Arcane Criticism - Blog Posts

op, i hope that your pillows are always cold on both sides, that you always have an umbrella when it’s raining and that you always catch yourself before you stub your toes because you deserve all of it.

i actually hated A LOT of choices the writers made in season 2 and you basically listed almost all of it. thank you. this deserves so much more notes.

arcane s2 didn't stick the landing

i feel like the second season didn't build on top of what was established in the first season

i actually hate the "cycle of hate" narrative at this point in my life, especially with how it relates to real world conflicts.

there is no both sides in most cases. there's the oppressed and the oppressors. racism and related is the privileged oppressing the less privileged. and the oppressed who are fighting back are doing it in a situation where there is no other option. and a lot of the time, the burden and criticism of finding the moral way to go about freeing themselves is put on them. oh the black panthers are dangerous and they were forced to end their activities yet the KKK are still around? oh the palestinians attacked israel and took hostages to bargain with while they've lived generations of israel keeping them in an open air prison, having control of what goes in and out of their borders, taking over their homes, kidnapping their children to put in jail, killing them without repercussions, the activists that come from other countries are killed. you can't criticize a people who are trying to survive, who have already tried peaceful methods, who have been pushed to a corner of biting back.

back to this silly media analysis after unloading actual real world issues

in arcane we have piltover: the privileged and zaun the less privileged.

zaun has less of everything, they're literally the lowest class of this uppercity/undercity situation.

i hated how Jayce laid down his weapon in that one scene where he killed a child worker in the factory. and Vi rightly criticizes him by saying,

"You've always been a part of this. You just never had to look it in the eye. One dead kid? There's hundreds more where he came from, thanks to Silco and thanks to people like you who stuck their heads in the dirt."

"This is over," Jayce says.

"Not for me."

he has the privilege of keeping his hands clean, of turning away. Vi accuses him of "sticking his head in the dirt" ignoring what's happening in the undercity and even now he has the privilege of doing it again, meanwhile it's never over for Vi. because these are her people who are suffering, and because she doesn't have the privilege of looking away.

there's a shot where it pans over the group of children who were working at the shimmer factory with their hands behind their heads. the reason they're working there is because of the abysmal conditions the undercity are in, that the upper classes turned a blind eye to. Jayce gets to wash his hands clean of it by walking away.

I'm not saying he should be prepared to kill children if it comes down to it. it's just the fact that he can walk away. he's a councilmember with all the power in his hands, he's part of the reason why these kids are here, and he can't bear putting up with a silver of the pain the undercity goes through everyday.

we see Vi establishing her identity as one of them when they say,

"I can't let you leave with them," Jayce says, referring to the gauntlets.

"Then I guess you're going to have to kill another trencher," Vi retorts. (is that the right word?)

either way, she's one of them.

I was looking forward to Caitlyn becoming prejudiced against the people of the undercity, because it meant conflict, it meant Vi would have to fight her. whether or not it would result in Caitlyn realizing that she was wrong or not. it's a clashing, and during a clashing characters and their ideologies shine.

we didn't really get that.

we got the buildup for it where Cait's dad says "what is she still doing here?" in loathing (though this may be more due to her blood relation to jinx)

and Cait says "You can (help). As one of us." while handing over the police badge

which directly contrasts Vi's standoff with Jayce where she claims her side as a person of Zaun. Here Cait is giving her a symbol of everything she's stood against, her oppressors. (and i heard that the piltover soldiers weren't supposed to be representative of police brutality by the writers and i mean c'mon are you serious??? especially with the scene where they set up barricades between the upper and undercity and where ambessa's right hand man beats up the jinx supporter in line??? where they have them torturing that same jinx supporter in the prison??? where they arrest all of the people at Sevika's rally???)

and sure Vi joins the police force eventually and even at this point I'm still thinking okay she's going to realize she's on the wrong side and leave them, which she eventually does by stopping Cait from shooting isha. but that was more of a "that's a child" moment rather than a "i'm on the side that's oppressing my people" moment.

and jinx rightly calls her out on it later.

In terms of Cait, again, I think they did a good job setting up her falling into prejudice:

"I just understand now, how easy it is to hate them. One vicious act." and i thought this was a moment of introspection where Cait is essentially seeing how easy it is to villainize a whole group of people but she is aware of it enough that she won't do it herself.

"A memorial," Cait says as they both watch a soldier pick up a crying child, "what kind of animals!"

this is where she's falling into it.

again as many other people pointed out, the privilege of living one day in the same terror that the undercity lives in daily and it's enough for piltover to be scared. not to mention, it was by ambessa's hand that this attack happened, and the undercity will have to pay for the political moves people in privilege are playing.

again if we were to compare this to real world issues, it's insurance companies putting people in debt to save a loved one, its banks evicting people from their homes, its the homeless who are put into prisons and used for labor without proper pay or rights. and the "one vicious act" being the bullet that the healthcare ceo assassin shot.

and then we see her weaponize polluted air to terrorize the people of the undercity. went against everything her mother believed in and worked for.

it's crazy that Vi agreed to this. stood beside cait for this.

it reminds me of what silco said,

"Have you forgotten where we came from? The mines they had us in? We came from a world where there was never enough to go around."

"You're too young to remember what the undercity was before it became... an enterprise."

The fact that Silco could still be that composed while he breathed in the toxic air. unless he was scientifically enhanced, i like to think it's because he's the oldest, he's been in the mines longer than the chem-barons, longer than Vi. I don't think Vi ever had to deal with the toxic air.

Vi has forgotten where she came from and here she is weaponizing that same pollution, the Grey, against her own people.

but again I had hope that Vi would see that this is wrong

Vi puts herself next to the undercity man, Heenot?, they were interrogating once Cait threatened him with her gun, giving her a look. these are her people.

"I thought you were on our side," Cait had said after staunchly defending the people of the undercity to her parents in the first season. creating sides, putting Vi on hers.

Vi stops her from shooting Isha and Cait says

"I keep telling myself that you're different." saying essentially "you're one of the good ones" a common thing the privileged/oppressors say about the oppressed.

and that's where the conflict ends???

and then when they reunite??? nothing happens??? they never go over what Cait did??? never confront her about it??? just forgot about all that buildup??? oh no we're too busy now with the end of the world i guess

as I said in the beginning, they set it up for the piltover characters to clash with the zaun characters, between Cait and Vi, between Jayce and Victor.

"You didn't say they were from the undercity!"

"What difference does that make?"

"What—they're dangerous!"

"I'm from the undercity."

but that got washed away once victor got taken over by the hextech and became a "oh both sides are bad" guy and actually free will is overrated.

I was excited for Ekko to show Hemierdinger the conditions they were living in and working together to fix it, for Hemerdinger to fix what he's done to the people because he didn't pay them any attention.

Ambessa and the hextech possession over victor really derailed all the buildup between the undercity and the uppercity that's been set up and then did nothing with it.

oh we have to come together to stop the end of their nation.

fuck that, where's the revolution??? Jinx is the face of the resistance and they do nothing with that??? sure it's the reason why the undercity go fight against ambessa and victor because jinx was their hope, but that hope was building up against piltover, with the border patrols, with the police brutality, with how they tortured their people in the jails, with how they all got arrested at a rally.

where's the face off between cait and vi??? not even that, where was Vi's arc??? like everybody's been saying she did nothing this season. Vi should've been Vander's successor, she should've joined hands with jinx, ending the cycle.

victor should've had his own conflict with jayce, should've been a leader to his people.

the writers really didn't deliver this seaons, the art and animation was so cool though

the only time "both sides are bad" actually works is between the elves and dwarves in lord of the rings because as far as I know one hasn't oppressed/enslaved/taken rights away from the other and it's just petty squabbles and cultural differences and more serious squabbles. (it may be different in the books, but this is what I got from my time in the hobbit fandom).

anyway, i'm sure someone else has already said all this. thanks for reading.

at this point nothing we ever say will change op’s mind if they think that stripping anyone, regardless of status, off their basic human rights just because they break the law is justifiable.

when i made a point in the comments about how criminality is not absolute and can be manipulated to fit the agenda of whoever is capable of changing the law, therefore “criminals” can include some of the most vunerable marginalized communities, thus taking basic rights away from “criminals” could also mean taking away those rights from the people who need them the most, it just flew over their head and i got called a weirdo immediately.

honestly, it’s so frustrating to engage in good-faith arguments with people who resort to personal insults the moment they are disagreed with.

^^^———

It is WILD that you say “selling drugs and engaging in gang turf war does not make you not a citizen” as if that changes the fact that they’re still CRIMES.

I mean, if your logic is that Zaun is technically part of Piltover and thus falls under Piltover’s jurisdiction… committing a CRIME under their jurisdiction means you can suffer consequences from your actions. No? It doesn’t MATTER if you’re a citizen or not. Being a citizen doesn’t give you free rein to do whatever you want! You have to obey laws!

If I’m a citizen of a city in America, and I do a crime, the police of that city are allowed to take away my rights as a citizen. That’s what being a citizen in a functional society MEANS!

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU WEIRD ASS MOTHER FUCKERS????

OK since the person I was replying to isn't somebody I want to get into a discussion with ill make my own post about it. Little rant on the aesthetics of arcane vs writer intention ahead based on the use of child labour in the show.

Child labour in Zaun is normalised. Although it's less recognisable to the viewer as such because we're more used to child labour being as being depicted in factories or mines, all of the zaunite kids in act one s1 are child workers. Ekko works in Benzos shop, repairing and selling things. Vanders kids work as thief's, Oliver twist anyone?

Child labour is a feature of industrial boom historically, as well as the result of wealth inequality. Silco and the other chembarons further wealth inequality in Zaun and make use of child labour, but they invented neither. Zaun is Piltovers industry, the majority of factories and mines down there will be owned by Piltovans because that's a major source of wealth.

We never see the piltover owned factories even though logistically they must exist. Narratively there's no place for them to have shown this, however it does seem like the show goes out of its way to show the poor treatment of children and workers by the other Zaunites but leaves Piltovers hand in it unspoken. The most I have here is Silco speaking on the poor working conditions they had and Jayces lack of surprise in seeing children working, both in the factory and when ekko sold him goods. However, realistically Piltover would absolutely be hiring child workers in zaun and would have been the main contributer to the need for child workers to begin with.

I'm mostly making this point for two reasons. One because I've seen Silco criticised as the source of child labour in zaun which I think dumbs down what actually leads to child labour existing. The fact is, with wealth inequality at a severe level, children are forced to work to sustain their family, if not Silcos factories there would be work elsewhere or they would go hungry. This isn't me justifying his use of child labour, I'm only saying the issue would still exist without him because the root cause goes further back than him.

Two, because I've seen people arguing about the strike team and whether or not children would have been caught up in the factory raids. I don't think the writers intended for the strike team to have gassed child workers, I think it's an oversight on their behalf, but yes, even with the most strategic raids children would have been caught in the gray.

I've then seen people claim the children and the workers deserved that and I'm not even going to bother getting into that, babies first exposure to exploitation much?

Anyway, all of that is to say these arguments can go on forever because there's a discrepancy between the aesthetics of zaun and what the writers want us to believe about Piltover. The aesthetics tell us that Zaun is impoverished and exploited, that it's reminiscent of victorian England, it has casual police Brutality hidden in montages. When you think about the implications it gets messy and you realise that some of our good guys are complicit in some nasty things. I personally think that's good story telling.

But then you get to the writing itself and what they're telling is another story. That zauns issues are more caused by zaunites, that the piltover council has very little to do with their problems, that the strike team cannot possibly have hurt civilians because that would make Vi and Cait TOO morally gray. I see this as pretty lame writing, frankly.

This allows for people to be arguing on the show based on completely different perspectives. I completely get why people argue the strike teams efforts were necessary and caused very minor harm, because the writers intend us to take that away, to the extent of only showing a child harmed by the gray when Jinx reverses it. But logistically tons of Zaunite children would have been caught up in the gray too, its just glossed over because the writers don't want us to consider it.

op i will kiss you on the mouth (if you’ll let me ofc).

i literally ranted on my blog about the non-solution (sevika being on the council) to the piltover-zaun conflict yesterday and in that post i haven’t even gotten close to dissecting the intrinsically problematic politics behind the show yet, so it’s really cathartic to see this post popped up.

context: i was born and raised in a country where there are still traces of colonialist and imperialist invasions. my country was liberated when my mother was 6 years old, and less then 30 years before i was born - it’s recent enough that this kind of oppression and economic exploitation is not a foreign concept to me. i grew up hearing stories about how people like my great grandfather fought and died for the freedom i enjoy today, how significant that sacrifice was and more importantly, how violent the struggle was.

you see, in stories like these, the point is rarely ever the victory, it’s the fight. no matter what version of victory the oppressed masses envision it to be, they can never reach it without violence - either towards themselves or their oppressors. anticipating that, what i wanted from season 2 was not that zaunites will be promoted to positions of power or even that zaun will eventually be independent, i just wanted to see the class struggle play out in its full bloody grittiness. this is not me saying that it would be cool to see a bunch of people murdering enforcers or vice versa, i’m just asking for the fight to be treated with the weight it deserves, even if it means people will face brutalization and by extension, death. but after the first 3 episodes of the season, i doubted i would ever get the story i was looking for and sadly, i was right.

(and at this point i dont even know if i should vent all my grievances about the politics in this show in one single post as a magnum opus and be done with it because I HAVE MORE TO SAY)

i despise the way the fandom talks about jinx. i'm sorry, but a teenager with severe mental health issues who was raised by a dictatorial drug lord in a city where crime is rampant, children are often orphaned, and there is no clean air or water, was never going to turn out right. that is not to say that i condone all of her actions (e.g. killing the firelights, helping shimmer run rampant in zaun), but i do believe that she is the product of the circumstances she grew up in. will all that being said, i don't think she did anything wrong to piltover. most, if not all, the piltovans jinx attacked were enforcers and councilors, her oppressors and the primary people responsible for the subjugation of the undercity. and before y'all argue with me in the comments "but in the s1 finale, the council was going to make zaun independent", i beg for y'all to think beyond authorial intent since the show has deeply flawed politics (see: christian linke saying that the piltover-zaun conflict is an allegory to how the us two-party system fails to communicate with each other). while there are councilors that i like as individual characters (jayce and mel specifically), i don't believe that a consensus would've gave zaun true liberation because there has NEVER been a time where the liberation of oppressed people hinged upon their oppressors granting them their freedom. negotiating with your oppressors is akin to having a conversation between the sword and the neck, there can never be peace unless the oppressed takes away power from their oppressors. whether it's between the irish and the british, the algerians and the french, or the vietnamese and the americans, the oppressed ALWAYS had to fight for their liberation, even for examples that "prove" otherwise. nevertheless, i do believe that jinx's resistance is flawed since her violence is aimless and i wish that in s2, she would actually embrace being a symbol of zaun and use violence to achieve liberation for zaun, but i don't think the writers would be able to explore violent resistance effectively because they're cowards.

this might turn into a structureless rant and it will be rambly, but i’m just gonna be so honest, that moment with sevika at the end was so unearned and it accidentally encapsulates one of my biggest gripes with season 2.

the writing of the season betrays everything they set up about the piltover-zaun conflict. i fully expected a deeper exploration into the innerworkings of piltovian systemic oppression and/or the failures of its institutions. and it didn’t even have to be nuanced, mind you - had they done any kind of social commentary on just one aspect, be it the corruption of the council or the indifference of the privileged class, and how it accelerated the pace of piltover-zaun wealth disparity, i would have been fine with it. (i have SO MANY ideas on this specific topic i’m not even joking, maybe just because i’m a no chill raging leftist idk.)

instead, what we got was half-baked ideas of generic activism (i refuse to call it class activism) and throwaway music videos about anti-establishmentarianism that just boil down to “oppression bad”. don’t get me wrong, this is not inherently a bad message, but it’s an underwhelming and ineffective one, because it’s so inoffensive that it doesn’t actually challenge anyone’s political standings enough to elicit radical changes. and if you don’t think any political development adjacent to “zaun independence” is a radical change then i don’t know what to tell you.

and worst of all, the cumulation of DECADES of class struggle manifested into… nothing. NOTHING. a mutual avenger-level age-of-ultron threat just sidelined that whole plot line into the stratosphere. “we were oppressed but there’s an invasion so we’re cool i guess?” - said no zaunite ever. and do i even want to get into the fact that the final boss is a zaunite or are we not ready for that conversation yet? (i mean people have talked in depth about how displeased they were with viktor’s character development more eloquently than i can so go read those posts and give them some love.)

it’s so unimaginative and ridiculous that at the end the resolution to the class struggle is the fact that poor people are represented in the council now. the conclusion to that whole conflict is not even a triumphant moment it just felt empty. and it felt empty because the story, in the way it eventually played out, did not respect the core conflict that it had consciously tried so hard to flesh out. piltover and its ruling class were condemned for the fact that they crippled an entire city and its people, but then never had to face the consequences of those actions - and they probably never will, because even if sevika’s on the council now, she can still (and will very likely) be outvoted in any zaun-related matter. be so fucking for real.

it’s actually funny and eerie how that ending mirrors our current world in the way political institutions treat marginalized minorities demanding better treatment: instead of making actual systemic changes, those in power often shut down voices of the oppressed by giving them a seat at the table but with little to no negotiation power. it’s a shut-up-and-take-it tactic. it’s a non-solution. it’s disingenuous and evil. and it’s so disappointing that the writers decided that the ending we got was the best one they could think of for the people of zaun.

Zaun never got its independence but its ok guys Sevika is on the council now

"OH YOU HATE CAITLYN BUT YOU PROBABLY DON'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT SILCO!"

LOUD WRONG BUZZER OVER AND OVER AGAIN

Not only do i despise Silco as an individual and how the fandom loves to ignore the fact that he groomed Jinx (in a non sexual way) and he is one of the main reasons why s1 Jinx was as bad as she was (no, letting the clearly self destructive person be self destructive is not giving them freedom and it is in fact more a way for an abuser to keep the abused in their control)

I despise the fact that the writers wanted to push the centrist bullshit of "Oh violence against your opressors is as bad as the violence your opressors execute over you" using HIM.

But guess what? Silco being an awful person and character does not erase Caitlyn. They're both shitty people and they're both awfully written only existing for the writers to push stuff like

-Abusing butch lesbians is okay!

-ACAB is wrong

-We shouldn't support revolution we should support a reform!

-Police brutality can be okay if it's a femenine woman doing it!

Amongst others.

Btw i will most likely make another post discussing Silco's abuse towards Jinx because everyone from a Jinx fan to a Kuklux kiraman stan loves to push this narrative of how silco was a "great father" and a "positive influence" bs, directly and inderectly pushing another narrative trying to make Jinx look like a spoiled brat who only did stuff because she was a "UNSTABLE MENTALLY ILL MONSTER WHO CANNOT LOVE AND ONLY ACTS FROM SADISM. AND SHE WAS THE ONE WHO CHOSE THAT LIFE NOBODY BUT HERSELF CAN BE BLAMED!" And that shit obviously doesn't sit right with me especially if it comes from the people that are now on twitter using raegan's "war against drugs!" As a way to defend their favorite cop.

And the crowd is...

Not surprised anymore.

First, it was defending police brutality. Then, it was defending martial law. And now it's circled round to defending the war on drugs. I told yall, that hot wasian cop has officially introduced a whole new generation of mfs to the alt right pipeline 😭

( context : caitlyn and vi stans on twt basically reinvented the war on drugs argument to defending caitlyn gassing zaun )

A caitlyn stan just called me (a bisexual, bigender and ace person) a homophobic fuck just because i told her that being a lesbian doesn't make her literate (which is true because sexuality does not affect any of your intellectual abilities, it is the individual who has them)

Also, shouldn't she be more angry at how caitlyn is actually written? The writers literally wrote this femme lesbian to be abusive to her butch gf only for it not only to be forgiven by the narrative but actually glorified.

I don't know about you but i'd be pissed.

Kind of unpopular opinion, many might disagree but

I don't think people would like canon caitvi if it was a straight relationship.

"That's not true! Straight ships are still more loved than wlw ships!"

While yes that is true a lot of people nowadays (especially people that went through wattpad phases or people that had to deal with the insanity that some romance animes were, me one of those people) fixate a lot on how healthy canon relationships are.

And Caitvi...

Let me just change Caitlyn for an unnamed man so you can see my point.

-If a man who is also a cop hitted his girlfriend with a rifle in a very calculated way right in a spot where he knows it would hurt more, then just abandoned her crying of pain you would obviously call this abusive.

-If a man was esssentially a dictador who opresses the specific group of people his now ex is part of, even doing stuff like mass incarcerations that actually include children and the few leaders that this opressed group has, you would obviously not root for them to get back together.

-If this man used another girl just as a rebound even if for just a small amount of time you would obviously judge him.

-If this man and his ex found themselves in a jail cell (place that should be traumatic for his ex, mind you) and then he just started flirting and started to have sex with her AND THE ONLY THING HE APOLOGIZES FOR IS HAVING USED ANOTHER GIRL WHILE THEY WERENT TOGETHER, NOT THE PHYSICAL ABUSE, NOT THE POLICE BRUTALITY JUST THE FUCKING REBOUND anyone with common sense would obviously not be happy about this.

Of course i know there will be many saying "B-But you're taking out of context many of Caitlyn actions!" My answer will be NO.

In no context is acceptable to (in a very calculated way) hit your partner in a place where you know for a fact it will hurt more (because if you didn't know rifles actually hurt more than you actually think). In no context is acceptable to commit police brutality and put children in jail and in no context is sex a proper apology.

If Caitlyn's actions look even worse in raw words without cute animation or banger songs and replaced by a man, it's very obvious that Caitlyn is the actual problem.

Also I REALLY hate that the writers decided to use the most lazy trope possible, the trope I hate with my whole heart

When we have a big war between two sides that was becoming worse and worse for so many years

And instead of actually resolving it, the writers just add another, BIG ONE enemy to unite those two sides

And now they don't need to think about how to resolve SUCH COMPLICATED conflict that was lasting for decades. No, now they suddenly have a peace bc "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". THAT'S SO FUCKING LAZY

I wanted to see how Zaun and Piltover resolve their conflict so bad and all I've seen was a fight against Ambessa and Viktor?? Seriously?? That's a such disappointment

Also the same thing happened in spop and I really hoped Arcane isn't gonna do it...and they did...

Like imagine if in ATLA instead of Aang stopping the fire nation, all 4 nations just united against spirits

That's actually insane