#I'm talking about cayde-6 btw

[canny-analyst]

*looking around* is nobody going to make horrific erotica of this witty robot man?

[thefirstknife]

So I’m listening to a Destiny lore podcast (Destiny 2 - Myths and Ztories) and they’re talking about Cayde-6, his whole life up until his death. They read a lore card from Book: Ghost Stories called A Hero’s Requiem, which is the story of how Cayde was Risen.

I thought I had misheard the podcasters, but Cayde says:

“My brain works, but I don't remember a thing 'cept that I seem to be a functioning life form—I'm human, I'm a man.”

And I’m a bit confused by that. Was Cayde not Risen as an Exo? Or is this just Cayde being Cayde?

He was Risen as an Exo, yes! Cayde was turned into an Exo in the Golden Age, after being basically coerced into it by owing a debt to Clovis. He went through his resets and eventually died as Cayde-6 which is what he was rezed at. It appears he died during the Collapse and had fragmented memories of it happening.

The thing is that Exos are human. An Exo should feel and think of themselves as human; it was a huge part of how they were made. An Exo is a human mind uploaded into a robot body. At first, Clovis wanted to make Exos as far removed from humanity as possible so he didn't make them capable of "humanisms": original Exos didn't breathe or eat or do anything human. Clovis wanted them to be perfect, better than human.

But the problem was that they were still human minds in a robot body and those human minds could not handle having a body that doesn't breathe or eat. They started suffering severe consequences where they would become convinced that they have died. Clovis' logbook details the process of this in the section "-045- Note on D.E.R." Warning for some gruesome medical descriptions. The term "Cotard delusion" mentioned here is a real phenomenon btw (again, warning for medical stuff that might be upsetting).

DER is Dissociative Exomind Rejection. It's a condition that Exos go through where their mind rejects their body and they essentially go mad. It's most easily explained in this old Ghost scan from Mars from back in Warmind; it's explained in a way that isn't gruesome like in Clovis' log. Here it is from him with some extra details. Basically, this is the crux of the problem. The Exos have to feel human and have to be able to do human actions in order to survive.

It was obvious to them that the root of the problem lay in the deficient exobodies I had supplied. Deficient how, I demanded to know. They did not suffer human weakness. They never needed to eat, drink, breathe, sleep, micturate, or dream. Apparently, this was the problem. I had assumed that the need for these irritations would pass since there would be no shortage or accumulation of poisons to trigger them. But evolution's tangled ways cannot be so easily rationalized. I was wrong. Their brains concluded that all of their internal processes failed. No digestion, no breath, no heartbeat, no sense of interoceptive health... all signs of death.

Both of these also mention how resets help to stave off the DER. It's something that helps them acclimate to a new body (this is why they're reset upon upload and why they have no memories of who they were), but also it turned out to be convenient for Clovis so he didn't have to bother helping them in other ways as well as to be able to hide information from them. You can see how this is explained for the public in that scan. Meanwhile here's how Clovis talks about it:

I am much more interested in the surprising success of memory wipes. I became so tired of answering the questions asked by new exos—what had happened to the scanning clinic, how long had it been, would I let them see their families—that I began inducing retrograde amnesia before spin-up. Interestingly, this seems to have improved their resilience against exomind rejection! I theorize the lack of any episodic memories eases the transition into the new body. And the loss of emotional ties prevents grief and stress, which could interfere with healthy function.

Specifically, how he was tired of them asking questions and how the reset basically allows them to circumvent actually providing psychiatric help to people. If they suffer some trauma, you can just reset them to erase it. Cayde is actually a really good case study for all of these issues as he suffered with adjustment to the Exo body and struggled with memories. He had frequent flashbacks to random events from his previous resets and fragmented memories which he tried really hard to put into some logical sense and ended up pretty much inventing a possible life he had. When he talks about his "wife and son," these are fabrications constructed from his fragmented memories of unrelated events. He constructed them in order to feel more human.

The kid. The woman. I do not know them. They are not real. But I wish I did. And I wish they were. They're just the two best cards I could find to keep up my sleeve when the odds were stacked against me. I made them real in my mind and in my heart. I fell in love with the idea of them, and I crafted a truth that allowed me to feel.

So yeah! The way he reacts to being rezed and thinks of himself as "human" is because he is. He had to be, in order to be a successful Exo upload, otherwise he would've just torn himself apart eventually. Exos have to feel human and act human and think of themselves as human. They're still Exo and have clear differences, but at the end of the day, they're humans. It depends on the individual if they would align more with being human or being an Exo; in Cayde's case, he would definitely lean more to seeing himself as primarily human. He was not a fan of the whole Exo thing and had some insight into all the atrocities done by Clovis in order to create the Exos. He was also famously terrified of going through another reset.

[pwnyta]

well if this is not technically a gremlin that's fine. one of my close friends likes destiny a lot. like, A LOT. and i get it that's fine, i don't have a problem with that.

but she's tried so hard to get me to like it too and i'm just not... interested. i tried to like it for her sake, i watched like 3 game "movies" (cutscenes from the game all pieced together without the gameplay, i did try to play the game as well after i discovered the second game was installed on my sister's ps4 but i have never played shooter games and i was terrible at it) it was over 10+ hours and it was kinda boring and hard to understand (because this fucking game has so much fucking lore but pretty much none of it is explained on cutscenes) but i wanted to legit try to like it for her.

i liked one of the characters from the first game named cayde-6. he was funny and charming and i liked his design so it was sort of a safe bet.

she didn't like that i liked that character. i could see that she was trying to sort of force me into liking other character named crow that she LOVED but i just didn't give a rat's ass about the guy 'cause its hard to care for these characters when all i'm watching are cutscenes. she was very rude to me about it, she was like "cayde-6 is so boring and the only good thing that he did for the story was die" after she said that to me i just lost complete interest on the games and i haven't wanted to interact with anything from it ever again.

after that i got a little distant with her 'cause like... i'm not her carpet and/or personal clown. i was trying to be nice to her and she was very rude for no reason, i don't have to put up with that attitude just 'cause we're friends.

i guess, if there's a gremlin here: inside a fandom people don't have to like things the way you do and if they like things differently then just shut up and be respectful, walk away and let them be. also don't expect your friends to like the things you do, if they express that they don't have any interest on it just let it be 'cause if you try to force it you'll end up driving them away.

that's all, thank you

Ah my friend and I do stuff like this to each other all the time but we know were probably NOT going to actually get into each others... things. Your friend needs to chill.

BTW MEWMEW HOW BOUT ONE PIECE?

Ya boy here is very cute. Congrats on having superior tastes to your 'friend'

SO BORING LOOKING damn.

Uhm yeah i dont actually blame you for ghosting the bitch, she does seem like a lot to put it lightly. People like this SHOULD be avoided or like maybe talked to? But if they dont budge THEN avoided. But you know her better than I do so maybe shes just the stubborn type not worth the effort. Especially saying that the character you like dies like?? So douchey. Even I now have a personal vendetta against Mr Crow here because of the association to that.

And as someone with many unpopular takes in various fandoms I feel you nonny. I keep my bullshit in my own space and try not to go to anyone with it. (If they come to me however, gloves off.)