To break out this thread, let me expand a second on Witcher As Female Gaze...
I love me some Sword & Sorcery. Love love love. But for female characters, it’s basically all just victims and Amazons. Even if you’re not getting raped and murdered, you’re that super rare unicorn who is Fighting Back and everybody starts every conversation with “OMG a woman.”
(Except maybe later Xena, but let’s just all agree that later Xena had Gone Places.)
But in Witcher, everyone’s first comment is not “OH MY GOD A GIRL WHO IS DOING STUFF.” It’s like, shit is on fire, there’s some kind of screaming flying thing, Bob’s a dragon and...wait, you want HOW MUCH MONEY?
It’s not that it’s super great but we’re just past having to stop every thirty seconds and go OMG A WOMAN. Like if Brienne had lived in that world, no one would even CARE.
(This was my problem with the movie BRAVE, incidentally. It was fine. Nothing wrong with it. But another tomboy princess who doesn’t want to get married was just disappointing because that story doesn’t feel empowering any more, it just feels like still being stuck.)
And it’s just nice to have a fantasy world where your personal power fantasy is unremarkable instead of OMG SPECIAL AMAZON UNICORN.
And also the way Geralt says “Hmmm” would make a nun sweat.
The End
The End
