Talk:Triss Merigold/@comment-88.5.17.226-20180708082142/@comment-79.121.84.143-20181006211733

> Secondly, that Triss hasn't done anything wrong is also a subjective opinion

Never claimed such thing, it's a straw man. There are very few characters in the Witcher universe who didn't do anything wrong at some time, everyone of note has flaws. I merely suggested she didn't do as much wrong as people like you are claiming, and that it wouldn't be enough to make her not a viable romance option. I (and also the developers unless they've been lying) consider her good overall, despite some flaws.

> If you're going to accuse me of something, at least don’t accuse me of something that you're doing yourself.

I've nothing against people being subjective and having their opinions, nor do I deny having such opinions myself. It's a good thing that people can interpret art in different ways, and it can lead to interesting discussions as long as they do it in a respectful manner and are able to agree to disagree. But you've presented your opinion as absolute, unarguable facts (despite that not being the case), and did so in a rude and offensive manner, right from the first post.

This bit from one of your comments sums it up: "there are interpretations more valid than others" - the belief that your opinion has authority over everyone else's who commented here so far. If that's how you approach it from the beginning, don't be surprised if you get similar replies.

''> And when did I say we were just talking about the books? Maybe I didn't make my position clear from the beginning, and I'm sorry, mea culpa, etc. But I think the position from which I was arguing from is pretty clear to anyone who bothers to read what I've written.''

You missed my point, there's not enough evidence in the books to support the accusation you made (stated as a fact) in your very first post, and you just admitted that yourself. The games confirm nothing about what happened, you just hate the game character (let me guess, you wouldn't if she wasn't a romance option), so in your head canon she retroactively becomes a rapist for no objective reason. It's lore twisting.

> Just because Triss wouldn’t have needed some kind of mind control doesn't mean she didn't use it.

So, prove without doubt that she did, and then we would have something to talk about. It's rhetorical, of course, I know you can't.

> I will repeat myself again, and I hope that this time you will pay attention.

I very much pay attention, didn't ignore anything. But there's only so much time I'm willing to spend on engaging in pointless opinion wars, so I tend to minimise responding multiple times to the same thing. So, when I seemingly ignore something, chances are it's because I, or someone else, already answered it (possibly more than once) earlier, or it will be addressed in a later part of my comment, one way or the other, or I consider it not relevant enough to the topic.

> Triss takes advantage of his amnesia, as she admits in the third game, showing an astonishing lack of scruples.

I've already commented on she admitting, I don't see it as a lack of scruples, on the contrary, a bad person just wouldn't have mentioned it at all. She's the one who brings the topic up in the first place, because she feels guilty about what happened in the previous games. In any case, none of this proves retroactively what kind of magic she used several years before, and her desperate longing for the witcher only began after that incident.

''> But TW3 suggests that Lambert has slept with a woman important to Geralt. The only possible candidate, considering all the facts, is Triss.''

Nope, you're relying on speculation just as much as that other poster above who claims that Triss was replaced by Coral. Literally not one piece of concrete evidence. Lambert doesn't say who the friend is whose feelings he didn't want to hurt, nor when it happened, let alone who he slept with.

> You're all arguing from the position that "TW1 is a game full of problems because of the company's lack of experience and a limited budget"

Don't twist my words into something different than what I meant, I never implied that the entire game should be disregarded, only that some dialogue lines lifted from the books (both from and by more than one character) don't prove characters have been written to intentionally impersonate others. That Lambert is heading to Kaedwen after the prologue, it's stated by him plainly as a fact, and is repeated in another line by Vesemir. And indeed he's never seen or mentioned again after Geralt leaves Kaer Morhen to travel south to Vizima. I see no sensible reason to disregard this part of TW1 as bad writing, it's not the same situation as with the "impostor" lines which are stupid and inconsistent even within TW1 itself.

> I only include this quote here so that the commentary is more complete and so that you don't accuse me of conveniently skipping a part of your argument, even though I haven't done such a thing.

So you did explain how it fits into your impostor conspiracy theory that Triss also reuses lines of other Lodge sorceresses, and so does Alvin Ciri's? Or why she suddenly stops doing it for no story reason the moment the second game begins?

> You have no right to say such things and try to pass them off as indisputable facts.

I'm not the one doing that, you're doing it all the time. I merely dispute what you are pushing as "facts" with endless walls of text (granted, I posted some myself, but fewer, and this is the last one), and point it out that there's not enough information to declare them as actual facts. As part of that effort, I provide alternate interpretations of the avilable information that are also plausible, to show that it's indeed not all black and white, an understanding that I think only one of us possesses. The argument that sorceresses can do literally anything with magic, be it irresistible and undetectable mind control, or reading the entire memory out of a man's mind who doesn't even remember the past himself, isn't a convincing one without backing it up, one could hand wave everything with claims of god-like powers.

''> How was Geralt going to find out if their encounter and the ex-took place in private? Explain it to me, or that part of your argument has no power.''

Not sure if that's what you're referring to, but if it's about "stealth mind control", he remembers he slept with Triss in Blood of Elves, and he should be able to find out if this is something he'd never wanted to do on of his own free will. Besides, when Geralt was mind controlled by Yennefer in The Last Wish, he was aware of it, he was shaken and felt that something unnatural happened, and witchers have the ability to sense magic.

> As for what you think about the difficulty of that procedure, it's irrelevant.

You mean it's irrelevant that you base an argument on something that may or may not be true, and want to force us to accept it as fact?

> We don't know if it's difficult or easy, but the ease and naturalness with which Yennefer reads Geralt's thoughts clearly suggests that what I’ve proposed can't be that difficult for Triss.

I see a few problems with this. First, Yennefer is older than Triss and her magic is stronger. Second and more importantly, reading someone's current thoughts at the moment is in all likelyhood easier than reading their forgotten memories from the distant past, those are buried deeper. Apples and oranges. That someone's capable of doing the former, it doesn't prove they can also do the latter.

''> First of all, what Geralt feels about certain events or people is completely irrelevant. It doesn't change the truth that can be observed from the point of view of an outside observer, which is, after all, the only thing that matters in an argument between outside observers like us.''

I somehow knew you wouldn't and can't understand the point, but never mind.

''> Secondly, he does care about the wrong things they did years ago. As Geralt, you can reject Triss because of how she took advantage of him.''

Really? Can you quote the dialogue where I could say so as him in the game? Because I only remember the unconditional line where he says he never even intimated he was taken advantage of, and that in Blood and Wine he says to Regis that she helped him recover his memories.

> He doesn't say it directly, but, for example, while talking to Dijkstra in front of her you can flatly, and with perhaps some contempt, deny that you're in a relationship.

Ah, so more conjecture, speculation and confirmation bias. Anyway, denying that you're in a relationship with someone isn't the same as holding a grudge against them, he still likes her at least as a friend. The narration says it at the beginning of the Novigrad quest line: "Though theoretically Triss and Geralt had ended their romance half a year earlier, it was clear the feelings they felt for each other had not vanished so easily", that's the starting point, and even if you say farewell to her at the end of Now or Never without asking her to stay, Geralt's last words are that he will always remember her with a smile. He has no reasons left at that point to hide his feelings, why not show that contempt if it actually existed?

''> Stop throwing fallacies and outright falsehoods at me, please, I beg of you. My head is going to start hurting.''

Worry not, I've no plans to further discuss with you, seeing that it doesn't lead anywhere, and I've better things to spend time on. To be honest, I knew it very well right from your first post that a constructive discussion isn't to be expected, but I despise hate spreading and malicious misinformation (sadly way too common on the internet these days, not only when it comes to this particular topic), so I thought it might be worth responding, so that other people who're reading aren't misled as much. Of course, I also know that this comment will be followed up by another wall(s) of text of your ranting to have the last word, but I hope I explained my thoughts well enough already that reasonable people can see you're full of BS, if that wasn't apparent enough from the wiki articles, developers' commentary (like this one) on their characters, and not least the games themselves.