#and now it’s gone.

[bumblecrisp]

the problem i have with arcane viktor isn’t that he’s no longer the machine herald we know from league, it’s that it is no longer a story ABOUT viktor. it’s a story about the arcane. ok does that make sense. stick with me here

viktor in s2 is taken over by the arcane. transformed by it. changed by it physically and mentally. it literally cleaves his mind in two to realize its form in his body. right? and that’s great! that’s genuinely really cool! BUT.

old lore viktor is taken over by OBSESSION. his own desire for improvement, for perfection, his hunger for progress. that is IMPORTANT. it is important to his character, it is very very important to me that we understand that viktor in s1 is by all appearances progressing along that path. viktor is dying, viktor is out of time, viktor is DESPERATE. he wants to save his own life, but crucially not as a selfish act. he sees himself as a VESSEL FOR PROGRESS. ok? that is so so important. viktor does not value his life as a human life, he only needs to remain alive so he can be a VESSEL FOR PROGRESS. i am dancing around yelling and waving my arms. this is SO crucial to his character and its like . so poorly handled in s2 it makes me INSANE i mean neurodivergent. i get that they were trying to do some evangelion thing but AAAAAARGGGGH they’re so WRONG about him.

ok? ok? do you see where i’m going. viktor is a desperate desperate man with a brilliant mind and shaking hands and he is working and he is working and he is out of time and he is going to do whatever the fuck it takes to give himself the chance to save his people. he is going to replace his flesh with silver and steel for sinew and platinum in his veins and he is going to tear out his own heart and replace it with a machine just for a little more time. he is absolutely selfless, and he is extraordinarily arrogant. ok? ok?

he is exceptional. he is a zaunite prodigy. he is the only hope.

he is a genius. he is a genius. it has to be him. his gears are softly turning and he is going to save his people. no matter what cost. no matter what cost. he is going to save his people no matter what cost.

and that is lost, in s2! it is so important to me. one of my favourite champion stories. and it’s gone. poof. what they have in s2 is just echoes. one-off lines about uniting the people, tossing out a “glorious evolution” to humour the old fans. it’s heartbreaking! he’s gone! the thing arcane fans don’t understand is that this isn’t just a rushed storyline, it’s a fundamental change to his character! don’t even get me STARTED on the whole thing with skye. the POINT!!! is that he makes SACRIFICES in the name of progress - himself! others! it’s all necessary evils for the greater good! they are so wrong about him im gonna lose it!!!!!!!!!

s1 viktor was beautiful, perfect, a wonderful WONDERFUL representation of the human he used to be, everything was in place, and then the whole character was sacrificed for a narrative tool to force a piltover/zaun reconciliation speedrun so they could keep it to nine episodes. it’s genuinely heartbreaking.

anyway. i should probably stop yelling at the wind and go write some fanfiction huh

[potato-lord-but-not]

yeahhh I realized that after drawing that lmao, still keeping my left handed Oscar headcanon tho. I mean. the implications. the symbolism.

Arthur being a menace and also my fav side characters evveerrrrr Noel hiiii

[r0semultiverse]

Like music to my ears

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[junewild]

what do you say to a trans person who’s sharing after-surgery pics?

[blueskittlesart]

Dear Big Brother

kind of a sequel to this comic

[hussyknee]

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.¹

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats.² The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine that, five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything, the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems are all purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government under a pro-union left-wing President and an unmarried female LGBT rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history. (Edit: She was knocked off first place by a dude in the final result. Boo.)

(On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state. Uh.)

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points (Edit: from the previous 5% to 10% in the final result!) but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! There Is a representative for Malaiyaha Tamils in the Central Province for the first time in history and it's a young woman! (Edit: now it's two female Malaiyaha MPS!!) This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, the NPP coalition formed around the nucleus of the JVP that used to be communist but haven't been in 30 years, they're now just social democrats who are left of places like the US and UK, whose "left" is now center-right. They're only threatening to the Western mainstream media for some reason who can't stop bleating about how we have a "Marxist" government now. In reality, the actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is quite high with a super majority government regardless of affiliation.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

---

¹ Well, nearly. There are a few career politicians and a nepo baby but they aren't so bad either.

² Goddamn it, Baby Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka's answer to JD Vance have wormed their way in using the list of Constitutionally reserved party seats for non-elected members. FUCK the National List.

[qualityrain]

[bastardiando]

posting across the targetverse here bc it did numbers on twitter

[z13lovebot]

🪲🐟

[rlyehtaxidermist]

archangel michael, brandishing his trumpet, ready to play the song that signals the end of the world: who are you and what are you doing here

weird al yankovic, accordion in hand, ready to play the polka that signals the end of the end of the world:

[deliciousnecks]

Kayvan Novak II The Emmy awards 2024

[akanemnon]

Shouldn't there be a minotaur in the labyrinth? Who put this goat here? This is not accurate to the mythology! /j

FIRST - PREVIOUS - NEXT

MASTERPOST (for the full series / FAQ / reference sheets)

[pangur-and-grim]

something bad might have happened and I’m really freaked out right now.

[aashiqeddiediaz]

you know what boils my blood.

over the last 2 weeks, i've seen countless patients walk into my urgent care center, symptomatic for so many things, refusing to get tested for covid and flu, citing that they don't want to knowingly bring it to their holiday tables. i had a patient tell me, verbatim, "i don't want to test for covid, because i don't want to be the asshole who brings it on a plane."

i understand that - i understand that holidays are times where people look forward to meeting loved ones that they might only see once a year, or where they get a break from the hectic back and forth of their lives.

but here's the thing - whether they get tested or not, they will bring whatever they have to their holiday tables. it's pure recklessness to know that you're sick, and walk into someone else's house spreading the disease.

today, january 2, i saw 91 patients, many of them who have tested positive for covid and flu. many of these patients are the same ones who didn't want testing 3 days ago, until their events were over, and now, they will have to reach out to everyone they know to let them know that they were positive because they were showing symptoms well before their event.

the next week or two? we're going to see many, many more, all people with symptoms that started around christmas. these are the only two viruses we test for rapidly in our office, but they are potent and can be fatal in many people.

so here's why i wrote this post, and maybe it's a little late, but - if you care about your loved ones, please get tested if you know you're sick. it doesn't have to be at a clinic if you don't want it to, because the over-the-counter tests work just fine too (if you test within 5-7 days of symptom onset). just...please don't try to run from the knowledge that you might have covid, because immunocompromised people, elderly people, people with co-morbidities like asthma, pregnancy, diabetes, etc...many of them may not recover. and they may not be sitting at your holiday table in the future because of it.