With time, I've come to understand and accept why Viktor as the mage from Jayce's past works for their story. I just don't think I'll ever like it.
I think the choice to make Viktor the mage in Jayce's past not only makes the world seem so much smaller but also far more selfish and cruel than it already was. Jayce believed in magic because some random stranger CHOSE to be kind and do good with it by saving Ximena and him. There were no ulterior motives, just genuine altruism. This is why Jayce had a radically different perspective on magic than his counterparts in Piltover.
In Piltover, the citizens only had the memory of warring mages, but Jayce actually saw the world and saw what magic could do. He saw how magic could be used as a force for good instead of a source of blight and destruction like Heimerdinger said. Ultimately, magic was just a resource, a tool, it could be used to hurt as much as help, it's all about choice.
It all just felt so pointed because Piltover's anti-magic stance in the greater context of Runeterra makes them so backwards and ignorant. Magic is everywhere in Runeterra, the land and the people that have stewarded it are defined by it.
People have built their culture around the magic of their homelands. From the Rakkor tribes of Targon (Lunari, Solari, and Noxii), the First Lands of Ionia, to even the land many Piltovans were originally descended from, Oshra Va'Zaun (still canon btw), whose patron goddess Janna is just as buried as the people who remain. To ban magic is to ban a core part of a people's culture in Runeterra.
Piltover's fear of magic was unhealthy, it made them close-minded, paranoid, and bigoted to the reality that was the world outside of their bubble. It's another layer of hypocrisy over Piltover's image as the city of progress that literally rejects a major foundation of life and culture on Runeterra. They reject magic because of the violence and destruction wrought by unknown mages, meanwhile they deal centuries worth of violence and destruction on their own people in the absence of magic.
Magic, like any technology, was and will never be the cure or the curse, and it will always be people who will determine its use. But then s2 throws away all ambiguity about magic to say magic is a curse, it does inherently corrupt. The mage was Viktor all along and he saved Jayce and Ximena specifically to save himself in a way that doomed thousands of lives (mostly Zaunites).
I have more to say in a less coherent way!
It feels kind of fucked up that Mel leaves Piltover soon after discovering her mage power. Yh yh Black Rose stuff, but this is right after the show says with a full chest that Heimerdinger was right and magic is ontologically evil. It's all super convenient because Arcane has a chronic case of wanting to have its cake and eat it too.
Arcane wants to say Heimerdinger's fears are right, but doesn't want to acknowledge that they've justified Piltover's prejudice against mages and magic, which is a really bad look when there's a region (Demacia) with a storyline where the government is committing mage genocide over it.
The power of love is beautiful and all but the insistence to make these stories so individualistic and ignore the many implications the writing choices have on the worldbuilding just to complete character arcs in very specific ways is frustrating. That's how you get storylines where a man trying to not die from disease gets told he didn't need magic to accept himself, when his immediate problem was dying.
One more thing! I think it's dumb that one of the damning things about hextech is that can corrupt (pollute) a tree. Piltover was literally already doing that to the point the river can give people fleshing eating nerve infections. Literally anything you can use hextech to hurt Zaun with, is already something Piltover can do magic free. It's not unique, say something else.
Darcy’s introduction in Pride and Prejudice is really ‘what if you had just had the worst month of your life because your ex-bestie tried to lover boy scam your baby sister out of her share of your dad’s life insurance and your friend dragged you to a shitty party in a dive bar in the neighbourhood where he’d just signed a short term lease, and you decided to let your bad mood show because you were never going to see any of the assholes in this stupid shitty bar EVER again. And your friend ended up making out with a girl he’d just met there while you were stuck talking to her sister who was less cute and then her mother appeared and started trying to matchmake and started saying how if she was twenty years younger she’d clime you like a redwood and ooooh is that a black Amex, guess the next round is on you hahhahahahaha, while her other sister (how many fucking sisters does she have?!) flashed an obviously fake ID at the bar and ordered six vodka-diet red bulls and no one in her family except the less-cute sister even tried to stop her. And you went home and consoled yourself that you would never see any of these people again but then you met them over and over again because they live next door and your friend and the cute sister keep meeting up to make out but not actually date and then. You fall in love with the less-cute sister because it turns out she’s really witty and charismatic but she already knows and remembers and resents the fact that on a day when you were in a shitty mood you called her mid out loud in a dive bar.’
"getting laid" is very hot and sexy. "getting off"? great news as well. so you would think "getting laid off" would be wonderful news for your penis. but alas
Hob at some point realizes that the ominously indignant “you dare-“ isn’t so much a threat as a verbal self soothing gesture from this ridiculous wet cat of an emotionally repressed eldritch Creecher he calls a boyfriend
A while back my pharmacist saw my deadname on my profile and accidentially called it out, he corrected and deleted my deadname from the system so only my preferred name shows up now. There was a crowd of people behind me, so as he hands over the pills he apologized, in equal tone and volume as when he called my deadname and lied saying it's been a long day and he didn't mean to call out -his own- name. I quietly told him it was fine and he didn't need to do that for my sake.
His response: "No, it's my name now."
I went to the pharmacist yesterday, his nametag is my deadname. He informed me he's immigrating and in the process he's changed his first name to my deadname to have an English sounding name. That's why he's now able to get a reprint of his nametag to be my deadname. And repeated, with the intense seriousness of someone who is going to die on this hill: "It's mine now. Not yours. I'm taking." His tone indicated that decision is final.
Bro literally deadnamed me once, and has committed to flat out stealing my deadname. It's his now. Legally. Officially. I over heard his co-workers call him by the name.
Oh, I remember this, the edit was done by youtuber Waffle to the left.
They didn't just cut out the parts with the oat milk, they skillfully edited over all the god-damn branding and replaced the audio.
But what I still find most hilarious about this whole commercial is the fact that everything they show in this solar punk world seems to be made with sustainable, zero waste and reusable materials.
Everything EXCEPT THE FUCKING CHOBANI BRANDED STUFF!
The only plastic you see in this whole commercial is all the straight to the landfill packaging made by the very corporation that tries to sell how sustainable and "green" they are.
Unintentional self satire at its finest.
They couldn't even show their yogurt and milk in (basically infinitely reusable) glass containers because they pretty much only sell their shit in plastic
It is such a perfect example of the true face of "green" capitalism, it's hilarious.
Another really interesting thing about this edit is that they changed the label on the side of the apple-picking machine.
From "donations" to "commons". It's a subtle change, but it makes a huge difference in the world-building of the video. The former implies that this big orchard belongs to an owner and that they're donating the fruits to "the less fortunate" (and, by extension, that poverty is still a thing); the latter implies that the orchard belongs to everyone and that the fruits are free to take in the spirit of solidarity.
Waffle To The Left brought out the potential in this gorgeous video and made it an actual solarpunk utopia — without brands and without corporate pandering, complete with true common ownership over land and resources.
When someone starts transfemme transfeminine HRT, they're warned that the breast growth is one of the few irreversible steps, and that it would need surgery to undo.
When someone starts transmasculine HRT, they're told that it won't get rid of their breasts, and that they need surgery to remove.
The standard societal conception of "androgynous" is a waifish, thin, flat chested individual
However, the inability of core gene regulation to reduce boobs, as demonstrated by HRT of many forms, shows that boobs are the natural inclination of the human body
Therefore, I motion that "androgynous" should mean someone with some real honkers. I'm talking some massive badonkers. Some enormous honkalagoogas. Some incredible and vast hadookalabohkadookies
(please don't take this seriously I'm actually studying bio and anyone trying to say something about the "natural" state of things is full of shit okay bye)
I'm in favour of this. We are mammals. What's a mammal without mammaries?
By the same token, beards require lasers to remove (and are mighty stubborn about it too), but male pattern baldness tends to get at least somewhat reversed by estrogen treatment. So our natural androgynous state is a full head of hair, beard, and breasts.
topping is actually gayer than bottoming because like the top is the one who's deciding again and again to put his dick in another man. The other guy could just be chilling. For all we know
An interesting demonstration of how the human brain works.
But also something of a lesson regarding perception, and the unreliability of subjective perspective versus objective reality.
You can be extremely certain about how you perceive the world, your "lived experience," that which you "feel it in my heart." But that doesn't mean it's actually true. And it doesn't mean we have to endorse it, or ignore or outright deny objective reality.
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