#cw: michael kirkbride
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dotheflumph · 2 years ago
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all wonderful creations
great day to create something buds makes you FEEL GREAT. create a drawing or a poem or a little tune you hum to yourself OR create a walk down the block or a little fun glance or a moment of conversation OR a moment of quiet silence for yourself. these are all wonderful creations
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musherum · 7 years ago
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okay okay okay the 36 lessons of vivec are meaningful and serious and full of intricate symbolism and shit yeah sure but HEAR ME OUT.......... vivec totally wrote every single one of them when ze was stoned out of hir mind
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boethiah · 3 years ago
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(Disorder eating metaphor cw) Eso is so...empty despite everything. It's like the game equivalent of bingeeating a whole bag of chips at 4:30 and then not having a real meal the rest of the day
i'm not saying this is the ONLY reason but i think one of the reasons eso is so... like that... is that it's the example we have of a TES game where the corporate entity producing it is heavily involved with the fandom. now i haven't been on twitter in over a year so i can't speak to the state of esotwt but, having an 'official' social media account that's responsible for promo'ing fan-made content but also selling the game, makes it really difficult to meaningfully critique that game or even have serious discussions on it... like to my knowledge the last time the "devs" were this active with the fandom was when michael kirkbride was an avid r/teslore user and those days were weird as hell. having the creator(s) present and active makes fandom toxic for some reason
the other reason i think ESO feels so empty in compared to other games is that it's not very customizable. you can't really install mods, you're stuck to different classes, "useful" characters are expected to join every faction for the skill lines. you're kind of stuck to a track so you don't have people getting really creative with their characters or going out of their way to explore the game any more. anything interesting that's added will be pointed to with a big red arrow, whereas in other games like skyrim etc and even in the base eso games it's not uncommon to go running thru the wilderness and just randomly stumble across something really cool.
and then there's the recent dlcs which have completely given up on even writing a compelling storyline and relying entirely on nostalgiabait, because they're more invested in getting new purchases from people who enjoyed skyrim or oblivion or whatever than they are at actually providing an interesting compelling story. there's a reason the best dlcs (orsinium, thieves guild, summurset etc) take place in entirely new locations and have plots mostly independent of any other games. they're actually adding to the lore and giving ppl new stuff to talk about like--
because like. okay all TES games have problems but i think they have such staying power BECAUSE there's so much freedom and so much is left ambiguous. like there's a reason that there's still a morrowind fandom nineteen (!!!) years after it came out, morrowind presents a lot of cool stuff but also leaves it all up to interpretation. we don't even officially know who killed nerevar. there's a huge amount of room for people to come up with their own ideas for morrowind and oblivion and skyrim, put forwards theories and try to make sense of stuff that's hardly touched on. and core eso kinda got this too, they gave us a ton of "mundane" worldbuilding (argonian tail warmers! siege warfare in tamriel! multiple quests about helping guar herders!) that inspired a lot of creativity when it first came out, and also hinted just enough at deeplore (the entirety of coldharbour's worldbuilding) to be interesting
but fans talking amongst each other doesn't generate revenue. so recently eso just gives you nostalgia on a plate and says "hey buy this"
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foulserpent · 4 years ago
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(tw for abuse) i dont understand what vivec is conveying in the sermons wrt the monsters and molag bal. he becomes divine so does he mean that stuff literally happened? or someone mortal did that to him and hes recontextualizing it? or is it like a metaphor for something more abstract about violence? the wedding stuff really confuses me. ive only gotten a little into morrowind lore
(putting under cut cw sexual abuse)
um like the thing with that is theres . a couple levels that entire narrative functions on, and it depends entirely on which  of two ways the spear “muatra” is interpreted
like the most obvious level and one that was absolutely intended is that muatra is a phallic symbol which is pretty explanatory when you see how its used. characterizes vivec as someone sexually violent. its really disgusting lol. this WAS intentional and mk gave a (non-)apology/explanation about that whole thing which was him being really fucked up at that point in his life and dealing with addiction and mental health issues which like . if it was just that then maybe id be like “ok whatever” but hes done a lot of other shit too.
but the other level, which is the level in which that whole narrative isnt terrible, is. “muatra” is an anagram of the word “trauma”. thats not accidental. and when you read that whole narrative through that perspective, it makes a LOT more sense bc the story becomes a recounting of a traumatic incident. the “wedding” and everything within is a recontextualization of something that happened to vivec that is being turned into a narrative aspect of their godhood journey instead
like the basic story is: vivec experiences abuse, and recontextualizes this as a “wedding”. creates a narrative where this very event is what taught him to grasp CHIM, indicating a life changing significance to this. this ahuse begets “monsters” that vivec gives birth to, which functions both as a confirmation on what this abuse is and a externalization of the results- the monstrous children are sort of like the twisted and disgusting results of what happened to them. if you chose to think of it as 100% symbolic, the monsters would be symbolism for the results of trauma and how trauma changes You. what that trauma bore
vivec gains the spear “muatra” from this encounter, which again is an anagram of trauma and pretty much every usage of the word can be read as trauma. in turning their trauma into a spear, its kind of like. an attempt to reclaim strength and autonomy after trauma. its reshaping what happened into a weapon and killing the “children” the abuse bore with it so one can become a new normal again. its a sort of cruel healing where you carry whats with you as something that makes you strong but like is violent and painful
i think all of the above is intentional, but the rest im going to say would give michael kirkbride too much credit. if it was written by a better human being who was writing from experience of how trauma affects you, id say the dual symbolism of: muatra as a sexual object used to inflict violence, and “trauma” made into a weapon, would be intentional. the more overt narrative of vivec being sexually violent with it would be representative of like a fear of having been sullied, disgust with oneself, disgust with ones body, fear of continuing the cycle, fear that youll become like those who hurt you, lashing out with a destructive coping mechanism. 
like it could function on that level but i think it was just MK being awful and putting shit in for shock value. also its just one example of  MK being shitty about vivec being intersex. placing a lot of like fetishistic emphasis on their genitalia. theres a lot going on there and almost all of it is bad
anyway as far as how literal it is. the sermons CANNOT be interpreted 100% literally. they partially exist to shape temple doctrine and maybe partially exist to instruct the nerevarine, so at the very least you have to assume SOME of it is untrue. like a lot of TES lore stuff is pretty damn literal but this is one case where i think its more interesting and valuable for it to be interpreted first and foremost as vivec rewriting their own history into a narrative fitting of what they want to be. 
but that doesnt mean NONE of it happened like, some of it might be real. some of it might have been retroactively made real. etc. it could be that the abuse narrative is 100% mundane with no daedra involved, it could be that they did actually grapple with molag bal (i think they did in some capacity but this isnt what its actually about). 
i think people with more developed Thoughts on this part of lore could say better but i think its less important to worry about the exact facts of it and more important to look into whats being said 
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dunmertitty · 6 years ago
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okay you know what? i’m still fucking mad about this
this skyrim specific and i’m not gonna go into too many details but i’m mad (and i realize eso is better about most of this stuff but i’m still ://// about it)
i’m not gonna get in to the early games too much, but look at a picture of the arena cover and see how that game treated women. also titty armor is still a thing in all of the games.
they REALLY could’ve made vivec intersex and/or nonbinary without being interphobic and transphobic. they REALLY could’ve done without making vivec into a rape fantasy as well :)
“heavily implied” gay relationships don’t count as gay rep :)
gay rep that had to be taken out but somehow is still canon because someone outside the game said so isn’t gay rep!
homophobic jokes don’t don’t count as gay rep either!
dead gay trope (multiple times, might i add) ALSO isn’t good rep!
argonians don’t count as trans/genderfluid rep if you only mention it a few times and don’t implement it into the games :)
making a perverted character bi IS NOT good bi rep!
making all the daedric princes (ya know, the """bad guys""") genderfluid doesn’t count as good trans rep! (yes i know that not all of them are bad, but labeling only the daedric princes as genderfluid and not any of the other “higher powers”? sketchy.)
also making a bunch of feminine male (dumag gro-bonk, cicero, adoring fan, etc) characters purposefully “annoying” and “hateable”? sketchy.
also on a completely related note that i’m not gonna explain,
FUCK MICHAEL K*RKBRIDE
i’m still mad about the “gay rep” in skyrim tbh
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boethiah · 6 years ago
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How do you feel about Lamae Bal, the most famous victim of rape in TES, and how rape turned her into a villain? In fact I generally find the vampire concept of abuse victims turned abusers to be super iffy
rape cw 
ehh, TES isn’t very good with these themes, and the lore seems pretty fond of “abuse victim turns abuser” stories (michael kirkbride has outright stated that this is what he was going for with vivec :/). morrowind and the games prior to it treated rape as a punchline to a joke in some cases and as a far-off abstract non-issue in others, and in later games they transitioned to never mentioning it at all– probably more for the sake of ratings than for a shift in conscience. morrowind in particular is really bad about this, what with all the rape jokes.
there are some parts of the lore where you have to acknowledge that whoever wrote it was extremely ignorant in the best case and a total shithead in the worst, and either salvage or ignore it with that in mind. i’ve written about the lamae bal story before in an attempt to salvage it; my personal interpretation of it is that it wasn’t lamae bal’s victimhood that turned her into a monster, it was the fact she raped the nibenese who saved her. i choose to read it as a condemnation of those who would use their own trauma as an excuse to hurt others. but that’s both a personal interpretation and one that i’m certain wouldn’t be shared by whoever wrote the story, so other people can do what they will with it 
basically it does suck. but on the bright side tes’ lore is very accommodating of retcons/omissions! ultimately the lamae bal story is just a story and there’s no reason we can’t say “that’s just propaganda by molag bal and not how it really happened”. there are shitty fairy-tales irl too, after all.  
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