Jayvik - Blog Posts
jayvik nation, how we feelin’
Valentine’s Day tomorrow, so here’s some text posts + my fav arcane ships 💘💌
little bonus 🤪
Listen man I love Mel as much as the next guy, and honestly the manipulation just makes her better. However, it's pretty important to acknowledge that she did do that. Like, she manipulated Jayce and Viktor. This is an important plot point. And I'm not saying she didn't genuinely like Jayce, because I think she did, but that was not a healthy relationship. And I think this is difficult for a lot of people to process because Mel's a woman and Jayce is a big, buff man - but that doesn't change the fact that there is a power imbalance in that relationship. And I know a lot of relationships in Arcane are fucked up, and I do acknowledge that they could have a discussion about the exploitation that happened and then move forward with a healthy relationship - but that didn't happen, and it's out of character for both of them. I think some anti MelJay people dislike the ship because of underlying racism and misogyny, but it's not a healthy relationship in the first place and I don't see anybody talking about that. Not to mention in the last part of season 1, Mel explicitly excludes Viktor from the discussion about weaponizing hextech. She tells Jayce, while right next to Viktor, that it's his choice if he wants to make the weapons.
Someplace peaceful where the conversation doesn't have to end...
(And yeah, I know Viktor looks kinda intense while Jayce just wants to be a good passenger, which was definitely in no way inspired by the council room fight scene)
So I just finished season 2 of arcane and...
We're all talking about the jayvik happy ending and how they are soulmates and etc. But aren't they supposed to die in the center of whatever the hexcore is going on. And even if they get out alive Viktor must die immediately because the hexcore doesn't supply his body anymore, right?
Oh no! Your homosexual situationship didn't work out! You have four options to proceed:
Graduate from murder cop to puppet fascist
Become a pit fighter and descend into alchaholism
Emerge from your chrysalis to become twink Jesus
Age 20 years, become a hater, and murder your ex
Jayce has impeccable taste honestly Mel and Viktor both are so gorgeous damn bro what in the bisexuality.
bisexuality demons were kicking his ass
Love the idea of everyone assuming Jayce and Viktor are dating when they call the other their partner 😂
he’s got rejection sensitivity
i was giggling the whole time drawing this
i’m back with more
best friends
to
lovers
to
enemies
to
i killed you
it’s more than that. i’ve been outdone. not only does jayce kill viktor, viktor tells him to do it AND they still get to commit gay double suicide later too 🥹 it’s beautiful
best friends
to
lovers
to
enemies
to
i killed you
jayce and viktor met and my dad was like “i’m picking up on something” yes you are good job
is this…. jayvik??
best friends
to
lovers
to
enemies
to
i killed you
asking sincerely. do you see a romance between jayce and viktor? do you think they ended up being something romantic at the end?
With apologies I am going to only half talk about the thing you are asking me, since I have something else on my mind and you happened to hit the button that makes me vomit it into words.
Coming at this from an aromantic perspective, I obviously don't experience the state of absurd obsessive delusion that you bizarre romantic freaks fetishize so feverishly*, but I am often annoyed by the idea that friendship and romance are either opposites or mutually exclusive. From my perspective, the boundary between the two is at best thin, and more realistically not actually a boundary at all except by cultural construction.
*i am taking an excessively hostile, crass tone for my own amusement i do not mean this seriously please be normal at me, weird allo freaks
I won't get into my full feelings about the end of Arcane, but it seems perfectly plain to me that the script, the imagery and the animation presents Jayce and Viktor as two halves of a whole, not opposing forces but alike to yin and yang: opposites which each contain the other. And at the climax of the show, the greatest peril to life and peace in the narrative is resolved by these two men literally joining their bodies and souls together, and going into eternity holding one another for comfort and strength. They are quite literally soulmates, quite literally the most important people in one another's lives.
I don't think that that kind of intimate emotional connection between men must necessarily be either romantic or sexual - I am aromantic, and plenty of ace people exist, and there is nothing in our natures excluding us from intense connections of love with other people of any gender.
I also think it is willfully ignorant (and genuinely homophobic) to act as though these deep connections are mutually exclusive with sex and romance. As though if Viktor and Jayce fucked nasty and made out sloppy style, suddenly their intimacy is less pure or valid, or tainted somehow.
"If these two men who are emotionally close to one another also fuck or get romantically involved, then friendship is dead, murdered on the floor by a dick-shaped knife; vile sexuality corrupts and debases the true, pure and virtuous love of ✨friendship✨" <- This shit is homophobic at a baseline, queerphobic in general, and frankly as an aromantic man I find it pretty fucking insulting as well.
What, are my friendships with other men just inherently more pure and divine, more meaningful and true than a gay man's can ever be, because I will never suffer the vile temptation of adding romance to my affection? Is that how I should think of myself? And is an aroace man more pure than me still, the only source of TRUE male friendship that a man can ever experience, free from the pustulant corruption of sexuality and romantic desire?
You get this pathetic defensiveness (especially from men, but other genders aren't immune) wherein sex and sexuality and romance between men is perceived as a threat to men's right and ability to experience deep connection to each other. But the emotional castration of men comes not from people imagining sex and romance as a component of our relationships - it comes from people who insist that our emotional lives must be ruled by strict binaries. Sex and romance, OR ELSE friendship. Deep romantic connection OR ELSE deep platonic connection. Pick one and do not dare to imagine both, nor act as though the boundary between them is something that we built by cultural fiat, and which can be dismantled just the same.
And yes, yes, yes, I know there are cultural forces literally illuminati-style conspiring to systemically erase the entire existence of explicitly romantic, sexual male love from media, and I know that homophobic puritanism is on the rise and there are material concerns and a real necessity for explicit representation in fiction, yes I know. Everything is more complicated than a tumblr post can cover, I am not trying to Solve Rainbow Capitalism™ over here, I am trying to express frustration as an aromantic man that this stupid fucking binary keeps getting culturally reinforced by both my enemies and my well-meaning allies, when I think the binary is what's fucking killing us in the first place.
So anyway. My position is that Viktor and Jayce can be entirely aromantic no-homo friends, and they can fuck nasty in the throes of mutual need and obsession, and I refuse to entertain the idea that there is an irresolvable contradiction between those things. Each of those can contain the other, or become the other given time and circumstance.
What the imagery, storytelling and script of Arcane makes clear is that Viktor and Jayce love each other more than life itself. To say that that love must be shoved into the box of either "platonic" or "romantic" is to miss out on almost everything that is beautiful about love. It can be both and neither! It can be a secret third, ninth or fifteenth thing that they haven't invented a tag for on Ao3 yet.
They are giving each other whatever the spiritual mind-ghost equivalent of sloppy backshots are on the ethereal plain forever, they are the most romantic lovers in the cosmos, and they are also the most chaste and platonic life-partner friends you have ever seen, effortlessly intimate and unashamedly tender. They are men who love one another, in every way that love matters.
You can pick whichever interpretation brings you joy, and resonates with what your heart needs, the text of the show is eminently and explicity open to it, and anyone who says otherwise either failed to pay attention, or refused to pay attention on purpose.
The demons won’t stop making me listen to “Let Down” by Radiohead bc they know it makes me think about those tragic little gay men
The Jayvik worms consume me
Halfway through drawing I forgor that Jayce is physically impaired post arcane so I’ll do CANONICALLY CORRECT leg brace Jayvik soon but I gotta indulge myself in this one and get out of essay hell :P
i promised you 🦋
(crossposting from x, bsky, & ig)
YOUR gays went to superhell. MY gays went to superheaven. we are not the same.
Viktor and Jayce in Gravity Falls where instead of the Hexcore, Viktor becomes involved with Bill Cipher 👁️ And they were lab partners… so I gave them the Stanford and Fiddleford outfits🥰
