October 2024

Jessie im about to be so normal about your Angel Lives design <- INSANE FKRVERRRRR YOUR GOOD ASS. IDEAS ALL THE TIME. Fuck !!!!!!!! The eridium IV drip is so fucking clever, I love how she gets gifts from so many people, so much support all around by the folks of Sanctuary/VHs like.....aauaghhghb what if I crode. The ECHO !!! TO CALL MORDECAI AND BRICK !!!! IM CRYONG. EVERYWHERE FOREVRR. Jessie in holding you by the shoulders and shaking you really reallt fast (AFFECTIONATE)

TYTYTYYYY YIPPEEEE!!! tales era angel is probably my favorite to think abt when it comes to my rewrite. she’s kindddd of an antagonist bc she doesn’t want jack to make it to helios and she wants to prevent the travelers vault from being opened.

but before that, shes orchestrates the deal between vallory and the vhs to go after athena, and she guides brick and mordecai to where they show up in game. they get athena and find out that rhys has jack in his head and angel drops everything to go deal with that

she ends up getting strong armed into everything by vallory though. since she’s the local leadership and angel is trying her best to make pandora whole, pissing off the queenpin isnt really something she wants to do.

she figures she can get rhys to helios and stop things there (fry his brain) but then jack gets uploaded into the system and. ruh-roh.

I've just noticed Flanksteak has fuckin shark teeth and. Two options here

• Filed them down himself (the likelier option probably on brand for the bloodshots, maybe it could be a bandit culture thing to have the sharpest teef in a similar vein to wh40k orks?)
• Genetic mutation of some kind (less likely, poses a lot of questions about the xenohumans of borderlands, more than i already have in fact, maybe fuel for my "there are very little if any baseliners left in borderlands" headcanon?)

ohh wait thats a good idea. the sharp points are running trend for the bloodshots, so it makes sense that itd extend to their teeth.

the other clans have their own metal edges, but these spikes are individual to the bloodshots. sawtooths are longer, slabs are more rounded, and the fleshrippers specifically have nails through scrapped car tires. (even though they’re pirates?)

the mutation angle is also really interesting though. and it seems possible, especially with the shape of his mouth being so distinct. his teeth are massive compared to his other concept art.

a good chunk of the bloodshots in my rewrite are formerly baron flynts crew, including flanksteak, which means he could have been in proximity to BL1s vault key when it was unearthed. as a result he became mutated like the rest of sledges men.

or he was just been born with it. ik that being close to eridian nonsense isnt necessary, i just like to make that connection because i am just unfortunately. so BL1 brained.

it could even be a mix of both ideas. the boss has jagged, sharp teeth and that becomes a status symbol for others to follow. who knows.

Yay thank you for responding to my bandit au ask! Follow up question. Does Nisha surviving change the inter-bandit clan politics at all, especially with the COV trying to get everyone to assimilate? I imagine she wouldn’t play nice, or go down without a fight.

and yes hello I see you on Angel + religious something or other with the bandit clans. If there’s anything more there please elaborate. Angel cults sound interesting as hell, moreso in light of her being alive in this AU. How does she feel about her position as a religious figure?

empyreansentinel:

ty for your ask! another read more situation because this ones even longer than the first. somehow.

Keep reading

editing to say that the bloodshots as a whole dont follow marcus. which is something that is canon that i forgot about. flanksteak has an echo rejecting his deal, though theres already the statue up in bloodshot ramparts, so he could only really delay the inevitable.

which is. interesting. it creates an internal conflict that i wasnt thinking of when i originally planned this out. though i need to find out where the line is between flanksteak being willing to work with hyperion and refusing to work with the raiders.

was the damage done by roland that bad? it must have been to make flanksteak that desperate. hm.

Hiiii I remember u sawtooth posting a bit ago and I got so excited <- Sawtooth canyon fan number 1

You saying Brick was a bad bandit leader and asking why the Sawtooths dont just overthrow the Slabs is so fucking real honestly. I've been thinking abt that ever since I first beat this game a year or two back, and thought "Why doesn't Brick care about the bandits he's leading, that's basically his workforce..... Is he stupid", but it does make sense in a way ? Cuz Brick isn't a bandit from Pandora specifically, he's (a vault hunter) from Menoetius, so he doesn't actually know shit Bout crap when it comes to actual bandit hierarchy or grouping. Say what you will abt the moralities of Flanksteak,or the Flynts or any other bandit loed, but they at least care enough about their groups to know they need to keep their numbers up. But I think the other slabs just stick around to him and tolerate his inability to lead because they know the Sawtooths would completely crush them if they didn't. And there's a really important reason for that also:

Brick is not only built like if a muscle came to life and started talking, but he's also (or used to be) a vault hunter. A vault hunter that, Very Specifically, is allied with the crimson raiders, which is built from a bunch of members from the Lance + other vault hunters. They're not trying to start a fight with the maniacs who massacre entire towns worth of bandit camps for one reason or another. They have acquired enough territory to be considered a super-power in comparison to say, Nine toes' group from the first game, whose group was very small and contained to being near Fyrestone. My theory is they're willing to put up with whatever the Slabs do on their side of the territory so long as it's contained There, because they know if they did anything their leader would get a whole other array of problems involved. Which is literally what happens in-game because Brick calls the vault hunter group the second they even remind him of their existence, and they in turn kill a whole bunch of people about it.

Im rambling atp but Bandit politics is interesting and I love how you go about ittttttt

BRICK IS JUST….hes a very frustrating character to me. he’s written as this big dumb himbo character who loves his friends but a lot of the choices he makes in 2 paint him as just being reckless with the lives of his men.

hes stationed the slabs directly in the middle of hyperion territory. their entire point of being is to put a wall of bodies between handsome jack and the rest of pandora, and its been that way for years. and it is not a fight they are winning, the best they’ve managed is a stalemate, which could be quickly overturned if jack used more than 3% of his brain power and razed the place like he did lynchwood and new haven.

but that for some reason isn’t enough to occupy him. he also instigates fights with the sawteeth and lynchwood as well. lynchwood is on the defensive, its not going to go out of its way to start shit with the slabs because its primary purpose is being a source of eridium, not a military base.

the whole deal with the sawtooth clan is even worse, because Brick is still the one picking a fight, with the excuse that the sawtooth have been selling out VHs to jack for money. which 1) WOMP WOMP and 2) further proof he still considers himself a VH and not a bandit. he sends you to cut through sawtooth cauldron and kill dozens of people for explosives. to uh. clear a bridge, if i recall. that can be crossed by buzzard. which the slabs have in abundance. whatever.

all of this to say: yeah, you’re right. he SUCKS as a bandit leader and I think a lot of the slabs are with him out of necessity. because even after being ousted by the rest of the crimson raiders and mostly cutting contact with the BL1 VHs, he still values them as people above the slabs. hell he values the BL2 VHs, total strangers, above the slabs and that was before he even knew they were with the raiders.

the biggest sell for me is his dialogue after you kill mortar. he questions why the sawteeth are still fighting, and calls them stupid for doing so. like he doesnt understand at all.

im gonna be honest ur posts pose a bit of an Issue for me bc like my rewrite has a plotline that involves lilith doing some shady shit in the name of the greater good and. in the light of the whole settler colonialism thing. is there a way to differentiate her attitude from jack's because i really dont wanna come off as "she's just as bad as him" guy number 172

I STRUGGLE WITH THIS TOO…To me the distinguishing factor is that the raiders don’t act with the same all encompassing anger that jack does. I don’t think there ever could be a true “just as bad as him” argument because he wants and has the means for total annihilation. no bias, no care for the individual, he says himself he wants every man, woman, and child on pandora dead. its his end goal, quite literally nothing matters more than that.

whereas the crimson raiders have tunnel vision in regards to what they want and everything else is just white noise - the bandit casualties are just a byproduct of what they’re convinced they Have To Do, but their deaths are not the underlying goal. these people are violent criminals, so who cares if they die? they were in our way.

the raiders have a scale for who is important and who isn’t, and the scale has some leniency for bandits. (that service = fondness cycle we’ve talked about before.) jack has no scale. it doesn’t matter what can be offered to him or what can be done for him. everyone is the same because everyone is a bandit and so everyone should die. so on and so forth.

the best example i can think of is how lilith handled the children of the firehawk:
she uses them as a shield, and tolerates them because of it.
this tolerance grows to fondness. she’s flattered by them killing in her name.
(its only bandits dying, after all. there’s no real value lost.)
and then she intervenes whenever they start burning sanctuary citizens.
(people who are decidedly Not Bandits, and deserve her protection.)

jack would have just killed everyone at first glance. the bandits, the settlers, the vault hunters, and everyone else within a five mile radius if he could. lilith, if incentivized, can see the humanity in her enemy. which is something that jack outright refuses to do.

i think comes down to generalized apathy versus abject hatred. someone can be made to care. it is a hell of a lot harder to convince someone to love or even tolerate someone they hate.

guuuh i've been looking at your posts and as someone who used* to barely think about a lot of the stuff the raiders did (*thanks to you /pos) it really opens up a layer of "what the fuck you guys" because i really do like the raiders but it really shows a double standard with them and adds a layer of moral grayness to it. things you'd think are just black comedy (lilith and the cotf) get a lot darker because of the origin of the bandits.

it's funny to me that while the line "...these are human beings, with lives and families and--" was meant to be like "eh whatever they're mooks in our fps game they were gonna kill ya anyway" it checks out a lot more when i read some of your rewrite posts. wish borderlands actually had this level of thoughtfulness when it came to the bandits in these entries.

!!! that line is always in the back of my head when i talk abt the raiders. they hit you with it right at the start, and as simple as it is, it really sums up their collective views on the bandits.

to me the most frustrating thing about borderlands is when it is just barley self aware. a brief flash where it looks at the camera and goes “hey, this is the funny part!” and the funny part is. racism or classism or the total dehumanization of an entire population of people. whichever it feels like on that day.

a lot of that is done by handsome jack because that’s his job as an antagonist, but its done in equal measure by the crimson raiders. and the game is aware of this! it just doesnt actually do anything with that commentary except try to be funny.

wdym verity commits hyper-capitalism

jakobs cove! shes responsible for all of her family’s operations on pandora and. unfortunately isnt a part of our class traitor agenda anymore, but she was when she was younger.

she made Plans with wainwright, though even with his support she felt like she was being smothered by living in the estate. eventually, she leaves for her own piece of the galaxy. yknow. the thing jakobs decided not to do when they abstained from the war.

she gets to the island and her first thought is “huh. feels like home.” and her second thought is profit. mostly out of spite. jakobs cove is her final compromise with monty to still be Family but to remain separate from the estate.

the first few rounds of workers were from eden-6, but lack of safety protocols and her sheer negligence for her men meant that injuries were common and they’d often need to be replaced. so she started pulling from bandit populations, which is how grogmouth discovered angel.

verity didnt have any pride in what she did, especially in her later years. she was running jakobs cove purely off of spite. it was intended to be just a branch off of the parent company, but after finding her footing she cuts most off-planet export, dealing with dahl and atlas more than she ever did with eden-6.

this separation doomed the island once verity died. the mill remained operational until post-BL1, but as a whole the lumber workers had been abandoned by jakobs. when ned came in with zombies, there was no evacuation called and everyone was left to defend themselves.

tldr: jakobs cove should have unionized and maybe put her in a guillotine. alas.