Snowflake catchup (#12-15), and reading roundup (Witcher + The Power)
OK, time to catch up on Snowflake for the final time! (it appears that it's not so much the frequency of Snowflake posts that determine when I get around to making mine, as much as the. uh, pressure of posts I'm behind on, I suppose? Like the fact that the challenge posts are being made every other day this year hasn't actually kept me more in sync, it just means I can go twice as long between posting my catch-up posts :P
Challenge #12: Commit an Act of Kindness (or two or three ♥).
I'm gonna say I did this via Dragon Cave, where I've been catching and hatching purple dragons as gifts for someone I've been trading with (I found someone as committed to purebred blusang lineages as I am, LOL) who went through a couple of refusals with new pairs due to not not having enough purples. And more recently I bred a holiday mate for another person. Since I consider DragCave at least fandom-adjacent, I think this totally counts.
Challenge 13: In your own space, create a fanwork.
One of the challenges proposed for day 15, I forget whose, but I thought it was lovely, was to encourage people to make fanworks for their Fandoms of One. Well, I'd already been contemplating this, because
sysann has been reading the Vlad Taltos books since my pimp post earlier in the month, so I've had reason to scroll back over my write-ups and remind myself just how wonderfully quotable these books are. And I had said, back on day 6, that I wished there would be more text icons in general. So, while I'm still not great at text icons, I figured I'd mess around with some.
So, here we go, the most self-indulgent icons ever, quite possibly (which is saying quite a bit, considering what kind of icons I usually make):
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Full set:
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Alt:
#1: Adron in 500YA
#2-3: Sethra (in Dragon)
#4-7: Morrolan in various Viscount of Adrilankha books
Dragon emblem by KeresaLea on DeviantArt. The role of Blackwand is played by a random fantasy black sword I found.
And I cracked myself up by making Morrolan's fonts "Blacksword" and "Black Window" (and Ancient from DaFont for the heavier Gothic accents). Sethra's weird font is, ironically, called DragonForce.
Challenge #14: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (Or a few!) What makes it particularly appealing for you? What do you like in fanworks featuring that trope?
Because I've now done Snowflake a bunch of times, this challenge becomes harder and harder, because, like, I can discover new fandoms (or have a resurgence of feels for older ones) and come across new things to rec, but my love of tropes tends to stay fairly constant, and I feel like I've covered most of them and don't feel like repeating myself.
(Past challenge answers for reference: 2015 (family and high school/Hogwarts AUs), 2016 (animal companions, Proud Warrior Race Guy, competence kink, Tam Lin motif, chibis), 2017 (Action Girl/Non-Action Guy), 2018 (fantastic science/sufficiently analyzed magic, fannish fusions))
For this year, I'm going to talk about a pretty common trope that has been on my mind since a discussion with
tabacoychanel about why we ship certain ships (via Steve/Tony vs Steve/Bucky, but with general ship dynamic implications) and two things that are Oddly Specific Tropes/Kinks for me that I kin of accidentally discovered, because you wouldn't think there would be a lot of canons in which such Oddly Specific things would come up, and yet.
Vitriolic Best Buds: As I mentioned above,
tabacoychanel and I were talking about different preferences in ships, and my tendency to gravitate towards ship where the two people start out, not necessarily as enemies or even antagonists, but something like rivals, or people generally likely to snark at each other, and I was kind of following that thread as far back as I could to try to figure out what the underlying dynamic was that was appealing to me, an I think it's this: two people who are very, very close (and probably have a lot of history together), but who show it by giving each other shit constantly. As I scrolled through the examples on TV tropes, I could see that a lot of my childhood proto-ships, from long before I knew what slash was, were definitely this trope: Powell and Donovan in the Asimov robot stories, Kristobal Junta and Fedor Kivrin in Monday Starts on Saturday, Trurl and Klapaucius in The Cyberiad. A lot of my ships have strong elements of this (in canon and/or fanon), e.g. House/Wilson (House MD), and this is a huge part of why I love Vlad/Morrolan (Dragaera). I think this is basically the only dynamic that works for me for f/f ships, too. It doesn't always have to be shippy, either -- I love this about Legolas and Gimi, but prefer them platonic, and it's one of the dynamics I really love in male/female platonic friendships (say, Ronan and Blue in the Raven Cycle). Anyway, so, yeah, if a piece of media has Vitriolic Best Buds, I'm almost certain to love all the bits with them.
Oddly Specific Trope #1: Possessed by the soul of a dead general. This is apparently a thing I love, and also, apparently, a thing that exists. I think there's actually a third example I've read and enjoyed, which for the life of me I can't remember, but the two examples I do remember very clearly are the part of Kushiel's Scion where (spoilers!) Lucius is possessed by the spirit of his warlord ancestor Gallus Thaddeus, and, of course, Cheris possessed by Jedao in Ninefox Gambit. It helps that I love me some general/warlord characters, and usually there's an interesting contrast between the possessed character and the dead general spirit, and so it's interesting for me to see the two characters sort of negotiating/figuring each other out, and/or people use to the original character suddenly finding themselves dealing with the dead general instead/along, which is great fun to see. And it tends to be a kind of military power-up, right, which can be pretty satisfying to see.
Oddly Specific Trope #2: Demon threesome. So I first discovered this was a thing that really worked for me when I read Jordan L. Hawk's SPECTR (series 1), which are not great literature by any means, but the whole premise is there's a young artist (Caleb) who is possessed by a demonic/vampiric sort of spirit (Gray), who is its own conscious entity with its own ideas and desires, and (spoilers!) he/they end up in a relationship with an exorcist (~magic cop), John. The books (which are m/m paranormal) -- spoilers, I guess -- start out John/Caleb, but gradually it turns out that John actually also has a thing for Gray, and so gradually the series ends up with a Caleb/John/Gray... poly V? And not too long after I got to the part in Bujold's Penric books where Penric and Desdemona meet Adelis Arisaydia and Nikys Khatai. Now (spoiler!) Nikys is Penric's canonical love interest, but Desdemona (Penric's demon) canonically has a lot of appreciation for Adelis's good looks, and I was really enjoying the dynamic between Penric and Adelis and shipping the two of them, which led me to what I've been calling my demon W -- Nikys/Penric (Desdemona)/Adelis. The odd thing about this is that while I enjoy regular poly ships just fine (OT3 or V variety), it's not a particular kink of mine... except, apparently, where demonic possession is involved. Why? I'm not rightly sure... but I guess the relationship between the person whose physical body it is and the demon possessing them is probably more intimate than any other scenario in which you could have two people involved in a poly relationship, and that's what makes the difference? And I guess having the other person(s) involved in the ship be aware of the demon is its own boost to intimacy, too. Obviously, both the person being possessed and the demon doing the possessing have to be full-blown characters in their own right for this to appeal to me, an the possession has to be, well, consensual at that point/something both parties are at peace with. (And I am not, it turns out, interested in shipping the character being possessed WITH the demon/possessing spirit; I've read some Cheris/Jedao fics where that was the case, and it definitely doesn't have the same effect as my demon threesome ships.)
So, there you go. Oddly Specific tropes.
(Look, y'all. I have favorite tropes that have nothing to do with possession, but apparently my Oddly Specific tropes both have to do with that... IDK what to tell you.)
If anybody has recs for books (or possibly other things) with my Oddly Specific favorite tropes, please toss them my way!
Challenge #15: In your own space, create your own challenge.
I'm really enjoying our newly kicked off Cyteen sync read, which is making it both easier and a lot more exciting to make progress on a very dense book I've wanted to read for a while, so I'm going to make my challenge around that:
Host or participate in a sync read (or sync-watch, or sync-listen, depending on your medium of choice).
I've done a bunch of sync reads and "reading pacts" over the years, in several different formats, and it's always been a lot of fun, and helped me embark on and stick with some books that I might have not made it to/through otherwise, including Catch-22 (which I'd started and wandered away from multiple times before), Dickens, and James Joyce's Ulysses (which I'd wanted to read for well over a decade but had been too chicken to do on my own). I also had much more fun squeeing or ranting or going "OMG!!!" at less lofty books, just because it's more fun to be reading the same thing as your friends and have someone to share all your thoughts with.
I've done sync reads in a couple of formats, and I think which one's going to work best depends on the book in question and the people you're reading (watching, whatever) with, but a couple of examples of how I've done it:
- totally free-form, with people commenting as they wish -- pro: easiest to kick off and participate in; only one post for everyone to keep track of / con: can be harder to manage if people are reading in different formats/editions (page numbers and/or % on't always match); harder for folks to find and join in if they're looking to catch up.
- single post with comment threads for each chapter/chunk -- pro: only one post for everyone to keep track of (and I do recommend tracking the post) / con: threads can collapse quickly, making navigation harder; harder for folks to find and join in if they're looking to catch up.
- weekly tagged posts -- pro: weekly post serves as a reminder/opportunity for new people to jump in and catch up / con: harder to keep track of for participants; spams uninterested parties on your flist; more reliant on the "host" staying on top of their own reading.
- it's also very possible to do a sync read in chat, as long as everyone either stays on the same reading pace or doesn't care about spoilers, BUT I find it much easier to do on DW/LJ because it's much easier to manager spoilers when they can be segregated to indiviual threads.
I find sync reads to be something of a cross between a mini virtual bookclub and having an exercise buddy, for fun and/or accountability (depending on the reading material). It requires a little bit of planning for everyone who is interested to get their hands on the book in question. And I find sync reads are most successful when you have a core two or three people committed to the book and the timing -- and then a couple more may or may not jump in and join (which is exactly what happened with the Cyteen reading plans).
The other thing I will say abut sync reads is not to worry too much if not everyone who starts ends up finishing, or if the book grabs you so much you just have to race ahead and finish it in 24 hours. The great thing about the DW/LJ format is that, unlike a RL bookclub, it's very easy to do this at your own pace -- other people will catch up to you eventually, eager to discuss, if you speed ahead, or you will always have a chance to go back an finish, and read all the prior discussion, if you decide to go back to the book, even months or years later.
And, like I said, I bet the same thing can be done with a (not-too-long) TV show, or, IDK, radio play, or something else that can be broken up into chunks.
So, that's my challenge for Snowflake this year: go forth and sync read :D
And to finish off Snowflake, naturally, the friending meme!
(I've been friending Snowflake people throughout January anyway -- *waves* -- but looking forward to finding more friends there :D)
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Apparently 2020 is just going to be the year of chaos reading... XD So I started two sync reads (The Power with
ambyr and Cyteen with
tabacoychanel), and instead read most of A Terrible Country (which
tabacoychanel had recommended) and then dove into Sapkowski's The Last Wish (in Russian) under the influence of the Witcher show and ikel89 quoting and forwarding
seriouslywhy's choice quote bits in Russian. I did finish The Power first, ultimately, but it was a near thing XD
4. Naomi Alderman, The Power -- this was a sync read with
ambyr (and her RL bookclub), which was a really nice thing, because this is the kind of book that it's good to be able to discuss with someone. I'm also glad that we ended up doing this as a sync read where we only talked about it after we were done with the whole thing, because my thoughts on the book changed a lot from beginning to end. I'm still, overall, quite impressed with it and happy to have read it. But I started out really liking it, and around the middle was having a lot less fun with it, and then, after the twist reveal, was left more frustrated than satisfied. But, like, on average, I still think this is a really fascinating book, that does a lot of very interesting things very impressively. But I'm left with the sense that I might've liked it more if it had attempted fewer impressive things, as they sort of undermined each other for me. More about that, with MASSIVE SPOILERS
I'm also not entirely sure how to talk about this book, because there are the four individual threads, and there's the larger story, told as a countdown to something unspecified (at first), and there's the framing story of letters, which reveal that the main story we're reading is a historical novel? novelization of history? something like that? written by a young author named Neil and submitted for a read-through to an older, more successful writer, Naomi. And then there are the sketches with their descriptions/explanations, of the sort you'd find on a museum placard, which gradually reveal the final twist: the fact that the main story is describing the event sthat led up to the Cataclysm, which knocked the world we know back to the Stone Age and eventually led to Neil and Naomi's civilization rising from the ashes of that. This reveal is cleverly done! The artefacts are very believable as things that could have come from our own Stone Age (and, in fact, the two pivotal pieces are based on two real artefacts, as the afterword reveals), and there's a very plausible explanation one could draw from what's suggested in the main story, that the eponymous power (women's ability to produce electrical current, which can be used as a weapon, or, in exceptional cases, more subtly, for mind control) had existed in our antiquity but either disappeared naturally or was culled from the population (and only returned due to the build-up of chemicals used as protection against chemical weapons in WWII). But then you get to the statue welded to an iPad, and the penny drops (or at least that's when it dropped for me) -- this prehistory is what remains of our world, the world Neil is describing in his novel. Except, that started raising the question for me of, how does Neil know enough about this pre-Cataclysm world to write about it so believably? I kept hoping the end of the book would explain that, but no: all he has is what he can infer from "negative space" and some unspecified scholarship. ect, I thought, and the way the "it's actually far future!" reveal with the artefacts was cleverly done, taken together, that pulled the rug out from under my suspension of disbelief. And I just... Like, this is a society that believes iPads are serving platters and Neil is relying on books selectively recopied across five milennia... but he was able to accurately construct things like post-Soviet Moldova, CNN, YouTube and the structure of Reddit. I mean, I realize it's a conceit, but the reveal, in combination with the framing narrative, made me THINK about it, and then I couldn't stop being bothered by it. If there'd been no framing narrative, just the Cataclysm reveal, I would've read the main narrative as just the thing that happened, without questioning who was telling the story and how they knew. If there'd been just the framing narrative and no five thousand year separation, I would've assumed, as I had been till that point, that Neil was writing a fictionalized account from a couple of hundred years in the future, relying on solid records of the era and what actually happened and just filling in the human aspects. As it was, the framing story an the "it's the future!" twist, taken together, pulled the rug out from under my suspension of disbelief and interfered with my appreciation of the last third of the book. (Other people don't seem to be bugged by this, more readily accepting the conceit for the sake of a more fun story, so I'm willing to accept that this is a me problem, but it was a problem for me nonetheless.)
I did appreciate the framing story other than that. I think it adds a lot of richness to the main narrative to be thinking of why someone in Neil's position -- a man trying to be heard and ideally taken seriously as a writer in a society that seems even less egalitarian than our own -- would write characters and scenes in a specific way, whose stories he was choosing to tell. But, to be honest, I found it pretty depressing to think that, after nuclear war and five thousand years, this is what humanity has to show for itself. It appears that Alderman thinks the letters hint at a more hopeful world being possible, but for me that was definitely too little, too late. Oh, and I found it neat that the patronizing, inappropriate older writer in the framing story was given Naomi's name, but ha missed, until
ambyr pointed it out, that Neil's full name is an anagram of "Naomi Alderman". Cute, but a little TOO cute.)
As for the main story, I thought the way it's told as a countdown was really effective in ratcheting up the tension -- especially the way it doesn't just go down year by year but skips forward in unequal leaps. Like, I'd keep thinking, "Oh, we've still got five years" an then it was "one year" and, like, OH SHIT. In general, the book uses various structural an rhetorical tricks to really great effect. The repetition of "You can't get there from here", which first sounds like just some generic philosophy the voice is spouting to Allie, until it becomes clear, towards the end, WHAT SPECIFICALLY this means, and "Think about it" as a way to introduce atrocities as seemingly reasonable solutions (the new laws and Allie choosing the Cataclysm), the way the newscasters (Tom and Kristen and Matt) are used to show the changes in society, "And now the weather on the ones" -- it's a rich an masterfully woven tapestry, and this was one level on which I never stopped admiring the book, even in the parts where I liked it less or disagreed with some of its choices.
Now, characters. There are four main ones with POVs spanning the whole book (and a couple of others that pop up now and again). I liked Roxy best, partly because she had the funnest POV voice, and partly because, yeah, for all that she's mafia, she does actually end up being the person who takes the high road and gets to be decent. She also definitely seems like a survivor, so I bet she ended up having that very powerful daughter and perpetuating the species thorugh the cataclysm. I mean, somebody had to, right? I liked Allie more than I expected to, and had trouble thinking of her as a "cult leader", even though, well, that's what she is. (I also really liked her conversations with the "voice", and her relationship with Roxy). Tunde is a nice character in his own right, but the thing that especially stood out to me was how he worked in the context of the framing story -- the brave and worthy damsel in distress, distractingly attractive -- all the tropes of the token female character, flipped, but not cynically done, because he really is a very likeable character.
The fourth main POV character is Margo, a politician, and the only one of the four who is a full-fledged adult when the events of the novel start happening. She started out being my favorite, actually, and I found her especially neat in the scene where she sits through the test without betraying that she has the power: the idea that someone who's made it as far as she has in that world knows how to keep control through something like that, and the thought she has at the end, that anyone who can't do the same doesn't deserve to be in her role. But I found her descent to leering, money-grubbing politician disappointingly cartoonish compared to what the other POV characters got. (OK, not compared to Tatiana, so maybe Alderman just doesn't like politicians, which, fair. But then she shouldn't have been a POV character.) It just didn't seem plausible to me that someone who had learned this much control would fling it away so easily. As
ambyr said, "I guess Alderman's point is that restraint and control are the virtues of the powerless, something they cultivate because they have no other choices, virtues easily flung off once power is attained--but I'm not actually sure I agree with her on that point (I mean, I agree that they're of particular value to the powerless, but not that they aren't also of value to the powerful, if they happen to have achieved them)" -- and, yep, this exactly. Although I will cop to tearing up when she had that flashback to Jocelyn with the bees, although, admittedly, some of that might've been PMS.
Of the minor characters, I kind of liked Bernie, Roxy's father, even after everything he'd done. And while Tatiana is over-the-top nuts, with her Evil Overlord orders to the help, pet leopard, and ridiculous clothes, I could actually kind of readily imagine someone going off the deep end like that when suddenly ending up in charge of a country. Well, and Allie was fuddling with her brain, which couldn't have helped.
There's a lot of rough stuff in this book. The horrible oppression from which the women win their freedom with the power, especially in Moldova, where they're victims of sex-trafficking, and the atrocity committed by Tatiana's army in the North, the sacrifices and the laws and the historical practices in Neil's society, and so much rape. By the point I became more conscious of the framing story and what it meant, I was thinking that the descriptions of rape were very skillfully gender-flipped -- like, I've read/seen all these scenes in books and movies before, just with the genders of the victims and rapists reversed. It felt very true to the kind of society that would be Neil's intended audience. None of it was gratuitous, and all of it was used to good effect, but it made this, past a certain point in the narrative, not the kind of book it's easy to enjoy.
What else? I wondered at the omission of any discussion of how the power affected trans people (I mean, I'm pretty sure I know how physically, but I wonder at the societal implications). And agree with
ambyr that it's weird how straight Neil's world seems to be (from the admittedly limited sample we see and the choice not to include much queerness in the main storyline). I was trying to see if I could handwave it for myself with the worldbuilding, but I don't think I can... I could see male homosexuality being taboo because, after all, what are they being kept around for if not to make babies (I mean, historically; it seems like the worst of that is a couple of hundred years in the past in Neil's time), but I can't figure out why anyone would object to women being with other women.
Oh, and there's a fair bit of quotes from conspiracy nuts and internet trolls and other such lovely people, very true to life, but, you know, not something I really needed to read at such length when I make a point of avoiding it for real. I mean, it's 100% believable that this is something that would breed its own conspiracy nuts and domestic terrorists. But I enjoyed this the least of the social worldbuilding aspects -- the porn and drugs and "learn this one weird trick!" clickbait and product hoaxes were MUCH more fun.
5. Andrzej Sapkowski, Poslednee zhelanie [The Last Wish] (Witcher 1) -- This was just what I was craving as The Witcher TV show withdrawal. It covered most of the same stories as the show (and now I've gotten to all of the stories the show covered, I think, as I'd previously read Blood of Elves and Sword of Destiny, so it was neat to note the differences and changes -- and also/especially to enjoy the Russian prose, which is so funny and so... juicy, in a way I don't think English could ever really match. Spoilers for book and show!
"Glas rassudka" [Voice of Reason], the framing story -- Did this really need the softcore opening? and the ugh, Yennefer pining... Nenneke, the priestess of Melitele, is great, though! I liked her ever since she started telling Geralt to stop making stupid faces, like a stern aunt, and was not bothered by other people writing off her goddess as a personification of Nature instead of something that's actually real, but the best part was when she told off the young knight who was hassling Geralt and trying to challenge him to a duel ("U tebya chto-to upalo, synok" [You dropped something, sonny]). Wait, no. The best part was actually the way she sees what a terrible idea Geralt/Yennefer is, and does not hesitate to tell him. Lyutik/Jaskier in the book does not elicit the shipping vibes with Geralt that he does in the show -- they're just really fun bros -- but I still very much enjoyed both him and their chats together.
"Witcher" - this was the first of the stories I read that I'd seen first in the form of adaptation on the show, and I've got to say, while I quite liked the show's version of it, the book version is SO MUCH BETTER. First of all, none of this miners banding together to pay to rid themselves of this horror and threatening revolution. There are some political machnications, because the nobles are sick of the king forbidding to kill the monster without tring to break her curse, but it's pretty clearly all political jockeying, and the "liberation" is not a revolution but welcoming over the neighboring kingdom. Best of all, the attitue towards the monster, which has been rampaging for 6 years, is best summarized by Velerad (~mayor's), "Oh yeah, it still goes and eats someone once in a while. Bearable, you know?" Now that's the true Slavic attitude I know and love XD Velerad's dialogue in general was great, but would've probably not made very good spectacle; still, a pity to miss out on it in the show. I also liked Foltest a lot more in this; he is much more... clear-sighted and sympathetic, I guess, and actually cares about his monstrous child, while still being somewhat sensible about the trade-offs. And even the guy who was the designated bad guy on the show -- it's much less clear whether he is actually to blame for the curse, and if he is, it's not intentional, and he still feels guilty, at the end. It's also not Geralt the noble Witcher being the only one willing to save the princess rather than kill her -- there's a range of opinions, and Geralt himself is not naive about potentially having to kill her, both before and after she assumes human form. It's just much more nuance all around, nothing as clear-cut. Also, just...
Show: these poor miners got together some money, paid a Witcher to kill the monster, but the Witcher got killed, and now the miners are threatening revolution if the monster is not ealt with.
Book: oh yeah, the thing comes out of the old palace and eats someone occasionally, but ehhh, not too bad. We built a new palace. It's fine.
"Krupitsa istiny" [Grain of Truth] -- I quite liked this take on Beauty and the Beast/Alenky tsvetochek, with a louty beast who is enjoying his monster-hood (I mean, what's not to like? he gets really good teeth, some small practical magics, willing bedwarmers in exchange for treasure which he's got plenty of, and even hit kitty came back after a while). He had some really fun, juicy conversations with Geralt before the actions kicked in. And the twist of the story: that it's not all the gals who are happy to sleep with him and even be good friends that break the enchantment, its his vampiric lover, who is willing to kill anyone, including him, to make sure no-one else could have him, who feels true love for him, since it's her love that breaks the enchantment.
"Men'shee zlo" [Lesser evil] -- the Renfri story. I don't think I can talk about this one without comparing it to the show right away, because the show sure made some changes. Some changes are minor: Marilka, who was my favorite part of the episode, is not, in the original, a clever girl who banters with Geralt, but a whiny five-year-old, the daughter of Geralt's friend, who fills the role that Marilka does in the show, taking Geralt to the sorcerer and then turning his back on him at the end. Amusingly, Renfri, who is as tall as Geralt and has short blond hair, is turned into a brunette, because show!Geralt apparently has a type (he really does; Renfri *and* the whole in an early ep are wavy-haired brunettes like Yen). Renfri also sneaks into Geralt's bedroom and basically won't leave until he agrees to sleep with her (after having a philosophical discussion on the nature of evil) -- ikel89's reaction to this was, "Geralt is chronically compelled to stick his dick in crazy," which is a fair summary. And then the story has all this stuff that the show cut out entirely which makes it a fractured retelling of Snow White, complete with poison and seven dwarves an being imprisoned in crystal, of which very little remains in the show -- just the evil stepmother and getting sent to the woods with a huntsman. Geralt hears more about her intervening adventures, and her gang are even bigger assholes in the story than in the show.
More significantly, though, while show!Renfri takes a girl hostage and so Geralt is actually saving a life by killing her, book!Renfri... it's more complicated. She and Geralt have a long conversation about how the lesser evil is something people will choose not abstractly, but, basically, when grabbed by the throat by a greater evil. And then, after promising him she'll leave town, she goes to threaten Stregobor that she and her boys will slaughter the whole town during the town fair if he won't come out and turn himself over to her. Geralt understands that's what happened and run to the marketplace, where he kills all her guys, but before they harm anyone in the city. (I had to reread the confrontation to confirm what happened -- Geralt draws first and walks towards them, with provocation, but still, but the gang actually attacks first, by shooting at him from a crossbow, so whether this was self-defense is kind of questionable. Anyway, the thing is, Renfri comes back (after the others are all dead) to say that she no longer plans to slaughter anyone: because her plan relied on Stregobor giving himself up to prevent a slaughter, but he told her he didn't care, and she could wipe out several neighboring cities because he wouldn't leave his tower no matter what she did. Geralt tells her to leave, but she attacks him, an he kills her in the fight (which, until the very end, she tries to kill him by treachery, with a hidden knife). So... Renfri is definitely not a super-moral person, but Stregobor's problem is not just that he's willing to kill young women on suspicion of being harbingers of great evil, but also not carying about anyone's life (and being a jerk to Geralt in minor ways in the past). But the other difference is that Geralt actually screws up: falls for Renfri's trick, when it's possible that if he left things alone the deaths of Renfri and her gang could've been avoided.
"Насколько мне известно, Зеркала Нехалены подразделяются на льстивые и разбитые." [As far as I know, the Mirrors of Nehalena are divided into two subtypes: flattering and smashed.]
Renfri, when Geralt pounces her as the intruder in his bedroom: "Слушай, есть два выхода. Первый: ты слезешь с меня, и мы побеседуем. Второй -- все останется как есть, но хотелось бы все же скинуть сапоги. Как минимум." [Listen, there's two ways out of this. The first one is, you get off me and we have a chat. The second -- everything stays as it is, but it would be nice for the boots to come off. For starters.]
"Vopros tseny" [A question of price] -- the one with Pavetta's betrothal. I am very amused by the opening of this, which goes "Geralt had a knife to his throat" before "zooming out" to explain that he is being shaved :D In a tub: the tub scene is canonical! The show largely stuck to the important beats of it, with a couple of key exceptions: first, Jaskier is a show addition to this episode (and a brilliant one, of course), as is the visitor from Nilfgard. The book has one fairly important character in this story whom the show omitted entirely: a knight who is half-heartely courting Pavetta (despite having a wife at home) but whose claim to fame is doing animal voices; he proves to be quite important as a key voice of reason once Duny shows up and Calanthe tries to be all autocratic about it. I can understand cutting him and adding Jaskier instead, and the Nilfgard addition is very well done, but the other change the show makes -- which has no actual effect on the plot, even -- annoys me a lot: in the story Geralt asks for the Law of Surprise when Duny offers him a reward for saving his life because he is basically duty bound: only children born under the Law of Surprise can become witchers, and with the witchers growing so rare, Geralt HAS to take that chance if offered. Him claiming the Law of Surprise as a joke in the show makes no sense at all, having just seen a demonstration of its power.
Anyway, Calanthe was great fun (I enjoyed her here as much as in the books I've already read), and I like that she tries A LOT of different ways to get rid of Duny -- not just having Geralt on hand to have him killed, but trying to cheat and threaten him into leaving, to discredit him and get the other suitors to attack him, saying she will convene a council to decide whether the king's word ought to be honored. Not a woman who gives up easily, our Calanthe. Her thing with Eist Tuirseach is also really adorable here, the way Calanthe sighs that hopefully the oaf he's brought to court Pavetta will turn into a man like that, since they have shared blood after all, and Eist complimenting Pavetta by saying that an apple doesn't fall far from the tree, so Pavetta is sure to blossom into a beauty like her mother.
- Нам необходим союз с островитянами.
- Почему именно с ними?
- На тех, с кем у них союз, они нападают реже, чем на других.
"Стало быть, говоришь, награду тебе обещал Регнер? Что делать, трудновато будет призвать его сюда, дабы он расплатился с тобой. Пожалый, проще отправить тебя к нему, на тот свет. Там вы договоритесь, кто кому задолжал."
"Kraj sveta" [The edge of the world] -- the one with the elves. Probably the least interesting story for me in this, so I'll mainly talk about the changes the show made. The big one is pretty damn big: the Elves are not sad noble victims: they are more vicious and also rather pathetic, choosing to hold on to their pride rather than adapt. They don't decide to be merciful towards Geralt and Jaskier on their own -- they only let them go because a nature spirit they worship/respect appears and commands them to do so. And when they go off back to their mountains at the end, even Filavandrel admits that they are basically going off to die slowly for their pride, because they won't condescend to trade with humans. But, OK, Geralt's fight/pedagogical exercise with the sylvan was pretty funny, and the villagers were amusing with their folksy speech.
"Poslednee zhelanie" [The last wish] -- the one with Yennefer an the djinn. Oh goodie, I dislike Yennefer in this even more than in the show version of the story XD She traps and mind-control Geralt into doing her dirty work for her, and nearly gets him and another person in love with her killed for attacking city worthies (OK, she sends Jaskier with what she thinks is the last djinn wish to rescue Geralt, but only after he's already gotten quite a lot of pain for this). Chronically compelled to stick his dick in crazy, indeed.
Well, at least Jaskier is suitably hilarious here, with his fishing practical jokes and his uncomplicated wishes. But I can't believe the show chose to omit the "go fuck yourself" joke, which was hands down the best part abut the story. Probably because it makes Geralt look fallible (in a silly, not tragic way).
Результатом были псевдокрасивые женщины со злыми и холодными глазами дурнушек. [About the magically remade beauty of the sorceresses: "The result was pseudo-beautiful women with the mean, cold eyes of Plain Janes."]
Given how much fun I had with this, I should go back and finish Time of Contempt, where I've been stuck at like 30% for several years.
*
Via monkiainen: Deadpool Disney parody: Gaston song (there is also a longer Disney parody including several songs, but some of these worked better for me than others). Note: content warnings are definitely Deadpool-level and not Disney level!
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