Arcane Analysis - Blog Posts

Another reason for Vi to pull out might be the phrase "Everything might have been different" as she doesn't know how to approach Jinx's "what if", because it not only implies that Vander wouldn't have "died". It also implies that Jinx, like seemingly happened in the other universe, she could have had both Vander and Silco.

Jinx being the sister that becomes the symbol is important because she is both Vander's and Silco's daughter, she is the legacy shaped by Vander's heart and Silco's ambition, even if she lacks both of them for several parts in the series. But only Vander is Vi's father, and Silco is just the main reason her life became miserable, even without being "responsible for making/forcing Jinx from Powder", so she can't step in.

Even in the other universe she doesn't get Silco as a father, or as a positive part of her life. That idea is so "other" to her that even in another Universe Vi doesn't get to experience that "what if", so she pulls away.

Damn, this scene right here where Vi reaches out to her to comfort Jinx just KILLS me every time.

It's a very small scene, but it carries so much weight because it shows how, despite all that's happened, Vi's love for her sister is still very much present, and the bitterness and resentment she felt toward her all those years ago are withering away.

I also love that when she retracts her hand, she doesn't do it forcefully or speedily, which would indicate hostility or resentment. She does it gently as if she's saying to herself, "Maybe I'll just give her some space for now."

As great as the big emotional scenes are (e.g., Vander reuniting with her daughters), you CANNOT undervalue the little moments that made them all the more impactful.

Silco is an abuser and a terrible father figure and i'm sick of people pretending he's not.

On the arcane fandom, even to this day there's this weird ass narrative of Silco being "the perfect father for Jinx" or "A loving father who only looks for his daughter's best interest" "girl dad" or whatever other shit this people call him right now.

And the way that i fucking despise this cannot be describe with words unless you count screams of rage and foam as words.

But let's go point for point shall we?

First, how did they meet?

Well the show is kind of ambigous with where they met in time, we know that Vander was already present in the girls lifes before the death of their parents but there is no indicator of prior relationship with Silco. I will then assume for the lack of info that Silco was never an uncle figure to the girls, he was probably too busy with their Zaun plan and he does not seem like the kind of person who would get along with children therefore i will declare that his attempt in murdering Vander and the kids was his first formal introduction to the sisters. He knew they existed, but he didn't had a formal bond with them.

So we can say that when Powder thought she was abandoned by Vi was when Silco stablished contact with her.

Now let's look at this scene in a more raw way, no music, no animation nothing. Just words.

This little girl is crying. She is right now processing the fact that almost all of her family is death. This was all just a very awful chain of events, but her mind cannot comprehend this, this is all her fault in her perspective.

Then comes the true culprit. This man alongside all of his goons are ready to kill her, end with her family's legacy.

Then she just clings to him.

She's acting on pure impulse, because that's what children do. She clinged to him not because she trusted him, not because he seem like a good person but because as a child she would be looking for comfort in the moment where darkness was consuming her mind. And this is the exact moment where this man gets a hold of this vulnerable child and will basically set it all up for him to mold this child into his "Jinx".

"OH BUT THOSE WEREN'T HIS INTENTIONS YOU CANT SAY THAT"

Grooming is a manipulation tactict therefore it is not bound to intentionality, most manipulators don't even know that what they're doing is wrong. Silco very much fits in this.

He projected himself in this child, he said it himself "We'll show them all". This is literally not the case, Vi didn't betray her sister she was having a natural reaction to a traumatic situation, but Silco obviously wouldn't care about it, he doesn't know this children out of this surface level interaction, what matters for him is that he has found someone, he might not have the intention of grooming her but this will be his action from now on.

Now let's take a look at the kind of parenting methods he applied. Most of the community will probably call it "gentle" if asked.

I will however describe it as extremely negligent.

First thing first, Jinx's hideout is dangerous af, this place is not appropiate for...Literally anything, not for testing explosive or treat wounds or to let a child be there constantly. Because i really doubt Jinx only started to have this place only around the time where act 2 was starting considering that at the start this place practically looked like a monument to her trauma. So Silco let this girl spend most of her time in this isolated space that looks like it's going to collapse at any minute, let her test dangerous explosives, and also the final episode shows she could've fallen or thrown herself to the bottom at any moment.

"But Silco has some stuff that Jinx painted over! That means he loves her!"

Abusers can be and actually a lot of them will be loving. Plus loving doesn't mean he takes good care of her, we can say that he loves her but that's it, somebody doesn't hate waffles when they like pancakes and Silco isn't a good father figure for loving his child.

And if anything this loves he has for Jinx only isolates her.

Jinx didn't had anybody but Silco before Silco's death.

Her relationship with Ekko was the equivalent of a crater left by a meteor strike.

Sevika and the rest of Silco's goons/allies just saw her as a problem, a mess who will sooner or later kill them or kill herself.

And outside of them it doesn't seem like anybody else in Zaun cared much about her before the attacks on piltover.

Silco is the only one who actually talks to her, and he only ever tells her that she is "perfect". Good to know that you love your child buddy but your child is literally having hallucinations every three scenes where she even talks to her death brothers, has careless behavior for her own and others safety to the point where it almost looks like she's eargerly making the chances of her dying higher, and just generally seems like she has given up on everything but you.

Individuals who suffer through mental illness need help, literally any kind, wether it is a person just helping us with tasks that might be difficult for us or a psychologist (any mental health professional tbh) that assist us in our way to be more healthy and not harm ourselfs or others.

Letting your daughter fall deeper and deeper into a pit where she's literally treating one of her wounds with staples and looking at a shattered mirror while in crisis is not help.

Grooming a child so they can become a goon for a drug lord is not an act that reflects paternal qualities.

And treating Jinx's character as if she was the one who dragged herself in the pit while constantly praising her abuser is not a display of intellectual abilities. The way this fandom is so blatantly ableist when it comes to Jinx should be studied, before we saw AU Jinx almost everyone and their moms was convinced she would've ended similarly all because everyone turned a blind eye to the man behind all of her problems to the man that named her Jinx. Or worse they blamed Vi another child.

All to protect the fragile perception of the ideal father.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

The animators and writers with Caitlyn

"Noooo! We can't show the people of Zaun suffering by a gas that will very clearly affect them since most of the population is homeless and most of them only have the chembarons or the shimmer as their work or medical care options! Let's just put a music video so everyone will ignore it!"

Them again with Viktor

"Yeah let's make this guy who only wanted to cure himself from a terminal illness that piltover gave him the villain, let's also make his community a cult and hive mind to really put on the screen that free healthcare is the literal devil"

tweet i found this from

original tiktok link to support the creator

YESSS. YOU GET IT

When we are introduced to viktor, we are first led on to believe that he has a confident, almost flippant personality— from how he relished in his power as that of the dean’s assistant and practically talked down to jayce. And yet this confidence only stems from his position in piltover, and this also leads into another really fascinating point I noticed between jayce and viktor: what they value about themselves is what society values about them.

Viktor cannot see value in his personality or his character in the slightest. What he sees as worthy is what the good he can do for society. This also ties back to what Viktor said in the finally to Jayce once he achieved godhood: “I was more than I ever was.”

He only truly values himself because he has made an effort to society, because he has done great. The ONLY reason he said that line was because he finally decided that he had reached his goal of helping others through his commune. He had made himself a legacy.

Another really great example of this is his line to jayce during act 2: “Come. Visit me. See what I’ve accomplished.”

He wants to show Jayce his inventions, he wants to show Jayce that he’s worthy. He literally can’t imagine any other reason why Jayce would be interested in him other than his work.

Now onto Jayce: my point might be a little bit of a stretch but I still think it’s an interesting thing to highlight about his character, and it also traces back to your post. In his journal, there’s a page where he disparages the inventions he sees at the parlors for Progress Day, claiming they’re nothing but child’s play and wondering how the world would react to such a revolutionary idea like Hextech.

He, as well as Viktor, both plainly crave society’s validation. You can see it when Jayce steps on stage— he plays along with the crowd, cherishing and indulging in the applause. He very clearly wanted to achieve personal glory for himself, to be congratulated for his efforts, as well as the desire to help the public and give hextech to the people.

Society holds him at high regard, and hence, he does too.

Except, this changes in the finale of s1, where we see Jayce forgoing this sort of attitude and saying to the council: “With respect, I don’t give a shit about what any of you think about me anymore.”

This also bleeds into s2, act 1, with “My place was always in the lab, with you”, and from this point on Jayce just doesnt care about society’s approval.

And here we see that when his consideration for the council and society’s input has completely dissipated, the only thing he cares about is his partner, and his loyalties have always led back to Viktor.

And then we go to the finale, and we go back to Jayce’s line: “I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world. Now, all I want is my partner back.”

Jayce and Viktor before season 1 act 2 had been a tango with society. Attempt to appease the council, avoid being expelled, dont let society find out about your morally dubious lab experiments, etc. etc. but with this line, Jayce has just said “Fuck society’s judgement. Fuck the rest of their opinions. You are my dream. You are the one I value the most. You are the one I want.”

In the last moments of the finale, Viktor finally, finally fucking learns that he didn’t need to change the world, or revolutionize piltover, or have his name to be embossed into history in order to feel fulfilled, but that maybe to be loved was enough.

Underrated JayVik moments/lines (16/∞)

"I suppose your legacy has been well-secured."

How is this a JayVik line? At first and even second glance it isn't, but bear with me for a moment.

What this line does do initially - seeing as it's said in response to Heimerdinger stating he never contemplates his own death - is tell us how important the idea of "legacy", of leaving something good behind to be remembered by, is to Viktor.

This is not a novel idea; I've seen multiple posts talking about the tragedy that is Viktor, in the end, leaving no legacy at all (if he's lucky, that is - otherwise there would only be the tale of that one time a metal maniac threatened to end all of humanity) because all of his accomplishments and good intentions vanish with him and Jayce.

And yes, that sure is one - very bleak - way to look at it.

However, fortunately that's not all there is to his story.

Because if you think about it for a moment - think about Viktor's motivations throughout the show -, there are two additional driving forces that contribute to this desire to leave a legacy, apart from his desire to help and his strong moral compass:

Loneliness and a damaged self-image.

People suffering from both often end up believing they will only ever be as good, as desirable, as lovable as the good they do for others. They wish to be remembered in death because they can't imagine feeling treasured in life.

I think for someone like Viktor - having placed all of his capacity to make a difference in the world on his "gifted mind" rather than his value as a person -, to be loved unconditionally for who he is may have been so grand an idea that changing the world honestly seemed more attainable to him.

Yet as I pointed out in part 4, even after ostensibly achieving what he thought he wanted in the commune ("an immaculate physique, community, the ability to help people and 'make the world a better place' - a perfect legacy"), from the way he speaks to Jayce and goes on to think and act after facing rejection by him, you absolutely get the sense that there is something vital missing from the picture here.

And it's scarcely even new information at that point, really, as we already learned this a lot earlier by how - when faced with the loss of both love and legacy - it wasn't the threat of losing legacy which Viktor's mind got stuck on:

"Jayce will understand."

It's almost as if... oh I don't know, as if Viktor had thought what he wanted was to bring magic to the world, but ultimately...

Oh.

"I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world... Now, all I want is my partner back."

Jayce, same as Viktor, had big dreams of making a difference in the world since childhood, which - while definitely also driven by a strong desire to help people - is proven here to be equally rooted in the very elementary human desire to connect with someone. For someone to understand him and share his dreams ("our HexTech dream").

He found, and was found by, that someone in Viktor. The fact that the very catalyst of Jayce's dreams - the mage - turns out to literally have been Viktor all along only serves to emphasise this point.

And here, at the end of everything they've endured, Jayce concludes that maybe, to love and to be loved in kind can be enough. Can be everything. Can be all he wants.

I like to believe that Viktor came to that same realisation about himself in those final moments of perfect connection they shared.

Part 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16

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