#atlas gauntlets

[arcanegifs]

Riot Store on Taobao Mall is selling these Vi Gauntlet stress balls lmao (link)

[backstabber128]

I'm bringing back this random crack genderbend idea from 2 years ago bc I can 👏👏

I love to see how much the Zaundads/moms parallel their daughters/sons like this lmao. It's also cool and cursed to imagine the story being focused on brotherhood more instead of sisters.

I also got inspired by other design ideas I found, so of course I couldn't resist drawing my own 👀✍️

I mainly had fun imagining the slightly different designs and how Vi would turn into the most basic ass male character ever 😭 (still a badass softie by heart though) + Jinx proceeds to completely obliterate male gender norms 👍

[q8qwertyuiop8p]

Beautiful Official Arcane Metal Poster!

https://displate.com/lumino/7481455

[definitetly-not-an-arsonist]

Ok maybe it was just the heat of the forge and the stress of making a weapon but I swear to jesus (Viktor) that there was a serious look of pain on Jayce’e face as he’s shown forging Caitlyn’s rifle and fixing the Atlas Gauntlets. He hates using Hextech as a weapon, especially after the events of S1E8&9, but now he finds himself making the exact weaponry he feared. I’m not a Jayce stan but goddamn with that compared to Hexcore Jesus leaving him soon after, I do feel bad for the man.

[ben-talks-art]

Jayce really needs to teach Vi how to activate her freaking shield function cause I'm pretty sure that thing could have helped her out four or five times in the climax of episode 3 of season 2.

[aurumnexus]

◄  Ep 4 - Ayo, where that camera pointed  ►

More HD screenshots: here Please reblog if you save or use

[reubenyeoart]

Commission - Piltover Protector

A full body commission for a client as a Christmas present for their friend, of their friend’s sona dressed as the Arcane version of Vi from League of Legends!

[hel-unleashed]

Okay, but it looks like they're holding hands ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝)

[kurootetsuroast]

I made enamel pins of Vi's Atlas Gauntlets from Arcane!! I love how they turned out!! So excited for season 2 next month ^^

Shop link here-

[kyndaris]

Chains of Oppression

By the time this blog post goes up, the US election will be done and dusted. The votes will have been tallied and we will know if the last great bastion for Western democracy will have fallen for the lies of a burgeoning billionaire autocrat or if the people will have chosen to forge a new path forward with Kamala Harris at the helm. Should it be the former, there will be many who fear the implementation of the so called Project 2025, which already looks like a page out of the communist playbook (when it comes to China and the USSR), and is certainly a manifesto for any would be dictator.

In Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand, you play as one of the Unnamed - a lowly slave of the highly religious totalitarian regime that dominates the world of Atlas. Like manty before it, at least in the real world, there is a hierarchy. At the top sits Thelos, the God of the world, with the Enlightened - religious zealots (and who have the most power) sitting just below. Then come the nobles, the merchants, the farmers and finally the Unnamed. And much like the slaves of yesteryear, the Unnamed are considered disposable tools that none would care for if they were killed.

One day, as part of an Essence caravan, two of your fellow Unnamed go missing. Fearing for their lives, you volunteer to head out of camp to search for them. Despite the threats of wraiths in the area. These wraiths, it should be known, are creatures born out of sand and utterly vicious. They are also a means for Thelos to control the movement of humans in his rigid order based society.

It isn't long, however, before your character stumbles upon a powerful gauntlet. It bonds with you, granting the playable character the ability to double jump, dash through the air and summon forth sand weapons to do battle.

As the Gauntlet Bearer, the player character rises to become the saviour of the oppressed and downtrodden. Along the way, they also uncover the secrets of the artefact they now wield, as well as come to learn more about the mysterious entity tied to it: Nyaal.

From a story perspective, Atlas Fallen retreads old familiar ground with its focus on the dichotomy between order and chaos. Thelos, with his panopticon-esque Watcher floating in the background, represents order. Nyaal, on the other hand, represents chaos and freewill. Much like Assassin's Creed and many other games that have explored similar themes, the playable character must throw off the chains suppressing humanity. To do this, they must target the ones in power with the help of a handful of allies. In this case, it is the 1000 Year Queen, so named after becoming Thelos' puppet in ruling the humans. Throw in some God-slaying and you have Atlas Fallen in a nutshell.

What I liked about the Reign of Sand downloadable content (which was free), is that it added additional context to the world of Atlas. While Thelos is still the antagonist of the series, through the trek through the Forgotten Realms in Source, we also learn Nyaal also had a hand in shaping the Atlas we encounter - including providing humans with Essence stones and the creation of the Wraiths. And though Nyaal only wished the best for the fledgling human race, they were also blind to ramifications of their actions. Something in which they must reckon with as they do battle with their own shadow.

It just goes to show that while strict and total control is untenable, unfettered freedom can also bring out the worst in our kind. Just look at the state of the world now with the war in the Middle East. Nor should we forget how Russia invaded Ukraine.

Then, of course, there are the infamous Twitter wars as public outrage takes new form. People can be cancelled because of one comment from a decade ago, films and movies are labelled 'woke' because a woman is a main character, and online communities are split into various tribal entities. There is no longer any nuance in the world. A centrist is considered part of the problem. And even when you don't try to insert politics into your content, you will be decried as a grifter playing both sides of the political spectrum.

It's enough for this lowly blogger to want to hit reset on the entire human race. A sentiment which is shared by many of the Earth-Trisolaris Organisation in the science-fiction novel: The Three-Body Problem (a novel I'm reading right now at time of writing up this post).

Gameplay-wise, Atlas Fallen brings in a traversal system that felt fun and refreshing. It also helped speed up the slow slog of running from one part of the map to another like another game I could name.

Then, of course, there is the combat. The Gauntlet Bearer can mix and match three different styles of weapons: the axe/ hammer, dust whip and a pair of knuckledusters. While all are viable depending on playstyle, I favoured using the axe/hammer with the dust whip because of the range it allowed me. Slotting in the essence stones that helped maximise my attacks, I was near unstoppable in taking down the enemies that crossed my path.

What was a little bit different, I found, was how player character level was tied to the armour one found. The game only has a maximum level of 11, which can only be reached by upgrading the armour one receives through the use of Essence. Additionally, by upgrading armour, one receives perks to put into passive upgrades including the ability to get more tribute (the currency within the game), essence, or having more momentum to pull off special attacks. These all blended quite well with each other although I didn't feel much need to experiment once I'd found my favourites.

Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand from developer Deck 13 is not a triple-A title. The controls are a little floaty and the story isn't something I would write home to. And yet, I did find myself enjoying the time I spent skimming across the sands and fighting off huge sand monsters. So many games coming out in the last few years have focused on being bigger than ever with little to no experimentation. But I have found the ones that stick in my mind are those trying to break the mould by telling their own fun little story. What's more, they don't try to follow trends by trying to have a huge sprawling open world or have huge budgets that can only be sustained through excessive monetisation of in-game items.

So, here's to more experimental AA games!

After all, when major game developers (and by extension, publishers) begin to crumble, they'll be the ones picking up the slack with fresh ideas and new IP. And maybe we can return to a time when games weren't politically weaponised. Or are seen by big corporations as a means to pad out their bottom line.

Time will tell who will win out when it comes to free will or oppression; anarchy and security.

[books-in-a-storm]

Currently Reading 💛

Acer & Gauntlet

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

You think it's so easy? To turn your back while your city looks to you for salvation?

Absolutely unhinged of the Arcane writers to have Jayce say this about Piltover looking to him for salvation, when all Viktor wanted from the very start was to be the undercity's salvation, and Jayce does not include the undercity in his definition of "his" city

The very reason Viktor leaves Jayce is because he cannot turn his back while the undercity looks to him for salvation, whether they realize it or not, while the plans for the Atlas gauntlets and the Hextech rifle are right there on Jayce's desk, while Piltover Enforcers are unleashing the Gray upon Zaunites, while the Hexgates themselves are polluting the undercity even more. Viktor thought Piltover would enable him to save the undercity, he's one of who knows how few from the undercity to make it to the Academy, he risked everything for Hextech thinking it would let him save his people, and it amounted to nothing

Viktor cannot save anyone while he's in Piltover and even without whatever the Hexcore is doing to his mind and body, he's known that for a long time

[backstabber128]

The Monster You Created.

....

[vacuian-demon]

From sand to space

Starter with @a-den-of-demons

The relic of Creation, as Atlas has parked in their nation it was up to them to watch such a powerful item, with any creativity anything could be created. But in the wrong hands, it could be dangerous.

SWISH, TING, GASH, SLASH

BOOM!

Atlas, failed and now a wanted criminals was trying to get away with the relic, a bandit they been looking for ages ago had his hands wrapped around the item- it only wasn't chopped off due to his gauntlets- Lance luckily intercepted him.

"With this the sky's beyond the limits! The boarder is just the start to wall off weak-minded fools!" He stated, behind his shades.

"..." Lance didn't waste time, he'd charge him, colliding weapon for weapon, as his foe would grab the cane and a portal would open up behind them both; The two would fall in, seeing....a desert with complex machines in it.

"I'll trap you in another world and then take over-" Raising the cane high in his hand during their freefall.

The vacuian-demon emerged, slashing his arm, and taking it clean off, fire dust so it cauterized the wound, but the relic would fly out, without Aura, it was just a cane.

"You bastard! Come my summon!" A sigil will open up in the sky and out would pop a messed up dragon, all mouth and wings, like a nightmare made manifest.

"Falcor, COME!" And alongside that would be a mighty owl, the four would clash as the cane would fall to the ground, right infront of a trader.

An hour later.

"It has to be here..." Lance was now walking the nearby Bizarre, many aliens, people he's never seen looking at him and his giant Owl friend. People would point out his summon or his tail, little did he know however, he'd be attracting some unwanted attention.

[arowyn-m]

The stupid little Heimer and Ekko scene has me grinning ear to ear because they’re just an adorable duo but it also raises a lot of questions?? I’m so curious about this whole thing.

What are they stealing?

Why are they stealing it?

When in the season does this take place?

Ekko has a legitimate point. Why are they sneaking around? It’s not like Heimer has been banished…which means Ekko has to be there. I’m not complaining because Ekko’s my second-favorite character in the show but nonetheless why is he there? It seems like he would only slow Heimer down, so whatever they’re smuggling out must be either heavy, hard to reach, or needs to be judged for merit by Ekko.

The hallway that the enforcer is shown walking down looks like the same hall that Sky was traversing when she was talking to herself about her research, so it may be that Heimer and Ekko are trying to get into Jayce and Viktor’s lab unseen. Why?

Are they trying to steal something more raw like the gemstones or research notes, or something more complex like the Hexclaw or Atlas Gauntlets?

Heimerdinger has a mask, here. Does that mean enough time has passed between S1’s finale and the present to allow for Heimer to be “initiated” as a real Firelight, or is it part of the silly gag of Heimer taking this way too seriously?

i also wonder if this shot from the trailer is going to take place in the lab after him and Ekko get wherever it is they’re looking for.

Sorry I’m going to be thinking about this 30-sec clip for hours I love it

[loveandlegacy]

the mutation must survive

singed, viktor, power, and progress

ok i said!! some while ago that i think the line 'the mutation must survive' is deeper and/or more sinister than it seems at first and talking with a few friends finally motivated me to articulate the whole. red-string board thing in my head about the themes of progress and power in arcane and specifically what singed and his estranged mentee, viktor, represent at the intersection of both.

ime most off the cuff responses take ‘the mutation must survive’ to mean something like ‘one must survive at all costs’, or that singed, the line’s speaker, believes that nature is brutal, and survival by any means necessary is always justified. i’ve always been kind of dissatisfied with that reading because there’s already a character who expresses this belief in so many words (silco), and it seems unnecessary and redundant for singed to have a world philosophy that's basically a duplicate of one of the major characters.

so what is he doing? what does ‘the mutation must survive’ mean and why is singed the one who says it? despite having quite a lot of influence on the story, singed is far from a major character, why have him say anything that feels Thematic at all?

there’s a lot going on in arcane, and conversations about power and progress recur frequently. characters approach the question of both from different positions, but the story makes the point that each begets the other. they're inextricably intertwined.

jayce, enchanted by magic, consistently reiterates that piltover should step into its destiny as the city of progress and embrace the arcane. he gets his way eventually and inadvertently creates tools of power - the atlas gauntlets and the mercury hammer - and uses them violently against the already downtrodden zaunite workers in a shimmer factory. heimerdinger opines about piltover’s legacy of progress, oblivious to the literal human cost of his idealism, and fearful of “a world that cannibalized itself over power and pride.” silco proclaims power as the avenue to revolutionary and liberatory progress.

on the fringes of these interwoven ideologies, we have singed. the story never presents him as an agent who cares about power in the same way that any other character does. granted we like have to pause here to define what 'power' is in the world of arcane, and that has a multifaceted answer. for the individuals seeking some kind of social control or liberation or domination, arcane outlines systemic power as some combination of wealth access, the ability to enact wide-scale violence without fear of retribution, and a willingness to use the first two to further one's own interest.

i imagine most people in piltover would follow heimerdinger’s example and say they don't care about having this kind of power, or that they think pursuing it is dangerous or kind of gauche, but implicitly piltover's whole existence is all about systemic control - and how power permits dominion over zaun in particular. this implicit disposition all comes out very explicitly in like. marcus. and the other enforcers and their brutality.

and then in the undercity there are varying attitudes about what to do with systemic power. vander gives up on the pursuit of power and liberation after the day of ash in the hopes that the enforcers will meet him halfway for a peace he’s never really granted. caitlyn’s statement that the people of zaun live in fear of “violent crimelords” implies that the chem barons deal in very direct acts of violence-as-power for the sake of amassing greater wealth. silco is obsessed with "real power" belonging to people who will fight for it (ie ruthlessness, the willingness to use violence and/or wealth to further his ends).

in a standout contrast to this, singed doesn't really express any interest in this type of systemic power. even in cases of violence, his behavior is framed as an almost personal interest compared to other characters. marcus, the chem barons, silco, vi, sevika, and even ekko and jinx all have intimate relationships to violence, but their intimacies are somewhat utilitarian. brutality is one act among many that a person might undertake in the interest of self defense, intimidation, protection of a loved one, or political domination. in other words, violence is a social tool and not a curiosity in and of itself.

by contrast, the story rarely confronts singed with circumstances that would require violence. he never needs to defend himself except in the one instance where silco threatens him after jinx’s shimmer infusion. and singed doesn’t physically fight with silco, he only states the obvious: that he saved jinx’s life.

he also never uses brute force to intimidate anyone. he has no loved ones to speak of, much less protect, and he never demonstrates any interest in organized violence for the sake of politics on the scale of silco’s vision or vander’s naive idealism. if anything, the story presents him as a man who was doing what he wanted to do long before he met silco and as a man who might continue to do what he wants to do with or without someone in political need of his skills. and what he wants to do could loosely be defined as scientific research but veers pretty wildly into the realm of malpractice and torture.

maybe the easiest thing to scan about singed is that he’s a solitary man with a sadistic interest in interpersonal power, primarily held over his patients and test subjects. he demonstrates some glee in condemning a cat to die by way of a shimmer-sickened mouse and he cheerfully informs jinx that the agony of her shimmer infusion will “only get worse.” so we could maybe say that violence comes easily to him, but an interest in political, social, financial, or military control is absent.

instead, he chases after progress.

out of the show's ~6.5ish hr runtime, singed has less than 10 total minutes on screen, and he spends most of that time talking about life, death, or survival ("will he live?" / "long enough"; "she's dying….the mutation must survive"; "rio will live"; "i thought you understood. the mutation must survive"; ”[shimmer] should provide everything one needs to survive a violent transition"; "i know the look of a doomed man"; "are you prepared to lose her?"; "sometimes death is a mercy"; "i saved her life").

he never abjures death and he doesn't glorify life. death is a mercy. a person can live ‘long enough’, which isn’t the same thing as living especially well. all these lines of dialogue frame him as the man who stands at the boundary between life and death and who views both things as obvious consequences of nature, equilibrium-like in their relationship if left undisturbed.

progress, though, requires one to contravene nature’s apparent life-death equilibrium, as he tells viktor repeatedly.

in his first meeting with viktor, singed describes rio as a "rare mutation that [he] cultivated" - presumably from some other genetic lineage that occurred by way of stochastic process. this selective breeding is his first intervention on life and death, on what genes are expressed and passed down through generations. he then goes on to say that rio is dying. i'm attempting to prevent that - another intervention.

everything dies, and there's no reason to believe singed takes issue with that fact in a general sense. a later scene even reveals that he isn’t trying to save rio’s life out of sentimental attachment to her, and in one of his culminating interactions, he tells silco sometimes death is a mercy, all of which suggests that even if “the mutation must survive”, survival isn’t always the better outcome for the subject in question.

looking at these two statements - ‘the mutation must survive’ and ‘sometimes death is a mercy’ - side by side, singed’s attitude highlights that there’s value in diverting what might have been the most obvious or best outcome for an organism if there's a chance the consequences will prove interesting by his metric. all well and good, if not for one problem:

nature has made us intolerant to change.

on the global level of arcane as a text, this statement seems to be true, particularly of people with access to systemic power. the piltovan council is incredibly inflexible and suspicious of change regardless of whether that change is likely to benefit them (hextech) or endanger their interests (zaun's liberation). zaun's most powerful figures, the chem barons, are similarly resistant to change. they would prefer to dispense with silco's vision for liberation because it destabilizes their present-moment interests. the underground's former leader, vander, had completely given up on the possibility of change before he died. silco even accuses him of this directly, in an observation that draws a circle around singed's point that real change is quite hard for most individual people to embrace: you'll die for the cause…but you won't fight for one.

despite his revolutionary ideology, even silco has a brittle attitude towards change. his liberatory strategy involves reproducing a violent, class-stratified regime within zaun where the chem barons comprise the ruling class in question, presumably doing as little for zaunites as the council of piltover. his aspirations are noble! but even for him, change involves retracing the boundaries of a known quantity.

whether or not change is necessarily always a good thing in arcane is a conversation of its own, but it's clearly a desirable thing to singed. after stating that an intolerance to change is common among [us], he adds: but fortunately, we have the capacity to change our nature (emphasis mine).

given this context, i think it’s worth returning to the note that power and progress are deeply intertwined in arcane, with different characters pursuing both in different ways. singed seems like an oddity at first in that he’s disinterested in systemic power but interested in progress, as outlined above. but his disinterest makes sense. his vision of progress requires a power mechanism that seems almost orthogonal to intercultural struggle. given everything described up to this point, singed’s ethics (or his cosmology, or whatever you want to call it) can be summed up as:

living things are resistant to change

change is desirable because it produces interesting, unexpected outcomes

being able to influence or alter the expected outcome of biological events is therefore also desirable, given the first two points

in this way, power and progress are not separate for singed any more than they are for any other character. but for most of the figures in arcane, power and progress have some attachment to society. through singed, certain forms of power take shape in the slippery alchemy of biology and chemistry.

shimmer is power because it drives living things off whatever course their natal biology set for them (it should provide everything one needs to survive a violent transition). genetic engineering is power because creates novelty (the mutation itself). manipulating the circumstances such that the mutation can survive (lol) is power too. arguably, creating those circumstances is the most influential force pervading all life, and the one that is most emblematic of progress: evolutionary power.

it’s easy to confound this. ‘evolution’ is pretty frequently conceptually misapplied irl in kind of shitty popsci and pseudoscientific texts. so i want to pause here and say: don’t take ‘evolutionary power’ to mean ‘the pursuit of optimization’ or ‘in search of an apotheosis’ in this case. singed doesn’t articulate an interest in specific end states for a mutation’s survival. even for rio, his interest is dispassionate. she must survive for the circular reason that he wants to know if she can survive by infusing her with the precursor to shimmer. he never opines about a subject’s teleology - that’s silco’s deal.

in other words, on the occasions where singed discusses survival, survival alone is the only qualifying criteria of interest - ‌[he’ll live] long enough; the mutation must survive; i saved her life. the quality of life for the subject or the general function of the mutation in a state of survival never comes up. when he tells viktor that shimmer should provide everything one needs to survive a violent transition, he also cautions him about the cost of said survival, implying that the other side of this rapidly-approaching event horizon might actually be the opposite of optimal.

if you take this path, they will despise you…

all this paints singed not as a man invested in the eugenic concept of survival of the fittest, but as the eerie steward of change itself. evolution drags all things along in its inexorable tide, mutations are the delimited space between what was and what will be, violent transitions are the catalysts for change, and whatever survives the fallout is the interesting data from which new truths about that change can be divined.

if you want to know what a mutation looks like on the other side of the catastrophic break between ‘before’ and ‘after’ - well. you’ll have to manipulate the circumstances such that the mutation survives. and if you succeed, and if you gather new, glittering fragments of truth out of the wreckage - if you’ve learned something novel - that’s progress.

but what does all this have to do with viktor?

taking everything together, singed’s presence in season 1 foreshadows quite a bit about viktor’s arc in season 2. i’m going to turn away from what i guess is pure analysis at this point and into the realm of theory-crafting from here on out, so…enjoy.

if viktor goes the way of league lore (and i assume he mostly will), his fate quite literally includes the word ‘evolution’. but in contrast to singed, viktor’s glorious evolution is all about a certain apotheosis. he is likely to become his former mentor’s obverse, leveraging an engineered evolution towards a specific telos, rather than dwelling at the threshold of change itself.

as an audience member, i hope the story doesn’t set viktor on a redemption arc. even if the narrative continues to build out his choices as understandable reactions to his circumstances, it's better to sit in the mire of people digging their own graves. and i do think viktor’s history with singed might make redemption impossible.

at the end of season 1, viktor tries to steer himself off the path he’s chosen, realizing too late that it involves the literal blood sacrifice of the woman who loved him. but we all know he won’t stay the course. he’s touched the void, the hexcore is hungry, and even if he escapes the hexcore’s direct influence, he’s about to witness the crumbling of what little good will exists between piltover and his home.

depending on which version of the lore you prefer, viktor’s eventual rise to accidental cult leader happens for one of two reasons. he either takes up his quasi-transhumanism because he comes to view his faith in human goodness as a product of emotional naivety (the new lore) or because he specifically wanted to carve out the jealous parts of himself that left him feeling broken after stanwick’s repeat betrayals (the old lore). in arcane, i think the story will change again.

in a last-ditch effort to cure his own terminal illness, viktor returns to his creepy former mentor for help. he claims to ‘understand, now’ what singed told him all those years ago about mutations and survival. knowing what comes next (sky’s death), one has to wonder if he really does. after all, before giving viktor the shimmer variant that might save his life, singed pauses to warn him that love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress.

it’s a leading line that invites a lot of questions. what love, whose love? sky’s maybe. or jayce’s. or heimerdinger’s, whose love is very flawed, but is arguably still love that viktor could lose. those are all compelling particulars or parts of the puzzle of viktor’s life, but i think singed is pointing viktor towards something more totalizing.

throughout season 1, viktor’s story has deviated from his league lore somewhat. he hasn't really been preoccupied with human error; instead, he has both desired and rejected different kinds of affection. rather than grappling with jealousy or heartbreak over stolen work, he wants to help the undercity - but ultimately mourns the fact that his illness will steal his opportunity to build a legacy, not his chance to make the world a better place.

summoned back into the role of necromantic mentor, singed seems to intuit this new emotional framework when he reminds viktor that progress has no room for love or legacy. those are the two sacrificial lambs required for progress to take place.

but if viktor truly believes what singed says (and it seems like he does at least a little bit), i don't think he’ll be able to abandon the want for either on his own. even in the wake of killing sky or in the wake of what we assume will be a very painful falling out with jayce, the story still frames him as a person with the basic human desire for closeness. he's afraid to tell jayce what he's done to sky, after all. if progress, otherwise known as the glorious evolution, is to proceed, he'll have to cut out his own heart not for the failings of jealousy or illogical inefficiency, but because the need for love and recognition has made him selfish.

he won't succeed, obviously. not the least in part because no need or feeling is entirely black or white. love brought him to his friendship with jayce. legacy made him brave enough to defy heimerdinger and chase magic. but pain, loss, and self-loathing distort all things, and i think that, in viktor's view of himself, the fragile yearnings of the human heart will become grotesque, the source of all his own wrongdoing.

in this way, singed’s unifying thesis has loaded the spring-trigger guiding viktor’s trajectory. if viktor hopes to forge a better way for the people of zaun, if he hopes to build something new in the world, he'll have to eviscerate himself first. such is the bloody price of progress, and so goes his evolution's apotheosis. it's not the man who matters. the mutation must survive.