What ho y'all!

Will you look at that....

I have made a post.  Its taken me two or three years.  I have also finally changed the layout of this place.  Is this fancy enough for you? 
I think I want to do a few more changes, but it might not count for much if I don't really end up posting anything on here.

Ugh guys... adulting is hard! Every hour of my day is used up like sand in a... sand bucket...

But last week, my social media feed got inundated with information about the casting of my favourite game dad, Geralt of Rivia for the upcoming NetFlix series. 

I had feelings as a result.  Weird ones.

Anyway - I mentioned that I had an essay's worth of thoughts and a friend told me to write them down.  So here we are. 
Its a preliminary set of thoughts, and I truncated a lot of it and cut out loads of paragraphs because the article was meant to be for publication in another online thing.  But it didn't happen so I might as well archive it here. 

Having said that, I could expand on what I've already written but I fear that the Wild Hunt will cut me down before I finish and I'll still be typing even on the day of the White Frost.  So I'll leave it as is.

On that time when Henry Cavill was cast as our favorite Witcher

2008 was the year that I met Geralt of Rivia, and I didn’t like him. 

Ok, let me rewind a bit.  It is still 2008, and I was given a very good second hand PC after my old one had completely carked it when playing, of all things, WoW.  The PC didn’t have a wireless receiver and I couldn’t be bothered to lay out the ethernet cable out to the kitchen to connect it to the modem.  As a result I began playing as many offline games that I could get my hands on. 

One of them was the Witcher. 

I loved, no, I LOVED the game.  I loved how infuriatingly difficult the POV would sometimes get, I loved prepping potions before fights, I loved the ridiculous glitches and I loved Zoltan Chivay. 

But I didn’t love Geralt.  He was a bit of a twat. 

Ok, rewind again to a rainy day in Derby, Yorkshire in 2005.  I managed to download a zip file with an assortment of fantasy and sci-fi e-books of very dubious provenance.  One of them was a Notepad file (am I showing my age?) with an exceptionally poor translation of The Last Wish.  I got as far as the equivalent of chapter 3 before I closed the .txt file and never opened it again, assuming that the Witcher was just one of those fantasy novels that I just couldn’t get into (like the Shannara Chronicles, so sue me).  I hadn’t liked the Geralt experience, neither from the book, nor definitely not from this version of the game. 

It was the first time I had genuinely fallen in love with a video game and also disliked the main character, and the feeling was weirdly jarring.  Wasn’t I supposed to like my protagonists?  Even if I made a genuinely unlikeable character in my first play of Dragon Age – I still was able to find something lovable about the horrendous scamp I had created.  But Geralt?

I realised half way through the game, that I didn’t respect him.  And it was only after he left Vizima that I started to properly get to know him and give him a little bit of a break.  But not much.

What was it about our White Wolf that I didn’t respect? Was it his inability to speak in a tone that suggested that the voice actor had been more than $50 for this gig? Was it the fact that the limitations of the graphics made him look like a badly shaved ape? was it the fact that Geralt could collect his romantic experiences by sleeping with random women like sexist baseball cards?

Probably?

The sexist tropes of the Witcher were definitely one of the main issues I had, but not for the reasons you’d think.  We can always say that discussions on sexism in games and the importance of diversity and inclusion in the gaming industry were in their infancy at the time.  And, as a devotee to the School of the Wolf and an obsessive fan of the Witcher, I even admit that there are times when I defended or outright ignored its poor behaviour.  But what I remember most about this unsavoury aspect of the game was how little I respected Geralt for this, even as I, his controlling player, made him sleep with every female character he had access to in order to complete the set.  In short, I thought he was a slag.

Yes, I am party to this shame.  I made Geralt a sad womaniser with horrendous flirting skills, and it was only due to my L33T skills with a mouse and keyboard that he got any romantic attention at all. 

I mean, I can actually lambast this game for its sexism and have a comprehensive exploration of its themes around equality, race, diversity etc – but that would mean me having to use footnotes and extend this already long rant of emotions for another 20 paragraphs. 

The point is, Geralt was a bit of a sadsack in my eyes, and his only function to me was that he got to kill the fun beasties and somehow managed to make friends with fun people (again, Zoltan).

Nevertheless, I loved the game and the Witcher, for all its faults is still my favourite in the franchise.

I am already a page in and I haven’t properly mentioned Henry Cavill.  But bear with me – there’s feelings being unravelled here.

The Witcher 2 was a phenomenal experience, it was head and shoulders above its predecessor in quality and look.  The game mechanics were great, the graphic design was unbearably beautiful and the storytelling was frankly, a masterpiece.  Of course, there were still issues and the fact that the first thing you see upon starting the game is Triss’ very naked body, which made me roll my eyes so hard, I nearly fell off my chair. 

Although completely unnecessary, there was some context to it(?) and by then, I had resigned myself to yet another iteration of the same thing.  I mean this wasn’t the only game using bewbies as a game mechanic by any means. 

But something unexpected happened.  I started to like Geralt.  He was, charming?

On my first play throughs of both the Witcher 1 and 2, I chose to always side with the non-humans. After all, in my personal mind fiction, I was loyal to Zoltan to the end of my mutant killer days.  But now, Geralt had more fleshed out opinions, hell, he had feelings! it was startling and impressive.

Of course, the improvement was also due to better writing and improved game development on the whole.  But this was the Geralt I would later come to recognise in the books as I resolved to try and re-read newer and better translated versions (again, I didn’t get very far, they weren’t the Gollantz editions and the writing still felt clunky). 

By then, I was completely and utterly in love with the franchise, and it was all I could do to wait for the Witcher 3. 

I won’t say much about CD Project Red’s masterpiece other than bow down to their genius.  (Side note: Whoever directed the DLC for Hearts of Stone deserves a goddamn Oscar).  The Witcher 3 is a towering coup of gameplay, story-telling and graphic design that drags me back to replay with the same giddy excitement as I did the first time.

Also – the Witcher 3 installation destroyed my PC.  I had to wait a year and a half to save up and buy a new gaming rig.  It managed to play the game in ultra settings, which is frankly, the only way to play this game.

You’d think that I’d be excited to hear that Netflix is making a series out of the books right?

Probably?

I genuinely don’t know what to think of this.  Colour me jaded but I only see the cynical attempts at making money from fandom and nostalgia.  I probably shouldn’t be so harsh.  Game of Thrones has seen great success that has taken a fantastic set of books and made it so much more than anyone could have ever imagined, perhaps the Witcher might receive the same treatment?

Again, probably?

So, when my social media feed was flooded with friends tagging me to let me know that none other than the squarest of jawed supermen had been cast as Geralt, my reaction was… ok?

Henry Cavill is a fantastic actor.  He has style, range, and a hell of a lot of charisma.  I first recognised him from the Count of Monte Cristo where he plays a young and almost shounen-esquely beautiful Albert Mondego.

After that, I only paid attention to him in the grossly underrated Man from U.N.C.L.E where I watched, mouth agape as Cavill played Napoleon Solo in a manner that made me feel, well, feelings that not even the suave and perennially handsome James Bond could ever make me feel. 

He’s a great Superman, don’t get me wrong.  For some reason I never mustered any interest or hype when Man of Steel first came out and I didn’t watch it until years later, and so never understood what the praise or criticism over the movie was about. 

I’m sure Henry Cavill could be a great Geralt.  I have faith in the professionals who can transform his lovely jaw into the grizzled arctic tundra that is Geralt’s beard (if you choose to leave him unshaven, which I always did).  Of course, if they focus on Geralt’s younger years, I’m sure that bricklike jaw will get plenty of swoon inducing screen time too.  

In short, I have faith that they’ll turn Henry Cavill into the Geralt that lives in my mind’s eye and the deepest and softest part of my rotten heart.  

That being said, Doug Cockle’s gravelly voice saying ‘hmmmm you’re a naughty girl’ in the most toneless and deadpan voice has been forever scratched into my mind until kingdom come.  Geralt’s game voice is even more iconic than his look, and despite this, I believe that young Mr Cavill can pull that off too.

So, why am I not excited?

Like I said, I have a lot of feelings regarding all of this.  Many of them deep and very personal at times.  But I think that there are many hard-core Witcher fans that might be feeling similar to me as well. 

Probably?

I worry about how Netflix will personify my favourite monster hunter for hire.  But I worry more how they’ll treat his friends, his loved ones, and even his enemies. 

I love Geralt, very much.  I love that it took 3 games for me to see his true beating heart.  It was a slow growing romance.  I love how the books make my eyes prickle when depicting his achingly tender scenes with Ciri.  And I love Geralt’s complicated, problematic but ultimately fascinating relationship with Yennefer.

Speaking of Yen, I worry about her depiction the most.  I love how Sapkowski intentionally wrote Yen as complex, difficult, and absolutely not at all how we would imagine your favourite protagonist’s love interest to be. (Unless of course if you simply chose Triss right from the beginning in the games – again, I have thought on this, but who am I to judge?)

I worry for Ciri, who holds such an important role in the universe of the Witcher and even moreso in Geralt’s heart.  I can only hope that the connection Geralt has to his daughter is as well characterised and written as it is in the books and the game.

I remember the first time I read Geralt acknowledged Ciri as his own with such conviction that I re-read the paragraph just because I found the scene so emotionally charged.  CD Project RED followed that up so perfectly that I cried when Geralt was finally reunited with her in the game.  Every. Time.

(Also his scene with Corrine Tilly where he reminisces about Ciri’s youth is again, some heartstring-pulling storytelling and goodness me I don’t think I can sing CD Project RED’s praises enough.)

I worry that the soundtrack will not be good enough.  The Witcher games have created a distinct sound and I might find it very difficult to even listen to the opening title scene if it is not done right.  

The Game of Thrones theme is iconic but the Witcher already has this too. 

The Netflix show has a lot of work cut out for it.  Casting the magnificent human person that is Henry Cavill is an interesting anecdote in the story of its production.  It’s strange that I should not really care about this as I think I should.  My problem lies in the fact that I simply don’t believe anyone is an appropriate choice for playing my white haired dad figure at all.  Geralt is already an icon who stands at a lofty height.  However, the appeal of the franchise isn’t just because of our favourite butcher of Blaviken, it’s the world that he lives in.  It is rich, beautiful, scary and full of incredible characters that deserve equally good treatment.  Perhaps I might eventually pass some sort of judgement once I find out who has been cast as Reince or Mother Nenneke. 

Probably. 

And so - in my old tradition of posting a fun video at the end of each post - here is something I heard before finishing the Witcher 2 and oh boy - to this day, this song overlays any game music set in a tavern.  

Also relevant.