Riot Games and Fortiche Production’s conclusion to Netflix’s Emmy award-winning League of Legends animated series, Arcane, left fans jokingly awaiting a new act the following week after its finale. While most fans have taken their feeling to fanfiction sites like AO3 to continue the weaving tales for their favorite confirmed relationships from the series, others have taken umbrage with its co-creator, saying their preferred ship was never romantic.
Arcane‘s nine-episode second and final season was jam-packed with tons of story and character development for its colorful video game characters. Chief among its highlights was the show’s confirmation of two of the fandom’s favorite ships, Caitlyn Kiramman and Vi (CaitVi) and Ekko and Jinx (Timebomb), as canon. Before the series abject confirmation of these ships in Arcane‘s final act (further reiterated by annotations in its official art book), all fans had to rely on were decade-old fan art and hyper fixation over voice lines and character bios from the respective characters in League. The show finally tied a bow on years of fan pining with arguably the series’ best episodes. However, The Gamer reports that lead writer Christian Linke came forward to say that fans’ “cosmic yaoi” ship between two other major characters in the series, inventor Jayce Talis and occasional-biomechanical-Jesus Viktor–a.k.a. ‘Jayvik’–was never meant to be seen by audiences a romantic connection.
“There are really close friendships, brotherhoods if you will, really being there for each other,” Linke said in a livestream. “That was actually really important for us to explore. It seems like there’s no other version for some fans that say ‘there must be romance’. These relationships can be really layered, really complex, you know?”
updating this one, yall pic.twitter.com/JBfwK0OKxS
— ცƖiss JAYV!K FOREVER (@vadrlke) November 28, 2024
While even the word of a co-creator shouldn’t stop people interpreting the show the way they see it, Arcane fans have been a bit up in arms about Linke’s comments. Much of the fandom took Linke’s words in jest by sharing memes that everyone but him got the memo that the two Arcane characters had something going on akin to a situationship. But others took this post-show information dump as wildly incongruent to the show’s own presentation of Jayce and Viktor’s relationship, pointing to inferences such as Viktor referring to the cornerstone of his relationship with Jayce in early episodes of the second season as being based on affection, visual parallels to Viktor and Jayce’s other romantic partner in the series, Mel Medarda, and the show’s finale seeing the two hold each other tenderly before disappearing in a cosmic explosion (and seemingly either dying together, or becoming one with the titular arcane itself).
As The Gamer notes, Linke went on to add that there is love in their relationship, though its strictly platonic in the text of the series in his eyes. Despite this, some Arcane fans are still mad at Linke for clarifying their relationship and yucking their yum. In a separate livestream with Twitch streamer LPGjustJohnny, Linke went on to note that Viktor was always meant to be Arcane‘s asexual LGBTQ+ representation. Despite meaning the revelation–which is not something that comes up explicitly within the show itself–the clarification, on top of Linke’s comments pushing back on Jace and Viktor as a potential couple, only made the discussion sourer, with some fans taking issue with the revelation as a perception that Linke was both using Viktor’s aromanticism to cut off any potential connection between him and Jayce, but also leaning on dated writing tropes around disabled characters being seen as ace.
Whether headcanon or not, Jayce and Viktor’s story stands as one of Arcane‘s best-written relationships, which is saying something since the show is nothing if not a phenomenal character study. Hopefully, the divergence between Arcane‘s co-creator and its fandom will remain in good spirits where both camps agree to disagree with one another.
All episodes of Arcane are streaming on Netflix.
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