#to heimerdinger but bc he's from zaun he was def

[wovetales]

university   viktor   tho.   he   had   no   friends   when   he   was   at   school   since   he   was   an   outsider   but   someone   SHOULD   befriend   him   &   we   should   write   it   :P

[guiltycorp]

+++ It kinda sucks that Arcane pushes forward mostly interpersonal and extrinsic motivation arcs. It’s a very deliberate choice that probably works better for provoking emotions in mainstream audience, but idk! Like, we don’t even see the working conditions in the undercity’s mines, only some mild water pollution in Viktor’s flashback, no visuals for sickness from toxic fumes or from living conditions down there while we get lots of scenes dedicated to awful effects of Silco’s drug trade, it’s all very... ehh.. In council archives in Caitlyn’s notes it’s mentioned that there’re other ppl like Viktor with lung problems + Jayce said these were the kind of problems they wanted to fix with hextech, so it’s def systematic, but in the show most main Zaun characters look perfectly healthy and it seems as if Viktor has an unfortunate individual problem which he then tries to solve individually for himself.  As a character who left the undercity in order to realize his scientific ambitions AND to help his people, we get surprisingly little insight into his feelings about the whole zaun/piltover divide and how his work is used for the profit of Piltover’s elite (and then weaponized before being of any help to anyone).  He only participates in discussing an appropriate way to solve the Zaun conflict with Jayce by the very end of the season off-screen (!!), it’s just kind of... Weird how we aren’t shown that side of him? In my personal opinion, best case scenario is if instead of ‘no emotions’ his arc will be focused on his actual beliefs and they will be too radical for him to stay in Piltover anymore and then he’ll be more focused on improving conditions in Zaun and that will be his whole s2 character arc, radicalizing and finding a way to finally do something substantial - with terminal illness plot resolved by itself (as a response to Jinx’s attack or by Jayce’s intervention or as a consequence of him changing his mind about hexcore’s powers as a ‘i must survive in order to do a specific thing’ scenario). Preferably with a line drawn between his illness and his leg bc like.. he’s not dying from the leg thing but we mostly get visual focus on the leg... And it seems to be a specific character trait while the lung disease is an actual part of the main conflict of the series.  They could also go for an exchange of like ‘completely healed physically BUT wrecked psychologically’, perfect health and no emotions, but yeah, he wouldn’t be so compelling after that. Instead it would just serve Jayce’s character as a source of additional emotional suffering for him :/ (Viktor fridging himself as repentance for fridging Sky lol) But honestly a lot of arcane criticism in my opinion falls into like, suspicion territory? Season 1 sets up a lot of story arcs in a way that feels organic and more or less well-written but with current LoL lore it’s difficult to expect that riot writers can actually deliver satisfying outcomes... Like dealing with Viktor’s arc, Vi’s transformation into a cop, appearance of more villainous characters in Zaun, just Heimerdinger as a whole, Caitlyn becoming sheriff... Unless they stray even further away from canon i suppose!! That would be best. Although if they make sufficiently dramatic and tragic scenes with swelling music we will still be sold on anything, i guess. 

I love Arcane but I am admittedly a bit worried about Viktor's arc in season 2 and how it may or may not be handled. We started Act 1 with such a likeable and complex character whose disability was not at the forefront. He mentions it as a way to encourage Jayce at his lowest point. But aside from that, he is witty, compassionate, super smart, and has a chaotic streak that is very endearing.

In Act 2, it's absolutely understandable that he would not be as energetic and he really is still likeable and complex... but I hate how much his disability/sickness takes center stage over him as a person. He kinda loses agency, tbh. I understand it's part of his story in the show but part of me wishes that we got to see more of how his ideals evolved, his distaste for Piltover grew, and how his goals took shape without his disability being the focus.

Viktor is such an interesting character that has so much more potential to be explored properly in season 2, but as I mentioned, Act 2 and 3 started settling into clichéd Tropes surrounding sick/disabled characters in a similar vain that much other media does. (Once again, in my opinion).

And here's a hot take: despite the work Riot has done to tone down Viktor's emotion deleting (House on Emberflit implies he has the capacity for some emotions like empathy and mischief), the Viktor so many people fell in love with in Arcane (myself included), is probably just going to be Gone by season 2 close. Unless they drop the emotion deleting narrative, because realistically not enough was set up to justify it in Arcane imo. His League lore made it integral to his backstory, not Arcane though. And having Viktor just delete his emotions because "uwu I must escape the pain of the Sky situation and the fallout of losing my partner 🥺" is incredibly weak and insulting to his character imo.

tl;dr Viktor just deserves better and I want more time with him as a person in a narrative that doesn't make his disability the focus like Act 2 & 3 did. Especially if we are just (potentially) going to lose all of the interesting aspects of his character come the end of season 2.

anyway back to my modern!AU where Viktor isn't terminally ill and everything is (mostly) fine