#she wouldn't be so after hextech if she just always intended to make Mel into a more powerful weapon and didn't care for her

[sweatandwoe]

i wanna do a whole post about Mel and Amebessa but I have zero energy so I'm just gonna say that they ruined their relationship by making it so that Ambessa only ever wanted Mel as a weapon and that Ambessa would not need a magic baby to fight magic users because she already had those rune tablets and Noxus itself has fought Ionia, land of many magic users, for YEARS

it really feels like they completely retconned their original relationship by making Kino the heart when Ambessa was saying this shit in S1 (timestamped)

[hxrpooner]

things in arcane s2 that pissed me offfff

in no particular order

warwick not going full wolf????? why!!!!

pussies wouldn't commit to jayvik kiss... ok.... what EVER

killing off characters just for shock value (jinx and heimer mainly)

cait losing her eye also felt like it was just for shock value

what is the message of jinx's death supposed to be? "there's no way for her to make up for the things she did, the only way for her to atone is to die"??? ok.

that "i'm always with you" line from jinx was FORCED holy shit

i absolutely do not believe that the hooded figure from jayce's childhood was viktor. i fully believe that they originally intended it to be ryze and then changed course last minute

sevika got shafted. she's super important for a while, then she just isn't. she barely shows up after "Paint the Town Blue"

the scene with mel using the black rose amulet on ambessa, and then going inside the vision...??? to kill leblanc or... something??? i just kinda.... huh??? what??? okay

a moment of silence for all the viktor enjoyers. they completely shafted his lore and changed his ENTIRE vibe as a character. and then they killed him off. and he's getting an ASU about it.

mel has an interesting thing going on in season 1. she's ambitious and kind of manipulative and it's clear that she's using jayce to her own ends, but the story was obviously building up some interesting motives behind it and i was curious to see where her arc was going to go. by comparison she felt very flat in season 2. the back half of her arc felt very rushed.

the anomaly is a stupid mcguffin. it came out of nowhere and was only brought in because they needed some existential threat for the characters to fight

ekko got shafted. the whole point of his original lore is that he's an idealist and a boy genius, and that he cobbles together the z-drive all on his own from scrap in his dinky little lab. but in arcane he can't figure it out without the help of a white woman and a yordle. fuck you actually.

too much of ekko's development was centered around his feelings for jinx.

unclear how characters like camille, ziggs, blitzcrank, zeri are supposed to fit in with this lore. renata especially pissed me off because we spent so much time on that stupid yordle chem baron, while the actual canon chem baron failed to make an appearance

the piltover/zaun v. noxus war would have been a GREAT opportunity to bring in urgot, considering his lore, but, nope.

hextech found dead in a ditch???

you can't just say "we're making arcane canon" and then proceed to fuck up the canon so profoundly!!!

i don't care for viktor's new aesthetic. the weird gold-and-porcelain thing doesn't suit him.

vander-warwick looks so fucking stupidddddd

sevika's fuck ass haircut

jinx's fuck ass haircut

isha's entire existence is a cheap sympathy-grab. introduce a cute child character, have her get close to the protagonist, then kill her off. egregiously lazy

would like an explanation as to why isha does not talk

actually would like an explanation as to literally anything about isha. she is a complete non-character

it felt like isha was shoehorning in on the vi/jinx/vander reunion

the alternate universe ekko gets stuck in is basically "wow everything is so much better if vi dies!!!" which like. the implications are CRAZY actually

alternate universe jinx was a bit too manic pixie dream girl for my taste. when she showed up in the leather jacket i was like. ok ramona flowers. (i have not seen scott pilgrim)

thematically/character-wise it seems like it would have made more sense for heimerdinger to stay in the alternate universe and live out his life happy and in peace, i don't understand why they had to kill him off instead. either way he's out of the story so what's the point?

having every episode open with an artsy music video... i felt like they saw that people liked the bridge scene from season 1 and went "okay let's just do that 9 more times then." no guys. it was so noticeable and so irritating.

there's a tweet that goes something like "arcane character: assaults someone and takes their money // arcane background music: i love assaulting people and taking their money". if i made a drinking game out of how many times that tweet became relevant while watching s2 i would die from alcohol poisoning

s2 does not have a silco. jinx went protagonist-mode and they were too wishy-washy with trying to make ambessa and viktor ambiguous. silco was such a larger-than-life figure in s1, i think they should have used that and had him haunt the narrative way more than he did. as it is s2 lacks a good villain and a compelling conflict and the story suffers for it

fucking jayce

a lot of the dialogue is SUPER on-the-nose or corny or is just like... people don't talk like that

too much of characters just explaining what is going on or saying the themes of the story out loud

lack of thematic cohesion

s1 sets up this really cool nuanced conflict between piltover and zaun, but s2 completely fails to properly address it, especially towards the end where out of the blue all the focus suddenly shifts away to the anomaly.

"hey guys i know we locked you all in a ghetto but can you pretty please come up topside to help us fight noxus? <3 thanks"

AND THAT WORKED?!?!! SOMEHOW

so many completely irrelevant characters (mostly caitlyn's squad, whose names i can't remember except for maddy)

i didn't feel that maddy's betrayal was properly built up to, but my friends disagree with me so. idk.

i'm getting a little tired of watching people get non-lethally stabbed in the abdomen

finale was mostly brainless epic battle fight epic fight battle fight. like girl... ok.

unclear on how sevika manages to get invited to these topside political get-togethers? shouldn't she be like public enemy number 2?

sevika dgaf about jinx at all after episode 4. it's crazy

there is no fucking way we got piltover councilor sevika. there is simply no fucking way. there are so many things wrong with this i don't even know where to begin.

i felt like a couple of things could be true: 1) they got a little too big for their britches, critiquing the evils of capitalism and the police state in s1, and somebody got nervous that they were going to be accused of being too Woke, so they had to dial it back. (less likely) 2) they found out about halfway through outlining the plot that they were only getting 2 seasons and had to drastically change course to wrap things up before then (more likely)

[our-hextech-dream]

i do unfortunately play league (more wild rift than desktop but i have played both, and specifically i have played both viktor and seraphine.) so i'm just gonna talk about kits and some mel kit speculation and in-game/arcane disconnect when it comes to champ abilities. 🙏 sorry for being a league player.

the difference between seraphine and viktor is that seraphine's control is temporary and limited, viktor's is all-encompassing and permanent. seraphine was, uh, extremely controversial when she first came out for a lot of reasons that boiled down to, um, [checks notes] she's a girly girl and she's pink and men hate her, so i'm pretty defensive of her now - she was always being accused of being Secretly Evil and Manipulative and Supporting Genocide (prior to both her and skarner having their lore retconned) but those are such bad faith arguments. if you read about her at all it's pretty clear that the extent of her ability is to make the people who come to her concerts feel more cheerful and hopeful for a while, which is why she mostly sings in zaun - they need it. she's not able to force anyone to do anything they wouldn't otherwise do, unlike viktor, whose mind control entirely kills his victims and turns them into puppets who immediately die once his influence is removed.

sera is just a teenager trying to uplift her birth city with the magic of song, she's like a my little pony in human form. she's really not comparable to either version of viktor. the kind of total emotional and subsequent physical control comparable to what viktor did in arcane that you're looking for comes from ahri (vastaya, based on the korean gumiho, whole story is about trying to find a way to live without hurting people) or evelynn (void demon, loves emotionally manipulating and killing people).

probably the reason they have to do a full VGU on viktor instead of just updating his art and models with an ASU is because otherwise there would be a lot of 'how come viktor could do this in the show but not in the game', which flat out did not happen with any of the other champs whose fighting styles and moves all very recognizably matched their in-game kits. (especially jinx ult lmfao rip mama kiramman. sniped from across the map. been there.) ((but also powercreep is real and peepaw viktor is EXTREMELY outclassed by newer midlane mages. i've complained before that he desperately needs a rework to become viable and competitive again, i just wish they could have kept the tech theme bc that's not that common, most of the other mages are pure magic themed. as viktor now will be. 😴))

as for kit vs what the show shows us for how powers manifest, viktor is a completely different character. (unsurprising, we knew this.) league viktor has a little electromagic bomb that hurts the enemy and gives him a shield, an electromagic trap he can place on the ground to create a slow field, his third arm laser beam, and his ult is throwing the hexcore forward and it generates a big electromagic storm field as it flies around. as you may have noticed, viktor's original kit was all about hextech powered gadgets and gizmos that he himself built and augmented.

when it comes to mel, if i had to guess, her kit will resemble sera's more than viktor's, no matter what viktor's kit ends up looking like after the VGU. viktor is a midlane mage, he is built to go by himself and 1v1. sera has the power to go mid bc she's op, but she was intended as a botlane support, and i am 99.999999% certain this is where they're going with mel because they had her team up and support cait in the show. (cait being a botlane ADC in-game.)

if we assume mel is gonna be like cait, vi, jinx, ekko, and jayce in that her show abilities will match her in-game abilities, mel will probably have a whip attack like you mentioned for her q, definitely a shield she can apply to herself or others for her w. based on her other lines and in-show abilities, being able to reveal invisible champs or wards is a possibility, generating a targeted or zoned cc is a possibility. stuns and slows are really common, even though we didn't see anything like that in the show, cuz those are always useful for supports to have.

i personally can't really see her being given a charm, because we didn't see anything like that from her in the show. the in-game charm that sera, ahri, and evelynn use is pretty obvious and doesn't last long, and the one renata has is like, so unique that they probably won't ever do something like it again. i'd be pretty excited if they gave her the ability to drag someone into a different realm, like in mordekaiser's ult, idk if that would be particularly useful for a support though.

i dunno. ultimately it's just a wait and see situation but i feel pretty confident in my shield support botlane mage assessment for mel. no goddamn clue what they're gonna do to viktor in the VGU, but he'll probably still be a kinda tanky solo midlane mage. (if they take away his tankiness because they twinkified him i'll be so upset.)

actively mad that the script says mel is an 'empath' when that isn't a thing that exists literally anywhere else in the lore as far as i know (like yeah there are other mind/spirit/whatever manipulators but no one is an "empath") and the mere label has now broken everyone's brain when in actual fact ostensibly she and viktor are capable of the same fucking thing especially since he's just like not a cyborg anymore