#a touch of solitude

[secicrexe]

Is this a denial of reality, or has something happened that has caused everyone to disappear from sight ?

.

. / i ate it / there was no one / i see no one / / and i will say ''thank you'' a hundred times / / sorry, i'm happy / .

Khalid EL Morabethi

voice : Mira

.

[soracities]

obsessed w this ("Dostoevsky as lover", Henrik Karlsson)

[demaparbat-hp]

He noticed the spears resting not too far away from the women. Zuko squinted his eyes and recoiled at the sight of blood painting the blades, in clear contrast to the whimsical whites and blues of the South. These women were hunters.

The Southern Water Tribe brings shades of white to Zuko's soul in For The Spirits Chapter IX: A Rider Alone.

Sharpened mothers and fatherless children resting on the back of tattered tents. A Ghost-Mother, a shapeless howl, and the blue eyes from his dream—everything comes together in the land of the Midnight Sun.

[falesiastuff]

A rough painting of an idea I would like to put into the fan comics.

[pandora-books]

"He kept on examining her, discovering the miracle of her intimacy inch by inch, and he felt his skin tingle as he contemplated the way her skin tingled when it touched the water."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

[lexsnotdead]

questionable narrative decisions aside, another thing that makes death of the outsider stand out among the rest for me is just how lonely the game feels. other protagonists always had some sort of alliances/teamplay going on: we dispatched our enemies of their allies and gathered our own in a complex political intrigue, it was a game of chess rather than a duel, whereas in doto there's just... billie vs. the world, billie fixing everyone's mistakes for nothing but atonement, she's on her own with the ghosts of her past and weight of the world on her shoulders and it just feels lonely

[roxynani9292]

F5 🚾 poster 🐦‍⬛🐡🍎🦭🐇

[miles-away-from-heaven]

i thought there were strangers knocking on my wooden door but it was dirt covering my casket. i ignored because i feared. i am afraid i am more scared of letting people in than death. i wouldn't mind dying alone. i prefer to rot inside this space than to welcome unexpected visitors inside. i sealed myself shut with the security i find in solitude. so if you say this is not nice, i'd say, i much prefer to suffocate with the vibe than deal with the atmosphere outside. i wouldn't mind being alone.

Miles

[soracities]

love returns like a boomerang !! do you hear a boomerang!!!!!

from "Roland Barthes: Love as Language", The Artifice [iD in ALT]

[heart-songs]

Love exists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Rainer Maria Rilke

[pandora-books]

"Meme felt the weight of his hand on her knee and she knew that they were both arriving at the other side of abandonment in that instant."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

[gible-love-nibles-archive]

Saw this prompt list in Des' tag called Des.cember and. Well. You guys know me (extremely normal about this guy). So I'm gonna try and do a couple of these! (begging myself not to forget)

This is actually Day 2's prompt "Frozen Lake", and all I could think about was that scene near the beginning of AL, when the team finds A.urora crossing that giant frozen lake. They all jump onto it with pretty much no hesitation, but. What if one of them made another hesitate, even if just for a little bit?

(Please reblog! I like reading tags :])

Taglist: @crickiss @heart-of-aspiration @halsdaisy @sifeas @jocelynships @imaginemyshipswithme @keyblade-ships @wooboomoomoo @seahydra [If you want to added or removed, tell me in a comment or tag!]

[wormchaser]

i am so horribly sick

[orchideae]

I have so very much to catch up on, my sincerest apologies, seriously— there's been mental madness going on behind the scenes, including this weekend. Please, let December be the month where normality starts and stays.

And on a more IC note, I often talk about solitude and isolation (and its origins in a very specific kind of loneliness) that is chosen and accepted, but I don't know if I ever talk about what that looks like exactly, and why, quite frankly, it's a little... for lack of a better word, concerning. Do me a favor, if you're in Genshin, turn your clock to nighttime, then go out into any of the cities, villages, camps, footholds and look up, no matter the nation you're in. How many characters are able to do that, and see a night sky that is nothing but void of any and all bounds and limitations? How many of them see that endless array of stars that illuminate it, and how many feel the cool fresh air that tickles their skin? For many, they can leave the four walls that house them, and experience that sight and sensation, because all of us to an extent, crave that. And honestly, so can Yelan— but she also, if not more often so, chooses to see something else. And the unusual concept of choosing that, is a driving force to my decisions for her and why I deem them so incredibly important: it's about the state of mind, it's about the mental that drives her.

On many days and nights especially, this is what she sees, and this is only if she doesn't descend further into the Chasm (which we know that she does), closer to the Abyss and to the Celestial nail itself that rests at its heart. And yes, it is beautiful in its own way, a pathway illuminated by the light of the moon and the nail, but it's also a cruel reminder of just how far the surface, and humans that live there (that she is by all accounts a part of, of course), are. But then, when she returns her gaze to the ground, her surroundings are void of light and dare I say, void of hope. The Chasm isn't just one of the places where you can get the closest to the Abyss, but it also consists of ruins of more than just one civilization. We see glimpses of Khaenri'ah (which we explore more closely through Dain's quest), but we know there is 'fauna' down there, even deeper, that is referenced as belonging to an even more ancient civilization that predated it. The Chasm is surrounded by reminders of death, ruin, and in that, it feels as if it's the direct foil of the world above it. The Chasm was almost the end of Liyue five-hundred years ago during the fall of Khaenri'ah, just as it had, apparently, once been to a civilization before it (please remember, the impact of the meteorite/fallen star that created the Chasm occurred roughly 6000 years ago), and its creatures wouldn't have stopped at its borders. The Chasm is the engulfing darkness in direct opposition to the light of life overhead, and the hope that humanity holds in the palms of its hands. It's dark, it's grim, and it's cold in more ways than one (See one, two, three, four).

And this place is a choice that Yelan makes to venture to and stay in, yes, yet calling it a choice is where it gets so interesting. Once upon a time, long before she got her vision, she was part of a team that surveyed the surroundings of the Chasm, and like many others before them that have descended into it, all members of this team, excluding her, died. The circumstances aren't clear, but following Yelan's line to Ning, I'm lead to believe that the Chasm's surroundings, which are all rather clearly threats to non-vision holders in specific (which Yelan also was at the time), were directly responsible for their demise. I'll note my hypothesis on what could have happened to them in a different post in the future, as I don't want to go far off-topic, but despite having likely witnessed what occurred to them, seeing the ruins of the Chasm, the threat of the Abyss and barely understanding what the Abyss even is, she continues to venture down there because the possibility of what could happen to the people of Liyue, is more important than her own existence and/or survival. And this bears even more weight following the events of Perilous Trail part 2, where she witnessed just how much the Chasm is capable of. Is this walking engima of a woman also drawn to equal or greater mystery than herself, much like a moth to a flame? I think that's part of it, but I definitely think it's infinitely more multi-layered.

Mostly, I think that this plays into the heart of what Fontaine has shown us that 'hydro' seems to represent: it's not merely a sense of responsibility (and/or justice) or selflessness, but a semblance of self-sacrifice either during the duration of one's life or at its end, either literally or figuratively. But keeping that in mind, what I really want to shine a spotlight on, is what kind of self-sacrifice seems to be the case with Yelan, and the way in which she seems to not just be at peace with it, but has truly accepted it almost as something akin to normality. And more importantly, note how this isn't normal behavior. An acceptance of solitude in such depressing surroundings is incredibly saddening, because it's not something that we ever crave by any means or should ever come to crave. Any regular individual, even most vision-holders surely, would find what she does insane to some extent. And yet, she walks the depths of the Chasm, of all places, with a similar routine as a Millelith guard patrols the outskirts of the harbor. Regardless of her clear reason for it— god, I have difficulty explaining what I'm trying to say; how does someone get to a point where they no longer do something so depressing out of necessity, but because it's... normal? That's her. The Chasm isn't... as eerie to her as it is to others, even if she knows better than most what these surroundings are; the Chasm it isn't as dangerous, even if she knows that it is and it's why she's there in the first place, to her as it is to others. Perhaps it's simply an acceptance that regardless of its dangers, that her fate lies in those depths as it did for her ancestors, that the Chasm's ruins will include her own legacy one day. But again, how does one come to terms with that? How do you come to make the decision that you will sacrifice yourself for others, especially when it means resigning yourself to a place like the Chasm, a place that is home to a pathway to the Abyss, which inherently holds the power to drive mortals to madness and death. Many wouldn't do this, or rather, many couldn't do this, not until they had no other choice and even then, think of Boyang, and even Bosacius, granted the latter had lost his mind by then. And that's where I think she's unique, because she technically has a choice, unlike individuals like Xiao whose... direct 'responsibility' and contract it is to do what he does. She could walk away tomorrow if she willed it, but she doesn't. Yes, responsibility plays into it, but the Chasm really hits differently when you tie it into that.

Now, I do need to note that I firmly stand against any believe that she a death wish or is thoroughly depressed. She isn't going down there over and over because she seeks an end to her life in some way or because she believes her life to be worthless. Quite the contrary, actually, and one could argue that the reasoning for that lies with her survivor's guilt. But all in all, before I get sidetracked again: Yelan embraces solitude to a rather extreme extent, and yet she doesn't seem to harbor a dissociation from the rest of humanity or dislike of it, but she does seem to place a firm line between non-allogenes and herself (and others who hold a vision). But what I mean with embracing solitude, is that while she is social, and she understands the laws and diplomacy of social behavior, she isn't one to always engage in it, simply because many don't seem to quite... share her headspace.

[stripedsilktie]

noooo i may never experience true romantic love, i might never understand what it's like to surrender to my own feelings because they are so genuine and strong, and receive in return another person's unadulterated attention and affection!!! it's not a cool thing but the realisation that my heart will never skip a beat for someone, and i won't cradle a lover's face and stare into their eyes to soak in their beauty, and even making love is doomed to be stale because there is no love and it's just a simulacre; i know in my mind that lovers' intertwined bodies are a reflection of their souls, their hearts melting into one another and for me i will only ever touch the bodies of strangers and only meet their flesh instead of their souls, it will never go deeper and neither of us will be changed by that encounter!!!

[soracities]

“Perhaps the greatest gift we can give to another human being is detachment. Attachment, even that which imagines it is selfless, always lays some burden on the other person. How to learn to love in a light, airy way that there is no burden?”

May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

“The mystic Simone Weil wrote to a friend on another continent, ‘Let us love this distance, which is thoroughly woven with friendship, since those who do not love each other are not separated.’ For Weil, love is the atmosphere that fills and colors the distance between herself and her friend. Even when that friend arrives on the doorstep, something remains impossibly remote: when you step forward to embrace them your arms are wrapped around mystery, around the unknowable, around that which cannot be possessed.”

Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost

“ ...Because I don’t KNOW what I want of you. I deliver MYSELF over to the unknown, in coming to you, I am without reserves or defences, stripped entirely, into the unknown. Only there needs the pledge between us, that we will both cast off everything, cast off ourselves even, and cease to be, so that that which is perfectly ourselves can take place in us.’”

D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“We must give up trying to know those to whom we are linked by something essential; by this I mean, we must greet them in the relation with the unknown in which they greet us, as well, in our distance. Friendship, this relation without dependence, without episode yet into which all of the simplicity of life enters, passes by way of the recognition of the common strangeness that does not allow us to speak of our friends, but only to speak to them, not to make of them a topic of conversations (or articles), but the movement of understanding in which, speaking to us, they reserve, even on the most familiar terms, an infinite distance, the fundamental separation on the basis of which what separates becomes relation.”

Maurice Blanchot, “Friendship”