#dark spoilers

[secretsofthewilde]

Anytime someone tries to talk to me about how complicated the family tree is in Once Upon a Time or House of the Dragon is I just want to grab them by the shoulders and tell them they haven't seen anything remotely close to the mess that is the family tree in Dark

[sunatsubu]

Jayvik and time paradoxes

I can't stop thinking about Jayce/Viktor. They're driving me insane, absolutely INSANE. Because everything about them is a time paradox??

This is pretty rambly, I'm just trying to get my thoughts down in my attempt to stop going crazy over them and also just figure out what the heck happened because I'm still kind of confused about some stuff, also I am not very familiar with game lore, mainly just the show.

They circle each other and are so intrinsically linked in so many ways, being both cause and effect to each other's fates. Starting at a random point that ends up circling all the way back:

Jayce and Viktor invent Hextech

Jayce gets drawn into politics as a result, away from Viktor

Viktor gets desperate, experiments with hextech on himself, with Consequences (Sky)

Viktor asks Jayce to destroy hextech

Jayce, unable to let Viktor die after Jinx's attack, fuses him with it instead

This leads to Machine Herald viktor, but not quite; like Pre-herald I guess? Where Viktor still retains some humanity

Jayce gets told by alternate Viktor to stop him from becoming the Herald

In his attempt to do so, he kind of causes/hastens it instead?! (more thoughts on this below*)

alternate Herald Viktor regrets everything and saves baby Jayce/gives him the runestone**

Jayce grows up wanting to research magic thanks to mage Viktor, and cue s1 events that end up circling back to the first point**

*I can't stop thinking about how kind and gentle Viktor seemed when he was trying to help Vander. It really seemed like he was on a path to using his new powers for good, without any sinister effects (though maybe I missed some hints, need to rewatch). It wasn't until after Jayce blew his heart to smithereens that he seemed to start on that path of deeming emotions and humanity unnecessary, solidified when Jayce rejected him to join him as partners again.

**Still trying to wrap my brain around these last two. The existence of alternate Herald Viktor that brings our Jayce to his destroyed world in order to ask him to stop our Viktor - does this imply that Viktor would have still become Machine Herald even if Jayce hadn't tried to kill him? Was it an inevitable thing? Or is this still more time paradox shenanigans, where Viktor asking Jayce to stop/kill his younger self, is both the cause and effect of Herald Viktor? And yet another paradox, Viktor inspired baby Jayce to research magic and ultimately invent Hextech, which is what was needed for Machine Herald Viktor to come to pass. So it seems like there are actually 2 paradoxes related to the creation of Herald Viktor/apocalypse post Viktor's revolution.

These time paradoxes defining their existences makes me think they weren't supposed to exist. Or at least, the ways they so significantly affected the world, weren't supposed to come to pass; Hextech, Viktor's Revolution, apocalypse. So while their ending breaks my heart into a million pieces, it makes a lot of sense. In order to cancel out what they'd do to the world (or just Piltover? this is another point I'm curious about, did viktor's revolution affect ALL of humanity?), they had to erase themselves from existence. It's so. romantic and tragic, but not really on both those counts? Like somehow deeper, too deep, to put such simple labels on. Honestly I don't even really know how to describe what their story makes me feel.

Bit of a tangent, but one interesting anomaly is the alt timeline Ekko was in. So Jinx would always be an important factor in Jayvik's fates since her attack almost killing Victor is the catalyst for a lot of things. Mage Victor says Jayce is the one thing across all timelines that could stop him, implying there are MANY timelines where Herald Viktor comes to be. Which thus means in all those timelines, Jinx is the unstable mess we know and love, the one who would attack the council. So that makes it interesting (and kinda gutting because its like Jinx is destined to suffer in most timelines) that Ekko's alt timeline was most likely rare in its stability, where despite Vi being gone, Powder is relatively happy and the world (Piltover/Zaun) is quite peaceful.

This is a seemingly random segueway, but Jayvik very strongly reminded me of the german show Dark. (WARNING FOLLOWING IS MAJOR SPOILER FOR THAT SHOW)

A completely different genre and story, but both are about two people whose destinies are so linked together throughout time and alternate universes, but weren't supposed to exist. And they could only save the world, allow it to go on untouched from the devastating effects they would have on it, by taking themselves out of the equation.

[hannahstanwald]

Being a Dark fan is thinking you've pretty much figured out all the fucked family connections, only to wake up in the middle of the night four year later with the sudden realization that Hannah's grandchildren married each other.

[haileanneposts]

[onewomancitadel]

'Jonas is a beautiful name' in a story which refuses to turn away from darkness and ugliness and forcibly wrenches Jonas through it... when he thought himself a curse beset on the world... and forsook his own name and became a monster. Jonas is a beautiful name

[yellow-dejavu]

I was probably still processing all the ways that Charlotte & Elisabeth are related when I watched season 3, so I didn't really think about Alt-Martha being the grandmother of her grandfather. But Alt-Martha is not only Tronte's grandmother, she is also Tronte's grandmother. The Unknown only exists in one world, and he had Tronte in both worlds. This means Alt-Martha has two grandsons.

Alt-Martha is the grandmother of her grandpa, but also of the Tronte of Adam's World. She is the great-grandmother of her dad, but also of the Ulrich of Adam's World.

This makes her the great-great-grandmother not only of both versions of Magnus and Mikkel, but also of herself. Which means that Martha of Adam's world is also her great-great-granddaughter. Martha can't exist without Alt-Martha.

Jonas loves Alt-Martha as he loved another version of her before. Jonas and Martha could only fall in love in Adam's world because Jonas fell in love with Alt-Martha. They are both descendants of their own son, so they could only exist through their love. Jonas and Martha will always gonna love every version of each other.

[post-modern-prometheus]

i just can’t stop thinking ab that scene between michael and jonas when claudia walks in. the way he has been sent back, thinking he’ll stop his father’s suicide, only to be the trigger for it. the way michael holds his head in his hands because that’s his son, offering the comfort hannah never really would. the look on jonas face that begs michael not to let him go with claudia. he is ready to sacrifice his life, his entire being, not really to end the cycle, but to end his own suffering. he doesn’t want to go with her. he doesn’t want his father or anyone else to die. he just wants it all to stop. he literally walks away crying bc there’s nothing else to do.

[phantomoftheorpheum]

Me, thinking about how, ultimately, The Umbrella Academy was basically just a weirder/wackier less cohesive version of Dark, but how the ending in Dark feels like such a triumph and a relief, while the ending in TUA just feels depressing.

[neon-witch-ritual]

: )

[xceanlynx]

Get to know me: favorite characters ➔ Jonas Kahnwald (Dark, 2017-2020)

The role you play in all of this is much bigger than you think. But every decision for something is a decision against something else.

[honeysuckle-flowers]

i personally interpreted dark as being about the cyclical nature of familial trauma and insular communities (#cycleofviolence) and so it ending w jonas and martha having to essentially erase themselves from their families and the town in order to heal...the only way to escape your hometown is to never return and burn it from your memory...the only way to escape your awful family is to leave them behind forever...ourobouros letting go instead of biting down...frankly a hopeful ending and not a nihilistic we-are-slaves-to-fate-slash-destiny one as many people around me believed it to be! wild.

[hannahstanwald]

I love stranger jonas, but he was kind of an idiot lol

literally all he had to do to save martha was tell her that staying in the bunker was the only way to be reunited with her jonas. instead of being cryptic as fuck and literally holding her at gun point

and not to mention he tells hannah that the jonas she knows will never return (which is a straight up lie and he knows it) and that she’s a horrible person and then he’s surprised when she takes the time machine and leaves lmaoooo

[yellow-dejavu]

idk how much dark fandom talks about this or if the dark fandom even exists at this point, but I don't think we talk enough about how elisabeth literally raised her own mother-in-law.

i also think that noah's belief in paradise comes from what he was taught by his mother silja, which comes from what silja learned from elisabeth, and which comes at the same time from what noah shared with elisabeth.

[post-modern-prometheus]

girls when they’re forced to face incomprehensible truths

[spectraling]

Some pain is never forgotten. You will carry it for the rest of your life.

[desolationarchivist]

dark the netflix show and rusty lake/cube escape the games are the exact same thing

gritty northern european horror fantasy thrillers about fucked up little places, fate, religious symbolism, confusing af family trees, shady family-owned business, funny looking vintage sci fi machines, time travel and fucked up clans in fucked up little towns in the woods with goregous aesthetics ranging from victorian through 80s to modern, people dying, cave and old hotel, animals dying, a whole plethora of Torture Devices, experiments, a hard boiled detective that fucks around and *really* finds out, going to therapy but the therapist being just as fucked as you or straight up evil, cults and sacrifices, clocks, a Bad Vibes lake, a place called paradise, recurring symbolic geometry (the triquetra in dark and the cubes in rl) etc

nobody will ever convince me that these two don’t take place in the same universe (pun intended)