#arcane episode 15

[dukeofdelirium]

“can we just pretend like it’s the first time?” the way that altered my brain chemistry in ways … I fear this might be terminal besties

[astheflowersgrow]

Just finished the second act of s2 of arcane

WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCKKKK

why.

[arataka-reigen]

Man wtf all these topsiders trying for peace, meanwhile Zaun said "fuck no we'll have no peace we'll make things worse on purpose"

[kestrels-nook]

Vi where are you vi I miss you

[lycanvulpas]

I've liked my fav ships long enough that they could go to elementary school

Kids these days are all "wow I can't believe I still like this ship 3 months after the canon ended!" bestie I have ships that started when I was still using dial-up internet

[pixieplushe]

over the course of watching arcane, vi absolutely stole my heart in more ways than one. her character is one of the most complex, misunderstood, and realistic out of the entire show

vi was shoved into prison at 15 years old, getting out 7 years later with nothing. every character in the show had somebody and moved on. ekko had the firelights, caitlyn had her family, jayce and viktor had each other, jinx had silco, sevika, then even isha. vi had no one. being locked away in such an environment, knowing full well you're the reason why your sister got taken by an evil man, does a number on you. vi had no chance to develop a sense of self, it is very prevalent in both seasons.

vi has little direction unless it's for someone else (which in turn is why i believe cait had a negative impact on her in s2 act 1, influencing her into being an enforcer + vi rationalizing it as a lesser of two evils, using the grey on chembarons vs allowing enforcers to storm the undercity). almost, if not every action she made was to help others, because she is so beyond selfless. it's her fatal flaw. like vander said to her, "you have a good heart". vi clings to people like glue because she cannot bear being alone again, letting the ones she loves slip through her fingers like sand.

she's just as traumatized as jinx, but her trauma is displayed in more subtle, self-destructive behavior as we see in episode 5 when she truly believed she lost everything again. which in turn is why I point to her being realistic, in real life it isn't obvious to spot when someone has trauma, it isn't supposed to be obvious. vi is the perfect example of that she finally got to choose for herself in the end, not be everyone else's plot device to make their lives better. i feel like she was written beautifully, everyone wants to dog on her for choosing to be in love? the past 2 seasons she chased jinx through every crack in the earth. she tried her damn hardest! jinx chose to cut the rope and let her be happy, let her go. much to vi’s dismay, we all know that was the last thing vi ever wanted. i love her so dearly, my favorite girl :(

(also, caitvi being canon makes me as a lesbian feel represented, i love them a lot. no more burying your gays trope! yay!)

[shmlnbstrcnd]

Season 1 failed Vi too. Jinx was always the writers' priority.

The way Arcane (even in Season 1) didn't address Vi's trauma from being imprisoned in Torture Jail as a child, gets even more egregious when compared to how Jinx's trauma was handled. From the very beginning, it was clear that the writers cared far more about Jinx than Vi.

I'm gonna focus only on Season 1 and ignore Season 2 (which is a whole other can of worms), because I want to highlight that the problems with Vi's writing already existed since the first season. So many people who are critical of Vi's writing in Season 2 praise her writing in Season 1, so I want to push back on that. Because Season 1 already failed Vi. Season 2 just multiplied that by 100.

Now, what Jinx went through in s1e3 was horrific and definitely enough to break a child's sanity. No denying that. Add to that her entire childhood leading up to that point, as well as preexisting mental illness, and the mental state of Jinx that we saw in episodes 4-9 was 100% realistic and believable. Even though she was taken in by Silco, then raised with tons of affection and validation, none of that was enough to heal her trauma. Good writing, no notes. Then we have Vi. Vi also went through season 1 episode 3, and her side of things were, in my opinion, just as potentially sanity-breaking. Then, she was immediately kidnapped and thrown into Torture Jail. As a child. In this jail, she was taken in by no one. Given affection and validation by no one. She got brutally beaten so many times that the wardens lost count. She felt crippling grief and guilt and worry the whole time but had no one to confide her feelings with. She had nothing.

At the same time as all this, Jinx had affection. She had validation. She had someone to confide her feelings with. Someone who even related to her trauma and could empathize. If anyone had hurt a hair on Jinx's head, Silco would have had them skinned alive. Silco was also the richest man in Zaun and its crime leader, so Jinx essentially grew up as the closest thing Zaun has to a princess. A mafia princess with an overly doting dad/trauma buddy. Remember, despite all this comfort, Jinx was still realistically shown to be horribly mentally damaged, and her trauma explored deeply and extensively in the show.

But Vi, who had none of the comforts Jinx did during the same duration of years, and received all the physical and mental abuse that Jinx didn't, somehow came out of the timeskip considerably saner and more well-adjusted than Jinx. Not only that, she also came out of the timeskip more forgiving and charitable towards enforcers than she was before her torturous imprisonment. And significantly more forgiving and charitable towards enforcers than Jinx, despite Jinx being immune to any enforcer abuse during the timeskip thanks to Silco having Marcus by the balls.

..........

Do you see why this writing is completely unbelievable and illogical? The excuses people give for this are:

1) "Vi is just that tough. She is mentally stronger than Jinx so it takes more to break her."

... sorry, but no 15-year-old on earth is so mentally tough that years of prolonged physical torture, verbal abuse, minimal sunlight, poor nutrition, no love or support, zero positive relationships, no proper medical care, and no psychological or psychiatric intervention, doesn't destroy them. Find me an example of a kid in real life who went through the equivalent of that and came out mostly sane, quipping and immediately ready to flirt with the cops.

2) "But Vi's trauma was shown in Season 1! She hallucinates Powder in the slums and also has a few lines saying how much prison sucked".

The Powder hallucinations occured while she was stabbed and delirious from blood loss. In every other scene, she showed no signs of mental illness. Her one or two lines saying Prison Bad were just that. Throwaway lines. If you removed them, would you be able to guess that Vi suffered in prison as a child? The Vi who is flirting and rapidly falling in love with an enforcer? No, from her behavior, you'd have no idea what she went through. Compare this to Jinx: If you removed all the verbal lines talking about the events of s1e3, would you still be able to guess what Jinx went through? Yes. Because it is shown in her character through more than just throwaway lines. It is shown visually, mentally, behaviorally.

3) "Vi just got lucky in genetics. Schizophrenia is hereditary and Powder was the unlucky child."

But Jinx's hallucinations aren't the only way her trauma is shown. Her entire personality is a response to her trauma. Even while lucid, she behaves in such a way that it's unmistakable this girl went through something fucked up as a child. Vi doesn't necessarily have to hallucinate or speak to dolls in order to show her trauma. The show just didn't bother to show it in any way whatsoever.

4) "Vi was hyper focused on her goal of killing Silco, and was suppressing the prison trauma."

So that means it should have been shown in Season 2 right? After Silco died and the dust settled? Guess what. It wasn't. The hallucinations she had in s2e5? All about Caitlyn and her break-up. Nothing about prison, Jinx, Vander, Mylo, Claggor, Benzo, Ekko, nothing. But then again, even Jinx's trauma responses were erased in Season 2 so like I said, Season 2 is another can of worms.

5) "Caitlyn is just that wonderful and kind and perfect and sweet that only 3 days with her undid 7 years' impact of torturous jail time and prior 15 years of class oppression."

Lol. Lmao even. That's all I can say.

TLDR: Vi during the Season 1 timeskip arguably faced a shit ton more physical, emotional, and mental torture than Jinx did, and it's illogical writing that she wasn't equally or even more damaged than Jinx. Even taking into account factors like Jinx's pre-existing mental illness or Vi's super duper ultra internal strength, it's still not believable. The fact is, Jinx has always been the writers' favourite. They did not care about writing/developing Vi's character as much as Jinx's. Season 1 already showed this. Vi deserved better from the start.

[dothestarsshine-art]

Reblogging for good luck every damn time I see this I've been quietly hoping for months that we get 12

Okay, now I'm pretty convinced that this season will have more than 9 episodes. It's no coincidence that they haven't announced the official numbers yet.

All these events can't fit into 9 episodes. I'm guessing 12 in 4/4/4 releases. The first season didn't end at the halfway point of the series, but at the right breaking point.

[vaya-is-dead]

Welcome to hour one of my delusional city

SO ABOUT JINX.... we have plenty to discuss. :))

*act three arcane spoilers under the cut don't read if you haven't watched it especially the last episode!!*

I have a theory.

Now many of you will point at me and call me delusional but I'm sorry. I think I might be right on this one for a change. (or at least it might be implied.)

OK, if you watch the final episode, you know that jinx made the sacrifice taking Warwick with her while Vi screams for her. This scene absolutely broke my heart and for about a good 15 minutes I thought she was dead.

Until I went back and watched the last couple of scenes.

Something that I found interesting is that Caitlyn was looking at the blueprint of the vent system, more specifically where Jinx made her ultimate sacrifice. We all know that arcane is not a show that would just throw in details all without reason. Everything has a point everything is calculated to either imply something or show something.

Why would Caitlyn be looking at the blueprint and why would the show creators specifically zoom in on certain airways? Well, of course, then none other to imply that Jinx could've escaped through one of these, therefore possibly surviving.

Now with that alone, it probably doesn't mean anything. It is nothing but a skeleton of what possibly could be, it needs flesh and muscle for it to actually be a Working theory.

But then, as I watched the final scene before the credits, tell me why an airship from Piltover airship very similar to the ones that we saw in episode one where powder said that she would be flying one of those one day. Why was it flying away into the distant sky, then followed by the classic Jinx glitches with the words the end?

Tell me why a show that is so focused on each, and every small detail, from micro expression to touches that linger just a second too long for it to be nothing, Even the drawings and graffiti around Zaun. why would a show so focused on those types of details do something like that if Jinx was not alive? It does not make any sense. It would not make any sense for the show.

Need more proof?

if you pay attention when Caitlyn and Vi are talking, specifically towards the end where Vi leans into Caitlyn, the expression on her face is not one of relief, but rather one of knowing something. She was the one looking at the blueprint, and she was the one who noticed the potential escape route that jinx would know better than anyone because it wasn't her sort of Home in the vent system? How could she not know how to escape?

it's also very satisfactory to her character arc, it was only in season two where we started to see her perception of death start to shift, it was only when Isha came into her life that she really started to understand her own mortality and not completely disregard her life like she used. the prison scene with Vi, where she's sort of regresses back to the mentality of everyone around me will get hurt because of me. while in act three she did begin to disregard her life again, I would like to think that her talk with Ekko might've snapped her back into place. So instead of losing jinx's character development in its entirety, she continues on the same path where she was while still keeping her goal of letting VI be happy the same.

Plus the pink streak coming up the side of the hex gate tower, it's similar to the way that Jinx charges at Vi in their fighting scene.

Now, this is the part where you go into the comments and call me delusional and make fun of my theory but thank you for comming to my Ted's talk

[daretolovemyrambling]

ARCANE: unreliable narrators (Silco and Vander focused) PART 1

I haven't really been in this tag/fandom before the season 2 finale, but can we talk about how both Vander and Silco are unreliable narrators? Especially when it comes to their flashback scenes?

I don't get why i've seen so many take the flashbacks we got in the show at face value. The show makes clear time and time again that when we get a flashback from the point of view of a single character, they are an unreliable narrator.

some examples of other characters:

on the left: biased/not the reality (character's memory/pov) vs on the right: unbiased/reality (our, the viewers, pov)

I'm going to use video clips and transcripts of the memories because I can't just gif like 5 minutes of scenes. Since you can only have one video per post, I will have to post this in several parts.

Let's start with Warwick's memories from 2x5:

We see that the memory of Warwick in episode 2x5 is all over the place, memories from the past 15-20 years come flooding back in bits and pieces. 

In the first moment of this scene we see Warwick running through the mines, then we see Singed who has experimented on him, we see the Monkey Toy aggressively banging it's cymbals against each other, then we see a younger looking Silco about to swing something at an enforcer, for a split second the Monkey's face replaces Silco's, we see that it was a bottle bomb and set that enforcer on fire.

I think this represents Silco's almost obsessive nature when it came to their fight for Zaun's freedom, the Monkey overwhelms you with it's loud noise the same way Silco likely overwhelmed Vander with his ruthless actions.

the next scene, Silco looks horrified at Vander and we cut to Vander drowning Silco, then back to the moment Vander (and likely Silco) discover Felicia's lifeless body. 

We see a moment of Vander punching an enforcer with his gauntlets from 1x1, cut to the Monkey's face again, then we see Warwick's perspective of the prison fight with the enforcers in 2x4 (we see him choke one of them out with his claws) and slashing several more of them brutally.

Finally, we cut back to the mines were he hallucinates a toddler-aged Powder crying her little eyes out (it looks like something that actually happened. I think this might be a moment shortly after he takes in the girls. Powder looks like she just woke up from a nightmare, her body language is shy and scared). He softly wipes the tears away with his left hand (same hand he used to choke Silco and an enforcer just a few moments earlier) 

Powder's face turns into Jinx and then pre-teen Powder and we follow Powder's lifeless gaze to Felicia dancing at the Jukebox, before finally, Vander images a Silco shortly after the murder attempt, this Silco is still dripping wet from the lake (and he uses his signature glass) but smiles at Vander invitingly (likely a moment that actually happend but was warped by the many nightmares Vander likely had about what he did).

The idea that Silco escalated the Bridge Riot and thus caused the death of many Zaunites, including Felicia and Connol, is definitely supported by this short memory, but it's *not* the only way you can read the scene. Vander's memories are evidently completely scrambled, he is remembering the worst moments of his life all at once.

It's just as valid to say that Silco was not there during the Bridge Scene in season 1 episode 1 as to say that he was!

That is what makes unreliable narrators so interesting, we can make assumptions to what happend, but if we don't get an unbiased view at a scene, we don't know for sure if it happend the way the narrator imagined it.

Examples where we have unbiased flashbacks would be flashbacks like Mel's childhood in 1x8 and the Bar scene with Felicia in 2x5. In these scenes we don't follow the pov of one character, of course information is still omitted from us to an extend, but we can make our own assumption instead of seeing the biased/narrow pov of a single character.

[burr-ell]

Bell's Hells gets compared to the Mighty Nein a lot, both in terms of narrative and party comp, but honestly, I think it makes more sense to compare them to Vox Machina. Back in Campaign 1, the deck was stacked against VM for several reasons in succession: the players had to port over from Pathfinder and learn 5e; Beastmaster Ranger sucks absolute ass; their cleric left in the middle of the campaign and was only available sporadically; and then their sorcerer left permanently. But they were able to build their characters to compensate! Scanlan took on the burden of arcane casting, and he, Keyleth, Vex, and later Vax all pulled their weight as healers. Keyleth was a Circle of the Moon druid, which is just a great subclass, and Percy not only had a great build but also took an ASI to give the party a higher INT score to better help with nerd shit. Vex multiclassed to play to more of her strengths when it became clear ranger wasn't going to do much more for her, and Vax's multiclass to paladin made for a formidable combination. It might have been nice if they'd had a wizard or if Pike had been available more often, but they still managed to find ways to work around it, and ultimately Vox Machina is still a really powerful and effective party.

Bell's Hells just...aren't doing any of that. Their party comp is ultimately just the sum of its parts, and not a particularly impressive one. They have a druid and two sorcerers and yet nobody has Teleport or Transport Via Plants (the Staff of Dark Odyssey needs charges and inflicts damage on the user for each charge expended). It was clear from early on that this campaign was going to have a lot of intrigue and conspiracy, but none of the characters had any reason to be invested in the worldbuilding or politics, so instead the party just followed breadcrumbs from lore dump to lore dump—Chetney didn't even get Grim Psychometry until level 10, and neither that nor Orym's knowledge of (mostly Vox Machina's) history were enough to make up for the fact that neither character had a real connection to what they were learning to give any of it real weight, and nobody else tried to make up the difference. Fearne and Laudna's multiclasses are both mechanically kind of a mess—it's not that they're not useful, it's that they're really not getting the kind of use out of their levels that they should be. (Is uncanny dodge worth being level 15 and not having any higher-level druid spells? Is it worth being a mostly-sorcerer multiclass when there's already a full sorcerer in the party?)

It's not that Bell's Hells can't accomplish anything; they very obviously can. It's that the players are making the kinds of choices that they were pretty deftly able to avoid ten years ago with fewer resources and years of experience than they have now, and it makes most of what the Hells do feel pretty designated and phoned-in at the end of the day. And frankly we saw that in last night's episode—they mostly just stumbled into their current party comp, and they mostly just stumbled into one of the dumbest decisions any CR party has ever made.

[octospace]

The impact of people so young being so sex negative it’s scary when we look at how some of you react to the Arcane sex scene in episode 8. I always think about how dangerous and weird the internet is for putting a lot of people together from different backgrounds and ages in the same room talking and reacting about the same things. Of course me as a 30 years old lesbian and a 15 year old person discovering themselves will have different feelings about the same story, the same media will mean different things for us.

But to see young people thinking they are nailing it while writing about sex and system of oppression because Vi goes down on Caitlyn it’s really sad. The connection between sex and power it’s a male x female reading of relationships were one of the people involved in a sex act it’s seen as a lesser person so they will perform things considered less.

That’s not what Caitvi sex scene it’s about, being greedy and wanting someone so desperately that you want to touch and feel every piece of their body it’s not a weird or bad thing, want to make someone else feel good it’s not a sign of being less of a person in a deeper social level, sex it’s just complex if you put it under the lens of religion and patriarchy were a woman needs to choose and safe guard herself to the right man who will be her husband and they will have kids and stay together for life. But outside that sex between two adults, who can consent and are madly into each other, it’s just fun.

[a-green-misstep]

A list of all Jayce and/or Viktor scenes in Arcane (wth time stamps)

SPOILERS for all of arcane

Season 1:

EP1

11:00 - 11:50

Jayce is heard, not seen during lab the break in

EP2

0:00 - 7:50, 11:50-12:20, 14:15-19:00, 20:00-21:40, 23:20-24:30, 31:30-33:40

Jayce introduced, goes in front of the council, almost kills himself and is stopped by Viktor who wants to work with him

EP3

7:30-8:40, 13:00-15:20, 17:00-18:00, 19:10-20:00, 25:10-27:00

they break into the lab and make a breakthrough in hextex

EP4

0:00-5:30, 11:00-14:30, 20:15-22:15, 23:10-26:30, 28:40-31:50, 33:00-35:20

hextex has advanced, Jaycee gets flirty with Mel, makes a public address, gets robbed by Jinx, and is made a council member

EP5

8:30-10:00, 13:20-14:00, 15:10-16:20, 19:00-21:20, 25:40-29:00, 31:30-32

Jaycee has lost focus on science for politics, and Viktor gets a breakthrough in the hex-core! Jaycee fucks and Viktor is in the hospital.

EP6

0-8:30, 13:00-16:15, 18:00-20:00, 22:30-26:00, 31:20-32:20

Baby Viktor, Viktor is getting weird and meets up with an old freind, Jayce fires Heimerdinger

EP7

5:10-8:40, 13:00-14:20, 23:00-27:30

Viktor is taking drugs and Jayce is getting hot in the forge. "I'm from the undercity"

EP8

5:30-6:20, 19:00-23:30, 24:30-35:00

Councilman Jayce meets Vi, Viktor runs, self-harms for the Hexcore, and kills Sky. Jayce forges the Hex hammer, raids a factory, and kills a child

EP9

0:00-2:30, 4:40-6:30, 8:30-10:40, 13:30-16:00, 23:00-24:20

Jayce sad about the dead kid, Viktor is sad about dead Sky and almost kills himself. "In the pursuit to be great, we failed to do good.". The boys get blow up

Season 2:

EP1

0:00-2:30, 14:00-16:00, 23:30-31:00, 34:15-36:30

Jayce survives, Viktor is dead and Jayce saves him with Hextec. Hex cacoon. Jaycee fighting aginst undercity gang.

EP2

13:00-17:00, 19:30-22:00, 32:20-36:00

Hex-Jesus leaves Jayce :(. Jayce almost kills Heimerdinger but instead talks science with Echo. Hex-Jesus starts a new religion.

EP3

13:30-15:30, 18:00-19:00, 21:20-24:30,

wild runs, the gang goes to visit the Hex-gates... it doesn't go well.

EP4

nothing

EP5

35:00-40:00

Jayce is back, and is doing bad. Viktor is now somehow speaking through Salo. "I thought you were done with hex-tec, and me." Jayce SMASHES Salo.

EP6

The entire episode is them.

Viktors the prophet, he has surpassed bodily existence. He helps heal, until Jayce comes to him, and kills his body.

EP7

8:00-10:30, 15:30-16:30, 17:00-20:00, 22:00-22:30, 27:30-28:00, 32:40-37:00

Jayce is in the Future, is being haunted by the mage, and spends months in a crevice with a broken leg, going mad. He is rendered disabled (like Viktor), and climbs to the top of piltover to find where the end of the world begins. (meanwhile Echo goes to prom)

EP8

6:00-6:20, 7:20-9:00, 14:00-20:00, 23:00-28:10, 33:30-37:00

Viktor has reached the glorious evolution, he spies on and trys to kill Jayce. Jayce is going to war. Viktor is alone, and is inbodied by a monster.

EP9

4:40-6:00, 18:00-18:50, 22:00-23:00, 27:00-39:00

Viktor has transformed, he wants for the world to become one, a collective consciousness. Jaycee and Echo convince/beat Viktor into understanding that he is wrong, and to end it, Jayce and Viktor, as partners finish things together, and their souls implode into themselves whilst they hold each other close.

[stackslip]

so after a second watch, the thing with arcane s2 so far is that near all the plot beats are really good and exactly what i wanted, but they also almost all desperately needed more buildup. it's like we're missing 10-15 extra minutes an episode for the scenes that would really flesh out a lot of the characters' motives for the choices they make and to build up the world! it's so painfully obvious that they're craming in plot bc they're missing a season or have cut time per ep, and as a result while im ecstatic at a lot of the developments v few of them feel earned!

vi choosing to become an enforcer, her agonizing feelings re jinx in particular feel like they're missing. we should have seen the moment cait chose to use the vents to target the undercity and others' reaction to this, especially vi. it's great to see the hole silco left, but we needed to see the underground falling apart in something that's not a shiny league amv. we needed to see the kid spend more time with jinx for her choice to defend jinx to hit harder. we needed to see more of jinx's suicidality and her voices disappearing. i would have been so grateful to see mel trying to do more to rally to counter her mother's influence and being foiled at every turn. more hints of ambessa's manipulation too! would have loved to see ekko and his peers rescuing undercity people and dealing with the aftermath of the war there directly!

and like tbc i think they v clearly considered what they did have the time with and chose to trim or cut off near anything that wasnt a super cool fight scene or important plot beats. the ACTUAL beats are near all a win to me tbh! i am ecstatic about cait's character arc, her using the vents made me gasp; the mel and ambessa situation is sooooo fascinating and fucked up; i love the revelation about hextech poisoning the ground; sevika and jinx dealing with the gaping wound of silco's death is so good; viktor's ominous messiah arc is hitting for me; i loooooved cait hitting vi and vi just breaking down.

in terms of missteps, i wish ekko didnt feel like he's just being explained plot at (i like his dynamic with jayce so far tho), i think vi of all the characters suffered by far the most of the sacrificed time to make her choices and words mame proper sense, caitvi kiss felt far more like they had to kiss before they broke up but in context did not work, and made me roll my eyes so hard, we did not need a five minute cait angst montage, i did not care for how "league" the zaunite chembarons felt instead of an organic part of zaun like they did in s1, half the songs are a complete miss to me, etc etc

i dont think the season is a loss and again im interested in the actual beats, and tbh i kinda feel sorry for fortiche and the writing team bc it's obvious that this is less like, active clumsiness on their part or shite writing and far more that time was a deeply limited resource for the story they wanted to tell and they had to make choices. you could argue if it would have been better to drop some plot threads entirely and focus more deeply on others but imo it wouldnt work for a series like arcane where the cast' actions have such massive ramifications on each other so. i get it. it's just really unfortunate considering how tightly written s1's tragedy was

[powder-ask]

Mylo and Claggor : How grief can change someone in a good way.

So, this is going to be a long post, i think at least, i do wonder when i'll manage to actually post it (edit : I finished it on the day I started, I'm so fucking happy)

This is a stray away from what i usually post, but i think it's important to analyse this subject, especially as a writter. Alsoooo spoilers for season 1, act 1 and 2 of arcane, act 3.

Most of the time, when we kill off a character and the other grieves, the character became worse out of grief, (ex : Jinx in the Main universe.) but how often does a character get out... Better ? Healthier ? A lot of them, actually ! But we follow them thought that journey, we see them grow. But what happens when we don't see that ? When a character is going from point A to point Z out of screen because they simply are not from our timeline ? Because we maybe don't deserve to see it ? Well, today is the day i'm analysing how grief changed Mylo and Claggor from Jinx's violent hallucinations to Powder's dear older brothers.

Season 1 Act 1, Episode 1 to 3

In the first season, we meet Mylo and Claggor, two other kids that complete the family that Vander created with Powder and Violet. We know nothing of their back stories, beside the fact that Vander adopted them, and it can be speculated that he adopted them toward the same time as the sisters. They all grew up side by side in the Undercity, as a family and as friends. Like Powder, Mylo and Claggor looked up to Vi, and we can assume she is the oldest of all the kids, Powder being the youngest, placing Mylo and Claggor between 11 years old and 15 years old in the first season. (But there are some sources that say they may be 17 ? I don't personally think so but whatever..)

Mylo

Mylo is very confident in the way he speaks, often bringing down Powder for most of his appearance on screen. But for anyone who's an older sibling (or who has a keen enough eye) would rapidly realize that it is all smoke and mirror. He shows off a lot, because he is insecure of his actual service in the gang. Vi is the chief, Claggor is the muscle and he feels like he doesn't do enough. While he is good at lock picking, Vi easily breaks open the door, barely even giving him the time to try and use his skills because he takes too long. He isn't that good at fighting, while he can hold his own in a fight, he isn't on the same level as his siblings. He doesn't know how to use a gun, as shown between his little arcade fight with Powder. And as a teenage boy growing in a oppressed city, he feels inferior to his older siblings. And that is why he picks on Powder.

Beside Mylo, Powder is the other weak link. She's smaller, younger, weaker, but believe me when I say that Mylo knows that one day, Powder will make her bombs work. He sees her potential, he sees the fact that she has a perfect aim at 11 years old and that worries him. If Powder's inventions work, he will become the weak link. If Powder succeeds, he will lose. If she succeeds, he becomes the real weak link. That's why he brings her down. If she abandons her inventions, Vi will still need him, even just as a back up.

We can also see that, Mylo never gets complimented by Vi. While Powder gets free passes for almost everything she does, Mylo gets hit in the back of the head when he tries to actually help. When she actually acknowledges him on the roof top, he is smiling and all happy. When they are saving Vander, he is panicking, barely able to do what he wants to do. And only when Vander tells him he can do it he manages to actually unlock it ! He looked so surprised when Vander was patient, in a moment of danger, and told him to take a breath.

Mylo often gets mocked for being too talkative, too brash, and too mean. He throws a ball at the wall out of boredom to make noise and to be seen, he steal an apple in the Undercity and he shows it off to Claggor, he picks up something random and shows it off after Powder found something that looked quite expensive, looking around to see if any of his siblings are impressed.

In the short time that we see him, we know he is an insecure teenager. Some people seem to forget that. Was bullying Powder right ? No. Hell no. But some of you are saying he deserves death for what he did as a teenage boy. Now i'm not saying 'boys will be boys'. I'm saying "Mylo is an insecure kid, that deserves to be sited down and talked to about the fact that his inferiority complex to the point where he feels that bullying and bringing down his sister is the only way to make himself feel better."

Claggor

Compared to Mylo, Claggor is the calmest of all his siblings, seemingly taking a backseat stage in his siblings lives, protecting them in any way he can. He is a quiet figure. He proposes to go up and get Powder when she is frozen on the rooftop, he is the one who voices worry over Vander being mad at them after what happened, he's the one hesitating about robbing Jayce's appartement and, an example outside his family, he tries and be supportive of Ekko's (a bit choppy) fighting moves (you knew I was going to sneak up an Ekko mention at some point, don't be surprised).

He always seems a bit nervous, and while robbing Jayce, he is the only one who doesn't pick up anything, staying carefully close to the window. He also has a habit of staying behind, closing the walk while his siblings walk in front of him. But unlike Vi who often calls out Mylo, Claggor usually stays quiet, only once he actively stands up for her is when he is mocking Mylo at the arcade. ("What's wrong, Mylo ? Worried Powder's gonna beat you again ?")

For Claggor, there is a bit less to analyse. He's the quiet older sibling, one of the oldest and always very helpful to everyone around him. So to analyse him more, i'm going to use Jinx's hallucinations, roughly at least. In her hallucinations, he often looks at her disappointed or disgust, which speaks a lot about how she sees him. While Mylo is loud and brash and doesn't hide his opinion, Claggor, as always, mostly stays quiet. Which to me mostly imply that Jinx must have always thought that, while he didn't say anything, he also saw her as, well, a JInx.

In the short time that we see him, Claggor finds himself to be passive, maybe too passive, letting Vi do the biggest part of the fight and taking a more protective part. (Ex : While Vi fights Silco's goon in episode 3, Claggor is breaking the wall to make an escape.)

Season 2 Act 2, Episode 7

In the second season, we visit alternate universes and we re-meet them again, As adults, they are implied to be in their 20s, but it's never really cut and dry with arcane characters. Anyway, we meet them back in the Last Drop, both of them dressed up in new clothes that arent as put together as the Pilties but also not as broken together as the Zaunites, which made me very happy :3

In that episode, we see both of them coming up to Ekko with a new kind of maturity, Mylo isn't mocking Ekko, just jabbing at him and Powder's relationship, like any older brother would, Claggor talks as much in those 5 minutes of screen time, than he did in the 3 first episodes ! They sit down and chat and we can hear Claggor talking about an invention he made, he takes charge and tells Powder to go save Mylo from embarrassing himself and he seems to have slipped into the oldest sibling role over the years. He seems more confident, complimenting Powder (I do count "what we would be without her ?" To be a compliment, since it is a very positive thing he says about her). After Vi was gone, someone had to step up and be the older brother everyone could count on and he took that role very seriously.

Meanwhile Mylo is soon much more bearable with Powder, to the point where he enthusiastically lets her help him, something the insecure Mylo of his teenage years wouldn't have been caught dead doing. Not once does he say a single bad thing to Powder, he never mocks her, never even makes a mean spirited joke against her or Ekko. He grew to understand that has family, he doesn't have to be serviceable to be loved, that his family will always be here. It also speaks a lot about his relationship with Powder. The way she casually sling her arm around his neck into a side-hug, hyping him up in front of a pretty girl and helping him talk to Gert. It implies that in those seven years, they made up, maybe even talked about Mylo's insecurities, since she so easily slips into her wing-woman moment.

When we see Mylo and Claggor just before the dance, they look up at Gert, side hugging, and compared to their teenage years where Mylo pushes away Claggor, he leans into the touch, smiles up at Claggor, with the music saying : "(Mais) la meilleur chose qui m'est arrivé" (the best thing that ever happened to me) as Claggor looks at Mylo with fondness.

When Vi died, it forced the two brothers to actually step up, to take charge and to be the brothers Powder needed after losing her sister, who we can see is the person she cares the most about in the whole world. They stop being the quiet observer and the bully Jinx sees in our universe, and they become the brothers she needs to grow and become the (almost) well-grounded persons she becomes.

Final thoughts

Grief is a very strong feeling, that pushes us to do stuff we would never do in another state of mind. It pushes Jinx to attack multiple people, becoming a literal terrorist when all she wanted to do was help. It pushes Silco to become a violent drug dealer when all he wanted was a free Zaun. But it also pushes Mylo to grow up and realize that bullying Powder will just push her- a part of his family- away and hurt in a moment where she is already down. It pushes Claggor to become responsible, and to actually speak up against Mylo, making sure that they stay together and united because they are a family.

And isn't that just the beauty of human emotions ? That any emotions can push you to do good or bad, depending on what you decide to do with those feelings ? That the prettiest of artwork was made from the tears of an artist, that anger and breaking things became an art form in itself, that your own happiness can hurt and oppress others ? The moral of feelings isn't to stop feeling every emotions, it's to learn to control them and turn them into something that can push yourself and other forwards.

[tinydinosauronadesk]

Hello Jayvik community! Been working on a fic since December and finally got around to publishing it. I haven't written anything in 15 years, so I'm pretty nervous about this tbh. But I hope some of you folks enjoy it!

Two Sides of the Same Coin (60275 words) by RtheHermit Chapters: 10/10 Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce & Viktor (League of Legends) Characters: Jayce (League of Legends), Viktor (League of Legends), Singed | Corin Reveck, Orianna Reveck, Powder from s02e07 AU (Arcane: League of Legends), Ekko from s02e07 AU (Arcane: League of Legends) Additional Tags: Jayce is a Sweetheart (League of Legends), Jayce is in love with Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce Needs a Hug (League of Legends), Protective Jayce (League of Legends), Jayce is Trying His Best (League of Legends), Bottom Jayce (League of Legends), Viktor Needs a Hug (League of Legends), Viktor is in love with Jayce (League of Legends), Top Viktor (League of Legends), POV Viktor (League of Legends), POV Jayce (League of Legends), POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, Psychological Trauma, Medical Trauma, Jayce Has PTSD (League of Legends), Viktor Has PTSD (League of Legends), Choking, Nightmares, Hallucinations, Body Horror, Mental Health Issues, Relationship Discussions, Post-Canon, post-canon established relationship, Post-Canon Fix-It, Ekko's Alternate Universe from Episode: s02e07 Pretend Like It's the First Time (Arcane), Medical Procedures, Medical, Jayce Takes Care of Viktor (League of Legends), Viktor Takes Care of Jayce (League of Legends), Happy Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt, Complete, Anal Sex, Anal, Anal Fingering, Oral Sex, Happy Sex, Consensual Sex Summary: Another post-canon fic that ends with Jayce and Viktor happily married in a cottage in the woods. But the road getting there wasn't easy. After all, how do you move forward when you wake up in another timeline with your naked partner laying beside you in a field? And discover he's dying of lung disease? How do you deal with all the mess and trauma you just endured in your previous timeline? How you do combat the horror that haunts your mind now? First thing would be to probably find a hospital.