#also retcon

[that-wildwolf]

hey, remember being 18 years old and playing mass effect for the first time and it's got this like intense aura of being very small and very insignificant in a very big, very empty galaxy? remember playing mass effect for the first time and everything all of this is so new and mysterious, and it's 2am and you're sitting in a dark room in the light from your tv and you're playing through feros for the first time and you feel that this is someting very old and very ancient and you are somewhere you shouldn't be and you don't know what's going to happen or where you're going but you keep on. there's a tingling in your stomach and you're playing mass effect for the first time. the thorian is a milennia old sentient plant being. the rachni queen is old and telepathic and a hive mind and in pain. sovereign is an ancient machine that has not been built but is, and has always been, and this is something so alien and so unlike and beyond anything your human mind can comprehend, and this is something unexplainable and huge and as uncaring and indifferent as the empty galaxy around you. you're playing mass effect for the first time and you're walking on the surface of an almost completely empty planet with nothing but your two companions silently walking beside you and everything is so huge and empty and silent and you're so small and insignificant and it's so beautiful and so scary and you feel like you are on a rollercoaster about to drop down. you are playing mass effect for the first time and you're playing the mission on the moon and you stop and just look up at earth visible in the sky. you know this. this is home. you are playing mass effect for the first time, and the galaxy is so big, and you are so tiny, and everything is about to change for you.

[sammakesart]

My headcanon for Veilguard is that it was a book Varric wrote, but the Chantry got involved and made him change a bunch of stuff. Most of it didn’t happen, at least not that way. They needed some propaganda, and quick. Their precious Herald of Andraste just fucked off with the Dread Wolf himself to live in the Fade forever. Varric begrudgingly made the edits, killed himself off in the book, then washed his hands of it, and is relaxing in sunny Rivain under a fake name right now.

[mochasucculent]

I'm rewatching Arcane, and after my third time seeing season 1 I had a hot new reading on Viktor's scenes in episodes 6, 7, and 8.

Like a lot of other people, I felt it was weird and unsavory that Viktor - very close to death with a disease that affects his lungs - suddenly starts experimenting on his disabled leg. Those two things have nothing in common, save for the fact that the cause of both might have been the toxic fumes of the undercity, which could have resulted in Viktor being born disabled if his parents were also subject to those conditions.

So why does Viktor try to "fix" his leg when his main goal is to utilize the Hexcore to prolong and improve living conditions before he's gone?

Viktor in acts 2 and 3 is motivated to save himself long enough to make a difference in the world. Even though Hextech is revolutionary for Piltover, it hasn't reached who Viktor wanted to help this whole time, the disenfranchised in the undercity. In his mind, he hasn't done enough to change the world for the better, and he will be gone before he has the chance to do so.

After realizing the Hexcore responded to organic matter when it absorbed Viktor's blood, he experiments with plants, only to find that they wither and die soon after the Hexcore makes them grow.

This causes him to visit Singed once again for anything that could help him figure out how to use the Hexcore for magic that could save lives, one last shot at accomplishing his dreams.

Viktor parted ways with with him as a child upon seeing that Singed was willing to hurt Rio, his salamander test subject, in order to prolong her life. Viktor didn't understand that cost before, but he does now, being in the same position as Singed and Rio simultaneously, both the scientist trying to make a breakthrough and the subject he needs to save in order to do so.

Like Rio, Viktor is not his own end goal to his scientific pursuits. Singed is trying to save his daughter, Viktor is trying to help his people. He's his own means to an end, and is now willing to pay the cost of getting there.

Singed gives Viktor a variant of Shimmer to experiment with, the idea being that it will stabilize an organism while the Hexcore's magic affects it, hopefully allowing it to survive through the aggressive and sudden healing process.

Viktor injects the Shimmer into his leg, as well as carving runes into both his brace and thigh to channel the magic towards there before he offers the Hexcore his blood. It does Something to his leg which we don't see till the following episode.

The new reading I have of this scene is that the reason Viktor chose his leg specifically is not because he was trying to "fix" it, but because:

-He's not willing to put others' lives at risk and knows he's not long for this world, so the only test subject he's willing to use is himself

-He knows the organic matter he tests the Hexcore on might die

-Viktor's leg is a part of his body he's willing to lose if things go wrong and it rejects the transmutation (he also knows that he could just fully die then and there too and is willing to take that risk)

Obviously, the scenes involving Viktor's experimentation center his physical disabilities (shots of his back brace, the focus on his leg) and equate them with the disease that is literally killing him. The narrative lens shows us that Viktor "curing" himself begins with his disability, which sucks.

So while the boat scene undoubtedly is written to be "triumphant" because Viktor's leg is no longer disabled (shown by him dropping his crutch, the swelling music, the parallel to the scene where a child Viktor can't keep up with his toy boat), a different reading is that it's another experiment to him.

Viktor is stress testing the organic matter he infused with magic, and the scene is triumphant because he's realized his leg isn't deteriorating or weakening - it holds up. The mutation of the magic in his leg survived. It's a sign that maybe he can use the Hexcore on the rest of his body, keep himself alive long enough to do what he's always wanted to do: leave a legacy that changes the world for the better.

To me that's a much more in-character perspective for Viktor in these scenes than what is being said narratively through directing, framing, music, etc. Previously, Viktor had never expressed distaste for his disability as an adult, only commenting on it as a part of why he was isolated socially from Piltover. To me, him testing the Hexcore on his leg is merely an indifference to its current state, rather than a preference to have it changed. I don't even necessarily think it'd be a bad thing if Viktor did outright say "I would like to not be disabled", because I'm sure many other disabled people feel that way from time to time, but season 1 really does a poor job of pushing that framing of "curing" disability onto a character that did not express those perspectives himself at this point.

It gives off a big ol' "aw, poor Viktor, not only is he dying because of the political landscape that leaves disenfranchised people to suffer preventable diseases, but he's got a disabled leg too!" One of those things is much more problematic than the other lol.

Season 2 definitely hurtles Viktor very quickly into the Machine Herald perspective in which he thinks humans must evolve past ANY limitations of their original bodies, but to me season 1 Viktor just doesn't feel that way about himself. His primary concern has always been rooted in how to improve the lives of his people permanently, and it's only when he's actively dying that his secondary goal is to live long enough to see that happen.

It's something he drops completely after his experimentation results in Sky's death. He's immediately spiteful of the Hexcore and tries to destroy it - and himself.

Viktor now accepts that he will die before he's able to change the world the way he wanted, and hides the fact that he fucked with his body from everyone as he awaits his demise. "Fixing" his leg is not something he celebrates in and of itself, it's now only a reminder that the pursuit of his dream resulted in someone else's death.

The narrative does well in season 2 to frame Viktor's Glorious Evolution as a Bad Thing at least, and Jayce's speech at the end about Viktor never being broken is extremely valuable and important, but it's just weird to see him say this:

Cause to me now, that ain't what Viktor was trying to do at all! The writers may have retconned that to be the case, which is fine, whatever, but season 1 in isolation does not support that idea to me after this rewatch.

Overall, I think Arcane can have confusing directing sometimes that focuses on evoking feelings and themes rather than the richness of its characters, their dynamics, and the world they inhabit - to the detriment of all the above. In season 2, this resulted in a lot of scenes that felt emotionally unearned or muddy to me, like pretty much everything with Jinx, Vi, and Vander together rip.

It's for this same reason that I think it took me so long to really come to this reading of Viktor's season 1 scenes, because the directing bias REALLY wants to make you feel sorrow and hope alongside Viktor, even though it means he'll seem to randomly start equating his disabled leg to his illness. It just felt like a weird disparity to me until I watched these episodes again and was like "wait" lol.

Anyway peace and love on planet Earth I cannot stop thinking about Viktor Arcane

[navree]

i think more people need to realize that the circumstances of how jason todd died would make him deeply untrusting of not only other people, not only himself and his own instincts, but specifically other people's proclamations of what they feel about/for him and how he reacts to that in turn

[shrimpchipsss]

the professors shen should never have been forced to share an office

wasn't professor shen the senior being associate professor shen the junior's PhD advisor enough?

[crow-caller]

Getting a suspicion this book isn't very good

Lightlark3 is somehow. How do I put this. Worse. The prose is really, really bad, and Aster operates on a baseline of having 'pretty bad prose'

Gee, I wonder if writing and releasing skyshade, plus writing her new adult book, plus a new bonus lightlark book and the 4th due next year... might be resulting in even less editing?

[shih-coulda-had-it]

lead me, wind-rider

[childofthestone]

hot take but the fourth installment of a series should not be accessible to newcomers

[succo-al-limone]

[flickering-nightfall]

How long do you think they would last if a pink lizard walked in here? 10 seconds? 20, maybe,

[cubbihue]

Does Chloe still exist in ur au?

She does! I've kept core parts of her personality, but retconned massive chunks of her history with Timmy.

Chloe never got fairies, and never shared them with Timmy. But she was his neighbor! They used to play a lot as children, but one day, Chloe wasn't allowed back at the Turner's house.

As a grownup, Chloe's a social worker! She's usually the Go-To person selected by the state to handle difficult public cases involving children. As in: cases involving celebrities, important figures, or the such where the child's identity is at risk to the public. She's an expert at keeping their life secret and away from social media.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[hinamie]

choke you back like fingers

[snarkspawn]

tell us more about ur lucanismancer rook please!!!

Oooof well!! What do you want to know? :'D I always find it easier to answer specific questions than to just ramble on with only my jumbled meandering thoughts as a guide lol

So uhhh ... his name is Nazeeh and he's in his early 30s, I'm kind of still chewing on his backstory so I haven't really settled on anything concrete yet except that he's from MInrathous, probably, and before he was adopted by the Mercars he grew up as a slave/indentured servant in the household of a (Venatori) magister. He's very smart but not particularly educated (and whatever the opposite of a bookworm is). Generally speaking he's very laid back, honest and direct, although he prefers hiding truths in jokes that often don't land (terrible sense of humour). He does have a temper but it mostly shows when he perceives some kind of injustice, in which case he will fight tooth and nail to right whatever he feels is wrong. He also thinks he's charming but he's really not, he's just lucky he's cute lmao

I think he came into his magic rather late so his approach is very fists first, throw lightning bolts later haha he's also an incurable optimist and very annoying about it. Like he doesn't even think of failure as an option, if you fail it just means you have to get up and try again until it works. Which also means that he often doesn't stop to think things through but just blindly jumps ahead and runs into situations that could've easily been avoided if he had taken a moment to consider all the options. He's a do-er, definitely.

In terms of the game he's an orb and dagger mage (no specialisation, more a jack-of-all-trades/whatever-works kind of thing) and mostly purple with a bit of red here and there. His best friend is Davrin but he's very close with Emmrich and Bellara as well (the latter he kind of views as a little sister, especially after the whole Cyrian thing).

Anyway, here he is with his mullet down

[ophanim-vesper]

Rewatching AVA for the fun of it. Why does no one talk about how TCO canonically can and does eat text.

[all-mighty-axle-arc]

//remade the piece for this post bc i am really bad at looking at my old art. sword in a dress 🔥

[royalarchivist]

Pepito: It doesn't matter if you're not with me all the time, I'm gonna love you.

Quackity: Aw, I'm gonna love you too, son! 🥹 I'm sorry, come here! I love you son, I love you. I just want you to know that you're my greatest son ever. I wish you could've met Tilin, because Tilin was also a great- a great daughter of mine.

Quackity: Tilin is taking care of you and me from the sky.

It means a lot to me when characters choose to keep living, despite all the horrible things they've experienced, so here's a small tribute to choosing life in spite of suffering, and to two Eggs who made life so much better for q!Quackity and everyone on the Island. ❤️