Meh, The TV show is so fucking frustrating. There was flashes of brilliance, ruined by cat ladies who hate the source material. Take the first episode based on 'The Lesser Evil', the short story is great with lots of moral ambuiquty, and some dark humour based on corruption of fairytales. (i.e. the idea Renfri was fucking her Seven Dwarfs). The TV show had fantastic onscreen chemistry between Geralt and Renfri, with both actors nailing their roles. But...it was cut down in favour of Ciri shit and seemed disjointed.
I wish they would have just binned the Ciri stuff and Story of JENNIFER STRONK INDEPENDENT WAMMAN stuff, and just made a few of the short stories, in linear fashion with the stories fleshed out and a 'Black Mirror' style feeling regarding the morals.
I guess it's no surprise that the only good episode of Season 2 was the only one based on a short story too...
Late reply, but the books actually do transition from episodic short stories to a larger, epic story that comes to a conclusion in the last few installments, at which point the 'short story' model is pretty much gone and it is a bit ASOIAF-ish as far as storytelling structure goes (plots within plots, big reveals, switching POV character to give you little peaks at pieces of the story). What is so infuriating is that there already is a blueprint to do exactly that - to move the story structure along away from the episodic one that paints the world for us initially. It was thrown out the window by Hissrich.
I can see why they did the Yennefer backstory because it
is important to her character. They definitely spent WAAAAY too much screen time on it though. Her origins are revealed in the book in one greatly written line that says a lot about Yennefer & Geralt's characters - that he looked in her eyes and saw 'that they were the spiteful eyes of a hunchback' or something like that after often wondering about her past, immediately realized that it would crush Yennefer if she knew that he had recognized that, and just never mentions it for the rest of the book. I get having that line make a strong impression, and that being hard to translate to the screen, but come on, the electric eels and shit was completely made up, overly drawn out, and frankly ridiculous.
As to why the cat ladies butchered a perfectly good story line, it's because they're cat ladies and they hate the themes. The sorceresses are basically cat ladies - they literally trade fertility and the possibility of creating life to live longer and maintain this illusion of beauty, dedicating their lives to political power plays, and they're all basket cases in one way or another. Yennefer is defined as a character by 'wanting it both ways' - she wants to break the rules, to have fertility & power, but it's very difficult to do that and it makes her somewhat of a tragic character and emotionally unstable but at the same time magnetic. Francesca Findabair first of all had horrid casting - she's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, with icy, distant condescension wrapped around a deeply buried sadness & barely buried resentment. The actress they got is pretty enough but doesn't fit the character at all. And the character - Francesca is viewed as a traitor to the sorceresses, and later to her own people, as she tries to save them but ends up being played and having to let her own most faithful followers be butchered as scapegoats. She's deeply tragic, really didn't do her justice in the show, completely changed her arc. Tissaia de Vries had a great actor cast - but once again you see the clear catlady bias influencing the plot because they didn't like the themes of the character. Her strong OCD, advanced age, and need to control everything make her emotionally frail, and she opens her own wrists after failing spectacularly in Aretusa in the books - she's a character whose inflexibility makes her brittle, something that probably enrages the evidently inflexible cunts running the show. And finally Fringilla - God what a hachet job. She's supposed to be an exceptionally pale, emotionally incontinent master of illusion with a pixie cut who dwells in a fairytale kingdom which is loosely under the umbrella of Nilfgaard. For some reason they turned her into a hulking negress who is fanatically devoted to Emhyr. Really the only thing that book Fringilla & show Fringilla have in common is the name - they are completely different characters.
The books have complex, gray themes. Ciri is torn between her destiny and her desires, Emhyr between his duty and his love for his daughter, Yennefer between accepting reality and chasing an impossible dream. Francesca perfectly embodies the hopeless situation of the elves and mirrors it in herself - unearthly beauty, but cruel and pragmatic, with a deep sadness. The elves in the books have such a peculiar feel to them - sad, vicious, ephemerally beautiful & graceful, powerful but fading. They really encapsulate the ambience of the world - cruel, savage beauty that's fading away, and there's a sadness in that - reminds me a lot of Blake's 'The Tyger'. Geralt himself is confronting his role as a witcher, and actually befriends a vampire in the later books. Henry Cavill obviously knew and understood this, which is why he wanted Geralt given more lines and opportunities to philosophize - to set the character up for the big turn that's coming his way in the books.
The idiots that get jobs as show runners nowadays don't believe in complex themes anymore because they're narcs who can't imagine thinking about anyone else before themselves.
Of course Ciri should chose her own desires,
you go girl! You do you! Yennefer is a strong, independent woman who don't need no man. The dimension of vulnerability that her futile desire for fertility gives her is stripped away. That's what makes her attachment to Ciri as a 'foster daughter' so strong in the books - in the show she's willing to sacrifice Ciri for power, because that's what a girl boss does! Francesca is dressed down and painted as a strong leader - stripped of her tragic dimension and shoehorned into badly written fanfiction. Girlbosses are never tragic. Tissaia can't kill herself! She's a cool, calm, in control woman, and trying to control everything
never blows up in a woman's face - and if it does, it's not her fault, so why should she kill herself? And Geralt? He's just a plot device to hook people in to the world with flashy fight sequences, monster CGI, gruff quips, a sexy body, and zero personal depth. Wouldn't want to distract from the perfect girl-boss cast that we've created for you by flattening all of the complexities out of the female characters. And the elves are obviously poor oppressed POC/indigenous people, we cannot complicate that strong good message by showing an inch of depth or nuance. We will also make a smattering of them black so you don't feel sorry for any solidly pale ethnic groups - that might be problematic!
