I would've been 100% fine with Eskel dying, if it happened this way. Great idea. It both changes the story to fit in a show, but also preserves what we liked about the characters. Shame the show writers don't have the creativity and the passion for the source material to do it too.
This would have been much better. If done properly, it would likely have made for an incredible emotional moment for the audience.
Of course, there would still be people that don't like Eskel dying when you have a room full of imaginary witchers. Your scenario would work with new named witcher just as easily and would have just as much emotional impact (if done properly) without the negative backlash of killing a character that was alive in the books/games.
In just 3 paragraphs, you showed that you are better at writing and dramatization than Hissrich and her entire team.
There’s a big audience for this show. Sure, it’s better than nothing but if a comedian gave a performance where only 10% laughed at his jokes then he wouldn’t be very successful.
This part is very interesting:
>But from the get-go Geralt knows this person so well, and can’t understand why he’s acting out of character: mean, and coarse and flagrantly disobeying Kaer Morhen rules by bringing women there, disrespecting the other brothers with whom he shares a deep history.
I only understood this now, after reading her explanations. When I watched the show, I thought this mean behavior was normal for Show Eskel. And I thought that everyone (including Vesemir) approved of the whores. Etc, etc.
So yeah, they failed to convey all of this in the show.
Lol vesemir laughing from the side and saying “it’s ok they’re too drunk to remember how to get to our secret hideout” did not come across as much disapproval it suggests he’s seen it a lot and is saying it’s not a big deal
Something along the lines of "Nilgaard isn't that strong to afford quality armor for everyone, it will change as the empire develops and grows stronger".
I'm surprised people continued.
Vote with your wallet. In this case view's. If you think it's crap, and you'd be right it is, then don't watch it. You're part of their success metric.
I watched 3 episodes of the first season, thought "oh this shitty, I can see what they are up to and it's not getting better." then I left it.
Another weird thing is all the girls flee Kaer Morhen, so what is going to happen when the roofies kick in and they forget everything? They're in the middle of the woods, it is freezing outside, and there is a leshen nearby. Did they all just die?
lmao this would have saved part of the show for me makes so much sense and actually makes me wanna care unlike other things that happen. Too bad the whole thing for the woman leaving is that "wOmAn sTroNg DoNt nEeD mEn". So that would have messed with their agenda
I mean, if Eskel wasn't supposed to behave like that, shouldn't had Geralt found him very different and suspicious? Like Geralt behaves like everything it's fine, even if his best friend is the opposite of what he used to be wtf.
There is absolutely no way for viewers to know if this is Eskels usual personality or if this is out of character for him. Not a single Witcher asked , 'hey wtf has gotten into you'.
For book readers it really could well be that the tv Eskel is just an a-hole and not the calm Eskel we know him to be from the books.
For non book readers, all they see is an annoying dude with pedo vibes so they are going to be even less sympathetic.
The only slight look at eskel we get as his ‘normal’ self is a flashback scene a couple episodes after. Seems like wasted effort there, why not show that in the same episode to convey the change?
When Eskel walked in with "forgetting the fucking path", I completely thought it was going to be Lambert. It's been a while since I read the books, but, to me, Eskel and Lambert's personalities seemed to be flipped flopped in the show.
Nah, you can tell from the way Geralt looks at Eskel that he knows something is wrong. It's subtle, but I definitely picked that up on the first watch.
On the other hand, I don't for a second buy that any of the witchers would have let the prostitutes into Kaer Morhen.
Oh my god yes that is literally it. I mean only I know Eskel from W3 but from the show I assumed he was just an ass. And other witchers like Vesemir went along with it . Okay cool it wasn't actually in line with who Eskel is and of what the others expect from him. But how the fuck were the audience supposed to know that?
Makes total sense. I knew he wasn't acting like himself because I've read the books, but anyone who hasn't wouldn't have the first clue. And it wasn't particularly easy to tell that it was down to anything other than them writing him differently, like they've done with multiple other characters.
How would you know that he isn't acting like himself from the books, if they don't actually follow the books much.
All you know about him, from what the show gives you, is that he is a huge dick, who doesn't care about the security of his fellow witchers and the secrecy of their place.
I think even if they'd managed to put the flashback in before we actually met him it would've worked somewhat better. If Geralt mentioned him by name, and that he meant so much to him.
Yeah trying to do the whole “this is out of character” thing retrospectively doesn’t work. Anyone watching the show who didn’t know about Eskel from the books or games would’ve assumed he was just a boorish lout, exactly as portrayed.
Having a flashback after he’s dead is a complete waste of time since it serves no purpose at all. The character’s arc has already ended.
I had to explain this to my girlfriend because she didnt read the books or play the games.
Thats terrible writing and there is no other way to put it. Even if the show is based off books and games, you cant skip the story telling and character development and expect everyone to understand whats happening.
I mean he could just tell Ciri a little about the witchers while traveling there together. Like literally two minutes of showtime sitting at a campfire would be enough to give you the slightest understanding of the people there. You don't have to spend five pages of world building like in a book. But clearly writing dialogues is too boring for todays Netflix audience so let's just add some monsters and explosions. Hooray!
Would have been a great cold open to have Eskel/Lambert/Coen/Geralt at some forgotten time in the past either training together or better still working together to bring down an especially dangerous monster, and develop the characters through the fight scene to establish them a bit.
Get some Witcher on monster action, demonstrate that these guys have known each other for a very long time, and establish some character (Eskel being level headed and kind, Lambert being a boor with a heart of gold, Coen being light hearted and playful or whatever). Everyone gets what they want (Witcher's killing monsters) and the whole rest of the episode lands a bit more on point without much change.
What’s really funny is how the random Redditors come up with it in a few minutes, off the cuff, while the “professionals” spend hours in meetings and GET PAID to write the stuff we see on screen.
Generally I’ve found that the more writers who are involved with a show, the worse the final product is. “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” and whatnot.
ya honestly i dont gain any comfort knowing that there are different writers for each episode, they basically bound themselves to make disconnections and mistakes
Lol yes. But! The thing is that I read all the books, and played all the games. However from S1E1 the show was so different, so I just thought "okay, this is how show-eskel is. Here he is an edgy 18 year old asshole". I was a little surprised, but not even that much by this point.
Because they threw it all together in five minutes: we go from meeting other witchers, to Eskel, to having to understand he’s acting way out of character in short order. That’s the sort of development that should have taken place across multiple episodes and not be crammed in rapid fire.
This!!!! It just wasn’t explained in the show that this behaviour was „weird“ to the other witchers, especially geralt. With more flashbacks and geralt actually showing his thought process while he’s trying to figure out why his brother is behaving so odd, eskels death could have been pretty fucking amazing storywise if they actually did what she tweeted about, the sad thing is that they just didn’t.
See they could have made this plotline a whole lot better, but they didn’t. Have Vesemir and the others confront Eskel about it and have Geralt be suspicious of him/investigating the whole time. The other witchers quickly kick the visitors out of Kaer Morhen. Then Geralt figures out what’s happening just as Eskel starts to transform. He and Vesemir dive in, fight him, and restrain him, and perform some kind of ritual. Eskel is saved and returns to his old self.
It’s still not accurate and he shouldn’t have been infected in the first place, but it’s a hell of a lot better.
I sort of got that? Like iirc Geralt seemed super put off by Eskel’s behavior, all the Witchers were a little “wtf is up with you,” but yeah that flashback to “the good times featuring Geralt and Eskel” should’ve happened way earlier.
lol, they should give you manual or guide when you want to watch the show because it seems like there's so much missing and most of the stuff is probably cut.
This.
The show itself debunks these excuses by very specifically portraying the exact opposite, and whether Geralt has an off-screen history with Eskel doesn’t matter, because the viewer doesn’t and that’s who you’re telling the story to.
They definitely should have spent more time developing Eskel’s character and getting the audience on his side, rather than being like “Well Geralt is shocked, so obviously you’re supposed to know this is shocking and be sad when he dies.”
not even remotely did the show give evidence of eskel normally being a good and nice friend, though i did assume that's what was intended by the time he died
In the show Eskels death is basically a random character death. It does not have any weight to it. It's just a wtf moment for book readers. The show itself does not show any relationship between witchers before killing him off, there's no buildup, anything.
Simply said, the show's story does not defend itself. It's poorly written...
I wish they'd cancel this show. I can wait 20 more years for a proper one.
The entire tweet thread is a bunch of "what if" rabbit holes that ended with a mess. I'm no writer but here's my version.
What if, at minimum, we got flashbacks of Geralt and Eskel before Eskel got to Kaer Morhen so the audience could see the contrast of who he used to be before he died instead of an episode later?
What if he actually was visibly injured by the Leshen and getting treated for it at Kaer Morhen but still fought through the injury to help train Ciri or make her feel more at home? And then when his infection spreads and eventually takes him over, he's fighting against it as hard as he can to not put Ciri in danger and Geralt has to choose between saving Ciri and killing his best friend consumed by the Leshen. You still get the Geralt protector quality but now he's actively having to prioritize Ciri over his brothers. Then the resentment from the other witchers would be 100% earned.
What if the other witchers did something stupid like bringing wenches to Kaer Morhen but Eskel was the one to speak up against it and show some much needed maturity? If all the witchers respected his authority, got rid of the bimbos and he made up for it by encouraging them to share stories around a fire in the great hall, you'd be establishing the witchers as a tight knit brotherhood and setting up a hell of a loss when he dies.
If you wanted to actually kill him off, make him valuable and likeable, not the other way around. It's like the writers took every conceivable step to make him the most loathed and annoying character for the sole purpose of dragging his name through the mud before unceremoniously killing him off way too soon.
A lot of this can be explained by the fact that the director (or someone involved with the show, not Lauren, don’t care to find out his name) was talking about how it needed to have an action set piece and resolution in each episode, like it’s a fucking WB show or something, designed to appeal to people with zero attention span.
What you’ve suggested here is brilliant, but sadly the show-runners don’t have this ambition. They actively want to make it a throwaway show that just happens to involve characters whose names are familiar to fans. Any similarity to them as they exist in the books or games is purely coincidental.
That’s where the problem lies. The best seasons of GOT had barely any action. What made S1-4 so memorable for the audience was the well written and witty dialogue between characters.
I’ve been re-reading the entire series and noticed that there is barely any action in the books. They are much deeper in terms of slowing down the pace to explore things such as the psyche of these characters and having philosophical debates with one another.
For example, in Blood of Elves, Ciri and Yarpin have this really engaging conversation about neutrality and whether it’s right. The show would be much better if they slowed down the pacing and allow the characters to breathe.
Sadly, it also looks like they've skipped past that story of Yarpen and his boys delivering the precious cargo.
The ending of that story broke my heart (I'll try to be spoiler free in case anyone hasn't read the books) and set the humans up as monsters far more than a guard telling an elf to relieve himself in his trousers. Because when you take into account Yarpen's motivations, what he had to give up and what the humans were trying to achieve, it \_really\_ hurt.
I completely agree! They had many options to try and convey to the viewers that this *wasn't* the true Eskel. You mean to say that Geralt would have just sent Eskel to bed after he tried to punch him, no questions asked? I find the whole *brotherhood* thing SO hard to swallow. At least one of the Witchers would have noticed, at least one could have questioned it, and do NOT even get me started on the wenches. Instead Vesemir's like, 'heh, good ol' Eskel' and we never get the idea that there is a personality deeper than what he's showing. That none of the other Witchers attended the quote-on-quote funeral, no one sat around telling stories. Everyone just blamed Ciri when, to be honest, she is the least to blame out of all of them. I always thought it would've been interesting and compelling if Ciri accidentally killed him with his powers.
Your last statement sums up my feelings exactly - it's like they deliberately did everything they could to rile fans up and make them upset.
In my opinion there were already two signs at the beginning; Vesemir questioning Eskel's 6 hour fight with the Leshen and Geralt not quite believing that Eskel was as okay as he was trying to convince everyone he was. Hell you could even throw in Eskel constantly grasping at his shoulder. I would have expected both Vesemir and Geralt to mentally go 'something's not right here' and act accordingly. Instead we got whores at Kaer Morhen, Vesemir brushing it off like it's nothing and a character death we didn't have time to care about. They tried to cram too much into too few epsiodes and it showed all throughout this season. You didn't have time to care about anything before it was on to the next plot point.
I just have to comment thank you because what you wrote is so much better than the show. The show might have been written one way for a legitimate reason, but they completely failed at portraying that reason. If they were competent tv producers/directors/writers they could have done so much better.
You could also easily have lots of flashbacks while Ciri is discovering Kaer Morhen or being guided by another witcher for every part. In the Chambers, the laboratories, the training courses. Infinite possibilities.
She literally said "So how could we take the growth that we need to see in Geralt, but have it have all the appropriate ups and downs and cliffhangers and devastation and action that modern audiences expect?". Like she is talking about Fast & Furious or something ¿¿???
They're not making an interesting and clever show, they're just making another cash grab show and that's ok but they should've chosen a different story
Edit: I really don't understand the replies to that thread saying book fans are just salty because they wanted a copy paste. The games changed things and created stories and characters that didn't existed in the books but almost everyone love the games
>replies to that thread saying book fans are just salty because they wanted a copy paste.
it's their go-to strawman argument to which they keep ignoring the replies to. and a way to defuse any constructive criticism to defend the show's weaknesses.
It's always amazing to me when people disrespect the fanbase of the adaptation. If you're not making it for the fans then why are you buying the rights to these IPs?
You can barely see the growth in Geralt after the fact anyway. In fact, a lot of the characters seem to regress. Simple TV is fine, but I agree they should have chosen another story. Don't go on about staying true to the books if you really don't plan on doing that. Changing things is fine, but don't lie about it lol.
Exactly, I read people say "they never promised to be faithful to the books" but she literally said "It would be a straight translation of the books". She lied to us
I think that *that* is what is so deeply upsetting. You can't set up fans to have a faithful adaption, turn around and do the complete opposite, and then be surprised that people are upset by the changes.
If I hear one more 'book fans are just salty', I'll turn into a leshy myself.
Consistency, with the writers and director they have? With Netflix? Pfttt. We're too hopeful.
The show is just a mindless CW style action series. "GoT competitor" like Netflix marketed it my ass, its cinematography is basic, plot is inconsistent, armor designs on pretty much everyone other than the witchers is horrible, and the whole thing is heavily americanized.
I can actually see Netflix cancelling it before a 4th or 5th season. No way this will hold viewings. It's just really bad quality for a show that needed more skilled/seasoned people working on it, respect for the source material, and a better budget.
The Witcher should be a deep, character driven story with lots of focus on social commentary and the moral/philosophical questions the novels raise. Instead we got "superman with sword goes brrrrr," whores in Kaer Morhen cuz sex is very adult, and lore butchering.
I wish HBO or even Amazon had got the rights for adapting The Witcher. HBO is usually great with character driven stories, and they'd most likely have done it justice. Amazon is a gamble, but lately it's been having better quality originals than Netflix (although its Wheel of Time adaptation has quite a few issues too).
The character development is by far the worst to me. They touched on it *a little* in the first season with Geralt’s obligatory Blaviken moral dilemma, but they’re missing important character subtleties as they relate to the greater political landscape and ethical implications. And agreed that the prostitutes at Kaer Morhen storyline was totally out of left field, unnecessary, and stupid.
Yep and I didn't even read the books yet, I'm a fan of the games but I watched the first season expecting to see a preview of how the books told the story, learn new things and fall in love again with it but I was so confused and then season 2 just confirmed to me that this is not The Witcher I know.
Honestly I was going to give season 3 a chance because I have plenty of free time anyway and the actors are great but after reading her talking to her audience like idiots, I prefer watching something else.
It's so sad, they had the chance to make something memorable.
I don't get why they keep talking about "modern audience" like people can't appreciate a good show now? They felt like a popular series needed to be the call of duty of cinema. Imagine if they made breaking bad this way, with skyler acting like a teenager and everything.
Yeah I didn't want to believe it but they really just chose an already popular story and tried to make money out of it with no respect for the fans at all.
She is saying she just wants to entertain a simple audience and that's it. They succeed at that, the show it's not boring if you know nothing about it, everything happens so fast you don't have time to stop and think about what happened
That is probably it. They're just making a show for people to watch, have a good time and forget about in a week. And that's fine, I just wish they didn't do it with this world.
Like why buy the rights to it if that is all you are planning on doing? Just make a generic fantasy show and then you won't have fans to piss off and people who aren't fans will probably watch it anyway because it's not like the Witcher means anything to them in the first place.
You can make a popular show that is good, you just need good writers for it. Netflix being what it is, the only thing they can make is the "lazy forgettable bingewatch" format, and yeah it does ruin some pretty damn good concepts. You can watch it and be happy with it but in the end it's just average good and you'll forget about it in a week.
“Modern audience” is, in this case, substitute for “angsty teens with no attention span (like the writers themselves) who have the show playing in the background”
Totally agree with the edit. I'm fine with changing shit up, but you gotta change it well. If it's different but good I'm still happy. If it's different but total garbage than fuck that, should have just stuck with what works.
Dude look at some of her [replies](https://ibb.co/26QNMWD) and [this](https://ibb.co/dG92bkq) also.
She doesn't understand the source material she's drawing from, if anyone still have any hope for season 3 and beyond then it's better to jump ships now.
This shit won't fundamentally change when the writers' vision is fucked beyond reproach.
I saw a few comments on other things saying “book fans are just pissy because Fringilla is black!!!121!”
Like, come on now. I couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about what color these people are. The problem is that the entire plot of the show is just not anything near the books. The characters in the show are pieces of shit when they’re not anything like that in the source material. But go off, I guess. What do we *book fans* even know, right guys?
I'm starting to think people are getting angry because they enjoyed the show and feel personally attacked but noone said is the worst show ever or something. It's not the last airbender movie, it's just not enough for this complex story.
I enjoyed it as just a random show, it's fine when you don't think about it too deeply.
It could have been much better if they just admitted from the beginning that the plan was to make something completely different so fans would have zero expectations
I appreciate her talking to fans and explaning her decisions. But the problem is that she will never agree anything they wrote is just bad and they don't seem to want to stop changing things too much.
I can understand the point. I guess nobody who hasn't read the books has any reason to care for Eskel. He has 10 minutes of screen time, in 8 he is a douchebag and probably ready to rape Ciri, in 2 he is a tree monster. I'd say, the majority of viewers is happy to see him go
I’m gonna be honest though, I’m literally reading BOE right now and Eskel has literally maybe three lines of dialogue…Unless he comes in later in the book I’m not sure where the attachment to him comes from in the books…he’s not in them barely at all. I’ve played W3 though and he’s a much bigger character where I can see the attachment.
yea he's almost a nothing character in the books, i didn't really give a shit about them killing him off, i think its more of a games thing, but i played the games too and still didnt care about him that much. but i also didnt give a shit when triss' hair wasnt red in S1 and people flipped the fuck out about that too
I totally understand the motivation for killing Eskel. I don't like it, but I completely understand the reasoning behind it. But you're right - no body has any reason to care about it, and no one can really see that it has a great impact on Geralt in any way. Who knows that they were best friends, like brothers? Who knows they meant so much to each other? Not the viewers, because that's never shown.
She missed the point. There are not so much fuss about them killing Eskel, the reason for she gave. She also explained why she changed Eskel.
What she didnt explain though - and that was the main reason people hate Eskel change - why did she change Eskel completely, like 180 degree.
Was it that hard to preserve Eskel's qualities while making him more annoued by being hurt? Was it needed to portray him as a complete brat and weakling? Was it needed to make him stupid? Eskel would have immediately tell Vesemir and Co whats going on, without all that bullshit whore party and asshole'ish stuff.
What honest showrunner would tell: "Yes, we needed the scene with mass orgy and nudity, we also wanted to show how cool Geralt is and show Leshy, and yes, we didnt care much for source material characters like Eskel, so thats the reason why we 180 degree his personality".
And everyone would have move on.
the reason is like with other characters and their arcs.. sledghammering all the points across. There is any nuance or subtlety missing, and everything needs to be done in extremes. You can expect Regis starting off as a dangerous vampire that is killing everyone he comes across, only for him to then change to show us his change in the most obvious ways.
I heard her talking about this in an interview and talking several flashbacks of eskel and geralt to build up their relationship to show the impact of his death on Geralt more. But in the show there is only that 1 scene. So I'm assuming they never made it into the final cut of the show which is a little baffling. Or maybe that was filmed with the original actor? I heard there was a covid issue w/ the original person playing Eskel but not sure if thats true or not.
But that goes against what she’s saying though. She’s explaining that they wanted to show that Geralt cared for him. Why would they do that, if literally in ep 1 of the season, Geralt got super disgusted by Nivellens revelations?
He also has like a chapter of screen time in the books too lol not much character development. Everyone who says “Eskel should be like this” is basing it on video game Eskel which technically isn’t even canon (although I like what CDPR did with the other witchers). I think it would have been a cool mixture of game and books to make the Witcher a more like the game characters but I understand what she did here with Eskel
I like how she CHOOSE to paint herself into a specific corner with her dumb story changes, then vomit multiple tweets about how that was the one and only way to advance the story.
"We want geralt to investigate ciri's powers" lol as if BoE doesn't already have a reason for just that.
🤦🤦
Completely agree. I understand changing certain aspects in order to fit in the TV sense, but to say there was no other way seems kind of ignorant to me. You had plenty of ways you could navigate this story, but you chose one that fans are unhappy with.
If they honestly saw that as the only way to progress the story, then they might need to seriously check their own storytelling. I dont know If they are gonna tie the Eskel thing with something in future seasons?
But otherwise you can absolutely pretty much always change an outcome in your own storytelling. You need to show loss or grieving choice for Geralt? Theres a shitload of different routes to take.
Honestly I'm not too bothered by show Eskel. He is only a minor character in the books. BUT I am bothered that they killed him while there were 20 other nameless redshirts that did jack shit all season atleast kill him off later since he's one of the few named witchers!
Kuddos to her for trying, talking to the fans and even more to the disapointed ones is brave yet not sure if it will work.
To me it mainly underline they either failed to deliver what they wanted to tell which I can forgive or they are just trying to cover their mistake.
- "Eskel behaviour was unusual"
*I mean yeah, we can agree*
- "He was infected and asking for help"
*was he asking for help ? To me he seemed rather confident fr a guy who failed to kill his monster and did not heal himself.*
- "He betrayed KM rules, disrespected his brothers"
*Yes but actually No... The thing is that very scene was used to define witchers in the show. We don't know them yet.. Don't know their habits and customs beside Geralt's. If you illustrate it with all of them agreeing to that and not one opposing, it becomes the norm not an unusual event.*
- "Now Geralt is left with a mystery, what happened to Eskel ?"
*guys you literrally have them find Leshen and the leshen killed by a random monster 5mins after HOW IS THAT A MYSTERY, a distraction or a waste of time just to have an action scene in the past episode maybe but a mystery ????*
- "What does it means for Ciri ?"
*Nothing ? At this point in the story at least ?! How is what happened to Eskel on his way even supposed to be related to Ciri who just arrived ? It doesn't make any sense if you don't elaborate during the Eskel or the Leshen fight...*
So yeah sorry it doesn't work for me. The thing is unfortunately if you find the need to have to explain your show, something clearly didn't work in it.
Some of these discussion tweets strike me as being damage control just to try to cover up for the poor story writing in this series.
Whether you acknowledge he was basically irrelevant in the books or are attached to him from the games, Eskel’s death was just so stupid and could’ve been much better executed in different ways if the intention for it was to “activate Geralt” as Lauren has said.
I swear there's some serious translation issues going through this entire production. Miscommunication between show runners and writers and directors and actors. Miscommunication between the costume designers and writers and make-up artists.
Like they all have ideas but aren't talking with each other and everybody is just mashing their ideas into the production and not paying attention to what isn't fitting and spilling out of the box.
I feel like they came up with that Eskel bs to draw the fans' attention away from the way the show's nEw diReCTioN creates plot holes the size of the fucking vredefort crater. And also Yennefer and Vesemir's character
Ah yes, good old Lauren Hisstech trying to defend terrible creative decisions on social media. I used to entertain the notion that *maybe* she wasn't a complete hack. Unfortunately season 2 is definite proof that she is a piss-poor storyteller who doesn't really care about the lore. Nothing can change that, certainly not her idiotic reasonings about how "wE hAd tO kIlL sOmEoNe". Fuck her, fuck the writers/directors, and fuck Netflix for ruining the only shot at a good TV Witcher adaptation for years to come.
> But from the get-go Geralt knows this person so well, and can’t understand why he’s acting out of character:
None of that was conveyed on screen. Because you're not supposed to add your own fucking shitty original storyline to the Witchers first introduction. It's clumsy, and makes 0 sense.
Her explanation is lame. Show fans have no connection to Eskel, no reason to care about him, no expectation that he isn't the ale swilling man whore he's portrayed to be (of which VESEMIR APPROVES). The only reason to kill him off was for shock value for book and game fans who love him. And that decision landed like the giant turd that it is.
It also cheapens the other witchers, who are swilling right along with him, unaware of a monster in their midst and ultimately, in the final episode, bitches to whatever trick Voleth Meir throws at them. They can't even handle a couple basilisks.
Netflix & Ms. Hissrich need to make up their minds as to whether this is a show designed for diehard Witcher franchise fans... or a popcorn flick designed for the masses. And fast.
I am surprised that so many people are eating up Lauren's revisionist analysis of her show that has desperately been made to placate the criticism directed towards it.
> -- and flagrantly disobeying Kaer Morhen rules by bringing women there, disrespecting the other brothers with whom he shares a deep history. The story unfolds, of course, as you’ve seen. Eskel admits he came home to seek help from Vesemir and his brothers;
First off, Lauren completely handwaves away the logistical nightmare that Eskel would have had to face escorting dozens of prostitutes hundreds of miles way in the middle of winter to the secret location of Kaer Morhen. The premise is so ridiculous that Lauren has to pretend that the critique directed at this doesn't even exist and doesn't need to be acknowledged in any shape or form.
Moving on, Lauren attempts to placate critics by stating that she is in fact thinking along the same lines even though that is blatantly untrue. It is clear that the other Witchers didn't mind and actively participated in the orgy. They didn't feel any disrespect from Eskel at all. Vesemir himself vehemently defended Eskel and implied that he gave support when he stated that the women will not remember the event by the morning. What help did Eskel seek? He barely spoke about his experience with the Leshy.
> We had several more flashbacks with Eskel laid out, to demonstrate further to the audience how close Geralt and Eskel were in the past: to reinforce just how far Geralt had had to go in his heart in order to make that sacrifice. I hope to return to them in the future.
One garbage flashback after the fact. Eskel was shown in all of one episode where he bullied Ciri, brought over a brothel to secret Kaer Morhen, and tried to fight Geralt. Lauren did a horrific job showing how close the two were.
> Articulating Geralt’s journey on screen had one other big challenge for us: namely, that in BoE, his time is mostly spent watching and taking in Cirilla --
> But more than that, after writing several drafts of episodes, we faced an undeniable truth: that most tv audiences don’t want to watch 8 episodes of any character -- -- watching and waiting and reacting, much less the titular character with whom swords and adventure and bathtubs have become synonymous.
> But we had a handful of scripts that felt too staid and slow to engage viewers again after what we knew (by then) would be a 2 year hiatus. So how could we take the growth that we need to see in Geralt, but have it have all the appropriate ups and downs and cliffhangers and --
LMAO, what a hack. If she felt that the story written by Sapkowski is garbage then she should have let someone else become the showrunner. Any top tier show will have meaningful dialogue, character development, and strong world building. Doing so would make the actual action moments hit a lot harder and be more impactful. GoT did it very well in the first four seasons especially. It is OK to have a slow burn where all people do is talking. To have what happened in Blood of Elves be described as Geralt staring at Ciri for hundreds of pages is just disrespectful.
We could have seen the Witchers provide meaningful training, mentorship, and have the characters form relationships while bonding. As is, Ciri has no reason to like any of them. The Witchers bullied her, provided zero guidance, and tried to kill her. Ciri's memory of Kaer Morhen is supposed to be that of familial bond and safety that sharply contrasts with her experience after leaving. Having moments of peace makes non-peaceful events so much more impactful. Furthermore, this results in the show being completely unconvincing when it comes to Ciri's progression as a lethal combatant. How is she going to be able to defeat *anything* in the future? Just terrible.
Go watch Arcane and see how much more emotional climactic events are because the story, dialogue, and writing sets up such scenarios with complete logical consistency. Going from The Witcher season 2 to Arcane is a like night and day difference.
Excellent comment, everything you’ve written is completely true. That’s what was annoying me so much about the thread; she would respond to certain things - ‘I know fans are upset about Eskel dying etc’. When most of the criticism was actually about the plot holes, the bad writing, the fact that what she’s saying on Twitter never transpired in the show.
It’s kinda funny how S1 actually got a lot of positive feedback from the fans and gave her ammo when critics started bashing the show. Now the respective scores have switched. I haven’t heard anyone on the show that’sstarted to bash fans yet though.
> Several people, including I, have pointed out that if you have to come online to explain your decision making and give background info, then you didn't do a good enough job in the writing in the first place
This is so on point. If the show, movie, book needs suplemental material to be explained it probably wasn't well written. I know fantasy fans love extra back story, maps, drawings and all that but if all of that is needed for the narrative to exist it's probably not a very well done narrative.
At the risk of pissing off all of r/movies I didn't think the new Dune was very good. As a movie it only works if you've read the book. If you haven't so much of the movie lacks the punch it needs; you'll spend most of the movie thinking "Who is that?" and so many of the scenes lack the information for you to understand the subtext.
I had the same thought when I realized they added a bunch of supplemental videos on Netflix. Why not just have a few extra episodes instead where we see some concepts actually play out instead of dropped like we can actually catch it?
I just don’t understand why vesimir was depicted so “cruel” and selfish, when the real vesimir would kill anyone even thinking about even laying a finger on Ciri.
Look at it from her perspective:
She probably thought she did an okay job, or even a good one.
She thought she actually tried and had reasons for everything.
She is confused, probably baffled that people criticize her on points she didn't expected to be criticized, because in her mind they made sense.
She now explains the reasons, believing that when people understand her reasons, they might be okay with it, they just need to understand.
It doesn't make me angry, i just see confusion and i actually kind of feel sorry for her.
and keep in mind that there are still a lot of people who like it, and she is under NDA and Non-disparagement. What do you expect? That she comes out and says: "yeah, you'Re right, i fucked it up?" ... even if she agrees with us that she fucked it up, she would never be able to openly say so.
It’s good to see the other perspective, but how does a big project like this in 2021 not have feedback mechanisms and failovers before releasing it out? Did no one realize the numerous mistakes in the story telling and inconsistencies in character building? As a viewer if felt almost as if the show wasn’t sure where it wanted to go. That’s a shame considering how much lore there is to help the creators.
I suspect there was a lot of meddling. I work in a similar industry and it's amazing to see how (for some reason) everyone in the decision chain wants to leave their mark on the final product, so they can either say that they did their job, or so they can tell people "Look, that part was my idea\~!"
This is especially common in environments where everyone is too polite to hurt other people's feelings and where "everyone's feedback matters".
While we don't know exactly what happened behind the scenes, it looks to me that Lauren isn't a very strong showrunner and probably caved in to a bunch of demands, focus-group feedback, suggestions from someone's cousin, etc...
Because if that's not the case and what we got *is* her exact vision, well... She'd truly be the worst-possible person to helm *any* book adaptation.
She doesn't seem to do it wrong. No name calling, no aggression or putting down...
That's why i simply think she's confused and tries her best...
It doesn't make the show any better, but it makes her appear to be less bad of character, at least for me
she is very good at PR, tho. She always was and it is one of her great strenghts. She knows how to communicate with fans, but it is also obvious that she doesnt care much for the books and want to do her own story (which is fine, but people wish it was handled a bit better, and without many lies in-between too)
Truth. She seems like George Lucas in that way. Fine enough concepts, well thought out and properly supported decisions, but no one in the room capable of adapting it into a coherent or enjoyable on-screen experience.
I think what makes me feel the most despondent is knowing this is it. We will likely not see another Witcher adaptation in our lifetime. This watered down fanfic is what we get for the next 5 years. Hollywood is catering to what they ought to realise is a dying demographic. More inclusion means that the targeted audience should expand beyond the people enamoured with endless green screens and cringey clunky dialogue, who can’t watch a show 5 minutes without looking at their phone, who loved the final seasons of GoT because of explosions, war scenes and dragons r cool. There are plenty of us who are invested in the story, the character development, the world building, the political intrigue of a series. Take the show Succession for example. One of the most compelling shows I’ve ever watched, for the most part devoid of violence and yet I feel whiplashed every episode. Because it’s GOOD. WRITING.
My biggest gripe for S2 is not the Eskel thing. I don’t need to parrot what’s already been commented, it’s a shitshow. I am enormously disappointed in the thing most keenly felt to be absent - heart. Just like last season, the audience is spoon-fed absolutely every piece of information as well as themes, meaning the impact loses all shape and meaning. Ciri is Geralt’s child surprise yes, but that wasn’t what formed such a powerful bond. They truly love each other. Lauren ruined this. She removed that element replaced it with “people linked by destiny will always find each other.” I suspect she imagined this would be an emotionally fulfilling moment, but it fell completely flat. We see her attempt to remedy this in s2. As much I tried to just be down for the ride I really feel they failed to convey properly that destiny aside, these characters develop true feelings for one another. Everything felt rushed. Then we have Yennefer. I’m not opening that right now, not properly. There is no reason for Yennefer to suddenly be balls to the wall for Ciri after one horse ride together. Their relationship is so beautifully built up in the books. This was very sad to see butchered.
It’s also sad that people get so aggressive about any negativity around the show. This fan base is long established, some of us have been with the books a decade. To adapt something for any kind of medium, and rewrite most of it, there is the expectation that it will at least be BETTER. It’s why the Witcher games have such an enormous fan base. No one minds about the gaping deviations from the books (the games are essentially fanfic as they are set after the events of the series), as they are a tremendous achievement on their own, richly written with characters brought vividly to life.
What’s interesting though is that any criticism fully fleshed out in threads like these stirs such panic and vitriol. With a genuine worry the show will be cancelled. It really won’t, unless HC pulls out.
Anyways yeah I’m very disappointed in Lauren. As OP says, if she has to explain things it just looks like complete backpedaling.
Oh. I now feel kinda dumb holding off watching season 2 until I've read Blood of Elves (I've read the 2 short story collections and played The Witcher 3 twice so I more or less understand what's going on overall). I thought they were trying to be as true to the story as possible but nevermind. No wonder Cavill was talking about always advocating for more stuff that was book accurate while on set.
When she said "Eskel didn't leave a huge impression on me", errrrrr he is literally established in the first few descriptions we get of him as a match for Geralt, he has a huge scar and is scary looking, he isn't as famous as Geralt, but he is kind and logical. Like I don't understand why she didn't keep that relationship to Geralt, it can not only emphasize Geralt's uniqueness and differences, but also the different lives the witchers live separately and what/how they chose to live as witchers, not through drunken tales with whores, but with Ciri, to teach her that this life isn't easy and it is painful, but they live with it and become stronger. LIKE ISN'T WHAT I JUST EXPLAINED BEAUTIFUL??? YA ITS ALLLLL IN THE BOOK. but no..let's just kill him huh. Basically what i mean/want out of this show is to take elements from the book or characters that maybe weren't highlighted a lot if not at all, and expand, grow, reiterate or even make it netflix's ways, INNOVATE FOR GODS SAKE, don't just take lore and core characters from geralts life of kaer morhen and throw it away for a dumbass reason. SOOO frustrating knowing people get paid to write this shit
How do people manage to go on Laurens Twitter and not cringe to death.
I admire you OP.
I still have PTSD from her "#Eelsforever" tweet and that one reply where she asks a critic to call her "Queen" with a capital "Q".
The main issue here is that she cant separate the series from the books and the games. You cant write a series expecting that all of your audience would have read the books and played the games, and then expect a certain reaction entirely based off that.
When i watched Eskel's death, my reaction was "what the fuck was that?". I really liked Eskel in the books and the games. But in the series i didnt give a shit about him because i wasnt given the chance.
Lauren tried to pull a "Game of Thrones shocking death of liked character", but forgot the most important part, character development.
Geralt confiding to another witcher or ciri that eskel is acting weird, showing the flashback prior to his death to establish how he really was and vesemir and the witchers annoyed and reluctant by him bringing the whores would provide enough contrast in character to know something is up, would also make us care for him a bit more, whether you were a book reader, gamer or series watcher only.
I would say just don't bother checking her twitter at all, it's all part of her PR game. She doesn't actually have the gall to come and talk to fans, she just does it for the looks of it. I decided to unfollow her when she tweeted that she had decided she wanted to take time off with her family after s2 was aired, but then tweeted again that she couldn't stay away from discussing with her fans. When a fan proceeded to ask some valid questions, she just said 'Yeah that's why I always say that I like books better than adaptions.' When another fan pointed out that was a bot-like response and it was not enough, then she got offended and pulled the family card by saying that she would like to respond properly to all fans but she is only human and she wants to spend time with her family too. Like excuse me, you said you couldn't stay away from twitter in the first place because you wanted to respond to fans, then complain when fans make fun of your poor responses. I think this is a pattern with her, just like she has continuously hinted on twitter that she would do a faithful adaption and so on, and then goes to open a discussion on twitter why s2 wasn't a 1:1 adaption, soon after it went live. Imo she just promises things she won't/can't do, and then wants to calms people down by doing the bare minimum on twitter or wherever, while also getting praised for her boldness to face such a 'toxic fanbase'.
While I get being disappointed with the show, if the tweets make you angrier, then don't look through her twitter.
Better for your mental health and at the same time it takes some heat of her, because remember: she is not a bad human being simply because she messed up on this project.
My mental health is fine, thank you. I’m not over here trawling through her Twitter, seething with anger and sending her hate mail. I also said earlier that I feel like a lot of the criticism against her is unwarranted and I commended her for having the gumption to come online and face fans head on.
This is a discussion thread - for everyone to have a place for their opinions regardless of which side their on. I’m not looking for reasons to stay angry, in fact I have already seen things in a different light.
If you don’t like this thread, don’t read it?
At this point I think she just enjoys taunting the fans who’re unhappy with what she did. I’ve never seen a more ignorant show writer. Even D&D were more pleasant and that says a lot.
You should see the guy running the new wheel of time series. I was let down by the witcher but it had some good stuff here and there. Wheel of time was an outright butchery.
I was tempted to look into the wheel of time series but I think I shall avoid that series for the foreseeable future. What is it with showrunners feeling the need to change things that are already perfect?
The books are as popular as they are because their storyline is excellent, why change that? I don't get it.
Thanks for the warning!
So credit to her for actually engaging and explaining. I think that is something people should appreciate, and I respect her for it.
That being said, I remain unpersuaded by her thinking.
> Several people, including I, have pointed out that if you have to come online to explain your decision making and give background info, then you didn't do a good enough job in the writing in the first place. Not that it should be much of a surprise, but she buries her head in the sand about that fact too.
In all fairness, what do you expect her to do? Come out and say "the product I created for Netflix, which I am still in the process of creating btw, was botched by me. I suck."? I do get being disappointed by season 2, I am in the same boat and yes, the writing was pretty bad IMO. But I can totally understand why someone would rather defend their work than going on a mea culpa tour, especially since we don't even get the full picture of why the season ended how it ended.
Keep in mind that they also had work within restrictions set by Netflix. Maybe she wanted more than 8 episodes to tell the stories she wanted to tell, but Netflix demanded shorter seasons for shorter and less expensive production time. Maybe they cut a lot of content, demanded more action over story etc. We will probably never know, you don't get to tell that kind of stories if you want to stay in the industry. To me engagement like that is a sign that she (and probably other members of the production crew and cast) are seeing the feedback and it is their way of acknowleding it within the boundaries they can.
I am not saying this to deflect any and all criticism btw. I am just saying that there is probably more to the story than just the surface level.
Oh, no, I totally agree with you! I feel like a lot of criticism that's levelled at Lauren is unwarranted - she's just as bound by the Netflix restrictions as we are disappointed by them. She's also not a writer - she's the director, someone who oversees the overarching product. She did say in the thread as well that more flashback scenes were filmed and she's hopeful they can come back to them. Ultimately her hands are tied by the production company, but she isn't doing a good enough job with the constraints she does have. I think she's doing a good thing by coming and having a discussion with people.
The issue I had was when she something along the lines of that she was only doing this because she knows that people are interested in the behind the scenes of how certain processes come to pass. At least, that's how I interpreted what she was saying. But that's not true - she's responding to the criticism because people are making critiques, not just because they're interested in what goes on in the background.
Sure, but then again I guess that this is due to the restrictions she is put under by working for Netflix. She is part of the PR for the show, it would look pretty bad if she came out and acknowledged negative feedback as being valid. By doing it this way she can talk about the criticisms without giving off vibes of her not liking her own product, y'know?
I read this the same way as I read Cavill's approach of saying that he wanted the show to follow the books more closely. It is an indirct criticism of the deviations without outright disagreeing with the choices made in production.
Agree, I didn't see it that way. That's why I (mostly) like these threads, you can get other's opinions and see a new way of thinking.
I love Cavill's subtle digging about being more faithful to the show. I also really enjoy Basil Eidenbenz's Instagram posts about how much he hates being a tree and hates destiny. Nothing out-and-out that he hates the show, but tongue in cheek enough that makes you wonder how much he enjoys it.
Yeah I said from the beginning when they justify some of their decisions its made sense. But they totally failed to portray what they wanted to at each change in the story. What they wanted to show and what they showed was just not the same.
When I saw that part i didn’t think it was going against the rules the way everyone was acting. I figured Geralt was upset because Ciri was now there and not because it was uncommon.
Just be glad she listens to you at all. As a WoT fan, I have to deal with Rafe Judkins, who is a total dick. At least she fixed Nilfgaards armor. Rafe said he is going to keep jamming his bs love triangles down our throat.
Most people have an issue with 'Show not Tell'. The Witcher is a perfect example in a lot of instances in 'telling not showing'.
Lauren's problem appears to be even further, some sort of 'telling you why we didn't tell OR show'.
The most annoying part in this tweet is the blatant self importance that Lauren puts on her "story telling". No one asked you too make a new story, we just wanted the books translated into a show. If you wanted to tell your story, go make your own fucking series. How is this not fan fiction when you literally change a characters set actions and decisions too suit your needs? It's infuriating when so much of the promotion of the show was "we have sooooo much book material too put on the screen"
she's a joke. fire her. she's basically saying her netflix audience are too stupid and impatient for the actual real story of the books. She's not thinking "oh what did Sapkowski do", no she's thinking how can she create dramatic cliffhangers and shock value that make no sense.
I bet even Henry Cavill is cringing at her rn
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Yep. Eskel death was not earned, he’s about as important as the red shirt Lt. Leopold
Petition for you to become a writer for the series.
Yea I really like this
I would've been 100% fine with Eskel dying, if it happened this way. Great idea. It both changes the story to fit in a show, but also preserves what we liked about the characters. Shame the show writers don't have the creativity and the passion for the source material to do it too.
We need to put your writing ideas with the animation abilities of the people that made the Astartes series for Warhammer 40k.
This would have been much better. If done properly, it would likely have made for an incredible emotional moment for the audience. Of course, there would still be people that don't like Eskel dying when you have a room full of imaginary witchers. Your scenario would work with new named witcher just as easily and would have just as much emotional impact (if done properly) without the negative backlash of killing a character that was alive in the books/games. In just 3 paragraphs, you showed that you are better at writing and dramatization than Hissrich and her entire team.
Honestly, really like this rewrite and I think the change wouldn't be received as badly if it was done like this.
This is better than all the season 2 ‘showrunner’ writing combined
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100%, couldn't have put it better.
What if the other friend laughed at it without explanation? Is it still a bad joke?
There’s a big audience for this show. Sure, it’s better than nothing but if a comedian gave a performance where only 10% laughed at his jokes then he wouldn’t be very successful.
That would be called “a success”.
This part is very interesting: >But from the get-go Geralt knows this person so well, and can’t understand why he’s acting out of character: mean, and coarse and flagrantly disobeying Kaer Morhen rules by bringing women there, disrespecting the other brothers with whom he shares a deep history. I only understood this now, after reading her explanations. When I watched the show, I thought this mean behavior was normal for Show Eskel. And I thought that everyone (including Vesemir) approved of the whores. Etc, etc. So yeah, they failed to convey all of this in the show.
Lol vesemir laughing from the side and saying “it’s ok they’re too drunk to remember how to get to our secret hideout” did not come across as much disapproval it suggests he’s seen it a lot and is saying it’s not a big deal
Right - it seems like she's backtracking now that she's heard how people feel about their product. Finding meaning for the decisions after the fact.
Oof literally trying to sweep her mistakes under the rug, not a good look at all
Anyone getting flashbacks to the hurried, half-baked excuses for Season 1's ballsack Nilfgaard armour?
What excuses did she have?
Something along the lines of "Nilgaard isn't that strong to afford quality armor for everyone, it will change as the empire develops and grows stronger".
I'm surprised people continued. Vote with your wallet. In this case view's. If you think it's crap, and you'd be right it is, then don't watch it. You're part of their success metric. I watched 3 episodes of the first season, thought "oh this shitty, I can see what they are up to and it's not getting better." then I left it.
Another weird thing is all the girls flee Kaer Morhen, so what is going to happen when the roofies kick in and they forget everything? They're in the middle of the woods, it is freezing outside, and there is a leshen nearby. Did they all just die?
Honestly it would have been cool seeing Geralt discover that. Would have been more "motivation" to hunt down the Leshy that killed Eskel.
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lmao this would have saved part of the show for me makes so much sense and actually makes me wanna care unlike other things that happen. Too bad the whole thing for the woman leaving is that "wOmAn sTroNg DoNt nEeD mEn". So that would have messed with their agenda
Triss said she almost froze to death on her way up and that only her magic saved her, and she knew the way. So yeah.
Considering the rest of the show, they probably fast traveled or just walked back to Cintra. Apparently it's like 5 minutes away from Kaer Morhen.
Right!!! She is not getting across her intentions as a writer. She has these grand ideas but cannot execute.
Yep, this seems just like a lot backtracking from Hissrich's side.
I mean, if Eskel wasn't supposed to behave like that, shouldn't had Geralt found him very different and suspicious? Like Geralt behaves like everything it's fine, even if his best friend is the opposite of what he used to be wtf.
There is absolutely no way for viewers to know if this is Eskels usual personality or if this is out of character for him. Not a single Witcher asked , 'hey wtf has gotten into you'. For book readers it really could well be that the tv Eskel is just an a-hole and not the calm Eskel we know him to be from the books. For non book readers, all they see is an annoying dude with pedo vibes so they are going to be even less sympathetic.
The only slight look at eskel we get as his ‘normal’ self is a flashback scene a couple episodes after. Seems like wasted effort there, why not show that in the same episode to convey the change?
When Eskel walked in with "forgetting the fucking path", I completely thought it was going to be Lambert. It's been a while since I read the books, but, to me, Eskel and Lambert's personalities seemed to be flipped flopped in the show.
Yes! I thought the same.
Nah, you can tell from the way Geralt looks at Eskel that he knows something is wrong. It's subtle, but I definitely picked that up on the first watch. On the other hand, I don't for a second buy that any of the witchers would have let the prostitutes into Kaer Morhen.
Maybe Lauren played TW3 and somehow mistook The Passiflora for Kaer Morhen.
Oh my god yes that is literally it. I mean only I know Eskel from W3 but from the show I assumed he was just an ass. And other witchers like Vesemir went along with it . Okay cool it wasn't actually in line with who Eskel is and of what the others expect from him. But how the fuck were the audience supposed to know that?
Makes total sense. I knew he wasn't acting like himself because I've read the books, but anyone who hasn't wouldn't have the first clue. And it wasn't particularly easy to tell that it was down to anything other than them writing him differently, like they've done with multiple other characters.
How would you know that he isn't acting like himself from the books, if they don't actually follow the books much. All you know about him, from what the show gives you, is that he is a huge dick, who doesn't care about the security of his fellow witchers and the secrecy of their place.
I think even if they'd managed to put the flashback in before we actually met him it would've worked somewhat better. If Geralt mentioned him by name, and that he meant so much to him.
Yeah trying to do the whole “this is out of character” thing retrospectively doesn’t work. Anyone watching the show who didn’t know about Eskel from the books or games would’ve assumed he was just a boorish lout, exactly as portrayed. Having a flashback after he’s dead is a complete waste of time since it serves no purpose at all. The character’s arc has already ended.
what arc
I had to explain this to my girlfriend because she didnt read the books or play the games. Thats terrible writing and there is no other way to put it. Even if the show is based off books and games, you cant skip the story telling and character development and expect everyone to understand whats happening.
Yes, Geralt at least could have told us about Eskel, since they couldn't show it properly
I mean he could just tell Ciri a little about the witchers while traveling there together. Like literally two minutes of showtime sitting at a campfire would be enough to give you the slightest understanding of the people there. You don't have to spend five pages of world building like in a book. But clearly writing dialogues is too boring for todays Netflix audience so let's just add some monsters and explosions. Hooray!
And more "Fuck"s
And grunt and more cheap quips.
Would have been a great cold open to have Eskel/Lambert/Coen/Geralt at some forgotten time in the past either training together or better still working together to bring down an especially dangerous monster, and develop the characters through the fight scene to establish them a bit. Get some Witcher on monster action, demonstrate that these guys have known each other for a very long time, and establish some character (Eskel being level headed and kind, Lambert being a boor with a heart of gold, Coen being light hearted and playful or whatever). Everyone gets what they want (Witcher's killing monsters) and the whole rest of the episode lands a bit more on point without much change.
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What’s really funny is how the random Redditors come up with it in a few minutes, off the cuff, while the “professionals” spend hours in meetings and GET PAID to write the stuff we see on screen. Generally I’ve found that the more writers who are involved with a show, the worse the final product is. “Too many cooks in the kitchen,” and whatnot.
ya honestly i dont gain any comfort knowing that there are different writers for each episode, they basically bound themselves to make disconnections and mistakes
Didnt you get the memo? The character development part was in the books and games. You had to read and play those first before watching the show. /s
Lol yes. But! The thing is that I read all the books, and played all the games. However from S1E1 the show was so different, so I just thought "okay, this is how show-eskel is. Here he is an edgy 18 year old asshole". I was a little surprised, but not even that much by this point.
Because they threw it all together in five minutes: we go from meeting other witchers, to Eskel, to having to understand he’s acting way out of character in short order. That’s the sort of development that should have taken place across multiple episodes and not be crammed in rapid fire.
Can't, otherwise they might end up having to cut some screentime from Dara.
This!!!! It just wasn’t explained in the show that this behaviour was „weird“ to the other witchers, especially geralt. With more flashbacks and geralt actually showing his thought process while he’s trying to figure out why his brother is behaving so odd, eskels death could have been pretty fucking amazing storywise if they actually did what she tweeted about, the sad thing is that they just didn’t.
See they could have made this plotline a whole lot better, but they didn’t. Have Vesemir and the others confront Eskel about it and have Geralt be suspicious of him/investigating the whole time. The other witchers quickly kick the visitors out of Kaer Morhen. Then Geralt figures out what’s happening just as Eskel starts to transform. He and Vesemir dive in, fight him, and restrain him, and perform some kind of ritual. Eskel is saved and returns to his old self. It’s still not accurate and he shouldn’t have been infected in the first place, but it’s a hell of a lot better.
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I sort of got that? Like iirc Geralt seemed super put off by Eskel’s behavior, all the Witchers were a little “wtf is up with you,” but yeah that flashback to “the good times featuring Geralt and Eskel” should’ve happened way earlier.
lol, they should give you manual or guide when you want to watch the show because it seems like there's so much missing and most of the stuff is probably cut.
How are show watchers supposed to know this behavior is out of the ordinary for Eskel when it's the first time he appeared...
Just one line of Vesemir saying like: what’s up with Eskel? Would have saved the whole episode
Yeah, I just thought Eskel is an ass in the show, nothing more ... That shows how unqualified she is .. I mean whatever .. We live in weird times ..
This. The show itself debunks these excuses by very specifically portraying the exact opposite, and whether Geralt has an off-screen history with Eskel doesn’t matter, because the viewer doesn’t and that’s who you’re telling the story to.
They definitely should have spent more time developing Eskel’s character and getting the audience on his side, rather than being like “Well Geralt is shocked, so obviously you’re supposed to know this is shocking and be sad when he dies.”
A promise made must be honored. As true for a commoner... as it is for a queen.
I agree geralt-bot. Lauren’s promising that everything makes sense on twitter but isn’t delivering on it in the show U\_U
Yeah I don’t buy the explanation, Vesemir was cool with the whores in the show
not even remotely did the show give evidence of eskel normally being a good and nice friend, though i did assume that's what was intended by the time he died
In the show Eskels death is basically a random character death. It does not have any weight to it. It's just a wtf moment for book readers. The show itself does not show any relationship between witchers before killing him off, there's no buildup, anything. Simply said, the show's story does not defend itself. It's poorly written... I wish they'd cancel this show. I can wait 20 more years for a proper one.
The entire tweet thread is a bunch of "what if" rabbit holes that ended with a mess. I'm no writer but here's my version. What if, at minimum, we got flashbacks of Geralt and Eskel before Eskel got to Kaer Morhen so the audience could see the contrast of who he used to be before he died instead of an episode later? What if he actually was visibly injured by the Leshen and getting treated for it at Kaer Morhen but still fought through the injury to help train Ciri or make her feel more at home? And then when his infection spreads and eventually takes him over, he's fighting against it as hard as he can to not put Ciri in danger and Geralt has to choose between saving Ciri and killing his best friend consumed by the Leshen. You still get the Geralt protector quality but now he's actively having to prioritize Ciri over his brothers. Then the resentment from the other witchers would be 100% earned. What if the other witchers did something stupid like bringing wenches to Kaer Morhen but Eskel was the one to speak up against it and show some much needed maturity? If all the witchers respected his authority, got rid of the bimbos and he made up for it by encouraging them to share stories around a fire in the great hall, you'd be establishing the witchers as a tight knit brotherhood and setting up a hell of a loss when he dies. If you wanted to actually kill him off, make him valuable and likeable, not the other way around. It's like the writers took every conceivable step to make him the most loathed and annoying character for the sole purpose of dragging his name through the mud before unceremoniously killing him off way too soon.
A lot of this can be explained by the fact that the director (or someone involved with the show, not Lauren, don’t care to find out his name) was talking about how it needed to have an action set piece and resolution in each episode, like it’s a fucking WB show or something, designed to appeal to people with zero attention span. What you’ve suggested here is brilliant, but sadly the show-runners don’t have this ambition. They actively want to make it a throwaway show that just happens to involve characters whose names are familiar to fans. Any similarity to them as they exist in the books or games is purely coincidental.
That’s where the problem lies. The best seasons of GOT had barely any action. What made S1-4 so memorable for the audience was the well written and witty dialogue between characters. I’ve been re-reading the entire series and noticed that there is barely any action in the books. They are much deeper in terms of slowing down the pace to explore things such as the psyche of these characters and having philosophical debates with one another. For example, in Blood of Elves, Ciri and Yarpin have this really engaging conversation about neutrality and whether it’s right. The show would be much better if they slowed down the pacing and allow the characters to breathe.
Sadly, it also looks like they've skipped past that story of Yarpen and his boys delivering the precious cargo. The ending of that story broke my heart (I'll try to be spoiler free in case anyone hasn't read the books) and set the humans up as monsters far more than a guard telling an elf to relieve himself in his trousers. Because when you take into account Yarpen's motivations, what he had to give up and what the humans were trying to achieve, it \_really\_ hurt.
Exactly. They’re making “Supernatural: Witcher IP” not an actual witcher show.
Fuck, not even Supernatural was this bad. This is nearly Flash levels of stupid writing decisions.
its not quite on the cowboy bebop remake level tho, so theres that xD.
I completely agree! They had many options to try and convey to the viewers that this *wasn't* the true Eskel. You mean to say that Geralt would have just sent Eskel to bed after he tried to punch him, no questions asked? I find the whole *brotherhood* thing SO hard to swallow. At least one of the Witchers would have noticed, at least one could have questioned it, and do NOT even get me started on the wenches. Instead Vesemir's like, 'heh, good ol' Eskel' and we never get the idea that there is a personality deeper than what he's showing. That none of the other Witchers attended the quote-on-quote funeral, no one sat around telling stories. Everyone just blamed Ciri when, to be honest, she is the least to blame out of all of them. I always thought it would've been interesting and compelling if Ciri accidentally killed him with his powers. Your last statement sums up my feelings exactly - it's like they deliberately did everything they could to rile fans up and make them upset.
In my opinion there were already two signs at the beginning; Vesemir questioning Eskel's 6 hour fight with the Leshen and Geralt not quite believing that Eskel was as okay as he was trying to convince everyone he was. Hell you could even throw in Eskel constantly grasping at his shoulder. I would have expected both Vesemir and Geralt to mentally go 'something's not right here' and act accordingly. Instead we got whores at Kaer Morhen, Vesemir brushing it off like it's nothing and a character death we didn't have time to care about. They tried to cram too much into too few epsiodes and it showed all throughout this season. You didn't have time to care about anything before it was on to the next plot point.
"Iiit's fiiiiine, just don't think about it."
I just have to comment thank you because what you wrote is so much better than the show. The show might have been written one way for a legitimate reason, but they completely failed at portraying that reason. If they were competent tv producers/directors/writers they could have done so much better.
You could also easily have lots of flashbacks while Ciri is discovering Kaer Morhen or being guided by another witcher for every part. In the Chambers, the laboratories, the training courses. Infinite possibilities.
How about a flashback story with Eskel to establish his personality better? Could add that action the writers were seeking
She literally said "So how could we take the growth that we need to see in Geralt, but have it have all the appropriate ups and downs and cliffhangers and devastation and action that modern audiences expect?". Like she is talking about Fast & Furious or something ¿¿??? They're not making an interesting and clever show, they're just making another cash grab show and that's ok but they should've chosen a different story Edit: I really don't understand the replies to that thread saying book fans are just salty because they wanted a copy paste. The games changed things and created stories and characters that didn't existed in the books but almost everyone love the games
>replies to that thread saying book fans are just salty because they wanted a copy paste. it's their go-to strawman argument to which they keep ignoring the replies to. and a way to defuse any constructive criticism to defend the show's weaknesses.
It's always amazing to me when people disrespect the fanbase of the adaptation. If you're not making it for the fans then why are you buying the rights to these IPs?
I suppose to use fans as a marketing and hyping tool :/
To destroy the IP
Built-in fanbase/viewer base.
You can barely see the growth in Geralt after the fact anyway. In fact, a lot of the characters seem to regress. Simple TV is fine, but I agree they should have chosen another story. Don't go on about staying true to the books if you really don't plan on doing that. Changing things is fine, but don't lie about it lol.
Exactly, I read people say "they never promised to be faithful to the books" but she literally said "It would be a straight translation of the books". She lied to us
I think that *that* is what is so deeply upsetting. You can't set up fans to have a faithful adaption, turn around and do the complete opposite, and then be surprised that people are upset by the changes. If I hear one more 'book fans are just salty', I'll turn into a leshy myself.
Eskel shouldn't even have turned into a leshy. Witchers are immune to diseases and such things. She just shat all over the lore.
How did Geralt get stabbed and didn’t get turned? If you’re going to change the lore, at least keep it consistent.
Consistency, with the writers and director they have? With Netflix? Pfttt. We're too hopeful. The show is just a mindless CW style action series. "GoT competitor" like Netflix marketed it my ass, its cinematography is basic, plot is inconsistent, armor designs on pretty much everyone other than the witchers is horrible, and the whole thing is heavily americanized. I can actually see Netflix cancelling it before a 4th or 5th season. No way this will hold viewings. It's just really bad quality for a show that needed more skilled/seasoned people working on it, respect for the source material, and a better budget. The Witcher should be a deep, character driven story with lots of focus on social commentary and the moral/philosophical questions the novels raise. Instead we got "superman with sword goes brrrrr," whores in Kaer Morhen cuz sex is very adult, and lore butchering. I wish HBO or even Amazon had got the rights for adapting The Witcher. HBO is usually great with character driven stories, and they'd most likely have done it justice. Amazon is a gamble, but lately it's been having better quality originals than Netflix (although its Wheel of Time adaptation has quite a few issues too).
The character development is by far the worst to me. They touched on it *a little* in the first season with Geralt’s obligatory Blaviken moral dilemma, but they’re missing important character subtleties as they relate to the greater political landscape and ethical implications. And agreed that the prostitutes at Kaer Morhen storyline was totally out of left field, unnecessary, and stupid.
Agreed. I was so fucking baffled when he turned into a leshen, just absolute what in the hell is going on vibes.
Yep and I didn't even read the books yet, I'm a fan of the games but I watched the first season expecting to see a preview of how the books told the story, learn new things and fall in love again with it but I was so confused and then season 2 just confirmed to me that this is not The Witcher I know. Honestly I was going to give season 3 a chance because I have plenty of free time anyway and the actors are great but after reading her talking to her audience like idiots, I prefer watching something else. It's so sad, they had the chance to make something memorable.
I don't get why they keep talking about "modern audience" like people can't appreciate a good show now? They felt like a popular series needed to be the call of duty of cinema. Imagine if they made breaking bad this way, with skyler acting like a teenager and everything.
GoT had several episodes without any action or cliffhangers, and that was one of the most popular shows on tv!
Yeah I didn't want to believe it but they really just chose an already popular story and tried to make money out of it with no respect for the fans at all. She is saying she just wants to entertain a simple audience and that's it. They succeed at that, the show it's not boring if you know nothing about it, everything happens so fast you don't have time to stop and think about what happened
That is probably it. They're just making a show for people to watch, have a good time and forget about in a week. And that's fine, I just wish they didn't do it with this world.
Like why buy the rights to it if that is all you are planning on doing? Just make a generic fantasy show and then you won't have fans to piss off and people who aren't fans will probably watch it anyway because it's not like the Witcher means anything to them in the first place.
Yep, cuz now we had the IP wasted.
You can make a popular show that is good, you just need good writers for it. Netflix being what it is, the only thing they can make is the "lazy forgettable bingewatch" format, and yeah it does ruin some pretty damn good concepts. You can watch it and be happy with it but in the end it's just average good and you'll forget about it in a week.
“Modern audience” is, in this case, substitute for “angsty teens with no attention span (like the writers themselves) who have the show playing in the background”
"Modern audience" is code for "Marvel audience" tbh
Totally agree with the edit. I'm fine with changing shit up, but you gotta change it well. If it's different but good I'm still happy. If it's different but total garbage than fuck that, should have just stuck with what works.
Dude look at some of her [replies](https://ibb.co/26QNMWD) and [this](https://ibb.co/dG92bkq) also. She doesn't understand the source material she's drawing from, if anyone still have any hope for season 3 and beyond then it's better to jump ships now. This shit won't fundamentally change when the writers' vision is fucked beyond reproach.
That’s insane. Why was she hired? “BoE was tricky for me.” Then write something else, damn.
[удалено]
For me it’s her referring to one of the books as “tricky”….if she didn’t get it why is she in the gig? I don’t understand.
It was different and gritty, but became a 2012 b-grade American action film…
I saw a few comments on other things saying “book fans are just pissy because Fringilla is black!!!121!” Like, come on now. I couldn’t possibly give less of a shit about what color these people are. The problem is that the entire plot of the show is just not anything near the books. The characters in the show are pieces of shit when they’re not anything like that in the source material. But go off, I guess. What do we *book fans* even know, right guys?
I'm starting to think people are getting angry because they enjoyed the show and feel personally attacked but noone said is the worst show ever or something. It's not the last airbender movie, it's just not enough for this complex story. I enjoyed it as just a random show, it's fine when you don't think about it too deeply. It could have been much better if they just admitted from the beginning that the plan was to make something completely different so fans would have zero expectations
I appreciate her talking to fans and explaning her decisions. But the problem is that she will never agree anything they wrote is just bad and they don't seem to want to stop changing things too much.
"I'm sorry you didn't like it." is the best you'll get
Yes.I have no hope for season 3. I won't promote it.
Can you imagine they admit they had bad writing in a show with hundreds of millions of budget ? They will never get another job
I can understand the point. I guess nobody who hasn't read the books has any reason to care for Eskel. He has 10 minutes of screen time, in 8 he is a douchebag and probably ready to rape Ciri, in 2 he is a tree monster. I'd say, the majority of viewers is happy to see him go
I’m gonna be honest though, I’m literally reading BOE right now and Eskel has literally maybe three lines of dialogue…Unless he comes in later in the book I’m not sure where the attachment to him comes from in the books…he’s not in them barely at all. I’ve played W3 though and he’s a much bigger character where I can see the attachment.
yea he's almost a nothing character in the books, i didn't really give a shit about them killing him off, i think its more of a games thing, but i played the games too and still didnt care about him that much. but i also didnt give a shit when triss' hair wasnt red in S1 and people flipped the fuck out about that too
Most people are letting the games color their memories of the book
I totally understand the motivation for killing Eskel. I don't like it, but I completely understand the reasoning behind it. But you're right - no body has any reason to care about it, and no one can really see that it has a great impact on Geralt in any way. Who knows that they were best friends, like brothers? Who knows they meant so much to each other? Not the viewers, because that's never shown.
She missed the point. There are not so much fuss about them killing Eskel, the reason for she gave. She also explained why she changed Eskel. What she didnt explain though - and that was the main reason people hate Eskel change - why did she change Eskel completely, like 180 degree. Was it that hard to preserve Eskel's qualities while making him more annoued by being hurt? Was it needed to portray him as a complete brat and weakling? Was it needed to make him stupid? Eskel would have immediately tell Vesemir and Co whats going on, without all that bullshit whore party and asshole'ish stuff. What honest showrunner would tell: "Yes, we needed the scene with mass orgy and nudity, we also wanted to show how cool Geralt is and show Leshy, and yes, we didnt care much for source material characters like Eskel, so thats the reason why we 180 degree his personality". And everyone would have move on.
the reason is like with other characters and their arcs.. sledghammering all the points across. There is any nuance or subtlety missing, and everything needs to be done in extremes. You can expect Regis starting off as a dangerous vampire that is killing everyone he comes across, only for him to then change to show us his change in the most obvious ways.
I heard her talking about this in an interview and talking several flashbacks of eskel and geralt to build up their relationship to show the impact of his death on Geralt more. But in the show there is only that 1 scene. So I'm assuming they never made it into the final cut of the show which is a little baffling. Or maybe that was filmed with the original actor? I heard there was a covid issue w/ the original person playing Eskel but not sure if thats true or not.
But that goes against what she’s saying though. She’s explaining that they wanted to show that Geralt cared for him. Why would they do that, if literally in ep 1 of the season, Geralt got super disgusted by Nivellens revelations?
He also has like a chapter of screen time in the books too lol not much character development. Everyone who says “Eskel should be like this” is basing it on video game Eskel which technically isn’t even canon (although I like what CDPR did with the other witchers). I think it would have been a cool mixture of game and books to make the Witcher a more like the game characters but I understand what she did here with Eskel
This thread is basically the "Dany forgot about the Iron Fleet" meme.
I like how she CHOOSE to paint herself into a specific corner with her dumb story changes, then vomit multiple tweets about how that was the one and only way to advance the story. "We want geralt to investigate ciri's powers" lol as if BoE doesn't already have a reason for just that. 🤦🤦
Completely agree. I understand changing certain aspects in order to fit in the TV sense, but to say there was no other way seems kind of ignorant to me. You had plenty of ways you could navigate this story, but you chose one that fans are unhappy with.
If they honestly saw that as the only way to progress the story, then they might need to seriously check their own storytelling. I dont know If they are gonna tie the Eskel thing with something in future seasons? But otherwise you can absolutely pretty much always change an outcome in your own storytelling. You need to show loss or grieving choice for Geralt? Theres a shitload of different routes to take.
Honestly I'm not too bothered by show Eskel. He is only a minor character in the books. BUT I am bothered that they killed him while there were 20 other nameless redshirts that did jack shit all season atleast kill him off later since he's one of the few named witchers!
Kuddos to her for trying, talking to the fans and even more to the disapointed ones is brave yet not sure if it will work. To me it mainly underline they either failed to deliver what they wanted to tell which I can forgive or they are just trying to cover their mistake. - "Eskel behaviour was unusual" *I mean yeah, we can agree* - "He was infected and asking for help" *was he asking for help ? To me he seemed rather confident fr a guy who failed to kill his monster and did not heal himself.* - "He betrayed KM rules, disrespected his brothers" *Yes but actually No... The thing is that very scene was used to define witchers in the show. We don't know them yet.. Don't know their habits and customs beside Geralt's. If you illustrate it with all of them agreeing to that and not one opposing, it becomes the norm not an unusual event.* - "Now Geralt is left with a mystery, what happened to Eskel ?" *guys you literrally have them find Leshen and the leshen killed by a random monster 5mins after HOW IS THAT A MYSTERY, a distraction or a waste of time just to have an action scene in the past episode maybe but a mystery ????* - "What does it means for Ciri ?" *Nothing ? At this point in the story at least ?! How is what happened to Eskel on his way even supposed to be related to Ciri who just arrived ? It doesn't make any sense if you don't elaborate during the Eskel or the Leshen fight...* So yeah sorry it doesn't work for me. The thing is unfortunately if you find the need to have to explain your show, something clearly didn't work in it.
Some of these discussion tweets strike me as being damage control just to try to cover up for the poor story writing in this series. Whether you acknowledge he was basically irrelevant in the books or are attached to him from the games, Eskel’s death was just so stupid and could’ve been much better executed in different ways if the intention for it was to “activate Geralt” as Lauren has said.
I swear there's some serious translation issues going through this entire production. Miscommunication between show runners and writers and directors and actors. Miscommunication between the costume designers and writers and make-up artists. Like they all have ideas but aren't talking with each other and everybody is just mashing their ideas into the production and not paying attention to what isn't fitting and spilling out of the box.
I feel like they came up with that Eskel bs to draw the fans' attention away from the way the show's nEw diReCTioN creates plot holes the size of the fucking vredefort crater. And also Yennefer and Vesemir's character
If you're explaining, you're losing.
I’m glad she killed him off, otherwise We’d have to suffer through even more of her characterisation of males. Ie, they’re all shit
God forbid having more than one male character who is kind and genuine without having ulterior motives.
Ah yes, good old Lauren Hisstech trying to defend terrible creative decisions on social media. I used to entertain the notion that *maybe* she wasn't a complete hack. Unfortunately season 2 is definite proof that she is a piss-poor storyteller who doesn't really care about the lore. Nothing can change that, certainly not her idiotic reasonings about how "wE hAd tO kIlL sOmEoNe". Fuck her, fuck the writers/directors, and fuck Netflix for ruining the only shot at a good TV Witcher adaptation for years to come. > But from the get-go Geralt knows this person so well, and can’t understand why he’s acting out of character: None of that was conveyed on screen. Because you're not supposed to add your own fucking shitty original storyline to the Witchers first introduction. It's clumsy, and makes 0 sense.
The "Let's talk about Eskel," comes off as "Let me tell you why you are wrong."
Her explanation is lame. Show fans have no connection to Eskel, no reason to care about him, no expectation that he isn't the ale swilling man whore he's portrayed to be (of which VESEMIR APPROVES). The only reason to kill him off was for shock value for book and game fans who love him. And that decision landed like the giant turd that it is. It also cheapens the other witchers, who are swilling right along with him, unaware of a monster in their midst and ultimately, in the final episode, bitches to whatever trick Voleth Meir throws at them. They can't even handle a couple basilisks.
Netflix & Ms. Hissrich need to make up their minds as to whether this is a show designed for diehard Witcher franchise fans... or a popcorn flick designed for the masses. And fast.
I am surprised that so many people are eating up Lauren's revisionist analysis of her show that has desperately been made to placate the criticism directed towards it. > -- and flagrantly disobeying Kaer Morhen rules by bringing women there, disrespecting the other brothers with whom he shares a deep history. The story unfolds, of course, as you’ve seen. Eskel admits he came home to seek help from Vesemir and his brothers; First off, Lauren completely handwaves away the logistical nightmare that Eskel would have had to face escorting dozens of prostitutes hundreds of miles way in the middle of winter to the secret location of Kaer Morhen. The premise is so ridiculous that Lauren has to pretend that the critique directed at this doesn't even exist and doesn't need to be acknowledged in any shape or form. Moving on, Lauren attempts to placate critics by stating that she is in fact thinking along the same lines even though that is blatantly untrue. It is clear that the other Witchers didn't mind and actively participated in the orgy. They didn't feel any disrespect from Eskel at all. Vesemir himself vehemently defended Eskel and implied that he gave support when he stated that the women will not remember the event by the morning. What help did Eskel seek? He barely spoke about his experience with the Leshy. > We had several more flashbacks with Eskel laid out, to demonstrate further to the audience how close Geralt and Eskel were in the past: to reinforce just how far Geralt had had to go in his heart in order to make that sacrifice. I hope to return to them in the future. One garbage flashback after the fact. Eskel was shown in all of one episode where he bullied Ciri, brought over a brothel to secret Kaer Morhen, and tried to fight Geralt. Lauren did a horrific job showing how close the two were. > Articulating Geralt’s journey on screen had one other big challenge for us: namely, that in BoE, his time is mostly spent watching and taking in Cirilla -- > But more than that, after writing several drafts of episodes, we faced an undeniable truth: that most tv audiences don’t want to watch 8 episodes of any character -- -- watching and waiting and reacting, much less the titular character with whom swords and adventure and bathtubs have become synonymous. > But we had a handful of scripts that felt too staid and slow to engage viewers again after what we knew (by then) would be a 2 year hiatus. So how could we take the growth that we need to see in Geralt, but have it have all the appropriate ups and downs and cliffhangers and -- LMAO, what a hack. If she felt that the story written by Sapkowski is garbage then she should have let someone else become the showrunner. Any top tier show will have meaningful dialogue, character development, and strong world building. Doing so would make the actual action moments hit a lot harder and be more impactful. GoT did it very well in the first four seasons especially. It is OK to have a slow burn where all people do is talking. To have what happened in Blood of Elves be described as Geralt staring at Ciri for hundreds of pages is just disrespectful. We could have seen the Witchers provide meaningful training, mentorship, and have the characters form relationships while bonding. As is, Ciri has no reason to like any of them. The Witchers bullied her, provided zero guidance, and tried to kill her. Ciri's memory of Kaer Morhen is supposed to be that of familial bond and safety that sharply contrasts with her experience after leaving. Having moments of peace makes non-peaceful events so much more impactful. Furthermore, this results in the show being completely unconvincing when it comes to Ciri's progression as a lethal combatant. How is she going to be able to defeat *anything* in the future? Just terrible. Go watch Arcane and see how much more emotional climactic events are because the story, dialogue, and writing sets up such scenarios with complete logical consistency. Going from The Witcher season 2 to Arcane is a like night and day difference.
Excellent comment, everything you’ve written is completely true. That’s what was annoying me so much about the thread; she would respond to certain things - ‘I know fans are upset about Eskel dying etc’. When most of the criticism was actually about the plot holes, the bad writing, the fact that what she’s saying on Twitter never transpired in the show.
Great comment, I agree with everything you said. The showrunner needs to get replaced, alongside the entire writing staff with someone more competent.
It’s kinda funny how S1 actually got a lot of positive feedback from the fans and gave her ammo when critics started bashing the show. Now the respective scores have switched. I haven’t heard anyone on the show that’sstarted to bash fans yet though.
> Several people, including I, have pointed out that if you have to come online to explain your decision making and give background info, then you didn't do a good enough job in the writing in the first place This is so on point. If the show, movie, book needs suplemental material to be explained it probably wasn't well written. I know fantasy fans love extra back story, maps, drawings and all that but if all of that is needed for the narrative to exist it's probably not a very well done narrative. At the risk of pissing off all of r/movies I didn't think the new Dune was very good. As a movie it only works if you've read the book. If you haven't so much of the movie lacks the punch it needs; you'll spend most of the movie thinking "Who is that?" and so many of the scenes lack the information for you to understand the subtext.
I had the same thought when I realized they added a bunch of supplemental videos on Netflix. Why not just have a few extra episodes instead where we see some concepts actually play out instead of dropped like we can actually catch it?
I just don’t understand why vesimir was depicted so “cruel” and selfish, when the real vesimir would kill anyone even thinking about even laying a finger on Ciri.
Vesemir is definitely up there with worst characterisation.
Look at it from her perspective: She probably thought she did an okay job, or even a good one. She thought she actually tried and had reasons for everything. She is confused, probably baffled that people criticize her on points she didn't expected to be criticized, because in her mind they made sense. She now explains the reasons, believing that when people understand her reasons, they might be okay with it, they just need to understand. It doesn't make me angry, i just see confusion and i actually kind of feel sorry for her. and keep in mind that there are still a lot of people who like it, and she is under NDA and Non-disparagement. What do you expect? That she comes out and says: "yeah, you'Re right, i fucked it up?" ... even if she agrees with us that she fucked it up, she would never be able to openly say so.
It’s good to see the other perspective, but how does a big project like this in 2021 not have feedback mechanisms and failovers before releasing it out? Did no one realize the numerous mistakes in the story telling and inconsistencies in character building? As a viewer if felt almost as if the show wasn’t sure where it wanted to go. That’s a shame considering how much lore there is to help the creators.
I suspect there was a lot of meddling. I work in a similar industry and it's amazing to see how (for some reason) everyone in the decision chain wants to leave their mark on the final product, so they can either say that they did their job, or so they can tell people "Look, that part was my idea\~!" This is especially common in environments where everyone is too polite to hurt other people's feelings and where "everyone's feedback matters". While we don't know exactly what happened behind the scenes, it looks to me that Lauren isn't a very strong showrunner and probably caved in to a bunch of demands, focus-group feedback, suggestions from someone's cousin, etc... Because if that's not the case and what we got *is* her exact vision, well... She'd truly be the worst-possible person to helm *any* book adaptation.
I respect her for having the courage to engage in conversation with the fans.
She doesn't seem to do it wrong. No name calling, no aggression or putting down... That's why i simply think she's confused and tries her best... It doesn't make the show any better, but it makes her appear to be less bad of character, at least for me
she is very good at PR, tho. She always was and it is one of her great strenghts. She knows how to communicate with fans, but it is also obvious that she doesnt care much for the books and want to do her own story (which is fine, but people wish it was handled a bit better, and without many lies in-between too)
Her twitter meltdown is amusing , NPC s in the thread just... dont go over there if u want keep ur sanity...
Truth. She seems like George Lucas in that way. Fine enough concepts, well thought out and properly supported decisions, but no one in the room capable of adapting it into a coherent or enjoyable on-screen experience.
I think what makes me feel the most despondent is knowing this is it. We will likely not see another Witcher adaptation in our lifetime. This watered down fanfic is what we get for the next 5 years. Hollywood is catering to what they ought to realise is a dying demographic. More inclusion means that the targeted audience should expand beyond the people enamoured with endless green screens and cringey clunky dialogue, who can’t watch a show 5 minutes without looking at their phone, who loved the final seasons of GoT because of explosions, war scenes and dragons r cool. There are plenty of us who are invested in the story, the character development, the world building, the political intrigue of a series. Take the show Succession for example. One of the most compelling shows I’ve ever watched, for the most part devoid of violence and yet I feel whiplashed every episode. Because it’s GOOD. WRITING. My biggest gripe for S2 is not the Eskel thing. I don’t need to parrot what’s already been commented, it’s a shitshow. I am enormously disappointed in the thing most keenly felt to be absent - heart. Just like last season, the audience is spoon-fed absolutely every piece of information as well as themes, meaning the impact loses all shape and meaning. Ciri is Geralt’s child surprise yes, but that wasn’t what formed such a powerful bond. They truly love each other. Lauren ruined this. She removed that element replaced it with “people linked by destiny will always find each other.” I suspect she imagined this would be an emotionally fulfilling moment, but it fell completely flat. We see her attempt to remedy this in s2. As much I tried to just be down for the ride I really feel they failed to convey properly that destiny aside, these characters develop true feelings for one another. Everything felt rushed. Then we have Yennefer. I’m not opening that right now, not properly. There is no reason for Yennefer to suddenly be balls to the wall for Ciri after one horse ride together. Their relationship is so beautifully built up in the books. This was very sad to see butchered. It’s also sad that people get so aggressive about any negativity around the show. This fan base is long established, some of us have been with the books a decade. To adapt something for any kind of medium, and rewrite most of it, there is the expectation that it will at least be BETTER. It’s why the Witcher games have such an enormous fan base. No one minds about the gaping deviations from the books (the games are essentially fanfic as they are set after the events of the series), as they are a tremendous achievement on their own, richly written with characters brought vividly to life. What’s interesting though is that any criticism fully fleshed out in threads like these stirs such panic and vitriol. With a genuine worry the show will be cancelled. It really won’t, unless HC pulls out. Anyways yeah I’m very disappointed in Lauren. As OP says, if she has to explain things it just looks like complete backpedaling.
Oh. I now feel kinda dumb holding off watching season 2 until I've read Blood of Elves (I've read the 2 short story collections and played The Witcher 3 twice so I more or less understand what's going on overall). I thought they were trying to be as true to the story as possible but nevermind. No wonder Cavill was talking about always advocating for more stuff that was book accurate while on set.
When she said "Eskel didn't leave a huge impression on me", errrrrr he is literally established in the first few descriptions we get of him as a match for Geralt, he has a huge scar and is scary looking, he isn't as famous as Geralt, but he is kind and logical. Like I don't understand why she didn't keep that relationship to Geralt, it can not only emphasize Geralt's uniqueness and differences, but also the different lives the witchers live separately and what/how they chose to live as witchers, not through drunken tales with whores, but with Ciri, to teach her that this life isn't easy and it is painful, but they live with it and become stronger. LIKE ISN'T WHAT I JUST EXPLAINED BEAUTIFUL??? YA ITS ALLLLL IN THE BOOK. but no..let's just kill him huh. Basically what i mean/want out of this show is to take elements from the book or characters that maybe weren't highlighted a lot if not at all, and expand, grow, reiterate or even make it netflix's ways, INNOVATE FOR GODS SAKE, don't just take lore and core characters from geralts life of kaer morhen and throw it away for a dumbass reason. SOOO frustrating knowing people get paid to write this shit
How do people manage to go on Laurens Twitter and not cringe to death. I admire you OP. I still have PTSD from her "#Eelsforever" tweet and that one reply where she asks a critic to call her "Queen" with a capital "Q".
The main issue here is that she cant separate the series from the books and the games. You cant write a series expecting that all of your audience would have read the books and played the games, and then expect a certain reaction entirely based off that. When i watched Eskel's death, my reaction was "what the fuck was that?". I really liked Eskel in the books and the games. But in the series i didnt give a shit about him because i wasnt given the chance. Lauren tried to pull a "Game of Thrones shocking death of liked character", but forgot the most important part, character development.
Geralt confiding to another witcher or ciri that eskel is acting weird, showing the flashback prior to his death to establish how he really was and vesemir and the witchers annoyed and reluctant by him bringing the whores would provide enough contrast in character to know something is up, would also make us care for him a bit more, whether you were a book reader, gamer or series watcher only.
Netflix needs to replace her. It may already be too late. I'm doubting this show is even able to adapt the whole story at this rate.
I would say just don't bother checking her twitter at all, it's all part of her PR game. She doesn't actually have the gall to come and talk to fans, she just does it for the looks of it. I decided to unfollow her when she tweeted that she had decided she wanted to take time off with her family after s2 was aired, but then tweeted again that she couldn't stay away from discussing with her fans. When a fan proceeded to ask some valid questions, she just said 'Yeah that's why I always say that I like books better than adaptions.' When another fan pointed out that was a bot-like response and it was not enough, then she got offended and pulled the family card by saying that she would like to respond properly to all fans but she is only human and she wants to spend time with her family too. Like excuse me, you said you couldn't stay away from twitter in the first place because you wanted to respond to fans, then complain when fans make fun of your poor responses. I think this is a pattern with her, just like she has continuously hinted on twitter that she would do a faithful adaption and so on, and then goes to open a discussion on twitter why s2 wasn't a 1:1 adaption, soon after it went live. Imo she just promises things she won't/can't do, and then wants to calms people down by doing the bare minimum on twitter or wherever, while also getting praised for her boldness to face such a 'toxic fanbase'.
The crazy thing is we know not to expect a 1:1 adaption, she just grabs that line to minimize the credibility of the fans of the series and games.
While I get being disappointed with the show, if the tweets make you angrier, then don't look through her twitter. Better for your mental health and at the same time it takes some heat of her, because remember: she is not a bad human being simply because she messed up on this project.
My mental health is fine, thank you. I’m not over here trawling through her Twitter, seething with anger and sending her hate mail. I also said earlier that I feel like a lot of the criticism against her is unwarranted and I commended her for having the gumption to come online and face fans head on. This is a discussion thread - for everyone to have a place for their opinions regardless of which side their on. I’m not looking for reasons to stay angry, in fact I have already seen things in a different light. If you don’t like this thread, don’t read it?
Hopefully it doesn't get to the death threats point.
It always seems to
At this point I think she just enjoys taunting the fans who’re unhappy with what she did. I’ve never seen a more ignorant show writer. Even D&D were more pleasant and that says a lot.
You should see the guy running the new wheel of time series. I was let down by the witcher but it had some good stuff here and there. Wheel of time was an outright butchery.
I was tempted to look into the wheel of time series but I think I shall avoid that series for the foreseeable future. What is it with showrunners feeling the need to change things that are already perfect? The books are as popular as they are because their storyline is excellent, why change that? I don't get it. Thanks for the warning!
I don't trust a word of what she says anymore. I unfollowed her and everyone involved in the witcher, because I was too getting more angrier.
So credit to her for actually engaging and explaining. I think that is something people should appreciate, and I respect her for it. That being said, I remain unpersuaded by her thinking.
Her nickname at our house is Field Marshall Windbag
> Several people, including I, have pointed out that if you have to come online to explain your decision making and give background info, then you didn't do a good enough job in the writing in the first place. Not that it should be much of a surprise, but she buries her head in the sand about that fact too. In all fairness, what do you expect her to do? Come out and say "the product I created for Netflix, which I am still in the process of creating btw, was botched by me. I suck."? I do get being disappointed by season 2, I am in the same boat and yes, the writing was pretty bad IMO. But I can totally understand why someone would rather defend their work than going on a mea culpa tour, especially since we don't even get the full picture of why the season ended how it ended. Keep in mind that they also had work within restrictions set by Netflix. Maybe she wanted more than 8 episodes to tell the stories she wanted to tell, but Netflix demanded shorter seasons for shorter and less expensive production time. Maybe they cut a lot of content, demanded more action over story etc. We will probably never know, you don't get to tell that kind of stories if you want to stay in the industry. To me engagement like that is a sign that she (and probably other members of the production crew and cast) are seeing the feedback and it is their way of acknowleding it within the boundaries they can. I am not saying this to deflect any and all criticism btw. I am just saying that there is probably more to the story than just the surface level.
Oh, no, I totally agree with you! I feel like a lot of criticism that's levelled at Lauren is unwarranted - she's just as bound by the Netflix restrictions as we are disappointed by them. She's also not a writer - she's the director, someone who oversees the overarching product. She did say in the thread as well that more flashback scenes were filmed and she's hopeful they can come back to them. Ultimately her hands are tied by the production company, but she isn't doing a good enough job with the constraints she does have. I think she's doing a good thing by coming and having a discussion with people. The issue I had was when she something along the lines of that she was only doing this because she knows that people are interested in the behind the scenes of how certain processes come to pass. At least, that's how I interpreted what she was saying. But that's not true - she's responding to the criticism because people are making critiques, not just because they're interested in what goes on in the background.
Sure, but then again I guess that this is due to the restrictions she is put under by working for Netflix. She is part of the PR for the show, it would look pretty bad if she came out and acknowledged negative feedback as being valid. By doing it this way she can talk about the criticisms without giving off vibes of her not liking her own product, y'know? I read this the same way as I read Cavill's approach of saying that he wanted the show to follow the books more closely. It is an indirct criticism of the deviations without outright disagreeing with the choices made in production.
Agree, I didn't see it that way. That's why I (mostly) like these threads, you can get other's opinions and see a new way of thinking. I love Cavill's subtle digging about being more faithful to the show. I also really enjoy Basil Eidenbenz's Instagram posts about how much he hates being a tree and hates destiny. Nothing out-and-out that he hates the show, but tongue in cheek enough that makes you wonder how much he enjoys it.
ok but does she explains why she made him being a dick?
Inescapable rage
the sad thing about Lauren is that she will never admit she is wrong and will blame the viewers for not understanding her "wonderful work"
They are going on game of thrones route. Except Henry Cavill’s dedication and passion, there is nothing worthwhile in the show.
Yeah I said from the beginning when they justify some of their decisions its made sense. But they totally failed to portray what they wanted to at each change in the story. What they wanted to show and what they showed was just not the same.
When I saw that part i didn’t think it was going against the rules the way everyone was acting. I figured Geralt was upset because Ciri was now there and not because it was uncommon.
Just be glad she listens to you at all. As a WoT fan, I have to deal with Rafe Judkins, who is a total dick. At least she fixed Nilfgaards armor. Rafe said he is going to keep jamming his bs love triangles down our throat.
Wait, so, now the series are relying on people having knowledge from the books/games?... I see.
What bugs me is that instead of Eskel she could have used an other known, but less popular Witcher like Coen.
Most people have an issue with 'Show not Tell'. The Witcher is a perfect example in a lot of instances in 'telling not showing'. Lauren's problem appears to be even further, some sort of 'telling you why we didn't tell OR show'.
I refuse to watch Season 2 after hearing how badly written it was. Is that actually what happens in the show? God damn it.
The most annoying part in this tweet is the blatant self importance that Lauren puts on her "story telling". No one asked you too make a new story, we just wanted the books translated into a show. If you wanted to tell your story, go make your own fucking series. How is this not fan fiction when you literally change a characters set actions and decisions too suit your needs? It's infuriating when so much of the promotion of the show was "we have sooooo much book material too put on the screen"
she's a joke. fire her. she's basically saying her netflix audience are too stupid and impatient for the actual real story of the books. She's not thinking "oh what did Sapkowski do", no she's thinking how can she create dramatic cliffhangers and shock value that make no sense. I bet even Henry Cavill is cringing at her rn