I'M READY

I love the concept that Viktor ends up with Jayce’s last name through some originally non-romantic means so much that I have multiple versions.

Jayce accidentally gives Viktor his last name by being so insistent on putting Viktor’s name first in every circumstance. When he’s listing their names on anything he puts them down as “Viktor and Jayce Talis”. When he introduces them to people he says “Nice to meet you, this is Viktor and I’m Jayce Talis” with a pause before Talis because he always forgets that he should say his house name too. Viktor slowly starts to notice that they’re referred to in the tabloids as “the Talises” and that higher ups at the academy will introduce him to investors as “Viktor Talis” without Jayce even being there.

When they first start working together, they put their initials next to things in their shared notes to mark when they have questions or agree with something the other wrote, or to differentiate when someone is dictating while the other talks. In an effort to not have it confused with a variable, Viktor initials VT (VikTor) as a bit of a joke to look similar to Jayce’s JT. However, one day when Heimerdinger is looking over their notes, he marks out a question in the margin for Viktor with “Viktor Talis” written out next to it in full. Viktor and Jayce debate for a moment after he leaves if it was supposed to mean it was for both of them, but the contents of the question makes it entirely clear that Heimerdinger things VT stands for Viktor Talis and has accepted that Viktor has adopted Jayce’s last name with no questions.

At the beginning of Hextech, as they are trying to get investors, Viktor regularly gets identified as being from the undercity and harassed for it by wealthy Pilties when he tells them his name is “just Viktor” when asked what house he is from. So one day Jayce suggests just telling investors that his last name is also Talis, thinking that people will assume they are brothers. Viktor gets flustered and tries to politely decline, but Jayce seems to confident that he lets it happen. It takes him weeks to figure out that Jayce doesn’t realize that everyone thinks they’ve gotten married or plan to. Viktor doesn’t have the heart to tell him and won’t let Mel break the illusion.

Jayce takes Viktor on a tour of the forge and when he gets done takes a hammer to jokingly knight him and dub him “officially part of house Talis” Jayce thinks nothing of it until the next time they meet someone new together when he almost spits out his drink hearing Viktor introduce himself as “Viktor Talis”

Some investor that they fucking hate can’t keep their names straight for some reason but always sees Jayce wearing his house sigil so he says “ah, Viktor Talis” every time he sees Jayce. They find it so fucking funny that even just saying “Viktor Talis” sends them into uncontrollable laughter.

Ximena refers to them exclusively as “my boys” to the point that most people who met her after Hextech was founded assume that she has two sons, Jayce Talis and Viktor Talis. She doesn’t feel the need to correct them as she does truly love them both as her children and is also quietly hoping one day Jayce will get his head out of his ass and ask Viktor out on a date.

forgive me lord for I have imagined a life far more soft and tender than the one you created for me

Imagine you're some skinny revolutionary twenty-something in Zaun. Your whole life you've been disadvantaged and born into a place where your very life is considered unimportant, but you desperately want to be treated with respect, and a life of comfort and luxury is secretly so appealing to you after working yourself into dust since you were old enough to stand. You worked in the mines, your small body struggling to keep up with your brick shithouse colleagues. But you keep up, because you have to. It isn't all bad, you make friends. Good friends. You and your best friend start writing plans and working to give your city the dignity it deserves. You fall in love. Your lover / best friend is practically double your size and filled with righteous anger but you love that about him. You trust all of your people, especially him, with your life.

Tensions with Piltover get hotter and you and he plan an uprising. You've never seen that many enforcers in one place, Zaunites are always easily able to overpower them. You are certain you've got this in the bag. But there are more of them than you expected on the bridge, and the conflict starts immediately with tear gas and bombs. You throw a Molotov at one of those pigs and they're set on fire. You're proud of yourself until bullets come showering down. You're skinny and quick, you're not an easy target, you can hit the ground. But your brick shithouse colleagues can't. You see two of your closest friends, parents to two little girls, dead on the ground. You don't know where your partner is. You keep fighting. At some point a bomb, a grenade, something goes off and shrapnel peels away your eyelid and half the skin off your face.

The smoke settles. You can't find your partner anywhere, but you don't see a body. After looking for hours, you find him wading in the Pilt. People often bury their dead at the Pilt. You figure he saw your dead friends and is here to mourn. You try to join him. Your face is killing you but there's no medical care to be found, your chest is crushed with the agony of seeing your friends' corpses and knowing in some way, it's your fault. Maybe if you didn't throw that Molotov, maybe they wouldn't have shot, maybe your friends would still be alive.

But you're relieved, so relieved, to find your partner alive and uninjured. You want him to hold him in those ridiculously huge arms and you want to mourn with him, for him to make you feel safe like always. But when you approach him, arms outstretched to receive him, he looks at you like you're a monster, like he doesn't recognize you, and before you realize it, the person you love more than anything in the world, one of your only remaining friends, has his hands around your throat and is holding you underwater. You've never experienced his strength like this. You can't believe it's real. He must have lost his mind. You try to get away, but he grabs your neck and shoves you in the water again. You're swallowing it, it's rushing into your eye, a hole directly to your brain, water filled with corpses and necrotizing bacteria and toxic chemical waste. You don't understand why. You only understand that you need to escape.

Then you finally manage to get away and somewhat recover only to learn that everyone you knew and cared about took his side, and blames you for the losses at the bridge, and you're no longer welcome in the thriving district you helped build.

No fucking wonder Silco had a catastrophic crash-out.

where you go, i go. that's the deal.

lyrics from "work song" by hozier

click for higher resolution. close ups and progress shots under the cut!

Gerry!

2 versions bc i cant decide

I love the concept that Viktor ends up with Jayce’s last name through some originally non-romantic means so much that I have multiple versions.

Jayce accidentally gives Viktor his last name by being so insistent on putting Viktor’s name first in every circumstance. When he’s listing their names on anything he puts them down as “Viktor and Jayce Talis”. When he introduces them to people he says “Nice to meet you, this is Viktor and I’m Jayce Talis” with a pause before Talis because he always forgets that he should say his house name too. Viktor slowly starts to notice that they’re referred to in the tabloids as “the Talises” and that higher ups at the academy will introduce him to investors as “Viktor Talis” without Jayce even being there.

When they first start working together, they put their initials next to things in their shared notes to mark when they have questions or agree with something the other wrote, or to differentiate when someone is dictating while the other talks. In an effort to not have it confused with a variable, Viktor initials VT (VikTor) as a bit of a joke to look similar to Jayce’s JT. However, one day when Heimerdinger is looking over their notes, he marks out a question in the margin for Viktor with “Viktor Talis” written out next to it in full. Viktor and Jayce debate for a moment after he leaves if it was supposed to mean it was for both of them, but the contents of the question makes it entirely clear that Heimerdinger things VT stands for Viktor Talis and has accepted that Viktor has adopted Jayce’s last name with no questions.

At the beginning of Hextech, as they are trying to get investors, Viktor regularly gets identified as being from the undercity and harassed for it by wealthy Pilties when he tells them his name is “just Viktor” when asked what house he is from. So one day Jayce suggests just telling investors that his last name is also Talis, thinking that people will assume they are brothers. Viktor gets flustered and tries to politely decline, but Jayce seems to confident that he lets it happen. It takes him weeks to figure out that Jayce doesn’t realize that everyone thinks they’ve gotten married or plan to. Viktor doesn’t have the heart to tell him and won’t let Mel break the illusion.

Jayce takes Viktor on a tour of the forge and when he gets done takes a hammer to jokingly knight him and dub him “officially part of house Talis” Jayce thinks nothing of it until the next time they meet someone new together when he almost spits out his drink hearing Viktor introduce himself as “Viktor Talis”

Some investor that they fucking hate can’t keep their names straight for some reason but always sees Jayce wearing his house sigil so he says “ah, Viktor Talis” every time he sees Jayce. They find it so fucking funny that even just saying “Viktor Talis” sends them into uncontrollable laughter.

Ximena refers to them exclusively as “my boys” to the point that most people who met her after Hextech was founded assume that she has two sons, Jayce Talis and Viktor Talis. She doesn’t feel the need to correct them as she does truly love them both as her children and is also quietly hoping one day Jayce will get his head out of his ass and ask Viktor out on a date.

Some very eloquent notes on violence as a necessity for resistance.

do we agree that celia is not doing all that for Jack out of some kind of innate motherly instinct, some need to care for that child she was given, but that she's doing it because the identity she was given as a mother has to mean everything to a person who got stripped of all she was over and over, who cannot remember if she ever was a mother in the first place and cannot afford to care, it's something to hang onto that she cannot let herself be divested of, and that's way more believable and interesting to me than just saying "she has to protect her kid"

well look, he did volunteer