#achievement addict

[spiderinleatherchaps]

[mollysunder]

The Medarda Family and the True Goal of Shimmer

Nature has made us intolerant to change, but fortunately, we have the capacity to change our nature. -Singed

For most of s1 the only versions of magic the audience really gets familiar with are visualized through hextech blue and shimmer pink, but we can't trust it to represent what actual magic is like on Runeterra. People from PnZ are incredibly unfamiliar with magic, it was banned for centuries, and they're mostly retracing steps and doing guess work. The best metric to understand how magic works is to look at characters and regions that are actually inclined to magic, and the Medardas may be the best example yet.

When Ambessa accepts the Wolf totem from Lamb one half of dual aspects of death, her body is enveloped in a bright purple transformation before being reforged into a red that resembles the kind her ancestors and the Lamb wear.

It's the same bright purple that consumes Sky in Viktor's last experiment with the hexcore in s1.

I think this purple represents magic at its most malleable state, where it can be refined or change others into final products with a proper catalysts. By s1's final scene, we know that Mel possesses magic and likely uses it through her golden armor. We also know it's possible for magic to be a hereditary trait that can be passed down (not perfectly) through family lines, which is prized in Noxus (and Ixtal?).

So if Mel has magic that likely means the Medardas family in general has latent magic that flows through them naturally., but qhat does this have to do with shimmer or PnZ in general?

The Medardas are relevant to PnZ because Zaun leading minds, Silco and Singed, have spent their capital trying to replicate what the Medardas can do!Shimmer doesn't exist purely as a bioweapon, that's frankly secondary to it's point. Shimmer exists as a means to artificially make the users capable of performing magic, or at least shift the user's biology into something that can tolerate magic. Hextech as a solution to the mystery of maguc completely sidesteps the relationship between magic and the user by using machinery as middleman, while shimmer takes a more direct route.

Singed can't literally biohack nonmagical people into mages all by himself. Singed instead developed what's essentially a hormone therapy to give users temporary magic abilities by synthesizing shimmer from these mysterious plants that resembles the color of the magic within Ambessa before her deal with the Lamb.

Why didn't Singed and Silco just give people the magic purple plants directly if it's capable turning them into mages? Sky and Rio might be the best examples for why you don't do that. When young Viktor feeds Rio the purple plants we see Rio immediately lose vigor, as an audience most of us assumed that was simply Rio's pre-existing condition acting up, but the relationship is more simple. When Singed said Rio was dying, he said it with surety because Singed KNEW the exposure to magic was killing Rio. And Sky was DISINTEGRATED upon being exposed to the hexcore's magic.

In that vein, Singed used Rio as a work around. From what we see non-mage humans absolutely cannot tolerate exposure to even base magic, but Rio was able to last longer. Instead Singed and Silco exposed Zaun to a version of those magic flowers that was broken down by Rio's metabolism into a more version that non-magical humans can tolerate.

The wild thing is that all this effort is to get non-mage users to Ambessa's UNREALISED state, the purple is just the base magic that exists in mages. Even still, Singed seems to have developed the kind of strain of shimmer that's the closest he's ever come to real magic, and Viktor and Jinx used it.

Viktor's own magical transformation has been facilitated by the hexcore in the same way the Lamb facilitated Ambessa's transformation. Do i think Viktor has essentially created his own Aspect through the hexcore? NO.

But in the same way shimmer is facsimilie of magical ability, so too is the hexcore a subsitute for living magic. And by living magic I don't mean unicorns or mermaids, I mean magic that is given consciousness and shape by being tethered to human concepts. And the hexcore's basic purpose is supposed to be magic that thinks and Viktor has tethered it to the human plane with his blood.

This all begs the question about what could exposure to the hexcore do to long term shimmer users? What WILL it do to Jinx? We all know that's inevitable next season.

You see, power, real power doesn't come to those who were born strongest or fastest or smartest. No. It comes to those who will do anything to achieve it. -Silco

Tldr: Shimmer is a large-scale project to turn the population of Zaun into mages, or magically tolerant, by essentially microdosing the population with magic through shimmer.

[blue-jos10]

i wonder how kevin's fitness-obsessed mind justifies his alcohol addiction

[fr0gg13b413]

AREN'T STARS MEANT TO BURN?; ON SELF-DESTRUCTION (FOR ACHIEVEMENT'S SAKE)

friedrich nietzsche // would that i, hozier // meditation on the threshold: a bilingual anthology of poetry, ‘monologue of a foreign woman’ by rosario castellanos // boyish, japanese breakfast // nineteen, movements // angel on fire, halsey // nata sin // vincent van gogh // notes from underground, fyodor dostoevsky // holly warburton // joan crawford // unknown, pinterest // first fig, edna st. vincent millay // Clementine von Radics // holly warburton // forugh farrokhzad, tr. by hasan javadi & susan sallée // she knows, j. cole // @/ragingantisocial // some kind of perfect, krista ritchie and becca ritchie // holly warburton // burned out, dodie // unknown, pinterest // a moth to a flame (burnt child), stig dagerman, tr. by benjamin mier-cruz // unknown

[decrepitluvr]

𝐼’𝓂 𝒶 𝓈𝓊𝒸𝓀𝑒𝓇 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝒮𝓅𝑒𝓃𝒸𝑒𝓇𝓈..˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥

[ipcearn]

The hilarity of me triggering the Dredge DLC for the first time in Dave the Diver (huge recommend) on (in game) Halloween

[riddlerosehearts]

thinking about the sakyo and azami dynamic for the millionth time! and i am just very very sad about the fact that sakyo's whole portrait was about how deeply he regretted not pursuing his dream of becoming an actor at mankai company. and then later we find out that he ended up feeling guilty for achieving that, for having seen himself in azami and encouraging him not to give up on a dream that they both believed would never come true, only to go off and live out his impossible dream while azami was unable to pursue his own. he had finally gotten what he always wanted but he couldn't even truly be happy because in the back of his mind he was always thinking about how he'd left azami behind!! that intense regret that he had over missing out on his dream just got replaced by regret over having made azami hate him!!

and then i'm thinking about sakyo tripping and breaking his glasses when he finds out azami was in a car accident, azami calling him lame for panicking like that when he barely even got hurt, and sakyo asking him "do i not even have the right to worry about you anymore?". about how azami spent all this time genuinely believing sakyo didn't care about him, and that there was surely no way he'd care enough to remember the card game they once made up together, but sakyo remembered the stats and abilities of every card. thinking about all of the love that was passed down through those cards, with sakyo's mother originally creating jin-gi-oh as a way to make him feel happy and loved and then sakyo going on to do the same thing for his son azami. thinking about sakyo telling everyone embarrassing stories from azami's childhood, just like a parent would do to their child, and how it shows that sakyo always loved azami and was there for him so much more than his "real" father ever was. about how much azami learned from sakyo and how he thinks he's nothing like "that shitty old man" but they are both equally terrible at expressing how they feel and they both have a naggy "blah blah blah" rant mode that they go into. thinking about how azami literally openly admits that he thought of sakyo as his dad when he was little and he still does. about how in the end, they finally both get to achieve their dreams and everything is okay because they may still fight, but they're together again and they know they love each other.

i'm also thinking about how sakyo insists on buying bargain juice and watering it down. azami is right, this man truly is a monster.

[szynkaaa]

tumblr: fandom tattoos are a bad idea wait a few years and if you still like it go for it

me: *sending out inquiries to different tattoo studios to get a Black Myth Wukong tattoo*

[wavcheck]

i am enjoying everyone’s commentary on using clonazepam

[takeiteasyonmeimstilllearning]

so help me God, if I see another blog about tiktok being banned I'm gonna (remembering manslaughter is a not polite thing to do) probably go on ao3 and read my blorbos fics then go finish my own fiction until I've finished every last mother fuckin word.

[purrrcrastination]

we are all Belinda

[edge-oftheworld]

when I was in high school there was a tendency whenever there was an attractive boy to simply fan over him. in a way that talked over everything he might say for himself and created a narrative that completely ignored, the fact in some cases, that he was really struggling—or if he was struggling, to pin all the blame on the girl he’s dating and completely ignore the thousands of other factors (no it can’t be mental illness or unaccommodated disability or systemic abuse or exploitation and if he is in an abusive relationship we won’t ever consider the factors that put him at risk for that)

and I’m not saying this fandom is like that. I get the need for privacy around some things and how in public conversations sometimes it’s a lot more respectful to stick to the positives (everyone who does that, I admire you) or even the struggles that are talked about publicly, show respect by not reading too far into them. there’s a time and place for that. but sometimes I feel like our only options are shitty and ableist gossip or totally ignoring the systemic and structural issues we know exist in something like the music industry until someone dies and then we’re looking for someone to blame. friends, there is a point where the respectful thing is to listen to what someone says and come together to make things better. and you can learn how to have that conversation respectfully. please do

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: Itaru Chigasaki's ordinary life as an office worker takes an unexpected turn after a series of unfortunate events ends up in him becoming a single father. (*Summary subject to change because author is bad at summaries.)

Author: cherrylimonade

[manns-cape]

the new 20-somethings of this website write such amazing posts

[floweringdenial]

I’m currently at 4 weeks of no orgasm 🎉 a small achievement but a personal record 😊

[daisywords]

wish I could get (and stay) in the zone with writing like I can with drawing