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Destiny was a game I swore I’d never play. Destiny 1 was soft-launched (as in my father begged me to play with him) around the time I was being horribly bullied in Call of Duty and Halo. And by horribly bullied I mean having my friends set up lobbies where they would kill me relentlessly as I begged for anyone to explain how the game worked. The only thing I learned was that I hated first person shooters, of which I actively avoided for many, many years.

Finally, in the fall of 2021, after purchasing a gaming laptop and becoming hopelessly obsessed with both Cyberpunk AND Horizon Zero Dawn, I caved and downloaded Destiny 2. As I created my first D2 Guardian, a Titan I would name Maximus (yes, I have OC lore for all of my Guardians with most of it posted to AO3 – https://archiveofourown.org/users/sconesandcoffee/works), I recalled the times I had entertained my father and played Destiny 1. I recalled being dead A LOT and felt like we were crawling through end game content – fun fact, we were running strikes. I was afraid that my experience would be similar in Destiny 2, but I shelved my concerns and hopped in with my dad.

I quickly fell in love with the story, different planets and NPCs, and the gameplay. Yes, I died approximately one thousand times in every strike I ran. The Harbinger quest, one my father was over-the-moon to show me because he had accidentally found it by shooting a fireplace in the EDZ (if you know you know), became my own personal hell as I discovered Titans must be part rubber for how much and often I bounced off of every available flat (and curved) surface while jumping. That jump from the tree to the cement wall? Yes, it made me cry. I persevered and earned my Hawkmoon as well as eventually collected enough feathers to earn the ship.

I grew to love solar Titan and my beloved throwing hammer (and a year or so later I’d solo three dungeons as a solar throwy-hammer Titan).

(Yes, I soloed all three dungeons using Lorely and a glaive.)

I NEEDED the bunny Ghost. I even have a replica of it above my gaming PC.

(I imagine you’d like to see the replica so here it is, along with some incredible art by Of Starlight Designs, @ofstarlightdesigns on Twittter and my beloved Vexcalibur – guest appearance by my Crota raid ring.)

Dreaming City became my absolute favorite place and I soon discovered that lore-wise my Titan was Awoken (my Warlock and Hunter too). Kismet! Erm…destiny? Enjoy the first screenshot I ever took while playing Destiny 2.

 I played Destiny like it was a second job, banking nearly 40-hours a week with my small clan of three, the Fresh Coast Collective. I eventually made a Warlock who I became obsessed with – can you say Osmiomancy? Here she is – Rhemy is her name, by the way – shutting the club down ie hanging out in the most happening Fallen night club as the servers went down and Tangled Shore was removed from the game.

I’d eventually make a Hunter for Witch Queen, a class I swore I’d never play. The sheer irony is, once I procured an Xbox, I logged back into Destiny 1 to visit my true first ever Guardian and lo and behold….

(Oops, I guess I have always been a Hunter at heart. I’d name them Elithia and they even have lore amoungst my other Destiny OCs on AO3 – https://archiveofourown.org/works/51138112 – if you’re interested.)

Anyways, here is a young Araidne (Destiny 2 Hunter) rocking blue armor as I painstakingly leveled her and learned Hunter jump.

Warlock has the best jump and you can fight me on that, but you’ll lose.

Soon, I’d meet many more wonderful Guardians by logging into my long-defunct twitter account because I HAD to talk about Destiny 2 and figured Twitter would be the place. We can all collectively laugh at my naiveté as yes, I have been bullied, woken up to hundreds of awful comments, and messages whose contents were both vile and abhorrent. But I also found so many cool people who took me under their wing….and I refused to cave to the loud angry minority.

For better or worse, Twitter became my favorite social media (we DO NOT call it anything but Twitter in this house.) I would meet Guardians who would take me through my first raid – Vault of Glass, through many more raids and dungeons, earning seals and shaders and exotics….I would make friends who would willingly run checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint until I got the exotic I dreamt of since I saw someone with it in the tower – Vex Mythoclast.

I ended up doing my first contest raid, Crota’s End, making it to final boss with one team and finishing with another and one of my closest friends I’ve made. I proudly share the story of trying to sleep for a few hours on Sunday morning before crushing Crota RIGHT before contest ended and failing to get much sleep because all I could hear was “CROTA” whispered by one Ir Yut. I “woke up” with a nosebleed, thanks Ir Yut. My beloved Necrocasm dropped and its now used to wreak havoc in PvP. Sadly, I have no screenshots but I do remember that after being awake and gaming for nearly two days I have never cried harder in my life.

(Fun fact: I do this race – yes, like on my feet – called the Ultimate Suck which requires one to be awake from Friday through Sunday morning. You sleep, you’re DQed. I maintain that doing physical acts such as wood cutting, running, rucking, swimming, lots of burpees, OC spray to the face, climbing chains, and shooting a gun (a short list among many activities) at targets you can’t see because you aren’t wearing your glasses *coughcough* is somehow less mentally draining than two days of contest mode.)

It’s hard to believe that Destiny 2 was once just a game I swore I’d never play because it has turned into so much more. I have friends. I have community. I feel like I found somewhere I belong. A week or so ago, due to a tweet that blew up, I now have a discord server with some of the coolest and kindest Guardians I’ve ever met, helping one another run all varieties of content, teaching raids, helping others grind for loot….it’s incredible. Certain pockets of the internet may have you believe that the D2 community is a toxic place. And sure, there are bad apples but that’s with literally any and every online community. I, however, have always pushed through, believing in the best of others and I have in turn found that best.

Here’s a raid family photo with some of my lovely discord friends.

(PS I died and respawned outside of the door and because my teammates are in-game Gods – and probably out of game too – they nuked Atheon and I just did the griddy outside.)

(PPS I think this is hilarious.)

I could go on for about, well, according to Time Wasted On Destiny:

Steam would say:

Plus Playstation – yes I own all of D2 on both PC AND PS5:

I have the memories and screenshots to show for it. So, indulge me, and let’s go down memory lane a little.

Before I started playing Destiny 2, my father called me one day distraught. Cayde had died. But I didn’t know who that was. So upon my next visit, my dad played the mission over so I could watch Uldren (?), who was Mara’s brother (??) – kill my dad’s favorite character (???). Later, I would play Forsaken and had to live it myself.

And yes, I hated Crow for a long time but he has since redeemed himself….and his hairstyle.

Presage was (and probably still is) my father’s favorite exotic mission and he could not wait to take me through it (You have to remember my dad is not on the internet at all. So he found Presage like he found Harbinger – by accident). I struggled with the jumps – not a shock there as again, Titans are made of rubber and I stand by that. For this photo I’d brought my Warlock – Warlock jump supremacy – rocking The Stag, an exotic I had no idea what its perk was…it just looked cool.

And later my father and I took a photo with the poor Guardian who’d succumbed within the mission.

(Hey, I’m not Byf, so if you want the lore, go check his youtube.)

Another fun fact: I won’t run the Warden of Nothing strike without a fireteam because one of the Vexs won’t attack you (first time you are in the train tunnel, first Vex on your left) and I can’t stand watching people kill him. We are friends.

(Bungie, a plea, please never fix him.)

Because of some awesome PvPers, I finally went flawless a time or two. Here’s my first trip to the Lighthouse.

(I didn’t realize I was still in voice chat when I called out to my dad “We made it and I actually got a kill or two” so that rang out across Knitehawk’s stream. He was very sweet about it. I was mortified.)

Later, my Warlock would make it and I made it my goal that week to find the darkest places in D2 to take screeshots of my glow.

One amazing group of friends spent lots of time at the Wish Wall inputting all the fun wishes in so I got what is one of the best photos of any of my Guardians while in Last Wish.

My fireteam of three would conquer the Witch Queen legendary campaign. Savathun took us almost six hours worth of tries, but the win felt so so good.

I also finally successfully led said clan of three through our first Grandmaster Nightfall (RIP) and we showed off our Hotheads at the Tower, only to be joined by other Hothead enthusiasts.

(Emoting and grouping up with other Guardians at the Tower is a magical experience unmatched in any other game I’ve played.)

Lightfall came out, one of my favorite expansions, and I fell in love with the aesthetic of Neomuna.

I’d get to meet my favorite villain, and subject of my only D2 tattoo (for now), Nezarec, in Root of Nightmares. It’s my favorite raid as it has my ideal aesthetic as well as I love the utilization of the mechanics of light and dark.

Then came The Final Shape, a DLC that did such a good job of wrapping up the light and dark storyline that I actually felt like the game had ended and took some time away. Similarly to Root of Nightmares, The Pale Heart has some of the coolest color palettes in the game. Here is Ariadne unlocking Prismastic.

(Yes, that’s my father’s Warlock being particalized on the lefthand side of the image.)

Of course, I’d do the legendary campaign with my father as I always have since I started playing the game. It was only right we started and ended together.

(No worries, we still game together. We will until the servers go down.)

And while I am not going into my feelings on Edge of Fate, which I will in a later post, I feel it important to say I miss Bonfire Bash. The lighting was just *chef’s kiss*.

These are only a handful of thousands of hours of gameplay with so many different people and so many different activities. While I have, on occasion, joined the dissenting voices on Twitter I will always love Destiny 2. I can’t help it. It has given me so much more than any game I’ve ever played. Thinking of the game going offline makes me tear up a little, but I’m riding this train until it reaches its last stop. While I may take breaks now to play other games, I will never not come back to Destiny 2. The lore, the story, the gameplay, THE PEOPLE – unmatched.

As Cayde would say:

See you in space and as always, eyes up Guardians.