The story of Cats is that in the 1930s, the famous poet T.S. Eliot wrote a book of cutesy little cat-themed poems for his godchildren
And then 40 years later, Andrew Lloyd Webber found a lost cat poem that T.S. Eliot had cut from the cat book for being too sad for children, and ALW was like “woahhh. A cat….that’s sad. That’s deep, man. I wanna make a musical out of this”
So the producer assigned to the project was like “okay, I guess you could maybe read these cat poems as a satire of 1930s British society? We could probably do something sort of interesting with that, I’m thinking a cast of about 5 and–”
And ALW was like “no. Forget the satire. Also I want a cast of dozens and the most advanced special effects technology ever seen on stage. I’ve taken out a second mortgage on my house to fund this”
And the producer was like “wh– you– wh– do you even have. a plot”
So ALW got a bunch of actors and writers and artists together and they holed up and did cocaine workshopped for 5 weeks, and at the end of it they emerged and said “the plot is that a bunch of cats are having a dance contest for the right to take a ufo to cat heaven :)”
modern day au, where geralt is still a witcher and jaskier is a violinist who busks on the subway.
they meet when geralt is taking down a hoard of vampires who are nesting in one of the tunnels. he gets flung through one of the walls and lands at jaskier’s feet - his eyes are deadly black and his teeth are viciously bared, he looks fucking horrifying, but all the busker does is tut, cause this man might be devilishly handsome and he might have literally been tossed through a wall by some nightmarish entity, but he’s literally caused all of jaskier’s hard-earned cash to scatter across the ground and some of it has fallen ontothe tracks, like how is he supposed to get that back?
geralt groans in pain, takes up his sword and glances up at the pretty violinist. feels dazed and oddly captivated by this utterly unphased musician.
meanwhile, jaskier arches a brow, despite feeling flushed and awed, and waves his bow airily in geralt’s face.
“do you, like,” he says, faltering with a confused wrinkle of his nose, “need an advil, or something?”
and geralt just blinks.
and laughs.
cause what the fuck?
so anyway, the vamps are vanquished and geralt’s like, okay bye cute boy i will never see again and leaves.
and jaskier is all, bitch u thought? and follows him, cause this hot dude just made lose him most of his earnings and he needs that shit back, plus interest
geralt is like, no
jaskier is like, okay but who asked u tho?
and jaskier follows him around, cause he’s gonna get his money back and he’s gonna get it by writing a fucking bop, an absolute banger, about this gorgeous witcher with eyes that glow like embers
geralt is still like, no
cause jaskier only lost like ten bucks, come on
jaskier gives him the Sad Eyes, because ten bucks goes a looooooong way when you’re poor and starving
and geralt Gets That, so he begrudgingly allows this pretty busker to tag along because he used to starve too, it had been part of his ‘training’ and had lived on the streets at a time and it was horrific. and his heart tugs at the thought of this lovely little violinist, living amongst the trash and the gutters.
(and then he finds out that jaskier is basically an upper class rich boy and is Pissed)
((then he actually meets jaskier’s family and is like, shit, i’d rather live on the streets too, the fuck?))
do you ever think about how weird it is that the moral of Frankenstein is kind of less just “graverobbing is weird and creepy” and more “take some fucking responsibility if you’re going to do so”
“if you’re going to create a large corpse son, you better be ready to love him”
the story is this - while Jaskier was teaching in Oxenfurt, Geralt visited him as frequently as he could and students were witnesses of a lot of them flirting in the halls~
Anonymous asked: What about if Geralt and Jaskier went to the coast and Jaskier befriended the sirens there. (Or maybe, after the mountain, he went to the coast, got a cottage on the deep cheap due to the sirens and Geralt finds him and apologizes, but first has to convince the sirens to let him near the cottage whose sole path gets washed out every day at high tide)
ok it’s morning and I just woke up to reading this message so forgive my messy thoughts but—
Geralt, guilty and determined after all the business that is to come with finding Ciri and surviving together, after months of simmering in the harshness of his words and how terrible it would be if that was their last parting, he finally gets his act together to find Jaskier and apologize. It will not matter if Jaskier decides he’s had enough of the witcher and the heartache he causes, but it’s important to Geralt that he try—that he say the words out loud and admit his mistake—
And the first thing he thinks of is the wistful look in Jaskier’s eyes in the mountain, when he mentioned the coast. That’s where he goes first, all along the western seaside and following the wake of Jaskier’s fame. He’s done so well for himself. Everyone knows one thing or another about the bard and the path he’s taken along the coastal cities and towns, but they never have a solid answer as to where he is. Geralt has to work a time figure in his mind of the last ring of cities Jaskier was last at to then hear the rumor that he got himself a place of his own, but—
No one’s heard or seen of the place. Just that it’s south of the river mouth, most probably. Except there’s sirens south of the river mouth, leaving a trail of dead men through the waters, and the thought of Jaskier living anywhere near those bloodthirsty fiends sends him into a panic. What if he’s trapped? What if the sirens sing their haunting hymns and drown him? What if he’s already dead—
Geralt will not breathe life to that last thought, he instead chases the wind of the river to a rocky incline, a set of cliffs wrapped around a sandy path. And the sirens descend on him swiftly. They scratch and bite and push him around, flying up before he can strike one down. The strangest thing is—once the tides rise again and the path floods with water, the sirens leave him be. Their scaled wings raise them up against the cliffs and pewter grey eyes stare down at him, waiting. Geralt tries again the next day, and fails. Then again the day after that, and he’s gathering an awful collection of scratches all along his arms but he doesn’t care because gods-willing if Jaskier is trapped in a siren’s nest he’ll set the whole coast aflame—
Then on the fourth day of his self-proclaimed hunt against the sirens, someone walks down the sandy path and it’s—it’s Jaskier. He’s walking on his own two legs, and the sirens just fly up to see him out as if watching out for him, as if Geralt is the one who’s intruding like a monster at the edge of town—
“Oh, you’re all such uncivilized ladies playing with his feelings. They can speak just fine, you know,” Jaskier says at him and—reels for a second because the sirens were protecting him from intruders and thieves and Geralt himself, and the witcher is fast to forgiveness because Jaskier is standing before him, hands on his hips, safe and whole. And a little angry. “Well, are you going to kill my new friends?”
“I thought you were.” Dead, he doesn’t say—can’t say because even standing here in front of him, knowing he is safe, the thought hurts.
He doesn’t say it and still Jaskier understands, expression falling to something gentle and open. “Yes, um. As you can see that’s not really an issue. I don’t need saving.”
He doesn’t, and he doesn’t need to have Geralt in his life or in his little corner of the world. But he still invites the witcher to his little coastal home, for a drink at least, and then insisting he take the privacy to check over his cuts—
And Geralt does apologize. He says those croaky words and Jaskier lets him stay for a meal and a bath because good gods, the man is a mess of mud, sand and dried blood. One of the sirens lands on the roof—a roof with a convenient latch that opens to let three lines of fish drop easily on a long bucket of salt. And Jaskier thanks her sweetly. The soft fluttery trill of words she throws back asks for an audience in return, to hear him sing. They seem to have their own currency of songs in place.
That’s how Geralt comes back to Jaskier’s life. In a cottage full of sirens, listening to him explain rather comically how the last owner begged him to buy his house for a dirt-cheap price.
