[ SECRET POST #4779 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4779 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 23 secrets from Secret Submission Post #684.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/Yk5QhDa.png

[silverr]

Ha, agreed, nonny.

For me it wasn't GoT at all, because a) only one character I liked died, and b) For the most part, no one I liked got humiliated or raped on screen.

[(Anonymous)]

no one I liked got raped on screen
Maybe not insert tab A in slot B raped but in the Djinn episode, Yennefer sexually assaults everyone and it's almost all played as jokes. "Oh valley of peNIS!" Jaskier squeaks as Yennefer grabs him by the pussy, and we all chuckle. Oh, Jaskier, you little rascal.

Like, I get what you mean, and I get what OP means, and I don't want to be the humorless SJW who SJWxplains why everything is probblleemmaaatttiiiicccc. Hell, there's much I like about the show. But god knows the critics have a point.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, they're not saying no one got raped on screen, just that it wasn't anyone they care about.

[silverr]

yeah, no, not what I meant, nonny, but thanks for tRying. (Full disclosure: I didn't care for Jaskier, but the only person I felt "deserved" their fate it was the guy who Geralt chained to the bed so that the monster could eat him.)

And to the previous nonny: Sorry, fair point re: the djinn. That didn't register that way for me, probably because to me it didnt't compare in degree to the rapes I saw and heard about in GoT.

[silverr]

Yeah, I do get what you mean as well, though. I know I sound like an old fogey here, but the thing I really don't like about "edgy" shows that keep pushing the envelope (or w/e they're supposedly doing) is that they often reset the scale on what is tolerable/acceptable/non-problematic and what isn't.... but they only reset one end of the scale, if that makes sense?

[(Anonymous)]

I thought they all volunteered for the orgy? Hang on, might have misread the introductory bits.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure they were all the people in town that Yen gave magical blue pills to. So yes, they all wanted to have sex, most likely with the people they were having sex with, presumably not in a big writhing ball in front of Yen.

So, it's kind of a stretch to compare it to GoT's hallmark violent sex crimes, but it definitely hits at least "sex pollen" levels of nonconsensual.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I just rewatched that episode. The conversation with Tissaia implies Yen's setting up for something, instead of, say, trying to lure people into a trap. And the people in the orgy have masks. Looks like a consensual sex party with (magical) aphrodisiacs to me.

That said, she's kind of full-on with Jaskier, and enspelling Geralt to assault people is pretty damn heinous. Just not, er, rape.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, don't get me started on Geralt. It's all icky at best.

Geralt and Yennefer flirt heavily, then he realizes she is bad news and wants to leave. She mind-whammies him, tells him he has no chance to overpower her, she kisses and bites him hard enough to draw blood, and Geralt blacks out.
And okay, this sounds like literally the textbook case we try to teach teenagers (It's okay to change your mind!). But she's hot and they're the canon OTP, so it's okay, and the show had both longing music and romantic flickering candlelight AND eerie wind noises to acknowledge that it wasn't the happy end yet. And he was clearly into her earlier. And it's almost certain Yennefer didn't actually rape him after he blacked out because the show would have shown us if she did, probably with tasteful shots with more flickering candlelight, billowing bed curtains and romantic music. So no sexual assault there.

When he wakes up, Geralt learns he attacked and humiliated Yennefer's political enemies and we laugh because it's funny that a grown man is spanked in public. I'm sure Geralt didn't mind setting his policy of non-interference in politics and his generally pacifist approach aside for this, and anyway, forcing someone to do something they're fundamentally opposed to isn't a sexual assault.

My problem isn't the fact that Yennefer assaults people. That's conflict, and conflict is what we want in a story, and it's especially cool if it comes from a female main character who we feel at least some sympathy for. That's a complexity we rarely see. Great! But I have to criticize that the show does it badly by playing her shitty behavior as a joke. The mayor has been roofied and it's funny because he's naked even though he's not hot, haha, and the dozens of attractive people forced into an orgy just so Yennefer has something to look at are adorably befuddled when Yennefer breaks the spell with a humorously unsexy word, just like I would be if I suddenly found myself surrounded by my naked co-workers. It's the fun kind of team-building exercise!
If the goal was to make Yennefer bad, so that we can have a redemption arc later, the show failed miserably, because her behavior doesn't read as "evil" to the viewer. It was all just cheeky fun! And it's not because we're un-woke viewers who don't get it, it's because the show tells us it's funny, oh valley of penis, haha. That's what makes the show bad: the things it says don't match the tone in which it's saying it, and that confuses the message. That is bad storytelling, and the show does it a lot.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think they were "forced into an orgy". I think they volunteered. I stated my textual reasons for thinking that earlier.

Yennefer is exceptionally unpleasant elsewhere, yes.

[des_pudels_kern]

Yennefer ends the orgy by saying "ragamuffin" or something similar, and everybody stops writhing, looks confused and shocked, shies away from the people they were previously touching and covers themselves. These were people under a spell, not willing participants in a scene.

It's a huge rape scene and the lack of acknowledgement has soured not only Yennefer's character for me, but also the creative forces behind the show who added this mass rape that, as far as I can remember, has no basis in the books but was made up specifically for the show.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm wary of some future events that may happen as they do in the books. I'll just say that there's rape in the books (although I don't remember anything onscreen so to speak) and a lot of attempted assaults. Some of which is vital to the overarching plot. I think having a female director has really helped tone down a lot of the grossness though, because Sapkowski writes really interesting, multifaceted female characters but definitely still falls into the rapey pitfalls of a lot of male fantasy writers.

[silverr]

Have you seen this?

https://www.tor.com/2019/12/09/get-ready-for-the-women-of-the-witcher/

I'm still on the wait list for the books, but I found some of the analysis in that article interesting.

[(Anonymous)]

Ayrt

Wow! That was a great analysis. It's very spot on in regards to the portrayal of women and women's bodies in The Witcher verse. Women are regarded as walking wombs a lot of the time in the series narrative (which is what makes the actual female characters interesting, as they play on that worldview - the Lodge and Ciri especially). I'll add that as far as the grossness and vile behaviour towards women goes, Sapkowski does portray it as equally abhorrent as the rest of the goings on of the war. It's a grim but believable take I haven't seen beyond the Black Company books. I hate descriptions of rape, but there was never a point in the books where I thought it went too far or was there for shock/titillation. So points to Sapkowski for that!

Thanks for the link!

[arashinoookami]

Thanks for the link!

[(Anonymous)]

Still lookin'

[(Anonymous)]

Honestly! I love fantasy, but GoT was just... so unenjoyable to me?? None of the aspects I liked were worth the things I didn't.

The Witcher has been a lot of fun, like... I genuinely enjoy watching all of the characters, even side characters I don't like are interesting to me in terms of what they'll do and how it will impact the others.

And I really LIKE being able to watch a fantasy series where a teenage girl can wander the world unprotected with a creepy guy chasing after her and yet I never ONCE find myself worried that there's going to be sexual violence. I appreciate how it's handled in terms of something characters can talk about as something that exists, that has happened in the past as w/ Renfri, without the show putting it front and center and making the audience look at it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't see why people would think that, they're completely different. Not all fantasy is the same.