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dragonpropaganda · 2 months

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The Architecture of Rain World: Layers of History

A major theme in Rain World's world design that often goes overlooked is the theme of, as James Primate, the level designer, composer and writer calls it, "Layers of History." This is about how the places in the game feel lived-in, and as though they have been built over each other. Here's what he said on the matter as far back as 2014!

The best example of this is Subterranean, the final area of the base game and a climax of the theme. Subterranean is pretty cleanly slpit vertically, there's the modern subway built over the ancient ruins, which are themselves built over the primordial ruins of the depths. Piercing through these layers is Filtration System, a high tech intrusion that cuts through the ground and visibly drills through the ceiling of the depths.

Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets, the friendly local ghost, tells the player of the "bones of forgotten civilisations, heaped like so many sticks," highlighting this theme of layering as one of the first impressions the player gets of Subterranean. Barely minutes later, the player enters the room SB_H02, where the modern train lines crumble away into a cavern filled with older ruins, which themselves are invaded by the head machines seen prior in outskirts and farm arrays, some of which appear to have been installed destructively into the ruins, some breaking through floors.

These layers flow into each other, highlighting each other's decrepit state.

The filtration system, most likely the latest "layer," is always set apart from the spaces around it. At its top, the train tunnels give way to a vast chasm, where filtration system stands as a tower over the trains, while at the bottom in depths, it penetrates the ceiling of the temple, a destructive presence. (it's also a parallel to the way the leg does something similar in memory crypts, subterranean is full of callbacks like that!)

Filtration system is an interesting kind of transition, in that it is much later and more advanced than both of the areas it cuts between. This is a really interesting choice from James! It would be more "natural" to transition smoothly from the caves of upper subterranean to the depths, but by putting filtration system in between, the two are clearly demarcated as separate. The difference in era becomes palpable, the player has truly found something different and strange.

Depths itself is, obviously, the oldest layer not only of subterranean but of the game itself. The architecture of Depths has little to do with the rest of the game around it, it's a clear sign of the forgotten civilisations that our friend Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets showed us, there's not actually that much to say about it itself, it's mostly about how it interacts with the other layers of subterranean.

That said, Subterranean is far from the only case of the theme of layers of history. It's present as soon as the player starts the game!

The very first room of the game, SU_C04, is seemingly a cave. It is below the surface, the shapes of it are distinctly amorphous rather than geometric. (well. kind of, it doesn't do a very good job of hiding the tile grid with its 45 degree angles.)

But let's take a closer look, shall we?

See that ground? it's made of bricks. The entire cave area of outskirts is characterised by this, the "chaotic stone" masonry asset is mixed with brickwork, unlike the surface ruins which are mostly stone. This, seemingly, is an inversion of common sense! The caves are bricks and the buildings are stone. This is not, however, a strange and unique aspect but a recurring motif.

This occurs enough in the game for it to be clearly intentional, but why would materials such as bricks be used in otherwise natural looking terrain?

The answer lies in the "Layers of History" theme. This is in fact, something that happens in real life, and it's called a tell

To be specific, a tell is a kind of mound formed by settlements building over the ruins of previous iterations of themselves. Centuries of rubble and detritus form until a hill grows from the city. Cities such as Troy and Jericho are famous examples. The connections to the layers of history theme are pretty clear here, I think. Cities growing, then dying, then becoming the bedrock of the next city. The ground, then, is made of bricks, because the ground is the rubble of past buildings. The bones of forgotten civilisations, heaped like so many sticks!

#rain world #rainworld #rain world lore #rainworld lore #rw lore #rw #subterranean my beloved #thank you to videocult for making the first survival game themed around stratigraphy and new york city rats #i would've gone on for another paragraph about how OE relates to this but like.#that's dlc stuff #and i still think of the dlc stuff as modded content lol #better to keep it separate #also this analysis is not comprehensive! the layers of history stuff is common throughout #there's farm arrays there's the relationship between shaded citadel and five pebbles there's the stuff buried under garbage wastes #so much more #unfortunately i do not have much energy lol

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dykedvonte · 6 days

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Kindness in the Fallout universe is so rare like listening to how genuinely shocked NPCs sound when you go out of your way to help but ALSO ask for nothing in return is so sweet. It's a crazy concept to them cause it's so unheard of, everything is a commodity, and for you to use your resources and expect nothing in return is objectively insane to them in like a wasteland Santa way.

Yet it's always appreciated and reciprocated. It's just so sweet when you help an area or faction and they help you in return because you show them that just cause the wasteland is full of hazards, pain, and misery doesn't mean they have to contribute to it.

#i play as obsseively nice as i can be cause it honestly unlocks so much more lore and quests #also everyone likes me and I feel like Im making things better #fallout #fallout new vegas #fallout 3 #fallout 2 #fallout 4

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ganondoodle · 4 months

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I was at first in love with totk, and I still think mechanical wise, its quite impressive

And when I collected all the tears and saw the "story" I genuinely got upset in a good way (at first), because man! Did they really got the balls to go that far? Is there nothing I can do for her? Now I MUST do all the temples, see how it plays out and --oh, I've got this cutscene already. Why are all the people so dumb about Zelda, I KNOW where she is, Link say something-- Link??

After finishing all the temples and almost falling asleep, I stopped playing the game, looked up the last boss and remaining cutscenes and went "Thats it?"

Watching other people (including you) being critically about so many things, both character and mechanical wise, I've almost startled myself with a realization what the gnawing feeling I constantly had, actually was.

Totk feels like a fanfic.

And don't get me wrong, I love fanfiction, I think its great and important, I adore fanfic writers, I love finding gems, I love reading self indulgent stories, see new spins and interpretation of characters. I love the casual, the passion, the creativity!

But totk gives me the same feeling everytime I am reminded that Fifty Shades is a Twillight fanfic.

The world is there. The faces I know and grew to love are there. But everything is ever so slightly different, uncannily so. Just how some characters talk, how they act, how they were placed in the story. The Zonai appearing out of nowhere, but no, they always had been there you see, they were these super magical advanced people but they all died, the king is so tragic. And you see, the king is super cool and powerful and-- oh I dont get to interact with him outside of the tutorial. Did they try to do another King Rhoam-- but wait, that only worked because we didn't knew he was a ghost-- totk wait stop why do you take him out of the story, why couldn't he be a companion, he IS ABLE TO TALK THROUGH THE ARM LET THE OLD GOAT COMMENT ON STUFF?? If you bring up all this ancient stuff and you still got a ghost lingering, let him talk?? (I never ended up getting Mineru but I smell wasted potential as well)

Im not even mad, I am disappointed. It feels like the devs saw what all the lore hunters got attached to and talked about and then just... took the "cool". All the Zonai stuff could've easily been Sheikah tech, but got just reskinned to look more exciting instead of being its own thing.

Like... at this point I prefer what fans are doing over what Totk gave us. The characterization of Rauru (and everything Zonai), projects like you do of what totk couldve been, the little nuggets of actual highlights and details of love fans find in the game. I found much more enjoyment in these concepts than I got from a 70bucks game. And thats depressing.

I love fanfiction. I dont love it when my corporate 70 dollar, six year development, console exclusive game feels like a story that passionate fan couldve written miles better in a week (and I've already seen much cooler and interesting rewrites and ideas).

Zelda has been a huge part of my childhood and its depressing seeing it treated like that. It always was about the story, the epic, its The Legend of Zelda for crying out loud. To be courageous to enter a dungeon, to be wise and solve all the riddles. To become powerful over the journey you embarked on. Zelda to me is the campfire story you tell to others and go into the woods or the beach and imagine what monsters you would slay. Zelda is not the sandcastle you build in the sandbox and then add dinosaurs and star wars ships because you didn't had any other toys, and just stumble into and over some story to entertain yourself until lunch is ready.

I'd have an oracle of seasons over another totk any day at this point. They should've just make the mechanics of totk its own thing, but I guess they were scared it wouldn't sell if it doesn't have a Mario or Zelda skin straped over it.

Anyways, sorry for the mini rant - love your art, love your thoughts and insights, and I am looking forward to see more of it - Zelda related or not (your original characters look amazing, I adore your style sm)

Hope you have a great rest of the day!

*nods along through this entire rant*

idk how many of my rants you have read but yeah ... yeah ... and the further you think about it the further it all falls apart, the wasted potential of it all and the goddamn audacity of them to do those interviews in which they make it EVEN WORSE is just

i know the expectation for a direct sequel to botw was huge and understandbly so but i really REALLY think it would not have been that hard to make it a good follow up even taking into account that totk was originally a DLC, pretty much all of botws aspects could have been developed further, i dont know what could have happened to make totk have turned out like this .. literally it feels like something had to have gone wrong, its like someone who doesnt know zelda nor botw at all was given a few prompts and then just made some generic fantasy story while the rest worked on ultrahand for 5 years

the technical impressive things ARE technical impressive, but i dont think it was necessary nor served the game well in any way (and i LOVE building games- however totk is neither a building game nor a story game nor a zelda game nor an exploration game nor a sequel imo) but zelda, this zelda, is not made for that and i cant help but think it was mainly to encourage people to make some ridiculous mechs so it can go viral on tiktok (not trying to discredit them, it IS cool what they are doing but i .... have my doubts if zelda is the right place for that)

ill stop there bc i have ranted so much about everything i dont wanna repeat it here again; it just doesnt feel like a real game (derogatory), it feels extra bad bc i was not really into zelda when botw came out and while i did get it as soon as i could (months after release since i just started a minijob and didnt have the money) i only over time grew to love zelda this much again, devouring any theories and anything about it bc i loved it so much- i was never into it like this when a new title was announced and dont own any special editions so i bought the totk collectors bc i was just so damn excited for it after the 2019 trailer dropped (god i want that time back ... it looked so much more like it was going to be an actual sequel) even if i was already worried it wouldnt be good at that point given how much i started to sense stuff i dont like about the newer trailers

i recently sold it at our local gameshop bc it was like a thorn in my side given how expensive it was and how dissapointed i was in the game, i genuinely think that, technical impressiveness aside, totk is the onyl zelda i truly cannot stand (for alot of reasons) and im genuinely worried for the future of the franchise

i bought an Oki (Okami) figurine for what i got back and i feel much happier with that :3

(also on a note, i did finish the game two weeks after release but stopped playing it right then and hadnt touched it since, i also streamed all of what i played and its still up if you want to see my slow descend into madness fjkdhkdhjk though its been a long while since then and i by far did not talk about everything back then, just what my most immediate frustrations were while still playing)

(also the gameplay isnt as good as people make it out to be, so much is so frustrating and punishing to use i am kinda baffled it got through like that and most people call that its best aspect ..... though i guess if the rest is so much worse even mid gameplay can seem good ooooooooh how dare i)

also thank you for liking what i do!!! <3 it means alot to know it is appreciated by someone :D

#ganondoodles answers #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rants #in my playthorugh i genuinely tried to be super open to what its offering me #but i think its pretty clear that i could see were it was going pretty soon and tried to fight my fear #and then i ended up being right #like i even went out of my way to get the memories and dungeons in turns so i wouldnt spoil anything #and still you can see me get sadder and dissappointed with each new memory i got #and the time it truly all started to crumble was when i discovered what they did to the shrine of life #pretty sure after i got all the lightroots and all i got was a you did it sticker i jsut gave up and went to the end #and after that i found the endfight fun so i played it a few more times #but the last few streams were mostly me ranting jkdfngvkjdfnhgjkdf #for this price its pretty bad #idk why so many people are okay with this tbh #zelda fans deserve better #i think the wasted potential and insulting treatment of both lore - botw and even the player is what frustrates me so much #sidenote i love the username bc there sure are words #alot of them even #(good)#i have done so much ranting it feels good to read someone elses rant about similar frustrations

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varilien · 8 months

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conjuring 2 just for the sole scene of the Crooked Man. Vash would make a great crooked man!

SOOO TRUE

#vash #vash the stampede #trigun #trigun anime #trigun fanart #asks #with-a-whisper #movie night with v #<- new tag all the recs + their responses will go under :]#okay the conjuring movies honestly give me such whiplash because they just. stand out so much from everything else i've watched lol #i've seen so few big studio horror movies and the first conjuring movie especially took me off guard just from being so........#like casually christian and “feelgood” with a happy ending where everything's fine???#like from a lore standpoint i expected the christianity vs demons thing but less so what i can only describe as youth group dialogue lmao #i think the second movie is better in a lot of respects and also less unintentionally funny hfdgkjd

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genericpuff · 11 months

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fp spoilers ahead and a content warning for violence:

hades normally:

hades when he's possessed by his dead dad and threatening to rip his wife's head off:

i rest my case, make murder hobo hades president, rip her head off you beautiful sick fuck-

#sorry i'm being edgy on main but MAN does hades look so much better here #seriously why is hades only drawn this attractive when he's threatening to rip his wife's head off #this is sad #i for one welcome our new evil overlord #at least he knows he's fucked in the head and doesn't pretend like he's nice #murder hobo hades for president 2023 #i'm just so desperate to see persephone lose at this point she's such a boring karen #lore olympus spoilers #lo spoilers #fast pass spoilers #trigger warning violence #tw violence #tw strangling #lore olympus critical #lo critical #antiloreolympus #anti lore olympus

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thefirstknife · 10 months

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I want to talk about Lakshmi-2 again since her story came back as relevant, as well as touch on Savathun since she's coming back. So this is going to be a retrospective on their involvement in Season of the Splicer!

A lot of people weren't around for Season of the Splicer or maybe don't remember it as well. That season was a lot and one of the most important parts of it was that at the time we still didn't know about Savathun impersonating Osiris. SOME of us who dedicated a lot of time to figuring it out have speculated it and were pretty much 100% convinced that Osiris in Splicer was NOT Osiris, but this wasn't confirmed until after Splicer ended.

I think that the misunderstanding of this event has also led to misunderstanding Lakshmi and what she did in Splicer. The entire season's story takes on a completely different vibe if you know that Lakshmi was heavily manipulated by Savathun whose presence in the City had a major goal of destabilising leadership and drawing attention away from her own schemes.

This isn't a post to justify anything that Lakshmi did; her actions in Splicer were unambiguously bigoted towards the Eliksni. She used her xenophobia for personal political gains while putting a vulnerable population in danger with her words and actions. Lakshmi's xenophobic preaching resulted in direct violence against the Eliksni. There is no excuse for that, no matter what's the origin of that xenophobia. I want to make that clear before I dive into this.

What happened in Splicer?

Season of the Splicer was the third season in Y4 (Beyond Light). It focused on a mysterious phenomenon known as "the endless night" which wrapped the Last City in perpetual darkness. This was done by the Vex. Nobody knew how to deal with this, including every single Guardian and scholar in the Tower so out of desperation, we turned to the Eliksni for help; sacred Eliksni Splicers had means to enter the Vex Network and find a root cause as well as a possible solution to the problem. This is how Mithrax and his House of Light were invited to the City, in an unprecedent move for an alliance with the Eliksni. Splicers and Guardians together have the unique power to manifest physically in the Vex Network and deal with the cause for the endless night. Long post under:

Accepting the Eliksni into the City was tough. Most humans have experienced some form of violence at the hands of the Eliksni. Our past is filled with wars and battles against the Eliksni. The first big battle for the City, Battle of Six Fronts was against the Eliksni who wanted to breach the newly built wall and attack humanity. Battle of Twilight Gap was a final fight against united Eliksni houses that got close to conquering the City, only to be held off at the Twilight Gap as the last line of defence. This battle was saved, in part, because Mara decided to reveal the Awoken and stop House of Wolves from joining Twilight Gap which essentially prevented Eliksni victory, but spurned the Reef Wars which devastated the Reef; both the Eliksni and the Awoken. This is but a small selection of the biggest conflicts that show for how long this has been going on and how many people were affected by the wars with the Eliksni.

This is all after the Eliksni arrived to the system just as our Collapse finished and they wasted no time settling in a world just beginning to recover from the Collapse. Early human settlements were routinely entirely destroyed by the Eliksni who were stronger and better equipped than humans; until the Risen showed up. But even with the Risen, ordinary humans still continued to suffer to both the Eliksni and the Risen and their combined conflicts. Stories about Amanda and Safiyah are but a fraction of stories of ordinary humans who had to deal with Eliksni attacks. This also includes civilian Eliksni; many Eliksni were literally just survivors of their own apocalypse and had nowhere else to go, while dealing with unfathomable desperation about being abandoned by what they saw as their deity. Both humans and Eliksni were exploited by their leaders and pushed to constant wars.

This is important to understand because it gives some context to why some citizens of the Last City were somewhat reluctant to accept the Eliksni being there, on top of the growing paranoia about a City plunged in an endless night at the hands of the Vex. Humans didn't just wake up one day thinking "Eliksni are stinky!" there were legitimate reasons for being afraid. Mithrax's daughter Eido confirms this in her logs, telling us that the Eliksni are well aware that they were the initial aggressors on humanity. The same can be applied to Eliksni as well; many Eliksni have lived with the knowledge that at any point in time superpowered immortal humans can descend from the sky and start indiscriminately killing them. They have horror stories about this, most notably about Saint-14 who led a long crusade against the Eliksni, including against civilians who wanted nothing to do with the wars. Putting Saint-14 and Mithrax in the same City during a Vex-induced anxiety was a ticking time bomb.

Luckily, Saint-14 is a kind man who is capable of reflecting and being compassionate. Once Mithrax explained how the Eliksni view him, he got deeply ashamed of his actions and sought to atone for his past. It took a while, but the Eliksni accepted him and he became great friends with Mithrax and was willing to lay down his life for Eliksni who, at the end, he claimed are his people equally as anyone else in the City. At the end of the day, the leadership of humanity and the Eliksni decided to put everything behind and start anew, which was the right thing to do. Everybody suffered in the past, but nobody has to continue suffering in the future. Giving everyone a second chance is literally the core theme of Destiny.

The Lakshmi-2 Problem

On the other hand, there was Lakshmi-2. She was the leader of the Future War Cult, one of the City factions. Factions in the city were representatives of the civilians; Future War Cult, New Monarchy and Dead Orbit were the three that operated for the interest of the civilians. Lakshmi was immediately deeply against the Eliksni settling in the City. She proceeded to be a staunch advocate for their removal, broadcast weekly radio messages with anti-Eliksni sentiments and stoked the anxiety and paranoia of the citizens, directing it towards the Eliksni. At one point, the animosity towards the Eliksni turned to violence as well, and the Botza District, where the Eliksni were settled, was attacked and their settlement ransacked. Many Eliksni were harassed in the streets and some were attacked. Lakshmi's broadcasts were a huge part of this violence, which ended with her broadcasting about taking matters into her own hands which resulted in opening a Vex portal to the City (specifically to Botza District to attack the Eliksni).

The fandom immediately hated her for that and with good reason. A lot of people were confused because they didn't think it was right to portray her as a warmongering politician which was always strange to me. She was the leader of the Future War Cult. Her messaging was always that of political warmongering. It's in the name. Splicer just amplified this because the situation was happening in front of our eyes and for other reasons influencing Lakshmi.

Lakshmi was shown actively using the Device, a prediction machine owned by the Future War Cult since the Golden Age which was made back then by Maya Sundaresh who founded the FWC and invested into this Device which is a mesh of Vex technology. Maya called it a "mind-ship" and shown that it was capable of displacing one's consciousness, allowing you to see the future, past, other timelines, or possibly something else. The contemporary FWC found remains of the Device and continued to use it for the same purpose. Using the Device proved to be largely damaging or even lethal to those put in it. A lot of the "futures" that users saw would be that of utter Darkness, war and collapse so they decided to spread the message that "war is all there is" and that there will always be some fight happening in the future and that we must always be ready for it. Lakshmi used this to prove that this whole thing with the Eliksni is that fight; the inevitable yet another clash between human and Eliksni that endangers us all.

It's important to note that using the Device is not safe and it's not reliable. It often shows stuff that is hard to interpret or even completely false and based on what the users wants to see. This shows with Lakshmi with a lot of the visions she was seeing. Even her own fellow FWC members were distraught at her behaviour at the time with some deciding to resign, believing that she was becoming corrupted and going mad. This is relevant because it shows that her close colleagues noticed that she was acting strangely.

And she was. Because of Savathun.

Savathun.

At the time, Savathun was in the city, masquerading as Osiris. Before Splicer, she tried turning us to war with Caiatl, which failed. After that failed, she turned to the ace in her sleeve; Quria, the Taken Vex Mind she was gifted by her brother Oryx back in the Books of Sorrow days. Savathun instructed Quria to manipulate the Vex into creating the Endless Night in order to create a problem for the City that will destabilise its leadership, and cause panic and infighting. Savathun was the one who, as Osiris, suggested that Mithrax and House of Light be invited into the City, knowing full well that it will cause issues. She wanted those issues. She wanted a panicking anxious population on the brink of slaughtering each other, gossiping, spreading lies and misinformation. She needed it to keep her worm fed and she needed it to keep eyes off herself, while she schemed to figure out how to get the Light. She needed time to investigate archives and find materials and learn as much as possible so a little background chaos was perfect for that; nobody will pay attention to an old man who recently lost his Ghost when there's bigger problems at the horizon.

This was possible to piece together during Splicer, but Savathun helpfully admitted to it all in the season after, in Lost. Of course, she framed it to appear that she was being helpful, but we as players have more information so we can piece together everything she's done. Savathun infected both Lakshmi and the City with her viral song. Lakshmi's last broadcast detailed that "Osiris" aided her in opening the portal. Savathun spoke to Lakshmi on multiple occasions. We also have proof of this from the other side, from the perspective of Osiris who could see into Savathun's actions while he was being held prisoner. This lore was the POV from Osiris, from Lost (after Splicer) and it shows Osiris seeing through Savathun's eyes as she was actively influencing Lakshmi. Osiris didn't even know who Lakshmi was; she gained prominence after he'd already been exiled. But he saw an "Exo woman" with "vacant eyes" and Savathun's "true voice" humming to her.

Savathun, besides creating both of the main problems (Endless Night and Eliksni in the City), also worked tirelessly to fuel violence in the City by corrupting Lakshmi-2. Savathun whispered in her ear, running suggestions by her, enticing her day by day and ultimately being the one who made her open the Vex portal in the middle of the City. Lakshmi, on top of being already driven mad by the Device, was also being driven mad by Savathun who desperately wanted the City's leadership to fight. It got to the point of suggesting a coup against the Vanguard. Lakshmi-2 and Executor Hideo (New Monarchy) got as far as to try recruiting Saint-14 to help them with the coup; when he refused, Hideo feared that he will tell Osiris everything and snitch on them, but Lakshmi was convinced that Osiris will stop Saint from saying anything. Why? Because it wasn't Osiris. The "Osiris" that Lakshmi knew was actually Savathun who would indeed try to stop Saint from outing their coup plans.

I want to stress again that Lakshmi wasn't innocent in this whole debacle. She had her own bigoted beliefs, coming from trauma; at the end we learned that Lakshmi-2 survived the sack of London by House of Devils back in the Dark Age. She has personally experienced a traumatic event of Eliksni attacking and murdering humans and destroying their settlement. The problem with Lakshmi is that she didn't even attempt to deal with that trauma or solve it. Saint was also traumatised, as were many other Guardians and people in the City and they all decided to put it aside and work towards getting better. Lakshmi held onto her trauma and never got over it. She confronted the Eliksni (Namrask) who participated in the sack of London and told him to his face that to her, he will never change from a conqueror he was, despite his very honest attempt to do so. Namrask, much like Saint-14 decided to put his warring past behind and to change and be a different person. And as much as Saint, he has the right to do so. Lakshmi denied it from him and instead still held onto her original belief that Eliksni cannot change and cannot be good.

Unfortunately, Lakshmi also never got a chance to change, given that the moment this all started, she was roped in with Savathun who wanted a City leader to sow chaos. Maybe without Savathun and the Device, Lakshmi would've turned out better. Maybe she would've thought about it more, learned to forgive, learned to accept the Eliksni (much like Saint), but she never got the chance before Savathun corrupted her. I feel like people forget that, or maybe even don't know about it. It's much easier to just hate Lakshmi and call her racist and talk about how violently she should die. The nuance and tragedy of her story is often pushed aside or not mentioned at all.

This is even more tragic now. Lakshmi was violated, deeply, in a way that is truly impossible to comprehend. She died, erased, in proximity to an alien entity. In her body, a new identity was installed, a combination of Maya and other Exos that participated in the "chorus" with her as the "conductor." She did not consent to this and as we've seen from her research into Spontaneous Exo Reset Syndrome, she was at least somewhat aware that something horribly wrong had happened to her. She was directed by impulses that were not entirely her own. Her interest in the Future War Cult and the Device are both suspect now, given that those things were Maya's obsessions and Maya used Lakshmi as a proxy; a twisted way to create a "child" by imprinting a part of yourself into them.

And as if that wasn't enough, she was grabbed by Savathun, a master in manipulation, lies and corruption who didn't care about her or about the City or about the Eliksni. I hope people can also realise that it was Savathun who used the bigotry against the Eliksni as a tool with zero care for actual victims of this bigotry. Eliksni dying in violent attacks around the City were nothing but an accessory to Savathun; accessory to her plans to ruin us while she's looking for a way get rid of her worm with the Light. It was entirely selfish, through and through, with no regards to either humans or Eliksni. In this case, I would put more blame on Savathun than Lakshmi for any kind of bigotry towards the Eliksni; Lakshmi could've learned better had she gotten a chance, while Savathun had many chances and simply did not care.

Lakshmi was an incredibly interesting character to me since I first saw her. This is partially due to her VA (Shohreh Aghdashloo) whom I adore to death so just hearing her speak had me enchanted. But Lakshmi and the FWC were always my favourite faction and I didn't like how the community boiled them all down to just xenophobia towards Eliksni as if there was nothing else to them and as if they all agreed with what Lakshmi did in Splicer. At the same time, people ignored the same xenophobia first and foremost from Savathun who had zero reason to even remotely object to Eliksni being in the City, or even New Monarchy who also participated in Lakshmi's schemes. It was only ever Lakshmi, a woman whose trauma was manipulated against her by an entity known for toppling down entire civilisations with the use of manipulation and corruption. Savathun infiltrated many civilisations in the same way she did ours and they all ended up much worse than us: her infiltration of the Harmony led to their downfall and her corruption of Umun'Arath led to the fall of Torobatl. A lesser known example is told to us by Rhulk, of a species (Kalarahnda) he came to destroy but that destroyed itself upon seeing him because someone (Savathun) alerted them to him so they spent centuries preparing their entire civilisation for his arrival as per her instructions. When he arrived, they self-destructed their whole planet, believing they're fulfilling a great prophecy of mass sacrifice to ascend. This was Savathun's doing; instead of helping them escape Rhulk, she orchestrated their demise purely to take the satisfaction of it from Rhulk. Not to help those people, to spite Rhulk.

I'm adding this because I want to absolutely stress how much Savathun does not care for any lives other than her own. Entire civilisations crumbled into dust due to her manipulations. We've talked about this before due to some of the stuff writers said about Savathun recently and I feel like people simply forget this or want to excuse it, but are super quick to judge Lakshmi in a way they never would Savathun; the actual person who orchestrated her actions and ultimately her death.

I think they should both be judged, albeit in different ways. And I definitely think that the blame for what happened to the City during the Endless Night and specifically for what happened to the Eliksni should fall mostly on Savathun, not Lakshmi. It was Savathun who even orchestrated the endless night to begin with. Lakshmi was complicit and she had her own issues that she should've worked out in the centuries she's had to think about them. Savathun probably chose Lakshmi because she was an easier target; already with a problem against the Eliksni. A believable victim, someone that wouldn't take much to convince and corrupt. I'm also of the belief that, as Osiris, she also tried to do it to Saint-14, but he's a much more principled person than Lakshmi.

So they both suck. Both Savathun and Lakshmi were using the struggles of the Eliksni as a tool for their own gains which contributed to untold Eliksni suffering, but in the grand scheme of things, it was Savathun that forged it all from the bottom to the top. She made the Endless Night, she directed the Vanguard into going to Mithrax and the Eliksni for help, she orchestrated their settlement in the City, she spent time picking a target in the form of Lakshmi to spread propaganda and force people to be in a perpetual state of panic and misinformation for months, while she tended to her own goals of gaining the Light.

And once more, Savathun's attempt to put us at war with someone, ultimately led to another alliance. At the end of the day, compassion and friendship in the face of danger prevailed because Destiny is fundamentally a story about hope.

It's just something I wanted to recap and remind people if they aren't aware or don't remember. Because I feel like the new information will reignite the old "Lakshmi is racist" spiel with complete disregard of everything we know about her and with complete disregard of the actual culprit of the bigotry in Splicer: Savathun.

This doesn't mean that you can't dislike Lakshmi for what she's done. You absolutely can! We can't claim that all her actions were because of Savathun; as a matter of fact, she was chosen by Savathun because of how maleable she was. It's not easy to just turn someone into a bigot. The new information definitely adds to the tragedy of Lakshmi's life and to how much she was manipulated by those around her, but it doesn't remove her own fault for what happened.

This also doesn't mean that you have to hate Savathun. Just be aware of some of the more heinous stuff she's done and don't ignore it or view it as not important. Savathun's actions should be condemned as much as Lakshmi's, if not more so, but I'm not here to compare who's a worse bigot. They've both done horrible things to humans and Eliksni in a situation where we needed to stay united. And in the same way we can discuss the complexity and tragedy of Lakshmi, we have to acknowledge it for Savathun as well. She was a victim of manipulation as well, someone who took millions of years to realise that those she swore her life to are liars. She will eventually have to reckon with that.

Luckily, the outcome was ultimately in our favour, although not without consequences. Many Eliksni were attacked and died. Lakshmi died and the rest of the factions were exiled. We now can't simply ask Lakshmi about the new revelations, we can't get more information from her or the FWC, something that might be able to help us understanding and defeating the Witness. There's still a chance to find out in some way, but it would've been so much easier if we could simply ask someone who is in the City.

Splicer was a really good season, I highly recommend going through the story of it if you haven't played. DLV has everything in the playlist I linked and the official channel has just the cutscenes. Being there was truly a whole special experience because of the stuff with Savathun and Osiris. I cannot stress enough that the majority of the players did NOT believe that Osiris isn't Osiris. The theory was out there but it was largely not listened to. Some even used lore tabs that explicitly confirmed the theory from Splicer to claim it debunks it. It was a wild time. The wildest of all was the ending where people were genuinely saying that the ending to Splicer changed their mind to NOT believing it was Savathun. It was one of the most mind-boggling time in Destiny for me and I think that the misunderstanding of that whole plot made a lot of people either forget or not properly understand Savathun's involvement with the events of Splicer. If one played through the whole thing believing that was actually Osiris, Savathun's actions may have eluded them, especially if they didn't engage with a retrospective of the season. I believe that understanding how Savathun manipulated Lakshmi is important for understanding Lakshmi as a character, especially now with these new reveals (and possibly directly because of the new reveals; perhaps Savathun also targeted Lakshmi because of her origin). But at the end of the day, Lakshmi is still someone who couldn't let go of her xenophobia which made her the best target for Savathun to manipulate. That one is on her, regardless of all of her origins and trauma.

#destiny 2 #season of the splicer #lakshmi-2 #savathun #eliksni #long post #lore vibing #don't know what to do with myself in this heat so i'm writing essays. shfkjshakjdh #but yeah. the new lakshmi stuff made me realise that a lot of people missed splicer #and that there's a lot of people who didn't miss splicer but definitely missed savathun actively fucking things up #it's a much better story with the whole context. a lot more complexity especially with lakshmi #it's really easy to just assume she was a bigot randomly. a bigot like her is actually more dangerous than that #she had a reason rooted in trauma (making her feel justified) and that was exploited by much more powerful actors #and everyone had to pay for both lakshmi and savathun. eliksni most of all.

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