fuckyeahisawthat

[fuckyeahisawthat]

can't stop drawing them...

if you want, I post more Jayvik doodles on bluesky 🦋

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I won't fail, I swear it.

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I've made a post like this before but I want to say it again: I'm glad to see people push back against the "Mel is an evil seductress" type of thing, but I'd be careful not to go too hard in the other direction.

Mel is a politician from a ruling-class family who is desperate to prove to her warmonger mother that you can attain power through politics rather than through violence. Guile is one of the forms of strength that is so valued by Noxus. In the book about Ambessa's backstory, Mel and her cousin mutually become friends so they can spy on each other for their parents, because their family is so fucked up. She *is* manipulative because that's how she was raised and that's the context she exists in. The binary that's presented to her is between being a fox and a wolf, that is cleverness and cunning, versus violence. She chose cunning. (I was going to go into a big thing about her season 1 flashback but I think I'll just make that another post).

Mel can be manipulative and not be evil because of it. But she is manipulative. In her second scene in the show we see her flatter Hoskel so that he stays loyal to her. She calls the rest of the council "old fools" behind their backs while smiling to their faces. She gets Jayce onto the council to serve her agenda of being able to keep developing hextech.

People say Mel is manipulative because that *is* how her character is introduced. What the haters fail to notice, though, is that the show then *subverts* the femme fatale character trope that she was introduced as. Her backstory is revealed, showing that her approach to politics is her way of eschewing her mother's violence. Because she is a soft-hearted and caring person. Her character *development* (that is, the way her character changes) in season 1 is that being with Jayce brings out her softer, more idealistic side, a side that she had had to supress in order to try to prove herself as a Medarda.

No character in Arcane is purely good or bad. And Mel is a kind and caring person who behaves in a kind of fucked-up way because of her context. And that is what makes her *so* interesting as character.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Oooh I'm so glad folks are engaging with this post because it's stuff I've been thinking about for a while!

I think it's clear that magic will continue to play a role in any further stories in the Arcane universe, now that it's been "woken up" in the course of the events of the show. Whether Hextech itself continues to exist...I'm not sure. I tend to think that the arcane was never going to successfully industrialized in the way the Hexgates work--forcing magic to do one ordered, repetitive task over and over and over again. Something like the anomaly was always going to occur, because the order of the Hexgates has to be balanced out with chaos generated somewhere else within the system. But there are lots of other ways of using magic in Runeterra so I could see the Hextech crystals and gemstones being used in other ways.

I would argue that it's not the case that Jayce and Viktor are the only people capable of understanding Hextech. They're certainly the experts, but Jinx is able to construct working Hextech devices with one gemstone and a notebook. When given some time to mess around, Ekko and AU Powder invent time travel. Yes, they have Heimerdinger's mentorship, but he seems not to know this is even possible in advance. So I think the Council keeping a lock on Hextech is not just about controlling Jayce and Viktor's labor power as scientists (although it is that) but also about preventing the proliferation of Hextech in ways they can't control. Because if anyone can build or use or reverse-engineer a Hextech device then that's a formidable source of power that the Council no longer has a monopoly on.

@kettleninth I am also gonna pull out some ideas from your first set of tags cause there's some really interesting stuff in there.

(1) The Kirammans having a monopoly on the hexcrystals/gemstones is a really interesting idea because I've had the idea for a while that at least part of their wealth comes from mining. (Vi being the daughter of miners and Caitlyn being the daughter of mine owners just seems very juicy and like it fits well thematically.) If this were true then it would make sense that they would have the means to both extract and refine the crystals, and that they either found them through their own companies' prospecting, or that Jayce convinced Cassandra it was academically useful for him to go along on a Kiramman prospecting expedition where he thought the crystals might be found.

I initially had a whole tangent about the Kiramman-funded ventilation system but I decided it really needs its own post. Tl;dr I see it as kind of in the same vein as, like, wealthy social reformers of the Industrial Revolution era who invested in public health measures because they'd had the revelation that maybe their entire workforce dying before thirty was not gonna be sustainable. There's a mix of noblesse oblige and self-interest at work. They have an interest in conditions in the fissures because that's where their workers live, and possibly because their own enterprises are contributing to the pollution.

(2) Houses being corporations makes a lot of sense too. This is basically how the ultra-rich operate now, creating trusts, investment vehicles, holding companies etc. to manage inherited family wealth (and avoid taxes). I have also thought that in a society that has inherited family wealth but also seems relatively chill about same-sex relationships, there must be some structure to formally and indisputably designate heirs who are not your biological children, and if bringing someone into your House is seen as more of a business relationship, that could fill that role.

(3) The idea that the Council has possibly carved out a legal exception just for the Hexgates because they benefit Piltover's ruling class, and that other forms of Hextech are not automatically legal...yeah that feels very on brand and interesting to explore.

who decides the future of hextech?

Hot take: I don't think Hextech functions like a scrappy tech startup at all. I know the Arcane writers have made this comparison themselves, but it doesn't really track with what we see in the show.

It's made pretty clear that Jayce and Viktor have at best limited control over what direction Hextech goes in. In a city that's hostile to and suspicious of magic, they need the continued goodwill of the Council, and the wealthy families who sit on the Council, for their work to continue to exist at all. And that shapes how Hextech develops.

For the first 6-10 years of its existence (however long you think the S1 timeskip is), Hextech consists of one (1) project: the Hexgates. A major piece of international transit infrastructure, utilizing a brand-new technology that no one knew was even possible a few years earlier, and requiring a massive financial outlay for construction years before seeing any profits. Frankly, taking that from the very first shaky proof of concept to a fully functioning piece of infrastructure in less than 10 years is astonishing. This isn't like inventing Facebook; this is equivalent to creating the internet itself.

An infrastructure project on the scale of the Hexgates could be entirely state-funded (and therefore state-controlled, answering to the Council). But from the dialogue and visual storytelling, I think it's reasonable to infer that Hextech functions more like a public-private partnership.

In the modern era, PPPs have come to be associated with privatization and neoliberal capitalism. But funding infrastructure development this way was common in the 19th century too, closer to the time period from which Arcane draws its steampunk-ish inspiration.

So who's picking up the tab? I think it's some combination of government funding from the Council and private funding from Mel Medarda and the Kirammans.

We see one other Kiramman-funded infrastructure project in the show: the Undercity ventilation system.

And, as we see in that case, what may seem like a purely benevolent investment for the good of the city as a whole comes with a very high potential for control. (And where do the Hexgate plans end up at the end of the show? In the Kiramman family vault, accessible only with the Kiramman key.)

The Kiramman family crest is all over Hextech at Progress Day. It's prominent on the stage when Jayce speaks, positioned as equal to his own House.

Cassandra Kiramman introduces Jayce's speech, and Jayce gets trotted around the Kiramman family tent like a show pony beforehand.

The Kiramman crest is also on the box containing the hexgems, which makes me suspect that the facility needed to process the gemstones is either owned or financed by the Kirammans.

Mel's influence is more subtle. There's no Medarda crest on anything associated with Hextech; once you learn a bit about Mel's relationship with her family, that is not surprising. But clearly Mel feels comfortable speaking to other investors on behalf of Hextech, without feeling the need to run it by Jayce or Viktor first.

I think this exchange implies that (1) getting additional, outside investors is something new that they haven't done to finance earlier rounds of Hextech development, and (2) Mel is planning ahead in case the Council doesn't like the direction Hextech is going next and they need to secure additional funding.

I wouldn't be surprised if Mel was the one who steered them toward shipping and long-distance trade as a marketable use for Hextech in the first place, something many of the councillors seem to have an economic stake in.

Throughout this whole scene with Jayce and Mel, the Hexgate model sitting on her desk is very prominent. It's the first thing we see in the scene; the color and lighting make it stand out; and it appears in the frame in multiple shots. It's the thing that's always there between them.

Mel and Cassandra Kiramman are also councilors, and along with Heimerdinger they are Hextech's main allies on the Council--3 out of 7. Jayce and Viktor really can't afford to piss off any of them...which gets complicated when they want opposite things.

At the time of Progress Day, Hextech is at a turning point.

This conversation implies that they have not had a lot of freedom to develop and build whatever they wanted in the years during the timeskip. It's an interesting reversal of the dynamic we saw from them in 1.02 and 1.03. This time Jayce is the one forging ahead, confident they can get what they want, while Viktor is the one pointing out obstacles. (This is also the first time we see Viktor's face post-timeskip and register how much sicker he's become, which...oof.)

Regardless of how much they talk about "bringing magic to the people," I think it's notable that both their little spiels focus on how these inventions would increase worker productivity. This is a presentation designed for people who are thinking about their bottom line. And they seem to expect that any new developments with Hextech will have to be given Council approval before they can proceed.

(I think all of this puts the Hexcore in a slightly different light, too. It's quite possibly the first Hextech device since Jayce's original prototype that they've built without thinking about the pitch meeting. It's not a single-purpose object with an immediate, obvious use. In the beginning, it seems to recapture some of that original sense of wonder and discovery. And Viktor built it. I can see how he would be protective of his creation even before things Got Weird with it.)

And then, of course, everything goes off the rails. The gemstone gets stolen; Jayce gets pulled onto the Council. And after that point, every new Hextech object that Jayce makes is a weapon.

Jayce and Viktor's arc can be read as a story about the hubris of scientists thinking they can control forces they don't understand and anticipate every possible consequence, or a story about their naivete in thinking they could keep their research somehow above politics in a world full of conflict. And it's not not about those things. But it can also be read as a story about how discovery, creativity, and people's natural altruistic impulses get constrained by capitalism, and how often innovation is only valued if it can be made to serve war or profit.

(As for who controls the future of Hextech after the end of the show? With Viktor, Jayce, Mel and Heimerdinger all gone from Piltover...Caitlyn, probably. A detail I would love to see someone use in a fic.)

[fuckyeahisawthat]

who decides the future of hextech?

Hot take: I don't think Hextech functions like a scrappy tech startup at all. I know the Arcane writers have made this comparison themselves, but it doesn't really track with what we see in the show.

It's made pretty clear that Jayce and Viktor have at best limited control over what direction Hextech goes in. In a city that's hostile to and suspicious of magic, they need the continued goodwill of the Council, and the wealthy families who sit on the Council, for their work to continue to exist at all. And that shapes how Hextech develops.

For the first 6-10 years of its existence (however long you think the S1 timeskip is), Hextech consists of one (1) project: the Hexgates. A major piece of international transit infrastructure, utilizing a brand-new technology that no one knew was even possible a few years earlier, and requiring a massive financial outlay for construction years before seeing any profits. Frankly, taking that from the very first shaky proof of concept to a fully functioning piece of infrastructure in less than 10 years is astonishing. This isn't like inventing Facebook; this is equivalent to creating the internet itself.

An infrastructure project on the scale of the Hexgates could be entirely state-funded (and therefore state-controlled, answering to the Council). But from the dialogue and visual storytelling, I think it's reasonable to infer that Hextech functions more like a public-private partnership.

In the modern era, PPPs have come to be associated with privatization and neoliberal capitalism. But funding infrastructure development this way was common in the 19th century too, closer to the time period from which Arcane draws its steampunk-ish inspiration.

So who's picking up the tab? I think it's some combination of government funding from the Council and private funding from Mel Medarda and the Kirammans.

We see one other Kiramman-funded infrastructure project in the show: the Undercity ventilation system.

And, as we see in that case, what may seem like a purely benevolent investment for the good of the city as a whole comes with a very high potential for control. (And where do the Hexgate plans end up at the end of the show? In the Kiramman family vault, accessible only with the Kiramman key.)

The Kiramman family crest is all over Hextech at Progress Day. It's prominent on the stage when Jayce speaks, positioned as equal to his own House.

Cassandra Kiramman introduces Jayce's speech, and Jayce gets trotted around the Kiramman family tent like a show pony beforehand.

The Kiramman crest is also on the box containing the hexgems, which makes me suspect that the facility needed to process the gemstones is either owned or financed by the Kirammans.

Mel's influence is more subtle. There's no Medarda crest on anything associated with Hextech; once you learn a bit about Mel's relationship with her family, that is not surprising. But clearly Mel feels comfortable speaking to other investors on behalf of Hextech, without feeling the need to run it by Jayce or Viktor first.

I think this exchange implies that (1) getting additional, outside investors is something new that they haven't done to finance earlier rounds of Hextech development, and (2) Mel is planning ahead in case the Council doesn't like the direction Hextech is going next and they need to secure additional funding.

I wouldn't be surprised if Mel was the one who steered them toward shipping and long-distance trade as a marketable use for Hextech in the first place, something many of the councillors seem to have an economic stake in.

Throughout this whole scene with Jayce and Mel, the Hexgate model sitting on her desk is very prominent. It's the first thing we see in the scene; the color and lighting make it stand out; and it appears in the frame in multiple shots. It's the thing that's always there between them.

Mel and Cassandra Kiramman are also councilors, and along with Heimerdinger they are Hextech's main allies on the Council--3 out of 7. Jayce and Viktor really can't afford to piss off any of them...which gets complicated when they want opposite things.

At the time of Progress Day, Hextech is at a turning point.

This conversation implies that they have not had a lot of freedom to develop and build whatever they wanted in the years during the timeskip. It's an interesting reversal of the dynamic we saw from them in 1.02 and 1.03. This time Jayce is the one forging ahead, confident they can get what they want, while Viktor is the one pointing out obstacles. (This is also the first time we see Viktor's face post-timeskip and register how much sicker he's become, which...oof.)

Regardless of how much they talk about "bringing magic to the people," I think it's notable that both their little spiels focus on how these inventions would increase worker productivity. This is a presentation designed for people who are thinking about their bottom line. And they seem to expect that any new developments with Hextech will have to be given Council approval before they can proceed.

(I think all of this puts the Hexcore in a slightly different light, too. It's quite possibly the first Hextech device since Jayce's original prototype that they've built without thinking about the pitch meeting. It's not a single-purpose object with an immediate, obvious use. In the beginning, it seems to recapture some of that original sense of wonder and discovery. And Viktor built it. I can see how he would be protective of his creation even before things Got Weird with it.)

And then, of course, everything goes off the rails. The gemstone gets stolen; Jayce gets pulled onto the Council. And after that point, every new Hextech object that Jayce makes is a weapon.

Jayce and Viktor's arc can be read as a story about the hubris of scientists thinking they can control forces they don't understand and anticipate every possible consequence, or a story about their naivete in thinking they could keep their research somehow above politics in a world full of conflict. And it's not not about those things. But it can also be read as a story about how discovery, creativity, and people's natural altruistic impulses get constrained by capitalism, and how often innovation is only valued if it can be made to serve war or profit.

(As for who controls the future of Hextech after the end of the show? With Viktor, Jayce, Mel and Heimerdinger all gone from Piltover...Caitlyn, probably. A detail I would love to see someone use in a fic.)

[fuckyeahisawthat]

The vision of Jayce forgetting to breath and looking at Viktor in absolute awe as he slowly undressed him has been haunting me for months 😤

Started this drawing back in winter but it took me an eternity to finish .__. Chronologically this is the first part of my poscanon jayvik series:

second part

third part

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Happy 10th birthday to the best tweet of all time.

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The combination of 'unnervingly flawless self-control' with 'occasional tendency to engage in reckless, dangerous, and borderline self-destructive or death-seeking behaviour' in a character is SUCH catnip to me

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Exam cheating tips from these two would be like

[fuckyeahisawthat]

"𝓘𝓷 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓽𝓲𝓶𝓮𝓵𝓲𝓷𝓮𝓼, 𝓲𝓷 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓼𝓲𝓫𝓲𝓵𝓲𝓽𝓲𝓮𝓼, 𝓸𝓷𝓵𝔂 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓬𝓪𝓷 𝓼𝓱𝓸𝔀 𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓼."

leave it to me to get into a fandom after the hype has already died down 😭 currently obsessed w arcane and I loooove the art style of this show, but I was nervous to do fanart bc im not used to doing stylized work. I'm a realism artist 🤡 but I think I did alright! adding jayvik to my ever growing ao3 pairings list (ive already read an OBSCENE amount of fics)

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adoration without limits

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wait how could I forget

sometimes just for fun I think about overlaps between my blorbos and Viktor and Primo seem pretty wildly different in personality, morality, their relationship to violence etc. but then I was like wait

[fuckyeahisawthat]

I think this makes total sense from a character perspective. And also, the gemstones that would have made something like a Hextech mobility aid possible were brand new at Progress Day in 1.04. And the rest of S1 takes place over at most a couple of weeks.

I'm gonna bet Jayce had a whole notebook of sketches ready to go, whether he'd talked about it with Viktor or not. In fact I think it's even possible that part of the reason they steered Hextech development toward portable human-sized devices AT ALL--as opposed to, say, arcane-powered clean energy or some other larger infrastructure project--was because they had ideas about how it could be used for various assistive technologies.

I’m sorry but where the FUCK was Viktor’s hex-brace?! Where was his hex-corset? his hex-cane? His hex-chair? You tryna tell me that Jayce saw in real time Viktor’s condition worsening and didn’t think to make his own partner hextech powered mobility aids??????

If not Jayce, then Viktor, Mr. Totally Down for Self-Experimentation, didn’t just build some hextech aids for himself? They figured out teleportation and magic batteries but not advanced mobility aids that would’ve made Viktor’s life a million times easier???

[fuckyeahisawthat]

“When were you going to tell me about this?”

15ish minute sketch on toned paper. I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit thinking about Jayce’s reaction to what Viktor has done with his body himself. By no means is this release going to tame those fantasies, but I’m stupid and don’t care.

Soundtrack of this sketch is a bit clashing but I’m neurodivergent and my brain listens to what it wants.