he deserves a blunt and a slap on the ass ur honour

The third and final of three D2 acrylic charm designs! I will be making these semi-transparent 2.5-inch charms and limited stock since I’m not sure if there’s anyone else interested in these as well.

My current impressions of the siblings below! Of all the D2 characters, I have the most brain rot for them…

Mara Sov

Since I was a fan of Seth Dickinson’s writing, I had done some preliminary research on what he wrote for Destiny lore. One of those things is the creation of Mara Sov and much of her lore. I also saw a Tumblr post showing a lot of people did not like her and that she was a controversial character in the game. This interested me more to play it and make a judgment for myself. I didn’t get to see who Mara Sov was until the Parasite exotic quest and even then was kinda confused as to who she was and her significance. I really like the dialogue during that quest since it was one of the first few instances during the early parts of my D2 journey that showed any hint of vulnerability from a character. Reading the Parasite lore page about Mara feeling gratitude at witnessing the vision of herself becoming the Witness’s disciple intrigued me even more!! Anyways, I say all of this to say that I ended up really liking Mara Sov. Marasenna, The Awoken of the Reef, and The Dreaming City were my first lore books I ever finished reading. I love how terrible she is, 10% of the time when she is viscerally vulnerable, and how complex she is. I am also obsessed with how her character relates to others such as: ofc Uldren/Crow, whatever freaky little friendship she got going on with Eris Morn, the parallels between her, Savathun, and Ikora as people who revolve their life around secrets, Petra and Sjur as her girlfriends wraths, and parallels to Caitl as rulers who rule very differently 9soon we see them interact in season of seraph...? bungo pls).

She has done so many morally reprehensible things. I can see why people don’t like her and can’t imagine her being likable, but unfortunately, I tend to really like terrible fictional characters. I have friends who are some of the kindest people I know and are extremely driven by selfish means. They were the ones who taught me that being selfish isn’t inherently bad and a person can be judged much more holistically. I’m not saying my friends are nearly in the same ballpark of being an egotistical, cold, and manipulative queen like Mara Sov, but that mix of good intentions in coexistence or clashing with selfish goals is familiar to me and I enjoy the moral struggle. That is a lot more interesting to me than being another NPC that just spouts quest objectives. Also to my more shallow tastes, I love a woman who would coldly step on me tyvm. Mara often fails and I would like to see her fail more, suffer the consequences of those failures, and succeed maybe like 50% of the time LOL I like women who are dominant but also fall from their dominance. I am very much a supporter of women’s rights and women’s wrongs LMAOOOOO (Note: I mean this last sentence for only fictional characters in case anyone decides to take this in bad faith. IRL war criminals are war criminals that deserve bad deaths regardless of gender.)

(I thought her hair was kinda ugly at first, but I got used to it so now I like it LOL)

Uldren Sov/Crow

I vaguely was aware of Uldren simply because of his relationship with Mara for awhile. Then I met Crow and realized “oh huh he’s clearly got a lot more going on then just being Mara’s brother”. Then I read Marasenna and realized his dynamic with Mara was a lot more complicated than I realized. I love complicated sibling relationships!! I thought it sucked that much of Uldren’s narrative arc happened in Forsaken which is now in the content vault and I can’t experience it for myself :^(((((. I recently finished reading The Forsaken Prince and thaaaat was really good wow. I wish we can see Jolyon in game considering he was an important person in Uldren’s life. Maybe it’ll happen whenever Crow decides to confidently approach the people that were important to his past life head-on. I really did enjoy the story when catching up on Season of the Risen and Haunted. During the Sever missions, I constantly kept going “omg Crow you’re going to let the little voice in your head keep saying things like that? Oooowww…” Like Uldren was mean afffff 😭 I understand the Crow fatigue for vet fans, but I just came in like a couple months ago so I am all ready to go to see what else the narrative team has in store for my guy. I am looking forward to his growth as his own person with a renewed sense of purpose. I didn’t realize Glint was important to Crow until revisiting dialogue during Season of the Lost and reading more of his lore so I didn’t include him in the drawing. If I ever make more of these charms, I’ll draw Glint in and maybe Petra (after studying up on her lore).

I am extremely mentally ill over the Sov siblings. By extension, I will soon be mentally ill over everything Awoken-related (I need to get on Petra Venj stuff holy moly), but I need to read more of their lore stuff first.

Honestly cannot be assed about Amanda’s death. I’ve been playing Destiny since D1 and this death feels so out of left field. I get they were dropping some foreshadowing w/ her language and some lore stuff. Just bc you randomly drop some foreshadowing to a characters death doesn’t make the death narratively compelling. Not to mention this seems like the worst way to add complexity/intrigue into this season. We still don’t know why the black legion/ Witness is taking prisoners. Mostly bc it seems contradictory to everything the witness has done so far. Like clearly the Witness did not launch an all out attack on Guardians/the Tower and earth in general. It’s attention was focused solely on the Traveller so what point is there in taking random prisoners and a war that’s not really being waged? If this was a Red War-esque scenario I could see prisoners being taken making sense. But that’s not what’s happening or at least not what Bungie has shown us.

I honestly was hoping for a darker twist this season esp since we had mentions of the air in the prison ships being different/hard to breath. Like maybe the Witness was trying to corrupt people over to his side and against Guardians/the Traveller. Something maybe parallel to what Mass Effect did with indoctrination w/ the Reapers. To me it makes more narrative sense and is more in line with original Destiny and the purpose of Guardians to have protecting people and the last city be an essential part of this season rather than ANOTHER character death with another revenge arc. It just would have been more compelling if we saw that actual humanity (rather than just the Traveller and named NPCs) were in serious peril. I also think it would have helped ground the DLC, which is dealing with these huge paracasual entities that are seemingly beyond our understanding in something more tangible to us as players. Made the Witness not just a threat to the Traveller but also the Last City and all it’s people.

I also think Amanda’s death also could have just been done better. Like even more so than the fact they killed her they did it in such an impersonal and awkward scene. A random explosion, our guardian walking out fine (presumably after being exploded and rezzed?), Eramis being there after a bunch of random cryptic warnings. And like rescuing 6 ppl. It was just not a compelling death in any way.

Then I will touch on the weird Crow/Amanda stuff going on. And I will immediately preface with Bi ppl exist. Ppl can have relationships with men and women and be attracted to people of all genders. So the fact Uldren had a relationship w/ a man prior to be a guardian and now seems to have had feelings for Amanda is not something I see as inherently awful or queer baiting. Same w/ Amanda flirting with a women Eliksni. (Also she obviously did not reciprocate Crows feelings so irrelevant imo) But as a bi person I kinda don’t mind them having characters that are attracted to multiple genders. I still think Crow/Amanda was a very forced pairing and felt awkward throughout the season. I also do not think they necessarily killed Amanda for the sole purpose of giving Crow man pain? I mean it’s too early to know what direction Bungie will go w/ the rest of the season so we’ll see what happens. I wasn’t particularly attached to Amanda. But I do think the decision was still shocking to me, I mean to me it was in the same vein as if they decided to kill off another well established vendor/NPC. Like Shax or Eva Levante. Like these characters have never had a lot of in game narrative purpose but have been constant companions to our guardians. And I’m purposefully ignoring lore as many NPCs have a much bigger role in lore but writing good lore for a character doesn’t make up for lack of in game content that’s actually directly communicated to players. You can’t have an entire game built on lore or having to read lore for context to understand what’s happening (which is what Bungie is doing).

Also Mara Sov at this point I’m like is this character development or are they just writing you as a completely different character? It really feels like Mara wouldn’t have given a shit about Amanda’s death or been this empathic to any of the other characters of this happened during Witch Queen. I don’t know if Bungie is trying to recoup how they wrote Mara earlier in the game to frankly be a complete bitch to be more like able now or this is like a driven character arc. I wish I remembered more dialogue from her from earlier seasons but it really feels like Mara is a completely different character at this point. (I don’t mind too much bc well she is actually likeable now).

I really feel like the current trajectory of the seasonal story really just cements the fact Lightfall wasn’t a particularly compelling narrative and that I am very nervous about the resolution of Destiny’s story. I feel like they are going to fall into Mass Effect 3’s trap of not being able to resolve such a massive IP w/ such in depth world building within studio/industry constraints.