To Be Clear I Really Hate That They Made Viktor Arcane Canon, I Wholeheartedly Believe His Previous 2

To be clear I really hate that they made viktor arcane canon, I wholeheartedly believe his previous 2 iterations were both overall better.

But I do believe people over catastrophize the void aspect a bit much, the show isnt really concerned with the void other than an aesthetic choice, from what we know of the void it doesn't even make much sense that they can make shimmer out of it.

Many peoples reading of the relationship between viktor and the hex core was that it was manipulating him, but other then switching his leg off when he actively tried to harm it (wich reads more as self preservation than anything), I don't think it did much, Viktor's obsession with it started to get unhealthy the moment it consumed his blood, and at that point the void element where nowhere to be seen. His obsession with it came from his own personality and the circumstances amplified it.

Not to mention the core only started gaining its corrupted look when it consumed a human, not when it got in contact with shimmer.

As for his look, I don't think the leaked image is a final concept, and its hard for me to imagine how they will bring in its orange look since we never saw that in the show so far. And I feel like color wise it would be odd? Blue red cape, purple chest and orange accents? That feels a bit incoherent.

For his staff, I can see it go either way. In Jayces journal he talks about how it could be used as a channeling object for magic, so I assume he will use it for that. But if he gains his power through the core and that will end up in the rod why doesn't he need it in the trailer. So it's a bit hard to tell right now.

As for his motivation, since Jayce seemingly will start making weapons he can't let jayce be the only one with the knowledge of hextech who only supports piltover and just gave them a tool to oppress his people more efficiently, so in order to give zaun a fighting chance and with his own survival becoming more important he starts doing more dangerous experiments with the hex core and on himself.

In the documentary talking about how arcane was made, they talk about how he will lose his humanity, but I don't think that will be influenced by the void, and it will be more in the lines of it twisting further his new adopted philosophy about surviving at all cost, which will be amplified by the changes the core makes to his body. I assume the more he will use it the more it spreads through his body.

If any one reads it this far, thanks mate!

So in conclusion, I don't like this new direction, but I also really dont think it will be as influenced by the void as people think it will be.

hallo - I'm probably the umpteenth person to ask this, but have you seen the very brief shot of Viktor's new design in the Arcane S2 teaser? if you have, what are your thoughts ? I'm a little worried about it if I'm being honest, given that they're leaning even MORE into the "sickly twink mage" thing :(

man I'm going to miss og viktor

Hi! Don't worry even if you're the bazillionth, I'll always reply, it's no problem (I like getting messages!)

Unfortunately based on the leaked screenshots, this is my prediction (I haven't invested more than one day into this art as it's frustrating to imagine):

The spindly fingers and his height in the leaked images inform me (I suppose) that they are indeed leaning into the "little timmy has a cough" design as a friend of mine would say.

They're gonna stretch him and have him feel like a tree, like he's made out of metal branches pulsing with Void energy. The Hex Core is clearly going to be in the middle of his chest to power him instead of on the tip of his staff. The staff already got converted into a cane. Expect to see a LOT of holes and veins in him because that's the very first design thought a person comes up with when they want to convey something "ooo creepy! ooo alien!" (we usually discard our first ideas because they are generic.) And Riot is clearly transplanting Malzahar's thing onto Viktor because apparently they don't know what to do with this Machine Herald character. He's gonna be going mad because of VOID WHISPERS instead of actually suffering from a real untreated mental disorder.

The staff design is already clearly visible in the leaked image, and the only thing I have to say about it is that it looks like a lot of pointless design noise. None of those lumpy metal parts serve a purpose.

The claw may replace the third hand and it may come out of the shoulder itself for some reason, which is insanely impractical. It was mounted on his back in the original design for a reason. Current designs seem to think that an actual hand is too "naive"?

Even if on first glance they may share many elements, fundamentally they are two different characters. They fulfill completely different archetypes.

It doesn't matter if Arcane Viktor's cape is still blue on the outside and red on the inside, because the core of the character would be different. A coat of paint on the top doesn't determine his structure.

I really hope they won't lukewarm the entire pvz conflict, compared to game lore the economic structures and nature of oppression in arcane are less defined (that's how you get the piltover did nothing wrong brilliant takes from people) then in the game lore. Like in game lore zaun was literally created by the mindless greed of the rich people and they outsourced them the work that created the most pollution.

Piltover was indefensible, and it's still in arcane if you ask me, but it was in a more aperent way.

Not to mention the implications for other characters, not just the oblivious like Camille. Viktor and Jayce are basically different people, where was Renata up until now, and what's up with Blitz? I will be seriously frustrated if they take their creation away from Viktor. (the way they could stole credit for Blitz's creation was another way to show the powerlessness of the people of zaun in piltover too)

Overall I'm really unhappy with this decision and I really don't think this will bring as many new players into the game as they think...

it took a lot of asking but riot finally deigned to discuss the lore of their billion dollar video game franchise

i absolutely called it that riot was going to retcon the Brackern/Hextech connection out of existence, but i didn't call that they'd use Arcane as the excuse to do it with. i thought they'd just quietly retcon it away with the skarner update without offering much explanation.

they say they're going to give seraphine an update to fit the new status of hextech which made me laugh a bit because, like, y'all already retconned her lore to hell and back when it turned out you had severely failed to read the tone of her connection to the brackern and launched her with a story that essentially implies she uses slave labor to be a pop star. I remember fucking marc merrill throwing the writers under the bus on twitter about it like an absolute douchecanoe.

and then, instead of engaging with any of the ways in which seraphine's powers of empathy generation could be incredibly interesting when paired with the brackern narrative that casts them as essentially brutalized victims of colonization for Piltover profit, you just go "uuuuuh, no, wait, she can't hear the brackern actually ha ha ha whoopsie doopsie." like, literally just nerfing her powers, but doing nothing to alleviate the horrible implications. "oh yeah, no, she still uses the enslaved soul of a brutalized species to power her platform, but now she doesn't know she's doing that, which I think we can all agree means the problem is solved."

hopefully they actually give her a new story that engages with her abilities beyond just "she is good at being a pop star" - building on the LoR version of the character, I would hope - but I fear it's more likely they just do the minimum viable edit and just find-delete any reference to consciousness in hex-crystals.

as for skarner himself, well he's Ixtali now so they'll probably still square him up against piltover's colonizing incursions into Ixtal, but more in a "primordial protector of the natural world" kind of way than "lone avenger reclaiming his people's stolen bodies." which, y'know, okay, sure, why not, but I would very much like him to have a more compelling character motivation than "preserve the status quo because nature and balance or something."

my big fear is they'll use the update as an opportunity to make camille a good guy or more sympathetic. like, house ferros made its fortune by selling the souls of a sentient species as batteries, knowingly, and camille was a ideologically committed defender of that decision, and that made her an interesting villain. but they've been humanizing the living hell out of her and i am real worried they're just going to tip straight on over into "oh no the authoritarian enforcer for the bourgeois power structure is sympathetic actually, she's really nice once you get to know her, she's just misguided" and ffffffffff

just... please let camille be evil. let her be a villain, please for the love of god

Rb if you will NOT be sharing the Arcane leaks.

Let's get a safe list going

Now that I posted a bait art for people check out my account, it's time to subject them to brain rot.

Sometime Jayce tries to pick a fight with the wrong guy, and sometimes a certain ex partner needs to save this moran because it would be such a shame to let his brain go to waste.

Bonus points if u figure out who is kicking they as

Smaugust day 2!

Teeth