#cw: michael kirkbride

[chappydev]

A further elucidation:

If it turns out I am wrong, and Kirkbride is just an asshole, he doesn't monetarily benefit from me enjoying his cosmology and theological writings. It's not like JK Rowling where the beliefs are baked into the fiction and she makes millions off of it.

A lot of people hate kirkbride because hes said some pretty transphobic things and graphically threatened a transgender man on Facebook

That is a key point and I am (unfortunately) aware of what he said and for the sake of everyone's eyes I will not repeat it here.

It was my understanding everything he said/did was during the years he was addicted to drugs and he was of unsound mind.

*I MAY BE WRONG ABOUT THE TIMELINE BUT MY OPINION IS BASED ON WHAT I KNOW/UNDERSTOOD PER HIS SITUATION*

That doesn't excuse him of ANY legal or ethical responsibility and he bears the full weight of what he did/said.👈👈👈

I (unfortunately) come from a family with multiple addicts and have seen how substance abuse and addiction ruins someone's life and personality. Addiction is a disease that ruins a human. It makes them say and do the most terrible things you can imagine and worse. Perhaps this is my own experiences seeing/living with addicts that's informing all this, but I've also seen former addicts I love utterly turn their lives around for the better.

From what I've seen of Kirkbride in recent years has been him posting Warhammer figurines and occasionally making tes art. He's sobered up and seems to be trying to move on from his fucked up behaviors and addiction. I hope, pray, want, wish, that he had truthfully left the past behind for the better. From what I understand, his wife is very lovely and very LGBTQ+ friendly so I'd assume she's got her hands full with him and has been helping him find his better self.

[velvetvexations]

my grandest desire is to use Michael Kirkbride's Foul Murder* as an album cover

*cw gore

[musherum]

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

[dotheflumph]

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

[foulserpent]

(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 

[dunmertitty]

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