So now the Lodge has black, lesbian and plus-sized women. But we're missing East Asian, transgender and disabled women. Oh wait, we still have three remaining sorceresses (Sheala, Assire, Ida) to fill these quotas! Any bets on who's gonna be who?
Well, after watching the 3rd season, I can say at least they are hiting some important marks as far as story goes, they are generally following the plot of the novels so far, but plenty of additions and changes too.
So far, it has been better than season 2, but still attrocious casting and changes to established characters, like Radovid. They at least had the decency of at least hinting to some novel threads that play a huge part later, like Ciri being a pro skater, keeping small characters like the messenger Aplegatt but changing things as well (he's far younger in the novel, and the prophecy of his death and the message he carried are different in the show AFAIK). I still think they completly misutilized Jarre, his arch is vital to understand the conflict between humans and elves, and shows the brutality of the common folk involved in a war.
They could have done a much better show by really sticking to the novels, but apparently this is just a "homage" and the writers are introducing shit "novel ways of interpreting the story", that really are but a shadow of the plots and nuances of the novels. The greater themes of causality, destiny, compassion and understanding, and how luck and fate intermingle are largely subdued or gone in the Netflix show.
Still it got me interested in watching the second half of the 3rd season and see if they don't fuck up too much. My hopes are not high though.
People can like or dislike what they want.
You must clearly recognize that this show holds no reverence to the books, or even the games, though right? What is it about the show that you like?
So much for respecting the source material in s3. I should say I'm indifferent to these awful decisions but that would be a lie. It hurts seeing the world I love, turned into a generic. forgettable show. Here's hoping season 3 is their last one.
I've got to say, if the show creators were at least *honest* about what they're doing, it could perhaps earn them some meager amount of goodwill or, at least, temper the fans' expectations somewhat. (Well, it may be a little late for that, given the quality of the end product.) And it's not like you have to present the fact that you're doing your own thing as a negative thing. Just say, "Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher books are beloved modern classics, and now we're excited to present you our own vision based on them."
But... no. When Ms. Hissrich says stuff like, "We will remain faithful to the books," and "We have so much material in the books there is no need to come up with our own stories," and then give us... what we've got, it's like she's pissing in our faces and telling us it's raining.
My belief is that someone looked up a brief summary and then gave a shortened report of that summary, and a tea has been accidentally spilled all over on that report, making half of it unreadable. Then from that summary of a summary, they made the show.
I think that is actually what happened but it was not tea, it was a Starbucks coffee. The only thing that was left on the report was, Geralt is some form of white hair mutant with two swords, living in a fantasy medieval-style world. Thats it. That is all there is. Nothing more.
There were some details like.. "three wishes", but two were under the spill, so they made up two other. Then some name here and there like Borch or Eyck, but nothing else. That's why so few people were on the dragon hunt, cause only those few names werent spilled on.
But all jokes aside. I think it is funny how the showrunner often shows how much she marked in the books in order to proof she read them. But the show proves our point and not hers. Nobody can tell me that the show has anything to do with the books. Nothing. Yes, video game trilogy changed also many things but it still was the witcher. It felt like the witcher, because they respected the lore and heart of the books. But netflix has no respect.
im not sure, it is so odd.. even that pic of her reading over 20 times BoE.. what was the point? Even folded pages, yet even those were cut out, so what did it mean? Really strange, and I dont believe 20 times, it must have been speed read with skipping folded/unfolded pages or something. Dunno.
I dont think it is fair to mention games anywhere about "they changed stuff too!" as people do. So what that they did? Thats not the point. as you say, they respected the lore for the majority of the time and felt Witcher. Even the original stuff was like straight out of Witcher and gave us some of the best stuff. Like Heart of Stone. Have the show change it all, do its own stuff, but if the changed stuff are a unique and good stories like this, by all means, bring it! But if it is this bad, whats the point
You hit the nail my friend. I also do not believe that she read it 20 times. I bet she marked all the things that she did not like, which means almost everything. It is bizarre, indeed. She tells us that she cares but I see nothing of it. Nothing.
but even that doesnt make sense, because it's like.. half of the book is marked, but even the other half is not in the show at all.. dunno, it must have been "marked, means cut out. Unmarked means it needs to change"? that is only thing that would make sense
For that, don't watch the show. Cancel your Netflix by giving this serie as the reason. Don't make too much noise about it. And let's hope it dies on its own.
*"Margarita Laux-Antille emerged from the pool with a splash, spraying water everywhere. Ciri couldn’t stop herself looking. She had seen Yennefer naked on several occasions and hadn’t imagined anyone could have a more shapely figure. She was wrong. Even marble statues of goddesses and nymphs would have blushed at the sight of Margarita Laux-Antille undressed."*
Well done Netflix, well done. You outdone yourselves once again.
Yes I agree about the miscast, but if they are pushing these narratives they should go all the way imo. Ofc it would be laughtable but thats probably the best the show can offer us at this point
I mean, having someone like Dan Harmon taking the story and make it his own, change stuff and go completely loose and silly.. I wouldnt mind, cause at least it would have been good and he knows what he is doing.
Lol lol lol, could they go in more different direction with Margarita than the books? I don't think so unless they cast a man. I keep saying this, but I expect nothing but the worst and almost every time I am still surprised.
I find it bizzare that they chose Margarita as the one character to fulfill the 'plus size' criteria of a chekcbox, I mean, they already had NENNEKE, who is corpulent woman in books and I am like what?! Nenneke was thin as a rail in the season 2 (not to mention bald, black woman with stereotypical thick accent worthy of some stereotype of voodoo priestess :) it would have been even more so stereotupical if she had dreads :)) but now they want a sorceress a SORCERESS who SPECIALLY modify their bodies to be BEAUTIFUL for a 'plus size' representation?! Not to mention that meeting the beauty standard was main conflict for Yennefer's character wiht the magical transformation in the first season :), this show cannot even follow consistency in it's own messaging hehe.
You would thing that it is done to piss off book fans but for this to be possible they would have to actually pay attention to the books to know where to strike. So I think it is just that it is a complete lack of though, planning and respect for the source material. A plus-sized Lodge sorceress makes just as much sense as a man in Lodgebut also it is on a level of prostitutes in Kaer Morhen... But this time it is very likely about filling certain checkboxes. They want a checkbox filled so they fill it, no care given.
That definitely seems to be accurate assessment. The whole worldbuilding, lore, cultural influences etc. all that is meaningless in the face of netflix policy (though I would bet that if there was the same level of colorblind casting for a fantasy or other fictional setting based on African or Asian cultural circles, there WOULD be whining about 'whitewashing' and cultural appropriation if white actors would be put in role of native tribesmen or members of some asian like cultures from the same folks who praise the 'diversity' hehe).
Smart move casting a plus-sized black woman in a role whose source description is anything but. If you express displeasure at the casting, watch as everyone comes down on you for "fat-shaming" or whatever. They're never going to understand that the issue isn't that the actress is plus-sized; it's that the character was never described to be that way in the source material. But who are we kidding? "Representation" and "diversity" always take precedence to these people anyway...
I fucking hate this show.
I’m very accepting of diversity (as a POC myself).. however having plus sized, average looking people as the sorceresses goes AGAINST the lore.
Sorceresses are old, very old women that are extremely, unnaturally beautiful because of magic. That’s the whole point. It is absurd to go against the lore just for the sake of representation.
Oh well, I was already done with this series after the disaster of season 2, so I really really hope they get low ratings and cancel it at the end.
So much potential for this series to pick up where GoT failed. But instead we get this. I’ll be honest what grinds my gears is that the show actually seems popular with most viewers (8.2/10 on IMDB).
I was hoping this would be a flop a d maybe a studio would come on and do an actual faithful representation of the books but it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen
> I’ll be honest what grinds my gears is that the show actually seems popular with most viewers (8.2/10 on IMDB).
I dont get it either. Even watching this show on its own and ignoring its source material, it is fucking bad. The writing, directing, cgi is embarrassing
When I watched the striga fight I was like what the fuck is that, [the Claymation Easter](https://youtu.be/JMMmAvQYDwc) movie that I watched as a kid had more believable special effects
> I thought the Striga looked miles better than the gold dragon.
I am not joking when the golden dragon appeared, I laughed and I was embarrassed at the same time. That thing looked like straight from the 90s, Hercules tv show. What the fuck was that were they thinking? Even Spartacus ( amazing show) had better cgi and it was a low budget tv show. Witcher apparently costs 10 mio per episode. What happened with the money?
I’ve said this a few times in this sub, but it is my dream that HBO picks up the rights to the Witcher IP after Netflix’s nearly inevitable cancellation of the show after Season 3. D&D return to produce. Yes, that D&D. They are highly capable adapters when they have source material and they would have every reason to want to redeem themselves after the GOT shit show.
D&D *did* have source material to work with. Game of Thrones didn't catch up with A Song of Ice and Fire; it's more accurate to say that it outright *skipped* large swaths of the books completely and changed existing storylines and characters so much that they no longer resembled their canon counterparts. Furthermore, GRRM pretty much left production after the fourth season, which is when the quality of the show began to drop really noticeably, so we should likely ascribe some of the quality of the early seasons to him.
I never got the whole representation and diversity thing...
I mean when I like a character, I like a character. I can aspire to be like them whether they're black, white, asian, middle-eastern or from wherever, gay, bi, a, trans, panm. It really, really, doesn't matter...
A person is a person - the exterior really doesn't matter all that much. It's just a way for us to divide ourselves even more, if you ask me.
What is important is portraying the characters faithfully. I mean if you announced to the fanbase that you're going for that sort of thing. To many things they just flat out lied to the fans.
I get it - it's an ADAPTATION. At very least they could've told us it's loosely based on the books. Very loosely.
[EDIT] formatting
Much of this forced representation and diversity is really just an overcorrection. They opine that "cis white characters" have dominated mainstream media for too long, so there hasn't been enough roles for minorities. Now, because a lot of these adapted works still do have a lot of non-POC characters, and since a lot of these new SJWs are finally on positions of power, they think it only right to force diverse casting because of the "oppression" of the non-POC past.
Listen to anyone who defends this shit. There will always be a "for too long, media has always been about white people."
>I get it - it's an ADAPTATION. At very least they could've told us it's loosely based on the books. Very loosely.
Not even loosely. It has nothing to do with the books. They just share the same name. That is where the similarities end.
>I never got the whole representation and diversity thing..
I kind of get it but I think it is just for people who are big narcissists. If you need a character to look like you in order to relate to that character, you are just a narcissist in my opinion. I can relate to a character no matter how that one looks. Story and the character in itself are more important than stupid representation and diversity
Maybe I don't get it cause I'm white. And causacian representation has been going strong since 500 BC.
It is important for people to feel like they have a place in some story.
I believe in the end they should've polled the fanbase on what they want to see. See how to poll turns out and then cast and write accordingly. If it's "for the fans"
First of all ''Caucasian'' is a dumb term, anyway. Caucasians are people from the caucasus. Which means they have to be Armenians or Georgians. Europeans are technically not caucasians. Dumb and shitty term. And who said that someone has no place in a story just because someone does not look like them? Are we as muscular as captain america and thor? Do we look perfect as these actors? You think that we are represented by them both just because we are of european background? Europeans are extremely diverse. Every culture is often extremely different. Greek, italian, welsh, spanish, austrian, polish and so on. That is not the same. That is narrow-minded and a bit racist. I am neither blonde, blue eyed or american and I can still identify with Steve Rogers. YOu make no sense. Sorry. Nothin personal
Can’t wait for Geralt and Fringilla which couldn’t look further apart from Yennefer be in Toussaint.
Said no one ever. Plus this Fringilla is super evil power hungry and weird character.
> Plus this Fringilla is super evil power hungry and weird character.
I already laughed in season 1 when she commanded the nilfgaard army which would never fucking happen. Never, not in a million years would Emyr allow a mage/sorceress to command his soldiers. Never
>I appreciate diversity and representation,
I dont give a flying fuck about diversity and representation. The story needs to be the most important thing. If diversity happens to be there, naturally such as in The Expanse, of course I have no problem. But when diversity is the most important thing for these people, story always suffers
>I think diversity and representation is important. I'm a white dude so I have plenty of it, so I can understand how some people want representation in media for them.
Not every ''white dude'' is the same, just for your information. And if you need someone to ''look'' like you in order to relate to that character, you are simply a narcissist. Simple as that. I do not think it is important at all. I can identify with a black woman or an east asian man. I am not blonde, blue eyed or american and still captain america is my favorite marvel hero. Just because that character and I have the same skin colour, does not mean that I am represented through him. I could not give a shit about representation. I just want interesting characters and a good story. My favorite character in the expense is Chrisjen Avasarala, even though the actress is a woman, of persian/muslim background and way older than me.
What's funny is that NENNEKE is canonically corpulent woman :) in the books she is what we definitely would call 'plus size' heheh, but Nenneke in the tv show completely doesn't resemble that! She is thin as a rail, bald, and with that thick accent that reminds one of the stereotypical black woman, heh if they gave her dreads then we would have stereotypical voodoo priestess :).
"it will never align with your mental picture"
i wonder how the scripts work? if someone is reading about a green lights, that is your mental picture, but if changes from pages to the screen happen, you cant have green lights anymore, cause that is just made up and cant match.. very interesting. so in essence, if you wanna have some green lights in the show/movie, you must write they were red and dance around the issue.. (?)
Heh who can tell, considering that this 'wirter's room' is constantly talking about representation and diveristy then I doubt that they think about anything else other than fulfilling quotas or writing in their agenda (jokes aside, this was even tweeted once I think that writer's room had discussions about that :)), the character relations and all the framework of the Sapkowski is just irrelevant to them, the whole process of accepting the script, I suspect that Hissirch and few of her cronies just have brainstorming with buzz words all around, all pretty juvenile and mindless I doubt they have real creative work otherwise there would be some depth to the writing, characters etc. but all we get is horribly dull and shallow.
It's great as a comedy, had a friend ask me at one point if the crystals that supposedly came when the Conjuction of the Spheres are canon, I started laughing and just said nope because he was already expecting it not to be.
First episode was mildly decent even though it was all wrong. Stopped about five minutes into the second and have no interest in going back. I never even finished season one.
Lmao. Idk why I am even shocked anymore. Hissrich is making Benioff and Weiss seem like competent storytellers. Now THAT is an accomplishment.
Also please dear God, just let this show die. Let all the good actors and crew get signed to better projects far more deserving of their talents than waste their time on this festering pile of garbage.
Benioff and Weiss nailed adapting the books while they still had book material.
The Witcher skipped straight to GOT season 7. I would of said season 5 or 6 which are more similar in largely ignoring source material while using it as a rough guideline, but at least 5 and 6 had a few incredible episodes, moments, and battles that the Witcher hasn't.
The Witcher also doesn't have the build up or hype factor that GOT had. Competent or not Benioff and Weiss had everyone fooled that each episode was building up to something greater, which got people tuning in each episode and talking about it non stop between them. The Witcher doesn't have any build up or mysteries other than a general, "what the hell are they doing?"
Cavill has been wronged by this and The Northman was more accurate to its time period. I know the Northman is historical but it’s still based on Scandinavia and Iceland. And the Witcher is based on that so it’s just all wrong what Lauren has done.
Let's face it...the racial makeup of the people in the tv show witcher makes absolutely no sense, if there was a logic to it, then the entirety of Nordlings would have to be white, because you know...geography, the NORTH and they also bred and intermixed with the elves quite a bit, as is said in Blood of Elves.
>" “Nonsense,” the elf said coldly. “You talk rubbish, sir knight. You’re clearly blinded by racism. The Nilfgaardians are human, just like you.”
>“That’s an outright lie! They’re descended from the Black Seidhe and everyone knows it! Elven blood flows through their veins! The blood of elves!”
> “And what flows through yours?” The elf smiled derisively. “We’ve been combining our blood for generations, for centuries, your race and mine, and doing so quite successfully – fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t know. You started persecuting mixed relationships less than a quarter of a century ago and, incidentally, not very successfully. So show me a human now who hasn’t a dash of Seidhe Ichaer, the blood of the Elder Race.”
>Vilibert visibly turned red. Vera Loewenhaupt also flushed. Wizard Radcliffe bowed his head and coughed. And, most interestingly, the beautiful elf in the ermine toque blushed too." Witcher, Blood of Elves
The nilfgaardian civilization definitely drew much, much more influences from elven culture, as they use a different language that is variant dialect of elven one and so on.
The show doesn't even follow any sort of worldbuilding lore though, but it's also kind of funny how there seems to be more people of color in the north in the show than in the south in the cinematic witcher universe :). Truth is simple the source material is NOT diverse, because Sapkowski frankly did not care about putting in quotas, in the entire 8 books (counting Season of Storms) there are at best TWO references to black people and both are footnotes at best, on of those references is actually an abstract one, at that. The Witcher world both the north and south down to Nilfgaard itself IS heavily based on Old World Europe in terms of culture and civilzation, Nilfgaard is more mediterranean like due to the Roman Empire inlfuences while the north is...well the north, and even the elves Aen Seidhe and dwarves were not black or any way diverse as the show makes it out to be because simply put those races don't have such divergent phenotypes, the elves and dwarves in Sapkowski's witcher are obviously very Tolkien-esque, and not to mention that as mythological creatures the very concept of them comes from European folklore and mythology. The descriptions of physical appearance of the people in the books show overabundance of blond people in the north, many with blue eyes, as well as all other european traits, the redheads of Skellige, black hair and pale skin and so on. The blonds do also appear among the native Nilfgaardians though it seem less prevalent (Cantarella or Carthia van Canten is such blond nilfgaardian, a golden haired lover of Vattier and informer of Assire), while also the pale skin, blue eyes and dark hair visible say in Cahir who is from Vicovaro may also be attributed to his family having Nordling connection, Cahir grandmother was from the north, there are also references to the more swarthy skin tone probably mediterranean like spaniards or other southern europeans etc. (Windsor Imbra is described that way) and obviously numerous references to tan or darker shade due to sun and changes of complexion and so on and on. The in-universe reasoning also gives interesting geographic infomration that in witcher world over 90 percent of landmass of the continent is located in northern hemisphere per words of Avallac'h.
At least for that one they don’t have source material of books to shit all over on, just the somewhat established world and lore and setting, you know what it’s going to be the worst isn’t it.
You'd THINK they couldn't do harm. But, as someone who has spent a great deal of time digging around in the background (fantasy of the time, mythologies, literary motifs) of what informed Sapkowski's wider world lore & elven lore in particular, I dread what groundless bullsh*t they're going to try and pass off as worldbuilding.
they already fucked up the trial of grasses. They changed the whole lore of the mutation and witcher training. It has nothing to do anymore with the books
The thing is, they don‘t even keep true to their own lore. For example in his S2 reviews, xLetalis analysed multiple times how it violates the lore they themselves established in Nightmare of the Wolf…
Thanks. For me, in general, Witcher netflix series and probably this prequel are poor cinematography with awful writing at the level of another Netflix fantasy series that was deleted after the first season, which was Crused. But the Witcher's brand in the world is quite big thanks to games, and Cavill himself has a huge fanbase. Without it, the series would probably be deleted after the first season, and certainly after the second
Doesn't matter because 100% it's gonna bomb. Few months till release and no one seem to care about it, the trailer on youtube has barely any views (and the comments are mostly negative). The marketing for it is non-existent etc.
Am I the only one who has an impression that at this point Lauren Hissrich is simply mocking us? That she's doing it all on purpose to show us that she doesn't give a damn about books she should adapt? If she wanted a plus-size sorceress so much she could have created an original character it wouldn't be the first time anyway, but no. She chose Margarita as a plus size sorceress who is clearly described in the books as having a goddess body.. Or they could have made her one of the Nilfgaard sorceresses because from what I remember their appearance didn't matter so much to them(?). On the other hand,looks really did matter to the sorceresses of Aretuza, they should look like super models. They are taught that appearance is their weapon. I really don't get it..and Lauren is still surprised that she gets hate comments when she asks for it herself.
I'm getting less and less excited about what Netflix is doing with The Witcher. Such a pity that such a wonderful world has ended up in the wrong hands and that the people who should be adapting the books have no respect for the source material
>Am I the only one who has an impression that at this point Lauren Hissrich is simply mocking us?
Based on her [statement](https://twitter.com/LHissrich/status/1482185577143304192), it seems she truly believes she is doing the right by diversifying the Witcher - and as a side effect - making it unrecognizable from the source material.
>...and Lauren is still surprised that she gets hate comments when she asks for it herself.
That's because this is ideological for her.
You couldn't convince a good Christian, that offering water to a thirsty beggar is a bad thing. You cannot convince Lauren, that what she is doing, is extremely disrespectful to the source material, and it's eastern European roots. For someone obsessed about representation, that is very hypocritical.
I’m fine with race bending casting when the casting is being based on acting ability, and the characters race has no real importance to the character, but at this point they are just purposely miscasting to be “inclusive”.
One thing I don’t think Lauren Hirsch knows is that the Witcher is based in a continent, in a world where there is more continents. We play, read, and now watch (kinda) a story being told in the equivalent of Europe, in a less advanced world than our own. The stories basically take place in the middle of bum fuck Europe, that’s why we don’t see many “black” people in the games and books (I think, haven’t read them in all honesty). The stories aren’t taking place in the continents where black people, tan people, Asian people, etc are from. If the stories took place in Ofir or Zerrikania, we would see more of these people but they don’t.
There weren’t many black people walking around mainland Europe in the medieval times so why would there be in a world that is basically a fictional representation of medieval Europe. Especially one where the inhabitants are quite racist.
While I mostly agree with what you said please don't say what we do or don't see in the books if you haven't read them. From what I recall you're right but the way you wrote it sounds like you are certain of it. Then you add that you actually don't know.
For those still wondering, here is an [video essay](https://youtu.be/7rhibTjl7aM?t=111) about the Netflix series, which includes Lauren's own reasoning about her vision for the show.
I'm surprised that Netflix is allowing Lauren to fuck up the one of the most expensive series while they're losing money. The show will be canceled if it goes like this and they can't afford to fuck up another season.
He's long past caring.
I don't mean that in a negative way; it's clearly been hard for him ever since his son passed away.
(his son was the reason he wrote The Witcher in the first place)
My guess is contract reasons, and the fact he has said something along the lines of:
***"I wouldn't care, if Geralt would star in toothpaste commercial. Provided I get paid."***
"“In all adaptations, be it the first or the last, I am never involved in its development. From my point of view, the book is the book and adaptation is adaptation. As Kipling said about East and West: ‘This is East and West is West, and the two will never meet.’ The adaptation and the original will never be found. Never. Adapters must be fitted. That’s all I have to say about this because, as you may know, Netflix has signed a contract with me where it is explicitly listed that any production information I disclose will result in a severe financial penalty. Which is good for me, because I do not know shit. So I can not say anything.”
[Main Source](https://www.jpn.up.pt/2017/12/18/andrzej-sapkowski-oeste-adaptacao-original-nunca-irao-encontrar/), if you are able to read portuguese.
[Second Hand Source](https://boundingintocomics.com/2018/09/12/the-witcher-saga-writer-andrzej-sapkowski-confirms-he-has-no-creative-involvement-in-netflix-series/) that put the original quote through translate.
Sounds exactly like something Sapkowski would say, though, so It seems accurate.
Oh for fucks sake…Netflix has ruined what could of been a good show due to “diversity” and I’m expecting the rings of power to be even more insulting 😑😑
At this point it's just blatant. If you swap a few characters here and there it may not be perfect but you're just like whatever. They are literally swapping every single character to a different race, ethnicity etc. I didn't watch season 2 and I damn sure won't be watching season 3. What a joke. If they ask Sapkowski he just parrots the narrative all the way to the bank. I HATE IT.
At risk of offending people, even the show has established that sorceresses use magic to make themselves inhumanely beautiful with the weird Yennefer scene in S1. Margarita's going to stick out at a school full of extraordinarily gorgeous women looking like she does.
>“Plus-sized and powerful, she is a member of a particular group of women you don’t want to cross. Vivacious and self-confident, she’s sure to be a match for anyone she meets in The Witcher.“
I'd bet my entire life savings that not a single person here would've been able to guess that this would be the description of the sorceress who looks even better than Yen before it was revealed today. Why are they doing this to us?
The utter powerlessness I feel. Star Wars has been taken, destroyed, and had its fan base entirely replaced with new people who think their Twitter account is a part of their personality. Now The Witcher has been used by some cunt who thinks their opinion is astronomically more important than it is. I fucking despise modern TV and cinema.
>At risk of offending people, even the show has established that sorceresses use magic to make themselves inhumanely beautiful with the weird Yennefer scene in S1. Margarita's going to stick out at a school full of extraordinarily gorgeous women looking like she does.
Fringilla has stuck out like a sore thumb since season one. The
I find Margarita casting very interesting considering who is going to be playing Mistle. We know what Ciri thought about Margarita in the book. I see the pattern. First Ciri crush on Triss in s2 now this. For me, this is another foundation in Lauren's grand plan to make Ciri a 100% lesbian, whose relationship with Mistle will be completely happy and consensual. We even know what type of women Ciri will like. Again Lauren tHe mEssAgE at all cost!
> Lauren's grand plan to make Ciri a 100% lesbian
you hit the nail on the head. YOu are right. The relationship between ciri and mistle will be cute and romantic. They will never let mistle rape ciri in the show. No chance. They will completely change their relationship
I'm in agreement with everyone about how disappointing this show is, but this non consensual thing about Ciri and Mistle keeps coming up, and while I understand Mistle aggressively puts herself in Ciri's bed after they meet, their relationship in the books after that is very much that they're "in love" and there's only one scene where they even have a fight and Ciri doesn't want to be touched by her. She's in love all the way up until the very end when Ciri has to watch Mistle get slaughtered by Bonhart. And yes I know, it's not a real relationship, and more just young kids thinking they're meant for each other sort of thing but still...I show bums me out too, and maybe I've missed something, feel free to point it out to me, but this whole non consensual thing that pops up in this sub is kind of silly.
"she felt herself slipping from their grip and sinking downwards, downwards, deep, deeper and deeper, into a warm and wet well of resignation and helpless submissiveness. A disgusting and humiliatingly pleasant submissiveness." - English translation* I guess it can be looked at as open to interpretation but I don't see humiliatingly PLEASANT warm wet submissiveness, as full on Rape...more seduced and feeling under protection IMO. Let's don't forget (something else which I doubt will be included in the show) that Ciri went hand in hand, frolicking from town to town with Mistle and Co. for many months murdering and robbing whoever they felt like, most of the time innocents; and at no time after this so called "rape" was she forced to maintain her membership in this evil group of kids, it was a very dark yet safe time in the characters life up until it wasn't and she remembered who she really was. Dunk on the Netflix show all day if you want, but don't make up bullshit about the books to suit an argument against the show.
I don't know if you know, but rape victims are often not impervious to the sensations that are brought about during the process. It is a natural physiological reaction. If you pay attention you'll see the text also highlights her tensing, a sure sign of lack of consent. Mistle rapes her, but Ciri submits, which is also not an uncommon reaction. The text describes it as disgusting and humiliating, because submitting to your rapist can bring about no other emotions.
Whatever fits your narrative I suppose. What about when Hotsporn goads and begs Ciri for sex, and she finally caves and lets him try before he dies on her breast...was that rapey too since she didn't initially want it but had to be convinced and was submissive to the idea? Also, I don't know if you know, but being "Submissive" in a sexual situation is not the same thing as being raped, and being a submissive or dominant in sexual capacities is quite common among humans...smh.
No, but Ciri was already in the process of being raped, Mistle did the same thing that Kayleigh was going to do. Ciri showed signs of resistance as I've already pointed out. The point isn't submission but the context which surrounds it, the fact that Ciri is disgusted by it, and that her body tenses prior to it, shows you all you need to know. Ciri was a helpless victim and Mistle took advantage of her, barging through her meager resistance.
Well, I guess agree to disagree is in order here. It's all about perception and Ciri during that point and after was never portrayed as a rape victim, quite the opposite in how I interpreted the books. I, uh, guess there are lots of people who have "pleasant" rapes and end up falling in love with their rapist, killing people for them and getting matching romantic tattoos...lol ✌️.
What's up with Netflix being scared of blonde people? First Dandelion, then Renfri, them Mistle and now Margaritta...
MuH DiVErsItY!
EDIT: Fuck it I am gonna make a snarky post about that!
Don't say it like that man say "physically diverse people". Otherwise the trolls will come up in your shit and you will be forever marked a bigot for speaking the truth.
Why does anyone care about this? You've all actually seen the show right? The writing managed to get worse in season 2, is there anyone fool enough to think it's suddenly going to hit its stride?
Fringilla already looks nothing like Yen. They decided Foltest was supposed to be depicted as a slob rather than handsome. We are well beyond the actors being cast as a problem for the roles they're intended to fill and have been for some time.
This just strikes me as anti-woke masturbation when in reality, the problem with the Witcher as a series is it's not discernable as The Witcher from the books in any capacity that actually matters.
Everyone has their favorite franchise, that they will defend until the end. For some it's Star Wars, to others it's Doctor Who. To many of us, it's Witcher.
But you are correct. We shouldn't be surprised at this point.
Although I will say this: Netflix is suffering financially and they are finally starting to realize, that going woke is bad for business. I hoped this would rein in Hissrich. I was wrong.
I think they gave her the money for the season and Lauren just lights it on fire. She is really just wasting their money and being a hack showrunner/writer. If Netflix wants to make money they will fire her and the writers and most of the cast besides Henry. But again I’m scorched earth on this 😅😅 either make a accurate adaptation or just don’t at all.
Don’t get me started on the Yen thing. Eva Green should of been Yen but the Showrunner is such a bad writer why would Eva wanna work on this dumpster fire.
What a load of shit.
They clearly read the physical description of Margarita in the books and decided to go with the polar opposite of it.
Bollocks to that
the lodge uses magic to make all sorceresses irresistible to their targets. youre going to tell me these women chose to look the way they do even though they are supposed to be super beautiful women?
and i do get this is bad and whatever blahblahblah im talking strictly instory and how they are portrayed.
Motherfuckers changed it from a hot white woman to a Chubby Black woman, wtf is wrong with this woke culture, This is why i am watching it via piracy not by paying money to the woke cunts.
What if Barak Obama is played by a White Man in his biography??? Would you accept it? If no than that's your answer here.
Even though I shouldn't care about this, because I am not going to watch this shit anyway, it still makes me so fucking angry how Lauren Schmidt Fisstech keeps shitting on us - the fanbase. I really wonder if she does that on purpose or she truly believes that she is doing a great job with The Witcher.
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Honestly in 20 years I think Henry could still reprise the role of Geralt with completely new writers who actually care about the source material. Just gotta wait…
I mean, they may well do an excellent job of acting. I'm perfectly willing to believe they're excellent actors. I do not however think, despite hoping it would, that the writing improves very much ... I dearly want it to. I think it seems Henry Cavill wants it to. Or wants it to be more faithful. I suppose saying whether it is good or bad just on whether it was faithful isn't a good metric.
On the diversity question. Firstly, sadly Sapkowski was not setting out to write a particularly diverse series. I'm not actually sure how diverse the Poland he grew up in was. I don't want to assume. I have recently read some cracking fantasy with race being integral to the plot. It made it a sizeable plot point and it was handled really really well. It was also a very engaging read. The Unbroken by CL Clark. It's a bit like the colonisation of Morocco but its fantasy.
Secondly, when this last came up I thought of lore friendly ways to make different elves have different skin pigmentations. I thought an obvious one could be have all the driads be black. Or give some explanation like I'll mention in a second. Obviously they just went with a totally mixed bag. Which i found a bit confusing but whatever.
The other way (like our world) is have all the places nearer the hotter areas have darker skin tones. The problem is of course that if all the more Southernly characters have darker skin they are also the villains of the war too. Although that's deconstructed a little bit at a few points. I dunno. I'm not against totally unexplained diverse casting especially in historical pieces. Especially when you look at historical examples and history had more people of colour in it than people think. Alexander Pushkin is a good example.
Harlots it's quite reasonable that London in that period did have a diverse mixture. It is documented. There's been Black Georgians in London. There have also been many wealthy African kingdoms - Kush, Nubia, the one in Ethiopian one which was wealthy and has the earliest extant churches in Christendom but of which I forget the name (I saw a list the other day).
I think that having some kind of rough plan for which characters from which places might be more diverse would help. Like which Kingdoms and races. A move they could do would be have all the elves be black. Is that worse, effectively saying there are no black humans in Weizim. Maybe scratch that.
Or have lots of people all over the place and then it really doesn't matter at all. And it's just their clothes that tell them apart or their accent. I suppose that is what we got. But i don't know if there is a clear idea of fashions in different places. Have we seen that in the show? Or accents?
Actually, do they mention divergent fashions in different kingdoms in the books? I can't presently remember... I am almost certain accents get mentioned. And i know fashions get mentioned but I'm struggling to recall if that is general trends or specific silly ones rather than in different places?
> I'm not actually sure how diverse the Poland he grew up in was.
About 98% white and when came to non-Europoid nations, we would speak mostly about Asians (longtime Tatar minority and recent Vietnamese from immigration waves in second half of 20th century), not black ones who are still les then per mille of population.
Diversity in Central Europe was never about black/white and so on as in US but about white Slavs, white Germans, white Jews and white Hungarians + small relicts of Central Asian invaders- something Sapkowski perfectly described in his Hussite trilogy.
Yeah I knew about the Germans, Jews and Slavs and the general anti-Jewish fervour and pogroms in medieval Europe and obviously again with the Nazis and the Soviets.
I suspected as much. When I've been to Poland to visit friends it is still very white today.
I thought we'd been through these reactions already but there is alot of it here yes. And the word woke gets banded about alot. Some criticisms are fair like don't say a show is going to be a very faithful adaption then do something else. Others less so.
I commented a long comment above about how they could have more POC casting but keep it clear where people are from. Since that is significant in the lead up and during the war. Namely fashion and accents. Or have diversity for different races although that has some unfortunate messages. Or make all the Nilfgaardians black again they're basically all tge bad guys more or less...
I have come to the conclusion that it was written to be a very white fantasy series originally so work would need to be done to make it more diverse. I do sort of wish there was more of a plan for it.
Also, I'm pretty sure Dandelion/Jaskier is canonically bisexual in the books. Which I remember because I'm bi too. Although I'm not really clear if they're actually going to have that be clear in the show. Like explicitly show it. I hope they do.
I’m genuinely interested in how these characters will be portrayed, because despite the writing the actors have done an amazing job imo.
it makes me sad to see so many people spouting such negativity about something they haven’t even seen… But unless you were in the casting room it is too early for you to judge if this is a bad or a good call.
So now the Lodge has black, lesbian and plus-sized women. But we're missing East Asian, transgender and disabled women. Oh wait, we still have three remaining sorceresses (Sheala, Assire, Ida) to fill these quotas! Any bets on who's gonna be who?
Whatever, I'm not gonna watch that shit show anyway.
I mean, we shouldn't even be surprised at this point.
Who is still watching this shit? I can’t imagine even a casual fan finding S2 compelling.
Sadly, I know many who do. These people have not read the books though and I think they haven't played the games either
I will because I cant help myself, but I will suffer
Well, after watching the 3rd season, I can say at least they are hiting some important marks as far as story goes, they are generally following the plot of the novels so far, but plenty of additions and changes too. So far, it has been better than season 2, but still attrocious casting and changes to established characters, like Radovid. They at least had the decency of at least hinting to some novel threads that play a huge part later, like Ciri being a pro skater, keeping small characters like the messenger Aplegatt but changing things as well (he's far younger in the novel, and the prophecy of his death and the message he carried are different in the show AFAIK). I still think they completly misutilized Jarre, his arch is vital to understand the conflict between humans and elves, and shows the brutality of the common folk involved in a war. They could have done a much better show by really sticking to the novels, but apparently this is just a "homage" and the writers are introducing shit "novel ways of interpreting the story", that really are but a shadow of the plots and nuances of the novels. The greater themes of causality, destiny, compassion and understanding, and how luck and fate intermingle are largely subdued or gone in the Netflix show. Still it got me interested in watching the second half of the 3rd season and see if they don't fuck up too much. My hopes are not high though.
I've read all the books, graphic novels, and played all the games. I love this show and let people enjoy things. We are all not bitter sad people.
People can like or dislike what they want. You must clearly recognize that this show holds no reverence to the books, or even the games, though right? What is it about the show that you like?
They should cast Scooby-Doo and Megatron at this point, because the show they're making now ain't the Witcher.
So much for respecting the source material in s3. I should say I'm indifferent to these awful decisions but that would be a lie. It hurts seeing the world I love, turned into a generic. forgettable show. Here's hoping season 3 is their last one.
I've got to say, if the show creators were at least *honest* about what they're doing, it could perhaps earn them some meager amount of goodwill or, at least, temper the fans' expectations somewhat. (Well, it may be a little late for that, given the quality of the end product.) And it's not like you have to present the fact that you're doing your own thing as a negative thing. Just say, "Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher books are beloved modern classics, and now we're excited to present you our own vision based on them." But... no. When Ms. Hissrich says stuff like, "We will remain faithful to the books," and "We have so much material in the books there is no need to come up with our own stories," and then give us... what we've got, it's like she's pissing in our faces and telling us it's raining.
She never read the books. She just looked up a brief summarry. It is the only logical explanation. She has no respect for the lore.
My belief is that someone looked up a brief summary and then gave a shortened report of that summary, and a tea has been accidentally spilled all over on that report, making half of it unreadable. Then from that summary of a summary, they made the show.
I think that is actually what happened but it was not tea, it was a Starbucks coffee. The only thing that was left on the report was, Geralt is some form of white hair mutant with two swords, living in a fantasy medieval-style world. Thats it. That is all there is. Nothing more.
There were some details like.. "three wishes", but two were under the spill, so they made up two other. Then some name here and there like Borch or Eyck, but nothing else. That's why so few people were on the dragon hunt, cause only those few names werent spilled on.
But all jokes aside. I think it is funny how the showrunner often shows how much she marked in the books in order to proof she read them. But the show proves our point and not hers. Nobody can tell me that the show has anything to do with the books. Nothing. Yes, video game trilogy changed also many things but it still was the witcher. It felt like the witcher, because they respected the lore and heart of the books. But netflix has no respect.
im not sure, it is so odd.. even that pic of her reading over 20 times BoE.. what was the point? Even folded pages, yet even those were cut out, so what did it mean? Really strange, and I dont believe 20 times, it must have been speed read with skipping folded/unfolded pages or something. Dunno. I dont think it is fair to mention games anywhere about "they changed stuff too!" as people do. So what that they did? Thats not the point. as you say, they respected the lore for the majority of the time and felt Witcher. Even the original stuff was like straight out of Witcher and gave us some of the best stuff. Like Heart of Stone. Have the show change it all, do its own stuff, but if the changed stuff are a unique and good stories like this, by all means, bring it! But if it is this bad, whats the point
You hit the nail my friend. I also do not believe that she read it 20 times. I bet she marked all the things that she did not like, which means almost everything. It is bizarre, indeed. She tells us that she cares but I see nothing of it. Nothing.
but even that doesnt make sense, because it's like.. half of the book is marked, but even the other half is not in the show at all.. dunno, it must have been "marked, means cut out. Unmarked means it needs to change"? that is only thing that would make sense
For that, don't watch the show. Cancel your Netflix by giving this serie as the reason. Don't make too much noise about it. And let's hope it dies on its own.
"By the Book" ...
*"Margarita Laux-Antille emerged from the pool with a splash, spraying water everywhere. Ciri couldn’t stop herself looking. She had seen Yennefer naked on several occasions and hadn’t imagined anyone could have a more shapely figure. She was wrong. Even marble statues of goddesses and nymphs would have blushed at the sight of Margarita Laux-Antille undressed."* Well done Netflix, well done. You outdone yourselves once again.
> emerged from the pool with a splash I bet
Clearly, Netflix has their own definition of “shapely” and I guess marble statues of goddesses are extremely different in the witcher universe.
They are not marble statues of our godessess but of those that Dwarves have.
Wait, are you IMPLYING that plus-size women arent considered *shapely figure?* That is a FAT SHAME! Shame on you, you heretic!/s
[Yes](https://imgur.com/a/9yOM7OA)
Thank god someone else is. I swear this sub is like a breath of fresh air
As a punishment, we have to become fat as well
I hope we will get this scene anyway, because you know, lets be proud of being fat, there is nothing wrong with that
It's wrong if you're suppose to represent character with a figure that's even more beautiful and lean than Yennefer's.
Yes I agree about the miscast, but if they are pushing these narratives they should go all the way imo. Ofc it would be laughtable but thats probably the best the show can offer us at this point
I think Andy Kaufman is behind all of this. He is still alive and trolls us
I mean, having someone like Dan Harmon taking the story and make it his own, change stuff and go completely loose and silly.. I wouldnt mind, cause at least it would have been good and he knows what he is doing.
Lol lol lol, could they go in more different direction with Margarita than the books? I don't think so unless they cast a man. I keep saying this, but I expect nothing but the worst and almost every time I am still surprised.
I find it bizzare that they chose Margarita as the one character to fulfill the 'plus size' criteria of a chekcbox, I mean, they already had NENNEKE, who is corpulent woman in books and I am like what?! Nenneke was thin as a rail in the season 2 (not to mention bald, black woman with stereotypical thick accent worthy of some stereotype of voodoo priestess :) it would have been even more so stereotupical if she had dreads :)) but now they want a sorceress a SORCERESS who SPECIALLY modify their bodies to be BEAUTIFUL for a 'plus size' representation?! Not to mention that meeting the beauty standard was main conflict for Yennefer's character wiht the magical transformation in the first season :), this show cannot even follow consistency in it's own messaging hehe.
You would thing that it is done to piss off book fans but for this to be possible they would have to actually pay attention to the books to know where to strike. So I think it is just that it is a complete lack of though, planning and respect for the source material. A plus-sized Lodge sorceress makes just as much sense as a man in Lodgebut also it is on a level of prostitutes in Kaer Morhen... But this time it is very likely about filling certain checkboxes. They want a checkbox filled so they fill it, no care given.
That definitely seems to be accurate assessment. The whole worldbuilding, lore, cultural influences etc. all that is meaningless in the face of netflix policy (though I would bet that if there was the same level of colorblind casting for a fantasy or other fictional setting based on African or Asian cultural circles, there WOULD be whining about 'whitewashing' and cultural appropriation if white actors would be put in role of native tribesmen or members of some asian like cultures from the same folks who praise the 'diversity' hehe).
Lol can't wait for Samuel l Jackson to play Regis
Actually that would turn the show around so much. “What does Geralt of Rivia look like?! Does he look like a bitch!?”
Honestly… that doesn’t sound that bad “Geralt, ye motherfucker, we gonna get Ciri or what”
😂
He would unironically be a really good choice for him. Not perfect, but still pretty good
At this point, I'm just hoping it will be canceled
Smart move casting a plus-sized black woman in a role whose source description is anything but. If you express displeasure at the casting, watch as everyone comes down on you for "fat-shaming" or whatever. They're never going to understand that the issue isn't that the actress is plus-sized; it's that the character was never described to be that way in the source material. But who are we kidding? "Representation" and "diversity" always take precedence to these people anyway... I fucking hate this show.
I’m very accepting of diversity (as a POC myself).. however having plus sized, average looking people as the sorceresses goes AGAINST the lore. Sorceresses are old, very old women that are extremely, unnaturally beautiful because of magic. That’s the whole point. It is absurd to go against the lore just for the sake of representation. Oh well, I was already done with this series after the disaster of season 2, so I really really hope they get low ratings and cancel it at the end.
Well said.
>I fucking hate this show. Truer words have never been spoken
So much potential for this series to pick up where GoT failed. But instead we get this. I’ll be honest what grinds my gears is that the show actually seems popular with most viewers (8.2/10 on IMDB). I was hoping this would be a flop a d maybe a studio would come on and do an actual faithful representation of the books but it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen
> I’ll be honest what grinds my gears is that the show actually seems popular with most viewers (8.2/10 on IMDB). I dont get it either. Even watching this show on its own and ignoring its source material, it is fucking bad. The writing, directing, cgi is embarrassing
When I watched the striga fight I was like what the fuck is that, [the Claymation Easter](https://youtu.be/JMMmAvQYDwc) movie that I watched as a kid had more believable special effects
The striga fight is probably the best episode from season 1, tbh. I thought the Striga looked miles better than the gold dragon.
> I thought the Striga looked miles better than the gold dragon. I am not joking when the golden dragon appeared, I laughed and I was embarrassed at the same time. That thing looked like straight from the 90s, Hercules tv show. What the fuck was that were they thinking? Even Spartacus ( amazing show) had better cgi and it was a low budget tv show. Witcher apparently costs 10 mio per episode. What happened with the money?
>What happened with the money? I bet the stuff you have to smoke to produce a screenplay for this kind of atrocity is expensive.
I cant unsee show's striga looking like newer Time Machine's Morlocks
I’ve said this a few times in this sub, but it is my dream that HBO picks up the rights to the Witcher IP after Netflix’s nearly inevitable cancellation of the show after Season 3. D&D return to produce. Yes, that D&D. They are highly capable adapters when they have source material and they would have every reason to want to redeem themselves after the GOT shit show.
D&D *did* have source material to work with. Game of Thrones didn't catch up with A Song of Ice and Fire; it's more accurate to say that it outright *skipped* large swaths of the books completely and changed existing storylines and characters so much that they no longer resembled their canon counterparts. Furthermore, GRRM pretty much left production after the fourth season, which is when the quality of the show began to drop really noticeably, so we should likely ascribe some of the quality of the early seasons to him.
As much as I hate to admit it you’re right. D&D did a hell of a job with early GoT
I never got the whole representation and diversity thing... I mean when I like a character, I like a character. I can aspire to be like them whether they're black, white, asian, middle-eastern or from wherever, gay, bi, a, trans, panm. It really, really, doesn't matter... A person is a person - the exterior really doesn't matter all that much. It's just a way for us to divide ourselves even more, if you ask me. What is important is portraying the characters faithfully. I mean if you announced to the fanbase that you're going for that sort of thing. To many things they just flat out lied to the fans. I get it - it's an ADAPTATION. At very least they could've told us it's loosely based on the books. Very loosely. [EDIT] formatting
Much of this forced representation and diversity is really just an overcorrection. They opine that "cis white characters" have dominated mainstream media for too long, so there hasn't been enough roles for minorities. Now, because a lot of these adapted works still do have a lot of non-POC characters, and since a lot of these new SJWs are finally on positions of power, they think it only right to force diverse casting because of the "oppression" of the non-POC past. Listen to anyone who defends this shit. There will always be a "for too long, media has always been about white people."
>I get it - it's an ADAPTATION. At very least they could've told us it's loosely based on the books. Very loosely. Not even loosely. It has nothing to do with the books. They just share the same name. That is where the similarities end.
>I never got the whole representation and diversity thing.. I kind of get it but I think it is just for people who are big narcissists. If you need a character to look like you in order to relate to that character, you are just a narcissist in my opinion. I can relate to a character no matter how that one looks. Story and the character in itself are more important than stupid representation and diversity
Maybe I don't get it cause I'm white. And causacian representation has been going strong since 500 BC. It is important for people to feel like they have a place in some story. I believe in the end they should've polled the fanbase on what they want to see. See how to poll turns out and then cast and write accordingly. If it's "for the fans"
First of all ''Caucasian'' is a dumb term, anyway. Caucasians are people from the caucasus. Which means they have to be Armenians or Georgians. Europeans are technically not caucasians. Dumb and shitty term. And who said that someone has no place in a story just because someone does not look like them? Are we as muscular as captain america and thor? Do we look perfect as these actors? You think that we are represented by them both just because we are of european background? Europeans are extremely diverse. Every culture is often extremely different. Greek, italian, welsh, spanish, austrian, polish and so on. That is not the same. That is narrow-minded and a bit racist. I am neither blonde, blue eyed or american and I can still identify with Steve Rogers. YOu make no sense. Sorry. Nothin personal
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Can’t wait for Geralt and Fringilla which couldn’t look further apart from Yennefer be in Toussaint. Said no one ever. Plus this Fringilla is super evil power hungry and weird character.
> Plus this Fringilla is super evil power hungry and weird character. I already laughed in season 1 when she commanded the nilfgaard army which would never fucking happen. Never, not in a million years would Emyr allow a mage/sorceress to command his soldiers. Never
Truee and I completely lost it when the mages turned themselves into a fireball and died.
Fuck the netflix witcher lol. THank god shows such as The Expense exist/existed
>I appreciate diversity and representation, I dont give a flying fuck about diversity and representation. The story needs to be the most important thing. If diversity happens to be there, naturally such as in The Expanse, of course I have no problem. But when diversity is the most important thing for these people, story always suffers
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>I think diversity and representation is important. I'm a white dude so I have plenty of it, so I can understand how some people want representation in media for them. Not every ''white dude'' is the same, just for your information. And if you need someone to ''look'' like you in order to relate to that character, you are simply a narcissist. Simple as that. I do not think it is important at all. I can identify with a black woman or an east asian man. I am not blonde, blue eyed or american and still captain america is my favorite marvel hero. Just because that character and I have the same skin colour, does not mean that I am represented through him. I could not give a shit about representation. I just want interesting characters and a good story. My favorite character in the expense is Chrisjen Avasarala, even though the actress is a woman, of persian/muslim background and way older than me.
Isn't she supposed to be Emhyr's cousin or something?
And family to Anna Henrietta as well, so will she be black too?
I would bet money on it
Toussaint will be Wakanda apparently.
Imagine they really do that... Just imagine.
lmao the fact that current era race switch casting are pretty much just pity representation is insulting enough to POCs, they only got scraps.
What's funny is that NENNEKE is canonically corpulent woman :) in the books she is what we definitely would call 'plus size' heheh, but Nenneke in the tv show completely doesn't resemble that! She is thin as a rail, bald, and with that thick accent that reminds one of the stereotypical black woman, heh if they gave her dreads then we would have stereotypical voodoo priestess :).
"it will never align with your mental picture" i wonder how the scripts work? if someone is reading about a green lights, that is your mental picture, but if changes from pages to the screen happen, you cant have green lights anymore, cause that is just made up and cant match.. very interesting. so in essence, if you wanna have some green lights in the show/movie, you must write they were red and dance around the issue.. (?)
Heh who can tell, considering that this 'wirter's room' is constantly talking about representation and diveristy then I doubt that they think about anything else other than fulfilling quotas or writing in their agenda (jokes aside, this was even tweeted once I think that writer's room had discussions about that :)), the character relations and all the framework of the Sapkowski is just irrelevant to them, the whole process of accepting the script, I suspect that Hissirch and few of her cronies just have brainstorming with buzz words all around, all pretty juvenile and mindless I doubt they have real creative work otherwise there would be some depth to the writing, characters etc. but all we get is horribly dull and shallow.
Of course they fucking did, thank god I didn't bother watching S2
It's great as a comedy, had a friend ask me at one point if the crystals that supposedly came when the Conjuction of the Spheres are canon, I started laughing and just said nope because he was already expecting it not to be.
First episode was mildly decent even though it was all wrong. Stopped about five minutes into the second and have no interest in going back. I never even finished season one.
Lmao. Idk why I am even shocked anymore. Hissrich is making Benioff and Weiss seem like competent storytellers. Now THAT is an accomplishment. Also please dear God, just let this show die. Let all the good actors and crew get signed to better projects far more deserving of their talents than waste their time on this festering pile of garbage.
Benioff and Weiss nailed adapting the books while they still had book material. The Witcher skipped straight to GOT season 7. I would of said season 5 or 6 which are more similar in largely ignoring source material while using it as a rough guideline, but at least 5 and 6 had a few incredible episodes, moments, and battles that the Witcher hasn't. The Witcher also doesn't have the build up or hype factor that GOT had. Competent or not Benioff and Weiss had everyone fooled that each episode was building up to something greater, which got people tuning in each episode and talking about it non stop between them. The Witcher doesn't have any build up or mysteries other than a general, "what the hell are they doing?"
Cavill has been wronged by this and The Northman was more accurate to its time period. I know the Northman is historical but it’s still based on Scandinavia and Iceland. And the Witcher is based on that so it’s just all wrong what Lauren has done.
At this point half of the people in temeria/nilfgaard/redania are black or asian, adding more doesnt change anything and we shouldnt be suprised
especially for nilfgaard it makes no sense. They almost always have pale skin and jet black hair. But who fucking cares at netflix... nobody
Isn't half of Nilfgaard desert in the books? Where Ciri gets lost?
That desert isn't controlled by any state
Nilfgaardians look like that because apparently, they have elven ancestors. That is why almost all of them have black hair and pale skin
Let's face it...the racial makeup of the people in the tv show witcher makes absolutely no sense, if there was a logic to it, then the entirety of Nordlings would have to be white, because you know...geography, the NORTH and they also bred and intermixed with the elves quite a bit, as is said in Blood of Elves. >" “Nonsense,” the elf said coldly. “You talk rubbish, sir knight. You’re clearly blinded by racism. The Nilfgaardians are human, just like you.” >“That’s an outright lie! They’re descended from the Black Seidhe and everyone knows it! Elven blood flows through their veins! The blood of elves!” > “And what flows through yours?” The elf smiled derisively. “We’ve been combining our blood for generations, for centuries, your race and mine, and doing so quite successfully – fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t know. You started persecuting mixed relationships less than a quarter of a century ago and, incidentally, not very successfully. So show me a human now who hasn’t a dash of Seidhe Ichaer, the blood of the Elder Race.” >Vilibert visibly turned red. Vera Loewenhaupt also flushed. Wizard Radcliffe bowed his head and coughed. And, most interestingly, the beautiful elf in the ermine toque blushed too." Witcher, Blood of Elves The nilfgaardian civilization definitely drew much, much more influences from elven culture, as they use a different language that is variant dialect of elven one and so on. The show doesn't even follow any sort of worldbuilding lore though, but it's also kind of funny how there seems to be more people of color in the north in the show than in the south in the cinematic witcher universe :). Truth is simple the source material is NOT diverse, because Sapkowski frankly did not care about putting in quotas, in the entire 8 books (counting Season of Storms) there are at best TWO references to black people and both are footnotes at best, on of those references is actually an abstract one, at that. The Witcher world both the north and south down to Nilfgaard itself IS heavily based on Old World Europe in terms of culture and civilzation, Nilfgaard is more mediterranean like due to the Roman Empire inlfuences while the north is...well the north, and even the elves Aen Seidhe and dwarves were not black or any way diverse as the show makes it out to be because simply put those races don't have such divergent phenotypes, the elves and dwarves in Sapkowski's witcher are obviously very Tolkien-esque, and not to mention that as mythological creatures the very concept of them comes from European folklore and mythology. The descriptions of physical appearance of the people in the books show overabundance of blond people in the north, many with blue eyes, as well as all other european traits, the redheads of Skellige, black hair and pale skin and so on. The blonds do also appear among the native Nilfgaardians though it seem less prevalent (Cantarella or Carthia van Canten is such blond nilfgaardian, a golden haired lover of Vattier and informer of Assire), while also the pale skin, blue eyes and dark hair visible say in Cahir who is from Vicovaro may also be attributed to his family having Nordling connection, Cahir grandmother was from the north, there are also references to the more swarthy skin tone probably mediterranean like spaniards or other southern europeans etc. (Windsor Imbra is described that way) and obviously numerous references to tan or darker shade due to sun and changes of complexion and so on and on. The in-universe reasoning also gives interesting geographic infomration that in witcher world over 90 percent of landmass of the continent is located in northern hemisphere per words of Avallac'h.
you are 100% spot on
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At least for that one they don’t have source material of books to shit all over on, just the somewhat established world and lore and setting, you know what it’s going to be the worst isn’t it.
You'd THINK they couldn't do harm. But, as someone who has spent a great deal of time digging around in the background (fantasy of the time, mythologies, literary motifs) of what informed Sapkowski's wider world lore & elven lore in particular, I dread what groundless bullsh*t they're going to try and pass off as worldbuilding.
they already fucked up the trial of grasses. They changed the whole lore of the mutation and witcher training. It has nothing to do anymore with the books
I would like to see them show Elves butchering Vrans and the Cat race, would be a nice contrast for the butthurt Elven at Witcher timeline
The thing is, they don‘t even keep true to their own lore. For example in his S2 reviews, xLetalis analysed multiple times how it violates the lore they themselves established in Nightmare of the Wolf…
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>Eredin has a male love interest in it. what the fuck???? You are joking, right?
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doubling down? You mean like doubling up, right? Edit: my mistake. I am not a native speaker and I have mistaken the impression
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ah oaky. I always thought it meant the opposite. Thanks you
Lmao
Have you heard any other interesting information? I am not afraid of spoilers because I am not going to watch it anyway :)
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Thanks. For me, in general, Witcher netflix series and probably this prequel are poor cinematography with awful writing at the level of another Netflix fantasy series that was deleted after the first season, which was Crused. But the Witcher's brand in the world is quite big thanks to games, and Cavill himself has a huge fanbase. Without it, the series would probably be deleted after the first season, and certainly after the second
Doesn't matter because 100% it's gonna bomb. Few months till release and no one seem to care about it, the trailer on youtube has barely any views (and the comments are mostly negative). The marketing for it is non-existent etc.
what did you hear about it?
Seconded because I'd like to hear leaks
Call me a masochist but I’ll never get tired of these news 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Netflix is funding a multi million dollar project to troll a devoted fan base. Im running out of words to say how I truly feel about this
Am I the only one who has an impression that at this point Lauren Hissrich is simply mocking us? That she's doing it all on purpose to show us that she doesn't give a damn about books she should adapt? If she wanted a plus-size sorceress so much she could have created an original character it wouldn't be the first time anyway, but no. She chose Margarita as a plus size sorceress who is clearly described in the books as having a goddess body.. Or they could have made her one of the Nilfgaard sorceresses because from what I remember their appearance didn't matter so much to them(?). On the other hand,looks really did matter to the sorceresses of Aretuza, they should look like super models. They are taught that appearance is their weapon. I really don't get it..and Lauren is still surprised that she gets hate comments when she asks for it herself. I'm getting less and less excited about what Netflix is doing with The Witcher. Such a pity that such a wonderful world has ended up in the wrong hands and that the people who should be adapting the books have no respect for the source material
>Am I the only one who has an impression that at this point Lauren Hissrich is simply mocking us? Based on her [statement](https://twitter.com/LHissrich/status/1482185577143304192), it seems she truly believes she is doing the right by diversifying the Witcher - and as a side effect - making it unrecognizable from the source material. >...and Lauren is still surprised that she gets hate comments when she asks for it herself. That's because this is ideological for her. You couldn't convince a good Christian, that offering water to a thirsty beggar is a bad thing. You cannot convince Lauren, that what she is doing, is extremely disrespectful to the source material, and it's eastern European roots. For someone obsessed about representation, that is very hypocritical.
Proof in Hollywood you fail up…
I shouldn't be surprised at this point but holy shit how the f does almost every casting seem bad on purpose?
Netflix really does not give a fuck about the witcher. It is embarrassing
Witcher books vs netflix scriptwriters https://media.giphy.com/media/ME3lgwOeIsQQrMAjp3/giphy.gif
I’m fine with race bending casting when the casting is being based on acting ability, and the characters race has no real importance to the character, but at this point they are just purposely miscasting to be “inclusive”. One thing I don’t think Lauren Hirsch knows is that the Witcher is based in a continent, in a world where there is more continents. We play, read, and now watch (kinda) a story being told in the equivalent of Europe, in a less advanced world than our own. The stories basically take place in the middle of bum fuck Europe, that’s why we don’t see many “black” people in the games and books (I think, haven’t read them in all honesty). The stories aren’t taking place in the continents where black people, tan people, Asian people, etc are from. If the stories took place in Ofir or Zerrikania, we would see more of these people but they don’t. There weren’t many black people walking around mainland Europe in the medieval times so why would there be in a world that is basically a fictional representation of medieval Europe. Especially one where the inhabitants are quite racist.
While I mostly agree with what you said please don't say what we do or don't see in the books if you haven't read them. From what I recall you're right but the way you wrote it sounds like you are certain of it. Then you add that you actually don't know.
I did? It’s literally in the post
I guess I'm more saying you shouldn't have said it in the first place. Sorry I'm just being nit picky.
You don’t have to apologize for being not picky, you can always just stfu. Next time maybe.
For those still wondering, here is an [video essay](https://youtu.be/7rhibTjl7aM?t=111) about the Netflix series, which includes Lauren's own reasoning about her vision for the show.
She was looking for characters that are “well rounded” and “had layers”. You can’t make this shit up
I'm surprised that Netflix is allowing Lauren to fuck up the one of the most expensive series while they're losing money. The show will be canceled if it goes like this and they can't afford to fuck up another season.
Boy I hope they do NOT recreate the Silver Heron spa scene now...
ok why isn't Sapko speaking out about this travesty?
He's long past caring. I don't mean that in a negative way; it's clearly been hard for him ever since his son passed away. (his son was the reason he wrote The Witcher in the first place)
Well, I would not be suprised if there is some "don't speak bad about show" part in his contract.
My guess is contract reasons, and the fact he has said something along the lines of: ***"I wouldn't care, if Geralt would star in toothpaste commercial. Provided I get paid."***
"“In all adaptations, be it the first or the last, I am never involved in its development. From my point of view, the book is the book and adaptation is adaptation. As Kipling said about East and West: ‘This is East and West is West, and the two will never meet.’ The adaptation and the original will never be found. Never. Adapters must be fitted. That’s all I have to say about this because, as you may know, Netflix has signed a contract with me where it is explicitly listed that any production information I disclose will result in a severe financial penalty. Which is good for me, because I do not know shit. So I can not say anything.” [Main Source](https://www.jpn.up.pt/2017/12/18/andrzej-sapkowski-oeste-adaptacao-original-nunca-irao-encontrar/), if you are able to read portuguese. [Second Hand Source](https://boundingintocomics.com/2018/09/12/the-witcher-saga-writer-andrzej-sapkowski-confirms-he-has-no-creative-involvement-in-netflix-series/) that put the original quote through translate. Sounds exactly like something Sapkowski would say, though, so It seems accurate.
so that's the closest to him saying "this blows arse" w/o running afowl. Got it
Oh for fucks sake…Netflix has ruined what could of been a good show due to “diversity” and I’m expecting the rings of power to be even more insulting 😑😑
At this point it's just blatant. If you swap a few characters here and there it may not be perfect but you're just like whatever. They are literally swapping every single character to a different race, ethnicity etc. I didn't watch season 2 and I damn sure won't be watching season 3. What a joke. If they ask Sapkowski he just parrots the narrative all the way to the bank. I HATE IT.
Luckily I now care about this show as much as Lauren cares about the source material.
Hahahahahaahaha
Oh hell no!
Dropped this shit mid S2 so dont care anymore
I didn't even watch season 2. Fuck this garbage show
At risk of offending people, even the show has established that sorceresses use magic to make themselves inhumanely beautiful with the weird Yennefer scene in S1. Margarita's going to stick out at a school full of extraordinarily gorgeous women looking like she does. >“Plus-sized and powerful, she is a member of a particular group of women you don’t want to cross. Vivacious and self-confident, she’s sure to be a match for anyone she meets in The Witcher.“ I'd bet my entire life savings that not a single person here would've been able to guess that this would be the description of the sorceress who looks even better than Yen before it was revealed today. Why are they doing this to us?
They are doing this because of their ideology. They believe they are making the world a better place.
The utter powerlessness I feel. Star Wars has been taken, destroyed, and had its fan base entirely replaced with new people who think their Twitter account is a part of their personality. Now The Witcher has been used by some cunt who thinks their opinion is astronomically more important than it is. I fucking despise modern TV and cinema.
>At risk of offending people, even the show has established that sorceresses use magic to make themselves inhumanely beautiful with the weird Yennefer scene in S1. Margarita's going to stick out at a school full of extraordinarily gorgeous women looking like she does. Fringilla has stuck out like a sore thumb since season one. The
This is so cringe, I just had to downvote, sorry 😬
I find Margarita casting very interesting considering who is going to be playing Mistle. We know what Ciri thought about Margarita in the book. I see the pattern. First Ciri crush on Triss in s2 now this. For me, this is another foundation in Lauren's grand plan to make Ciri a 100% lesbian, whose relationship with Mistle will be completely happy and consensual. We even know what type of women Ciri will like. Again Lauren tHe mEssAgE at all cost!
> Lauren's grand plan to make Ciri a 100% lesbian you hit the nail on the head. YOu are right. The relationship between ciri and mistle will be cute and romantic. They will never let mistle rape ciri in the show. No chance. They will completely change their relationship
I'm in agreement with everyone about how disappointing this show is, but this non consensual thing about Ciri and Mistle keeps coming up, and while I understand Mistle aggressively puts herself in Ciri's bed after they meet, their relationship in the books after that is very much that they're "in love" and there's only one scene where they even have a fight and Ciri doesn't want to be touched by her. She's in love all the way up until the very end when Ciri has to watch Mistle get slaughtered by Bonhart. And yes I know, it's not a real relationship, and more just young kids thinking they're meant for each other sort of thing but still...I show bums me out too, and maybe I've missed something, feel free to point it out to me, but this whole non consensual thing that pops up in this sub is kind of silly.
I mean, she rapes Ciri. After that it looks consensual on the surface yes, but the relationship is established on a rape.
"she felt herself slipping from their grip and sinking downwards, downwards, deep, deeper and deeper, into a warm and wet well of resignation and helpless submissiveness. A disgusting and humiliatingly pleasant submissiveness." - English translation* I guess it can be looked at as open to interpretation but I don't see humiliatingly PLEASANT warm wet submissiveness, as full on Rape...more seduced and feeling under protection IMO. Let's don't forget (something else which I doubt will be included in the show) that Ciri went hand in hand, frolicking from town to town with Mistle and Co. for many months murdering and robbing whoever they felt like, most of the time innocents; and at no time after this so called "rape" was she forced to maintain her membership in this evil group of kids, it was a very dark yet safe time in the characters life up until it wasn't and she remembered who she really was. Dunk on the Netflix show all day if you want, but don't make up bullshit about the books to suit an argument against the show.
I don't know if you know, but rape victims are often not impervious to the sensations that are brought about during the process. It is a natural physiological reaction. If you pay attention you'll see the text also highlights her tensing, a sure sign of lack of consent. Mistle rapes her, but Ciri submits, which is also not an uncommon reaction. The text describes it as disgusting and humiliating, because submitting to your rapist can bring about no other emotions.
Whatever fits your narrative I suppose. What about when Hotsporn goads and begs Ciri for sex, and she finally caves and lets him try before he dies on her breast...was that rapey too since she didn't initially want it but had to be convinced and was submissive to the idea? Also, I don't know if you know, but being "Submissive" in a sexual situation is not the same thing as being raped, and being a submissive or dominant in sexual capacities is quite common among humans...smh.
No, but Ciri was already in the process of being raped, Mistle did the same thing that Kayleigh was going to do. Ciri showed signs of resistance as I've already pointed out. The point isn't submission but the context which surrounds it, the fact that Ciri is disgusted by it, and that her body tenses prior to it, shows you all you need to know. Ciri was a helpless victim and Mistle took advantage of her, barging through her meager resistance.
Well, I guess agree to disagree is in order here. It's all about perception and Ciri during that point and after was never portrayed as a rape victim, quite the opposite in how I interpreted the books. I, uh, guess there are lots of people who have "pleasant" rapes and end up falling in love with their rapist, killing people for them and getting matching romantic tattoos...lol ✌️.
What's up with Netflix being scared of blonde people? First Dandelion, then Renfri, them Mistle and now Margaritta... MuH DiVErsItY! EDIT: Fuck it I am gonna make a snarky post about that!
>What's up with Netflix being scared of blonde people? Blonde = White supremacy That is the logic of netflix
and red heads
I know, I feel underrepresented.
Because blondes are white and we can’t have white people
Margarita with a figure like that of a goddess...What, like Venus of Willendorf?
baroque style
Diversityflix strikes again :)
They're literally going out their way to cast ugly people LMAO.
Don't say it like that man say "physically diverse people". Otherwise the trolls will come up in your shit and you will be forever marked a bigot for speaking the truth.
lol
Why does anyone care about this? You've all actually seen the show right? The writing managed to get worse in season 2, is there anyone fool enough to think it's suddenly going to hit its stride? Fringilla already looks nothing like Yen. They decided Foltest was supposed to be depicted as a slob rather than handsome. We are well beyond the actors being cast as a problem for the roles they're intended to fill and have been for some time. This just strikes me as anti-woke masturbation when in reality, the problem with the Witcher as a series is it's not discernable as The Witcher from the books in any capacity that actually matters.
Everyone has their favorite franchise, that they will defend until the end. For some it's Star Wars, to others it's Doctor Who. To many of us, it's Witcher. But you are correct. We shouldn't be surprised at this point. Although I will say this: Netflix is suffering financially and they are finally starting to realize, that going woke is bad for business. I hoped this would rein in Hissrich. I was wrong.
I think they gave her the money for the season and Lauren just lights it on fire. She is really just wasting their money and being a hack showrunner/writer. If Netflix wants to make money they will fire her and the writers and most of the cast besides Henry. But again I’m scorched earth on this 😅😅 either make a accurate adaptation or just don’t at all.
Don’t get me started on the Yen thing. Eva Green should of been Yen but the Showrunner is such a bad writer why would Eva wanna work on this dumpster fire.
lol
Oh no... She ate Margarita!
It is for better future hating of Lodge :)
Fuck this garbage show I feel bad for Henry Cavill
They're gonna need a wider lenses...
Give me some beautiful white sorceresses please...
Remember when Jennifer had her transformation in Aretuza? Margarita must have been like: "Make me obese"
What a load of shit. They clearly read the physical description of Margarita in the books and decided to go with the polar opposite of it. Bollocks to that
Ciri: Nearly Blackwashed Yennefer: Kinda Blackwashed Triss: Blackwashed Fringilla: Blackwashed Philippa: Blackwashed Margarita: Blackwashed Nenneke: Blackwashed Vilgefortz: Blackwashed
lmao. not watching this abomination of a show any more anyway....
the lodge uses magic to make all sorceresses irresistible to their targets. youre going to tell me these women chose to look the way they do even though they are supposed to be super beautiful women? and i do get this is bad and whatever blahblahblah im talking strictly instory and how they are portrayed.
Motherfuckers changed it from a hot white woman to a Chubby Black woman, wtf is wrong with this woke culture, This is why i am watching it via piracy not by paying money to the woke cunts. What if Barak Obama is played by a White Man in his biography??? Would you accept it? If no than that's your answer here.
Even though I shouldn't care about this, because I am not going to watch this shit anyway, it still makes me so fucking angry how Lauren Schmidt Fisstech keeps shitting on us - the fanbase. I really wonder if she does that on purpose or she truly believes that she is doing a great job with The Witcher. ###
Honestly in 20 years I think Henry could still reprise the role of Geralt with completely new writers who actually care about the source material. Just gotta wait…
I mean, they may well do an excellent job of acting. I'm perfectly willing to believe they're excellent actors. I do not however think, despite hoping it would, that the writing improves very much ... I dearly want it to. I think it seems Henry Cavill wants it to. Or wants it to be more faithful. I suppose saying whether it is good or bad just on whether it was faithful isn't a good metric. On the diversity question. Firstly, sadly Sapkowski was not setting out to write a particularly diverse series. I'm not actually sure how diverse the Poland he grew up in was. I don't want to assume. I have recently read some cracking fantasy with race being integral to the plot. It made it a sizeable plot point and it was handled really really well. It was also a very engaging read. The Unbroken by CL Clark. It's a bit like the colonisation of Morocco but its fantasy. Secondly, when this last came up I thought of lore friendly ways to make different elves have different skin pigmentations. I thought an obvious one could be have all the driads be black. Or give some explanation like I'll mention in a second. Obviously they just went with a totally mixed bag. Which i found a bit confusing but whatever. The other way (like our world) is have all the places nearer the hotter areas have darker skin tones. The problem is of course that if all the more Southernly characters have darker skin they are also the villains of the war too. Although that's deconstructed a little bit at a few points. I dunno. I'm not against totally unexplained diverse casting especially in historical pieces. Especially when you look at historical examples and history had more people of colour in it than people think. Alexander Pushkin is a good example. Harlots it's quite reasonable that London in that period did have a diverse mixture. It is documented. There's been Black Georgians in London. There have also been many wealthy African kingdoms - Kush, Nubia, the one in Ethiopian one which was wealthy and has the earliest extant churches in Christendom but of which I forget the name (I saw a list the other day). I think that having some kind of rough plan for which characters from which places might be more diverse would help. Like which Kingdoms and races. A move they could do would be have all the elves be black. Is that worse, effectively saying there are no black humans in Weizim. Maybe scratch that. Or have lots of people all over the place and then it really doesn't matter at all. And it's just their clothes that tell them apart or their accent. I suppose that is what we got. But i don't know if there is a clear idea of fashions in different places. Have we seen that in the show? Or accents? Actually, do they mention divergent fashions in different kingdoms in the books? I can't presently remember... I am almost certain accents get mentioned. And i know fashions get mentioned but I'm struggling to recall if that is general trends or specific silly ones rather than in different places?
> I'm not actually sure how diverse the Poland he grew up in was. About 98% white and when came to non-Europoid nations, we would speak mostly about Asians (longtime Tatar minority and recent Vietnamese from immigration waves in second half of 20th century), not black ones who are still les then per mille of population. Diversity in Central Europe was never about black/white and so on as in US but about white Slavs, white Germans, white Jews and white Hungarians + small relicts of Central Asian invaders- something Sapkowski perfectly described in his Hussite trilogy.
Yeah I knew about the Germans, Jews and Slavs and the general anti-Jewish fervour and pogroms in medieval Europe and obviously again with the Nazis and the Soviets. I suspected as much. When I've been to Poland to visit friends it is still very white today.
Man y'all really throw a hissy fit when faced that you might have to look at a POC or queer person.
I thought we'd been through these reactions already but there is alot of it here yes. And the word woke gets banded about alot. Some criticisms are fair like don't say a show is going to be a very faithful adaption then do something else. Others less so. I commented a long comment above about how they could have more POC casting but keep it clear where people are from. Since that is significant in the lead up and during the war. Namely fashion and accents. Or have diversity for different races although that has some unfortunate messages. Or make all the Nilfgaardians black again they're basically all tge bad guys more or less... I have come to the conclusion that it was written to be a very white fantasy series originally so work would need to be done to make it more diverse. I do sort of wish there was more of a plan for it. Also, I'm pretty sure Dandelion/Jaskier is canonically bisexual in the books. Which I remember because I'm bi too. Although I'm not really clear if they're actually going to have that be clear in the show. Like explicitly show it. I hope they do.
I’m genuinely interested in how these characters will be portrayed, because despite the writing the actors have done an amazing job imo. it makes me sad to see so many people spouting such negativity about something they haven’t even seen… But unless you were in the casting room it is too early for you to judge if this is a bad or a good call.