#Eernanon

[eerna]

Was it just me or was viktor’s writing kinda ableist. Like one of arcanes main villains is *checks notes* poor oppressed disabled man who wants to help other poor oppressed disabled people. And I know it’s bc he was taking people’s autonomy but that’s a lazy cop out to present a societal problem and not address it bc a crazzzzyyy person brought it up. Like viktor to me represents the perfect zaunite who does everything “right”- worked his way to the top, gave himself, his work, his life- for piltover’s benefit but was still casted aside. HIS technology was twisted to their image and he was told he could die now bc they got what they wanted from him and weren’t gonna help him or his ppl. So he dips and tries to do it himself instead of feeding into piltovers power bc they won’t accept zaunites no matter how perfect. And then his feelings abt this weren’t even validated at the end either, Jayce was just like, I liked when you were disabled??? (And was viktor ever really trying to cure himself or was he receiving no help and was scared of dying?) Like sure there is critique to be made to the trope of magical cure that says there is something wrong with disabled ppl and their lives can never be fulfilling unless cured. It’s an ableist trope. But making a victim of a system like that a villain??? For offering help to an oppressed class??? I guess if we consider how Viktors arc was treated, it’s no surprise the story ends with Zaun receiving no help or improvement. Arcane saying poor oppressed disabled ppl should just idk die or become martyrs for their oppressors? Kinda.

BRO MY THOUGHTS ON VIKTOR EXACTLY. The final boss of the show is friggin. Viktor???? HUH?????? Not the system????? Not the oppressors??? No, the oppressors redeem themselves by stopping VIKTOR, A CAUTIONARY TALE OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A ZAUNITE JOINS PILTOVER. When Jayce started giving his speech about how Viktor's problem was that he was trying to "heal his weaknesses instead of embracing them" I was like'????? Tf????? No????? Viktor's problem was that he decided to become part of the system. He believed the system was unfair to his people because it had no choice, so if Viktor provided the tools to stop the oppression, he could save them. He was trying to heal himself because he was ACTIVELY DYING and he WANTED TO KEEP LIVING SO HE COULD LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO INVENT SOMETHING THAT COULD TRULY SAVE ZAUNITES ONCE AND FOR ALL. But they mischaracterized him and turned him into someone who just felt bad about his disability. It was all so icky

[eerna]

I'll be honest when I first heard the "I'm the dirt under your nails, nothing's gonna clean me out" it bothered me and now I know why. It's essentially vi (a zaunite) saying she is dirt (filth) and making Cait, a piltie (a rich privileged girl) "unclean" with her presence. Like... That's not as romantic as the writers think.

In ep 1, 15 year old Vi gives an angry speech on how horrible it is that she feels she is worth less than Piltover people. In the final episode, 23 year old Vi concludes the show by calmly, romantically noting she is worth less than Piltover people. Crazy to think the writers thought this was a nice happy ending for her

[eerna]

Also what’s weird about arcanes writing this season is that it made no sense. It literally wrote misery for the sake of misery (killing isha for example just to make jinx suicidal) yet kept its happier tone shift? So many negative developments were framed as positive and not a tragedy, which I wouldn’t have liked it more if it Was framed as tragic bc again it felt like they were writing misery porn atp, but at least the tone would’ve been consistent. Like they abandoned the fact it had a tragic tone but still ended it on a tragic note except it’s not framed that way. SO WEIRD.

Also the amount of parallels and full circle moments that just didn’t make sense. They really thought if they wrote parallels or full circle moments it’s somehow makes it good writing without putting any thought into if doing so makes any sense (like the caitvi jail scene or ambessa invoking the wolf flashback and then calling Mel a wolf meant to be positive💀) But we are supposed to be happy bc ummm all the popular ships are canon I guess.

Also, on a sillier note, I couldn’t stop thinking about that arcane tweet about the music being too on the nose shdjajfbksfn it took me out so many scenes, especially the bad ones like caitvi sex scene and jinx “death.” I did like the music this arc, there were some really good ones, but every time I thought a scene was already bad a song would come on and narrate it to me and it would kill me.

YEAHHHHHH it is very tonally inconsistent and the parallels for the sake of parallels are super obvious.... The song part is so true fbdjsafk. I think hearing a basic sex pop song in the sex scene snapped something within me (IT EVEN MENTIONED AMERICA JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER BASIC SEX POP SONG). My personal favorite was Jinx' suicide song just saying she wants to die over and over again, and then when Vi is holding her dangling over an abyss, the song said "LET ME GO LET ME GO" as if it's some kind of a full circle moment that everything has been leading up to and I just started laughing honestly

[eerna]

the character assassination of viktor is something i will never recover from like what do you mean that a victim of oppression who rose into the elite makes the realization that its the system, not the development of hextech, that needs to be dismantled in order for any of its benefit to reach the undercity, ends up becoming an embodiment of that very said system itself by robbing people of their choices and autonomy to .. achieve perfect society ??? or whatever ?? i mean writing the corruption of characters is something i eat up but i feel like it was so distastefully done with his character.

like if i squint i can see the angle the writers were going for by creating a common enemy to unite piltover and zaun but idk how they thought VIKTOR should have been the choice for this. he deserved so much better .. and by the end topside is just. absolved from their oppressive behavior iguess. like where is the accountability and justice yall .. what actually societally changed from s1 other than them plopping sevika down in the council

EXACTLY I remember the discourse around Noxians uniting the cities from back when the trailers dropped, and I wasn't ENTIRELY opposite to a "a foreign enemy unites us" storyline... But the way it was done was simply Not It. What was done to Victor to achieve that unity was simply insane. Choosing a Zaunite to represent a system even worse than the current one was simply insane. Letting Piltover get away without any significant economic changes other than shutting down the Hexgates was simply insane.

[eerna]

i was one of the people who saw the early leaks post and i remember trying not to read too much of it but i had a moment of being like wow this cant be real but also it definitely could be. i remember reading about the damn caitvi sex scene and i thought to myself thats so ass why would they do it in a prison and then i realized the writers probably thought it was some meaningful parallel or something about vi being able to transform being imprisoned with something good

then the act dropped and i saw the damn parallels with cait finding her in the cell and i was like ok yeah. they basically had that as an idea. amanda overton was talking about it in a watch party and said they love their parallels and it was meant to symbolize vi addressing her trauma and im like. i see what they were going for and i get it I GUESS narratively but i really feel like this is such monkeys paw shit like we got this scene at what cost. and like the scene ITSELF was very good and sweet and lovely but like could it not have happened ANYWHERE ELSE?

i feel like the biggest problem with arcane s2 was that the creators rlly wanted to push the bar with animation storytelling. amanda talked about this too and like i feel like it kind of highlights the problem. where bc this show is so amazing graphically the animators wanna highlight that with as much action as possible instead of focusing on smaller scenes and more intimate quiet moments. i watched arcane s1 all at once after it came out and there were def parts that felt a little rushed in certain acts but it was nothing like s2. it just feels like they had all these story beats they wanted to hit but didnt give it the time it deserved and it sucks bc they said they always meant it to be 2 seasons so like why does it feel like this. they wrote them back to back around the same time what happened between s1 and s2. i just feel like the caitvi sex scene is a microcosm of the larger problem. they had these emotional beats and story moments that in isolation are really powerful but its almost like we didnt get a proper A to B transition. its like we skipped several steps for sooo many story beats.

such complex characters with real ass lives causing real ass problems. cait's privilege being an issue, how gratifying that could be to have explored. viktor's experience being explored more in depth. just so much more about zaun. like all of it was there in tiny slivers but it was never given the depth to GROW or properly BREATHE bc five million action scenes and plot points had to be squeezed in.

ultimately i love arcane overall. i think it has broken boundaries and done some amazing things. but its blemishes are really... painful at the same time. and knowing how the writers did such a good job in s1 makes me just like. cmon guys. you had it. YOU HAD IT

anyways sorry for blowing up your ask with so much rambling i just... idk. what are your thoughts on this stuff do you agree with my assessment or do you think the culprit is something else

No prob, welcome to the symposium~ Yeah, I totally get what the writers were going for with Vi. Which is why I am so shocked they thought it was a good idea. Like, okay, she is addressing her trauma in the sex scene... But why should her trauma get addressed by being locked in a jail cell by her sister, who just spent days being wrongfully imprisoned in there by the girl she's about to have sex with, and who then told her she was gonna off herself. If anything, the thing I was feeling was pain because it happened again, a Zaunite was thrown in jail by the Enforcers after she helped and saved them without any rights, and she was reminded she was less than them and her life is worth nothing... Mmmmm, the perfect memory to overwrite prison abuse!

I too felt s1 had some strange pacing choices, Vi and Jayce teamup comes to mind first, and that was, surprise surprise, a fight scene. But those were pretty minor, and still left time for other scenes to develop properly. It only becomes a real problem when it happens scene after scene, character after character, until no one is acting in character and you constantly feel like you have skipped a scene or two. I too remmeber them saying they wrote the seasons back to back, but. Dare I say it. I think s2 was so majorly rewritten by the time it went to recording that only the bare bones remained. In fact, that might be why we feel this way - maybe they DID have a frame they wanted to follow, but the rewrites warped and twisted the characters so intensely they ended up making no sense in the context of that frame. That's right, I'm talking about the way they decided to more closely follow and collaborate with LoL in s2. Jayce's final speech to Viktor only makes sense for game Viktor, and goes completely against s1 Viktor. Vi deciding police brutality doesn't really matter all that much makes sense for game Vi, and foes completely against s1 Vi. Jinx giving up on ever being loved or accepted by others makes sense for game Jinx, and goes completely against s1 Jinx.

So yeah my thesis is: Arcane knows it looks good, and sometimes it prevents it from being well written. It also decided to throw in its lot with LoL in s2, and no amount of good intentions from the writers could have saved it from crashing and burning.

[eerna]

I love vi so much that I’m so sad this happened to her. Like they “probably” wanted to convey that she’s gonna stick with Cait for a while by calling her a dirt under her nails but even writing that line rn is breaking my heart idk how everyone behnd that was just “yep that’s cool and so in character” this was the girl who said this city’s gonna respect to us someday and having a whole mental breakdown in front of Cait for how desperate her hometown place is in the “oil and water” scene. Im all here for caitvi but she loved jinx MORE THAN ANYTHING she’d die and kill for this girl why did the vice versa happen suddenly? Why did the writers discarded the legit CORE of her character, the one that was making her our vi, just to make her an extension of caitlyn. Not to say she’s probably still drinking as we see in the last scene why do they forced us to believe she’s gonna be ok cause she’s got Cait? Didn’t arcane prove us the whole time that love alone isn’t enough to make one healthy?

THANK YOU FOR MENTIONING THE GLASS IN THE FINAL SCENE BECAUSE I TOO WAS LIKE "WAIT IS SHE DRINKING AGAIN, CAN WE ELABORATE ON THAT" DBSBAJKBASKJ... I don't really have anything against her arc being that she needs to learn how to let people who don't want her to hold onto them go. Really, it's super unhealthy to keep obsessing over those who have left you behind, and I do think that the only way Vi could be happy is if she learned that lesson. Then, Jinx choosing to return to her would be all the more powerful. But the way we got to that point is just. Just really sad and not very good.

I saw the shippers complaining about the criticism of the final line and the jail scene by saying the critics just don't wanna see lesbians happy, but to me it's the opposite. I love Vi so much, she is my favorite character, and I absolutely wanted to see her happy, but I simply can't ignore what the story is telling me. Vi ISN'T happy. She is a prisoner in a system that treats her like shit, and she has made peace with it. She is humming a lullaby whose meaning is literally "Zaunites should be happy with Piltover's runoff and never ask for more", she is drinking, she is demeaning herself. The show tries to tell me she is happy, but that is not the emotion I am getting at ALL, because all the subtext points to the opposite.

[eerna]

I have. Mixed feelings about this season. But that last exchange between Viktor and Sky (or "Sky") was so so good

"I'm going to miss our little talks"

"No, you won't"

It's such a small exchange but it's true bc like. Viktor didn't give a fuck about her until she died! And while whether it was really her he was wandering the astral plane with or a hexcore fusion-induced projection of an IDEA of her is up in the air, the point is that it...doesn't matter all that much in the end. Viktor would've pursued his glorious evolution regardless. Their "conversations" were really more just Viktor listing off his findings and her sorta agreeing. It was just really well done

YEAHHH and the entire season I was really confused if that was Sky at all, so seeing that exchange definitely solidified that it truly isn't clear on purpose. Is it her? Is it just his way of coping with what he'd become? Who knows certainly not Viktor

[eerna]

Something I don’t see is discussed enough about Jayce is that he’s kind of discriminated and looked down upon in the upper city ( at least that’s the impression iv gotten) but he himself also discriminate and look down on others different than him. Like in that part where he’s talking poorly about undercity and viktor quickly calls him out and tells him that he’s also from there.

Yup! Jayce Talis is from one of the lower houses of Piltover. So still noble, just the kind of a noble that other, bigger nobles look down upon. This makes him quite a fighter for equality and peace in the beginning of the story... But the more power he amasses, the more corrupt he becomes, until he is lecturing Viktor that people from the Undercity are dangerous and shouldn't be trusted. I used to be super annoyed by it but now I appreciate it, I like characters who function as a warning that all the good intentions in the world won't save you from being blind to those in need when it matters most!

[eerna]

And you know what I love her but fuck Caitlin and fuck her mom. Vi and jinx and other kids in the undercity went through the same process multiple times and that bitch never gave a fuck or felt remorse about it. They didn’t even address the corruption inside the enforcers and what they were doing down there.

Because they tied the enforcers being mean to one singular reason: Cait's grief and vengeance. S2 pretends like once Cait stops rampaging, the Zaunites feel safe enough to join Enforcers. Which is bs, bc like the Hexgates, the issue started long before that point in time. S1 had Grayson, who was a "good Enforcer sheriff", as in she tried to lessen the impact they had on the Undercity, and STILL they were a terrifying hateful force every Undercity resident hated. Because it doesn't MATTER if the person on top has good intentions, the system is rotten from inside out and it can't suddenly turn good. But s2 forgot that part and said hey Cait is nice now we can trust Enforcers

[eerna]

It was really clear from how diff s2 was from s1 that they were probably gonna drop/not fully resolve some storylines, but it was literally none of the storylines I expected. Like I thought most of Mel's thing would get pushed to a Noxus-based series. I don't think it would have been awful for them to leave the machine herald thing more open ended either. Very weird choice to make him a main villain right at the end. It kinda felt like the Piltover-Zaun series was neglecting,,, Piltover and Zaun. Some choices were made and I kinda wonder what we're going to hear when NDAs start wearing off.

Yup!! Exactly!! We neglected Piltover and Zaun in the show about Piltover and Zaun!! Now that you mention it, I too can't wait for NDAs to lift...

[eerna]

What did you think of Viktor being revealed as the mage who handed the stone to young Jayce? I remember it was a popular theory when S1 came out, but some also believed it was some other playable character from LoL.. So I’m here wondering if that was the plan from the very start because that flashback confused me before. They really pulled a Howl’s Moving Castle with them a la Find me in the Future, but Wise Regretful Viktor with a beard looked kinda funny

I don't like it... Last week someone asked me about it and I always always always root against time travel, but this is more than my personal preferences. I think thematically it makes no sense for it to be Viktor. I think it only makes sense if Jayce's life is saved by a mage who lives a symbiotic life with the arcane away from humanity, deep in the wilds, never taking too much and always giving back. That way we can see how it DOES work, the arcane isn't INHERENTLY EVIL, but it turns evil when in the hands of greedy capitalists who only take and never give back. There's something so beautiful in Jayce witnessing real, healthy arcane, and becoming so obsessed with recreating it in his world where it doesn't belong that he corrupts it into a monster. Making the mage Viktor, who is his partner in making the arcane a servant of capitalism, crashes this entire setup to the ground. And IMO the mage from s1 doesn't resemble Viktor as a s2 mage At All, not in his looks nor in his gestures or behavior, it was clearly a different character and idc if the writers try to say it was always meant to be him

[eerna]

Why would they try to parallel caitvi first meeting (which was a super fucked up time for vi) when the bed scene is RIGHT THERE

I KNOW??? I K N O W?????????????? There are so many s1 moments to pick and choose from to signify Vi finding safety and comfort with Cait. And they picked. The scene in which Cait does the bare fucking minimum as a member of the ruling class opposite a member of the oppressed class

[eerna]

Jail cell sex scene was good, the giggles were cute, but the timing and setting was just completely off. This is not an unpopular opinion ofc but HOW did they think this was a good idea. "Oh ya Vi just got abandoned by her sister who was like 'I'm gonna go kms btw.' Now is the time to have her fuck Cait" Bro are you sure though??? It's just comical cause like. Maybe a little more time for Vi to breathe and for Cait to be like "I let her go intentionally btw" and THEN the scene would've worked but as it is it was just so jarring

YEAH and you know the reason? The finale is missing the "calm before the storm" moment. YOu know how every final battle has that period before it when characters do whatever they gotta do before going to fight? THAT's usually when the romance happens. But here we jumped straight from the war planning into the battle, without any leadup, so they had to smash in a really awkward moment or not at all. PRIORITIES, PEOPLE!!!

[eerna]

https://x.com/vulltarex697/status/1860275084046295281?s=46&t=bJzTQsv30Dz3HWTn-GAdHg

This!!!!

Nothing changessss... nothing changes.... nooothing chaaangeees..... aaaaanyyyyhooooow

[eerna]

Vi is that one friend with a partner with problematic views 😭

She can NEVER bring her home for the holidays 😭

[eerna]

As a lesbian. I’m gonna say it , I would have rather vi and jinx running away together rather than caitvi, THERE

THERE!!!!!