#like it's actually a physical pain in my chest

[adripakoffee]

Okay, fun fact about me, I have chronic pain in my chest from when I fell and (most likely) fractured one of my ribs in the 6th grade. I never told my parents how much it actually hurt so I never went to the doctor. This, combined with some other undiagnosed physical problems, has left me with quite a lot of really painful pain in my chest and arms.

Now because I haven't been officially diagnosed with anything, I'm not gonna pretend I have any authority here, but here's some Viktor headcanons based on personal experience.

Viktor from Arcane has chronic pain, just all over his body because his tissue is calcifying and turning into bone. But today I'm focusing on his chest. Viktor has lung problems, most likely from when he was living in Zaun and inhaling Grey 24/7. That's our basis.

S2 SPOILERS IN THE LAST ONE

Until he figured out the cause he has flare-ups often from under-activity. It wasn't as much of a problem when he was in the Undercity because he spent more time moving around, but once he joined the Academy he spent all day at a desk. Once he figured it out, he spent more time moving around.

Singed also has chronic pain but didn't care enough to teach him about it. But Viktor's smart, he put two and two together really fast and copied a lot of Singed's methods and home remedies.

Some times he tries to redistribute the pain by pinching the opposite side of his body or biting his finger.

Whatever's wrong with his lungs went undiagnosed until he collapsed in season 1, everyone thought it was the bone thing.

He gets tremors occasionally in his left hand, which isn't his dominant one, but still inconvenient.

When Jayce found out he got really weird about it. Not because he thought less of Viktor, but because his love language is physical touch and he was trying to make sure he didn't accidentally hurt him or something. It took Viktor like a week of reassurance to get him back to normal.

Gets awful migraines that can last all day. Usually, taking one above the recommended dosage of migraine medication and laying face down helps.

Heimerdinger told him to keep a journal of anything notable for himself and the doctors to keep track of, but Viktor's so used to letting things pass that he constantly forgets to update it.

If the Hexcore didn't literally steal his emotions, he would've freaked out over how weird it felt to just be... fine. Like nothing hurts anymore wtf is happening

"He just like me fr," I say as I press my face against the TV and sob over robo jesus

[seraphsfire]

///ARCANE s2 finale SPOILERS ///

LONG POST

SO. THAT VIKTOR ARCANE LEAGUEOFLEGENDS GUY HUH.

some observations that are my personal opinion and/or interpretation of viktor's transformation and physical state. (my screenshots, idc if u repost them or whatever just don't say they're yours, etc)

minor edit: added a sentence i could've sworn i'd written that i hadn't and so my paragraph made no sense lol

love love love the aspects of body horror and character design going on with viktor's post-sourdough-starter cyborg body here, so i was trying to get a better look at it to maybe sort of figure out how his body was transformed, and what it's made of now (metal, magic, a third secret thing, idk)

so it looks like, in general, his skeletal structure and the metal parts in his back brace and his leg brace were fused together and then fused *into* his musculoskeletal structure, not just sort of copied by the hexcore. You can see here he has actual bolts in his spine before he got robot-ified, and to me it seems like this could have been a way for his brace to hook or snap onto his spine more securely to give him extra support.

I think the circles in the middle of the brace over his sternum might have also snapped into bolts in his chest, and you can see them better here

the cloth and leather parts of the brace have either dissolved or been turned into metal.

--I just want to take a side note here to note what im sure other ppl have mentioned but I haven't seen talked much about at least recently, is that viktor's disability wasn't just his mobility issues and bad respiratory health, that he must have been in terrible pain to have a procedure as extreme as bolts being put into his spine and/or chest deemed necessary / beneficial to his quality of life.

In the scene where he tries to destroy the hexcore, he can barely push himself up, and it takes all of his strength to lift a stool over his head that's only a few pounds :(

He later asks jayce to destroy the hexcore because he can't, and ive seen most people interpret that as him not wanting to destroy his life's work, but i always viewed it as him not physically being able to--the hexcore was too strong, and it snapped out at him and knocked him over just at the threat of him destroying it.

That circles over to another thing i thought was interesting, is that when he comes out of the goop he still seems very weak and unstable, even though he now has his back brace and leg brace fused to his skeleton. He still has to use his crutch to walk toward jayce and make effort to straighten his legs, because they're still twisted. It makes me wonder if the hexcore didn't so much heal him as dull his sense of pain so he couldn't feel it, and its energy forced him to move.

That's something i thought was interesting, and it made me think of his line about not feeling cold--he then says he feels something that is exactly how I'd describe coldness to somebody who's never felt it before, it just seems like now, his nervous system doesn't process it in the same way as he used to recognize the sensation of coldness. Interestingly, he still describes it as "unpleasant"

back to the design of viktor's body: what exactly is it made of? Here's where the body horror aspect of it comes in, because i think there's a possibility that's still mostly his body and what we're seeing here is exposed, preserved muscle fiber, because the hexcore either burned or melted off his skin or it literally rotted away while he was in the goop. There's a few artsy little flourishes from the hexcore magic peeking through, but except for the slightly darker color, it looks eerily like how muscle fiber on preserved cadavers looks, down to the way the little filamenty veins are. Granted it could just be a metallic structure the hexcore created, visually mimicking human muscle structure. Or the sourdough starter could have been something super gross like magic sentient cosmic energy formaldehyde--that also makes sense to me because of how when his hair grew out some of the tips had lost color, like they'd been bleached.

anyway the visual aspect of his resurrected hexcore appearance that makes me think of a reanimated cadaver most was how strange and unsettling i found it that he's completely gray and glowing with purple sparks, is that for some reason he's still got a bellybutton and almost a normal skin-like surace to that part of his stomach.

On the other hand, his hip socket and the rest of his pelvis is bony and skeletal. You can kind of see his pelvis not being attached with muscle fiber to his hip socket in that lower corner, it looks the same atp as when he's in his cosmic form.

the jokes about "jayce hugged him with his whole ______ out!!!!" just make me sad bc obviously any extraneous soft tissue was completely obliterated, (I say obviously but idk how many ppl literally believe they were censoring human body parts here.)

Like, he doesn't even have fingernails anymore. The only reason he has a stomach still is because abdominal muscles are a skeletal support structure.

That gives the he heebie jeebies so good, honestly, and what an fascinating choice by the design team instead of giving him idk, age of ultron steel robot shaped abs, which i've seen a lot in like human--robot transformations, he's this horrifying mix of petrified/preserved cadaver tissue, magic metal, and sentient cosmic energy. (Even more tragic and sad if you think about it that way and that jayce might have been hugging his dead friend's preserved, skinned corpse)

the "reanimated corpse" idea fits into the interpretation that viktor's emotions and thoughts are still his, but they've been very dulled by the power of the hexcore, because a reanimated cadaver body isn't going to be able to work as effeciently that way anymore.

or idk maybe the idea that he was still sort-of there, faintly is one i like because it makes me feel better, i can at least pretend some part of him felt comforted being held in such a horrific situation. had to post this screenshot bc that sad little face when hes getting hugged is destroying me

Anyway. many thoughts, many feelings, many possibilities and interpretations. Do with this what you will. I, for instance, will be walking into the sea and never returning probably

[l1li4n]

i would actually slit my own throat if i ever get to see long haired max verstappen

[inspotlight]

ive been in a very weird mood for a couple weeks now, maybe even a couple months, and i finally feel like i can sit and do some replies, so hopefully i'll have a more active queue to be posting soon but in the mean time, you're always welcome to yell with me about our muses in dms or on dis.cord

[healingheartdogs]

Cardio said my echocardiogram ultrasound, exercise stress test, and week long heart monitor all showed no serious issues, my resting heart rate is fine, but that my heart rate does seem to rise very rapidly under even small amounts of stress (postural changes, taking stairs, casually walking around my house) and rises very high (160+ bpm according to the monitor) so now I get to be put on beta blockers to see if they work and if they do she said that is sufficient evidence to confirm for sure that it's POTS.

Obviously could confirm it as well with a tilt table test but those are TORTURE based off what I've heard from fellow POTSies so I am very thankful that she doesn't think that's necessary and will not be making me do one.

[lookingforcactus]

I have a lot of Feelings about the way that people talk about autism being "just autism" and act like being ""only"" autistic automatically excludes people from being physically disabled.

Yes, the shit that physically disabled people have to deal with is different than the shit people who are able-bodied and neurodivergent have to deal with.

You know how I know that??? Because my ""just autism"" has made me physically disabled for years at a time.

A lot of autistic people are physically disabled, especially but not exclusively people with level 2 and level 3 autism.

A ton of autistic people have motor issues to a level that makes them physically disabled. If you don't have the motor abilities/physical ability to do things like tie your own shoes, or use a regular fork, or shower yourself, or be stable and safe while walking, is that not a physical disability?

Now, none of that is how my autism sometimes makes me physically disabled - I'm level 1 autism, and aside from some fine motor skills I'm personally mostly fine on those fronts. (For people who don't know, "level 1 autism" is more or less what a lot of people would term ""high functioning,"" but that is problematic and outdated terminology.)

So, you might be wondering "Well then how the hell does being autistic make you physically disabled??"

Well, first of all, it's genuinely not that rare for masking to be so, so hard on and physically stressful for autistic people (yes including and specifically level 1 autistic people) that they just fucking. develop chronic pain. sometimes so severe they're regularly in and out of emergency rooms. Because stress hormones are literally toxic/cause tissue damage, and because being completely tensed up and sensory guarding and in sensory pain all the time causes a shitton of muscular dysfunction and chronic pain.

That's happened to me somewhat/occasionally - there are other people it impacts a lot more.

My main problem?

Autism significantly affects your ability to regulate sensory and nerve input.

Meaning when I have a significant injury, between that and all the tension/distortion/related pain, that injury can last for literal years.

I spent three years with on-and-off Significant mobility restrictions because I got an ankle injury.

I just finished two years of chronic pain/sensory pain and a big reduction in functioning/cognitive everything, which was so bad it left me housebound for the first six months, as the result of a surgery that is super common and super does not do this to most people.

Does that not count as physically disabled??

People also tend to treat physical disability as something that by definition never goes away, but people move in and out of physical disability all the time. Our society just tends to use really restricted definitions of what "counts" as a disability, due to stigma, rather than looking at it as a significant and/or long-term impairment in your ability to do things. If you have a severe injury, it can leave you unable to move normally/walk/walk unassisted for months or years. And then, eventually, hopefully you heal and do a lot of physical therapy and then you may not count as disabled after x amount of time.

(I'm not just making this up btw, this is a major tenet of a lot of modern disability studies. I could cite a bunch of texts for this but tbh I'm not investing that kind of time.)

Also the mind-body division is fake, which is why a lot of disabilities and disorders that affect the brain/nervous system (you know, like autism) also affect the body. You know, the thing your nervous system runs through basically all of.

So, yeah, I'm not trying to tell anyone else how they can or should identify, but I personally describe myself as "previously physically disabled" and/or "intermittently physically disabled" because that is the most accurate way I've found to describe my own experience.

Okay, rant over, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[zarophod]

hi guys i am reaper76 brainrotted rn

[haemosexuality]

realizing that big boobs are the reason why i have so much back pain immediately destroyed the acceptance i spent years working on about how my chest looks. lol

[alilaro]

once again i have experienced medical malpractice at the hands of a male doctor 😔

[lordofthemushrooms]

can I say something truly insane about my Solavellan…..

[crowleyanthonys]

.

[l1li4n]

rain always makes me think of brocedes

[rosetinted--clouds]

"it's all in your head" lies it's in my chest too

[bokutoasavillain]

Send help I’m reading a bingyuan fanfic and it’s angsty and my chest hurts

[icewindandboringhorror]

feeling sick constantly in the background all the time is like.. usually negligible-ish.. until multiple various chronic background issues all happen to overlap at once and then it’s like 

[kohakhearts]

not to be Hashtag serious about anything because that goes against my principles but this was the first year since i was 18 that i didn’t take antidepressants at all and the first time since i was 16 that i didn’t attend regular therapy (or at least Think i Needed to attend regular therapy) and yeah i wouldnt say i had a Good mental health year but. But. thats a big step for me actually and one i am very pleased with. go me