Give Me Chronically Fatigued Viktor.

I like the idea of there being something a little sharper about Zaunites.

Jayce often turns around to find Viktor much closer than he had thought, even being able to hear the tapping of his cane. During late nights in the lab, his amber eyes burn violently in the blue glow of the hexgems. On the rare occasion he blinks, Jayce can swear they appear reflective, like a cat’s. Just tricks of the light and the mind.

Mel’s skin rises the first time Jayce brings Viktor to a Council meeting. They’ve met before, of course, but there’s something immovable in his grip when she shakes his hand, touching him for the first time. Viktor smiles ingenuinely, almost mockingly, at something Salo says, and his teeth are a tad sharp. Mel has grown up around war, around danger, but it had always come for her head on. In Piltover, it came in the form of ruining reputations or profits. She wonders how thoroughly Viktor could ruin someone before they even realized he was there. She dreams of wolves and foxes that night, and from a tree, the ember-bright eyes of a lynx watches, waiting for the other predators to tear each other apart.

Vi likes to climb. Caitlyn knows this, though she supposes she didn’t really think about it. It’s almost beautiful to watch, really — the agile switches, the power thrumming beneath Vi’s skin like she might burst from it. Vi maneuvers through the rooftops of Zaun as easily as breathing. Sometimes, Caitlyn’s own breath will catch when the jump looks too far, too much, then Vi’s hand will catch the ledge without fail and she can huff a laugh. She ignores how many distances Vi has crossed that shouldn’t be crossable. Like a cat, a Zaunite will always land on their feet.

Ekko seems to move quite strangely, Heimerdinger thinks. Though, he’s never truly paid close attention to human movements, the boy seems to traverse without the normal effect of gravity, as if he simply never dismounted his hoverboard. It was far too smooth, far too even — it took a considerable time for Heimerdinger to put his finger on it. As they discover the sickness of the tree, the pattern changes. Ekko glitches sometimes, staying in one place for too long before seemingly being sling-shot through space, appearing somewhere else without having gotten there. A mystery for later, he supposes.

Silco feels like a condensation of all Zaun’s noxious gases, perhaps with a vein of Shimmer added for realism. Marcus feels like his lungs are clouding just from being around him, getting the urge to cough out the pollution. Silco is the grimy cracks, the perpetually-wet streets, the sunken ribs and track marks of every body slumped on every street. His voice curls around Marcus like a snake, squeezing tighter and tighter until the fear and the threats are the only things left in his brain. Yet, Silco sits calmly, always far too still. Sometimes his scar appears to splinter in front of Marcus’s eyes. When he tucks his daughter in a night, he wonders about what kind of monster might slip, unheard, through the cracks of her window.

There’s always been Something in the air in Zaun. The water too. Really, can one be surprised at the consequences?

the Jayce struggle..

This post genuinely altered the trajectory of my life and how i make a lot of my decisions and i think about it so much

Thinking about missed opportunities in the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy again: it's weird with hindsight that Count Dooku doesn't appear in "The Phantom Menace".

Dooku was a Jedi, so it's perfectly reasonable for him to be at either the Jedi Temple or the Republic Senate when we visit Coruscant in TPM. It would have been easy to move a few things around and include him even as a member of the Jedi Council when initially constructing the films, if you were planning ahead when writing.

As Qui-Gon's former master, Dooku is in the perfect position to ask questions onscreen about Qui-Gon's conviction that he's found the Chosen One and Qui-Gon's decision to put Obi-Wan up for knighthood, both publicly with the Council and privately from a more personal standpoint. Dooku could be used as a tool of interrogation to better lay clear for the audience some of Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Anakin's characters, their motivations and fears and their potential flaws. An intimate conversation with his master's master could definitely be used to give Obi-Wan some much-needed character focus and inferiority before his climatic fight with Darth Maul.

As the future leader of the Separatists, this is also the ideal point in time to have Dooku act as a voice of criticism, someone who laments both the greed of the Trade Federation and the inaction of the Republic. Dooku could have easily been the representative of the Jedi in the Senate, watching everything, offering grandfatherly sympathy to Padmé Amidala, remarking on the effectiveness of unrestrained power, perhaps even making a warning observation of the dangers of that as Palpatine becomes the new Chancellor. We don't have to see Palpatine and Dooku interact directly, the film could even suggest that Dooku finds this ambitious politician slightly distasteful, but it sets up an explanation for how these two might know each other.

And if we have reason to know and like Master Dooku, then it would actually hurt more when he becomes Count Dooku and betrays both the Jedi Order and the Republic. Even briefly, we could have seen him show frustrated affection and concern for Qui-Gon, give warm advice and praise to Obi-Wan, stand up firmly against the unfairness of the Jedi Council saying Anakin is too old at nine years old. We could have seen Dooku support Padmé in her struggles to make the corrupt Republic take action. We could have seen him as dignified and wise, perhaps one of the only members of the Jedi Council to immediately take the return of the Sith 100% seriously after Maul appears on Tatooine. We could have been made to feel like this experienced, slightly embittered, but righteous older man was the only one "speaking the truth" here.

It really wouldn't have taken all that much shuffling and reassignment plotwise to add him in as a supporting character.

We would feel intrigued at the beginning of "Attack of Clones" when we learn that Count Dooku has left the Jedi Order after Qui-Gon's death. We could see Anakin and Obi-Wan briefly exchange lines about how they miss Master Dooku as well as Qui-Gon (there is already an exchange in the films where they state they miss Qui-Gon), and how they haven't seen or heard from him in some time now. Anakin could suggest that Dooku is hunting down the Sith Master; Obi-Wan could counter with how Master Dooku has simply returned to his life on Serenno, which he couldn't have as a Jedi Master, which Anakin casually calls unfair and he suggests that Dooku can do far greater good as a powerful count (a parallel to Anakin's marriage to Padmé and own Fall). Dooku being established earlier in the trilogy would better highlight how he and Obi-Wan went completely separate directions after Qui-Gon's death.

And again, the reveal that Dooku has Fallen would hurt so much more, if we had actually seen him be affectionate and righteous and wise. If we had any point of comparison for how Dooku's embittered desire for peace and justice has been warped into the pursuit of control and tyranny. It would hurt to see that formerly good man sentence Padmé to death as "just politics, my dear".

"This will start a war!" Padmé tells the man who helped her help her people once.

"I know," Dooku replies, with ominous satisfaction.

It would hurt to see Obi-Wan beg Dooku to stop this (a prelude to him begging Anakin in the next movie: "Anakin, please, I cannot lose you too!"), only for Dooku to attack and nearly kill him when Obi-Wan refuses to join him. It would hurt to see this grandfatherly figure cut off Anakin's hand, someone he knew and was kind to as a child. Seeing where Dooku fell from would also make everything about his fight with Yoda hurt more as well. We wouldn't have seen Dooku's struggles directly, offscreen in the time skip between TPM and AOTC, but this Fall would help prepare us for witnessing Anakin's Fall onscreen in "Revenge of the Sith", illustrate for us how power and grief corrupts, how the desire to take complete control and "start over" corrupts.

And all of this would also make Dooku's death in ROTS hurt more: to see Anakin execute an unarmed, injured man who had once been kind to him, who had once had good intentions a long, long time ago. We could have even had Dooku perhaps try to warn Anakin about Sidious, as the fear cuts through him as he realizes Sidious has betrayed him, only for Anakin to kill Dooku out of anger (Dooku is responsible for so much death, Palpatine reminds Anakin) just before the ruined man can finish speaking. Dooku's former goodness underlines Anakin's arrogance in thinking that his own fate will be any different.

The novelizations of the prequel films and other extended universe materials build up an image of Dooku's life as a Jedi and his Fall for us. We can assume and imagine a lot. We can retroactively apply knowledge gleaned from "The Clone Wars" with Dooku as a major villain. But ultimately, Dooku as a more sympathetic and emotionally relevant character is just not in the films.

When "Attack of the Clones" reveals to us: "Oh, no! Dooku has betrayed the Jedi Order and the Republic!" I think that most of the audience is like: "Gonna be real with you, chief, I have no idea who that is."

He's only been mentioned before once maybe? In Palpatine's office? Master Mundi assures Palpatine that Dooku is a good man (or something like that), but we have seen no evidence of this ourselves. This line mostly just becomes really funny on a rewatch, rather than poignant, because the prequel films audience only ever gets to see Count Dooku as a Sith Lord and rather underdeveloped villain. We don't ever get to see him be a "good guy" first. We're told but not shown.

The audience has no solid reason to care that Dooku specifically has betrayed the Order, as opposed to any random Jedi, because we haven't seen him before at all, much less interacting with any of our protagonists or establishing himself as an opinionated player within the story. Which is a shame! Because he has strong opinions that stand in interesting ideological conflict with so many other characters, generating fun and dramatic exchanges! He has direct connections to and parallels with other characters! He's potentially a really useful storytelling tool within these films, and his character just doesn't get used to that full tragic potential.

In conclusion...? I wish I'd actually been sad when Dooku betrayed everyone and died at Anakin's hand, instead of mostly just confused and then vaguely pitying. I want to see some of the love between characters beforehand, so that it hurts more effectively when that love turns to hate.

every friend group should include:

a bimbo

a mean bisexual

an even meaner lesbian

she/theys

and he/theys

a token straight who’s on thin ice

an astrology bitch who has everyone’s birth chart memorized

and a short king

Zaunite Version

my favorite thing about anakin as a character is the inherent nuance lucas wrote into his story, like he's neither an innocent victim nor an inherently evil monster, he's just some guy put in a series of Situations and ultimately failing the test of his humility and self-control. he was certainly flattered and shaped by the devil, spiraling into something unrecognizable, but he chose to take every step down the pathway to hell. lucas knew he would lose a certain demographic by making him basically a greedy pawn in the larger story, not a righteous betrayed macho badass, but he did it anyway. he made him an awkward romantic and a loyal friend, a generous boy and a brilliant teen. he made sure he had all the positive qualities that meant that he had potential to be so much more than vader, but it was clearly his choice to lie, murder, and fully squander that potential. there are no excuses for what he became, no acceptable reasons to commit mass slaughter. he became an unbelievably selfish and impatient man, reckless and wantonly violent. hayden captured that nuance so well, nobody can match the sweetness of his smile and the absolute horror of his scowl on mustafar. to view him through a single lens as either pure victim of manipulation and (canonically unsupported) emotional neglect, or a creepy evil villain, denies the heart of his story and the weight of his tragedy. he's neither an angel nor a demon, he's both and neither, he's deeply human, a classical tragic hero with a flaw of greed. lucas made a choice with the prequels to tell a story that not everyone wanted to hear, and the result was a character that i think is one of the best of modern pop culture, mostly because he feels to me so very, very ancient and eternal.

Penelope will always be a girlboss because by sitting behind the 12 axes she told the suitors to shoot through cleanly, not only was she

mocking them by being showing she was fully confident they wouldn’t succeed

But also BASICALLY TELLING EVERYONE THAT THEY WILL NEVER BE BETTER THAN HER HUSBAND WHO ACTUALLY COULD SHOOT THROUGH 12 AXES.

AND ON TOP IF THAT PROVING HER LOVE TO ODY BY SAYING THAT IF ANYONE WERE TO EVER SUCCEED THE CHALLENGE AND BECOME KING, THEY WOULD’VE KILLED HER BY DOING SO. QUITE LITERALLY, SHED RATHER DIE THAN RULE WITH ANYONE OTHER THAN ODYSSEUS!!!

the most annoying people are people who don't understand storytelling. they be like "oooo how convenient that this thing happened to the main character in the very beginning". yeah no shit. that's why the story begins here

SICK from thinking about the symbolism of the rune.

Which rune Viktor gives baby Jayce is the only thing we see as a catalyst for change across timelines — it's the butterfly flapping its wings.

The rune switches hands only twice more after that:

Viktor giving it back to Jayce, representing the start of their partnership concerning Hextech,

and Jayce giving it to Viktor in the astral plane, helping him put an end to the arcane apocalypse.

But there's one more important similarity about these moments — they're moments when Viktor and Jayce save each other.

Mage Viktor saves Ximena and baby Jayce, then gives him the rune.

Viktor stops Jayce's attempt, then hands him back his bracelet.

Jayce stops Viktor from losing his humanity, taking the rune from his wrist and together, they use it to save the world.

The rune isn't just about possibilities. It's a representation of their lives.

And they only ever put it in each other's hands.

Viktor baby get behind me, people who’ve never seriously had to reckon with their own mortality or what it really means to live in constant, high-level pain for the rest of their life keep trying to create takes on you

(this is not an endorsement of the whole Herald eugenics thing, but if I keep seeing garbage analysis about Viktor and the Hexcore (before he died the first time) I will take notes from Jayce and start bashing things with a hammer)