Man, it just hit me how obviously comfortable Viper is with Sage and Omen here.
Deadlock is one thing, but Sage and Omen are people that have canonically been involved with Viper's trauma and past in some way. Yet here she is, smiling and stuffing her face with what's probably Sage's cooking while Omen sits right next to her.
I've always pictured these three as being close, but seeing Viper actually heal and overcome her paranoia (Omen) and grudge (Sage) in canon, as well as for this to be the first time we see her spending time with other agents, just makes me so happy. She deserves to be able to relax and eat with the people she trusts.
Sorry I'm still too lazy to provide most of the context😔✌️ Basically it is the world where people's fight against radiants(and also everyone is like 5-6 years older)
Fade s on human side because I said so
Some of redesigns. All the radiants are basically evil versions of themselves.
If you want to use any of these designs or ideas for your art - I'd love to see them, just don't claim authorship✌️
hey so can we talk about how dangerous he potentially could be
im not talking about ingame. nono. im talking about lore.
valorant has done a lot of hinting through voicelines about the power of different radiants. e.g., Viper telling Yoru to riftwalk to another world that's better, Skye's "untapped potential", Neon's whole dynamic with Reyna & Sage, Kayo's voicelines where he talks about the Radiants during the war. now, i am absolutely fascinated with the potential of everybody who's classified radiant. i think that, with what some other characters have, the sky is the limit. that goes for the most unsuspecting ones, too.
now, Miks might not have interdimensional travel or defy death, but he has so much going for him. his whole deal is sound waves, right? that alone you could do so much with. i think people look at sound and think "oh, thats not that bad"... but when you really think about it... stay with me here.
what happens when you endure loud sounds? you go deaf. not just that, but there's been a whole bunch of studies talking about prolonged exposure to noise, and how that increases cortisol levels. it literally triggers your nervous system, your fight or flight response... imagine having to associate his music with danger. even if he doesn't just outright deafen you, it wouldn't take much to condition a person.
and his ultimate is what really fascinates me. you're telling me he can physically move people with sound. do you know how powerful that is??? do you know how intense that has to be to physically push people back? it takes roughly 100-120dB to move small objects... how loud would it be to move WHOLE ASS ARMORED PEOPLE??? (motorcycles are only 90-99dB btw, to put that into perspective.)
and, yknow... it takes 185db to disrupt your internal organs, and kill you. i dont think that would be that hard to reach for him given my earlier statement. (roughly 100-120dB to move small objects)
there's even more. like did you know that consistent exposure can cause heart diseases? that, comboed with knowing that music = "danger"? that's not even factoring in the pitches. how high can he go? how low can he go? the pressure from the sound waves? im not an expert, this is just from some brief skimming, so there's guaranteed more to it. i'm especially curious how his healing works, because that's not just a gameplay thing - he can canonically heal. how does he heal people physically with sound? there very well might be unique properties that we don't know of yet. like do you see what im saying? Miks is manipulating physics.
tldr. i think Miks could be a lot more powerful than we initially think. i better see people talk about it, because if they dont I Will <3 (and i also want whatever noise canceling headphones he's using, if he can actually make sounds that loud and still hear.)
hello fellow viper enjoyers! I am cobbling together a short post to mention a few things I thought were VERY INTERESTING in the version art/WHY WE FIGHT BACK cinematic.
alright so: right at the end of the cinematic, around 3:14, there seems to be a green shimmer in viper's eyes that dies away a moment later. you could argue this was just a coincidence because of the lighting (that's what I thought at first too) but I think some other details suggest otherwise!
(I promise the reason why I'm fixating on this will make sense)
first of all, the fact that she's completely unaffected standing in her toxic fumes after her mask breaks. we can see everyone else that's unmasked is visibly affected (coughing, reddened eyes, etc), but she's just. standing there??? completely fine???
(cravingforchaos also mentioned this in their post. it's linked a little further down!)
whatever it is, it's clearly not normal!
second: if we look at the art, you can see in the top right that one of the snake's eyes is glowing bright green (the other one probably is too, except the bright lighting around it makes it seem dimmer). I don't think I have to explain that snakes are a recurring motif/symbol associated with viper—it's quite literally in her name, and one was used to represent her and her plans in the cinematic.
generally, glowing/shimmering light is something we see a LOT in characters with radiant powers. think of neon's eyes/markings lighting up, reyna's tattoos shining bright magenta, and phoenix's eyes flaring orange.
so, combined with the brief green glow present in viper's eyes earlier and her lack of reaction to her own toxic fumes, I think this implies that viper has some kind of inhuman powers that give her resistance to certain toxins.
this brings up two options, as my wonderful friend cravingforchaos brought up in their post here (read their analysis if you haven't already, it's absolutely excellent):
viper is actually a radiant (which is admittedly what my mind went to first)
she augmented herself using radianite somehow (ALSO a very cool idea.)
I haven't decided which theory I like better yet! they both seem plausible. if you have any thoughts let me know :)
now that we've established that viper's body is probably a little quirky, let's look at this part of the image next. it seems like there's some sort of poisonous substance leaking out from under the snake's scales. (although, it also seems like it could be dripping down from viper's mouth or mask.) this poison seems to be disintegrating the scales around it. considering this snake represents viper and the fact that her powers likely relate to poison, it's reasonable to infer that whatever her powers are, they're harming her in some way.
this would be on brand for riot, considering some radiants have abilities that have to sap power from something—be it themselves, people around them, or something else. there are also radiants that seem to suffer from harm when they overuse their abilities (e.g. yoru in the cinematic).
so, to conclude: viper likely has some kind of inhuman power from radiance or radianite augmentation, and this power could be detrimental to her health.
now, we're going to zoom in on that shot even further—and now we notice that there are actually people falling along with these drops of poison. (funny story, I noticed this while writing my analysis for the part before this.)
we know oe-viper (like her alpha earth counterpart, of course) has the blood of countless people on her hands, and does not shy away from violence and murder to accomplish her goals. I believe these people represent those she sacrificed/"dealt with" to achieve them.
this is due to the fact that they're falling from venom that seems to be coming from the inside of the snake. snakes swallow their prey whole, so this implies that the snake could have "eaten" them. the snake preying on these people could represent how viper killed them, or otherwise harmed them in some way to reach her own ends.
another way you could look at the people falling down and out of the snake is that certain things are slowly spiraling out of viper's control—people are falling through the gaps before they can be “digested” (disposed of) properly. this aligns well with viper’s current mental state. she doesn't seem to be making the most rational decisions, and to put it bluntly, she's also straight up mentally unstable. I think we can all see how that could lead to poor choices. read cravingforchaos's linked post from earlier if you want to know more about viper's very emotion-driven decision-making! :)
however, this could be less plausible because she just seized quite a lot of power and control for herself by usurping brimstone. (although perhaps the loss of certain aspects of his leadership could cause issues, maybe? who knows)
alternatively, the falling figures could also represent the important people in her life, whose losses (or near-losses) have influenced her goals. my reasoning for this is similar to the first one. the losses of these people are fuel (food for the snake representing viper) driving her goals. in this case, the goals in question would be her thirst for vengeance.
I won't go in-depth, but here are two examples from the cinematic: sage's current state and chamber's near-death. the latter affects her more obviously: brimstone had to physically drag her away from him in the opening scene. her care for sage is less obvious, but the fact that viper reached out to touch her... glass incubation-chamber-looking-thing (I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO CALL IT) does imply she cares about her. there's also the fact that the screen cut to sage with the title "WHY WE FIGHT BACK" after viper stormed out of the room, heavily implying sage's current condition is—you guessed it—one of the reasons she fights back.
both of these events were likely contributing factors to some of her decisions (e.g. overthrowing brimstone, attacking ae agents at reyna's sanctuary) in the cinematic. while these are not perfect examples, considering sage and chamber are not necessarily gone for good, they still highlight how viper's decisions are influenced greatly by things that happen to people she cares about. again, if you want to know more about this, read cravingforchaos's analysis post that I linked earlier!
okay that's it from me for now! thank you for reading my very unorganized yapping. please leave me your thoughts if you have any!
Does skye's healing ability just not exist lore-wise orrr??? Its nice that we're getting a new healer, but with all this focus on sage "not fighting alone" anymore and the effects of her healing on her like errrrrrr is there not skye or
You know how OE!Sova's flashback was kind of an odd one out in the cinematic?? Breach and Yoru are both shown to be motivated to help people, strangers even. But Sova's flashback seems to center his motivation on a personally traumatic event and ostensibly revenge.
Considering that most of Sova's lines (or at least AE!Sova's) includes showing appreciation of his teammates (at least the ones he likes lmao) and how that flashback showed the area littered with bodies, perhaps this moment was further traumatic because it involved OE!Sova losing his team right before losing his eye. Furthermore, this is in relation to how Sova looks back at the row of his injured teammates in the present, and how he agrees to support Viper usurping Brimstone.
More interesting to me was how AE!Sova was shown smiling as he wiped the blood off the knife. Even if Omen's line about him states Sova has a lot of rage inside him, it still seems strange to me that AE!Sova would have taken so much joy in this. After all, his lines to his counterpart includes things like "Sova, I spared you when we first met. I can't let you go again" and "Беги (run), Sova". Even his kill lines ("it was you or me" or something like that and "a fine death") seems to connote a degree of respect; a respect that I feel like isn't really reflected in, you know, sadistically cutting out your mirror's eye.
Either AE!Sova is good at hiding that side of himself and is just pretending that they parted more honorably (or as honorably as cutting out an eye and killing Sova's team goes), or the presentation of the flashback is biased and this is how OE!Sova interpreted it (like how a lot of the images in the cinematic were representative of Viper's state of mind, if that makes sense).
On the other hand, it does seem undeniable that AE!Sova did intentionally carve out OE!Sova's eye. Considering that AE!Sova already has an eyepatch then, I feel like it could be implied that AE!Sova lost his eye to OE!Sova and is taking revenge. But that would also mean that Sova had hunted down his counterpart with the intention of getting revenge, and that somewhat also undermines the apparent respect/mercy he shows towards OE!Sova.
Unless the intention was to try and intimidate OE!Sova away, by traumatizing him?
I feel like it's more like a mix of both reasons, like it was for both revenge and to scare off OE!Sova, like killing two birds with one stone.
Then again, maybe it's hypocrisy. Or it's just a moment Sova let go of his morals to indulge in anger. After all, Chamber does say that Sova had broken the rules/his principles before. It may not be this time with OE!Sova, but it does imply that Sova's integrity isn't perfectly firm, if that makes sense.
