#Like Noxus is piltover’s problem why does Zaun have to fight their battles too after being under their boot

[yangscowlick]

Anyway Piltover and Zaun are going to team up to oust Noxus, Vi/Jinx is gonna be the bridge and Zaun will be independent at the end. Vander tried, but he couldn’t do it because he ignored the discontent represented by Silco and it depended on the good grace of Grayson as an individual and not an equal power balance, etc etc.

[arcane-ish]

Most of my mutuals (and I) come down on the side of “Silco was, under the circumstances, more right than Vander and one tragedy of Arcane is that he didn’t succeed in his plan”.

I guess one problem of mine is that I'm a lot less convinced of that. Starting with, just because Silco had the right idea (Piltover sucks) doesn't mean that his plans how to deal with it were necessarily that good.

I recently went to a lecture of history for my home country which talked a lot about the rise of fascism in Europe before World War 2 and in my real life country real life people made the decision to not try to call a general strike when there was a major crisis of government. And the way they tell is was because they knew that they had way too many normies and women and children in their ranks and everybody in their ranks with real military experience told them they would just get slaughtered.

Was it the right decision? I don't know. But it is was that was sincerely made by real life historical people.

I think our view on history is often clouded and romanticized because we only remember the successful or pretty successful uprisings. We don't have all the ones on the radar that didn't happen because nobody showed up, the ones that only got a bunch of people killed but changed nothing about the status quo and the ones that might have made everything worse.

Just being morally right isn't enough in the real world you also need a feasible battle plan.

On the show these are the closest to concrete Silco plans we have heard of:

Battle of the Bridge: presumably something with violence. Maybe just escalate it. Maybe traditional acceleratism of "if we get beaten and get many people killed that's a good thing because it will get more people to fight"? We don't know. It is prevented, but it also seems doubtful that it would have worked.

Something, something with Shimmer: After he loses his first Shimmer supply he seems to give up on that plan willingly and instead seems to switch to a plan of trying to build up their own industry.

Something, something Hextech weapons? It's still not 100% clear to me what Silco planned to achieve except parity of power with Piltover, when we see how easily Jayce builds hextech weapons. Was his plan always to bomb the council or is this something Jinx just decided on their own?

In the end Silco came closest to his dream via a negotiation without an all out battle (not to slight Silco here, him building up power and a threat scenario was certainly part of why the council was considering it at all, but at the same time, Silco got lucky that Piltover had a lot of "dove-ish" council members rather than hardliners).

And then there's the whole meta level, how independent Zaun would every have been economically, financially. Via the Chembarons it seems Zaun already has the possibility to build up their own industry and it seems to be exploitative towards Zaunite citizens anyway even if their own people are running it.

Like I said elsewhere, I just have deep doubts about how serious the show is about telling a revolution story or whether revolution and injustice is just pretty window dressing to a story that is probably about character relationships first, League-like spectacle second and revolution and politics third.

But I have no problem in being proven wrong by the time the show is over. I crave a good story that does a genuine stab at trying to answer this questions and have an opinion on it even if it might not necessarily gel with me own. I just have more genuine worry that whatever happens is very likely to be a jumbled mess from a "okay, what's the political takeaway from this".

(with me still thinking that with the current story setup the most likely Free Zaun setup is Zaun getting it because Caitlyn feels bad and because Zaun agreed to play mercenary for Piltover against Noxus, the threat that Piltover themselves invited due to their own stupidity. and not a mention of the actual interest strategic elements that an outside power can play in a struggle like that [ie the Zaunite side being behind inviting Noxus to further their own goals, or at least parts of Zaun debating whether they should offer to team up with the Noxians to beat Piltover, or Ambessa trying to make dealings with Zaun and promising independence if they fight for her)

Fear haunts us all

Just thinking of the “relatability” of Silco and Vander as a duo (romantic, comradely, it doesn’t matter). They represent two urges most of us have inside us: to go out to fight and kill for what we care about, and the urge to protect and make peace for what we care about. They often conflict. Even in everyday life we often have to choose between arguing for a change and making work/ trouble, and being a nice amiable person getting on with everyone.  And neither is wrong, not as a philosophical stance. And neither is pure in Arcane, either. Vander “wasn’t always the peacemaker” and his motives led him to do at least one truly awful thing (if you read the Drowning as precipitated by Silco being a troublemaker, which I do, but also Vander being somewhat traumatised himself by events in the Piltover-Zaun conflict). Silco has a coherent peace plan which includes concessions, and in the end, limits on what he’ll do to achieve it. Most of my mutuals (and I) come down on the side of “Silco was, under the circumstances, more right than Vander and one tragedy of Arcane is that he didn’t succeed in his plan”. The symbolism of “What could have been” playing over his dead body isn’t particularly subtle. But the relatibility is in the duality, the need to compromise vs the need to fight and the fear that you’re not doing the right thing.