What would I do if I had not loved you?

A collection of Viktor being framed by a halo through Arcane, because I'm still going insane about how GOOD this show's art, composition and details are!

cause like... sure they could've gone on a beautiful perfect sweet date where nothing went wrong and it was just a nice cute classic BL episode 7 plot and the character development/relationship development happened later on, and there would've been nothing wrong with that!! but that wouldn't have been very true to their characters- it makes SO much sense that they'd both worry about it a lot and that karan would deal with that by overcompensating and achi would deal with that by not expressing his feelings of discomfort- and it also just would've been such a less meaningful episode overall

like obviously the major theme of the episode as echoed in the other plots as well is getting to know someone organically- not using mindreading or anything else, just communicating openly and honestly in order to better understand who someone is and what they like and don't like. and obviously that's what karan realizes he should've done all along, and I LOVE that we have that moment where he explains WHY he did what he did- he wanted to impress him!! he was nervous!!- which of course makes sense, but the fact that we get this lovely character growth moment for him where he realizes that he should've like... asked achi if he liked it!!! can ask next time to make the next date something much more achi's speed!!! now has so much more information about who achi is as a person after this series of missteps!! is just my favorite thing

and ofc achi has the same moment of like "wow yeah this would've gone better if I had communicted my feelings to you" al;djfa;ldsj and like... I have a lot of feelings about how achi is able to break through his fears of hurting karan's feelings in order to communicate his thoughts and feelings directly cause it is truly just so good for the health of their relationship long term but ALSO is so extremely good for achi himself to have done. achi is someone we emphatically know struggles with self-worth issues AND has idolized karan for a long time- it would make sense that his go-to move would be to devalue his own feelings of discomfort and not want to confront karan about this. but the fact that he IS able to acknowledge his own discomfort and not write it off and also communicate it to karan feels like such massive growth imo, and a sign of him feeling more secure in himself and slowly removing karan from the pedestal he put him on

and it's just also the sweetest thing in the world to me that achi is like "I don't want anything special being with you and talking like this is special enough" like that's perfect :(((( the communication and getting to know each other better and how to care for each other better is what makes the date special!!!

...though god even when talking about the insane date itself, not even the post-date clarity connection conversation, despite everything, achi still says that every minute they were together was special. that whole insane date. that's so lovely. he's so in love.