So I saw that article circulating that there's an ominous 80% saying that they won't watch The #Witcher series post #Cavill.
Let's have a little bit of #trans #commentary, because we have something of a perspective here.
First, unrelated, though, let me tell you that when Cavill was announced to play Geralt, I remember an awful lot of the same thrown his way. That he can't play him, because he's too smooth, looks nothing like the game-Witcher, and he'll butcher and ruin the part. So this is just a cycle beginning anew, and I call bullshit on those "80%" now.
But the other, trans thing here is... we're stories in the heads of other people. They have an image of us, our part, how our life is supposed to go, what it should look like. It's thrown distressingly often our way that people liked our old self better, that they don't believe us, that we'll never be what we set out to be.
What we're doing is changing who the protagonist of our story is, how the story goes, the narrative. Over what can happen with transition, like divorces, downturns in career, friend groups in pieces, rebuilding from ashes, they tell us we ruin it. And other people are rooting for our failure, doubt us every step of the way, abandon us without even waiting to see what we can do, who we can be. Maybe even sabotage it.
I feel uneasy when I see especially trans people announcing that they'll never watch The Witcher post Cavill, because in a tiny microcosm they do the same that we condemn what others do to our life. And that's just about some silly entertainment, a story we watch for amusement that doesn't go quite our way, with quite the cast we got used to.
What does that make us if we ask that strict adherance to what we see as canonical in fiction, but demand that people follow suit on our radically changing self, life, and narrative?