Because a fantasy world based in what's pretty clearly analogous to the medieval Slavic states inherently implies an overwhelmingly European (read: white) ethnicity. Some things don't need to be explicitly written, a black character in a nation comprised of 99.999% white people would need mentioning, on the other hand.

I want to clarify that I don't particularly give a shit on the actors ethnicity, it's very clearly entered Hollywood territory, and that's an entirely different kettle of fish. If it was done by a studio in Poland though...

 

I saw that Romilda was in this now. Somewhere in that show, someone had better look at her, then look at Geralt, and say "HANDLE IT!"

 

I'm not contesting the impossibility of people who aren't white in the books, I am contesting the absurdity that her colour not being mentioned means she's somehow not white. Just like when I turn on the news and hear about corruption in China, I assume the perpetrators are Asian, with extremely good reason. If I read about John Smith from Britain in the 1800's I assume he's white too.

Nothing you have said makes me think for even one second that what you wrote in that original post wasn't a justification after the fact. Why is it wrong to assume a book written by a Polish author on whats clearly a reflection of medieval Poland, with Polish characters and culture, would overwhelmingly be white? It's an absurd double standard, if an author from Africa wrote a series of fantasy books set in the year 1000 A.D. and a television series was adapted to it, and a good portion of the characters were inexplicably white, I would bet my entire life savings you wouldn't argue that "The idea its black in the books unless explicitly stated otherwise is part of the problem."

More to the point, there isn't a problem with people thinking medieval Europe characters are white, what a ridiculous statement.

 

Allow me to quote myself:

My issue remains that what I originally quoted was and is a stupid argument. There's no reason that Geralt couldn't have been played by Will Smith either, description and implied description are irrelevant in a made up world.

 

I'm sorry, are people unclear on the fact that the Witcher franchise's world is based off the ethnic tensions between Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians during the 1600s and inter World War Period? Real world ethnic tensions between "White people"? Say it ain't so.

 

Do people not realize there are different shades of whiteness? My mom's family is from Austria and the Slavic region, and many of them look slightly out of place to what people expect, by having a darker, more olive, skin tone. My mom looks more like Anna Shaffer with less curly hair, while I look more Northern European, even though I'm part Native and a mixture of all sorts of nationalities.

The only reason people say Anna Shaffer is black, and not look at her skin tone, is for some stupid reason we are still using the 'one drop' rule. If you had no idea who her parents were, people would easily guess she is Middle Eastern, Southern European or Spanish. All groups that are considered 'white'. Hell, why is it when people are mixed, they are considered black more than white?

In Hollywood, it's been common, for decades, to use mixed raced actors as white characters. This isn't anything remarkable.

So far the cast hasn't been that bad, once we add some hair dye and makeup.

 

To be precise she has chestnut hair and a skin colour light enough to be noticeable blushing in certain situations.

And while agree with you about general problem of defaulting to white characters in fantasy setting, I would bet a dollar that if anyone asked Sapkowski what is the colour of the skin of majority of the characters, he would said white. Unless Netflix paid him to say otherwise, but if I were him, I would do the same for free money.

 

I can only assume those not caring about ethnicity in this fictional show also didn't care that ScaJo was cast in Ghost in the Shell, right?

That would be pretty weird, otherwise.

 

Given that the original GitS director himself said he had no problem with the casting, it really would be strange for people to have a problem with her casting.

I think my issue with this whole debate is that many of the people who get upset over Triss or Ciri being black tend to be the same group of people who tell minorities that they should judge a show/movie/actor by their merit when a charecter is whitewashed.

On the other hand, the people arguing for historical and canonical accuracy have a point as well. I'm not going to comment on historical accuracy since I don't know shit but as far as canonical accuracy is concerned, most fans care more about the show being true to the games rather than the books. So while Triss's race may not be explicitly stated in the books, it doesn't matter because most fans want the Triss from the games: a hot white redhead.

 

Gonna be honest...who doesn't want a hot white redhead?

 

People who want a bit of variety and find redheads to be vastly over-represneted in popular media? Or those who don't want to get into bed with soulless succubi?

Lol, jk. You can never have enough sexy redheads.

 

These people are objectively, factually, truthfully, and scientifically wrong.

 

Those people are weird. Succubi were super hot in W3.

 

Netflix reveals first look at The Witcher cast.

They really improved Geralt. Not sure if it was because of fans' reaction to first photo or it would happen anyway. Ciri is fine too, but Yennefer continues to not work for me. Maybe the trailer will change that.

 

The script will make or break this show. Netflix has plenty of slick looking stuff that's boring or bad or both.

 

Cavill looks 100000x better.

 

Oi, don't jebait me into giving Polygon clicks you fuck.