#Opposite of Loneliness

[fleeting-fixations]

Opposite of Loneliness

[synnthamonsugar]

Yes. Yes. Okay. Savathun was impersonating Eris. But this all fundamentally applies TO Savathun herself. Savathun wrestling to free herself of the tethers of the Darkness and to find the Light and to protect the universe from Witness' machinations. A millennia of burned bridges and severed connections to who she loved, who she was, and who she fell in league with. Savathun reaching out to the Guardian, the only person in the universe who might be able to help her and to not have the words because what she is is anathema to everything they stand for, because it's unbelievable she would turn her back on the Darkness, because there is no way anyone would believe the truth. And so she constructs an elaborate lie, wearing the face of a kindred soul, to reveal her innermost feelings. OK!!! OK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bumblingbabooshka]

[Tuvok & Janeway: Control, Distance, Duty & Connection.] Sources: St Voyager Transcripts / Mitski 'First Love Late Spring' / Disco Elysium

[aq2003]

ten

[oatmealaddiction]

But I'm a Nice Guy Originally by Scott Benson in 2013.

[h3llgurlie]

I always wonder how ppl with no prior dating experience “casually” date other ppl after turning 18, I literally can’t go on a date without fighting off a panic attack or overthinking into insanity. It fucking sucks.

[anthropoetics]

hello! i was wondering if you know any books/essays on fear of intimacy (both physical and emotional). i know this is so specific but i get the feeling you might have some good recs! i hope you had a lovely birthday :))

hello, thank you for seeing me in this light, i'm definitely not suited to give you many recommendations, as i realized that's not something i generally read about, but! these are a few things i've read that might go along the lines of intimacy; (and thank you so much 🥺💌)

lockdown and physical intimacy among friends

on the intimacy of the mundane

loneliness: coping with the gap where friends used to be

ask polly: i want people to know the real me but it just won't come out

tell the people you love that you love them

i really recommend wong kar wai's the hand, which is both the fear of emotional and physical intimacy. and aloners where the protagonist has a very avoidant type of personality.

[yuridovewing]

I'm making the RiverClan Trio (Minnowtail, Rippletail, and Beetlewhisker) antagonist-adjacent in my AU, for petty stuff in Po3 and for actual horrors in OotS, and while talking to Vio I got the cursed idea that they're like those anti rivals you see in kids superhero shows that parallel the protags in power and personality and maybe appearance (think the Rowdyruff Boys from PPG) and now I wanna lean into that. Make Po3 basically just an episodic superhero kids show parody. Go all out with it's ridiculous premise

[morninkim]

Five years ago, Wren MacGowan was an ordinary farm kid from a small town who ran away to join an adventuring academy.

Now, after pretending to be nobleborn for a few months, a potential war, a military invasion of the school, an ongoing clone conspiracy, a god-like being known as "Salvation", dropping out of school, half a decade in isolation from their friends, and a lesbian situationship with a traumatized Rogue, Wren must prepare to face a new, but old, threat that has been left alone too long: themself.

[daily-hanamura]

[fettery-fetterie]

I'm just kinda thinking over what could it been had things gone just. Just every so slightly better

Had some fundamentals been challenged further

Had the right words be spoken

Had they didn't go all in

It's just so sad, because I ultimately do see them working on the right scenarios, but they're all just...fantasy, a fleeting dream, the unreachable

Oughhhh I love them so much. They're so doomed

[swallowtail-ageha]

Imagine being like one of miquella's close assistants during haligtree era and somehow the conversation ends up converging towards the role of empyreanhood and ascension and he's like "ah... godhood... indeed.... alas to become a lord i shall find a consort... if i could i would have made malenia consort, for we have already been one several times, and perhaps in birth too, but alas her fellow empyrean natures doesn't permit it" and you're standing there being like "did this guy just admit he fucks his sister"

[jewishdainix]

Im going to a sci-fi fantasy con tommorow!

[heliianth]

im so fucking emo abt totk zelink i havent even gotten to the sad place in the story and i have no idea what the cutscene is like but sometimes i think abt what it might be and i want to. collapse like a dying star

[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.

[twicedailyquotes]

We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life [...] It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's 4am and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can't remember. That time we did, we went, we saw, we laughed, we felt.

Marina Keegan

The Opposite of Loneliness