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angstylittleguy · 1 year ago

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Dalton's Drawings

An important bonding opportunity for Bennett and Dalton, though neither leave feeling any better.

tw: mentions of suicide

character context: Dalton is a size-shifter whose height is affected by his emotions. Bennett frequently gets stuck in time loops and the only way to get the loop to end is for him to survive the day.

word count: 2.5k

-> In Which Everything Goes Wonderfully Wrong masterpost link: Here

-> character introductions and moodboards: Here

Bennett stalked down the hallway, humming lightly to himself as he pulled his Air Pods from his ears and shoved them in his hoodie pocket, the music ceasing suddenly. He knocked on Dalton's closed door. "Yo, Dalton. You ready to go, man?"

When no response came, Bennett creaked open the door, peeking his head in. "Hey man, are you in here?"

The silence lingered as Bennett scanned the room. Dalton's bed was unmade, something that he never allowed to happen. The guy was a neat freak, never wanting anything in his space to be out of place. It made Bennett quirk a brow for sure. The second red flag was that Dalton's phone was laying on the floor, screen faced up and still playing music from the earbuds that were attached by a thin white cord. Next to it, a fancy crayon that had been snapped in half from the impact of it hitting the hardwood floor.

Bennett stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. "Dalton?" He called, his voice much lower now. He picked up the phone and paused the music, placing it on Dalton's desk.

"Are you...?" Bennett got on his knees and peered under the bed. "Ah."

In the far corner of the room, pressed against the wall and almost totally concealed by the shadows of the bed, was Dalton, about the size of Bennett's hand.

Dalton glanced up miserably at Bennett, his heart pounding in his chest because of the massive eyes watching his pitiful form. He buried his head in his knees.

"Hey," Bennett murmured, trying to keep his voice low because he knew how much loud sounds affected him at this size. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, you know." The brunette dryly laughed, his voice betraying the humor he was attempting. "The usual."

Dalton tried to make a joke to lighten the mood, to make the fact that his friend found him sulking under his bed the size of a bug less pathetic, but it didn't help any.

"You're pretty small, did something happen?"

Bennett was aware of Dalton's abilities, they all were. But they didn't see it often— not the extremes, anyway— Dalton would always hide away in his room until the size-changing spell ended. They all knew he hated his abilities, just as much as Bennett hated his. Dalton found it humiliating, and they all agreed to give him privacy when things like this happened. It always felt wrong to Bennett to leave him be when he was going through one of his spells, however. They occurred because of how he was feeling, and to leave him alone felt like Bennett was abandoning him. Maybe when he needed them most.

When Dalton was this small, it meant he had a lot on his mind.

"Just thinking," Dalton said, his voice so small that Bennett had to strain to hear him.

Bennett laid down on his stomach, resting his chin on his folded arms as to not tower over Dalton as much as he could. It had to be frightening to just see a giant head watching him from a crack under the bed.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He already knew the answer, but he figured he might as well ask anyway.

Dalton shook his head. "Not really."

Bennett extended a careful hand, outstretching his arm across the length of the bed so that it almost brushed against Dalton's tiny form that seemed to shift deeper into the shadows. "Do you wanna come out? We can watch a movie or something until you're feeling better?"

He looked at Bennett's hand, it larger than life itself and he so impossibly small. Dalton was on high alert, worried that with one twitch of Bennett’s fingers he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from scurrying down the length of the wall and disappearing into the darkness.

"Listen, dude." Bennett interrupted his inner monologue with a frown. "It's totally okay to be scared right now. Hell, I would be freaking the fuck out if I were you. But you don't have to do anything you don't want to. We can stay in here and hang out, or I can go, you just say the word."

Dalton wiped frustratingly at his eyes, tearing his gaze away from Bennett's hand to look at him. "You don't have to go," he said numbly. "Can we just... stay like this?"

"Of course, man. I don't wanna do anything to make you uncomfortable."

He pulled his hand back to rest under his chin, causing Dalton to flinch with the unexpected movement. Bennett tilted his head to the side with a sad smile, watching his tiny friend wipe at his eyes as his ears flushed red.

"Ugh, this is so embarrassing." Dalton pulled down the beanie he wore so it covered his ears and nearly his eyes. "I hate this so much."

Bennett chose not to speak, and so Dalton continued. "I'm not scared of you, for the record. Just... uneasy, is all."

"That's totally fair, bro. It would we weird if you weren't."

Bennett tried to shift again, adjusting his position on the floor as Dalton watched him with a careful gaze. Finally, he pressed himself up into a sitting position with his hands, Dalton's vision no longer filled with Bennett's face, but rather his legs. He felt his heartbeat increase as the wooden floor creaked beneath the shift in weight.

"Sorry," Bennett chuckled, his voice now coming from high up and out of sight. "Uncomfortable on your hard ass floor."

He sat with his back against the bed now, his legs outstretched on the floor and facing the closed door. Dalton swallowed the lump in his throat as he forced himself to a stand, his entire body trembling as he walked out of the shadows on shaky legs.

(It’s fine. This is Bennett. You trust Bennett. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.)

Dalton bit the inside of his cheek.

(Not on purpose, at least.)

He paused just at the edge of Bennett's line of vision, staring up at his friend's mop of messy blond hair from his position on the floor. He was fidgeting with his hands, opening his mouth to say something but being unable to find the words.

From Dalton's perspective, Bennett was colossal. He was a massive force that could do with him as he pleased and there would be nothing Dalton could do until he managed to shift back to his normal size. And even with this major power imbalance, Bennett was patient and trying his best to look out for Dalton, never doing something that he wouldn't want him to.

Dalton walked out from under the bed, doing his best to mask his uneasiness. "Tell me about it," he said, voice slightly wavering. "I've been stuck down here for the past two hours."

Bennett's eyes widened and he quickly snapped his gaze down to Dalton, causing him to nearly jump out of his skin from the movement. "You've been like this for two hours?"

Dalton nodded sheepishly, craning his neck to meet his eyes.

"Dude, I'm so sorry. If I had known I would have come to check on you sooner."

"Ah, no it's okay." Dalton waved his hands in front of him awkwardly as if he were swatting away the idea. "It's better this way, anyway."

Bennett's frown never shifted from his expression, but his eyes softened just enough for Dalton to notice.

Dalton looked down at his feet.

"So," Bennett said, but his voice trailed off and he never finished his thought aloud. His gaze shifted to Dalton's desk, and he was able to see whatever he was working on from his spot on the floor.

"May I?" He asked Dalton, finger pointed at the desk.

Dalton shrugged, and Bennett shifted a little to grab the unfinished drawing.

It was of Meiling, her smiling complexion colored with oil pastels that showed off her warm skin tone. Half of her shoulder-length black hair was colored as well, but the color abruptly ends and a single black line trails to the edge of the paper, even staining the desk as it was dragged towards the floor.

"This is really good, dude," Bennett told Dalton, looking down at his small form that watched him examine the drawing with cautious eyes.

"But," Bennett said, "I don't think she's into guys."

Dalton flushed red. "Ah! No! That's not why I was drawing her!"

"Dude, it's okay. I'm not judging. I just wanted to tell you you probably don't have a chance with her before you get your hopes up."

Dalton buried his face in his hands and threw his head back. "Noooooo, it's not like that! I just— inspiration struck, okay?"

"Yeah, man. I get it, she's pretty—"

"Oh my god, Bennett. No. Okay, look in my sketchbook at one of the last few pages."

Bennett stood, his height making Dalton dizzy. He stepped closer to the desk, running a finger along the rows of sketchbooks that lined the shelf. "Which one is it?"

"The black one."

"Like, ninety percent of them are black."

Dalton groaned. "Just— put me on the desk."

Bennett's head whipped downwards to stare at Dalton who stood uncomfortably close to his socked feet. "What?"

"Put me on the desk."

"You want me to put you...?"

"On the desk, yes."

"You want me to pick you up and—?"

"And put me on the desk."

"You want me to—?"

"OhmygodBennettjustdoitalready."

Bennett awkwardly squatted, laying his hand flat on the floor next to where Dalton stood. The brunette stared at it for a moment, before glancing up at Bennett's lingering gaze, and climbing on.

The moment Bennett's hand was in motion, Dalton fell to his knees, the uncomfortable feeling of skin surrounding him. He held on to Bennett's thumb for balance, knowing that a fall from this height would surely kill him.

Dalton was deposited on the desk in a matter of seconds, but his legs were weak as he struggled to force himself to a stand.

He trekked across the wooden surface, stopping when he reached the markings from the oil pastel that he was using when he shrunk. He rubbed at it, staining his hands black as he tried to wipe away the marking. Dalton pointed up at the shelf with a newly black finger. "It's that one."

Bennett grabbed the sketchbook, laying it down next to Dalton as he wiped his hands on his pants.

He flipped through the pages, finally landing on a self-portrait in the same oil pastels.

"What do you notice about mine compared to hers?"

Bennett hummed as he stared at the two drawings. "Well, one is obviously of you…"

"Yes, that's true. But what about our faces?"

"You have pale, pasty skin?"

Dalton pressed a hand to his cheek. "No, dumbass. She's smiling."

Bennett looked back to the drawings, seeing the one of Dalton expressing a deep frown, with the most defeated eyes Bennett had ever seen on a person. His face was somewhat red, especially around the eyes and the tip of his nose as if he had been crying just moments before. Compared to the drawing of Meiling, whose eyes were bright and full of life, her smile brighter than lightning, Dalton's self-portrait was depressing.

"Why... why did you draw them like this?"

The brunette blew air out of his nose, glancing down at his feet before looking back up at Bennett's massive form. "I'm sure you've noticed it too," he said, peeking over his shoulder to the drawing of Meiling that laid idly on the desk. Her smile seemed just as big as he was right now. "She's always so... happy."

Bennett cocked his head sideways. "And you're not?"

"How can I be?"

Dalton threw his hands up miserably, gesturing to himself. "I mean, just look at me. I am four inches tall right now. And for what? Because I'm a little sad? I'm a little sad all the time, so this is just my life now! And Meiling? She didn't get stuck with some shitty superpower that affects her everyday life. She's never been happier, and I'm—"

"Jealous?" Bennett finished for him.

"Yeah. I'm jealous."

Dalton sat down on the desk, propping his chin up in his hand. "I used to draw as a way to express how I'm feeling. It normally helps— or it used to— didn't matter if I was sad or angry or happy or whatever. But I can't do that anymore, because, well..."

He gestured half-heartedly to himself again, frown coating his lips. "I guess you wouldn't get it, though. You got pretty lucky—”

"Lucky?" Bennett almost laughed, shifting his position so he stood on his knees and rested his folded arms on top of the desk next to Dalton. "I would not describe my situation as lucky."

Dalton's expression seemed to say, 'then what?' so Bennett continued. "I would describe it as 'The Fucking Worst.' Do you understand how many times I've died? Like, actually, physically died? More than I would have wanted, which means more than once."

Bennett talked with his hands, and with each wild gesture thrown in Dalton's direction, he flinched, debating standing up and moving back further on the desk. If Bennett noticed, he didn't do anything to show it.

"And yeah, it could be useful if I needed a do-over or something, but like, to get that do-over I'd literally have to die. And that's so scary, dude. Like, I can't—"

His words fell short as he wasn't sure what to say next. He glanced down at Dalton who stared at him with big eyes.

"I'm sorry," Dalton said. "That does suck."

"I feel like it happens to me more often than others. Like, normal people only die once." Bennett paused for a moment. "Well, yes, duh, of course people only die once. That's not what I meant. I'm saying, if a guy somehow survives a terrible accident, what are the odds he's going to get into another one a week later? And then in another one two weeks later? Probably not likely, you know?”

Dalton nodded silently.

"But for me, it is likely. I'm like… cursed to die. I think it's the universe's way of forcing me to use my ability. I mean, Rory uses hers all the time. Josiah ends up invisible almost once a week. You use yours pretty often. When do I have a chance to use mine? Dying doesn't happen to someone that often, but the universe needs me to use my ability. So, things happen that force me to use it."

Dalton wasn't quite sure what to say, and Bennett dryly chuckled. "Didn't mean to ramble," he said. "Can we just agree that both of our abilities suck?"

"Yeah," Dalton nodded. "Our abilities suck."

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hadesknockedupintheunderworld · 8 months ago

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I think the theme of "home", while not always in the forefront, is something that interests me about the Sonic Movie Universe (in a similar way it interested me during Prime)

For Movie!Sonic, home is where you make it first and where your family is second. After his guardian died, he presumably jumped from place to place, and it was a while before he had a stable home. He made himself a home on earth and fell in love with the land and the culture. But you get the sense that as long as he's in hiding and ostracized all the time, it never fully feels like home. So it's important that he got to really experience earth and living in Movie 1 with Tom. It's important that he made earth his home, and then made the Wachowski household his base. No matter where he goes on earth and beyond, he has a family he chose and who chose him he can come back to and be himself around. "Home" for Movie!Sonic began with necessity, progressed due to his growing attachment to earth and what it offers, and fully settled in with him having a more permanent place in this world and support.

For Movie Tails, I surmise that "home" to him is where Sonic is. He was ostracized (possibly even bullied/picked on) back home for his two tails. After listening to some of his lines in movie 2, Tails read to me like a character who'd been treated as weird or an outcast and ended up isolating himself as a result. I got the impression that when he wasn't indulging in his love of technology/mechanics (or perhaps even at the same time) he was holed up in his base, watching a live stream of Sonic and his adventures, even after the conclusion of the first movie's events. He knows everything about Sonic, down to knowing that he doesn’t take showers, before even meeting him properly. Tails is not at home on earth nor particularly entranced by earth itself (in opposition to Sonic, who became entranced with it). He only even goes there to warn Sonic and to help him out. But Sonic's place—Sonic's home—is on Earth, in Green Hills, with Tom and Maddie, and Tails has formed an actual bond of friendship with the hedgehog he formed a possibly parasocial relationship with used to watch on a screen. Before, I think Tails was just content with watching or being helpful. But now? Now that he's spent time with Sonic, Sonic makes him feel normal. Sonic makes him feel like even "weirdos" can do great things. Sonic makes him feel valued. He's no longer content just watching because Sonic is more his home than the place he grew up in ever was. Home to him is with the people you choose, the people who make you feel at home, the people you want to be around. The Wachowski household is Sonic's home because he loves earth, green hills, and because he has mutually taken Tom and Maddie as his parents. Earth and the Wachowski household are only Tails' home as long as Sonic is there.

And for Knuckles... He has the set up to fall in love with earth in a similar way Sonic did. He grew up/was born in a similar place to him. And yet, all of the beautiful nature on earth doesn't matter to him. Knuckles, as of the beginning of the Knuckles series, had adopted a different approach to Sonic. Sonic tried to make home for himself wherever he could, no matter how many worlds he'd jumped to. In contrast, Knuckles never bothered to do this. He only pursued the mission, never bothering to make a home when he'd be off to the next world soon enough (especially if it seemed trivial in the face of his life's mission). And it's pointed that although he's able to participate in what earth offers the same way Sonic is in movie 1 (Knuckles learning how to bowl or Sonic going to a bar), he is not at home because of those things. He's able to slow down and appreciate what earth offers, the same things he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge before, and yet he's not at home on earth because it's beautiful or because it has food he likes or whatever. He very pointedly makes a connection with Wade and his family. The Whipple family is home. Not the earth, not even the house itself. He feels comfortable when with them, he enjoys the time on earth he spends with them, and he is able to appreciate Earth better when he experiences it with them (in contrast to Tails, who never had any sort of arc of appreciating what one can experience on earth to me). Home to Knuckles isn't easily quantifiable (more of a feeling really), but it’s about the people who make you feel at home. It's about the people who helped him relax and feel more comfortable not always putting his focus into the mission.

Sonic, who can make home anywhere, who always appreciated what was great about living on earth, and whose "home" was finally made permanent when he spent time with Tom and Maddie.

Tails, who never truly felt home until he spent time with Sonic, who doesn't particularly care for what earth has to offer, whose home is wherever Sonic is.

Knuckles, who never allowed himself to feel at home or tried to make a home until he began to travel with Wade and open up to new experiences, who began to enjoy earth and yet considers his home with the Whipple family specifically.

Sonic would protect the earth he lives on even if everyone he cared about was gone. Tails would protect the earth he lives on so long as it's Sonic's home. Knuckles would protect the world he lives on not just to keep the master emerald secured, but so long as this place is home to the Whipple family, with whom he enjoys experiencing Earth with.

Do you... Do you get me?

#sonic the hedgehog #knuckles the echidna #tails the fox #miles tails prower #unbreakable bond #sontails #sonic wachowski #knuckles whipple #knuckles series #sonic movie #knuckles 2024 #sonic movie 2 #knuckles series spoilers #knuckles 2024 spoilers #i just be ramblin #essay time #Sorry I'm just consumed with thoughts I'm emotional #it gets to me that what home is to Knuckles' borrows both from Sonic and Tails' experiences in different ways #And yeah while I do feel like saying 'Knuckles' home is the whipple family' is a bit eh reductive or a copout in a way‚ in the end I enjoy #that they are his home‚ but not in the same way the Wachowskis are to Sonic while not fully in the way Sonic is to Tails #Although all in all I actually am against the idea that Knuckles is in a nuclear family situation with the Whipples in a similar way I'm #against Tails's home with Sonic being reduced to 'so sibling behavior haha'#and with that being said‚ I tagged that one ship only to make it clear that I do not mean the Tails bit in a sibling way #But at the same time I am also not reducing Tails' home to romance either. It's more atypical or queerplatonic. Not siblings but not simply #just romantic but not necessarily solidly platonic. That's my stance. My other stance is that sontails fans should also be allowed to have #fun with the idea of movie Tails' arc and specific actions being interpreted in a romantic fashion😂#Anyways yeah

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goldiipond · 4 months ago

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ohhh my friend came over and we somehow ended up watching the entirety of tpn season one and ray still makes me so fucking sick. im goig to tear apart steel beams with my teeth

#skye's ramblings #THOUGH IM ALSO JUMPING AROUND SOO FAST BC SHE LIKED IT. shes like my only irl friend shes known abt my illness since the start #i take my ray plushie when i sleep over at her house she calls him my little guy. i genuinely didnt think it'd interest her much #we were literally just bored and she randomly picked up v1. 2 pages in she was like 'oh this is really addicting can i borrow this'#FELT AUTUSM KICK INTO MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. said we could watch the anime n after ep1 she was like oh this is really good #cant describe how much i am jumping off tge walls in my mind. shes never been able to get into anime till now. i think i just won at autism #of course w the excitement comes escape arc ray once again hitting my brain with hammers god i love him so fucking much guys. i'm nauseous #it'll be 3 years since my first watch soon btw i wonder if ray emotions will ever stop making me physically ill. ifuckng love yuou raaay...

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thescreaminghat · 1 month ago

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There’s so much to talk about Arcane S1 and S2, and what I want to focus on for this ramble is the issue I take with Singed being Corin Reveck. I’ve said this before, but this was one of the choices that I was worried that the writers would make back when s1 was airing. I actively dislike the idea of making Corin and Singed the same person, and not just because I think it unnecessarily humanizes the awful, awful person that Singed is both in League lore and Arcane while taking away what is a tender and mournful story revolving around two relatively unimportant characters in the broader world and stakes of Runeterra (namely, Corin and his only daughter, Orianna).

My two main gripes with this writing choice are as follows:

It makes the world so much smaller and less interesting than before. In the most recent iteration of Orianna’s game lore, Corin was a famed artificer known for building prosthetics in Piltover (this could be seen as a "doing good work for the people" kind of job, even if he is running a business). This background in itself wouldn’t be too surprising even if directly transposed to Arcane Piltover and Zaun, as even prior to Hextech improvements, we see that body augmentations/modifications are accessible to members of the council (though I much rather prefer League’s idea of Piltover and Zaun as having all sorts of inventors and academics exist in both cities, with Zaun having its own Academy of Techmaturgy, rather than having a handful of named characters be responsible for much of the city’s technological development as we see in Arcane). However, to me, what makes Corin and Orianna’s story so compelling is how easily it can be overlooked amidst all of the grander narratives in League P&Z, the in-fighting between chembarons and the class hierarchy enforced by Camille, Jinx being Jinx, etc. Corin has importance as an inventor, but there are so many of his type—perhaps not specializing in prosthetics, but another field of study—that he really feels like another “ordinary citizen” of Piltover. There is no world-ending stake involved in his and his daughter’s story, but that is precisely why their narrative is so compelling to me—when Orianna rushes to the site of an explosion in Zaun, in secret, to apply the skills she learned as her father’s apprentice in order to save others, and returns home with irreversible lung damage, I feel as though I am witnessing a ”day in the life” of someone stuck within the conflict between P&Z. Corin and Orianna are still privileged, and their situation is vastly better than the actual Zaunites who Orianna made it her mission to save, but Orianna’s biography suggests that despite Corin’s renown, he and Orianna were left largely to their own struggle following Orianna’s illness. I.e. they did not have the kinds of resources and help presumably available to the houses with even greater authority in Piltover.

When Corin devotes himself tirelessly to saving his daughter with his own skills, and Orianna is watching herself lose bits and pieces of her own body, I feel as though we are meant to understand this as a small blip in the overall circumstances of the world, that there are far greater events demanding the attention of the many, and a father’s grief over his child, and a child’s horror at how her body no longer looks the way that she remembers it, is relegated to a quiet, personal tragedy to be shouldered by the pair alone (even though it shouldn't be).

When Corin and Orianna relocate to Zaun, after Corin spends everything he had in order to save his daughter, I can imagine the kind of small relief that father and daughter perhaps felt, realizing that as long as they had each other and their passion for their craft, then that was enough for them, regardless of what happens in the complicated landscape of P&Z. When Corin subsequently falls ill due to the toll that his stress has taken on his own body, and Orianna is forced to make a deal with a chembaron to obtain a hextech crystal in an effort to save her father, we are left wondering how many Zaunites and Pilovians alike may have fallen into similar circumstances, how many secret meetings have taken place between desperate people and good-for-nothings in positions of power in P&Z. And when Orianna ultimately saves her father by giving him her last, healthy organ, the physical embodiment of her emotional core—her heart—and decides to leave her home as a machine powered by hextech, there is no fanfare, but we do get the sense that a tragedy has occurred, that even if there was no “fatal flaw” or twist villain, that something unjust has taken place in these sister cities. And that is how it was meant to be, I think, in Orianna’s story. These are characters, who, by interacting with the world of P&Z as we know it, give us insight into how this world works for its citizens. Their stories don’t need to lead to a grander narrative or tie into timeline-changing events; they are meaningful because they allow us to see how a character could live and thrive and struggle within the backdrop of the world. And that allows us to imagine other stories that could organically come from the politics of P&Z, and other ways its citizens could envision change (e.g. what if working-class Zaunites were given better protections, and Zaunite industry designed to be safer for its workers, so that explosions like the one that was slowly killing Orianna didn’t occur? What if Piltover had better medical support systems so that Corin wouldn’t have to destroy his own health in order to keep his daughter alive? Did Corin’s initial attitudes towards Zaunites change? After all, Piltover effectively failed to assist them, and he and Orianna were forced to move to Zaun in order to continue their business, something that could be regarded by more elitist Piltovians as a “decline” in one’s respectability, regardless of the quality of work produced by Corin and Orianna for their clients. Etc. Etc.)

By making Corin the same person as Singed, the possibilities that Orianna’s narrative opens up for an exploration of other people’s lives in P&Z are removed. Because Singed is so closely tied with shimmer, with Warwick/Vander, with Viktor, with the trajectory of the arcane, with the surgical “creation” of “Jinx”, there is little room to let a backstory of a father and daughter breathe, let alone introduce an audience to the non-plot-related interactions that this duo could have with the richness of the world. It also, in my view, makes the world so much smaller/more extreme (e.g. we can only have a scientist who engages with grandiose, unethical experimentation for the sake of his child, because that is what we would commonly think of when we are presented with a scientist father; we cannot have a father who also happens to be a scientist, where the focus is on his introspective, personal mourning on how his field of study and his community of peers have, in many ways, failed him, but despite that resentment, he continues with what he has, representing one path in a set of circumstances that could drive a different person down another path). And I get that Arcane s2 in particular literally opens up the idea of the multiverse and “other paths,” but that felt somewhat hackneyed, and I much prefer the idea that the multitude of paths that an audience can explore is right here, in the world we currently see, as different people live through their different circumstances.

2) Singed being Corin Reveck removes so much of what made Orianna’s dilemma—whether she is a “machine” or a “human”—so interesting. Orianna, by having her limbs and organs slowly replaced with artificial ones (I emphasize this because the nature of Orianna’s transformation becomes a “ship of Theseus” question), also loses her sense of what it means to be human (e.g. the unbridled creativity that is suggested to have previously animated her craft seems to be gone, and she instead produces “masterfully tuned mechanisms,” rather than “works of art”). She becomes “disconnected” from herself, presumably both from her internal sense of self as well as her physical body, even as her care and love for her father lead her to literally give up her own heart to keep him alive.

One can see the parallels between League Orianna and League Viktor, and how they potentially contrast (or complement!) the other. Viktor claims to have replaced his flesh with metal in order to rid himself of the weaknesses inherent to having an organic, decomposable body, while Orianna is forced to replace her limbs and lungs because she is experiencing, real-time, what the limits of that organic body are, even though she obviously does not want to experience something like this. Viktor claims that it is humanity’s emotions that leads them to make errors in judgment and hinder efficiency and progress, but Orianna’s love for her father leads her to perform a successful operation and save his life (and Corin’s love for his daughter leads him to “create” the kind of mechanical being that Viktor would praise, as part of his ideology). Viktor’s actions suggest that he believes it is necessary to move beyond “limiting” emotions like fear (e.g. his injection of that experimental serum into Naph) while Orianna’s whole struggle is trying to replicate, once more, those feelings, trying to indulge in sentimentality and romance (e.g. When she tells the automaton, Fieram: “I like to ride the Rising Howl at dusk to catch the last of the day’s golden rays,” . . . “From the very top you can see the harbor beyond the sea-gates, and the endless glistening ocean. From up there, you can imagine the smell of faraway lands.” – are these the thoughts and language of a machine, or of a human? And when she desperately destroys the casing around the automaton, believing herself to be freeing a boy like her, are those the actions of an “efficient” consciousness, or of a child encased in steel?). I can imagine, in the world of League P&Z, scientific and philosophical debates regarding the nature of Orianna’s existence (what makes her more human than machine? More machine than human? Is it her lingering connections to memory? To emotions? Or something else entirely?).

All of this to say, that there are some interesting questions to be explored through the way in which “Orianna”, whether she is an identity, a physical being, or something else entirely, emerged through Corin's gradual and necessary removal of her physical body. Making Singed and Corin Reveck the same person strips away these complexities.

Both League and Arcane Singed are awful people. That is undeniable. Regardless of his reasoning or emotions, Singed did unspeakable things to Vander, and was a catalyst for much of the violence, or its escalation, in Arcane, particularly with his production of shimmer in line with Silco’s aim of weaponizing and distributing the substance in the undercity. The circumstances of Orianna’s creation, with Singed noting that everything he had been doing was for his love of Orianna, are thus tinged with a layer of ethical wrongdoing so thick that not even Jesus Viktor could remove it. Similarly, Orianna was not replaced slowly, with the mechanical equivalents of her limbs and organs. She appears to have been yeeted back into existence with the magic shenanigans in S2 Act 3. Any interesting questions about Orianna’s identity, in my opinion, are overshadowed by the starting premises that, yes, Orianna should not have lived or been brought back to life in Arcane, if it meant that the horrible things that Singed, whether directly or indirectly, had done to the people of P&Z could have been avoided, and yes, Orianna in her current form may literally not be herself because we have seen the hexcore/multiverse/ascended hivemind Viktor shenanigans play out already. And this doesn’t even touch on the lack of agency that Orianna has in Arcane, as an unconscious thing for Singed to show the audience for sympathy points, versus the Orianna we get from League lore, who consciously made the choice to disobey her father to help Zaunites and was conscious and present throughout the entire process of her body modification/replacement.

The League lore also sets up an interesting exploration of how patriarchal power is used and its relationship to the mechanical female body—Corin comes off as not only overprotective of his only daughter, something that could also stem from class considerations towards Zaun, but as a sort of “Prospero” figure, guiding and warning his daughter to never venture outside of their neighbourhood in Piltover (like Prospero’s warnings to Miranda), while only permitting her to indulge in fantasies that he approves as “appropriate” for her (e.g. theatre performances). Even when he builds Orianna her artificial lungs, Corin keeps the key to these lungs in a safe, to prevent Orianna from leaving his sphere of authority.

When they do move to Zaun, Orianna not only takes on the traditional role of the breadwinner due to her father’s ailing health, but is in some ways able to gain more agency in her interactions with other elements of the world, such as the chembaron. When Orianna decides to make the choice to save her father, she takes with her the last object that he can use to maintain some form of control over her. While his control is not framed as intentionally abusive, it does lead to questions about how Orianna’s feelings of “detachment” from her sense of self may also be tied to the control that her father exercises concerning her physical agency.

None of this was explored in Arcane, and I never expected the show to focus so much on these kinds of issues for minor secondary characters, but that’s exactly the problem. By introducing us to Singed as “Corin Reveck,” and effectively tying him with Orianna and the intriguing possibilities available through the existing lore, Arcane, which has now ended in terms of its story, ends up failing to deliver any sort of exploration of these issues. Orianna and Corin could have been left as a side story in an Arcane spinoff, or as a cinematic like the Annie origins cinematic, etc. but because the Arcane writers seem to want to make everything “interconnected,” it just feels like we missed so much potential, and even if we did get something on these issues, it feels, from the path that the showrunners have gone so far, that they would narrow these possibilities to whatever can fit the ”interconnected stories” narrative.

Not everything needs to be tied to something else to be good, it can just be good—tying Singed of all people to Orianna’s story was the strangest of these kinds of choices made in Arcane S2, especially when we could have just explored Singed as Singed (i.e. exploring ethics in science from a broader perspective), and hopefully I’ve been able to explain why.

*Note: the above is just my opinion, so please ignore if you feel so inclined.

#arcane #arcane s2 #arcane season 2 #singed #orianna #corin reveck #ramble #ive been praying that they wouldnt make this decision for the last 3 years but #well gee shucks look what they did #i definitely think singed works better just as a guy that has a fucked up sense of ethics and a warped viewpoint and thats it #like not everyone has to be redeemable and make you feel bad for them cuz they had a family or something #singed can just be singed - he can be a hater and a weirdo and have some strangely compelling moments with viktor #even though i dont like him personally i understand that there are people just like that in this world and and in fiction and thats. . .ok?#like you can humanize him with those little interactions and make him interesting but still say his worldview is wrong overall #you dont need to borrow the emotional weight of another character for him to be compelling #yeah

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