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The Witcher: Evil is Evil


AncalagonTheBlack

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I was finally able to finish this yesterday. I liked the last episode more than most and I have no idea why. I paused it with 10 minutes to go and thought hell this can't be right, it needs at least 30 more to  finish up, but no.

I will say that I had a hard time watching most of the episodes, the acting, plot and damn multiple timelines killed me, that and Cavill grunting in every damn scene he was in. I would watch another season, mostly to see what Ciri can do.

 

Stupid question but did GRRM borrow anything from these books? Ciri the Lioness, Cersei the Lannister Lion.  Gerhalt whatever his name is, The White Wolf hero swordsman undead dude with strong morals of his own.   I am not a fantasy novel person so these may just be normal concepts but I kept thinking ASOIAF when I would see white wolf. The white flame....R'hllor... Obviously dragons are kind of common in fantasy. Even have that assassin face changing guy. I am simplifying their descriptions but just seemed like a lot.

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32 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

You're underestimating the... creativity... of non-North Americans. ;)

I'm not. The list of popular shows we were discussing tracks streams through legal platforms.

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7 minutes ago, dbunting said:

Stupid question but did GRRM borrow anything from these books? Ciri the Lioness, Cersei the Lannister Lion.  Gerhalt whatever his name is, The White Wolf hero swordsman undead dude with strong morals of his own.   I am not a fantasy novel person so these may just be normal concepts but I kept thinking ASOIAF when I would see white wolf. The white flame....R'hllor... Obviously dragons are kind of common in fantasy. Even have that assassin face changing guy. I am simplifying their descriptions but just seemed like a lot.

The first Witcher short stories were published in the late 1980s but only in Polish, which GRRM doesn't speak. GRRM started writing ASoIaF in 1991, when only The Last Wish was available (in its original format, The Witcher) and again only in Polish. None of the Witcher stories were available in English until 2007, when GRRM had already published AFFC.

So, no.

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2 hours ago, dbunting said:

Stupid question but did GRRM borrow anything from these books? Ciri the Lioness, Cersei the Lannister Lion.  Gerhalt whatever his name is, The White Wolf hero swordsman undead dude with strong morals of his own.   I am not a fantasy novel person so these may just be normal concepts but I kept thinking ASOIAF when I would see white wolf. The white flame....R'hllor... Obviously dragons are kind of common in fantasy. Even have that assassin face changing guy. I am simplifying their descriptions but just seemed like a lot.

This kind of stuff is in just about any epic fantasy novel/series, and often is inspired by history, and yes by preceding works. There's a region near Cintra called Riverdell, just one letter away from Rivendell. 

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4 hours ago, dbunting said:

 

Stupid question but did GRRM borrow anything from these books? Ciri the Lioness, Cersei the Lannister Lion.  Gerhalt whatever his name is, The White Wolf hero swordsman undead dude with strong morals of his own.   I am not a fantasy novel person so these may just be normal concepts but I kept thinking ASOIAF when I would see white wolf. The white flame....R'hllor... Obviously dragons are kind of common in fantasy. Even have that assassin face changing guy. I am simplifying their descriptions but just seemed like a lot.

Most fantasy series set in a medieval-Europe type world will have a lot of things in common, as they're working from the same history and legends.  There are similarities between this and ASOIAF, but no more than between ASOIAF and Memory Sorrow and Thorn.  Ciri's story has a fair amount in common with the stories of both Daenerys and Arya, but I think largely because stories of exiled princesses/teenage nobles on the run, will always have things in common.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Most fantasy series set in a medieval-Europe type world will have a lot of things in common, as they're working from the same history and legends.  There are similarities between this and ASOIAF, but no more than between ASOIAF and Memory Sorrow and Thorn.  Ciri's story has a fair amount in common with the stories of both Daenerys and Arya, but I think largely because stories of exiled princesses/teenage nobles on the run, will always have things in common.

There's a lot more similarities between ASoIaF and MS&T and MS&T was one of George's primary influences in writing ASoIaF (to the point of the similarities becoming a bit uncomfortable at times), so not the best example. Maybe more akin to the similarity between ASoIaF and WoT, which George also hadn't read.

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1 minute ago, Werthead said:

There's a lot more similarities between ASoIaF and MS&T and MS&T was one of George's primary influences in writing ASoIaF (to the point of the similarities becoming a bit uncomfortable at times), so not the best example. Maybe more akin to the similarity between ASoIaF and WoT, which George also hadn't read.

Yes, that would be a better comparison.

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57 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

How many pale/albino anti-heroes in fantasy are there anyway?  Geralt, Elric, Drizzt....  Anomander Rake?   And how many are called the White Wolf? 

Pretty sure Drizzt and Rake are black

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4 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

How many pale/albino anti-heroes in fantasy are there anyway?  Geralt, Elric, Drizzt....  Anomander Rake?   And how many are called the White Wolf? 

 

3 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Pretty sure Drizzt and Rake are black

Yep, it’s Rake’s brother who is the albino

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I'm on episode 4 and it feels a bit 3.4 roentgens so far. Not great. Not terrible.

I like the main players even if Geralt's role feels a bit small for a lead with his mission of the week status. The bard felt a little out of place and bordered on meta. 

I'll keep watching if only to see whether the 3 storylines will converge at all.

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On 12/31/2019 at 10:33 AM, williamjm said:

I felt the first episode was one of the weaker episodes due to timeline confusion and I didn't feel it was all that clear why Geralt feels he has to oppose Renfri.

I found the Renfri actress super compelling and really wish we'd had more of her as well. My read of the situation wasn't that he decided to oppose her, he tries to stay out of it completely. She speaks a prophecy to him in the night after they have sex which leads him into the town looking for her, she sends her men to attack him who get butchered (word choice intentional) and then attacks him herself. For about 75% of the fight he's not counter attacking at all and is entirely on defence. Once she scores a hit on his leg with her dagger and almost gets his other leg he accepts he's going to have to kill her and starts attacking and kills her shortly afterwards. Even in that moment she's forcing him to go through with it - whether she's following the prophecy, or just knows she'll eventually be killed and chooses Geralt to do it is unclear.

On 1/1/2020 at 12:08 PM, williamjm said:

I think Yennifer's story starts maybe about 40-50 years before Ciri's and Geralt's starts about 20 years before Ciri's, by the end of the series they will all have converged.

I think Geralt's is actually a lot longer than that, but we don't get a hard number. At the start he doesn't have any infamy, the Butcher of Blaviken is the first major act of his that starts to get him known. We jump an unknown amount of time and he meets Jaskier, who starts really spreading his fame. After the jump from ep 2 to ep 3 people know "Toss a coin to your Witcher" so I'd say its at least a couple of years. Here we get the hard link between his and Yen's story - Yen graduated and became court magician about 20 years before Geralt is here and fighting the Strig..whatever its name is, as she's seeing King Foltest when he's ~10 and I'd guess he's 30ish when Geralt meets him. He's still alive as the King of his Kingdom at the end so he can't be too old at this point.

The next episode I think is when he's in Cintra? Which is we then get a hard time for him being ~20 years before Ciri's story, however I think there's at least a few more years between these incidents - Jaskier looks a bit older and like he's got a lot more renown, so I'd guess around another 5 years passes between these episodes. The episode after that has another smaller jump and his timeline syncs up with Yen's and they both slowly catch up to Ciri after that.

So overall I think I agree that Yen works out at close to 50 years before Ciri, but I think Geralt is closer to 30 with an outside at 40 - the gap between the 1st and 2nd eps could be large.

On 1/3/2020 at 6:26 PM, Mark Antony said:

I’ve literally only seen people hate the bard on here. He’s pretty much a huge hit with everyone else unless I’m living in a bubble 

I thought he was exactly what he was meant to be and enjoyed him. I'd also say that generally the people that were previous fans of the IP seem much less likely to have enjoyed the show.

Personally its been a couple of weeks since I watched it and I'm still thinking about it a fair bit and very impatient for more, so was definitely a success for me.

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1 hour ago, karaddin said:

I found the Renfri actress super compelling and really wish we'd had more of her as well. My read of the situation wasn't that he decided to oppose her, he tries to stay out of it completely. She speaks a prophecy to him in the night after they have sex which leads him into the town looking for her, she sends her men to attack him who get butchered (word choice intentional) and then attacks him herself. For about 75% of the fight he's not counter attacking at all and is entirely on defence. Once she scores a hit on his leg with her dagger and almost gets his other leg he accepts he's going to have to kill her and starts attacking and kills her shortly afterwards. Even in that moment she's forcing him to go through with it - whether she's following the prophecy, or just knows she'll eventually be killed and chooses Geralt to do it is unclear.

This is different from what I remember in the story

Spoiler

Renfri makes Geralt's choice easier in the short story. She threatens the town by sending her men to the market with the intent to start killing people until Stregobor shows himself. When Geralt figures this out, so he goes to the market to stop them, he does, then she attacks him, too.

 

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There is a timeline story on Yahoos main page, I can't get link to work but it lays it out pretty well, breaks it down linking the episodes to timelines back and forth. Starts w Yennifer, then Geralt, then Ciri 

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Hissrich actually answered fan questions over the last days. It's been a bit contentious with fans of the novels often being upset by changes, and reading some of the critiques and discussing them with Linda, I can see the point (namely that Ciri's story spun its wheels too long and she should have been introduced later into the season, and the knock-on effects that will happen from the idea that sorceresses need to have their uteruses removed). Hissrich has been pretty good at not brooking overt rudeness while acknowledging criticisms and trying to explain the reasons behind some of their decisions.

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25 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

you mean, like how was Geralt even born?

Hah. Not that one specifically, though I guess that's a question now. My understanding in the books is that the actual use of magic can eventually cause sterility, but it's not always the case. My guess is that Hissrich will use a variation on this and suggest that Aretuza's methods are not the only way to create sorcerers and sorceresses, and so druids like Visenna don't go that route. Or something.

The specific issues people raised were 

Spoiler

Triss intervening in preventing Ciri being given certain alchemical things that would have rendered her sterile, which doesn't make sense if she's destined to be a uterus-less magic user; and Yennefer saying she'll send Ciri to Aretuza to be taught magic, given her now objecting to the their procedures.

 

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1 hour ago, Ran said:

Hah. Not that one specifically, though I guess that's a question now. My understanding in the books is that the actual use of magic can eventually cause sterility, but it's not always the case. My guess is that Hissrich will use a variation on this and suggest that Aretuza's methods are not the only way to create sorcerers and sorceresses, and so druids like Visenna don't go that route. Or something.

The specific issues people raised were 

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Triss intervening in preventing Ciri being given certain alchemical things that would have rendered her sterile, which doesn't make sense if she's destined to be a uterus-less magic user; and Yennefer saying she'll send Ciri to Aretuza to be taught magic, given her now objecting to the their procedures.

 

I thought the whole Yennifer thing was because of her desire to be beautiful, not her magic use? Did I get that all wrong?

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