The Golden One - March 25, 2020


The Witcher Plagiarism Controversy. Utter Silliness!

Hosted by
Marcus Follin
Mentioned
Sapkowski Geralt Lion Games Workshop Laddingtons Arthurian Beowulf Vesemir Mario Wolf Zack
The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski - Book and Game Review. Racial Tensions and Sexual Morals Isolation Heavybag Session. 20 Minutes Home Workout.

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

150.16

Word count

1,414

Sentence count

130

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

A sequel to my book review of 'The Witcher' by Polish author, C.A.W. Sapkowski. I look into a few points of contention, and try to debunk them. Also, I share some plans for a new fantasy novel I'm writing.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, Laddingtons. This is a follow-up video to my game and book review of The Witcher.
00:00:07.000 Saw a comment saying that the author, I would say Sapkowski, had plagiarized his character.
00:00:17.000 Basically copied someone else's work. And I looked into it and just thought it would be a good idea to respond to it.
00:00:25.000 Because I thought it was a bit silly indeed. Now, first and foremost, I want to mention the contrarian nature of everyone who criticizes him.
00:00:35.000 Whenever there comes anything popular, you always have these guys who just, they have to go against the grain.
00:00:41.000 They have to be contrarian, they have to find faults. And you know, sometimes it's good to go against the grain.
00:00:46.000 It's good to say your piece if something is obviously wrong.
00:00:51.000 So, you know, I say porn is wrong even though it's very popular. Because I know it is wrong.
00:00:56.000 But some guys, they just, for the sake of it, have to be special, unique.
00:01:01.000 They want to be apart from everyone else and saying, you know, this is bad. So therefore, they find faults.
00:01:07.000 In this case, they find faults with The Witcher because, yeah, they want to be unique.
00:01:13.000 So they come up with these points of contention, which I have looked into. And I will refute them now.
00:01:22.000 But before I do so, I would like to share some plans with you all, my esteemed subscribers.
00:01:30.000 I'm actually writing my second book right now. It's not a fiction book. It's more a social, cultural and political analysis of a few things.
00:01:43.000 But in the long term, I do want to write fiction. Fantasy or historic fiction. I just need to sharpen my pen a bit more.
00:01:50.000 So that's why I'm writing a second book now. And also because I have a lot of things I want to say.
00:01:56.000 But anyway, I thought to mention this before I actually release a fantasy or historical fiction book.
00:02:05.000 And that is also to do with original ideas, original names, etc.
00:02:13.000 So that was just the preface of me refuting the points of contention.
00:02:21.000 So anyway, first thing. The White Wolf is a moniker used by Sapkowski.
00:02:30.000 The Witcher, Geralt of Rivia, is called The White Wolf.
00:02:35.000 And apparently the other character is also called The White Wolf.
00:02:40.000 And this is rather silly, I would say. You know, The White Wolf is hardly an original moniker.
00:02:48.000 I don't think he's the first fantasy author to use the name.
00:02:51.000 I don't think there has never been a historical figure who's been referred to as The White Wolf or The Wolf.
00:02:59.000 You know, I call myself The Lion sometimes, just as plenty of other historical figures or even fictional figures.
00:03:06.000 You call yourself The Lion because you want to evoke a sense of royal majesty, a sense of vitality and power.
00:03:14.000 That's why you do it. Same thing with a wolf.
00:03:17.000 And I don't think the story would have been any less good if Geralt was called The Strong Bear or something like that.
00:03:30.000 Now, of course, The White Wolf is more suiting because he has white hair.
00:03:34.000 Which is also the second point of contention.
00:03:38.000 Apparently the other character also has white hair.
00:03:42.000 Now, we can talk about blonde hair. 0.99
00:03:45.000 First and foremost, you might wonder why my hair looks a bit darker and a bit more dull now than it did when I had long hair.
00:03:52.000 It's simply a matter of sun bleaching, a lot of accumulated sun bleached hair.
00:03:59.000 But give it a few months, then Helios and Balder will bless my hair with the golden luster again.
00:04:06.000 But anyway, speaking of hair, basically all other heroes have long blonde hair.
00:04:12.000 You can talk about Beowulf or Achilles or elven heroes. Everyone basically looks the same. 0.59
00:04:21.000 Speaking of elven heroes, here is the most epic of descriptions.
00:04:26.000 Glorfindel was tall and straight. His hair was of shining gold. His face fair, young, fearless and full of joy.
00:04:33.000 His eyes were bright and keen and his voice like music. On his brow sat wisdom and in his hand was strength.
00:04:41.000 So if I write a fantasy novel or a short story with a guy who has long blonde hair, would I have copied someone else's work?
00:04:52.000 No, it's just an archetype. Same thing with having white hair.
00:04:58.000 You know, the story of The Witcher could have been equally good if he had brown hair. It's not a big deal.
00:05:03.000 So just because two characters have the same hair color doesn't mean it's copied.
00:05:10.000 Then, the third point of contention. Having a magical sword.
00:05:16.000 And I would say in basically all fantasy stories you have magical swords.
00:05:22.000 It would be strange if a character didn't have a magical sword.
00:05:25.000 Even in the Arthurian legend you have Excalibur. A magical sword. It adds to the story.
00:05:31.000 It's nothing unique. It's nothing original.
00:05:33.000 When I write a story I will probably also have a magical sword imbued with some sort of cool thing or whatever.
00:05:41.000 So in my opinion, The Witcher isn't good because he is using magic. It's not good because he uses a magic sword.
00:05:50.000 It's not good because he has a moniker that is white wolf. It's not good because he has white hair. 0.67
00:05:55.000 He could have had brown hair or blonde hair. Viserys would have been equally good.
00:06:00.000 So it's not a success because he has similar attributes as someone else.
00:06:05.000 It's a success because it is written in an entertaining and interesting way.
00:06:10.000 I like them. I like the books because there is a lot of nuance to them.
00:06:14.000 In terms of geopolitics, economics, societal issues, even tolerance as I talked about, sexual morality.
00:06:23.000 You know, he imbues the stories with a lot of relevant and interesting social commentary.
00:06:28.000 And that is also why I like it. Because it creates a bit more...
00:06:33.000 It makes it a bit more immersive than just having battles and heroics etc.
00:06:39.000 Now, furthermore, in regards to fantasy, my favorite setting, the Warhammer world.
00:06:45.000 Which is geographically speaking our own world, but with some changes.
00:06:50.000 Also inspired by European history, you have Kislev, which is Russia.
00:06:54.000 You have the Empire, which is basically the Holy Roman Empire.
00:06:59.000 Then you have classical elves, which, you know, for a contrarian guy who would say
00:07:04.000 Oh, these guys have just copied Tolkien's work. And I would say no. They have just built on Tolkien's characters.
00:07:14.000 They've just taken elves, put them in a different setting, add a bit of grimminess to the dark elves, add a bit of nuance to the high elves etc. 0.82
00:07:21.000 But I don't see it as something bad. I just see it as a very nice setting.
00:07:27.000 And Games Workshop, if you're watching this, please do release more books from the old world.
00:07:32.000 It's a superior setting to Age of Sigmar. I'm sorry to say it, but you know it's true.
00:07:37.000 So anyway, you don't always need to find, you know, nitpick faults. You can just enjoy a story.
00:07:45.000 So that was just my response to the controversy, if we shall even call it that, of The Witcher.
00:07:52.000 So anyway, since this is a bit more light-hearted topic, I might throw in some other clips after this little sequence.
00:08:01.000 So yeah, enjoy that. And as always, thank you for watching, and I hope you're all staying safe.
00:08:09.000 XXO BOOM!
00:08:10.000 I was supposed to post boxing footage, but then I reminded myself that I will actually make a separate video.
00:08:18.000 Will be a quick heavy bag workout you can do at home for everyone who is fortunate enough to have a heavy bag.
00:08:26.000 But anyway, I thought just put in some gaming footage from The Witcher 3.
00:08:32.000 Vesemir and Geralt are being attacked by a Griffon here, as you might see.
00:08:37.000 So yeah, again, I will recommend the game.
00:08:41.000 Good times, good times. And now the Cuddle Princess demands my attention. 1.00
00:08:46.000 But yeah, thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. XOXO BOOM!
00:08:56.000 Thank you, T Agora.
00:09:03.000 All right.
00:09:05.000 All right.
00:09:06.000 Thank you for opening your vídeo.
00:09:08.000 This Minecraft Graphic gesprochen is great.
00:09:11.000 All right.
00:09:13.000 When I care, it's just looking at the Mario test, so that's all for everything.
00:09:16.000 But yeah, give me a chance that, and for me,
00:09:17.000 I think of DC Channel 5�, like the mindset Eggs Supernatural,
00:09:21.000 Are you, Zack?
00:09:22.000 Are you ready for the K Tekoa Assembly for helping our industry?