Witcher series 2 costume observation period beginning!

[cimorene]

I really enjoyed that Twitter thread that Wax read the other day (so I assume it's been going around but I also don't know who wrote it) about how a fantasy show, specifically the Witcher, can still be historically inaccurate, and it was completely right in its focus on the fact that Geralt's very tight pants couldn't look like that without elastic fibers because natural materials don't do that and the whole thing about how industrialization would have to exist in the society for those to happen. And as the tweeter pointed out, you COULD make up an explanation using the magic in this world for the technically impossible fabrics and constructions, but that requires assumptions about the way the world works and they didn't bother to write those bits.

I'm willing to postulate a fairly simple explanation for the new season 2 tight pants that were the amusing subject of her (again, correct) rant, though: as long as we only see Witchers wearing them, we can say they wear fighting outfits with special enchantments to prevent seam splitting on them.

In verse, it's obvious that the enchanters or sorcerers or whatever they're called are making their clothes with magic at least some of the time, so it's not the physical impossibility of their wardrobes in the first season that was so irritatingly historically inaccurate so much as the fact that the designs were all obviously modern because they borrowed from both modern and pre-modern fashion elements kind of at random, as opposed to telling a somewhat coherent visual story about the garments' cultural backgrounds. (Karolina Zebrowska has a great video about them that contained pretty much all my thoughts on the subject and a little more - which her videos usually do - although I think she maybe came to a different overall verdict.) Fashion has only started to do that in the modern era, and it's not even plausible without a lot of factors, not least the faster garment creation and the faster communication of the modern era. I mean, you could just imagine that the sorcerers have a little self-referential culture where they are each other's fashion audiences and they are also creating all the garments with magic, I guess, but. This still sounds dubious to me. Especially given how geographically separated they are. And that wouldn't make sense of all the other things that were historically incorrect about the fashion of series 1.

So I hated the costuming of series 1 passionately enough that I was quite hopeful when I saw they had switched costume designers for series 2, and I admit, the first images of Geralt's armor gave me great pause because they are, obviously, silly as hell - much sillier than before, really - but at least they showed signs of being silly in a different way. Wax is on episode 2 now, and thus far it still looks possible that series 2 will be coherently silly, albeit obviously not possible that it will be 'historically correct' exactly. But so far, I would say it has presented a look that is coherently sort of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre meets Fabio-style romance novel covers (which are the 200% obvious source of Geralt's looks). I will be interested to observe.

(It remains to be seen whether the writing as revealed in subtitles will look un-irritating enough for me to ask Wax to remove her headphones and turn the sound on. The dialogue was absolutely unbearable for me in series 1.)

Comments

[msilverstar]

The dialog is much less horrible than season 1.

[cimorene]

I did notice it appeared less dire in some of the bits I saw!

[which_chick]

My anime group just finished up season 2 of Dr. Stone and they totally glossed over the hideous amount of work that textiles in a post-apocalyptic stone-age-ish society would represent. Like, this is a huge and glaring problem for me. People are clothed and yet nobody is ever shown growing cotton or flax or sheep, spinning or weaving or knitting or naalbinding or even tanning hides. There is one tiny super-fast clip of someone sewing, but apparently the needle, thread, and cloth just show up out of thin air. Argh. This while technology for all sorts of other things are Gee Whiz Mr. Science'd up as part of the plot structure for the anime.

Now, I love Dr. Stone and I think it's delightful... but it ignores the effort required to have textiles without modern factories. Probably also I am more aware of this because I'm currently in the process of making a sweater (woolen, handknit) out of actual wool that I card and spin and ply and scour and wind into balls. Like it's a whole process thing to get from "cut off the sheep" to "wearable sweater". So I KNOW how much work it takes (and that's with a modern-quality, coated corriedale fleece, modern hand cards, a spinning wheel, a niddy noddy, and a lazy kate) to make a wearable garment out of raw material.

[cimorene]

Yes! I love fiber arts and textile history and just historical facts in general and I've read a lot about it over the years, so I do know not everyone will know as much about it since they aren't as interested. BUT I do think we covered textile history, and specifically the textile component of what a big deal the industrial revolution was, SO many times in the history classes I took at least that it would be nearly impossible to miss at least the basic background knowledge that it used to be a LOT of work. Like, I'm sure that the hypothetical reasonable person who knows it was a lot more work would still underestimate just how much and be surprised if they watched some videos about the lifecycle of flax and wool, but they should still realize it's a huge time investment, if nothing else simply because making them yourself is going to be a lot more work than buying them!