k i’m not gonna lie i don’t like the territory it veered into at the end with “we cannot forget that we aren’t just queens… we are sisters and mothers too 😌” but other than that it was very good
Eramis doesn't have a man in her life? She's married to Athrys, another female Eliksni. Eramis had always been seen as a mother before she made a name for herself as being more than just "a mother, mate of Athrys". Eramis was a mother first and foremost, but she is so much more than that now. She's the Shipstealer. The Kell of Darkness. But she was a mother first.
i am aware eramis is a lesbian and i’m aware she’s canonly a mother. the issue is not with the ingame justification for this line but the real world connotations behind this line, with the misogynist and patriarchal implication that women should be defined by their relationships and not their deeds. in season of the haunted, eris didn’t tell zavala that he doesn’t have to be just the vanguard commander he has to be a father and husband too because it’s just assumed that men can be all of those things at the same time, whereas women have to choose.
i explain further in the reblogs of this post here.
I don't think that the message was necessarily meant to say that Eramis (and Mara for that matter) has to choose.
The message starts with Mara telling Eramis about Uldren's and Eido's stories. Stories about their people and their cultures, told to their young. Eramis dismisses this, but Mara specifies that the world is better when there are people like that telling fantastic stories and teaching new generations.
Mara is coming to terms that her previous way of doing things was wrong. She was thoroughly detached from her people and refused to form connections. She viewed everything as part The Plan (TM); everything she does and everything anyone does should just serve The Plan. There is no time for personal connections and attachments, there is no time to count losses and grieve, there is only The Plan.
Mara realised that this mentality is what led to her losing a lot and to her people losing a lot. You cannot be a good leader if you detach yourself from your people. Once you do that, your people cease to be a people with lives and families and culture and history; they become numbers. Bodies to throw at the enemy.
The world is a better place when we take time to stop, breathe and connect with others. To teach. Tell stories. Raise our young. In other words, to connect.
Eramis has failed to do so, in a very tragic turn of her story. Her initial motivation was always driven by her family. She made sure that her family is sent somewhere safe while she goes to a necessary war to prepare a safe future home for her people (and primarily her family). But as time went by and Eramis got influenced by the Witness to the point where she was basically being a puppet and still is, she forgot about her original motivation.
She still remembers it, here and there, and insists that she must save her people, but all of her recent attempts at doing so have only caused more grief and suffering to that people. Because she is detached. She lost the connection to her people and to their needs and wants. It led her to unleashing the Vex on them, it led to her people fleeing in terror and joining Mithrax, it led to everything in Plunder and now to Eramis having to watch as those people are being turned into Scorn.
Long post :( :
Eramis needs to wake up to the reality of how much she pushed aside her humanity (generalised term). Mara knows this intimately well, which is why she is trying to appeal to Eramis' original motivation; family.
I don't think Mara is saying that Eramis has to choose one or the other. It's actually the opposite, I think. Mara wants to tell her that in order to be a good leader, you have to acknowledge that humanity. You cannot be a good leader who acts completely detached from all connections to your people, lest you end up treating that people without humanity as well.
Basically, if you remember that you are not JUST a leader, but a part of the people you lead, you will lead better. It is a genuine risk of leadership positions to start seeing your soldiers and even civilians as expendable. Eramis is currently doing it and her current biggest wake up call in the making is the Witness turning her people into Scorn. But at this point, it's too late. They can never go back to not being Scorn.
Mara is desperately trying to get Eramis to wake up sooner rather than later. Because at some point, it WILL be Eramis' family on the line, just like Mara's. Mara had to see her brother die. She is advising Eramis to change before she has to see Athrys and their children die and get turned into Scorn.
I think that paying attention to potential bad tropes in storytelling is good, but we also have to look at the wider context of the media we're analysing itself. Destiny doesn't really do this. Destiny has a plethora of women in leadership positions and none of them have ever been made to choose between leading or being housewives. So Destiny itself doesn't uphold that trope at all.
But given the sheer amount of female characters in leading positions, statistically some of them will also be mothers. Eramis is one of them and even then, she is never presented as someone that can only be one or the other. Even if she was, I don't think it would be upholding the trope simply because of the amount of characters like her in the same media, but I really don't think that's what the message was meant to say.
Zavala is an interesting parallel actually because in his case, it was the exact choice that he made. He was being prepared for leading and he chose to be a father and a husband instead. This is only not being referenced anymore because his wife and child have since died and he hasn't really showed interest in going through that again.
With Eramis, it's different, because her wife and kids are very much alive and potentially in grave danger given the state of the universe right now and her own role in it. I'm sure the Witness knows exactly where they are. And even if not, the Witness' plan certainly doesn't involve letting the family of its servants frolicking around the universe when push comes to shove.
Mara is essentially saying that there is more to us than just being leaders. Eramis really HAS to remember that she is not only a leader or she will simply lead her people into more harm. She is not seeing her people as people; she sees them as fodder for a greater future plan. And Mara knows very well just how much of a slippery slope that is.
I understand the negative connotations of the line overall, it's just that I don't think it can really be applied to Destiny itself. In most cases that type of a line happens in stories with very few female characters, all of whom are stereotyped into being better as mothers and not very good at leading. But in Destiny, this simply isn't the case. The story never postulated that women can't be leaders.
Mara, Ikora, Caiatl, and even characters like Eris or Elsie or Ana have all been in leading positions successfully and were never relegated to anything else or being forced to choose. Eramis is just one of them so in the grand scheme of things, for Destiny in particular, I don't think it's inherently perpetrating the trope. More so because even with Eramis, it's never presented that she is a bad leader.
Eramis' descent into bad decisions is entirely on her being manipulated by an incomprehensible entity that manipulated much bigger fish than her before. Eramis' motivation was always that of family and keeping people safe, but unfortunately she lost herself chasing power and promises from the Witness. She can still be a good leader, if only she can remember her original motivation and realise that one can't lead a people without understing their connection to that people.
Gender doesn't really play a role here and is only noticeable because honestly, right now, we only have female characters in leading roles. It's also important to note that with tropes, it's not just about a thing happening, but about the trend. Or rather, whether that thing is happening repeatedly. It's also important to examine the media where it's happening.
Overall, when it happens in a media, my first thing to look at is "how many female characters are there?" and "how many female characters are in leading positions?" Usually there's one and that one is portrayed in that way and then it's really shitty. But in Destiny that's simply not the case.
Also another important note that I want to add is that, in a world as rich with female characters as Destiny, it's healthy to portray some of them as not good at what they do. Because that's something that can happen to a woman. Eramis could genuinely benefit from taking time off, checking in on her family and joining us to stay safe, then working with us from a less exposed position. She is currently working with incredibly powerful and malicious forces and has demonstrated that she is not strong enough to resist them.
i don’t know how many times i have to say that i AM NOT INTERESTED IN THE INGAME EXPLANATION FOR THIS. i don’t care how people justify it or make it make sense . this is not a “i don’t get what mara meant here, please explain it to me” post. this is not me complaining about eramis being a mother. this is solely an issue related to the way that real life systems of oppression impact how the writers of destiny write characters and their wants/needs/desires. sure, i get that eramis needs to get in touch with her humanity and wake up to the fact that she is no longer achieving her own goals (make the world a safe place for the eliksni/her wife and children). but i have an issue with the way it was brought up and discussed and no amount of lore justification changes that because it’s not a issue with lore, its an issue with writing.
destiny is not real. eramis is not real. she is not a real person with her own desires and relationships. she is a character written by people who can be influenced by the patriarchal society we live in. and we can’t just say “oh well they’ve written well rounded female characters before so that can’t be the intention here,” because destiny is an ongoing game that cycles frequently between writers. we have no idea who wrote those characters in the first place and who is writing them now. the writer who came up with mara sov in the first place and wrote the majority of pre-lost mara left bungie in may.
why didn’t this happen with calus? why did no one implore calus to think about what relationships joining the witness would do to caiatl? eramis is the only one that gets this speech and i implore people to consider WHY that is. look past the kneejerk reactions of “destiny can’t be misogynist, there’s so many good female characters!” and “but i like eramis, so she can’t be poorly written in any way!” and genuinely think about it. and if you don’t agree still, that’s fine. but i’m pretty firm in my belief that i think this was a badly written line that was in poor taste.
I think I get the issue now, my biggest reason for not interpreting it that way is just that there's no precendent for this sort of misogyny in writing from before so I am strictly looking at it from in-universe perspective.
Obviously every writing has bad stuff, including Destiny, but this type of misogyny feels entirely out of place since Destiny currently is literally mostly comprised of women in leading positions so I find it incredibly hard to believe that the writers intended that line to be seen to mean that women have to choose between leading or family, or that they're unfit for leading entirely. Or that they were subconsciously influenced by misogyny when writing it. Obviously we're all influenced to some extent but you know.
Maybe the issue is the wording or delivery, but I genuinely do not believe that the writers meant it to be read as anything other than Mara trying to reach out to Eramis to help her with something Mara is familiar with. I especially think it was really nice that they had two women (both wlw) who went through the same aspect of having to put their own lives aside in order to lead their people talking about this. I think that if writers had any malicious intent, they would put less effort into who they pair together for this conversation. Unless the malice wasn't deliberate, but that makes things more difficult to discuss.
It's definitely a good thing to look out for in the future though. Writers are not infalible and, as you pointed out, there can be issues especially when writers change. In this particular case I definitely can't view the interaction in this way, but that's mostly because nothing of the sort has happened in Destiny before, to my knowledge. So I am naturally inclined to give a benefit of the doubt and not interpret it in that way. Obviously if this continues and more female characters are pushed away from leadership and all their storylines start revolving around kids and family, then things will change. But for now, for this one example, I can see it as an example of a character who is just like this, not necessarily a commentary on women in particular.
I'd like to add that in regards to Calus, the issue is that he is not a redeemable character. Even before he fell for the Witness' power, he was not a good guy. He has always been incredibly possessive and abusive and did not perceive his family as individuals, but extensions of himself. So really he can't get better if only he goes back to his family; he's been like this before. As a matter of fact, I want him as far away as possible from his family, same as Clovis.
I guess we could discuss why only male characters were shown in this way and why isn't there a female character written like that. Though perhaps I would argue that Savathun would fit, as Savathun's treatment of her children was that of complete disinterest and she has admitted that she only wanted the mother morph in order to live forever, and for no other reason. I guess Osana Sov, worst mother in the universe, could also fit. So it's not even explicitly about gender in this case either, since we have examples across the board. That's mainly what makes me not really look at it from the outside perspective since the writers haven't really exhibited this type of blatant sexism before.
+ as a guardian grows stronger, their pokemon can choose to evolve. If a pokemon is capable of mega evolution, when a guardian channels their super, they mega evolve too!!!!!
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