#i think theres so much symbolism in that

[vinylstitch]

protagonist who is begrudgingly following the yellow paint and complaining the entire time

[infernal-lamb]

The Lamb Slaying Death Incarnate

(Part of a larger comic....but I sort of like this panel a lot on its own!)

[phoenix-before-the-flame]

hello i had an idea once. Here is ur explanation for it

Ok goodbye

[borealing]

been thinking about crowleys fall a lot. insp

[skitskatdacat63]

Fernando Alonso & His Relationship With Cards

I'm sure we're all familar with the cards on the back of Fernando's Vegas GP helmet by now, but did you know his relationship with cards goes a lot deeper?

I. Magic Tricks

You've probably seen or heard someone at least mention Fernando's propensity for card tricks. As far as I can tell he was doing them(publically) as far back as 2003 all the way to as recently as 2018. Even once performing a card trick, with a condom and a teddy bear(!??!?!??!!), in front of Valentino Rossi who said "How was that possible?"(x)

But how did this start? According to James Allen, "Fernando admits to having been heavily influenced by his grandfather, a mercurial figure, who taught him magic and card tricks, still one of his passions away from the race track."(x) And I'm not sure the validity of this one, because I couldn't find an actual source, but apparently he once said: "My parents are responsible for the two things I like doing most - driving and magic tricks. They bought me my first go-kart and a magician's kit."

In several interviews he described it as his hobby off track, and that he loved learning new tricks and surprising others in the garage with them! So clearly cards are pretty important to him both as a hobby but also to who he is as a person since they've been with him just as long as racing has.

II. Card Symbolism in His Helmets

This is the reason I originally made this post, but I thought I should also explain the origins of his card fascination first. As I said, we probably all remember the cards on the back of his helmet in Vegas, but did you know that wasn't the first time he had cards on the back of his helmet?

From 2008-2013, he used to have a pair of cards on the back of his helmets. The symbolisms of the cards themselves as well as the evolution of their design is really fascinating to me! Even more so with the recent development of the card choice in 2023.

Fernando said he wanted to reference his two titles in some way on the back of his helmet and after his friend sent him several ideas, he decided on having two cards(an ace of clubs and an ace of hearts, sometimes pictured with 05 and 06 on them as well), saying: "I picked the cloverleaf [the ace of clubs - Ed] to give me luck, but the only pity is that it doesn't have four leaves!"(X)

2008.

Here's the very first appearance of the cards! They're displayed flat, with the 05 and 06 clearly visible

2009.

Very similar to 2008, but with a slightly different design, and they're maybe a bit more straight with less shadow?

2010.

This is the first major change! I was sad they didn't have the years on them anymore, but then I realized they're sparkly to match with his signature lightning bolts on the top of the helmet!!

2011.

Honestly I'm still somewhat unsure if this is the actual 2011 helmet? It's pretty difficult to find clear photos of the back of helmets from older seasons. It's easiest to find them on replica sites or auction sites so I'm not 100%? But anyways, I like that this has the championship years on the underside of the cards

2012.

This is when I started getting weirdly emotional about the helmets. Do you see how they've progressed from being a centerpoint to being curled up and sad at the bottom of the helmet? Not listing the year anymore??

2013.

Same thoughts as 2012. And after this season, they cease to exist (just like his ferrari chair in the garage, WOAH CALLBACK), until cards make a reeappearance in his Vegas helmet, albeit in a different form

2013 Monaco(Honorable Mention):

For some reason 2013 helmets were easier to find proper pictures of, so I happened to witness this absolute beauty. The creativity of this helmet genuinely blows me away??? Wanting to keep the card motif, but making sure to incorporate it into the rest of the puzzle piece design?? Mwah! There was another special 2013 helmet but they didn't change the cards at all so I really applaud this one

2023 Las Vegas(The Return of The King):

The magnificent return! But look! The cards are different cards! Instead of being two aces, it's now an ace of hearts, a four of hearts(his driver number of course!) and, the, now iconic, representation of himself as a Joker. I literally could not believe my eyes when this helmet was released and I saw the Joker card, what a fucking silly old man....I really wonder if he felt nostalgic having cards on his helmet again or if he didn't think about it all and was just like, "ah cards because Vegas!!!"

III. Why Does This Matter?

*The rest of the post was factual, this is moreso my personal thoughts on the symbolism of the cards/designs

This post spawned from me recently watching the 2010 Bahrain gp and noticing "hey wait a minute...are those CARDS ON THE BACK OF HIS HELMET!?" It's a really tiny detail that's unfortunately covered up by the HANS device pretty much whenever he's wearing the helmet, so it's really difficult to spot! But I became fascinated with the fact that he had cards on his helmet before that recent helmet, and now here we are!

There's something to me about how the design of the cards evolves over the course of six seasons from the cards being front and center to being smaller, more folded up and closer to the bottom of the helmet. As I said, the 2012-2013 ones genuinely made me depressed because it feels, symbolically, like his hopes for getting another Ace are becoming more and more unlikely and falling away until they eventually fall falt and fade away entirely after 2013 and disappear for basically a decade.

But when they return? They're not the same cards! Instead of representing Fernando's championships, they now represent him as a person, displaying his driver number and his persona of being a Joker!! Though I do think it's interesting he happened to keep the Ace of Hearts, even though he talked more about the Ace of Clubs before. I'm not sure it's actually this deep in reality, but I like to think that it's him not letting his championships(and the lack thereof) define him, but rather letting who he is as a person shine and be the centerpoint instead! But on a sadder note, as @suzuki-ecstar said to me, maybe the Aces aren't there anymore because he's lost all hope for a chance at a third Ace entirely :(

[causticflower]

scar Going Through It(tm) in Ad Astra by @desertduality <3

version with Eyes vv

[mikuyuuss]

I wonder if Doll and the Circus fam are aware that the Funtom Candies are made by the same boy that their father wants them to abduct… I mean they should know right? I don’t think it’s a secret that the Funtom Company belongs to Phantomhive.

I also think about how Doll, Joker and even Snake must have felt, after knowing that it was “Smile” all along

Imagine Doll looking back at how her roommate was the ceo of funtom corporation this whole time, and now she hates his ass.

[stromblessed]

Mel 🔆, Viktor 🌌, and Jayce 🔥 symbolism

SUN 🔆

Mel's association with the sun is self-evident and still mostly shrouded in mystery, though her love scene with Jayce is notable, which is overlaid with starry imagery, where her silhouette and her freckled face are compared to the cosmos. The sun is also a star. It's just the star that's closest to Runeterra and has the most influence over the world.

Mel and the Hexcore are the POVs of the scene.

Hexcore and starry imagery is more strongly and consistently associated with someone else, though!

STARS 🌟 / THE COSMOS 🌌

Viktor's blue to purple pipeline is real

But seriously, the starry/swirly shapes point toward distant stars, the cosmos, a galaxy. There is no moon in Viktor's night scenes throughout the season, only stars.

Viktor's character regresses as the season goes on (blue to purple, ready to fall into Shimmer-like magenta as his corruption nears its peak).

His hubris opens him up to some kind of corruption by the Hexcore, or by whatever - or whoever - is using the Hexcore as a gateway, like what Jinx points out. Singed as his mentor plants and encourages the lie that Viktor believes, that he's better off alone and that the ends justify the means.

These perfectly ruinous circumstances lead to him getting Sky killed (Sky like sky blue, like Inspiration, lost as Viktor has lost sight of good in his pursuit of great).

In his running scene, Viktor runs not from left to right, filmspeak for progression - he runs from right to left, as though backstepping.

(And also for the Rocky Balboa reference called out in this brilliant post, but hey, I think it all works)

It's also worth laying the foundation that Viktor is a fantasy interpretation of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor who was fascinated with electricity, radio signals, the cosmos, and [REDACTED for another post probably lol]

If you've fallen down the rabbit hole of League lore like I have, you might have picked up that peoples and warriors who are sun-worshipers are (at least anciently) tasked with hunting down and destroying Void beings, who are eldritch beings associated with the distant stars, or are Runeterrans constructed by the Void Watchers trapped between realms. The sun fights against interlopers from other dimensions or celestial bodies.

Mel and Viktor have the same ideas about risk and the nature of progress, and they are both technically foreigners living in Piltover and pursuing that progress - in two very different (but complementary) ways. They are most likely the two characters whose literal bodies are celestial, imbued with the Arcane. Their bodies are most likely augmented with magical metals.

Yet the arcane imagery that seems to accompany them respectively are diametrically opposed - Sun vs. Void, possibly. (Also, purple and yellow/gold are opposite or complement colors on the color wheel.)

Whether they wind up working together or whether they clash (as Viktor loses himself) or if it's a mix of both, I think Mel and Viktor are destined to collide in season 2.

So where does this leave Jayce?

FIRE 🔥

Fire for Jayce means more than one thing. The first thing that should come to mind is the fire of the forge. Creation and industry. The legacy and hard work of his family.

However, his FIRST imagery with fire occurs when Elora says "Speak of the devil" and Jayce is framed in flames at Mel's fundraising party.

He's similarly framed in the flames of a Molotov cocktail on the bridge between Piltover and the undercity with Viktor, after he's just called the people of the undercity dangerous.

What I think we're being shown here are Jayce's choices. He can use his talents and influence for good - creation and industry - or he can use them for destruction and oppression. A hammer can create.

A hammer can also be a weapon, a tool of destruction:

Fire can quickly burn and spread out of control.

Hey look, blue all the way to magenta in one scene!

And if you know his original League lore, the reason why his rivalry with [REDACTED] crosses the point of no return - fire and destruction. Yeah.

Jayce is interesting because his point position in the Mel-Viktor-Jayce trifecta makes it tempting to assign celestial imagery to him, too. However, adult Jayce is only present with Hexcore, star, and sun imagery when he is sharing a scene with Viktor or Mel respectively.

The show makes it a point that Mel and Viktor are the reasons he is the Man of Progress at all:

Note that Jayce in the center of his Man of Progress posters is backed by a gear (Viktor) and the sun (Mel). If Viktor had not intervened in episode 2, Jayce would be dead or disenfranchised. If Mel had not intervened in episode 3, then Jayce AND Viktor would have been kicked out of the Academy if not imprisoned or exiled, and Hextech with Jayce and Viktor at the helm would not exist.

(This is reaching, but I like to interpret that the circle + notches in the gear shape are like Viktor's star symbolism, but even if that's the big reach that I think it is, Viktor is a machinist, engineer, and techmaturgist with Artificer parents - the gear definitely represents him on a meta level)

The imagery that I believe is Jayce's and Jayce's alone is that of fire. He is terrestrial, using magic contained within tools the way he has always wanted to bring Hextech to every household, while Mel and Viktor are influenced by magic on a whole other level.

Sure would be a shame if Jayce found a reason to choose the path of destruction and be corrupted further, diverging from Mel and Viktor's core values

Sure would be a shame if Viktor's personal choices had consequences that radiated out further than season 1 and he gets put on a disastrous collision course with everything that Jayce and by extension Piltover hates and fears

Sure would be stressful for us if Arcane decided to be a Greek tragedy about it

Though possibly the most important piece of this picture is how Mel - gold like the sun, gold that doesn't tarnish or rust, gold that is an excellent conductor - has already faced the abyss and said NO to her own corruption:

It sure would be something for her to have to watch Jayce and Viktor go down a different path, huh

[puppppppppy]

fuck it. plaguesona

[pseudophan]

honestly they were disrespectful to themselves. they let it get completely out of hand for a MONTH. the palace did this to themselves

yeah... look nobody will get me to agree with people being like 'conspiracy theorists have gone too far' 'you've all been disrespectful towards catherine' 'there was never a reason for any of this' 'you should be ashamed for what you said' etc etc etc. because like... first of all, again, i hold zero respect for these people. why the fuck should i. but even if i did... it's their own fucking fault???? the fuck?????? lmao?????????? literally only a handful of people gave a fuck until that doctored photo. and then they just kept making it worse. and i'm sorry but i actually don't think they're entitled to their privacy when their entire job is pr and they're blatantly lying in all their pr shit like ? what else are you good for lol. but then that also makes me angry because as much as i don't like kate for several reasons i'm still a bit genuinely offended at her behalf for how they've handled all this shit.. like making her take the blame for the photoshop (i hope for her sake it was her own idea, because otherwise........), having her appear alone in the video announcing her cancer (why tf isn't william there when she's talking about how he's by her side lmao), the general just lack of giving a fuck about anything whilst the world went wild theorising about her.... i can't tell whether she's taking the fall to cover for something else or if they're just all absolute assholes ?? again like. i don't like kate middleton. for many reasons. but i like william and charles a whole lot less and it's infuriating that they're making me feel like she's been wronged lmao

[runwhileyoucan]

"You got it all wrong, brother. I've always loved you, even now." 

I used @prettyundeadgirl 's picture as reference for the grave stone so kudos to her! Please check her photos out!

[herotune]

in fair faerûn where we lay our scene.......

im a little late heading into wyll week and im so sad but here's an illustration for day 3: modern au!!!!

wyll gives me theater kid vibes and i think modern au wyll would Absolutely be an actor. and i think he'd be incredible in shakespeare adaptations and historical dramas... so i Had to redraw one of my favorite shots from baz luhrmann's romeo + juliet with him. a modern au in a modern au...its perfect 🎭

[woodlaflababab]

Thinking about zukaang.

[outfoxt]

"For many lesbians and gay men, blood family represented not some naturally given unit that provided a base for all forms of kinship, but rather a procreative principle that organized only one possible type of kinship. In their descriptions they situated gay families at the opposite end of a spectrum of determination, subject to no constraints beyond a logic of 'free' choice that ordered membership. To the extent that gay men and lesbians mapped 'biology' and 'choice' onto identities already opposed to one another (straight and gay, respectively), they polarized these two types of family along an axis of sexual identity."

-Kath Weston | Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship (1997)

[this-should-do]

White stains so easily, it's just a shame you live in a palace of blood

[itsalwaysdark]

ive gotta stop starting so many posts with 'also' like they r not continuations of conversations or whathaveyou generally