demiclar

[demiclar]

Bold Endings

Destcember Day 7 - Bold Endings - Ao3

Glint and Ghost talk after their discussion with Micha, Eva, Ophiuchus and the other Ghosts.

-----

“I’m…sorry I wasn’t more open during our talk earlier,” Ghost says, his voice low as he and Glint hover at the edge of the Tower. 

Their Guardians are somewhere behind them, on a secluded platform sharing a bottle of wine on a couch, close enough that they lean into one another. It’s a rare day off for their Guardians, in the middle of the Festival of the Lost, it was all Glint and Ghost could do to convince them to take some time off, but they seem to be making the most of it. Glint can feel the warmth spreading through Crow through their bond, radiating from the heat of the wine in his gut and the feel of the Guardian pressed against his side, their legs resting atop his as they lean back, Crow’s feet kicked up on the low table before them.

Ghost and Glint had found them after they’d left Eva and Micha earlier. Speaking with the other Ghosts had been nice, but draining, and Glint can’t help but think Ghost didn’t say everything he needed to. It will take time, they both know that, but he also knows there’s some things Ghost will only say around friends. Being the Ghost of the Traveler’s chosen certainly comes with its challenges, that much Glint is sure of, not to mention everything he’s been through because of it.

“It’s alright,” Glint promises, nudging his shell against Ghost’s. The comfort isn’t only for Ghost’s benefit, though he knows his friend has come to appreciate the touches from the way he presses his shell back into Glint’s when they touch. Glint likes to think the growing familiarity between the four of them is a comfort to all of them. He already cares for the Guardian a great deal, having accompanied them on plenty of missions before, and he knows Crow would always look out for Ghost if he needed it, his Guardian’s protectiveness clear as day since Ghost sacrificed himself to kill the Witness and they all realized how dire the consequences they faced could be.

“No one there expected you to say anything you weren’t ready for,” Glint says. He and Ghost watch as a ship departs the Tower hangar, slowly fading into a streak of light in the sky. “I certainly didn’t.”

“I know, I just…” he pulls in what looks to be a deep breath, his shell expanding, then closing once more as he pushes out the artificial sigh. Ghosts can’t breathe, but Glint hopes the movement grounds Ghost the same way it does for his Guardian when he lets out a heavy sigh. “I know I should probably talk about it more. I know I shouldn’t keep it all locked up.”

Glint waits, staying close to Ghost, offering him his presence and his silence, patience and time for Ghost to formulate his words, to think and parse out what he wants to say, but after a long moment of waiting, Ghost only stares at the streak of the fading ship in the sky.

“It’s strange,” he murmurs.

“What is?”

“My death. Thinking of it as a tragedy. Micha said—I’d never thought—” he shakes his shell around his frame, softly so he only brushes Glint’s fins with his own. “I hadn’t thought of my death as a tragedy. It just felt necessary.”

“That makes sense,” Glint agrees, and when he steals a glance back at Crow and the Guardian, Ghost’s eye follows. They look together at their Guardians, pressed together nearly from head to toe, their conversation low enough that Glint can’t quite make it out. He watches Crow laugh softly, his head turned to the side so Glint can see his profile, his nose wrinkled just slightly, his teeth bared in a grin. “I think I would feel the same way if Crow were ever in that kind of danger. Protecting him feels like what I’m meant to do. Not tragic, but necessary,” Glint says, looking back at Ghost. His gaze tracks over his own Guardian as they slip the wine bottle from Crow’s hand and take a sip, then drop their head onto his shoulder, smiling up at him. “But your death was a tragedy, the way the Witness hurt you—”

“I know,” Ghost’s voice is brittle enough that Glint breaks off immediately. He only felt briefly what it was like to be held in the Witness’s grasp. He doesn’t know what kind of scars Ghost still bears from feeling it so repeatedly, over and over again, another impossible sacrifice he bore for them. Ghost’s shell trembles in the air beside him and Glint presses his own into it. He wants to apologize, but even doing so feels like dragging the topic back up when he should let it lie. Ghost presses his shell back into Glint’s, and they’re so close Glint can feel his Light, tense and flighty, breathing in the contact of Glint’s own. 

“Sometimes Crow asks me to keep a scar or two of his when I revive him after a hard battle,” Glint says after a long minute of silence. He knows Ghost does the same thing for his Guardian. He knows from the patchwork of scars Crow likes to kiss over the Guardian's body, the new ones he’s noticed whenever he’s around the Guardian while they wear their sleep clothes. “I think it helps him think about what he’s been through, to validate it. Is it hard when your shell doesn’t have anything like that?”

“Sometimes I think so,” Ghost admits, “but other times I’m glad I don’t. Sometimes it’s hard enough having to carry around the memory of it happening.”

He watches Ghost look over at him, his eye tracking over Glint’s shell, considering. 

“I never asked you where your scar came from.” There’s a small scrape towards the inside of Glint’s shell, close to his center eye, a gouge in the paint of his shell, revealing the metal below it. Glint feels his shell shift around him, holding the fin that bears the mark a little further from his core.

“It came from Spider, when he put the bomb into my shell.” 

Glint remembers the terror of that moment, both his and Crow’s, the fear of being paralyzed and the suffocating, nauseating anxiety that came afterwards, wondering if at any moment, that bomb might go off and destroy him, whether Spider chose it or not. He remembers the way Crow wept after the bomb was finally removed, once they’d made it to the City and the explosive was carefully disarmed and dismantled in a lab. He remembers being sealed away in a vacuum chamber while a technician operated on him in an oxygen starved environment, just in case. He remembers the Praxic technology that held his shell open and his fins still. The look on Crow’s face, distorted through glass. He remembers what it was like when he was finally free of it, when he and Crow were finally alone and Crow’s tears finally fell, his hands cradling Glint close to his chest.

Glint closes his eye for a moment, pushing the memories from his mind before he looks at Ghost again.

Ghost nods in recognition of his words, though he doesn’t hold Glint’s gaze. “I’m sorry I haven’t asked you much about it. If you wanted to talk about it–”

“It’s okay,” Glint promises. “You’re going through a lot.” He’s not here to talk about his own traumas, it’s Ghost that needs help right now.

“I know,” Ghost says, meeting Glint’s eye again, “but it couldn’t have been easy.”

Glint tilts his shell to the side. “I don’t think any of our lives have ever been easy.”

“Maybe,” Ghost allows. “It used to be easier, before the Red War.” He looks back at his Guardian. “That was the first time I ever really thought I’d lose them. It feels like everything changed after that.”

Glint remembers the Red War from the suffocating feeling of being robbed of his Light, and the terrible, terrifying indecision of whether or not to return to the Traveler and the Last City, to offer his aid and risk being close to the danger or to stay and wait until the threat had passed, and wonder if it ever would.

“Have you ever talked to your Guardian about any of this?” Glint asks him. “Crow and I sometimes have a hard time, but I think it helps. We were only able to get through what Spider did to us by going through it together.”

“Not all of it.” Ghost’s eye looks out towards the city again, his shell tight around his frame. “I had a list, once, of things I wanted to say to them. I’ve tried talking about it more but,” he shakes his shell again. “They think I’m a hero for what I did, for sacrificing myself, but I’m not. They do so much for the city and for humanity but when we were fighting the Witness, I didn’t think about what destroying it would do for humanity and for the system, I was only thinking of them. I just wanted them to be safe, and I think it hurt them having to be the one to channel their Light through me. I couldn’t stop them from knowing how painful it was.”

Glint might not have been with Ghost when he sacrificed himself to kill the Witness, but he watched beside Crow when they poured over the footage of the final battle, first with the Vanguard and again on their own. He’d heard Ghost’s agonized screams, the way he’d howled when the Guardian channeled their Light through him. He can’t imagine what something like that would do to Crow. It was always clear that Ghost wouldn’t have lasted much longer even if he hadn’t sacrificed himself, but he can’t imagine the pain the Guardian must feel to have any relationship to his death, to have been the one to cause it, even if it wasn't their fault.

“Maybe it would help them to talk about it, too,” Glint suggests, and Ghost stares towards the Guardians again, where his Guardian’s head rests, tucked against Crow’s neck.

It’s not like the Guardian escaped the Witness without scars. Ghost dealt the final blow but Glint knows they’d have had a long recovery ahead of them had he not come back to them. The scars they received from the battle still linger on their skin, darker than the rest, like the moment without Light was enough to permanently etch them into the Guardian’s skin. He’s seen what Ghost’s death has done to them beyond the physical, too. The first few nights after the Witness’s defeat, they spent wrapped in Crow’s embrace, more than once jerking out of sleep with tears wetting their pillow. On one of their rougher nights, after they and Crow struggled to reach sleep, overtired and exhausted the Guardian had woken from a fitful sleep and fell quickly into rough, aching sobs, cradling their Ghost to their chest while they’d cried. Glint remembers the way he’d pressed himself into the Guardian’s cheek, Crow cradling them in his arms. 

“I don’t know if I can–” Ghost breaks off and Glint nudges his shell against his friend’s. 

“That’s okay,” Glint promises. “You don’t have to, not if you’re not ready.”

“I don’t know if I ever will be ready,” Ghost tells him. He turns away from the Guardians again, looking out towards the city once more. From the pain in Ghost’s tone, Glint almost wants to call his Guardian over, to ask them to hold him, to comfort him, but maybe that isn’t what Ghost needs. Glint has been through enough, seen enough, talked with Micha and Eva enough to know that it will take time for Ghost to come to terms with anything that’s happened to him, but it doesn’t make the time in between any easier. It almost hurts worse knowing there’s nothing he can offer him that will make it any better.

“That’s okay, too,” Glint says, and Ghost’s shell shudders against his when he lets out another trembling artificial sigh. From behind him, he can almost feel Crow’s eyes on him, his awareness pulled to their bond as his Guardian looks back at him from the couch he and he Guardian sit on. He can feel the warmth Crow sends down the bond to him, reassurance and well-wishes, the promise that he is there and that whatever Glint and Ghost are going through, Crow and the Guardian will be with them. He sends his own warmth back to Crow along their bond and tries to muster it up, to imbue his Light with it as he leans his shell a little further into Ghost’s. 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk, too.” Glint watches the ships gliding through the City airspace, the line of lights formed up in the traffic pattern that will bring them into the Tower hangar, Guardians coming home for the night. He pulls himself and Ghost into the present, offering them a hint of something grounding. “It’s okay if all you want to do is stay right here, and we don’t have to talk at all unless you want to.”

Ghost’s next breath comes a little easier, his shell a little more relaxed when he presses into Glint, into his space and his touch. He looks out over the city, his shell drooping around his frame. “Thank you,” he says quietly, and Glint stays with him for as long as he needs.

[demiclar]

Vantage

Destcember Day 3 - Vantage - Ao3

Crow and Ikora take Eido for a change of scenery

-----

“I really don’t see how this is Vanguard business,” Eido says from behind them, her politeness just barely starting to wear through in the face of her frustration. “What are we doing here?”

Crow glances over at Ikora, biting down on his smile as the Warlock Vanguard gives him a knowing wink. He nods back at Eido, trying to keep a serious air about him. If she catches on to what they’re actually doing here, there’s no way they’ll get her to tag along for long enough for their plan to work.

“I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain, but you’ll understand once we get there.” 

It’s the same nonanswer he’s given her three times now, another cause for her thinning patience. Behind him, Eido huffs out a sigh, crossing her lower arms over her torso as she follows behind him and Ikora. 

“Alright,” she grumbles. “I trust you.”

The words sting just a little when Crow considers that he’s actively misleading her as they wind their way through city streets, making their way further and further from the Eliksni quarter—from Misraaks, his medical servitor, the laboratory, Eramis, and everything else—but he knows it’s for her own good. Everyone needs someone to tell them when to take a break from time to time. Sometimes the telling is more forceful than others times, but eventually, he knows Eido will understand. 

“Just a little farther,” Ikora says, and Crow lets himself fall into step beside her as they make their way off of a busy street and onto a quieter, pedestrian-only walkway. 

In all honesty, there’s a number of people Crow wishes he could take on an outing like this, to steal them away from their stressors for a few hours in a place where they can forget about all of it. Assuming it all goes to plan, of course, and Eido manages to set down her burden for long enough to relax rather than spending the whole evening worrying over what work is still left to be done. If he can find success here, he’d love to bring Saint, and Osiris, maybe even Zavala, if he thought the Commander might agree. He almost wishes someone would do something similar to him, to book out his schedule with things he thought to be important, things he’d carve out time for in his busy life only to find that the time he set aside could be given back to him, spent resting and rejuvenating in a guilt-free environment. There’s certainly something about their wars of life and death that turn the whole lot of them into incurable workaholics, that’s for certain.

“You’re brooding,” Ikora remarks, the corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile. Eido has dropped back to trail behind the two of them, another one of her mostly-polite ways of making her displeasure known, though Crow can’t help but think she looks a bit like a fussy child walking with her arms crossed, her chin tucked into the warm layers she’d donned to combat the early winter chill.

“I am not,” Crow protests, but he feels himself smile all the same. He’s certainly not as close to Ikora or Zavala as they are to each other, but working with the pair of them has introduced a comfortable familiarity to the group of them that Crow relishes. Besides going on missions with the Guardian, he’s never had a fireteam he could rely on like them before, and with every day he spends in the Vanguard position, it feels better and better to be relied on in return. Even dealing with the mess that Fikrul has thrown at them, being part of a team, finally finding his place in the Tower with friends and supporters all around him has introduced a stability to his life that Crow’s never felt. He’s not even sure Uldren ever felt so settled.

“I was just thinking, that’s all,” he continues, adjusting his light gloves as he glances back at Eido as she trails behind them, “about how we all need a vacation, me included.”

Ikora lets out a short, amused laugh. “Well, I don’t see that happening anytime soon,” she says, then meets his gaze, “but maybe we can try to make more moments like these.”

They’d come together to make sure Eido got the rest she needed, or at least was able to take some time for herself, but Crow knows that given the right attention, the evening could be rejuvenating for the two of them, too. They’d left their work behind at the Tower to do this, and even if Eido is their chief concern, Crow knows she won’t relax if their own stressors are lingering over their heads. Besides, the walk through the city is already proving to be beautiful. They’ve woven into a quarter built with rich red bricks, cobbled streets lay beneath their feet. The air is brisk, but the cold isn’t biting, and a fine dusting of snow rests over the landscape. Crow knows it’s too early in the winter not for it to be melted soon, but the image will be beautiful for however long it lasts. 

“I hope we can,” Crow agrees, and he and Ikora begin to slow their pace as they spot their destination, just ahead. 

“Are we meeting with an informant?” Eido asks, coming to a stop as they pause beside a restaurant. Crow feels himself smile.

“Only if you count a waiter as an informant.” He tugs open the door, gesturing for Ikora and Eido to head inside. “C’mon, I think you’ll like it.”

“We’re…here to eat? But I thought–”

Ikora ducks inside and Eido stares between her departing form and the open door for a moment before she moves to follow her in, though her body and mind seem to disagree, her steps slow as she shakes her head, struggling around her words.

“I thought you brought me here for Vanguard business. I thought we had work to do. I didn’t leave the lab to–”

Crow follows her inside and the waiters are quick to seat them at a booth in the corner of the restaurant. It’s still mostly empty, another piece of Ikora and Crow’s plan to keep Eido unsuspicious, careful to schedule their outing between traditional mealtime hours. Ikora leads the way into the booth, Eido reluctantly taking a seat as well, though her face is twisted in displeasure. 

“I don’t have time for—I should be working.” Her voice is rising, her frustration more evident. From another vantage point, they had just dragged Eido from her lab and forced her to walk out in the cold with them without telling her their true intentions, all the while planning to spend her time unproductively sharing a meal together, but it’s that kind of thinking that’s made this whole outing necessary in the first place.

“Eido,” Ikora interrupts calmly, “you do have time for this. You had time for this when you believed we were taking you here on Vanguard business, didn’t you?”

“Because I thought it would give us new leads!” Eido throws her upper arms up in exasperation, her eyes pinched as she frowns down at the table. “I thought it would help me–”

“And it will help you.” Crow sets a hand atop one of hers when she lets them come to rest on the table. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but taking a break, getting some fresh air and some good food will make you more productive in the long run. You need things like this to keep you from burning out. If you stay holed up in that lab forever, you’ll lose sight of everything around you.”

“But I should be working!” Eido says again, insistent. “Any time I spend here is time I’m not spending looking for a cure for my father. I can’t do that to him.”

“You’re doing everything you can for your father,” Ikora reminds her, and Crow watches some of the fight leave Eido’s features from the calmness of her tone. “You’re working yourself to the bone and we all see it. He wouldn’t want you to suffer for him.”

“All we’re asking is that you share a meal with us. Put all your work aside, just for a little while. We’ll eat, and you can go back to your lab and work, but until then, take some time and don’t think about it.” Crow watches her eyes shift over the table, her fingers resting over knots of wood. “I know it isn’t a step back that you want to be taking right now, but trust me when I say it will help you.”

Eido stares at the table for a long time, long enough for the waiter to set glasses of water before them and quickly depart. Eido pulls her glass closer to herself, swiping her thumb through the condensation on the outside and staring down at the ice within.

“Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come from time away,” she says at last, and Crow feels himself smile.

“That’s the spirit.”

[demiclar]

After scouring the internet for days I have come to the conclusion that a prompt list for Destcember 2024 does not exist, so I made my own! I don't want to co-opt the whole thing or anything like that, so rather than claiming it as 'Destcember 2024,' I'm labeling this one as my personal list. Feel free to use it if you'd like! And obviously you don't need my permission, but if you'd like some empowerment, make your own list if you want to! I tried to make this one a blend of things relevant to the latest expansion and to the current season, with a few that looked back to previous prompts that I really liked from the past, all without being too on the nose. I had no idea how much of a challenge it would be so props to the previous makers! And thanks to some of my discord pals for suppling me with a few prompts as well!

If you aren't familiar with Destcember, Destcember is a Destiny themed art challenge that takes place in December with one prompt per day, where artists and writers create one work per day responding to the prompt, but the rules really aren't that strict. Feel free to respond to prompts out of order, to combine prompts, skip prompts, go off prompt, whatever you want to do!

I'm probably going to be tagging my entries as both #destcember2024 and #Demiclar's Destcember 2024, if you decide to use this list, feel free to use those if you'd like, too! I always love to see what people come up with for this challenge.

Happy creating!

[demiclar]

fuck I'm thinking about the last page of unveiling again and how it's literally The Point of The Video Game Destiny condensed into like maybe 8 paragraphs

like THAT'S IT!!!!! THAT'S WHAT WE LEARNED!!!!! THAT'S THE POINT OF IT ALL!!!!!!!

the interesting thing about this passage is that you absolutely can just replace the word "Darkness" with the word "Fascism" in the last graf there but the Darkness in Destiny is NOT synonymous with fascism. Mara Sov is absolutely NOT saying that "a balanced world needs a little fascism in it to keep things honest". In fact, that kind of thinking is what allows for unchecked, thriving Darkness in the real world.

No, the Darkness is not fascism. The Darkness is Memory, which is co-opted by fascism. "Remember when life was great?" "Don't you want to just live in that great moment forever?" That's exactly what the Witness offers, in the end: to be frozen in time in the exact moment of your greatest joy, dead but never dying, trapped in amber and never permitted to live again. Because to live would be to acknowledge the impermanence of that moment, the reality that existence is not and cannot be one single glorious moment. One Final Shape, you might say.

What is it that Riven said? "Even paradise is a prison if you can't leave." She was talking about a literal paradise that was a literal prison for her but that's okay, the metaphor is good too.

I think that Destiny thinks that Memory is necessary and good for humans to have. But Memory is not an ideology. Memory does not grant the power to end suffering. Memory isn't even real. Not the way Life -- existence -- mortality -- Light -- is real.

Anyway that's why Destiny is anti-fascist. There are also a lot of other reasons why Destiny is anti-fascist like the Worm Gods and the Hive and Sword Logic as an extended metaphor for late-stage capitalist society but that's for a different post. Plus someone else who's better at writing than me has probably already said everything I would've said about that.

[demiclar]

Why is nobody talking about how TFS is a story of redemption. I realised it yesterday; how we "destroy" the Witness not by feeding it enough bullets, but by giving the Dissenters the opportunity at penance and redemption. We don't even "redeem" them by our hand! It's their own choice, and we merely help them achieve this goal. We topple the Witness by beaming Light at it; by literally letting the Light in. TFS is a story about how there is never too late to turn back; how the door is always open, the option to change your mind is always on the table, there for you to take it; you can always, always, return to the Light. There is always forgiveness there for you. TWQ was revolutionary by presenting this idea with regards to the Hive (and Savathûn in particular), you know, the worst murderous race in the cosmos--but the Witness is so much worse. It is as close as it gets to the devil. It's THE evil-maker of the universe. And yet there was a part of it that wanted to change, that made the choice to repent, and *this* is what allowed us to finally triumph over it. I'm so insane about this. There is always always always always hope for you, no matter how far gone you think you are.

[demiclar]

Connection

Glint and Ghost talk about the Light and the Traveler.

--I wrote this for a writing challenge last month and realized I didn't share it here. I just love some Ghosts <3

When Glint finds Ghost a few dozen yards from the Young Wolf and Crow’s camp, he’s hovering over a fissure of Light, his shell thrown wide, his optic dim. Glint hovers back for a few moments, watching, worried he might be interrupting, but Ghost doesn’t move. Eventually, his curiosity—and his concern—get the better of him.

“Ghost?”

“Glint!” Ghost jumps, shooting a foot into the air, his shell snapping shut. “Sorry, I, uh, thought you were back at camp.”

“I didn’t mean to disturb you, I can go if you–”

“No, no, that’s okay. It’s fine.”

Glint glances down at the fissure of Light below Ghost. Their Guardians are both back at their camp, tucked away in a protected cave in the Impasse, fortified by a few trip mines at the entrance, as well as the Ghosts’s attention. Still acclimated to the Last City’s time after the celebrations in the wake of their victory, their Guardians are asleep within their tent. He and Ghost had left to give them a little privacy, agreeing to keep watch. When they’d left, Crow and the Young Wolf had lay back to back, sharing body heat in the cool recreation of Old Russia. Glint knows that sometime during the night, his Guardian will roll over to face the Young Wolf. Crow’s hand will rest on their hip, or over their waist, and either consciously or unconsciously, the Guardian will press their body into his and the pair will wake up in the morning curled together. It’s happened before. It will happen again. He’s glad Crow has someone to spend his cold nights with, and he’s especially glad that person is as nice to Crow as the Guardian is. 

For now though, he pushes the Guardians from his mind. He can feel through his bond with Crow that they’re safe, Crow still deep in sleep, and he can see the entrance to the cave off behind them, with no enemies in sight. 

“What were you doing with that?” he asks Ghost, feeling the front half of his shell rotate slightly as he looks over Ghost and the fissure.

“Nothing,” Ghost answers, a tad too quickly, and Glint rights his shell, trying to look neutral. “I was just…scanning it.” 

Again, Glint glances down at the fissure below. Unless Ghost scans things with his shell wide open, unmoving, he isn’t telling Glint the whole truth. Glint has spent enough time with him to know he scans the way they all scan, with a beam of Light, or a few quick pulses.

“Did you find anything?”

He watches Ghost’s shell deflate, a beam of light now tracing over the fissure. 

“No,” he answers. “I wasn’t scanning it. I was…I was trying to use it to commune with the Traveler.”

The front half of Glint’s shell rotates again, this time a full circle counterclockwise, then forty-five degrees clockwise. Ghost’s shell pinches around his eye, and it reminds Glint of the way Crow used to hunch over while they lived with Spider, making himself small as if to hide from view.

“I wanted to know if everything we’ve been doing to heal it is really helping,” Ghost tells him, though he avoids Glint’s gaze. “And, I was looking for guidance. I wanted to see if I could speak with it. If it would give me a vision like it gave Cayde, because I–” he stumbles over his words. “Because when I–”

“Because you died, and the Traveler didn’t bring you back,” Glint guesses quietly, and Ghost’s shell relaxes around his frame but seems to fall downwards, like he’s being pulled down by gravity.

“Yeah,” Ghost murmurs. “That.”

Glint sweeps his own beam of light over the fissure. Their scans are the closest thing he can really approximate to how their Guardians touch things. Glint imagines his beams of Light are the same as Crow running his fingers over something, the tactile sense feeding information through Crow’s nerves, into his brain. Through his scans, Glint can feel the composition of the stone below them, the Traveler’s recreation of Old Russia’s dirt and rocks, the mix of rust and old glass, particles from the graveyard of cars littering the space around them. He can also feel the Traveler’s Light, raw and unfiltered, bubbling up from the fissure and filling the air around it. 

While Ghost had his shell open when Glint had first spotted him, he’d have been able to feel the Light around him like he was breathing it in, a sensation Glint only knows from Crow, but one that feels rich with meaning. Ghost would have been able to feel the Light pouring over him, seeping into his core and tangling with his own being. He’d have felt the composition of the air and molecules of dust and dirt within it. He’d have been able to smell the flavor of the wind and taste the makeup of the Pale Heart around them.

But despite all that, despite opening his very being to the Traveler, Glint knows it wouldn’t have spoken back. He knows it would have remained silent. He knows that’s what the Traveler does, and he knows why, but he also knows Ghost does not need silence now.

“The Traveler might not be much of a conversationalist,” Glint admits, tilting his shell down to look at the fissure. Ghost avoids his eye contact the way Crow does when he’s feeling particularly raw, but Glint knows enough to understand that he’s not trying to ignore him. “But I’m here, if you want to talk.”

“I–” Ghost stops, and he lets out a quiet sigh the way that their Guardians do, a deep breath that makes their shoulders drop, the stress in their bodies diminishing just slightly. “I don’t know. I know it probably sounds crazy, but I think dying for my Guardian was easier than being controlled by the Witness. Every time it spoke through me–”

Ghost shakes his shell sharply, letting out another sigh.

“That’s what sticks with me more. I just can’t stop thinking about it. Even after it’s gone, I’m still–”

“It does sound a little crazy,” Glint interrupts him, though his voice is soft and gentle, “but it also makes a lot of sense.”

Ghost lifts his eye finally, looking over at Glint, and Glint shrugs his shell.

“When you killed the Witness, you chose to die for your Guardian. You knew what you wanted and you decided to do it. When the Witness took control of you, in the Pale Heart, or back on Neptune, it took control of your body. You didn’t get a choice.” It’s Glint’s turn to look away from their eye contact, sweeping another beam of light over the fissure. “When Crow and I were living with Spider, when he put a bomb in my shell, Spider was using me to keep Crow with him. He was using me to keep Crow around so he could hurt him. That was terrible, and I still had control of my body, at least when Spider wasn’t electrocuting me but–” Glint pushes off the memory, rotating his shell like he needs to refocus his mind. “I know I can’t understand how it felt–”

“But you probably understand a lot more than most,” Ghost finishes for him, meeting Glint’s eye when Glint looks at him. Glint bobs his shell in a nod.

“Can I ask what it was like?” he murmurs, “when you died?”

Ghost sinks a little lower, and Glint follows him down to hover just above the fissure of Light.

“If that’s too personal you don’t have to–I didn’t mean to pry–”

“No, it’s okay, Glint,” Ghost promises, looking over at him. His shell lifts in a tense smile. “It’s been hard to figure out. Cayde talked about feeling at peace, and I did feel that, but I knew a piece of me was missing. A huge part of me. I might not have had my Guardian as long as most other Ghosts, but ever since I found them they’ve been everything to me. Maybe it would have gotten easier over time but I could hardly think past how much I missed them, how much I knew we were meant to be together. But at the same time, I didn’t want them to come to me. I didn’t want them to die, I would never want them to. Not until they’re ready, that is.”

Glint feels himself nod. He knows Crow won’t live forever, neither of them will, but Glint would rather destroy himself than let Crow meet his end before his time. 

“Did you feel the others? The way that Sundance said? That we’re all connected?”

“I did.” Ghost’s smile is a little brighter now, a little less sad. “I felt everyone. Targe, and Sundance, I felt Sagira, and Brya, I felt Guardians, too. I felt people I’d never known and more than I could comprehend. I know they felt me, too, but I think they also knew it wasn’t my time yet. I don’t know how long I spent with them, but eventually I felt Cayde and my Guardian. I could feel them both pulling me back, and then I woke up in my Guardian’s hands.”

Glint watches Ghost sweep a beam of Light over the fissure. “I can still feel them, now. I think Cayde’s Light kept me connected to them. I can feel him and Sundance, they’re closest, but I can feel the others, too.” He nods to Glint. “We’re all connected, just like she said.”

They look over the fissure in silence for a long moment, listening to the wind blowing over the landscape, the hum as it catches in pockets of cars and caverns.

“What were you hoping the Traveler might say, if you could commune with it?”

Ghost’s shell pinches again, his eye down. “I knew my time was coming, I think since the moment the Witness first cut into me, when we first got here. I didn’t think to ask the Traveler to heal me, I didn’t think it could, even when we were healing the other Ghosts. But when I died, my Guardian asked it to bring me back, and it didn’t.” Ghost is silent for a long moment, his optic flitting over the fissure. “I wanted to know whether or not it was right for Cayde to have brought me back, or if the Traveler didn’t heal me because it wanted me to stay dead.”

“I don’t think the Traveler wanted that.” Glint flits closer, until he can press one of his fins against Ghost’s, the way their Guardians bump shoulders or lean into one another. “The Traveler wants us to make our own fates. Being a Ghost, and being a Guardian are both hard lives, I think you and I know that pretty well. If the Traveler brought you back, it would be subjecting you to the same violence that killed you, when you could’ve finally had peace. But,” Glint spins the front half of his shell clockwise forty-five degrees, the back half rotating a full circle. “At the same time, I think that like Crow’s wish did with Cayde, you wouldn’t have been able to come back if the Traveler hadn’t been alright with you going, and if it hadn’t been something you wanted. You and Cayde made your fate, but the Traveler hasn’t abandoned you, either.”

Ghost looks at him like he’s daring to be hopeful.

“You think so?”

Glint bobs his shell in a nod. “It’s like you said, you can feel them, can’t you? We’re all connected. Always.”

[demiclar]

Every Ghost has a name.

Sound off, Guardians! What'd you name your faithful companion?

[demiclar]

If that's the fate you make.

I really think that Sundance speaking to Cayde in that vision is the closest we'll get to the Traveler speaking to us directly, and I think she says everything that Guardians need to know from the Traveler. She reassures Cayde's fears and tries to soothe him a bit by reminding him that everything related to the Light is connected (the Traveler, Guardians, Ghosts) so his decision can be based on what he wants to do, made clearer by the knowledge that whatever choice he makes, Sundance will be with him because they're connected. And of course, she reminds both Cayde and us as the players that Guardians can make their own fates and make their own decisions, saying "If that's the fate you make." in response to Cayde asking about staying with her. She also notably never tells Cayde what to do or expresses her own wishes for him, she doesn't try to push him in any direction. She makes sure he knows that the paths are all open for him, whatever he decides.

Anyone saying the traveler should have spoken is wrong. The whole theme of TFS is that guardians make their own fate, it is the final and greatest argument of the traveler, the perfect rebuttal to the final shape, to speak to the guardians, to guide them would be to impose purpose on them.

The traveler can give us weapons and tools, it can show us things that are happening, it can give people choices, but it can't choose for us. We had to choose to save the traveler. Guardians make their own fate.

[demiclar]

i'll never get over "there you are" not even because of how tender and relieved it sounds but because those are the words he chooses. not "you saved me," not "we did it," not "it's okay." but "there you are." like he was still looking for us. like he got returned to the light and he was still searching for us the moment he woke up, like he was waiting for us to find each other again.

[demiclar]

Okay, I'm coming back to this because there's also a really tragic element to this that I didn't quite fully appreciate before and I want to get into it. The Traveler is a silent god by design, it brought us back and made the Ghosts to protect Sol and humanity but it hasn't ever really told us what to do or asked us to do things. The only times it's guided us have been to keep us alive or to give us things that might help us move forward, it never choses for us or tries to constrain us into one role, unlike somebody. (Some-bodies? The Witness, you get the point).

The Traveler spends the whole lore tab talking about how they're reaching out to protect people, and how they don't believe that their gifts are really gifts but rather curses and burdens, and they can't bear to lose any more people to 'It,' and when the moment finally comes that someone is there to save them from It, they reach back with a sword.

This feels like another instance where the Traveler was willing to kill itself to keep us safe. If we follow the drowning metaphor, "that last gasp of air in your chest" the Traveler doesn't have time to wait around for us to fight the Witness off and then save it, and we see that when just after the Traveler gives us the sword to break the statues in the finally campaign mission, we go through like two rotations before us and Ghost (and probably the Traveler) are literally on the edge of death. And, even while this is going on, while we and the Traveler and the Light are on the edge of death, it still gives us the shield of Light to protect us so we can get out with Ghost.

The Traveler doesn't care about it's own life, all it cares about is that we are able to live on, and if it can save us one last time, it's alright with dying to do that. If it wasn't alright with that, I think this whole situation would be different, we wouldn't get the sword, the Traveler would have used the moment we bought it to flee or to otherwise save itself, it would have grabbed our hand and let us pull it to the surface but instead it took a gamble with its own life to give us the ability to save everyone.

The new exotic sword lore has got me feeling all sorts of ways, but specifically the ending!! Just!!

They're talking about us, guys!! That's the Traveler and it's drowning but we're reaching out to save it and in return it gives us a fucking sword. Like not only is this pure and tender because omg the Guardian and the Traveler and what a beautiful thing we have as the Traveler's chosen, this symbiotic relationship where the Traveler gave us life and a future and in return we also give it life and a future, but also how fucking badass is this? Like the the Traveler is drowning, we're saving it and it's like 'go fuck some shit up, homie.'

Beautiful, well done bungie.

[demiclar]

The new exotic sword lore has got me feeling all sorts of ways, but specifically the ending!! Just!!

They're talking about us, guys!! That's the Traveler and it's drowning but we're reaching out to save it and in return it gives us a fucking sword. Like not only is this pure and tender because omg the Guardian and the Traveler and what a beautiful thing we have as the Traveler's chosen, this symbiotic relationship where the Traveler gave us life and a future and in return we also give it life and a future, but also how fucking badass is this? Like the the Traveler is drowning, we're saving it and it's like 'go fuck some shit up, homie.'

Beautiful, well done bungie.

[demiclar]

VANGUARD!!!!

[demiclar]

This might be the best horizon tweet I've ever come across

[demiclar]

"Ah, I've waited so long to fulfill one last wish..." - Siren Of Riven, The Last Wish raid

One Last Wish: A Destiny 2 Ahamkara zine has been awakened! This is a free fanzine crafted by 40 artists and writers, dedicated to our favorite wish dragons, the Ahamkara! A lot of love and care was put into this zine, I'm so proud of all our contributors and I hope everyone enjoys our creations! 💜

View the zine here!

[demiclar]

Adding on some fiction works for those of you that have a hard time with theory texts (I've read a lot of Fanon for class recently and he's fantastic but in case you need a break/something a little more story-based)

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarmbga -- Set in colonized Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), tells the story of a girl named Tambu who struggles with the tension between her culture and the cultural and familial expectations placed upon her and her desire to be educated in colonial mission schools. Dives deep into gender struggles surrounding education and opportunity for women and holding on to traditional customs and ways of living. (Also has a great audiobook available on Spotify!)

Moloch Tropical (2009) -- Unpacks corruption within the Haitian government surrounding president Jean de Dieu Théogène, politics and the struggle for power, the relationship between the common people and the elite of Haiti, with a healthy dose of oblivious US American celebrities thrown in.

La Noire De (1966) -- (Black Girl) Directed by Ousmane Sembene, known as the father of African Cinema, a young woman from Senegal moves to France to work as a maid for a white family. Unpacks exoticization and depicts key aspects of French colonial desires of assimilation and integration (which was inevitably wrapped up in a mess of exoticization, could converse well with The Battle of Algiers)

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich -- Based on real events, set in North Dakota in the 1950s, during the termination era in which the US government was trying to terminate the legal status of many Native American nations in order to avoid upholding treaty rights. Follows members of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians as they fight back against termination in legal system built to keep them out. I absolutely love this book, I recommend it to practically everyone I know. Deals with personal and familial struggles, has some cute romance moments, some cool fight moments, some unpacking religion moments, some 'someone go punch that white guy' moments, this book has something for everyone.

so i study decolonization, as in i studied it as part of my degree, and i thought I'd make a list of some readings/films that might offer additional insight about decolonization (it also helps if you're tired of the christian moralistic thinking)

occupation 101 (can be found on youtube i believe, it's about the history between isreal and palestine, it focuses on palestinians and it is quite comprehensive. there's live footage, there's interviews with palestinian children, etc. it's a must watch i think, regarding palestine. it points the finger squarely at the united states.)

the wretched of the earth, franz fanon. fanon is really well known in the decolonization sphere because he writes about it in a very succinct and clear way. to him, decolonization can never occur peacefully, and i think that's a really important key lesson. he also talks about how colonizers don't just take land, they reframe ideas, they take language, art, thoughts.

the battle of algiers, 1966. this is a fascinating film, it's sort of a documentary, they got the actual people to play their parts. it describes and interviews the main individuals involved in the fight for independence within Algiers. i think understanding how a nation can gain independence over its colonial forces is really important in the grand scheme of decolonialism.

unthinking eurocentrism. if you can get your hands on it, i love this text. it's so poignant and it lays everything out so clearly and it really shows how we center our worlds around eurocentrism and westernism.

[demiclar]

[demiclar]

Light Projections in the Red War

So I've been doing a bit of a deep-dive into the Red War Campaign for a fic over the last few months (ah how I miss her) and something occurred to me when I considered the Light and the Darkness and how they've both been portrayed and defined in the last few years. Now, D2 the Red War came out in like 2017, so maybe this is a case of a lack of planning and forethought, but if Bungie has shown us anything in the past few years of story content, it's that they really plan ahead, so I don't feel like that's it.

As a part of the initial D2 content, there was a series of missions for players to unlock their extra subclasses, for Warlocks you could do missions for Voidwalker and Stormcaller, for Titans it was Striker and Sunbreaker, for Hunters Gunslinger and Nightstalker (maybe they haven't gotten rid of these, it's been a long time since I've unlocked a subclass). On all of these quests, you'd go through the EDZ and towards the Shard of the Traveler and along the way you'd encounter a set of what Ghost called "Light projections," figures of either Guardians that used (or still do/at the time still did) wield the subclass you're trying to get, or are enemies that were defeated by Guardians that wield the subclass you're getting. They tell stories about themselves, or sometimes others tell you stories about Guardians that used the subclass you're getting, but they each are supposed to have some kind of lesson in them.

What gets me about this, though, is that these projections seem to go against everything we know about Light and Darkness from content like The Witch Queen. The Light is not a physical entity, that's fine, these projections seem to be manifestations of Light, we might be able to hear them, but they don't seem to exist per se or have any tangible mass. But, what's off about them is the fact that they're there at all. The Light, as we know it, makes a point to forget things. When Guardians are revived, they can't remember their past lives, their strength seems to come raw power, and maybe a few guns that get passed down, but nothing like this.

The Darkness, on the other hand, is grounded in memory, and things tangible. In Witch Queen we remade and restored objects using the Darkness, manipulating time itself. In Lightfall, we found the strings that tie the universe together and manipulated those. These projections then, feel a lot like the Darkness from Witch Queen, memories of Guardians past.

One theory could be that all of this takes place in a spot called the Dark Forest, emphasis on Dark. You move through the space, to the shard of the Traveler through a series of Taken portals, which seem to be pretty linked with Hive Darkness. Since the shard of the traveler is calling you to it, a question then arises, is the Shard making the portals appear? Does it have power over this Darkness? If that's the case, then maybe it's using Darkness to manifest these projections, but how does that work, because how can Light control Darkness? Not to mention, these projections, at least visually, seem to be built out of Light, not Darkness, aesthetically linked with all the depictions of Light we've seen at least in this campaign.

So, I don't get it. Maybe because this place is a meeting point of Light and Darkness it's just weird, but I'm having a very hard time making sense of these projections considering the context we've gotten over the past few years. I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on it!