www.blathancaerme.com/witcher-3-cu...
Thinks. Writes. Niche. Sapkowski's Witcher, fandom ethnographies, literature, folklore, old vgp. https://www.blathancaerme.com/ Links: https://linktr.ee/elinratzinger Contact: cauldronoffae@gmail.com đȘđȘ in đŹđ§
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www.blathancaerme.com/witcher-3-cu...
Why is there an elven Tower, Tor Gval'cha, on Skellige? What is Ragh nar Roog, really? Why are the Aen Elle taller than the Aen Seidhe? The Witcher 3's cut content tells of Freyja the elf, Alderwalk, Leib-Olmai, the white ships, and even the cult of the Eternal Fire - created as a joke.
www.blathancaerme.com/who-is-eredi...
In the Witcher games, Eredin is a template death knight. In game-fanon, he is frequently a BDSM, ultra-dom, plotting maniac. In the Witcher books though... Eredin is a bit different. Like a unicorn, I rarely see him in fandom spaces, and did he kill Auberon? Well... đ :
no matter who picks up the pen after Andrzej Sapkowski.
Apply this to Geralt. A Witcher whose end is shaped in Arthurian fashion. Tears at my soul to think that by entering legendary matter at the end of Lady of the Lake, he faces the mythical time of never-ending repetition of archetypal tales that will always end the same way for him,
Spotify is now instituting face scans and ID checks ... to listen to music. Porn was only ever the excuse. The only thing that surprises me is how quickly the government surveillance mandate has spread to absolutely every service we use. www.404media.co/spotify-uk-a...
ciri. âïž #tw3
Khm, in a book where we meet a fortune (future) teller Avallacâh, khm.
Not an original point but worth saying again - there is not a single element in this picture that identifies any of these folks as law enforcement agents. No badges, no uniforms, no vests. Out of context it just looks like a bunch of random guys are kidnapping a mayoral candidate.
Glad to see those green eyes on Ciri despite the mutations! (Flawless. Gem. Queen.) đ #TheWitcher4
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig1X...
audioteka.com/pl/audiobook/wieza-jaskolki-tom-1/ & audioteka.com/pl/audiobook... You can also listen to an example on YT: youtube.com/watch?v=Ig1X0t
Not SuperNowa continuing with the FULLY voice acted Witcher audiobook series with Ciri's journey in The Tower of the Swallow!?đ€©Finally, after all this time! (also could we pls have the little tune Avallac'h plays on the pipes at the end as a separate file, pretty please!)
God, I hope we see Ciri's vision-warging in The Witcher 4.
Crazy how much abandonment trauma The Witcher has.
'...it is not an ordinary person, most esteemed sisters. It is death or life, destruction or rebirth, chaos or order. Depending on how you look at it.' âPhilippa about Ciri It's someone with the ability to choose.
'Monck sailed to Loc Muinne, to persuade the elves there to adopt a group of Source children,' I think it would make for a super cool Witcher story if we got to follow a child like this in a digest of elf-human cultural & magical differences. Before humans became a dominant force in the Neverland.
I write like 6.5 times better when I read out loud to myself what it is that I am writing. I write like 3 times better when I hit the perfect ratio between font & window size when I have 4 parallel working spaces open. I just work more efficiently when I switch to b&w mode. Got any weird tips?
--> so the past is constantly being eaten by the future in an Ouroboric circle. That's the journey to rebirth, because you yourself must transform in the process of creating the reality you seek. The darker side of the deal being that what we imagine can equally destroy us.
where AURYN's power comes from our capacity to imagine fruitfully -- 'do what you wish'; bring what you imagine into reality (simply wishing is not enough; you have to will that reality into existence through yourself). Of course, what we can imagine is the outcome of our memories
imagine, *know* what you exactly & really want, strongly desire, strongly wish for, very strongly, while imagining places or faces or moments associated with that knowledge that is more embodied truth than factual statement. Which, again, reminds me of Michael Ende's The Neverending Story,
& does not recognize that despite the adverse conditions she did not imagine meeting, she has reached him. They run past each other. It seems both scrying (through the walls of Tir nĂĄ BĂ©a Arainne) & moving between places and times draw on the same ability:
âPerhaps not imagine places or faces, she thought, but strongly desire ⊠Strongly wish for something, very strongly, right from my belly âŠâ Ciri must really-truly know what she wants in order to navigate in the archipelago of moments. She ends up in a blizzard when wishing to reach Geralt
Work in progress on ĂŒks mu lemmikajaleht. Hiljutises numbris ilmus ka lihtne, aga pĂ”hjalik ĂŒlevaade Hansalinnade tĂ”usust ja langusest. worksinprogress.co/issue/the-ri...
đ Make sure to check out the book by Lennart Meri "Silverwhite: The Journey to the Fallen Sun". Now in English. đ www.amazon.co.uk/Silverwhite-... #LennartMeriConference
For a Belleteyn/spring challenge with some lovely friends, I wrote a thing, where Ciri makes wishes and Avallac'h dabbles in wish fulfilment. Oh and crime. They do crime. Enjoy! archiveofourown.org/works/65449399
The Witcher 3 reminds me so much of the anime Mushishi.
It's actually NOT so shocking how much of The Witcher comes down to characters not handling their own emotions very well & hiding behind some dysfunctional coping mechanisms -- not only witchers wear that mask. Feels very much like Sapkowski went: LEARN YOURSELF you stupid f to its male characters.
Happy belated birthday, Ciri!
In 2022, Curtis Yarvin (Peter Thielâs âin-house philosopherâ) wrote that, âit is Russiaâs fate to again to restore order in Europe,â but âTrump needs to let Putin really know itâs okay to do it.â Yarvin added: âThere is only one way to send this message unequivocally: withdraw from Europe.â 1/
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Echo. #KingdomComeDeliverance2 #KCD2 #VirtualPhotography
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II #KingdomComeDeliverance2 #KCD2
if anyone's already watched Conclave and is craving more papal dramatics, recall that the bonkers modern classic THE YOUNG POPE exists, and this is a typical scene in it youtu.be/yFMDVH4lqSU?...
My take was that Sapko wrote Geralt as a bait and switch (hold on!) for young men to read and learn how to be more empathetic and care about the world around them. But then the games came out and nuked his character development lmao
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Portraits. #KingdomComeDeliverance2 #KCD2 #VirtualPhotography
You could get a whole genre out of #KCD2 and pictures of washerwomen, as they're all about it at such picturesque spots.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II The Knight of Greens. #KingdomComeDeliverance2 #KCD2 #VirtualPhotography
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II #VirtualPhotography #KCD2
How do people play a game while screenshooting? I manage the story for like 20 minutes, and then spend 2h taking shots. Will never finish #KingdomComeDeliverance2 at this rate.
Aaaa, I wanted this. Is it out now? Can it be ordered abroad?
The Lodge of Sorceresses as the Dames of the Round Table.
#witcher If there is no Avallac'h in the new part of the game I will take up killing lol You can judge me, but you can't command your heartđ
#witcher couldn't resistđ
reposting with alt text. omg DO NOT DO THIS.
Stuff like this is perfect because it shows how utterly devoid of creativity genAI evangelists are. Great you recreated a photo that already exists in a drawing style that only has currency because of who you're stealing it from giving the world something with absolutely no value or meaning.
Steam says I've spent 243.5 hours in this game (and I'm far from done) đ« #KingdomComeDeliverance2 #KCD2 #VirtualPhotography
#kcd2 #hansry another day another sketch I hope after all of my deadlines I could draw something more than this....
an attire befitting a king #kcd2 #hansry
Since writing this article, I have received messages from federal civil servants who tell me it is accurate, and that they are frightened. Please share this with anyone who doesn't understand the scale of the transformation. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Being a historian, people ask me if I think the US is living through Germany 1933. I answer no, analogies are always imperfect but to me it feels more like Russia 1999: a blatant theft of state assets and liberals in a fugue state, refusing to believe the arc of progress is bending against them.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II #VirtualPhotography #KCD2 #KingdomComeDeliverance2
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II #VirtualPhotography #KingdomComeDeliverance2 #KCD2
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II #VirtualPhotography
Sad to learn Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was supposed to have a cooking mini game (what are all these delicious spices FOR man...), but it got cut :( Hungry Henry could have veered into becoming the best chef in Bohemia.
One of the 'nice' ways to combat the gold surplus in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II would have been, for example, to have us lose our horse (sorry, Pebbles) permanently after one notable ambush in ACT1 (along with what we had stored on it. Feels bad BUT I like struggling in this game.
Who will be the first to write the history of that short-lived period that began in 1989 and ended in 2025? So much hope and opportunity, so much short-sighted and incompetent leadership on all sides, and such an ugly, tragic ending.
Trump and Vance needed to create an incident to provide a justification for their pre-planned abandonment of Ukraine now, then separation from NATO in the near future. Thatâs what that was all about, and that was always the way a second Trump term was going to go.
"Ukrainians hurt our feelings and their president won't wear a suit" is quite a reason to be complicit in genocide
The mistake is to think Zelensky could have salvaged this. Trump admin just doesnât want to support Ukraine. Period. There was also never going to be a peace agreement. Thatâs been clear but everyone has been pretending otherwise. There can be no confusion now.
Vance blew up that meeting on purpose
Didn't I say so: www.blathancaerme.com/the-ciri-pap... :D
Remember when people tried to say the new Ciri model from The Witcher 4 was⊠*checks notes ugly? đź
Dear Bluesky People, I haven't yet made a proper introduction here - but instead of myself, I'd rather introduce the Finno-Ugric peoples I research, promote and am somehow obsessed with. Hop on!
Inspired by the Witcher stories #art #sketchbook #witcher
"Kas siis selle maa keel laulu tuules ei vĂ”i taevani tĂ”ustes ĂŒles igavikku omale otsida?â - Kristjan Jaak Peterson Cannot the tongue of this land, in the wind of incantation, rising up to the heavens, seek eternity?
Absolutely. I hope & at the same time dread as to her future in CDPR's hands. Because as a playable protag she'll run the risk of being turned into a sock puppet for various player groups' interests - choose your own adventure. Maintaining HER as her will be tough, esp when exploring her trauma.
is an unfortunate outcome of the circumstances of the market. Narratively, however, the stories that follow the books should have always - always! - been about Ciri.
> It kind of felt like once Geraltâs story was over so was Ciriâs. That premise is a little wrong-headed. Ciri's story at the end of the books is only beginning & we have seen *none* of that. That CDPR has to tell this story AFTER they have made it with Geralt (the traditional vg protag)...
Ciri is also someone with the power to bring change. Thus, Ciri faces a triple-layered moral choice. Find out the rest in the article I wrote about Ciriâs Omelas Dilemma in #TheWitcher4 : www.blathancaerme.com/the-ciri-pap...
Geralt, who doesnât have the power to change the system but will do all to fight for his loved ones, can walk away form Omelas. Ciri, the idealist, poses a counterpoint, as Ciri is both the suffering child and the potential âwalkerâ simultaneously.
In Omelas, the suffering child has no choice, but stories about chosen ones â who have no choice but to choose â revolve around the burden of Power. This positions Ciriâs ethical struggles as a twisted mirror of Geraltâs.
Sapkowski digs into the trauma of being âchosenâ when you are a woman. Women are often âchosenâ for motherhood, their bodies transformed into a battleground for othersâ ambitions. Ciri bridges these critiques as she is both the chosen one and the potential sacrifice.
Le Guinâs parable of Omelas presents a critique of the false binary of the utilitarian sacrifice (utopia or a childâs suffering). Sapkowski subverts the chosen one narrative wholesale, critiquing authoritarian uses of utilitarian rhetoric.
Ciriâs Omelas Dilemma Can you walk away from a destiny that is inscribed in your own body? Does possessing the capacity to help create an obligation to do so? Might Ciri, in taking The Trial of Grasses, be choosing the Greater Evil?
What if in The Witcher 4 we sail to the part of the world from where the Northeners first came from?
Kind of love that in The Witcher 3's draft script, Yennefer (?) says she would like to see Ciri as the Queen of Cintra.
In The Witcher 3 CDPR faced a significant narrative challenge: transforming Avallac'h from the antagonist of the books into a mentor figure for Ciri. Cut content surrounding the Curse of Inversion reveals some of how the developers approached this. #TheWitcher3 www.blathancaerme.com/the-ugliest-...
Grim collection of views on the transatlantic relationship. My take: Europe needs real military capability and of course political will, too, to stop Russian aggression. If it doesnât get its act together, its fate may be decided by other, darker forces. carnegieendowment.org/europe/strat...
Heh, it's more of a small piece of commentary really, but I recommend the interview in which Sapkowski makes the comments that inspired me :) (and yes, Earthsea is good!)
www.blathancaerme.com/sapkowski-on... Love is the essence. Love and lovelessness walk hand in hand at the heart of everything in The Witcher, and with them the good and the evil. As Tenar to Ged in Sapkowskiâs reading of Ursula K. Le Guin, so Ciri to oh, so many characters.
Excerpts. First two from 'The Escape Artist', third from Ciri's Omelas Dilemma, fourth from CDPR's Vision for Ciri. And: "I hope they will explore a truly morally ambiguous Ciri, letting her be messy and problematic rather than simply heroic. I hope they dare to explore her as Her."
What do Ciri's past trauma & burden of power mean for her as a mutated, Elder Blood witcher in The Witcher 4? Three meditations on Ciri: from trauma's narrative potential to bodily autonomy. www.blathancaerme.com/the-ciri-pap...
asdfghjklpawueg Here's one for all Ciri/Avallac'h fan. For "reading between the lines" all these years! Geralt & Avallac'h talking about Avallac'h's feelings regarding Ciri, from The Witcher 3's cut script iteration
Rose Garden. Lara Dorren & Avallac'h #elf #thewitcher
The path beyond both master and slave morality? Love. When Geralt acts from care rather than power or moral judgment, he transcends Nietzsche's binary. A warrior-monk who chooses his battles not from weakness or strength, but from convictionâeven when it costs him.
www.blathancaerme.com/nietzschean-... When is morality genuine, and when is it just cope? Wrote on Nietzschean witchers based on Sapkowski's provocative little quote in Crossroad of Ravens & how Geralt learns to take his first steps toward acting beyond good & evil.
New review/analysis out on Sapkowski's latest Witcher novel (RozdroĆŒe KrukĂłw, currently only in Polish). Witchers have absent mothers & distant fathers who'd love to vivisect them. In witchers' trauma I found echoes of women's experiences in the Witcher world. www.blathancaerme.com/analysing-ro...
Thoughts on #TheWitcher4 medium.com/p/d2a7beeef06e "The insinuation made about Ciriâs life through Mioniâthe peasant girl offered in sacrifice to a local âGodâ for the greater goodâis not subtle. This is Ciri fighting off the echo of her own story, trying to change such fates in principle."
So much to write about, so little time.
The Witcher 3: A Time of Sword and Axe Predecessor of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
If you don't know yet, The Witcher 3's Original story (2012-2014, before the re-writes) just dropped. github.com/glassfish777... And a video essay (3h) was made based on the materials: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hAS...
Has anyone considered what an indictment of humanity it is that in The Witcher, there are no elven witchers - i.e. no elven orphans given away to that path of life.
You ate with that rabbit, ngl.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Tor Gvalch'ca, Undvik #VirtualPhotography #TheWitcher3
www.instagram.com/p/DDEtLFSinq... A kilogram of silver gilding a moment out of The Tower of the Swallow. Geralt & Avallac'h's meeting under the Devil's Mountain even has the knocker & barbegazi present, but, alas, the artists chickened out on the penises. Meanwhile Ciri's heading for a trip.
#promosky Moot check vol 1. Interested in: the witcher (books/games) tolkien literature the Absurd folklore & mythology fandom anthropology gaming (disco elysium, DOS II, pentiment, roadwarden, against the storm, DRG) mushishi analogue & virtual photography trees central & eastern europe writing
The Witcher 3 has a bit of a slapdash III Act. Battle with the Wild Hunt was supposed to take place in Novigrad. Avallacâh, instead of Eredin, was the âfinal boss.â Geralt had a tough choice to make. Letâs talk about The Unpublished Ending of TW3. medium.com/@cauldronoff...
It was also advantageous because the Wild Hunt were the main antagonists, and it could refer to Geralt's hunt for Ciri.
