#i’m still taking hades art requests btw

[its-haughty]

Thanatos or Hypnos drinking the Nectar Zag gave them

it’s da guy!!!!

[cruddyborderlandstheories]

holy shit okay i was working on my Angel post and I got sucked into the mythology as you do when doing stuff like this, I’ve made 4 separate drafts since then but I can’t keep my mouth shut because guys, I know we’re all focused on the Calypsos, and how Calypso is the child of Atlas, and all that fun stuff

BUT

What if, in the grand scheme of things, Tyreen is Demeter, Troy is Demophon, and Persephone the mystery girl. please, I have wikipedia quotes for all of this. I personally am not an actual believer of this theory, but it was really fun to write, so here you go.

OKAY

Let’s start with Tyreen and Demeter. Yeah, she’s shown us that her power is like... Phasesuck or whatever, where she drains the life force out of people (and Siren powers, apparently), we also see in the art on the wall of the HBC that her and Troy are bringing food (in boxes) to the cultists.

So Demeter is “the goddess of the grain, agriculture, harvest, growth, and nourishment, who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito (Σιτώ), "she of the Grain", as the giver of food or grain”. It seems like Demeter is the exact opposite of what we know Tyreen as- right now she steals the life force and strength from people, meanwhile Demeter would nurture them and help them grow and get stronger. In addition: “Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death.” yeah. yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Bonus, I did a lot of research on Cybele a while ago while I was batshit crazy, and GUESS WHAT

“Demeter was often considered to be the same figure as the Anatolian goddess Cybele”

For Cybele: “Her cults most often were funded privately, rather than by the polis. Her ‘vivid and forceful character’ and association with the wild set her apart from the Olympian gods”. Now I don’t know exactly what the Olympian gods are in the borderlands verse. My first instinct was the corporations? But two of those are named after titans and the rest clearly aren’t greek. So I got nothing.

In addition, Demeter created a cult called “the Mysteries which give the initiates higher hopes in this life and the afterlife”. Sound familiar? Yeah, the Great Vault in BL3 that’s referenced by the Cultists while they’re dying. their exact words are “The Great Vault beckons”. To add to that, the Calypsos are stated as giving their cultists something to believe in so they can believe in themselves. They give them ‘higher hopes in this life’. Quote straight from the Danny Homan interview: “People need something to believe in and they need people to believe in them and that’s kind of what the Calypsos have provided. They’ve kind of gone ‘oh bandits, everyone calls you animals, everyone calls you trash... but we see there’s something, there’s something in you, there’s something we can elevate your murder to. Murder in our name’.”

So why do I think this matches up with Ty? Because I don’t think her power is solely taking power from others. I think she can turn around and distribute it to other things.

Moving on.

This coming bit is mainly why I think Demophon is Troy. Let’s take a looksie:

Weird beginning, but things start to make sense soon, I promise: “While Demeter was searching for her daughter Persephone, having taken the form of an old woman called Doso, she received a hospitable welcome from Celeus, the King of Eleusis in Attica. He asked her to nurse Demophon his son by Metanira.”

“As a gift to Celeus, because of his hospitality, Demeter planned to make Demophon a god, by anointing and coating him with ambrosia... making him immortal by burning his mortal spirit away in the family hearth every night.”

Sadly, she doesn’t succeed in making him immortal and Demophon dies because she was interrupted in her ritual. 

Why do I think this is tied to Troy? Because we know Typhon Deleon found something important. We know De Leon is the name of the legendary dude in our world who found the Fountain of Youth - the key to immortality. It’s also been confirmed that Troy can’t survive without Tyreen helping him (tending to him like Demeter does Demophon). It would make sense that they are trying to figure out a way to immortalize Troy (and, yeah, he probably does end up dying. There’s no other reason to mention he’s sick...) We also are all guessing that Troy’s tattoos have appeared by Ty giving him Lilith’s powers. and what is Lilith’s main element? Fire. 

Since we’re on the topic, let’s talk about Demophon’s brother, Triptolemus. He was considered one of the first priests of the Mysteries and one of his rules was “Honor your Parents”. Sound familiar? Yeah, “Honor the Father” that’s on some of the CoV propaganda posters. To explain: “He flew across the land on a chariot drawn by dragons... his mission of educating the whole of Greece in the art of agriculture. Triptolemus was equally associated with the bestowal of hope for the afterlife associated with the expansion of the Eleusinian Mysteries”. We know now that the ‘art of agriculture’ is Demeter’s domain, and we have likened this to Tyreen’s powers. So, likely, Triptolemus is the priest we see on the cover art. Walking around, chosen by Tyreen, teaching people about the Twin Gods and the cult ‘Children of the Vault’.

Now this is where I get a little stretchy. Because we know nothing of Mystery Girl on the cover.

Persephone. “Plutarch identifies Persephone with the season of spring, and Cicero calls her the seed of the fruits of the fields. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, her return from the underworld each spring is a symbol of immortality”. 

Now I talk about Zeus a bunch in my mythology masterpost that i have yet to post cause i'm always adding to it, and basically I think he’s a representative of the Eridians themselves. Some sort of leader or smth? idk

“Zeus, it is said, permitted Hades to abduct her... Demeter searched for her all over the earth with Hecate's torches. In most versions, [Demeter] forbids the earth to produce, or she neglects the earth and in the depth of her despair she causes nothing to grow. Helios, the sun, who sees everything, eventually told Demeter what had happened and at length she discovered the place of her abode. Finally, Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return Persephone. Hades indeed complied with the request, but first he tricked her, giving her some pomegranate seeds to eat. Persephone was released by Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, but because she had tasted food in the underworld, she was obliged to spend a third of each year there”.

now this is 100% unfounded bullshit im spewing here, but maybe this is why we have yet to actually see Mystery Girl, like, AT ALL. 

We know Tyreen wants to get stronger, she wants to absorb the powers of the Vault Monsters. but why? Just to rule over the galaxy? I mean, sure, why not, but she’s pretty much already getting there just with her cult.

Instead, you know what’d be cool? If she needed all those powers to fight whatever/whoever fucked with mystery girl. If she knew that opening all those Vaults was going to lead to something terrible and didn’t care because it was bad for the Eridians, or whatever that took her sister (?). Like, what if they actually were triplets (Tyreen being the first sister), but the reason Mystery Girl looks so young on the MoM is because she’s been missing since that age? Because they tried to make her immortal like they’re doing for Troy? If they’re all siblings, it’s possible they all have the same sickness. Tyreen can always heal herself because of her Siren powers, but what about Troy? The mystery girl? They’d need someone/something else to heal them. I’m sure Ty can do it for one of them, but both? They’d probably gone looking for a way to heal her, maybe they opened a Vault at some point? (maybe the red vault shown in all the wall art?) And Mystery Girl went missing because of it or smth. idk, im just rambling. i was gonna post my Angel post today but I got toooooootally sidetracked. might still do it if i have the energy. 

This is what my tabs are looking like right now btw lmao