Latest Posts by chickabot - Page 3

I need everyone who’s new to Critical Role/TLOVM to know this is Taliesin Jaffe (the voice of Percy) at his senior prom.

I’m sure he thinks his new look is cool as hell but it had to have been a little jarring to look in the mirror for the first time after that

I’m really enamoured with the way most of the CR3 player characters approach the life-shattering events in their respective pasts. There’s a quiet, understated acceptance to it that really depart with the usual “epic” feel of fantasy backstories, and it lies not in what happened but entirely in how what happened was processed by the characters.

A robbery goes wrong. Your friends have to skip town, leaving you behind with a hole in your skull and terrible debts to pay off. And it sucks, sure, but what would have been the point of everyone going down when one could take the fall ? Shit happens. Life goes on. You get back to work and people greet you in the street.

Your husband dies during a surprise attack on your home. It’s probably the worst loss you’ve ever experienced. For a while, you may even feel like this should have been the end of your story too… and yet, life goes on. You both knew the risks when you signed up as bodyguards. Your time together was good. You say his name, and you smile.

One day you’re a woodworker - though perhaps a rather shady one - the next you’re a bloody werewolf. And it’s not an easy experience to navigate ! So yeah, you’re looking for answers, guidance, but to be honnest you were always a bit of an outsider, and you may have gained more than you lost. Anyway, life goes on. You craft a wooden toy ship for this new friend you made.

You’re killed in someone else’s story and awaken hanging from a tree. You’re dead. You’re not. You hear your killer’s voice inside your head. No one should have to live through that, but you did, and after the terror and confusion and emotional turmoil fade, well, what can you do ? You design a puppet out of dead things, you make yourself at home in abandoned houses, you meet this strange girl and the loneliness dims. Against all odds, life has gone on. So why shouldn’t you ?

I don’t know. I just think it rings true.

“How can you not be angry?”

“I am angry,” the werewolf said. “But unlike you, I don’t have the luxury of showing it without being called a monster. Without someone taking it as a sign of proof that I need to be put down like a rabid dog, that I’m just like what the stories tell you.” 

“But everyone gets angry…that’s human.”

“Up until the point when you’re not human.”

You ever have a compliment that just sticks with you for literal years and years? Maybe forever?

For me, it’s when I was working as a figure model for art classes at my university (because it paid well due to being an early-morning thing and was easy to get because nobody else wanted to apply due to the near-nakedness and pervasive body image issues in our culture). There was this one professor who was always so happy when I showed up as the female model for that day because he said that I had a “good sense of motion”, and it was fun to draw. (Which, in itself, was a great compliment because I am a clumsy, self conscious person.)

But what really got me was one day we were doing 15-minute poses, which are harder to do because you need to come up with something interesting and dynamic, but you have to be able to hold it for a quarter of an hour without moving even a little bit. They didn’t have any specific guidance for us, so I just… did something. Idk. But about five minutes into wandering around helping the students and talking to them, he paused and told me that I was doing a good job, and, “What a fun pose. You’re reminding me of Rodin’s ‘Eve,’ there. You always have a very Rodin sort of energy about you. Thanks for waking up early for us.” And then just went back to discussing the use of ink with one of the students like he hadn’t almost reduced me to tears.

Then I went home and looked up Rodin’s ‘Eve’ and was blown away because she actually did look like me? I had ended up in that pose almost exactly just by chance, but she also had a soft, squidgy tummy and the hip dips and weird butt and big feet and thunder thighs and strong calves, just like me.

And I don’t have a great relationship with my body. Very much the opposite. I frequently hate the way I look and fit into it, but then occasionally from the depths of the past comes the voice of an art nerd telling me I’m like a Rodin sculpture, and I feel like, “Yeah, I have Rodin Energy so suck it, brain!” And it helps me reframe the way I’m thinking about myself because I can get outside of my head for a minute and see that while I’m frustrated with my body, it has an art to it just by existing. Soft tummy? Fun to draw, nice curves! Big thighs? Strong lines! Dimples and wrinkles and slopes become a place for light to sit. Bodies are so cool, and that includes mine! Even if it’s not quite what I want it to be, it’s still a work of art that nature sculpted just for me.

And for him it just seemed like such an off-handed, normal, natural thing to say. He thought “Hey, that looks like Rodin,” and so he said it.

Just… Idk. Compliment people. Say what’s on your mind. You have no idea whether it’s going to totally change a person’s life. It’s just words to you but it could be really, deeply important to them.

kids remind me, often, of the things i've taught myself out of.

i have a big dog. he looks like a deer. he is taller than most young children. while we were on a trail the other day, a boy coming our direction saw us and froze. he took a step back and said: "i'm feeling nervous. your - your dog is kind of big."

goblin and i both stopped walking immediately. "he is kind of a big dog," i admitted. "he's called a greyhound. they are gentle but they are pretty tall, which is kind of scary, you're right. their legs are so long because they are made for running fast. i am sorry we scared you. would you like us to stand still while you move past us, or would you feel more safe in your body if we move and you stay still?'

"oh. i didn't know that about - greyhounds. i think i ... i want to stay still," he said. at this point, his adult had caught up to us. "i'm nervous about the dog," he told her, "so i'm - i'm gonna stay still." she didn't argue. she didn't make fun of him. she just smiled at him and at me and held his hand while goblin and i, with as wide of a berth as we could make, crept our way through.

behind us, i heard him exhale a deep breath and kind of laugh - "he was really big, huh? she said it's because greyhounds have to go fast."

"he was big," she said. "i understand why that could have made you a little scared."

"yeah. next time i - next time do you think i could maybe ask to touch him? when - i mean, next time, maybe, if i'm not nervous."

later, going to a work event, in the big city, i stood outside, trembling. my social anxiety as a caught bird in my chest. i took a deep breath and turned to my coworker. she's not even really my friend yet. i told her: "i feel nervous about this. i am not used to meeting new people, ever since covid."

she laughed, but not in a mean way. she said she was nervous too. she reached her hand out and held mine, and we both took another deep breath and walked in like that, interlinked. a few people asked us - together? - and i told the truth: i feel nervous, and she's helping. over and over i watched people relax too, admitting i feel really kind of shy lately actually, thank you for saying that.

the next time i go to an event, and i feel a little scared, i ask right away: wanna hold hands? this feels a little dangerous. i hesitate less. i don't hide it as much. i watch for other people who are also nervous and say - it's kinda hard, huh?

i know, logically, i'm not good at asking for help. but i am also not good at noticing when i need help. i've trained myself out of asking completely, but i've also trained myself to never accept my own fears or excuses. i have trained myself to tamp down every anxiety and just-push-through. i don't know what i'm protecting myself from - just that i never think to admit it to anyone.

but every person on earth occasionally needs comfort. every person on earth occasionally needs connection. many of us were taught independence is the same thing as never needing anything.

each of us should have had an adult who heard - i feel nervous and held our hand and asked us how we could be helped to feel safe. no judgement, and no chiding. many of us did not. many of us were punished for the ways that we seemed "weak".

but here is something: i am an adult now. and i get nervous a lot, actually. and if you are an adult and you are feeling a little nervous - come talk to me. we can hold hands and figure out what will help us feel safe in our bodies. and maybe, next time, if we're brave, we can pet the dog that's passing.

the impossible return

the new counterculture needs to be anything that involves zero makeup and curation. the revolution will not be ‘content creator’-able.

Manfred Rütten

no okay so yes i make all my backgrounds in minecraft first im bad at perspective please dont cancel me

hey everyone 👋 take my uquiz i finished and then forgot about for months. it's 28 questions with 15 results and there's no lyrics or pop culture references so it should be friendly to non-americans and people like me who are just out of touch

This one hovered around my heart for over a year <3 

She just wants to read her manga and drink her tea in peace

Anyone should be able to get bottom surgery for any reason, and it should be free.

Cis guy wants a vaginoplasty but nothing else, and still identifies as a cis guy? ABSOLUTELY.

Cis girl wants phalloplasty? WITHOUT QUESTION.

People should be allowed to have whatever relationship with their bodies and identities makes sense for them.

(this post MUST be reblogged by EVERYONE)

So my husband is back on his medieval warfare and tactics special interest lately, and he was telling me about how so many battles were lost because the knights would just disobey orders and break ranks because they got too excited and just went full Leroy Jenkins. Prey drive switches on and they see somebody running and they just blank out and go.

Which seemed really dumb to me, like people couldn’t be that stupid, until I got walloped in the face by a memory from freshman year of college.

It’s almost 10pm in the dead of winter right before Finals, I’m out at college in a high altitude desert in the biggest city I’ve ever been in during my life. My dorm is on the second floor of one of the newest buildings, which are still surrounded by construction zones for the other new buildings going up. Just past the construction zones is one of the city’s major roads. There is still snow on the ground outside, the sidewalks are ice and rock salt, and the parking lot is a slush pile. (All of this is relevant in a minute I swear, stay with me here.)

We get a knock at the door. One of my roomies answers it. There’s 2 creepy looking muscle dudes asking for another roommate, E. E is creeped out and doesn’t want to go see them, but they won’t leave, insisting they see her and talk to her out in the hall. My spider senses are tingling, the social anxiety override kicks in, and I go full Mom Friend and ask them who they are and how they know her. And dudes just take off for the stairwell.

And I took off after them.

I need y’all to understand that I was an asthmatic at altitude in a mountain city in winter at night in shorts and a t-shirt and no shoes whatsoever, and I somehow made it down two flights of stairs, out the door, down the sidewalk, across a construction zone, across the parking lot, and halfway to the road screaming at two beardy dudebros twice my size to “get back here you little creeps”, all before I had consciously realized that I had left my apartment. Something about watching two creepy guys run for it triggered something in me, some latent instinct to Search and Destroy. Like Fight or Flight but I wasn’t the one being threatened, they were the ones doing the Flight, and I had this deep, ferocious need to FIGHT.

I full on blanked out, y’all. I literally have no memory of getting down the stairs or across the parking lot or anything at all until I was watching the headlights on the road thinking “wait, where are my shoes?” It’s a little black hole. I was in the apartment, they took off running, and then bam, there I was. It was like an out of body experience, I was hearing myself shout at them and thinking “I sound like such an idiot right now omg,” and then I realized What I Had Done.

Not only was it stupid, it was super dangerous. Even aside from all the environmental dangers, if they were some kind of kidnappers they could totally have snatched me. And yet there I was, barefoot in the snow and road salt with no phone, no inhaler, and I was still hollering after them like a dog on a chain when one of my roommates came down in boots and a coat to drag me back inside.

And honestly? I’m still miffed I never caught the guys. That was my takeaway from that incident.

So yes, I believe it now. People are so unbelievably dumb and the prey drive instinct is absolutely real.

Eskel

Let’s talk ESKEL, my dears.

I’ve seen a few people in the fandom puzzle over why Eskel has such a passionate following, given the fact that there is so little information about him.

I’ve seen fic writers afraid to write him because there is so little screen/book time, yet the fandom seems to have VERY PASSIONATE and VERY DEVELOPED opinions on him. It feels like a minefield!

Never fear, *pats seat* sit down and let's discuss my darling Eskel. I am not the first person to do a character breakdown of Eskel, but this will be my personal feelings and how I approach him in my fics. I will break down:

EVERYTHING! IT’S AN ESKEL CHARACTER DISCUSSION BONANZA!! (long, involved, extremely nerdy)

Book Canon

Game Canon

Headcanons, ie, how I develop him for fics

Popular Fanon

What I think of the Season Two trailer with Eskel

Who I ship him with

Feel free to reply, send asks, messages, whatever if you have feedback or questions. Also fandom should be fun. All headcanons are valid. These are just mine.

So who is Eskel? Eskel is a wolf witcher from Kaer Morhen. Geralt and he are the same age and went through The Trials (the experiments that killed most of the boys and made the surviving ones witchers) together.

Why I love Eskel

Eskel is important to me because he is physically "monstrous" to the point where Ciri has to stifle a scream when she sees him. The world sees Eskel’s body and relentlessly projects the expectation of cruelty and violence onto him. That is brutal, grueling, emotional warfare on a person’s spirit.

Add to that, the horrific trauma of the trials that all of the witchers endured and his life has been hell in every way imaginable.

And yet! Eskel is kind, polite, a little awkward sometimes, and extremely respectful of women. He is also very protective of those he loves. And while he is powerful (magically gifted) and rough around the edges (he kills monsters extremely efficiently, ribs his brothers, drinks white gull, and trains Ciri hard) he is also humble and soft.

The resilience of his spirit...the kindness that has persevered in spite of it all, is inspiring. (Yes, I’m inspired by fictional characters.)

Also, it is important that heavily scarred and ‘disfigured’ people are shown to be kind and gentle. Most movies, shows, and books portray scarred people as evil. Want to make someone seem like a villain? Throw in a scar. Call them Scar. It’s a feature of our culture that associates ‘perfection’ with goodness and good looks with virtue. It is often flat out ableist. I like that he subverts that.

You might be saying....but Geralt is scarred and stigmatized, all the witchers are. Yes. And I love them all. But if you read further, you’ll see how it’s a particularly extreme case for Eskel.

That is all book canon.

I also borrow some game canon when I build his character. According to TW3, he is hillfolk. In the game, he sings an Appalachian lullaby. I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachia, and my father’s family is from the Ozarks. (for non Americans, this is as remote and ‘hillfolk’ as one can be.) So there are cultural and emotional aspects I build onto him as a result of my knowledge of growing up in this region and coming from an isolated community. That makes him mean even more to me.

Alright, do you want to know where I got all of that? (I.e. Are you a big nerd?) Well, read on. I’m starting with book canon, and I’ll tell you when we get to game canon.

(TW: menstruation)

Eskel’s Appearance/Book Canon (Blood of Elves)

Alright, so full disclosure, Sapko doesn’t include very many physical descriptions of the men. (We do know all the women’s breast sizes though. That’s Sapko for you.)

So here’s what we know about Eskel physically from when he meets Ciri, as Geralt brings her to Kaer Morhen for the first time:

A black figure stood framed in the door, blurred by brightness.

"Who comes?" Ciri heard a menacing, metallic voice that sounded like a dog's bark. "Geralt?"

"Yes, Eskel, it's me."

"Come in."

Alright, so we know that Eskel’s voice is metallic and sounds like a dog’s bark. What else?

Ciri looked up into his face and barely restrained her frightened scream. He wasn't human. Although he stood on two legs, although he smelled of sweat and smoke, although he wore ordinary human clothes, he was not human. No human can have a face like that, she though.

From this we know that Eskel is so frightening to Ciri, that she thinks he is inhuman and barely stifles a scream. Let’s note that, because I’m coming back to it. Ok what else.

She saw that he was human after all, that he had and entirely human face, deformed by a long, ugly, semi-circular scar from the corner of his mouth, across the length of his cheek, to his ear.

Alright, so we know that he has a scar that Ciri perceives as deforming, from his cheek to his ear. Then the last thing we know about his physicality is that when Triss arrives, this is how she perceives him:

Eskel stood next to Geralt, resembling the wolf like a brother, apart from the color of his hair and the long scar that disfigured his cheek.

So Triss also perceives his scar as "disfiguring".

But here’s what I think is important. Geralt has scars, yet Ciri was never afraid of him. Also, Triss is covered with scars on her chest, and yet she also notes Eskel’s scars before his eyes or expression or anything.

So he must be extremely scarred for this to be of note. I think we can assume that they actually affect the shape of his face. Like, they probably pull at his lips or his eye.

Triss also notes that he looks like Geralt apart from his hair color and scar.

But we don’t actually know that much about what Geralt looks like! He has white hair and cat-like eyes. He’s sinewy and striking and his smile scares people sometimes. That’s about it! And we don’t know in what way Eskel resembles him. Face shape? Eye shape? Build? Who knows! We don’t know Eskel’s hair color either, just that it isn't white. So that doesn’t help a whole lot.

We just know that Eskel has a metallic voice, he terrifies Ciri, and his scars are notable even to Triss.

Eskel’s Personality/Book canon

He is affectionate. Here is how he greets Geralt in the same scene.

Eskel turned around. Suddenly, quickly, wordlessly, the witchers fell into each other's arms, and wound their shoulders around each other tight and hard. For one brief moment.

"Wolf, you're alive."

"I am."

So he is physically affectionate, and uses a nickname. Now, he may be standoffish to others, since he is used to them freaking out and being afraid of him (we don’t know). But when he cares about someone, he goes straight for the hug.

We can also see that his relationship with Geralt is comfortable, close, and doesn’t need any words.

He takes his role protecting Ciri very seriously. When Geralt introduces Ciri, he is very clear that this child isn't just his destiny.

Geralt clenched his hands over her shoulders.

"She is our destiny."

Eskel doesn’t think they can take care of a girl at first, but he still smiles and welcomes her. His reticence lasts about five minutes, and he does his part to train and boss around Ciri. And, when Triss comes to visit, he is very suspicious of Triss turning Ciri in to the Brotherhood.

"Have no fear," she interrupted coldly. "I will not tell anyone about Ciri. Not even the chapter. Why are you looking at me like that?"

"We are amazed by the ease with which you pledge to keep this secret," said Eskel calmly. "Forgive me Triss, I do not mean to offend you, but what has happened to your legendary loyalty to the council and chapter?"

So even though he hates conflict and rudeness (you’ll see soon) he ‘calmly’ challenges her because he is very protective of Ciri.

Eskel is incredibly polite.

He is embarrassed when Lambert is rude to Triss. (so is Geralt, who corrects Lambert to no avail from time to time)

Eskel does his best to listen to Triss talk about politics, even when none of the other witchers make any effort to hide their boredom.

In that passage, we also get one of Eskel’s physical gestures. When he is trying to be polite, but perhaps not genuinely interested, he avoids eye contact. Maybe he is worried his true feelings of boredom will be found out, and he’ll hurt her feelings or be embarrassed. (Who knows? You can headcanon whatever you want!)

Eskel is humble.

So Triss becomes furious when she finds out that Ciri has gotten her period and none of the wolves knew or helped her with it. She’s furious that they’re making Ciri train while menstruating. They are all pretty embarrassed and angry. But Eskel is humble about it immediately.

So we learn a few things from this. He is humble. He bows, and kisses her hand with respect. He asks for help.

We learn a few more things from that passage though.

Once again, his scar is called hideous, so that reinforces that it must be an extreme ‘disfiguration’. They all have scars, and the book doesn’t harp on about it.

Eskel vibrates with magic, even more so than Geralt.

What does that mean? It can mean anything you want it to in a fic. You can play with his magical properties however you want. I’ve made them smutty. I’ve made them impressive. You can play with his backstory. Whatever you want!

We also got more physical gesture in that passage: Eskel rubs his cheek when he’s nervous.

We also get more evidence of Geralt and Eskel’s bond. Eskel looks to Geralt when he’s nervous. *sobs* I love that.

Eskel is a gentleman.

Triss comes up with a plan. When Ciri comes down from her room in a dress, that means she’s on her period and doesn’t want to train. So Ciri comes down in a dress and states that she won’t be training.

“Dear” Eskel again, behaves “as fitting”. So Triss thinks of him as “dear” and admires his manners. Not bad for a witcher, who was probably never taught to be around women.

Eskel also shoots Lambert daggers when he looks at Triss’s breasts.

There’s a lot of casual sexual harassment in the witcher books that I tend to erase completely in fics simply because I don’t like it. Geralt gapes constantly at women’s breasts. Constantly. I erase all of it in my fics. BUT it is still nice to see that even in Sapko’s world of constant leering, Eskel is a gentleman.

He keeps his political opinions close to the vest.

He will talk about the war. But when the rest of them start arguing about neutrality, he's silent.

Eskel drinks in the evenings. (all of them do)

Ok, so just from those passages, we get physical characteristics, gestures, voice, ways that he shows affection, and personality traits. I made a list of them and kept them next to my laptop when I wrote my fics, until I had them all down. When he is nervous, I have him rub his cheek. When he’s lying, he loses eye contact. I have him give great hugs. I have him be a gentleman. I have him care what others think, and be humble. I have him show protectiveness.

That is where I start.

Now, what about the games?

Game canon I always keep:

Dark hair and amber eyes. I keep that. I like it.

Eskel is hillfolk. I LOVE that. I’ll talk about that more in my headcanons section.

The basilisk rescue. Eskel rescued a child once by cutting it from a basilisk’s stomach. I LOVE that one. In fact, I have a whole fic where the girl he rescued was a teenaged Jaskier’s niece and that’s when Jaskier’s fascination and love of witchers starts. (It’s called Uncommon, and it's in my pinned post)

His fighting style. Whenever I write him in a fight, I watch TW3 to get a feel for how he fights.

Fucking a succubus. I keep that. I love the idea of Eskel having sexual experiences where he doesn’t have to feel like a monster. And I love monsterfuckery as well.

Doing fisstech. He does drink white gull and is very blase about drugs. So I don’t see any reason he wouldn’t do fisstech. In the books Geralt rejects it when it is offered to him, and seems to see it as a bad thing. But I always headcanon Geralt as a bit more conservative in some ways. I mean, Geralt is canonically pretty vanilla sexually, and he corrects Angoulemes language when she curses. So compared to him, I’m willing to believe that Eskel is a bit more wild.

Game canon I sometimes I keep:

He has a goat. I sometimes keep that. Fandom likes it. We all think that treating animals well is the sign of a good heart (I certainly do think that), and he does have a good heart. So that’s a great way to show/not tell. I have a whole fic where Jaskier meets him when he needs help delivering Lil Bleater’s first foal. (Eskel is Magic) But he does use his goat as forktail bait in the games, which isn’t very protective. And if you’re talking about a rustic or rural existence, animals are work creatures and you tend to eventually slaughter and eat them. So you can go either way with it.

The way he got his scars. In the games, Eskel invokes the law of surprise and ends up with a daughter. She ends up giving him the scars. You can look up the story if you like. Her name is Deidre. I refer to it sometimes in my fics, because I haven’t head canoned anything different. But I’m not wed to it and I like to hear other people’s theories.

Game Canon I Ignore:

His general personality. Watching the videos of him interacting with Geralt, I don’t see much of the awkwardness or softness I read in the books. I love that he sings his mother’s lullaby. That’s about it.

Summon the bitches. I get that he’s drunk and it's funny. Someone else could absolutely say that when a man is alone, no women around, and drunk, it’s totally believable for him to be less of a gentleman. And that’s fine. It’s just something I filter out because it doesn’t really fit for me, personally. Each to their own!

Physical headcanon

I head canon him as big and hulking. I just don’t see Ciri, a girl who has seen war, monsters, and whose adopted dad is a scarred witcher, scaring that easily. So in addition to the scars and voice, I think an imposing physical figure is a reasonable guess.

Hillfolks Headcanons (I firmly believe that each to their own. You don't have to like or use these. You can hate them! That's why they're mine.)

The main thing I do for headcanons is just extrapolate on what is there. Since he is hillfolk, he grew up in a tiny isolated mountain community. So, judging from my own experiences, when he came to Kaer Morhen he probably:

Didn’t own shoes

Wore hand me down clothes

Didn’t understand the language, and definitely didn’t understand the dialect of the other other boys

He felt incredibly isolated

Possibly had less formal education

Possibly had more agricultural and household skill

Because of the connection to Appalachia, I also like to headcanon him as indigenous, or at least mixed. There is a faceclaim going around of Manu Bennett as Eskel. He is of Maori descent, which is a different country obviously, but is indigenous. So I like that. Also, Jason Momoa is 6’4” and is Native Hawaiian. So that works for me too physically.

Other headcanons

He is practical and responsible, and Kaer Morhen is a big place to upkeep. It’s not like they have staff. So I think he’s learned a ton of skills. Yes, fixing things. But that’s not the only thing that goes into a home.

You have to decorate it. I bet they don’t want the old paintings of the shithead kings and such up anymore. So perhaps he knows how to paint or cross stitch.

You have to earn money for upkeep. So maybe he spins wool and knits. (I have that in a fic).

I love the idea of him baking for his loved ones. I just know he bakes for them.

I bet he knows how to whittle and he makes things for the other wolves.

But those things may or may not come up in every fic. Mostly what I do, is start writing. When a situation comes up, I reference my list of his traits, and I imagine how someone with those traits and the kind of physical and emotional trauma he has, might respond. There are no rules. In fact, I ask the same question and answer it differently in different fics. You can write it so that Eskel is angry inside. Or placid. Or just really horny. Or asexual. We never know his inner life. So have fun. Switch it up.

Popular fanon

Eskel is chubby, thicc, or has dad bod.

Eskel is dominant.

Eskel is a top.

Eskel has a big dick.

Eskel is hairy.

There are small dick, no dick, and sub Eskel fics. (all completely valid). But those I listed above are the popular ones with the fandom in general.

The dominant and big dick thing I THINK comes from the idea that sometimes it's the quiet, humble ones that have unexpected layers. People like subversion of stereotype. And as far as the dom thing, you want a dom who is extremely respectful of boundaries and kind. You want to be dicked down by someone who is a gentleman in the streets and filthy in the sheets.

As for his thiccness, my theory (I could be way off base) is that people like the idea that his big body, the one that is stigmatized and scares people, is actually soft, the way his heart is. The gentle giant. Also, we think he gives good hugs, and people associate good hugs with chubby people. (I hope so, seeing as I’m chubby). Also, people like to have at least one witcher that isn’t 2% body fat.

That’s where the hairy comes from too. People associate hairlessness with Hollywood.

However, lots of ethnicities (my particular native american ancestry in particular) are not hairy. So I also don’t like when people enforce that on fan artists and fic writers. You don’t have to be a waxed movie star to have little to no hair. Let people live. Let them envision him however they want.

These are just my theories. My guesses. I might be totally off base. Feel free to correct me on why you think Eskel is chubby or has a big dick.

What I think of the S2 trailer.

Ehhhh. Look. I’m willing to go in and enjoy the Eskel they’ve created.

But he will be a very new, very different Eskel. He will be unique to the show.

For one, the scars are light. They could be on the other side of his face, (we’ve only seen one) but the ones I can see are pretty light. He isn’t even close to ‘disfigured’.

He’s significantly younger (over ten years) than Henry, so their dynamic will be completely different. Geralt tells stories in the books of them running pranks together and being disciplined by Vesemir. They went through the trials together in the same year, so they went through the utter hell of all of their shared friends dying around them. So the age thing will automatically wipe that out. It will be an entirely different dynamic between them.

He is slim, and that’s ok. He doesn’t have to be tall or thicc. The book doesn’t say. But if he doesn't have a lot of scarring and his voice is normal, AND if he isn't large, there is nothing frightening at all about him. So that’s a huge part of who he is in the book that is gone.

It’s a different Eskel altogether.

Again, I’m going to watch, and I may love him for who he is. But he isn’t going to be book Eskel, and he isn’t going to be fanon Eskel. He’ll be a new Eskel.

I hope people love him and I will hype their art and read their fics. This is the nature of adaptations. They are all different.

But I’ll keep writing him the way I’m writing him, because that’s who I fell in love with. And hopefully the readers will stick around when they watch the show, then come find my fics with thicc dark haired, heavily scarred, brown Eskel.

This is not to be pissy about the show. I watched Henry’s Witchercon interview and I absolutely loved everything he had to say about the direction of Geralt in S2. But I’m one of those weirdos that latched onto a very minor side character, so here we are lmao.

And again, I may love this Eskel. But it will be a different Eskel.

Who I ship him with.

Happiness.

Basically, anyone who will respect his autonomy and consent and worship the ground he walks on. And since we do whatever we want in our fics with characters, that can be anyone. It’s all in how you write it.

I have written about 200k words of him with Jaskier. I have written him with Geralt. I have read him with Coen, Lambert, and Letho. Rawr suggested Milva once and I LOVE IT. I may write that. So as long as the person your writing him with is adoring him, I’m in.

I finished listening to season 2 of Critical Role (600+ hours after I decided to check it out, haha). Anyway I spent the entirety of the finale drawing this! The Mighty Nein was a fun crew. :)

New sleep style: hitting the snooze button so many times that you sleep two additional hours in ten minute intervals. I call this Horse Sleep

His Red Eyes

The_Eret

[close ups]

Urban ghillie suit (it would probably work in the wilderness, with all the shit laying around...)

You are allowed to want attention! You are allowed to want reblogs, comments and kudos! The amount of reads or engagement you get doesn't determine your worth as a writer but you are allowed to openly want these things!

equal rights for women will never truly be achieved until we have more female noir detectives

AO3 donators, it’s voting time. And one particular candidate not only doesn’t understand AO3 on a fundamental level (somehow, despite being a tenured user and an unfortunate volunteer) but actively wants to push censorship. They are the exact kind of person we don’t need involved with OTW or AO3 for that matter. The same kind of person we have to actively fight against like, all the time. I frankly don’t know how the hell they even became a volunteer but, anyway. Got vote for people who won’t actively work to destroy it.

Tons more info in the reddit thread here https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/comments/wlxk3m/otw_board_election/

There’s already several posts around here on tumblr of people with the same worries, but not enough imo.

my gay little cat screams and cries if i kick him out of my room he wails and sounds like hes dying and it picks up on my mic and my friends and partners shout "LET HIM IN YOURE KILLING HIM" and i look into his dumb little eyes and know that theres not a single fucking thought behind them

reblog this to place a small, rotund ceramic animal in the palm of the person you reblogged it from

at the end of it, you’re always just the point of someone else’s story, everyone clamoring to say what you were, what you meant, and your thoughts on it all don’t mean nothing.