#i just also could really use some money to save rn OTL

[ask-neontiger]

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they can be found here on my TH!

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

Fanon characterization of the Calypso twins between me and The Wild West Pyro: 

We both have the strong sinking feeling that the twins are slowly going to lose it as the game goes on, so here’s our collaborated analysis of the two:

I’ll be in non-cool text, while The Wild West Pyro will be in italics, for easier distinction between us. [There will be slight edits and changes for cohesion]

“It would be pretty interesting if we found out the Calypsos/the cult started out with 'good intentions'.”

“Hell, you can see the populism kicking in there.What did the writers say? Ah. "Your poor bandits! You're kicked around and nobody likes you, but we can give you a purpose in life! We can make you feel appreciated and loved!" [This is a reference to the Danny Homan interview] Something of that line.”

“oh yeah! the twins are also providing them with food and weaponry. i mean i can see why a bandit desperate for something better would follow them.”

“I'm guessing how this goes: The Twins start off by winning people over by talking about how they want Pandora to be finally at peace after endless war and giving the bandits a new life where they're treated like actual people. Then once they've got enough people, they say that the Raiders have to go, the corporations have to go, with the Vaults seized the universe will see no more war. Actually, I'm predicting rn that they have a very, very cult-like end goal in terms of IRL parallels.What if they choose to "cleanse" the universe with whatever power Tyreen possesses? And once everything standing in their way is gone, they can create this ideal utopian peaceful universe where there's no corporations and no more fighting. Meanwhile the Eridians are panicking because they know it's a doomed plan and the Vaults do not work like that.”

“[this is very much a] large scale Opportunity situation. literally reverse uno card as to what jack was attempting”

“Yep. Paradise for the common man bandit. OTL parallels to what usually sparks communist revolutions or popular revolutions in general. So yeah, Tyreen could very easily justify herself in that she genuinely wants to bring peace to the universe, with all means necessary. Of course, internally, the Twins just want to be gods and play at being them and hold onto their power as absolute rulers presiding over an eternally-grateful populace.”

“definitely sounds like two teenage cult leaders to me ngl. i could see them not being too secure in themselves (behind the vvv confident personas they put on) and constantly second guessing themselves and reassuring that they're doing this for everyone's own good even as things just keep getting worse and worse. could [have] a tie-in to whatever tragic backstory they might have”

“Yep and yep. And there's this internal fear that they don't know what being a god entails, if they'll lose sense of who they are or not... but put that aside. All for the greater good! I'm actually thinking about this. People note that the Twins are basically streamer critiques, which is a yes. But if you want to take them to serious universe-spanning villain territory, I think that they'll absorb the knowledge from Elpis at one point. And they start to become more detached and more frightening, and a lot more eloquent as they really start becoming gods in the BL sense. While still being narcissistic attention whores who actually like killing people off with their powers but pretend to act benevolent. Essentially, you have the Greek Gods except there's two Zeuses, one is a girl and they've both got all of Zeus's worst traits cranked up to eleven.”

“oh god are they gonna dick everything that moves? oh no... cover ava's eyes! joking aside, that sounds accurate. especially given the borderlands universe loves to tie in its greek mythology. also also i am glad someone else agrees the twins are going to elpis. i refuse to believe they'd destroy it/blow it up before going there for the info. that shit is valuable! especially if you want to convince people you're gods?? accurately predicting the future is insanely good for doing that! plus all the other cool shit you can do by knowing exactly what's going to happen.”

“It also makes the Twins much more dangerous if they can see every outcome...unfortunately, Lilith is very good at playing 4D Chess by now.”

“lilith, putting on her sunglasses and cracking her knuckles: it's time to show them what a real military organization can do. ellie is her hype woman with the drink and a towel. also also lilith is probably kicking herself for not being fast enough this time to punch the vault symbol into tyreen's face.”

“Honestly, I'd love Lilith to turn out to be this really crafty, really charismatic guerrilla warfare commander. Like an Innie leader but they're hypercompetent, not a terrorist and also have Keyes's sheer talent for analyzing battles and tactics and adapting accordingly. Lilith sitting up in Sanc-III being BL!Keyes except a lady and specializing in ground warfare would be sick.”

“yes. fucking. please. gearbox please give lily all the character development, your girl deserves it. im glad because it does seem like she's getting there when you crash land on Promethea. and even the way she handles herself on the bridge is very smooth and confident.”

“tfw you can see the future and, yet, the lady you robbed of her siren powers is outsmarting you 24/7, 365 days a year despite you being able to see the future. also you're trying to fight fate and desperate to change reality so that you can't lose like the future said you would. joke's on you, you cannot fight it.”

“There is no changing it. bonus points if ty only saw the very end, so she is utterly clueless on how the middle bits play out. so lilith is kicking her ass across elpis and she's like ‘this is NOT how i saw this going’.”

“I'd seriously imagine that life in BL corporate society really is like life in Rapture or Columbia. The upper class profits immensely and reaps all the best goods, but they refuse to do the dirty work themselves so they rely on this huge workforce who they constantly cheat, lie and exploit. The few achieve huge power and stuff at the expense of the many. Looking at the Twins in the parallels of how revolutions go, they'll basically go from recruiting the bandits to recruiting the huge lower class of every planet.  Looking at records from all the planets, we've got people being screwed over again and again, corruption and other nasties. The Twins claim that they want all corporations to go, to bring some form of unified government back to the galaxy. And it works- their army size quadruples overnight and goes from there. By the time we get to Promethea, the COV are already recruiting everyone dissatisfied with corporate life. If they successfully seize control of Maliwan like I predict, they'll be a force to be reckoned with. The Twins will use the masses to achieve some sort of theocratic revolution, [they] claim that it's all for everyone's good. But in reality, they want to be absolute rulers of the universe, gods worshipped and feared by all.”

“Oh yeah, the twins are definitely feeding (maybe literally) off the huge numbers of dissatisfied people across the universe- the mega corporations are evil, no doubt there are millions of people waiting for something better. tbh, if gaige wasn't booted from the main game, I could see a whole side story of her having started a revolution somewhere, and then joining up with the Crimson Raiders once her entire party just up and joined the CoV. And [I would] 100% bet the twins started a campaign against DAHL and Atlas and suddenly nearly every bandit on pandora joined up with them. (also Athena was sitting in a chair clutching at the armrests and janey was like "don't you fuckin dare, hon" and athena is like "but... Atlas...")”

[We talk more about Gaige’s anarchist revolution and trying to topple the mega corporations in a less cult-y fashion here]

“... Bonus points 2: The COV fire up the memories of Jack to rally everyone into opposing Hyperion and suddenly Athena is like "OK I'm not going, mobilize the army." And Janey is like ‘Here we go...’.”

[we joke around a little bit more about Athena and Janey here]

“I can imagine Rhys's internal conflict, knowing that he has to make the galaxy a better place but at the same time, maintain his corporate power and control because without it, he's doomed. Then again, Rhys is no stranger to doing shady stuff. I think a lot of the Twins's evil will be in how they treat their followers.There's all the smooth-talking and promises of the future. And then when you actually get there, you're brainwashed into being another unthinking, 100% loyal attack dog for them. And you follow everything they ask you to do for 100%, even if they use you for power experiments or cannon fodder. And the game will remind us that these people weren't all bandits - over the course of the story, the COV includes people like former corporate execs, entire families, people who were just trying to get by day to day. And now we as Vault Hunters have to kill all these ordinary people to save the universe. Tough choices, eh?“

“Oh geez, you know that's a really fair point. i know borderlands likes to push the 'morally gray' aspect of things, but holy shit that's dark. (not saying i don't love it though, i totally do lol) You’re probably 100% right that rhys is struggling internally. especially after being so closely tied up with hyperion and even fiona and sasha, seeing exactly what hyperion did to people not just on helios but the people trying to live their daily lives and survive on pandora. im sure he has a similar reasoning to himself as the twins: im doing this for the better of the people. i can help so many more people with this money and power. somewhat similar to handsome jack, but hopefully lorelei (if she's not evil) helps ground him and keep him from jumping into the middle-to-deep end.”

“I'm still betting that Rhys will remain on the good side, if a teensy bit unscrupulous. I mean, the whole thing about the Twins is that they're social commentary of livestreamers and influencers and the incredibly toxic influence they can have. There are countless aspects of that to explore. If streamers can mobilize their entire loyal fanbases to bully the crap outta some poor chump or buy things or let their fans believe that they know the streamer 100% as a person and not a persona, the Twins can convince people to go to war.”

“Oooh yeah, it's not hard to imagine they probably don't even need the brainwashing for a majority of their cult, just the select few who are either on the fence or against it, but are [still] 'available'. irl streamers can be seriously fuckin scary, man, im not surprised this is the route gearbox is going for. now, it would be severely fucked up if there was a scene where tyreen demands someone kill themselves on the spot and they do without hesitation. if you watch the moze gameplay there seems to be a hint of something like that going on over the radio/TVs, she mentions something about their sacrifice or something, then you hear a dude screaming/gurgling.”

“Everyone's thinking that Tyreen will be this laughable, entertaining villain. But I'm constantly seeing hints and estimating that she is going to be far, far more scarier than we give her credit for. For one, Jack was a presence largely relegated to audio. We only physically saw him in BL2 twice. The Twins run a cult, which itself is frightening already. And it looks like we'll be seeing them in person very often.”

“Oh yes, tyreen is fucking terrifying. i mean even that she can steal siren powers is already a huge "whoa what the fuck" in my book. that one line at the end of the HBC where she's like "you're my most loyal follower vault thief, you just don't know it yet"? fucking scary, how her voice drops and gets all serious for a split second and then the hologram just cuts out. i was like "wh- wait hang on-???" i definitely think she is putting up a persona and as the game goes on we're slowly going to watch her lose it. troy will probably grow a bit distant from her as well if he doesn't lose it, too. definitely think ty is going to try and kill him once he's of no use to her, because he's just been a pain in her side because she had to keep him alive as the brains of the operation. but once the operation is done... whoops. sorry pal. don't need you anymore. they're the main villains, i can't see her holding the bonds of family in high regard at all. she could totally write off his death as like ‘he sacrificed himself for the Great Vault, now we pray to him every day and sacrifice ourselves in his name’ or smth”

“She puts up this fun-loving persona as a streamer, but she then decides the Vault Hunters get to see her true self. It is not pretty. It makes Jack look like a kitten-cuddling fluffball, that's how bad the real Tyreen is. It makes Piston and Vasquez sound like friendly guys you'd take out for lunch after work. It makes Hector's goals look very reasonable and sane. Also, perhaps she kills him and we never see how she did it, which ups the scare factor. It's like Troy disappeared and we have no idea how she killed him and how long it took for him to die. We just find a lot of irreconcilable proof that Troy is dead now and we don't know how. That is the amount of horror I'm estimating.”

“Oh man I love this. That's so horrible (in a good way), I can 100% see it happening. Jack swore revenge for us killing the person he 'loved'. Tyreen herself kills the person she 'loved' and we start to realize holy shit this is the real deal. She can't even pretend to care like Jack pretended to care (he didn't actually care about Angel as a person, but he did say things to try and make Angel think he did, just putting that out there cuz I don't wanna sound like I support him lol). There's just a complete contrast between her and Jack during the final levels of the game. Jack stops joking around "you feel that, child killer?", he's dead serious and ready to kill vs Tyreen laughing or just being off the rails bubbly for her 'streamer persona' while looking utterly unhinged”

so yeah, the convo teetered off after this a bit, but the general gist is that Tyreen is going to go absolutely off-the-wall by the end of the main story. this is somewhat supported by the Danny Homan interview that states the twins are going to have their relationship warp and twist.Tyreen is going to start going crazy with all the powers she absorbs and realize once the plan is over she won’t need Troy’s expertise anymore, and Troy is going to get sick of being relegated to the side when he’s the one with the master plan. We both have the deep feelings the twins aren’t going to stay as charismatic as they are in the little bit of promo material we’ve gotten of them. which i get, because in a lot of the official trailers, Troy looks pissed. Tyreen is always super smug no matter what shot she’s in, but Troy... he looks very angry in some shots we get. even when Ty is holding his forearm in that one shot, he rips his arm out of her grip. For example: “How many IRL streamer "friends" get into ridiculous drama and feuds with each other? Answer: a lot. Could be mirroring that with the twins. A lot of people are saying that the new villains will never match up to Jack. This is our take, and we're proud of it, and very confident in Gearbox's new writing team. ”

EDIT: some edits made by The Wild West Pyro