The Witcher, Season 1
Mar. 10th, 2020 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleI watched The Witcher last weekend, but I wasn't feeling well and was kind of out of it, so I felt like I didn't really get it, although I knew enough to understand jokes and read fic. This weekend, I googled a timeline explainer (things in the show take place across multiple timelines, and I got how two of them fit together but couldn't figure out when Yennefer's story was in relation to the others), and re-watched it while paying attention and with captions on (I usually dislike them, but I thought maybe reading it would help make it make more sense). I get it much better now, and also some things I have thought about:
I knew from fannish osmosis that fandom's pairing of choice was Geralt/Jaskier. This makes sense, because the first time we meet Jaskier, he just walks over to the big scary guy in the corner (Geralt) and hits on him. Of course fandom loves that! I also realized in reading fic where Jaskier finds out that Geralt can use his witcher senses to smell how he feels that Geralt and Jaskier are basically Derek and Stiles, so of course it's taking off in fandom. I have enjoyed some of the fic! I love their hilarious relationship on the show! I think fandom is (as usual) overselling it. There are a number of episode 6 "fix-it" stories, which I was very confused about after watching it the first time because I didn't remember Geralt being all that harsh to Jaskier. And now that I've watched it a second time, I can see that what Geralt says is hurtful to Jaskier, but I still think fandom is going overboard on it. Like, I don't see Jaskier as being a character who is going to hold onto his hurt about that in the face of decades of friendship.
I am also annoyed that this seems to be a fandom where "fix-it" means "there's no need for that inconvenient woman." The complicated love story on the show is Geralt/Yennefer. As much as I am all for polyamorous Vs (which the show certainly leaves open as a possibility, although of course it's not explicit because we can't have queer people in our manly man fantasy world), I'm not really thrilled about Geralt/Jaskier fic that is all "Yennefer is evil, let's dispatch with her." I mean, Yennefer is not necessarily a good person, but that isn't canonically a problem for Geralt. I guess I sort of hope that people aren't writing Geralt/Yennefer episode 6 fix-it fic because it's clear from the finale that they're going to meet up again next season, but I'm pretty sure it's sexism instead.
Speaking of things this fandom doesn't have because of sexism: I need a million modern AUs where some combination of Geralt, Yennefer, and Jaskier raise Ciri. I've read one or two that were Geralt/Jaskier where Geralt and Yennefer used to be together and Ciri is their child, and at least one Geralt/Jaskier/Yennefer version. I have not read any of what I really want, which is Geralt/Yennefer with either polyamorous V Geralt/Jaskier or Jaskier is a friend who hangs out with them and helps a lot as part of their found family.
To me the more interesting thing to explore from episode 6 is the conversation that includes this:
One of the things I find fascinating about this show is that it's named after Geralt and theoretically about him, but it's deeply concerned with motherhood:
In episode three, Geralt is hired to stop a striga. A curse was placed on a dead pregnant woman, and that resulted in the baby growing into a striga (kind of werewolfish). The dead pregnant woman was a princess, and the baby's father was her brother, who is now the king. One of the conversations Geralt has is with someone (I think it's the mage who cursed her, not the king) who says that they advised her to have an abortion and she wouldn't.
The beginning of Ciri's story starts when Duny, a cursed knight, arrives at the court of Cintra to claim the princess Pavetta's hand in marriage as a result of the Law of Surprise. I have gathered that the way the Law of Surprise works is that if you save someone's life, you can claim the Law of Surprise as your repayment, and then whatever bounty they have that they didn't know they have becomes yours. Queen Calanthe, Pavetta's mother, makes the point that this is one of men's laws, that those who birth children would never come up with something like that. Calanthe is a generally terrible person and terrible ruler, and yet she is very fierce about her motherhood and what that means to her. She later refuses to cede Ciri to Geralt because Ciri is all she has left of Pavetta.
At the end of the last episode, just before Geralt and Ciri find each other, Ciri is taken in by a kind woman. The woman tells her that she has everything she's ever wanted - her health, a roof over her head, her son, and her husband - except for one thing: a daughter. On Geralt's side, he's delirious and has a mix of hallucinations and memories of his mother. We see him with his mother when he's a very small child - or rather, we see him clearly and her dimly or only in bits that don't include her face. It very definitely implies that Geralt's mother had magic, but I'm not sure if we're supposed to trust that it's a clear memory or if that's supposed to be the child's view of parents as providers. He sees her again when she tells him she's given him a potion because gangrene was setting in. He tells her she has no right to use the name Geralt as it was given to him by Vesemir. But sometimes what he sees is Yennefer, and I'm not sure if there's really supposed to be anyone there at all.
And then there's Yennefer. She begins the story as an unloved, physically disabled and hunchbacked girl who performs a feat of spontaneous magic. This brings her to the attention of Tissaia, the rectoress of Aretuza, who buys her for four marks. Yennefer's mother protests to her husband that he can't sell their child; he says that she is no child of his and completes the sale. We later learn that Yennefer's biological father was part-elf. To "ascend" - become a full mage, I guess - Yennefer goes through a remaking of sorts, where her body is transformed into the most beautiful, powerful woman she can imagine. She asks to keep her eyes, and the scars on her wrists from her suicide attempt upon arriving at Aretuza. The transformation is achieved in part by taking out her uterus and ovaries and using them in some sort of potion or mixture that gets painted onto her.
We catch up with Yennefer again roughly thirty years later as she's escorting a queen and her newborn daughter on a journey. The queen hands Yennefer the child, which Yennefer is very skeptical about, and then when the baby starts to fuss, the queen takes her back and softens over her child. The queen says that she's just a womb to the king, and "To this baby, I am the whole world." They're attacked, of course, by an assassin sent by the king as the queen has run out of chances to provide him with a male heir. Yennefer uses portals to jump them from place to place, with the assassin following them. At one point, Yennefer jumps without the queen and the baby, the queen offers the baby to the assassin in exchange for her own life, and the assassin kills the queen. Yennefer comes back, grabs the baby and portals away, but in the process, the assassin gets her with a knife that goes through her and kills the baby.
The next few times we met Yennefer, she's trying to find a way to gain back her ability to have children. This is such an interesting turn! Tessaia says to her in a conversation about it, "I gave you all that I could give. What more do you want?" Yennefer says, "Everything." She tells Geralt that she wants to be important to somebody. Writing about this show is making me realize how much the culture of surprise and shock in media has made me distrust storytelling. I think what she tells Geralt is the truth, and that she decided when the queen said that she was the whole world to her daughter, but how can I be sure of that? If that is what she most wants, then I'm also not sure she's cut out to be a good parent.
The thing I thought was most missing from the motherhood discussions was women who don't want to be mothers. I want a story about a mage who is relieved to be made barren because it means she'll never have to bear a child. In general, I want interesting stories about the way the women mages navigate life! Late in the story, Yennefer tells a trio of students at Aretuza that being beautiful is overrated. I would be super interested in a story about a mage who decides that she wants magical power but not beauty. Is it possible to become a mage without losing your fertility? If a mage kept her original looks, could she then have a child?
An interesting feature of the show is that when the mages use spells, which are all in Elder Speech (aka Hen Linge), they're not subtitled. Some other Elder Speech conversations are. Dave, the guy creating the language and also my sister by choice's husband, has all the translations up on AO3, and it was interesting to read what the spell translations mean as I rewatched the show.
Having contemplated the show for a while now, my most lingering question is: Is Jaskier supposed to be a good bard? His song making Geralt famous aside, I don't think he is. But then I keep reading fic where he's a famous/accomplished bard/poet/teacher, and I'm very confused about it.
I'm kind of disgruntled about the fic. So much of it is serious and full of plot, and what I want to read in this fandom is sex, jokes, and/or found family parenting. Some specific plot bunnies I would read that have not yet been mentioned in this post:
I knew from fannish osmosis that fandom's pairing of choice was Geralt/Jaskier. This makes sense, because the first time we meet Jaskier, he just walks over to the big scary guy in the corner (Geralt) and hits on him. Of course fandom loves that! I also realized in reading fic where Jaskier finds out that Geralt can use his witcher senses to smell how he feels that Geralt and Jaskier are basically Derek and Stiles, so of course it's taking off in fandom. I have enjoyed some of the fic! I love their hilarious relationship on the show! I think fandom is (as usual) overselling it. There are a number of episode 6 "fix-it" stories, which I was very confused about after watching it the first time because I didn't remember Geralt being all that harsh to Jaskier. And now that I've watched it a second time, I can see that what Geralt says is hurtful to Jaskier, but I still think fandom is going overboard on it. Like, I don't see Jaskier as being a character who is going to hold onto his hurt about that in the face of decades of friendship.
I am also annoyed that this seems to be a fandom where "fix-it" means "there's no need for that inconvenient woman." The complicated love story on the show is Geralt/Yennefer. As much as I am all for polyamorous Vs (which the show certainly leaves open as a possibility, although of course it's not explicit because we can't have queer people in our manly man fantasy world), I'm not really thrilled about Geralt/Jaskier fic that is all "Yennefer is evil, let's dispatch with her." I mean, Yennefer is not necessarily a good person, but that isn't canonically a problem for Geralt. I guess I sort of hope that people aren't writing Geralt/Yennefer episode 6 fix-it fic because it's clear from the finale that they're going to meet up again next season, but I'm pretty sure it's sexism instead.
Speaking of things this fandom doesn't have because of sexism: I need a million modern AUs where some combination of Geralt, Yennefer, and Jaskier raise Ciri. I've read one or two that were Geralt/Jaskier where Geralt and Yennefer used to be together and Ciri is their child, and at least one Geralt/Jaskier/Yennefer version. I have not read any of what I really want, which is Geralt/Yennefer with either polyamorous V Geralt/Jaskier or Jaskier is a friend who hangs out with them and helps a lot as part of their found family.
To me the more interesting thing to explore from episode 6 is the conversation that includes this:
Geralt: Listen, the people who made us, they made us sterile for a lot of reasons. One of the kinder ones is because this lifestyle isn't suited to a child. What? You were going to summon chaos on kings' orders in between feeding and naps?Has Geralt only thought about this since he acquired a Child Surprise, or is it something he wondered about before? That to me would be something interesting to explore.
Yennefer: Do not patronize me!
Geralt: I'm not. I've thought about this. Often.
One of the things I find fascinating about this show is that it's named after Geralt and theoretically about him, but it's deeply concerned with motherhood:
In episode three, Geralt is hired to stop a striga. A curse was placed on a dead pregnant woman, and that resulted in the baby growing into a striga (kind of werewolfish). The dead pregnant woman was a princess, and the baby's father was her brother, who is now the king. One of the conversations Geralt has is with someone (I think it's the mage who cursed her, not the king) who says that they advised her to have an abortion and she wouldn't.
The beginning of Ciri's story starts when Duny, a cursed knight, arrives at the court of Cintra to claim the princess Pavetta's hand in marriage as a result of the Law of Surprise. I have gathered that the way the Law of Surprise works is that if you save someone's life, you can claim the Law of Surprise as your repayment, and then whatever bounty they have that they didn't know they have becomes yours. Queen Calanthe, Pavetta's mother, makes the point that this is one of men's laws, that those who birth children would never come up with something like that. Calanthe is a generally terrible person and terrible ruler, and yet she is very fierce about her motherhood and what that means to her. She later refuses to cede Ciri to Geralt because Ciri is all she has left of Pavetta.
At the end of the last episode, just before Geralt and Ciri find each other, Ciri is taken in by a kind woman. The woman tells her that she has everything she's ever wanted - her health, a roof over her head, her son, and her husband - except for one thing: a daughter. On Geralt's side, he's delirious and has a mix of hallucinations and memories of his mother. We see him with his mother when he's a very small child - or rather, we see him clearly and her dimly or only in bits that don't include her face. It very definitely implies that Geralt's mother had magic, but I'm not sure if we're supposed to trust that it's a clear memory or if that's supposed to be the child's view of parents as providers. He sees her again when she tells him she's given him a potion because gangrene was setting in. He tells her she has no right to use the name Geralt as it was given to him by Vesemir. But sometimes what he sees is Yennefer, and I'm not sure if there's really supposed to be anyone there at all.
And then there's Yennefer. She begins the story as an unloved, physically disabled and hunchbacked girl who performs a feat of spontaneous magic. This brings her to the attention of Tissaia, the rectoress of Aretuza, who buys her for four marks. Yennefer's mother protests to her husband that he can't sell their child; he says that she is no child of his and completes the sale. We later learn that Yennefer's biological father was part-elf. To "ascend" - become a full mage, I guess - Yennefer goes through a remaking of sorts, where her body is transformed into the most beautiful, powerful woman she can imagine. She asks to keep her eyes, and the scars on her wrists from her suicide attempt upon arriving at Aretuza. The transformation is achieved in part by taking out her uterus and ovaries and using them in some sort of potion or mixture that gets painted onto her.
We catch up with Yennefer again roughly thirty years later as she's escorting a queen and her newborn daughter on a journey. The queen hands Yennefer the child, which Yennefer is very skeptical about, and then when the baby starts to fuss, the queen takes her back and softens over her child. The queen says that she's just a womb to the king, and "To this baby, I am the whole world." They're attacked, of course, by an assassin sent by the king as the queen has run out of chances to provide him with a male heir. Yennefer uses portals to jump them from place to place, with the assassin following them. At one point, Yennefer jumps without the queen and the baby, the queen offers the baby to the assassin in exchange for her own life, and the assassin kills the queen. Yennefer comes back, grabs the baby and portals away, but in the process, the assassin gets her with a knife that goes through her and kills the baby.
The next few times we met Yennefer, she's trying to find a way to gain back her ability to have children. This is such an interesting turn! Tessaia says to her in a conversation about it, "I gave you all that I could give. What more do you want?" Yennefer says, "Everything." She tells Geralt that she wants to be important to somebody. Writing about this show is making me realize how much the culture of surprise and shock in media has made me distrust storytelling. I think what she tells Geralt is the truth, and that she decided when the queen said that she was the whole world to her daughter, but how can I be sure of that? If that is what she most wants, then I'm also not sure she's cut out to be a good parent.
The thing I thought was most missing from the motherhood discussions was women who don't want to be mothers. I want a story about a mage who is relieved to be made barren because it means she'll never have to bear a child. In general, I want interesting stories about the way the women mages navigate life! Late in the story, Yennefer tells a trio of students at Aretuza that being beautiful is overrated. I would be super interested in a story about a mage who decides that she wants magical power but not beauty. Is it possible to become a mage without losing your fertility? If a mage kept her original looks, could she then have a child?
An interesting feature of the show is that when the mages use spells, which are all in Elder Speech (aka Hen Linge), they're not subtitled. Some other Elder Speech conversations are. Dave, the guy creating the language and also my sister by choice's husband, has all the translations up on AO3, and it was interesting to read what the spell translations mean as I rewatched the show.
Having contemplated the show for a while now, my most lingering question is: Is Jaskier supposed to be a good bard? His song making Geralt famous aside, I don't think he is. But then I keep reading fic where he's a famous/accomplished bard/poet/teacher, and I'm very confused about it.
I'm kind of disgruntled about the fic. So much of it is serious and full of plot, and what I want to read in this fandom is sex, jokes, and/or found family parenting. Some specific plot bunnies I would read that have not yet been mentioned in this post:
- One of Jaskier's liaisons has resulted in a child. I would read the he's raising a baby version and/or the he and Geralt now have two teenagers version. As for that second one, I would read a Yennefer helps variation and/or an angry Yennefer is like "I have no children and you have two" version.
- Mpreg of the humorous rather than body horror variety where Jaskier hooks up with a dude and gets pregnant.
- Other mpreg idea: Yennefer can't get pregnant and Geralt can't impregnate anyone, but magic so Yennefer impregnates Geralt. Geralt: Fuck.
- A universe-swapping story where Jaskier and Stiles switch places. Jaskier's attempts at a ballad praising Derek are met with scowls. Stiles starts calling Geralt "sourwitcher."
- Eventual post-canon Geralt/Yennefer curtainfic about them working out their issues and raising Ciri. Jaskier and Yennefer learn to tolerate each other.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-03-11 04:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-03-11 03:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-03-11 09:38 pm (UTC)