Arcane Salon (Snowflake Challenge 13)
Jan. 25th, 2025 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quiet
This is actually a timely challenge, because I've been thinking I wanted to make a post that's just, "Everyone talk about Arcane with me, please, I beg you." The post I've been envisioning started out a little more whiny, because I just don't know where to nerd out about things with other people anymore. But I'm going to bite my tongue with my complaints about social media platforms these days and instead invite anyone who's interested to give me their Arcane takes/feels.
Got recs for fic or artists? Got a character you want to talk more about? Want to link some meta you or someone else has written? Want to list out some headcanons? Just have a topic you want to chatter about? Want to talk about what did and didn't work for you S2? Please go nuts!
Here are some prompts, but no one has to stick to these. Anything goes if it's Arcane or LoL lore related here.
- What sort of "missing scenes" do you wish we had gotten?
- What did you come away shipping, if anything, and what attracted you to the ship?
- If you are a Jayvik fan, were you a day one truther? Did you come in from the old LoL pairing? Was it S2 that convinced you? How much of the old Vikjayce characterization do you like to see in fanworks if at all?
- What are your thoughts on Maddie and Caitlyn? I kind of love them as a pairing? I think Maddie alone is an extremely interesting character. She was a double agent the whole time but her loyalty to Noxus is sexy, and I'm intrigued by the scene in which she's encouraging Caitlyn to end the lockdown of the undercity, or at least reminding her that the option is there. I wonder what her angle was there. And Cait could not have more clearly been using Maddie as a rebound, but if Vi had somehow been permanently off the table, say in the AU where she was dead, would she have maybe taken the relationship more seriously?
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Date: 2025-02-02 05:05 pm (UTC)shipping wise i was increasingly invested in a sort of kingmaker dynamic between jayce and both mel & viktor. they gave me such triumvirate vibes with a missed chance to be steampunk!challengers. back when i thought s2 would care more about the political chessboard it had set in up the first season, i hoped to see these three matter in balancing the stakes between piltover and zaun. instead of, well, getting what we got where the oppression/occupier worldbuilding of s1 didnt seem to matter anymore.
(and tho i wouldn't call myself a day one truther, the jayvik was STRONG from episode 2. tho i havent delved much into fanworks for them. the pair are delightful but its so easy to see fandom erode their characters into just, bland Bigger Male/Smaller Male slash works. its a tale as old as time, sadly.)
and this may be a wild opinion seeing just how widely maddie was hated at the time, but i dont think she was the root of all evil. theres not enough nuance to an answer like that, and this series was at its best when it left room for the gray. if you think about it theres a lot of questions that never really got answered about maddie. was she from piltover? was she actually from noxus? could she have been from zaun, and if so, would that explain why she had no real loyalty to piltover/caitlyn and instead chose to align herself with someone who would empower her? and when did maddie become a double agent? was she purely an opportunist? did she think zaun and piltover could thrive under noxus? did she genuine want caitlyn to make better choices or was she testing her commitment to ambessa's methods and reporting back all the while? outside of fic, we'll just never known.
& again, i just really believe this show needed way more time to cook.
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Date: 2025-02-03 03:22 am (UTC)It's a shame S2 was undercooked. I enjoy undercooked shows because they give fandom so much space to explore, but at the same time, as a work taken for what it is there is a lot of space for criticism. Jayce just blasting Viktor and then walking off is one of those. Like I can come up with many missing scenes there that would fit fine, but even though the show explains some of the reasoning, that doesn't mean it actually makes sense.
Seeing more of a tug of war for Jayce between Mel and Viktor would have been great. Given the political situation I think it would have been hard to keep the antagonism without turning Mel into the bad guy, just because for most people regardless of what argument she could make being the richest person in Piltover means that she's lost the argument before she's begun. I think it would still be interesting to hear her make her argument, or otherwise engage with with the Piltover/Zaun issue at all, which she didn't really. I don't think the showrunners were willing to reckon with what Mel actually stood for.
I admit I am a big exciting battle enjoyer so the shift from the politics to the dramatic combat was something I liked, but had the show had more time I would have loved to see something more akin to a political drama.
There's been some Any Two Guys showing up for Jayvik and a lot of fanon is starting to calcify, but with the sheer number of fic coming out so far it feels possible to find stuff that has interpreted their characters in new and interesting ways, or is focused on adhering to parts of their canonical characters that don't fit the tropish mold. I'm optimistic but it only takes a few good fic to make me happy lol.
I never considered the possibility that Maddie might have been a Zaunite, but that does open up some interesting doors! My assumption has been that she was a Noxian native and came to Piltover on a spy mission, but Noxus taking advantage of the social inequality in the cities to find agents is something that actually happened in the cold war so definitely a possibility!
no subject
Date: 2025-02-04 08:24 am (UTC)and I may be reading your comment incorrectly, but i have to say also never read any inkling of animosity between Viktor and Mel. especially not over Jayce. the show only ever positioned them as parallels to each other, not rivals. pretty much everywhere ive seen that asserted they were opposed has kind of been fanon spin. i just don't think there was any antagonism there to start, let along keep up story-wise.
and sorry cant stop now since we are on the topic of villainy. Jayce and Caitlyn are characters who also needed deeper arcs. honestly! we know for a fact that characters like Caitlyn are willing to use means like absolute force, and even willing to indulge in classism & bio-existentialist dogma to justify their actions and anger - (im paraphrasing but "its [jinx's] blood flowing in your veins" was a CRAZY ass thing to say to Vi after (a) she refused to allow caitlyn to use indiscriminate violence and (b) showed she was willing to use violence against vi for questioning her, and honestly it was an overall even crazier thing for the show to NEVER engage with again.) we also know for a fact that jayce was willing to build weapons out of his technologies, despite the fact that hextech was supposedly built out of the dream of bettering the world. the trajectory of a more grounded jayce arc could have gone on to question the ontological relationship between tools and users, when are these creations purely weapons? or when are they defensive measures?
and going deeper, can the same question be asked of the more Zaun based invention of ChemTech? we only ever saw chemtech being used as a scary bad poor people drug, analogous to a more literal take on the greater Urban Super Predators myth (forgive me for being so Very On The Nose with the real life connection.) BUT with more time and interest in fleshing out Zaun, could we have found less militant or addictive uses for ChemTech? or does the world of Arcane simply subscribe to this practice of chemistry and science as being an irredeemable evil?
and, getting back on topic, i thought jayce and caitlyn and their supposedly years long friendship (for what little we saw of it) could have been the driving back and forth between this conflict of weaponizing inventions and the arcane. take Noxus out of the picture and ask, what story is Piltover and Zaun actually battling out amongst themselves? its easy to imagine Caitlyn asking Jayce for weapons. its easy to see him hesitating because he has actively harmed innocents (the child in S1). he is no longer as blind to the cost of swinging that hammer. but we also know that Jayce has this noble streak that makes him vulnerable! he's smart enough to see problems and bold enough to try and envision a world without them! it makes him need to feel like he has done everything he can and participated in problem solving to the fullest extent of his ability. (or maybe thats my inference on jayce, maybe you disagree? lmk) i ultimately saw Jayce's arc as him falling down the hole of trying to brute force a HexTech solution into a problem that cannot be solved with innovation. you will not fix society inside a lab anymore than you will fix it on a battlefield. it requires knowledge of diplomacy and compassion (mel), history and caution (heimerdinger), solidarity and outreach (ekko). yknow, actual unity towards a goal.
i also think it requires engaging with the structure of Zaun and the way its inequities shapes the trajectories of lives to be explored. no characters ever ask this, but what makes a Viktor vs what makes a Jinx? both are brilliant individuals, both get swept up in the dreams of other people (Jayce and Silco respectively), and both these Zaunites are made dangerous by the their wounds have when mixed with the power they can weild. what are we supposed to make of that? are some undercity dwellers just inherently evil (as Caitlyn at her lowest seems willing to believe?) or is Viktor really the most special boy and was immune to being evil until the plot demanded it? or is it all down to chance and scarcity? if Viktor and Jinx ever had an actual second to be considered narrative foils, could the unspoken but heavily prevalent idea of Piltover's meritocracy have been blown out of the water?
ah. we'll never know. again, because the show decided that actually the real problem is viktor's use of hextech and the arcane that is inherently incorrect, along with singed's use of chemtech.
it just would have been too hard or too radical to tell a story reconciling the failures and disparities in a single society. instead its about reminding the lower classes they redeem themselves by signing up to be canonfodder when a bigger bad turns up, and hoping maybe ONE lower class individual gets to join a council of oligarchs and pray its not a figurehead role.
and yikes. i wrote you a manifesto here.
sorry, not sorry
- Cypress
no subject
Date: 2025-02-05 04:55 am (UTC)Note Silco was my favorite character in S1, so I don't think that being an antagonist is a bad thing at all. I don't think that Mel would become a villain in a stereotypical way or anything like that. My thinking is if the show didn't go in the direction it did, it still needs sources of conflict, and if we assume that it should chose to derive that conflict from the class divide it would make more sense for Mel to be on the side that prevents Zaun from just getting everything it wants right away. The best possible outcome, for both cities, would be for Piltover leadership to do everything it could to bring equity to the two cities, and to invest its resources in supporting a prosperous and safe Zaun, but without resistance to this decision there is no story. Heimerdinger has already moved to Zaun, Jayce is resigning from the council, and Cait represents one arm of Piltover's oppression but I don't think she cares at all about the political or economic elements. Her overreach is driven 100% by pursuit of Jinx. IMO Mel is the only other major cast member who could play the role. Another option is that Zaun's position is bad enough that Piltover cannot reasonably acquiesce to it, which could be problematic considering the power imbalance.
To be clear I don't think Mel would actively resist a social good if that issue was brought to her, I think it would have to be more an issue of "not right now" or prioritizing other more imminent issues, or thinking that what's being done is enough, or other similar mind games that the 1% use to just not do what they could do to make the world a better place. But she did let things stay as bad as they were for years so it's not completely OOC for her to not be particularly proactive about fixing problems.
I'm also not saying that this is how it would have to go! I'm sure there are many other possible angles the show could have taken. I'd be interested to hear other possible avenues of conflict if S2 really focused on Piltover vs. Zaun.
But tbh I am probably in the minority in that I always considered the Zaun/Piltover conflict to be a part of the backdrop but not really the focal point of Arcane, and when it was in the foreground it was basically resolved by S1E9 until literally the final second. I think the ending of S2 where everyone just suddenly came together to fight a common enemy was a cop out, but more in the sense that I wasn't looking for a resolution to Piltover/Zaun at all. I think it would have been really interesting if Jayce wasn't able to convince Piltover of the threat Viktor posed and was dismissed as crazy or something, and instead had to find allies in Zaun (possibly with Mel who was the only one who believed him thanks to her own experiences or something) and Zaun alone had to make the sacrifices, achieved the victory, and by the end wasn't out from under Piltover's boot but now had a lot more resources and will to fight because of what they had just been through, with the final scene suggesting that an honest to god civil war was now on the table.
As for what we got, Sevika ending up on the council worked for me because it doesn't feel like anything has really been solved. It's an incremental change and many problems clearly still remain and that's significantly more interesting a place to leave it to me than total independence or parity on the council, which doesn't feel realistic.
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I agree there wasn't any personal antagonism between Mel and Viktor in the show we got, but their purposes and priorities were at odds at times. They probably got along fine, though we never much between them. I interpreted your comment about kingmaking as Jayce making a choice between what Viktor and Mel might represent, so in that case I anticipated there would be some antagonism post Viktor's heraldification in an alternative S2. I don't really want Mel to just agree with Viktor about things because that's boring unless there's something else causing the conflict. They do have a lot of personality parallels though. They are people who believe in peace and abhor violence, and who believe in progress in ways that are (at least in S1) aligned. There are probably timelines where they are powerful allies.
I know there's shipping tension between MelJayce and Jayvik fans and ot3ers so I want to be clear I don't think there's like a romantic rivalry or anything or a need for there to be conflict around, like, possession of Jayce or anything like that. I just prefer interesting conflict in general. It's one of the reasons why I'm attracted to more League leaning characterization of Jayvik or divorce era Jayvik, because I'm not as enthusiastic about the approach where Jayce is so completely smitten that he's ok with everything Viktor or Mel does. Like he blasts Viktor in the chest. And I don't take that scene where Jayce tells Mel she used him as a breakup either. I like that scene a lot because he's asserting himself and Mel is also completely unapologetic because she doesn't believe she has anything to apologize for, and I think she's right! And I think that's a conflict that the two of them could have worked through if they had been given the chance, maybe come out of it stronger together.
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There are a lot of real-world parallels we could make with Arcane but I try to avoid going there myself. Not that there isn't a lot of insightful stuff to say about it all, but I don't really want the positions I take on the plot to be about my positions on real world politics, for the most part. For example I think it made sense for Jayce to make a hextech weapon and raid a chem factory, it made sense that Vi was the one who ultimately goaded him into it, it made sense for Cait to use the gray and attack chem barons with a strike force, but that's because I think that the real world solutions of community buy in, healthcare access, abolition of the carceral state, due process, reparative justice, how about even a conversion to a true democracy, and all that were never on the table from a Doyalist perspective. Arcane is a story driven by big, dramatic decisions made by individuals who have fantasy powers. The power fantasy element and the focus on interpersonal drama is going to trump a sober approach every time. It's within those constraints that I'm more interested in analyzing the story. At some point the writers have to ask, “Where can we get Vi to punch something with her gloves?” IRL I'd want anyone doing what Jayce or Caitlin did to end up in jail themselves, but I don't want that to happen in Arcane because that would be boring to me. I'd read the fic though.
I also think a lot of the analysis that engages with the questions the show raises is where it should be, in analysis. I think in some cases (not all) the fact that the show raises the question is itself something of a success and the answer is not really the interesting thing (as drama within the show itself! I think addressing it in comments like these are great and your mention a lot of places where critics can dig in). There are also places where the show does just reveal biases on a structural level and its very open to critique there. IDK if you've watched it but there's a youtube vid called <a=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qagp6v--qym&t=803s>Arcane was Always Centrist. I only watched maybe half of it cause it's kind of long and I don't agree with absolutely everything said, but it has a lot of good points and its central argument seems well supported.
I hope this doesn't sound like an attempt to dissuade you from analyzing the show from this perspective. You make fine points and I agree for the most part. I just can't really follow you there too much.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-05 05:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-02-09 07:33 pm (UTC)a story where the class conflict isnt at the foreground ultimately does not make me interested in these characters, at all. i dont think of the political contexts as just a jumping off point; i believe it should steer each of the story arcs to a cohesive conclusion. i want the genesis of these dynamics and the actions they take within it to MATTER in the end.
the fight between piltover’s excess and zaun’s down and dirty power struggles were so very baked in, from all of S1 and even from the LoL game lore. i was never going to be able to shake that expectation of the narrative. and i dont want to dissuade you from disagreeing either, but the idea that you cant fix societal conflicts with flashy battles doesnt remove the ability for the story to include punching things imho. there is just the added expectation that the punching of the things at some point will be ub favor of a sort of internal set of politics and praxis within the narrative. and yknow, letting characters occasionally talk to each other in ways that are meaningful.
ultimately, im not riveted by caitlyn and vi’s will they or wont they unless we examine the forces that created the barriers. where is the joy unless we grapple with the things they overcome in seeing each others humanity? similarly, i cant really be satisfied with sevika on the council because it shows zero movement on zaun’s independence, just that one player in zaun has acquiesced and been folded into the already existing machinations.
(and not that i expected the zaun/piltover story to conclude in a utopia. thats not really my point here. but if you look at how the story began and ended, starting with vander’s ethos of “keep your head down and we wont be murdered”, to the "poor people will make themselves useful to the ruling class when external threats arise, so just wait and see" i just truly dont feel like there was enough ratifying change aside from a tired montage of sad looking outros from the characters.)
and maybe most of all, the single reason i had been put off to jayce and viktor overcoming their failed ideas of progress (& defusing the ~*~*glorious revolution~*~*~) is how the text resolves it as one telling the other how his disabilities and illnesses (that were actively killing him) dont matter when they are deeply coded as results of the disparity he grew up in.
these two were so deeply entwined and had such rich potential. but their end only feels fulfilling if i shrug and go “well, theyre together now i guess.” idk. it just felt like a cheap and easy conclusion. the centrism of it all keeps everything flattened and the resolutions in these relationships just feel unearned as a result. its just sad because i believe there was so much in this story that we could have overcome, in a sense, and still achieved real interpersonal catharsis. but that would have taken more time and commitment.
but again, this is a feature of most western fiction. taking familiar struggles and making them set dressing isn’t exactly new. but its not something i can feel pride in the show for touching on rather than engaging with. perhaps im just getting to old for the whole “hey look at this problem! & now wave bye as it goes, its no longer plot relevant, dont worry about it” bit.
i say all this knowing its potentially uninteresting to you. and thats fair. but hey, in the end i hope its okay to say my piece and leave you be :3
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also, in response to your last comment, in the Silco!Lives S2 do-over fic that lives in my brain and will probs never get finished, theres tons of game/lore characters that would have made sense as antagonists. Camille and Renata are the big ones i think about a lot. Camille as a character actually entrenched in and originally from Piltover's ruling class. it would be a fun perspective to watch her trynig to maintain her clan's hold over the ruling structures that historically have gone unchallenged for them. and Renata is That Bitch. gosh. she would have given Silco (or any other faction that wanted to lead Zaun) a run for their money.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-13 01:53 am (UTC)I do think that a lot of the character work, particularly in S2, could have used more time to breathe, and some of that extra time could have been used to more cohesively engage with how who the characters are was affected by their upbringing and social status, and how their relationships with each other might require some serious reckoning with that. Vi and Cait are definitely the poster girls for that. Given a different plot, we could have gotten a true divorce era Viktor and Jayce if they had continued to lean on the Piltover/Zaun conflict too.
In the end I was personally satisfied, for the most part, with the amount of attention that it did get, but I also get why that wasn't the case for a lot of other people. For me though the most frustrated I got with S2 was the second act and this was largely because I felt that Vander and Isha made the whole plot drag to a halt. The characters in Arcane are for the most part complex, with sometimes self contradictory attitudes or conflicting emotions. A lot of the interesting tensions for me was in wondering how conflicting needs and desires would create circumstances with no easy solution. Vander and Isha by contrast were just sort of there and felt one-note and transparent in their roles in the story. There were similar characters in S1, but even Sky, who's personality kind of comes down to "crushes on Viktor" surprised me when she got vaporized trying to save him. Although maybe my impatience with Vander's tragedy is a side effect of the zero-sum game of a 9 episode season, and if things had been longer it wouldn't have felt like such a diversion. But they each got a episode song for themselves and as heart wrenching as they were I was like please let's get back to the story for most of it.
Jayce's last speech I mainly forgive because he is talking to a man who has turned himself into a demi god in an attempt to eradicate all flaws in humanity by wiping out humanity. At that moment Viktor's sense of brokenness is not proportional to his existence prior to the council attack. It also helps that Jayce was through most of S1 heavily invested in curing Viktor. If he had said something similar while Viktor was coughing his lungs out the meaning would have felt much different and grosser. As it is the speech is understandably divisive. I get why it feels like saying Viktor's illness didn't matter and things are just ok again suddenly. For me that had a little less to do with the failure to address the systemic sources of that illness and more to do with the fact that Jayce went for that angle rather suddenly after first trying to blow a hole in Viktor and then whack him with a hammer. Like there could have been a little more lead up there.
I really appreciate you replying so thoughtfully even though we are not agreeing on all that much! I don't -disagree- with you all that much to be honest either! Like I said I don't prioritize that angle personally but I do agree that there is a lot of opportunity there re: Piltover vs Zaun that was left on the table.