#makes more sense it'd be ionia

[noxianwilled]

considering the comic threw away some stuff in the short stories and bios, i was thinking about the timeline, and I think it may be fair to assume kat's first mission was in ionia, not demacia. (i'll still use the bios to try to make sense of it though bc.... yeah)

i already thought that made more sense with cass' bio saying she was 'little more than a child' when soreana was poisoned, and months passed and brought them closer, and an unspecified amount of time passed but didn't seem that long with "When the general was recalled to Noxus to prepare for the long-awaited invasion of Ionia, he took Katarina with him, but Cassiopeia remained in Urzeris."

if cass was little more than a child when her mom was poisoned and her dad left months later, i think? it may be fair to assume she was 12-13ish?

kat thinks in the comic 'we were still kids when father sent talon to kill me' by which I assume they were no older than 15ish, but would personally set closer to 14, which would be aligned with marcus leaving for the ionian war and taking katarina with him and cass being 12-13ish.

on top of that, there's the zed dream - which honestly seems to further imply that connection (I'm assuming talon would have been? adopted before they went to shurima? and that he was also taken to ionia, given if they were raised as siblings he likely was part of the family already and the fact it's the three of them facing zed in her dream also seems to suggest that, to me)

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Are there any champions from Piltover/Zaun or beyond, who didn't show up in s1 of Arcane, who you'd like to see in s2? Both from a “this character would work really well with the story” perspective, and a “I just really like this champion” perspective.

Mm... I'm really wary about introducing more characters, honestly. Arcane's first season was already absolutely crammed to the gills with characters and one of my criticisms of Season 1 is that while everything that was in it was very very good, it was also so incredibly dense that the audience barely has time to breathe.

It's the kind of delicate balance where it feels like they just barely had the time and space to tell the stories of the main ensemble, and introducing more champions into that mix might make it all tip over.

That said, they do have the advantage that all the introductions and worldbuilding have basically been done now, and there's probably room to introduce one or two more characters to shake things up.

Instinctively I want to say Camille, except it makes no bloody sense why she'd only turn up in Season 2 and have been a complete non-presence in Season 1. Like, there was some shit happening that she should have been involved with in the first season.

Renata Glasc is an option. Zaun is going to have a big power vacuum and she would slot in very nicely as the new major power in the undercity. On the other hand, she's also perhaps a little bit too much like Silco 2.0, being partly based on him in the first place, and I think there's a solid argument for bringing the chembarons from season 1 back to fight with each other instead. Especially since one of them has a literal death vendetta against Jayce now.

Then there's Orianna, who in this canon seems to be Singed's... daughter? Some kind of family member? If all of Singed's research in the first season was about trying to find a way to save her life or bring her back to life, then she'd be a natural character to use to expand on Singed as a character in season 2. I think she'd have to be substantially redesigned, though - "music box ballerina" would be a weird thing for Singed to want to build her into.

Seraphine and Zeri are non-starters, I think, primarily because they are both mages, which would make absolutely no sense in the Arcane universe. Like, it is kind of important to the plot of Arcane that mages are essentially as rare as cryptids in this world. Same reason I don't think they'd introduce something like Janna either. She's a literal demigod, it would raise too many unanswerable questions.

There's no reason to bring in Ezreal, Zac, or Dr. Mundo, but Urgot is... not out of the question. He's the kind of relentlessly dogmatic, bloodthirsty cult leader that would make sense as a figure in the chaos and violence of the war that's likely to erupt. Twitch could also cameo, I suppose, but only as a cameo, I don't think it makes sense to make him a central character.

Outside of Piltover and Zaun, I'd say the main champions we are likely to encounter would be Swain or Darius (Darius specifically was most likely teased by Ambessa), and if Darius shows up there's a greater than average chance he'll have Draven with him. It's not impossible that Samira could show up for a bit of a cameo, as some kind of Noxian bounty hunter getting in the way of things. Katarina and Talon are... not impossible, I suppose, Noxus is probably going to want to assassinate someone, but I also doubt they'd introduce a champion character to fill that role in the narrative. It'd be wasteful.

If Noxus is making moves, of course, there's a non-zero chance that there'll be like a Demacian diplomat at some meeting, which... makes it possible that Xin Zhao or Garen might cameo, and if Noxus wants Piltover's technology to prosecute their war in Ionia, hey, maybe there will be Ionian diplomat characters showing up to plead their case, which opens the distant possibility of someone like Irelia or Shen showing up.

I very, very much doubt it though.

tl;dr in my opinion:

Most likely new champions: Darius, Swain, Orianna, and Warwick (Warwick being Vander)

Not impossible: Twitch, Urgot, Renata Glasc, Draven, Camille

Extremely small Easter Egg cameos at best: Xin Zhao/Garen/Jarvan, Irelia/Shen/Karma, Azir (Shurima is Piltover's southern neighbor), Miss Fortune/Gangplank (Piltover controls the sea gate and trade between two oceans), Ziggs (Heimerdinger's best friend), Ryze (the science boys are starting to fuck with World Rune-level magic hazards), Vel'koz (might show up in a Void vision inside the Hexcore or something).

[twothpaste]

What are your thoughts on that weird cutscene with Lucas and the magypsy that awakens his PSI? (I forgot their name)

I don't view it as harshly as some folks do, but I do think the game would be better off without it. Or at least if the scene were framed & written differently. Tryin to figure out how to word my thoughts gently… I'll put it under a readmore, since The Mere Implication Of Sexual Assault is a heavy subject, even if it doesn't actually happen in the game. Content Warning for that, and discussion of transphobic bigotry.

Itoi writes the Magifolk about as sympathetically & endearingly as a clueless old cis man could, and has spoken fondly about them in interviews. He didn't do a great job imo, but I get the gist his heart was in the right place. He clearly didn't intend to demonize Ionia in that scene. The angle I suspect Itoi was going for, is like? He knew older players' minds would drift to the worst possible outcome. So he set it up, and deliberately subverted that expectation. You see that Ionia meant no harm to Lucas, and was only helping him awaken his PSI, and you go "oh." Itoi probably hoped older players would take this moment to reconsider their bigoted biases. And while younger players would be confused, he knew it'd make more sense to them later in retrospect. Maybe he hoped that these kids, upon encountering anti-queer propaganda irl, would be able to consider it more critically after experiencing this scene (and the Magifolk in general) in Mother 3. That's, ah. The most generous interpretation I can offer.

Regardless though, it's handled pretty badly. I think it's definitely framed as a joke. The player's expected to taken aback and bewildered and grossed out, and then expel a relieved laugh when it turns out everything's fine. Misleading the player into being suspicious of a trans coded character - in This Particular Way 😬 - is probably not the best method to go about critiquing bigotry & exposing biases. CSA isn't something to joke about or handle flippantly. Neither is the fact a lot of queer folks end up targeted, hurt, and/or killed as a consequence of "groomer" narratives (which conservatives have been pushing for decades). I see & respect what he was going for - but surely there must've been a better way to accomplish it. Dropping "see, our child protagonist didn't get hurt by the weird trans character" like it's a punchline just sucks no matter how I try to slice it.

There's a lot of clumsy handling when it comes to representation of marginalized groups in the Mother series. This scene and Reggie are by far the worst examples imo. I've seen some fans say this scene almost put them off of Mother 3 entirely, and truthfully I can't blame them. It's actually something I think new players probably deserve to be warned about before getting into the game.

If anyone's never seen it before, [ Here's a page from an interview ] where Itoi talks a little about it. I do think his perspective is super interesting, even though I don't like how he executed it.

[warmothered]

Based on your post earlier. Is there any region that Ashe would like to make friendly relations with? Even if it's just a mutual non-aggression pact or anything of the sort?

» — >  ⌜ OOC ASKS⌟ , always accepting

— @dolls-runeterran-dollhouse

honestly, to put it simply, i don't think so.

"My tribe will bring peace to the North! The South should fear us." "They think me cold. I have seen things the Southerners cannot imagine." "Are all southerners so weak?"

but i'll elaborate.

despite what i said there, demacia might be the most likely ally — if only because of sylas eventually allying with the winter's claw, and them being at war with the avarosans. even so, ashe would sooner ally with sejuani than with the southerners. i guess jarvan could try diplomacy and she might ultimately see the benefit to it, especially if noxus is being troublesome. but it'd not be that she wants to make friendly relations with them as much as circumstances would make it beneficial.

we know the freljordians aren't on good terms with noxus, because noxus has been trying to expand that way too. as a result of that, i find it hard to believe she'd ever make friendly relations with them, and that any pact of non-aggression would be done with 0 trust and preparing for when it'd be broken, if they ever even reached the point of making one at all.

then there's ionia, which we know freljordians at some point used to raid. while i don't see ashe and her people doing anything like that, i don't see them necessarily seeking a friendlier relationship either. for the most part, i think she'd be pretty neutral.

which is how it goes for the rest of the world, mostly. many of them are just way too far. none of them would survive the freljordian winter, the way ashe sees it; to put it plainly, they'd have to earn her respect to make her want to be on friendlier terms.

piltover and zaun might be the ones that intrigue her the most. ashe is a clever leader; she'd know technology can go a long way, and her people have been settling semi-permanently in some areas, as well as planting crops and raising livestock. anything that could help make that easier/more reliable (in the sense of, say, aiding in protecting the crops from the more harsh temperatures, for example) would be of interest, so fostering good relations with the more technologically advanced nations would probably be a good idea, the way she sees it.

but she still would see them as weak, and she'd also know there's little reason for piltover to be interested in the freljord, so she wouldn't expect much from that either. out of all of them, it might be the one nation she's more interested in being friendly with, though.