Talk:Yennefer/@comment-27334094-20151223121909

The root of the opinion that Yennefer is a bitch, or a terrible person, or a bad character, or a bad love interest basically comes from her relationship with Geralt? Which is pretty stupid, because their relationship basically disproves this.

It’s obvious to everyone that Yennefer is not as openly nice to Geralt as people like Triss and even Keira are. (Then again, it can be argued that Triss isn’t so nice to Geralt as she appears to be, or at least, she shouldn’t be that nice, if you’re one of those people that prefers book canon over game canon.) But, on that same thread, Geralt generally isn’t a nice person either—in a broad sense he’s cynical, biting, sarcastic, judgmental and often childish; more specific to Yennefer, he fights with her, trades barbs, mocks her and insults her, too, in a similar fashion that she does to him. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Here you have two world-weary people, both around a century old, who’ve dealt with being lied to, abused (definitely in Yennefer’s case and probably in Geralt’s case, if not less extensively for him) betrayed and all other sorts of terrible things that have affected them, deeply. Of course a relationship between two people like that isn’t going to be sunshine and rainbows and cupcakes, cutesy pet names and constantly fawning over each other. Real life isn’t like that, and I applaud Sapkowski for not being afraid to explore realistic relationships in an otherwise unrealistic setting. Fighting doesn’t mean you don’t love someone; it means you’re not afraid to be real with them, to be yourself, even if it means you clash, and if you can come back together after that, the two of you are that much stronger for it, both as an item and as individuals. Sapkowski himself stated that Yen wasn’t meant to be the standard fantasy girl, the reward for the hero that will just silently fawn and faint into his arms—she’s going to fight him, she’s going to be three- dimensional, she’s going to have realistic emotions and she’s not going to be the doting and utterly devoted RPG girlfriend, the secondary character, all the time. After seeing what Yen could be like when they first met in Rinde, Geralt was well aware of what he was getting himself into by entering a relationship with her.

It also doesn’t help that people have a wonderful double standard wherein behavior like Yen’s probably would’ve been excused if she was a guy (”he just has trouble showing emotions because of his damaging past, he really does love her”) and that her past would’ve been brought up more if she were a guy (where are all the people talking about that?) She used to be a little girl named Jenny. She came from parents who abused and shunned her because she was afflicted with a physical deformity (being a hunchback and all.) She’d tried to take her own life. She was taught that sorceresses are seen as weak if they cry, or show emotion, or display affection, or allow themselves to fall in love—that she had to choose between being a sorceress or being a mother. The people who were supposed to love her and nurture her didn’t, and naturally it had repercussions on her adult life and her adult relationships. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t love Geralt – she has feelings and acknowledges them, she knows she can’t just walk away from him like she wants to sometimes because she does love him – it just means she shows them in unconventional ways and Geralt recognizes this. He returns them in these unconventional ways, meaning that sometimes they bicker and fight and tease and prod each other. Sometimes they do separate. And I love how, in TW3, Yen is weirded out if Geralt treats their relationship like a standard RPG relationship, or like a relationship with Triss, because the bond between them isn’t like that. It’s complex, and involves more gray areas than black or white ones.