The Power of Listening

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I’m not good at it. Listening is not easy. Genuinely hearing what other people are saying is active – a verb. You are doing something, not just passively sitting and waiting for your turn to speak. Most people don’t listen with the intent of understanding, most people listen with the intent of responding.

I’m going to frame this conversation in terms of entertainment, both written and other media, but it is something that should be applied to any other communication.

The movies have always been for me. The massive, record breaking, blockbuster films for the vast majority of my life have been super white. The awards given out have been all white. The works they were based on were overwhelmingly white. It’s been a white, white, white world.

February is black history month. The Academy of Motion pictures is holding it’s annual awards this first weekend of February. Will diversity show up? I have my doubts. Check out this video to hear what prompted my thought process.

When the comic book adaptation film Black Panther came out I was very excited to see another part of the Marvel cinematic universe come to life on the screen. BP crushed at the box office and had amazing staying power in the theaters. It got extremely positive reviews. When I reviewed the movie the take away for me was “this movie was not aimed at me”. It was a black superhero telling a story that showed that white wasn’t the only way. It was aimed at NOT white kids to say, “look, this is for you too”. I thought that was one of the best parts of the movie. I have no idea the “realness” of the backgrounds of characters, the authenticity of the costume inspirations – non of that is history I know. It was wonderful, but in the end it didn’t have the same impact it would if I were part of a community that grew up with, knew or understood those things. I appreciate what it is and what it did, but it was not going to be inspirational to me or have the kind of impact it will with people not from my background.

I attempted to explain what I meant to another white person. This white person said something to the effect of, “What? You don’t like it? How can you not like it? Look what Marvel is doing! All those costumes and colors…”

This person wasn’t listening. To them the film was just another part of a bigger whole without the context of inclusion. To be fair – I don’t know if it was a matter of accepting this diversity without question or completely missing the point. The feeling I got during the conversation was that they were completely missing the point. It’s not easy to listen without putting forward your own view and making things fit into the framework you’re comfortable with. Saying that it wasn’t for me was not a condemnation of the film, it was an attempt to understand that an expanded and multi-faceted creation had more to offer than the same old reworked all white framework that I have known my entire life.

Sometimes when listening becomes action it means accepting a different role. Really listening means you’re open to changing your views. Sometimes the different role is not the “in charge” role. Not making decisions or leading. If you’ve always been in the lead it is not easy to relinquish that to anybody else, let alone someone that doesn’t mesh with the homogenized system you’ve become comfortable with.

This is also not an easy conversation to have. Being the middle aged white guy makes putting forward any thoughts on diversity of any kind dangerous. It’s easy to go wrong due to lack of understanding and a lack of willingness to listen. There’s a quote I heard in the past about media that essentially said if you let somebody talk long enough you will be able to take six lines out of context and use that against them – even if that was never what they meant. Sometimes you don’t know or can’t know the right context for asking questions. It can be challenging to put forward that you don’t know something. It will make you vulnerable and people don’t generally like that. The landscape of social media makes it easy to hide behind anonymity and scream out about the faults of others. Nobody wants to be vulnerable. Vulnerability scares people.

Great quote from a great movie, “I have the right to see fine in any color…”

I am trying to listen. I am hoping to be part of a meaningful change. It won’t be easy. It’s something I’m working on. I think I’m getting better, but that’s not really for me to judge. Diversity matters. It matters an awful lot more than we understand. Listen ~ and be part of the change.

Three Cross Bog

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I mentioned on an earlier post about a story that has come into my possession. I am going to present my uncle’s work here. I don’t know if it was ever published anywhere else, but I think it is fair to put it here at this point. I have actually had some other story parts that have been inspired by reading this work. I may reference parts of this story in some of my upcoming work. Until then, the story in parts:

Part 1

One and a half miles southeast of Three Cross Bog, a small campsite was neatly tucked against the side of a knoll. A lean-to made from pine boughs had been lashed between two sturdy tree trunks. There were numerous gaps in the roof, offering little protection from the bitter New England weather. The cool, crisp air flowed easily through the crude structure with its open sides. The floor was bare except for the figure of a boy, who was curled up inside a sleeping bag made from old green Army blankets fastened together with huge safety pins. A man stood twelve feet in front the shelter. An old man. He was white haired and sported a bushy porcupine mustache, all but covering his lower lip. He had a slender figure for a man, almost five feet tall.

Stooping over their rekindled campfire, a frying pan in his left hand, Gramp Willard saw young Ron Powers wipe sleep from his eyes.

“Better shake a leg and get out of that bedroll,” the old man said. “We’ve a full day of hunt in front of us. Food’s up.”

“Coming,” said the youngster.

Ron pulled on and laced up his calf length boots that he’d retrieved from the bottom of his sleeping bag, slipped on his baggy brown hunting jacket and shucked off his blankets. The boy picked up his double barrel shotgun, a twelve gauge Knickerbocker, and opened the breech to inspect the bright brass shell ends. Convinced his gun was loaded, he closed the weapon with a sharp snap. The fledgling hunter tucked the butt of the shotgun under his arm. He tried out the carrying method Gramp had recently taught him and felt the rounded walnut gun stock fit comfortably beneath his limb.

While watching the boy handle the gun, the elder huntsman recalled his own first experiences with arms and his own associated sensations of fear and excitement. Most of all, Willard recalled his sense of power. His potency.

“Boy, the true mark of a hunter,” the veteran woodsman said, stopping to pause, “a man eats only what he can kill and he kills only what he needs to eat… and boy…”

“Yes sir,” said the youthful pupil, watching his grandfather toy with the spatula in the skillet.

“You can’t shoot no egg.”

They both laughed.

“Gramp,” said Ron, crossing to the campfire, “if we’re here to hunt partridge, why didn’t you bring Peppersauce with us? She’s a good bird dog.”

“Well,” said the senior hunter, leaving the frypan sputtering over the fire and walking to his worn wicker knapsack, “she’d had been no good on this hunt.” Gramp rummaged quickly through his pack. “Here lad,” said the ancient poacher, tossing Ron a box of shells.

“Buckshot! Deer?! We’re going to hunt deer? Out of season? Gramp…”

“Hush up,” the old man snapped.

“But ~”

“No buts! I wouldn’t tramp narry a step for any ordinary stag. No siree. We’re out there to get us a might special deer. Mighty special.”

“Not Old Buck,” the youth quizzed.

“Straight on the mark,” came Willard’s reply.

“Gramp,” said Ron.

The old timer crouched and removed the heated breakfast from over the red heat and said, “Bring your mess over and shove some of these eggs down ya.”

“Gramp. Gramp, nobody’s seen that deer in better than two years. They say a hunter over in Groveland got him.”

“That’s right. That’s right, lad. Even had a proper write up in the Gazzette. Picture and all. Group of businessmen standing ’round congratulating each other. Cut it out to save it. Have to chuckle every time I see it.” The shrewd deerstalker laughed and said, “Move your plate ni closer. I don’t want to slop no fat on the fire.”

“But Gramp, if that was…”

“Damnation! Sometimes I suspect your mother’s raising a tree stump instead of a boy! I wouldn’t have brought you out here if I wasn’t sure that Buck still runs right through here and up past Three Cross Bog.”

“Certain,” the youngster asked.

“Certain,” came the reply.

“Why haven’t you bagged him before now,” Ron persisted.

“Wasn’t time. It just wasn’t time, boy.”

Squatting and sitting precariously on a small wood pile, Ron cut into the egg yolk, oozing out from under the fork’s pressure. He lifted the steaming mouthful and had his first taste of nourishment.

“Three Cross Bog,” the boy inquired.

“A mile or so off to the left’s the cranberry bog. I’ve a stand picked out for you. A place where you can wait for Buck to come to you. Runs right by there. Easiest way for him to skirt that fathomless pit. Heed me, now. That bog’s swallowed up three grown men and I don’t want no fourth. You just stay in your spot. Are you listening, lad?”

“Yes sir,” said the younger Powers.

“Certain,” the elderly woodsman asked.

“Certain,” came the response.

Both sat eating slowly in silence.

“Why,” asked Ron, after downing his last bite, “didn’t you say Old Buck was still alive? You could have told me.”

“You know the Morrisons,” the old man questioned.

“They live over on Parish Road? The house that sits way back off the road?”

“Aya,” Willard said. “The old man. Ben,” he continued while looking intently at Ron. “Crazy. Crazy, blind Irish bastard. Been after my tail for… for years. Blames me for his brother. We were hunting deer. Buck. He jumped a doe and winged a hind quarter. Fool. Fool followed her into the bog. Couldn’t do nothing. No rope. Was nothing of either when we got back. Out of sight. Sank right out of sight.”

“And he blames you,” Ron uttered.

“Deserted him,” Willard snapped. “Hell! I went for help boy, help! Was nothing there when…” The old man stopped suddenly and looked into the deep, dark woods. He seemed to be straining, straining to hear every sound, to see every bit of movement. Turning away from Ron and focusing his eyes on a spot far from their encampment, Gramp studied the slight movement. It was nothing. He looked back at the boy and said softly, “Morrison’s a hunter. A patient hunter. I suspect he knows that Buck’s still alive. Figures one day Gramp would go back into the woods. Back to the bog”

The young hunter had been as still as a granite monument marking some historical event. He was learning to become a good listener.

“Old Buck,” the veteran deerstalker said, “He’s your prize. One that’ll set these folks around here on end. They’ll take notice of ya.”

Ron looked sheepishly down into his dented tin plate and nervously stirred one small morsel of burnt bacon with the tines of his fork.

Random Sports Stuff

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I am a fan of sports in general. I was an athlete once upon a time. I have a vague sense of what it takes for folks to achieve things at a high level and what kind physical effort it really takes to be great. I am not one of those people that somehow believes “if not for that one thing…” I would have been there. Getting to the top of any game is a massive, life consuming effort. Even the low level of athleticism I managed to achieve takes its toll on a body. I can’t imagine how I would feel now if I had been pushing my body further, faster, stronger or more than I did.

It’s still fun to watch sports, mostly. I’ve drifted away from the major sports. The No Fun League has really fallen in my view. They excuse unethical, dangerous and violent behavior as part of doing business. They’ve been so big for so long that they’ve become a machine that doesn’t feel like it will be stopped.

Prediction zone – KC will win the game today. It will be tight. The Patriots will regret trading Jimmy G to the 49ers ~ win or lose today he’ll be back in the playoffs a bunch.

Speaking of the Pats ~ it’s going to be a long time before they see the super bowl again. Tom Brady is playing the media like no other athlete before. He will sign back with the Pats (one year deal ~ big money). They’ll make the playoffs next year (again) and get knocked out before the AFC title game (again). That will be it for them. It will be another 20 or 30 years before they’re good again. I was watching when they went to the super bowl the first time, I’ll probably be watching when they go again. It’s been a nice run.

I plan on watching “the big game” today (calling it that is an entirely different argument that I’m not interested in right now [it’s stupid]). I will continue to casually track my favorite team and watch games when I can. I won’t spend any more money on them. I think there are a lot of problems with that league and all they stand for (with their actions more than their words).

I do believe that sports can and should have an important place in the lives of people. I am in no way trying to say that football or any other organized sport should somehow be stopped or removed. Sports give us a lot ~ and a lot more than entertainment. Life lessons, amazing stories, opportunities for real change… all of those things are part of sports. Physical health is part of sports. Mental health and emotional well being should be part of it too. I’m not saying we need to have ‘participation trophies’ or stop keeping score. Winning and losing are part of understanding how life works. Losing is a particularly important part of learning. IF you never get knocked down you won’t learn how to get up, dust yourself off and keep going. That matters.

I hope to see sports continue to grow and change. I love seeing how far and how hard people can push themselves. What are the limits of unaided human physicality? How far can sports go without becoming something beyond human?

I’m working on a collection of stories that I hope will delve into the distant, and maybe not to distant future of sports and what people can achieve in that realm.

Jane Hawk

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The Silent Corner (Jane Hawk, #1)

The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The story of FBI (or possibly former FBI) agent Jane Hawk hunting down a global conspiracy.

This book was a pick from the science fiction book club. IF you go with the thought process defining science fiction as ‘a story that fails without the science’ then this book fits that definition. There is a science portion here that the book wouldn’t survive without. I would not categorize this as science fiction ~ I’d put it much more into the ‘techno thriller’ category. There are many other aspects of what I consider to be science fiction that don’t actually appear in the book.

This book will bring excellent discussion to our group. There are lots of topics to pick from. Ethics, technology, law enforcement, moral choices, and how far some of the action stretches. I won’t say the story breaks my willingness to ignore my disbelief, but there are certainly a couple of stress points that are being pushed.

There were a couple of spots in the book that I thought made it drag too long. There were a number of details that the writer in me cheered as ‘research done’ so that the story was very grounded in the world we live in. This was OK, but I enjoyed Odd Thomas much more.



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No Joy

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My daily work is in the architecture field. I’ve worked in this field for twenty years now and studied it for even longer than that. There have been things that have always bothered me about the field of architecture. The two biggest of those things were the lack of communication with the general public about the work of our field and the massive wall of elitism that is so off-putting.

First the attitude. The amount of pure snobbery I have received from architects over the years is staggering. It is so commonly noted that it has become something akin to a meme ~ wearing a black turtle neck and small round glasses or a tweed jacket and a bow tie kind of pervasive. It grates my nerves to deal with people who look down on the rest of the moving parts of their field. The most rare architects I have gotten along well with are those who came up via an old school apprenticeship rather than by way of some ivory tower… and I went to one of those design schools. I don’t understand the attitude. My lack of understanding has likely cost me opportunities over the years because I don’t deal well with those people. I don’t have time for them. If you’ve got a scoffing ivory tower attitude, you can walk because I’m not interested.

Communicating with the public poorly seems to be rooted in this elitism. I have conversations with friends about architecture from time to time about names working in the field past and present who are doing or have done amazing things. These architects have recognizable names within the field but rarely are they known beyond the field (even when they achieve “starchitect” status). Every time I ask people who they know as an architect they invariably answer Frank Lloyd Wright. As if he’s the only architect ever. This has caused me to push back quite a lot against fans of Mr. Wright. I have often proclaimed he was a short egomaniac that made buildings with leaky roofs. This has gotten me in trouble with supporters who were my superiors in the past, but I stood by my stance – there is more to architecture than Falling Water.

That argument is entirely about pushing back and advocating for the study of others. It’s exaggerated to make a point. In my career in the architecture field I have come to learn that there are many reasons to admire what it is that Mr. Wright accomplished. Among the things he accomplished was starting a school of architecture that concentrated on how buildings related to their environment. It’s well known and a very big deal in the architecture world.

Thus the title of this post. It does not bring me joy to see part of the legacy of an immensely famous architect fail. The 88 year old school is shutting down.

Taliesin West

For all that I complain and exaggerate my grievances with buildings I can’t stand up straight in (6 foot ceilings do me no favors) the field of architecture is not a zero sum game. There is room for a world spanning variety of opinions and scholarly studies. It is disappointing to hear that the school at Taliesin is closing. I hope that others will continue to carry forward those studies and work toward making our built world mesh more favorably with our natural environment.

Article here: The School of Architecture at Taliesin Closing After 88 Years

Bogged

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I find myself in an odd spot. I’ve got in my possession a story. It’s not generally my kind of story. A short story that was written by my uncle. My uncle passed away back in 2014 (side note – I didn’t realize it had been that long. It certainly doesn’t seem to be that far back). I’d like to do something with the story but I don’t know if I can.

I have no honest idea if the story was published when he wrote it or not. It’s all on typewritten pages dated from back in 1981. I think he might have used the old school copyright trick of making 2 copies and mailing them to himself. Way back before e-mail and internet I seem to recall this was a method of proving copyright by way of having an official government date and time stamp (from the post office cancelling the mail) on your sealed envelope. This was a way of not going through the cost of doing the paperwork to get your work through the actual copyright office.

At the time of the initial clean up of what remained of my uncle’s worldly possessions a number of things were boxed and put in the car with a “sort this out later” label. My mom found this in a box of things that she found in the basement. It was likely missed during the ‘sort this out’ phase and this is clearly “later”. She opened the envelope and found two copies of the story. I got one today.

I read the story. It’s clear and well written. It clocks in around 3,000 words. I think I understand where my uncle was going with it, but I am not 100% certain. I think with some rework it would be a story that could be sold today, or perhaps even the start of a series of short stories. There is potential.

Thing is – it’s not mine. I have no idea what the legality of any of this is. I don’t know if the story was submitted before. I don’t know if he published it himself (he did run a small press at one point). I don’t think I could successfully search up this story if it ever was published.

My thought is to present the story here, perhaps in serialized form a few hundred words at a time. Maybe I’ll then write some other stuff based on this short story… I’m not sure. I’m going to run the idea past a few people before I really do anything with it.

Hopefully that will mean some new fiction here soon?

Book Reviews

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For a while I was writing reviews for a number of different places. I would also post up my reviews over on Goodreads. I haven’t been asked to do any book reviews for any of my sources for quite some time. I am also woefully behind on posting reviews for the works that I have read.

I’m trying to catch up with these ‘missed’ reviews on Goodreads. Normally I’d cross publish all of those reviews here but I suspect I’m going to just hit the highlights.

Reviewing all the books I missed from the end of last year’s reading during January of this year feels a little like cheating on this year’s list. Like bumping or padding my stats in an unfair way. I mean, nobody is looking or checking. I haven’t actually set any goals personally or using whatever tools the web site offers – so I’m not sure who I think I’m cheating on, but the feeling persists.

I feel as though I do actually need to add this review here.

Navigating the Stars

Navigating the Stars by Maria V. Snyder

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Disclaimer – I know the author, but I did not get this book as any kind of freebie or promotion or anything. I went and bought it. Yes, she signed it for me, but that’s just because she’s cool.

Having said all that – this was an awesome book. Go, buy it and read it. Then go and get the next one too.

Lyra is a teenage girl. She lives with her parents in another part of the galaxy searching for resources. The story centers around Lyra and the mystery surrounding the life sized terracotta warriors that humans have found on 21 different planets.

The voice of the main character in this book is very strong. Lyra is a real person – it’s that good. The science of the time dilation just adds to the mix and makes a really suspenseful story. I don’t want to give anything away. I will simply repeat – go get this book.



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Working on Working

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Make no mistake, writing is work. I know there are people out there who throw down thousands upon thousands of words and they just seem to flow out of them, but even for those people this is work.

I’m beginning to get myself back to a creative place and be able to do this work more regularly. This is a boon for actually putting words up here. Sometimes there are extra words that don’t actually fit in the stories I’m working on and they slop over the side of the cup. On good days I can mop up those words and squeeze them out into something vaguely coherent here.

Sometimes those words just leave a ring shaped stain on my desk.

The most difficult times are when I really want to lay down a screed about something that has caught my attention in the news and I just don’t have the ability to get here and do it. It’s a spoon thing for folks that subscribe to that analogy. I just run out of spoons.

A good example of this is the latest Star Wars film. I went to see it on opening day. I was at the theater for the earliest show. I went early and had my favorite seat, right in the middle in the middle. Popcorn in hand I was on board to see more Star Wars!

I watched it. I was confused by so many parts of it. It was big, it was splashy and decidedly a “need to see it on the big screen” kind of film. That was the best thing I could say for it. There were a ton of clearly fan service moments in there. There were a ton of really questionable story telling choices. I would honestly need to see it again just to parse out all the weird combinations of stuff that either did or didn’t work. What I really needed to do at the time was jump on here and write all those things down while they were fresh in my mind…

And here I am a month later mentioning that I wanted to talk about it.

Would the words still be relevant? The moment is past. There are a half dozen other things that have come up and made waves since then. There are tons and tons of reviews in either direction (love it or hate it ~ take your pick) and my take would be a rehash of various parts of a lot of them. I didn’t get to the work in time.

That actually brings up another point. Work. I like putting my thoughts up here and having a place where I can land all this stuff that is my own. It’s my web site ~ I own it. I will put what I want up here, when I want to put it here and not worry if some massive company is going to accidentally “ban” me for a month or whatever. It’s my own and I will do as I please. It is my own, and this doesn’t pay. All these words are free and sometimes I need to focus on the words that pay. I will be the first to tell you that they don’t pay well, but they do pay (from time to time).

So I’m going to continue to work. If you’ve meandered with my train of thought all the way to the bottom of this ~ thank you. I appreciate that you’re reading. I’m off now to hammer out some more of those words that are supposed to pay.

If you’d like to see a really amusing take on all sorts of aspects of the most recent Star Wars film that didn’t really work head on over to YouTube and check out Pitch Meeting. I thought it was more than funny, it was pretty right on.

Digital Native?

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I was having a conversation with a friend about digital ownership. That wasn’t all the conversation was about, but it was a significant part of what we covered. He was telling me about a group of people that had put a lot of money into this digital venture and then it was suddenly gone.

By pure coincidence I got this notice today:

That’s it. A program I’ve been using for a while is going to just stop. The notice popped up right after an “upgrade”. No recourse, no options ~ they’re done. If you’ve put any amount of money into this program… sorry. You’re done. Use it up before April.

This is a game, and I’ve never actually spent any money on it. It was running on the ad revenue from me and clearly that’s not enough for them to keep going with this program. The money amounts for “in app purchases” never really looked like anything more than ten or twelve bucks. I still wouldn’t spend my money on it…

And that’s part of what’s making me think. My friend was explaining this other group of folks had dropped tens or hundreds of dollars on “digital real estate” and would often spend significant amounts of time in these digital locations. I have to admit that I don’t get it. I’m trying to draw parallels to spending money on going to the movies or some other form of entertainment, but the amount of money seems terribly disproportionate to me. I’m not sure where the block is for me… but it definitely doesn’t seem to make sense to me.

I suppose the value of entertainment is in what you get out of it. While hundreds of dollars seems desperately irresponsible to me for purchasing video game… anything frankly, if I didn’t have the ability to get up and out of the house on my own I’d likely see that differently. That digital real estate would be my way to vacation. I wouldn’t get photos at the airport, I’d get screen shots of that one time when this really cool thing happened ~ right?

I will probably have this added to the tally of “Luddite credentials” that I have, but I just don’t ever foresee myself being willing to put so much money into an item of entertainment, and particularly never a digital thing. I’m already very nervous about the number of “books” that I don’t own via Kindle. I do my best to download copies to an off line location, but I can’t say that I’ve gotten them all. Even if I did get them all, what if the reader equipment I have fails to function? I get the queasy feeling that I’ll eventually be dealing with some other kind of entertainment / digital upgrade nonsense about something that will cause me to add to my pile of vinyl records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, VCR tapes…

I suppose I have to chalk this up to the price of entertainment and the illusion of ownership. People will pay what they want to have fun and be part of something entertaining. I won’t be paying to join an online WoW server any time soon, but I hope the folks that do have a great time while it lasts.

The Witcher – A Review

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I’ve been a fantasy fan for a long time, but I haven’t played video games since the days of Atari. When the Netflix series “The Witcher” was announced I had no idea what was headed to the screen. While a long time fan of fantasy I’ve drifted away recently and read in many other genres. I still love it, but missed anything related to this series. I started watching the show with a blank slate, just really hoping for some excellent, accessible fantasy.

Before I get to the spoilers I will say that I did in fact like the series. I can’t say that I loved it, but it is swords and sorcery and that usually works out well for me. If you’re a fan of swords and sorcery it’s worth watching. There is a book series. I thought I would go and grab up the books, then I read this review. Perhaps I’ll hold off. Maybe it’s better to let the show stand on its own.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Why didn’t we get more of *this* Witcher?

Yes, it’s swords and sorcery. It’s got a ton of standard fantasy tropes in there. Eleves, dwarves, wizards, and even dragons. There are castles and wizard battles and swamp monsters and ghouls and…

and all those things are rammed in and around the plot in just 8 episodes.

The problem with epic fantasy is rarely the fantasy part. The problem is the epic part. There is SO much world building and background that it’s almost impossible to cram it all in to anything less than a massive series. The writers tend to do exactly what I said ~ they cram. The push and mash and squeeze as many of the eye catching ‘cool’ fantasy things into as short a span as they can in a desperate grab for eyeball time. The Witcher suffers from this. There is so much there and very, very little of it is actually the main character doing his job. Geralt is a magically created warrior designed to hunt and destroy monsters. The series opens with him battling a swamp dwelling giant spider with human features, then shows his fighting powers against people, then that fades away in order to start stacking in story.

As I wrote that I had to stop and really think about it. How could I complain about building in story? It’s exactly what I always say that I want. That is the part about cramming in the ‘epic’ part. The story is named for Geralt’s job, but then we spend huge amounts of time on Ciri, Yennifer, Jasker the bard, The Brotherhood (that is mostly women?) and a jumble of other bits. We see Geralt’s part in things, but only just.

Witchers are supposed to be constructed to have no human emotions. I suspect this is not the truth and much like the manner in which Spock is portrayed in the modern updates of the Star Trek series the character is deeply emotional, simply repressed to the point of psychological damage. I believe the emotions will burst forth in the form of rage at some point. A truly emotionless character would be far less interesting. What this emotionless warrior does is drift through the story. I want to like Geralt, but he’s flat. On purpose? Maybe.

So a flat character and a jumble of story. At least the whole thing will make sense when it’s fully rendered on screen, right? Wrong.

The time line jumps all over the place. I could never tell when in the story we were supposed to be. Were we in the past, the distant past, the present? It was almost impossible to tell for sure. Flashbacks to dead characters that have been replaced by magic shape shifters only made this worse. Apparently both the sorceress Yennifer and Geralt are supposed to be significantly older? Sorcerers are supposed to have greatly expanded life spans, but we’re only getting vague references to that? It was very frustrating.

The other part I found frustrating was the indecision of what the nature of the show wanted to be. Getting past organizational aspects of how the story was made, what were they trying to portray? There were tons of gratuitous nudity scenes. Generally speaking I am in favor of that sort of thing – if it advances the story in some way. These scenes all gave me the feeling that what they were aiming for was trying to take over the space vacated by Game of Thrones. The show wanted to be dark, and mysterious, violent and sexy… and then they added in Jasker the bard. Jasker should have been Joxer from Xena: Warrior Princess. They could have gone for a much lighter, entertaining version of the entire series. There were still monsters and fighting and love stories just with added camp.

I don’t know if I would stay on board for campy epic fantasy and that’s the show’s biggest issue. It can’t decide what it wants to be or where it wants to go. It’s a retro feel stuffed in a modern package that doesn’t quite fit.

There are other issues associated with the show as well. Yennifer as hunchback and deformed never sat quite right with me. Something was off about that portrayal. When she was transformed it confirmed my fear. This was actually a gorgeous Hollyweird actress that they’d made up to look that particular way, then magically transformed. I do not fall into any category other than ‘able’ so it’s not for me to discuss the depth of this, but despite truly excellent make-up and special effects it just didn’t sit right.

For more depth on this you should check out this article.

I’ve spent quite a few words picking this show apart. These issues are what distract me from flat out loving a successful fantasy series. There are really excellent parts to this show and good stories within the larger story. The series has been announced as having a second season already. My hope is that the story lines get sorted in better order, the actual power of Geralt comes forward (there was a lot of hype around the black eyes in the promo stuff and we almost never see that in the series) and the writers decide to make this story it’s own, not just a GOT replacement.

I do recommend watching the series. As always, supporting something new is vital to showing that we, the consumer, are actually interested in new and exciting shows and that we want something more than another remake.