some rest for the wicked. as a treat.

Borderlands side-blog because I still care about the Pre-Sequel a whole lot. Stanning Nisha's horrible life-choices in this our year 2021 because she's the future, baby. Josie, she/her. Main blog: langernameohnebedeutung

[luckychocopan]

sketchhhggghhh

[eridiandisaster]

I saw you ask about borderlands characters request………………….. what about Nisha >:3 ?

here you go! i hope you enjoy :))

her designs is so cool in BL2, i very recently got to Lynchwood in it.

[4n631satellite]

i know nisha was mad as FUCK she didnt get invited to the zaford-hodunk shootout that happened at HER train station. just punching a wall crying she bc she couldnt turn them all into red paste.

[4n631satellite]

Is Nisha good at her job?

Best to ever do it

Valued employee

Doing the best they can (positive)

Doing the best they can (negative)

Pity hire

Active detriment to their organization

Genuinely unemployed

Voting ended onMar 18

[4n631satellite]

hyperion has like 7 competent workers total and angel is 6 of them.

[mong-mongi]

Jathena wedding pic!! Gotta give Athena the beefcake short queen representation she deserves...

+ details

Timelapse under the cut :3

I had to redraw Rhys' dumb face like 4 times it was maddening

[vagina-dentatas]

Is Nisha Kadam from Borderlands a cop, or is she worse than a cop?

Cop

Worse

Technically a vigilante, which is just a cop in superhero spandex

Voting ended onJan 4

[hyperwitch]

Tried to make Nisha’s tattoo yesterday from THIS one concept art of her 😗

[stian-redux]

For art request …what about -….N-Nisha….. she so p-pretty I ruv her🥺…

I hate drawing cowboy hats because I can never draw them right... but here's your Nisha 💜

[claptraprights]

Having Nisha feelings again. You ever just think about Nisha and go a little insane.

I miss my doomed cowgirl.

[claptraprights]

@vvhenan

okay one thing is - my favourite interpretation of Nisha is as someone who doesn't rig the game. That she can take an L -> because to her, most of the things she does would not make sense and not be exciting if she couldn't lose (aka die a horrible death).

I think it's important to keep in mind that the things Nisha does, they don't really have an endgame, the way Jack's plans for example do. She also doesn't really want to accumulate anything. And while I think she takes some sadistic pleasure in being infamous and feared, being famous also isn't a goal in itself.

What she really wants is a) constant thrill and excitement b) getting better and better. That's something that comes up in her lines a lot - she wants to fight 'real badasses' and she wants bigger challenges all the time.

There is generally a pattern of gamifying things with Nisha. The whole 'she got good at catching things because of all the things her mother would throw at her' -> tbh i think the explanation is a bit silly, but I do take it as Nisha's perspective on things, at least in hindsight; That her mother's abuse is something she started interpreting as a challenge and that it made her 'better'. Just like in her perspective, killing the dog she loved made her better because it also taught her to overcome something that held her back.

The opposite to that is her father - for her, that's what 'weakness' is: Avoiding challenge, avoiding conflict, not getting better.

(I think that's another aspect that imo is important to Nisha which is her very specific brand of self-discipline. She's not a military character-archetype like Athena for example. In fact, in many ways she is very self-indulgent and hedonistic - we know she drinks a lot, she is not exactly a professional on her jobs (I actually think that when she first met Jack, it was more of a 'recreational' interest before he went off the deep end and became actually interesting to her).

What I mean with self-discipline is that while ramping up the violence and the challenges, she is effectively avoiding a lot of introspection and thinking about any deeper meanings. Being scared, being sad, grieving, hoping, empathy - those emotions are something she often had to deal with as a child. So for her, that's a child-thing. So when other people actually allow themselves to feel things - or are overwhelmed with them - in Nisha's eyes, that's being childish. That's weakness, that's lack of discipline. That's embarrassing. (That's her dad...)

In her world-view, she actively ended all of that when she ended the life of her dog as a child. So the moment someone gives a shit about something trivial or sentimental - in her eyes, they're just weak and pathetic and they are going to die anyway. If anything, it's her right to crush whatever they cared about, make them watch - and then they either kill her or she kills them.

(Another take i have on her is that lack of challenge and lack of growth also directly leads to her sadism goes into absolute overdrive - and I think that's what happened in Lynchwood. Sure, I think she's a sadist in all fights she's in. But at the end on Pandora, she is no longer going up. She is no longer fighting vault monsters or even trained enemies. She is back to 'flaying bandits alive on Pandora'. So I think what she does is that she becomes more and more sadistic and vicious out of sheer boredom and also, to create more opportunities for whatever fighting and conflict she can get out whatever enemies she can find.)

[claptraprights]

Having Nisha feelings again. You ever just think about Nisha and go a little insane.

I miss my doomed cowgirl.

[vagina-dentatas]

Commissioned an outfit swap of my favorite two purple cowgirls from a friend

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

a fine day to remember that these two gentlemen are married

[claptraprights]

haven't watched this so maybe this makes a super-compelling argument...but tbh i never questioned why the Vault Hunters would do what they do?

To me, it's already answered by the fact that they CHOSE to become Vault Hunters. That's the whole point. That's why they keep coming to Pandora.

And yeah, Borderlands 4 did something new and interesting with the Bolts - which is good! - but tbh, also if they hadn't been bolted and just arrived on Kairos for the Vault and fought the Timekeeper, this would have tracked with me entirely as something Vault Hunters would do.

They're adventurers. That's why they do this.

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

i . i dont know what to even say here

[claptraprights]

back to workshopping my "Arjay as the main-antagonist" ideas and: You know how they mention that in the Phase, time doesn't work in a linear way? So technically it wouldn't even require any copy by Lyctor to have pre-Phase Arjay appear - instead, I would have made his transformation non-linear from the Vault Hunters perspective as well.

I would have had Arjay from different stages of his transformation appear to the Vault Hunters - maybe even the early ones first, telling the Vault Hunters to come save him, he doesn't know where he is, he's scared, he wants to go home etc. - and then we catch more and more glimpses of something else there, chasing him. The Vault Hunters assume there is some malignant entity in the Phase.

I mentioned i had this idea about having the people you meet also help the Vault Hunters help Arjay - so when they meet Amara, a Siren, they tell her about it. Amara at this point is looking for Lilith so she says 'hey, if we work together we can help them both - and if there is anyone who can help your friends, it's a Siren and if any Siren can, it's fucking Lilith!"

Then the whole plot-twist happens where we realise that it wasn't Lilith who was talking to us from the Phase - it was the malignant entity that is in the Phase with Arjay - except we realise that it IS Arjay, the version of him that has undergone everything.

Since we meet various versions in a non-chronological order, early Arjay does the whole thing where he begs the Vault Hunters to destroy him entirely - because then he doesn't have to undergo what he has undergone and he won't be hurting the Vault Hunters and his friends and even if they save him, he would be a "monster".

At that point, the Vault Hunters can decide to either kill Arjay (in which they have to go back in to the Phase, kill Phase!Arjay, pre!Phase thanks them in a dramatic death scene and Arjay disappears from the game and we get the rest of the game basically as we have it now, going after the Timekeeper) or to save him. It's a sentimental moment and some mourning and then we move on.

To save him they have to work with the people they meet. Arjay appears more prominently now, in cut-scenes, blink-and-you-miss it appearances and messages.

Now if the Vault Hunters follow the path of saving Arjay, they have to complete that mission and find a way to get him out of a Phase before they enter the Vault of the Timekeeper because it is somehow linked to the Phase (considering that it's the TIME-keeper and contains the end of TIME, it makes sense that it can be reached through a non-temporary space). Or maybe you have to get back into the Phase to make that happen but after Lyctor's experiments, the barrier is really fragile so you only have one chance to do it and you have to combine it with your attempt to take the Vault of the Timekeeper.

If you do all of that, you can free the version of Arjay that has undergone all he did and bring him back.

If you go after the Timekeeper without that Arjay-mission finished, you receive several warnings that if you proceed, you won't be able to safe him. You can still do it and people will tell you 'you saved Kairos and that's what matters!' but you leave with the knowledge that Arjay is still trapped in the Phase without time, still undergoing these experiments for all eternity.

[claptraprights]

tbh I'm also not sure what the takeaway from the Rippers is supposed to be. "Really Kallis' own fault that she ripped out her belt and rebelled before the glorious Vault Hunters arrived to fix things"?, "you wanted to be free but the Timekeeper made sure it would destroy you and now we kill you bc you essentially got a brain injury"? "The victims who didn't have to bolt ripped are just so much more managable and therefore deserving"?