Ep. 6 — “The Last Wish” with Jess and Crisanto

Jess & Crisanto join Alyssa from GoodMorhen to discuss the title short story from Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish, “The Last Wish.” Very important bits include: class systems in the Witcher Universe, the Femme Fatale, how callbacks enhance comedic rhetoric, too many pop culture references, and Quitty Wips™.

This episode is available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher.

Transcript

Cold Open

JESS AND CRISANTO: My name is Geralt. And I’m out here getting juice.

CRISANTO: Gotta—

JESS: Apple juice.

JESS AND CRISANTO: Blame it on the goose. Gotta blame it on the gooseberries.

JESS: Ya-ya-ee. Yay-ya.

CRISANTO: Ya-ya-YEN. Ya-ya-YEN.

JESS: Is that okay?

ALYSSA: [Laughing] This is so dumb. I love it.

Introduction

[Breakfast in Beauclair theme music by MojoFilter Media]

ALYSSA: Welcome to Breakfast in Beauclair, a global Witcher Podcast. My name is Alyssa from GoodMorhen, and I’ll be your host as you, I, and our international hanza accompany Geralt of Rivia and his destiny, Cirilla of Cintra, across The Continent.

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[Episode Details]

As for this episode, our friends Jess and Crisanto join me in New York to discuss the title story from Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish, “The Last Wish.” Join us in the original blanket fort as we discuss themes such as class systems in the Witcher Universe, the Femme Fatale, how callbacks enhance comedic rhetoric, too many pop culture references, and Quitty Wips™!

During the mid-episode break, Lars from Witcherflix returns with new information from recently published interviews with the cast and crew as well as the schedule of Witcher-related sessions at next week’s 2019 Lucca Comics and Games festival.

Speaking of—Lars and I will be meeting at the festival in Italy! If you have any local recommendations for Florence and Lucca, questions for the Netflix crew, or thoughts on the kind of coverage you’d like to see from our time there, let us know!

Without further ado, let’s get to this episode’s short story, “The Last Wish.”

Discussion

[Breakfast in Beauclair stinger by MojoFilter Media]

ALYSSA: Welcome to Breakfast in Beauclair. My name is Alyssa from GoodMorhen and I’m excited to have my friends, Jess and Crisanto. Hi guys.

JESS: Hello.

CRISANTO: How’s it going?

JESS: Shall we say bonjour? Bonjour!

CRISANTO: Bonjour oh Beauclair. Oh, we’re right next to each other by the way, right?

ALYSSA: Yeah, we are. I'm really lucky to have Jess and Crisanto joining me in my home.

CRISANTO: It's just made of blankets.

ALYSSA: As of right now, yeah. So, I live in a studio apartment. And we have turned it into a very small and very hot soundstage. So, hopefully, it sounds really great.

CRISANTO: Will we post pictures in the show notes?

ALYSSA: I will absolutely.

CRISANTO: Yes. Yeah.

ALYSSA: We have to put pictures in the show notes because this is wild.

JESS: It's pretty cozy. I, I love a good blanket fort.

ALYSSA: At the time of recording, it's August. I think this is gonna probably air around October or maybe the beginning of November. It's very, very hot in here.

CRISANTO: Sorry about that.

ALYSSA: We're not gonna think about it.

JESS: It’s okay. We're just anticipating the cozy of October. Wrapped around some blankets. We've got some tea. It's all good.

ALYSSA: Jess, you're an avid reader. And you're new to the Witcher universe. Thinking about the books that you've read, how does Sapkowski’s work fit into your own personal canon of literature?

JESS: Well, these days I read mostly contemporary young adult fiction. People would call them teen novels and, you know, coming of age stories. So, it's really different for what I'm reading now. But it really goes back to my roots. I grew up reading Harry Potter.

ALYSSA: Yes.

JESS: So, this is totally like fantasy and magic.

ALYSSA: Yeah.

JESS: Yeah, I really liked it. And, in terms of not just books, but also in TV, I really liked this series on BBC called Merlin. So, it was this show about if Merlin and Arthur were the same age and they were buddies. Oh, that show I just loved it so much. And this reminded me so much of it. All the magic and like the way magic is kind of taxed and restricted and all the different creatures and monsters that pop up in every story. There was always a body of the week on that show. So, it reminded me a lot of all the things that I kind of hold dear and – I don’t know – it's really nice. I like it. 

ALYSSA: How do some of the thematic elements compare between, you know, young adult novels and the Witcher?

JESS: Ooh, that broody hero, totally. Yeah. I mean, you know, when you talk about young adult novels, they're teenagers and they can be very broody. Geralt, he's not exactly in his feelings, but he's a dark horse. He's a dark hero.

ALYSSA: Yeah.

JESS: And you kind of see that a little bit in young adult. So, even though he is kind of this dark horse – this dark hero, he still has feelings, and he cares about his friends. The romance and the friendship, you definitely see that lot in YA. And Geralt, even though he's the kind of guy who would take down a striga and fight all the demons, he's still a softy on the inside I feel like. So, that, that comes up in YA a lot.

ALYSSA: And, Crisanto, how does the Witcher universe compare to other science fiction fantasy series that you're familiar with across all the mediums that you're into?

CRISANTO: I’m a huge consumer of science fiction, enjoy graphic novels, do concept art. Most directly, tonally and thematically, The Elder Scrolls series. The Elder Scrolls is a Western RPG. It's a open-ended, medieval-themed RPG in which it's very high fantasy. You meet lots of people. You play amongst politics. And you pretty much play puppet master, pretty much in line with what I've seen with Geralt, at least, thus far with The Last Wish. It is very much a hero's journey story. It does have a lot of comedic elements. And it does fit the mold of contemporary blockbuster. There's romance. There's snark. There's action. It’s a very straightforward story.

ALYSSA: And is there anything that makes the Witcher stand out or explicitly different than anything else that you've read?

CRISANTO: Yes. I think Geralt is snarkier than most fantasy protagonists that I have seen. In Game of Thrones, Tyrion has a lot of snarky comebacks and “quitty wips”. But Geralt is—

ALYSSA: “Quitty wips?”

CRISANTO: ‘Quitty wips’. Witty quips.

CRISANTO: For any gamers who played the Hitman series, he's very similar to Agent 47. But he is snarkier than most.

JESS: Geralt’s got jokes.

CRISANTO: He's got jokes. Yeah. And a troubled past that we've yet to explore, at least, in the two readings that Jess and I have done.

ALYSSA: So, I think that's a really good time to dive into our short story, which is the title story in The Last Wish called “The Last Wish.”

[Reading] Part I starts with Dandelion and Geralt reeling a catfish that breaks loose from the line. Dandelion finds a chipped stoneware jar with a seal, which he believes contains a djinn, a genie. As the bard and Witcher bicker, the jar falls into the sand and bursts red smoke, forming an enormous, distorted head. The djinn grabs the bard by the throat and Geralt fends it off, holding the seal in his hand and shouting out an exorcism he had been taught by a priestess. The seal burns and the djinn runs off. Geralt checks on Dandelion, who immediately vomits blood.

JESS: Again. Oooh, fuck. But, yeah, I would not survive in this, in this universe where I'd have to catch my own catfish where—

ALYSSA: It's a 12-foot long catfish. 

JESS: Yeah.

ALYSSA: This thing is massive. I'm five foot two. Like—

JESS: Yeah. You put like the two of us together, and we'd still be shorter.

ALYSSA: Dandelion finds a stoneware jar. And it has this curious seal on it, which has a broken cross and a nine-pointed star. Geralt tells Dandelion, “Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't touch it.” Dandelion, being I think as playful as he is or as he believes to be—

JESS: Or stupid.

CRISANTO: Yes.

ALYSSA: A little dumb in this scenario. Whereas Geralt is very serious in this moment saying, “Don't touch it.” Like, someone knocks it over, and the seal falls off. This huge cloud of red smoke comes out. Geralt immediately runs for his sword, and Dandelion just stands in front of the red smoke and starts demanding things from it.

JESS: He’s just like, “Hey, what’s up? I like three wishes, please.”

ALYSSA: Yeah. Dandelion stands in front of it, in my mind, just like power stance, like, hands on his hips, feet spread apart, pompous and overconfident as to what he's commanding this creature to do.

JESS: Like, what did he wish for? I forgot. He—I know one of the wishes was—oh, yeah. He asked this girl, Virginia, who always denies his advances, would succumb to his advances. And I'm like, “Eww, gross. Like, that's really creepy.” Consent isn't important. And then the first one was, oh, someone—

ALYSSA: He wanted a competitor to die.

JESS: Like, just drop dead. I'm like, “What?”

CRISANTO: Dark. Yeah. I mean, all factors considered, didn't he technically release the genie?

ALYSSA: I feel like it's also very short-sighted—

JESS: Yeah.

ALYSSA: —especially if he wants that girl to fall in love with him. Dandelion is known to be a womanizer.

JESS: Ooh.

ALYSSA: So, what's the point of having this one girl fall in love with him when he's not going to do anything about it?

JESS: You know, if the girl is not succumbing to your wiles or whatever, if you have to have someone's consent taken away in order to like you, that means they don't like you.

ALYSSA: Yeah.

JESS: So, I mean just move on.

ALYSSA: Yeah. We also don't know, if that genie granted that wish, what that love could or would look like.

JESS: Yeah. I think the wording that was used in – at least, in our English translation, was that she would succumb to my advances. Okay. So, she succumbs to your advances. Then what? Like, what happens after that? Then he just goes back to be, like, “Nope, sorry.” See you later.

CRISANTO: So, I have an interpretation. I mean, in my head, succumbing to my advances, that's just me waving at another person and then them waving back.

JESS: Yeah. That could be—

CRISANTO: My advances have worked.

JESS: Great job.

CRISANTO: Yeah. This is nearsighted thirst at its prime.

ALYSSA: The djinn grabs Dandelion by the throat and starts strangling him. Geralt gets the Silver Sword, chops the air around the djinn. And, after the djinn drops Dandelion, he grabs the seal, shouts out an exorcism, and the seal burns really hot, and the djinn screams and runs off. And then, talking about the exorcism, Sapkowski notes that Geralt had never used those words until now, because, in principle, he didn't believe in superstitions. I think that says a lot about Geralt's character.

JESS: Yeah. He's definitely a realist. Especially being a Witcher, I feel like, as a Witcher, you're taken when you're young, right? So, he's kind of just thrown into the world. It's not like he was a convert, and he chose to be in this world. It was like it was chosen for him.

CRISANTO: Yeah, he's hyper pragmatic. It's a very black and white, you know, cutthroat understanding of the world. And you can interpret it in those nuances.

ALYSSA: [Reading] In Part II, Geralt reaches a gate after traveling with Dandelion all day. They’re barred by the guards, who won’t let them through at night, despite Dandelion’s state. They’re taken into the barbican, where they meet two elves and a knight: Chireadan, his cousin Errdil, and the knight Vratimir. Geralt gives the men a guarded retelling of the events at the river. Clearly needing magical healing, the elves tell Geralt about one sorceress who is staying in Rinde under the protection and asylum of a merchant from Novigrad. She has little regard for the law and is making a mockery of the local Redanian councilors. The sorceress is Yennefer of Vengerberg.

ALYSSA: When Geralt and Dandelion reach the gate, the guards won't let them pass, unless the person has either a royal exception or a political exception. The bard and the Witcher are forced to spend the night outside the gate. And this is really interesting. And it provides a little bit of background into families and classes. Crisanto, you had a note about this as well.

CRISANTO: Yeah. At this point, Geralt notes Vratimir's crests on his shield. His coat of arms is a shield divided per cross and bearing golden lilies cut diagonally by a silver bar. Geralt notes that these have mixed race. I found this really interesting, because, jumping straight into the story, I really didn't have an idea of the lore, at least, politically, and how the class structure is. Yeah. It's interesting to note that Geralt is sensitive to this. He has some sense of social awareness.

ALYSSA: Yeah, for sure. And I find the note about medieval heraldry really interesting. The silver bar means this. And, like, he's not only illegitimate, but he comes from a mixed human, nonhuman family. Like, what? Like, I don't have anything better to save than, like, “Damn, it's really cool.” So, getting back to the events in the barb, again, they meet the elves in the night. And Geralt tells them about the events at the river.

JESS: Do you think that these are really hard to pronounce because we're American? Or, is it just, like, that's just the world?

ALYSSA: I'm, I mean it probably is. As you read the books and you learn more about the different independent kingdoms that make up the north and then as well as the Nilfgaardian Empire in the south, you do see that Sapkowski uses regional names and regional conventions. Yeah. But you get very difficult things for me, but I know I've a very strong northeast American accent.

JESS: Same.

ALYSSA: So, there are definitely things that I'm just like, “I'm gonna sound stupid pronouncing this,” but I'll do my best.

CRISANTO: You got to stop pronouncing his name like that.

JESS: Okay. Bernie Sanders just entered the soundstage.

CRISANTO: Hey, how's it going everybody?

JESS: Even the fact that they have to come into a walled city, we don't really have walled cities in the US. In Europe, that was a very common thing. They would create walled cities. And it was very intentional of who they are trying to keep out. They want to keep the riff-raff out and keep certain people in, whether that's a method of control as well. But, yeah, I also studied abroad in Romania. And Romania was essentially controlled by invading forces of Russia and what is modern-day Germany and Hungary. And, so, these walled cities were actually a form of oppression, because it would keep people in. Certain people in. Keep certain people out. And there aren’t that many walled cities left in Romania as far as I know, because they tore them down once they were, you know, freed and became independent, according to the tour guide. I mean it’s not like I'm Romanian and I know anything. But, according to the tour guide, there's – there's not as many as there were left, because they wanted to get rid of that oppressive force.

ALYSSA: I mean, despite not having, you know, physical walls, you still see the isolation of certain groups, especially in urban areas. That geographical divide is still used as, like, systemic oppression, even though those physical barriers are no longer there or haven't been there.

JESS: But, yeah, like you have to be really intentional about breaking down those walls, whether it's physically tearing down a wall or, you know, just having intentional policies put in place to counteract those invisible walls that have been put up over time.

ALYSSA: Mhmm.

CRISANTO: Those figurative walls are a lot more insidious. It, it takes a large nexus of control to maintain those walls, especially political ones. The physical barriers are, you know, relics of more war-torn eras where the strife was clear. You knew who your enemies were and who they weren't. But in, you know, times of peace or relative ease, it's trickier, you know, when the, when the barriers are economical, political, racial.

JESS: It's like a false sense of security. You don't realize you're in, you're trapped in a box because you can't see it.

CRISANTO: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

ALYSSA: Right. And there's also the perception that you won't be able to transcend whatever political, social, economical level you're at. And that's also terrifying not being able to see beyond what you can imagine really.

JESS: Like, how do you get out of your box if you don't know if you're in a box?

ALYSSA: Haaaa, The Matrix.

CRISANTO: Ergo, in his recent movie, Get Out, he calls it the sunken place.

ALYSSA: Yes.

CRISANTO: A zone of extreme hopelessness and pure social and mental sensory deprivation. You don't know what's going on. You don't know how to solve your issues. You don't know how to rise above your social strata. And that's scary. Yeah, it's funny. We see this—a hint of this in, in this passage when Geralt notes Vratimir’s crest. There is a clear social hierarchy.

ALYSSA: Yeah. And I mean you see it in other ways, too. So, not only with the knight’s crest, but also they talk a little bit about the boycott of magic.

JESS: The taxation on magic, the limitations on magic, that actually reminded me a lot of BBC, Merlin. The reason why it reminded me of this cozy little show that I used to like was because that show imagines a world where magic is banned.

CRISANTO: Is it explained further on why magicians are boycotted?

ALYSSA: There's always tensions and skepticism between magic people and non-magic people. And I think you would expect that in any medieval world.

CRISANTO: Damn muggles. Sorry.

JESS: Bringing it back to Harry Potter. But, seriously, I mean you have a taxation. Why do you tax something? You want to make money off of it. And the taxation is a kind of like it's trying to cripple someone. Not that taxation, in general, is to cripple someone. But it's just a fringe benefit probably that you're handicapping someone who's really, really powerful.

ALYSSA: The elves tell Geralt a little bit about a sorceress that is staying in the town. She's apparently been just making a mockery of all the local councilmen, and everyone is trying to bring her down. But she has asylum, and she's kind of politically safe. The last line that we hear is that she's named Yennefer Vengerberg.

JESS: Dun-dun-dun. It's not like, “Oh, man.” It's just like, “Oooh.” It’s like, “It's what we've been waiting for. How did they meet?”

CRISANTO: I mean, so far, it's just been this—

JESS: Bro fest?

CRISANTO: Yeah. It’s just all bro fest, yeah, with awkward names and catfishes and, you know, muscly genies with cat paws. First female in this ratio is amazing. This is frat worthy.

ALYSSA: [Reading] In Part III, the witcher knocks out Beau Berrant’s porter and enters the house, where he finds the merchant completely naked in the kitchen muttering about apple juice. As Geralt tries to help him, Berrant falls asleep, and Geralt takes the juice and continues through the house. He comes across a room covered in dirty drinkware and dishes and smelling of lilac and gooseberries, which leads him to a bedroom and the sorceress inside. He gives her the juice, and she suspiciously asks him who he is before attacking him with a spell. Geralt introduces himself. Yennefer has heard of him, the famous White Wolf. Geralt begins to tell her why he’s there, and she cuts him off for a bath and tells him to join her.

JESS: Okay. Can we talk about how he knocked out the porter? Like, it was, it was like a Joss Whedon level, like, one-liner. So, earlier, I think, in our earlier part, someone advises Geralt to bring this big coin sack, because you're gonna need money to kind of bribe your way in. The words he says is money opens all doors. And then, so, when he's trying to get past this porter, he doesn't actually give the guy any money. He literally takes the sack of money and whoops him over the head.

CRISANTO: Toink.

JESS: And he literally says out loud, uhmm, “Money opens all doors.” And then I was like, “What?” This is, this is like, like out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or like Avengers or something. And that's why it brought me back to Joss Whedon. Like, those one-liners.

ALYSSA: I feel like it's absolutely like new-era Thor—

JESS: Yeah.

ALYSSA: —and also Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street.

JESS: Yes.

ALYSSA: Like, that's the kind of thing that I totally imagine Jonah Hill or Channing Tatum would say.

JESS: Yeah. I think it was at this moment that I realized, like, this could totally be a TV show. And I'm so excited for the show to have, I really hope, the snark and the ‘quitty wips’ are gonna be in the show.

ALYSSA: ‘Quitty wips.’

CRISANTO: ‘Quitty wips.’ I’m surprised Geralt didn’t just pat himself on the back at that moment.

JESS: Yeah.

CRISANTO: Just like, “Yeah, funny. That was a good one.”

JESS: He’d love it.

ALYSSA: It's just so silly. As the short stories have expanded on the lore of the worlds and the main character, it just gives so much more room for weird character quirks like this. It's so dumb.

CRISANTO: He doesn't do anything to the body either. He just knocks him out.

ALYSSA: No. He pulls him into a little room where there's like a woman with her dress hiked up over her hips.

JESS: Oh, yeah.

CRISANTO: Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

ALYSSA: And then he shoves the porter in there.

JESS: Yeah. Yeah. And then he comes into the kitchen. And, like, some guys muttering about apple juice. So, I was like, “Wow. Like, you—

CRISANTO: He’s naked.

JESS: Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was naked muttering about apple juice. So, I was like, “You live your best life, dude.”

ALYSSA: That's Beau Berrant.

JESS: Yes.

CRISANTO: Yeah.

ALYSSA: That's the, the, you know, honorary ambassador to Novigrad. This is someone in a good enough political position, where he can give someone, who's harassing the town and the counselors, just complete asylum and complete protection. There he is in his kitchen, butt naked, presumably drunk out of his mind.

CRISANTO: Yeah.

JESS: Yeah.

ALYSSA: And he's, and he’s looking for apple juice. And then he just falls asleep there. Like, it's such a high contrast from what we know about him politically and what we actually see of him.

JESS: Actually, that kind of makes sense to me. I feel like, this privileged guy, he's kind of like, “Yeah, I run this place. I could run around my house naked and muttering about apple juice. No problem.”

ALYSSA: But I wonder if it's the kind of thing where, like, you have a very strong political status and, like, you rule things outside of the home. And then, inside of the home, you want to be ruled.

JESS: Oh, right. I think that that’s what it is.

CRISANTO: Oooh.

JESS: Oh, I just—

ALYSSA: Sweet.

JESS: Oh, I just got what you're alluding to. Oh, yes.

ALYSSA: Mhmm.

JESS: Okay.

ALYSSA: I wonder if we know what kind of incognito sites he visits in his free time.         

CRISANTO: Probably involves apple juice. It's all I know. 

ALYSSA: Oh, dear. Is that the safe word?

CRISANTO: Apple juice? I thought it’s gooseberries and witty quips.

ALYSSA: Witty quips.

CRISANTO: And ‘quitty wips’. I love how Geralt is just so DGAF about it. He just walks in. And he’s like—

ALYSSA: I mean he does say, at some point, I knocked out the porter. If I don't do this, it's gonna be all for naught.

JESS: He does.

ALYSSA: So, I'm just gonna do this. Like, Dandelion, he’s my help. So, he just kind of chalks it up, and then just goes to talk to Yennefer.

CRISANTO: He's so brutally pragmatic. It is incredible how he just literally sees a straight line and just goes, “I'll do what I need to do.”

ALYSSA: Everything seems to align just right for him in this case. He knocks out the porter, and then he just happens to find the man of the house who just happens to give him the apple juice that will just happen to make Yennefer listen to him. But we're about to get there. So, Geralt, you know, continues on through the house after he finds Beau Berrant. So, he ends up in the bedroom and just sees this huge massive black curls, which then asks him for apple juice. Geralt gives it to the woman in the bed, who turns out to be Yennefer. And, as she wakes up, she asks a few questions. And he's like, “Which one do you want me to answer first?” She just attacks him with a spell off the bat. Geralt parries it. And, you know, up until this point, presumably, she assumes that he's completely human. So, when Geralt parries the spell, she asks him who he is.

CRISANTO: ‘And where's my apple juice?’

JESS: Like, who it is?

CRISANTO: There’s thirst all around. Not, well, actually, not. Yeah. It's, we're building towards that.

JESS: Literal thirst though because she wants apple juice.

ALYSSA: And then we're gonna get to physical thirst I think.

JESS: Wow. Like it. Wow. So dynamic.

CRISANTO: Yeah. He’s living his best life. Geralt, oh, man.

ALYSSA: He seems to by accident.

JESS: So, this is their first time meeting, right?

ALYSSA: Yeah.

JESS: So, this famed couple – because, when I got into the series, I didn't know anything about it. I did a quick Google search what is this about. And Yennefer and Geralt came up as one of, like, the very first things. People are shipping these people really hard. And, so, this is kind of like their first time meeting each other. So, it's a very interesting meeting. Like, you wouldn't expect someone to be, like, shipped so well when they start off with like a couple of insults. Like, saying like, “Hey, you smell. I could smell, like, a horse on you.”

ALYSSA: Yeah, this is not like a rom-com meet cute at all.

JESS: But then it is though.

CRISANTO: It is very much a rom-com. I don't know what dorm room has, you know, rich linens, naked woman. And I think one of the bed posts is a faun. Like a half goat, half man. They're into some careless whispers. This is definitely a sex room.

ALYSSA: Oh, absolutely.

CRISANTO: Yes.

ALYSSA: Absolutely. All the bed posts are just covered in these fantastical pictures of people in various poses. And you can pretty much allude what that is. The narrator notes that the room before the bedroom is just covered in glassware and smells of sour wine and candles. And there's just clothes strewn everywhere. Like a stocking and Basilisk slippers, which he notes were the most expensive raw material in the world which could be used in making of shoes. This is a woman, a sorceress of expensive tastes and of high presumably political, cultural, social stature.

[Reading] In Part IV, in the baths, Yennefer turns herself invisible while Geralt tells her about the events at the river. Geralt tells Yennefer about Dandelion’s wishes, not hiding his skepticism of the fairytale belief that djinns grant wishes. Yennefer asks Geralt if Dandelion has the seal from the bottle. Geralt lies and says the bard might, knowing full well that he has it himself. Yennefer opens a portal to Errdil’s home, where Dandelion is staying, and the pair travel though.

JESS: And what you didn't mention was that this is the part where, mentally, Pony by Ginuwine starts fading in and gets really sexy. The way that the soap bubbles kind of curve around her breasts where her breasts would be, he’s getting a little bit blushy. Like he's, like, trying to turn and he's like, “Oh, excuse me.” This is kind – like, he wants to, like, turn around and, like, I was really surprised. I was like, Mr. Tough Guy, who could, like, take down a striga, and like, he's just like, “Oh, a lady!” It sounds so weird.

CRISANTO: Yeah. He's just standing there all the while. We don't really get Yennefer's perspective. Can you imagine her just staring at this dude?

JESS: Oh, I can imagine.

CRISANTO: She’s not looking away.

JESS: Yeah. She's trying to ham it up. 

ALYSSA: Based on what we know about her character, she fully well knows what she's doing and how this would affect him I'd imagine.

CRISANTO: It is considered a femme fatale, right? Very much in power. She knows how to manipulate and seduce.

ALYSSA: And very unapologetic about it. Like, if this is gonna get her what she needs, she has no qualms.

CRISANTO: There's a bit of fencing going on. You can tell this is a rom-com—oh, my god—at this point.

JESS: Yeah. They're kind of clipping at each other or whipping it. No. No, not whipping. Creepy. Because I was, I was kind of going back to like ‘quitty wips.’

CRISANTO: ‘Quitty wipping.’

JESS: Oh, god, yeah. They've got the banter and like a --

ALYSSA: Which is classic rom-com.

JESS: Mhmm. Yeah, who knew? Coming as an outsider, you think like, “Oh, it's high fantasy. And it's a video game. It's probably going to be really bro-y.” It's totally in my wheelhouse. Like, this rom-com.

ALYSSA: It's very human. They all have their very individual wants, needs, desires that really inform their decisions throughout the plot. And I find that the ensemble cast that The Series has is absolutely incredible when you consider how many people are there of all different races and all of their political and social intentions.

JESS: Really well-rounded.

ALYSSA: So, two things I want to talk about here. Geralt, when he's telling his story about what happened at the river, Yennefer asks how Geralt drove away the djinn. And he says:

[Reading] “With an incantation, an exorcism.”

ALYSSA: She asks:

“Which one?”

He repeats the incantations substituting the vowel ‘e’ with an intake of breath according to the safety role. He thought he'd impress the sorceress by knowing the rule. So, he was surprised when he heard laughter coming from the tub.

“That wasn't an incantation, Geralt. Nor would I advise you to repeat those words in other temples.”

“What was it if not an incantation?”

“A witty saying if rather indecent.”

JESS: Okay. Wasn't that witty?

ALYSSA: You find out later what it is.

JESS: Yeah. So, when you find out later what he actually said and what it means, you're just like, “Okay. Wasn't that witty?” And I guess, yeah, it was pretty indecent. But—

CRISANTO: It's, it's pretty straightforward.

ALYSSA: The other thing is that, when Yennefer asked Geralt if Dandelion still has the seal from the bottle, Geralt lies to her and says that he might, but also notes that experience taught him that sorcerer shouldn't be told too much. So, again, like I think this comes back to the discussions about races and classes within the Witcher universe, and tension and skepticism that happened between each of these different classes.

CRISANTO: Right. Yeah. I really like the subtext here, because, essentially, these two are feeling each other out in this conversation. And they're not trying to show their own hands too much, because more information basically gives your opponent leverage on you. They're playing coy. They're hiding information while, at the same time, bantering and insulting each other. So, I really like the subtext.

ALYSSA: After hearing what Geralt has to say, Yennefer opens a portal to Errdil’s home, where Dandelion is staying, and the pair travel through.

[Reading] In Part V, Geralt waits with Chireadan in Errdil’s house for Yennefer to finish with Dandelion. Chireadan warns Geralt of the unapologetic danger that Yennefer is capable of. Yennefer asks Geralt to come into the room, and she locks him inside. Dandelion is asleep in the bed, and she’s laid a magical trap across the floor. Yennefer demands the seal from Geralt, paralyzing him with magic. Yennefer tells Geralt that he’s going to “settle her debts.” She kisses him suddenly, and Geralt feels magic, hears his own voice talking to Yennefer, and then nothingness.

ALYSSA: When we first get into Errdil’s home, Geralt and Chireadan are sitting and talking just kind of waiting outside. Chireadan has feelings for Yennefer. He's protective of her, but still has been jilted by her. And here he tells Geralt, “It’s almost as though you thought a scorpion were prettier than a spider because it’s got such a lovely tail. Be careful, Geralt. You’re not the first to have judged her like that without knowing she’s turned her charm and beauty into weapons. Weapons she uses skillfully and without scruple.”

JESS: So, first of all, it sounds like he's talking from experience. We can see what you're trying to do. Nice try. Very subtle.

ALYSSA: And this comes back I think around to, Crisanto, what you said about, you know, the femme fatale and the characterization of Yennefer in this kind of trope. She has weaponized anything that she can in order to get what she wants.

CRISANTO: I don't want to say she's, she's been around, but there's a small universe that revolves around her. We've got our first hints with Chireadan, who explained the situation with her and this island. We see this in Beau, the merchant. He seems to be at her beck and call. And, now, we're seeing it again with Chireadan, who is trying to keep Geralt away from her for obvious reasons. We're starting to see a pattern. And that pattern is becoming more prominent.

ALYSSA: And more personal.

CRISANTO: Absolutely, yeah.

ALYSSA: Geralt/the narrator in Geralt's head says, you know:

[Reading] “Each to their own taste but, in actual fact, not many would describe sorceresses as good-looking. Indeed, all of them came from social circles where the only fate for daughters would be marriage. Who would have thought of condemning their daughter to years of tedious studies and the tortures of somatic mutations if she could be given away in marriage and advantageously allied? Who wished to have a sorceress in their family? Despite the respect enjoyed by magicians, a sorceress’s family did not benefit from her in the least because by the time the girl had completed her education, nothing tied her to her family anymore—only brotherhood counted, to the exclusion of all else. So, only daughters with no chance of finding a husband become sorceresses.

“Unlike priestesses and druidesses, who only unwillingly took ugly or crippled girls, sorcerers took anyone who showed evidence of a predisposition. If the child passed the first years of training, magic entered the equation. The young sorceress would become attractive because the prestige of her profession demanded it. The result was pseudo-pretty women with the angry and cold eyes of ugly girls. Girls who couldn’t forget their ugliness had been covered by the mask of magic only for the prestige of their profession.”

ALYSSA: Which—

JESS: Okay.

ALYSSA: Oof. Oof.

JESS: Okay. So, first of all, let's address that this whole speech is pretty much him saying like, “I know what I'm getting into. I see right through this.” And this last line that we kind of just went, “Oof”:

[Reading] “Girls who couldn't forget their ugliness had been covered by the mask of magic only for the prestige of the profession.”

JESS: It makes them seem like they're obsessed with their beauty/ugliness. And, in reality, I think it's more that society is obsessed with women's beauty and ugliness. And the sorcerer is just trying to kind of counteract that. They're trying to bend their appearance just to be taken seriously. So, it's really not about vanity. It's about kind of taking control back in their hands and saying, “You're gonna ignore me, because I'm ugly? Well, guess what? I could make myself beautiful, and you can’t ignore me now. I have the power.”

ALYSSA: It says a lot about, I think, how the perception of beauty affects social value.

JESS: Yeah, because I guess this world is supposed to emulate some type of medieval age where women weren't taken seriously. They weren't equals. And, even in modern times, I feel like this is an issue still, where I feel like a sorcerer, she has better things to do. I mean I feel like they're, the idea that she's making herself look beautiful. That's not for her. It's just so she could be taken seriously. And, in this world, this medieval world, you, as a woman, can't be taken seriously unless you're beautiful, unless you're married to someone powerful. So, that's just, they're just trying to, you know, make it in the world.

CRISANTO: Yeah. I’m just trying to figure out if this is a reflection of Sapkowski’s own values or whether it was really a world that married, you know, the medieval times in which being a woman meant you're just popping out babies, right? The interesting part I found about this passage is that it expands into, you know, women's roles as sucky as it is. For some reason, I just imagined geishas in the sense that, you know, they provide that service and, yet, they're still bound by, you know, society's very unflattering, like, outlook on them, you know, their service. You know, they're professional musicians, calligraphists, singers.

JESS: Singers. Yeah.

CRISANTO: So, they were highly valued in that society. And, yet, unfortunately, the, you know, they cannot escape, you know, the male gaze. And they're bound by, you know, these rules of society. One thing I do appreciate about this is that it frames Yennefer and her struggles. There's a sense that, that there's more to her than we understand, because the society is kind of shitty to her. There are layers. And there are reasons for her and why these walls are up.

ALYSSA: I think it's also the coming of independence. And, again, I think it's magic that does that for these women having a certain element of power, you know, whether they're seeking this very chaotic power of our authors or just power in order to better the world. But I think that, you know, this beautification of these women is more of a means to an end. But this is one of the ways in the society that young women are able to get out of this kind of social and cultural oppression.

ALYSSA: So, to get back to the plot, Yennefer asks Geralt to come into the room, and then she traps him inside. There's this huge drawing and pentagram. There are candles. There's an orb in the center. She demands the seal from him. He starts to kind of like whacks this intense moral monologue at her. As he's doing that, he freezes physically. She kind of laughs to herself and she was like, “I wonder when you would feel it. I knew you would deflect a spell thrown straight at you.” So, she decides to paralyze him with magic. She notes here:

[Reading] “I also knew that before you tried anything, you tried to impress me with your eloquence. You were talking while the spell hanging over you was working and slowly breaking you. Now, you can only talk, but you don't have to impress me anymore. I know you're eloquent. Any further efforts in that direction will only spoil the effect.”

ALYSSA: Geralt here says, like, “You know, someone's gonna figure it out. Someone's gonna know something's wrong.” And Yennefer responds:

[Reading] “What if Chireadan does figure it out? Is he going to run for help? Nobody will get through my barrier, but Chireadan is not going to run anywhere. He won't do anything against me. Anything. He's under my spell. And, no, it's not a question of black sorcery. I didn't do anything in that way. It's a simple question of body chemistry. He's fallen in love with me, the blockhead. Didn't you know? Can you imagine he even intended to challenge Beau to a duel, the jealous elf. That rarely happens. Geralt, it's not for nothing that I chose this house.”

ALYSSA: My god. You see her weaponization of self in full, full form. She is so self-aware of what she is doing to everybody else.

JESS: And it's so funny, because, earlier Crisanto, you were saying, “Oh, it seems like Yennefer has left a wake of tears behind her.” And it's totally, I don't know if it's entirely intentional. She's pretty much saying here, “It's, like, not my fault that you fell in love with me. Sorry about it.”

CRISANTO: Yeah.

ALYSSA: Like, she's definitely leveraging—

JESS: Yeah.

ALYSSA: —what's been more or less handed to her.

JESS: Exactly. It’s, like, she needs to get what she wants. And sorry if you fell in love with me, but, like, I gotta do what I got to do.

CRISANTO: She's capitalizing. Yeah. She doesn't really have to care about how other, others perceive her.

JESS: Oh, I feel like this is like that Lizzo song. Oh, it’s like—

CRISANTO: The juice?

JESS: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like something—

CRISANTO: The apple juice?

JESS: Not my fault. The apple juice, exactly.

CRISANTO: Blame it on the apple juice. I do love the setup here. In their first bout, when Yennefer throws the energy blast at Geralt in the bedroom, he deflects it. And, in this scene, she pretty much has him down pat already. She has her pattern recognition down. And, now, in this, their second meeting, she capitalizes on it.

ALYSSA: I wonder how much that says about her versus about Geralt. Either she's really smart or he’s—

CRISANTO: Oh, she’s smarter.

ALYSSA: —insane—

CRISANTO: She’s, definitely, smarter.

ALYSSA: —or he's insanely simple and very predictable. And it might, it's probably a very wonderful combination of both. So, at this point, Yennefer tells Geralt that she's going to, “settle her debts.” Debts that could be settled by anyone, but she'll have him do. She kisses him really suddenly. And Geralt feels magic. He has this very out-of-body experience, where he hears his own voice saying like, “Yes, my lady. Anything, my lady.” He leaves the house. Everyone that's in the house sees his eyes, and they just back away from him because they know something is wrong. He marches out of the house, and then he blacks out completely.

CRISANTO: Pure femme fatale at this moment. She's using her sex appeal plus these other abilities to take advantage of him. I love the black out, because it is a deliberate cliffhanger. And it sets up some hilarious Hangover-esque moments.

ALYSSA: So, we're gonna cut to a break. And, when we return, Jess, Crisanto, and I will continue with “The Last Wish.”

Tidings from Toussaint

[“Tidings from Toussaint” theme music by Bettina Campomanes]

LARS FROM WITCHERFLIX: Hey, it's Lars from Witcherflix and this is “Tidings from Toussaint.” The time of silence when it comes to Witcher news is almost over. So, let's jump right into it.

As previously reported in the last edition of “Tidings from Toussaint,” the Witcher crew will visit the Lucca Comics and Games convention in Italy. There will be a lot of Witcher-related events in the course of the convention, which lasts from October 30th to November 2nd. The whole Witchercraze will start on October 30th with cosplayers dressed as Witcher characters from the show roaming the streets of Lucca and a Witcher Academy where visitors can learn real Witcher skills. At 2PM local time, author Andzrej Sapkowski will hold a panel and tells us everything about the Witcher story. The next day it gets even more interesting: on October 31st at 3PM local time, there will be a Netflix Witcher panel with showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich, author Andzrej Sapkowski, and the two actresses, Anya Chalotra and Freya Allan. Rumor has it that they will show the next Witcher trailer during this panel. The next day, on November 1st at 2PM local time, there will be another Witcher panel: Tomasz Baginski (executive producer of the show), Tim Aslam (costume designer), and Andrew Laws (production designer) will talk about the show. Or as Tomasz Baginski said on his Facebook account, "So if someone wants to grill us about the Nilfgaardian armor, Calanthe's hair color, slavic motifs and anything else, do that there." This sounds absolutely awesome.

And the best thing about this is: me and Alyssa will be in Lucca! So, make sure to have an eye on our Instagram and Twitter pages when the Lucca Comics and Games convention takes place.

In the French magazine "Premiere" Henry Cavill was asked about the show. Henry again talked about his history with Geralt of Rivia: "I discovered the games, then I discovered the books, and the universe of The Witcher instantly meant something to me. I often thought about playing Geralt. When the opportunity appeared, I didn't let the chance pass me. I asked my agent to make me meet Lauren as soon as possible… I didn't even have the need to prepare myself for the role. Because I breathe, I live this universe every day. I already got numerous opportunities to think about this character while I was playing the games. My preparation was already made before the casting started." If you ask me, there is no one better fitting to play Geralt. This enthusiasm is just great.

Once again we learned more about characters that were cast in the show. We already knew that actor Callum Coates had been cast, but now we know his role on the Witcher show: according to his CV on Spotlight.com he has been cast in a role named "Doppler Mousesack". The storyline he will appear in has to be original, as there is no doppler version of the druid Mousesack in the books. Moreover we already know that there is a doppler Cahir in some point of the show, so it's definitely possible these two doppler characters appear side by side. As a reminder: a doppler is a shapeshifter who can transform into anyone he likes if he has a similar body weight. Moreover Hungarian actor Levente Lippai will play an original character Zeke in Episode 2 of the show.

I'd like to finish this edition of “Tidings from Toussaint “with a nice little rumor from the set, brought to us by Redanian Intelligence. They report that Geralt will find himself in a Nilfgaardian camp at one point after a battle. There he has to fight ghouls. This scene could be a reinterpretation of Geralt getting attacked by ghouls from the short story "Something More". Moreover Redanian Intelligence wrote that they heard Eamon Farren (who will play Cahir) will be leading reinforcement troops into a battle. They also heard that the Nilfgaardian commander was "described as a relatively thin man with short bright hair". Mimi Ndiweni as the sorceress Fringilla Vigo was also present. Last but not least, there is also supposed to be a scene of the mage Vilgefortz (played by Mahesh Jadu) "annihilating a survivor". This big battle that is described in these scenes is almost definitely the famous Battle of Sodden Hill between the North and Nilfgaard.

Anyway guys, that's it for me. We'll talk again in the next episode of Breakfast in Beauclair. Until then, thanks again for listening and good luck on the path!

[“Tidings from Toussaint” theme music by Bettina Campomanes]

Discussion

ALYSSA: Thanks for the update, Lars! Welcome back from the break. I’m here with Jess and Crisanto to continue our discussion on the title short story from Andrezj Sapkowski’s The Last Wish, “The Last Wish.” So, when we left off, Geralt had come into the town of Rinde with Dandelion, who was attacked by a djinn or genie. And he had gone seeking for help, and he had found Yennefer, the only sorceress in town. At this point in the story, Geralt has visited her. She's decided to help him. It turns out she trapped him and has now sent him into town in order to feel some sort of purpose, and the Witcher has blacked out.

[Reading] In Part VI, Geralt wakes in a dungeon with Chireadan, who fills him in on the day’s events. The Witcher, possessed and in a trance, marched around town harassing each of the councilors who had wronged Yennefer. On his way to the temple, where an entire unit of municipal guards was waiting for him, he fainted. Chireadan got involved with the guards and they were both thrown into the dungeon. Chireadan apologizes to Geralt for not attempting to stop him and admits to Geralt that he is “fascinated” by Yennefer and was afraid of the witcher hurting her. Dungeon guards arrive on behalf of a councilor, Laurelnose, and beat the witcher. One mocks Geralt asking if he needs anything from the councilor, if the witcher has “any wishes at all.” Geralt responds, “Just one. That you burst, you son-of-a-whore.” And the guard turns red, clutching his stomach, and bursts.

ALYSSA: So, this is very much, like, Geralt comes to an almost a Hangover-style moment, where he has no understanding of the events that happened after Yennefer really, like, set him loose on the town. He's learning about all of this from Chireadan. And he's just groaning and just, like, “Oh, did I really do that?”

JESS: Yeah. I think it gets progressively worse and worse. He's like, “What? I did what?” It's just like your worst hangover moment. You're right.

ALYSSA: And I'm sure that there are probably people listening to this that can relate. I personally cannot relate, but I'm sure that there's someone out there that'll be like, “Mhmm.”

JESS: I can't either. I don't think I've ever been, like, blackout drunk before.

CRISANTO: Yeah. Same here.

JESS: Yeah. Oh, look who’s that!

CRISANTO: I’ve never experienced such an incident.

JESS: No, have you?

CRISANTO: Blackout drunk? No. I mean not to the point that like I pulled down the pants of another villager—

JESS: Oh.

CRISANTO: —and like—

ALYSSA: Beat him?

CRISANTO: —beat him with a belt.

ALYSSA : And then especially for Geralt just like learning that he was basically harassing the whole city to the point where you had an entire unit of guards just waiting for him. And I think they mentioned that they basically had everything from the armory, except for an actual like trebuchet or—

JESS: Wow. Go get them, Geralt.

ALYSSA: So, to back up for a second, Geralt left Errdil’s. He went straight to a pawnbroker and just punched the pawnbroker across the face completely unprompted, left that, went straight to Laurelnose, the apothecary’s place, drags him out of his home, pulls down his pants in front of this entire crowd, and just starts lashing him with a belt.

JESS: Yo.

ALYSSA: I think he says something about like this is the kind of gossiping that a child would do. So, you get a child's punishment. And then he just lashes him on the ass. And it's just like, ah, it's funny, but it's awful.

JESS: He’s got the quips. And, in this case, actual whips!

ALYSSA: Oh, no.

CRISANTO: Oh, the witty quips. The ‘quitty wips’.

JESS: Right. He's got some ‘quitty ‘whips’’. Literally!

ALYSSA: Oh, lord. After Chireadan lets Geralt know what has happened, Chireadan apologizes to the Witcher that he didn't stop him earlier. He's like, “I could have tried.” And Geralt is just like, “Based from a trance and based on my own personal strength, you wouldn't have been able to stop me.” Chireadan says like, “No, but I didn't want to stop you because I didn't want you to hurt her. I was afraid that, if I broke the trance and somehow if I'd stopped you somehow, when you came to, you would go back and you’d try to hurt Yennefer. And I didn't want that. It was never about you. It was about her.” And you see here how deeply he, like, “loves her.”

JESS: This is when you cue Usher’s U Got It Bad.

CRISANTO: Give this guy some apple juice. He is thirsty.

JESS: Yeah. This is a really interesting way to manifest his little crush on her just like, “I'm trying to protect her. So, I’ll protect her by, like, beating some other guy.” Like, I'm not sure if I totally believe him. He might be, like, trying to, like, get some, some aggression out. Like, “Ah, it's clear that, like, Yennefer and you have some chemistry.”

CRISANTO: That’s a total fuck boy move let’s be real.

JESS: Word.

ALYSSA: Yeah. Yeah. It's not great. I mean, like, everything that seems to drive Chireadan throughout this chapter is just his one-sided love for Yennefer. It's definitely weird. She does take advantage of it repeatedly throughout the whole chapter and acknowledges that she does. And here in – like, in this moment of vulnerability with Geralt, who just seems to draw vulnerability out from whoever he's with no matter the occasion.

CRISANTO: He's a listener.

JESS: Yeah.

CRISANTO: He’s a sensitive boy.

JESS: He’s one of those people. He just brings it out of people.

ALYSSA: I wonder if he’s just so quiet that people feel the need to fill the void with him.

JESS: That’s exactly it.

ALYSSA: And just, like, keep talking.

JESS: I bet. Yeah.

CRISANTO: Well, while he's not trying to, like, extrapolate information, he's just staring at you. He's like, “Yeah. Go on. Keep talking.”

ALYSSA: Dungeon guards arrive on behalf of Laurelnose and beat the Witcher. One mocks Geralt and asks him if he needs anything. And they just kind of keep mocking him. They pin down his arms. They pin down his feet. The warden just starts beating the Witcher. They provoke him enough that the Witcher just says in spite, “One wish. That you burst you son of a whore.” And then the guard just grabs his stomach. He turns red and just explodes.

JESS: He literally burst.

ALYSSA: Which, ugh, I'm imagining—Again, it's August, so, Stranger Things Season 3 released recently.

CRISANTO: Oh, yeah.

ALYSSA: And there was a bunch of that. There was a lot of, like, bursting in Stranger Things 3.

JESS: Gross.

ALYSSA: So, that's the only thing—that's, that's the visual that's coming to mind right now.

CRISANTO: A lot of insides becoming outsides.

JESS: Oooh.

CRISANTO: Yeah. At this point, I thought that Yennefer did it or Geralt unknowingly, but yeah, we'll go into that.

ALYSSA: [Reading] In Part VII, Geralt and Chireadan are brought to Mayor Neville’s office, where they are joined by the Priest Krepp. Geralt tells the mayor and priest most of the events at the river. Suddenly, a portal appears in the wall and Dandelion through it, hollering that the Witcher is innocent. The group tries to get to the bottom of his yelling before Krepp realizes that Yennefer forced the bard to give up his last wish in hopes to capture the djinn before it returns to its own dimension. Thunder booms outside and everyone rushes to the window, where they see the djinn above, above Errdil’s tavern despite Yennefer’s magical bindings. The Witcher asks Krepp to reopen and stabilize the portal. Geralt passes through the portal to Errdil’s inn.

ALYSSA: So, Krepp is a religious figure. He was the next person that was on Yennefer's list for Geralt. After the pawnbroker and Laurelnose, Geralt was about to go after the priests in the temple and because he was like giving out large sermons about Yennefer and her sins and everything. And Krepp starts to explain, like, the mechanics of what djinns are, where they come from, how sorcerers can use them for magic. Krepp here says that, you know, there are different planes and dimensions, which relate to the elements. So, water, fire, air, and earth.

CRISANTO: So, these four powers in The Avatar Returns. I’m a true children of pop culture. And it had gotten way too saturated.

ALYSSA: I know. We've had way too many pop culture references. Ahh.

JESS: It's funny. You were thinking about Avatar. I was thinking of Earth, Wind, and Fire, “Do you remember?”

CRISANTO: Remember.

JESS: Do any songs.

ALYSSA: Krepp goes on to say that each of these elements has its own dimension, which is called a plane. Each of these planes are inhabited by different kinds of genies. Air genies being djinns. He explains that a genie like this is a reservoir of magical energy, which sorcerers can draw from to expand their powers. Krepp also confirms, the idea that Geralt is skeptical of, that djinns can grant wishes. Three wishes come from each genie. Then it's free and escapes to its own dimension.

JESS: Yeah. Actually, going back to what you said before about how, like, there's a water plane, a fire plane, and so on. I thought that was really interesting. When I was reading, I was like, “Ooh, what does that mean for each genie?”

ALYSSA: The overall powers that they possess. I'm not sure how broad they are. Because he does mention that an earth genie once helped a wizard move a mountain, because it was just locking his view from his tower or Sapkowski doesn't really note here if, for example, moving earth is a power exclusive to earth genies or if like any genie can do that.

JESS: Yeah. That's what I was wondering while I was reading. I thought that it was interesting that it's a different element attached and how does that affect, you know, what kind of magic that they do. And that's what I like and don't like about short stories actually. Because, with short stories, you kind of get little pieces, and it kind of introduces something. It teases a little something. And you don't get, like, the full-blown mythology of this.

CRISANTO: It's a teaser. Yeah. There's two straight pages of exploits in here, where it’s just like trying to understand the mechanics of where the genie you come from, why – what's happening, why did this guy burst. It's hilarious. There's a little buddy cop routine between Krepp and Neville. Neville is just like, “Oh, my town! But my town.”

JESS: Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Correct.

CRISANTO: All the while Krepp is like, “You've unleashed, you unleashed this apocalyptic power upon our world. You and this woman, how dare you!” All the while Neville is like, “My town!”

ALYSSA: They're very true to their positions—

CRISANTO: Yeah.

ALYSSA: —the two of them, you know, as the priest and as the mayor respectively.

CRISANTO: True bureaucrats. And, yeah, we do get the, we’re understanding how deep Yennefer's threads attach to the narrative.

JESS: Geralt’s.

CRISANTO: And Geralt, yeah, he's just, he's our surrogate everyday guy just at this moment. Like, “Oh, this is happening now. And this is terrible.”

ALYSSA: Yeah. So, they're having this discussion. And then, all of a sudden, Dandelion just pops into this portal. They're trying to figure out what the hell is going on, because this happens very suddenly. No one was expecting it. And Dandelion is just kind of screaming. He says that, you know, Yennefer woke him up or that I guess he was awake, and she just tells him, “Say that this is your wish: my only wish to say that the Witcher is innocent.” And she just shoves him through the portal. Krepp, at this point, makes the connection that Yennefer just made Dandelion say his last wish. Now, she's going to try to capture the genie. And, as that happens, they hear this huge boom outside. And everyone rushes to the window. I'm imagining it like Friends when they go to run and see Ugly Naked Guy.

JESS: Yes.

ALYSSA: Just the six of them piled on the window peering out. The djinn is out of Errdil’s tavern and just wreaking havoc in the town despite being bound down magically. The Mayor Neville is just freaking out about this town. Geralt, again, just says like, “Krepp, I need you to do this thing. Open the portal.” And Krepp starts giving him this huge monologue about like, “But the sin. But your sin. But her sin.” Like—

CRISANTO: Like taxes. They’re like taxes.

ALYSSA: And then Geralt was like, “Yeah, okay, whatever. But, like, can you do it? Can you actually do it?” And Krepp was like, “Ah, yeah.” So, Krepp opens the portal and then, on his way out, the Witcher asks, “That exorcism that made you really angry. What were – what do the words mean?” Krepp says like, “Indeed, what a moment for quips and jokes.” Geralt says, you know, “Please Mr. Krepp, sir.” It reminds me of Tom Holland’s Spider Man. “Please Mr. Krepp, sir!” And the priest says, you know, “It's your last wish. So, I’ll tell you. It means… hmm… hmm… essentially… get out of here and go fuck yourself!” And, so, that's what Geralt’s been saying as his exorcism for this whole period. And Geralt kind of jumps into the portal laughing.

JESS: I love that reveal. Like, there was, like, such build up to this in the narrative, because they didn't tell you the words that Geralt was saying. He thought it was like this interesting, like, exorcism. And then Yennefer was like, “Oh, it was just something rather indecent.” And then you find out and you’re like, “Yeah, it is rather indecent and not very witty.” She said it was witty and indecent or something like that, right?

ALYSSA: Maybe the actual wording of it was witty, because we don't know what the literal translation is. He's just like—

JESS: Right. Okay.

ALYSSA: He's just, like, “I mean it essentially means, like, ‘Get out of here and fuck yourself.’”

CRISANTO: ‘Be gone from here and go fucketh thyself!’ I love how, I love how it's referenced here as a callback. It's such an inside joke within the narrative.

JESS: Yeah.

CRISANTO: And they do bring it up three instances.

ALYSSA: Mhmm.

CRISANTO: And it – like it really – it's such a major point of resolving their first conflict with the djinn. It literally is just a practical joke that this random priestess played on Geralt.

ALYSSA: Yeah.

JESS: Yeah, really creative.

ALYSSA: I love it. It's so good.

JESS: Yeah. I think some of the best shows and books and stuff, they do that. Callbacks are really important. It makes world building more believable, because it's like, “Okay, this is a world in which these rules apply. And these rules are reinforced because this thing keeps popping up.” So, whether that's a person or a metaphor or phrase, I think that's, I don't know. It's nice world building. It makes it really cozy.

ALYSSA: So, putting as a site, it's absolutely wonderful. It's like putting .cool. But they make, like, info graphs and charts about, like, different random pop culture things. And they had a chart about how callbacks affect stand-up comedy.

JESS: Yes.

ALYSSA: And you can see how, like, in their little charts about graphing laughs throughout a comedy special, people always got the loudest and greatest laugh when they had a really good callback. So, you see this with John Mulaney. You see this with Ali Wong. There's a number of other comics. I love comedy. I just got back from a trip from Montreal exclusively for the Just For Laughs Festival. And there were a couple of people there that did it so well. And it just kind of always tied their narratives and their storytelling together.

CRISANTO: I think the basis of comedy is the rule of three, because comedic rhetoric is based on subverting expectations. When you create a pattern, usually, you start with one, and then you repeat on the second, and then you can choose to break it on the third or you usually break it. So, that's a punch line. It’s usually what happens on third. I just love it in this instance with how a Geralt shoos away that the genie, gets laughed at by Yennefer, and then --

JESS: And you're at that point and you're like, “Wait. What does this phrase mean?”

CRISANTO: Yeah.

JESS: Like, it gets you curious. And, on the third time, they get you.

ALYSSA: Yeah.

CRISANTO: Yeah.

JESS: It’s just like, “Oh, go fuck yourself.” Sick burn.

CRISANTO: Hey.

JESS: I keep on saying that.

ALYSSA: I love it. A little MasterClass in comedy, I'm sitting with the stupidest smile on my face like, “Oh, this is so cool.” So, from this point on, we just jumped straight into the action. We're now on Part VIII. There are 17 total parts in the rest of the chapter. And they're all very fast. We continually go inside and outside the tavern to see what's happening with the djinn and what's happening on the outside with everybody. So, this part of the story, from now until the end, is very, very fast paced.

[Reading] In Part VIII, Geralt passes through the portal and falls into the floor of Errdil’s inn, where Yennefer is desperately attempting to contain the djinn in a sphere. It attempts to attack the sorceress, but, when Geralt moves between them, the genie doesn’t attack and roars instead. Yennefer opens a portal for Geralt, but he pulls her though too. They fall into the center of a crowded ballroom, and Yennefer lashes out at him before jumping back through the fading portal. They return to Errdil’s inn, and she continues to beat him for intervening.

ALYSSA: So, we see here, even though Geralt enters the fray, Yennefer just doesn't want any help from him. And she feels like he's going to be more of a nuisance than a help. No matter when she's in danger, she never backs away from this fight. And she always steps toward it. She has every intention of continuing. And I think that you see that this power that she has and this perception of self that she has is not only applicable to how she treats other people. It never turns off even when she's in the face of a supernatural danger.

CRISANTO: What I appreciate about these past chapters is just more dimension to Yennefer. Like, she's not this vindictive femme fatale and that there is definitely more to Yennefer than we realize.

ALYSSA: [Reading] In the next few parts, we’re brought outside Errdil’s inn where Dandelion, Neville, Krepp, the elves, and other onlookers have gathered. They can see that Yennefer and Geralt are fighting inside. Errdil laughs about the destruction of his tavern, saying that he had the place insured for a massive sum that also covers magical events. Back inside the tavern, Yennefer uses magic to restrain Geralt. And Geralt tells her he needs to tell her the truth. Outside the tavern, Krepp reveals to the group that the djinn is fulfilling Geralt’s wishes: the first, for it to go away and the second about the warden, which is why Yennefer can’t master it—Geralt hasn’t given up his last wish yet. Dandelion bemoans Geralt getting himself involved in saving Yennefer and asks if Geralt could use his last wish to save them both. Krepp ponders that he might, but only if it was the right wish. Yennefer demands again that Geralt gives his last wish, and as she does, Geralt realizes what she was before she became a sorceress. The djinn breaks through, Yennefer goes to battle it, and the Witcher makes his last wish. Outside the tavern, the crowd watches the djinn escape, freed from Geralt’s will.

JESS: Yeah. This is a lot, actually, a lot going on. It was really fast paced. Like, and I think, at this point, I kind of realized like, “Oh, wishes. This is like, you can like, it's not just Dandelion.”

ALYSSA: Yeah. I mean that, that is the big twist for the story. It’s that it was never Dandelion in the first place. And it doesn't reveal when Geralt realized. Maybe it was when the warden blew up, but I don't think it would have been before that. He makes that connection somewhere. Like, I didn't realize either until it was in the exposition.

JESS: What I know of him, he's just a very perceptive person. He's always looking at details. He's always noticing details about people, what they're saying, what they're wearing. And, if he says you burst and like this guy, he actually bursts. I think – I think that's – you know, he's a smart guy. I think he figured it out at that point.

CRISANTO: Because there’s this pretty particular passage where Yennefer is urging Geralt to hurry up. The passage reads, “The wish, Geralt! Hurry up! What do you desire? Immortality? Riches? Fame?” Geralt stays silent throughout this entire sequence. And then he realizes, “Oh, Yennefer is beautiful.”

ALYSSA: I know. Like, “Oh, like, ma’am, you're busy right now. Can you just, like, focus on anything—”

JESS: Yeah.

ALYSSA: “—that is not—”

CRISANTO: Oh, he's thirsty. He needs his apple juice. In this instance, he realizes he loves her. I don't really—

JESS: Wow. That was fast. 

CRISANTO: Right. 

JESS: He met her, like, today.

ALYSSA: I know. That was like a really quick, like, swipe right and then—

JESS: I wonder what it was. Like, how, how do you fall in love so quickly?

ALYSSA: That's, that's what I find to be the interesting thing. Like, we talked briefly about all these men kind of revolving around Yennefer's world and, like, her being able to pick and choose as to how they, for lack of a better word, serve her and serve her intentions and purpose. We, we get allusions that she's a fascinating woman, that she's smart, that she's like this kind of femme fatale trope, and, you know, there's something very alluring about her. I think it's still really ambiguous as to why Geralt is suddenly head over heels other than like, “Meh, she's got boobies.” Like—

JESS: Yeah.

CRISANTO: Yeah, because the passage reads, uh:

[Reading] “But, suddenly, Geralt knew the truth. He knew it. She knew—he knew what she used to be, what she remembered, what she couldn't forget, and what she lived with.”

CRISANTO: So, I'm hoping Sapkowski is implying that, “Oh, she's a strong woman. She's independent. She can handle her own.”

ALYSSA: Nope.

CRISANTO: Except, it's immediately preceded by, “Oh, she's beautiful.”

JESS: No.

ALYSSA: Well, I mean it goes back to Geralt’s perception.

CRISANTO: Yeah.

ALYSSA: Like, Geralt, suddenly, like, looks into her cold eyes. This is so bizarre. He looks into her cold eyes, and he realizes like, “Oh, shit, she was a hunchback.”

CRISANTO: Right. Yeah.

ALYSSA: He's just like, “Oh, my god, she can never read this in my mind.” And he just suppresses this information so deep down in his soul that he chooses to forget it.

CRISANTO: Yeah. Geralt, as a character and romantic interest here, is—I don't see it, but—

JESS: I think it's just the format. It's a short story. It's not a full-length book. In, in this format, he can't really expound upon, like, what is it about Yennefer that—

CRISANTO: Yeah.

JESS: —you know, that really touches him, which is unfortunate because this – this is supposed to be their first meeting.

CRISANTO: Right.

JESS: And you kind of want, you really want to know the details. Like, what does Geralt see in her and why she’s different from all of the women that he's ever encountered, what about her touches him. And, you know, that something does touch him about her.

CRISANTO: Yeah.

ALYSSA: We do know something does.

CRISANTO: ‘Ey.

ALYSSA: I know we haven't gotten there yet, but there's gonna be touching to be had. I mean, yeah, like, I think you, like, absolutely hit it on the head. We don't really get an understanding from Geralt/the narrator of anything that's beyond the superficial.

JESS: I’m guessing it kind of gets revealed in a more long form format, hopefully.

ALYSSA: Again, like, this entire section just is so fast paced in and out of the inn. We get a lot of exposition from Krepp as a proxy for the reader if the reader hasn't caught on yet, because spoiler alert—I didn’t know—so, Krepp was there for your girl and just kind of helping move the plot along so you really have an understanding of what's going on and why Geralt is saying what he's saying, why Yennefer is reacting the way that she does. You know, eventually, Geralt makes his last wish. We never find out what it is. We just see the aftermath of it in Part XVI and XVII. So, the Witcher and sorceress are miraculously alive after the destruction of the tavern as if having been protected by an invisible force. Yennefer asks Geralt about the wish that he made, completely in awe of it. And then they make love on the ruins of the tavern floor. And, for the first time, Geralt calls her Yen.

JESS: Bam chicka wow wow.

ALYSSA: [Reading] In Part XVII, the group outside tries to see if the sorceress and Witcher are still alive. Chireadan peers through a shattered window and sees the pair, backing away and telling the group that they should leave.

ALYSSA: And that's the end of “The Last Wish”.

JESS: So good. Going back to his last wish, it's ambiguous, right? You don't know what his wish is, but, somehow, the wish protected both him and Yennefer, Yen. And I'm just like, “Wow. What was that wish?” Like, I want to know. It reminds me of—what's that movie? It's a Tarantino movie with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson.

CRISANTO: Oh, Pulp Fiction.

JESS: Okay. So, there’s this suitcase that everyone's after. And inside is something really valuable.

CRISANTO: It shines gold every time someone opens the suitcase. Yeah.

JESS: Yeah. Like, when it opens, it, like, sparkles and, like, shines the golden light on the person looking at it. And they're just like, “Oh, my god.” Their eyes go wide. And you're just like, “What is in it? What is in the suitcase?” And you never know. At the end of the movie, you don't see what's in it. And that's how I feel about this wish. Like, what was his wish? What was so clever and, like, so, like something that obviously touched Yennefer's heart and something that, you know, made them want to, you know, get it on.

ALYSSA: Do you guys have any hypotheses around what that wish could have been or how it could have been phrased?

JESS: I don't know. That's a tough one. What do you think, Crisanto?

CRISANTO: I think he wished to die of old age with her. I think that’s—I feel like that's the most straightforward—

JESS: That’s so cute.

CRISANTO: Yeah.

ALYSSA: Jess, do you have any like hypotheses?

JESS: No, I was just struck by, like, like, what is it. I was that person who was just, like, taking the book and, like, holding it between my two fists and, like, shaking it. What is it? Tell me your secret! I can't, I can't even tell you. It really is like that suitcase in Pulp Fiction. Like, I don't know what's in it, but it's like the, it must have been something good.

CRISANTO: Or ridiculous.

JESS: Yeah.

CRISANTO: Like, you know, ‘you can't kill us until we drink orange juice’ or something stupid.

JESS: Yeah. Though, it does say—at some point, it does say that, like, their fates are kind of bound.

ALYSSA: So, the general theory on the internet is that Geralt wished for their fates to tie back together. And, you know, the phrasing of it is a little ambiguous. There are some – there are other people on the internet that have different theories about what was said. Sapkowski has turned down some of them. But, you know, for the most part, the sentiment around the, around the web really does seem to be that it was just some sort of phrasing of like, “I need our fates to be tied together,” because presumably the djinn couldn't kill its master. So, therefore, if the djinn couldn't kill Geralt and Geralt’s fate was tied to Yennefer, then the genie couldn't kill either of them. So, that's kind of what the theory is.

JESS: Okay. That's, yeah. I mean that's a good short term solution, but like Geralt, you know, he has a dangerous job. Like, what if he gets killed? Then like, all of a sudden, Yen just, like, drops dead. Like, that kind of sucks.

ALYSSA: Well, also, Yennefer does say like, “You've condemned yourself to me.” And it's very melodramatic.

JESS: Yeah.

ALYSSA: I feel like it's so unexpected from, from both of them. Like, Geralt is a little less so just because he's been like fantasizing about her this whole time.

CRISANTO: That’s for sure.

ALYSSA: But, for Yennefer—and he calls her, in this moment, Yen, and she, like, just succumbs to him completely. And—

CRISANTO: ‘Only my parents call me that!’

JESS: Eww! Gross.

ALYSSA: Like, it makes you wonder, like, what other people have said to her or if this is something that she's putting on as like an air for her to be like, like, “I can't believe you just said that. Like, what would make you do that? I'm completely in awe of this. Let me make love to you.”

JESS: Hmm.

ALYSSA: So, I don't know. I'm skeptical of it.

JESS: Actually, that's a good point. You just brought something up that made me realize, like, well, we were talking about how she uses her assets, whether it's magic or her beauty or, you know, her romantic aura to kind of get what she needs. And I, I wonder if it's supposed to be ambiguous. Like, does she really like Geralt? Is she really touched by what he did for her or is she just kind of like, “Oh, this guy looks really useful. He's smart. I'm gonna make sure he's in my pocket for a little bit longer.” And I'm sure, if you ship the two of them, you want to believe that it's like, “Oh, it's love at this first or second sight or whatever.” But, yeah, that's something to discuss in the future, I guess. But the rom-com lovers out there is like, yeah, like, there's something about these two – these two that are really special. And this is their, uhmm, consummation of that—

CRISANTO: Oh, my god.

JESS: —of that specialness uniting.

ALYSSA: Hey.

CRISANTO: I think the feelings are genuine. Everything up to this point is validated, like, the story is very much a rom-com summer blockbuster, action romance. You know what I mean? Like, everything is tied up in a neat bow.

ALYSSA: Yeah, for the moment.

CRISANTO: Oh.

JESS: Oh, okay. Well, it is kind of the second to last story—

CRISANTO: Yeah.

JESS: —of the book.

ALYSSA: Yeah.

JESS: So, you kind of love that.

ALYSSA: And we still have six more books left.

JESS: Exciting!

CRISANTO: Oh, man.

ALYSSA: Can you touch on the oddly specific circumstance that he could have wished for?

CRISANTO: He wished for them to share their 80th birthday party together. It’s so—

JESS: Lame.

CRISANTO: —in a hotel ballroom.

ALYSSA: ‘I want to make a goat farm with you at the age of 75.’

CRISANTO: Oh, that's awesome. So, I’m—

JESS: Oh my god, you said that just as I was—

CRISANTO: Sorry. I want us to fish – to go catfishing – catfishing with our children.

JESS: Like, you can't kill Yennefer until we've had some waffles and ice cream. And it has to be the year 2055.

CRISANTO: Yeah, exactly.

JESS: And—

ALYSSA: I have to align my face with the moon, but only on a quarter moon. And—

CRISANTO: Yes.

JESS: Exactly. It has to be, yeah, a quarter moon. But, also, if it's not on a Thursday, it has to be a blue moon. And, also, can I have some lilac and gooseberries? Like, if there's no lilac and gooseberries, like, it’s not, it’s, it’s a deal breaker. I'm sorry. Like this is, and then it turns into like a Postmates order.

CRISANTO: Yeah. And, yeah, what about did you go, did you fuck yourself, genie?

JESS: Oh, yes.

CRISANTO: Yeah. I forgot about that. Fuck.

ALYSSA: I know. So, that, so, that thing, let's, let’s talk about that for a second. So, now that we have obviously revealed that Geralt has been the holder of these wishes, the very first wish that he said when he held the seal and kind of thrust in front of the genie was, you know, this translated exorcism, “Get out of here and go fuck yourself.” And, even Krepp mentions this saying, like, you know, “I'd be really upset if I had to fulfill Geralt's first wish down to the letter,” and just kind of implied what the djinn might have had to do.

JESS: Yeah. Like, how do you literally, like, fuck yourself? Like, I don't, I don't know. I have no idea.

CRISANTO: I mean the djinn is all powerful. He’s, like, he’s gonna have to go fuck himself.

JESS: But he has to, I know he's all powerful, but he's powerful. But, at the same time, he has to fulfill a wish. So—

CRISANTO: Yeah. Yeah. 

ALYSSA: He has these constraints. Yeah.

JESS: Yeah. So, he's all powerful to do it… but how?

CRISANTO: ‘Master, do I have to?’

JESS: Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

CRISANTO: Because—oh, man. I could just—

ALYSSA: I’m never gonna unhear that. No.

CRISANTO: I could just imagine the genie. You know that meme with the lady—the calculus lady?

ALYSSA: Oh.

JESS: Oh, no, all the equations going around her head.

CRISANTO: I could imagine the genie is just going, “Fuck myself. What?”

ALYSSA: I need to, I need to remove that sound byte that you just said. Just, I need to repress it quietly the way that Geralt repressed his knowledge about Yennefer and just exorcise it from my body.

CRISANTO: Oh, god.

ALYSSA: Oh, bless. So, now that we finished the chapter, what did you guys think of it?

JESS: So good! I love it! New fan! Yeah. This is my first time reading anything. Well, this wasn't the first—

CRISANTO: Hah!

ALYSSA: “This is my first time reading anything.”

CRISANTO: Oh, god.

JESS: No. I know how to read! I swear! I wasn't lying about Harry Potter and YA! I know how to read. No. So, sorry. I pause at a really awkward point. So, this is my first time reading something, umm, from the Witcher saga. And I just, I think I just have fallen in love. I really like it. Like, I really love, like, contemporary stories, but, ah, this really brought me back to high fantasy. And I just, I just love it.

CRISANTO: Yeah. Like I mentioned before, it very much reads like a, like a summer blockbuster film. It has—it's very balanced. It has action. It has romance. It has ‘quitty wips.’

JESS: Yeah.

CRISANTO: It has good comedy. I think that, like, high fantasy gets a rep being sometimes too inaccessible to like high—

JESS: Boring.

CRISANTO: Too boring. Yeah. Actually, like, too political. But, at least, in this, this is a very simple narrative to follow. It's not too complicated. What I really do appreciate what he does is he's a very efficient writer. Like, he doesn't dwell too long. This is an anthology. So, despite having so much floor to, to cover, he efficiently covers, like, what you need to know in each story. At least, in this instance, you need to know the basic elements. Like Yennefer is up to no good, this mystery, mysterious figure and Geralt is a stone wall. And Dandelion is a goofy sidekick. So, Sapkowski really lays out foundations really well. His exposition is very sharp. And his dialogue is extremely witty and quippy. Dialogue is extremely difficult to write, especially if you're constantly moving a plot forward. That's a true art form.

ALYSSA: That's it for our show today. Jess and Crisanto, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. And thank you to our community for listening. So, for you guys, where can everyone find you? And is there anything that our international hanza can help you with?

JESS: Okay. So, I'm @j_bagsy, j_B-A-G-S-Y. It’s very complicated. I know. So, something that would be easier for you if you want to follow me on say Instagram go to @TeamLensFlare, T-E-A-M-L-E-N-S-F-L-A-R-E. Huh! That was hard. Yes. So, Crisanto and I with six other people, we have this photography group. And we do photography of cosplay. So, every once in a while, there's conventions and stuff and we put people's cosplays to life in photography and videos and things like that. So, you can go follow us.

CRISANTO: That was thorough. Hi. My name is Crisanto Jorda.

JESS: Okay.

CRISANTO: Yeah. I'm a media freelancer. I do photo, video, and editing. That's so vague. Wow.

JESS: I just have to say. Because Crisanto is really bad at, you know, promoting his own stuff. Like, for example, his, his name on Instagram is @greatgiraffe. I mean it has nothing to do with his actual brand, which is Crisanto Jorda. He's—okay. So, he’s a photo—

ALYSSA: Drag him a little more, Jess.

JESS: Yes. He's a photographer. He's a videographer. He also does general, like, script writing and any type of production. He's edited stuff like that. And he – recently, he’s been getting into 3D animation. So, if you need, like, some 3D graphics, like, hit him up. Sorry.

ALYSSA: Now, I—

JESS: I didn't mean to like takeover ad shout and like plug. I don't know. But it's his profession.

CRISANTO: Thank you.

JESS: I want to, you know, make sure, you know, he gets acknowledged.

ALYSSA: I feel warm—

CRISANTO: Thank you, love.

ALYSSA: —and fuzzy from watching just all of this interaction unfolds in front of me in person. It's very sane. I love it very much.

CRISANTO: Yeah.

JESS: Yeah. Just go to crisantojorda.com. That’s C-R-I-S-A-N-T-O-J-O-R-D-A.com

CRISANTO: Yes.

ALYSSA: And I will link it in the show notes.

JESS: Yay.

CRISANTO: Yes. Thank you

JESS: Yeah. And, so—

CRISANTO: And, yeah, please check out Team Lens Flare. I'm a resident artist for that group.

JESS: Go to @TeamLensFlare and Crisanto, me, and all the other members of Team Lens Flare are tagged in every post.

CRISANTO: And if you are a local artist, if you love Witcher or cosplay Witcher, yeah, please—

JESS: Hit us up.

CRISANTO: —hit us up. We would love to shoot you.

ALYSSA: Team Lens Flare is active mostly on the East Coast, right guys?

JESS: Yes.

ALYSSA: And they're absolutely phenomenal. Like, just seeing their work. And it's, like, they do such an amazing job of bringing people's ideas and largest cosplay fantasies to life. And it's so incredible to see and watch. I've been friends with you guys for a really long time. Umm, Jess and I have known each other since we were in Catholic school together in middle school. And, Crisanto, I met in college. It just absolutely blew my mind. Like, just to know someone from middle school and then meet someone in college and, all of a sudden, they get together. And, now, they're on my podcast.

JESS: Oh, yeah. Spoilers. Yeah, we're a couple.

CRISANTO: Oh, my god.

JESS: Oh, oh my god. We’re dating!?

ALYSSA: And Jess and Crisanto will be back to wrap up The Last Wish compilation with the discussion of its framing narrative, “The Voice of Reason”.

Outro & Credits

[Breakfast in Beauclair theme music by MojoFilter Media]

ALYSSA: Thanks for joining us at the breakfast table! For show notes, transcripts of each episode, and a complete list of our social platforms and listening services, head over to breakfastinbeauclair.com.

Breakfast in Beauclair is created by Alyssa from GoodMorhen. It’s hosted by Alyssa with the “Tidings from Toussaint” News Segment by Lars from WitcherFlix. The show is edited by Alyssa with the Breakfast in Beauclair theme by MojoFilter Media and the “Tidings from Toussaint” theme by Bettina Campomanes.

Breakfast in Beauclair is produced by Alyssa in New York City with Luis, The Owner of The Churlish Porpoise, Coolguyhenry, Arix the Godling, Katie (The Redhead of Toussaint), Jacob, David, Mahakam Elder Joe, Julie, and Sylvia of Skellige.

Special thanks to Jess & Crisanto for joining us for this episode and our international hanza for their support.

Transcriptionist: Rachelle Rose Bacharo 
Editor: Krizia Casil

 

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