r/DestinyTheGame • u/jamer2500 Laser Tag Weekend • 1d ago

Hey Bungie, not every character needs a fucking redemption arc. Lore

Especially one so viscerally hated by almost the entire community. Who’s been writing this shit? The story feels like it’s been ripped from a shitty anime with 30-50 word long titles. Eramis should have been killed the moment she tried that shit with the Warmind, arguably way earlier. I honestly would have been happier if she broke out of her imprisonment and then we fought her for the shard of the traveler. Then at the very least I wouldn’t be asking myself what the fuck we’re doing just letting her go.

3.6k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

View all comments

Show parent comments

335

u/examinedulna 1d ago

I feel like Misraaks mutilating another fallen, curse and all, is more of a character assassination. It makes him unworthy to be Kell of Kells and I don’t think it’s a great look for House Light

303

u/cuboosh What you have seen will mark you forever 1d ago

Everything about this curse felt like character assassination. He got the curse saving his former mortal-enemy’s partner. That may be the most selfless thing anyone’s done in the whole franchise, and we have to watch him turn into the god of pain

It’s not like there was a metaphor of him conquering demons from his pirate days - there was nothing to it 

 Now it make sense though, they just needed an excuse to give the echo to Eramis 

117

u/TheToldYouSoKid 1d ago

That may be the most selfless thing anyone’s done in the whole franchise, and we have to watch him turn into the god of pain

That's not a character assassination; that's a sacrifice.

Nezerec is a being that has existed for thousands of years, in a psychic space. We even found that psions worshipped him in the ancient past. Even as far as Earth's orbit, it started to torment people on Neptune when it was only conscious as a head. It's heartbeat could KILL guardians. It's just as swaddled in the darkness that allowed the Witness to manipulate countless civilizations to destroy themselves, or resign their lives to nothingness; except in a way, it's worse. Because Nezerec doesn't want the suffering to end.

Point is, unlike the witness' proding, Nezerec was occupying Mithrax's mind. There's not a character in the franchise that could ignore that forever. And within the theming of the episode being gothic horror; it's a straight-forward allusion to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The good and evil within someone separated into two distinct beings in one frame. Everyone could recognize that Mithrax wasn't himself. No one mistook his actions for his own. That's not assassination at all.

And i'll be real; even without Nezarec's curse, it still should have gone to Eramis. She was the one to remember Riis the most passionately. No, she doesn't like humanity, yes she's done awful things, but the lore has been VERY CLEAR that even when blinded by her rage or influenced by the Witness, she thinks about nothing but her people and the Whirlwind. We don't need a working relationship with ALL eliksni; what they need is a home, and she could be the one to provide that, with that echo. All she wants is to be done with us, so i don't understand the offense in that. Why do we need a pound of flesh more?

69

u/Stevenstorm505 1d ago

I think it’s just more that Mithrax deserved better than what he’s been given and Eramis, with what she has done and what she helped usher in, doesn’t deserve to just have some sort of happy ending where she provides the Eliksni with a home that she then gets to enjoy. It’s just not very satisfying as a player invested in the characters to see these characters not get what they actually deserve.

35

u/Blekker 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah and Eramis this character that hasn't done a single kind act (towards humanity) her entire existance in the story is now just going to chill out on her planet. We are supposed to believe that now that she has a shard that gives people immense power she doesn't want any revenge or anything.

They're trying to make her a Thanos after snap without any of the same motives Thanos had.

2

u/Cluelesswolfkin 1d ago

I'm on this bandwagon, she has the echo and bubgie over bringing her back ~ is she going to chill eith the echo or come and fight us again for something stupid like the traveler

1

u/TheToldYouSoKid 21h ago

First off, generalizing means you missed her saving eido's life from Lucent Brood, warning us about a trap her own employer set, and saving mithrax's life when we failed to act on her information. If we acted on that information, amanda would also be alive.

She has spent decades, possibly hundreds of years, angry, hateful, and scarred, including being under the finger of one of the most powerful and manipulative beings. Have you considered that the reason she wants to break away from humanity and the Traveler specifically, is because she's just tired of all that? Maybe it just took her seeing her partner again, maybe eido really did get through to her?

Maybe with the visions of her homeworld literally in her hand, she realizes how empty it all isThe echo is, after all, not just "immense power", it's a crystallization of everything she lost in the whirlwind, calling her home. Like before light, and dark, it's Riis.

1

u/Blekker 14h ago edited 14h ago

Yes, lots of maybes and maybes, but you earn those maybes with character development, not this headcanon of yours, she was still hateful and pissed off until her final words of the quest.

Nothing about her demeanor, tone or dialogue showed she has grown any sympathy or kindness towards humanity, yet we are just letting her walk away with this incredible power because... because?

•

u/TheToldYouSoKid 34m ago

Nothing about her demeanor, tone or dialogue showed she has grown any sympathy or kindness towards humanity,

You are still reading this from the perspective of humanity, as nothing else as the "main character" and "heroes".

7

u/cuboosh What you have seen will mark you forever 1d ago

Yeah the same mission had the juxtaposition of Mithrax succumbing to his curse and Eramis being defiantly hateful 

This is in the literal final mission of the whole Kell of Kells arc. It’s not satisfying at all 

4

u/EmCeeSlickyD 23h ago

She took part in the attempted ending of all existence (including all eliksni) even playing an integral role in it. I feel like that deserves a death sentence at a minimum. There is no redemption from trying to end all existence, it's literally the worst thing you can possibly do.

-3

u/TheToldYouSoKid 22h ago edited 22h ago

Right. So when are we executing Zavala? "Submit ourselves (plural) to darkness", went off on his own, he began preaching the word of the Witness; he switched sides, however temporary or misguided he was. He wasn't even threatened with our deaths or hive-based lobotomies, he was just taken advantage of because he's a grieving widower and father.

Clearly not the same as Eramis being locked in waking-solitary for years, released and told "i can put you back in, unless you listen to me" and was subsequently lied to and manipulated by threatening the lives of her people for her failure to comply or succeed, so we're killing him right?

1

u/EmCeeSlickyD 22h ago

"Here is an apple, it is identical to this orange, they are both fruit". I'm sorry but if you think those two things are even remotely similar there is nothing more to be said

1

u/cuboosh What you have seen will mark you forever 20h ago

Have you been missing the years of them beating us over the head that “Darkness” is just a force of nature, not evil incarnate?

That was the whole point of Prophecy 

Zavala using darkness is literally how we won - it’s how we found the weakness 

He didn’t join the Witness, he used darkness as a tool to figure out how to kill the Witness 

He just got fed up with the Traveler and took matters into his own hands. 

•

u/TheToldYouSoKid 35m ago

No. The entire reason we won was not Zavala. It was Targe. It was his ghost that broke him out of the space, it was the ghost that allowed zavala to see things as they were and effectively break the Witness' conditioning.

Let's not forget a name for the Witness "the voice from the Darkness." It actively preys on people using the darkness and it's connection to conscious thought. Yes, Zavala learned important information, but if everyone had followed them into that space like he described, that was game over.

The entire thing was a trap from the beginning, baited with real information. Did you think the Witness appearing was a coincidence? That entire scene is a parallel to lightfall's ending; except the ghost was the one that did what was necessary to do.

Zavala was lost, Targe put him back. "Submit yourself to darkness" was a baited trap that Zavala put himself into, and nearly put the entire universe into as well. He was manipulated into serving the witness.

2

u/Different-Set-7022 20h ago

but the lore has been VERY CLEAR that even when blinded by her rage or influenced by the Witness, she thinks about nothing but her people and the Whirlwind

My brother in christ, she tried to unleash the Vex on Europa on her own people in an effort just to kill you. She was a baron of the house of devils. She has been a murderous, genocidal maniac for almost as long as shes existed as a character. Hell, the writing has the audacity for Eramis to reference that she needs to find a place "Safe" from humanity. As if it weren't the actions of the Fallen at Twilight Gap and more that pushed humanity to the brink on their own planet.

Absolutely laughable that the spark went to her.

•

u/TheToldYouSoKid 44m ago

You are reading from the human perspective. You are willfully ignoring the argument.

1

u/eagle1980 1d ago

She was out of the system during final shape events right? Then why doesn’t our guardian explain who the real manipulator was so she stop blanking humans for stealing traveler bc I’m pretty sure it blessed many civilizations and bounced once witness showed up

1

u/TheToldYouSoKid 22h ago

Why do you think she's decided to make a clean break from both humanity and the Traveler? Even if she didn't know what happened during the final shape, i doubt it, she's very smart, if not incredibly full of spite and grief, but none of that changes the things humans and risen have done to eliksni. Saint XIV became a horror story for entire generations of eliksni, which is big considering that the eliksni are not a united species, and don't have a home planet to act as a hub. Do you understand what that meant, how far saint went to exterminate the Eliksni?

Now, i get it, it's been discussed to death, but she references this in her goodbye, but pointed at all guardians. That's still a big thing to her; a sin they can't repent for in her eyes. Sure, her methods have chilled out, but that hate is still there. The difference is that she knows that the cycle has to stop somewhere; thank you eido and mithrax for showing her that.

As for the real manipulator, we know who the manipulator is, and she knew intimately; that doesn't change our role in the story, doesn't change what's happened between us or the reasons why. That doesn't change that Traveler betrayed the Eliksni by turning it's back on them. She distrusts humanity and the Traveler. The fact of the matter is what is done is done. Eramis wants nothing to do with humanity, guardians and the Traveler, and her recourse for this is literally the sanest thing; "This artifact that chose me wants to rebuild our world, so im going to do that. I don't want to deal with any of you anymore. Goodbye."

I don't see why we need things tied up in neat little bundles, especially when we already got Forsaken teaching us how empty revenge and cowboy justice is, and can lead to ruin.

-9

u/positivedownside 1d ago

He got the curse saving his former mortal-enemy’s partner.

He got the curse from the decades he spent with Nezarec's relic around his neck.

3

u/cuboosh What you have seen will mark you forever 1d ago

It’s from when he made the nezpresso for Osiris

-1

u/positivedownside 1d ago

My guy, he carried a part of Nezarec around his neck for literally like 50 years.

3

u/cuboosh What you have seen will mark you forever 1d ago

And it’s just a coincidence that there’s zero hint of curse in any of those 50 years and the curse starts a few months after the nezpresso

-2

u/positivedownside 1d ago

There was evidence of it, though. His base bloodthirsty nature alone showed that.

3

u/Kozak170 1d ago

That’s just them trying to handwave away any of his bad actions in the past. The writers are allergic to having characters actually be bad or do evil things, there always has to be XYZ excuse, and deep down they were a good person

45

u/NothingMonocle 1d ago

I don't want the current bungie writers to even mention Mithrax. Dude came to us as literal space jesus for the Eliksni. His name refers to Mithraism and he seems to be the perfect candidate for the first Eliksni Risen. That's what the narrative built him as. But so far he became a pirate a vessel for Nezarec and became a meme. Bungie's narrative just uses what's convenient when it comes to seasons and it's damaging characters. Best example is Osiris.

22

u/tbdubbs 1d ago

Bungie's narrative just uses what's convenient when it comes to seasons and it's damaging characters.

I don't know how many times I've harped on this, but the seasonal model has been so harmful to this game and this is one huge component of that.

Long running TV shows that just keep going and going run into this issue - from one season to the next characters will make decisions and events will happen based on the "flavor of the month" or whatever is popular elsewhere in media.

This is why we have characters that make dramatic 180s and we get shock deaths (and revivals), redemption arcs, and all these things that kinda work in the moment (because many people are just interested in the here and now) but ultimately when you look at the overarching story and world building it just doesn't add up or make sense.

If there had been a very big plan in place that mapped out all these characters and world events in detail, it could have worked - the obvious wrinkle there being the many delays in production and the (alleged, but very likely) splitting up of lightfall and final shape being a good example.

I'm not even sure where the narrative really started to go sour, because there have been good steps forward along with the bad ones - but overall the epic space opera that I signed up for just got infected and really killed my interest in the story and characters.

1

u/NiftyBlueLock Stronghold, Strong Opinions 1d ago

Anyone who thinks that misraaks was going to be risen, or that you have to be “good” to be risen, has completely ignored the story since forsaken.

8

u/lightningbadger 1d ago

What if he sticks em back on with glue in his own redemption arc come the final episode?

12

u/TheChunkMaster Killer Queen has already touched the dislike button. 1d ago

Yeah, the only time him doing that would make sense would be after Nezarec takes over his body, and Eramis made him taste the rainbow before he could get his pound of flesh.

20

u/EcstaticCinematic 1d ago

Lmao taste the rainbow.

Don't talk crap about Eramis' Skittles Staff of Purifying +2 /s

9

u/TheChunkMaster Killer Queen has already touched the dislike button. 1d ago

Eramis chose the perfect Ash of War.

1

u/AutisticBBCtwinklove 1d ago

How is it character assasination when bro is fucking possessed ?????????????????????

1

u/Middle-Ear1666 1d ago

Makes him unworthy

And yet Eramis got the echo despite her being a dock supporter lol

0

u/examinedulna 1d ago

Eh yeah but I see it more like if he did dock her then within House Light* he would be seen as unworthy for Kelly of Kells. When you’re leader goes “yo docking is an oppressive means of control” then docks someone it would cause unrest in your community

-1

u/Mzuark 1d ago

Besides, he's a pussy