#he was the best season 1 character

[exoscreamsoda]

something is so funny about paul de pointe du lac hating lestat and wanting louis to be with a woman when his actor is gay irl and also blowing mens backs out in a new netflix show

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

When you try to Manipulate and Manwhore yourself out of a situation, and end up a Malewife.

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[bastart13]

As I transcribe the Love and Legends routes, it's interesting having this very thorough dive into each route and the differences in their writing.

One thing that makes Iseul's route stand out from the others is how it uses its extended cast. So far, it rarely uses the Witch Queen or generals (Alain and Helena have had a handful of lines, and Magnus and Lennox haven't even shown up) and instead uses Reiner, the retainers, or Iseul's family as antagonists. While Jinhai acts as the inciting incident, the actual conflicts stem from Iseul feeling confined by Reiner and the others, Iseul feeling compared to Imohn, or Iseul and the MC not having Ishara's blessing.

It creates a strange emotional distance between Iseul, MC, and their allies. They can't be a source of comfort in the same way because every time they interact, the focus is on whatever argument or emotional conflict the season is focusing on.

I think one of Love and Legend's greatest strengths is its cast. Every other route really makes me believe these characters are friends with deep histories and extended relationships, especially Iseul. It's kind of a shame his own route makes me believe he doesn't even like the others. He and the MC seem like they'd be happier keeping to themselves.

The theme of Iseul's route is struggling with responsibility and the ease of being selfish vs considering other people, but I wish I could be more sympathetic whenever they sacrifice the happiness and safety of everyone else for the sake of their own desires.

In some ways I like that the plot is less intense and focused on personal struggles, similar to Helena's, but Helena's route had an easy excuse for why the cast would be antagonistic and they're still contrasted against the generals for being a more comforting presence. I feel like they either needed to focus on Jinhai and the generals triggering the conflict between Iseul, MC, and the others, or to better establish why there's so much aggression.

[fieldofheathers-stuff]

The Silco saga, Part 3: The Eye

*This is the third (well, actually fourth) post in a series I’ve lovingly dubbed “The Silco Saga, a retrospective after Season 2”. It’s halfway between flow of conscience, meta, headcanon and review, spawned from my Arcane brainrot (and recent S1 rewatch) and vaguely aimed at trying to reevaluate the entirety of Arcane with a focus on my Main Man™ Silco. Here is Part 1 (on how S2 handled Silco and Jinx’s relationship), Part 1.5 (miscellaneous thoughts regarding timeline issues and Silco’s actions towards the kids in S1ep3), and Part 2 (Vander and a bit of Zaundads, yaaay).

Please feel free to comment! I love hearing different perspectives on this show.

----------------------------

This will be a short one, but I need to get it out of my system. I just... love, love, love Arcane's use of visual language (and specifically character and environment design) to wordlessly communicate story beats. The whole show is just a perfect synergy of writing and artistic talent, where both contribute to craft a deeply layered and meaningful story.

Silco's eye is such a perfect example of this. To use the eye as a symbol of his corruption post-drowning is such a genius intuition, because it's symbolism is so immediately understandable yet also layered with meaning that is incredibly specific to his character.

There are plenty of characters in popular media where facial disfigurement is used to convey duality and corruption (the most obvious example being DC's Two-Face), and Silco could have easily gone down this well-traveled path of character design. However, by focusing on the corrupted eye in particular, this element instantly specifies the meaning of his mutilation.

Vander's violence didn't just impact him phisically. His scars don't serve just as a constant reminder of the ways in which he (and the world, since the Pilt's toxic waters are an effect of Piltover's exploitation of the Undercity) wronged him. The violence inflicted upon him distorted his vision of the world, metaphorically and literally. He is forced (first by Vander, and later by himself) to view the world through a monstrous filter.

I wonder whether him having to constantly inject Shimmer into his eye is meant to symbolize - or rather mirror - the coping mechanism he uses to deal with his trauma. Silco is shown constantly revisiting The Drowning™ as a crucial moment in his development as a person, and while in his personal narrative he reframes it as a positive and cathartic experience, we are aware, through his flashbacks, that the moment was anything but. Him needing to constantly inject Shimmer into his eye is the physical equivalent to the psycological ritual of "healing" he performs by reframing his trauma as a moment of self-improvement (and literally dunking himself in the Pilt, Silco you madman).

It's only logical, then, that the injections don't seem to work long-term. It perfectly mirrors his psychological state: as the story goes on, we see how his narrative of death and rebirth is just a superficial fix, a solution which could perhaps be sustainable for him alone, but inevitably crumbles as soon as he attempts to apply it to another person (Jinx). Jinx's tragic arc in S1 reveals the fault in his vision: there is no healing to be found in rewriting your past by cramming it into a narrative that suits your feelings and "killing" (denying, hiding, repressing) the bits that you don't like - or that are too painful for you to face.

It's deeply symbolic, then, that he still keeps his scars in the Best Timeline™ of S2ep7, but there's no sign of infection or (what I assume is) Shimmer corruption: the wounds are still there because the past can't be changed, but he is shown to have been able to shape it into something stable, manageable. It's what healing actually looks like: it's neither a return to an umblemished state, nor a rebirth into something completely new, but rather an integration of the past and present self into a whole that is not just the sum (or, in his case, a subtraction) of its parts.

[m0thlegs]

maybe the real Viktor arcane season 2 character arc were the friends we made along the way

[mybreakdowns]

mike wheeler nobody gets you like i do pookie

[devilman-things]

I finished my S1 rewatch of supernatural and I have some disorganised thoughts to share

I had forgotten how young they looked, I'm currently older than sam and almost the same age as dean and it's unreal to me

S1 is definitely one of the scariest seasons, there were some bangers that I remembered with startling clarity because they actually scared me so much ("dead in the water", "hookman")

the racist truck episode still has one of the best monologues given by a secondary character ever, in the history of the entire show

the pilot was actually great

man, this shit was problematic. I didn't see it on my first watch because I was young and ignorant of many things: ep2 was racist but decently written, "bugs" was racist and also just awful

supernatural in a nutshell: the worst episode ever ("bugs") followed by one of the best episodes in the show ("home")

FUCK JOHN WINCHESTER I HATE YOU SO MUCH jeffrey dean morgan is a fantastic actor

I am,,, uncomfortable with how much of myself I see in dean, it's actually kind of insane

"faith" made me very sad, but dean in a hoodie? kinda hot

BOBBY!!!!!!!!!

dean's voice breaking as he's almost dying? fucking kill me now, it made me cry!

dean realising john winchester is possessed because the demon was nice to him? wild shit, jw go to therapy challenge

And now... onto season 2

[a-shade-of-green]

yeah so that scene where mike kicks down the fort in his basement in s1 is definitely supposed to be paralleled by will taking down castle byers in s3. just if anyone cares about when mike turned his back on being a kid.

[ncfan-1]

I have a few wants for Mae’s story next season, with the hope that she gets her memory back relatively quickly being a pretty important one, but it’s not the only want I have for the way things go for Mae that I consider important. There’s something else that feels even more important: namely, that Mae find people in her life that deeply love and prioritize her.

There’s something very pointed going on in Season 1. “Everyone seems to want you,” Qimir says to Osha, but by comparison, nobody ever seems to want Mae. When they’re children, Sol professes a connection to Osha, and Mae is little more than an afterthought; as an adult, Sol ultimately leaves nothing for her but the worst parts of himself. Qimir is visibly fascinated with Osha from first sight, and ultimately doesn’t seem to have thought much of Mae even before she attempted to desert his side; he seems to brush her off the way you’d brush a speck of dust off of you.

And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that Osha should have chosen to stay with Mae in Episode 8. It doesn’t make sense from a storytelling standpoint, not at this juncture. This is the culmination of Mae’s character arc this season, where she is finally able to stop clinging to Osha, to accept that what she wants more than anything is for Osha to be happy, even if she isn’t with her. For Osha to choose to stay with Mae at that point would feel wrong, for Mae has to prove to the audience that she has reached this kind of peace regarding her relationship with her sister by accepting that Osha doesn’t want to stay with her without bitterness. As for Osha, this is the culmination of her character arc this season, which has been about taking her life and her power into her own hands, and it would be strange for her to stay with Mae when Qimir has offered to help her do what she wants. It wouldn’t feel right from a storytelling standpoint; for things to make sense, they have to part ways at the end of Season 1.

But even if Osha frames it as making sure that Mae is safe from any reprisals on Qimir’s part, and even if it’s what make sense from a storytelling perspective, what it ultimately amounts to is that Osha doesn’t choose Mae, either. Nobody ever chooses Mae.

And it’s so uneven. I’m not saying I want Osha to be this alone, too—I don’t. But it’s wrenching to watch this woman who has nothing and no one at the beginning of the season still have nothing and no one at the end of the season, because even the memory of Osha forgiving her and loving her again has been taken away from her. Even her memory of the one person she had left who actually loved her has been taken away from her. She had nothing then, and she has nothing now.

Like I said, it feels pointed, the way Mae is never chosen, and what I’m hoping is that this means that it won’t be the case anymore in Season 2. Vernestra, you say, and yeah, I have high hopes for that dynamic, but no matter how things shake out between Mae and Vernestra, that is never going to be a relationship of equals, and I don’t think it’s ultimately going to be the kind of relationship where Vernestra would choose Mae, not meaningfully. Not over every other option.

That’s what I want for Mae, really. Someone who will love her deeply and choose her over everyone else, every time. With her memories and without. Knowing what she’s done, the good and the bad, knowing what she’s capable of, the good and the bad, knowing her past, knowing her faults and knowing that those faults aren’t all of who she is. Someone who would choose her without a second thought.

Because I feel like there’s going to be a scene like the one in Episode 8, where this time, it’s Mae who chooses. But Osha had more than one option. Either Qimir or Mae were viable options. Osha had a solid foundation to rely on, whatever she decided to do. But as it stands, Mae only has Osha. Osha is all Mae has. And if we do get a moment like that in Season 2, where this time it’s Osha asking Mae what she wants, if she wants to go with her or not, if Mae’s options are still “Osha” or “be completely alone,” then it's not the meaningful choice that Osha had, is it? My point is, I want Mae, whatever she decides, to have actually had a meaningful choice. To not be completely dependent on Osha for love and acceptance. To have someone else she could turn to if she decided that she didn’t want to go with Osha. To not have her choices be: Osha—or no one.

[tooquirkytolose]

Hey speaking of fantasy/Sci fi shows Netflix canceled after 2 seasons, does anyone remember or even know of Altered Carbon? That show with the whole premise being 'far off future society has rich people body jumping into tailor made human bodies to basically live forever' and the main guy is named Takeshi Kovacs and he's technically japanese but the entire time he's actually a white guy body so the whole first season you have people calling THIS man:

Takeshi-kun

and in season 2 he's Anthony Mackie

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

First and Last appearances of Poorly-Drawn-MDZS Season 1!

[notcryingtoday]

proud to have never been a jayce hater (i've joined the fandom like three weeks ago lmao) because everytime he is on the damn screen it's the greatest scene ever

[mildcicada]

[standsforjinxed]

how we feelin about the new season so far?

I love all of it—the art, the music, the story.

They somehow made the animation look even more striking which I didn’t know was possible. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack on repeat all week. And they have not disappointed in continuing to make all the characters feel like deeply complex people. Like you can resent the actions or decisions of certain characters but still fundamentally understand why they are acting that way. I love how beautifully complicated everything is even if it hurts.

But also everything is so intense that most of my week has just been spent processing and waiting in anticipation of the next act. No new posts until it’s over but man has it given me a lot to work with so expect them soon.

[slozhnos]

Look at himmmm

the fact i know which episode this is may be concerning but look at him!! he’s such a vital part of the show and brings several very important topics to the show! he’s also very babygirl and he is now in my family. his parents don’t deserve to have such a wonderful person as their son

[brionysea]

mike could've easily been the bad guy in season 1 if they'd framed the exact same events a little differently so let's all remember that storytelling is a matter of perspective and trickery. that's why they call it an unreliable narrator