i don't storm, i sunshower

did not expect the final book in the witcher novels series to include ciri meeting the knights of the round table and introducing the black plague but here we are i guess

nah real talk the universe hopping was fun! it took me a minute to settle into the plot of this one but once i did i loved it. the ending isn't actually all that happy - 2/3 of the main characters are dead, ciri is traumatized forever and lying about it, the aforementioned black plague situation, ethnic and political tensions - but geralt and yennefer got to be together, ciri is alive and has her dignity intact, we found out what emhyr var emreis' deal was, AND we continued to get that really fun meta construction storytelling. ciri's story is a folktale being reconstructed after the fact by students and mages and historical records. that bangs.

obviously i'm not DONE done with these books as there are still a couple of short story collections left but i feel very accomplished anyway.  

this is a post about two totally unrelated things: the witcher series, and hockey rpf. 

we'll start with the thing you expect from me. the witcher series, book whatever: baptism of fire. (i am a little tipsy and a lot sad as i'm writing this, so any incoherence? i'm sorry.) in this book, ciri, geralt, and yennefer have all been separated--ciri has a gang of mall goths called the rats (and a girlfriend? like, she is canonically in a relationship with a woman?); yennefer is absent for more than half the book before getting magicked out of a statue (i won't explain any more, to leave you wondering, for fun. go read the books, they're good); and geralt goes adventuring with his buddy jaskier/dandelion, a badass archer lady called milva, a vampire, and a sort-of-nilfgaardian soldier dude named cahir whose deal i am actually SO curious about. why is he dead set on rescuing ciri? why does he insist he isn't actually from nilfgaard? tf is up with that? is it angsty? 

i'm excited for Book The Next despite the circling, repeated intimations that No One Is Going To End Up Happy. they're all going to die horribly i'm sure. this book series is so so so much about the horrors of war and how even the best intentions can fuck you over. 

ok so now i'm going to talk about hockey. late last month i opened tumblr to find my sports mutuals (i have two, one check please fandom author who also likes real hockey and one random german girl who's really into philadelphia sports who i followed for baseball gifs) losing their fucking minds about a trade that had happened. i guess these two kids (i say kids, they're... a year and two years younger than me. i'm old now??) were besties in anaheim and then got separated when the flyers took one of them and now the flyers have the other guy. hockey internet went insane and because this is a situation happening local to me (and one of them is kinda hot ngl) i decided fuck it, i'm going to get into hockey. which, for me, because i've spent most of my life at this point in fannish spaces and because some of those years were spent writing kpop rpf, meant reading fics about these kids, and then fics about other members of the philadelphia flyers, and then just other hockey rpf fics that seemed good. 

i want to be clear that i don't, like... actually ship any of these people. this was the same with kpop honestly i was writing kpop rpf but at that time they were mostly characters i could use to write other stuff and the utility of reading the hockey rpf is to sort of teach myself how hockey works. i did a similar thing with baseball but not with rpf, that was more aus where characters were on baseball teams. familiarizing myself with the local hockey lore or whatever. but the thing is, i'm finding myself enjoying it for other reasons. in these fics--and, honestly, this is a big part of what i get out of kpop rpf at this point in my life, when i'm reading that--there are two main themes: the mortifying ordeal of fame and being in the closet, and bodies/embodiment. despite the fact that i've never really spent significant time closeted and have never really put myself at great risk being queer--accident of birth, i truly just got lucky--i'm fascinated by stories about the pressure of hiding some part of yourself and what happens for you to finally risk it all--or what happens when that narrative gets taken out of your control!! it's about the repression i think. and then, in terms of both being a pro sports player and being an idol, there's also the question of what happens when you get old? what happens when you get hurt? there's this one hockey pairing that kind of doesn't exist anymore that i've been reading a lot about because i guess one of those guys is quote-unquote injury prone and so there's this whole thing there. idk. i don't know how to explain it but it's good. and i like stories where one or both of them is having a really truly bad time but one of them makes a point to prove to the other: no, i love you, and no matter what's going on with you mentally or physically i am here to take care of you.

and i'm sad right now because i'm having a moment about literally everyone else around me getting married and in some cases having kids and i'm by myself and i feel fundamentally unlovable or whatever and i want someone to say that they'll love me no matter what so fucking bad so i guess that's the appeal of nolan patrick/travis konecny to me, or whatever. sorry to doompost, reader(s).  i'd say i won't talk like this again but i'd be lyinggggg

not kidding. well. mostly one. so the book in question is Blood of Elves, the first book in the Witcher series that is actually A Book and not a short story collection. Gamer Boy #1 saw I was reading this and went !!! oh shit cool!!! whereas I got the distinct pleasure of informing Gamer Boy #2 that yes, they really were books first (he was nice about it, we weren't um actuallying each other). they're both nice guys. i guess it's incentive to keep reading the series lmao

i found myself really easily drawn into the plot of this book -- ciri training at kaer morhen, geralt and triss' weird thing, jaskier's spy misadventures, and finally ciri training with yennefer and the two of them having this enemies to besties sort of deal. both the petty personal drama and the politicking are very fun for me. things i like, i guess.

i started a new job last week monday and my commute is, uh, WAY longer than it used to be by about 30 or 40 minutes depending on if we're counting the time it takes to walk places. so i've been reading on the subway. i've discovered that i can get carsick on the subway which is really fucked up but it's also useful for getting some reading done.

i read the first book of the witcher stories recently and really enjoyed it. i watched the first season of the show back in 2020 right before getting sent home from college, liked it (but not enough to watch season two), and now that i've finally gotten through one of the discworld series figured that i ought to consider further expanding my horizons or whatever and read some more classic sff. it was a quick read. i really liked two things: first of all, the more explicit links to fairytales. maybe the netflix show didn't make those links clear or maybe 19 year old me was just stupid, but i didn't realize that renfri was dark snow white. i also am a big fan of how much more mutual the geraskier friendship is. like it seems like geralt actually likes jaskier in the stories and they are friends who consensually spend time together as opposed to geralt sighing and getting jaskier out of some trouble that jaskier has annoyingly found himself in.

another recent finish? a fanfiction called the yawning grave. this is kpop boy fanfiction. sorry. it's REALLY GOOD THOUGH. it's written by an author with some real talent for worldbuilding and is set in a hunger games/squid game/sort of the expanse(?) fusion world, with contestants competing in a death games loosely inspired by the survival show boys planet. because there are two guys on boys planet who are somewhat provably gay and potentially Actually fucking. i am not usually one to go all red string about rpf shipping but trust me that in this situation it's entirely plausible. anyway. the fic is brutal and heartbreaking and like 60k or something and i LOVE ITTT and this was actually my third read. because i am the person i am, i want a sequel so bad but i don't know op so it's just expanded into an extended universe in my head where, like... okay. the fic is about survival. right? but the sequel in my head is about recovery. from not only the death games and all that trauma, but from the less obvious but equally brutal trauma of living in that dystopia eg losing family members, food and housing insecurity, etc. i want to watch them Get Better i want to get inside their heads about it. so bad.

so to that end i've been thinking about maybe doing whumptober for the first time? well, originally i wasn't intending for it to be THAT but i saw someone reblog the prompts, i do love some good whump, i originally thought about writing it for 911 or maybe torchwood or both, but maybe... maybe i could expand the universe in my head and deal with backstories and missing perspectives and the recovery arcs i really want, and i really doubt i'll post it anymore (i haven't posted kpop fic since i was a teenager--while i'll happily read it, it's not the foot i want to put forward on my own ao3 anymore--and again, i don't know op and that would be weird) but it would just live on my google drive for me. (also probably because i won't finish all the prompts or scenes and that would eat at me.) i need to make a decision on that soon because it's now mid-september. even if i do a scene-a-day flash-fiction option i should probably still make a somewhat organized google doc or whatever.