100 days of enemy recs: 74. Witcher

[melannen]

So the biggest Witcher enemy pairing is based on video game canon and to talk about it in detail is probably a giant spoiler for show fandom? And I think also for book fandom? I read up to but not through the last book chronologically; and okay I just checked wikipedia and it is revealed in the last book but uh, learning the way it is revealed makes me actually not want to dig any deeper into this pairing right now! Okay! We're just going to assume the video game is set in a slightly different universe because none of the game fic I've read has alluded to that even a little bit.

Anyway. Witcher is a medievalish fantasy fandom. Geralt is a Witcher, a traditionally politically neutral travelling monster-slayer who somehow keeps getting mixed up in politics anyway. Emhyr is the Emperor who is going to conquer the world. They frequently find themselves at cross purposes. They occasionally find themselves allied. They fit the archetype of "Person who has become so powerful nobody dares disrespect them/the only person left who is too out of fucks to care, and constantly disrespects them anyway" which is a pretty great dynamic.

Also they were allies first when Emhyr was a young prince in exile under an assumed name and gave his daughter into Geralt's care. So there's that between them too.

TV show fandom is much bigger than video game fandom, but a lot less enemy-slashy, although I have read some Yennefer/Dandelion that does the triangulation-around-Geralt thing in a fun way, so have some of that as a bonus!

• Prickly (26783 words) by softestpunk
  Fandom: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Emhyr var Emreis/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
  Additional Tags: Curses, magic being both ironic and bullshit, helpless woodland creatures, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, everyone loves Priscilla, Emhyr has both a literal and figurative soft underbelly
  
  The Emperor gets turned into a hedgehog (for real this time) and only one person can help him.



• A history of dragons in popular culture (17922 words) by Deputychairman
  Fandom: The Witcher (TV)
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
  Additional Tags: this is the story of that post, where Yennefer & Jaskier become drinking buddies after the dragon hunt breakup, bitch about Geralt, and accidentally on purpose sleep together, and instead of playing Despacito he writes a song for her, not to make Geralt jealous you understand!, Geralt internally when he sees them together:, WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK, only a jealous threesome can resolve that kind of mess, ft. the only m/f dynamic that means anything:, if she can't have him executed, there's too much equality going on, and he is Into That
  
  Jaskier writes Yennefer a song.

Comments

[sophia_sol]

I just wikipedia'd the book because I too am only familiar with Emhyr/Geralt from game-fic and I needed to know what you'd discovered and uhhhhhhh WHAT THE FUCK

[melannen]

WHY DID YOU DO THAT, DID I NOT GIVE ENOUGH WARNING

Anyone else reading: if you want to keep enjoying the video game fic, don't look that up D:

[sophia_sol]

oh you absolutely gave enough warning, I'm just incorrigible and always want to know things, even if those things won't improve my life to know!

[melannen]

Well, I am sorry either of us had to learn that! (I think I am not sorry I didn't get around to reading the last book, though.)

[superborb]

This made me curious enough to look, but it wasn't as horrifying as I expected from your reaction hahaha. They didn't go through with any of the really horrifying stuff it seems!

[melannen]

No, it sounds like none of it actually happened at least. But it's still very hard for me to go from that to all of them playing happy families in videogame fic!

[msilverstar]

Everything that dragonlady7 bomberqueen17 on AO3 writes in this fandom is splendid! She does Geralt/Emhyr but also a new sub-series with the enemiest pairing Iorveth/Vernon Roche, fabulous!

[rmc28]

Heh yes, I was just rereading the Iorveth/Roche story and thinking "I bet melannen would like this".

[melannen]

I read most of her big series back last year! I see it's gotten longer. The first OT3 fic there was on my shortlist for recs, but I thought to myself "Do I have time to read another 630000 word series right now? I'm still working through the Ethan Rayne one".

So anyway it's yours and rmc28's fault I was too distracted to post yesterday. :P

[msilverstar]

I've lost days reading her fic in many fandoms, the Star Wars linked series was so good!

[pengwern]

Yeah, I first read the fic for Emhyr/Geralt and later on I wanted to try the books in hopes of more and, w e l p. (in reading the wiki, not in actually finishing the books. I hadn't played the games and was not very happily surprised to learn the books were these......dudely broken fairy tale stuff.
(I and a friend realized we had both read those fics, but for a different dynamic than enemies/lovers - emperor/minister (jun/chen), which is a very specific historical chinese relationship that it's always hard to find in english media....we were very happy with the substitute nutrients here XD)

[melannen]

Yeah there's also a dynamic, in especially Astolat's fic, for them that's, idk, "person who is just looking for someone worthy of commanding them/someone who is just looking for someone worthy of their command" that I also really love, which sometimes but not always overlaps with enemy ship, and I think might also have some overlap with that Chinese dynamic?

There were things I really liked in the books - they spend a lot of time looking at a fantasy war from the POV of ordinary people who are just trying to survive it, and doing it well, which is something I wish Western fantasy had more of. Also Ciri gets a girlfriend! But there was also a lot I wasn't super into, and the dude-fantasy way it treated a lot of the female characters was a large part of it.

[pengwern]

Ooh, that does make trying the rest of the books sound fun - I finished one of the first books, saw the summary of what happens next, and placed it down, but maybe I will get to learn more about some of these characters? The second fic you recced - amazing. Wonderful, brilliant, I love them already. One day I'll manage to watch the show.

(That's basically it wrt sovereign/official! Which also leads into the thrilling "is this a good working environment" which in fics as well as irl is often NO, alas. I do know that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms fandom is a fruitful source of enemy ships as well as jun/chen ships, for the...centuries that it's been in existence...)

[melannen]

I did not get nearly as much Dandelion goodness out of the books as came out of the show fandom! I mean he's there but. I didn't read any of the short story collections though, he might be good there?

The books are definitely full of unrelentingly bad things happening to people, especially to women, and they also have a ton of characters and complicated levels of plot that I could never quite keep track of much less get invested in, and like I said I never read the last one and I don't think I want to. But I really did like diving back into a Western fantasy world after a long time away, and having it be one that really felt like the author understood the horribleness of living in a place that a war is being fought in, even if you aren't fighting in the war, much, much more than even the most grimdark of the American or British ones I've read.

I have been partway through Romance of the Three Kingdoms for years, because it definitely sounds very much my thing! But iirc I got to the part where the Peach Orchard Oath started to go terribly wrong and got sad and put it down. I should pick it back up.