Piltover And Zaun - Blog Posts

I don't have a name for him yet, but he's an 8 year old boy who lives in zaun, an inspiring artist who mainly does graffiti or large designs in chalk on street grounds. He's learning how to do portraits after seeing the rise in Jinx portraits all around after she became the figure of freedom

And small details that always make me smile, he 'dyed' his hair with chalk, and has belts around his shoes because he never learned how to tie shoes, oversized old overalls that he fixed up after finding them somewhere, jinx socks, and scars on his knees from learning how to jump rooftops. Also his hair is based on my hair irl

And what if Jinx escaped? Left behind a few things to move forward? What if she finally rode on "one of those things" and got out of Zaun and Piltover?

What if on her travels—to heal, to find a new purpose, become a girl who isn't damned, to be someone who isn't reminded of her past in everywhere and everyone she looks—she ends up in Demacia?

What if the story continues after magic has been reintroduced into Runeterra and we see it through the perspective of the kingdom so against its very existence? Introduced to the girl who resents the deal she's been dealt in life and fears—if not ashamed—of who she is: part magic.

What if these two opposing characters, for whatever reason or another, meet?

Lux, ever the optimist. Jinx, the guilty pessimist.

Lux, the girl who hides who she is in fear of being rejected and captured. Jinx, the girl who's been rejected and unwanted far too many times to count.

Lux, with a dream of adventure yet stationed in one place because of duty. Jinx, almost chronically bound to do what she wants or deems the better choice, despite what anyone wants, tells, or expects of her.

What if Jinx inspires a new way of seeing the world for Lux—one where she's not limited by others and can become a truer version of herself? What if Lux inspires a new way of seeing the world for Jinx—one where she can learn to love who she is, rather than view herself as a curse?

WHAT IF?

Another Arcane headcannon:

So you know how Get Jinxed is cannon in the Arcane universe? We were all wondering if Jinx published a song or something, or is it just a random coincidence that a song like that exists?

But I give you this... Felicia(Jinx and Vi mom) is actually the singer. Now hear me out Jinx and Felicia have the same voice (I was so fucking startled by this when I watched S2). And the lyrics can be explained to fit her...

Wanna join me? Come and play

What if this is a call to arms, like for their revolution?

But I might shoot you, in your face

It's Zaun, anyone might shoot you at any time, tho it's a nice warning

Bombs and bullets will do the trick

What we need here, is a little bit of panic!

Once again a call to arms

Do you ever wanna catch me?

Right now, I'm feeling ignored!

Remember the fact that the goal of their revolution was independent Zaun, they needed Piltovers attention, to reach their goal.

So can you try a little harder?

I'm really getting bored!

Piltover ignoring them and not taking it seriously and just sending down enforcers to deal with the Undercity filth.

So much better, so much fun

Let's start from scratch and blow up the sun!

'Blow up the sun' would probably reference Piltover-the-sun-shines-out-of-my-ass attitude and general goldness.

Come on, shoot faster

Just a little bit of energy!

I wanna try something fun right now

I guess some people call it anarchy!

Let's blow this city to ashes

Literally saying let's bomb Piltover

And see what Pow-Pow thinks

What if Jinx got the idea for Pow-Pow from this song?

It's such pathetic neatness

Making fun of pilties!

But not for long cause it'll get jinxed!

How sad would it be if Felicia sang this song long before children were even a thought and Jinx struggling with her name after Silco took her in, listened to the lyrics and got comfort in the fact she could just be a jinx to her enemies, not family...

Felicia picked a catchy song so it would get stuck in everybody's head and dragged her Bozo's to help her kicking and screaming...

Also Silco playing guitar and Vander drums lives rent free in my head.

op i will kiss you on the mouth (if you’ll let me ofc).

i literally ranted on my blog about the non-solution (sevika being on the council) to the piltover-zaun conflict yesterday and in that post i haven’t even gotten close to dissecting the intrinsically problematic politics behind the show yet, so it’s really cathartic to see this post popped up.

context: i was born and raised in a country where there are still traces of colonialist and imperialist invasions. my country was liberated when my mother was 6 years old, and less then 30 years before i was born - it’s recent enough that this kind of oppression and economic exploitation is not a foreign concept to me. i grew up hearing stories about how people like my great grandfather fought and died for the freedom i enjoy today, how significant that sacrifice was and more importantly, how violent the struggle was.

you see, in stories like these, the point is rarely ever the victory, it’s the fight. no matter what version of victory the oppressed masses envision it to be, they can never reach it without violence - either towards themselves or their oppressors. anticipating that, what i wanted from season 2 was not that zaunites will be promoted to positions of power or even that zaun will eventually be independent, i just wanted to see the class struggle play out in its full bloody grittiness. this is not me saying that it would be cool to see a bunch of people murdering enforcers or vice versa, i’m just asking for the fight to be treated with the weight it deserves, even if it means people will face brutalization and by extension, death. but after the first 3 episodes of the season, i doubted i would ever get the story i was looking for and sadly, i was right.

(and at this point i dont even know if i should vent all my grievances about the politics in this show in one single post as a magnum opus and be done with it because I HAVE MORE TO SAY)

i despise the way the fandom talks about jinx. i'm sorry, but a teenager with severe mental health issues who was raised by a dictatorial drug lord in a city where crime is rampant, children are often orphaned, and there is no clean air or water, was never going to turn out right. that is not to say that i condone all of her actions (e.g. killing the firelights, helping shimmer run rampant in zaun), but i do believe that she is the product of the circumstances she grew up in. will all that being said, i don't think she did anything wrong to piltover. most, if not all, the piltovans jinx attacked were enforcers and councilors, her oppressors and the primary people responsible for the subjugation of the undercity. and before y'all argue with me in the comments "but in the s1 finale, the council was going to make zaun independent", i beg for y'all to think beyond authorial intent since the show has deeply flawed politics (see: christian linke saying that the piltover-zaun conflict is an allegory to how the us two-party system fails to communicate with each other). while there are councilors that i like as individual characters (jayce and mel specifically), i don't believe that a consensus would've gave zaun true liberation because there has NEVER been a time where the liberation of oppressed people hinged upon their oppressors granting them their freedom. negotiating with your oppressors is akin to having a conversation between the sword and the neck, there can never be peace unless the oppressed takes away power from their oppressors. whether it's between the irish and the british, the algerians and the french, or the vietnamese and the americans, the oppressed ALWAYS had to fight for their liberation, even for examples that "prove" otherwise. nevertheless, i do believe that jinx's resistance is flawed since her violence is aimless and i wish that in s2, she would actually embrace being a symbol of zaun and use violence to achieve liberation for zaun, but i don't think the writers would be able to explore violent resistance effectively because they're cowards.

this might turn into a structureless rant and it will be rambly, but i’m just gonna be so honest, that moment with sevika at the end was so unearned and it accidentally encapsulates one of my biggest gripes with season 2.

the writing of the season betrays everything they set up about the piltover-zaun conflict. i fully expected a deeper exploration into the innerworkings of piltovian systemic oppression and/or the failures of its institutions. and it didn’t even have to be nuanced, mind you - had they done any kind of social commentary on just one aspect, be it the corruption of the council or the indifference of the privileged class, and how it accelerated the pace of piltover-zaun wealth disparity, i would have been fine with it. (i have SO MANY ideas on this specific topic i’m not even joking, maybe just because i’m a no chill raging leftist idk.)

instead, what we got was half-baked ideas of generic activism (i refuse to call it class activism) and throwaway music videos about anti-establishmentarianism that just boil down to “oppression bad”. don’t get me wrong, this is not inherently a bad message, but it’s an underwhelming and ineffective one, because it’s so inoffensive that it doesn’t actually challenge anyone’s political standings enough to elicit radical changes. and if you don’t think any political development adjacent to “zaun independence” is a radical change then i don’t know what to tell you.

and worst of all, the cumulation of DECADES of class struggle manifested into… nothing. NOTHING. a mutual avenger-level age-of-ultron threat just sidelined that whole plot line into the stratosphere. “we were oppressed but there’s an invasion so we’re cool i guess?” - said no zaunite ever. and do i even want to get into the fact that the final boss is a zaunite or are we not ready for that conversation yet? (i mean people have talked in depth about how displeased they were with viktor’s character development more eloquently than i can so go read those posts and give them some love.)

it’s so unimaginative and ridiculous that at the end the resolution to the class struggle is the fact that poor people are represented in the council now. the conclusion to that whole conflict is not even a triumphant moment it just felt empty. and it felt empty because the story, in the way it eventually played out, did not respect the core conflict that it had consciously tried so hard to flesh out. piltover and its ruling class were condemned for the fact that they crippled an entire city and its people, but then never had to face the consequences of those actions - and they probably never will, because even if sevika’s on the council now, she can still (and will very likely) be outvoted in any zaun-related matter. be so fucking for real.

it’s actually funny and eerie how that ending mirrors our current world in the way political institutions treat marginalized minorities demanding better treatment: instead of making actual systemic changes, those in power often shut down voices of the oppressed by giving them a seat at the table but with little to no negotiation power. it’s a shut-up-and-take-it tactic. it’s a non-solution. it’s disingenuous and evil. and it’s so disappointing that the writers decided that the ending we got was the best one they could think of for the people of zaun.

Zaun never got its independence but its ok guys Sevika is on the council now

Vanco art dump!

VI's personality synopsis in my opinion

I keep seeing complaints about how the Hexgate/Anomaly polluting the undercity, specifically poisoning the Firelight tree, subplot and Ekko and Jayce’s conflict over it, never got any payoff or resolution.

But…uh…yes it absolutely did: Ekko got to blow up the two guys who built the Hexgate, using a miniature replica of the anomaly to do it.

The guy who saw firsthand how much better things would have been (specifically for the undercity) without Hextech got to literally throw their magical bullshit back in their faces. And the fact that the device he used to do it had a design reference to Powder’s monkey bomb is just *chef’s kiss*

Honestly, for me, that was actually the most satisfying “Zaun takes vengeance on Piltover” moment in the entire show.