M00nsh-ne - Phloats.

YESSS. YOU GET IT

When we are introduced to viktor, we are first led on to believe that he has a confident, almost flippant personality— from how he relished in his power as that of the dean’s assistant and practically talked down to jayce. And yet this confidence only stems from his position in piltover, and this also leads into another really fascinating point I noticed between jayce and viktor: what they value about themselves is what society values about them.

Viktor cannot see value in his personality or his character in the slightest. What he sees as worthy is what the good he can do for society. This also ties back to what Viktor said in the finally to Jayce once he achieved godhood: “I was more than I ever was.”

He only truly values himself because he has made an effort to society, because he has done great. The ONLY reason he said that line was because he finally decided that he had reached his goal of helping others through his commune. He had made himself a legacy.

Another really great example of this is his line to jayce during act 2: “Come. Visit me. See what I’ve accomplished.”

He wants to show Jayce his inventions, he wants to show Jayce that he’s worthy. He literally can’t imagine any other reason why Jayce would be interested in him other than his work.

Now onto Jayce: my point might be a little bit of a stretch but I still think it’s an interesting thing to highlight about his character, and it also traces back to your post. In his journal, there’s a page where he disparages the inventions he sees at the parlors for Progress Day, claiming they’re nothing but child’s play and wondering how the world would react to such a revolutionary idea like Hextech.

He, as well as Viktor, both plainly crave society’s validation. You can see it when Jayce steps on stage— he plays along with the crowd, cherishing and indulging in the applause. He very clearly wanted to achieve personal glory for himself, to be congratulated for his efforts, as well as the desire to help the public and give hextech to the people.

Society holds him at high regard, and hence, he does too.

Except, this changes in the finale of s1, where we see Jayce forgoing this sort of attitude and saying to the council: “With respect, I don’t give a shit about what any of you think about me anymore.”

This also bleeds into s2, act 1, with “My place was always in the lab, with you”, and from this point on Jayce just doesnt care about society’s approval.

And here we see that when his consideration for the council and society’s input has completely dissipated, the only thing he cares about is his partner, and his loyalties have always led back to Viktor.

And then we go to the finale, and we go back to Jayce’s line: “I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world. Now, all I want is my partner back.”

Jayce and Viktor before season 1 act 2 had been a tango with society. Attempt to appease the council, avoid being expelled, dont let society find out about your morally dubious lab experiments, etc. etc. but with this line, Jayce has just said “Fuck society’s judgement. Fuck the rest of their opinions. You are my dream. You are the one I value the most. You are the one I want.”

In the last moments of the finale, Viktor finally, finally fucking learns that he didn’t need to change the world, or revolutionize piltover, or have his name to be embossed into history in order to feel fulfilled, but that maybe to be loved was enough.

Underrated JayVik moments/lines (16/∞)

"I suppose your legacy has been well-secured."

How is this a JayVik line? At first and even second glance it isn't, but bear with me for a moment.

What this line does do initially - seeing as it's said in response to Heimerdinger stating he never contemplates his own death - is tell us how important the idea of "legacy", of leaving something good behind to be remembered by, is to Viktor.

This is not a novel idea; I've seen multiple posts talking about the tragedy that is Viktor, in the end, leaving no legacy at all (if he's lucky, that is - otherwise there would only be the tale of that one time a metal maniac threatened to end all of humanity) because all of his accomplishments and good intentions vanish with him and Jayce.

And yes, that sure is one - very bleak - way to look at it.

However, fortunately that's not all there is to his story.

Because if you think about it for a moment - think about Viktor's motivations throughout the show -, there are two additional driving forces that contribute to this desire to leave a legacy, apart from his desire to help and his strong moral compass:

Loneliness and a damaged self-image.

People suffering from both often end up believing they will only ever be as good, as desirable, as lovable as the good they do for others. They wish to be remembered in death because they can't imagine feeling treasured in life.

I think for someone like Viktor - having placed all of his capacity to make a difference in the world on his "gifted mind" rather than his value as a person -, to be loved unconditionally for who he is may have been so grand an idea that changing the world honestly seemed more attainable to him.

Yet as I pointed out in part 4, even after ostensibly achieving what he thought he wanted in the commune ("an immaculate physique, community, the ability to help people and 'make the world a better place' - a perfect legacy"), from the way he speaks to Jayce and goes on to think and act after facing rejection by him, you absolutely get the sense that there is something vital missing from the picture here.

And it's scarcely even new information at that point, really, as we already learned this a lot earlier by how - when faced with the loss of both love and legacy - it wasn't the threat of losing legacy which Viktor's mind got stuck on:

"Jayce will understand."

It's almost as if... oh I don't know, as if Viktor had thought what he wanted was to bring magic to the world, but ultimately...

Oh.

"I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world... Now, all I want is my partner back."

Jayce, same as Viktor, had big dreams of making a difference in the world since childhood, which - while definitely also driven by a strong desire to help people - is proven here to be equally rooted in the very elementary human desire to connect with someone. For someone to understand him and share his dreams ("our HexTech dream").

He found, and was found by, that someone in Viktor. The fact that the very catalyst of Jayce's dreams - the mage - turns out to literally have been Viktor all along only serves to emphasise this point.

And here, at the end of everything they've endured, Jayce concludes that maybe, to love and to be loved in kind can be enough. Can be everything. Can be all he wants.

I like to believe that Viktor came to that same realisation about himself in those final moments of perfect connection they shared.

Part 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16

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have a quick jayvik while I test my new drawing equipment

bro's the void jesus lmao

GUYS IM A GENIUS HOLD UP

imagine Jayvik (instead of exploding galaxy-style) are transported to that reality without Hextech that Ekko and Heimer were in before. imagine that there's no Jayce or Viktor there. imagine that they have a pact to never re-invent Hextech, that they move to the undercity and just lay low and have a domestic little time

oh my god yall new AU dropped

coming back after 3yrs just as this site is shutting down to post jayviks and name drop my other socials - find me on twt @OmenBairn

Just sayin

Honestly? I’d be super curious to see more “Jayce got sent to the Powder reality” or just any other reality where he inhabits his own body there (so not S2 Jayce/S1 Viktor fic I mean fic where Jayce gets the Ekko treatment) but where Jayce just… tells the truth about being from an alternate universe right away?

Because really, if ANYONE would accept the possibility of alternate universes RIGHT AWAY, it would be Viktor, or Heimerdinger, or in general people from the circles that Jayce very much moves in as someone working on the theoretical edge of science.

The reason I’m thinking about this is I feel like I’ve seen a few of these fics now where a lot of sort of predictable drama gets generated by Jayce trying to blend in and pretend to be his AU self with absolutely nothing to go off of, but to me that seems 10x more difficult and prone to disaster than just… trusting that his science buddies will be open to the possibility that a very weird scientific event is happening to the guy who was fiddling with HARNESSING MAGIC WITH SCIENCE and needs some help right now.

Idk, maybe it’s my penchant for thinking in straight lines. Maybe I just need to write it. But I also genuinely have a story… Frustration? With unexamined tropes and stories that immediately assume that talking about or asking for help about the magical or supernatural things happening to the characters would get them consigned immediately to some insane asylum.

Like, unless someone has a HISTORY of struggles with reality, I think most people are willing to play along a bit. If one of my friends or even my partner ran up to me and said “I know I look like myself but I’m actually from another dimension inhabiting my counterparts’ body and I need your help getting back.” Idk, I’d like to think I’m pretty genre savvy and have a decent sense of humor. I’d be willing to play along until they get tired of the game or provide me with some hard evidence that something legitimately out of this world is happening. I’m not going to immediately have them arrested or committed, ffs, even if they’re my worst enemy. I MIGHT check in with someone close to them to ask if they’ve been acting strange lately or if they have suggestions in case this person is legitimately having a psychological event of some kind, but again, my first response isn’t to freak out at them, it’s to ask for more details and get a sense for what’s going on here.

But to get back to Jayce, in general, he has people in his life experimenting with the bleeding edge fringe of theoretical science and I think he could count on a fair number of sympathetic and even helpful ears. At least, people willing to entertain his hypothetical for a bit if he brings it up as a possibility rather than a thing actively happening to him right now. I think he’d definitely have more success going to an AU Viktor or Heimerdinger and asking for their help with such a theoretical scenario than he would stumbling around trying to pretend to be his alternate self when he has no frame of reference for what this AU’s self is even like. After all, Jayce is a scientist, not an actor, and he knows it. He can give a speech but I’m not sure that translates to like… playing along with an entire life that isn’t his, full immersion LARPing type stuff.

And for the record, it’s not so much that I’m critiquing these fics. I get the reason for the tropes and how they generate the drama and the plot for the story the author wants to tell. It’s more that it’s a trope I’ve seen turn up in a few unrelated authors’ fics and that always gets my trope-contrarian brain buzzing with, “Ok but does this trope MAKE SENSE? Would Jayce or anyone in his situation be actually under so much pressure to disguise what happened to them as this story is implying they would be? Would anyone actually get locked up or in trouble for floating that they’re their AU self? Heck, wouldn’t it almost be SAFER to bring up the hypothetical, even as a joke, just to see if it’s like a known experiment in this world or a thing that regularly happens that everyone knows about, or at least to make some allies amongst your AU loved ones, rather than stumbling around getting in ACTUAL trouble in a world that could have completely different laws or customs than you’re aware of?”

Tropes, people! They should be interrogated!

i miss them

talk to me, tell me everything you see, the sun that’s shining lighter than a feather

(prints)

jayce visits a timeline where viktor was a minute too late