it kills me that angel clearly had such a passion for drawing. of course she’d turn to art because she had no other way to express herself. no one else to talk to aside from jack.
its just. augghh. rip tween angel you would have loved scrapbooking in a little lock diary.
My favorite geadcanon for Zer0 is that they’re just an empty power suit, a long abandoned project from an Atlas era long gone. They gained sentience one day and erased everything on their existence, killed their creators and set off to find a purpose of their own. There is absolutely Nothing in there, the conscience is spread out through the body. You look through their helmet’s darkly tinted glass dome and you see what seems to be their brain staring back at you. Their posture is stiff and calculated, you’d think them to be unbreakable, but aometimes it takes a little longer to get up because the joints that were built with Humans being able to help themselves up, and they aren’t as strong when it’s just the suit on its own. There’s no way to open Zer0 and even if there was, you would never be able to see it. There aren’t any records of Zer0 before they were Zer0 because they were never meant to be their own individual. This is not a transgender metaphor you know what but it could very well be.
cant think about nisha watching hyperion take over her friends bodies for too long or i want to explode.
wilhelms change from the way he is in TPS and BL2 happens VERY quickly. by the time they raid new haven you can tell he’s lost most of himself just by his voice. and then he (unofficially) gets poisoned by jack and set up as bait for the vault hunters. a god-killer made expendable.
and nisha will never know ‘just’ timothy, if she was even allowed to know his name or true self in the first place. his entire livelihood is to pretend to be someone else and, if need be, die in his place. and then he just disappears one day without a word, completely cuts contact. and thats if she sees him at all after the elpis job is done.
i dont think she ever considered claptrap her friend but that doesnt mean shes blind to how worthless his entire product line was to jack. this is someone who did an equal amount of work for hyperion that she did who still gets shot and ditched somewhere out in the tundra after years of mockery. going into his brain and seeing his emotions first hand didnt even pull an ounce of empathy.
its not even just her friends. felicity was their saving grace and they (they! nisha took part in this.) cannibalized her programming for the next generation of loaders. gladstone and the rest of the hyperion staff were obviously innocent and are murdered anyways off of impulse.
and she thinks its funny. of course she thinks its funny. its probably fucking hilarious for her but girl!! snap out of it!!
Oh Boy, do I Ever have Thoughts on the Flynt family !!!
The Flynts are an interesting case study on the kinds of politics that dominate Pandora. Baron and Captain rule their respective regions with an iron fist, their territory was achieved and maintained through bloodshed and aggression, showing their fellow bandits why they’re the leaders through sheer brutality alone, real survival of the fittest … but that’s not usually enough to keep dozens, maybe hundreds of armed folks pinned under their thumb all around so much land for as long as they were in power. You’re telling me Baron was in power for long enough to see Dahl enter AND leave Pandora and not Once was anyone like, “You know what, if we all got together we could probably kill this scrawny bastard easily” ? I don’t buy it.
For there to be a functional ecosystem in which people like the Flynts fit in, you need others to depend on something they are doing too. It’s not enough for there to be a Strong Guy, because clearly that wasn’t enough to stop both the VH teams, you need to be providing a service that would make you valuable to keep around. Bandit clans form out of necessity— community, resources, numbers, you name it— and while making yourself fearsome and unbeatable works in the short term (See: The Slabs accepting Brick’s bullshit), but at some point you have to consider that there’s Many of them and only one of you. Where am I going with this ? You’ll see.
The microsms of characterization we get on the Flynts is very skewed because we are playing the perspective of their aggressors. They are fully on the offensive and throwing what they can on the vault hunters because they are In Their Houses, so we don’t exactly catch them at a very nice moment. If we weren’t so explicitly expected to murder both of them for a resource they have, then we’d find a different perspective: They’re competent leaders Outside of the murderous tendencies too. They provide safety from the world within their clans, there’s structure to how the society is built, seconds and thirds in command to oversee different areas the leaders themselves can’t be around for, ranks for whoever is closest to the top, you get the idea. There’s Structure. They’re still violent and hostile, even to their own troops, but they’re still competent enough to understand that without those people, they literally have nothing. Captain has multiple dialogue lines reminding Bandits what to do and what they should avoid + giving them updates on things, Baron immediately puts a bounty on your head when one of his more important men are killed (but does show to be comparatively more uncaring to his lackeys, which probably says something more about him than it does about bandit leaders as a whole). They’re also constantly mobilizing troops to other places and certifying they’re where they need to be (see: Liar’s berg, The Rust commons.)
What it tells us about bandit society is that Bandit leaders aren’t Just some big idiot who gives everyone orders. No, these guys are like. Small district politicians actually. They’re not good people, but they’re necessary, and when removed from their respective positions it’s hard for the rest of the groups to bounce back. And that the Flynts especially are a family that has been continously involved with politics from all around Pandora for a long time.
Also Zane is silly I wanna throw him at a wall.
Tldr: These guys are literally generals / politicians to some degree and they’re not only essential to the Pandoran ecosystem, but good enough at what they do to not get immediately murdered by their men.
was his character good? no. and were his plotlines compelling? not really. but did he look good? also no. but did i enjoy his time in the game? again, no. but would i watch more of his character? also no.
Do you have any characters you feel aren't talked about enough? Either narratively or irl, for me Felicity will always be "that one character with the most interesting influence on the story that just gets sidelined in favor of other things"
oh there are plenty!!
felicity is a really good example, though it think it is partially by design that she is wiped so cleanly from the games memory. she only ever really existed to a handful of people, her narrative purpose is a warning sign that goes ignored. (wilhelm, claptrap, gladstone, all people who were involved in her death eventually becoming just as expendable to jack and hyperion.)
however i DO think that her death would have stuck with aurelia specifically and if the writers had any care for her character it would have changed how she acted in BL3. and from a fandom sense absolutely yes she needs more attention. i need to draw her myself one of these days.
and i feel pretty much every BL1 character would be very popular if introduced today, or if they had lived past the first game. outside of that, helena pierce, steele, and baron flynt had potential to be very important to the surviving cast and its not really seen through.
uhmm who else. the fact that wilhelm isnt more popular is a little bizarre to me seeing as how he’s so heavily attached to hyperion. i think he was underutilized by the games as well, sacrificing him for the plot in a lackluster way and not really giving him anything to stand out against the other VHs in TPS.
he is VERY interesting to me though, and had the potential to be very threatening.
sir hammerlock is unironically one of the best characters in the series and he has such a lasting presence between BL2 and 3 and there has been almost complete radio silence on the fandom’s end.
he is very unique to me! and very charming, and i wish that was felt more by the rest of the fandom at large. he was the perfect introduction to BL2. story wise i think he sits very comfortably, and as far as borderlands characters go, he gets more attention than most. but i am starving for more fan content.
i think im cheating a little bit by putting angel on this list but i genuinely do think she should have been mourned properly by the characters (and by the game, from a meta standpoint). shes popular enough as it is within the fandom, but i dont really feel her impact as much as i would like within the games themselves.
her being mentioned in BL3 and FFS dont really count to me, mainly because they seem more like misery baiting than properly addressing and mourning her circumstances. she just gets flattened down to this sad, dead little girl. and she was more than that!
i guess my biggest issue is that its hard to make narrative connections. borderlands has kind of an object permanence issue with its characters when theyre not on screen.
pros to planning out childhood lore for the flynt brothers: easy-in to worldbuilding for early bandit families on pandora. working out barons characterization and motives for the first chunk of my rewrite. general family angst.
cons: trying to decide what captain could have possibly fucking looked like as a child.
Fuck it. Food Headcanons from each Borderlands corporation
DAHL
- Dahl is all about Militaristic Seriousness to comical degrees, so it shouldn’t surprise you that most of what they have to offer is Rations. Canned food, nutrition packets and weird astronaut looking pastes, all packaged up in neat browns and greens to match with the very boring aesthetic of the Rest of their products. Everything is neatly separated and easily accessible in Dahl settlements. One bonus of it is that it never expires, so if you’re hungry and need a snack, just find an old military base and that should have you pretty much covered for a few weeks.
- “But Magnus, what’s in the packs?” I hear you ask, and not to worry my situational friend, I’ve done Way Too Much research on this and can absolutely tell you ! Again, its all very shelf stable and nutritional, so it ranges from cereal bars, dried up meats and nuts, protein powders and pastes (usually peanut butter), some mildly flavoured crackers, a variety of canned foods (including but not limited to: “Spaghetti”, “”“beans”“”, soups and veggies. These are meant to be complimentary, not really eaten on their own), and ready-made “pop it in a fire for a few seconds” sustenance providers like curries. It’s good enough to eat ! Hopefully.
- …It does Not. Taste like the best thing in the world usually. If you’re desperate enough you won’t notice it at first, but these things are meant for soldiers who haven’t dreamed of a non-dehydrated vegetable in 10 years, so it’s tough to swallow once you’re not suffering from all the malnutrition ailments. It’s very barely seasoned to account for the vast majority, and it’s probably not a good investment to waste spices on any of it either. You could still reasonably throw a meal together with the pastes plus the canned stuff and (if you get lucky) have a chocolate cake for dessert though, even if it does taste like a biting an old boot.
