#i don’t hate jayce or viktor either btw

[sunfyrisms]

of course the show that is fundamentally centered around two sisters and their tragedies becomes centered around men and said sisters are sidelined and their arcs are pushed to the sidelines and all the phenomenal care that went into their characters went down the drain. ​one’s arc is literally “the traumatized / mentally unwell character’s happy ending is committing suicide because they are simply too broken to heal and be happy” trope, and her mental instability is forgotten. the other is reduced to a mere plot device, has no agency of her own, and her trauma and anger is treated like a complete and utter joke for the sake of a shitty ship, and because the writers literally, point blank, were bored with her. it’s so sad because the tragedy of these sisters is so utterly devastating, so encompassing and so intricately woven into the narrative. but make it about two men i suppose?

[arcaneconfessions]

I don’t mind both MelJay and Jayvik but like the blatant racism,infantalzing and ableism that Jayvik’s have for Mel,Jayce and Viktor is actually insane. The cool thing about fanon is that it’s fanon like I’ve seen Jayvik shippers say “it doesn’t matter if it’s not confirmed because it’s canon to me” which is great because that’s what fan work is about but to also see them get so mad about Mel and grasping at straws to lessen her relationship with Jayce just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. (This includes those weird animators that said it took Jayce having sex with Mel to realize he loved Viktor which shippers are taking their words as Bible)

They also seem to make Jayce some dumb dude which in my eyes is kinda racist considering he’s a brown man who came from a labor intensive family and worked hard to prove his intelligence and work and to have him just be made in some himbo is weird. As for Viktor it’s really weird how much they baby him to fit their narrative like he isn’t some weak little guy he’s an independent and intelligent man who has layers to him and to have his entire character revolve around Jayce and to make him some “smol bean” type character is not cute (not to mention the entirety of his tags on multiple platforms are filled with Jayvik and barely anything of just him) .

I know there have been a few MelJay shippers who are weird towards Viktor which is not cute either and I don’t condone at all, comparing it to the sheer amount of hate that Mel gets like it’s not even comparable!

Like recently CL said he saw Viktor and Jayce as brotherly and people were up in arms about it saying that the writers opinion doesn’t matter cause they believe what they want to believe (which is exactly why fanon exists) and now that Amanda says she can see why Jayvik could be a thing everyone is going crazy which is very sad because I vividly remember Amanda doing a Q&A on Twitter and she answered a question saying that she and the rest of the creators saw them as brotherly and people were so awful to her that she kinda distanced herself from the app which just says the writers words matter when it fits their narrative.

This is such a word vomit but it’s so disheartening to see cause Viktor is one of my favorite characters in LoL and Arcane and to have him so overshadowed by all of this is disheartening

Btw People are one hundred percent allowed to disagree with me because again opinions are subjective but don’t take this as me hating on Jayvik or Meljay or any ship at all because it’s not I’m just disliking the shippers and how they’ve been acting

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[colorfulwastelandvoid]

It’s late at night and saw this and now I’m irritated all over again😭. This seems to be a common talking point about Mel and all 5 of her fans, so let’s get into it. While I absolutely do think that a FEW Mel fans throw around the words misogynist and racist too willy-nilly, most do not.I chalk this behavior of the “dismissal” of Mel’s wrongdoing to the fact that it is all a certain demographic has been talking about for 3 Years! Mel’s fans are just tired having the same convo over and over again for years! Quite frankly the manipulation was never the point of her character so it’s irritating to harp on such a small part of her that she quickly grew from.

Let’s get into the mysignoir of it all. Black fems who point out the violent way yall act toward Mel are not pulling this out of thin air. It’s from experience. The fandom has been hypercritical of Mel since jump a lot yall somehow came into the show deciding not to like or meaningfully engage with her character. Oh! By the way saying she’s hot or you want to bang her is not meaningful engagement of her character, you troglodytes. I can go on and on about how you see the dumb jokes about “oh I ship JayVik cause Mel is for me” or “ I treat her so much better than Jayce could” then you go on their page and except for a few pics (usually in a non-cannon ship) they don’t engage with Mel at all as a character. Heck most time there is nothing there at all about her! The fandom either fetishized or villainized her. The same people talking about progression and what not, shut down black fems whenever we pointed out the bigotry in the fandom. It’s always listen to black women until it’s time to actually listen. Crazy thing is Mel could have been perfect and the fandom would still tear her apart for being perfect, hell some of them are calling her a Mary Sue now. It’s like there is no where to go as a Mel fan.

Let’s for a second get into what the tweet said. She used Vik and Jayce for Hextech. That has been said since season 1 and the ending of season 2 certainly didn’t help… or did it?Whenever someone brings this up, I ask what in particular did she use them for? Here comes the mischaracterization, you point that out and either one of two things will happen. One they’ll double down and say that you are removing all the “complexities”of Mel and will no longer engage with you. You say that you aren’t but are putting her actions into context. They don’t care and will either run off or start swinging in your comments. Two they will concede that she really didn’t need them for anything but still used them and saw them as investments. You say that’s fair but point out what an investment means to Mel is different to what an investment means to them. That’s why I hate the fandom reaction to the “argument”. She didn’t double down she explained. An investment to Mel, is like a parent or mentor invest in a kid. A kid could show great talent in helping people so the parent starts putting them math and science tutors or sending them to bio camp. Not because they hope to get something in return (I hope some parents are bad) but because they love and believe in their child’s ability. Mel loves Jayce and respected Viktor and believes in their ability to do good. Hence why she said you were the wise investment. She literally listed the positive attributes about Jayce. It’s also why he apologized. This notion that whenever someone puts Mel’s actions into context we are disregarding her complexities is such a dishonest take and is why some of her fans are hostile to any critique. i’m not saying it’s right I am saying if we don’t acknowledge why we’ll never be able to get past it. I mean here are few things I noticed when discussing Mel online. These are the non racist one btw.

You want to talk about how all she wanted was to be accepted. SIKE! Someone is gonna bring up the fact that she was the richest person in Piltover and disregard your statement about her. Want to talk about how Jayce isn’t that naive and him and Mel was just genuinely agreeing to stuff for most of season 1. Ha! Here comes the jezebel stereotype to try to prove you wrong! Bring up the fact that Mel genuinely believed in Jayce from the start and wanted to help(yes she had her own reasons, none nefarious though). Lmao! She actually just wanted more money and power, apparently! Bring up the fact that because of Jayce, Mel started to become the dreamer she once was and because of Mel, Jayce got to have autonomy over his own invention and how huge that was for both characters! SIKE again! It is a parallel to Viktor, somehow.

This post is already long, thanks for reading it. The last thing I’m gonna say about the dismissal of Mel’s flaw critique. It’s not true. Most of the fandom won’t let it go. Go to a JayVik post and asks about Mel, that’s all you will see and hear is critiques and mischaracterization. Stop bothering Mel fans if you are not going to meaningfully engage.

To the Mel fans throwing racist& misogyny around a little too loosely, STOP! You are not helping.

That is all for…now.

[arcane-ish]

BTW, it is my stated goal to convince all of fandom of Arcane’s Ekko’s smut potential and no I’m not remote sorry for it. 

Obligatory: 

If you can’t take Ekko thirsting, this is an Arcane Ekko thirst post: 

Also, bless those Timebomb fan artists who draw him like he’s the world’s tallest stud muffin. I mean, not that I don’t like cute Ekko, but tall Ekko is just .... guh. 

Also, can we talk about how Ekko can basically do ballet? 

Mumble, mumble, something, something, *limber*. 

Seriously, where is my Timebomb Step Up / Ballet School AU? 

Also underexplored dynamics (some shippy, some considerably less so): 

- Ekko / Viktor: shy guy Viktor having a crush on cool guy Ekko or vice versa? Maybe with a mentor angle?  - Ekko / Jayce: rivals to lovers, considering how much game!Ekko seems to dislike game!Jayce?  - Ekko / Mel: so like they meet at a party and they like smut it up because they are the prettiest people in Arcane? okay, so maybe Ekko becomes the official speaker/representative of Zaun and Mel tries to mentor him on political savyness? or Mel goes undercover into Zaun because she had heard of Ekko and wants to check him out?  - Ekko / Silco: so... I’m not into non-con, but let’s just say the non-con potential in either direction is considerable, because the hate it definitely there on Ekko’s side and while we don’t really get much from Silco what he thinks about Ekko, it just seems very plausible that he would despise Ekko, as they have directly competing world views in regards to how to advance Zaun and in regards to Jinx, while still having the common baseline of being deeply invested in both Zaun and Jinx. And I guess the obligatory “corruption arc” respectively “Silco adopts X instead of Jinx/in addition to Jinx” AU. Or maybe they are forced to team up to save Jinx together and learn to respect if not each other but at least how they both care about Jinx in their own way.  - Ekko / Firelights: so they haven’t really told us much about the Firelights, but ... what if they were all free love and poly? And Ekko has like two partners there and they all make sweet love? Seriously, where is “character of choice or reader gets invited to a firefly party and is all 0o and Ekko is all ‘well yes, we all love everybody here, wanna join in on my threesome?’”. 

[viktormaru]

okay here’s my full character analysis??? Headcanons???? canon retelling with my shit slapped on??? on

VIKTOR LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

(under read more cause its gonna get long)

Viktor is said to be born in the borders of the Entresol level of Zaum (aka the middle), but I’m guessing that means the lower border because of how often he’d have to move or stay away from home due to accidents.

I assume Viktor had good parents. They were artisans and seemed to encourage his creative pursuits with robotics and so on. (I also believe he is trans and that his parents supported him in that as well haha).

So yes, we have this child who likes building things. And he lives in this place that is not healthy or safe for the people that live there. His parents probably go to the upper levels to work and Viktor gets a glimpse of a better place there. He sees where he’s at and at first, he is motivated by both kindness and frustration. He is a child with a passion and all these leaks and accidents are getting in the way! So he starts studying to see what he can do. Time passes though and he realizes the extent of those things, the casualities of those humam errors. So he takes his work more seriously and soon he is producing results. But of course no one takes a teen seriously, no matter how good he is.

Until someone does and it works. His inventions are good! So he keeps doing it! He’s awkward and socially anxious but he really LOVES building things so he does it and sells his work to the factories until he gets the attention of the Zaun academy of techmaturgy (this is canon btw). 

He goes into the academy and he’s.... awkward... Like, Zaun is full of weird people sure but Viktor is pretty bad at talking about anything but robotics and stuff and comes off as blunt often, so he’s kinda isolated by his peers. He doesn’t mind, he’s there to study. But professor stanwick approaches him with interest in his work and Viktor is happy he is recognized by a professional. He’s a little naive back then and trusts his teacher a lot. Which is why he is convinced to move to Piltover, despite a bit of his reluctance to leave his home. His parents wave him goodbye and he leaves.

He moves to Piltover and gets a better lab, more tools, more money and more people to help. His work just improves in time and he’s put to work with a lot of people. He once again fails incredibly of socializing properly and falls into isolation yet again (hello darkness my old friend). People end up working with him either because he’s really the best option or because they can stand him for the time he is needed {:- (

Well, that is, until he works with Jayce. Jayce is infurating and doesn’t do things the way Viktor likes doing and has this weird outlook on how things are done that sometimes just works despite it all. He’s a puzzle that doesn’t make sense and the two end up doing a lot of things together. And having a lot of discussions. A LOT of them. They are both kinda lonely. But its like.. they don’t dislike eachother?? Because they kind skipped some steps in how socializing usually goes so it just kinda worked. 

They could’ve kept going, getting comfortable in eachother’s spaces until they could just go out to chill together or something but neither of them was brave enough to try it (or smart enough to realize that could be good). 

But then at this time that awful chem spill happened in Zaun in the entresol level and Viktor rushes home to help.

I’d say this is where Viktor’s character starts like, solidifying I guess? Because I think for the first time, as a grown mature person, Viktor is seeing death and suffering with his own eyes. Death and suffering that could’ve been avoided. He’s watching all these people die and suffer and he can only do so much to repair the damage. If only it could’ve been avoided, could’ve been stopped. He knows it’s possible. Why didn’t anyone do it? 

He doesn’t find his parents either.

So he spends the next several months throwing all his energy and sanity into doing whatever he can to help these people. He builds blitzcrank and they fix evertyhign they can. It’s a fucking CHEM spill, can you imagine just how AWFUL it all was?? people were dying for several weeks after the accident , even after the damage to the structures were already fixed. These people were slowly suffering around him and he was trying and they kept dying around him. These are workers, families. It’s a pretty bad situation.

He learnes how to infuse mechanical parts with flesh in an astonishing way just to try to replace the rotten, sick parts of the people around him. Get rid of the parts that were kiling them.

And then! He finally goes back to Piltover, after it all, and the first thing he gets is the news that Stanwick stole credits on his invention of Blitzcrank.

Like.. the emotional toll of it all? He’s tired! He’s burdened with the ammount of death he saw and people wanna be shitty and play games like that for glory and fame! It’s stupid and he doesn’t understand it! He tries to fight for his right and loses because no one really bothered to support him through it (Jayce didn’t think he’d really have to and would you look at that).

He’s angry and upset and grieving and possibly traumatized. He keeps wondering why would people do that to eachother and comes up empty. So he’s here, obsessing with replacing every part of human error to garantee that people WILL live. Of course, he’s more isolated then ever and people don’t bother to sit down and listen, they just think he’s weird and obsessed and stuff like that.

So when he needs to do the colaboration on the dive suits with Jayce and they have their fight about free will, people side with Jayce quickly. They think Viktor is mad and they had seen it coming miles away. 

He gets fucking expelled from the Piltover academia and sent back to Zaun.

To his ruined home, alone, with nothing but his name and his thoughts.

Clearly that leads him into a deep depression. After all, he lost everything but he doesn’t understand why ! because sure these people in piltover like acting high and mighty and theorizing and politicizing but they didn’t have to watch children crying because they were coughing so much blood was coming out because their lungs were corroded and they wouldnt last another week. They thought viktor was mad. 

And viktor had a lot of time to wallow over it, and think about his failures and suffer on his own and he’s actual conclusion is that negative emotions ( envy, pride, sadness) clouded people’s judgemetns. They’d let others suffer for their own gain out of fear of losing. 

He thought that himself feeling sadness was just another obstacle to do what he had to: save people.

So he basically starts operating on himself until he can barely feel emotions anymore, removing his own happiness with it (but its not like he felt it anyway so what difference did it make). And then he starts plunging into work like never before, dedicated to this new cause that is the glorious evolution. He starts again from the bottom and once again he rises, because Viktor is a genious, and he is honest in his work, in his intentions. He wants to help.

 People were scared of the Mad Man Viktor, but Viktor would do anything he could to save you if you came to him. He understood limits though, he never imposed over people. Do no harm, as they say ( what would be the point of doing that?? )

And then the other toxic even happens in Sump, another really bad one, and Viktor rushes in to help. He’s keeping these people alive in his lab but he knows he doesnt have the power to keep them so. So he goes to Jayce after an energy source.

He thinks Jayce will listen to him now, now Viktor isn’t emotive and easily hurt, now he isn’t insecure, he has a cause, he has something he fights for. A brighter tomorrow.

And Jayce calls him mad. 

Viktor is kind of dissapointed, he’d think Jayce, who has always been so uncaring of people’s opinion’s would at least try to understand. He doesn’t. So he takes the crystal by force from Jayce (petty arguments can be saved for later, those people on his lab needed him NOW).

When Jayce follows him there with a hammer he understands the stakes. 

One life against hundreds is an easy math. Viktor chooses to sacrifice Jayce (Jayce chose to come here after all)

But then Jayce actually destroys his lab.

And like... imagine waking up to your laboratory destroyed, just dozens of corpses of innocent people laying around. yet another failure, yet another big price to pay.

He has to start from zero again. His reputation is completely stepped on ( he is truly crazy now by everyone’s eyes) and Jayce is a hero. Blitzcrank sticks around for a little while, moved by the same passion to help people, but blitzcrank can stand the deaths and the gruesomeness of viktor’s work, he leaves to try to help in other ways. Viktor lets him of course, blitz has free will and he isn’t anyone to stop him. 

Some people, desperate people, still come to him for help. He does his best to give them what they need. A strange cult forms and idolizes him, he hates it, he is no god, he is just another man. People thinking of him as an etheral being just proves his theory on how fear and wayward emotions lead to dumb, dangerous mistakes.

In the end, Viktor is trying to cheat suffering, cheat death at all costs.

I don’t believe he sent any golems or anything after Jayce, vengence is way too beneath him. Stealing? Maybe not, depends. I think Jayce became a bit paranoid after “defeating” viktor. Because Viktor said some big words and Jayce is suddenly realizing that truly, he has no purpose. He’s just a useless tool. He makes things sure, but what for? He’s raised as a hero but damn he doesn’t feel like it.

And to end it all, this is why I think Ekko and Viktor should sit down and chat at some point. They are so similar and so different all at once. They both love Zaun and its people, they both wanna protect them and have a passion for inventing. But while Viktor wants to reject his human side to achieve his goals, Ekko embraces it. Like, I don’t think Viktor shouldn’t even be his mentor, more like his colleague. Ekko is his own person and has a different way of doing things, but they could do a lot together as well. 

Also Ekko and Blitz are totally friends in canon so like.. yeah.. Zaun for life....

Anyway this is it thank tou all for reading this is UUUH like 1,8k words long 

extras or stuff I already said and will say again:

viktor is trans

he was an anxious yet hopeful (and maybe a bit naive) teenager

he still loves sweet things and thats canon.. he likes chilling sometimes

workaholic as seen

blames himself for literally everything like a dumbass

is kinda of very afraid of death in general

is not the kind of person that steals children to experiment on them cmon guys thats propaganda

is embarrassed of the cult following him

i guess he doesnt have his whole left arm anymore, chop chop it went

USED braces as  kid

loves blitzcrank like a son, doesnt realize it

I think thats all, sorry yall

[arcane-ish]

Yes, pretty much agreed. 

It’s a tricky subject, because I do think that in a lot of ways I feel like “brother” is their short hand for “these characters will display a ton of emotional intimacy and have a very intense relationship”. 

It’s shorthand not just in a “don’t worry about it”, but also in a “tell don’t show” kind of way. Like, we know so little about Silco and Vander’s backstory it’s not really justified why we should care about it or rather why we should respect that that is like THE root of all of Silco’s motivation and trauma (notice when everybody gets their “childhood” flashback for Silco we get him being drowned by Vander and not I dunno, baby Silco being spat at by a topsider and that fuels his hate for revolution or baby Silco hanging with some sort of mentor figure telling him how people can be manipulated).

Which yes one can argue is lazy storytelling but on the other hand Arcane just happens to be a fast paced show and imo they get choices about what they explore in detail and what they shorthand (just like they shorthanded Ekko and Jinx having a childhood bond, imo it was still completely understandable to the audience that this is what was meant to be conveyed but it’s still, well, shorthand as opposed to portraying an actual relationship). 

IMO many choices in Arcane just make a lot of sense if you just accept that everything except Vi/Cait (because there are dedicated shippers on the writing staff) is secondary to Vi & Jinx. 

Yes, Silco and Vander is not really a well developed story. But it’s not really supposed to be. IMO the point of Silco/Vander from a writers POV is predominantly to show us the stakes. It’s supposed to make us worry about Vi and Jinx. It sets the baseline of how bad it could be. See “those are brothers whose relationship got so bad they were trying to drown and stab each other, be scared that Vi and Jinx could get as bad”. 

It’s kind of a flawed approach because well VI and Jinx are actually sister-sisters, but not only are Jayce and Viktor not actual by birth brothers, it seems Vander and Silco weren’t either as per Jinx’s line in the “baptism” scene. So it’s kind of a pretty flawed parallel, but still, the point of it is to set a mood. 

And as you said, if Silco and Vander were bitter exes in the story they lay out then it wouldn’t do the job of setting up a situation where we fear for Vi and Jinx and how their relationship is going to end up if Silco and Vander so clearly have such different parameters. (I mean... they stiill have, but by setting up this betrayal with the word brother they are intentionally try to move it closer to Vi & JInx).

BTW not sure why they didn’t make Vander and Silco actual brother-brothers. Why that line from Jinx even exists. Maybe they didn’t want to go into the whole nature vs nuture thing of how two brothers could have ended up so differently (I have a theory that Arcane has a lowkey “nice people are nice because they have nice parents” theme going on, where it’s the parents who decide that characters end up as nice people and not privilege and richenss, ie Mel and Jinx versus Cait and Vi and Ekko) or they didn’t want to “tarnish” Vander’s positive portrayal by making us question whether he was a shitty brother-brother to Silco if Silco has so many issues. 

Not to be that guy but the multiple uses of “he’s like a brother to me” in arcane come so quickly and feel like they’re meant to be “NO HOMO NO HOMO, BUT-”

like even if it could be genuine… the writing is like so clearly cishet men being like “don’t make our men gay for each other :(“