That one weird girl with many obsessions.

Summary: The witchers of Kaer Morhen have never been comfortable with gentle touches. It just isn't who they are. But when Geralt arrives to spend the winter with his brothers looking more relaxed than any of them have felt in years, all due to the affection of a human bard, Lambert and Eskel grow curious. They wonder what it would be like to be touched or held without fear. When Lambert runs into Jaskier in a small town in Redania, it's the safest he's felt in years. He and his brothers need touch and kindness more than they're willing to admit, and all Jaskier wants it to help, if only the witchers would let him. Geralt and Jaskier are together, all the other relationships are platonic with a good helping of touch-starvation on the side.

🫶 he's so happy to be there. and people are happy to see him too. sometimes sport really is just wholesome 🫶

It's always a man's world where women's issues surround him. Even if we get a female perspective once in awhile- it all comes back to how it facilitates his game in the end. She's a footnote in the overarching scheme of things. Misogyny exists. Back to the real plot.

Apothecary Diaries is strictly from a female perspective and how each class of woman has to act, what limits they have, what rights they have and don't have between each class, etc. These women have to behave a certain way under a patriarchy, which you would think makes it a man's story, but it never is. The women are THE focus of this show, their struggles are THE plot. The focus is about how the patriarch effects them.

Take the concubines for example. The show dives into how bearing a child affects their rank, how traumatizing it is to lose that child, the consequences of that, etc. We have barely seen the emperor who sired all these kids because this is not about him.

Jinshi's personal plot is secondary to Mao Mao's journey- he is mostly there to provide new cases for Mao Mao to solve and to learn more about the shortcomings of his class when taking care of citizens like Mao Mao.

Jinshi is not a bad person, but by virtue of his position in the higher classes, he cannot understand how harsh life as a poor WOMAN is specifically- he can only catch glimpses of it from what Mao Mao tells him and feel outrage but powerless in his wealth and luxury

Mao Mao is a fortunate commoner woman for what privileges someone in her class should and shouldn't have. She happened to be adopted by a knowledgeable man. She is allowed to read, write, learn, and has enough skill to be a poison tester and have a job EXTREMELY out of her class limit as an apothecary, also a job not traditionally meant for women

Mao Mao is not a "noT lIkE oThER gIrLs" protagonist, she is FOR THE GIRLIES. She only wants to help the women around her, and women are whom she has the closest relationships to. She sees a woman being harassed and can't let it stand. She sees a frail, traumatized woman dying from the recklessness of those who should be caring for her and spends day and night nursing her back to health, while also punishing the people who were so careless with her needs.

My girl has STUDIED UP on THE BODY to TEACH these upper class ladies on how to really HEAT things up in the BEDROOM

Sex depicted in Apothecary Diaries is both something women are not shamed to be enjoying, while at the same time being acknowledged as an unfortunately huge economic necessity to market themselves.

Like shit is just so real in this series???

Listen, I can go on and on about how GOATED the series and especially Mao Mao is but you get the picture

Goodbye Carl Weathers 💔

But we won’t stop there! What if I want to say “Sasha” in a cute way? Then I call him “Sashenka”. Still a bit shorter than Alexander, but not by much.

If you are called Ivan, then your “short”/informal name is “Vanya”. So I want to call Vanya in a cute way… then he is Vanechka. (Also, if you want to call Vanya in an even more informal way it’s: “Vanka”. The rabbit hole goes all the way down…)

This goes also for all nouns in existence. A cat is “kot” (male)/“koshka” (female). But if it’s cute then it’s “kotik” (male)/“kisa” (female) or even cuter “kisonka” (female).

Some loose sketches of Atreus and Calliope, doubling as pose studies! All of them are from my post-Ragnarok AU where Atreus rescues Calliope from the Underworld, and they go on a little adventure on their way back to Midgard XDD One of their stops is Rome, hence Atreus wearing some Greco-Roman garb!

Usually, in a story like this (masculine man loses his wife, motivating him to go on an adventure), the story is usually invariably sexist. The wife’s death is violent, but once the man has started going on an adventure, proving his heroism, she’s basically never mentioned again. She’s a brief plot device, forgotten after the start except for a few dull flashbacks. We never learn more about her as a person. She existed to date a man and then die. That’s it.

And Faye isn’t that at all.

Her death was not violent, and does not happen onscreen. It was a quiet death, presumably from illness, and what’s more: she saw it coming. She was at peace with it.

Anger over her death isn’t the reason for the adventure. Kratos doesn’t start wandering the Nine Realms because he’s angry about his dead wife. He travels the Realms because he wants to honour his wife’s wishes. The journey only happens because of the immense respect he felt for her.

Her death isn’t the sole reason why the adventure starts. Yes, she’s the reason why her husband and son go travelling, but Baldur’s appearance is what introduces violence into the story.

Faye had a life before she met Kratos. She’s not a paper-cutout mother-and-wife. She had friends. She kept secrets. She was a warrior who led a rebellion. Her association with Brok and Sindri is the reason why they agree to help Kratos and Atreus. Kratos acknowledges her talent, and the fact that she was better than him at some things. Her life before Kratos directly affects the story after her death.

Faye is not forgotten by the narrative. The whole story is haunted by her. She knew what would happen. Kratos and Atreus talk about her with each other and with others. It’s clear how much she meant to them and how significant she is to the plot.

Meaningful flashbacks. Usually when a woman is fridged, the flashbacks are just an overly bright snippet of the woman looking pretty and saying some variation of ‘I love you, babe’. But the flashbacks in God of War: Ragnarok are plot-relevant. Kratos and Faye don’t just discuss their relationship. They talk about grief, morality, mortality, Kratos’s past, and the way to raise their son.

Genuine grief. This isn’t a man seeing his wife dead, crying a single tear, killing a bunch of people, and never reflecting on his widower status again. Kratos, Atreus, and other characters all mourn Faye’s passing. Years after her death, Kratos is still deeply moved by his memories of her. She is not forgotten by anyone.

A god of war... a god of pain, of suffering, of destruction. The Norns said I chase a redemption that I know I can never deserve. What does that make me? God of fools? A god of... hope.