No, I’m not going to write about the Riots or the Election or the Virus or any of that stuff everyone’s already right about and mad about. Go infect your brain with Twitter if you want to read the latest hot takes. I have other things to think about.

Specifically, I want to write about what I’m not watching. And that thing is Witcher.

Since I’ve been reading a lot of Fritz Lieber lately, and a fair bit of Robert Howard, and am currently working on a novel in the Blood & Thunder style, Witcher ought to appeal to me. It’s something a lot of people like, and has spawned a great deal of content. It’s readily available on Netflix, and it’s based on a whole slew of written content that is somewhat episodic and therefore not unfinished the way A Song of Ice and Fire remains (A year past the end of the series, and Martin is hawking Folio editions of his still unfinished series on his blog. It is to laugh).

And yet.

Enh.

I’m not sure why. My wife watched some and couldn’t get into it. But if I cared I wouldn’t have let that stop me. I didn’t care. I still don’t.

Maybe it’s the name. What’s a Witcher? A Witch? A Witch-Hunter? A Witch-Protector? It’s vague and it suggest a vague world.

Or maybe I suspect that, this century being what it is, it will be on the side of the Witches. We will have White Queen-style jibber-jabber about natural magic and the Bad Authority that fears it, and it will be about as subtle as The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m deeply bored of being preached at on the down-low.

Maybe I’m too jaded to get into things and just want to grumble about how IF IT’S NOT TOLKEIN, IT’S CRAP. That at least has the value of being demonstrably true.