#bad beat

LOOK-A-LIKE

Step One: Make an OC

Step Two: Give her a wife

Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV Series) - S5/E5 ’Bad Beat’ (2014) Dirk Blocker as Hitchcock and Joel McKinnon Miller as Scully

I’d SO fuck Dirk and Joel but you already know that. What you don’t know is, I’d tit fuck Joel while Dirk has his tongue in my ass. 

Now, I know, he is a FICTIONAL character.  In reality, Cayde doesn’t have feelings cause he’s not really here and he’s not, nor was he ever, alive.  He’s just a character.  So I know no one can actually hurt him.  

That being said, still, when I saw the post in the screencap below, I flipped and wanted to lay into this asshole - yes, ASSHOLE - for Cayde, regardless; and, for that, maybe I have a bit of CaydeStan in me and if you want to come at me for it, be my guest.  Not going to change my opinion here.  

Now ... CLEARLY, regarding the post, this person doesn’t know Cayde’s lore.  

To recap, yes, as far as we and Cayde knows, based on journal entries and bits of memory that sneak in through dreams and other triggers, he was human once.  He was some kind of mercenary/did other shady jobs/and was on security detail for Clovis Bray.  He did and continues to (up to Forsaken) have gambling habits that have gotten him into trouble.  But Cayde is, at his core and heart, a good guy.  He has stated that he may not always be good, but he does good.  That it’s his job to do good.  But, even being in an Exo body, he’s human.  He has faults, like anyone else.  Whatever his life was like as a human, before becoming an Exo, we may never know.  He may never know.  I have theories, but that’s all they are and, really, they’re irrelevant at this point.  

As for Cayde’s life nearing when he became an Exo and why, according to his journal entries, he was doing a job for Clovis Bray, VERY expensive equipment was damaged, and Clovis Bray basically said, you owe us a ton of money OR ... donate your body to the Exo Program.  Personally, thinking about it, I think it was a shady way for Clovis Bray to get ‘volunteers’.  I think they saw his skills as an asset and I don’t think Cayde would have willingly gone for it unless his back was against a wall.  

Now, Cayde, as you know, has - many times - spoken of his Queen and Ace.  And he’s spoken of Ace as his son and, by assumption, his Queen would be his wife and Ace’s mother.  In one of the ‘The Man They Called Cayde’ lore pieces titled ‘Bad Beat’ there’s a part  where Cayde says he has flashes of a woman’s face and feels love for her.  There is older lore, from D1, where it is known Cayde, when first becoming an Exo, was a security guard for Maya Sundaresh.  And he did find her beautiful and fell in love with her.  Feelings were not returned.  But I think those flashes of a woman he dreams about are of her.  They’re memories he’s now somewhat disassociated from yet, he used them as a way to keep himself on the right side.  There’s also something else crucial that he says in the ‘Bad Beat’ entry.  Here it is :

“Been trying hard to give you a sense of what matters to me, but also to find a way to talk about the things that, uh… that scare me. "Thing," really—singular. And that thing is… loss. Losing. I'm a poor loser, I admit it. I run from it. Full speed. Others don't. Others accept it. But everything I said about my Queen is true; she is my shield.

She is also a lie.

I don't know when I made her up. Or better… I don't know when I decided to believe in a life I don't know and can never truly own. Was it during this life? Was my rebirth as a Guardian—or the void of everything I was before—what drove me to invent comfort? Possible. Even likely. But I'm not sure.

I do have flashes of memory of the life I had before I was a Guardian, but that's all they are, flashes—quick flickers of people and places in my dreams or in that space between a bullet and getting rezzed.

I see a woman there, and she's all I've ever known of a life long since gone. I feel love for her. Is that love a memory, or am I simply loving the memory? I've convinced myself of the former. I've concocted a truth to make myself whole.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.”

(Bad Beat Lore Entry: https://www.ishtar-collective.net/entries/bad-beat#cayde-6)

You want proof of how complex and truly deep and profound a character Cayde is, this is the part of his lore that shows it.  

When he’s in the prison and he knows it’s all over and looks down at his cannon and says: “I’m coming home, Ace,” in the back of my mind there’s always a part of me that thinks ‘Ace’ is something connected to Clovis Bray.  Maybe it’s where his real mind/body is stored.  I’m not sure, it’s another wild theory that just hovers there.  But in the moment, when Cayde believed he was going to die, I think, even knowing Ace was a lie, he said it anyway as his own way to comfort himself and focus on something good to hopefully look forward to.  So there wouldn’t be darkness and nothing after but so he could imagine leaving this existence and finding his family.  And, I know, that just makes that scene all the more heartbreaking, but that’s the intent.  

So, yeah, I wanted to be working on my chapter right now but I ended up doing this instead because it was that important.  I am not denying Cayde had a family and kids when he was human.  It’s quite possible he did.  To me, his lore doesn’t read that way when I look at the pieces recalled from his human life, but those are just little blips in a whole lifetime we know nothing about.  A whole lifetime stolen from him with memory wipes and then being reborn a Guardian.  So I will never sit back and say no, Cayde never had a family.  I just know what he has said about his Queen and Ace and how they play into his life as a Guardian.  And I really hope that, by reading this, if you were unsure, it gave you a better understanding of who they were and why Cayde also told us to ‘Take care of Ace’ and to ‘Use it well’.  He wasn’t just leaving us a gun.  He was leaving us something special to focus on so we stayed on the good path.

So, okay, I’m done now.  Once more, a huge middle finger to the guy in the post below and now, to refocus myself on my chapter cause I want to get that out to you guys as soon as I can. ~ ❤️♠️ ❤️

~Ais