“what does geralt get from that friendship…”
another post examining the weight of geralt and dandelion’s friendship… because i don’t think people recognize how painful and debilitating loneliness can become.
the witcher as a deconstruction of the genre takes fantasy tropes to their most logical ends—it asks us to consider what The Lone Swordsman feels, looks into the humanity in a Cold-Blooded Killer. and it turns out he’s not cold-blooded at all.
that despite some superhuman abilities, he laments and worries and curses himself, just like any other worker of any other profession. just as the farmer is scorched by the sun, the washerwoman’s back aches, and the scholar goes half-blind studying, a witcher deals with all of the pains and annoyances and dangers of his job in a mundanely human way.
but the farmer, the washerwoman, and the scholar have something the witcher does not have—they’ll always be seen as human and part of their society. at the end of the day after enduring all of their labor, they have their wife to caress, festivities to attend, and taverns to frequent. but for a witcher? after the killing is over, what does he have? no one and nothing. not even a thank you. he is met with fear and hatred everywhere he goes, baseless bigotry and dislike.
I did my job. I quickly learned how. I’d ride up to village enclosures or town pickets and wait. If they spat, cursed and threw stones, I rode away. If someone came out to give me a commission, I’d carry it out.
so he faces not just loneliness, but being deliberately ostracized and cast out from society. geralt can’t even find a polite word in most settlements, much less a friend.
‘(…) Tell me, where should I go? And for what? At least here some people have gathered with whom I have something to talk about. People who don’t break off their conversations when I approach. People who, though they may not like me, say it to my face, and don’t throw stones from behind a fence. (…)’
this kind of loneliness is not a mere inconvenience. it’s completely altering to your self-perception and ability to see the positive in the world.
each day is not lived, but endured.
day in, and day out—forced to the most difficult and lowest labor in order to survive, and knowing that were you to die, no one would search for your body, few would miss you, hell, they might even spit “good riddance”.
in this situation, to find a friend, is not only friendship, but a rescue.
without dandelion, geralt may have drowned—drowned in solitude, amidst a sea of strangeness.
‘(…) And I’m alone, completely alone, endlessly alone among the strange and hostile elements. Solitude amid a sea of strangeness. Don’t you dream of that?’
No, I don’t, he thought. I have it every day.
because dandelion is not only a bright soul, characteristic rippling laughter and the strum of a lute, but someone who will intently listen to geralt, someone who mutually enjoys his company.
‘(…) you almost jumped out of your pants with joy to have a companion. Until then, you only had your horse for company.’
someone who doesn’t see him as strange and at the fringes of society at all, but as an utterly normal man.
and doesn’t impose demeaning, sappy sympathy onto him, but sobering and realistic “quit your bullshit” which ridicules the very thought that he should internalize societal hatred.
Do you know what your problem is, Geralt? You think you’re different. (…) [You don’t understand that] for people who think clear-headedly you’re the most normal man under the sun, and they all wish that everybody was so normal. What of it that you have quicker reflexes than most and vertical pupils in sunlight? That you can see in the dark like a cat? That you know a few spells? Big deal.
dandelion isn’t “willing” to accept geralt for himself—he already has accepted him. and to him, it’s no difficulty, it’s nothing worth discussing, because he sees no abnormality and no strangeness in him.
while others “prefer the company of lepers to witchers,” dandelion has already offered geralt to share his room and board. not out of sympathetic pity, not out of fetishizing curiosity. because… they’re friends.
and what else does this friendship save him from?
not only from others, but from himself.
worse than enduring others’ apathy and hatred is one’s own thoughts—the darkness and negativity which builds from witnessing and experiencing such behavior.
dandelion’s ability to counter and dispel geralt’s pessimism and self-flagellating tendencies—again, not out of pity, but out of friendship—is undeniably invaluable. someone to rescue you from your darkest thoughts, when you begin to spiral.
and in this darkness, all you can do is cry. you cry, beg for someone to help you, please—
Help! Why doesn't anyone help me? Alone, weak, helpless – I can't move, can't force a sound from my constricted throat. Why does no one come to help me? I'm terrified!
to be alone, the saga reminds us, is worse than a death sentence. to be alone is to “perish; stabbed, beaten or kicked to death, defiled, like a toy passed from hand to hand.” to be alone is to suffer, and to be with someone is to save them from that suffering.
'(…) I wouldn't like anything bad to happen to you. I like you too much, owe you too much-'
'You've said that already. What do you owe me, Yennefer?'
The sorceress turned her head away, did not say anything for a while.
'You travelled with him,' she said finally. 'Thanks to you he was not alone. You were a friend to him. You were with him.'
it is true that geralt has saved dandelion countless times, helped him, gotten him out of some scrape… but to ask what did geralt get in return? are you kidding me?
did you ever consider that it is dandelion who saved geralt?
by being with him. by being by his side. by being his friend.
indeed, dandelion has rescued geralt, countless times, from the yawning jaws of endless loneliness. he’s helped him, chased away the danger of geralt’s own rumination. and he’s gotten him out of scrapes, his own insecurities and bitter helplessness.
so what does dandelion give geralt? what does geralt get from their friendship?
an amusing question. what one gets from friendship is the friendship itself. and that is more than enough.
277 notes
·
View notes
The Letter
*Warning: Angst, mentions of suicide and generally misery. If your in a poor place mental health wise, please skip past this post and seek help. And regardless and whether you are or arn’t, drink some water, eat some food and love yourself*
So, in a No One Knows AU things are getting more and more dangerous for Danny. The injuries are piling up, the rouges are getting more and more dangerous, his fathers slowly but surly becoming less and less and of lost cause in terms of accuracy, close calls are getting closer.
He starts to worry that someday, something will happen and he won’t make it home, and every one he cares for will be left desperately searching for him, for who knows how long, not knowing his corpse is probably phased into the ground, floating in space, or in another dimension entirely. And the thought of everyone he loves being so lost and confused because he took a second bite of the big one hurts almost as much as dyeing the fist time, so he decides to make a “If your reading this, I’m probably dead.” letter. Just to clear the air and say goodbye and all that jazz.
But the last thing a grieving parent needs to know is that they spent months trying to murder their child, mourning friends don’t need to know that all the canceled plans, detentions, avoidance and secrecy that caused so many fights was because their “Bad Friend” was out risking, and in the end sacrificing, their life for them and their home. So he leaves out any and all mentions of Phantom. Just a whole lot of “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it” “it’s not your fault” “I’m in a better place now” “there’s nothing you could have done” and a few “don’t feel guilty”s thrown in just incase his identity was discovered because of his death.
However, it turns out that a super hero’s “I’m sorry I didn’t make it back home to you” message that includes absolutely nothing about being a super hero reads a lot like a suicide note. Like, A Lot.
Whoops.
Maybe Jazz goes snooping as a worrywart big sister and find a very good reason to worry, maybe Jack and Maddie stumble upon it, you could have a classic “oh no that’s not my homework” mix up and Lancer’s now trying harder then ever to help Danny succeed, Sam could have been trying to uncover whatever the hell Danny’s been hiding with Tucker along for the ride.
Regardless, someone finds the letter and everyone is straight up not having a good time.
127 notes
·
View notes
📚 QUEERBOOK 2024 is hereee! We made a book by and for LGBTQ+ youth! 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
Last year, we asked LGBTQ+ youth: what's your idea of a "queer utopia?"
Not gonna lie - with more than 150 bills introduced in 35 states in 2023 that aimed to restrict student access to inclusive and diverse books and other library materials, the theme felt pretty radical.
And you DELIVERED. With the help of our Youth Voices (amazing queer youth activists from across the country), we compiled your amazing submissions of poetry, short essays and letters, visual art, photography, and more into Queerbook 2024. Like a yearbook, it captures what queer youth are feeling, going through, and hoping for - right here, right now across the U.S.
It's also no accident that it's the perfect small-ish size to stash in your locker or backpack so you can crack it open any time you're looking for some queer connection. :3
Read some more about the book and grab your own limited-run copy of Queerbook 2024 now here.
2K notes
·
View notes
Ok but what if she went to waddle Dee town in the forgotten land and all the waddle Dee’s just accepted her because they are really nice and not rude and they accept her and she has fun and a good time please I really need this for her
i considered drawing something out to this, and making it a happy ending sort of thing, because i think this is extremely sweet as a concept and i understand the desire for it!
that said, i decided that it would be a disservice to the lore i'm building for her, my biology/magic headcanons, and also the waddle dees as a whole. i might still draw it some day, because i could absolutely perceive a way it would work (ie: all waddle dee signatures messed up by Elfilis's portals, or their magic sensitivity nuked by it.) and i think it would be lovely
but for now, i have too many other things on the backburner to get to this promptly, and i wanted to answer this one sooner rather than leaving it for months
i will say, they're not being rude to her! there might be the odd one or two who is a bit snide, but there are some of those in every society. as a general rule the waddle dees not only understand that she is struggling, they want to accept and help her. many of them even know she's lonely, and feel pretty bad about it. but it's hard, and not just because she makes people uneasy!
i draw parallels with starstruck's gummed up magical signature to autism, as i'm autistic and so by merit (as a sona), so is she. but there are some parts that do not line up with the way autism functions in our world, and one of them is that touching or being around her can be genuinely, literally painful for some of the very sensitive waddle dees.
despite that, her waddle dee doctors actually pushed through it while she was in the castle dedede infirmary. because they were determined to treat her (mostly-surface-seeming) injuries and help her feel better. and they apologised for the reactions that they couldn't control anymore than she could control her signature; the various "sorry"s she parrots in this comic are implied to be from waddle dee doctors.
it's a fine line in alien-storytelling, especially with a real world disability parallel, and i'm trying to tread it as carefully as i can. but i don't intend to villainise the waddle dees at all for their reaction to her; they truly can't help it. many of them even do their best to push through it if she comes into their vicinity, especially because she often arrives with Beloved Celebrity, Captain Bandana Waddle Dee. but like a lot of us, she can tell when she's being tolerated, and so as a rule she just sort of tries to avoid it, one way or another
30 notes
·
View notes
Beefleaf isn't canon. Mxtx has said she doesn't like to write another gay ship different from the main (she struggled with svsss)
I have heard about this! The content I saw was just so insistent about Beefleaf that I wondered if maybe I was misremembering and the "no same-gender side couples" thing applied to MDZS only. (I have gotten similar vibes from Moshang and from whatever Yue QIngyuan and Shen Jiu's ship name is, but I've now obtained Vol. 1 of SVSSS and plan to read it, so if those two aren't actually canon, don't tell me! It can be a surprise!)
The "no side couples"--or, in MDZS's case, "no queer characters AT ALL besides the protag, his love interest, and the disgraced goth weirdo who annihilates himself to resurrect the protag"--thing confuses me, because... I guess I don't get the point of it? I totally understand not having the bandwidth to develop more than one couple. The challenge of adequately building up other relationships fully independent of your main couple without detracting from the exploits of your protagonist and his love interest could be daunting, as would expanding the story's focus and juggling multiple equally-prominent lead characters for an effective ensemble piece. But here it seems like people picked up a vibe between the characters from what was already there in the text and then MXTX was like, "oh, no, they're not a couple! there's just the one couple!" and THAT I don't get. If she's disinterested in writing women, but has a cast of attractive men who are all obsessed with each other, why not toss a romance in there between some of the guys? Again, you can keep it entirely as-is and just toss a kiss in there or confirm in interviews that yes, they were in love, and you're so happy readers picked up on that even though you didn't get to tell their full story on the page.
I am extrapolating based on the Xiyao situation specifically, so maybe this doesn't apply to her other works! But it is a choice that confuses me. A couple doesn't have to be that developed; Xuanli certainly aren't, but their existence is a major plot point. I should think that the presence of other m/m couples would bolster the main couple, if anything, because it sets a precedent for them existing in their world. There are situations where adding an expressly romantic element would change something fundamental about the relationship, but there are just as many where the addition of a romantic element changes nothing or makes it make more sense (case in point: Xue Yang's freakout after killing Xiao Xingchen).
Like I said, I get not wanting to devote energy to it, and I also get that sometimes a work or performance is received by the audience in ways the artist didn't intend (this is the Destiel website, after all), but to make it a conscious choice to have One M/M Couple Only? Based on what I currently know, this perplexes me.
36 notes
·
View notes