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sundayswiththeilluminati · 3 years ago

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Ager’s Scepter

"One day, you will mold the world to your liking, dear brother, as I always have." --Queen Mara Sov

Type: Trace Rifle

Slot: Kinetic | Energy | Heavy

Element: Kinetic | Stasis | Strand

Perk: Ager's Call - Final blows with this weapon generate a slowing burst around the defeated target.

Trait: Rega's Refrain - Stasis final blows transfer ammo to this weapon's magazine from reserves.

Masterworked Trait: Will Given Form - Hold reload to drain Super energy, overflowing the magazine and empowering the beam with bonus damage and the ability to slow and freeze targets until the magazine or Super energy runs out, or the weapon is stowed. Can only be activated when Super energy is full.

Ornaments: Symbol of Rule, Springtime Scales, Cold Cheer

Origin & Description: I'm not going to try to summarize the complex relationship between Mara and Uldren Sov, and between Mara and the resurrected Crow, because we'd be here another three months while I typed and retyped a seven-page-long entry. Not least because in the recent Season of the Lost Mara's lines are so mismatched between activities that she sounds like three different people, none of whom are on speaking terms. Destiny's writers need to get together and play rock-paper-scissors or whatever to finally decide if the Queen of the Reef is a predatory manipulator, vainglorious false prophet heading for a fall, lonely visionary isolated by the weight of centuries-long schemes, ruler projecting a façade of unanswerable power and secret knowledge to hide the misfit teenager forever frozen beneath, or whatever arcane combination of all of them a person becomes over a 20,000-year lifespan. Suffice to say that Mara and Uldren are fraternal twins, that their relationship was complicated and unhealthy, that Uldren constantly got the short end of the stick, and that the same writers still can't seem to decide how she feels about Crow.

I'd like to buy the lore for Ager's Scepter because it's cool lore, but it's just too incompatible with previous lore for me to believe it came about for any other reason than "we're making a Stasis trace rifle to go with the other three and the quest needs to tie into the season plot." Ager's Scepter itself belongs to the Awoken and was stored in one of their relic/treasure vaults, Dozmary Vault*, for safekeeping. It should belong to Uldren, but Mara won't let him have it. According to the (very) thinly-veiled allegorical story told by Mara, when both Mara and Uldren (sorry, "Rega" and "Ager") told their mother Osana that they were set on leaving the Distributary, she gave them two gifts to protect them: a crown for Mara and a scepter for Uldren. Mara casually informs us that she "has the crown" - no further info on what it actually is or what it does, which makes me think it was just made up for this story - and also the scepter. She wouldn't let Uldren have because she thought he "wasn't ready for it" and would get himself into trouble - a running theme with Mara, who seems eternally convinced Uldren's failed to live up to some standard known only to her and which poor Uldren chased in vain for most of his life. She tells us, at least, that Uldren would have used the Scepter to make useful and important pathways through the Ascendant Realm and also gotten himself killed. So instead she gave him something "safe" to do and then of course Uldren got killed anyway, but maybe that was necessary for Oryx's fall? It's unclear. Either way it was a dick move, Mara. Seriously. Dick move.

* According to local legend, the Lady of the Lake gave Excalibur to King Arthur at Dozmary Pool in Southern England. Bungie's fascination with legendary swords continues.

Anyway by "scepter" Osana apparently meant "trace rifle," which, I didn't know she was a weaponsmith, but over 20,000 years you pick up a lot of hobbies. Osana built the scepter centered on an "obsidian feather," presumably the Stasis crystal at the core of the weapon, and it fires a beam of Stasis energy that damages and slows targets, freezing them with enough dwell time. Final blows generate an AoE burst of further slowing energy, hindering and potentially freezing enemies around them as well. That all seems to be a side effect, though. Since Uldren served as a scout and pathfinder, Osana built the Scepter to bore through dimensions, similar to how the Blind Well focuses paracausal energy to pierce the Ascendant Realm. Given that Uldren sans Scepter managed to sneak in to e.g. the Black Garden, it's a safe bet that with the Scepter he'd be more or less impossible to keep out of your stuff. Mara feared Uldren would use it to "open doors and challenge foes best left alone," but for us its world-rending properties manifest as destroying specific glittery-purple rocks in Ascendant Realm missions. I don't see how Uldren could have gotten himself into trouble by cutting through small chunks of ascendant rock, but hey, I'm not Queen of the Reef.

The masterwork trait for Ager's Scepter is a real oddball. Most masterwork traits improve or simplify the weapon's existing abilities, like how Trinity Ghoul's Forked Lightning changes its buff trigger from any precision kill to any Arc kill. Will Given Form, on the other hand, adds an entirely new ability: if your Super is full, you can infuse that energy into this weapon to overflow the magazine and give it bonus damage and freezy range as long as the energy lasts. There are a decent number of combat situations where your Super's full but not useful at the moment, and dumping it into a quick Ager's Scepter rampage instead can get a lot done. Since the empowered beam also does solid damage to bosses (and triggers Focusing Lens, an on-again off-again seasonal artifact mod that buffs Light damage against Stasis-marked targets), Guardians running support Supers like Stormtrance that aren't useful in damage phase can use Ager's Scepter to get some value out of that energy, especially against bosses like Atheon whose damage phases come with buffs to Super regen rate.

Now that what was once Uldren's body is occupied by an adorably puzzled Guardian, what's a Queen of the Reef to do? Mara still seems to sense part of the same paracausal connection she and her brother always shared in Crow - enough at least to pull her attention from the Ascendant Realm - but how that translates into actual interactions, well. Sometimes she seems happy her brother's back in any form at all, sometimes she's mad we "got to him" first and now he won't listen to her like he used to, sometimes she's almost offended the Traveler dared interfere with him. Me, I tried to bring him the Scepter once I had it because by rights it's his, but he had a lot of other stuff on his mind. Like threading an extremely awkward needle as if he were playing an IRL version of that party game where everyone has a post-it note on their forehead saying who they are and they have to guess who it was from other people's reactions. I say "was" because remember Savathun? Yeah, she's here too - she was masquerading as Osiris, which, I'm going to kill her just for how much she hurt Saint - and she wants to throw Mara off her game as much as possible, so naturally she screwed with Crow's head until Crow asked her to tell him about his past life. Now Crow's off working through a lot of Heavy Emotional Shit (he'll be okay, he just needs some space), Mara's upset and distracted, and Savathun's laughing her ass off. Oy. Her comeuppance can't come soon enough.

Destiny 2 Compendium Armarum Exoticarum

#Destiny 2 #Ager’s Scepter #Season of the Lost #Crow #Mara Sov #Uldren Sov #heheh Mara acknowledged that Uldren was kind of already a Guardian in terms of doing dumb shit #sorry lady he was already doomed #I have complex thoughts about Mara being so terrified of losing people she cares about that she ends up destroying them #because she fundamentally doesn’t believe she’s worthy of love #but: another time #cute bird cutscenes though!#birb frand #this is a fun gun though don’t let the Complex Emotional Baggage get you down #fun and useful!#especially if you have glittery purple rocks.#Destiny Compendium Exoticarum #Destiny #this is the wager of existence

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youtiaoshutiao · 5 years ago

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go go squid! eps 1-30 - thoughts

i’ve actually read the novel for this a few years ago as a teen and it was just alright in my estimation, it was cute overall and a fun read but i largely forgot about it in the past few years. checked out the drama out of curiosity as to how they’d adapt it. have watched up to ep 30 at this point and i’d say i’m rather ambivalent (though i’m still pretty engaged) so here’s some rambling about my thoughts about my watch so far.

Ngl, the first 7 eps were unbearable to watch imo. I have a super low tolerance for secondhand embarrassment when watching movies and dramas (which is why i can’t get behind some high school movies/dramas) and it was uttermost torture watching tongnian stalk her way (very incompetently too, i must add) to k&k’s resting quarters, even getting his identity wrong (despite being fully capable of baidu searching him given that she knew his full name + found out he was part of a famous team), intending to go to watch him the next day but not even thinking about buying tickets till she was actually at the event venue and then being all righteous about not buying tickets from scalpers... Worrying about causing a misunderstanding among gun’s trainees yet continually getting near him and hence causing a misunderstanding anyway... Though i knew that it was part of her character setup (high iq genius but nil experience in love?) but i couldn’t bear to watch all this unfold haha. Coupled with the very draggy endless flashback scenes and all the testosterone-pumped angst about solo (and now 30 eps in i’m very into Li Xian’s turn as han shangyan but my eyebrows were hurting watching him furrow his brow 24/7) i was almost prepared to quit but was told that everything would get better around ep 8.

And lo and behold... it did. As predicted, around ep 8/9 a switch flipped and i began to be more engaged and enjoy the drama more. I was trying to pinpoint what exactly changed my opinion and i think above all, it was the character of han shangyan that really captivated/held my interest. I started seeing gun not just as the typical 霸道总裁 trope that’s just meant to be confident and commanding and therefore hot but more as a very complex and well fleshed out human (more so than the novel i think, but i can’t really remember at this point as it’s been years, and anyway the novel is a pretty short book while this drama is considered quite long for a modern fluffy cdrama thus allowing more room for exploration).

I really appreciated seeing all the dualities to his character, e.g. his god-like status in his industry and being the idol of thousands and thousands of youth yet seeing how this celebrity status does not translate to being estimated highly by the people around him, and how it does feed into his ideas and perception of himself to a certain extent, though he is also adamant on doing what he deems right, not caring what people think. How he as a leader of k&k appears unflappable, in control, and is determined, eyes fixed on the prize; yet his softness and care for his boys and the elderly he employs and his past teammates shine through in quiet moments and little actions. He has lofty dreams and big goals and aspirations for the future of his team, yet he is also a man bogged down by tons of emotional baggage, stuck in ruts of nostalgia and guilt and unprocessed anger about the past and unable to let go of past enmities or relations. Even his small little quirks amuse/intrigue me, like his sucking on sweets whenever he’s bothered, like his weird obsession with that one Beyond song and playing it whenever he’s Brooding about his past (though it’s probably just the drama’s way of shilling Netease Music lol)

Reading Han Shangyan’s personality/character arc as such, I found myself very invested in what was happening to him/what he was doing/his interactions with the other characters in the story. Even the flashback scenes and SP team scenes that I found very droll initially and still do to a certain extent now held more of my interest as a gateway to understand HSY more. He’s definitely not a perfect character and is deeply flawed, but I appreciated that they portrayed him in such a manner as he definitely felt more real. (though when it came to how this comes into play with regards to his r/ship with Tong Nian, I had rather mixed feelings about it, which I’ll elaborate on further below)

Similarly, I also enjoyed the fleshing out of side characters like Mi Shaofei, Solo, Su Cheng, Xiao Ai etc. Mi Shaofei’s arc especially was very moving and wistful to me, seeing him have his dream of being a champion rekindled at the start of the drama and going back to be a competitive CTF athlete, yet having his age and his lack of practice cause him to not be in top form and doing badly, and eventually making the decision to retire. Seeing him express regret having quit together with Han Shangyan back in the day in a pique of anger and not having this arc resolve in a neat, fulfilling way - I really appreciated it and thought it illuminated quite a sobering reality that timing and circumstances may not always yield the best outcome, that actions from the past that you thought were the right thing to do may come back to haunt you, that you may regret your past actions, that you may have to close the door on certain things even if you really want it. And I really like Mi Shaofei’s personality as well, seeing how he has a good read on his friends’ temperaments and personalities and knows how to diffuse tense situations (especially when Han Shangyan is being prickly and abrasive), how he values the collective above himself, like being happy that SP team scores improved greatly even when the improvement came about due to his retirement. I’m glad that he now has a new path which he can work towards his original dream of being a champion, albeit in a different way that he had initially envisioned.

The main thing niggling at me/making me feel conflicted as I watch the drama is actually Tong Nian’s character/Tong Nian and HSY’s relationship. I don’t really know how to explain what exactly bothers me so much about this, but here’s a shoddy attempt:

In comparison to how well fleshed out Han Shang Yan’s character arc is, Tong Nian’s arc sadly feels very underwhelming in comparison, and I wish similar character development was afforded to her character. 30 episodes in, I literally know nothing about her inner thoughts, motivations, character etc that is not Gun-related gushing. And this is all the more a pity given that her character’s setup was so cool - being so smart and intelligent, being so advanced in a STEM field, also having such a successful online career out of her singing hobby - all these hint at such an interesting female lead, but ultimately feels like an empty shell of a person. There really is no scene where she exists independently, separate from Gun or Gun-related thoughts pervading her mind - e.g. even when she is pitching some cool project idea showcasing her computing skills to the police department, she’s hung up on Gun after breaking up with him; when she’s invigilating a class she’s still thinking about him; she’s coding some new game for him; she’s doing some debugging... but that’s because she’s devastated after he behaved in a shit way towards her; she’s at some tryouts to be the singer for the ctf theme song! she’s showcasing her singing! but somehow... the show still managed to make it all about how she’s heartbroken over him; she uploaded a new song! ... but it’s about how she’s in love with him...

The show tells me she has a life outside of her crush on Gun, but it doesn’t show it as such. Though I also understand that this is due to the drama being centered on esports and hence involving HSY more, and Tong Nian is an outsider to the esports scene and thus her own activities would not be featured as much. It is possible that should they have chosen to feature more about Tong Nian, it might have affected the cohesiveness and pacing and how tight the plot is. But but but... she is the female lead, after all?? I literally know more about Mi Shaofei than about Tong Nian, and he is a supporting character! And precisely because the show did such a good job of fleshing out HSY, whose job and aspiration and passion and friendship-related angst etc lend a lot of fodder to shape his character and that is totally unrelated to his romance with Tong Nian, Tong Nian’s character development seems really lacking in gravitas in comparison.

This sense of imbalance spills over to my perception of them as a couple. I definitely am not opposed to or feel squicked out by huge age gaps in principle, as long as there isn’t some power imbalance and no teenagers are involved. But something about the combination of Tong Nian being all about Han Shangyan (at least that’s how the drama portrayed it, even if it was unintentional) while Tong Nian is only one part of Han Shangyan’s life + Tong Nian’s almost worshipful sentiments towards Han Shangyan + the show’s tendency to highlight how much sleep or time she sacrifices to do stuff for him, on top of the huge age gap made me slightly uncomfortable...?

I think I felt it especially during the plot arc of the second break up. The events of this arc were standard asian drama angst fare - interference from well meaning but biased parent leading to melodramatic wallowing in angst and mean behaviour attempting to drive the other party away... If purely viewing this arc from the lens of character exploration, I think the (rather ridiculous) events in that arc like HSY promising Tong Nian’s mother to not bother Tong Nian anymore and all his subsequent shitty behaviour towards Tong Nian shed some light on HSY’s inner self abasement and 自卑感 and was fascinating in that regard. But then seeing how Tong Nian who definitely puts him on a pedestal just internalised all of that horrible behaviour and accepted it and even kept on excusing his actions or asking him if she had done something wrong or if he was mad at her about the cat (though i also was mad that she just got a pet as a gift without asking beforehand lolol) or if he wanted her to do anything... that was SO painful to watch. (Until he implied that he cheated on her, thankfully she drew a line at that!!) I felt like it was bordering on cold violence to some extent? Not that any part of the second break up was Tong Nian’s fault, but just the way the show portrayed Gun’s way of pushing Tong Nian away and Tong Nian’s subsequent response made it harder to just dismiss the entire saga as just pure asian drama typical noble idiocy angst and left a really bad taste in my mouth. And above all what made me quite exasperated was how in the end, HSY didn’t even apologise to Tong Nian about it, and even attempted (and was successful) to get back into her good graces by listing all the reasons why he should be pitied and hence activating Tong Nian’s ‘Han Shangyan is so pitiful and I love him and want to give him everything’ mode, and being so smug about it??

(I feel like I come off as being rather inconsistent here lolol, earlier gushing about how much I love HSY’s character and now ranting about him. I think I just feel very confused about what to feel when watching the drama, and partially I think it’s because the entire romantic plot and all the events of the drama... require some suspension of belief and are not really very cohesive or well plotted, in the sense that it doesn’t seem to flow organically together with the characters’ emotions and responses? i.e. the character’s emotions/motivations/thoughts don’t correspond to their subsequent actions and the other characters’ subsequent responses to said action doesn’t seem proportional at times. So at certain plot points like how HSY got back together with Tong Nian so easily I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel outraged or just take it in my stride?? I’m not sure if I’m making sense)

Oh, another thing that bothered me was this weird machoism (?? not sure how to explain it) that I sensed at some parts. An example off the top of my mind would be the entire sequence of HSY and Mi Shaofei going out together after Mi Shaofei announced his retirement, with Tong Nian and Yaya trailing at their heels. Once again, from a character development angle, I enjoyed the dialogues between MSF and HSY, between MSF and Yaya. But seeing MSF and HSY pass their coats to Yaya and Tong Nian then embarking on some bromantic tension-filled run together, while Yaya and Tong Nian are left hovering around waiting for them to return and holding their coats; or seeing MSF and HSY give each other Meaningful Looks and then downing a whole bowl of alcohol in some testosterone-fuelled display of Manly Sorrow and Solidarity as Tong Nian and Yaya watch from the sides, worried... Then having Tong Nian and Yaya each attempting to comfort their respective men... idk, i think coupled with the fact that the show is centred around esports, and most of the esports characters are male, and a larger proportion the main female characters we see are not directly involved and are more on the sidelines, it just gives off the sense of like, the men in this drama having their struggles, their aspirations, their sorrows be forefront and central in the plot, while the women are just there to fawn over them and support from the sidelines and tend to the guys’ emotional needs and baby them when they are being grown children. I’m definitely not explaining this well enough and I’m not sure if my impression is valid or I’m just being a hater or being subconsciously misogynistic and projecting or something lol. I’d love to hear what anyone thinks heh.

Thankfully, that part of the plot is over and now the romance part of the drama seems to be settled and the drama I’m assuming is gearing up towards winning the championships. This is promising haha because personally feel like the esports plotline is more captivating than the romance. I sense that now that Tong Nian/Gun are a properly established relationship and both are fully on board the dynamic might change a bit so I shall see how I feel about their relationship in the last quarter of the drama!

With regards to the cast, there was all round quite solid acting imo. I thought Li Xian seemed to be overdoing it with the frowning and grouchiness initially but I think it was alright after a few eps. His microexpressions and meaning-loaded gazes and quirked-lip-smiles are pretty affecting. I watched some interviews of him and he seems really different from Gun in real life so that’s quite impressive. Plus I love his slight slouchiness when portraying Gun in the more personal scenes where the facade of gruff boss!han shangyan disappears lolol. For all my problems with the way Tong Nian’s character was portrayed, Yang Zi does a great job in her role too. I think her crying scenes have always been on point and it was no different here. Special shoutout to the actors for Mi Shaofei, Solo and Xiao Ai, who portrayed their roles really well I think!

Lastly on a random note, I’m quite amused by how the soundtrack copiously borrows from the Suddenly This Summer soundtrack, but I’m not complaining because the OST is pretty evocative and whimsical and makes me hugely nostalgic for STS :)

#go go squid!#亲爱的热爱的 #cdramanet #li xian #yang zi #李现 #杨紫 #drama watching #this is so badly written i cannot english #but i hope it makes some sense and isn't gibberish

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