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#that shit was hell on my brain b4 just bc it all looked so similar and i accidentally clicked on the wrong spots sometimes
seoafin · 3 years
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tbh,, i havent read the raws of the interview yet, only the translated ver from fan-translator and b4 i start, i think that this will be just me talking in circle and in no particular order AND a real mess (my brain does weird things after exams) but uhh here we go
gojou collects talented people, and by doing so he finds the people he can most probably relate to, except that he can't, not really, because something in the universe shifted when he was born. and it makes me think of how he's always known it, that he is special, and he's proven it, time and time again— he wants to take in talented ppl and he does, but there rly isn't much he can do for them. for they are talented, more talented than the world can understand,,
but they aren't gojou satoru
gojou took in megumi, bc he knew megumi was strong, and would grow up to be someone even stronger, but gojou can't facilitate or encourage his growth, bc for all they're similar, they are so fundamentally different. ALSO,, while geto was in his life, gojou rly judged everything according to his understanding of geto’s moral compass. gojou wears a human suit and geto is how he learnt to wear it well 🏃
the dragonfly analogy regarding to geto’s response to gojo, who was shown wearing a dragonfly patterned yukata in HI arc,, i’m trying to not think abt the fact that dragonfly symbolized victory in jpn....pain. i quoted from a web here for more explanation : In Japan the dragonfly is known as the "victory insect", or kachimushi, because of its hunting prowess and also because it is known to never retreat. Dragonflies are agile and fast fliers and can even hover, but never fly backwards
and bringing this up again, matricide and patricide are 2 of the 5 worst act to commit in buddhism, and it was said that if u commit one of those act u’re going to spend a real long time in the deepest pit of hell before continuing the samsaric cycle (higher chances to be born as an animal after that probs)— this might be geto’s divine retribution. held no power over his own body and could be considered that he’s the same as those “monkeys” 💀
ALSO the fact that sukuna's interest is "eating" rly drives home his hedonistic philosophy of seeking pleasure for himself. and he’s a cannibal...makes me think if he’ll just chomp on ppl with the mouth on his stomach
randomly, to date i think he hasn't really called himself a human, shaman, or a curse, and has held himself apart from all 3, and we've also the intro of the cursed wombs so i wonder if he’s trying to become, or is, a different entity altogether
so onmyoji got mentioned in the interview and what they practice is called onmyodo and abe no seimei and kano no yasunori were the notable practitioners,, and the kamo in jjk is the same as irl who served the imperial court back then
maybe i was right when i said that the relation between the govt. and jujutsu elders are similar to how the shogunate and imperial court work (ie, the former holds the actual power) but... lets see later,,
and i cant believe that i actually nailed it on the analogy of jujutsu practices by religion,,, so mahayana buddhism, shintoism, and taoism is present in jjk along with their respective jujutsu practices...but between the 3, it shld (?) be taoism > shintoism > mahayana buddhism (which could took a path to pure land buddhism)
it’s weird that the number of curses are supposedly higher in jpn comparable to other countries when taoism was brought from china....tengen sus
so the zenin family tree is sth like :
brothers: [toji's dad] ; naobito ; ougi
so toji, naoya, and maki & mai are cousins of the same generation
[toji's dad] → jinichi (probs) ; toji → megumi
naobito → other brothers, naoya
ougi → maki, mai
but yea i’d call anyone who’s within/close or below my age range as cousins and others above 30 as uncles/ aunts LMFAO,, i dont rly memorize my own family tree 😭😭 especially since most call the other by honorifics instead of names : aunt, uncles etc or attaching said honorifics at the end of a name for an older sibling figure/ older cousins [but like ppl in my country also call the other who are older with sibling honorific even if we’re strangers,,, rly similar to korea’s hyung/oppa—eonnie(unnie)/noona but some uses more genderless honorific] (1)
tw // topic of incest, mentions of abuse
if anyone got the wrong idea when reading this : i am not glorifying/ romanticising incest(uous themes),, i’m looking at this with absolutely no lenses of bias even tho im rly against it
初恋 = literally : first love, or puppy love
恋 = romantic love/ deep longing
i literally don't know how else to put this...🧍and with language barrier...using a western interpretation of the eng word "love" to explain a jpnese term is not quite that simple, unfortunately
that thread omg,, i rly do understand how exactly someone could associated kindness with love bc of my upbringing, it was when i was slightly older that i was just...oh so its not like that orz,,, so the most plausible explanation would be that
but the problem is that,, akutami never specify when exactly she had a crush on them,, and when megumi answered todo’s question she had a “♡” reaction 😶,, uhmmm there’s rly no way to look past this if its this way or be in denial
i’ve seen some of "why wouldn't mai react that way after hearing megumi say he'd like someone who's compassionate when she's surrounded by men like naoya",, well I MEAN,,, that, but also mai probs admires that megumi grew up so well out of the clan, regardless of the fact that he had the foundation (10 shadows) to do so. imo she seems happy for him the way she can't be for maki, bc maki ultimately had to leave her behind
hate to say it but yea,, the 3 clans most likely still practice inbreeding in order to preserve their power and presumably their wealth too 😀
i had an idle thought abt it at first but i filed it deep in the back of my mind asap,, bc i ont wanna jump to conclusion abt this out of all things too early. it’s probably not even in jjk, but all those elite clans in other ani/mangas that produce powerful heirs and whatnot also do the same,,, but this way of (my personal) thinking was influenced when i first got into tsukihime (type-moon),,, i read abt the nanaya family background and found out that they practice that in order to keep their bloodline “pure” (to keep it short : they have an optical power),, and i had this kind of assumption ever since so there’s that
i’m,, convinced the zenins' inbreeding made it more difficult for them to get powerful shamans bc they got 2 jujutsu technique-less children with heavenly restrictions in the same generation: toji & maki
even more convinced that maki might be a bit stronger than toji bc toji could see curses without aid while maki can't so the pay-off must be higher,,, SJJASN IDK ,,, plus naoya sort of implies his older brothers are nothing compared to him, and idk if we should take that as his arrogance or that his older brothers rly are weak/powerless. it would make sense as to why naobito had a lot of sons, ig, as head of clan
i feel so bad that if one of the factors that can caused heavenly restriction is inbreeding,, toji and maki and mai had no say in how they wanted to be born but are scorned for it,, typical asian families projecting their traumas and ideals onto their kids but get mad when they realize that those ideals are ugly...😁😁😁
since the zenin are conservative,, i wonder if they still hold onto old jpnese dining traditions. where in ancient jpn, hierarchical relationships were made readily apparent even within families. a dining table where everybody sat down and ate as equals would be unheard of. rather, each individual is given their own table that indicates their status,,, someone who is not considered “strong” according to the zenin’s views most likely have no place at the table, and probs eat when those who are “strong” finished/ serve them when they are eating
if toji was tossed into a swarm of curses,, i dont think abuse during said time is below them,,,
the zenin clan was already great, but they further amassed power and strength by, what i assume to be, marrying and adopting powerful individuals into the clan 🤔 ,,, i imagine they're like the hiiragi but without doing what they did to shinya (ons reference)
BUT after all that, i like to think that since akutami’s a big horror fan, jjk might be an outlet to explore said topics or even darker ones, so i wouldnt be that surpised abt it. given that there’s more than enough “red flags” before this was dropped : a reference to “tale of hikaru genji” when a grown woman asked for gojou’s number in HI arc (out of all things); granny who transformed into the man’s daughter, sat on his lap and man just touched her waist; mei mei and ui ui ; and...this (incestous theme is in the novel btw)
lets not start with whatever the fuck in kubo’s head in the interview otherwise i’m writing paragraphs with every curse words possible,, those big 3 mangakas are so— UGH,, a planet w out (cis) men like him sounds real good rn 😌 if one of yall out there decide to do it,, pls hmu rly cant do this shit anymore
akutami said i like my men pretty and i like women who will step on my neck and spit in my face (I REMEMBERED TATSUKI FUJIMOTO’S INTERVIEW WHEN HE WAS ASKED ABT MAKIMA AND IT WAS SO 😭😭😭😭) but ykw,, love that for both of them <3
when i said 3 : one piece, bleach, naruto. aside from the blatant depiction/ characterize of women in those 3,, idk if some ppl arent aware yet but oda is friends with two (2) convicted pedos,, man...the major disappointment and disgust when i first find out abt it
anyways this is just my 2 cents (which i think rightfully belong to the trash can) so pls just take this w a lil to no grain of salt - 🐱
YEAH THE ♡ LMFAO I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST A “good answer ♡“ heart BUT NOW IM RE-EXAMINING?????
honestly i wouldn’t be surprised if the three clans practiced inbreeding. but ik people are going to be  😡😡😡😡😡 about it when the queen of fucking england is literally married to her (something) cousin. i’m not justifying it but like....love the double standards, just as always with the west 😍
DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THAT FUCKING PED* LIST THEY SHOULD ALL BE IN JAIL. JAILLLLL. it’s all so gross. that’s why i fucking hate when people look towards manga for positive representation because the chances of that are super slim to zero, especially since the industry is saturated with misogyny and ped******* and a lot of other gross stuff.
i think ppl forget jjk is a horror manga LOL so obviously it’s going to confront darker themes. the question is whether it’s going to be done tastefully or not......
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im supposed to be working on uh literally anything else but instead i gotta get this outta my brain
tl;dr: slag is causing the Psychos to spread across the galaxy bc the Calypsos are using it to both brainwash their cultists and give them ‘special powers’. i mean, its not just slag, it’s eridian ruins/tech, too, but the Twins are utilizing slag the most. which explains the slagfalls and also the processed eridium everywhere still. im hoping sirens will help us cure this- starting with Krieg because slag/Psychos have some sort of connection to the other dimension, just like Sirens, but more messy. also this insanity from the slag/Psycho-ness is literally Mayhem and us fans are taking part in it- we’re the cult irl. plus, this game is gonna be about love and the relationships we have with the people we care about and that’s all the roses mean because i’m feeling s o f t tonight. tomorning. whatever maaaaan
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“… among their fractured ramblings, it is tempting to try and find a deeper meaning…”
“[their madness] defies attempts at explanation or containment. from an isolated region of a single planet, to a nearby moon, to systems throughout every human colony, madness is catching…”
you can’t tell me this isn’t just BEGGING for us to figure it out
so, for my own sake:
i have a theory.
i kinda sorta hinted at this with my destroyer theory but i REALLY wanna go all out in this because i think this is actually something to think about… mostly because ive seen A Scene… and i wants to talk about it, vh. i wants it
now im gonna `lol` ignore everything about my lost legion eternal theory and start entirely from scratch. it’s also 1am here for my apologies if this comes across as incoherent because wow i should be asleep but fuck it i got research to do
so it all starts with psychos. i mean i guess it does. it’s gotta right? i brought in pictures it must
anyway
the guide admits that the first psychos came from Dahl’s prison colonies
the ones abandoned on pandora, now ive kinda talked about this b4 but imma talk about it again bc uhhh fuck it? why not.
so we know a lot of the bandits left on Pandora mutated because of the eridian ruins/the key. this is referenced mostly in sledge’s mine
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its like world-wise called headstone mine but i never remember that. SLEDGE’S MINE
notice that line “most went crazy and many were physically mutated as well”
so i think it’s safe to say whatever they found in there started causing psychos to appear on pandora
im saying that i think eridians are the cause of Psychos across the galaxy
i have a lot more proof for this so please sit back and enjoy the ride because i think its really really cool
so lets look at hector’s logs from the newest dlc
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“one of my boys found a shiny alien trinket”
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“a few boys went rabid already, had to put them down”
now idk if there’s a connection here, but it’s interesting that both times, people who found these eridian artifacts started going crazy soon after
shit i mean even tannis begins to go off the wall after her and her dig team start investigating the eridian sites. although if that is because of the horrific incidents that befell her and her team or the ruins idk for certain. i’d bet its the shitty incidents tho
there’s more to this, hang on…
alright, so, lab rats? they’re pretty cool right?
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we all like lab rats! personally, chase is my favorite, but adam is hilarious. that final season, huh? pretty wicked… wasn’t really a fan of the island setting but you know what, to each their own. it’s cool they actually progressed the show instead of staying stagnant. that got my respect even if it moved in a direction that wasn’t my cup of tea.
anyway Q U O T E S:
“Hyperion opened my eyes. i didn’t want it!”
“needles in my eyes!”
“don’t you look at me!”
“i can see! i don’t want to see!”
so there’s obviously something ~fucky~ going on with the lab rats and whatever it is they can see from the hyperion experimentation. we know hyperion had a hard-on for slag experimentation and you know i wouldn’t even be shocked if they were injecting these rats’ eyes with slag.
the best part is their reactions when they’re phaselocked. Unlike most enemies, the lab rats will only react to maya’s action skill, and none of the other VHs.
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vs something like a marauder:
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who has all these voice lines for Zer0, Axton, Sal (merc), AND Maya
the lab rats will only ever respond to being phaselocked.
and what do they say?
“i see the universe!”
“i see infinity!”
“it’s beautiful!”
 (now weirdly enough i was told on the tv tropes for bl2 that the lab rats will say “I see it more!” when phaselocked by maya, but i couldn’t find a source for that. couldn’t even find it in the files i extracted from the game. i checked an online video just to double check because you know, my extraction could’ve been off, but it wasn’t there, either. even phaselocked one a bunch as maya and i couldn’t get it to proc. so, idk where that info came from, if someone could give a source/proof that would be awesomesauce.)
sooo what do other enemies say when phaselocked? usually… they just see blue. so nothing quite as interesting as infinity.
so wtf is up here? 
im thinking the experiments hyperion performed on the lab rats are letting them see the dimension maya locks them in. i mean, tbh, i think they can see into that dimension whenever they open their eyes, but maybe maya’s phaselock makes sense of it for them. because they seem to be in indescribable agony outside of it
but the lab rats aren’t the only enemies that only react to being phaselocked
turns out the psychos only react to phaselocking, too
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they also have some fun lines:
“I can see forever!”
“I’m home!”
“I’m inside… I’M INSIDE ME!”
with some other nonsense thrown in for fun
so idk, just taking a look at this, it’s clear the psychos and lab rats are seeing something that the other bandits just aren’t seeing. most reactions are demands to be released or that they’re flying, or just straight up confusion as to what’s happening.
is that the side effect of their exposure to slag/eridian tech? yeah, imma bet on it. their mind machines probably broke because they saw something they weren’t supposed to (possibly into the other dimension. the one maya phaselocks them in) without proper ‘protection’ and thus went batshit. like maybe sirens are protected from the craziness of the other dimension because they’re ‘chosen’ or whatever. iunno.
i do think it’s most interesting that the psychos seem familiar with whatever they’re seeing, calling it ‘home’ and well… themselves. 
so why in the fuck am i talking about all this? because i think it ties straight into bl3.
let’s bring back lab rats and their experiments
you know how hyperion was supposedly injecting their eyes with slag? and it caused them to shoot those weird blue lasers out?
what happens to the destroyer’s eye in tps?
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yeah we inject this bad boy with slag
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“i only juice the eye with a little bit of slag at a time”
which ends up causing a singularity around the eye the second time you do it
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“if this slag stuff is powering the laser, we need to force as much of it as we can back into the eye. the increased power will trip a failsafe and let us shut everything down”
oh, increased power? you mean like how Sirens get increased power from absorbing eridium? that kind of increased power?
we know in bl1 the Destroyer seemed to have something like slag in it- those glowing pockets on the tentacles that explode into purple goo
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even its attacks are like purple liquid. which, you know… would be quite similar to slag (tho tbf, these attacks actually hurt instead of applying the debuff)
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and boy does the destroyer not like it
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“warning. space-time instability detected.” after injecting the eye with too much slag. but… why? it got too powerful? are its powers directly connected to the other dimension and by increasing it’s strength a bunch we created some sorta link between our dimension and the other one? 
i mean given the other dimension allows for teleportation and shit, im not surprised there’s a space-time instability!
i mean we’ve all seen it do the eye laser thing, and the tentacles, and the purple goop. but causing space-time instabilities… that’s new isn’t it? kinda like how Sirens get new powers after they absorb a bunch of eridium???
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so i wanna take a guess as to what the destroyer is
we know its ‘immortal in its own realm’ but when it’s taken an actual body that we can kill it, so odds are, it never actually died in bl1 OR tps. i imagine the Destroyer we see in bl1 is just a small fragment of it, and that it’s consciousness can be spread out across hosts. *EDIT: actually the lovely @automata-systemata-hydromata reminded me that you can find the destroyers brain in Helios. The other stuff I left in should be fine tho I thiiiink (thank you!).
and that, y’know, is cool and all, but what IS it??
Jack uses slag to give it a power boost, but it doesn’t seem to be happy about it when it happens. in fact, it even seems scared.
to be honest, all we know is that the eridians locked it away for some reason
idk im just spitballing here, but what if the Eridians were the creators of the destroyer? not intentionally, or maybe it was the result of one hell of a slag experiment/exposure to the other dimension/eridian tech, but we’ve seen what slag/exposure to eridian stuff does to humans… makes them go crazy, makes them start mutating. i mean, look at badass psychos. look at goliaths.
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i mean shit even think about bloodwing. she goes wild, attacking the VHs and not listening to mordecai’s instructions despite their bond
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she grows to a huge size and gains a whole shitload of new powers she didn’t have before. including fucking fire breath (which we’ve seen in burning psychos)
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you know these dudes
i go into all this eridium/slag mutation stuff in SO much more detail in this post here, so if you’re interested in mutations, read this!
so what if the destroyer is just one HELL of a mutated eridian/alien and it plus all the eridium was locked away forever in the other dimension to keep this from ever happening again? because god, i wouldn’t want that to ever happen again, either, and i guess locking away the eridium (you know the stuff used in all these hyperion experiments) would be their best bet at ensuring it. also maybe just… locking away anything with eridium for that long probably isn’t the best idea… maybe that’s why it’s all tentacles and death. maybe they just locked someone away in a Vault as a prison and then leaving them with all that eridium caused them to mutate wildly out of control. kinda like the FEV. 
i mean we know ‘slagged psychos’ look like this 
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i wouldn’t be surprised if we gave them enough slag/time they’d end up mutating even worse. and the destroyer was left in the vault for hundreds of years.
so wtf is the connection here with Sirens? there’s gotta be one, right??? is slag experimentation the first rung on the ladder of volatile science to achieving siren-hood? like you’d have slag/eridium experiments/mutations -> the lost legion eternal -> actual Sirens. maybe if sirens take in too much eridium they become something like the destroyer. now that’s fucked up to think about.
maybe it’s better the twins took lilith’s powers away from her…
oh, speaking of mutations and burning psychos and hyperion experiments, you know what we haven’t talked about yet?
Krieg. 
let’s talk a whole lot about Krieg, because he is super important
krieg is important for a lot of reasons.
u know what his teaser trailer was named?
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yeah i don’t think that’s coincidence one bit
ahhh Mayhem.
“deep beneath pandora, an experiment has escaped”
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we know krieg is a hyperion test subject, dr samuels confirms this (and apparently contracts insanity as well at the end of the Crawmerax DLC)
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also we know some other tests going on at the WEP from the quest Doctor’s Orders:
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“this vault key didn’t make eridium come outta the ground for nothing, right?”
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and there’s this one very very very interesting line by Tannis at the end of the quest:
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“the spread of slag poisoning” yeah call it that DUMB name tannis, im gonna call it what all the kool kids are calling it: ~Mayhem~
so… Krieg.
what’s so special about him?
well… he gives us insight into what the hell is actually going on inside the heads of some psychos.
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so idk about you guys but i always took this as a poke at Maya and Krieg, but i realize now that this is talking literally just about Krieg. it’s about his body holding both sides of himself.
krieg does appear to be like lucid behind the psycho controlling his body, which, idk about you guys, but for me that plants some pretty horrible mental images of all the psychos in-game who probably have similarly exasperated people behind them who are getting murdered because they can’t control themselves anymore.
and idk i wrote this whole post about how maybe the slag experimentation is turning people into hosts for the destroyer’s consciousness and that could explain all the wacked up psychos and shit. but tbh im not gonna talk about that today
just about slag experimentation/eridium exposure. we know what it ACTUALLY does and that’s mutate the hell out of things and cause insanity.
Krieg is like… the poster child for slag experimentation/eridium exposure
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soooo why does slag experimentation make people go insane? could be any number of reasons, but tbh i would bet it has to do with that other dimension somehow. because eridium isn’t a normal ‘our dimension’ element. it came out of a vault. from a different dimension. and who knows the long-term effects of that shit.
i personally had a theory that the 4th dimension had something to do with time and that only Sirens are able to harness this power, but then i have no idea how to explain angel and amara’s powers through that lense, so eh. fuck it. just seeing an upper dimension would make you go crazy anyway, so let’s not bring any time shit into this because that’s just asking for trouble. 
either way
i think that sirens are able to make sense of that other dimension. they have some sort of command of it/some sort of tie to it that allows them to not go crazy the instant they interact with it, unlike psychos. unlike lab rats. unlike Krieg. it’s like… eridium is our window into this other dimension or some shit and Sirens are (literally) able to process it, while it just fucks over anyone else who tries to interact. ~kachow i just introduced parallels~
and tbh i think we’re going to use Sirens to help cure this plague of insanity going around the universe. probably starting with Krieg. i mean, the only time he’s able to get even an iota of control is when he sees Maya. “Turn around pretty lady!!” like… that’s HUGE for him. and Maya’s a Siren. im not saying the power of love isn’t strong… but maybe the power of Sirens is stronger. i’d love if tannis helped us out with that. maya, too, if she really did learn more about sirens on athenas. 
this all ties into borderlands 3 for 2 reasons:
1. Mayhem being both the tagline for this game and Krieg the Psycho’s DLC pack is not a coincidence
2. The calypso twins are going to be using slag to both brainwash people into becoming cultists and give them special powers
`breaks fingers` this is the real meat of this theory, all that other stuff was just getting you READY for this
let’s put the Mayhem stuff off to the side for a second and just focus on the Calypso twins.
We know they’re promising their cultists special powers and free brainwashes (lol)
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we’ve seen that one concept art from the museum of mayhem with the giant slag pool
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we know enemies are STILL dropping refined Eridium even though it seems like all manufacturers have stopped creating slag weaponry
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and we’ve seen the slag falls in a bl3 promo material already
oh yes
okay so i said right at the very beginning of this document that i’ve seen A Scene that i wanna talk about and oh baby this is it
This Scene right here
look in the very back there
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look familiar???
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~it shooouuuuullld~
yeah this is it!!!
so what i think is going down: anyone who’s not already insane is sorta ‘baptized’ as their entrance into this cult in the big ol slagfall. maybe the twins have a way to induce slagged cultists so they can have elemental affinities. not sure about that.
regardless
the twins are using slag to drive people insane (turning them into psychos) as a form of brainwashing to force people to join their cult.
so that’s the special powers and the free brainwashing and the slagfalls down.
let’s talk about why exactly we’re seeing enemies drop bars of refined eridium even though hyperion stopped making them. because the twins are making it!! it makes sense why there’s no slag guns still, even if it still exists in-universe: of course no manufacturer is going to contact an insane bandit cult just to get their hands on slag for their guns. 
there was a 7 year dry spell of eridium production so there was no slag to go around, so companies started phasing it out of their guns and replacing it with nuclear. 
but the twins have recently started production again. they’re obviously not using it in their guns, or selling it to other manufacturers. so wtf are they using it for? it’s gotta be important, it’s holy holy holy.
special powers and brainwashing!
and the refined eridium is back in circulation, so enemies are still dropping it. see? solution acquired.
as for psycho-ness spreading across the universe? it makes sense. not only are the twins using their slag to brainwash people and turn them into psycho cultists, but people are also being mutated by the eridian ruins/vault keys/vaults on the other planets and being driven insane. This craziness is quite literally Mayhem.
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Mayhem is coming, indeed! 
now let us talk about what the fucccck gearbox is doing with all that Mayhem stuff in the trailers and shit.
sooo WE are the cult surrounding this game. as the fan base. 
do u think it was coincidence that they made ‘ECHOnet’ Streamers the leaders of their big bad cult and then also immediately introduced, in real life, the Twitch ECHOcast extension and invited a bunch of streamers to play their demo? they knew exactly what they were doing. Giving away a free cultist psycho mask to everyone who preorders a console copy of the game? that’s intentional. everyone who preorders the game gets a ‘gold weapon skin pack’? yeah! you know what gold weapons represent in-universe? higher standing in the cult!! gearbox is making commentary on how we are all just like the cultists!
AND THEY ARE TOTALLY RIGHT
all the trailers having something to do with Mayhem? ‘Mask of Mayhem’ ‘Mural of Mayhem’ ‘We are Mayhem’ ‘Mayhem is coming’. We’re all insane cultists because we’re all absolutely fucking rabid for this game and they KNOW IT.
oh also we’re all in love with each other lmao. 
in all seriousness, i think the game is going to focus a lot on the relationships we have with the people we care about- our found family, our romantic interests, our friendships- and that’s being expressed through the roses. 
i think that’s why all the characters are shown in the roses on the cover art. why the roses are so prominent in the So Happy Together trailer. why Zane is sitting at a bar with a rose between himself and his clone (as a joke, but still, it’s the intent). 
red roses are, like, the most obvious way to show your affection to someone. and we know the bl3 Vault Hunters are going to find family in each other in this game. that we’re going to watch the calypso twins’ relationship become warped as the game goes on. hell, we’re probably even going to have a whole plot about tina and mordy (and talon) and brick being a small family together, and maya and ava being one as well. plus ellie and vaughn have gotten together since commander lilith. shit, guys, even claptrap is building himself a girlfriend.
this game’s about love, guys.
anyway i have been working on this since 1:30am. it’s currently 6:06am. i am very tired and very wired and those never mesh well. im gonna go eat some motherfuckin pizza.
edit: i missed the obvious connection the first time around: of course we’re going to cure Krieg, he loves Maya. and this game is all about love.
that and/or one or both of them die and gearbox hurts us right in the softest parts of our hearts.
edit 2: also yeah at some point in the near future im writing that Hyperion-Twins theory because as much as i love Atlas, i have ~seen some things~
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