trash-baggins

[trash-baggins]

So…remember when the Catholic Church gave us ✨four✨ anime kids? Is there maybe, a reason, you picked that number in particular, uwu?

[trash-baggins]

To add onto your point about Viktor pushing people away I think this is shown a lot through his interactions with Sky. When they first meet as kids she clearly takes interest and wants to talk but he looks down to gesture to his boat when she is called away. He believes that it is his destiny to be lonely. Shortly after when meeting Singed, Singed asks “why aren’t you playing with the other kids,” and Viktor steps out from behind a rock to show him his leg. Singed’s response is a double edged sword because he says that “loneliness is often a byproduct of a gifted mind,” on one hand he is calling Viktor intelligent and implying that his disability isn’t what makes him lonely, however Singed still essentially reinforces the idea that Viktor is inherently going to be lonely because of his mind.

Later (in life, technically it’s earlier in the show) she flirts with him and he surprisingly refers to her by her last name only despite knowing each other for so long. This act pushes her away, especially at a time when he probably did need to ask for help as he had just coughed up blood earlier in the episode and passes out not long after she leaves. While I do not think he harbors any romantic feelings for Sky both the way she shows interest with him as a kid and as an adult proves Singed wrong. She doesn’t find his intelligence isolating, she admires him for it and wants to get closer but Viktor has put up a wall because he’s already internalized that loneliness is a byproduct of his existence.

She also does not even hesitate to try pull him off the hexcore when she has no idea what it is.

Viktor is often shown with themes of loneliness but it is contrasted with the fact that he is constantly around people that would move heaven and earth for him if he asked. This really shows that the internalized loneliness that makes him push people away and refuse to be selfish is also tragic because he and Singed are wrong. He does face a more difficult time being a disabled zaunite in Piltover for sure, but pushing out those who wish to be close is a fate he curated himself since he believes it’s how it has to be.

I think you said it very well!

One thing I love about having the full Arcane story with S2 is that we can really dig deep and analyze who these characters are now.

I'd argue Viktor came across as pretty... flaw-free in S1. He's still complex, but most of the problems he faces seem to come from issues outside his control, like his disability and his terminal illness.

I think S2 brought into focus what Viktor's flaws are, including his intellectual tunnel vision and, as you noted, his tendency to think himself lonely when he is the one constantly pushing people away, perhaps as a result of that awful line Singed fed him when he was a kid. (Silco and Singed are both great examples of damaged adults trying to help the children in their life, teaching them the lessons they learned, but in so doing scarring those children with their own issues and pain because their situations actually aren't parallels.)

So much of what Viktor does in S2 revolves around loneliness. Normally, I think such loneliness plots would be about someone finding love for the first time, or learning to love themselves despite it. But the strength and quality of Viktor's loneliness story, what I think brings it closer to a more realistic story, is that it takes two to tango. He's projecting rejection onto others like Jayce that isn't there. He's thinking he needs to isolate himself and even as a child to play alone, even though Sky was right there taking an interest. He was just too obsessed with his work (admittedly, work that would save him from a terminal illness so like, I feel him on this) to see that he was letting the life he had pass him by, or that there were people trying to help him, who were actively helping him if he just looked around.

He does it in 2.02 to Jayce too, by the way. Regardless of Hexcore influence, he chooses "the Mission" of securing a legacy over the friend who is right here beside him, offering help, who has come back to Viktor after Viktor chastised him for leaving his side. Jayce listened and he's back now, but Viktor is now so consumed by guilt of the other person he ignored that he's missing the loved one he's ignoring right now.

Viktor then builds this commune of people that sure as hell looks like a wall he's building against loneliness. He speaks with their voices, they are of one mind, they share their emotions, and yet Viktor still self-isolates there, spending his time with the hallucination of Sky, set apart from the other cultists in his giant bubble on the hill, making them look up to him like angels singing praises to God. And that too is lonely. It's not true connection. And by making everyone into One, it's still loneliness, it's still his old patterns. Combining everyone into one person with one will so they can never leave you (no one is ever shown leaving the commune, btw, all foot traffic flows inward) still ends up with him alone in the homogenous soup of everyone he turned into him.

Wizard Viktor is another example of this behavior, the ultimate conclusion of it, why he needs Jayce to get through to him. Only Jayce can show Viktor that his loneliness is in his own head, it's a product of his own behavior, he is pushing people away and ignoring them and then being upset when they're not there, and then when they come back he pushes them away again in favor of "the mission" in favor of "legacy", and even if it's in favor of finding a cure for himself, he pushes away people who are trying to help him with that. And he doesn't let Jayce in on the fact he's dying which is another example of not letting people who love him help him with his most important mission of saving his own life.

This is getting way too long lol but ok:

TL;DR One of Viktor's flaws is self-imposed loneliness that still makes him lash out at others and ultimately leads to some of his most heinous crimes like the assimilation of the cultists and attempt to make everyone into One Being, which is still the same behavior of self isolation, and that's why only Jayce can get through to him that he was loved the whole time and he's only lonely because he keeps ignoring his loved ones and pushing them away.

[trash-baggins]

Knowing that Oda based Sanji off of Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs and that he now imagines Mackenyu while drawing Zoro gives me life and lols. Sorry Sanji, Zoro is just too effortlessly pretty.

[trash-baggins]

High-ish quality scans of the Silco & Vander pages from the artbook

[trash-baggins]

One of Vander's last actual memories of Silco is this:

but the (first!) image that surfaces when Viktor looks into his mind is this:

...I have to forgive everything I didn't initially like about Arcane season 2. I got what I have been writing fanfic of for years, really.

[trash-baggins]

Blue Prints of the Thousand Sunny

Gallery Shop Link

[trash-baggins]

Omg they are perfect

Still the hottest couple on the Sunny (Moony??)

[trash-baggins]

I feel like Sanji could definitely use lightning kicks (I’ve seen anime fire rules, I know how this works) but he would never impede on Nami’s joy from being able to control Zeus with her Clima-Tact.

[trash-baggins]

Anything that addresses how disastrous their breath would be in the morning, I am here for XD

Morning-after breath

[trash-baggins]

Come get your dog

[trash-baggins]

I still haven’t finished the game but I think I have a totally normal amount of love for these two and if anything happened to them, idk what I would do.

[trash-baggins]

When you get smacked so hard it breaks your entire model 💀

[trash-baggins]

killer wants to be cute too but noooo kidd has to be TALL and STUPID 🙄

[trash-baggins]

Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water

it will not Fix You but like. maybe. maybe.

[trash-baggins]

h/w sketches and notes from the past few weeks <3

the first drawing based off the classic Go For It, Nakamura! meme

[trash-baggins]

Logically, Sanji would be an ungodly mix of smells, and that just breaks both of our hearts. Sure, Zoro smells, but that’s just because he’s the kind of guy who doesn’t believe in showers.

[trash-baggins]

Finished this wonderful ZoSan knight/princeAU fic and wasn’t expecting to be able to be so endeared by the AU setting. Inspired by the sweet ending where all of the threads are wrapped up in a cozy little bow. 🥰