#city of progress

[wrongcaitlyn]

Caitvi edit to Work Song by Hozier for the incredible lorrxrai on ao3 as part of the city of progress secret mongoose gift exchange!!

i was so SO excited when i saw one of the prompts as work song bc this is just the most caitvi song ever <33 it was also my first time working on a much longer style of edit so i hope that it lived up to your expectations! thank you so much for your incredible fics and i hope you have a wonderful holiday :))

[dogpawsswapgod]

happy Valentine's Day lesbians (et al)! 🩷🤍🧡

here for the City of Progress Discord "Sweethearts Event 2025" are three teeny microfics based on three great tunes.

"The Worst Isn't Over" Vander and Silco's violent falling out from Silco's POV. inspired by "No Children" by The Mountain Goats

"Down Home Girls" Sevika and Shoola celebrate Juneteenth in late 21st century New Orleans. inspired by "Down Home Girl" Rainbow Girls version

"Finale" Caitlyn and Vi say goodbye! inspired by "Finale" from The Legend of Korra OST

assignment was to pick up to three "love songs" from a playlist of participant submissions and create fic/art of an Arcane pair based on/inspired by the song.

this was super fun and i loved doing it. stepped outside of my comfort zone w the first two entries, and gave my beautiful beloved dear darling CaitVi the tooth-achingly sweet ending they deserve!

enjoy!

the full playlist for the event

[whimsical-adhd-gal-pal-1910]

✨ Our Hextech Dream ✨

[amanedachi]

intermission: viktor and the hexcore

(city of progress: 1, 2, int, 3)

[fanfichellwithextrasauce]

[alexkacr]

"Hextech in the hands of everyone"

Well, second day and I'm still here!

[watchmebitch]

New Piltover: The City of Progress at the Expense of the Oppressed

As with many of their characters and city-states, Riot has taken Piltover and Zaun in entirely new directions since the 2014 retcon. In their original incarnations, the cities were mirror images of one another, portraying the best and the worst of innovation, respectively. They were presented as a black and a white counterpart - the shining, virtuous, ecologically friendly city of Piltover and the smoggy, crime-ridden, cutthroat city of Zaun. At a deeper level, Zaun represented advancement at any cost, while Piltover was representative of all the good reasons to subject progress to legal and ethical limitations.

Like all of the old lore, it wasn’t perfect. It was subject to the usual criticism: that the cities and characters Riot put onto paper were too extreme, too objectively Good or objectively Evil to be compelling. Many people looked forward to the lore rewrite for exactly this reason, hoping it would bring a bit of dirt into Piltover and shed some much-needed light on Zaun.

Unfortunately, the rewrite missed the mark. In the Old Lore, Zaun and Piltover were black and white. In the New Lore, they are... white and black.

This post is not a reflection on the morality of any individual Piltovian or Zaunite champions, as none of them (with the key exception of, perhaps, Camille) have been revealed to be particularly instrumental in or impactful towards the issues described below. Instead, this is a discussion of Piltover and Zaun as a whole, as well as of the non-Champion forces controlling the city and district respectively. Please do not respond to tell me that, “actually, Caitlyn is still quite nice,” or that “Singed is still quite nasty.” The morality of individuals has nothing to do with this post.

Let’s begin with what we know. The new lore transformed Piltover and Zaun from diametrically opposed city-states, standing on relatively equal footing at opposite ends of the ethical equator, to very unequal parts of a single whole. Zaun is repeatedly referred to as a “district”, rather than a city, a nation, or a state, whereas Piltover is described as a city and state of its own. In Zaun’s introductory text, Riot writes, “Zaun and Piltover were once united, but are now separate, yet symbiotic societies.” While Zaun and Piltover are separated by a geological barrier, it is important to note that there is no reference to Zaun having a separate government or being a separate state itself. The description of Zaun as a “district” further implies that it is a district of, well, something else. The only “something else” that makes any sense, based on the information we are given, is, of course, Piltover. 

The short story Riot prepared for the Piltover rework, “Progress Day”, sheds some light on this phenomenon.

Our narrator describes a man-made trading route allowing passage through Piltover, and thus from west to east Valoran, in explicit detail. In the author’s words, “the destruction of half of Zaun was seen as an acceptable price to pay for future prosperity.”

“The destruction of half of Zaun” is elaborated upon in a passage describing the origin of Progress Day itself: 

So we learn, in the Progress Day story, that the people or government of Piltover, at a minimum, believed in retrospect that massive civilian casualties (“remember those lost”) and massive destruction of physical infrastructure (“submerg[ing] entire districts underwater” and causing “the destruction of half of Zaun”), were a perfectly reasonable loss, at least in the name of progress. 

These events happened recently, we learn. Though Riot has not given us a timeline, or any dates, they explain that the cataclysm that created the passage happened “within living memory”. And because they happened within living memory, because we cannot reduce them to an ancient but impactful history, they change absolutely everything about the dynamic between Piltover and Zaun, and create a responsibility on Piltover’s part for the disparities between the two regions.

Responsibility for everything that happens in Zaun - for the criminal underbelly, for the dangerous technologies, for the chemical runoff and pollution - cannot be placed on Zaun anymore, because we know for a fact that Piltover causes much of it and actively profits off of all of it. Piltover’s criminals become Zaun’s most dangerous inventors and cult leaders. Piltovian lifestyles are supported by access to Zaun’s black market. Piltover’s actual, literal sewage runs down into Zaun.

Meanwhile, hopeful Zaunite parents of underprivileged but brilliant Zaunite children scrape and scrounge for the chance to send their progeny up to fancy Piltovian schools; apparently, that’s the only opportunity for a better life.

If you aren’t disgusted yet, reread that a few times.

All of this is worsened by the fact that Piltover, in Riot’s own narrative, is still described as a city, with Zaun as a district: a part, whether or not Piltovians want to admit it, of Piltover. Zaun does not have a separate state or government, and why would it? How could a region plunged into such immediate and staggering upheaval possibly reform one while the architects of its destruction are still digging for gold with one heel in its neck? 

Before the time of the split, Zaun and Piltover apparently made up two parts of one whole city, or were at least, according to the Universe website, “unified” in some way. Zaun may not be large enough anymore to constitute a full half, but it is apparently part of Piltover, and it is no longer in any position to maintain itself. The onus falls on Piltover to tend to its own citizens, to repair its own infrastructure, and to maintain the rule of law over its entire city - including every “district,” not just the wealthiest ones or those occupying the tallest towers.

Meanwhile, Zaun and Piltover were not opposed in the old lore merely because one society was controlled by some sort of quasi-medieval Green Party. Their differences ran deeper - Piltover believed in the rule of law, in limitations on progress for the sake of sustainability or the greater good. Zaun believed that technological advancement was the greater good - it was justifiable, no matter how dangerous. This is why Piltover produced idealistic police officers and fascinating hextech baubles, while Zaunite scientists were attempting to literally transcend humanity with their technologies and could successfully put a man back together who had been cleaved in half.

It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t fleshed out nearly as well as it could have been with greater resources or a larger, more experienced creative staff. But Riot had the benefit of both of those things while writing stories like Progress Day, and yet their new lore doesn’t flesh out any of these differences - it just erased them. Piltover is willing to sacrifice the safety of Zaunites for progress, and... so is Zaun? Technology is just as advanced in Piltover as Zaun, if not moreso - hextech augments abound, completely overshadowing Viktor in his original, groundbreaking role. Piltover is more financially prosperous, with a wealthier, healthier people, and all because it carved a bloody foothold into Zaun’s back to climb up to its current position. That isn’t an improvement. It isn’t opening up the lore to broader interpretation, and it damn well isn’t grey. 

It’s as black as the mark that building your city on a mass grave leaves, as black as an indentured Zaunite factory worker’s lungs, as black as the nightsoil that apparently flows from Piltovian sewers into the streets of Zaun.

It’s true, the old lore wasn’t perfect. According to modern morality, it cast Piltover as a city of angelic, carefully curated progress and Zaun as a grim, cautionary tale of capitalism gone too far.

But the new lore doesn’t fix that. It may make some parts of Zaun grey - it may have invented the Zaun Grey - but only because Piltover casts such a dark shadow.

[electronicsquid]

Centralia, Illinois

(Robert W. Kelley. 1961)