We're Still Making Up New Popes And Kings And Shit In 2025. Fucking Embarrassing

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

I like the idea of there being something a little sharper about Zaunites.

Jayce often turns around to find Viktor much closer than he had thought, even being able to hear the tapping of his cane. During late nights in the lab, his amber eyes burn violently in the blue glow of the hexgems. On the rare occasion he blinks, Jayce can swear they appear reflective, like a cat’s. Just tricks of the light and the mind.

Mel’s skin rises the first time Jayce brings Viktor to a Council meeting. They’ve met before, of course, but there’s something immovable in his grip when she shakes his hand, touching him for the first time. Viktor smiles ingenuinely, almost mockingly, at something Salo says, and his teeth are a tad sharp. Mel has grown up around war, around danger, but it had always come for her head on. In Piltover, it came in the form of ruining reputations or profits. She wonders how thoroughly Viktor could ruin someone before they even realized he was there. She dreams of wolves and foxes that night, and from a tree, the ember-bright eyes of a lynx watches, waiting for the other predators to tear each other apart.

Vi likes to climb. Caitlyn knows this, though she supposes she didn’t really think about it. It’s almost beautiful to watch, really — the agile switches, the power thrumming beneath Vi’s skin like she might burst from it. Vi maneuvers through the rooftops of Zaun as easily as breathing. Sometimes, Caitlyn’s own breath will catch when the jump looks too far, too much, then Vi’s hand will catch the ledge without fail and she can huff a laugh. She ignores how many distances Vi has crossed that shouldn’t be crossable. Like a cat, a Zaunite will always land on their feet.

Ekko seems to move quite strangely, Heimerdinger thinks. Though, he’s never truly paid close attention to human movements, the boy seems to traverse without the normal effect of gravity, as if he simply never dismounted his hoverboard. It was far too smooth, far too even — it took a considerable time for Heimerdinger to put his finger on it. As they discover the sickness of the tree, the pattern changes. Ekko glitches sometimes, staying in one place for too long before seemingly being sling-shot through space, appearing somewhere else without having gotten there. A mystery for later, he supposes.

Silco feels like a condensation of all Zaun’s noxious gases, perhaps with a vein of Shimmer added for realism. Marcus feels like his lungs are clouding just from being around him, getting the urge to cough out the pollution. Silco is the grimy cracks, the perpetually-wet streets, the sunken ribs and track marks of every body slumped on every street. His voice curls around Marcus like a snake, squeezing tighter and tighter until the fear and the threats are the only things left in his brain. Yet, Silco sits calmly, always far too still. Sometimes his scar appears to splinter in front of Marcus’s eyes. When he tucks his daughter in a night, he wonders about what kind of monster might slip, unheard, through the cracks of her window.

There’s always been Something in the air in Zaun. The water too. Really, can one be surprised at the consequences?

I need someone to draw this:

Odysseus, covered in blood, ragged and looks like death warmed over: *wearing a sash that says “most valid crashout” across it with Hermes/Athena bestowing a pageant crown upon him*

Optional skewered Poseidon in the background

i promised you 🦋

(crossposting from x, bsky, & ig)

This this this right here is getting to me. Gif is from @terrapia

Yeah you could argue this parallels Silco but it doesn’t really. Silco didn’t want to give up jinx because she’s his daughter. Sevika doesn’t want to give up jinx because she’s a zaunite

And you know who that reminds me of so fucking much?

That’s Vander’s ideology right there. Vander could have done like Grayson suggested, picked any rando off the streets to take the fall for the apartment explosion, but he wouldn’t, because those are his people.

Vander was weak and Vander was a coward but Sevika followed him once, and there was a reason for that

Silco may have been the Eye of zaun, but Vander is its Heart, and that heart is still fucking beating

cursed ball...

i was never your baby / i was only just a maybe

babe no of course your unsettling stare and random fits of prophecy aren’t ruining the function

they’re all just pissy bc they all have to go die on a quest now

Mel in her noxian fit

Every friend group should include:

a bimbo

a mean bisexual

an even meaner lesbian

she/theys

and he/theys

a token straight who’s on thin ice

an astrology bitch who has everyone’s birth chart memorized

and a short king

Piltover Edition