#( answer; jayce. )

[idcaboutart]

all that remained were fields of dreamless solitude

only you can show me this

[misslilies]

Omg Jayvik nation hiiiii hope you're doing great today

[fangsandthangs]

[ohnoitstbskyen]

asking sincerely. do you see a romance between jayce and viktor? do you think they ended up being something romantic at the end?

With apologies I am going to only half talk about the thing you are asking me, since I have something else on my mind and you happened to hit the button that makes me vomit it into words.

Coming at this from an aromantic perspective, I obviously don't experience the state of absurd obsessive delusion that you bizarre romantic freaks fetishize so feverishly*, but I am often annoyed by the idea that friendship and romance are either opposites or mutually exclusive. From my perspective, the boundary between the two is at best thin, and more realistically not actually a boundary at all except by cultural construction.

*i am taking an excessively hostile, crass tone for my own amusement i do not mean this seriously please be normal at me, weird allo freaks

I won't get into my full feelings about the end of Arcane, but it seems perfectly plain to me that the script, the imagery and the animation presents Jayce and Viktor as two halves of a whole, not opposing forces but alike to yin and yang: opposites which each contain the other. And at the climax of the show, the greatest peril to life and peace in the narrative is resolved by these two men literally joining their bodies and souls together, and going into eternity holding one another for comfort and strength. They are quite literally soulmates, quite literally the most important people in one another's lives.

I don't think that that kind of intimate emotional connection between men must necessarily be either romantic or sexual - I am aromantic, and plenty of ace people exist, and there is nothing in our natures excluding us from intense connections of love with other people of any gender.

I also think it is willfully ignorant (and genuinely homophobic) to act as though these deep connections are mutually exclusive with sex and romance. As though if Viktor and Jayce fucked nasty and made out sloppy style, suddenly their intimacy is less pure or valid, or tainted somehow.

"If these two men who are emotionally close to one another also fuck or get romantically involved, then friendship is dead, murdered on the floor by a dick-shaped knife; vile sexuality corrupts and debases the true, pure and virtuous love of ✨friendship✨" <- This shit is homophobic at a baseline, queerphobic in general, and frankly as an aromantic man I find it pretty fucking insulting as well.

What, are my friendships with other men just inherently more pure and divine, more meaningful and true than a gay man's can ever be, because I will never suffer the vile temptation of adding romance to my affection? Is that how I should think of myself? And is an aroace man more pure than me still, the only source of TRUE male friendship that a man can ever experience, free from the pustulant corruption of sexuality and romantic desire?

You get this pathetic defensiveness (especially from men, but other genders aren't immune) wherein sex and sexuality and romance between men is perceived as a threat to men's right and ability to experience deep connection to each other. But the emotional castration of men comes not from people imagining sex and romance as a component of our relationships - it comes from people who insist that our emotional lives must be ruled by strict binaries. Sex and romance, OR ELSE friendship. Deep romantic connection OR ELSE deep platonic connection. Pick one and do not dare to imagine both, nor act as though the boundary between them is something that we built by cultural fiat, and which can be dismantled just the same.

And yes, yes, yes, I know there are cultural forces literally illuminati-style conspiring to systemically erase the entire existence of explicitly romantic, sexual male love from media, and I know that homophobic puritanism is on the rise and there are material concerns and a real necessity for explicit representation in fiction, yes I know. Everything is more complicated than a tumblr post can cover, I am not trying to Solve Rainbow Capitalism™ over here, I am trying to express frustration as an aromantic man that this stupid fucking binary keeps getting culturally reinforced by both my enemies and my well-meaning allies, when I think the binary is what's fucking killing us in the first place.

So anyway. My position is that Viktor and Jayce can be entirely aromantic no-homo friends, and they can fuck nasty in the throes of mutual need and obsession, and I refuse to entertain the idea that there is an irresolvable contradiction between those things. Each of those can contain the other, or become the other given time and circumstance.

What the imagery, storytelling and script of Arcane makes clear is that Viktor and Jayce love each other more than life itself. To say that that love must be shoved into the box of either "platonic" or "romantic" is to miss out on almost everything that is beautiful about love. It can be both and neither! It can be a secret third, ninth or fifteenth thing that they haven't invented a tag for on Ao3 yet.

They are giving each other whatever the spiritual mind-ghost equivalent of sloppy backshots are on the ethereal plain forever, they are the most romantic lovers in the cosmos, and they are also the most chaste and platonic life-partner friends you have ever seen, effortlessly intimate and unashamedly tender. They are men who love one another, in every way that love matters.

You can pick whichever interpretation brings you joy, and resonates with what your heart needs, the text of the show is eminently and explicity open to it, and anyone who says otherwise either failed to pay attention, or refused to pay attention on purpose.

[ellenchain]

he cries when you yell at him

[viktorthemachineherald]

I've seen a few takes about how Jayce has been possessed by the Arcane, hence the whiplash of his vicious actions, and how seemingly unhesitating he was in killing Salo and Viktor.

But I think Jayce is still himself, main factor being the eyes:

Jayce's eyes are still the same golden hue, unlike Viktor's and all his followers, which have taken on the iridescent tone of the Arcane. I think Jayce has certainly been touched by the Arcane, and taken on some side-effects from it (one of which being a healthy dose of PTSD), but I don't think he's necessarily been corrupted by it.

One effect we do see is Jayce "glitching" into multiples-- could there be some multiverse situation where Jayce has lived multiple failed iterations, and seen what the Arcane can do and the destruction it lays waste to?

Before Jayce kills Salo, he seems resigned that he has to do so. I don't think this is the face of a man whose actions are being corrupted, but of someone who has seen things, and knows what has to be done.

I also don’t think it’s unintentional that Jayce shot Viktor right through his Hexcore heart.

It's not a coincidence that his visions are constantly interspersed with fractaled flashes of anomalous Arcane beings when he encounters Viktor's healed followers. We see this with Salo, and as he makes his way through Viktor's village.

And when he promises “I won’t fail, I swear it”, who was he speaking to? I think this Jayce has lived multiple iterations of the same situation and knows something we don't, something he learned when he was stuck in the Hexcore Anomaly.

TL;DR: This is a Jayce Talis defence blog, and he is here to DEFEND OUR TOMORROWS I will not take any Jayce slander in this house

[gilsart]

I saw you were wanting specific requests. My favorite character writing activity is "what would this character do if someone handed them a living duck?" El oh el, do you want to draw what you think Vik or Jayce or any of the other characters would do if someone handed them a duck?

I think Mel would love ducks. Jayce, however, would panic if he was given a duck.

[moonmothpaladin]

Finally finished this piece as a little love letter to @lesbianherald ‘s PHENOMENAL fic on AO3 ‘Coming Home (But Not to You)’ 💕💕💕

[monsters-demons-and-heralds-ohmy]

How long was Viktor in the Hexgoop coma? Because I’ve heard everything from days weeks and months in various fics and posts. I feel the need to hammer it down.

How long was Jayce holding vigil and obsessing over what the hexcore was doing to Viktor? Because he was distraught neglecting everything in his personal and professional life for a long while before the scene where Mel visits him exhausted and spiraling clutching Viktor’s cane for comfort to get him to talk to people and stop saying things like “it should be me up there”.

Clue 1 The Council Meeting that Jayce declined to attend: Obviously this isn’t going to be 100% accurate because we only have flashes of Piltover’s medical system but… It was enough time that Salo who was paralyzed and left in agony was able to sit up in a wheelchair and bounce down a set of steps without obvious pain.

It was also enough time that we see of Shoola’s horrific facial wounds are healed scarring.

Realistically this would suggest many weeks too months for that amount of healing to happen.

(Sidenote: Mel Medarda protected Hextech and the whole city in the aftermath of the bombing (which was the job Jayce seems like he was not in a place to do as he immediately shifted his focus from his job to Viktor’s survival). She also took over Jayce’s place as de facto leader in the council meeting and did not push Jayce to leave the lab to attend even though it would have greatly benefited her for him to be there in the vote to not invade the Undercity with Hextech weapons. She had great respect for the fact he needed to be there to care for a loved one. Some people forget that.)

-

Clue 2 The Statue: It was enough time that shortly after Jayce re-emerged to society to attend the memorial for the 3 fallen Councilors we see a massive statue has been fully finished. Again, even rushed that suggests weeks too months.

Conclusion: While for the purpose of creative license it is impossible to fully project a timeframe I would pose it was on the short end at least 6 weeks and a few months at most, and that just makes Jayce’s devastation when Viktor left so much worse.

He waited and watched an took careful notes for long time. He held distraught vigil and from what we’ve seen may have neglected an entire city for Viktor while Mel stepped into the role he was not capable of taking at that point.

He loved Viktor so much it was actually insane the devotion he had to not even leave his side unless absolutely necessary even when he had the whole city waiting he would have rather been there in the lab with Viktor. It brings so much more to his words about leaving the council and how he truly believed he always belonged by Viktor’s side in the lab when he had hardly left either for WEEKS to MONTHS.

[lateforcakes]

Comic of Ch. 3 of “the line is covered in jellyfish” by @yunuen. This fanfic is FANTASTIC, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I read it! 🪼🪼🪼You can read it too here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61254193/chapters/156546298

[fairyroses]

Jayvik AU inspired by this tweet where Jayce is the only one credited for inventing hextech because his "silent" partner Viktor is actually an astral projection that only he can see and talk to (and maybe, if they try hard enough, even touch...? 👀)

[lazylittledragon]

if you're feeling personally victimised by chapter seven and eight of 'dreams can come true' you may be entitled to financial compensation

[mollysunder]

Orianna's inclusion in Arcane really drives how the show depicted Piltover as passive as possible instead of the active agent of misery it was in the original lore (or at least by comparison). In Orianna's OG lore, she was dying because she chose to bravely help Zaunites that were caught in a large chemical disaster after an explosion either brought on by the poor conditions of Zaun or it's general structural instability (or both) broke a gas line that released dangerous fumes that destroyed her lungs in short order as she helped others breathe.

In Arcane, it's no longer important how she got sick because both her agency and affect on the world around her are irrelevant. Orianna's just a dying little girl that the audience will automatically sympathize with because she's a dying little girl (who's dad is Singed). In her place, it's Viktor who's sickened (offscreen) by the Fissure gasses instead of being victimized by Piltover Academy when the instution sides with the Piltovan professor that stole his work.

It's in the same vein as how in Arcane the ones who take those closest to Ekko aren't Piltovans working his parents for 12+ hour shifts or just straight up killing his friends like Ajuna. It's other Zaunites like Silco and Jinx that are the prime source of his misery as they murder his friends to his face. You can even argue this goes for Vi and Jinx's story because while they do say that the enforcers killed their parents neither can articulate it was the Council that sent them there in the first place!

[viktor-rp]

Stop sending me this shit

[stealingpotatoes]

whose outfit in arcane would you most want to wear

THIS IS SUCH A DIFFICULT QUESTION like mel probably has my favourite outfits in the show, but i don't think i'd wear any of them so i'm gonna have to say caitlyn's s2 act 3 jacket outfit

[bringthekaos]

It's funny how Viktor RADIATES Dom energy and Jayce looks and acts exactly like a guy who still hasn't figured out that he needs to be put on his knees and pegged and therefore doesn't know how to ask for it

SERIOUSLY THOUGH. Jayce very much gives me “wants so many things but struggles to ask for them” vibes. And especially considering the society he grew up in, where the value of a “house” is based on what they can give to the world. But like… his mind is always running so fast, and often what he needs is to just be mindless for a few hours. To entrust himself and his body to someone and just let all of it go.

And chu buddy, does Viktor give off those dom vibes. Just the way he was always depicted as so slow and precise, calm and collected when working on a project (even a dangerous one).

Like… looooook at himmmmm

I just KNOW he can have even the strongest of men begging for it.