i think the witcher makes me feel a profound sadness every night because it’s about all the things we love so much, or that we wish we had, but can never get back. the tragedy of the uncontrollable. the pain of loss.
ciri, despite her youth and innocence, loses her home and family and then she even her adoptive parents, and then she even loses her youth and her innocence, and is left with nothing but a grotesque scar symbolizing her trauma that doesn’t fit her childlike face and a hardened, green glare. and a sword, which is only a burden.
her parents, despite their incredible love for her, despite all of their agony and sacrifice to get her back, despite their own loss of their honor, their pride, their blood — they lose her too. they lose a child, the most tragic loss of all.
dandelion loses his best friend, clutching at his memories like the weeds growing by loch eskalott, trying to grasp the last twenty years to write his memoires.
milva hears her father’s words when she shoots, and his wheezing echoes in her mind.
regis lost himself, his entire life, all the people he ever loved and chased away.
cahir, despite his large family that loves him more than imperial orders, can never return to darn dyffrya, feel the sun on his face in vicovaro ever again.
angoulême wonders if her mother would have loved her had she not abandoned her, imagines what her hand patting her head in praise could have felt like.
and then geralt loses them. all of them, one by one.
and nimue, reading about it all, can never meet the figures of the legend she has obsessed over for years and years… she has her part to play in it, she can know their voices from dialogues and know their faces from etchings, but will never be able to tell them she loves them, tell them how much they mean to her.
even when they find what they’re searching for, even when they find what they’ve desired so — it’s only for a bittersweet moment. they shortly lose it again. everyone in this series is so intertwined together and caught in the same snare of destiny, and at the very same time so very alone and abandoned
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