jazz-penguin

[jazz-penguin]

[jazz-penguin]

asking sincerely. do you see a romance between jayce and viktor? do you think they ended up being something romantic at the end?

With apologies I am going to only half talk about the thing you are asking me, since I have something else on my mind and you happened to hit the button that makes me vomit it into words.

Coming at this from an aromantic perspective, I obviously don't experience the state of absurd obsessive delusion that you bizarre romantic freaks fetishize so feverishly*, but I am often annoyed by the idea that friendship and romance are either opposites or mutually exclusive. From my perspective, the boundary between the two is at best thin, and more realistically not actually a boundary at all except by cultural construction.

*i am taking an excessively hostile, crass tone for my own amusement i do not mean this seriously please be normal at me, weird allo freaks

I won't get into my full feelings about the end of Arcane, but it seems perfectly plain to me that the script, the imagery and the animation presents Jayce and Viktor as two halves of a whole, not opposing forces but alike to yin and yang: opposites which each contain the other. And at the climax of the show, the greatest peril to life and peace in the narrative is resolved by these two men literally joining their bodies and souls together, and going into eternity holding one another for comfort and strength. They are quite literally soulmates, quite literally the most important people in one another's lives.

I don't think that that kind of intimate emotional connection between men must necessarily be either romantic or sexual - I am aromantic, and plenty of ace people exist, and there is nothing in our natures excluding us from intense connections of love with other people of any gender.

I also think it is willfully ignorant (and genuinely homophobic) to act as though these deep connections are mutually exclusive with sex and romance. As though if Viktor and Jayce fucked nasty and made out sloppy style, suddenly their intimacy is less pure or valid, or tainted somehow.

"If these two men who are emotionally close to one another also fuck or get romantically involved, then friendship is dead, murdered on the floor by a dick-shaped knife; vile sexuality corrupts and debases the true, pure and virtuous love of ✨friendship✨" <- This shit is homophobic at a baseline, queerphobic in general, and frankly as an aromantic man I find it pretty fucking insulting as well.

What, are my friendships with other men just inherently more pure and divine, more meaningful and true than a gay man's can ever be, because I will never suffer the vile temptation of adding romance to my affection? Is that how I should think of myself? And is an aroace man more pure than me still, the only source of TRUE male friendship that a man can ever experience, free from the pustulant corruption of sexuality and romantic desire?

You get this pathetic defensiveness (especially from men, but other genders aren't immune) wherein sex and sexuality and romance between men is perceived as a threat to men's right and ability to experience deep connection to each other. But the emotional castration of men comes not from people imagining sex and romance as a component of our relationships - it comes from people who insist that our emotional lives must be ruled by strict binaries. Sex and romance, OR ELSE friendship. Deep romantic connection OR ELSE deep platonic connection. Pick one and do not dare to imagine both, nor act as though the boundary between them is something that we built by cultural fiat, and which can be dismantled just the same.

And yes, yes, yes, I know there are cultural forces literally illuminati-style conspiring to systemically erase the entire existence of explicitly romantic, sexual male love from media, and I know that homophobic puritanism is on the rise and there are material concerns and a real necessity for explicit representation in fiction, yes I know. Everything is more complicated than a tumblr post can cover, I am not trying to Solve Rainbow Capitalism™ over here, I am trying to express frustration as an aromantic man that this stupid fucking binary keeps getting culturally reinforced by both my enemies and my well-meaning allies, when I think the binary is what's fucking killing us in the first place.

So anyway. My position is that Viktor and Jayce can be entirely aromantic no-homo friends, and they can fuck nasty in the throes of mutual need and obsession, and I refuse to entertain the idea that there is an irresolvable contradiction between those things. Each of those can contain the other, or become the other given time and circumstance.

What the imagery, storytelling and script of Arcane makes clear is that Viktor and Jayce love each other more than life itself. To say that that love must be shoved into the box of either "platonic" or "romantic" is to miss out on almost everything that is beautiful about love. It can be both and neither! It can be a secret third, ninth or fifteenth thing that they haven't invented a tag for on Ao3 yet.

They are giving each other whatever the spiritual mind-ghost equivalent of sloppy backshots are on the ethereal plain forever, they are the most romantic lovers in the cosmos, and they are also the most chaste and platonic life-partner friends you have ever seen, effortlessly intimate and unashamedly tender. They are men who love one another, in every way that love matters.

You can pick whichever interpretation brings you joy, and resonates with what your heart needs, the text of the show is eminently and explicity open to it, and anyone who says otherwise either failed to pay attention, or refused to pay attention on purpose.

[jazz-penguin]

i need y'all to understand that the beautiful words that harry lloyd said yesterday didn't confirm jayvik. he didn't say that jayvik were married with 4 adopted children who live in a cottage by a stream either (but one can dream). i feel like that's the only thing some people are taking away from his speech, but you're missing out on the real beauty!

he said that romance isn't enough to describe their bond, their relationship. that to call their relationship romantic would belittle what it means.

they are not lovers because lovers isn't enough of a word to encapsulate their relationship and what their relationship means.

they're not romantic because they're more than romance. they're not brothers or platonic either. in fact, there is no word to describe their relationship because it doesn't exist.

that's why harry lloyd called them soul partners. he made up a word to describe them because not even soulmates was enough.

they're like two cogs in the fabric of the universe that need to be together in order for the universe to even function. they're two halves of the same soul!!

one cannot exist without the other; they're yin and yang, light and dark, good and evil etc. etc.

so are they romantic? no. are they platonic? no. are they brothers? no. they're a secret fourth thing that doesn't even exist in the human language because it's so beautiful that it can only exist in fiction (:

(and p.s. to the ppl saying, "how can you ship jayvik when jayce literally calls viktor his brother!!" you try having a bond with someone so profound that if you don't save each other, the whole universe collapses, and you try to describe what it is! jayce is emotionally constipated at best; brother was the only word he could think of that was close enough. give the man a break)

[jazz-penguin]

[jazz-penguin]

diversity win! the pharmaceutical corporation that is going to trap your wife in an evil basement includes gender neutral pronouns on their patient intake forms

[jazz-penguin]

I want to go home. SEVERANCE | 2x07 | Chikhai Bardo

[jazz-penguin]

most intentional design choice i've ever seen

[jazz-penguin]

[jazz-penguin]

Planetarium Dress

Finally got to paint this idea I had after failing the last time. My friends on Discord suggested a music dress so I might take a stab at that next :D Timelapse below. The full hours long video recording, HD image, and PSD file will be DMed on my Patreon.com/Yuumei on March 5th

[jazz-penguin]

coziest of hugs

[jazz-penguin]

[jazz-penguin]

”So I feel like this is the perfect time for a film like this. I feel like the film has become more important and more relevant today, which is a sad thing.” – Oscar Winner Taika Waititi in the Press Room

[jazz-penguin]

stay your pretty eyes on course

[jazz-penguin]

I'm closing up the void.

[jazz-penguin]

Perhaps.

[jazz-penguin]

Pourquoi ton prénom me blesse Quand il se cache juste là dans l'espace? C'est quelle émotion? D'la haine ou la douceur, quand j'entends ton prénom?

[jazz-penguin]

Guys, I'm on Bluesky now!

Link is in my bio, come visit me ❤️