#jayvik fandom

Imperfections

Art prints available here

A lil quiet on here for awhile Cus I’ve been chipping away at this massive jayvik piece after finally watching arcane.

Of course I had to pour in all my feels into this large conceptual piece and grossly underestimated the amount of details - ngl I almost wanted to trash this halfway and forget about it after second guessing my decisions repeatedly 🤡

I love this two’s entire journey so this piece is my dedication to fitting bits and pieces of their start to the end of arcane.

Ta daaa! Monster hunter AU . ✨️

I did this because of Picky.

An idea which I was too lazy to make a comic of, so I'll just leave y'all the drawings as it is so you just figure out the plot

Posting partly because I don’t think anybody’s gonna see this lmao, but I really do need to get this out. This ship has me in a chokehold and I’ve been gobbling up as many fics as my grubby little hands can find.

But. Yall. It’s getting harder and harder to get my fix because most of the jayvik fics I’m clicking on here and on ao3 are super ableist.

It’s not intentional I don’t think, because the aim of a lot of these stories is obviously the romance, so they end with Viktor learning to accept himself through Jayce’s love and all that, but that’s like. A problem. The fact that so many of Viktor’s POVs start with and are defined by how miserable his life is. There’s a healthy dose of classism in there too and that’s a whole other issue, but the gist of it is that the popular characterization of Viktor ends up being that he’s just so poor and disabled that he has nothing to live for until Jayce stumbles into his life.

And the thing is if that was how their relationship was in Lol lore or in the Arcane show I would understand why that’s the version of his character that gets written the most, but it’s really not? Like the first time we see him he’s in probably the highest position in the Academy that anyone can get with the dean spot being taken up by an immortal yordle. Like if you know anything about academia, being a grad assistant for the literal dean is so fucking brag worthy, because even though Viktor would have to get Heimerdinger’s approval for studies and stay within the scope of his research Viktor would have been running whole portions of the lab by himself, with his own gaggle of assistants and his name first on what was probably a good bit of research papers. He was the dean’s right hand, the highest an academic could go in a city known for churning out geniuses. That’s social and professional clout; people from all over would have been willing to sacrifice their first borns to get to where he was. He would have been well connected, well respected, and with the kind of money that comes from the stability of a tenure-track professorship (and he probably would have been teaching as a GA or a phd student, whatever the hell he was doing at the beginning) plus grants/scholarships/prizes won from his research? Where did we all get that he wasn’t doing well for himself before Jayce and Hextech?

And that was all achieved while needing a cane to walk. Here’s why fans assume, I guess, that Viktor’s disability is a major detriment to his life: I don’t think a lot of people notice the the show kinda makes a point to distinguish his leg from whatever respiratory illness he has going on from the Gray. The leg that had been anteverted from birth did not hinder his progress through life; he couldn’t always play with the local kids because he wasn’t mobile like them, and Piltover lumped him being a “cripple” in with being poor and Undercity because they like, suck. But those are the only issues that get brought up in that regard—a lack of accommodation and upperclass stigma, both of which did not stop Victor from reaching his goals. The Gray though? The physical representation of cyclical poverty? THATS what’s killing him. THATS the reason that he loses muscle tone, and has to graduate from a cane for stability to a crutch to actually support his weight. THATS what gives the Arcane the in to exploit him. The illness that all of the fissure folk are at risk of because of Piltover’s greed is what ruins Viktor’s life, not the body that he was born with.

That being said, if there was just an over abundance of sickfics, or fics that use his illness as a plot point like the show does, I wouldn’t bat an eye, but what’s ended up happening is that the image of Pale, Frail, On the Brink of Death Viktor is the one that gets written about again. And again. And again. Meek, quiet, and anti social to an extent that we just don’t get evidence that he is, ever. So he’s getting written OOC, hard, and in ways that completely negate his role in the show, I feel like—one of the things I LOVE about Arcane is how mindfully ableness is treated, and how that adds to the whole respect for life thing the show has going on. So if writers aren’t getting these character cues from canon I feel like we’re just passing around these tropes back and forth within the fandom itself without stopping to think about what we’re repeating.

Look. I’m willing to admit that maybe I’m just clicking on the wrong stuff, but this is stuff that I noticed in like. The Big Fics that consistently show up in rec lists. What ends up getting written is either a narrative about how miserable Viktor’s disability makes him or an inspiration story of his success DESPITE his disability, both of which are super problematic. I took a college level Lit class with a whole section dedicated to ripping apart how problematic and unproductive those narratives are, because they reduce a person down to their disability and nothing else. No life, no love, no happiness, no agency.

Every once in a while, I find a fic where Viktor’s POV does not begin with him in pain, or he isn’t introduced straight off with a limp or holding his cane. And they’re so, so good. The ableism makes him so one dimensional and flat, and when it’s not there the writing can get so creative. Instead I’m swiping out of hundreds of fics where the relationship is getting stalled because writers assume that because Viktor walks with a cane he must fucking hate himself. That only in his wildest dreams would he dare think that Jayce who is so strong, so capable, so the pinacle of masculinity would ever want him back. That Viktor’s disabled body is so ugly that only one (1) extraordinary person would ever be attracted to him, maybe two but only if we’re going for a possessive/jealous vibe. And maybe that could be argued away as Viktor having a regular amount of insecurity but. Y’all. Let’s all be so for real. There’s a reason so little of y’all assume that he’d be confident in his looks. Even though before he gets sick he’s a tall, fluffy haired academic with gold eyes and a chiseled little face and enough dry humor to make fun of Jayce when he’s literally about to jump to his death; do y’all even understand how hard I’m being forced to suspend my disbelief when y’all say stuff like Jayce was his first KISS at THIRTY? Why have I read that specific plot point anywhere else but in my nightmares. Atrophied limbs do not stop people from pulling hoes, I assure you.

Promise promise this isn’t directed at anyone specific. Buuuuut there’s one fic somewhere that never got finished but Viktor in it was basically like the quintessential hot professor and i cannot BELIEVE that in this nerdy ass scientist ship there’s not more hot for teacher/steamy academia shit going on. Literally giVE IT TO ME I WANT IT IM BEING STARVED—

I guess a cosmic entity is better than a self-mutilating human who puts on mechanical parts 🤔