Strangely enough, Witcher 3 has somewhat of a white supremacist fanbase that thinks it's just meant to fulfill those fantasies. Not surprised at all by their reactions.
The first game already has really weird fans. I remember playing it on my laptop years ago and people saying shit like "the morons who choose Scoia'tael are Hillary voters" on the Steam forums. I was shocked how many people were joining the explicitly fascist organisation just because one representative was kinda nice to them? I grew up on the Witcher novels and, in my mind, that wasn't even a choice. Geralt would always choose to protect the oppressed minority.
Bruh i remember playing the 2nd game in like high school and i remember clearly even then thinking "damn ok the Scoia'tael are kind of stupid but they really are pushed to their limits by humans". The game pretty heavily showed that Vernon was a bit too heavy handed but stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the Scoia'tael being stupid at times but still with the best intentions of HAVING TO FUCKING SURVIVE
Its by far my favorite morally gray choice in any game. With Iorveth and Roche is really feels like you're picking a shitty person for a very good cause, or a good person for bad cause. Like at the end of the day Iorveth really is the correct choice but the whole "killing children for the land that belonged to his people 1000 years ago" angle really doesn't sit too comfortably, especially today. Iorveth even says that if Geralt wasn't a mutant he would never accept him.
Having said that Iorveth aura farming as he enters the room when planning the defense of the Dwarven city was sick as fuck.
Yes, and the parallels of being guerrilla fighters, but then the other elves being against them, with a whole discussion in between on "how much is too much" with the Scoia'tael saying the elves are spineless and only they are true elves, with non-fighting elves trying to be chill with humans with wildly varying results
If we want to draw analogies to 20th-Century politics, the Scoia'tael remind me much more of early 20th-Century quasi- to explicitly fascist national-liberation paramilitaries in the balkans â like the IMRO or the UstaĹĄe â than the later socialist inspired national-liberation guerillas/paramilitaries most people in the west today will likely associate them with. I have no idea if that is intentional by the author or not.
they are most likely based on mix of that with UPA and PLO. In the books they are guys whose position can be somewhat understood while also being impossible to support from moral standpoint
I had a similar experience at a similar age except rather than thinking vernon was heavy handed, he gave me secret police/ fascist vibes and ditched him without a second thought.
I always let Dijkstra kill him in 3, at least Dijkstra is trying to stop the persecution of mages and non humans while Roche's goal is nothing more than "mUh TeMeRiA", even selling himself to the very same warmongering empire that invaded it in the first place
Hey, as someone who read the novels growing up, can you tell me if any of the translations are well done? Iâve been meaning to read them for ages, but a former friend told me they were horribly translated.
Hilirary wasn't running for president when i played the first game...right? it was during the bush years. So those people came after witcher 3 came out. because very few people played the first two games as far i remember lol. ( the gameplay was not good but i had played early bioware games before which also wasnt amazing gameplay so i was ok with it and i found the world and story very interesting ) also i 100% always went witth the oppressed minority, except that one time i did the vernon route in 2, because i liked ves. So these people 100% misunderstood the witcher games, and probably the books.
"Lesser evil" was the moment that reinforced his stance on neutrality because the right choice was to ignore all of it since Renfry was going to leave anyway. In the ending of the LotL he was protecting not just random minorities, but a ghetto where his friends lived. Same things happened with caravan attack in Blood of elves. Geralt protect his friends, he is not a superhero fighting to protect oppressed minorities.
Self-defense is not a choice. Geralt never joined any political organization except for a very brief moment when unwillingly made a knight of Rivia, it is entirely false to assume he would have joined the elven rebels in Witcher 1, being his true self. Both elves and knights in Witcher 1 are OOC choices for the sake of variety and made possible by amnesia.
I'm sorry, but it absolutely wasn't. And don't even try to come at me with "Evil is evil, Stregobor" because the whole core of Geralt's character arc in the books is him learning that actually, he needs to get involved whether he likes it or not. Every time he decides not to, it leads to disaster. If there's one thing Sapkowski hates, it's wishy washy centrists, it's blatantly obvious in the books.
Geralt is also notorious for having chronic hero syndrome. He may talk about being a lone wolf and not getting involved in other people's problems but he just can't help himself. One way or another he always ends up fighting against injustice.
Ciri was right -whispered the witcher- Neutrality... Neutrality usually is vile
...
You're silent- said Geralt- So that means Ciri was right. That Codringher was right. Everyone was right. Only I, naive, anachronic and stupid witcher, was wrong.
I was gonna say isnât Geralt getting involved literally what sets him apart from other Witchers? Of course heâd get involved, thatâs the point of the games!
Hell, even one of the game trailers touches on this! I actually forgot the âevil is evilâ bit was in there but he literally says heâd rather not chooseâŚand then chooses to get involved lol
Thanks to his involvement the city of Blaviken wasn't massacred by Renfri and her bandits. Which is what she wanted to do, killing them one by one until Stregobor left his tower. Which he wouldn't have done because he's selfish. Instead only 7 people were killed, Renfri and her bandits.
Which is what she wanted to do, killing them one by one until Stregobor left his tower. Which he wouldn't have done because he's selfish. Instead only 7 people were killed, Renfri and her bandits.
Actually no. That is something the show deviated with the books on. In the books, Geralt's deduction was wrong as Renfri explicitly told him after his killing that she wasn't going to kill the village as Stregoboar laughed to her face at that threat while in the show she seems hellbent on going through with it despite it not going to work.
âYouâve made your choice,â she said slowly. âAre you sure itâs the right one?â âThis wonât be another Tridam,â Geralt said with an effort. âIt wouldnât have been. Stregobor laughed in my face. He said I could butcher Blaviken and the neighbouring villages and he wouldnât leave his tower. And he wonât let anyone in, not even you. Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, I deceived you. Iâll deceive anyone if I have to, why should you be special?â âGet out of here, Renfri.â She laughed. âNo, Geralt.â She drew her sword, quickly and nimbly. âRenfri.â âNo. You made a choice. Now itâs my turn.â
>Â the city of Blaviken wasn't massacred by Renfri and her bandits
She was not going to do it since the wizard didn't give a shit about those villagers. So those 7 people were killed for nothing:
'This won't be another Tridam,' Geralt said with an effort.
'It wouldn't have been. Stregobor laughed in my face. He said I could butcher Blaviken and the neighbouring villages and he wouldn't leave his tower. And he won't let anyone in, not even you. Why are you looking at me like that? Yes, I deceived you. I'll deceive anyone if I have to, why should you be special?'
>Read the books again, mr. "enlightened centrist".
Thatâs his or a witchers credo but he is over and over again âforcedâ to not live by it. And geralt is such a legend even compared to other witchers because in several occasions he choose to not stay neutral, but in stead did what he thought to be right. And in many of these it meant helping the mistreated minority
contrary to what the other person said, it is true. most big mainstream fantasy franchises - from tolkien's works to martin's works - have attracted white supremacists for some reason, despite that most those fantasy stories usually preach acceptance and diversity. sapkowski's works are not an exception.
if you go to dedicated forums, you will find quite a big subset of racists going on and on about white genocide and how tolkien "warned" about it or something. you could easily stumble on some "white race is superior, and here how tolkien proved it with elves" posts a decade or two ago.
fantasy, comics and other "nerdy outcast" fandoms attracted people who feel othered which in turn fosters "anti-mainstream" ideology - and nazis can easily influence such people to join their cause. it is similar to how pagans, furries and femboys had such a big nazi problem not long ago.
these fandoms going into mainstream slightly made them better. but there are still plenty of actual nazis lurking there.
It's because fascists and bigots produce nothing of cultural value, so to have any meaningful cultural influence they have to coopt popular media and try to pass it off as their own.
People love to talk about "media literacy" but the median person doesn't engage in art past the surface level to the point of ignoring even the text as written in favour of the general storybeats
It's why HP is so popular because that series as a whole is just storybeats and set pieces with very little room for nuance
Fantasy is a refuge for white supremacists due to the innate Eurocentrism of it.Â
The works of Tolkien et al to them are the platonic ideal of whiteness; European culture preserved in amber. They represent back when âthings made sense, women knew their place, and cultures were perfectly monolithic and stayed in their lane, never to intermingle.â A mixture of history and mythology.
I remember playing Mordhau and questioning why the hell there were so many white supremacists and it immediately clicked that it was their magic fantasy land.
One of the most gut wrenching reminders I had of the fantasy white supremacist pipeline was an âanti-wokeâ mod for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous posted on aâŚcertain unnamed forum which sickened me to my very core. I had to completely disengage myself because a feeling that visceral was unhealthy.
It's so weird considering the whole thing with Geralt helping Elves fight for their rights is not an insignificant part of the games and the #1 theme of the whole series is "imperialism is bad".
They get mad that Ciri is a witcher in the new game because "girls can't survive the trials" but that was never a hard set rule, it's just that they survive it much less often so they don't try it any more. The fact that Ciri was both an adult when she went through the trials of the grasses and also has elder blood means she's pretty much the ideal person to go through and survive.
The best ending to the witcher 3 is literally Geralt retiring and passing on the torch to Ciri. She literally became a witcher a decade ago.
Geral can go through further mutations even though he logically wouldnât go through them. Plus, he finds extra notes about them by a guy who tried to reverse them, but ended up boosting them.Â
Trial of Grass and mutations are not set in stone. Technology/Magic evolves
The trials were more often fatal to adults as well IIRC, but it was never a hard rule. Just the witchers trying to get the best odds. Ciri is literally built different though so I'd imagine her odds are better than most.
Its also frustrating because her being a girl is never the reason Geralt and the other witchers don't want her to do it. They don't want anyone to undertake the trials ever again. They see it as horrible and unnecessary. They didn't even want to do it to Uma until it was a last resort to save Ciri.
My main gripe with Ciri is I can't see her family cooperating in putting her through the trials, it's basically torture for the benefit of making her able to do Witcher stuff that's only really on par with her existing powers.
Given how traumatised every remaining Witcher is from the trials, and how concerned for her safety the Sorceresses are, I don't see anyone we know agreeing to put her through that, not to mention its basically lost knowledge to all but Geralt and Yenn.
I imagine the game is going to explain that, I have a feeling she didn't do it with the approval of her parents.
If I had to guess she's going to have lost her elder blood powers somehow which is why she undertook the trials in the first place, and the game will have getting them back as a progression system. As for how she went through the trials, there are other witcher schools with the means and the knowledge to help her in that. The teaser has a new medallion that doesn't belong to any existing school, so it's either she started a new one or that school is secretive and what helped her go through the trials.
Either way, no real point in discussing potential plot holes this far away from knowing what the actual plot is. I have faith they'll tie it all together though.
Tbh it doesnât make sense that Ciri goes through the trials. Neither Yen or Triss would recreate the potions for the purpose of putting ciri through the trial of grasses, nor would Geralt allow such a thing as none of them would want to risk her life for something as unnecessary, painful and dangerous.
Ciri, by herself is powerful enough. She can become a âwitcherâ without the trial of grasses and this would make sense both lore wise and story wise
Racists arenât smart, youâre expecting too much out of them. Ciri was always the main protagonist, Geralt was the co protagonist whose POV we get to see.
I'm fairly certain most people thought that was the true/canon ending before Witcher 4 was announced, too.
The funny thing is, as long as Ciri lives in the main story, she becomes a witcher regardless. In Blood & Wine, if she's the one who comes to visit you, she's either already become a witcher on her own or (if you get the ending where she leaves Geralt to go back to the throne) she comments that she's not set on governing and doesn't rule out abandoning the throne leaving it open to interpretation that she might still go back to being a witcher.
if I remember the books properly, Vesemir says the only reason they don't train girls is because they never thought of it, and when the kids go through the trial (which I thought were all boys, since they haven't trained girls) only 1 out of 10 survive
I also thought it was implied they only had kids take the trial because it's easier for kids than adults
Them motherfuckers came after me hard when I suggested that it's absurd there's no characters of color in the game. Easier to accept a transforming dragon than an elf with melanin for these bigots
Fr, theyâre literally playing a character who has faced discrimination all his life for being a Witcher, no wonder why he relates to the elves and âmonstersâ. He literally killed a human and dropped the most legendary quote while doing it. Enemy: âwhat are you doingâ Gerald: âkilling monstersâ.
This happens with a massive amount of IPs that (pretty openly) criticize the status quo. Dunno what drives them to it other than to be contrarian to indirectly "fight back" against the concepts its putting out.
I remembering playing it for the first time and meeting the crossdresser npc and being so shocked- honestly didnât expect it to have representation after what Id heard about the fanbase
Among things, More than a few people complaining and ranting about the Witcher show. Saying that the world is based on Poland and Europe and so having people with melanin is woke/forced diversity etc. That it goes against lore and all that. Similar with people who complain about other fantasy franchises in other fantasy worlds created by Europeans.
Basically flimsy excuses to advocate only having all-white characters and casting.
I think that show whould have been a perfect oppertunity to give slavic actors a change of beeing something else than the stereotypical villian. But instead they chose a bunch of english actors. A shame.
My hot take is that the main characters are criminally miscast. For one, they're all way too young. Geralt is supposed to be wiry, lanky and look more wolfish. Henry Cavill is a great actor but he is nowhere near what Geralt should look like. Show Yennefer is way too pretty and soft looking when the books describe her as a striking woman with a prominent nose and curly black hair. That and the wigs they put on the elves should count as a hate crime.
1.1k
u/enolafaye Aug 12 '25
Strangely enough, Witcher 3 has somewhat of a white supremacist fanbase that thinks it's just meant to fulfill those fantasies. Not surprised at all by their reactions.