#i think thats the first year i actually feel part of d2 community and interact w ppl about it 🥺

[hyakunana]

I think you might have missed last year's Dawning event, because we can now give Elsie cookies (Starwort Thins).

?????!?!!?!??!?!??!???

WHAT?????

I MEAN--

Yes, I missed last year's Dawning event, because it was the period they took Beyond Light out of gamepass, but I do remember checking the first week's event and recipes and I do clearly remember not having hers back then 😥 Unless it was only available for those who has access to BL by that time?? Either way I remember being really upset bc of the gamepass thing and I only returned to play after WQ, so yeah I could have easily missed it

[sovpologist]

hi, genuine question! I want to like Mara, but d2 lore shows her, in my eyes, as selfish and cruel, set on her own goal with no consideration for others. At least that's what I got from marasenna lorebook.

Why is she liked by so many in community? I feel like I'm overlooking something over things I mentioned above, but I would appreciate a perspective from someone who likes her character! If it's okay to ask!

its totally okay to ask!! this is going to be a long post so im going to put it under a readmore :)

i just want to stress first that mara is like.... widely disliked by many in the community. it used to be very unpopular to like her and if you even said anything remotely positive about her, people would reply to your posts and send you anons about how you were a terrible person for liking such a manipulative and toxic character. it was only recently that community opinion kind of started to shift, and people started to actually appreciate her character as nuanced and interesting. i definitely dont think this is because of me or anything crazy like that, but ive tried to correct misconceptions about her and cultivate a space on my blog at least where people can just openly like mara and not feel like they have to qualify it by constantly assuring people that they know mara's done bad things too (because literally every character in d2 has done bad things, and somehow people understand that liking the uldren doesnt mean you support him killing cayde but cant apply that same concept to mara for some reason). ok, im getting off my soapbox now and im going to just talk about why i like her.

mara is genuinely just such a fascinating character to me. reading the marasenna im really struck by how alone she is, even as a 19 year old human. her mom has essentially abandoned her and says that she's mara's friend but not her mother, and mara's father is never mentioned, so mara literally has no parental guidance or supervision or love. this puts a lot more of her pre-awoken actions into context, such as her not knowing how to interact with people and preferring to keep herself away from the rest of the crew. everyone mara loves leaves her. her mom stays in the distributary, uldren is distant in his efforts to impress and surprise her and then dies, and sjur dies too.

i also love mara's character arc, although it kind of makes me sad. mara is so painfully human in the earlier parts of the marasenna. she's awkward, she's lonely, she thinks her and uldren's secret language is "cool," she gets embarassed at her mom's embarrassing petnames, she hero-worships alis li and listens to her advice. watching her lose all of this and crystalize into a queen is so interesting. remember, mara didn't go out into the fight between the darkness and the traveler bc she knew she would gain power and create the awoken, its stated that she went out there to die. so a 19 year old just trying to die peacefully ends up witnessing firsthand the power of the dark and light and being tasked with essentially creating a new species, knowing that one day she wants to go back and fight the darkness. she becomes such a politician and has to scheme and plot and really loses her humanity while following ALIS' advice- alis was the one who told her that people need a mascot, not a friend. this also makes for a really interesting scene where alis grants mara one favor, and instead of asking for political power, even though mara is such an intensely political and scheming person, she tells alis the truth about the awoken and asks for forgiveness. alis, who mara looked up to, doesnt forgive her, and mara really internalizes this and starts to permantantly close herself off. mara made herself into a queen and lost her humanity in the process. there's a couple people who see the real her, like sjur, but even sjur doesnt really understand her. but her relationship with sjur is also so well written and interesting, sjur being the one person she lets herself drop her mask around and just act human. i made a post about this once, but even mara's speech patterns change around sjur, becoming much more casual and "normal." however, at the same time, mara's mask/persona is a part of her character, and one that i love. people hate her for being "mean," but i like characters like that. mara doesnt take any shit, even from the protagonist, and has her own plans and goals that she doesn't feel obligated to share or change for other people. she's ambitious, sticks to her guns, and doesn't allow other people to influence her.

you say she's selfish, and i think it is easy to brush her off as selfish and doing everything for her own gain, but there's a lot of subtext and outright text in the marasenna and other lore that shows mara genuinely believes that the only way to fight the darkness is to become a being on the same level as the darkness and the traveler. she doesn't let the awoken become immortal gods, which some people regard as a bad thing, but she did that for a reason. mara understands that a people who are eternal and ageless will never grow as people, and she knew that the darkness wanted them to just be complacently sitting aside in their little realm while it does whatever it wants. mara wasn't going to let that happen, and knew she had to find a way to encourage people to leave paradise. you can dislike the way she went about this, essentially encouraging conflict and war among her people, but she did not just do it for her own gain or amusement. mara has also been hated on for starting the reef war/firing a missile at the house of wolves, people act like she did that just for fun too, but the eliksni fleet was heading to conquer earth. instead of just hiding and building up her own resources, which wouldve been the logical thing to do in this situation, mara put her own fleet and power on the line to draw the eliksni's attention away and help earth. she doesn't do things solely bc they benefit her, but because she genuinely loves and wants to help earth. her uncaring persona is a mask, the thing that she feels she needs to be for people to have faith in her.

i have more to say but this is already so long and ive said a lot, so i'll end it here :) at the end of the day, some people are just not going to like mara and thats totally fine. she's not everyone's type, bc she IS ambitious and manipulative and sometimes cruel. i just wish she didnt get a disproportionate amount of hate for being like that when i know for a fact that if she was a male character she would not get this much hate, and i wish that people could just dislike her normally without lying about her or misinterpreting her character and motivations. but if you dont like her, you dont like her! sometimes we just dislike characters, sometimes for well thought out reasons snad sometimes just for no reason! thats completely fine, as long as you're respectful!!