Derik Badman's Journal

Started reading Junji Ito's No Longer Human which I got sent to review for The Comics Journal. I've never read any of his manga before as he tends to do horror. This one is horror too, but it's more of an existential horror, based on a novel of the same name. We'll see how it goes, and hopefully I will have opinions enough on it to write a review.

We have our game today, with Ian taking over DMing the 5e D&D adventure Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. I'm excited to take a break from DMing and play some, and to put all my online character sheet updates to use. I'll probably right up a recap tomorrow.

Still working my way through The Witcher season 1, 6 episodes in now. I'm noticing more and more how the show writers are altering the original story plots. Some of the changes are clearly to allow for the overlapping of timelines (so they don't have to wait until season 2 to show Ciri as anything but a little girl) and to fill in backstory (most of the Yennifer content so far). Other changes seem to be more about ramping up drama. And some, I'm not totally clear on their purpose or what they add to anything in comparison to the originals. The characters like to talk about destiny a lot, which is overdone, it almost makes the case for the opposite. If someone keeps urging you onto follow your destiny and do this and that, then it feels less like destiny and more like manipulation and choices. One of the major points in the early stories, when Geralt first meets Ciri as a child is that he isn't looking for her and, as I recall, doesn't even know who she is when he first meets her.

They also seem to be adding some kind of religious aspect to the Nilfgaardians, which I don't at all recall from the stories. I feel like that tempers the work some. Instead of just an invading nation of people, they are... religious fanatics or something? That seems more conventionally fantasy than just having all the war and death and chaos caused by an invading, expansionist kingdom.