What's the deal with Jayce Giapora? Is he neuro-divergent? Is that a popular headcanon? Is he a jerk with a heart of gold? Is he golden with the heart of jerk? What's his LoL relationship to Viktor? What makes Giapora Giapora and Talis Talis? This is an invitation to rant if you're up for it. From: An Arcane Fan with a lot of curiosity.
So! Giopara isnt, canonically neurodivergent in a “this is explicitly said” sense, HOWEVER, after reading all of his bio, his short stories/comics, and playing him and hearing his funny lines in the games, I heavily heavily read him as being both autistic and having NPD (which is a neurological disorder! Also isn’t bad! Just means he has a lot of self confidence and a shame affects him wayyyy worse than it would affect a normal person) mainly because of the way he acts AND the way he personally thinks! (Which thank you League bio and a quick fix)
Giopara is, a jerk! And also doesn’t have a heart of gold deep down, he kinda sucks, and I say that in the most loving way I can, He doesn’t really like people, like at all, because no one is as smart as him so he finds it hard to talk to them and relate to them and people can’t tend to stand him due to his elevated ego, which is fine by him really! He doesn’t like people, people don’t like him, it works out well. In League lore, Viktor and Jayce met at a Party, and both bonded over not wanting to be there (which is super funny to me) and then eventually start working together because they can vaguely stand the other (U have to do a lot of cross referencing whilst reading their bio’s because Jayce and Viktor lie a lot to make their side of things seem better) but the general gist was Jayce thought they were friends, and apparently Viktor hated Jayce.
The differences between Talis and Giopara are pretty simple actually, people don’t really like to admit they’re way more similar than they first seem, but I am also an autistic idiot that has watched arcane 10 times, I know the show inside out at this point so. But the main difference between them is that Giopara is Jaded, Hes tired, Hes an asshole for reasons it’s kinda hard to understand. Talis is obviously! Quite sweet, though a lot of that Giopara arrogance and stuff is in there too! Talis Means Well, he wants to help people and cares about a Lot of people, but he’s still not a people person and doesn’t like being around them (literally forcing a smile during that speech on progress day godbless) Hes just naturally good at faking being a people person, so good that he got onto the council.
Basically, tldr; Giopara is like sucky but Hes my beloved babygirl who I am so overly emotionally attatched to, and reads as having neurological disorders, him and viktor have weird consistency issues due to them lying but the general consensus is that they were buddies before their argument, and Talis is like when you get a new golden retriever puppy, and Giopara is like when you adopt an elderly crusty white dog.
