@Roz - yeah. Part of what makes Yen who she is in the books is a ton of charisma, despite not being classically beautiful, combined with 80+ years of experience and everyone underestimating her because of how young she keeps herself looking.
If the actress has charisma and good chemistry with Geralt, I think it'll work fine. I wouldn't mind if they'd made her look older, but I'm fine with sticking to the apparent age in the books.
Yeah well, people can whine about the series not being exactly like the games, but this is an adaptation of the books; I (and other book fans) will endeavour to shout louder than they do if we have to. 
I mean, adaptations are never 100%; the Expanse isn't a perfect retelling of the books, but it keeps the spirit of the story intact (no doubt because the authors are heavily involved with the show). If we get something that's along those lines here, it doesn't need to be a completely accurate retelling of the Blood of Elves saga. As long as it keeps the spirit of the story—which is, arguably, that the family you find and make along the way is more important to who you are than bloodline or prophecy, and "destiny" will ruin your life if you let it—then I will be happy.
where the first two games are in their own little alternate continuity, the third seems to take place within the book continuity, set right after the final book.)
Wait a minute
hold up
you're saying I can read books and skip the first two games, and just play the good one?
This is like the best news ever.
As Roz says, you don't even need to read the books; the third game does manage to stand on its own. There are bits of the game you may get more out of if you've read the books; Avallac'h is a more understandable character if you've read last two books, for instance. The vision of a particular character (who does not otherwise appear in the game outside of that vision) dying is a direct reference to events in Lady of the Lake. Etc.
If you do decide to read the books, there's only a few you really need to read; most of the others are short story collections or side-stories. However, the story collections are worth reading; they flesh out the earliest parts of Geralt and Yennefer's relationship pretty well, and a lot of characters who are later big players in the saga first show up in those stories. Also, the second of the collections (Sword of Destiny) has an extremely important and notable event in young-Ciri's life, as well as some useful backstory on her tale in general. And you get to see Geralt being both worst dad (in one story) and best dad (in another).
In terms of series chronology, with the bolded ones being the actual books of the Blood of Elves saga (i.e., Ciri's story), and italics being the games:
@Roz - Yes, plus the way she's described in the books, that actress honestly is superb. Yennefer is not supposed to be stunningly beautiful; it's her charisma and force of personality that draws people to her. If she and Henry Cavill have good chemistry, that casting was inspired.
Depending on where they start in the story, the actress playing Ciri might be a bit too old, but that's not necessarily something they couldn't tweak in the story. The actress for Ciri is otherwise spot-on for the book description as well.
Yennefer, Triss, and Ciri are all made more "cinematic" in the games; Triss, for instance, is not a redhead.
The books are really worth a read, though the English translation is considered lackluster compared to most. And though the final book of the saga takes a bit of a weird left turn into Arthurian myth and never really quite seems to resolve the Wild Hunt storyline it introduces. (Hence the "fix-it fic" that the Witcher 3 basically seems to be; where the first two games are in their own little alternate continuity, the third seems to take place within the book continuity, set right after the final book.)
At any rate, I think the casting is very true to the books. And I am certainly very happy it's an adaptation of the books rather than the games; as I think literally all of my friends who've discussed the Netflix series in my earshot know by now, I am hoping the series at least touches on the Korath Desert arc and Ciri befriending Ihuarraquax. (#GiveCiriHerUnicornBuddy2k19)
HELLO YES.
(UC is my favorite Gundam continuity—no surprise, since 0083 Stardust Memories is probably my favorite Gundam series—and I find myself very interested indeed.)
@mietze - I'm gonna go with the latter option there.
@Selerik ...have these people ever done project management?
I also have two that don't really apply to me.
I have learned to cope and focus (which is admittedly way easier on the ADHD meds), but my coping mechanism tends to lead to a very interrupt-driven method of functioning; if I am in that mode at work and you bring me something new, I will shift to work on that and then return to the original thing afterwards. Unfortunately, I often then find it hard to return to the original thing. So the "can't switch tasks" only really applies when in hyperfocus, but "cannot switch back" is constant. I have one context switch in me per half-day, I think. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, make me use it and I'm going to never be able to context switch back to the original task.
I can cope in chairs; I don't like it, unless the chair reclines, but I can cope. (Couches, though, I am incapable of sitting normally on.)
@Olsson - brb writing stats for something in the D&D 5e campaign I'm running. (Cause earth elemental type creatures are great, but in a campaign where necromancy figures heavily, an earth elemental fashioned out of the ground in which people were buried sounds like exactly the thing I need to inflict on my poor players.)
Seriously, that looks awesome.
Oh hey, a disturbing number of these ring true for me. Probably for you also!
I have a shameful admission, but... something inspired by Miraculous could be fun. Though it would probably work better as a sandboxed online tabletop. And yeah, it's a French children's cartoon.
Still, the idea of superheroes who each have one 'power' beyond agility/speed/durability/strength, and once you use that power, you've got five minutes before you revert to your civilian persona... it's something you could have some fun with.
@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Where do you get your stencils? I've considered those.
Amazon. There are approximately 8 billion journal stencils. This is the main set I use.
ETA: You can also find interesting custom-made stencils on Etsy, as well as custom-made washi tape.
@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Do you do a full-month calendar page? That was what always took the longest for me. Sitting there with a pencil and ruler meticulously making lines, then going back over them in pen and... eesh.
Nope. My full month is a list; numbers down the left-hand margin, with the events written in beside them.
The page that takes me forever is my habit tracker because, yes, I do a grid and then color alternating lines with a light marker. And then label the page and add stickers. (This time I added a watercolor space whale that went nicely with the shades of blue I used as the dominant color on the page. I used a very interesting style of outline stencil from that set I linked above, drawn in black ink for the page label, and a metallic purple marker to fill in the outline afterwards.)
@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Also: I did not know there was such a thing as washi tape paper. Man the things I could do with that. I might need a printer and some of this at some point!
Eyep. It's very dangerous.
(Though I feel like this is verging on getting into "we should make a thread for bullet journaling if we don't have one already" territory.)
@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I have yet to find a bujo method that works consistently for me. Partly because I see these amazing, gorgeous layouts people do and the hate of my own lack of ability to make something so good creeps up...... on top of the 'I spent hours on this but it looks like hot garbage'
I love bullet journaling, but I am bad at it.
I had this problem too, honestly. I was just doing very bland and sort of messy pages, and it made me keep drifting away from my bujo. But I've finally discovered the joys of stencils, washi stickers and washi tape, and my housemate's stash of washi sticker inkjet paper with which I can make my own stickers. Also metallic markers. I cannot draw for shit, but I can sure as heck stencil.
My August theme in the bujo, for instance, will be gaming. And I've got a bunch of sort of watercolor imagery of dice, minifigs, game controllers, and so on which will be printed on washi sticker paper and placed in the bujo to accent various pages. I'm going to borrow some of my housemate's holographic d20 washi tape. I've got stencils with nicely dramatic fonts suitable for a gaming theme; where I do not do headings as washi stickers on the inkjet, I will use stencils instead.
I have found now that my bujo is pretty, I use it more consistently.
Being ADHD, working on your bullet journal for the next month, having your morning dose of ADHD medication wear off right as you end up smearing ink everywhere in the bujo (ruining pages you'd just worked on for an hour and a half), and finding yourself on the verge of frustrated tears over something so dumb. And then having to go take another dose of the meds, sit down, and redo everything again.
Some of it may be stress over family health stuff, some of it was the ADHD medication wearing off, but it feels like creating the charts and lists for the next month in a freaking journal should never drive someone to that point, even if a mess gets made.
@Too-Old-For-This said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@Sparks Olives are gross. And oregano is the devil. Its an herb that easily overpowers everything it touches, yet its thrown about with casual abandon.
I actually agree with you on oregano inasmuch as it should be used sparingly. A little bit of oregano on a pizza is wonderful; many places do put far too much on.
@Selira said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
why would you defile pineapple with olives, how do those even work together?!
Pineapple goes best with something salty, a little sweet already,
Yes, exactly! Like really good black olives (or kalamata olives, which are even better as they have a higher salt content to them, but which a lot of pizza places don't offer as a topping).
Olives are too bitter for pineapple!
You are clearly using the wrong olives.
Look, all I'm saying is that pepperoni, pineapple, and black olive is the pizza of the gods.
Sausage and pineapple is an abomination against all natural law, order, and reason.
ETA:
@Too-Old-For-This said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Also... no oregano. >.>
@Thenomain said in MU Things I Love:
Updated game engines.
@faraday , @Ashen-Shugar , @Griatch , whomever is in charge of Penn these days, you lot don’t get thanked enough.
I think Penn's maintainer currently is Raevnos, yes?
