#narrative structures

I'm going fucking insane over Jayce & Viktor so I offer you an unhinged ramble about the butterfly and the narrative structure of their relationship. I apologize in advanced for being batshit.

So Viktor and Jayce's relationship is a chiastic structure. A chiasm is where the beginning and end of a story point to the middle of it, creating an X or ∞ (a chiasma is also a structure in genetics, if you've seen the word in science classes before.)

This means that the rise and fall of the narrative mirror each other (parallelism). There are many parallels in Jayce and Viktor's relationship, with one of the most overt being "Am I interrupting?" and one of the more covert examples being Viktor's belief in Jayce's dream to use science to bring access to the Arcane ("Our hextech dream") and Jayce's belief in Viktor leading them to shattering access to the Arcane web ("We finish this together.")

At the center of this narrative is death and resurrection (metamorphosis). The first season ends with Viktor's death, and the second begins with his resurrection, the literal center of the story.

Now, Arcane is about love in its entirety. All-encompassing, earth-shattering, life-giving, life-taking love. Love, which inspires our greatest evil and our greatest good, is something that changes us. Love which can lead to grief, can make us into our worst selves (consider the warmongering), but it can also make us into our kindest selves (consider Isha.)

Jayce's love for Viktor saves him but it also changes him. Twice. When Viktor dies, Jayce is unwilling to let him go and uses the hexcore to resurrect him. This transforms Viktor into the Herald.

When Jayce is forced into the alternate reality where he experiences the decline of his body and the struggle to climb from the depths to the surface (a narrative representation of empathy), he finally understands Viktor. This transformative understanding primes him to fulfill his promises to Viktor, past and future - to destroy the hexcore and stop the Arcane from bleeding out all over reality; to save Viktor.

The butterfly is a well-know symbol of transformation, so it's no accident that it follows Viktor and Jayce from the very beginning to the very end. But it isn't just a visual representation of love and its power, but a reminder of the very structure of their narrative.

Because Arcane is also about perspective - narratives. Silco and Vander show us how our shared experiences can yield different motivations, as do Jinx and Vi, and Ambessa and Mel too. Every single one of these characters is motivated by love, but their methods are opposing forces.

We see, time and time again, that those with the most power are those who control the narrative (power in Zaun creating a righteous rebellion vs power in Piltover creating a narrative of dangerous insurrection), and that power lacking empathy is corruptive (Cait and Ambessa forsaking empathy in favor of violently seizing control vs. Vi and Mel embodying empathy to save that which they love.)

At the center of all of this conflict is partnership. Failed partnerships, like Vander & Silco and redeeming partnerships, like Ekko & Jinx. Viktor and Jayce share a dream, and that dreams bleeds the Arcane, corrupting reality. But when they forsake their partnership (Jayce joining the council and Viktor leaving the lab), it nearly destroys everything.

When they lean into their affection, when they utilize empathy, when they let their love be transformative, they heal the Arcane and reality. In their final moments, they mirror each other, and as they're scattered into all timelines and all possibilities by the explosion they are transformed into something cosmic together. Their story ends as it began.

We know from the lifecycle of the butterfly, by the structure of the narrative, that beginnings and endings are not so finite. Love is both a constant ("in all timelines, in all possibilities") and an anomaly ("That which inspires us to our greatest good, is also the cause of our greatest evil".) It is the infinite, and the infinite is not a line with a beginning and an end, but a tangle of time and potential.

The chiastic structure of Jayce and Viktor's relationship is one that shows that love itself is the most powerful and transformative force in nature. It demonstrates that love doesn't just have the potential create or destroy but to do both at the same time; that reality isn't binary, but it is symmetrical. A butterfly was always a caterpillar and a caterpillar was always a butterfly; it experiences both, not one or the other (there's even a moment where it's neither and both all at once!)

Love is imperfect. People are imperfect. When Jayce is transformed in the depths of Zaun, he finally understands this. He carries this revelation to the height of Piltover where he finds Viktor waiting for him.

"There is no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit."

If love were perfect it would stagnate, dreamless. Recognizing its power is seeing it for all its good and evil, and choosing it all the same.

"You were never broken, Viktor. There's beauty in imperfections. They made you who you are. An inseparable piece of everything I admired about you."

Viktor's transformation isn't from a broken man into the Herald, it's from a man believing himself unworthy of love to one knowing he is loved unconditionally. If love were perfect it would require perfection of us. But it isn't and it doesn't. Only Jayce can show Viktor this, because Jayce loves Viktor and Viktor loves Jayce.

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

Think about Singed telling Viktor that "Love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress."

And Viktor responding, "Jayce will understand."

He did understand eventually, only he sacrifices progress and legacy for love and transformation. Love is not the opposite of progress, perfection is the opposite of progress. In a perfect world, there is no need to dream together. Jayce understands this. He shows Viktor this. And together they change.

I've been seeing this video in my YouTube recommendations for a few days, and kinda just let my eyes skim over it, 'cause I was confusing "The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" with "The Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege" (1989) [PDF] in my head, and I was mildly afraid it would be criticizing "Wokeness."

But I like Ursula K. Le Guin. So in the end I decided to watch it.

It's not criticizing "Wokeness," or anti-racism. It's critcizing Joseph Campbell.

And I'm sharing it here, so I must have liked it.

find the things you are excited about, and write those parts in great detail. just skim past the repetitive mashing.

so like

the emotions the characters are feeling

the escalation of sensations / experience

the little details, like hair hanging down, or sweating, or gripping the sheets, or smelling their partner's skin, etc.

write a typical sex experience, but have the character experiencing it for the first time, so they get to marvel at all of the things that usually seem so commonplace and uninspired.

write a super quick sex scene, with only the bits you love, and get back to the plot! you're writing for yourself - skip the bits you find boring

reread a bunch of smut that you have enjoyed - check your ao3 bookmarks! - and try and note which are the bits you enjoy, and write stuff that is similar!

Who is the character that, to you, most symbolizes the struggles and the development of the main characters?

Is it the Nowhere King, the embodiment of the pain that has shaped them, created the people they have become?

Or is it the Woman, the manifestation of the imposed upon environment, the symbol of what has to heal?

(Polycule cont) My question is thus: how can I write the male character in this polycule getting “pampered” without it being *grossly* misogynistic? I want to make it clear that this isn’t a harem situation, they all love each other dearly. (Also, sidenote, said polycule is seriously, actually canonical.)

I don't think you need to worry about it, tbh!

like, maybe don't make it the very first chapter, so no one comes into it thinking that the whole fic is three women pampering one man sexually. but it sounds like this fic is going to be really well balanced! no overt misogyny!

if you are still concerned, here are some things you can include to make it very clean that this isn't a harem situation:

have the man think to himself how unusual it is for him to be just laying there and accepting pleasure, without giving back in the moment

have some of the women thinking sexually or romantically about each other during that chapter, and even touching or kissing, to remind the reader that they are all in a relationship together

remind the reader of some of the things that the man does for his partners, whether it's mentioning shopping and cooking, or a way that he supported them emotionally

hm.

well, there's two ways I can see this working out.

one: the preferences that the characters have in bed is different from how they are in non-sexual life

lots of people enjoy engaging in power dynamics in kink and sex, precisely because they need a break from who they are in the real world. so you could write a control freak, or a character with heavy burdens of responsibility who longs to give up control and be submissive to someone. and similarly, someone who doesn't have much control over their life, or who is struggling with unfulfilling choices may want to be dominant in order to be able to take control over a specific situation, or to feel like they're succeeding and doing well at a thing.

two: the characters are exhibiting both sets of traits during sex

there is a phrase that you hear sometimes called "topping from the bottom" or "bottoming from the top". this could look like a handful of things, any of which you might use for your characters:

the bottom (the character receiving sensation, often seen as the submissive) might ask for or demand specific things to be done to them

the top (the character causing sensations, often seen as the dominant) might be performing for their partner's pleasure or at their demands, to make them feel good

the submissive might be very pliable and do everything they're told, but if the dominant crosses a line, or does something the submissive doesn't like, they may harden up and speak firmly

the dominant might check in really frequently, asking "is this what you want? is this good?"

the submissive could be a little bratty, and try and wrest control from their dominant, only to be put in their place (or succeed, and take over!)

the dominant could be slightly passive, and need encouragement or a bit of a push to get going

I mentioned in another post, but my number one tip for writing smut is to read smut, and figure out what you like from that!

When it comes to research, hm. I’ll bet you could find something decent by searching “how to write sec scenes” or “how to write a romance novel”, and some enterprising citizen of Romancelandia will have written a guide.