i’m literally going to end it all

kagehina but they're easing each other into retirement. they're both well past their prime, somewhere in their mid to late 40s. they're still part of a professional team of course, but it's getting harder and harder to keep up with the physical demands of the sport. their bodies just aren't the way they were a decade ago, knees buckling with each jump and muscles becoming sore way too early into a five set game. they spend less time on the court, until eventually they become absent from the starting lineup.

it's a reality that's hard to face, being pried away with unstoppable force from the very thing that breathes life into your being by your own body, for two people who yearn to be standing in front of a net for the rest of their lives. who crave the sound of a ball landing with full force on the polished floors of a court and the buzzing sensation on their skin when the game reaches its peak.

oh my god I am SICK

The fact that I have heard more than one minecraft hardcore youtuber refer to baby zombies as 'Philza Killers' and treat them with extreme wariness and caution not extended to other mobs is Very Funny like oh no we can't fuck with the undead toddler it killed God once

Everything between Jayce and Viktor can really be traced back to their childhood inciting incidents and it’s killing me.

Jayce: a miracle saves him and his mom, forever imprinting him with the certainty that miracles do exist, they can be controlled, he can save his loved ones no matter how awful things get, if he can just be smart and bold and quick enough.

Viktor: he saw the horror of what Singed had done—of forcing a creature to live against its will, of the degradation and terror of being fundamentally changed. For a while he thought he understood Singed, when he decided that he was willing to throw away all his principles to survive his own body. But he didn’t, really. He didn’t understand. There was still a line he would not cross. He wanted to die human.

It’s fitting, then, and unspeakably tragic, that Jayce is the one who played Singed’s role in the end. Because you can’t ask Jayce to let a loved one go, when he knows there’s a miracle that can save him, the solution is right there, it will work if you will just let him try—and so he forces a change onto Viktor against his will. He traps him into the Arcane, takes apart and reassembles his body, strips him of his selfhood and humanity. All so that Viktor will live. Singed wasn’t talking about the desperation not to die—he was talking about the desperation not to lose someone you love.

And so Viktor is…changed. He lives, whether he wants to or not.

And so Jayce loses him anyway.

Jayce you better go get your damn wife from wherever the hell she is then take your ass to the undercity and pick up your damn husband, he is naked and becoming jesus. Thank you..

Id just like to point out that despite his body mutating and his hair growing wild suggesting viktor RLY hasnt been taking care of himself there is still no beard in sight.......... that's a trans man 1000%%% reminder his character designer is not cis and also pitched spiderpunk to be genderqueer in spiderverse

extremely based take

actually the best part of the new season is that the jayce/heimerdinger/ekko plotline is My Plant Is Dying And I Don't Want It To :( meanwhile jinx is on the run from the cops, mel is getting kidnapped by witches, viktor is becoming jesus, and caitlyn and vi are speedrunning fascism

heimerdinger breaking into the lab right after jayce spent the night and had his breakup with viktor was so funny. he's sitting there with eyebags surrounded by research notes and diagrams, hasn't had a good night's rest since the accident and his ex just decided to start a cult, i guess and he's like professor? what happened to you? and heimerdinger's like ???? what happened to YOU?

viktor arcane has to be one of the characters ever.

he's gay. he's terminally ill. he's suicidal. he's from league of legends. he's in a toxic relationship with an orb. he also might be the orb(???). he bullshitted his way into the academy by pretending he went there. he rizzed up a guy so he wouldn't kill himself. he then tried to impress said guy by breaking into his boss's lab. then when he got caught he tried to play it off by saying he thought this big intimidating door was his bedroom door and he was just trying to sneak a guy in there. he nearly died because hetero sex was happening like a mile away. kinda. he took illegal drugs. he's also the apprentice of the guy who's making the illegal drugs and never mentions it. he's inspired off of the tale of frankenstein's monster. he got shot by a missle and fucking died. when he came back to life he immediately broke up his messy gay situationship and became jesus fucking christ.

truly one of the characters of all time

that pretty boy just bit me! he bit me! are you fucking kidding me-?

thinking about the hq characters whenever I listen to the Warriors album that came out recently (I actually really like it - I watched the film as a kid when I shouldn't have and was so scared of it that this album has healed that fear a little - the bottle clinking is still the soundtrack for my nightmares though).

yes I have daydreamed the entire story, yes you will see snippets of it if this stays latched on my brain for long enough. for now, enjoy my match-ups of hq characters to the main gang members because I have been thinking non-stop about how easy it is to transfer their personalities over since the album was released. if you know nothing about The Warriors (book, film, or album), this will probs not make much sense but enjoy anyways!

tw for anyone who needs it: The Warriors is about gang violence and murder so caution engaging with it + this post thus mentions it briefly

HAIKYUU AND WARRIORS???? omg

Jayce and the fallacy of the butterfly effect in Arcane's narrative

If Jayce's symbol is the butterfly, then my theory is that we're going into a full "butterfly effect" narrative in Act 2. Either we'll watch it happen, or we'll only see Jayce come out the other side of it changed by the experience, knowing - or more importantly, THINKING he knows - what to do to change the future. Literally, to "defend tomorrow."

tl;dr: Jayce will encounter the butterfly effect in season 2. Viktor and Mel both foreshadowed this in season 1. I think Jayce will fixate on Viktor and will believe that stopping or changing Viktor either in the past or the present - most likely the present - will mean he can save the future. I believe this will lead to an even worse tragedy and may have the same effect as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ekko's approach to changing the future by sticking closer to the present - considering only tiny increments of time to alter more immediate future outcomes - will be the superior approach. I also think that Jayce attempting to change the future will create the conditions that push Viktor to become the Machine Herald.

One of the most common reactions even the casual viewer had to Arcane season 1 was this: "If [character] had just done this one small thing a little differently, [tragic event] wouldn't have happened!"

Arcane has been called a Greek tragedy for the main reason that because of how well built up the characters' personalities and reasonings are, there's no other way season 1 could have gone. There was no stopping the multiple tragedies that occurred, because with one event leading to another, the chain of seemingly inevitable events goes too far back to identify what one singular event caused everything, what one character made what one decision to put our characters on the terrible paths they walked.

Arcane is about to investigate this idea in its own narrative, and I think that Jayce will be the character to stumble into the flawed idea that you can change one event, or stop one character, and change the future for the better. This is because Jayce struggles with a few very interesting character flaws, one of them being that he believes himself to be the main character, and it is therefore his responsibility to intervene, be a hero, and fix things.

Viktor and Mel both foreshadow Jayce's future encounter with the butterfly effect.

Recall that Viktor said: "There is always a choice."

Jayce sees choices in black and white, believes that he has no other options but to go along with what he's persuaded and pushed into, and acts too boldly with too much power multiple times.

Recall that Mel said: "We can't change what fate has in store for us, but we don't have to face it alone."

Jayce tries to solve big problems on his own, and though he delegates to Enforcers and the like, Jayce relies on his reasoning and his alone to make important decisions if he doesn't simply become persuaded - usually through strong emotions like fear - by other characters. In addition, since Mel is specifically talking about Viktor's plight here, it's worth mentioning that while Jayce did say that he would help Viktor in acts 2 and 3 of season 1, Jayce does wind up leaving Viktor to face his fate alone. When Jayce tries to change that fate in s2 ep1, ep2 shows that only tragedy can come of this as well.

Viktor and Mel's statements here are not contradictory. Viktor makes the point that you can always make a choice. In context, he's literally referring to the classic "secret third option," because given a choice between aggression and passivity, war and surrender, Viktor chooses to defuse the bomb instead. Mel, interestingly, seems to believe that destiny is fixed in a broad sense, and she operates as a politician and diplomat and investor who navigates that line of destiny in the most optimal way possible. In reality, in context, she is referring to the fact that Viktor can't change the way he was born and so he has no way to change his fate and therefore must face it, which is true - she's only missing the information that Viktor actually does have the means to change his illness and his body. Her wisdom still applies however, because he'll have to accept the hand that fate deals him after he makes that choice. Will he face it alone, or not?

There is always a choice, there's even secret third options, because having a fate doesn't mean that you are doomed to make only one possible series of choices. What it does mean is that each choice comes with a hand that fate deals you. It is impossible to know what all of these branching choices and consequences are in advance, and it is just as impossible in hindsight - the branches are too complex and the end outcomes are all equally meaningful, just different. If Arcane season 2 is to be a tragedy, it may show us that each possible outcome is still tragic if you fall for the fallacy of the butterfly effect.

Jayce is counseled by some of the wisest, cleverest characters with the deepest life experiences in Arcane, but he hardly ever takes that counsel to heart. If he does, he still acts on that counsel in flawed ways that have unintended consequences. This will come to a head in season 2.

Viktor and Jayce both have a butterfly following them around in season 1. The butterfly effect refers to one small seemingly insignificant event changing the course of history, and changing that event therefore changes history. Viktor bled over the railing of a Hexgate in season 1:

And Heimerdinger sees what we can only assume is Viktor's blood contaminating (?) the Hexgate in s2 ep3:

This might be the seemingly unimportant "inciting incident" that Jayce (and Heimerdinger and Ekko) settle on as something that should be avoided or erased by changing the past (if they time-travel with Ekko, for example).

I doubt that, if this is what this crew chooses to fixate on, it will be the only event that is considered as something to change. But let's take this and run with it for the sake of discussion.

As silly as it sounds, how do you stop Viktor from allowing his blood to come into contact with the arcane? Stop Viktor's involvement with the Academy entirely? Don't invent Hextech at all? But what if someone else invents Hextech besides Jayce? What if future tragedy befalls Piltover because it didn't invent Hextech?

The possibilities and what-ifs could branch on forever. But because Jayce is who he is, and because his tragedy with Viktor is still raw and recent and frightening, I think Jayce's butterfly effect experience will have to do with Viktor.

My personal prediction is that the timeskip between s2 ep3 and ep4 will be Jayce experiencing a timeline where Viktor, taken over by the Hexcore, brings about an apocalyptic event similar to what Heimerdinger experienced in his past. Either Jayce and co. can't go into the past to change the present, or Heimerdinger and/or Ekko advise strongly against it to avoid a paradox. This will lead to them re-entering the canon Arcane timeline before this apocalypse, but still after the timeskip. Jayce, believing that destroying Viktor and his cult will save the future, and believing that resurrecting Viktor was Jayce's mistake to fix, attacks him. But the consequences don't unfold the way he hopes, because trying to change fate once the cards have already been dealt has led to tragedy before.

The butterfly is a symbol of something other than just the butterfly effect - change, evolution, and rebirth. If the butterfly symbolizes the butterfly effect for Jayce, then I think it has a different meaning for Viktor - the change and rebirth meaning.

I've always found it very interesting that we see a similar-looking butterfly on Progress Day... but made of metal.

Every time Viktor's situation changes, he adapts and evolves. If Jayce attacks him, if his cult is destroyed, if the Hexcore is causing Viktor to decay, if all of these things happen at once - he'll just evolve again, and I think the Machine Herald is the next step. And the Machine Herald will be a triumph for Viktor, but Jayce will believe that he's created something even worse. The resulting feud will be a personal nightmare for both of them.

I think this still allows Viktor to use his own agency to choose to become the Machine Herald (the MH will probably be the "secret third option" that saves Viktor, or there will be a secret third option that ends the feud) while still allowing Jayce to be offended and horrified at whatever the Machine Herald represents or is trying to do in the undercity. Introducing the element of time travel allows Arcane to explore the meta concept of tragedy and fate that season 1 was built on while showing that you can't "solve" a tragedy, because there are other terrible possibilities lurking behind alternate choices. Especially if what you're trying to change is singular people or events and not systems of power.

This is why Ekko's approach with his Z-drive will be superior to Jayce's sweeping attempt at changing the future. Ekko's goal has always been societal change. He creates his own punk society in the undercity, more progressive and successful than anything Vander or Silco ever created, and a better bastion of safety, hope, and progress than what Heimerdinger founded in Piltover. Trying to change systems by going back in time is most likely futile. But taking what Ekko has already built in the Firelights, curing his tree, and fighting for the Firelights' survival bit by bit by optimizing the present with the Z-drive shows that:

That's my Act 2 but, ultimately, my season 2 prediction based on the butterfly symbolism we've already seen. Ekko's involvement is what will give the series the at least partial happy ending that the creators have referred to. I personally don't think that the Viktor/Jayce feud will end quite so well, but maybe, they will still survive.

my mind is BLOWN holy shit this is a brilliant analysis

"This fic was ai generated—" Cool, so lemme block you real quick

<3

Maddie being introduced as this literal ray of sunshine and then being the first to beat along to Piltovers turn to martial law. Her interactions with Vi mystifying her as “one of the good ones.” One of the good Zaunites. She was always discriminatory toward Zaunites, they just didn’t make it overt at her introduction. The turn to fascism and discrimination can start with anyone. Including a literal ray of sunshine.

There’s a saying: “The nicest cop you know would still sweep a homeless encampment.” And the nicest enforcer you know would still gas you with The Grey and cheer on martial law

SOMEONE FINALLY PUT IT INTO WORDS!!!

guYS THE FUCKING SIGNS

such a normal thing to say to ur bf about his boy best friend

not to be insane but sometimes i just get hit with the fact that sylus is so attractive like . that is a very pretty very handsome man

SCREAMING