Don’t mind me just thinking about how important it is to the books that Geralt is hated at first glance not for being a Witcher but for being Rivian and how that really sets up the themes of discrimination and xenophobia. It’s not about what you do (being a witcher) it’s about who you are (Rivian) and people’s bigotry blind them to everything.
In the books, wouldn't have half the problems if Geralt understood the concept of polyamory
Keira Metz was one of the youngest sorceresses, a member of the Lodge, and a fierce fighter who sided with the Northern mages at Thanedd. She is mentioned in Blood of Elves and appears in Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, and Lady of the Lake.
If you are interested in Witcher book content and have questions or just want to chat about them, I made an 18+ discord server here for anyone to join :)
With that, Hi! I’m Aaliyah and this is Part 9 of my WTF series --- a crash course in subjects from The Witcher Books.
Book Spoilers (duh)
Margarita Laux-Antille was a sorceress, a member of the Lodge, and the Rectoress of Aretuza and appeared in Time of Contempt, Baptism of Fire, and Lady of the Lake.
If you want to chat some more about Rita, or just the books in general I made a discord server just for Witcher Books content that you can find here.
With that, Hi! I’m Aaliyah and this is Part 8 of my WTF Series - a crash course in subjects from The Witcher books.
Spoilers (duh)
So first, here’s a mash-up of all the new Witcher covers that I made. I think the pic looks super cool!
Second, I noticed that a lot of the book fans I know seem scattered and I wanted a place for us all to hang out and chat so I made a little discord server. You can join here!
If you can’t tell from my blog, I’m a massive fan of the books and I love talking about them. So come on over to the server to discuss any topic in the books, no limitations, or ask questions about the books or anything book related! There’s a section for spoilers and spoiler-free. If you are interested in getting into the books, this could also be the space for you!
Be sure to read the guidelines once you join! If they aren’t to your liking that’s fine :)
the other thing with rereading the books is it makes me realize how many people selectively read them. honest to god saw someone the other day say they preferred book dandelion to show jaskier because "he's a confident womanizing guy and not a laughing stock" and uh. I don't know that that's how i would describe him. he is a) an openly sexist perv and most women with any sense don't like him or just tolerate him and b) he is definitely a laughing stock
Jaskier and Dandelion are such different characters. I find it similar to comparing show and book Fringilla where they have similar core characteristics but perform those characteristics almost completely differently (of course Jaskier and Dandelion are more similar than the Fringillas but the same principal applies)
For everyone wondering the difference between Jaskier and Dandelion:
Dandelion would say no homo bro and Jaskier would kiss the homies goodnight
I was going through old interviews of Andrzej Sapkowski and I found a really interesting quote:
You’ve stressed many times that the Witcher is neither a medieval, nor a Slavic story. Are you surprised by the constant attempts to ascribe Polish origin to your characters?
“I’m very surprised,” Sapkowski said. “The Witcher Geralt has a pretty ‘Slavic’ name, there are some ‘Slavic’ vibes in the names of people and places. There’s the leshen and the kikimora - but you also have Andersen’s little mermaid and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s Beast. I think there’s a need to repeat this: the Witcher is a classical and canonical fantasy, there’s as much Slavic spirit in it as there’s poison on the tip of a matchstick, to quote Wokulski’s words to Starski.”
And I feel like I’ve always heard the narrative that “the books are super polish” or “we need slavic representation and need to make the show more slavic”
I always assumed Sapko had intended The Continent to resemble medieval Poland but apparently that is not the case at all. I may need to do some re-thinking about the framing of the world.
There’s a full transcript of the 2020 interview here
Man I don’t really have the time but I’m going to anyway because I just can’t help it.
I only recently arrived in this fandom so I’m very new to the books but having just read them to me it really did feel like Sapkowski did not intend for it to mimic Polish history or culture. Or Slavic for that matter. It just has those vibes because he is Polish and therefore Polish and Slavic history and culture are his main frame of reference.
Like mine is Scandinavic/Northern Europe, if I ever wrote a fantasy series there’s a good chance it would end up with some vibes of Norse mythology and Old Danish folklore because that’s my primary frame of reference.
Generally when a writer intends something it is not just more overt but a lot more thought through. But the Witcher feels like Sapkowski just writing from the world he knows best, which is Polish/Slavic vibes with a lot of other European stuff in there.
Which leads me to these tags from @swords-and-spindels
You’re so right. I keep being baffled when people call it pseudo-Medival because it’s not. Quite apart from the fact that it fuses things from five different time periods its main setting is Renaissance. In technology alone, it has moved well away from the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance proper.
Things like glasses and the printing press, things that this world have are Renaissance tech. Portraits of people as well were not normal until this time period, nor was “realistic” painting.
Other things like a very well-functioning banking system complete with the ability to withdraw money in different branches and a working postal service of some kind, didn’t roll around until late 18th or later.
Then there’s the social upheaval and the shift in society towards something far more misogynistic than existed prior (which might not have been that grand but was still a whole lot better) which is also a Renaissance thing. No really, if you had the choice between being a woman in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, I would recommend choosing the former. Your life, legal rights, and social standing would almost undoubtedly have been better during the Middle Ages, if you think they weren’t you’re believing a lie the Romantics/Victorian scholars invented.
I will freely admit that one of the things I’ve studied the least in all of history is medieval Europe, outside of how it relates to Judaism. 
I’m familiar with basically stuff like Charlemagne and the Magna Carta — broadband people and events, but I don’t know as much about the day-to-day life and a lot of general time period facts. So getting to read this kind of analysis is really interesting to me and makes me want to look into it more. 
I also really like the point about how since he is a Polish author obviously that cultural narrative influences his writing, even if he didn’t want The Continent to be fantasy Poland. I think this is a unique strength of the TV show because there are so many people from so many different countries involved. Sapko is one person with one cultural mindset so obviously it’s going to reflect his own life more strongly. A team is made of a lot of people with a lot of different lives all contributing different perspectives. (Duh)
But I also think this makes the people crying about the show erasing Slavic or Polish culture by existing look significantly worse. Because now you’re wondering why they’re pushing for it and why their idea of Slavic is white. 
Mostly, the first clue that it isn’t a middle ages story, at least not our middle ages, is that they know about mutations, genes, taxonomy, etc. It’s fantasy and very much fantasy that pulls from a lot of different cultures and fantasy tropes. There’s some stuff that’s undeniably Slavic (the Lodge as a coven at Bald Mountain, etc) and a lot of cultural context I’ve been told is missing in the English translation– mostly silly jokes. But the idea that the books are about the Polish middle ages and therefore, the show should be white is simply very wrong.
There’s also the possibility of it actually depicting a post-technological society - humans came over from another world during the Conjunction, and we aren’t told, afaik, at what moment “our time” the Conjunction happened. It could be a case similar to what happens in the Darkover books by MZ Bradley. Some things might be kept - glasses, for instance - while others were impossible to reproduce, for whatever reason. It would explain anachronisms I’ve seen people complain about - things like “A type tech is dependent on B type tech, they can’t have one without the other” rather than unrelated technologies from different times being present at the same time - be it a pre or post technology society, things could simply have evolved at different rates due to different conditions.
But yeah. Both from a Watsonian and a Doylist (Word of God) PoV the Witcher is not, and was not intended to be, a representation of Polish/European middle ages, nor Poland, nor anywhere specific. It was intended more as the Fairy Tale section of your local bookshop, if you want to be precious about it.
I believe what it comes down to is people are conflating the fact that the series is very Polish with the world within the series being Polish.
Because the series is very strongly Polish. It has a lot of cultural influences from the writer, it has a lot of inside jokes that you can’t fully understand without reading some of it in the original polish, etc.
But The Continent itself is not Poland. Just like Middle Earth is not Britain.
I’ve also seen a lot of people in the tags bring up how the games they built the world in a very Polish way and that’s absolutely true.
I just read this amazing article about the world building of TW3 and it’s cultural influences and Polish Nationalism. Super interesting read!! Here.
But that’s not the books.
Anyways I love the “past our time” theory and I know I’ve seen that in other media but I do like it a lot!!! It’s a good trope!!!
I was going through old interviews of Andrzej Sapkowski and I found a really interesting quote:
You’ve stressed many times that the Witcher is neither a medieval, nor a Slavic story. Are you surprised by the constant attempts to ascribe Polish origin to your characters?
“I’m very surprised,” Sapkowski said. “The Witcher Geralt has a pretty ‘Slavic’ name, there are some ‘Slavic’ vibes in the names of people and places. There’s the leshen and the kikimora - but you also have Andersen’s little mermaid and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont’s Beast. I think there’s a need to repeat this: the Witcher is a classical and canonical fantasy, there’s as much Slavic spirit in it as there’s poison on the tip of a matchstick, to quote Wokulski’s words to Starski.”
And I feel like I’ve always heard the narrative that “the books are super polish” or “we need slavic representation and need to make the show more slavic”
I always assumed Sapko had intended The Continent to resemble medieval Poland but apparently that is not the case at all. I may need to do some re-thinking about the framing of the world.
There’s a full transcript of the 2020 interview here
Man I don’t really have the time but I’m going to anyway because I just can’t help it.
I only recently arrived in this fandom so I’m very new to the books but having just read them to me it really did feel like Sapkowski did not intend for it to mimic Polish history or culture. Or Slavic for that matter. It just has those vibes because he is Polish and therefore Polish and Slavic history and culture are his main frame of reference.
Like mine is Scandinavic/Northern Europe, if I ever wrote a fantasy series there’s a good chance it would end up with some vibes of Norse mythology and Old Danish folklore because that’s my primary frame of reference.
Generally when a writer intends something it is not just more overt but a lot more thought through. But the Witcher feels like Sapkowski just writing from the world he knows best, which is Polish/Slavic vibes with a lot of other European stuff in there.
Which leads me to these tags from @swords-and-spindels
You’re so right. I keep being baffled when people call it pseudo-Medival because it’s not. Quite apart from the fact that it fuses things from five different time periods its main setting is Renaissance. In technology alone, it has moved well away from the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance proper.
Things like glasses and the printing press, things that this world have are Renaissance tech. Portraits of people as well were not normal until this time period, nor was “realistic” painting.
Other things like a very well-functioning banking system complete with the ability to withdraw money in different branches and a working postal service of some kind, didn’t roll around until late 18th or later.
Then there’s the social upheaval and the shift in society towards something far more misogynistic than existed prior (which might not have been that grand but was still a whole lot better) which is also a Renaissance thing. No really, if you had the choice between being a woman in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, I would recommend choosing the former. Your life, legal rights, and social standing would almost undoubtedly have been better during the Middle Ages, if you think they weren’t you’re believing a lie the Romantics/Victorian scholars invented.
I will freely admit that one of the things I’ve studied the least in all of history is medieval Europe, outside of how it relates to Judaism.
I’m familiar with basically stuff like Charlemagne and the Magna Carta — broadband people and events, but I don’t know as much about the day-to-day life and a lot of general time period facts. So getting to read this kind of analysis is really interesting to me and makes me want to look into it more.
I also really like the point about how since he is a Polish author obviously that cultural narrative influences his writing, even if he didn’t want The Continent to be fantasy Poland. I think this is a unique strength of the TV show because there are so many people from so many different countries involved. Sapko is one person with one cultural mindset so obviously it’s going to reflect his own life more strongly. A team is made of a lot of people with a lot of different lives all contributing different perspectives. (Duh)
But I also think this makes the people crying about the show erasing Slavic or Polish culture by existing look significantly worse. Because now you’re wondering why they’re pushing for it and why their idea of Slavic is white.
I was going through old interviews of Andrzej Sapkowski and I found a really interesting quote:
You’ve stressed many times that the Witcher is neither a medieval, nor a Slavic story. Are you surprised by the constant attempts to ascribe Polish origin to your characters?
"I'm very surprised," Sapkowski said. "The Witcher Geralt has a pretty 'Slavic' name, there are some 'Slavic' vibes in the names of people and places. There's the leshen and the kikimora - but you also have Andersen's little mermaid and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's Beast. I think there's a need to repeat this: the Witcher is a classical and canonical fantasy, there's as much Slavic spirit in it as there's poison on the tip of a matchstick, to quote Wokulski's words to Starski."
And I feel like I’ve always heard the narrative that “the books are super polish” or “we need slavic representation and need to make the show more slavic”
I always assumed Sapko had intended The Continent to resemble medieval Poland but apparently that is not the case at all. I may need to do some re-thinking about the framing of the world.
There’s a full transcript of the 2020 interview here
I don’t post art here often, but I did some doodles of what I think Regis would probably look like.
So I talked about Geralt’s disability in the books here and I also reblogged a post about how it’s not always a bad thing when a character is “healed” from a disability —-please read that post so my little phrase isn’t taken out of context 😆
And I was just wondering if any other folks in the fandom who deal with some type of Chronic Pain or Neuropathy have thoughts on Geralt being “healed” by Fringilla during the last book and basically being able to avoid all the pain he went thought in Time of Contempt with his knee.
Because I’m having some mixed feelings on it but I’d really like to know other’s thoughts.
So, with Season 3 of The Witcher currently being filmed and about to cover Time of Contempt I think it’s time to talk about Geralt’s disability. How he got it, how it changed his lifestyle, and how it affects the plot.
With that, Hi! I’m Aaliyah and this is Part 8 of my WTF Series – a crash course in subjects from The Witcher Books
Warning for Book Spoilers (duh) as well as plenty of trigger warnings common to the books including extreme violence and self-harm. For this one in particular I want to mention there are many descriptions and discussions of chronic pain and neuropathy.
TLDR: Due to an injury during Thanedd in Time of Contempt, Geralt has PNP (Peripheral Neuropathic Pain) with symptoms of allodynia, hyperpathia, and windup. Most of the pain is present in his right knee and left elbow. It affects how he fights, moves, and reacts to situations. His struggle with his disability is present throughout Baptism of Fire and Lady of the Lake. Fringilla “heals” the pain in his knee with magic but the series ends before we find out if this magic was permanent.
Abt the racism over the show: personally I have a huge belief that it has to do with the games, too. A lot of people use the whole "accuracy to the books" shtick but most of the fans complaining are actually fans from the games & there are, like, NO PoC in the games. Mix that in with a fantasy where you can be a typically masculine guy going around fighting things & sleeping w tons of women, and you now have a series catering to a specific type of young male gamer. Keep in mind (cont)
Okay, so I actually have been thinking about this for a long time.
Now mind you, when I talk about the games and gamer fans rn I'm not talking about a lot of the "fandom" games content because most of it is really disconnected from the actual games and is really more strongly built out of fandom characterization and headcanons. Which is honestly super cool and it's a interesting subsection of the fandom but that's to talk about or get asked another time.
I agree with most everything you've said here (although I will say the show is very different from the books in many ways -- and there are critiques to be had but seemingly the loudest and most popular people all tie them back to race -- also on tumblr microagressions and exclusion is more popular than the blatant racism seen on other platforms). I also want to add it’s well-known there’s ties to white supremacy circles of TW3 fans. More on that here.
Long discussion below
I love The Witcher, and I love so many people in this fandom who make amazing content but it is just so sad to be a Witcher fan. I’ve been in many fandoms but I have yet to see anyone that has this much blatant racism everywhere I turn.
I just wanted to be excited about this cute tweet where Anya Chalotra is holding a water bottle
ALT
But of course you go the replies and you see racist and just plain deeply insulting things
And before you say “oh that person is just talking about book accuracy” they are actually using that as a dog whistle because they just want an excuse to be racist as fuck.
Which btw, as a massive fan of the books, it’s such a shame to see “book accurate” turned into a racist dog whistle, particularly on Reddit and Twitter. Just look at some of the replies under the new casting announcement RI released today.
ALT
You have ur blatant racists
Then you have ur “Slavic Erasure” crew who use that as an excuse to be racist
Which is closely related to the “book accuracy” crew of racists
And of course we can’t forget the people who try to say the reason Sapko supports the show and says color of the characters doesn’t matter is because he was bought out
And I love the few people in the replies trying to combat this, and I love how almost all the quote tweets are super positive but holy fuck is it exhausting to not be able to even celebrate the casting of a character.
I often feel like I can’t enjoy the show at all without getting dog piled in some way. And it’s not that I think the show doesn’t deserve criticism, but it’s more like sometimes I just want to enjoy friends without having to dissect every tiny intricacy. I just want to make a nice meme about Yennefer being dorky or Fringilla being flustered around Francesca without having to make some sort of disclaimer about how I hate X part of season 2 or I thing Y is inaccurate to the books.
I feel like many people are so pedantic that they’re finding more enjoyment in complaining about the media than the media itself.  and I’ve done a fairly good job of trying to block it out but it’s just difficult when you have to really put the work in to try to avoid constant negativity.
I will say this, Tumblr is definitely the best place that I have found. Reddit and Twitter are practically unusable at times. 
I don’t know what makes the Witcher different than other fandoms that the racism is so consistent, blatant, and common. More so than most places. But it’s just sad.
Sometimes, I just want to enjoy a show I love, talk about my favorite characters (if u know me u know who that is), and feel like there’s an actual fan community.
But it’s just. Hard. And I’m tired. And I know others are tired too and I just don’t know what to do to combat widespread racism of this magnitude.
@bardicious @bislutcowboy what you both said is something that I’ve also seen repeated by a lot of people in the tags and it really does come down this to this idea that people are totally willing to weaponize the idea of being Slavic as a way to shut down diversity. Particularly since just because you’re white doesn’t mean you’re Slavic. Ciri, Jaskier, and Geralt do not have Slavic actors. Yet no one complains about that. It really is an excuse to be racist.
And even then one of my favorite posts here is about how the Witcher is a Polish series not a Slavic series and it’s interesting to me that so many generalize it to being Slavic. And even then, it’s so clearly a fantasy world with a wide wide range of mythologies included.
I’m sure all of the book fans and even people who have just heard the title know how big of an Arthurian legends boner Sapko had in Lady of the Lake 😆
I think the other problem is is that a lot of these people who talk about book accuracy also end up agreeing on all of the non-racist points about how the show is not like the books so you end up with general complaints about how things aren’t accurate to the books also being used by racists. Which you can see an example of in the tweet talking about Eskel.
This means that when you’re talking to people about how the show is different from the books establishing whether or not they care about the color of the characters’ skin is really important to do. And it’s rough that we end up finding ourselves in the same room as racists but pushing racists out of the book community is really important for all of us book fans to do.
I’ve said this before but if you are being racist as a book fan by complaining about people of color getting cast then you completely misunderstood the whole point of the books and you’re acting just like all of the terrified humans in the Rivian Pogrom.
And I know that a lot of book fans have a wide variety of opinions. And I know that some of us loved season 2 and some of us hated season 2. But I think that we can all come together to make sure there is not this blatant racism present.
I love The Witcher, and I love so many people in this fandom who make amazing content but it is just so sad to be a Witcher fan. I’ve been in many fandoms but I have yet to see anyone that has this much blatant racism everywhere I turn.
I just wanted to be excited about this cute tweet where Anya Chalotra is holding a water bottle
But of course you go the replies and you see racist and just plain deeply insulting things
And before you say “oh that person is just talking about book accuracy” they are actually using that as a dog whistle because they just want an excuse to be racist as fuck.
Which btw, as a massive fan of the books, it’s such a shame to see “book accurate” turned into a racist dog whistle, particularly on Reddit and Twitter. Just look at some of the replies under the new casting announcement RI released today.
You have ur blatant racists
Then you have ur “Slavic Erasure” crew who use that as an excuse to be racist
Which is closely related to the “book accuracy” crew of racists
And of course we can’t forget the people who try to say the reason Sapko supports the show and says color of the characters doesn’t matter is because he was bought out
And I love the few people in the replies trying to combat this, and I love how almost all the quote tweets are super positive but holy fuck is it exhausting to not be able to even celebrate the casting of a character.
I often feel like I can’t enjoy the show at all without getting dog piled in some way. And it’s not that I think the show doesn’t deserve criticism, but it’s more like sometimes I just want to enjoy friends without having to dissect every tiny intricacy. I just want to make a nice meme about Yennefer being dorky or Fringilla being flustered around Francesca without having to make some sort of disclaimer about how I hate X part of season 2 or I thing Y is inaccurate to the books.
I feel like many people are so pedantic that they’re finding more enjoyment in complaining about the media than the media itself. and I’ve done a fairly good job of trying to block it out but it’s just difficult when you have to really put the work in to try to avoid constant negativity.
I will say this, Tumblr is definitely the best place that I have found. Reddit and Twitter are practically unusable at times.
I don’t know what makes the Witcher different than other fandoms that the racism is so consistent, blatant, and common. More so than most places. But it’s just sad.
Sometimes, I just want to enjoy a show I love, talk about my favorite characters (if u know me u know who that is), and feel like there’s an actual fan community.
But it’s just. Hard. And I’m tired. And I know others are tired too and I just don’t know what to do to combat widespread racism of this magnitude.
Currently fixating on the fact that the Witcher books are obsessed with hyper femininity and having women perform being feminine to the extreme while the Witcher show is obsessed with hyper masculinity and having male characters perform being masculine to the extreme
