#REALLY great villain imo

[arospecsyourblockdudes]

i love shen jiu BECAUSE of the child abuse he does. get on my level 💪

[thefinalwitness]

read more bc i talked a lot about why i like emet-selch specifically only as The Worst Guy Ever.

also i can't help but notice that emet-selch is equivocally comparable to like. a rich person divorced from the reality of his own society. like sure, life's swell for him, bad things don't ACTUALLY happen to him—until one such bad thing does and he is completely unable to process it in a humane way whatsoever, going on to commit 12k years of "rich guy got owned once and demanded heaps of legislation to make sure he was never sad again."

you know. this guy is fucking nuts. and the world he remembers didn't exist, at least not to 99% of people, assuming it even actually existed for him and the aforementioned points aren't obscuring the fact that he has utterly INVENTED a version of reality that isn't real and was never real because he romanticized it so hard he's like those white girls who wish they were born in the 1920s or whatever.

and that's why i like him as a villain. he is so utterly entangled in his own grief, and in refusing to let go and face tomorrow, he has completely destroyed his own humanity—ASSUMING he had much of it to begin with, ASSUMING he wasn't always above the struggles of the world and simply didn't fucking know what pain was until it was big enough to get him too. but a lot of what we see of him in elpis suggests he was, in fact, in an ivory tower of privilege and wealth and success that, sure, made the world sound pretty great to him because fuck you, got his.

people dying in distance lands? people suffering untreated mental illness? sounds like a skill issue to him. get a real job maybe. stop crying about the utter depravity with which we treat life and be more like the more successful, powerful men around you who are so distanced from it they not only don't care, it doesn't even cross their minds most days.

and like that's the POINT. everything about him is twisted to a selfish, divorced life he led, one that utterly taints his ability to conceptualize most life as anything more than 'inventions' and 'pests' and 'abominations'. and he exploits this. his way of life has always depended on the suffering of others, so it's no wonder that's what he resorts to when something Bad Enough finally touches him in that ivory tower. he got to where he is in ancient etheirys with cruelty and depravity, and he continues trying to use these until his very last words in ultima thule.

because he STATES there that you, the wol, are still nothing to him. the only value he sees in you is that you're the fifty billionth reincarnation of his dead friend; he says you OWE it to this dead former life you've never known to live. nothing about 'you' matters to him, only how he can relate you to azem. also, he literally said he'd still be trying to kill you if he were alive.

like!!!! don't get me wrong!!!! i LOVE all of this about him. he is so selfish, so delusional, so utterly twisted and it's why i find him such a compelling villain. i DO feel bad for him. it doesn't excuse anything he's done, but knowing this idiot rotted in his own grief because he was too arrogant and stupid to accept help or even deserve it after the THOUSANDS to MILLIONS of people he'd wronged, knowing this all happens because he's mourning and is too fucking selfish to accept that's what he's doing is FASCINATING. he's SO EVIL, it's sad and infuriating and you want to shake him because he should be able to LEARN from this!

but he won't. he can't. because he is a rotten, horrific person, who has always judged everyone as lesser, who a small few are lucky enough to be spared his arrogant dissonance by virtue of him deciding he likes them and calling them his friends. and these people enable it. bless your fucking heart, hythlodaeus, azem, but you let him keep doing this. you let him treat the world as dirt under his feet and nothing more. i like to believe that's part of what azem's desertion is about, is realizing the mistake that is the convocation, these fourteen people who get to decide who lives and dies, who matters and who doesn't—realizing this is ALWAYS what they've done, and the final days are only a huge, in-your-face, super literal example of what they have ALWAYS done.

and like. it's GREAT, narratively. it's compelling. it's fascinating. it's true to a lot of real life parallels—humans that are so successful and comfortable they forget their own humanity and think themselves above others inherently, friends who love someone and overlook or do not try to stop their cruelty until it's too late, a world that was perfect ONLY in hindsight, ONLY when you refuse to accept how things change, ONLY when in your grief you romanticize it into something that never existed.

it's incredible. it's heartwrenching. it reminds that kindness and compassion and mercy and acceptance are CHOICES. and no matter how obvious or inherent they may feel to some of us, they are like battery acid to others, who would sooner choose control or saving their own skin or maintaining the status quo at the cost of countless lives. emet-selch is interesting to me because every single thing about him is wrong, corroded in his own selfishness and arrogance; he's human, but you almost can't tell from how much it's rotted in him.

emet-selch, hooked up to a lie detector: says some bullshit about the world unsundered that is factually untrue and you can literally go to elpis and look it up

lie detector: doesn't react

ppl: well he must be telling the truth. it can't be that he believes his own fabricated reality based on 12k years of decaying memory and stagnating grief and the literal magic monster that canonically twists and warps people he sold his soul to. there's no other explanation

[wolfiwonderer]

Tonny is sus

In honor of the new chapter and questionable decisions, I'm going to deep dive on Tonny and why I think his innocent look is a front.

He believes he's the good guy (which honestly, confidence in one's righteousness is a red flag that Julia (prev), Tonny, and Sahed all share). The Tonny that he presents cares about each member of the circus, hates taking their lives at the beginning and end, and has sweet innocent thoughts about Julia. I think he really believes that.

I love Tonny as a character btw, super excited to see where this goes.

Tonny does not really care about the people in the circus.

The oldest history we've been told is that they were in a castle. An old woman knew about them and funneled people there for money. Tonny gave them an offer to tie themselves to the castle for eternity to protect them from pursuit.

Okay, but everyone in the castle is miserable. Tonny looks miserable. The people around him do. He clearly isn't too worried about the woman directing people to him. So why is he signing them up when he has been shown that they will break down?

It seems like there must be some kind of compulsion that means Tonny needs to add people to the pact continuously. If he's really burdened by giving them happiness, then he wouldn't sign up for more work.

2. Tonny is not that bothered by taking people's lives.

Okay, first of all, I don't know how you could keep killing people twice and not prove that you don't actually feel bad about it. He has many options other than killing people.

Most of this being bad is predicated on Tonny knowing that there's a cost after their second death, but given how hard he claims to be working to stop people ending their lives (particularly to people who have been around for a while), I think he knows something of it.

Mr. Finnegan is the epitome of Tonny's immoral sign up practices. I have no doubt that Tonny thought he was doing the right thing, but a good 30 second think on Finnegan's motivation shows that it's a terrible idea. The entire reason that Finnegan wants to sign up is to spend more time with his wife. What exactly did Tonny think was going to happen when the wife died? It was going to happen, since he didn't sign both of them up (also, why not?). He had to know that Finnegan was a short term stay.

Mr. Finnegan is the 'youngest' of them all, which makes me wonder how many people have come and gone in the last hundred years. Sahed would probably be somewhere around his age if he aged normally, so he's the next youngest we know outside of Camille and Julia.

Speaking of Sahed, we also know that he made some kind of promise to him that convinced him to sign up.

Sahed has had the same goal for a long time and he thinks Tonny betrayed him. I'm inclined to believe him - even if I'm sure the details of what he asked for were impossible. Tonny agrees with him that Ah'kon deserve equal rights. He also seems sad about the hate against them in a way you don't see from other characters. But, his logic that it is too dangerous to taken them in seems weird when he also took in Dotty while police were after her. Sahed's intake couldn't have been risk free considering he's a legendary level escapee.

I could see this being a savior complex. He 'solves' the problems presented to him with the hammer he has. He signs up to fix problems he can't and then when he doesn't deliver, he hides behind all the other promises he's made. But it's like he' s a married man with a secret family and it's somehow the family's fault he wasn't faithful when they find out about the other.

3. Julia is not safe with Tonny

This is full on theory/prediction and I want to talk about some phone fast pass episodes, so putting it under the cut.

Honestly, Camille kind of called this out in the last episode. Julia has said that Tonny is keeping her close and he has a certain possessiveness. He shows signs of feelings (for no apparent reason than chemistry though? Like do they have much in common? Julia wants to not die but also not be a bad person. Tonny wants ???), and that could be explanation. But I get antsy about a guy who wants a woman to center her life around him. But if that was all, I wouldn't be quite so suspicious of him.

Tonny has admitted that Julia is in the middle between him and someone else, but then, like... doesn't explain. He's said full trust, but she's just hoping he will make her not die, when he has a history of breaking promises (other than killing people, he's got a good record on that, seems to be the go to solution for everyone at the circus). I can't help but think that the reason he hasn't elaborated on the true details of anything to Julia, and likely to everyone, is that it is something horrible.

[harrowscore]

a few days ago i (re)watched the 25th anniversary concert of les misérables and. oh god. i forgot how much this musical did éponine dirty

[cureblogging]

Gonna say something potentially controversial:

I think Heartcatch suffers from the Up phenomenon in that people remember it as an excellent, if not flawless masterpiece when it actually has One (1) excellent, if not flawless moment in the beginning and is otherwise nothing special.

[mangora]

On one hand Trevek is canon which is infuriating and terrible because Trevor deserves better and Derek is a nothing character with no likable or sympathetic traits beyond occasionally having funny lines and Emily is literally right there. On the other hand Trevek is canon which is awesome because Noahh’s character had to kiss a man

[youngpettyqueen]

Repentance is an episode that kind of hits what I think it was trying to say but then also. completely and utterly fails in other areas. which is characteristic of a lot of these types of Trek episodes tbh

[technicolorxsn]

watched the new hunger games movie with my mom and aunt today and was looking it up on youtube after to see what other people's thoughts on it were and. I forgot people on youtube are so stupid

[moonsidesong]

fair ways into magical turnabout. hate nahyuta a lot more than i remembered

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

nah but listen.

i love ashnard.

THIS is what makes him such a great villain.

no excuses. no bullshit. no sad backstory.

sometimes it’s nice to have an antagonist who isn’t evil, but nowadays it’s so rare. sometimes it’s nice to have a true villain who doesn’t want to be pitied or seen as a “hero”, and won’t mince words when he’s confronted about his actions.

[bluemew-theturtle]

i am so sorry but Anastasia is Just Fine. It's Alright.

[gothamcityneedsme]

hello and welcome to my novel idea: comic book heroes killing people is always wrong and never fixes anything!

[coyote-fawn]

.

[selfishpresley]

Sorry babe I hate Lando xoxo 💋

but what if he sounded like Chet Hanks pretending like he's in the caribbean?

like i think I would be able to forget the strange whiny things he's said and done the last couple of years

[kiss2012]

ummmmm ok.

[steelandscience]

I have thought about this so much, because Viktor being spotlighted so frequently in the trial scene is just so interesting. I think part of it is partly just foreshadowing that This Character Is Going To Be Important, of course, but I do think there’s more.

There’s a couple really great ways you can read their early pre-journal-stealing-Viktor interactions, but I think my favorite is just… ego.

It’s one thing that the arcane versions of Jayce and Viktor very much have in common with their League counterparts (if you see them as separate). We definitely see bits if Jayce’s ego throughout the show, from the way he is fine with playing along with Heimer’s advice in the trial until they start calling him an incompetent failure of a scientist, to the bits of preening and social prowess he shows as he gets rebranded as the Man of Progress. A lot of Jayce’s character conflict stems from the fact he knows he is right about Hextech/magic, but he either cannot get other people to see that, or he cannot reconcile his own vision with Hextech’s place in the real world.

However, Viktor is just as confident and egotistical as Jayce.

This is a man who beat the odds of his birth and absolutely believes he is one of the smartest— if not the smartest— in the room at all times. This is a man who is happy to work on illegal, experimental projects because he knows he is smart enough to figure it out. He’s even confident enough to do it twice in the show, once with Hextech and once with Shimmer! I think Arcane Viktor is certainly tempered with a lot of empathy and a clear drive for survival as opposed to his League counterpart, but he is just as concerned with Legacy and scientific success as Jayce, Heimerdinger, and Singed are— it’s just that they view that success in different ways.

(I’d like to add that I personally prefer to think of Jayce and Viktor in Arcane as a proto-League version of themselves, with the League lore that currently exists.)

So my favorite way to read the scenes where Viktor gets Jayce arrested is simply that it’s not about Jayce in particular, but that Viktor simply thinks he’s a better scientist. Viktor came from very little and already succeeded “beyond his beginnings”, he knows he is consistently smarter than most of the graduates in the Academy, and he already has some beliefs on how Heimerdinger himself is wrong. He will happily go on to challenge Mel and the ideas of power and law in Piltover repeatedly. So it’s not about Jayce, but about the fact that Jayce is yet another scientist who got in over his experimental pay grade, and Viktor gets to watch another rich Piltovan university student realize they aren’t actually all that great. He did have a presupposed image of Jayce, even if it wasn’t about Jayce Talis in particular— though it could have been, because we know from Jayce’s Journal in the league client event circa 2021 that Jayce was failing most of his classes because he was obsessively working on Hextech, and that Heimerdinger was worried about him. Maybe Viktor even knew that before he walked into Jayce’s ruined apartment.

Jayce failed. Publicly and catastrophically. Viktor would never.

And I think it isn’t until he hears what Jayce was trying to do that Viktor realizes how alike he and Jayce are. He wasn’t some failing rich kid who got in over his head; he’s a sponsored student willing to push the boundaries of experimental and illegal science and magic in the name of progress. It’s easy for Viktor to switch to needing to work with this man because he realizes Jayce isn’t stupid, that Jayce has very similar goals to Viktor right now, and that Jayce is also every bit as insane as Viktor is in his pursuit of progress. Suddenly Viktor realizes he may not be the smartest in the room, just like Jayce realizes he might not be the only one smart enough and ballsy enough to create Hextech. They match each other, and continue to match each other, in brilliance, drive, and ego for the better part of a decade. Even in League, they met at an Academy party and bonded over the fact that they hated being there and how they were both so much smarter than anyone else in the room.

Obviously we don’t know how they will fall apart in Arcane S2 (I have so many theories but we will see soon enough). But in League, their egos are also a massive part of why they fall out, but continue to be almost single-mindedly obsessed with the other person for the rest of their lives. They are the only person who matched each other’s intellect, goals, and drive for years, and even though Piltover and Zaun are filled with brilliant people, they never really care about anyone else besides their old partner. I think a big part of that is that each of them, respectively, believes the other hurt their own pride and ego in an unforgivable way, so they are going to spend the rest of their life making it the other person’s problem.

Hi why did Viktor seem almost glad that Jayce was being arrested and put on trial in ep 2?

Like…he has this haughty, kind of contemptuous attitude towards Jayce throughout the episode until after the trial—when he realizes that Jayce’s research on magic may be something worth looking into.

But BEFORE that, when Jayce’s apartment is being searched, everything about Viktor’s demeanor seems to indicate that he’s putting Jayce below himself. When Jayce expresses distress about the situation, Viktor responds with sarcasm or nonchalance: “I believe someone should have said that earlier.” and then when prompted he introduces himself not as a person, but by describing his position: “I’m assistant to the dean of the Academy, who it may serve you to remember is also head of the Council.”

He seems glad to hand Jayce over to the enforcers and does so with a SMILE, and later in the episode when Jayce walks into the Council room for his trial, there’s this lingering shot of Viktor smirking at him as he passes!! And it’s 1000% on purpose—Viktor’s the only character besides Jayce (in a crowd of people, mind you!) who’s fully lit up in that shot.

It’s like the writers wanted to clearly convey that Viktor had a “you’re getting what you deserve” mentality towards Jayce, which is odd considering Viktor’s characterization after the trial is nothing but amicable towards Jayce throughout the rest of Act 1 before it turns into fondness over the rest of the season.

So…if this haughty attitude towards Jayce was put there on purpose and not just as an introduction to the smartass counterpart to Jayce’s optimistic charm, then why does Viktor have such contempt for Jayce if they don’t even know each other?

see this is why we need a novelization or at very least the published script because i wanna know what these characters were thinking