#resqueue

It makes me insane that when Dream asked this question in 1689, he had tears in his eyes. He had just listened to Hob Gadling recite the litany of miseries that the past century had been for him, and he was bracing himself for the answer to be "no." But that meant that Dream would've been proven right! He would've won the wager with Death about whether any human could endure eternal life. Yet there he was on the verge of grief waiting to hear Hob Gadling ask for death at last.

OH MY GOSH!!!!

An heir to the throne of Faerie!

This is how I learned the news btw, so thanks for dropping by. :) I love this communal well-wishing from all the dear hearts, and I'm joining right in with sending good thoughts in her direction. That baby's gonna be so blessed.

There are several valid production reasons why the show version of Whoreson Prison Blues doesn't have the lines "If I had to do it over, I'd do it all again // The wind don't cower to powerful men" that are in the studio version. But for an in-universe explanation, I submit that in this moment, Jaskier is both physically and emotionally battered and he doesn't have it in him to be anything other than this odd mixture of despondent and defiant. He doesn't know if he'll ever get out of this cell, and all he's got is "this is bullshit" and "fuck you." Later on, after Geralt frees him and he has had some time to heal*, he gets enough perspective to go back to the rough draft of this song and add in "you know what? It was worth it." And that's the final version we get.

Oooh, what a fun question! Thanks for giving me a chance to fantasize about a world where I'm not too terrified of needles to get the TAD tattoo I truly long for. (Seriously, it's bad. Getting my COVID shots was a trial but I was so Brave about it.)

But anyway! Images, huh? Here are some thoughts:

a pirate ship

flowers like forget-me-nots, rockrose, thistle, or any kind of blossom from a tree (apple, cherry, et cetera—I always thought the "blossoms that fell from above" in Blossoms and the "petals in a storm" in Fair were from a spring-blooming tree of some sort)

a fox

a crown

needle and thread

wings

trees or leaves

books, or pen and paper

fire, either a bonfire or candles or just flames

an antlered (deer?) skull like what Joey and Madeleine were holding in a couple of the photos for The Horror and the Wild

DnD dice

music, like notes or headphones or a music sheet. Or piano keys?

a broken and mended clay pot

welly boots

marbles

an upturned inkpot

the Saint of Never Getting It Right (so much gorgeous fanart has been created of this that I'd want my own version of it)

a cat!!! in a Batman costume!!!

What the hell does this line from That Unwanted Animal mean? Two possibilities I've been toying with, one a popular fandom theory while the other is rather rarely mentioned:

1. The Assyrian general from the story of Judith and Holofernes. The tale (from the deuterocanonical Book of Judith) was that this man who was leading a siege against a beautiful Hebrew widow's hometown was so struck by her loveliness that Judith was able to get him drunk and then behead him in his own tent, thus saving her people. Artists, writers, and musicians from the Renaissance and the Baroque eras up to today have taken this narrative and run with it, using it to represent things such as virtue vs vice, the folly of pride, the Catholic Church vs Protestant heresy and the Ottoman Turks, you name it. Judith has been portrayed as everything from chaste heroine to depraved seductress, and Holofernes has been, well, dead. Lots of inspiration to mine there when interpreting the song, particularly in the theme of sexually charged violence.

(Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith and Holofernes, 1620-21)

2. The learned man from Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. Holofernes is a schoolteacher who is a rather insufferable pedant, priding himself on his intelligence and command of languages. He mocks others for their ignorance, but he himself is a ridiculous caricature of scholarly affectation and is walking, talking proof that education does not necessarily mean wisdom.

Of course the name is a reference to the Assyrian general (and all the cultural weight that comes with the story), but this specific character is interesting to me because of these lyrics:

And you, you follow philosophies But me, I laugh, I choke ‘Well hello, my hollow Holofernes’ I wink but you don’t get the joke

It's like she's mockingly saying, "You think yourself a philosopher, but all of your knowledge is empty" just like the play's foolish scholar.

(From the Folger Shakespeare Library. Holofernes is in blue.)

So.