#so Vi recognizing Vander and asking about parents made sense

[vole-mon-amour]

I reached 30 tags so screw it:

if they made it like Silco and Vander had a fallout way before the Mom's death, it could've kinda worked 'cause Vi could've recognized Vander but not Silco, so Jinx still jumps into a stranger's embrace and Silco ends up raising her.

but then again, Vander tried to murder Silco WAY before that scene in the bar in s2. Vander looks way older, even though Silco looks completely different to what we see in flashback in s1.

it's like they didn't put any effort at ALL. it doesn't match. it doesn't make sense. was s1 good on a accident? should have they tried to at least get rid of inconsistencies? or don't go with the theory in s2? because so far it truly looks like "this is the story we wanted to tell" vs "this is the story we actually told" and now it's two completely different stories.

ugh.

I think ignoring s2 and treating s1 as a standalone might be the best choice here, cause s2 is definitely not going to work with the story they told on s1. what a shame.

The Vander/Silco Shitshow - generic, juvenile, and gimmicky slop

So, I think that Vander/Silco flashback was terrible. Tropey, careless, juvenile, clichéd bullshit that stripped away everything that made their season 1 story nuanced and poignant, while simultaneously ripping open a fat plot hole because the team got careless and did not catch the discrepancy between the story they'd written in their heads and the visuals that ended up on screen in season 1. This is just going to be a long rant post detailing the reasons I absolutely despised this flashback. Obligatory disclaimer that this is just my (strongly held) opinion.

1) The timeline plot hole

No, I'm not misusing the term. So a plot hole is an inconsistency in a fictional narrative that cannot be explained away by any plausible in-universe justifications. There are many moments of weak writing in Arcane that may be contrived, rushed, weird, convenient, etc. but aren't plot holes.

This Vander/Silco situation however. Oh boy. If you all remember, Season 1 opened with the bridge massacre, also known as the Day of Ash. Vander is shown cracking enforcers' skulls. He looks like this.

The sisters, seemingly recognizing him, ask him where their parents are. He gestures to their corpses, the sisters cry, Vander has his "violence is not the answer" epiphany, drops the gauntlets very dramatically to underscore this massive turning point of character development for him, then picks the girls up and leaves the bridge.

In episode 3, we are shown a flashback. Vander is trying to kill Silco in the river. He looks like this.

Let's compare this to how he looked like on the Day of Ash.

Yeah. According to the visuals shown in Season 1, the falling out of Vander and Silco seems to have occured in the past before the Day of Ash, evidenced by how much younger Vander looks. Unless Silco is a time traveller who jumped forward to the future to throw a molotov at the riot because he just loves violent extremism that much, or Vander took the time to shave his beard and apply heavy duty anti-aging lotion on his face before hunting Silco down, there are no plausible in-universe explanations for this inconsistency. Not to mention, if Silco and Vander were really as close as brothers and the sisters knew Vander, then it's impossible they wouldn't have known who Silco was.

Yet, in Season 1, that's exactly what we see - not a single sliver of recognition between Silco and the girls, nothing to imply they knew of his existence before episode 3. Not a single conversation between Jinx and Silco implied that he knew, let alone was close to, her mother. Nothing from Vi throughout the entire first season indicated that she knew of his past friendships with her mother and Vander. They acted like total strangers to each other.

Many fans already caught this inconsistency during the three-year gap after writers' comments online implied Silco was involved in the Day of Ash. We had hoped the writers would catch on to this discrepancy too and either iron out the timeline if they want to do serious flashbacks, or just avoid calling attention to it completely by not doing flashbacks of their falling out. Alas.

2) Leonardo Dicaprio pointing meme

Death to the everybody-knows-everyone trope and lines that only exist to invoke the "Leonardo Dicaprio pointing" meme. Throw them into a fucking fire. Boring, mind-numbing, clichéd, overdone garbage. Not every character needs to have some kind of half-baked relation with each other. Not every major incident needs to be tied back to the main characters. Not every single detail needs to be overexplained and justified and again, somehow tied to a main character. They are unnecessary, and make the world feel so much more claustrophobic and smaller than it should be.

"The enforcers actually commited the Day of Ash massacre because SILCO threw a molotov. Vander actually tried to kill Silco because of VI AND JINX'S mother. She knew both Silco and Vander personally and TOLD THEM to help her raise her kids. VANDER named Vi."

Bullshit like this really fucks with immersion, because it becomes clear very quickly that the world is only occupied by a small handful of real characters while the thousands of other people in it are nothing more than inconsequential set dressing and wallpaper. The story and world no longer feel real, vast, and immersive. And these forced "connections" between main characters are so obviously manufactured to generate "OUGHHH" and Dicaprio pointing reactions. Idk about anyone else, but it takes me completely out of the story when I can obviously tell the writing is trying too hard to blow my mind.

The girls' mom waltzing up to Vander and Silco and just. Fucking telling them to help her with her kids lmfaoooooooo. (OUGHH and they both really ended up raising her kids WOAGH😱🤯). Jinx's mom saying choosing a name is stressful because her child will feel stuck with it (GASP and Powder ended up changing her name WOOOOWW😱). Vander coming up with Vi's fucking name. (OUGHHHH HE REALLY WAS MEANT TO BE FATHER ALL ALONG WOADGHHGHDHDH🤯🤯🤯).

Fucking kill me. Arcane Season 1 was surprisingly good precisely because they DIDN'T, for the most part, resort to tropey bullshit like this. It had, for the most part, originality. Uniqueness. In fact all the strongest aspects of Season 1, aspects I loved, were deliberate subversions of overdone clichés. For Season 2 to resort to this kind of writing reminiscent of Disney slop is insanely disappointing.

I'm waiting for a character to unironically say, "What are we, some kind of League of Legends?" in Act 3 now.

3) "Ohhhhh so THAT'S why he did that!!!!!!!!!"

Also death to overexplanations and giving justifications for things that never needed justifications. You know what I was never confused by while watching Season 1 of Arcane? Why Vander adopted the girls. Why Silco adopted Jinx. Why both came to care for their girls so much, they were willing to sacrifice so much for them. I thought the reasons for those things were very clear and poignant in the first season. I never needed an extra on-the-nose justification for the adoptions in the form of, "they wuved yo mama". It's not only redundant, it's also one of the most tired ass tropes in fiction. To me, Vander taking in the girls and Silco taking in Jinx are so much more powerful if they really were just random guys with no real connection to the girls' parents.

But I've already seen some positive reactions to this flashback with "Ohhhhh so THAT's why Silco/Vander cared for the girls so much, now I understand😯🤯😓" mf what exactly did you not understand before??

4) Character motivations

The motivations of both Vander and Silco are made downright bizarre by this flashback. So Silco was hellbent on murdering Vi last season, despite being close friends with her mom whose death he may feel guilty for? Literally despised her and wanted to kill her the entire time with no hesitation lol. So Vander had that aforementioned dramatic moment of character development, dropped the gauntlets, realized violence wasn't the answer, and carried the kids to safety... then doubled back to violently hunt down and murder Silco? But not before shaving his beard and applying youthful lotion of course. Can't kill your bro while looking crusty. Then he failed to kill Silco so he just... went back to the kids and pretended like nothing happened? Lol.

Silco being close to, let alone loving, the girls' parents makes no fucking sense for his character. Vander knowing them at least makes sense, but casual friends would have sufficed. "I was lowkey crushing (?????) on your mom and also named you" just cheapened the entire Vander/Vi and Silco/Jinx surrogate father dynamic. Vander's motivation for killing Silco being yet another fridged woman is also weak as fuck. First Viktor with Sky, and now Vander/Silco. They really should have left this one up to our imaginations if this was the boring tripe they came up with.

[arcane-ish]

Hmmm, I don't really think of Vander as a bad dad but more like somebody out of his depths, which is precisely why the Jayce similarity made a lot of sense.

(I started to realize this when I was trying to think of an "all Zaunites are Pilties, all Pilties are Zaunites AU" and I instantly slotted Vander into the Jayce roll of the slightly vapid council member/beloved city golden boy)

I feel Vander has a good connection and rapport with most of his kids and overall means well.

What I'm struck with the most is: why on earth didn't Vander get more help with raising them? Raising 4 kids is not an easy thing to do and at this point Vander should have had them long enough to know that?

I was talking about this before but in the pseudo-Victorian setting they are in, if it was more historical then "Ah darn, guess I have to get married to have somebody help take care of the kids" would totally have been a thing and even in place of that there should have been "okay, then get an adult relative to move into the household" or "get a servant/nanny/au-pair".

Like basically almost anything Vander does (yes including the whole keeping vital information from Vi), the whole charismatic, jokey, giving you a lot of freedom, but taking you in for "serious talk" lessons, would have been totally fine ... if it was the counterpoint to a second parent who does more of the tight oversight thing. Especially since the kids do not seem to be part of part of any school/kindergarten/other structured institution and instead just spend their time loitering around in a very unfocused way.

That said, one angle I do go light on comparably is the "Vi as a co-parent to Powder"/putting too much responsibility on Vi angle. Mostly because:

1.) in my experience that is something that just comes with the setup, it when you are dealing with 4+ kids, that just seems to come with the territory that the older kids are roped in with helping with the younger (ie watching over them, feeding, changing diapers of toddle age children because the mother has the new baby to deal with). And yeah it tends to potentially fuck up the children in question in a "I had less of a childhood because I was thrust into taking care of my younger siblings" kind of way, but again it just seems to be genuinely unavoidable logistically without unless you are like some millionaire with a different nanny for each of your 12 children. I mean, there are many reasons why in modern post-birth control societies we sort of naturally gravitate towards 1-2 children because if people were honest this is about the maximum amount that most people can feasibly manage without starting to draw on the help of *somebody* whether it is "well my mother lives with us" or "older kids take care of younger kids"

2.) I get the distinct feeling that "Vi as Powder's caretaker and primary focus person" was already in place when Vander found them and that Vander probably tried to get closer to Powder but she was slow to open up because her attachment to Vi was already very tight.

So imo it would have taken a very steady and "I understand why this is important" heart of Vander to actively work on breaking up that dynamic and forcing Powder to lay off Vi and recognize him as the primary caregiver and I can't really fault Vander completely on just not being that/for thinking that if he just gives them a generally friendly environment that dynamic will eventually grow itself out.

(for example one of the core examples of "where is Vander??? Why is Vi doing this???" is actually Vi in the Enemy music video where it seems that she is lecturing Powder on being reckless after Vi and Powder get search and frisked by Enforcers. To me this very much seems like a "where is Vander?" but it's of course impossible to know where he was and whether/why he potentially he didn't know/whether Vi took it upon herself to handle it rather than Vander refused to do it or missed the whole ruckus because he was busy and they don't ask him)

arcane: vander is actually a pretty bad dad

i'm kidding ( >ヮ<)

In all seriousness Anon, I don't think Vander was a bad Dad the same way I don't think Silco was a good one. None of them were perfect. They both were trying to make their daughters better than the trauma they endured, but no one has a book on parenting---especially not in Zaun.

The great thing about Arcane is every character is flawed. Vander wasn't the best father but he tried his best. Vi wasn't the best sister but she tried to be. Even the Pilties: Jayce tried his best, but lost sight of himself along the way. It just goes to show how well grounded the show is in that every character feels real and so human that their flaws are just a part of them, while also driving the show's conflict severely well.

I guess to loop back to the whole "ask bit": I don't really agree with this. I don't think he was the greatest dad, but Vander was a good dad. But hey, to each their own! ( ^‿^)

Until next ask,

- Bleh