state of the gremble

So the only reason I haven't watched the gay pirates show yet is that I'm almost certain that when I do, I will instantly transfer all my devotion to the new blorbos and be absolutely, permanently Done with the witcher.

Because it's not fun being a "fan" of a media property whose creators make it aggressively clear that I am not the kind of fan they want. And TWN isn't quite as vicious to their queer fanbase as say, SPN and Sherlock were, but it's got that same underlying vibe of "you are enjoying this wrong." We're not supposed to be more invested in Jaskier than Yen-and-Geralt -- and yet I daresay Jaskier was single-handedly responsible for the fandom explosion after S1. So then they're in a bind where they owe queer fans for the success they're enjoying, but resent us for not being the "right" fans -- and they can't sideline Jaskier after that, but they can kick him in the fuckin' teeth to make sure we know how they feel about it.

Or maybe I'm overestimating geraskier fandom's importance vis-a-vis witcher fandom as a whole. It's easy to lose perspective when you live in a self-selected fandom bubble. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, I had a moment the other day where something shifted in my brain and I found that I was just... Over It, with the witcher. My investment had disconnected, and at that point I was just waiting for the next new thing to come along. I had not expected that next new thing to be a canonically gay pirate comedy, but life is full of surprises!

It wasn't that S2 was bad (though it was), it's that its heart was in the wrong place. In exchange for some cheap drama, they made Geralt a bad friend to Jaskier, a bad father to Ciri, and a bad romance to Yen. The season ended with every important relationship in shambles, the characters' trust in each other shattered so badly that it's hard to see how they can or even if they should come back from that.

(And then they told us they'd delivered found family. Mate, you didn't, so don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.)

So yeah.

I'm not sure what the future of my fandom involvement in the witcher holds. I dearly want to finish Song of Selfish Hearts before I leave, in part because it is my manifesto on my dissatisfactions with the show. I am also, at the moment, intensely hooked by this new fic idea, THE VERY DUBCON ONE, but it's an AU of an AU that never even met season 1, much less the clusterfuck of season 2. I'm still at the initial stage of banging it out at light speed, but that's going to slow down before long, and I'm not sure I'll be able to sustain interest long enough to finish it, because it's a very ambitious story.

We shall see! Anyway, I’m off to go bang out more words on THE VERY DUBCON ONE.

honestly don’t stress about yennskier discourse or whatever. ive been around the witcher fandom since the games, and recently there are people who will come up with anything to invalidate twn fans/ jaskier fans. most of the people who oppose yennskier that I’ve seen are 1. dedicated geraskier shippers who don’t like yen or 2. og witcher fans who despise any ship with jaskier (because they see him as a twn character, not dandelion, and don’t like twn.) don’t stress.

Oh, I'm not stressed about it, no worries!

My reaction is mostly just being bummed for those folks because there's so much joy in my wee little rarepair and the community around it and it sucks that some people don't bother to look.

Yennskier is not a ship for everyone but it takes a willful kind of ignorance to make claims about what kind of people ship it and why and tell them they should ship something else.

Luckily, I have seen far far more positive reactions to my work and this little ship than anything negative! And I was never expecting that when first starting to express that I enjoyed this ship. Like for me, its been wonderful to see all the joy and tenderness and art and comedy and creation coming out of the community around this ship like we are very small and stupid sometimes but big of heart and full of love.