maddogdrawing

[maddogdrawing]

Everything between Jayce and Viktor can really be traced back to their childhood inciting incidents and it’s killing me.

Jayce: a miracle saves him and his mom, forever imprinting him with the certainty that miracles do exist, they can be controlled, he can save his loved ones no matter how awful things get, if he can just be smart and bold and quick enough.

Viktor: he saw the horror of what Singed had done—of forcing a creature to live against its will, of the degradation and terror of being fundamentally changed. For a while he thought he understood Singed, when he decided that he was willing to throw away all his principles to survive his own body. But he didn’t, really. He didn’t understand. There was still a line he would not cross. He wanted to die human.

It’s fitting, then, and unspeakably tragic, that Jayce is the one who played Singed’s role in the end. Because you can’t ask Jayce to let a loved one go, when he knows there’s a miracle that can save him, the solution is right there, it will work if you will just let him try—and so he forces a change onto Viktor against his will. He traps him into the Arcane, takes apart and reassembles his body, strips him of his selfhood and humanity. All so that Viktor will live. Singed wasn’t talking about the desperation not to die—he was talking about the desperation not to lose someone you love.

And so Viktor is…changed. He lives, whether he wants to or not.

And so Jayce loses him anyway.

[maddogdrawing]

Parallels between Jayvik and the Phantom of the Opera

I can't believe I haven't seen any discussion yet around the musical theater influences in Arcane S2 so far (besides my one mention of its parallels with Les Miserables).

So as a basic, Phantom of the Opera-loving bitch, can we please take a moment to examine the Phantom of the Opera parallels that are literally shoved in our faces during this opening sequence and what that means for Jayvik?

Viktor is the Phantom. The show opening outright says it. The parallels are there. They're impossible to miss.

And then, when you dig a little deeper, hooo boy those parallels become even more stark. Especially if you read Viktor as romantically pining after Jayce, which 99.9999% of humanity does.

To quickly summarize, Phantom of the Opera is the story of a deformed genius who falls in love with an opera singer, Christine, and then nurtures her talents, only for her to in turn fall in love with a nobleman, Raoul. The ensuing love triangle is the heart of the plot, with Raoul and the Phantom both vying for Christine's love.

This shouldn't be a hard one to see the parallels for.

Viktor = The Phantom. Literally a genius born with a disfigurement, in this case a disability he sees as a weakness and a disease that is sapping away his life and hope of a legacy. He is riddled with jealousy for the person trying to pull his scientific/musical partner away from him, a person who happens to be beautiful and live a life of privilege that Raoul/Mel could offer to Jayce/Christine instead.

Jayce = Christine. Instead of sharing genius in music, he and Viktor share genius in science. Like Christine, he is tugged between the glittering world of politics and privilege, vs his genius and love at a more esoteric skill, in this case science instead of music.

Mel = Raoul. Literally an aristocrat who is far more beautiful than the Phantom/Viktor, who steals away his partner's attention and offers them a glittering life of privilege in the public eye instead of the wonders of their joint musical/scientific pursuits. Whether or not Mel meant to embody this, or steal Jayce from Viktor, this is the role she fulfills in Viktor's view of the world.

But the most profound moment for me of, "Oh wow, they're doing Phantom of the Opera! Actually, they're not just doing Phantom, they're doing Phantom fixit fic?!" was this:

Which, if you'll forgive the potato quality of the screenshots, is literally the moment Viktor has his mask knocked away and then cringes in on himself to hide his exposed face from Jayce.

Which... is literally a scene in Phantom of the Opera? Just after "Music of the Night"?

But we're already in Phantom fixit territory, because Jayce doesn't recoil like Viktor expects! Instead, he embraces Viktor and loves him for all his self-perceived flaws.

And then, AND THEN, in a moment that made my Phantom-loving heart sing, Viktor tells Jayce to go!

And Jayce doesn't.

In the final song of the Phantom of the Opera musical, Christine is forced to choose between Raoul and the Phantom. She chooses the Phantom and kisses him. Flooded by remorse, the Phantom then relinquishes her to the man he knows she truly loves, and when Christine hesitates to leave, he shouts at her, "Go!" and then, of course, she and Raoul leave together.

Viktor is expecting that to happen! I think his order to Jayce very clearly implies that he thinks Mel and Jayce are still together. It's the classic, "Go be with the woman you love instead of staying here and dying with me," trope that we see over and over again in dramas.

But Jayce. Defies. The Trope.

Unlike Christine and just about every buddy war movie out there, he stays with Viktor. He chooses his scientific/artistic partner over the life of aristocracy and privilege that Mel would theoretically offer him. He chooses the masked genius with the disability and calls him perfect. He refuses to go when he is ordered to leave. He stays with Viktor until the end.

And I still can't believe that no one else is talking about this!

[maddogdrawing]

I love women ‼️

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ron and samantha for sure deserve the win but I couldn't in good faith vote against my lesbian god murdering queens

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the volcano joke iss one of the top ten worst jokes ive ever made and i mean this

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repost brought back the saturation

[maddogdrawing]

Made a Trudy Trout playlist that has spoilers for the new episode (I will put credit for other tumblrs who gave me song ideas later) (I may update this for additional Trudy lore)

Features mainly 50s songs for a playlist that tells a very Trudy story

Song idea credits:

@maddogdrawing for Never Love an Anchor; The One That Got Away

@spacetwinkk for The Other Woman

@thedndgoblinwholivesinyourwalls for Me and My Husband

@moreclaypigeons for Next to You

@oak-ills for Brass Goggles

[maddogdrawing]

dndads s3 e12 what a doozy.... absolutely in love with all the descriptions in the episode

[maddogdrawing]

So there's this famous quote from Trevor Noah:

“The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He's attracted to independent women. "He's like an exotic bird collector," she said. "He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.”

And if that isn't Trucker Trout to a T.

Trudy was studying physical education, she wanted to start women's sports teams. That is not a traditional woman, especially for the time. By their standards she was probably very much a tomboy, maybe even to the extent of being described as mannish. But that's the woman Tucker decided he wanted, the woman he had have, to own. To beat (figuratively, as far as we know) into submission and mold into the perfect housewife. Why? Well to prove he could I suppose.

And when she left him, oh that had to hurt. The woman that he had so meticulously chained to his side deciding he wasn't worth being with and having the nerve to do something about it. Even the son he gave her, the son that, according to her (or at least the part of her that is Rosie), was her crowing achievement, wasn't enough to keep her with him.

She leaves him, and she shouldn't survive. A single woman all on her own with no friends or family to speak of in the 1950's? She should've come crawling back to him within days, throwing herself at his mercy, begging him to take her back. But she doesn't — she flourishes. She makes her way to California, gets a job, starts a relationship, makes a life for herself, leaves him in the dust.

Tucker could have just counted his losses, made the best of the situation and moved on. He's a strong man, strong enough to carry a robot in his arms up a hiking path and into a mine. He's incredibly intelligent and has a steady government job. He's a catch. He could easily find himself a new woman eager to fulfill the role of doting wife and stepmother. But he doesn't want just any woman, he wants Trudy.

So he tracks her down, gets all the way to California. He lures her back to his hotel, not even for him, but with the promise of info on the son she left behind, likely another blow to his ego. And he kidnaps her. Drags her all the way back to Peachyville. Takes her apart. Literally molds her into his perfect bride. Less of a modern day Prometheus and more of a modern day Pygmalion with his Galatea. She is made of steel rather marble, and he calls on science rather than the goddess Aphrodite to bring her to life. But it's the same idea, isn't it?

He didn't need to do that, did he? We've seen Lil' Tuck and Tiffany, he can clearly create near-perfect facsimiles of life. He could have just as easily made himself a new Trudy from scratch, without all the messiness of kidnapping the original and actually using her brain. He could have made a version of her that would never truly gain sentience, never disobey, never step out of line, always love and care and nurture. If anything, he'd at last never have to risk anything as potentially scandalous as being seen dropping his wife down a mineshaft.

But it wouldn't be the same, would it? It wouldn't be the woman he once conquered, the woman he caged, the woman bested him and did in the end manage to escape. She got the last laugh.

And Tucker Trout strikes me as a sore loser.

[maddogdrawing]

hiiii back on my trudy trout grind 💪💪💪 (trying not to think about other things) sooo spoilers for ep 12 but here's a little comic to the song never love an anchor by the crane wives.

and also a video version with sound

[maddogdrawing]

“You’re the original Trudy to me.”

Kelsey😭😭😭

[maddogdrawing]

get yourself a friend group who constantly dress like they’re part of wildly different friend groups

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IT’S HERE

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been listening to sophomore slump Soooo much (skipping secret admirer for my own mental health🫶)

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your honor I love them

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Just like the post canon homestuck photos..

[maddogdrawing]

I’m relistening to dndads season 2. Save me, Scary Marlowe…