#sorry Ambessa you dont get to watch

[catyuy]

So..........

Where's the Arcane fanfic where characters are forced to watch and react to the show?

Let's say Ekko impresses a diety and makes a wish. So they force characters from season 1 episode 1 to watch both seasons in order to change things.

From Zaun: Silco, Vander and Sevika.

From the Council: Mel, Heimerdinger and Cassandra Kiramman.

From team science: Jayce, Viktor and Singed .

Bonus characters: Benzo, Shoola, Grayson and Sky.

Let them watch how their decisions screw with the next generation and lead to senseless war and brutality. How magic can be great and awful. How some rise above and others fall further. Let them squabble over who's at fault and what their kids do. Then, let them actually try to fix things. (Like send Powder and Ekko to the Academy, get rid of the grey, build prosthetics, and get everyone therapy).

But why do none of the kids get to watch? Because this is about the adults fixing things and not fucking up the kids anymore then they already are.

[stackslip]

so after a second watch, the thing with arcane s2 so far is that near all the plot beats are really good and exactly what i wanted, but they also almost all desperately needed more buildup. it's like we're missing 10-15 extra minutes an episode for the scenes that would really flesh out a lot of the characters' motives for the choices they make and to build up the world! it's so painfully obvious that they're craming in plot bc they're missing a season or have cut time per ep, and as a result while im ecstatic at a lot of the developments v few of them feel earned!

vi choosing to become an enforcer, her agonizing feelings re jinx in particular feel like they're missing. we should have seen the moment cait chose to use the vents to target the undercity and others' reaction to this, especially vi. it's great to see the hole silco left, but we needed to see the underground falling apart in something that's not a shiny league amv. we needed to see the kid spend more time with jinx for her choice to defend jinx to hit harder. we needed to see more of jinx's suicidality and her voices disappearing. i would have been so grateful to see mel trying to do more to rally to counter her mother's influence and being foiled at every turn. more hints of ambessa's manipulation too! would have loved to see ekko and his peers rescuing undercity people and dealing with the aftermath of the war there directly!

and like tbc i think they v clearly considered what they did have the time with and chose to trim or cut off near anything that wasnt a super cool fight scene or important plot beats. the ACTUAL beats are near all a win to me tbh! i am ecstatic about cait's character arc, her using the vents made me gasp; the mel and ambessa situation is sooooo fascinating and fucked up; i love the revelation about hextech poisoning the ground; sevika and jinx dealing with the gaping wound of silco's death is so good; viktor's ominous messiah arc is hitting for me; i loooooved cait hitting vi and vi just breaking down.

in terms of missteps, i wish ekko didnt feel like he's just being explained plot at (i like his dynamic with jayce so far tho), i think vi of all the characters suffered by far the most of the sacrificed time to make her choices and words mame proper sense, caitvi kiss felt far more like they had to kiss before they broke up but in context did not work, and made me roll my eyes so hard, we did not need a five minute cait angst montage, i did not care for how "league" the zaunite chembarons felt instead of an organic part of zaun like they did in s1, half the songs are a complete miss to me, etc etc

i dont think the season is a loss and again im interested in the actual beats, and tbh i kinda feel sorry for fortiche and the writing team bc it's obvious that this is less like, active clumsiness on their part or shite writing and far more that time was a deeply limited resource for the story they wanted to tell and they had to make choices. you could argue if it would have been better to drop some plot threads entirely and focus more deeply on others but imo it wouldnt work for a series like arcane where the cast' actions have such massive ramifications on each other so. i get it. it's just really unfortunate considering how tightly written s1's tragedy was

[birdmenmanga]

@tetrissyndromes

YOUUUU UNDERSTAND ME. It's like. if you told me at the end of s1 ohhh noooo theyre not making a second seasonnnn I would have drawn them having lesbian sex myself. but by the end of s2 I was watching them make out sloppy style with no emotion in my heart. thats how you know you fumbled it bigtime as a writer. if I was watching it in person with a friend I would have turned away from them sucking and fucking and said "can I tell you something? I dont really care abt caitvi. put it on in my living room while I'm cooking dinner and see if I turn away from my sausage and peppers I'm making I won't. Because I don't even need to catch a GLIMPSE of them having lesbian sex. for me, the ship caitvi holds NO sentimental value. (laugh) sorry!"

like in s1 you have the general arc of cait's "sheltered and intelligent rich kid who's been taught to see poor people as beneath her learning that poor people are actually human" and vi's "bottomsider who has learned through past experience to never trust topsiders because their material interests lies in the exploitation of poor people coming to realize that not all topsiders are inherently bad, some of them just have no idea what's beyond piltover" which is really compelling! You have a relationship that isn't just "two people coming to like each other", but one which is changing both of their core beliefs about another group of people. that's exciting and vulnerable!!

and in s2? COMPLETELY bungled it. vi joining the cops bc cait got her a spot is already stretching my suspension of disbelief but I can kind of see it I guess. cait is genuinely trying her best to give vi what she thinks vi deserves. but it should have been OVER the moment cait gassed the undercity. I don't oppose a story about how liberalism can very easily turn into fascism, but IF they were going to make cait sink into the role of a fascist dictator she shouldn't be able to walk back from that so easily. if they were dead set on making her piltover hitler then they should have given up on caitvi!! when vi screamed at cait saying "AMBESSA WHISPERED POISON IN YOUR EARS AND YOU JUST ATE IT UP!!" they understood the assignment. they should have committed to the bit. they should have made vi leave her forever.

sure, vi can let cait help her save her father. but I firmly believe vi should have forever remained "the one that got away" for cait. YOU let the Hitlerite particles take over and THIS is the price you pay for that. in fact I think her NOT getting together with vi, and STILL turning away from fascism is an even stronger character arc for cait. like you receive no reward for what you do. and yet you do it still because it's the RIGHT thing to do. maybe they will occasionally catch a glimpse of each other across the city. but vi will always break the gaze first and never, ever looks back. this is cait's penance.

^ that's how it should have gone #DIVORCE #ITSJOEVER #HATEY

you'd think I'd like arcane more because I liked gwitch a lot and they had a lot of the same problems (rotting around ep4 of s2 despite a phenomenal s1 setup) but the crucial difference between arcane and gwitch is that gwitch didn't do a shitass version of takaeishi