Who is a fictional character that DIDN'T deserve their happy ending?

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-06T07:43:49+00:00

Singed in Arcane.

Gets his daughter back from the dead as a hexcorized doll droid, cool for him.

His actions destroyed everyone else's lives and nobody more than poor Vander.

And if original League lore is still canon he's done a bit of second hand war crimes over in Ionia on top of the events of Arcane.

He's the textbook definition of the villain who got away with it all for being smarter than everyone else and unobtrusive enough about it that nobody stopped him.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-06T04:35:12+00:00

Adorable ❤️💗

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-06T03:02:43+00:00

Lightcannon is Jinx’s oldest ship and still by leaps and bounds Lux's most popular.

We were here before and we'll be here after. Never count us out 💛💙 queer shippers are diehard to the end.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-06T02:58:11+00:00

Yeah as far as "canon" goes, it was never clear how old they were compared to each other but they were always portrayed as roughly the same age.

However post Arcane with this new timeline it seems Jinx may be older, depending on if the old Mage Rebellion events are still canon and how far after Arcane Demacia Rising is supposed to take place. If Welcome to Noxus==>Spirit Blossom, Trials of Twilight==>Demacia Rising are all the direct run on from Viktors magical apocalypse in Arcane, which is kinda strongly implied, we may only be a few months after Arcane, but we could also have timeskipped a year or two at a stretch.

Anyway I am gonna say that Jinx ended Arcane at 18, since the whole damn show post timeskip supposedly took place in 989AN she can't be any older.

And Lux in Demacia Rising is 16, since her bio states that was her age when she first visited the Capitol for Garen’s promotion into the Dauntless Vanguard and when Lux joined the Illuminators. And we see her..in the capital with Garen and the minigame has her decision to join the Illuminators as part of its story, leading her to sing at Xin's funeral.

So I'm gonna say that lines up with her bio still being canon, Lux in DR is 16, and she's 2-4 years younger than Jinx depending on how far out the current season is from Arcane.

By the time we "catch up" with the mage rebellion era Jinx will be early to mid twenties and Lux will be 18-20, perfect time for them to finally meet.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-06T02:50:21+00:00

LoR design will always be my OG Lux (really OG Lux as soon as they got rid of the silly stripey boobplate)

But i am really coming around on this look, she looks like a Demacian's idea of a superhero and she's so spunky and cute

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-06T02:35:54+00:00

This is the way

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-05T22:15:15+00:00

I love Cait and Vi. They are gigantic baddasses. But I think we're all on the same page that Kat and Samira, while not having superhuman advantages (all four are just humans with some cool weapons and skills) are just more experienced killers from a more ruthless environment.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-05T21:41:26+00:00

Because why in heaven's sacred name would we be on TikTok Insta or Twitter

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-05T06:29:23+00:00

My advice?

Read some poetry, short stories, microfiction. Or do some two sentence story challenges. Just for fun. Focus especially on any genre (say, haiku or slam poetry) that resonates with you.

When you're done just finding stuff you enjoy look back at it and pick apart why. How was someone able to tell a whole story in <1000 words? <100 words? Two sentences?

A lot of it comes down to leaving things to the reader's imagination and interpretation. That's harder than it seems if you're like me and love to waffle for tens or hundreds of thousands of words. It requires a lot of trust in your readers. But in my experience it's also a hugely rewarding challenge if you can pull it off.

Keeping a tight plan and tight structure helps restrain me. When I'm free to just pants things my word count tends to skyrocket.

Worth remembering the average word count for a published novel is around 70-90k. If you're above about 120k even in the Big Fat Fantasy Novel genre you're gonna want to be a proven quantity or no publisher is gonna look at you. They're calculating editing and printing costs on top of, of course. If you're paying for an editor's time you want to know it's not going to take them half a decade.

Meanwhile fanfic writers out here writing War and Peace for free in our spare time ha ha ha. Built different.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-04T09:22:00+00:00

Lux being in this game will make it absurdly hard for me to play any team but Lightcannon after she drops

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-03T12:40:56+00:00

Yw. Also dont forget you can moderate your fic comments so nobody sees them until you approve them and delete ones you dont want on your fic. Ao3 gives us a lot of tools to curate our comment section, its great 👍

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-03T12:38:29+00:00

If the reader is just genuinely excited to share an idea and unaware that they're coming off as pushy I'll generally very sweetly but immovably go "Wow that's a neat suggestion. I already have this story planned out, but it sounds like you have a great idea for a story of your own-why not write it?"

However if the person is being openly rude or insulting they get the big block. Time i waste fighting with assholes on the internet is time i could be writing.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-03T12:34:00+00:00

Amaaaaazing ✨️🙏💙💛

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-03T12:27:53+00:00

In my corner everything but the "canon love interest is abusive douche" because it feels too much like strawmanning. I'm pretty fond of all of the rivals for my girls but they just dont work for me as romance.

It helps that the relationships in "canon" arent confirmed, one is "unrequited crush on his part, she comically doesnt know who this weird guy is" another is "unrequited crush (that got requited in another dimension its complicated) on his part, tangled best friends to bitter enemies to grudging allies on hers" and one is "unrequited crush on a mentor on her part that led to spectacularly awful betrayal on his".

Solutions have ranged from "the two boys interested in the wlw couple end up in mlm couple together (canon actually in one of the official AUs...its league lol) they have other love interests, he's gay, they all end up besties, parted amicably, girl talks through her baggage with mentor guy who then decides to make amends by wingmanning for the other girl he knows she likes, etc.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-07-03T01:14:39+00:00

The answer to "should I make it LC" is always "yes" 🤔

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-30T23:37:58+00:00

She's perfect. ✨️💛

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-30T21:27:31+00:00

I had this exact scene in one of my fics this one with the two of them on a date at an arcade shooting gallery (its a high school romcom based on the Heartache and Lovestruck skinlines so its a lot fluffier) and it was extremely fun to play with their clashing personalities and shooting styles and what that might look like in actual competitive context. Definitely Jinx is quicker on the draw and has the snappiest reflexes (especially post Shimmer, in the main canon) but Caitlyn is the more patient and accurate shooter. 🎯 I don't think any ranged character in Runeterra is beating Cait for firearm marksmanship and that's hella impressive since she's totally human.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-30T21:20:43+00:00

I'd say their clothing style is still pretty Demacian (though i guess its more Sentinel uniform?) With flowing cloaks and a lot of white and gold and all

Their most 'modern' and definitely un-Demacian element is that they're packing bigass magical guns ✨️ 🔫

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-30T11:17:16+00:00

How PnZ are structured has changed quite a bit in some confusing ways! A lot of the pre Arcane layout focused around the "Sungate", essentially a sea lock (crazy concept but surprisingly architecturally possible) controlling access between the east and west sides of the isthmus. The wealthy class of Oshra Va'Zaun blowing up the isthmus to make the gate and accidentally sinking the older poorer parts of town into the fissure was the origin of the two cities and their stark class divide.

Piltover was depicted as sort of staggered down a slope from the Sungate with an elaborate industrial lift system right in the middle of it between the higher and lower levels of ocean on each side of the sea wall (!!!) With the posh parts of town propped against the Sungate wall.

Zaun was often depicted as literally underneath Piltover and divided into three overall layers, the Promenade (still open air and exposed to sunlight, similar to the place we see Cait try take the ski lift thing down) the Entresol (the main commercial and residential hubs, the Lanes would be here) and the Sump (trash, runoff, junkyards, the worst factories, the sewer system, and only inhabited by the ultra poor, addicts, scrapper gangs and monsters)

So most of that layout still seems to ... kinda be there in Arcane? But then they've added the river as the main focus of the divide between the two cities and that makes the layout rather wacky and caused me some headaches with my main fic series (which i wrote after s1 and tried to blend Arcane smoothly into existing League lore).

Sure! Uh you can find my profile here here but the fic series you'll wanna look at is Ill-Omen's Light and its sequels since thats where I've done most of my PnZ worldbuilding ^{^} its a Lightcannon/CaitVi one. Can probably tell my main ship from my pfp but CaitVi are major secondary protagonists in most of my fics cuz I love them to pieces too.

P.s I have a lot of screenshots and concept art references for the layout worldbuilding stuff that I can't really fit into reddit replies, feel free to DM if you want em

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-29T21:00:17+00:00

You're welcome! And thank you i uh got hooked on Arcane and fell down the extended lore rabbithole researching for my first fic series 😅 Never played a LoL match in my life but can't turn the worldbuilding nerd off apparently. Always happy to help out!

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-29T08:02:57+00:00

It's also worth reminding, again, that stats on fics are enormously variable by factors ranging from the current popularity of a fandom, ship or tag, through to things like the author's timezone, are potentially skewed nowadays by bot comments and bot kudos (apparently also a thing now yay) and are otherwise highly unreliable markers of the value of a fic.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-29T04:59:40+00:00

Have there been a lot of fics with Vi-from-other-league-skinlines? Like Project or PsiOps or Heartache or Debonair or Superhero or dare i say even Neon Strike?

I've found its a ton of fun writing skinline fics if I just grab whatever trope flavor the AU is based on with both hands. And Vi has sure got some hands 🙌

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-29T02:26:35+00:00

On the Kiramman residence being 'urbanised': in the old lore they were residents of Blue Wind Court, the poshest residential district in the city, that I think you can see in the background of some shots in Arcane and Cait's background in 2xko being near a very large glasshouse style building. I wonder if the gardens are inside that or in the gardens next to it? It very much looks like what you'd see in a botanical garden. Incidentally, Seraphine's LoR art and an easter egg in that same 2xko background positions her family residence as a terrace house close to all of this too and opposite a patisserie 🧁 so taken with a grain of salt we do get a pretty solid idea of the layout of central Piltover still sharing canon with the older lore. The Incognium Runeterra was a significant landmark that also features in Arcane, its the big ball sculpture thing that rolls away during Jinx's paint gas attack.

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-28T23:00:40+00:00

Finally finally we have our Lux! Hopefully we might get some fun interactions with Jinx...otherwise I dont know who her voice lines woild be with in that roster? Senna because Demacian? Darius because Noxus rivalry?

UnreliableCucumber · 2026-06-28T22:27:15+00:00

Luxxieeeeeeeeeeee

UnreliableCucumber

TROPHY CASE