jez

Geralt felt cardboard as fuck and like he's frozen in time and it's just really, really weird??? i liked him but i didn’t, bc there was no natural emotional growth for him that we got to see happen: not with Ciri (who he jumps from Avoiding Forever to She Is My Daughter really, really quickly, and as someone who is literally writing a story wherein a character doesn't want anyone to rely on him but ends up accidentally adopting a kid, i know how careful that plot progression has to be and how delicately you need to handle it); not with Yennefer, and not with Jaskier. we get more time spent on relationship growth bw Geralt and Nivellen the rapist, for fuck's sake, than we do with any of the characters who are supposed to have a greater impact on Geralt as a character.

there is more relationship growth bw Yennefer and Jaskier in season 2 than there is between Yennefer and Geralt in both seasons 1 and 2. i'm not sure i ship yennskier (idk, have to think on it; right now, i just am in love with their friendship. they, more than anything, need a real, genuine friendship than they do a romance) but if we're supposed to believe that yenralt is endgame (and to be clear, i don't ship yenralt, but it's gonna be endgame bc it's endgame in the books, so) we need more than the gross humping sex scenes in season 1 and the kiss/brief conversation in season 2.

Geralt has a lot of nerve to get pissed at Yennefer but act like he's done nothing wrong. don't get me wrong: it was very, very, very wrong of Yennefer to decide to trade Ciri for her magic and her quickly backtracking doesn't fix it, but i can tell we're just gonna have the djinn wish get blown aside as no big deal in the later seasons bc now it's going to be entirely about Yennefer earning back Geralt's trust rather than Geralt owning up to his shit and making amends.

and speaking of which, can we stop making Jaskier the Punching Bard for a single fucking second? (do the writers have Jaskier's face on a literal punching bag so, when they're not sure what to do next in the plot, they glance at the punching bag and go "OH YEAH WE CAN KICK HIM WHILE HE'S DOWN"?) why are so many of his emotional beats immediately tossed aside without any real weight or time in favor of him cracking another joke? Jaskier's big speech to Geralt being cut off bc Geralt needs his help? Geralt's apology coming from on the back of a horse so he doesn't even have to look at Jaskier while he says he's sorry (and doesn't actually retract what he said! or say "you didn't deserve it"! or say "it was wrong of me to say this"! all he does is say he's sorry! and that's it! FUCK!) only for Jaskier to instantly--literally instantly, there isn't a single second of pause--make a joke. and sure we can say that Jaskier is doing this bc emotions can be really difficult, and he might not be sure how to react, but it's not played as such.

Jaskier! Is! Literally! Tortured! For! Geralt! and it clearly goes on for quite some time bc, when the scene resumes, Rience is there saying "maybe i need to change my methods" so clearly enough time has passed for Rience to realize that beating Jaskier up isn't going to cut it, and it took Yennefer quite some time to figure out where to go to find him (Yennefer waiting for the ship to sail while watching over his broken lute, Yennefer finding the sex worker to pay to ask for information, the sex worker going to inquire about Jaskier at any prisons, Yennefer waiting for the sex worker to return with the information, Yennefer finding Jaskier and formulating a plan to get him out of there--that's a lot of time!! also, it’s nighttime when he’s captured and daytime when Yen finds him) and we're not going to have him mention that to Geralt at all? i thought it was really telling that they had cleaned Jaskier's face up of blood and bruises for when Geralt returns, so Geralt doesn't see him post-torture and it can therefore just be swept under the rug.

and for that matter, where is Jaskier's aftermath of the torture? a fair amount of time passes bw him getting tortured and Geralt finding him in prison, as he's not in episode 6 at all, but that amount of time would not be enough for anyone to overcome literal torture so as to just brush it off, even given what we know of Jaskier's history with spywork. (spies are trained to withstand torture etc etc, but that doesn't mean a spy isn't going to be seriously traumatized after they're tortured. that's not how torture works. that's not how training works. that's not how people's mental health and sense of well-being works.) when we see Jaskier in the prison cell, he's singing, his hands are fine after literally being burned, he's not horribly distraught about his lute being destroyed, he can taunt the guards. the most emotion we get from him (and this is absolutely no fault of Joey Batey's; he's a masterclass in acting and micro-expressions and i wish he could have a more respectful writing team) in the post-torture world is the raspy "fuck it" before he hugs Geralt and the way he can't quite look at Geralt the entire time they're in the prison cell apart from when he's yelling at him.

and look, look, i know Jaskier isn't one of the main characters, i know the entire series is the Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer Story, i know that's why Geralt says that he and Yen and Ciri are the ones up against the world at the very end of the season, i know that. but as a writer, if you're gonna include side characters who are very important to the plot, as Jaskier clearly is, and the characters, as Jaskier definitely is, you need to actually fucking respect them. the writers have said that they're giving Yennefer and Jaskier more plot bc they don't really show up in the books as much as Geralt and Ciri, so why can't some of that time exist to actually treat a character with a modicum of respect? we had an entire episode dedicated to Nivellen, a rapist, and a plot that doesn't really have much impact on the season as a whole, but we can't spare some of that time to giving Jaskier even a second more of proof that the people he risks his life for, over and over again, care about him?

Yennefer is excluded from that criticism, however. of everyone Jaskier interacts with in the show (even the fucking barmaid! we hear her complaining about Jaskier too! for fuck's sake!), Yennefer shows him the most love, the most respect, the most friendship, over and over again: she hugs him the instant it's safe to come out of hiding in the tavern; she trusts him with the huge secret that she's lost her magic; she risks her life and gives up a guarantee of safety in Cintra to save him after he's been captured and tortured even though she doesn't have her magic anymore and consistently feels very weak without it; after the final battle and she, Geralt, and Ciri return from the wild hunt world, she goes to Jaskier before anyone else for support, both figurative and literal; in Kaer Morhen, she asks him for help bc it's clear she actually values his intelligence and abilities and doesn't ever treat him with the same joking derision and cool indifference everyone else does.

speaking of which, i love Lambert and i know how Lambert behaves to most everyone in general, and if he had been the only one to shove Jaskier aside and say "no" when Jaskier announces they're all a big happy family and introduces himself, i'd have been fine with it! bc that's just who Lambert is, as evidenced time and again throughout the season, with him being an ass to various people and then quickly saying "i didn't mean it like that" or "it was a joke" or whatever. but Lambert is simply the last person in a long line of characters to do this to Jaskier: the dwarves, Ciri, even Geralt to a certain degree--though i did, admittedly, love when Geralt said that he missed Jaskier, too, and that it wasn't said in the tone of voice of "yeah yeah i missed you too" with an eyeroll, as it could have been played.

Jaskier is maybe being written as queer but not explicitly so, or with the purpose of Actually Giving Us Rep, but with enough plausible deniability to skate by. i'm sure some straight people will not see it (or will willingly not see it), but as someone who is queer as fuck i can't not see it, especially bc i know what it's like when showrunners want queer points without doing any of the work to make the queer well-written/respectful (looking at you, spn. you were a crash course for this). there's this common practice in fiction to write an artist and make them the gay character: to use Netflix examples, it happens in the first season of that Medici show and it happens in Bridgerton, and it appears to be happening in the Witcher now, too (and i'm sure it happens in more than just these three Netflix shows). it makes sense, in a way, i suppose, for the artist to always be the gay character (hell i'm queer and a writer, and most of the writers i'm friends with are queer in some way), but the fact remains that it's a trope commonly utilized by people wanting to throw in a little queer so they can get a few points from queer viewers and tout their stuff as diverse without actually doing any of the work. and it's happening here again with Jaskier: him adding that he, an artist, will be lumped in with those deemed the other; the Taylor Swift breakup song that is Burn Butcher Burn; the fact he admits that he's broken-hearted over Geralt; that Yennefer doesn't even need to pause for a second to understand it's Geralt he's singing about even though she wasn't there to see how Geralt treated Jaskier at the end of season 1; the fact we're seeing him write himself into the same camp as Yennefer when he sings about Geralt again and again (i've had his songs on repeat since they came out. the lyrics are crystal clear); the team-up of Geralt's ex and Geralt's ex and Yennfer's ex and Yennefer's ex.