#fandom girlbossed female character rest your weary head

[bumblingbabooshka]

TOS T'Pring should be able to live her 'I think I like this little life' dreams!!

[im-fairly-whitty]

@mightywolfmouse kindly said I could answer this as an ask post since my thoughts on the matter are a bit lengthy, so here goes!

The short answer is that in my opinion you’ve already landed on the best of the lot in the while Witcher franchise as TW3 is a magnificent and beautiful game that has a great time with the book’s canon while still treating it with respect. I own the game on two platforms now and have sunk so many hours into it and I agree that it’s probably the best way to fall in love with the world of Witcher in general.

Which is a good thing since the rest of the media can be a little…hard to love at times. 😅

NETFLIX SEASON 1: For my part Netflix season 1 was my first exposure to the Witcher, and from what I’ve gathered the Netflix is best experienced first and not second, since if you know nothing about the world but still like the show you’ll have a pretty good time once you’ve gotten the very confusing non chronological timeline thing figured out. The fights are great, the monsters are cool, and Jaskier is the accidental star of the show who went on to inspire the vast majority of the tumblr fandom’s activity, much to the horror of the Reddit dudebro population.

If you’ve already played TW3 though Netflix season 1 may feel somewhat lacking since Geralt is played as a kinda pushy and nearly nonverbal kind of asshole-ish guy instead of the warm quippy adventurer in Projekt Red’s games or the world weary but rather sweet book character. The show also tries its darndest to make Ciri and Yennifer the main characters instead of side characters like in other media with mixed results. I’d say it’s worth a watch if your standards aren’t set too high and you’ll have a decently good time.

NETFLIX SEASON 2: In season two they do a much better job of making Yen both likable and engaging instead of just overpowered and angry, making her relatable and human instead of just Hashtag Girlboss energy cranked up to eleven. They’ve also managed to start decoupling her from her womb-quest which is definitely one of the more badly aged elements to have come out of the original books. If you are a Yennifer fan definitely give season two a go, but be warned that if you hold anything about the school of the Wolf, Kaer Morhen, or Lambert/Eskel/Coen near or dear to your heart you will be wildly betrayed and disappointed so honestly low key skip ahead whenever it comes on screen.

THE OG BOOKS: I wanted so badly to like the books and maybe I’ll try them again someday, but as an English major and story crafter they hurt my head too much to choke down. The story telling is actually pretty clever and charming all around with fun spins on fairytales…except for the fact that practically every single fucking time a female character comes on screen everything goes to beans and is super weirdly written until she leaves. Characters become two dimensional, motivations turn to jello, descriptions veer leering and simpering. Then she leaves and all the male characters recover and the story goes back to being pretty decent.

I’ve read so so many books in my time, many of which are products of their time ect but these ones just put such a bad taste in my mouth I ended up dropping them, which is a shame but also I was getting all the important excerpts from the fandom anyway. Yen especially has such a bad time being a Hashtag Girlboss while simultaneously juggling her meaningless in the face of apparently having no true claim to womanhood if she can’t birth a child herself that the fact that she was written by a man in 1986 is very unforgettable. Overall the books have fantastic worldbuilding and set the foundation for so much great stuff, but don’t expect much from his female characterization at least in the first book. It’s full of gems but is also very much a panning for gold experience where you’ll have to sift through a lot of weirdly sexualized dirt clods.

OTHER GAMES: Projekt Red has certainly worked to milk their cash cow for all its worth, and have Witcher 1 (which I’m playing right now and is old but charming, and a clear grandparent of TW3, def worth it when you’ve exhausted the third) Witcher 2 (haven’t played it yet but it’s waiting in my steam library when I’m done with 1) Gwent the card game (which is kinda niche but I fucking adore it, the card art is gorgeous and I literally spent an entire summer obsessed with playing it, also delightful since it pulls in canon from all their other Witcher games into the same classy art style) Thronebreaker (an extension of the Gwent game but built around a story world as you collect cards, I didn’t get into it myself but it was pretty good stuff) and Witcher Pokémon Go (I tuned in during the buggy launch and appreciated it for what it was but ultimately couldn’t be arsed to walk that much in the year of our pandemic 2021) and I think I’m missing a mobile game or two but those are all the important ones I think.

OTHER SHOWS AND MOVIES: I have not watched the young Vesemir castlevania Netflix anime but heard very distressed comments from a friend about it since it reportedly the charge in burning school of the Wolf canon that season two witcher continues. Probably will not personally watch but hey, hot young Vesemir has got to have some merits. There are also several old films made about Geralt back before the games which vary wildly in quality, there’s a very charming one with an excellent Dandelion that I’ve seen referenced in fandom but when I tried to watch it I accidentally got a janky old TV series with pornographic misogyny in it so be sure to do your research and get the titles right if you seek them out! 😂 (although baby geralt was raised by actual wolves for like a month during his training in that one which was cool I guess?)

Ultimately the best part of loving the Witcher is slowly hoarding all the canon knowledge you can from every crevice you find it in and then crowing in delight when you recognize it being used or referenced in another game/show/cosplay/book/fanfic. What you end up partaking in is totally up to you, just as long as you’re enjoying wherever it is you’ve wandered, but hopefully this gives you a decent roadmap to start wandering with!