#even if its not relevant to the main plot

[embershroud108]

It seems like a lot of people didn't like the Black Rose subplot in Arcane s2 because it felt shoehorned in as a backdoor pilot for the Noxus show, which took away from the main setting plots.

Which, fair enough, I can definitely understand that perspective, but I (surprising to me) ended up liking the Black Rose plot and a big part of the reason is that it actually ties into the themes of Arcane and Piltover/Zaun as a region better than I think people are giving it credit for.

Season 1 established Piltover as a place founded to "escape the warmongering of mages." Piltover is not precisely anti-magic or anti-mage in the same way say Demacia is, for example, but it seems that it was meant to be a safe haven for people to build a society free from the excesses of magic and its users.

But except for very vague, distant warnings from Heimerdinger, season 1 never shows us mages in this world being a problem.

Why are mages and magic so bad? Well, something catastrophic happened a long time ago, magic was involved, but the details are left extremely vague. Are mages a thing in the world now? Not answered or addressed at all, except in Jayce's flashback where a mage and magic are presented as a good thing.

The introduction of the Black Rose in season 2 changes that. Mages are very much still a present, if secretive and covert, threat in the world and they are presented as being downright evil. Suddenly Piltover originally intending to be this non-magical bastion of enlightened progress (however false that ended up being in practice especially with the invention of Hextech) feels a lot more relevant.

Further, Ambessa's whole motivation being attempting to use Piltover/Zaun as a testing ground to develop technology to negate the advantages of the Black Rose and mages in general in warfare is essentially just a logical extension, but also the corruption, of Piltover's own foundational ethos. Thus, in that sense, Ambessa becomes the perfect foil and nemesis for Piltover.

Also, that's not even getting into the ironic twist of one of Piltover's main political leaders ending up being a mage.

But basically, overall I think the Black Rose plot actually added a nice extra thematic dimension to the Piltover/Zaun setting rather than detracting from it.

[vonkarma2]

bullshitting oc lore wrt what the afterlives are like the first one you wake up as a furry with no memories in an ancient rome slash wild west type society but also everyone is subject to mind control from a giant tree on occasion. but like its a recognizeable world in which you can live. when you die in that you are reincarnated into a 2 dimensional white void of shape and color and turn into waves and circles that disperse across an endless plane and eventually fade into nothing and also linear time does not exist because everyones souls are turned into art on a canvas observed by some inexplicable third (?) dimensional entity. but tbh I havent put much thought into what the fourth world is like maybe I should make everyone reincarnate into like 2003 canada where you have to live as a minimum wage gas station employee who gets shot in a robbery after a year and thats how they move on to the next life. anything can happen

[joshuamj]

In Stars And Time? More like In Ace And Gender

+ some alts

[ssaltlicker]

Caitlyn and vi being overshadowed by the hypothetical het ship and the nonexistent white man ship is. As unfortunate as it is predictable

[rosquinn]

what do you mean netflix is making a tpodg adaptation and making basil and dorian brothers what

[puhpandas]

as someone who isnt super excited for sotm for certain reasons I am really glad that like. it's clear that since ruin theyve been setting up for carnival and sotm IS carnival. so now that carnival is finally coming out, afterwards theyll be moving on to other plotlines since the main villain stuff is sorted out

I'm just rlly happy to finally see a clear direction for how the story is gonna be playing out with like "okay these games were leading up to this so after this will be open possibilites" instead of like. absolutely no info about each upcoming game and being left guessing before it releases and just having to wait and see what's in it and if anything you're looking forward to will be in it

it feels like they have a plan and a solid direction for what they're trying to do and after carnival releases thatll be all that buildup coming to fruition. & we already know from the Scott interview that theres another release 'beyond sotm' that's 'super exciting' so maybe thatll be focusing on another big currently untouched (which is basically all of them) plotline, or even the big campaign game that dawko has been calling security breach 2

[randomnameless]

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't FE15 state that although god's control is removed, there's still evil in mankind's heart that must be vanquished or something along those lines? It kinda makes the whole "humanity f*ck yeah" shtick feel hypocritical doesn't it?

Yep,

Because FE15 couldn't nuke FE2 from its DNA, by virtue of being a remake.

So we have two, contradictory messages in this game : Duma BaD and Gods BaD and must go because BaD and they "make humans do BaD things"...

and you have the "gods might be bad, but humans are still BaD without their influence" message at the end - when the entire game (and the timeline and supplementary materials!!) has been pushing the first message.

So...

In a sea of "Gods BaD" waters coming from the remake, you still have the lone "evil remains in the hearts of men" raft that is, somehow, pushed to the forefront in Part 6 where both Celica AND Alm call Thabes the result of human folly, and the player knowing that Grima - who was originally the RED CAPSLOCK eldritch monstruosity before FEH retcon'd them in a tits'n'ass character to uwu about by stealing Anankos' backstory - was "man-made".

And yet, given how the "last word" about FE15 - as in last material revealed - was the timeline in the Memorial Book, we close FE15's book by "and Duma was BaD".

I mean, look at all those mentions of Rudy being so brave and strong and uwusome -> Duma's degenaration is directly tied to how awesome Rudy needs to be in this calendar.

Rudy is so brave to stand in front of a degenerating Duma? -> Duma was insane!

Rudy is so thoughtful and sticks to his promise to Duma by sealing Mila -> akshually Duma wasn't completely insane because he told him to seal Mila and not to kill her even if I said the inverse 3 lines earlier...

[possamble]

I think the most egregious case of "tagging a background f/f ship" is when the f/f ship is an established couple that spends most of their screentime trying to get the m/m or f/m ship together. They barely even flirt. Many such cases. :(

I know there are real problems I could get heated about but this one truly makes me want to book a rage room

[sonknuxadow]

they werent lying that knuckles series barely has knuckles in it

[bmpmp3]

also on that end though - it does always surprise me when white people completely and utterly miss mixed race coding in like books and other fiction. which i guess i shouldnt be surprised because of how bad they are with any racial coding at all really like (gestures vaguely at the hunger games rue situation for the past 15 years) but like straight up they dont see it? they don't even see...

[hundredowls]

silly oc doodle..... ballroom yuri

[eyepatchdate]

finished my soul hackers 2 replay yyayyy. i bought the story dlc and i liked the sidequests, the superboss was kinda disappointing though, not for gameplay, they were incredibly difficult, but like. i expected at least a little lore or nana involvement in the end and there was neither which was sort of odd.

[kebiday]

of course ppl have no obligation to care about characters they don't like... & fandom is about doing what you want and having fun... & it's inevitable for fanon to simplify the cast into little cardboard cutouts...

but i Do wish that ppl who pour a lot of love & effort into analyzing + developing the relationships of + having empathy for the circumstances of the main characters would extend more than a fraction of that to other characters. like my favorite girl kevin day 🐈‍⬛

[kanyniablue]

it's tempting to blame tiktok for bad literary opinions but some of you were this bad before tiktok

[erythristicbones]

-smacking the top of a background character with a paper tube- depth be upon ye, bitch

[froggerland]

Just had a revelation that the thing I love most about the terror above literally everything else is how serious it takes its audience

There are 40 white guys with enough screentime to be somewhat relevant and they all look vaguely similar and share the same 10 names? Yeah it's confusing as fuck but if you manage to remember (most of) them you discover how every single one of them has an arc and is a living breathing human being, not a background character simply there to drive the plot forward or lick the main characters boots.

There's little details that make no sense to you right now, like what does "E.C." stand for, whos that child next to Crozier in the final scene? Watch it again and again if necessary, I shit you not I've never seen a show that has (dare I say) zero loose ends like the terror.

The characters are just human at the end of the day, not chess pieces pushed around by the writers to get from point A to point B. It feels like the early seasons of Game of Thrones when it was really REALLY good, no one has plot armor, things happen because they're the logical consequence of what happened before.

I've seen Gladiator II a few days before I got into the Terror and I know the movie doesn't aim for historical accuracy over giving the audience something cool to look at, everyone knows that (case and point newspapers in ancient rome). But as a history lover and minor film buff it's kind of sad to me how much hype media like Gladiator II gets, stuff that has zero subtlety and basically spells everything out for you so that no one in the audience misses the point the director wants to make and you don't even have to use your brain. You can leave the theather thinking "yeah that was a cool movie" and forget about within a week.

I wish people would appreciate media like the terror more because without wanting to sound like a condescending asshole we NEED more media that gives you something to chew on, that you have to marinate in your brain a little before it all makes sense because THATS good media.