continuously annoyed by how often borderlands displays the casual brutalization of women. oftentimes even faceless, nameless women at that.

im specifically talking about BL2s false sirens here. it is a few lines of dialogue in a side quest at the beginning of the game and yet i still irritated by it every time i play it.

in assassinate the assassins, roland sends you after a group of hyperion workers that have infiltrated bandit groups in an effort to hunt down lilith. instead, these men murder random women to dress up their corpses as sirens for the off-chance of making bank through hyperion. it is, by definition, femicide.

according to jack, they murdered at least a dozen women. note that these are likely bandit women, which means they have no means of protection from corporate interests, not even from the raiders. they only intervened because one of their own was being targeted.

but because we are getting this dialogue from jack, who is a misogynist himself, the game treats this with humor. there’s not any actual weight given to these women’s deaths, and as a a part of an optional quest with no further commentary, they are ultimately meaningless.