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The timeline stuff is so unnecessary. This isn't a story like Catch-22 or Illuminatus! where being disjointed and out-of-order reinforces a theme. Nothing is gained by it. Most of the arguments in its favor boil down to "I didn't have any trouble following it. Maybe you should have paid attention."  It would have been so simple to give all three main characters screen time without confusing people. Have the first couple episodes alternate between Geralt & Dandelion having adventures and Yennefer's backstory. A few episodes in, have the Pavetta & Duny episode. A little after that, have an episode where Geralt goes to Cintra to claim young Ciri, but leaves without her. This would be the audience's introduction to the character. A bit after that, have the Brokilon episode where the two officially meet for the first time. All throughout, weave in slight mentions of the political situation so that the audience has some context for the war. End with the fall of Cintra. The same story is told, but in a manner that doesn't unnecessarily confuse and overwhelm the audience.
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Jan 9, 2020 17:31
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Jimmy Noskill posted:The timeline stuff is so unnecessary. This isn't a story like Catch-22 or Illuminatus! where being disjointed and out-of-order reinforces a theme. Nothing is gained by it. Most of the arguments in its favor boil down to "I didn't have any trouble following it. Maybe you should have paid attention." I've heard it argued that it was a choice on the part of the showrunners' to mirror the way the story is presented in the books. It's a dumb decision imo but at least there's a reason behind it. Anyhow they've said the next season is going to be much more linear. But if you're doing this https://twitter.com/NXOnNetflix/status/1214620806933700608 Probably you didn't communicate what was going on very well. Could've used some "telling" of what year it was. Does it work if you just put "Year 12XX" as a title card or subtitle for the first scene of every different timeline per episode?
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Jan 9, 2020 17:39
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Yeah the different timelines weren’t a mistake but not explicitly calling them out from the beginning is.
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Jan 9, 2020 18:25
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hobbesmaster posted:Yeah the different timelines weren’t a mistake but not explicitly calling them out from the beginning is. I think the only indication you have about how long Yennifer's court service is a tossed off comment about "it's been 30 years" while she's getting bounced around in that carriage, at that point I was pretty sure all the characters were in different times but that was the first time I was sure. I also remember thinking "wow that seems like it would be pretty easy to miss" when she said it.
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Jan 9, 2020 18:30
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I think it would be funny if they did do the "battle" part of the Battle of Sodden as episode 1 of season 2 and Cahir's reinforcements arrive wearing proper armour instead of the ballsack suits.
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Jan 9, 2020 18:41
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hobbesmaster posted:Yeah the different timelines weren’t a mistake but not explicitly calling them out from the beginning is. They more or less do. When Yennefer appears at the dance King Incest is shown as a kid, the council discusses how stubborn Calanthe is and then later if they should aid her.
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Jan 9, 2020 18:57
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i've watched a bunch of reaction vids because i'm bedridden and can't concentrate on very much and most casual viewers 'get it' that there are multiple timelines in e3 or e4 without much trouble.
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Jan 9, 2020 20:41
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Renfri has dialogue in the first episode about Calanthe just winning her first battle, which in the Ciri storyline we see Calanthe looking back at as something she did when she was not much older than Ciri. It's pointed out from the beginning. It just gets more obvious later, but there is dialogue and visual cues from the start. It's been interesting reading the many different reactions to the diff POVs being in diff times. Mostly people who ARE familiar with the source material are the ones I see who dislike it, oddly enough.
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Jan 9, 2020 20:41
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I don't have an issue with the time jumps, my main issue is with the weird changes they made to some of the antagonists.
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Jan 9, 2020 20:50
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likewise, and I know i've been posting a lot of  comparisons to the books that may come off as a negative reaction, but I'm posting that more for conversations sakeOverall I think they did a great job on the show.
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Jan 9, 2020 21:23
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I do think the cutting made all the stories too rushed.
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Jan 9, 2020 21:30
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They're doing Dopplers dirty by introducing everyone to a sociopathic murderer Doppler when that's the exact opposite of how they usually are.
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Jan 9, 2020 21:30
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ATP_Power posted:They're doing Dopplers dirty by introducing everyone to a sociopathic murderer Doppler when that's the exact opposite of how they usually are. iirc I think Cahir says that to him right from the start? something like "you're not like the rest of your kind" maybe we'll get to see a normal one next season
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Jan 9, 2020 21:47
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Noslo posted:likewise, and I know i've been posting a lot of Hell, 
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Jan 9, 2020 21:48
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Alhazred posted:They more or less do. When Yennefer appears at the dance King Incest is shown as a kid, the council discusses how stubborn Calanthe is and then later if they should aid her. Funny fact about Foltest his Card for the Card game has this quote from him. "It is natural and beautiful that man should love his sister."
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Jan 9, 2020 22:01
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Noslo posted:likewise, and I know i've been posting a lot of I enjoyed the show quite a bit as well, I just worried that the weird structure might make some people turn it off. Netflix said at the end of the year that this was one of their top watched shows so I guess I worried about nothing! This isn't specifically about the Witcher because I'm only very loosely familiar with the source material, but when I watch an adapted work where I have read the source I always feel like there's no way that people who didn't read the book/comic are going to know what the hell is going on. And I'm almost always wrong.
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Jan 9, 2020 23:02
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I’m a neophyte to all things Witcher and I almost didn’t continue after the first episode, it was not a good intro to the story. Second episode was better and overall I’m glad I stuck with it, but I hope season 2 is much better. I think I only liked about half the episodes.
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Jan 9, 2020 23:06
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Noslo posted:iirc I think Cahir says that to him right from the start? something like "you're not like the rest of your kind" I really hope they adapt the Dudu stuff. It's probably the most "fun" of the short stories and isn't particularly violent or plot heavy. It'd make a great little filler episode. They could set it after Geralt and Ciri split up in Blood of Elves.
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Jan 10, 2020 01:15
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Geralt just wants to buy a new jacket and some vengeful lover of Dandelion ruins it for him.
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Jan 10, 2020 01:19
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Ciri was a perpetual damsel in distress for this season, for sure. You could see a bit of independence poking through at times like when she tried to kill the changeling or later when she was just stealing food and horses to live. However, every time she did these things, someone would come along and take control of her life again. At the beginning of the season she was pretty glad for it, but by the end she distrusted everyone and planned to split ASAP. Then she found Geralt. I'm hoping season 2 is about her learning to be capable and independent, now that she's had her nose rubbed in what it's like to be a commoner amidst the consequences of royal bullshit. edit: spoiler tags. poo poo's pretty vague, but I didn't want to be an rear end in a top hat to anyone. Elpato fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jan 10, 2020 |
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Jan 10, 2020 01:53
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Ciri is 12. She is not a strong independent woman!
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Jan 10, 2020 02:04
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Next season she'll be indisposed, but dammit she'll be indisposed on her own terms!
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Jan 10, 2020 02:07
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Ugh I watched something by Stephen Moffat and now I'm left seeing the writing on this show in a more favorable light.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:15
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At least this show doesn't actively treat you with contempt for trying to figure out what's happening like a Moffat script does
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Jan 10, 2020 02:34
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Arglebargle III posted:Ciri is 12. She is not a strong independent woman!  This girl built a home out of garbage and junk food despite being hunted by penis monsters every night. Ciri can learn to be Newt. Right now she's Olive Oil.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:47
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That's a real hosed up opinion.
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Jan 10, 2020 02:48
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A girl raised to be a queen inside a comfortable palace has zero survival skills and would naturally have to rely on those who do. What's more, in her timeline only a few weeks at most have passed since Nilfgaard destroyed her home. I really don't get why people are expecting her to be some kind of overnight survival hero.
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Jan 10, 2020 03:16
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Something I'm wondering. Is Darra only a half elf? The thing with elves is there are very few young elves left following their wars with humans. They kept Civril as a half elf for his brief appearance in the first episode, so I'm inclined to believe Darra is a half elf as well because he looks way too young to be a full blooded elf at the current time.
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Jan 10, 2020 03:41
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Jesus, my post just boiled down to "I hope she learns to be more capable in season 2." Season 1 just kind of happened to her.
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Jan 10, 2020 03:59
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Arcsquad12 posted:Next season she'll be indisposed, but dammit she'll be indisposed on her own terms! I hope they copy the “indisposed” line word for word, poo poo still makes me laugh when I read it.
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Jan 10, 2020 04:30
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I feel like the show runners made some really amateur mistakes and poor choices in this. That they think they’ll get 7 or 8 seasons is kinda cute. The weird time skips destroy continuity and if you hadn’t read the books / gained familiarity with the characters would be super confusing - the choice to have these out of sync character arcs and give no indicator of when and where poo poo is happening is just bizarre. You wind up with a slog as a result. Like how hard is it to just put up a title card with time/place to give some anchor? You also have no reason to care about a lot of the early ep content unless you’re already familiar. It’s just terribly put together and edited. Then we have the additions. Is there a good one? It all comes together in the end but you could cut and edit it down by a few eps and have a better show. Don’t film a lot of it and you could’ve spent the money on actual locations and cg so it doesn’t look like a video game in places. Cast is pretty great. Toss a coin is catchy as hell. It gets better as it goes on. Am I out of step here? What did I miss? E: like it’s been a while since blood of elves but I don’t recall feeling that way about it. It skipped around but it was like a collection of stories in a world and there’s a lot of things like that so it was fine. On TV the way they did it is just trash Buffer fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jan 10, 2020 |
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Jan 10, 2020 06:47
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Yeah, I posted this in another thread but it's kind of a problem to jump around the timeline without context when 2 of the 3 main characters don't visibly age.
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Jan 10, 2020 07:58
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I didn't mind the jumping timelines. It became very obvious after a few episodes at which point it became entertaining to wait for the timelines to sync up
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Jan 10, 2020 08:12
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Yeah, and having all 3 timelines be linear helped, I thought
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Jan 10, 2020 08:13
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I was only familiar with the Witcher from the first chapter of the first game about 15 years ago, and a bit of cultural osmosis, not familiar with the books at all. I didn't have any real trouble with the show - I didn't need to know that we're starting at different times for each protagonist. I worked it out in the first half of the season. If the show had cards with dates on it, I'd be trying to work out a timeline and place events in my head and trying to work out if we've jumped backwards or forwards. That would have been confusing because I would have thought it mattered. It doesn't - each character's story is linear within itself as far as I remember. They did the right thing not front-loading us with all the info.
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Jan 10, 2020 08:27
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i was hoping there would be some sort of re-edit of Javier/Witcher's scenes so it looks like he's singing Dayman, but youtube is coming up empty I cant be the only one who thought of it VVV I'm a professional Westworld Watcher, cant trip me up with NOTHIN bring back old gbs fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Jan 10, 2020 |
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Jan 10, 2020 12:13
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What I find funny is that a lot of "people won't understand all the time-jumps" are almost invariably book readers, and the people who say "nah, I figured it out pretty quick" are not.
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Jan 10, 2020 12:15
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Proteus Jones posted:What I find funny is that a lot of "people won't understand all the time-jumps" are almost invariably book readers, and the people who say "nah, I figured it out pretty quick" are not. There's a difference between your average internet dweller/goon and your average Netflix binger though. I know people who gave up after the first two episodes because it was basically nonsensical.
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Jan 10, 2020 12:17
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Arcsquad12 posted:Something I'm wondering. Is Darra only a half elf? The thing with elves is there are very few young elves left following their wars with humans. They kept Civril as a half elf for his brief appearance in the first episode, so I'm inclined to believe Darra is a half elf as well because he looks way too young to be a full blooded elf at the current time. I think he's supposed to be full elf, he is still visually a teenager in spite of being old enough to hide from and survive purges that took place before Ciri was born. Also his ears are just as prominent as Filavandrel's or Toruviel's.
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Jan 10, 2020 14:51
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The series has already been picked up for another season, and the third season is rumoured to be greenlit. I'm hopeful we'll get at least 5 seasons.
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Jan 10, 2020 14:57
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