I am fresh off watching an hour of ten-year-old Zero Punctuation and realized that I haven’t played any of those games.   None.  And that’s okay.    In a way, it’s kind of disappointing and weird since I’ve never played Half-Life or even Peggle, but still… okay.  Maybe I’m a gamer like a writer – in name only.  =/

This is a quiet evening and one, frankly, I’ve been looking forward to for about a week.     I’m oddly alone, save Sneezles, for most of the evening as Jason is at the Tampa campus.   He has one class online and one class in Tampa a week since the new semester started.

So…. still didn’t go to the movies.
I know if I did that I’d spend the evening playing Wizards United while avoiding buying an Auntie Anne pretzel, so I  opted for the relatively safe space of the gym instead.

Instead of paying for a movie, I finished Dracula and started in on the Witcher.    I now have an inkling of what the Witcher Song is as referenced in Salty’s stream over the past couple of sessions.

I’ve never played the Witcher and only know odds and ends my reputation, but I can see how they’re making Geralt into an ’emotionless’ chick magnet.    Emotionless definitely earns the punctuation marks because he is definitely not without emotions.  Smiling, being sarcastic, happy to see someone, and chanting a dead person’s name while unconscious shows some type of emotions.

Spock tended to show fewer emotions than this guy from the first episode.
Still, despite his snubbed emotional growth, I think I like the character.  The sideways glances and “eh…s” seem to give every woman an equal opportunity to sleep with him instead of the usual predestined Barbie doll types that tend to follow most male protagonists.

What I find distracting is Geralt’s upper lip.

Geralt is played by Superman famed Henry Cavil.   He joins the other Warner Bro and Disney castoffs to start in Netflix Productions.   (I’m thinking of you, Adam Driver and Scarlett Johanson.)

Henry was filming for another movie at the time he played Superman.    I’m thinking it was Mission: Impossible, but don’t shoot me if that’s not right.   Anyway, for one movie he had to have a mustache.    Superman is distinctly mustache-less.

In the movie (Justice League?), Henry’s mustache had to be hidden with cg paint.   Course, since everyone knew it was there even though we couldn’t see it, it wasn’t hidden very well.

Geralt is part of the mustache-less variety, which I am absolutely A-Okay with.  But, I keep looking for a dash of the cg paint that he had in the last movie I saw him in.

Still, never having actually played Witcher, I think Henry serves well as Gestalt.   If one of the production’s goals is to attract people like me, well done.   Mission accomplished.  I find some sort of fascination about how the characters interact with each other.

The story, so far, is also fairly familiar.
Geralt is almost like a male Xena as they both go share the same tailor who really likes leather armor.  The clingy bard reminded me of Joxer and Gabriella may have multiple female forms as each woman somehow assisted Geralt while showing they know how to use a weapon, but be completely available to date at the same time.   I don’t think I know enough about the game and story, in general, to make a decisive call on who is ripping off who.

We’ve had a princess attacked in the woods, like Snow White.    Another loved a monster who turned into Prince Charming as in Beauty and the Beast.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a sleeping princess somewhere along with another who has a fetish for flashy footwear.   Or, rather, needs some sort of status symbol to claim her rightful place in the world.

It’s really difficult to avoid the old stories, so maybe Netflix decided to make sure they have them all.

Which is okay.
They’re tropes for a reason.

What is a bit confusing is how the show slips back and forth in thirty years without warning.    Since Geralt doesn’t age and the other characters aren’t introduced into any real length, it’s exceedingly difficult to tell exactly how the episodes fit together.

I only know it’s thirty years because Yennefer mentions it in passing.
On that note, I did like Yennefer’s side story.   Being someone of a twisted spine and other qualities, I felt kind of close to her until she gave it all up to become another Barbie.
There was a little light during the monologue with the dead baby.

Otherwise, the character seemed to go from fairly fleshed out to flat.    There’s a lot of time invested in her story, so I’m hoping that she’ll become more viable in future episodes.  I have this sneaky feeling that she’s going to become Gestalt’s right-hand woman/girlfriend or his main adversary.

Personally, I prefer adversary, but we’ll see.    It doesn’t make a lot of sense right now for them to be pitted against each other.   Yennefer could really use a show of her own.    I think there’s enough material there without Geralt.

Okay… so this blog turned into an unintentional review.

Bath time!  As Prompto would say.