Was watching schnee's video essay on why arcane's characters are lonely from around 2 years ago and at the 1:17 timemark we see a scene from s1 where Heimerdinger praises Stanwick Pididly to Jayce. I was like why does he sound familiar? Then went yooooo it's that bitch who stole credit for making Blitzcrank from League Viktor!!!!!!
Damn, Viktor really is the opposite of a creator's pet.
Got a complete revamp instead of just getting an Arcane skin like the other champions that were in Arcane, was written in a very ableist way in both seasons, doesn't have his disability or terminal illness named even though it's a big part of his character, lost his agency for most of season 2, got confirmed as ace after the show ended because one of the showrunners hated jayvik, didn't form any meaningful relationships in the show outside of Jayce, isn't properly credited for making the Hexgates in the show, had actually cool concept art for his transformations into the Machine Herald just to have it scrapped and now the guy who wronged Viktor the most in his lore and is the actual reason why he started to self-harm as well as the main reason he completely embraced "Glorious Evolution" is treated like an outstanding dude 🙃
Plus it's not just Viktor. They deleted Jinx's schizophrenia in season 2 and screwed over any complexity Vi had in order to get her back together with Cait by act 3.
Yeah, Stanwick Pididly was an NPC in old league lore who not only stole the credit for creating Blitzcrank from his doctoral students, he also stole Viktor's earlier research and designs for prosthetics and used those in the process of revival and reconstruction of Urgot in the collaboration with Noxus's Bleak Academy, of course presenting those as his own. He also went to Piltover to advertise "bringing Urf back from the dead" while Piltovians were mourning Urf's passing. Unsurprisingly, he was kicked out. He later became a councilor on Zaun's Board of Directors. An absolutely deplorable person.
And what did Arcane do? It turned him into a hero, a founder of Piltover way back in history and Heimerdinger's friend.
One could argue that a viewer would have to think about worldbuilding to come to conclusion that whoever was involved with Piltover was directly involved in creating and perpetuating suffering in Zaun, thus Pididly is portrayed as a villain... and that theory could hold water, if literally any Piltovian was actually fully held accountable by the narrative for what they did to Zaun. Yet none of them, other than Marcus (whose crime was also hating Caitlyn!) was. Heimerdinger is a silly little goofball who might have been too serious earlier and "stuck in his old ways", but he felt sad when he went to Zaun (once? For the first time since Piltover started oppressing Zaun?) and narrative instantly treats him as fully redeemed. Jayce's moral dilemma disappears in S2. Caitlyn is not held accountable.
Arcane does a very poor job of actually following through with its portrayal of brutality Piltover enacts on Zaun which was shown through enforcers in Season 1. It is shown, yes, but the narrative doesn't always frame it as bad. Oftentimes it behaves like it's the case of "it is what it is". Which means there's no strong basis to say that Stanwick Pididly was portrayed as anything other than a hero.
For the rest of your points, I have nothing to add because they're all true, other than the ace argument - bear with me - if you view it through the lens of "it's a tool to deny jayvik", it may seem to you as something bad. But ace people are real, one of my best friends is ace and as an orientation it's not good or bad, it just is. It really shouldn't be used as a negative in ship wars.
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