firecracker22

Dude, small businessman!

That's a really awesome piece of art, man. Great work.

@karkarov: Very true. All the badass mages are all women. There's only two male mages I can think of that are of any real note to the saga and only one of them is a major character, and of considerable talent. The most badass mages, even ones that aren't focal points of the stories, are women for sure. I'm up to "Baptism of Fire", and even someone like Francesca who isn't really seen, save for a short cameo-like scene where she meets Geralt, is clearly carving out a pocket of dominance by becoming a ruler, and with her reputation, you know she's a badass. The position of power, in terms of magic, seems entirely concentrated on women. Which seems to make sense when you consider the creation and mission statement of the Lodge of Sorceresses.

• Total playtime 2 days, 18 Hours, 3 minutes
• Level 11 (85 points from level 12)
• Crowns 3664
• Vitality 4460
• Sign Intensity +73% ( most used signs, Igini: 173 Fire damage, Quen: 346 Phys Dmg reduction)
• Pretty Sign focused, so far, as I want to max out Quen. So, I've mostly got points in Igini and Quen.
• DPS Silver Sword 276
• DPS Steel Sword 246
• Armor 21
• Just finished "Ghosts of the Past", where I was surprised to see Letho. I chose to let him live in this playthrough, and pretty happy I went that route. I stepped in and ruined his plans, so wound up inviting him to Kaer Morhen. Interested in seeing how that winds up. I'm hunting some Gwent cards, and my current Main Quest is 'Pyres of Novigrad'.
• Explored all of White Orchard, and almost half of Velen, playing on Blood and Broken Bones (will save Death March for a later playthrough). I'm ultimately going about the combat with the same tactics I used in Witcher 2, having a Quen sign focused build, with bomb tossing and constantly rolling and dodging. By way of how I need to spread points in trees to access the other Quen upgrades, I've wound up adding Igini into my attacks. I loot everything (again, just like Witcher 2), haggle everyone I can for a bonus on contracts, and ALWAYS get paid for Witcher's work, no matter what (first rule of being a Witcher, never work for free). I've pretty much played it as neutral as I can, except where I thought I needed not to. Gave the Baron a piece of my mind, for example.

Well, truth be told feminists can be just as divided as anything else. I identify as feminist, and find other feminists whom I disagree with on things. You get people on the same spectrum who are just on different sides of it. Alot of feminists are happy with Mad Max: Fury Road, for example. But, FF saw it as a sexist film. So, like anything else there are different views about where we stand.

But, I'll go back to my original post and just say that it's kind of sad to me that something that is so pro-feminist getting criticized for being anti. I'm reminded of Joss Whedon mentioning how we can turn on eachother even though we're for the same thing, in the end.

Yeah, the sexualized aspects can be distracting I think. I agree wholeheartedly. But, I wonder if it's just a product of it's time. It's always been generally believed, even if it's not true anymore, that certain genres are directed at certain genders. The fantasy genre was always really just directed at males, with so many prevalent stereotypes about the guys who like nerdy stuff. That, and Europe aren't as conservative as we are in America about nudity and sex. It being an established universe kinda leaves them on the hook for everything, good and bad, that comes with it.

And yeah, I too had reservations about Ves's arc, too. I was on the fence about it, but wound up on the positive side because of Loredo. I thought there was some interesting commentary on how (via the agency of the player) one can view the exact same soul crushing crime committed by a nobody, and the other committed by a King. I've been thinking alot about it lately, too, in terms of society as well. Bill Cosby, for example. His fame and fortune have kinda served as a mean of protection for him, which I think is fair to say no matter which side you stand on. What ultimately bothered me most, and still does, was the sacrifice of an interesting and dominate female character. I don't know if I'd had felt differently if it had been a different, less fully realized, character.

It'd be an outright lie to say that the Witcher is female friendly, because there's stuff that makes me think it's always been directed at males. But, I would say there's alot there that serve the purpose of promoting rather liberal beliefs about things like sexism. There's also inclusions of themes about LGBT with gay characters. There was a particularly sad and tragic backstory early on in Witcher 3 about how anti-gay sentiments had completely destroyed the lives of an NPC and his partner.

I'd be interested to know your thoughts when you get further into the game. If you haven't seen Ciri yet, then you're barely scratching the surface of the story in the game. You meet female characters who don't seemingly exist as characters for Geralt to fuck. Gran, Ciri, the three sisters of the Crones all the ones I can think of early on off the top of my head. Even the female characters that Geralt can sleep with, serve a greater purpose than just being sex objects. The ONLY female characters that accurately fit that description are at the brothel. The female characters you encounter outside of that, all serve a purpose that's more than sex.

There's a few layers to the sorceresses beauties to read into, I think. Ultimately, you take it as you will...but considering the source, Andrzej Sapkowski, it's hard not to take it as commentary, if also a clever use of leveraging tropes of the fantasy genre. Andrzej Sapkowski created the Witcher in 1986 and the main series of novels, the saga really, began in 1994. Alot of what goes into those novels is addressing the tropes of fantasy storytelling. He even addressed classic slavic folklore, as well as classic fantasy tales like Sleeping Beauty, in his writing by putting a very different spin on things. You need to consider where these things started, and how I think he leveraged certain fantasy genre tropes to tell subversive stories, and say some really crazy shit that may or may not have been "okay" for the time (I'm American, so not sure about certain subjects like abortion were like in Poland). If having these tropes, like a stoic badass male lead and beautiful women who fill the universe (a VERY prevalent trope present in fantasy genres since fucking forever) can serve a purpose for the storyteller by ultimately allowing him to tell certain stories that would normally, especially considering the political climate an artist might be living in a certain time, without getting outright rejected by an audience, or shoved aside as some propaganda slinging loon.

That has always been my read on that stuff, as an artist. But, if you want to read into the fiction itself...there's some tragic shit to see about how, ultimately, women who cannot be used by their families are abandoned. It's a medieval-type setting, and so women (and children, really) are treated like pawns for political and social gains. A family that might be middle class can suddenly become an upperclass family if they have this beautiful daughter who can steal the heart of some young noble boy or something. But, the moment that young girl is shown to be useless to their family for that purpose, she can be outright abandoned. We're talking about girls with disabilities like missing limbs, limps, blindness, deafness, or illnesses, or even just being considered ugly by society's standards causes them to be ignored and viewed as worthless and they're literally abandoned. And so, you wind up having these people who have severe emotional, and psychological, insecurities that can be physically fixed by use of magic and they ultimately wind up being the most beautiful, attractive, and ageless figures in this universe (including the men, as well, who do use magic to look good, and stay young looking). The mages are, pretty muc outright, the celebrities of the Witcher universe. They live more extravagant lifestyles than the royals, and are so fucking elitists that it bleeds into actually likeable characters within that group of people. I've always read this as commentary about how fractured a person can be, despite the beautiful exterior. As time has worn on, I think it speaks even more volumes in a era where people use selective surgery to "improve" their looks with plastic surgery, and the culture of obsessing over beautiful celebrities who are ultimately just has broken, fucked up, and have as many issues as all of us who aren't famous.

As per the use of more beautiful sorceresses and ugly sorcerers (Stregobor from "The Lesser Evil" and Dethmold from Witcher 2), the truth is there are FAR more female characters than male characters mages. You're seeing the large volume of how many female characters there are. In The Witcher 2, for example, we had Dethmold who was a sorcerer. And we had Triss, Phillipa, Sile, Assire, and Cynthia. That's five to one, right there. Dethmold isn't indicative of the other sorcerers, even though he was a very minor character in the novels. But, by in large even in the novels there's just way more sorceresses that are major players to the fiction than sorcerers, primarily because the sorceresses are essentially fighting to bring about a feminist movement to the Northern Kingdoms by taking power away from the men who rule.

Like I said, there's a lot to read into and take away from this universe.

The sad thing, to me, about some of the critiques from some people about women in The Witcher is that it's ultimately going after a piece of fiction that is considerably pro-feminist. CDPR has done Andrzej Sapkowski's novels justice in many ways, including the pro-feminism themes addressed in the novels and the games. I think like anything else, some people are conservative about the use of violence in media and where that violence maybe directed. The novels, and the games, are giving us fully realized, dominate portrayals of women who overcome adversity in a world that is dominated by abusive and power hungry men. It's dangerous to live in the Northern Kingdoms, and even moreso if you're a woman. So, characters like Yen, Triss, Ciri, Phillipa, Sile, and Saskia (and there are many more female characters to point to who rise above, as well, in the Witcher universe) are all dominate women who rise above in a world where everything is stacked against them. Bad things are happening, especially to women, but you need to remember the rules of storytelling here. Overcoming adversity is paramount, and you can say alot about a group of characters who achieve a level a power, and dominance in a story, by how other people like them can wind up.

And here's something that many people who haven't read the novels may not even know, but the dirty little secret of The Witcher is the extremely clever use of leveraging a stoic, badass, male action hero to include storytelling of badass female characters. Ciri, one can very easily argue, is the main character of the novels (something I've heard said about the Witcher 3 as well). In the novels, you're essentially reading about the coming of age of this young girl who winds up becoming a huge deal...with Geralt serving as a gateway for readers who may never even give the notion of reading the coming of age story of a girl to even be interesting.

So, it's kind of sad to me how off the mark some people have been about the Witcher universe in where it stands on women's issues. For me, especially as a storyteller, there are some amazing things to take away about how to write, and portray, women overcoming adversity in a world where everything is against their favor. This is pro-feminist pieces of fiction.

Man...it is weird to hear some of the negative talks about this move. Just. weird. I can't even wrap my head around the possible reason to even get mad about it.

Hmmm. I'm not very far in, yet, so can't say either way. She seemed the same in the beginning, though. I'm still hopeful.

Might not matter, though. I can't say no to those violet eyes and kinky hair. Lilac and gooseberries, lilac and gooseberries....

I'm playing with gaming headphones, a Turtlebeach PX51. It's the first game in a long time that I've wound up turning subtitles off, as well. Haven't had any issues with hearing dialogue, even the music seems balanced well without overlapping dialogue (which happens in most games).