There’s Something Terribly Poetic In The Inevitability Of Events In EPIC. The Choices Odysseus Is Given

cursed ball...

hhh women

yeah you’re her boyfriend but we exist as wretched mirrors of each other, never free of the knowledge of how fate will never let us untwine, so fuck you dude

GOD I want to enjoy the opening sequence of Arcane S1 but unfortunately I am an ex-dancer and managed to traumatically injure myself while dancing to that song and don’t particularly like dissociating bc of Imagine Dragons so what’re you gonna do

Okay but imagine Viktor getting a chance to show his undercity roots

They get locked out of the lab and Jayce is like fuck this is Skys day off and she has the extra key set how tf are we getting in and Viktor just starts picking the lock. Jayce hasn’t even gotten through his out-loud thinking process and Viktor already has the door open. He’s so confused. He even designed the door to not get broken into.

They go down to the Zaun markets for things they can’t find in Piltover and Viktor easily haggles down the prices to what they should be and not what they’re trying to charge Jayce. (He does pay full prices for people who actually need the money in Zaun).

Viktor easily charms people for information. Jayce needs help in the council with something and Hoskel is not being helpful at all. He can't go to the other council members. Viktor manages a meeting with him for coffee/drinks and he comes back two hours later with all the information Jayce would need. He had Hoskel eating out of the palm of his hand. He still has no idea how he did it.

Viktor trips people on purpose all the time. Some guy insulted him passing by at a gala and a few minutes later the man tripped and fell into the champagne fountain. Viktor didn't even change his facial expression, no one knew it was him except for Jayce. (Jayce was proud, thought it was funny).

Viktor can pick-pocket. (Sky can too). They have a game of "who can steal the most off Jayce" when they're all in the lab together. Mel has gotten in on it by giving them challenges like adding pins and stickers. Jayce is so confused. He is covered in pins and stickers. Someone help him.

Viktor has the street smarts in addition to his actual book smarts. He and Sky have helped to teach Jayce how to spot things like people getting ready to fight (the physical signs) who to avoid and why, how to get out of a spat in the bad parts of town, and how to use these skills in Piltover (avoiding drunk gala attendees, fighting outside of wine clubs).

Viktor can hold his own in a verbal spat. He's also got a temper when it comes to someone trying to break down his morals or is being just an outright ass. Once got into an argument with a store owner who was being ableist and downright insulting about him being from Zaun. He was gonna let it go but then the guy turned on Jayce and his family. Jayce had to drag him out. Viktor is now banned from the shop.

spreading my viktor wolfcut agenda

Hold on. Your hand is bloody and slipping and cramping, but one day your tendons won’t remember the strain and your palm will be soft again. Hold on.

Padme was not a Witness

I will never join the “Padmé was stupid to go to Mustafar” parade—she had valid reason to believe in the possibility of Anakin’s redemption—but there’s something awful in the fact that she didn’t have to witness either of his massacres.

Obi-Wan and Yoda walk past the bodies of their people—of their people’s children. Bail Organa goes to the temple and sees a kid get shot down trying to escape (more clones than Anakin, but still).

Padme hears about the second massacre after sitting in her apartment while the Temple was on fire. She’s told about them in vague terms. “I killed them like animals,” “he killed younglings,” She has a touch of denial when she goes to Mustafar partly because of her belief in Anakin, but partly because—I think—the Tuskan Massacre was never fully real to her. She understands it intellectually of course, but violence on that scale is difficult to conceptualise without seeing it, especially if it’s easier to just let it go. If she’d seen the bodies? Or seen Anakin kill them? She watched that one refugee kid die slowly, not at all violently, when she was working with the refugee organisation, and it affected her for the rest of her life. It is not a lack of caring on Padmé’s part that’s the problem.

Imagine being Obi-Wan listening to Padme saying “there’s still good in him,” after walking through the Temple, seeing the lightsaber marks on knights and children alike—not even to mention seeing her get strangled. It sounds not only wild, but honestly deeply offensive on more levels than one (besides the obvious issues it’s another, “train the boy,” prioritise Anakin over everything moment, except this time Obi-wan’s entire world has been torn apart, rather than just losing his Master)

If Padmé had actually been a witness to Anakin’s violence? If it was made present and visceral to her?

I think her opinions and her actions would’ve been different.

Thematically, it is crucial that when Luke goes to the second Death Star, he is under no illusions about who Anakin is or what he’s done, and in his most desperate moment he chooses to ask Anakin for help anyway. Padmé goes to him still a bit in denial, still a bit convinced things can return to how they once were. When she starts to push at the illusion, Anakin accuses her of betraying him and strangles her to shut her up, attempting to preserve the illusion (the difference between Anakin’s state at the time of his confrontations with Padmé and Luke is a whole other, very important topic). In part, her illusion allows Anakin to believe he can preserve the past (to be clear—he is the only one responsible for the choice to strangle her; Padme being imperfect is not an excuse for domestic abuse).

Side note, but if anyone is not sufficiently freaked out by Anakin strangling Padmé, it's important to know that strangulation is one of the flashing red warnings that physical abuse is doing to turn deadly, very, very quickly.

Luke’s complete and honest knowledge of Anakin’s worst self means there is nothing for Anakin to lose except his son, exactly as he is. No illusions, no wonderful past, not even any good memories together. Just his son.

To me, that’s one of several reasons (both thematic and logistical) why Padmé’s plea fails where Luke’s succeeds. None of those reasons has anything to do with her being stupid to go in the first place.

(There are some wonderful fanfics out there that show Padmé actually making her disapproval about the Tuskan massacre—both despite and because of her love—actively known during their marriage, and I think that interpretation of her is a stronger character than ROTS gives us, and more in line with what we’re shown in the first movie)

Jason and Bruce are out late one night in Gotham as civilians. They get cornered by a mugger and Jason nearly pisses himself, he’s so amused. He teases the would-be mugger about their hand placement, even tries to goad the mugger into a fight because he’s Red Hood. He can disarm anyone in seconds. It doesn’t matter if you have a gun — he has two.

He’s Red Hood, and he has the literal Bat of Gotham standing behind him like a wall of muscle. They’re as close to invincible as humans get, in this town. And that kind of confidence scares off their would-be mugger.

But then Jason turns around, a smile stretching across his face, and Bruce is white. Bone white and so so quiet, eyes wide and trained on where the mugger had been standing.

the woman ever actually

Mel ✨