@redalader replied to your post:
i absolutely LOVED the show but i would love it if you could expand on your tags because I want to know more about what worked better in the books (the jaskier plot kinda makes me sad im ngl i wish he hadnt written the song now)
No problem, I’m happy to expand some! Under the cut, because it got really long. There should be no book spoilers past what Netflix has already covered, just missing scenes.
So with Jaskier, I’ve just checked and I wasn’t totally accurate in my tags. He does still write a ballad after that adventure, but:
“[...] Do you know what? I’m going to tell you something.” He stopped playing, hugged the lute like a child and grew sad. “I don't think I’ll mention the elves and the difficulties they've got to struggle with, in the ballad. There'd be no shortage of scum wanting to go into the mountains…Why hasten the—” The troubadour grew silent.
“Go on, finish,” said Torque bitterly. “You wanted to say: hasten what can't be avoided. The inevitable.”
Writing that ballad will destroy the safety of the elves living there, and for Jaskier it’s just another song. He’s already a popular bard at this point, it’s not like it’s going to make a big difference to him. Geralt still has his ideas about how the elves should give up and fit in with society (which I have my issues with, but do think is primarily to do with his own desire for normality), but after they’re freed they don’t want any harm to come to the elves. And then you look at Toss A Coin To Your Witcher and the elves are a “pest” and Geralt is a “Champion” and “friend of humanity” for defeating them, which actually misses the point entirely. The elves are vilified, where in the short story they’re pitied.
The first time that Geralt and Ciri interact is after Ciri, age ten, runs away from home because Calanthe is setting up an arranged marriage for her. This is the point at which she ends up in Brokilon forest and meets Geralt, and they bond during the few days they spend together. There’s a lot of really delightful moments:
“Ooow...” the little girl yelped as she took a step.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve done something... To my leg.”
“Wait, Braenn! Come here, scamp, I’ll carry you pick-a-back.”
“There was once... a cat,” he began. “An ordinary tabby mouser. And one day that cat went off, all by itself, on a long journey to a terrible, dark forest. He walked... And he walked... And he walked...”
“Don’t think,” Ciri mumbled, cuddling up to him, “that I’ll fall asleep before he gets there.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Know what? I can’t stand you.”
“That’s dreadful. Ciri, you’ve stabbed me in the very heart.”
“I know,” she nodded gravely, sniffing, and then clung tightly to him.
Eventually, they escape and Geralt leaves Ciri with Mousesack. This is the point at which Mousesack attempts to encourage Geralt to follow his destiny, for Ciri’s sake as well as his own.
“How do you know Ciri would want to go with me? Because of some old prophecies?”
“No,” Mousesack said gravely. “Because she only fell asleep after you cuddled her. Because she mutters your name and searches for your hand in her sleep.”
Geralt still chooses to leave at this point, but this means that when they meet again outside Yurga’s hut it’s a reunion, rather than the first time. Geralt has been searching for Ciri since he heard of the fall of Cintra, and Ciri, after being left all alone in the world, has found someone she knows she can rely on.
“You found me! Oh, Geralt! I was waiting all the time! For so very long... We’ll be together now, won’t we? Now we’ll be together, won’t we? Say it, Geralt! Forever! Say it!”
“Forever, Ciri.”
“It’s like they said! Geralt! It’s like they said! Am I your destiny? Say it! Am I your destiny?”
[...]
“You’re more than that, Ciri. Much more.”
Now obviously in the series it’s difficult to fit this in with the rest of Ciri’s storyline as we’re starting with the Fall of Cintra, but I would have been a lot happier with Ciri being introduced a few episodes in and spreading her backstory out over a longer period. I’ve seen people saying they watched the end of Something More and thought Geralt and Ciri were meant to marry each other (given Pavetta and Duny), and I think that says a lot about how little development was given to their relationship.
I don’t think I mentioned this in the tags, but Geralt and Yennefer’s first meeting in the books is when she’s incredibly hung over, craving apple juice, and in the bed of her current boyfriend.
The stairs led to a bedroom, the floor of which was covered in an enormous, shaggy animal skin. A white shirt with lace cuffs, and umpteen white roses, lay on the skin. And a black stocking.
The other stocking hung from one of the four engraved posts which supported the domed canopy over the bed. [...]
Geralt cleared his throat loudly, looking at the abundant black locks visible from under the eiderdown. The eiderdown moved and moaned. Geralt cleared his throat even louder.
“Beau?” the abundance of black locks asked indistinctly. “Have you brought the juice?”
It’s a meet ugly in the extreme, and I don’t understand why it was replaced by the dub-con magical orgy scene. Maybe they wanted a bit more nudity or something, I don’t know.
After that, we’ve got Geralt asking for help, the mind control, the trip to prison, and eventually we get to the wish. In the series, Yennefer doesn’t hear what Geralt wished, and it’s portrayed as being some kind of love spell, which throws in the usual consent issues. In the books, we still don’t know the exact wording of Geralt’s wish, but there’s a big clue thrown in.
“It's not that simple,” the priest pondered. “But if…If he expressed the right wish…If he somehow tied his fate to the fate…No, I don't think it would occur to him. And it's probably better that it doesn't.”
Yennefer hears exactly what Geralt wishes, and isn’t bothered by it. Her biggest concern is that the whole “tying their fates together” thing will disadvantage him:
“Your wish,” she whispered, her lips very near his ear. “I don't know whether such a wish can ever be fulfilled. I don't know whether there's such a Force in Nature that could fulfill such a wish. But if there is, then you've condemned yourself. Condemned yourself to me.”
In both the books and the series we don’t see them interacting between fighting the djinn and the dragon hunt. However the relationship during that time is portrayed differently in both. In the series it seems like a number of one night stands over the years, whereas in the books we know Geralt and Yennefer lived in Vengerberg together for around a year (until Geralt freaked out and ran off in the middle of the night, which is where the antagonism comes in when they meet again).
When the breakup comes around, Yennefer is trying to choose between Istredd, who adores her, but who she feels nothing for, and Geralt, who she loves but who can’t convince her that he loves her back (because he’s hiding behind his so-called lack of emotions). For most of the story she plans to leave Istredd and choose Geralt, until she confronts him about his feelings and her own insecurities. The short stories play with fairy tales a lot, and Sapkowski uses The Snow Queen as a metaphor here:
“I’m travelling with you, Yen, because the harness of my sleigh got entangled, caught up in your runners. And a blizzard is all around me. And a frost. It’s cold.”
“Warmth would melt the shard of ice in you, the shard I stabbed you with,” she whispered. “Then the spell would be broken and you would see me as I really am.”
“Then lash your white horses, Yen. May they race north, where a thaw never sets in. I want to get to your ice castle as quickly as I can.”
“That castle doesn’t exist,” Yennefer said, her mouth twitching. She grimaced. “It’s a symbol. And our sleigh ride is the pursuit of a dream which is unattainable. For I, the Elf Queen, desire warmth. That is my secret. Which is why, every year, my sleigh carries me amidst a blizzard through some little town and every year someone dazzled by my spell gets their harness caught in my runners. Every year. Every year someone new. Endlessly. Because the warmth I desire at the same time blights the spell, blights the magic and the charm. My sweetheart, stabbed with that little icy star, suddenly becomes an ordinary nobody. And I become, in his thawed out eyes, no better than all the other... mortal women...”
Yennefer is afraid that he’ll grow tired of her, or that she’ll grow tired of him. She wants more out of the relationship emotionally, but is afraid it will ruin what they already have. Geralt thinks they’re happy as they are, so why do things need to change? But what he wants isn’t enough for her, and what she wants is too much for him, so in the end the relationship falls apart and she leaves town, refusing to choose either man.
Despite my complaining about it here, I really do think the Netflix series did very well. I enjoy it a lot, but there are things that I find frustrating. On the other hand, there are things I think the Netflix series does better - there’s no depiction of Sodden Hill in the books and I think that was fantastically done, and they cut some uncomfortable scenes that don’t make a difference plot-wise which I really appreciate. It’s more that it gets frustrating when a showrunner regularly insists that they’re being incredibly accurate to the books and they just... aren’t.
