[shigeoreum]

i love women

[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.)

[vagina-dentatas]

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

[yulnik]

Feeling useless till I draw random characters

[eridianarchives]

very small borderlands 4 spoiler, but i saw moxxi's new boy-toy and remembered all those people who swore up and down that moxxi flirting with tim in bl3's handsome jackpot was sincere and the beginning of a real, lasting relationship... poor bastards. that's just not who either of them are

[battle-for-dyke-island]

if you say “but aros can still date!” about your aromantic blorbo, I need you to mean it. you can’t make the ship just boring old romance.

your blorbo is still aromantic, so how would that color their relationships? how would that affect their daily life? do they struggle with feeling “greedy” because they can’t love their partner back the way their partner loves them? do they have a hard time with an allo partner because on a fundamental level they don’t quite understand what romance is like, even if they’re experiencing it? on the positive side; what societal boundaries of romance do they cast aside or embrace? how do they navigate a romantic relationship differently than their peers? if it’s an aro4aro partnership, how is it unique? how much does being aro define their relationship vs. just their own personal quirks? is that even a line that can be drawn?

an aro relationship is different from an allo one. I promise, it’s so much more fun to explore what that means and the consequences of that than just “oh aros can date so they’re dating in the same way any allos would”.

[heavenly96]

But did you know? He’s an even better shot when he’s drunk?

[heavenly96]

>:3

[eridianarchives]

if you're interested in buying borderlands 4, i'd watch someone play the first area where you get to run around freely (coastal bonescape) and decide from there. i was morbidly curious at first, but watching a friend play through 4 hours of the game cemented my decision to give it a pass. my assessment so far:

level design: only getting worse over time. maps are big and empty with points of interest few and far between and thanks to the glide pack mechanic. adds nothing but additional time played and maybe jumping puzzles. rewards for exploration are sparse outside of marked points of interest.

visual style: there are high points and low points, and some elements are heavily borrowed in very noticeable ways if you've seen the artists used as inspiration (cough, saren stone)

gunplay: excellent and even more evolved. it's the only thing still worth it, imo. clearly the moment-to-moment is the only craft the execs actually care about

new mechanics: grapple is fine. glide pack should be lost in a fire. rechargeable heal is solid. skill trees are fine

playable characters: mostly petty gripes, but vex doesn't read as a siren. imo they're getting too far away from the fundamentals of borderlands in the pursuit of cool when there would be plenty of it if they just developed what was already there.

story: meh so far. already annoyed at the use of core characters who are there for no good reason and i'm not confident it'll ever be explained how (and sometimes why) they came

the big bad: bland, derivative. feels like the writers tried to make another character as viral as HJ and ended up with another goober mostly propped up by the visual style

performance: noticeably bad on PC launch even on high-end machines. gearbox just keeps packing borderlands full of unnecessary vfx. pretty bad texture pop-in and terrible shader management. after crashes, the shaders recompiled extraordinarily slowly, then compiled again mid-load. seems choppier in places that don't make a lot of sense

bugs: a few crashes and one uncompletable side mission (abduction injunction, couldn't talk to the guy at the end)

music: no strong opinion but i did laugh at the attempt to recapture the magic of BL1 track Fighting Off the Skags with a little dash of throat singing

character customization: it fucks, actually. you no longer have to go to a station to change and the color options are (i'm pretty sure) recycled from tiny tina's wonderlands, which was one of the best parts of that game

[heavenly96]

Rakkaholics anonymous

[phenikas]

Genuinely did not know Pickle is a hated character until a few days ago when someone on Twitter said "I hope they bring back Pickle in BL4" but meant it as a joke

What

[claptraprights]

actually I think the hottest way for Nisha is to survive is the people of lynchwood just dumping her (seemingly dead) body into some hole or crack in the ground but with the entire town built on Eridium mines, she comes back slightly Different and slightly Mutated and then there's a whole anti-hero western style solo story about her trying to find a cure or sth to stabilise it

[4n631satellite]

skinny bastard.

[woogiez]

Hyperion finest

[flippythedog200]

Handsome Jack is crazy if my evil gunslinger girlfriend died i woulda been buried with her like a pharaoh's cat

full under the cut ^_^ just loved how her skin and gauntlet deets turned out though

[claptraprights]

for the character headcanon thing: miss nisha kadam! :D

oh God Nisha:

- She’s painfully honest. Even if it hurts other people’s feelings. Not because she thinks lying is wrong or immoral or anything - she just can’t be bothered to make up lies. I mean, for what? To spare someone’s feelings? And if someone tries to come at her for it, even better, bring a gun.

- So much trauma-based hypervigilance.

- Yes, she got her famous reflexes from catching the stuff her mother threw at her but at the same time it’s also because she really, really doesn’t like things moving towards her face at high speeds (I mean, the throwing thing is the reason for her dislike of that but it also kept her in training)(in short: see above)

- She is fluent in four languages.

- When she first advertised herself as available for ‘mercenary work, S&M, and birthday parties’ she was actually just kidding about the last part but...it turns out that Pandorans don’t really see an issue with an armed, infamous mercenary performing trick shots at their kids’ birthday parties. Also, a lot of Pandoran birthday parties turn into open fights and clan wars at some point so she can offer her mercenary skills as well. win-win (and cake)

- She was actually always expecting to die young. The thought of growing old and weak and helpless is one of the few things that she was afraid of. Or at least that she refuses to contemplate.

- The reason that she deputised Winger out of all the people she murdered when she first arrived in town was that he wore a patch on his coat of a band she liked. Nisha lifestyle rule number one: If you have to work together, always pick someone with the same taste in music! (also, see point 1, she openly told him that this was the reason but for some reason he was not particularly enthusiastic)

- While there are many ‘normal’ rules in her laws for Lynchwood (no stealing), there are also some really, really random ones (she banned ice-cream) - although these all have a backstory. There are however no laws concerning her personhood or demanding for them to worship her or pledge loyalty. She is counting on them to resist, after all.

- She also put all almost 300 of her laws on signs outside the train station for the bandits to read - fully aware that most of them cannot read. In fact, many of them find out what they did wrong when she reads out their ‘crimes’ before putting a noose around her neck.

- (This one is from the fic I’m writing but:) The silver emblem at the front of her hat doubles as an access key to the Helios fast-travel network.

- She actually used to have short hair in most of her 20s. Easier to maintain on the road and less problems with hat-hair.

- Her mother died of a rare bone disease. Nisha found out not too long before the events of TPS. 

- Her father had found out where Nisha was based on all the bounties and wanted pictures on the ECHO.net but had been scared to reach out while his wife was still alive because he didn’t want to draw her anger. He tried to get into contact Nisha a few times when his wife first became too sick to leave the bed, but he had no means of contacting her (on Pandora of all places!) until an old employer of Nisha actually gave him an ECHO handle. However, her father could onyl reach Nisha in time for him to tell her that it was too late and her mother was dead. 

He saw this as his chance to make things right in his old age and bring his lost daughter home and asked for her to come back and move in with him and her sister and promised her that he would help her hide from the authorities and that they would ‘just not talk about the things they say you did. I don’t believe you did that.’ (The last part ...he was lying) and that if she needed any help he would be there. She hung up and joined a giant party in Pyro Pete’s bar.

- Based on the photo of Angel on Jack’s desk, she suspected that he either had or had had a child and she made it very clear to him that this subject is never to be brought around her. She doesn’t want to hear anything about kids or parenthood. Her personal suspicion is that the kid in the photo is either dead (in which case she’s not available for any mopey death anniversary drinking!) or on some fancy Hyperion boarding school at the other end of the galaxy.

- On average, she killed 6.2 people each day she spent ruling Lynchwood, not counting the initial purge when she arrived.

- She has very detailed anatomical knowledge. For one, because of all the time she spends torturing others, for two, because of all the time she spent getting herself fixed up while alone out in the desert (glass cannon fighting style and all).

- In close combat, she is really, really vicious. Biting off, twisting off, dislocating, a blade hidden in her boot - she doesn’t hold back. (In short: She loves close combat although only a few even get that close)

- She has a lot of scars. The only scar she hides is the one where her dog bit her (that’s why she wears those chokers. It’s not so much that she’s ashamed of it or hiding it - it’s just very intimate and not everyone’s business, okay?)

- She is a very good or a very bad driver, depending on your point of view and how resilient your stomach is.

- She has dyslexia but it was never actually diagnosed bc of her childhood. (One symptom of dyslexia? Difficulties reading maps)

(and of course: she actually survived and went off to live with Aurelia)

[4n631satellite]

nisha had to die bc if she survived to 3 they'd be unstoppable.