#not arcane

[the-glorious-evolution-fanart]

WIP for Viktor | Not Arcane

I think the best option for him is to have transforming augments while still having a human silhouette in default state.

[mellohimmku94]

Lesbians for Alucard!!

[sheriff-caitlyn]

There is something inherently important about Caitlyn and Vi's respective natures and personalities that make them Piltover's Finest. Caitlyn was released Jan 2011, and Vi in December 2012, so Riot had plenty of time to make Vi a proper narrative foil to one of the original Champions. And yet it seems like the most important aspects of their characterisation are forgotten, glossed over, or outright ignored in how Caitlyn and Vi are depicted.

Caitlyn is Intention, Vi is Impulse.

The sniper rifle is a tool to handle problems from a long distance away; magnifying lenses on a hat help bring small details in to focus. Caitlyn focuses on a goal, and then looks at every step in the long and short term to achieve that goal. She has single-minded purpose but is able to cover a lot of ground, to have unique perspectives on and multiple opportunities for her desired end result because she has a view of the big picture. She sees how everything is connected, no matter how arbitrary. Every move she makes - socially, politically, nationally, and even on the Fields of Justice - is both deliberate and carefully-deliberated. She leaves nothing to chance. Everything is calculated. Her intention is what matters most; her intent is what makes her powerful, dangerous, unstoppable.

"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

"Me, miss? Not by a long shot."

"I have the tools for the job."

"Nowhere to hide."

"Go ahead. Run. I'll give you a five minute head start."

Fists are up close, personal; the gauntlets are hand-crafted, engineered by Vi's own hands to suit her own hands. Vi is reactionary, surrounding herself by the world, immersing herself in sound and sensation and situation and choosing to act in accordance with what feels the most urgent. Vi acts on whatever is closest to her reach or nearest to her immediate needs; she prefers short-term solutions because those are, in her mind, the most necessary solutions. Immediate needs should be met immediately. She doesn't look for the easiest solution, but she looks for the simplest one, the most expedient one. She is adaptive, and quick-witted, and capable of handing upsets and change step by step, without flinching. Vi's impulses guide her every step, trusting chance and circumstance and personal talent to back her up and make her next step possible. Her adaptability and her willingness to be personally-involved is the reason that her 'one foot in front of the other' style of action is so powerful.

"Sometimes you gotta make a door."

"One girl wrecking crew!"

"Let's get crackin'!"

"I like your smile. Makes a nice target."

"Plan? I don't need a plan."

Personified by their weapons of choice, these women are both forces of change in their respective cities. They are both incredibly effective on their own. Caitlyn had her plan and her rules and her methods that involved no-one but herself, and Vi was quick to repeatedly declare 'I'm my own backup'. They do not need each other in order to get things done, to have a wide positive impact on their community or for the people they care about.

And yet, they can do more together than they would apart.

Caitlyn can be distant from those she loves and those she is trying to save, can come across as cold and detached. She does not show her emotions well, if at all; she has more in common with the hextech rifle she carries than with other people. Caitlyn was capable of changing Piltover and becoming Sheriff all on her own, but she was not liked or respected by the people she was trying to save until she had a more-humanising force by her side. A short-sighted answer might be that Vi was so violent and dangerous it made the calmer Caitlyn more appealing by comparison, but that isn't the case at all.

Vi's past is lost to shadow, stolen by those in power who sculpted in misery, so to fight this aching void she surrounds herself with people who need help. She's used to being the underdog, to having the deck stacked against her, but she has built herself to be the strength of others, to fight on their behalf. She looks for joy and resistance in equal measure. Vi is smart, and intuitive, and has a very strong moral compass, even if - especially if - it causes her to clash with the powers that be, those in charge who don't do things they right way or for the right reason.

Both of them are raging against the world in their way. Both of them see potential in the world, for it and for everyone in it, to be better.

It is Caitlyn's intention and methodology that gives Vi the opportunity to do something bigger than the most-immediate threat in Zaun. It is Vi's impulse to send Piltover's trash back across the bay that connects her to Caitlyn, that gives Caitlyn the idea and means to encourage others and affect greater change. Like iron sharpening iron, the two of them improved each other as they began to interact. Of course they clashed when they first met, when Vi found Caitlyn too rigid and Caitlyn found Vi too reckless, but it was in these clashes that they learned to work together, to see from new perspectives. A sniper can't watch her own back. A boxer can't see beyond the ring. But together, they're more powerful than they would be apart. They've got each others' backs, they mitigate each others' weaknesses and boost each others' strengths, and they learn from each other.

Caitlyn is one of the few who can see, acknowledge, and respect the intelligence Vi is trying to hide, both in terms of Vi being an incredibly-talented engineer but also in Vi's social adeptness and comprehension of human motivations. It's Vi who can see Caitlyn's self-imposed isolation for what it is, and call her out on times when a more personal touch is necessary. Caitlyn has learned to be 'more human', to see the impact beyond just statistics and social change, to learn to accept other people into her life. Vi has had the chance to see that structure and morals can co-exist, that not every rule needs to be broken, that sometimes stillness and quietness can be productive.

Caitlyn and Vi are still their own people. Caitlyn will always lead with her intention, and Vi will always follow her impulse, but they'll do it together, mindful of each others' thoughts and methodologies. They've had years to turn their partnership into a kind of dance. It's not perfect, but they know each other so well, to the point of anticipation in movement and thought and action. Caitlyn - in purple, with her sniper rifle - and Vi - in pink, with her gauntlets - are the perfect team, and together they've brought Piltover into a (near-literal) Golden Age as well as been there to lead the city-state through disaster and reconstruction. They've even started making headway into helping those in Zaun, or at least inspiring others to step up and see them as a challenge to be equalled. They are Piltover's Finest, because they match and rival and equal each other, as foils, as partners, as symbols.

And that's something that Arcane absolutely failed to understand.

[lanternfeather]

I LOVE BUTCHES SO MUCH I WANT TO FALL TO MY KNEES AND WORSHIP THE GROUND THEY WALK ON AND GET A BUTCH TRAIN RUN ON ME!!!!!! fucking feral for butches holy shit

[zephyr-rat]

Green Giant Character Insights: Warwick - Inspirations and why Pre-Arcane Lore was Better

Back when Warwick got his visual gameplay update in 2017, he got a brand new bio to match him more with the new capitalist grimdark setting of Piltover-Zaun. Of the brand new bios they released for the new setting, I thought at the time that Warwick was one of the best with Orianna and Camille. 2017 VGU Warwick is ultimately the story of a rugged criminal desperately trying to redeem himself for his past crimes, but finds his attempts to make amends fruitless. As a result, the scientist Singed lists him as a candidate for his inhumane experiments because he believed that no one would lament a man like Warwick. After all, he’s a criminal, the worst filth of the earth, who would miss him? 

Singed abducts Warwick pretty easily and commits many convoluted experiments to test the limits of the human body, leading to the chemtech werewolf we see in the video game. In a subversion of most werewolf stories, this version of Warwick doesn’t want to turn back to a human, the man he once was. He hates that man, the one labeled the irredeemable criminal. As Warwick himself says in one of his VO lines

“The man I was, I killed him first.”

And yet, he still tries to make amends in his own way. He turns into the Zaunite punisher, wanting to kill those that have blood on their hands, that remind him of himself, through the same hateful lens that society taught him.. As Warwick’s color story “If They Run” puts it:

“They are the monsters I hunt. And I am one of them.”

It’s a heroism guided by hatred, but it’s still, in its own perverse way, an attempt at heroism, an act to better clean up the city that abused him. As edgy as this is, there are rich themes of self-loathing, justice, redemption, and systemic violence. Who gets to decide who’s worthy of redemption or not? Who gets to decide how you view yourself? 

(I still hate his new face)

Arcane season 2 sadly did not keep any of these thematics when adapting Warwick for their show, opting to make him a prop for Vi and Jinx to amend bridges over and a symbol of the hopeful future that was ripped from them by the end of act 2. Wowie I wish monster characters can actually be characters and not just symbols.

That being said, Arcane season 1 did give me hope by making Warwick / Vander’s big inciting incident, the big crime that got him to change his ways and play ball with Pilties, is that he helped start a revolution to make Zaun better. Using the framework of Warwick’s 2017 lore, I thought that was genius because it shows how socially constructed a crime really is. No one’s going to argue that murder and robbery aren’t crimes, but is being gay a crime? Is providing trans affirming healthcare a crime? Is abortion a crime? We can argue all we want on what’s a crime and what’s not, but by the end of the day, our governmental systems are the ones that make the final call. I’m very sure the current system wouldn’t like revolutions meant to upend everything, greater good or no. It also makes Warwick’s desire to be a vigilante more believable than if he was just responsible for unnamed crimes.

(Art commissioned by Cryspan)

For the Green Giant Saga, I based my version of Warwick mainly on the 2017 lore with that revolutionary aspect in Arcane season 1. My fanfiction series focuses on Zac’s journey to identify his own heroism: what him as a hero would look like. Warwick acts as an excellent foil with his messy, violent vigilantism. His age and cynical experience with Zaun contrasts brilliantly with Zac’s youth and optimism, an optimism that slowly gets dulled by realism as the city goes on. Both characters have great powers that they want to use to make the city better. Both characters struggled under the weight of societal labels. Both characters, at certain points in their lives, want to escape being a monster and be accepted.

However, if Zac can’t help but see the emotions and humanity of everyone through his empathy, Warwick can only see the blood on their hands.

---------------------------------

If you want to see how Warwick's lore interacts with the Green Giant Saga (fanfic series focused on Twitch and Zac), check the story out.

His story comes in effect in episode 8 and episode 11, the latest episode as of January 12th, 2025!

Ao3 Series

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[trinityobsessesovatings]

idk if people who follow me play the game romance club??? BUT I JUST FINISHED THE LAST 3 EPISODES OF SOULLESS SEASON 2!!

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I DON’T GET TO SPEND TIME WITH MY WIFE AVA!???

[cosmermaid]

I like Lightcannon AND Timebomb. Jinx has two hands, I want a polycule.

[thejinxadventures]

Jinx's fashion ✨️

[becoming-the-herald-comic]

Have a meme format which I really like!

(Hans helping Viktor with programming)

[loveandlegacy]

DR MANHATTAN: Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

LAURIE: But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!

DR MANHATTAN: Yes. Anybody in the world. But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.

[purpleshimmer]

sorry this isn't arcane related but has anyone seen the new Batman show

I feel like hardly anyone is talking about it but it's soooo good; it reminds me of the older scooby doo shows at times which was really fun to watch

[the-glorious-evolution-fanart]

WIP | Viktor the Machine Herald, thinking | original 2011. lore

The mask as well as its frame are longer than his jaw, to allow the mouth to be able to open!

[mellohimmku94]

I just lost the best fanfic I’ve seen in a while this is worse than 9/11

[sheriff-caitlyn]

[x]

[lanternfeather]

95 lb deadlift today HELL YEAH!!! previous one was 85 lb!!