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characters!, the witcher

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sargassostories https://sargassostories.tumblr.com/post/703393175684988928/god-i-love-the-way-you-put-this-triss-truly-is :

essskel https://essskel.tumblr.com/post/701767677156442112/i-will-always-love-triss-merigolds-arc-in-the :

I will always love Triss Merigold’s arc in the books because I remember so clearly in Blood of Elves thinking that she was on this somewhat predictable track of ‘purpose driven survivor/second chance hero/survivors guilt tragedy’ and I sort of ended up holding out hope/expectation that she was going to pull some deus ex machina move even all the way at the end after she’d failed everyone a hundred times over already (if not for the sake of her redemption then maybe her lingering care for Yen and Ciri).

But no! She doesn’t save anyone because she can’t and she was never going to. Shes a complacent centrist, she’s a ‘I thought i could change it from the inside’ dirtbag, she’s true apathy in contrast to a set of protagonists that berate themselves for their own falsely perceived apathy.

She’s frustrating to read without being a distraction or a weight to the plot, and I think that’s worth acknowledging, because most characters like her truly are just filler when you look under the surface. And maybe she is too, but it’s compelling regardless. The woman was dead the whole time - not as a ghost with unfinished business, but a corpse who’s got nothing to do but decay.

[ID: “Are you foretelling death?” shouted Triss. “Is that all you can do, foretell death? For everyone? Them, her…Me?”

“You? You are already dead, Fourteenth One. Everything in you has already died.” /end ID]

(Blood of Elves, ch3)

God I LOVE the way you put this! Triss truly is the perfect complacent centrist— she’s someone who “means well”, she personally aligns with the roles demanded of her, as a sorceress and a woman, or has aligned with them for so long they’ve become a part of her, so she doesn’t understand why Yennefer or Ciri has such a hard time with any of it.

Triss Merigold is the kind of #feminist who would post #divinefeminine bullshit about how suffering is an intrinstic part of being a woman and not even realize it’s a huge TERF dogwhistle.

Triss Merigold genuinely thinks she’s a Good Person and therefore anything she does couldn’t be bad, because her intentions are Pure.

And she’s not always wrong— she’s very right about the Witchers’ not caring for Ciri’s menstrual needs and giving her a choice in the way her body develops, even if she then is not interested in hearing Ciri’s thoughts on the matter herself.

When you take two seconds to really Absorb her, you’ll realize you know dozens of Triss Merigolds. She’s everywhere. She’s CRUCIAL to a story like this, and she’s crucial to this story. She’s so messy, so willing to believe the prejudices she was raised on because she’s built her identity on them, she lies to herself all the time. I’m keeping this to the books and Blood of Elves because op’s post is about that but! Gosh I just love her and hate her. (Your picture was not posted)

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headspace-hotel https://www.tumblr.com/headspace-hotel/700951831857250304/but-i-really-do-dislike-how-much :

But I really do dislike how much veganism-the-ideology has taken over the discussion on climate change and how to fix our foodways, for reasons that include but are certainly not limited to:

• people who believe that farming animals is innately bad and unethical attributing climate change to “animal agriculture” when most of the negative impacts come from beef specifically, which makes the problem seem MUCH less solvable than it actually is.
• animal rights activists and organizations have been given a seat at the table discussing how to solve climate change and biodiversity loss, when they include people that believe things like “zoos are inherently bad” “domestication is equivalent to slavery” “it’s never necessary to cull overpopulated species” and “hunting is always bad”
• The way we grow plant crops is SO fucked as well—nitrogen fertilizer causes so much pollution, use of pesticides and herbicides is probably the main cause of the decline of insects, we are losing topsoil way way too fast— but we have people naively proclaiming that switching to “plant based diets” is the answer
• the way “veganism as Solver Of Human Problems” puts the focus and responsibility entirely on individual choice instead of changing the way food systems work. I’m sorry but people cannot personal-choice their way out of a system that is fucked by design and that they need in order to not starve
• the stereotyping of farmers as evil and sadistic people who love to watch animals suffer for a profit. Who benefits
• rejecting outright the idea that farming or hunting animals could ever be sustainable or acceptable on any scale when indigenous people worldwide have done it for millennia, animals have been domesticated for 12,000+ years, and not everyone can even survive on a strictly plant based diet
• anti-indigenous racism
• anti-indigenous racism
• entangling so much energy and effort to removing all nuance and advocating a personal lifestyle change that is not possible to accomplish and/or sustain long term for most people instead of literally anything specific and effective
• ^who benefits (Your picture was not posted)