this is not a call for donations, this is a call for work. please direct any money set aside for mutual aid to people who are in genuine need, such as emily gwen, the creator of the lesbian pride flag
tl;dr: I'm a disabled indigiqueer artist who has been unemployed since september 2022 and I need money for things like medication, glasses, mutual aid, and gifts for my friends and family for christmas
hi! this is me attempting to boost the reach of my work, because like it says in the above paragraph - i need money. I see an average of $50-150 CAD a month, most of which usually comes from a cheque i get from the government once in a while. nobody in my field of work will hire me because I'm overqualified (I have a master's) but I have no experience, or because I'm autistic and I interview really poorly. i'm extremely competent at what I do, but unfortunately, employers can't look past the thin veneer of what is socially acceptable to employ me. I am actively seeking work in my field, but progress has been very, very slow, and people typically stop hiring entirely before the holidays, even if they have job postings up.
so: I need money. I gotta get new glasses, pay for many medications (I am no longer on my parents insurance), and be able to purchase/make gifts for my friends and family for christmas. I'd also love some funds to set aside for mutual aid.
so let's get to the point - how can you support me?
buy my jewelry
I make beaded jewelry! I'm a settler/metis/anishinaabe beadworker who has reconnected in large part due to my beadwork. if you don't like anything in my store but are still interested in my work, you're welcome to talk to me about custom work. send an email to [email protected] if you're interested!
2. buy my prints
I am also an illustrator! I sell my work on inprnt, whose quality I can vouch for personally. most of my big destiny illustrations are there, including and especially the lesbian ones.
3. commission me
I take art commissions! click the link above to be taken to my commission info.
4. tip me
can't afford to drop a huge chunk of money on art, but still want to support me? no problem. i have a ko-fi.
to conclude, thank you so much to those who have supported me and will support me. I really appreciate it. every commission and beadwork purchase brings warmth to my heart. take care of yourselves.
I think I may have figured out Destiny. I don't think the primary conflict between the Light and the Darkness is the philosophical issue we thought it was.
I got thinking about it after all this talking, with many others but especially @jazzhandsmcleg, about the way all of The Witch Queen DLC and its 4 seasons have had overarching narratives surrounding trauma and cycles of violence and grief, and the way the Darkness and the Light are characterized by their different approaches to it.
In TWQ, Savathûn is given a true second chance for her species in the Light. But as Ikora points out, she struggles to break free of the learned patterns of the Darkness, continuing the pattern of deception and violence.
Same with Season of the Risen - it’s the Warlords and Dark Ages all over again, but this time it’s the Hive. It forces once again to ask: what does it mean to be given a second chance if this is what you do with it? Temper this with Saladin’s story about the girl from the Dark Ages who he protected, but who became a cruel mortal Warlord in her own right. Crow objects to the mental torture of the Hive Lightbearers and he tries to break from the cycle of interspecies violence, but unintentionally ends up continuing it by killing the Psion and heightening tensions between humans and the Uluran.
Season of the Haunted!!! Literally, the entire thing is about confronting your traumas and greatest fears and the worst parts about yourself and beginning to heal them, making something better from them. Completely changing the game by turning Nightmares that torment into Memories that guide you. Crow with the memory of Uldren, Zavala with that of Safiyah, Caiatl that of Ghaul - and most importantly, resolution focuses on how they, specifically have been held back from healing by their self-incriminating Nightmares. It challenges the cycle of continuing violence on a very personal level. Eris even has patrol dialogue describing the a Nightmare as a thing of pain craving only more pain: "Such is the cycle."
Season of Plunder brings up the very same questions on a much higher organizational level. It gives us Eido and Eramis taking very different jaded vs. new-hope approaches to the legacy of the Whirlwind, asking: can we change? Are we defined by generational trauma forever? Can we continue to grow and change for the better even though it can never be undone? Though Eido is clearly young and naïve, we're clearly given the opportunity and narrative nudge to sympathize with her desire and hope for growth and redemption, both for the Eliksni overall, and for Eramis in particular.
And we're not even done with Season of the Seraph, but it already goes incredibly hard asking the same questions, again from a more personal angle. How far, and through how many generations is trauma transmitted? From the Bray family to Rasputin, to Felwinter to Osiris to Ikora – how do we fix this? How do we fix this? How do you defeat an enemy who IS war itself? What can you do to end an endless cosmic cycle of violence?
Go back and back and back in Destiny's lore even back to D1, and the majority of conflicts seem driven by this cycle of grief and revenge and violence. The entire line of humanity's war with the Hive goes back through Oryx's grief for Crota and the First Crota Fireteam and Eriana-3's grief for her wife Wei Ning. Even the Hive siblings' pact with the Worm Gods, though manipulated by Rhulk, was driven by the pain and grief they endured for themselves and their people, and wanting to escape that cruel pattern. The entire predicament of the Eliksni and their conflict with humans is driven by the trauma and grief and loss of the Whirlwind. Even Caiatl's empire, a conquering force that would be highly regarded by the sword logic, now must reckon with the same kind of loss in the Fall of Torobatl.
How do you escape this cycle and stay free of it?
I think, this year, we are finally seeing the beginnings of an answer.
I can't highly enough recommend the TWQ Collector's Edition lorebook (page scans & transcript) and The Hidden Dossier (page scans & transcript) that immediately follows it. What I've been calling Ikora's theory of "memory and grace" that she develops through the course of these two lore books is a balanced philosophy of memory/Darkness and grace/Light (which honestly deserves an entire post of its own). I think it clearly points toward the final resolution the story of the conflict between the Darkness and the Light.
In light of this, something in the Calus part of the new Lightfall CE lorebook (images, transcript) really jumped out at me.
“The doomed and the damned left the record of their downfall in the OXA. Your star got its name from the oldest myths in that archive. And when your mother told your father that story…the star became your name. A prayer that all will go as it must…and the way it must go is struggle.”
“Aiat.” Not a word in Ulurant or any other Cabal tongue. “But Caiatl means something else..”
“Yes. ‘It may not always go as it needs to go.’ A good name for a soldier."
"A strange name for a daughter," I say.
"Your father chose it for your mother's sake. Out of love."
And because the parallel is so overwhelmingly striking, I am once again going to reference philosophy/worldbuilding from the Young Wizards universe, which has great resonance with Destiny lore and which Bungie has been long aware of and has even been referenced in Forsaken-era canon lore.
“all the fair things skewed, all the beauty twisted by the dark Lone Power watching on his steed. If only there were some way he could be otherwise if he wanted to!
For here was his name, a long splendid flow of syllables in the Speech, wild and courageous in its own way—and it said that he had not always been so hostile; that he got tired sometimes of being wicked, but his pride and his fear of being ridiculed would never let him stop. Never, forever, said the symbol at the very end of his name, the closed circle that binds spells into an unbreakable cycle and indicates lives bound the same way.”
[...]
“Nita bent quickly over the Book and, with the pen, in lines of light, drew from that final circle an arrow pointing upward, the way out, the symbol that said change could happen—if, only if—and together they finished the Starsnuffer’s name in the Speech, said the new last syllable, made it real.”
Excerpt From: Diane Duane. “So You Want to Be a Wizard, New Millennium Edition.”
CAIATL’S NAME IS LITERALLY THE UP-AND-OUT SYMBOL.
I know I'm probably only talking to the handful of Destiny players from the (very small) Young Wizards fandom, but what you need to know is that this moment is pivotal and sets up the series-long theme of hope for an eventual exit from the cycle. It's the incredibly small, overwhelmingly improbable possibility of a second chance, a new start for the Lone Power, the source of all strife and suffering, who itself is driven by loss and pain. A concept of extended grace that is inherently tied to the philosophy of the Light.
“Billions of years, it took. All the redemptions there have ever been went toward this; from the greatest to the least. And finally in the fullness of time you came along, and took my role, of your own will, and woke up a race powerful enough to change the whole Universe, and gave them the fire.” She glanced up at the mobiles and smiled. “How could he resist such a bait? He took the gamble: he always does. And losing, he won.”
[...]
“The Defender reached down and put a hand into the shadow. “And we are going where such matters are transcended… where all his old pains will shift. Not forgotten, but transformed. Life in this universe will never have such a friend. And as for His inventions… look closely at Death, and see what it can become.”
The long, prone darkness began to burn, from inside, the way a mountain seems to do with sunset. “Brother,” the Defender said. “Come on. They’re waiting.”
Excerpt From: Diane Duane. “High Wizardry New Millennium Edition.”
This is the devil’s second chance, its homecoming. Grace among the memory. How do we heal this? By fixing it. By making and TAKING that opportunity of grace.
Likewise, Destiny is shaping up into its own universe’s story of this Reconfiguration, the remaking of everything that exists through the act of a second chance, both offered and taken, with full awareness of the irreversibility of harm already caused.
Destiny isn’t the story of the light and the darkness fighting each other. That happens, but that’s not what it’s ABOUT.
It’s “And I know exactly what we are. We’re best frenemies with a history of intense mutual hurt and messy reconciliation, leaving a deep tenderness as well as an almost impenetrable knot of scars. What could be simpler?” (Chalco)
It's “For so long, I believed peace was beyond my reach. No more. I have found it in guiding others down the same path that saved me. But… I might allow myself to want more than peace. What, I am not certain. Is joy the word? Might I find that again?” (Eris)
It's “Second chances… hm. Turns out I've been using mine wrong. I thought being a Guardian was my destiny. That wielding the Light for good was the most I had to offer. But it's clear now. This is what the Traveler chose me for. I was reforged in the Light for a purpose. To remake something dead and gone… into something beautiful. To learn how to forge something new from what we were. Everything Uldren did to the Reef, the Scorn… Fikrul. I have a responsibility — no — a calling to make them whole. And… I can't replace Cayde. But I can cover his old patrols — maybe organize the Hunters a bit, if they'll let me. Clean up some of my mess. I don't know if I can fix everything Uldren left broken… but I can try.” (Crow)
We aren’t defeating the Darkness. That’s never what it’s been about. It’s about breaking the cycle of trauma and grief with memory and grace. We're transcending the Final Shape, but we're not here to destroy it or become it. We’re harmonizing the Darkness and the Light into a sustainable balance to create something new from the wounded remains.
We're here to heal the broken relationship between the Winnower and the Gardener.
That's all that it is, in the end. They had a falling out, and now they hurt, and they hurt each other, and everything else, forever. Breaking free from that cycle begins and ends with them.
Is that fair? No, it's not.
But Destiny is – unhingedly, brilliantly, paradoxically – a FPS game about how to stop killing each other, growing ever more into a framework of restorative and reparative justice.
The story says, we are all culpable, we have all done awful shit and have endless potential to do more awful shit – AND, most critically, we all have the potential to do better (grace). AND, the act of making the conscious choice to do so and letting that happen is the only way for things to get better (memory).
The Collapse happened and it was horrible, the Red War happened and it was horrible, the Great Disaster happened and it was horrible, Twilight Gap happened and it was horrible...AND?? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO RESPOND? The Whirlwind happened and it was horrible! The Fall of Torobatl happened and it was horrible! Your species' Choice was stolen and you became the most prolifically violent killers in the universe and it was and is horrible! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Are you going to make it more horrible? Or are you going to make it BETTER????
Are you going to fight for the Final Shape, or for the gentle kingdom ringed in spears?
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
My longest work yet on AO3! A series wherein Claudius, the villain of Shakespeare's Hamlet, diverges from canon and takes on the mantle of the Warrior of Light. Mostly written in disconnected vignette style, with reflections on canon events, narrativized game mechanics, and gratuitous banter.
It deals with themes of past trauma and abuse, the ills of Ishgardian society, and glimpses into Claudius's messy love life. Also: the found family trope. Lots of it.
Go where those others went to the dark boundary
for the golden fleece of nothingness your last prize
go upright among those who are on their knees
among those with their backs turned and those toppled in the dust
you were saved not in order to live
you have little time you must give testimony
be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous
in the final account only this is important
and let your helpless Anger be like the sea
whenever you hear the voice of the insulted and beaten
let your sister Scorn not leave you
for the informers executioners cowards—they will win
they will go to your funeral and with relief will throw a lump of earth
the woodborer will write your smoothed-over biography
and do not forgive truly it is not in your power
to forgive in the name of those betrayed at dawn
beware however of unnecessary pride
keep looking at your clown’s face in the mirror
repeat: I was called—weren’t there better ones than I
beware of dryness of heart love the morning spring
the bird with an unknown name the winter oak
light on a wall the splendour of the sky
they don’t need your warm breath
they are there to say: no one will console you
be vigilant—when the light on the mountains gives the sign—arise and go
as long as blood turns in the breast your dark star
repeat old incantations of humanity fables and legends
because this is how you will attain the good you will not attain
repeat great words repeat them stubbornly
like those crossing the desert who perished in the sand
and they will reward you with what they have at hand
with the whip of laughter with murder on a garbage heap
go because only in this way will you be admitted to the company of cold skulls
to the company of your ancestors: Gilgamesh Hector Roland
the defenders of the kingdom without limit and the city of ashes
Be faithful Go
The Envoy of Mr. Cogito, Zbigniew Herbert (trans. Bogdana Carpenter)
Even the smallest acts of self-care are a way to acknowledge your own worth.
Lighting your favorite candle or enjoying your favorite meal can be good, easy ways to show yourself that you are cared for, that your needs and happiness matter.
