in september of 2012 i walk into my new class for the first time. The prettiest boy ive ever seen says “yo” and i wave and scuttle to the back of the room and we dont talk ever, because he starts hanging out with boys that i was scared of. I think americans would refer this as high school (started when i was 15) but for austrians its a HTL! And i studied game design !

in december 2012 vi comes out in league of legends and her loading screen is a hot pink haired woman with Big fists, playing the first ever loading screen song with lyrics, here comes vi. i fall in love. i knew about league because i watched my older brother play it almost daily, and like 10 people in my class also played it, but it wasnt until vi came out that i wanted to play it myself along with my internet friend. But well. I dont play vi because it turns out im not a good top. (ha) Nor a jungler. My internet friend loves vi and plays her, and to this day because she was the one i started playing league with, i heavily connect her with vi.

In january 2013 thresh comes out and he becomes one of my mains. (I was always destined to bottom) I start playing games and arams (before the gamemode existed, before howling abyss? iirc???) with the people in my class, actually socializing for the first time, but never making friends because well.. Theyre kind of mean to each other. They flame each other and make me flinch from how loud they yell in class. I have enough yelling at home and dont need it at school too, so while i keep playing with them when they ask me (or when they need someone), at home i duo que with my internet friend! (who i just chatted with yesterday again. This is why im so sentimental now btw.)

in late 2013, riot blows my mind by uploading get jinxed. jinx is edgy in a way that my angsty teenage girl self adored. blue long hair and pink eyes, so playful and insane, building bombs and guns and wrecking havoc with a banger song blasting, and a huge smile on her face. I fall in love.
Jinx is an adc. and while i did bottom, i mained support. and i was always someone who picks one champion (or a handful) and sticks with them literally forever. it wasn't until i started playing ranked games that i was forced to diversify my support champion arsenal... from thresh to thresh and nami and leona and alistar and morgana... so instead of playing jinx, i started supporting her and admiring her explosive silly personality from beside her. i remember sitting in class and drawing jinx right after the music video came out. i think i still have that somewhere in my old drawings collection.... i remember a friend complaining about how shes edgy and boring, and i remember being so upset about it because i felt like jinx was the first female character that actually had a personality that was unapologetically herself ?? i dont think i argued with him back then, i just said that i think shes cool and doodled her.. dont get me wrong. i still had issues with jinxs design, as i did with any and all women in league back then because riot was allergic to different female bodytypes, and it was SO bad that jinx was "refreshing" because she was skinnier than the others LMAOOOOOO...

OK ANYWAY

On a fateful day in early 2013 maybe, I play a 1v1 on the new aram map howling abyss against the prettiest boy in my class. He plays nidalee and i play sona and we both build AP and go at each other. He sits two rows in front of me, and when i two-shot him for the first time, he turns to me and says something like “what the hell”. With a big smile on his face. I fall in love again, and i dont realize it for a long time.

In late 2014, warriors comes out. Our class flies to [country in the continent of europe] to visit a game convention. Im only able to attend because my teacher went at great lengths to make it possible. The boy sitting next to me on the plane is the one that said jinx is edgy and boring, and throughout the flight i silently forgive him because we bond over our shared interest in art and music, and because he tells me he has an intense fear of heights and told no one– i dont know what to do for him then, but we end up sharing his (high quality) headphones and listening to music, and that seems to be enough.
The plan for the excursion is that we will be spending the first few days in the city and then all 3 days at the upcoming games convention.
On one of the days before the con, something bad happens to me. (was it during the con? I dont remember) And maybe it wasnt that bad in the grand scheme of things of things that have happened to me, but it sets the tone for the upcoming days. I also dont know it yet, but big crowds sap the energy out of me and make me shut down, so the first day of the convention, im incredibly exhausted, following along my friends wherever they want to go and not caring what i want to do myself.
Its a huge convention. My now-roommate then-not-yet-close-friend gets to meet youtubers that he admired, theres a ton of game stands of people presenting indie or triple A games, theres a bunch of cosplayers everywhere. On the first day i spend half my money on an assassins creed zip up hoodie and i almost exclusively live in it for the rest of the duration of the trip.
But im exhausted. And so tired. And everything is so loud. And i listen to warriors on repeat and i hold hands with a friend and let her take me to places because i dont have the energy to think for myself.
On the event schedule, theres many timeframes where people play league live. Its on a big stage where there are two booths, one for each 5 person team, and it has people who do commentary and announcements and its recorded live too. Just like real esports is! I think it was world-championship-time, which is why warrior dropped and which is why this convention advertised it. It feels very official (as it was a riot event im pretty sure?), but its not official, because the players are exclusively random people that the announcers pick from the crowd.
Around that stage, i see a league cosplayer for the first time. Its jinx. !!!! And i swear i lit up when i saw her. She looks so cool and she poses for the crowd and i take a picture (which i just saw on my phone is corrupted :( but you can still see almost all of her!) and i smile for the first time in what felt like days and i get sooo excited and invigorated. I dont manage to tell her she looks cool, theres a lot of people there. But i started almost bouncing up and down with excitement. Feeling alive again. Its silly but it really did the trick. Also. theres a ton of music playing at that event, especially around the league stage while they were in-between games. And this specific hero remix plays often, and also while the jinx cosplayer was there im pretty sure. I went to listening to warrior on repeat to listening to hero on repeat.
Okay. so. Im not wearing my assassins creed hoodie, because i borrowed it to one of those “scary guys” that i mentioned in the beginning, who is actually quite nice but we never became friends. But. the important part is that that scary guy was friends with the boy i liked. So. i finally feel alive again. and i see my assassins creed hoodie close to the stage of the league event because it was just about to start again. The boy i like and the plane-boy are there with him. I finally feel alive again so we chat and have a good time and i feel social and fun for the first time in those dreadful days.
And then. .
And then the announcers start speaking. And theyre asking for new players again. And the boy i like is like “lets do this!” and him and plane-boy put their arms up and jump up and down to be picked by the announcers. and im like . huh . what the . why would you ??? up on stage ??? huh ????
And they get picked!!!!!!! And they get picked (not scary-boy though, he doesnt play league).!!!!!! They get picked and they walk on stage and into their little booth and then the announcers keep picking more people and im there like ?? ahh???? And then they need just one more person. And im . okay listen. I think i was wearing a stark white hoodie that was NOT mine . and i was the only girl in the crowd. So i stand out. And so im like. Okay. i . ill just stand Normally and put my arm up and they wont pick me anyway. But they picked me. They… picked me…… and then . and then i wwent up on stage (what the hell) in front of a huge crowd. And i see the boy i like and plane boy walk into the Opposing booth. And . i get to be in the other booth. Meaning ill play against them.
So i walk into the booth as the last person with another dude at my side, and mid and bottom is already taken. We look at each other and i say “anything but jungling” and he laughs and says yeah you can top.
And i smile politely because well! I cant top. I can and i will but i really cant and i shouldnt be up on top.
And my first thought is okay !!! if i have to top, ill play someone i like. I dont play top champions okay. Sorry to be a bottom sup (not to be confused with bottom sub, but i am both anyway). So with just freshly having seen jinx, my immediate thought is ill just play vi! Vi because i love her design and shes important to me and i love jinx and this will calm me down emotionally.
It gets to the ban stage and vi gets banned.
I dont smash my head into the keyboard even though i want to. I do a dumbass move and i pick irelia in a panic. That was a dumbass move because they had DArIUS on top . to this day i still dont know what compelled me to play someone that darius counters perfectly. I like to believe im not dumb and that i just panicked a lot. Which i did.
Anyway. Boy-i-like picks vayne, he plays all roles but hes a huge carry so i knew hes gonna be mid or adc anyway. Plane-boy picks trundle, hes a jungle main. And thats when i knew ohh im going to lose big time <3
And then i started losing big time! And when youre sitting in that booth, you still hear the announcers outside but a little muffled and with a 3 minute delay, so everytime vayne got a double kill (which he did often) or trundle did something silly and trolling, the announcer would go WILDDD and the crowd would cheer and i mean i was losing but it was very fun to watch my friends do amazing.
Vayne gets a quadrakill and man . it was the hottest thing ever for me back then. I love men who are good at videogames…
Okay. and then the game ends, and all the players walk out on stage. We all get little lulu cupcakes gifted. And boy-i-like gets a microphone shoved in his face because he was the star of the game. He gets asked what the secret to his teams success was, and he says “communication!”. And i watch him with big eyes and think hes so cool and nice and pretty.
We talk a little! Not much, but im happy either way. I survive the whole trip and convention and start dreading school life again.

Back then almost all i did was feel dread. The adhd kicked in and i started procrastinating on all my homework and all my studying and i did everything last minute and it was incredibly stressful and i had a bad home life too. I was very lucky to have intense obsessions when it came to fandoms like league. It kept me going. And it especially kept me going after that convention, because just a few weeks later boy-i-like writes me at an ungodly hour of the day (1am or 2am on a school day) and asks if we want to play duo que ranked. And i say yes. And we start playing alone together very often. And hes so nice and encouraging to me and even though i still believe he did most of the work, he’d say i carried him! We become friends. We bond over art and i share my home life stress and we become best friends. Somewhere here i realize im in love and i dont think much of it because of course im in love, hes so nice and skilled and good at art and pretty. Nothing will come out of it anyway, so ill enjoy the butterflies while they last. Half a year later he confesses and i do a shocked pikachu face before it was a meme. We get together and i spend almost all my summers with playing league for 10+ hours a day with him and other friends, and i have the time of my life, and we climb to gold together (back then when gold was.. Harder to achieve than it is Now), and graduate together, and we stop playing league together, and we play many other games together instead.

Riot announces Arcane in 2019. My heart does a weird little flip at seeing jinx and vi, but my league days are long over, and i have to say that im not really into the piltover and zaun aesthetics, so.. Im not incredibly touched by it. Im still a little excited because im deeply in love with riots art and it really has shaped me as a person, and the artstyle they chose to go with for arcane is really stunning so.. But in october 2019 i was still recovering from something bad that happened to me that year (when will bad things stop happening to me?) so it didnt really.. Push through to me . kind of. It was a stressful year.

In late 2021 the first 3 arcane episodes come out. Me and my (still same) boyfriend and my roommate watch it together. And jinx and vi are on screen and the artstyle is so beautiful and the animation and music is amazing and i look around and for the first time in 2 years it feels like im finally in the present. In my own apartment. Still the same me as ive always been for the past 8 years, sharing an important life event with my best friend and my best friend, loving the same characters on screen, who are the same but different.

My favourite character in arcane is jinx.

(arcane spoilers ahead)

Jinx is everything that she was in my mind in 2013. Playful and insane but smart and innovative… and now her character design is actually PEAK. its still unapologetically her, but less sexualized and more fun. And now she has a father figure (two to be fair)! And she loves her sister! And shes fucked up because the mistakes she did as a child are following her around. And she was abandoned by vi (NOT by choice but still it hurts) and then raised by silco and so loved (in his own way) and then she lost him too. Shes so angry and hurt and and bad shit happens to her and she Does bad things too. Shes so. Shes so important to me and i felt like i was crying the entire time while watching her story. Season 1 was just… god. I already know its the best season of arcane. I never rewatch serieses but i rewatched season 1 act 1 4 times, and the other ones like 3 and 2 times. Jinxs story is everything to me. “What could have been” is everything to me.

In 2023 more bad things happened to me again. (When will they stop?) Remember when the boy-i-like said that the secret to success is communication? Well he was completely correct, and now he’s my ex, because he foreshadowed my character weakness so perfectly many years ago.
And i also quit two jobs and im still recovering from burnout which at this point i know is not burnout, its just the way ive always been.
Yada yada. Good things happen too btw. I fall in love with stray kids and i start writing. But all the meanwhile.. Im so angry.. And hurt.. And despite a lot of therapy, i dont know how to process things still. And then i take a therapy break for a year and it feels like no time at all has passed. Im still the same me. Ill always be the same me.

In november of 2024 arcane season 2 drops. I dont feel excitement. I feel dread. Not because of arcane, just because of general life. But arcane doesnt help because i dont want to experience something that i know i should love during a time where its hard to love things, and ive already got my hands full with stray kids. My roommates and i watch the first 3 episodes together anyway.. And i see my jinx.. And shes hurt. And angry. And grieving. And i love her so much, and i feel present again.
My ex asks me if we want to watch it together. I say i already watched it. He’s hurt because he says i promised ill watch it with him. I dont remember promising things, but my memory is criminally bad and i break many promises, so i tell him sorry! Watch the first 3 episodes and lets watch the rest together. I say that because im an idiot.
And then we meet for a different event the day after watching arcane. I feel so present that i notice it when i start dissociating. Theres many people. Theres fireworks. Its loud, and im so tired and exhausted and i dont tell anyone because i never tell anyone. Like an idiot.
But my ex knows. He always knows, and i wish he didnt anymore, because it hurts that he still knows and that hes still cool and nice and pretty.
And then the day after i have the worst therapy session ever, because im an idiot. Complete waste of money. Because i forgot i met up with my ex and started detaching myself from everything to the point of where in therapy . i kid you not. I was like “hm i dont really know whats wrong right now!” and i MEANT it. Until i was out of therapy and realized Hold On . something important happened yesterday . oops.
Days pass of me feeling Bad. turns out my period was actively trying to kill me but i won and that explains why everything felt so Especially doomed during the past few weeks. And while im uhh (tmi) experiencing the worst cramps and period of my entire fucking life (after. I kid you not. 3 years of inconsistent but (concerningly) light periods), im also finally feeling sane again. Finally more like myself, all the pain included. And i make the decision that i dont want to watch arcane with my ex because its important to me, and if i watch it with him, he’ll cling to these memories too. And i desperately need memories without him.
But im a coward and an idiot. So i dont say that. I simply dont write him when act 2 drops. But he writes me. And in an act of rare bravery i tell him that i dont want to watch it with him and that i dont want to see him that often anymore. He says ok, and thats that.
I wait until yesterday to watch act 2 because my roommate is gone on a work trip. I feel. Many emotions. Ive been feeling too many emotions and im just so tired of them.
And then i watch jinx again. And she has a new little family, isha. And isha is her own character, but shes also a representation of jinxs inner child, and i love that jinx loves her.
And then warwick arrives.. And ive waited for this moment for years. And jinx and vi hug him. And im bawling my eyes out and im holding hands with my roommate and i know theyll take all of that away from me soon but all that matters is that they get a loving, hopeful scene where i can delude myself into thinking everything will be ok. And vi and jinx bond again. And ambessa talks about sacrifice, and i know isha will sacrifice herself. And isha sacrifices herself and i cry. And im feeling many emotions. And i love jinx so much. And i connect with my old internet friend again and we bond and talk and she tells me she loves and relates to vi and i say i know, I connect her to you. And i dont tell her how much i connect with jinx because it turns out i just dont tell people things, but man.. I love jinx so much. Shes my favourite character in arcane. I also love viktor! But jinx takes the crown. Please let her have a happy ending. Something tells me she wont though. Whatever ending it is, i hope that itll be a new beginning for me