#Witcher: Blood Origin

[viking-raider]

Michelle Yeoh. Badass as-fucking-ever, Queen.

[geeneelee]

Gay marriage is legal but marrying outside your class is NOT for elves

[wintersmitth]

Elven blood Jaskier confirmed???

[arwen-winchester]

About ‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ from the lore perspective

This - probably extremely poor-attempted - quick analysis contains spoilers from the books’ version of the witcher lore by Andrzej Sapkowski and latest Witcher-verse abomination from Netlix

So you’ve been warned.

Let set the stage of the drama.

ACT ONE: 

The entirety of ‘The Witcher’ saga is a story based on relations between races and relations beetwen them.

(In one word the book’s version story is about racism)

 At the beggining these said races are mostly gnomes, dwarves, elves and human. In the books there are always unicors - but about them later.

Gnomes and dwarves were - as was said in the books - indigenous inhabitants of the Continent.

I’m gonna talk about monsters in further part of this analisys or maybe in another note.

ACT TWO:

Elves originated in ANOTHER WORLD. Before the Conjunction of the Spheres elves were able to travel between worlds. How? Enter unicors. Elves couldn’t open Ard Gaeth - The Doors/Gates of the Worlds - on their own. To do that they needed help. And unicorns had the ability to easely open/close those Gates. 

At this time there were one single tribe of elves. During the Conjunction elven abilities slowly faded and they devided themselves in to groups or tribes! Aen Seidhe had stayed in the Continent world. The other tribe had become Aen Elle - which later turned into The Wild Hunt.

For regaine the ability of between-world-travelling elven scientists created Hen Ichaer, The Elder Blood. The Elder Blood’s the genetic material ceated by mixing of the genes of elves and unicorns.

ACT THREE:

Conjuction of the Spheres

This huge cataclysmic long-lasting event brought elves, human and monters into the Continent. This event forced elves into magical science experiments with the mix of the genes of elves and unicrorns (Hen Ichaer) and brought people and other creatures into unending war. And human to create first monster hunter known as The First Witcher

ACT FOUR:

THE BLOODLINE

Far before the main story there were four important caracters in the books. The Elven mages -  Aen Saevherne - Avallac’h, Auberon Muircetach, Shiadhal and Eredin Breacc Glass. All of them were injected with genetic mix that turned later into The Elder Blood, Hen Ichaer.

Two of them - Shiadhal and Auberon Muircetach - had a baby girl, Lara Dorren, first in line of ‘Lara’s gene’, a natural born carrier of powerful magical genetic material. Lara was supposed to marry Avallac’h, but she’d fallen in love with human mage -  Cregennan of Lod.

Their doughter was Riannon, born with the last breath of her mother, adopted and raised by queen Cerro of Redania. She was queen of Temeria during Falka’s uprising. Mother of Fiona (only survivg childand first queen of Cintra with Lara’s gene) and Amavet (father of the next Cintra’s queen). Foster mother of Adela, Falka’s bastard doughter.

As a result of many generation of Royal Family of Cintra princess Cirilla was born.

Fun Fact: The Lara’s gene is active in the female-only-line. Males could be carriers, but the gene is inactive and became extinct in two, maybe three generations. The grandparents of princess Cirilla were Calanthe (with barely exinting activator in her genetic material) and Roegner (who in this case was the carrier of almost extinct remnants of the Hen Ichaer genetics).

ACT FIVE:

Creation of the first Witcher

The people responsible for creation of The First Witcher were Alzur and his lover Lylianna, renegade mage from Temeria and sorceress intrested in mutation. They’d tried to create monter hunter but failed multiple times, most of the were spectacular. The First Witcher was a young orphan boy adopted by said mage. That boy was put into a series of magical Trials and Changes. And this time it was a success. the key element of the witcher cretion was youth.

And now crème de la crème - the comparison of the Lore and ‘Witcher: Blood Origin’

1. There was no clans in the elven society. They were devide into classic society structure. And ther’re the first occupiers of the lands that previously belonged to gnomes or dwarves.

2. Ithlinne was  Aen Saevherne (The Knowing Ones) - a high-born and elven powerful mage. Not a peasant girl working in the inn in the middle of nowhere in far north of the Continent.

3. The First Witcher were createed out of a young orphan boy with magic and a lot of mutagenic herbs, not an adult elven-male warrior and other-worldly monster’s heart.

4. WITCHERS ARE STERIL!!! That means they cannot have kids. And the show impled that Eile and Fjall’s child was conceived after him changing into the witcher.

5. The elves travelled between worls WITHOUT monoliths. this addition to the main show was the most outrages thing ever happened in the fantasy plot.

6. In the main show Vesemir needed special magical flowers, Ciri’s blood and Tris help with incantation to even attempt to create that mutagenic potion and in the ‘Blood Origin’ all they need was two mages and monter’s heart

TL;DR: The showrunners of the Netflix’s Witcher-verse graduated Stephen Moffat’s Show Writting University. And in comparison to other Witcher’s properties this is the biggest pile of dragon shit I’ve ever seen.

[yoursincalendricalheresy]

I watched Blood Origin last night and to me it just felt sort of empty. As I finished the pilot I thought the weird pacing was just the need to set a lot of stuff up— even if it was done poorly— but it just kept going on and on with this thing happens then immediately this thing happens without any room to breathe. Emotional beats with the main cast fell totally flat because there wasn’t the time or space for me to bond with them, just a lot of honestly quite boring fight scenes (for the love of good storytelling, please just choreograph fights as sequences and don’t cut between every punch. I get that it’s snappy to keep it to a beat but this is excessive and takes all tension out of a fight. Attack of the Clones had better fight scenes than this. Actually they had pretty good fight scenes in general, but still).

The only characters I actually felt anything for was Merwyn and that military guy, because they were the only ones that had the down time for a coherent emotional arc. For everyone else it truly felt like they had a quota of fight scenes to fill and all the emotional beats before the end were dropped to make space for setting those up.

The worldbuilding also felt too underdeveloped to support the story. Don’t get me wrong, it was clear that the author had put a lot of thought into it— I’m sure that it exists in the book and is explored much more fully, but we don’t really get to see it. We don’t get to see, specifically, why Merwyn is considered such an evil ruler. The famine seems to have existed before she took power, so it’s not like she was responsible for that. She ends the war between the kingdoms, which likely saved thousands of lives. She doesn’t seem to be persecuting anyone except Lark and their boytoy. She does seem to genuinely want to help her people, even if her vision of what that will mean is flawed. Now I’m not trying to say she was in the right— the shows attempt at a thesis is that imperialism is bad and I agree with that— but show me. Give me a reason to think that the seven are heroes. Because all they seemed to do is kill a monster and start a mob. And also dump a bunch of humans and monsters into their world. And after that they just run off to live in a little village rather than help bring some kind of order to the land they just swept into chaos.

[dndspellgifs]

Iris Van Herpen? In MY Witcher prequel miniseries?

[awitcheress]

We never did get the name of Eredin's lover, did we? But fuck, those two were hot....

[definitely-not-an-alb]

Watched Witcher: Blood Origin. That was some slowly fun, and extremely fanfic baity. Will have to rewatch to have actual opinions, but I liked this A LOT better than Witcher 2.

[magic-multicolored-miracle]

Since the new season reminded me that I hadn't finished Blood Origin, I did that this evening.

I quite enjoyed it.

Although the last episode felt...rushed and odd? Like it didn't fit with the rest.

And I like "The Black Rose" approximately 3000x more than "Song of the Seven." (Would pay hard money to hear Joey sing it, maybe as a duet with the girl who played Eile.)

[cirex101]

I want to say congratulations to the Witcher: Blood Origin's costuming and makeup departments; you make Rings of Powers' elves look good by comparison. Because my God, are those elves some of the worst looking elves I've ever seen in live action.

You cannot just slap pointy ears on an actor and then pass them off as an elf. They just look like a random person who screwed up their Spock cosplay. I'm not asking for a cast of Legolas' and Elronds, but at least put some effort in making them elfy.

While in theory I can commend an attempt to break away from the usual faux-Tolkien portrayals of elves we've been getting ever since Lord of the Rings, this just feels like a complete overcorrection in the worst way possible.

And the outfits the actos wear, it's just, ugh.

[fairytrashmother]

The fact that the bard/Witcher dynamic was written into the first Witcher is something that makes my brain scream like a tea kettle

[lana-1526]

Just finished witcher blood origin and omfg imagine the possibilities with teh different clans of elves and i absvdjcncn

[confusedgoldenflower]

Witcher Fanbase

Honest Question:

[I haven’t read the books or played the games, genuinely asking for someone who has done so to inform me.]

Does anyone have the link of a Witcher Blood Origin review that DOESN’T get in a twist about the “forced diversity” and explains instead the changes that were made to make it a failure??

I don't understand why people are all pissy about "fOrCeD dIvErSiTy" in it. Like, is it explicitly stated that the elves HAVE to be white AND is integral to the story??? Why can’t characters be gay??? Have there been any changes of integral-to-the-story pairings that would damage the story???? I don't remember anyone getting so tied up when Avatar had white AND poc playing blue aliens--yknow a fantasy race of nonhuman creatures.

Besides the actual writing changes of the story, it sounds like extra excuses to whine, quite honestly.

I respect disliking something because it genuinely ruins source material/characters, but I don’t see that as reason to attack everything from the casting to the costumes to actors’ races and character’s sexual orientations.

[gwiazdaerydanu]

Witcher: Blood Origin- No Polish Allowed

For a show that is based on Polish folklore it is laughably devoid of Polish characters or actors.

[awitcheress]

I just saw The Witcher: Blood Origin, and objectively as I haven't read the books or played any games, I thought it was pretty good.

Missed the hotness of Geralt though....

[izzy-hands]

The Witcher and his Lark