Duplicity application
Nov. 19th, 2025 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
manprogressed« « « OBSESSIVE » » »
Name: Jayce Talis Door: none Canon: Arcane Canon Point: season 2, episode 9 "The Dirt Under Your Nails" - while Caitlin and Mel face down Ambessa, and others confront the minions of the Machine Herald, Jayce allows himself to be taken into the Arcane in an effort to convince Viktor that the only path forward is the destruction of the wild rune — and all of Hextech in their version of the universe. Age: 32 Appearance: Appearance as of the final battle in s2e9. History: Biography/history from the Arcane wiki. Personality: Positive Trait: Dedicated From his first exposure to the Arcane when he was a child, Jayce has been dedicated to discovering this magic that used to be a major part of the world but which has slipped into obscurity. He spends his youth and early adulthood researching it secretly, until the explosion in his apartment. When Viktor recovers his research and encourages him to continue pursuing it, Jayce takes little prompting to return to his fixation. As Hextech grows, his dedication to their research and the improvement of Piltover and Zaun remains at the forefront of his concerns throughout season one, even when that dedication and concern over improvement, safety, and stability is exploited by others. Outside of his endeavors with the Arcane, his dedication extends to his closest friends — Caitlin, Viktor, and Mel. In season one, we see the ways that Jayce continually tries to see the best in his friends, to support and uplift them, with his earnestness and belief in not only their collective goals to improve lives in Piltover and Zaun, but also the individual ones as well. Even when their goals (particularly Caitlin, in her quest for justice after the death of her mother) do not align, Jayce tries to approach their goals with his own. At times, this means that he puts his own morals aside for the cause of his friends. Other times, like when Viktor is injured in the attack on the council building, Jayce's dedication to Viktor outweighs his promise to him to destroy the hexcore and its alien connection to the Arcane. By season two, Jayce's experience in the failed timelines has jaded his views on the world and the arcane, but has not dampened his commitment and dedication to his friends, or to Piltover and Zaun. When he returns from the Void, his dedication is now tied to the knowledge that he has to stop Viktor to avoid the doomed timelines. It is his dedication to Viktor as his partner that drives him to overcome his repulsion for violence and stop Viktor, the Herald, from ushering in a complete catastrophe of their world. It is his dedication to Piltover and Zaun and the potential of their cities that lets him lead others together to fight back against the Machines and the Machine Herald, as well as Ambessa and the Noxian army. Negative Trait: Obsessive Dedication can easily be seen as obsession, and vice versa. Jayce's drive for the Arcane, for knowledge, for the ability to harness something beyond the understanding of mortals and the mundane, leads him down a path that could very well spell disaster. From his first exposure to the Arcane, saved as a child by the mage, we can see the spark of his obsession with understanding how and why the Arcane exists, and how to harness it for the everyday person. Despite Jayce's best intentions, throughout the show, it is shown that his dedication and commitment to his knowledge and the improvement of the world around him are fed by an undercurrent of obsession. Even from the first time that we see Jayce — or, rather, Jayce's apartment — we get a picture of the kind of young man he is with his studies: neglecting basic safety and even hygiene for the long nights of his private research, illegal ventures into Zaun to pick up materials that would help with his unsanctioned studies, and even defying his mother, his advocates, and the council of Piltover to insist that he not only can but should continue his research on the Arcane. The obsessions he experiences make him malleable to manipulation, and reckless in decision making. Certainly, an element of his obsession is what drives him to use the hexcore on Viktor, catalyzing him into the Herald after his exposure to the Arcane. The true picture of his obsession is while Jayce is trapped in the doomed timelines, as he spends unknown time in the Void building and rebuilding his understanding of the world, as well as physically building and rebuilding himself. Negative Trait: Compromising In spite of his determination, Jayce allows others to influence him in regards to how he approaches his goals and accomplishments. When Heimerdinger expresses concerns over the potential dangers of Hextech inventions and the rate or focus that Jayce and Viktor have about their technologies, Jayce pulls back from announcing these inventions at the Progress Day ceremony, despite he and Viktor intending to share these accomplishments. When he's made a member of the council — and even before, as the "face" of Hextech — Jayce spends years delaying or redirecting work that he would rather be doing in order to placate the council and their business interests. That same supremacy of council goals over innovation and improvement for the people of Piltover and Zaun also leads him through a series of backroom business deals and cooperative agreements, and even allows for him to buckle and move to have Heimerdinger removed from the council and the academy, especially once Heimerdinger starts pushing back against Jayce and the rest of the council's shift towards weaponizing Hextech. He tries to make everyone else happy and continually undercuts himself in the process until no one is happy, especially himself. Despite his best intentions, as Hextech grows and the tensions with Zaun skyrocket, Jayce's ascendency to the council becomes a balancing act of his commitment to the betterment of Piltover and Zaun, and an abiding idea that he is the person that can enact protection and justice. He builds weapons, acts as a function of oppression, and cannot see how his own ignorance and complacency contributes to the issues at hand. Throughout season one, Jayce continually allows himself to get caught up in the causes of others until he loses sight of his own ideals and goals. Not only in a capitulation to the business concerns of the council, but in the very fabric of his being the Man of Progress, the face of Hextech. He spends so much time and effort becoming and being a spokesperson instead of the inventor and creator he wants to be that he loses sight of what drove him to research the Arcane in the first place. Whether as a result of his increasingly compromising nature or merely his staunch dedication to the people he cares most about, Jayce has issues keeping his own promises as the series goes on. This culminates particularly with Viktor, when he asks Jayce to destroy the hexcore. While Jayce initially agrees to this, he goes back on the promise when he realizes he might be able to use it to save Viktor after the attack on the council chamber. His fear of losing his best friend and partner outweighs his promise with an immediacy that leaves him shocked when Viktor revives from the hexcore cocoon and leaves Piltover. In the Void, as he sees the destruction wrought across the failed timelines, he sees the results and consequences of his own selfishness in what the corrupted hexcore does to turn Viktor into the Herald. Negative Trait: Naive Jayce's faith and dedication to others, his arrogance, and his admittedly sheltered upbringing in Piltover all show him to be naive to a fault. From the first two episodes, we see that he can be easily duped and deceived by others, such as going into Zaun to buy the supplies for his secret project and being outmatched in haggling for his materials by a child. His absolute belief in others makes him a wonderful spokesman for Hextech, but leaves him blind to the ways that Piltover uses Hextech for their own gains. This blindness is also what leads to him sidestepping and ultimately setting in motion Heimerdinger being removed from the council; his naivete is so great that instead of heeding warnings, he thinks that he can control a situation long enough to account for all the variables. Jayce's part in the creation of weapons used against the Zaunite resistance is one of his first exposures to violence. This, as well, shows where his naivete is in motion: first, that he is shocked and horrified to discover that he was fighting and contributed to the death of children; and later, his visceral reaction to seeing the dead bodies on the bridge after Jinx causes an explosion. However, this aspect of his naivete also leads him to buckling under the concerns of the council and his own skewing morality to make a deal with Silco to secure Zaun's independence, looking for peace through getting rid of Jinx and the drug, Shimmer. He truly believes that the deal will work and resolve all tension, that removing one or two pieces from the board will result in a lasting peace. While Jayce's time in the Void does batter down some of the naivete — through exposure to the horrors of the compounding, ruined timelines, his own madness, and ultimately his capacity to embrace violence as a means to an end — it still exists in his lack of understanding of the actions and choices of others. It isn't until these final moments of the second season that Jayce seems to realize that Mel was using him for her own goals and aims throughout their friendship and brief relationship; and it is only through his exposure to the Mage in the ruined timelines and, ultimately, to Viktor's ascendency to the Machine Herald, that Jayce realizes that he was the contributing factor in this downward spiral with his partner. Powers and Abilities: Jayce himself does not specifically have any powers or abilities beyond that of an average human. However, the wild rune embedded in his wrist gives him an innate connection to the Arcane, and enhances some of his natural physical prowess, including allowing him to wield the corrupted Mercury Hammer. Entering Duplicity will offer some basic nullification of the wild rune's more erratic and unpredictable behavior, including Jayce experiencing multiple timelines/realities at once, except when it is in proximity with a hexgem. Jayce will endeavor to contain or control the wild rune as quickly as possible upon arrival. Inventory: corrupted Mercury Hammer (non/semi-functional); original notebook with research on Arcane and early Hextech technology speculations; 1 refined hexgem Samples: Network (TDM #44) Prose/log style (TDM #45) |
