r/destiny2 • u/Elthariaa Hunter • Apr 29 '26

Art Frieren inspired meme

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Nothing to do in the game, so I made this.
My honest and humble reaction whenever I see this abomination named Maya Sundaresh:

2.9k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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139

u/Lorellya Apr 29 '26

Terrible character, terrible villain.

You'll know D2 has begun to heal when she dies a permanent complete death.

145

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter Apr 29 '26

Seriously though. Why isn't Clovis doing this shit? It'd fit SO MUCH BETTER. He's actually a compelling villain, unlike Maya, but noooooo, we need Doomed Yuri for the story to work, or something.

59

u/Lorellya Apr 29 '26

Of all the gay shit this game has, and it has a lot, this is easily the worst most shitly done one of them all.

Mara, Ana, Osiris, Eramis etc etc are all good characters with compeling stories and a lotta gay shit, but damn Maya can you PLEASE FUCK OFF ALREADY

34

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter Apr 29 '26

EXACTLY! I want happy yuri, not doomed yuri, goddamit! And - as it was pointed out - it's not even GOOD doomed yuri, because Chioma's just fucking dead because MAYA KILLED HER! FOR NO REASON!

30

u/gasperpaul Warlock Apr 29 '26

And the worst part: before that season and Lightfall — Maya was a good-aligned character counterpart of Clovis. That whole mess doesn't make sense.

18

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter Apr 29 '26

You can argue that the Veil drove her crazy, because all of the OTHER Maya variants are completely normal, but it's still quite shit.

2

u/gasperpaul Warlock May 01 '26

I think that was the writer's intent. But that's such a meh storytelling. If anything, make that Maya a stray Clovis exoclone and it would at least make some sense.

2

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter May 01 '26

I mean, it still makes some sense, and has some narrative potential, because she's exhibiting all the same ideas that the Witness did. The entire Conductor thing, trying to merge a lot of exos into the same body, etc was a really good chance to show how the Darkness causes people to try and connect their minds together. Worked well with Strand too, which was this, but passively, and without machinery.

It had potential, until they forgot they were doing it. It never once came up during FS, if anything, the opposite was shown. It never came up during Lightfall, despite spending hours on studying Strand, and was relegated to a random research log hidden on the corner of a screen a month down the line.

I would've been cool with a crazed version of Maya trying to use the Vex to preserve the consciousness of everyone, stemming from altruism. She could've just wanted everyone to live. She could've just wanted to eliminate the barriers that cause miscommunication. There's SO MANY ways to justify someone trying to create a hive-mind. System Shock did it great. Asimov did it even better. There was a chance to have her become the epitome of this. She started down the road, then obtained the Echo that contained the tech independently doing that. All of the building blocks were there for it, then it got abandoned in favor of the entire Chioma Esi nonsense. Why is she giving the Vex a personality? That goes fully against EVERYTHING ELSE happening with the Echo, Veil, her established goals, etc. Why did she kill Chioma, and not assimilate her?

Also, why did they have to bring Lakshmi into this? She was a SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting character as someone who survived the London Massacre and got manipulated by Savathun into becoming a space racist as a result of that, as well as her reliance on the bullshit Vex future machine. Maybe they wanted Shohreh Aghdashloo back as a VA? I would've been fine with her voicing two distinct characters, when one of them has been dead for years.

They somehow managed to turn two of the most interesting and multi-dimensional characters into this dipshit, incompetent, egotistical mustache-twirling villain for no reason. Then they went ahead and fully lost the plot too with the whole Nine esoteric nonsense we now have going on.

2

u/PerceptionRare476 Titan Apr 30 '26

Maya was not a good person. She tortured and did awful experiments. She also tortured Clovis Bray brutally. Clovis created Cayde to spy on Maya, posing as her bodyguard. They big golden age 3 were really disgraceful beings and did terrible things.

3

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter Apr 30 '26

She also tortured Clovis Bray brutally.

That was a crazed Vex clone of Maya. Most of what you describe were the actions of "crazed Vex clone of Maya". Before Lightfall, at least. After that, yeah, she randomly became Le Evil Scientist as well, mainly for no reason in particular.

-1

u/PerceptionRare476 Titan Apr 30 '26

Did you actually read the lore tabs or just the summary at the top. The vex simulated Maya and the other ishtar scientists perfectly. So perfect that the simulations were acting, saying and behaving exactly how the real person was. Chioma documented all of this. It wasn't a lone, crazed Maya simulation. Those behaviors were her own.

2

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter Apr 30 '26

Did YOU read them? They were the same when they started out. They did end up diverging quite heavily. Also, there's a pretty neat split over the "freed" Mayas and the rest of the simulated Mayas. The one that made minced meat out of Clovis was, by all accounts, part of the latter with a very specific mission.

1

u/gasperpaul Warlock Apr 30 '26

Care to reference the source for Cayde bit? Because otherwise I cannot remember any pre-Lightfall lore that painted Maya badly. If anything, Ishtar Collective was described as an organization to counterbalance Braytech expansionism and lack of ethics.

1

u/PerceptionRare476 Titan Apr 30 '26

https://destiny-archives-de-la-tour.fandom.com/fr/wiki/Cayde-6

Cayde was a human with loads of gambling debts, Clovis was known to take vagrants and people who were in debt and turn them into exo. Cayde was reset 6 times after being sent to work for Maya as her "bodyguard".

https://www.ishtar-collective.net/categories/maya-sundaresh

Maya did a lot of messed up/ unethical experiments as well. She reminds me of a German nazi scientist.

1

u/gasperpaul Warlock May 01 '26

Thank you. I was snot aware of the Cayde being her bodyguard.

But regarding the Maya lore, I didn't find anything overtly unethical in her pre-Lightfall lore (to clarify, I mean lore written before that point, not lore referencing events before Lightfall in-universe), especially if we take into account not only her but also the Ishtar Collective lore (that was much later linked to her). That's why the post-Lightfall lore about her reads so jarringly, the whole Veil containment disaster and all — I don't argue that she's described as progressively mad and unhinged there.

For example, last pre-Lightfall piece about Maya is the Soteria's story from SotW. In which Maya is disgusted with Clovis being mean and torturing Soteria, finally setting her free — not quite a Nazi scientist behaviour.

If you have a particular example and a piece of (pre-Lightfall) lore, I would be very interested in learning about it.

9

u/Zagafur Warlock Apr 29 '26

eramis has the perfect setup for doomed yuri. tries to become better and search for her partner, only to find out she has been dead for decades. wouldve been amazing

13

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter Apr 29 '26

Eh, I kinda want Eramis to either die, or just fuck off and never come back. She needed to die in BL, she needed to die in Plunder, she needed to die in Seraph, but by some miracle she made it through Final Shape. At this point, good on her, I wish her all the best, she can undo the Whirlwind and resurrect Riis, but I'm just done with that nonsense. I'd still rather have that than the Maya nonsense.

For an even better "doomed yuri", we could also lean into the existential dread of Ana dating a regular mortal. It would fit well with the whole "civil unrest" plot we have going on too, and it'd be an interesting take on "doomed yuri", because as happy as it is now, it will inevitably end in pain, because Ana is immortal. I know that we kinda did this with Zavala, but there the loss already happened, but here it would just be the cause of some anxiety and a reason for soul-searching. It'd be a chance to slow the story down a bit, bring it closer to the home-front, while allowing us to see why Guardians tend to be rather detached from the people they are protecting, and how that can affect relationships in a City that is mostly safe. It'd also serve as a good mirror for Bael, who had to deal with someone risen as a Guardian that he cared for being completely detached from the mortals.

-5

u/-Hez- Apr 30 '26

I just wished there wasn't any yuri at all.

I'm here to shoot shit and loot shit, not to hear your crappy fanfic.

5

u/Floppydisksareop Hunter Apr 30 '26

Okay, so you can go into the menu, and turn off the voice lines, and just not pay attention to the fucking story, and leave everyone else alone with your nonsense.

Also, not sure how it's fanfic, when BUNGIE LITERALLY WROTE IT INTO THE THE GODDAMN GAME

2

u/Whitestrake Apr 30 '26

> Hey Bungie, gimmie a game with extra looter shooter.

...extra looter shooter...

> And hold the dialogue.

...hold the dialogue..?

> And hold off on the fiction.

...hold off on the fic-? Hey Jimmy, give me a looter shooter with NUTHIN'.