How To Forget The Time In Which Anya Awakened The Dark Determination:

How to forget the time in which Anya awakened the Dark Determination:

Anyone else imagine that the Collector turned the Boiling Islands into something like Totto Land?

It's interesting to think that, in some way, Touya is what Zuko would have been if he hadn't had Ursa and Iroh's support and never left the Fire Nation and that Azula is what Shouto would have been if he hadn't had his mother's support and if he hadn't met to Izuku.

If Zuko had stayed in the Fire Nation, and by extension not had the experiences of other people, and had Ursa to love him and Iroh to advise and support him, he would have sought Ozai's recognition to extreme degrees until he injured and nearly killed himself and at the same time he would have wanted to take revenge on his father in the worst possible way for the abuse towards him and his family as Touya did.

If Shouto hadn't met Izuku and hadn't had his mother's support, Shouto would have only seen himself as a tool of is father which would cause him to focus on his personal goal to surpass Endeavor to an obsessive degree that would make Shouto become extremely perfectionist and would have repressed and controlled his emotions an extreme degree to achieve his goal that would make having relationships with others irrelevant and in case he wanted to have relationships with others he wouldn't be able to socialize or express himself with them in a healthy way just like what happened to Azula with her personal goal (be recognized by her father Ozai and unconsciously, by her mother Ursa).

Zuko and Dabi were the failures who wanted their fathers' love and recognition while Azula and Shouto possessed great power and talent that their fathers wanted to make them the perfect tools for them to achieve their ambitions.

Piltover and Zaun, Hextech and Shimmer

We all know that Piltover and Zaun are cities that share many elements with each other: rulers disconnected from their respective cities (Piltover Council for Piltover Chem-barons for Zaun), intelligent personalities (Jayce and Jinx) and other similarities, another of the elements that equate the two cities and that I liked the most are

the Hextech

and the Shimmer.

Hextech and Shimmer are means that both cities use to make their citizens more powerful, to advance and evolve.

Piltover is the city of progress, the cradle of the greatest technological advances, it always has its eyes on the horizon, on tomorrow. Hextech is Jayce and Viktor's masterpiece created with the purpose of improving people's lives and giving them a better future: the portals that improve the transport of goods between cities, the Atlas Gauntlets so that miners can work faster, they get less tired and protect them from possible landslides in the mines or the hexclaw to improve the work of artificers. In Jayce's words, he wanted his technology to be a tool to build a new and better world. Hextech has the ability to learn from its environment and adapt to the needs of its user without losing the purpose of its creation (example: the Atlas Gauntlets create a shield for Vi because it adapted to her need to protect herself and also the Atlas Gauntlets fulfill the purpose of their creation which is to protect their users in the mines).

On the other hand, Zaun cannot look to the horizon. Its people are always underground, in the shadow of Piltover and the light hardly reaches. In addition, poisonous gases flood the streets, causing damage to the health of children who are unlucky enough to be born on this side of the river, as happened with Viktor. In Zaun everyone consumes Shimmer but why would anyone want to consume something so toxic and deadly, sacrificing their physical and mental health in the process? that's because zaunites don't have a longer life expectancy. Many zaunites died from the noxious gases, others from hunger and cold, and others simply died in an alley during a fight. In Zaun people don't live but survive and that is why they are willing to sacrifice tomorrow to have a guaranteed today. Another reason why the zaunites consume Shimmer is because by giving its users greater physical strength, Shimmer invites them to have a fantasy of power because, being aware of their precarious situation and how the piltovians live in great luxury, they also want to be strong, big and powerful like the piltovians. It's the same case as that of people who smoke or use drugs: they know that they are damaging their health but they seek an escape from reality and forget their problems temporarily, being more powerful but Shimmer, like any other drug, corrupts and converts its users into monsters stripping them of their humanity.

This contrast is even seen in the colors of both: the blue color of Hextech is related to the aesthetic of Piltover and its ideals of goodness and progress, it symbolizes the color of the sky of the horizon that the piltovians look at constantly looking for progress, looking for tomorrow. While the Shimmer is purple because in a certain way, purple is a corrupted version of blue, a color that has the beautiful and noble blue of Hextech and Piltover plus the red that represents blood, in this way the purple of Shimmer represents Zaun's connection to Piltover (blue) and the zaunites' blood who die daily and the rest who struggle to survive another day (red).

Hextech was created by a piltovian (Jayce) and a zaunite (Viktor) to help others and ensure a future while Shimmer was created by an ex-piltovian (Singed) in collaboration with a zaunite (Silco) to improve and strengthen the body of anyone at the cost of their humanity just to have one more day of life.

When it comes to Kisaki, I couldn't help but remember what Watts said to Cinder in RWBY Volume 8 as it perfectly sums up Kisaki's ideology:

Watts: You think you're entitled to everything just because you've suffered, but suffering isn't enough. You can't just be strong, you have to be smart. You can't just be deserving, you have to be worthy.

It was never about Kisaki loving Hina but about proving that he was worthy of having her. Kisaki mistakenly thinked that Hina loved Takemichi for his dream of being the number one gang member when in reality she loved him for his bravery and willingness to help others so Kisaki, using his intellect, set out to create plans and manipulate everyone to become the number one gang member and then become the most powerful gangster in Japan and he succeeded. For Kisaki, being the most powerful gangster was to prove to everyone that only he was worthy of having Hina by being better than Takemichi for successfully achieving what the latter wanted.

If Kisaki had really loved Hinata, he would have talked to her, trying to establish a friendship with her, and if Hinata had rejected him, then, out of love for Hina, he would have respected her decision and wouldn't have killed her, but Kisaki never saw Hinata as a person but he saw her as an object to possess, a goal to achieve. Kisaki didn't care about Hinata as a person and the feelings and desires that she had, he just wanted to show that he was the most worthy of possessing Hina by working hard to get her, becoming what he thought she liked but not achieving his goal, he saw that his effort to be worthy of having Hinata was wasted and if he wasn't worthy of having her then no one else was worthy of having her.

Serving as a continuation of this post, can you imagine if these two fusion?