eclecticpaperchild

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Arcane @ Annecy Festival - Poster & Banner by Fortiche

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One difference between the Lord of the Rings books and the Peter Jackson films that I find really interesting is what the hobbits find when they return to the Shire.

In the books, they return from the War, only to see that the war has not left their home untouched. Not only has it not left their home unscathed, battle and conflict is still actively ravaging the Shire. They return, weary and battle-scarred, to find a home actively wounded and in need of rescue and healing. All four launch themselves into defending their home and rousting those harming it, and eventually succeed. But their idyllic home has been damaged, and even once healed, is never quite again the Shire they set out to save.

In contrast, in the Jackson films, they return to a Shire shockingly untouched by the horrors of war. The hobbits of the Shire talk, in the Green Dragon in Fellowship of the Ring, about not getting involved with issues "beyond our borders," and it seems those issues have not invaded their sanctuary. After having been bowed to by kings, dwarves, elves, and men alike at the coronation in Gondor, their only acknowledgment upon returning home is a skeptical head shake from an older hobbit.

One of the most poignant scenes to me in Return of the King (and there are a considerable amount) is the scene where Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin are sitting in the Green Dragon. The pub patrons bustle around them, talking loudly, clapping excitedly, drinking cheerfully, just as they had in the beginning of the story. But the four hobbits sit silently, watching almost curiously at what was once familiar but is now foreign to them. Their home has not changed. But they have.

Which is the deeper hurt? To come to your home to find it irrevocably changed, despite all you did to keep it untouched and the same? Or to return home but no longer feeling at home, because it is only you that is irrevocably changed?

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shrimp posture couple

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Jayce Talis' Google search history be like:

how to know if I'm gay

am I gay

Best Hammers Ranking by Piltover Times

bisexual definition

how to be a good ally

how to tell my best friend i am in love with him

mother's day gift ideas

whey vs soy protein powder

Hot Slavic men

crystals for sale near me

how many painkillers can I take in a day

mobility aid friendly house modifications

can I use motor oil as lube

how to give a blowjob for beginners

ER near me

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Happy Pride!

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My second collage of Zaun background art. Zaun is so beautiful.

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people dismiss silco’s plans for shimmer & i get it since a lot of what he built is not explicitly shown to us before Act 1 ends or the timeskip, but if you take a second, all the info for having the upperhand on piltover is there before powder’s monkey bomb derailed everything.

I posted this on Twitter and they liked it, so sharing here too :)

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in act 1, silco’s visibly running an industrial arms manufacturing operation out of the cannery. he has people producing shimmer en masse and his rhetoric towards Vander makes it clear he has a specific goal to scare piltover while they still had leverage.

he wants to arm zaun through raw shimmer and weaponry to seize freedom immediately. if vander had agreed to fight, the revolution would have likely happened that very night, with the acting sheriff dead and the council distracted by jayce and viktor. it could have been ideal timing.

when powder’s monkey bomb goes off, he loses pretty much his entire industrial arms manufacturing operation along with his stockpile of shimmer. that material loss is a huge setback and he spends the duration of timeskip rebuilding his position all over again. except now with the arrival of hextech, zaun has fallen even further behind than it already was. so silco pivots his strategy to industrializing zaun into a legitimate competitor while rebuilding the shimmer position.

creating zaun’s economy requires compromises though. so he installs several industrial figureheads to lead these operations, which led to the chembarons: zaunites angry and envious of piltover, but notably not motivated by anything more than enriching themselves. they were not part of his plan originally and silco despises this.

he was never able to achieve as strong of a military position as what he’d had prior to the monkey bomb incident though, and instead leverages his control over marcus, the sheriff, to undermine piltover while he stalls for time trying to rebuild instead.

then he finds himself fighting more set backs left and right, with the firelights, jayce, and the gang targeting the shimmer exports + operations directly.

even though Jinx’s talent with explosives & weapons helped give teeth, it still wasn’t enough to make him sure of their success. which is why he was bluffing with jayce (who saw right through that) during their meeting on the bridge. silco knew he still needed more direct force to win an inevitable conflict for independence, since piltover had dominance in the use of force throughout the entire show.

his methods for industrializing zaun did still get them to a point of parlay, but he wasn’t able to make the final decision when it meant losing his own daughter. that said, he still would have kept fighting for it twice as hard if he didn’t die. he wasn’t going to give up there.

[eclecticpaperchild]

SHAYYYYLAAA

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thinking about this parallel .... </3

[eclecticpaperchild]

I think the key to writing Viktor is remembering that we the audience see far more of him than any character in the show does. Including Jayce. "Emotional and super sensitive but very guarded" is the way Harry Lloyd described it, and I think that sums it up very well. The way you show that in a visual medium is by letting the audience see things that no one else does.

Viktor isn't shy or meek at all, but everything intense about him is so contained. He has an expressive face and big big feelings (like, canonically he comes to the conclusion that his problem is having too many goddamn feelings) but we get to see far more of that than he shows to anyone in his life. Seriously, go back and look at the blocking in his scenes and how often we can see his face when no one else in the scene can. Outwardly he can appear confident, calm, earnest, passionate, wryly funny--at least until he gets too sick to hide his exhaustion and pain. Meanwhile anything that might express a vulnerability, a need, is tucked away where no one can see it.

All those sneaky glances and yearning looks thrown at Jayce? Jayce doesn't see them. Usually there is no one else there either. All his interactions with the Hexcore--the frustration, fear, reckless determination; the apprehension and then triumph of running on the dock? He's alone. Crying over Sky, curled up in a ball on the floor? Alone. Everything in the astral plane--the open curiosity and wonder, the casual physical closeness with Sky's and Vander's astral bodies, the despair after Jayce rejects him? Alone. Astral Sky isn't real; she's a figment made up either by the Hexcore or by his own brain (I think either interpretation works) to make him feel less alone. I 100% believe that no one whose mind he looks into is allowed to look back at him, up until the few moments at the end where he allows Jayce to see him.

When he's angry--and he does get angry--it's a cold, still anger. Contained. He glares and his tone gets sharp but he doesn't so much as raise his voice. He doesn't shout or use big gestures. The one time we see something that might be considered an outburst (when he slams his fist on the desk and scatters his notes in frustration at trying to understand the Hexcore), he is (1) desperate and scared, (2) very clearly angry at himself, and (3) once again, alone.

A bit of a tangent but I think it fits here: this extends to his physicality with his mobility aids too. I realized that the reason "Viktor whacks people with his cane" always bumps me in fics is not just that Viktor isn't casually mean like that--although he's not. It's that when it comes to habitual, everyday movements, he never uses his cane or crutch for anything other than support. He doesn't gesture with it or use it to grab things or stick it out to stop a door from closing. (Which makes the rare instances when he does use it for something other than support really stand out.) It's not like he's hiding it, but he doesn't do anything to draw extra attention to it. He lets it fade into the background as much as possible, for as long as he's able to. Contained. It's a very specific physicality that I think says a lot about how he's trying to be perceived.

And like, to me, lover of wordless longing and isolated/self-isolating characters (which could mean nothing) all this is fucking catnip for fic material, because prose gives you such easy access to a character's interiority, and then you get to watch them hide things from other characters and deny things to themselves. (Love a character being confidently wrong in the privacy of their own head.)

When I'm writing a new pairing I am often trying to figure out, like, what's the tension? The tension on the relationship can be subtle, but if a smut scene is not popping off for me I often find it's because I haven't correctly identified the tension, or I've released it too early. Sometimes the tension is societal or interpersonal, but often (for me) it's internal. The main thing holding the characters back from uncomplicated enjoyment of each other is themselves, their own traumas or fears or insecurities.

I think something clicked for me with Medicinal where I was like, oh, the dynamic I like for them is when their natural state is to stick together like magnets, and they are constantly having to pull themselves back. Viktor doesn't shy away from Jayce's touch or his attention; he craves it and is constantly having to take that firehose of yearning and reel it back in, because he thinks Jayce doesn't feel the same way. Contain it. Yeah man that's the good shit.

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't include the god tier example of the kind of Viktor POV I'm always striving toward, Uncover Him by spqr.

[eclecticpaperchild]

Imma cry now

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis

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VIKTOR SCENES IN ARCANE (1/?): 1.02. Some Mysteries Are Better Left Unsolved

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going here would fix me actually

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Greed's Cherished Daughter.

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Awwwwwww so cute

See me in a new light.

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To the person who keeps send me dms asking for money, please stop spamming my inbox. I have no money.