elegy of the swan

Odette Spessiva

odette spessiva is a character that came out on august 12th in genshin impact, following the release of the long-awaited final region, snezhnaya. in that time, she has consumed my entire life and has become the only thing i will talk to anyone about. i absolutely adore her. she is my favourite character of all time (aside from one other) and i have not shut up about her since i got her. i love her SO MUCH!!!!

odette is a really quiet, almost emotionally stunted character who doesn't let anything show to the public. she is extremely kind, but not overtly. she's very elusive, but she tries her best around people who know her, like vodyanitsa , alyosha and the traveller, and though she's surrounded by a whole nation of people who love her, nobody entirely knows her. despite this, the glimpses she gives of herself to those who she loves are beautiful, like cracks of daylight through the frost. she is loved by all and known by none, but in what little we do know of her, she's so incredibly worth knowing. i need to fuckinf CHILL
i relate to odette. so much. i feel it in my SOUL i am HER i am literally fused with her. it's like hoyo took a piece of me and put it into their stupid game. i love her so much i feel so extremely connected to her it's almost worrying. i did dance for 9 years, i am extremely avoidant as much as i like to say otherwise, i have a weird relationship with food, i overwork myself and deny it constantly, i need to be the best at everything or there's no point! and about a million other things. oh and i also have issues with my mother + have deep resentment for a mother figure who was close to me when i was younger. me and odette are The Same Person i literally even had blue hair over the summer WE ARE THE SAME PERSON. OK .
for me i think odette just kind of represents everything i am and everything i want to be in life. i KNOWWWW she's just a character from a dumb gacha game but shes More than that to ,me. Ok. i relate to her on almost every level possible but i also want to be like her in some ways too. she's so extremely busy all the time and overworks herself and suffers because she's successful in something she loves. she makes a difference no matter how much she struggles alongside it. she matters to people and she's seen and loved by all for something that brings value to the people, for something that matters to them. i want that more than anything in the world and it's comforting having a character who i feel so deeply in my soul also have all of those things that i want more than anything in the world. I LOVE ODETTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so, odette is a ballerina. she's named after odette from the swan lake play composed by tchaikovsky, obviously, and is the best ballerina in all of snezhnaya.
she's a member of the fatui - the main antagonist of genshin and snezhnaya's main organisation, where she's next in line to inherit the "Fair Lady" seat after her deceased mentor, La Signora) the rokot - a secret organisation working against the fatui and project stuzha (snezhnaya lore stuff) where she works under the name lelek so as not to have her identity found out by the fatui, and the korolevskiy theater troupe, where she performs and is the dutiful, famed ballerina of the nation.
we first meet odette in the first archon quest of snezhnaya, in the great deeds on the tundra quest in svetloledovka. blah blah blah lore exposure and story continuation, and then there's this fucking AWESOME cutscene where odette helps the traveller escape the cave cuz its collapsing and they have to fight and ITS SO COOL

"and i heard your voice, as clear as day // and you told me i should concentrate // it was all so strange, and so surreal // that a ghost should be, so practical // only if for a night // and the only solution was to stand and fight, and my body was bruised, and i was set alight // but you came over me, like some holy rite // and although i was burning, you're the only light ♡"

odette's family produced ballerinas for centuries. her mother, violetta, was also a ballerina, before she had to quit when odette was young due to an injury on stage that caused her to have to quit dancing. her father, a member of the fatui, died in a mission when she was young, and she was inducted not long after by Signora into the fatui and became her protege, along with training to be the next ballerina of the korolevskiy troupe.
with this, there was a lot of expection placed on her at a young age, and that wasn't helped by signora's relentless training methods. she became one of her closest subordinates very quickly, and, after her death, became next in line to take the seat of the fair lady. when odette found out in present day about the death of signora and that the traveller was the one to kill her, she reveals that she isn't really too upset about it due to the harsh training she had to undergo under signora's thumb, harsh enough that she became almost numb to any kind of pain. this helped her to become the person she is in present day, training well into the night, and overworking herself beyond repair.
despite being so valued in the fatui, she adopts the role of lelek like i mentioned earlier, a member of the rokot who works against the fatui. she is on both sides at all times, and has ears everywhere. she knows and understands everyone and every side, even if it's difficult sometimes, and that's one of the reasons she's one of my favourite characters. she is one of the most empathetic characters i've ever come across in any kind of media, despite coming off as the coldest. she's so multifaceted and confusing and that's the best part of her character. she's talented and beautiful, cold and deadly, justice-driven and righteous, icy and uncaring, and she exists perfectly in every state whilst not breaking face once. it's admirable and i absolutely adore how well written she is, especially in the archon quests.