Sorry for the tangent in my Witcher video, this just bothers me.
Since I recorded it, I managed to get enough stomach together to watch one of Razorfist’s rants on Witcher and I regret not doing so before as it’s best to see his argument from him rather than from his fans, for obvious reasons, and snippets off his twitter account.
The reason I haven’t done so previously is part of me thought I’d enough of a grasp going by what I did and when I thought about it and figured that I mightn’t, I didn’t really have the will to listen to him till now as Razorfist’s style is ok when you agree but when you seriously disagree it’s quite, quite grating.
Transcripts are a great way around that.
In the video, “No More Witcher for RazörFist (And Why)”, he is sorry that CDProjekt Red is getting caught up in this so that’s something.
Though he seems to have changed that stance since as he was attacking CDProjekt Red via twitter around the time of my recording of this episode over them saying that someone was holding old Cyberpunk 2077 docs for ransom, saying “Stealing intellectual property is wrong, guise. (…unless it belongs to Michael Moorcock)”, when CDProjekt Red talked about the Cyberpunk trademark “The company that made its name thanks to a work of plagiarism proffers a lecture on copyright. Hilarity of hilarities.” and lastly “Why would it change that both Sapkowski – and @CDPROJEKTRED – stole from Elric of Melniboné without giving credit?” so yeah, that was one hell of a tone change.
That’s where I got the image of him just being a child having a temper tantrum as he may have an argument against the original author but CDProjekt Red shouldn’t bear that man’s sin and yet he’s pushing that they do.
I can understand him being annoyed that the “ripoff”, as he puts it, is after becoming such a sensation but him lashing out at CDProjekt Red is crossing a line as they’re working from Sapkowski’s stuff and if Sapkowski is after fucking up that’s his problem and fault, not CDProjekt’s.
He’s also said that CDProjekt Red must’ve known about the Elric books and about the alleged plagiarism because those books were famous.
I can’t really comment on their fame as prior to seeing Razorfist’s engorged hateboner for the Witcher series, I hadn’t even heard of it or it’s author; When it came to famous fantasy novels and authors, Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit and Tolkien were what I knew.
He’s assuming guilt as he doesn’t like CDProjekt Red, I’m merely pointing out that things mightn’t have played out as he asserts though it’s entirely possible that he’s indeed right.
He argues that Geralt is a carbon copy of Elric but looking at the character’s wiki entry, that doesn’t seem to match up.
Elric needed drugs to survive, is an accomplished sorcerer and summoner – able to summon a Duke of Hell among others, a soul eating sword, he is/was an emperor, normally he’s quite frail and weak but his sword cancels that out along with his drug dependency and gives him skills, and lastly doesn’t have many friends.
Geralt is a mutant, a Witcher, due to magic, mutagens and herbs, he’s a monster hunter who’s trained from a young age, he only knows “Signs” which is basic magic, he was knighted though he lost said title, he’s got a wide range of friends that can help him out (A vampire and a dragon among others), he’s got steel and silver swords, and due to the mutations and his training, he’s strong, fast, and durable.
On the swords, Geralt’s can be magic or mundane, in the first and third Witcher games one was even gifted to him by the Lady of the Lake, while with Elric, his sword is an artifact made by beings “alien to the multiverse”* and is one of the two artifacts that when together can give the wielder nigh-“absolute power over the entire multiverse”*. There’s a bit of a difference in importance there, mundane/magic swords compared to half the key to nigh-ultimate power.
Not a comprehensive list but there’s enough differences there, provided the wiki isn’t misleading me, to show that “carbon copy” is an vast overstatement, though keep in mind that I was focusing on the differences due to the claim I’m rebutting.
For Geralt to be a “carbon copy” then he’d have to be exactly the same as Elric so the slightest difference would prove that claim false, I went the extra mile as I’m a benevolent overlord.
He argues that it’s possible that Elric stuff got through the Iron Curtain before it fell, there was metal bands on the soviet side apparently, and Sapkowski read them that way.
That’s possible but just because things got through, if they got through, it doesn’t mean that he ended up seeing them.
Sabaton came to Ireland a few years back, I didn’t see them and yet they were here.
To expand on the previous point, anything that got across the border would have had to be kept quiet and hidden, black market stuff.
This is material the Party hasn’t approved, I doubt they’d be happy with anyone who owned a copy.
So just because it crossed the border doesn’t mean that Sapkowski would have had access, he mightn’t know where to get it or have the ability to do so and that’s presuming that he’d want them.
Now, I’m not saying that he couldn’t be right, I’m just again pointing out that it’s not as clear cut as “It might have gotten in thus he had it”.
Before I move on to other topics, I want to say one last thing in relation to the previous point.
Razorfist claims that the “Iron Curtain” defense is flimsy but then gives an even flimsier counter argument, “Maybe Elric magazines got smuggled past the Curtain and into Poland thus he had it”, the nerve of him just pisses me off.
Now I can see where he’s coming from with his logic and maybe he’s right but at the same time, he’s so quick to call that defense flimsy and then turn around and give an even flimsier attack that the brazenness of it is like a slap across the face.
A point in his favor though is that he acknowledges that he could be wrong right after saying this, so that’s something but who knows, maybe he’s walked that back like he did with his lack of ill will towards CDProjekt Red.
On the topic of the “Conjunction of the Spheres” and “Conjunction of the Million Spheres” from Witcher and Elric respectively, I have little knowledge.
Within the Witcher version, worlds collided with the inhabitants from one ending up on the other which is where various monsters in the setting came from and, according to the elves, the humans themselves and that the human homeworld was destroyed in the process though humans fiercely disagree. Humans gained the ability to wield magic at this time as well.
The Conjunction happened 1,500 years before the novels, and on one last note as it’s relevant to the Elric version, magic is the embodiment and weapon of Chaos. (This is according to Yennefer in Blood of Elves).
My knowledge of this topic is annoyingly sparse as my main touchstone with the series has been the games, of the novels I’ve only read Blood of Elves so far, and the first two games don’t really talk about this much though there is mention of other worlds in the second game and talk of beings traveling between the worlds which is also mentioned in what I’ve seen so far of Witcher 3 as well.
(There’s books in Witcher 1 & 2 that give a general rundown but it’s nothing truly detailed.)
What I have listed above is what little I know of the topic and what little I feel comfortable looking up as during my double checking of what I know against the wiki, trice I ended up seeing a split second spoiler for Witcher 3 which I’m in the middle of playing and I don’t want it spoiled further. (The wiki doesn’t have any spoiler free explanation of the Conjunction beyond what I’ve already said and I doubt any explanation elsewhere will be any better.)
In the future, I might come back to this and revise it when I have finished that game and looked at more of the books.
While with the Elric version, I’m having to refer to http://www.seiyuu.com/okamoto/writing/multiverse.html as the wiki entry I found for it is seriously lacking in detail.
There’s a multiverse and each ‘verse is called a sphere with it’s own people and deities, and some races can hop between said spheres and certain artifacts can allow it as well.
Unlike with the Witcher, where the Conjunction is a thing that happened seemingly once and the inhabitants from one world are dropped onto another, this is a thing that happens on a cycle and changes how the spheres are, be it altering space/time or the laws there; there is a quote by a character, Orland Fank, who says “A time of great changes on all the planes. When the planes intersect at specific points in their history. When our normal perception of Time and of Space becomes meaningless and when it is possible for radical alterations to be made in the nature of reality itself.”*****
Travel between the spheres is easier at this time apparently but the site doesn’t clarify how or in what way but it doesn’t seem that man and beast are simply tossed from one world to another.
As I’ve alluded to earlier, there’s artifacts made by beings that “are alien to the multiverse” and these are tied into some fight between Order and Chaos.
There’s champions chosen to serve “the Cosmic Balance to preserve Order and Equilibrium”* and sometimes they get one of the artifacts with Elric’s sword being “Stormbringer, the Black Sword” which is a fantastic name, I gotta say.
Lastly there’s a “concept, a city, a refuge”* called Tanelorn, it exists in all spheres, it can resist “the power of the Spirit of the Sword”* that lives within Stormbringer, and it’s some man made place where “men do not need gods”*, whatever that means.
Both of them also talk about “Chaos” though there seems to be a literal war in Elric while within Witcher, magic is called the embodiment and weapon of Chaos though I haven’t seen any further progress in that line of thought, as in what she meant by Chaos, be it being or concept.
So while the series seem have a similar idea, they handle them in different ways.
In Witcher, it’s a mystery that just happened, long ago at that, and, as far as I’ve seen, the story surrounding it is more to do with interracial drama and violence that unfolds from it as well as the monsters that came along; with Geralt not being some champion in some cosmic balance affair, just a witcher.
While with Elric, the conjunction is less of a mystery, and is very much current affairs, with the story’s focus on it being more on the bigger picture, judging from what I’ve seen, such as a literal war between the forces of order and chaos with Elric being a champion of cosmic balance and that depending on how things go, there may not be any gods in during the next cycle.
In any case, the names are too close for my comfort, the similarity is chafing honestly.
Of course, all of this is going off my limited knowledge of Witcher and off a Jeff Okamoto’s work trying to piece together a summary of Elric’s Million Spheres so it’s plenty possible that anything that I’ve said here is wrong or right but not brought far enough to be completely accurate.
During the video mentioned earlier on in this essay, Razorfist gives a description of a character that’s meant to make the viewer think of Geralt but in reality is about Elric, this is to show how much Geralt is a ripoff of Elric and while in some cases it does show a certain level of closeness in characterization, in others it’s just intellectual dishonesty.
Two examples:
1) He talks of them being spellblades. The thing is, as I said earlier, Geralt is a swordsman that has only basic magic at his disposal and, if Witcher 2 is to be believed, it’s sneered at by proper mages**** while Elric is a proper sorcerer and summoner who gains a sword that gives him “strength, health, and fighting prowess.”**
To say that this is the same thing is quite absurd, it’s comparing an ember to a roaring bonfire, at least as far as magic ability is concerned and Elric is a swordsman only due to his magic sword which doesn’t disqualify him from being a spellblade but it’s yet another difference.
Calling them both spellblades is to obfuscate the difference between the men and to try and help equate them to give unjust weight to his argument, it’s a very dirty tactic.
So, yes, both may use magic and swords but I’d hesitate to pretend that they’re the exact same as that’d be quite frankly wrong though I’m not saying that spellblade doesn’t fit both of them, just that it needs stipulations and clarification.
2) Geralt’s “abnormally-long life” wasn’t “initially sustained through the use of ancillary substances”, sustained is more the word I’d use for Elric.
The herbs and mushrooms that Geralt would have gotten as a kid were stimulants, with the herbs quickening development and bestowing the correct metabolic rate while the mushrooms have some effect on keeping him fit and strengthening his muscles, though any other effects of them are unknown as they’re a close kept secret***, so basically a healthy kid being made healthier.
The rest of the substances were magic and mutagenic experimentation which weren’t about sustaining his life and could’ve quite easily have ended it, only 3 in 10 boys survive the Trial of the Grasses, they were the final piece in him becoming a witcher which is what granted him his long life.
Elric had to use herbs to keep himself alive, to sustain himself, before he got that sword as he was frail and weak, now that is something I’d call “life … sustained through the use of ancillary substances.”
This is comparing a boy being put through a super soldier program, with a quite potentially fatal super soldier serum at the end, to a guy living pill to pill, again quite different things.
Before anyone says that I shouldn’t be talking about this due to my lack of knowledge on Elric, then neither should Razorfist as he doesn’t seem to know Witcher that well and he’s more than eager to run his mouth about it, so go and tell him to shut up and see how well that works.
I think I’m liking writing these blog posts as I find that when I talk off the cuff, I feel that I’m not making as good an argument as I could and I do end up repeating myself as I feel that I said a point wrong or whatever.
Again, sorry for the rant in the video; him lashing out at CDProjekt Red just really gets under my skin as he’s accusing them of a capital crime as a writer because they may be drawing from a tainted pool, even though his fight should be with the guy who, according to him, tainted it in the first place.
(It seems that I actually did have a good grasp of his point, I’d been worried that one of his fans might have misrepresented what he’d been saying but it seems to be about right though they left out “carbon copy”, likely due to how flagrantly wrong it is.)
*These quotes are taken from Seiyuu’s webpage on the Elric Multiverse.
**This is quoted from the Wikipedia entry on Elric
***These two points on the effects of the herbs and mushrooms are from Triss in Blood of Elves, though she had been talking about Ciri at the time so I just changed her/she to him/he.
****A character in Witcher 2 claims that Phillipa Elihart, a powerful sorceress, could create an “illusion of a garden full of flowers, fruit trees, and young elves of both sexes copulating merrily all the day. And the illusion is complete – the flowers have an aroma, the fruit and she-elves are juicy…” which is something well beyond anything Geralt could do. Though, it should be said, the character has given ample reason not to be trusted though it’s doubtful that she was lying here.
***** I got this off of the Multiverse wiki
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