geralt was careful to be methodical and detached as he covered the marks with beeswax and the scent of campion. He cannot help but imagine the pain that forced Jaskier's sun and moon to bubble and split so wide; the layered burns that distort the comets into slashes of lightning.
He cannot help but wonder why Jaskier didn't leave him to rot.
He cannot help but wonder why soul marks are counted as a blessing when his sun and moon remain clear and smooth while Jaskier's have ruptured into glowing black holes. He must not be an expert, there must be a gap in his knowledge, for he'd once counted Jaskier's dismissal as a blessing.
"Easy there, Geralt," Jaskier said kindly, "there's no reason for all that."
Of course Jaskier could interpret the bite of Geralt's lip and the furrowing of his brow.
Geralt held Jaskier's hands between his own, their suns and moons nearly meeting where the burns didn't warp them, "I'd given up on seeing this," Jaskier said fondly, "our own little world in our hands." He traced Geralt's comet down to the bowl of the moon, "Thank you Geralt, you did a very good job."
"I'm sorry," Geralt managed, "I didn't know."
"I didn't really want you to, would you have received it well?" Jaskier said pointedly, then his voice softened, "it was bad enough I wormed my way beside you- this- Geralt,” he gently squeezed their hands, “This is more than I dreamed of.”
"You should want more," Geralt said, "You should ask for more. I'm sorry-"
"I've said the same of you," Jaskier laughed softly, a rare sound of late, "I've said the same of you many times. Perhaps we can work on this together."
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Hiyaaa, have you seen the Banished with Myanna? There is a scene in the first episodes where she gets badly whipped and an idea popped in my mind, what if in the 2nd season of the Witcher the Brotherhood decided that Yennefer's punishment for using the fire magic should be 10 hits? Buttt! Tissaia makes a deal with Stragebor not to get Yen involved so Tissaia would get punished for her? And later Yennefer finds Tissaia lying on her bed with her back bleeding, Yen is in shock and is quickly is there to patch and heal Tissaia and after she stays with her. However Tissaia feels really weak and wants to Yen to leave because of her state but Yennefer refuses and they argue and it slips from Tissaia's mouth that she loves Yen so much that she'll bleed for her? And finally Yennefer realizes that those hits where meant for her and she can't hold the sob and starts crying. Finally fluff and them holding each other together... Is there any chance you can write this one shot please🙏🏻
Hi!! :) I wasn't planning on doing requests, but I actually liked your idea. I've never seen the movie Banished, but I'm curious; I'd probably skip the whipping scene as I cannot bear to watch her hurt/suffer. That's why the ending of The Witcher season 3 never happened; I mean, whoever says it did, saw the wrong ending! 😂
I truly hope you love this little one-shot. Thank you for considering and asking me to write it. It's absolutely heart-warming, and I appreciate it immensely. ❤️
“Yennefer of Vengerberg must be reprimanded for using fire magic,” Stregobor yells without hesitation. All the other members of the brotherhood turn to him with questioning stares; however, Tissaia, her eyes burning with utmost rage as she glared at the man.
“So you mean to reprimand her, even though she saved us?” Tissaia huffs in disbelief. The stares and glares she's receiving from her fellow chapter members are the exact opposite of what she had hoped she'd receive. "She saved us―” she calls out desperately.
“She is to be treated as any who do not abide by the rules; fire magic is prohibited.”
“What do you suppose we do, Stregobor,” Vilgevortz asks, and Tissaia’s eyes dart at him. Were they really considering this?
“I believe ten hits with a whip should be―”
“You must be joking!” Tissaia scoffs, “We are resorting to corporal punishment now? Yennefer of Vengerberg bought us some time against Nilfgaard, and you wish to whip her? Is this something you derive pleasure from? Seeing a woman bent over for you?” Her mocking words cause Stregobor's face to turn bright red with fury.
“All in favor, say aye.” Except for Tissaia, Vilgevortz, and Artorius, the other brotherhood members all said “Aye!” in unison. Tissaia was shocked while looking around the room,
“Whip me!” She exclaimed without a second thought,
“Excuse me?” Stregobor inquires, raising an eyebrow and tilting his head slightly to the side.
“You heard me; I said whip me. Not her.”
“It never ceases to amaze me how far you will go for your pet, Tissaia. I have no objections; you will follow me and suffer her punishment.”
****
Stregobor seemed to revel in the fact that Tissaia's back was covered in lacerations, yet she refused to show him any sign of distress. No amount of pain or suffering could cause her to cry, scream, or allow a single tear to drop. She refused to give this perverted, degenerate of a man satisfaction of seeing her breaking down.
Each strike was delivered with exact precision, as if he had wanted to hit the same exact spot twice, intensifying the pain for the older woman. Her breaths were short and shallow; at least he was at seven hits with only three more to go. Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead, and she kept her eyes tightly shut, jaw clenched.
Gripping the desk tightly, her knuckles turned white; all she could think about was Yennefer. How much she loved her and how she would do anything to keep her safe from any type of harm. She could feel the droplets of blood running down her back as Stegobor's whip hit her one last time.
As he moved to stand beside Tissaia, the man placed the whip down on the desk in front of her. His eyes swept across her face, “I hope she’s worth it.”
****
"Tissaia?" Yennefer rapped on the Rectoress's door, her curiosity getting the better of her. Not having seen the older woman at dinner, she felt obligated to check in with the woman. "Are you there, Tissaia?"
'Where in the world are you?' Yennefer muttered angrily to herself, pounding her fist against the door. When still no answer came, the raven-haired sorceress flicked her wrist, and the door unlocked.
When her hand met the door nob, she turned it slightly to the right, and the door screeched as she pushed it opened slightly, causing the sorceress to wince. She peered through the small opening, and Yennefer surveyed the older woman's quarters before stepping inside. "Tissaia?" she called out, her voice echoing through the room.
“Yennefer…” Tissaia's voice was faint as she spoke her name, and Yennefer instantly shifted her gaze to the bed. Tissaia was lying face down with her back completely exposed, bloody, and mangled from the wounds.
The raven-haired sorceress rushed to the woman’s side, her heart pounding against her chest. What in the gods had happened? “Tissaia?” she called, her voice shaking. Her hands trembled; however, they immediately hovered above the older woman's wounds in order to heal them. She'd never been an expert in healing spells, but it didn't matter; all that mattered was getting Tissaia's lacerations healed. The last thing the older woman needed was an infection.
The gashes healed after several minutes, and Tissaia turned to her side. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Tissaia, what happened? Who did this to you?” The older woman struggled to keep her eyes open, and when Yennefer moved herself onto the bed beside her, Tissaia objected immediately. “I am not a child, Yennefer; I don’t need to be coddled,” The older woman snaps. Feeling humiliated to have been so exposed in such a degrading way to the raven-haired sorceress. “Thank you for healing me, but you can go―”
“Like hell, I’m leaving. Tell me who did this to you!” Yennefer declared firmly,
“Why, why do you care, Yennefer? You’ll be leaving soon anyways, off to find your lover, the Witcher,” Tissaia spat out her words like venom as they left her mouth, and Yennefer couldn't help but flinch.
“Why are you upset at me?” The sorceress asks calmly, “I only wish to know who did this to you and why,”
“I do not wish to tell you, Yennefer, now please, just go!”
“No!” Yennefer shouts, and this time, it’s Tissaia’s turn to flinch, “You say you’re not a child, so stop acting like one―”
“Stregobor! Stregobor is to blame for this! Because I would rather suffer a thousand harsh beatings until there's no more skin left on my back and bleed out than let anything happen to you.”
“What?” Yennefer’s eyes water as they dart between Tissaia’s
Tissaia whispers in a low voice, full of emotion, as tears slide down her face. "I would do anything for you,"
“Move,” Yennefer says, and Tissaia doesn't have the energy to fight. When she did, Yennefer moved under the blankets, and Tissaia complied when motioned for her to come closer. She nestled her face comfortably, lying gently on Yennefer's chest.
“He whipped you?”
“Yes,”
“And this was meant for me?”
“Yennefer,” Tissaia sighs,
“Was it?”
“Yes,” Was all the woman said. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough of an answer, and Yennefer slightly shifts in order to look down at the older woman. When Tissaia exhales an exasperated breath, she moves into a sitting position beside Yennefer. “He called a meeting, saying you needed to be punished for using fire magic. When the vote came, all except for three voted in agreement, and you were to be whipped ten times.” Yennefer’s eyes widen. “I took your place―”
“Why?”
“Because, as I said, I would rather suffer a thousand―”
“Tissaia, why?” The raven-haired sorceress demands.
“Because I love you.” She whispered, “I always have, I know you don’t feel the same, and I’ve accepted that―”
The next thing Tissaia felt were Yennefer's lips against her own, and Tissaia was unable to stop; she returned the kiss with an intense passion, and when Yennefer's tongue slid across Tissaia's lower lip, demanding entrance, Tissaia immediately obliged. The raven-haired sorceress didn't waste any time teasing her; she slipped the tip of her tongue inside Tissaia's awaiting mouth. As if in reply, Tissaia allowed Yennefer deeper access to explore further inside what very soon turned into an even more passionate kiss, both women gasping for breath.
Yennefer's tongue caressed Tissaia's hungrily, eliciting soft moans of pleasure from the older woman. But suddenly, Tissaia pulled back and shook her head, “Stop, wait,” Yennefer immediately ceased her movements and stared at Tissaia with concern. "I cannot continue this― I won't let myself be hurt by your leaving again; I will not!"
“Tissaia, all I ever wanted was you; you’re everything to me.” The raven-haired sorceress said before wrapping her arms around Tissaia in a tight embrace. “I’m not going anywhere.” She finally whispered as they both laid back down. Yennefer held Tissaia in her arms for a long while, offering her the love and affection they had each so desperately yearned for.
#tissaia x yennefer#tissaia de vries#the witcher#the witcher netflix#the witcher tissaia#yennaia fanfic#yennefer of vengerberg#one shot fanfiction
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This is something of a plot bunny I came up with… don’t have a name for it either. Just a sort of prologue. This part takes place a couple hundred years before the Witcher season 1. Cannon is an unholy fusion of all three plus whatever my brain comes up with. Will be Geraskier.
Part 2 Part 3 Part 4
Two mages and two Witchers sat in one of the mage’s work rooms in the depths of Kaer Morhen looking utterly board.
“So why exactly can’t you do the trail of the grasses on the initiates yet?” Rennes, grandmaster of the school of the wolf, asked the mages.
“Alfred is late,” Dagobert the senior mage answered.
Barmin, Rennes’ second, snorted. “Alfred Pankratz has probably just drank too much faerie wine and got stuck in yet another orgy. How that sorcerer gets himself caught up in these things I don’t know but he does too much thinking with his cock. Remember last year? He stumbled in all rumpled, covered in scratches and bite marks, then bragged about how he had a tryst with the Queen of the Seelie Spring Court. Can you not start without him?”
“If only,” the other mage, Reidrich, grumbled, “We need an ingredient only the fae can give us, and has to be given willingly. It’s the most vital component of the formula. Alfred went to fetch it from them. They don’t like Dagobert because he used to dabble in monster production, and I can’t go without risking a diplomatic incident because King Eredin of the Unseelie Night Court took grave offence that I beat him in a game of gwent of all things.”
“That’s all?” Rennes was astonished.
“He insinuated that I cheated because I won a rather valuable magical object,” Reidrich complained.
“Did you?” Barmin asked with a raised eyebrow.
“For once in my life actually I didn’t… which is probably the only reason I got out of there with my life and without the wild hunt on my tail. Anyway that leaves only Alfred without having to get one of the other schools involved. He’s late.”
As if summoned by mentioning him the lab door opened and in walked a tall wiry man with auburn hair and cornflower blue eyes, wearing loose clothes, a backpack on his back and in holding a small bundle. He looked rather frantic. “Sorry I’m late, something unexpected came up that held me back.”
“Alfred, thank the gods. You have what we need?” Dagobert asked.
“Yes, yes, that’s not the problem—“ Alfred started only for the bundle in his to start crying. “Oh come on kid. I managed to feed you, you don’t need changed, please don’t start crying again.”
“Why do you have a baby?” Rennes demanded, moving closer, catching a whiff, “A fae baby at that.”
“Remember how last year I said I had a tryst with the Spring Seelie Queen… well apparently the contraceptives didn’t work…”
“Wait… are you serious? The fae aren’t pulling a joke on you?” Reidrich inquired while moving closer to take a look.
“Yes I’m serious!” Alfred snapped back out of exasperation, “Changelings are just a myth humans made up to explain the tragic deaths of infants. A Fae child takes around two hundred years to reach the age of majority. Even the most blind human would notice if it took around eleven years for a baby to have just a year’s worth of growth.”
Alfred rocked the baby to try and quiet him as he paced frantically. “What am I going to do with a baby that will be an actual baby for a couple decades!”
“Ok we established the baby is yours. You still didn’t answer why you have them,” Barmin cajoled.
“The Queen’s consort was rather offended. Not that the child wasn’t theirs oddly enough. Although Fae do pair off with someone for many years, apparently they still don’t do strict monogamy. Not in their nature. No they where offended the baby was half human and a potential heir to the throne. Not that it’s that likely, they are the Queen’s third child and her oldest daughter who is next in line has two children herself and another on the way. Anyway although harming a child is a grave offence to the fae she was worried her consort might harm them. So now sudden and unexpected parenthood for me.”
“Well your mother has been going at you about producing an heir for a while now. At least you can now tell her you have the next Viscount de Lethenhove. She might not even mind they’re half fae. She is getting on in years after all,” Reidrich joked and clapped his friend on the shoulder.
Alfred looked even more panicked all of a sudden. “What am I going to tell mother?”
“You’ll work something out. So boy or girl?” Rennes asked.
“Undecided,” Alfred replied and got odd looks from the two Witchers.
“What? I’m sure it has to say it in one of those bestiaries somewhere. The spring court are shapeshifters as well as gender fluid. They quite literally change their sex organs from male to female all the time as children until they settle on their gender expression… some never do and change back and forth at a whim their entire lives. They can also change into one animal form instinctively but can learn how to change into others as they get older.”
“By all that howling I think that little one is going to be a wolf,” Barmin joked, “Here let me take them. Babies are very good at picking up emotions. You’re a nervous wreck it’s just going to make things worse.”
“What’s their name?” Dagobert asked this time as Alfred handed the baby over to the Witcher with some relief.
“They didn’t really have one yet. The fae wait a while before naming their children, get to know them. I’m not sure what to name them. They’re gonna be powerful magically, just feel the raw chaos. They’re a source.”
“Right now the babe sounds like they’re gonna be a bard. Not one of those flashy troubadours either that just sing, dance, and play instruments. No a true bard that can weave magic with their voice and into their songs and music,” Barmin commented. He’d got the baby to quieten down some but was still crying, just not as loudly. “Certainly got the lungs for it.”
“I should give them a male name. If my mother thinks it’s a boy it will make my life a lot easier,” Albert said thinking out loud. “Julian. It was my great grandfather’s name, my mother’s favourite grandparent, who also raised her. It also means youthful, to see the world through a child’s eyes. Appropriate given how long they will be a child compared to a human lifespan. Julian Alfred Pankratz. We can call them Jules, that’s gender neutral.”
“Well Jules, welcome to Kaer Morhen. You’re a damn site more lucky than most boys who come through here because I assume no one is going to put you through the trails,” Barmin said to the baby in his arms.
“I’d kill Dagobert or Reidrich before I let them experiment on my child by putting them through the grasses,” Alfred stated. He was the youngest of the mages at only sixty years old, but no one doubted he would follow through on his promise. “Besides. That boy isn’t just fae, he’s Hen Ichaer, elder blood, just like his mother and the rest of the fae royal families. He was tested before I left. He’ll grow up to have the strength, speed, hearing, vision, and the rest of any Witcher. We really need to get making the potions we need. We’re running late. What are we going to do with a baby in the middle of it?” Alfred asked, remembering why they’re there.
“Oh that’s easy. We got a young upstart we had to take off the path for a while because of an incident people are blaming him for. Not his fault really, it’s just the optics. Best keeping him here for a while until people forget. He doesn’t like kids much, so we made him a fencing instructor a week ago,” Rennes said with a smirk.
“Oh… the kid is gonna just love this,” Barmin agreed with a laugh. “Don’t worry we have the perfect nanny in mind. We should leave you to it and go find Vesemir.”
@xxx|}::::::::::::::::::::>
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The Witcher Headcanon - Trouble Bonus Scene: Interlude 3
Jaskier toddled between the tables, sampling the dropped crumbs (that were probably from the previous night's dinner), and trying to decide if he should try the yellowed, waxy crumble with fuzzy green stuff on it, or the brown, crispy oblong thing with the two long 'hairs' on one end.
"Hey, what are you trying to eat now--! Lambert began before screaming "Oh MeLiTeLe hE'S gOt a cOCkrOach!" , and the Hall erupted in chaos.
Wolves jumped up from their benches and dove for the baby. Jaskier toddled as fast as his unsteady baby legs could carry him.
It presented a comical scene: a bevy of grown a** Witchers looking like a team of very incompetent linebackers trying to tackle a very small quarterback without actually tackling him.
Witchers were running into each other, tripping over benches, and falling over their own feet as Jaskier scurried away at a bumbling run, brittle prize clutched in one tiny fist.
They didn't know how he was getting away. He always seemed to be where they weren't.
The Witchers ened up in a groaning pile on the floor, lying in the shame of having been out-maneuvered by a tiny human being that could barely walk.
Jaskier plopped down on the floor just out of reach of the Witchers. There was a collective, desperate cry of "NoOoOoOOOOO!" as Jaskier went to stuff the dessicated cockroach into his mouth.
He let out a confused sound as he abruptly ascended, scooped up by Yennefer's hands. He cooed in disappointment as he dropped the crispy oblong, and outright squalled when Yennefer wrested the waxy chunk of yellow and green out of his other hand.
"Don't eat that, you nasty little savage!" Yennefer said.
Jaskier sniffled and babbled "Ma-ma-ma!"
"Don't try to sweet talk me!"
Jaskier's bottom lip trembled, and his blue eyes looked very sad.
"And don't look at me like that either!"
Jaskier: *sad face intensifies*
Yennefer wavered just a tiny bit, but managed to resist the unreasonable urge to give him back the cockroach. Her voice turned soft and sweet.
"I'm sorry, my poor lamb, but you can't have that yucky old bug!"
Jaskier voiced his displeasure with his loudest, angriest howl.
Yennefer offered him some custard, but he refused. She tried offering him his little wooden spoon, but it ended up on the floor. She tried giving him the various toys the Wolves had made for him, but he only screamed and cried louder.
He found himself being bounced slightly, and patted softly and rythmically on his back.
"I know, I know!" Yennefer said sympathetically, "Shhh, shhh, shhh, sweetling!"
Jaskier found himself yawning when he paused to draw breath for another dramatic wail.
"Such a big yawn!" Yennefer murmured to him, swaying slowly from side to side.
Jaskier rubbed at his eyes and continued to cry, determined to let everyone know they had crossed him, and there were going to be consequences for their transgressions!
Let me sing you the song of my people!
His song petered out from a howling storm, to a light drizzle of whining with his next yawn. And seconds later, inspite of his best efforts, Jaskier fell asleep on Yennefer's shoulder.
Jaskier was carried off to Geralt's room and tucked into a makeshift nest of pillows and furs on the side of the bed that was touching the wall. He was dead to the world, looking sweet and angelic, and not at all like he had just been ugly screaming over a dead roach and a moldy crumb of cheese.
Yennefer looked at Geralt, a suggestion in her eyes. It was early. The baby was sleeping...they had time! Geralt nodded, Yennefer quickly extinguished the candle, they dove under the covers...and went the f**k to sleep.
Jaskier woke them up promptly at sunrise. He was very soggy and uncomfortable, so he remedied the issue by tumbling out of his nest and crawling up on top of Yennefer.
He plopped his wet bottom down and waited as the wetness soaked into the furs.
Yennefer woke up with surprised "eEeWwWw!" when the wetness made it through.
Geralt chuckled when Yennefer lifted Jaskier off her, and the baby kicked his legs, the diaper fell off and landed in her lap with a wet splat.
Well, that was better! The awful wet cloth was gone! But now he was cold...
Jaskier fussed and whined "Ma!", then proceeded to p*ss on her. Geralt laughed out loud at the look of utter shock on Yennefer's face, and the way she froze as she managed to ignore her body's reflexive desire to yeet Jaskier.
"The audacity! That was personal!" she said accusingly to the baby, setting him on a dry spot on the furs so she could spell the bed dry.
"Shut up!" she snapped at Geralt, who was now snorting into his hands to try to laugh quietly. She hurled the sodden diaper at him, and frowned when he twisted out of the way. F***ing Witcher reflexes!
Jaskier laid there, squirming around and being as uncooperative as possible while Yennefer struggled to put a fresh diaper on him. He fussed and rolled and tried to crawl away, screaming angrily at the indignity when he was dragged back and turned over.
He screeched and screamed and wailed and fought until Geralt jumped in, and between the two of them, they wrestled him into the diaper and then into his clothes.
"Oh, what a face!" Yennefer laughed softly, cuddling Jaskier and kissing his pudgy cheek as he pouted and sucked his thumb. She brushed his hair out of his eyes and pulled her cloak over him as she walked out into the chilly hallway, "Sorry, my love, but you are not going to free-ball it. I dont think Vesemir would appreciate stepping in your piles and puddles."
Jaskier ate most of a bowl of honey sweetened grits, then gleefully flung the rest of it across the table at Lambert and Eskel, and smeared it around on the table in front of him. Eskel got him a little cup of goat's milk and held it for him so he could taste it.
Jaskier decided he liked it, and sucked at the edge of the cup.
"He likes it!" Eskel exclaimed happily, carefully tipping the cup incrimentally.
"Look at him go!" Aiden said.
"Hmm!"
Jaskier eagerly sucked at the milk and the Witchers started pounding lightly on the table and chanting "Chug! Chug! Chug!" until he'd drained the cup. Eskel 'slammed' the cup down on the table when he'd finished, and Geralt scooped him up and paraded him around the table as his brothers cheered.
Geralt noticed that Jaskier's little hands were cold and he was shivering a bit. The Witcher had hmm'ed thoughtfully. It was a little chilly in the Hall still, even with the fire burning. It would be a few hours more until the fire could chase out the cold.
Geralt and his brothers made a trip down to the hotsprings to get Jaskier warmed up. They lounged in the water, sitting in one of the pools that was shallower and not as hot, taking turns holding the baby.
Jaskier splashed and chirped "Ba-bol!", remembering the big soap bubbles the Wolves had blown for him before.
"You want bubbles? I'll give you bubbles!" Lambert said mischeivously. He leaned to the side and a series of bubbles churned up from under the water.
"That's f***ing nasty!" Aiden said, but ended up laughing anyway because farts were funny.
There was a brief contest to see who could make the best bubbles.
Jaskier made a little growly sound from Eskel's lap, and the Witcher looked down at him, "What's wrong, little--SH*T! He sh*t in the water!" he screamed as the brown chunky cloud quickly expanded. There was a chorus of panicked screams and swears, and the water churned and roiled as the Witchers thrashed, flinging themselves out of the water.
Coen took Jaskier to sit in front of the fireplace in the Hall while his brothers cleaned out the contaminated pool. He swore he'd only looked away for a second to get his ale off the table, and Jaskier had said to himself Let's play a game!
Coen burst into the hotsprings, yelling "Songbird's gone! I looked away for a second, and he was just gone!"
"You lost Baby Bird?!"
"F**k!"
"We're dead! We're dead! The witch is going to kill us!"
"Everyone calm down!" Geralt barked. "We're going to find him. Everyone spread out. You know what to do."
Yennefer was walking out of the kitchen, into the Great Hall, when she saw Geralt and his brothers on their hands and knees, crawling around on the floor in the hallway, sniffing the stones.
As she watched, the Wolves crawled into the Hall, spreading out and continuing to smell the floor. She leaned against the doorframe, took a bite of her sandwich, and just watched the odd sight. They were actually sniffing the d*mn floor like hunting hounds!
They looked so abusurd: Big, hulking men crawling around with their a**es in the air -- not that Yennefer was going to complain about the view -- everywhere she looked, she saw a dummy thicc a** slowly waving in the air.
"Hey! Hey! This way!" Geralt practically barked, and nose to the ground, started crawling quickly, following the scent trail. The other Witchers crawled after him, snuffling along behind him, and followed him as he led them at fast crawl, right up to a familiar pair of boots...
"What the h*ll are you f**kwits doing?"
The Witchers looked up to see Yennefer glaring down at them from the kitchen doorway.
As one man, they cringed back, hunching closer to the ground.
"Er...we, uh, we're looking for...uh..." Lambert began.
"We lost the baby!" Eskel blurted, unable to take the crushing guilt.
"You mean this baby?" Yennefer said cooly, turning so they could see Jaskier snuggled securely against her back in a makeshift sling. As if on cue, he cooed.
"Er, yeah, that's the one!" Lambert said.
"Don't be a smarta**!" she snapped. "I went to the kitchen to get something to eat, and he was sitting under the tables trying to eat rat turds!"
Four Witcher heads turned to look at Coen. The bald Witcher shrank under the scrutiny. "I-I-I...I looked for him!" Coen stammered, "I didn't see him anywhere, I swear! He was gone!"
The Witchers, still kneeling on the floor, drew closer together and made no move to get up in the off chance that a show of subjugation would appease the witch. It was worth a try.
Yennefer sighed. She couldn't really be upset. Even as an adult, Jaskier had a knack for just disappearing and getting into trouble the second you took your eyes off him. But still, she had an image to uphold.
"You lost your Baby Bard Privilege for the rest of the day," she informed them sternly. "You're going to have to earn it back, and you can start by giving the Great Hall a good scrubbing! This place is a pigstye!"
There was a chorus of muttering, and Lambert grumbled "It's not that dirty-!"
"There's a dead rat under that table, crumbs that are so old they are practically petrified, something brown and sticky under the benches, piles of rat sh*t in the corners, and a f***ing army of cockroaches that swarms the floor every night! It sounds like I'm walking over a bed of dead, crunchy leaves everytime I have to walk across this floor on my way to bed!"
The Witchers shifted uncomfortably and started grumbling and muttering.
"Go on, get!" Yennefer commanded sharply. The Wolves cringed and scuttled out.
"So that's how Witcher's track their prey," Yennefer said to Jaskier, taking him out of the sling to sit him on her lap at the kitchen table. "I'll have to write it down for you in your little notebook so you can make a song about it when we get you back to normal!"
Jaskier babbled as if in agreement.
#the witcher#the witcher headcanon#the witcher netflix#twn#geralt#geralt of rivia#yennefer#yennefer of vengerberg#jaskier#julian alfred pankratz#geraskier#geraskefer#geraskifer#yenskier#yennskier#yennaskier#yenneskier#baby!jaskier#coen#eskel#lambert#aiden#kaer morons#trouble headcanon#interlude headcanon
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Keep My Heart In Your Gold
Pairing: Geraskier
Characters: Jaskier, Geralt of Rivia
Additional tags: friends to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, sad geralt of rivia, supportive jaskier, trust, grief/mourning, renfri's brooch, inspired by season 3 episode 8
Rating: teen and up audiences
Word count: 2,579 words
Chapters: 1/1
Summary: Geralt always carries a brooch around with him. Jaskier wants to know why.
Author's notes: I can't stop thinking about Jaskier knowing what the brooch meant to Geralt, like, the implications of that??? It must have taken a huge amount of trust on Geralt's side to tell Jaskier this and since i'm insane about this whole thing, i decided I wanna write how that conversation went.
Read on Ao3
*
The brooch always seemed out of place for Jaskier. It wasn't exactly the type of accessory that you would imagine a dark, brooding witcher carrying around: pure gold and shiny gemstones, and delicate carvings that almost made the brooch look like it had an eternal smile.
Yet, Geralt always had it with him, strapped to the hilt of his sword. The sight of it was a little comical, here and there, to have something so pretty stick out during an intense fight with a gruesome monster. If the brooch got covered in blood, Geralt would wash it off with such gentle, caring movements, as if it wasn't just a simple object, but something more important.
But Geralt wasn't such a sentimental kind, was he?
Jaskier has been traveling with Geralt for a couple of months when he first brought up the brooch.
"It's pretty," he pointed out one evening as they sat by the fire, the orange glow of the flames reflecting off the gold.
Geralt followed Jaskier's eyes that fixated on the brooch. He let out a quiet grunt and returned to tending to the fire. Jaskier waited for a few moments. When no more reaction came from Geralt, he continued.
"How long have you had this?"
"A while," was all Geralt said. He didn't even look at Jaskier. Usually, Geralt wore a closed-off, strict expression. At first, Jaskier thought it was only reserved for him and his somewhat annoying shenanigans, but he's quickly learnt that it was just simply Geralt's face. There was something else to it now, though, a deeper, darker emotion, like bitterness.
"Was it a gift?" Jaskier pressed further as he scooted closer to Geralt. "I mean, it was, wasn't it? It looks expensive. Almost like it came from someone royalty."
Something flashed in Geralt’s eyes as he looked at him - like a fleeting moment of anguish. Whatever it was, it made Jaskier's chest tighten.
"How do you know that?"
"I hang around royalty a lot, Geralt, I'm a bard," Jaskier reminded him. "I know what kind of jewelry they wear, so..."
It wouldn't make much sense for Geralt, who famously despised royalty, to accept a gift from someone like that, let alone keep it. Whoever gave it to him, they must have been special.
"It's time for you to sleep," Geralt told him, not bothering with a reply to the actual question. Jaskier snorted.
"You're putting me to bed like a child?"
"You are a child," Geralt replied with a small grin. That made Jaskier sputter, but he did take his place on his bedroll all the same.
The brooch was the last thing he saw before he fell asleep.
--
All of Jaskier's attempts at trying to ask about the brooch turned out to be futile. Geralt either completely ignored Jaskier until he gave up, or he changed the subject right away. If Jaskier was a little too pushy, Geralt would even snap at him and tell him to stop being so nosy.
Jaskier wondered why Geralt was so apprehensive about telling him. As the years have gone by, their bond deepened, and the witcher opened up to him more and more. He trusted Jaskier, that much was obvious: he left him alone with Roach without hesitation, told him about Kaer Morhen and the witcher trials, entrusted him with picking out the right potions for him after a fight. He let him give him baths, for Melitele's sake, it was obvious that Geralt knew Jaskier was someone he could rely on.
And yet, he refused to tell him about the brooch, over and over again.
"It's from someone important," Jaskier noted one day. It wasn't a question, and Geralt realized that, too, because he just stared down at his boots, the muscles in his jaw twitching, like he wanted to reply, just didn't know how.
Jaskier waited for him to open up at last, to let him in - to share something so clearly important with him. He looked at Geralt, trying to silently communicate to him that it was alright, that he could always talk to him about whatever heavy burden plagued him about that brooch.
"Just drop it, Jaskier," Geralt said eventually. The sheer pain in his voice was enough for Jaskier to reach out and give his hand a squeeze. He didn't press it any further. Geralt seemed eternally grateful for it as he laced their fingers together.
--
Jaskier stopped asking about the brooch after that. He relied on his vivid imagination instead as he walked up the hill after Geralt, looking at the gold shining on his sword.
Who could have given it to him? Was it a gift, a sign of gratefulness after Geralt has gotten ridden of a monster? Maybe, but he wouldn't have held it so dear, then. This was something deeper.
An old friend? Someone Geralt greatly cared about, someone who cared for him too - someone that Jaskier hoped to be like, one day, if Geralt was ready for it.
Family? His mother? The only thing that was left of her? Another witcher at Kaer Morhen? A token of love?
Love... maybe it was from someone really close to Geralt's heart. Someone who meant the world to him. Where did they go? Did they leave? Did they die? Did looking at their brooch cause Geralt great pain, a reminder of what he has lost, or did it fill him with joy, giving him the strength to move forward?
"I wish you could talk," Jaskier chuckled softly when he cleaned Geralt's sword and faced the brooch. It was already a big step that Geralt let him clean it, he hasn't before. It felt almost as if day by day, Jaskier got closer to Geralt's heart. Maybe one day he would learn the truth behind the brooch, and he would be fully let inside. Until then, he appreciated what he could get.
"I'd love to know your story. I bet it's a great one, isn't it? Good song material."
The sunlight glinted on the surface of the brooch, almost like it answered him. Jaskier laughed at the silly thought.
"Also, I want Geralt to fully trust me, you know?" Jaskier continued as he scrubbed at a nasty stain on the edge of the sword. "And, I don't know. I feel like you mean something to him. And it would mean a lot to me if he shared you with me."
The way the light reflected in one of the gemstones made Jaskier laugh again, because it looked like the brooch winked at him.
--
Jaskier was about to fall asleep when Geralt slipped out of bed. Jaskier didn’t question it; he knew Geralt often had trouble sleeping as his witcher senses kicked in during the night, picking up every single quiet noise and tiny movement. He also knew about the nightmares, the horrific images of having to take lives, and seeing his witcher brothers die haunting his mind. Jaskier didn’t think a big deal of Geralt leaving their bed, so he pulled the blanket up to his chin and closed his eyes again.
A couple of moments after Geralt got up, the bed dipped again. Jaskier cracked one eye open, trying to get used to the darkness in the room. Geralt was only somewhat illuminated by the moonlight, but Jaskier could still tell he was looking right at him.
"You're awake, then," Geralt stated. Jaskier rubbed his eyes as he sat up against the headboard.
"Yeah. What's wrong?"
Geralt looked down. Jaskier noticed he was holding something in his hand, but couldn't tell what it was in the dim light.
"You used to ask about it a lot," Geralt started. His voice was tired, pained. It woke Jaskier fully at once. Geralt didn't even need to tell him what he meant, because Jaskier immediately knew he was talking about the brooch.
"You've stopped."
"Because it's clear you don't want to tell me," Jaskier replied. "And that's okay, Geralt. I don't want to force you."
"I want to tell you," Geralt said. The moonlight glinted off the brooch as he turned it around in his hand. "I want you to know."
Jaskier hugged his knees to his chest. He tried to appear patient, but his heartbeat picked up as he realized that what he has been waiting for years - for Geralt to truly let him in, to share such an important piece of his soul with him - was finally happening.
"This brooch," Geralt said, looking down on the gold in his hand, "belonged to a girl named Renfri. She was a princess who had to leave her home because she was born under a Black Sun. She was prophesied to be dangerous. But she was just... a girl who was hurt. Too many times."
He looked at Jaskier as he continued. "She was a skilled warrior. Very strong and brave. Any man could have envied her strength. She was also witty and smart. I think you would've liked her."
"You think so?"
"Yes. I often wish you two had a chance to meet."
Something about the way he said it made Jaskier's heart flutter inside his chest.
"Renfri was special. In a way, she really was dangerous. When nothing good ever happens to you, when you keep hurting... it's hard not to become the very thing everyone was told you were going to be. But that did not make her a bad person. She had a right to be angry."
He reached out and took Jaskier's hand. Jaskier drew in a sharp breath when Geralt placed the brooch in his palm, laying his own over it until he covered Jaskier's hand with his own. The brooch was cold, but Geralt's skin was warm against his own.
"She was more than her anger," Geralt continued, looking down on their joined hands. "She also had a right to prove she was more than that. But she didn't have enough time."
"You loved her," Jaskier whispered. Geralt nodded.
"I did. And I killed her."
Jaskier only heard his own heartbeat in the dead silence of the room. Geralt sighed deeply.
"It was always going to end that way," he said, "you truly cannot trick destiny. I was told to choose between the lesser of two evils. I had to kill Renfri to stop her from unleashing chaos on the Continent."
Jaskier's throat felt dry and constricted around his words. "I'm sorry, Geralt."
"This is a reminder for me," Geralt continued. He ran his hand over the brooch, then Jaskier's palm. "That I can't escape the past the same way I can't escape the future. Renfri told me that the girl in the woods will always be with me."
"And who's that?"
"I have a hunch. The destiny I was trying to avoid, again. The one you also warned me about not trying to forget."
In the pale moonlight, Geralt's eyes shone bright as he looked into Jaskier's eyes.
"Renfri was the first human I truly let close to me," he told Jaskier, his voice softer than Jaskier has ever heard it before, "and somehow, although you are very different, I see her in you, sometimes. A constant reminder of my own humanity. And..."
He caressed his thumb over Jaskier's palm again, gently. "I trust you, Jaskier. You bring something good out of me. The same way she could have, but destiny stepped in. But with you... I think things are going to be alright."
Jaskier's eyes welled with tears as his heart nearly burst with an emotion so strong, he couldn't resist that eternal pull anymore - the one that made him follow a grumpy witcher at Posada, the one that never let him leave his side, the one that loved Geralt so dearly, always hoping, always longing to be the one Geralt trusted the most. The one Geralt loved as much as he loved that mysterious girl from the past, who left a part of her heart behind in that brooch.
In that moment, it just felt right when he leaned forward and kissed Geralt. Geralt's arm snaked around his waist and pulled him close until he was on his lap. He grabbed onto Jaskier's shirt like an anchor, holding him close almost desperately. Jaskier wiped Geralt's tears off - or were they his own, he didn't know anymore - as he continued kissing him, silently telling him that he would never leave.
"Thank you," Jaskier whispered as he pulled back to rest his forehead against Geralt's. Their hands were still intertwined over the brooch.
--
The soldier wouldn't let them pass, and they couldn't waste any more time. They needed to find Ciri as soon as possible. Jaskier could have screamed in frustration.
"Wait," Geralt said, reaching into his pocket. Jaskier raised an eyebrow at him. They didn't have any more money on them, so they had nothing to offer as a fee.
"What about this?"
Jaskier gasped when he noticed Geralt holding Renfri's brooch.
"No, Geralt," he whispered, "not that."
Geralt sent him a small smile, and touched his lower back fleetingly. A small gesture of comfort, as if he wasn't the one who was about to pay a douchebag Nilfgaardian soldier with one of the most important objects in his possession. Jaskier tried to reason with him one more time, but Geralt handed the brooch over anyways. Seeing that bastard take it made Jaskier's stomach churn, and his heart clench uncomfortably.
He didn't have time to dwell on it while he had to assist Geralt's fight with the soldiers, but it was the first thing he asked him once they got their horses ready for the road.
"Why?"
Geralt sent him a questioning look. "What do you mean why?"
"The brooch," Jaskier sighed, "Geralt, it was important."
Geralt smiled as he gently tucked Jaskier's hair behind his ear. He cupped his cheek soothingly.
"It's time to let go of the past," he said softly, "and focus on the future."
"But... there must have been another way, Geralt! I could have offered him a blowjob, although it wouldn't have been one given willingly."
"I would have chopped his head off before I let him touch you," Geralt scoffed. He smiled again when Jaskier leaned into his touch. "It had to be done. For Ciri, for all of us. It did mean a lot to me. But it's time to let it go - to let Renfri go."
He kissed Jaskier on the lips before he planted another kiss on his forehead. "Come on. Let's find Ciri."
Jaskier nodded with a smile. Geralt's heart worked in mysterious ways, but Jaskier was slowly learning its intricacies. He knew he was right: cherishing the past was important, but staying stuck in it didn't help anyone. He saw the way Geralt smiled at him before he grabbed the reins of his horse: he looked relieved, like a huge weight has just left his shoulders. The same way he trusted Jaskier with the truth all those years ago, now he trusted him to understand his decision. And Jaskier did.
He looked back at the camp one last time, saying goodbye to the brooch and its history in his mind - and to the girl whom, while he did not know, also meant a lot to him, because she was important to Geralt.
And now it was time to take his beloved witcher's hand and face the future, so they could rescue someone who also meant a lot to both of them.
#geraskier#the witcher fanfiction#the witcher fic#my fic#jaskier#geralt of rivia#geraskier fic#geraskier fanfiction#geralt x jaskier
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My MCM London Experience
So my Comic-Con experience certainly had its ups and downs...somehow, I always seem to end up catching a bug like COVID a few weeks before an event I've been looking forward to for months, and then I'm left with a chronic cough and feeling like death even once I stop testing positive. I had so many plans to meet up with friends and catch up over drinks, and I ended up going to bed in my hotel room by 6pm...
But........
There were certainly some highs. Meeting and chatting with @wifeofsyril & @karnpuffs in the queue for the photo ops with Denise on Saturday, talking all things Star Wars, Andor, and Dedra (which frankly I don't get to do enough of, it's criminal)...
Meeting up and getting to play with my old saber training group, Silver Sabres, and spend half the day surrounded by fellow saber nerds...
The utter chaos that was the Witcher 3 panel. It felt a little...strange, like it was vaguely linked to it being ten years since the Witcher 3 came out, but it all felt quite loosely connected to the fact. It was more fun watching Denise slowly lose her mind over having to draw anything 😄 (I felt that, Denise. As a fellow artistically-challenged-person, I felt that. Pictionary is my idea of hell) and the conversations the cast were having about their characters. An interesting snippet from Denise was about her decision to pitch Yennefer a little lower than her natural speaking voice, to project authority and power, and I felt you can hear that in Dedra's voice too.
The lighting wasn't great so this was pretty the only picture I took during the panel which didn't turn weird...
Nearly had a heart attack when they started mentioning fanfiction. Admittedly, it was Witcher fanfiction, not Star Wars or Andor, but now I can't get the image of Denise scrolling the Dedra Meero tag on Ao3 out of my head 🤣🤣. Denise and Doug, the guy she's sat next to who voiced Geralt, and some of the other cast, also spoke about the importance of fandom and the escape it offers as they've been told by fans over the years, which I fully concur with. Fantasy has always been my escape when the world gets a little too much.
And finally, what probably had to be the highlight of the weekend:
I debated about covering my face but I'm posting this on the clock app too since I post cosplay shit over there. You should've seen the way Denise's eyes lit up when I offered her the lightsaber. Don't get me wrong, I love that Andor doesn't rely on the Sith-Jedi-lightsaber stuff at all beyond occasional references to ol' Palpy, but I think it should be written into every Star Wars actor's contract that they get to play with a lightsaber at least once. This is also my Inquisitor Dedra cosplay's debut, got some really great comments walking around MCM, and when I took the photo for Denise to autograph, she basically said she wants a black uniform like mine. Now, to work on my photoshoot skills so next time, you can actually see more than just my cloak, one boot, and one gauntleted arm 🤣😅
#MCM Comic Con#MCM London#Denise Gough#Lieutenant Dedra Meero#Dedra Meero#cosplay#Star Wars#SW#SW: Andor#Andor 2022#post: textpost#post: picset
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I mean no offense to the people who enjoyed "The Witcher" Season 3: Vol 1 on Netflix. No judgement. And also no offense to the cast and crew who I am sure worked hard to bring this to the screen.
I love the Witcher, mostly from the books and some gameplay, so from my own personal perspective...
What in the actual hell did Netflix do?!
There's so much eloquent dialogue in the source material to draw upon and this steaming pile of ****e is what they came up with? It telegraphs so much without a whiff of subtlety or craft— not unlike Sabrina in 3x5— that I want to puke, the only exception being that Yarpen Zigrin is still no nonsense and true to form.
Emhyr, as is evidenced by his cringe, overlong speeches and dull drawl, is not written as cunning or menacing by any stretch of the imagination as he ought to be, and the lack of a strong villain does nothing to drive the pace of the season.
Why are we waxing on about Vissena to try and strum up audience feels? We don't need to revisit that unless it serves a purpose for the characters. It doesn't. If the audience has been watching any of the previous two seasons, we don't need Geralt's childhood memories of his mother to impress upon us that he takes newfound parenthood seriously and would spill blood and make sacrifices for his family.
If that weren't painful enough, Yennefer — who we know is cunning when she schemes— lacks all of her razor edged wit when "groveling" before the Brotherhood to form a conclave. The recycled dialogue with Tissaia about chaos and control has lost its potency, as lukewarm as the mages' council of armchair tapping, and even her speeches to Ciri like "my ugly one" have so much wasted potential because there's a speed run montage about how much Yen and Cirilla care for eachother in episode 1 rather than letting us growing into the emotions ourselves, so that by the time we get to Yennefer disclosing her past, the emotion is lost. Also, Cirilla is supposed to be in a little awe of Yen and her power of influence, which is what makes "ugly one" so endearing, because it's the ends way of saying that Cirilla is powerful but magic isn't all she is / she doesn't need to rely on it like the mages rest on prolonged youth. It's her way of saying I love you, and for all the exposition that season three uses to elaborate feelings, this most essential part is completely lost. It's like we're playing house with emotions that haven't been earned their screen moment. "Lilac and gooseberries, now that I can tolerate," but I cannot abide these trash conversations.
These were the action sequences, the fight choreography, and the monster concept visualization they came up with? Like, for example, a failing mass of conjoined limbs and disembodied heads! The idea of Ciri's doppelganger from the books has been so corrupted.
On top of that, the cuts from scene to scene are so rough it's like whiplash. Chase scene - recycled Geralt /Ciri hug - dark portal nonsense - crash through ceiling. No finesse.
The Belletyn festival, which is so meaningful and beautifully described in the books, was butchered in execution of costume (Yen's is a season 1 throwback but never underwhelming way), with ridiculous "masks" (it irks me so much that Yennefer tells Cirilla had to cover her eyes and hair for a low profile and then we speed cut to the next scene where neither occurs and the costume department decides that they aren't even going to attach Cirilla's mask to her face, she just carries it around in her hand because that makes sense), unnecessary mazes to separate our characters and engineer a sense of peril, the whole lot. They used Belletyn as a setup to engineer a subsequent bait scene, which was an appallingly insult to intelligence and fight choreography. PS: Yen can I do more than throw a knife, can we please utilize her a little better?
Speaking of choreography, Ciri descending from mid air to stab the CGI aeschna in 3x4 with the overlong shot pull of monster blood on her face was so poorly edited I wanted to fast forward the entire episode thereafter.
Lastly, this farce for humor is what they came up with?! They made layered source characters like Dijkstra into single line fodder, and they wasted so much time on sitcom rubbish like Queen Hedwig's Redanian funeral, and Phillipa's bedroom shenanigans, and Fringilla as a drunken poison tester. I want to slap someone. It's as if the whole of season 3 thus far is a live-action adaptation of Ciri and Jaskier's satire of Yen and Geralt. Except that no one left the audience in the joke.
Also, for a series called The Witcher there is surprisingly little in the way of meaningful dialogue and action for Geralt to do, and that's a shame
I'm angry.
Season 1 was fantastic, season 2 was good but with notable divergence to character integrity, and Season 3 so far is the refuse pile of Aedd Gynvael. The only highlight was Ciri telling Valdo Marx to shut up, like I wish I could do for the rest of the dialogue in the series. After "Sherrawedd" I kept thinking to myself, it will get better. Ironically Sherwood was probably the best episode so far because at least it kept the essence of idea in "dear friend" from the literature as a foundation. After which it kept sinking down into chaos.
But more than angry, I'm disappointed. I'm sad that the Yennefer/Jaskier frenemy dynamic ("Hello again witch) —a highlight of season 2— has been shirked; the only decent byproduct of which is the Ciri/Jaskier relationship. And I'm depressed that this is Henry Cavill's sendoff as Geralt.
#Netflix: the Witcher#the witcher season 3#is this a parody?#is it satire or is it the Witcher?#jaskier x yennefer#ciri and geralt#spoilers: the Witcher#henry cavill#geralt of rivia
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@tallfroggie be prepared. list of Thoughts incoming akjfskdjgh
First, I wanna make it clear I don't just draw him in those colors bc I like them, that's what color he actually is! though his jewelry should actually be gold
Can disguise himself as human, does so to do his barding
Has a den in a cave near Toussaint, fills it with jewelry, minerals, coins, and other shiny stuff, sleeps on a big pile of soft furs and pillows
Does not wear clothes when not disguised as human. it's more comfy that way <3
Okay, personal sex demon lore incoming, but horns are a big deal for them. A very personal area. Typically touching each other's horns, letting your horns be touched, is a very intimate thing, typically saved for proposals and married couples. Geralt,,, doesn't know this, and does it because he likes the feel of Jaskier's horns, and Jaskier just allows it, he loves it so much
Loves to steal Geralt's clothes for his sleeping pile and return them when they don't smell like his Witcher anymore (this has the bonus effect of meaning Geralt ends up with clothes covered in Jaskier's scent - wildflowers, honey and cinnamon)
wishes he could have Geralt's shiny medallion for his den
Doesn't need to eat to survive, but does need sex and lust. Jaskier always finds Geralt the most nourishing meal because there's mutual love involved
Likes to wrap his tail around Geralt's waist or arm for either comfort of affection
purrs. definitely purrs.
This is an edit oh my god I can't believe I forgot this, he can change his sex characteristics at will
Uhhhh brains running outta steam will add more if I think of any/answer asks if u guys send em kxjhfkdjg
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*Squid Squidward wide awake meme*
ALRIGHT, hear me out - I've been saying for a while how much Witcher 3 reminds me of the Brazilian countriside (more specific Minas Gerais).
And ever since I had this madlad dream of a Brazilian Witcher except we called them Bruxeiros (the X here is pronounced like "SH" not like the American "X" - its kind of a meme here, kind of a "literal" PT-BR translation, it's complicated), and they fight Brazilian folklore badass stuff like Boitatá (fucking giant fire snake), Iaras (river mermaids) and un-curse women that became Mula Sem Cabeça (literally headless mules running around with fire coming out their necks).
These are all some of our most well-known folklore for real, lol (HIGHLY recommend season 1 of Brazilian Netflix show Invisible City if you wanna see more! It's REALLY good!)
ANYWAY.
I was in my kitchen making toast at midnight, when it occured to me. I had A VisionTM.
Brazilian Witcher battle music would be like.
Floral Fury.
youtube
For those unfamiliar, this specific Cuphead theme is 200% oldschool Brazilian samba - yeah the "weird straw-against-plastic-lid" sound is an actual instrument, it's called cuíca lol
"Nah, but this is too happy and cheerful", you say. Alright, you are correct, maybe it doesn't fit to be a battle theme for the Bruxeiros.
HOW ABOUT
SEPULTURA, THEN
youtube
SEPULTURA, THE BRAZILIAN METAL BAND, who performed this song as soundtrack for the BR movie "Lisbela e o Prisioneiro" (one of my fucking faves btw), and it the theme song for Frederico Evandro, a character who's ruthless hitman ("Matador").
BRO. IMAGINE. The peaceful and colorfully bucolic countryside of Minas Gerais and you are there fighting a Brazilian Werewolf (cause they are different from the European werewolf, we have several types btw), with THAT playing as battle theme.
Another good contender is Break of Reality's rendition of "As Bachianas n5" by Villa-Lobos (guy was a badass proeminend classical music composer who loved to mix in Brazilian folk elements with the classical music sttuff, pissing off a lot of purists in the process lol, good for him)
"As Bachianas n5" is probably Villas' most famous piece, it's originally a GORGEOUS aria, classically sung in Brazilian Portuguese.
SEVERAL people covered this song, including Sandy from sibling duo Sandy & Junior (they were EXTREMELY POPULAR with kids and teens back in the 90s/early 2000s); also people from all around the world covered it. You get it, it's pretty legit and famous AF.
THEN came Break of Reality a few years ago
with THIS badass cover:
youtube
LOOK.
THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE VERSIONS OF THIS SONG. I STAN THIS COVER SO HIGH. I LOVE how it is sweet and emotional, but it brings a totally different, new, raw aspect to it that is so strangely fitting to this song (I can't explain, it just is).
I can easily imagine this in the Bruxeiro!AU as battle music, even more cause a lot of the og Witcher 3 OST is full of slavic folk music that doesn't even reflect the Battling of Monsters thing - "...Steel For Humans" is like, a song sung by girls on wedding/harvest festivals, lol.
ON THAT NOTE, I think we could end this crazy ass post by including some of the folk / afro-Brazilian culture as well, which is only fair, and add this one, which I LOVE, "Caxangá / Escravos de Jó" by Milton Nascimento (my beloved <3) and folk singer Clementina de Jesus:
youtube
Milton is known to sing in high, ethereal vocalizations and extremely emotional lyrics. Guy is just A Fucking Legend fr. If there's a bard in my Bruxeiro!AU it's def Milton, I love his work so so so much! He's also known for mixing up influences from afro-brazilian culture, as you can see in here!
Stay tuned for more posts like this that can happen again at any moment or never again, lol
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While i'm not currently drawing turtles, i'm very hyperfixated on some OCs of mine, kind of a little project i started in the past 2 weeks hehee !
i'm challenging myself to design 8 characters that are adopted siblings in a medieval kind of setting, and make them all look different from one another. They don't have much lore yet, besides of being very loosely based on concepts of The Witcher and other stuff i'm making up along the way.
I have 3 of 8 characters designed and I'd love to share them with everyone !! :)
The first design I did was Garreth's, some part of her like her feet are looking kinda wonky cuz I'm terrible at drawing feet-
I tried to make her look non-op but I don't think I did a great job on that :(
lore stuffs:
Garreth is the 4th child;
She came out as a trans woman to her family very recently and didn't felt a need to change her name;
Besides being a amputee, Garreth also wears a knee brace because of a old injury;
Her arm prosthesis is enchanted to work as a real arm, but Garreth doesn't like wearing it because of it's weight, and refuses to use it while in safe spaces;
She's autistic and very prone to bottling up feelings until exploding, but she's working on her communication skills.
Zaia was the second character I designed and honestly she's my favorite-
I love me a big strong lady <3
lore stuffs:
Zaia is the oldest child.
She's currently the only AFAB person in her family, being mistaken for a boy as a child;
Family only discovered about her biological sex when she was 14 and had her first period, siblings tried to cover it up for her safety;
Zaia's incredibly smart and a big creature nerd and wrote a entire bestiary by herself with details of creatures found on her journeys;
Besides being the physically strongest of the bunch, Zaia prefers to solve problems peacefully;
Has big problems trusting any figures of authority;
Infodumps about her travels to anyone for hours.
And the third design I did is Talô! I actually just finished him hehee !!
He was a tidbit more challenging than the others since I've never draw a albino character before, but I'm pretty happy with the result and hope to get better at drawing him and other albino peeps in the future !!
lore stuffs:
Talô is the youngest child;
He is the only sibling to be currently in a romantic relationship;
He's engaged with his two lovers, whom he loves very much;
He lost his leg in a fight with a werewolf, in which he was infected;
His prosthetic was made by a very cherished friend from the sea and it's currently the only mobility aid he owns;
He fell a little bit out of touch with his siblings in the years following his transformation, afraid that his siblings would hate him for that;
Talô was very close to all of his siblings, so the separation is very painful to him;
He's currently working to gather up courage to tell his siblings about this and about his upcoming marriage.
---------------------------------------------------------
This is currently everything I have about this characters (at least that I remember now lol).
I'm very proud of this designs even tho I can see much room for improvement, and I'm also open to questions about them !! :)
Good night folks !!
#oc#original character#original story#my ocs do not steal#my oc character#proshitters dni#fuck proshitters#anti proshitter#knight oc#oc stuff
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2023 review
Hi beans! I bring you an art dump of all my art made in 2023 because I keep forgetting this website exists. (It's c/pd from my Patreon, that's how bad I am.)
First up is a book cover I made for my sister (Daina Rustin - Demon Hunter, not published), that I actually started a year or two ago, but had the last push/rework in January and called it finished. I’m also adding the sword concepts I made for it, even though they were technically done in 2022, as I haven’t shared them before.
In February, I did some figure and hand studies with some friends on the NFC discord, and thumbnailed a bunch of locations and ideas for Sky Across illustrations. March was the beginning of my character concept art project for the main character of Sky Across - Aurelia.
Started with figure drawings, then outfit variations and explorations for different uses and settings. After that it was colour variations, and the last one is a finished character illustration. I also spent some time doing general research and working on worldbuilding, writing and designing certain elements that will be important for the story later on :>
At the beginning of June, I started working on a “props” section for my portfolio. I made it so far that I made a whole 3D/blender scene with them, and then…. I wasn’t excited about painting them. I kept pushing it around, sort of like pushing food around your plate when you have no appetite. After some time staring at that task in my calendar, I decided I would be better off doing something that ✨ sparked joy ✨ instead.
So, I painted a new Witcher fanart piece. It was done in anticipation of the third season of the show on Netflix…. That I still haven’t finished. Oops.
July and August were a big dud for me, art-wise. I was going through a rough period and I was busy with real-life issues.
September was a big month for me as that was when my ADHD diagnosis was approved and I finally got medicated. I think I did more things (in general) in that first week than I did in the entire July+August. I finally saw the bottom of my dirty laundry basket after 7 years.
Art wise, I did another bunch of thumbs for my Sky Across illustration, I set up the references I needed in Daz3D and Blender, and I got an offer to work on an exciting freelance project so I jumped on the research and thumbnails for that as well. The project is still in progress, and I'm looking forward to sharing it next year!
September was also when I drew Hopper, Nickie’s cat, in pencils. I used to do a lot of traditional art in the past so I didn’t think it would be complicated, despite not having drawn a realistic cat in over a decade…. I always forget how humbling traditional work is.
Nickie visited my hometown and I travelled back home to meet her and see my family <3
I got a cold as soon as I returned and that slowed down my zoomies for a few weeks, some family/personal issues happened, and I had to start branching out before I was ready to - which is how Patreon and Twitch came to be. The rest of September and October were spent on YouTube researching and developing “passive” income ideas.
I won’t be talking about Oct/Nov pieces as I’ve already done that in the previous few posts. In short, art zoomies picked back up in October, I managed to knock out some presents for friends and some fanart pieces, only to be absent for the majority of November again because I had/was recovering from Covid. (I’m still coughing 💀)
Over the course of the year, I did some animal drawings as presents for friends - Joe’s wonderful sassy corgi Dennis that I'm plotting to kidnap (at least for a day, if I ever make it to the UK), Joel’s cat Kissa that looks like someone spilled ink all over, Isla’s cat Skye that has seen all of the horrors of the universe, and I’m cooking something up with my own cat - Azriel.
I started working on another illustration for Sky Across featuring the same character I concepted at the beginning of the year, I'm streaming the process on Twitch when I can, and I started a little banner illustration for socials that I noodle on from time to time.
There were a few bits and bobs that I don’t feel are worth mentioning, and some Blender practice things that aren’t really worth sharing but were great practice.
All in all, this year was mostly marked by a million doctors’ exams, a big focus on exercise/physical therapy, dealing with ~feelings~ about medical issues, and general financial uncertainty. But also more art than I made in a long while, so swings and roundabouts!
I'm really proud that I've managed to handle and organise so many health-related things, and I'm getting better at judging how much I can do and schedule for myself, recognizing when I need to take time off and when I can afford to push things.
I hope to do more original illustrations and concepts next year, and I’m adding traditional art to my calendar for next year as I’ve been itching to experiment more.
I’m very grateful to my family and friends that held me up, I wouldn’t have been able to manage without them <3
Hope you have a successful 2024 and may all your dreams come true!
Until next time,
xo
PS: INPRNT is running an end of year sale, and you can get my art for an extra 20% off with the code: OQKQS6DJ
#dijanadraws#dijana#art#digitalart#digital art#painting#illustration#drawing#fanart#seventeen#s.coups#yoon jeonghan#the witcher#henry cavill#digital#2023#year in review
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Well onto part 4 of my still nameless fic. Right now I’m just kinda posting to tumblr as I write.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
They made it into the mountains following hoof prints when they got jumped by a sylvan and a couple of elves. They came too tied up together in a cave.
“This is the part where we escape?” Jaskier asked as he worked on getting his hands free.
“This is the part where we die,” Geralt replied sardonically.
“Filthy humans,” one of the elves said and hit Jaskier.
“Leave him alone! He’s just a bard!” Geralt exclaimed and managed to head but the elf.
“No not the lute!” Jaskier yelled too late as the other elf smashed it. Jaskier was about to yell at them in elder when a familiar elf joined them in the cave and Jaskier groaned.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” He asked lips turned upwards.
“Just a couple humans. We should kill them before they bring others,” the female elf who had hit Jaskier proclaimed.
“They’re not human. Not entirely anyway. Are you blind as well as sick? He’s not only half fae, he’s also a prince. That’s Prince Julek of the Springtime Seelie Court. Considering they just agreed to take us in I don’t think killing one of the Queen’s children will endear us to my aunt any,” the new elf replied, “Hello cousin. You seem to get yourself in some of the most interesting situations.”
“Filavandrel. Well met. I’d give a proper bow but I’m a little tied up at the moment,” Jaskier replied amiably.
“So I see,” Filavandrel said trying not to laugh at the situation. He knew his cousin could get out of that if he really wanted to. “So who’s your friend?”
“Filavandrel, this is Geralt of Rivia, Witcher of the wolf school and childhood friend of mine. Geralt this is Filavandrel the last High King of the Elves. Also my first cousin. He’s he’s fae on his mother’s side which is actually rather common in Elvish royalty. His mother and my mother were sisters.”
“A pleasure to meet you your majesty. I’d also bow but am also a little tied up right now,” Geralt greeted.
Filavandrel let out a snort of laughter. “No you wouldn’t. You’re a Witcher. You’re also one of Vesemir’s pups. I have no doubt he’s taught you that Witchers are neutral and bow to no kings.”
“Yes well, Vesemir no doubt also tried his best to teach the pup manners and he’s trying to be polite,” A new voice spoke up followed by another man who looked a lot more like Filavandrel, only he had eyes that glowed more unnaturally blue and his ears wasn’t quite as pointed.
“Fuck,” Jaskier swore when he saw the second man, “I’m not going back Blaze!”
“Well I guess this answers the question of where you ran off to Jules. Is that Eric you got with you?”
Geralt grumbled a bit before speaking up, “It’s Geralt not Eric. Hasn’t been for a long time.”
“Oh yes, that’s right. Vesemir made you change your name before you could leave the keep. I don’t know why Witcher’s insist on changing their names before going off on the path the first time. While yes it is true that names have power, knowing one’s true name isn’t some sort of spell to compel people into doing things. I swear humans come up with some of the strangest rumours about my species.”
“They don’t all change their names. Although I suspect that old wives tale has a lot to do with why. I personally prefer to think of it like the old Shobogan tradition dating back to before they where fae, you change your name as a promise to who you are and/or want to be now because you have outgrown your old name,” Jaskier explained.
“Is that why you’ve been insisting on going by Jaskier?” Geralt asked, genuinely curious. “Who are the Shobogan anyway?”
“Yes, the other reason doesn’t matter since my cover has been blown. Shobogan is the name of our subspecies within the fae… lot of people just refer to us as royal fae but once the fae was a huge federation spanning many spheres with lots of different races. It’s why I’m considered fae even though I’m technically only half, it’s because I’m a citizen in the ruminants of that federation. Or species like that sylvan we tracked up here, or dryads for example are also considered fae. The elves first thought the humans where a subspecies of fae because they look a lot like the shobogan. Main difference between the two being our second heart and eyes.”
“You’re telling this Witcher our secrets!” The sylvan shouted, incensed.
“I didn’t go through the trail of the grasses, nor the tail of dreams. Never needed to. I did go through the rest. I’m technically also a Witcher,”Jaskier said as he broke out of the ropes binding them.
“Yes, very dramatic brother. We all know you worked your hands free ages ago and could break free at any time,” Blaze stated, rolling his eyes.
“Yes well. Had to find the best time for melodrama. I wouldn’t be me otherwise.”
“Yes well now I’ve found you that saves me a trip to Kaer Morhen to look for you,” Blaze stated.
“I’ve not had the courage to go there yet,” Jaskier confessed.
Blaze continued as if he said nothing, “Now the question is where is Valdo? He’s obviously not with you.”
“Who?” Geralt asked.
“Valdo Marx. My nephew. Sister’s youngest, the same age as me,” Jaskier clarified.
“And those two have been practically inseparable since he arrived back in our realm after the sacking. Have you seen him? He’s about this high.” Blaze held his hand up to indicate how high. “doesn’t actually look like he’s related because he’s got his father’s dark complexion and thick curly black hair which he wore short last I saw him, and has a thing on his face he thinks is a beard and moustache but really can’t grow one properly yet.”
“No, not seen anyone like that,” Geralt answered.
“I got no idea where Valdo ran off to. I didn’t even know he was missing, besides even if I did know I’m not going to tell you,” Jaskier added, “one of us needs to get out of court at least.”
“I’m not dragging you back to mother. I’m way too busy. Finally talked Filavandrel into bringing his people to our lands. Better to loose pride than be dead.”
“We’re resorting to stealing grain laced with iron from the humans. It seems we really need to move sooner rather than later if they’ve resorted to sending a Witcher up here. It won’t be long before they come looking themselves and probably in large numbers. We’re starving and sick. That’s not a fight we can win. The question is if we can get everyone out by then,” Filavandrel speculated.
“It will take a while to move so many,” Jaskier acknowledged, “Geralt… yes I have heard about the whole Blaviken incident. No I don’t believe you wholesale slaughtered anyone without reason. I know you. That’s not who you are. You don’t have to talk about it. I only bring it up because I have an idea but it does lean into that reputation a bit.”
“What?” Geralt asked, just knowing he was probably going to regret asking.
“Well you know how I can convince people of just about anything if I sing about it?”
“The frost trolls still ask if you are ever going to come back and preform for them after you got us all up the mountain that way,” Geralt replied ruefully.
“What if I make a song that makes people think you got rid of all the elves around here. By the time anyone thinks to look they’ll be long gone.”
“Sure, if you get people to start paying what they owe me while your at it,” Geralt agrees with obvious sarcasm.
“You know you just guaranteed it will make it across the continent and be sung in taverns for the next hundred years, right? You don’t tempt fate like that. She loves irony,” Blaze stated more than asked.
“You’ll need a new lute. I have one laying around doing nothing that belonged to my mother. Got to add to that irony after all,” Filavandrel added.
@xxx|}::::::::::::::::::::> <::::::::::::::::::::{|xxx@
#the witcher#geraskier#jaskier#geralt x jaskier#geralt of rivia#fae!jaskier#wip#fanfiction#still need to name this
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Tw: mentions of death, war, murder, child abuse, slavery, lil blood think thats all but anything i missed feel free to tell me
Note: not very knowledgeable with the witcher fandom but i tried to investagate what i could, but even so ill probsbly get stuff wrong so my apologies here. Also good with writting so sorry if it sounds shitty XD
POV: u found out whose been stealing ur food
Ana from Nilfgaardian: Backstory
Ana's life was filled by nothing but human's torment and survival. She only 3 years old when she was found with her mother's corpse and letter saying that whoever finded her to please took care of her. Samuel one of the prisioners in the group took the child as his own, felt pity to let it die in the middle of the forest like her mother.
And so for the next 3 years Ana would grew up being taught the best way to stay alive is to stay quiet and obey. Ana's only family was a grop of criminals but they loved her and took care of her as their own. But even so, child or no the guards wouldnt care less, once you become a prisioner you're treated like one...
They knew she wouldn't last long in this hell of a place....
When the heard the rumors of a witcher close to these walls, they decided to help her to escape, witchers protected people so if she could find the witcher she could find protection.
She met the group later on, they found her eating their food behind the bushes, she tried to run off and they were gonna let her go if she hadn't fainted duo to exhaustion. The decided to take her in until they could find someone who could take care of her. (Spoilers that day hasnt come 😃)
(They gotted clothes for her cuz c'mon she was barefoot the poor thing :/)
Interactions with the group:
Avdol: He was the first one who she got the closets with his calm aura made her trust him, he likes to read her and share stories of their past hunts, he also tends to spoonfeed her a lot. Litteraly calls him mama XD (doesnt really mind, he thinks its cute)
Kakyion: The quiet duo. They mostly enjoy eachothers company, likes to play with his hair and observe him and avdol when they making potions (she sometimes gets handsy but backs off when told to)
Polnareff: she like his music, she sometimes ask him to sing her to sleep (specialy after having a nightmare) he like to tease her sometimes (which ends up her biting him lol) also because she so quiet she tends to scare him off HAHA
Alex & Yanyu: She loves them :3. Very affectionate with them and likes to sleep on Yanyu's lap. Although Alex gets a lil nosy sometimes so she just cover her ears to let her know shes being too loud (i feel like she tends to raise her voice without meaning to like me xddd)
Jotaro: Another one whose she's very affectionate with. Was scared of him at first but she gets very attached to him later on. Calls him papa (says he doesnt like it but he actually MELTS at the name) stays close to him the most and likes to put flowers in his hair. Loves being carried by him 💕
Ana: Da-ddy?
Jotaro: Do I look like-
Ana: :(
Jotaro:..........Fine
Ana: Papa! :D
He's like those dads that didnt want the dog at first, but treats them like their kid the next day lol
Joseph: He babies her the most and likes to tell her stories of his old adventures, he tells him about holly sometimes (mostly when jota isnt close) uses her as shirld whenever he pisses jota cuz he knows how soft he's become on ana (jota denise it but we all know how it is 🙄)
Overall they all love her very much and will fight anyone who hurts the child
____________________________
Note: Witcher jjba au belongs to the wonderful @ahoge-fish pls go and check it out on their blog! Cuz its thanks to them im just as hooked as i am to this fandom now ksksksksks
Also hope i didnt make the characters to ooc here (im sorry if i did)
#jjba#jjba au#jjba witcher au#tw slavery#tw child abuse#tw death#others oc#jotaro kujo#joseph joestar#kakyion noriaki#alexandra parker#avdol muhammad#tw injury#ahoge#ahoge's oc#comic#long post#my oc#my original characters#ana#tw blood#red ❤#yanyu tee#jean pierre polnareff
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