the-old-caius

[the-old-caius]

11月3日 いいおっさんの日

November 3rd Good Old Man's Day

#the elder scrolls iv: oblivion #martin septim #this is the only real martin drawing

[the-old-caius]

relocated. @caius-antivirus

[the-old-caius]

Gonna be moving the blog today, sorry for any annoyance

[the-old-caius]

But is not that THE Point?

Sometimes I like to watch what other say about the writing in The Elder Scrolls, and sometimes I run across people who, disappointed in watered down and discarded lore, try to use it it rewrites

Skyrim’s Civil War with the Stormcloaks and Talos worship is one such example when plenty of people who complain about the loss of previous lore try to use it in rewrites, and by doing so, completely misses the point of that the current story is telling (if clumsily and contradictory at times). They want the Stormcloaks’ conflict with the Empire be about venerating the old Nordic gods and be a tale about the uwunderdogs vs imperialism.

Keep reading

#the elder scrolls #tes #skyrim #tes v: skyrim #reblog #yeah. #not to claim that elder scrolls games are esoteric masterpieces of writing (they are not) #but sometimes i get the feeling people literally just dont think about them enough #because they automatically assume that a flawed plot cant have intentional themes

[the-old-caius]

he's got a sadness about him you only see in catholic stained glass windows

#martin septim #😶‍🌫️

[the-old-caius]

Was losing my ability to think when I tried writing this but what I was saying is that the past is haunting Skyrim in every way possible. Alduin is back and denying the world a future, untended graves are filled with the dead walking, the Nord have lost their own religion and are killing each other over a god imposed on them by the Empire... even the dragonborn is the last, killing deathless beings and stealing their memory, speaking to dead gods and seeking and beating Alduin in the afterlife with the help of the dead... the country is ravaged by war and in ruins... Winterhold is lost... the Nord are fearful of magic when it was once integral to them... death too. So much of Skyrim is about the death of people, cultures, gods and ideals. Twisting the memory of them to fuel the rampant obsession with death. Everything the Nord do not know is an enemy, but everything they know is lost or warped to make more enemies. A paranoid people

Sundered king-less bleeding

skyrim. game about time

#jon battle-born was RIGHT #skyrim #the elder scrolls #tes v: skyrim #tes #ramblings #im still not making sense but ehhh you get the picture

[the-old-caius]

Martin's weird non-reactions to the player committing murder and assault, how he says "people died" in the cult of Sanguine without elaborating and that he owned the rose "briefly" kinda just makes me think he murdered those people. Maybe manslaughtered 'em via unbound daedra if we're generous

#guy commits murder #gets cold feet and maybe finally understands what kind of forces hes dealing with #pulls all the petals off the rose #fucks off and becomes a priest #sounds about right #its kind of a joke but also i like to operate under that headcanon #the elder scrolls #oblivion #tes iv: oblivion #martin septim #ramblings

[the-old-caius]

I really like the “not being the main character” thing about Oblivion’s main plot but it could have been taken even further. Every time you come back from your errands to visit Martin there should be some kind of larger-than-life situation or conversation going on for which you have no context at all. That would be funny

#tes #oblivion #tes iv: oblivion #reblog #that situation before the battle of Bruma but every single time... #id kill the bastard myself

[the-old-caius]

skyrim. game about time

#skyrim

[the-old-caius]

If Lorkhan had his heart torn out by/at the behest of Akatosh for betrayal and Pelinal is heartless and in his chest sits only the rage of a mindless dragon but then the stone where his heart should've been is said to be the symbol of a covenant Akatosh sealed with his own heart-blood and then when the stone is destroyed and the covenant is broken Akatosh manifests and that was the last thing that needed to happen to have the LAST dragonborn appear. What does that mean

#the elder scrolls #akatosh #lorkhan #pelinal whitestrake #ramblings #tes iv: oblivion #tes v: skyrim

[the-old-caius]

oblivion art nightmare bam bam 

#oh these are just delightful #oblivion #the elder scrolls #martin septim #uriel septim vii #corvus umbranox #lucien lachance #hieronymus lex #sheogorath #adoring fan #vicente valtieri #janus hassildor #jauffre #baurus #reblog

[the-old-caius]

some of ya’ll be like

#tes #oblivion #reblog #👁👁

[the-old-caius]

Lorkhan and ES humanity's association with genocide to me seems like the result of one particular author's agenda- Ysgramor's "palaces of idleness" speech and everything about Pelinal have the same source. That and a fandom utterly obsessed with the notion of race war

i'd go a step farther and say that the entire elder scrolls series (as well as the genre of which it is a part) is irrevocably premised on the notion of race war and that attributing that fact to one particular developer rather than acknowledging the involvement of everyone else who was also initially involved in conceptualizing tamriel as "the arena" in which different "races" are destined to do battle is a bit reductive in that it doesn't address the wider issue (that the mainstream fantasy genre is rife with racism and colonialist thought and that elder scrolls is one of many examples of fantasy media that parrot racist and colonialist tropes dating back to tolkien and his imitators)

[the-old-caius]

#flashing lights #gif #eyestrain #martin septim #it's him.

[the-old-caius]

Last post got me curious, which daedra did your HoK choose for the Blood of the Daedra quest?

#azura... #caius knows at best what a daedric princes realm is #and also does not want to have the slightest thing to do with daedra #so he just went with the advice #ended up being a bad call #caught vampirism and spent three months in the wilderness looking to cure it #burned to death more than once #cringefail

[the-old-caius]

I think Cyrodiil should use glagolitic script. Slavic alphabet invented by missionaries from Byzantine, what more do you need

#the elder scrolls #oblivion #tes iv: oblivion #ramblings

[the-old-caius]

I neglected to mention, I don't necessarily buy that the intended reading was simply Divine Right of Kings Good, Empire Good. It's not what I got out of it, at the very least. Martin has a crisis of faith specifically regarding the god that granted the right of Kings, says that waiting for a divine to intervene and guide you isn't how you fight off evil, (supposedly this is framed as correct, since that conviction is what leads us to victory at Bruma, subsequently being how we even get the amulet back) (the complicated part here is that while this, in part, denounces the idea of a god-chosen Emperor, he also fulfills that idea in the same act) and like, he ended the covenant, the third era and the septim dynasty, and that's what saved Tamriel, so. YMMV? In the end, a divine did intervene, but only because of the Amulet being shattered, so blindly clinging to that symbol of rule would've ended far worse... the invocation of the avatar is also weirdly ambiguous regarding why things actually happened. I've said this as a joke before, you could 100% read it as divine retribution instead. It's also not like Akatosh is a beacon of morality or sense.

The story lacks perspective- you get the Blades, a religious order dedicated to Talos and sworn to serve the Dragonborn on one side, and the insane world-ending cultists on the other. Not good! But Martin specifically, as arguably the central character of the Main Quest, has more going on than just being a symbol for a "righteous reign of emperors". Quite the opposite, at times

[the imperial legion specifically, the Empire's tool for conquest, also renders itself useless to actually fighting off the forces of Oblivion cause they're busy "defending" the border, so like... that might not count as an explicit condemnation of imperial conquest (Redguard did that), but it certainly doesn't cast it in a good light.]

M. Caius-antivirus 1) don’t know your pronouns 2) I keep thinking of your soldier/poet/king thingie and like. 🤔 can’t quite word it but do you think Martin found apotheosis as Just Martin or as Martin Septim? I know the intended reading is the second one because Todd Coward said divine right of kings, but the more I think about it, the more I find it romantic/rewarding that he was ultimately Just Martin. What do you think? :o

Good evening 1.) he/him :] and 2.) okay so here's the thing. I have so much to say about like. Everything that's behind the covenant and the amulet and how that kinda re-frames in my mind a little. Like the origins are pretty fucked up and I think making it fucked up was a conscious decision

Short answer is that I think the breaking of the amulet and covenant was another turning point where something significant changed. Avatar of Akatosh.

His blood... the dragon needs the mortality of human flesh for the blood to mean something? You know? All of it.

#had to add something sorry #yeah 😵‍💫 #theres the part where Martin wears tiber septims armor #which is also the part where he invokes the name septim #but the story doesnt exactly force the idea of gods being inherently *good* #like specifically Brother Martin the priest of akatosh is hopeless and at his lowest #uhh. its complicated and i think just assuming that the empire is always intended to be good and just misses some parts #which isnt to say that it was handled perfectly or even well #i dont think i can truly judge that at this point #but these games arent like... dumb. #theyre a bit stupid but theres thought behind it #and also. the lore behind the amulet itself is kinda sinister #like its got akatoshs heart-blood in it and it mightve been pelinals in-place-of-a heart #he has no heart in his chest only the rage of a mindless dragon etc #at least by the time skyrim comes around the game specifically points out that dragons are brutal creatures that conquer and murder #and that a dragonborn inherits that nature but that anyone can work to defy their nature #ehh??