The dirt under your nails - ARCANE

[hellgodsrus]

Well I watched Act 2 and I'll crosspost my opinion from SB:... It wasn't as good, it's not bad but it doesn't hit the same level of 'almost perfect' execution that Act 1 does.

Spoiler: Gripes

Specifically, The firelights are a Deus Ex Machina right now, they're the inciting incident for Cait to start her investigation, they're the ones who come in when Jinx is at a critical time with Vi... I like how the show has used standard tropes to expedite its story telling but this time the execution wasn't great and it's not like we didn't have Silco introduced to us in Act 1, it feels like they're holding back on the introduction, I fear because the leader will be reavealed as a champion after Act 3.

On top of that, Cait is looking Mary Sue-ish, which is a massive problem in a series about conflicted characters whose main storyline runs on those characters making poor decisions based on their flaws, ...she sticks out. it's even worse knowing what little I do about the game because not only does that feed the Vi as an enforcer narrative, it also looks like pandering since AFAIK Cait is one of the most popular champions.

Tl,Dr: I feel like some narrative choices are made for the game now, not to the point of killing my enjoyment of the show, but it does lessen the experience IMO.

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I completely disagree, especially vis a vis your complaints about Caitlyn (who is actually lower in mains than Jinx, I'm pretty sure? Certainly lower in pickrate ATM since she's kind of in an odd place in the meta due to past kit adjustments and the recent removal of her autocancelling with the visual update). Also this Act eased a LOT of my fears about how the show will resolve its political dilemmas since, well, it's showing quite a complex story with everyone managing to be various shades of right AND various shades of wrong.

 

[Dream Logic]

Somehow when I first watched it I thought that Vander had killed Vi and Powder's mom during the riot. My brain just kind of went 'he killed a person, reaction shot to the kids, dead person has purple hair and he's taking off the gauntlets'. Which while a totally weird read would have been interesting to see.

Haven't watched act two but I hope they address the fact that Vanders both hadn't made any progress and that he was going to let war happen to protect his kids.

Hell, juxtapose Silico and Jace as people who would inherently shake an unjust status quo.

Actually wonder if they'll consider the fact that Vanders milquetoast centrism was a direct response to a horrible experience. That and how despite keeping things from getting worse he never actually makes things noticeably better either.

 

[Xepheria]

On top of that, Cait is looking Mary Sue-ish, which is a massive problem in a series about conflicted characters whose main storyline runs on those characters making poor decisions based on their flaws, ...she sticks out. it's even worse knowing what little I do about the game because not only does that feed the Vi as an enforcer narrative, it also looks like pandering since AFAIK Cait is one of the most popular champions.

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I disagree with this entirely. Caitlyn, at base, has been shown to be a talented young woman chafing at the role imposed on her by society, unsure of if the success that she experiences is won by her own merits or merely handed to her by virtue of her birth. There is a certain naivety of perspective that is really highlighted through her interactions with Vi - hesitant, cautious, and completely on the back foot in a way that's she's never had to be, especially when contrasted with her partner's brashness and absolute self-confidence.

The character writing and the way emotions and relationship dynamics are portrayed in this series are absolutely stellar - there's a lot told through body language, microexpressions and motion in a manner that looks incredibly natural, which you never see in animation. The flip side of this is that people manage to miss a lot of what's going on, because they're entirely unused to it even existing within the medium.

Abandon your preconceptions of lore written in and not touched since 2013, and let Arcane tell its story.

 

[stratigo]

Also, vi and caitlyn are gonna fuk.

 

[megamiaouh]

Abandon your preconceptions of lore written in and not touched since 2013, and let Arcane tell its story.

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I'm not a league player, and I barely have any preconceptions, my reaction mostly stems from how many Sue type characters follow this format of being entirely right and their only conflict coming from an unjust authority, the sprinkled I'm too good hearted and people fool me because of it doesn't help.
I've dropped literally hundreds of fanfics with that 'plot' and it's a pretty big red flag for me at this point.

The character writing and the way emotions and relationship dynamics are portrayed in this series are absolutely stellar - there's a lot told through body language, microexpressions and motion in a manner that looks incredibly natural, which you never see in animation. The flip side of this is that people manage to miss a lot of what's going on, because they're entirely unused to it even existing within the medium.

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I do agree with this, tough it feels like that aspect has dropped in quality from Act 1.

 

[10ebbor10]

I'm not a league player, and I barely have any preconceptions, my reaction mostly stems from how many Sue type characters follow this format of being entirely right and their only conflict coming from an unjust authority, the sprinkled I'm too good hearted and people fool me because of it doesn't help.
I've dropped literally hundreds of fanfics with that 'plot' and it's a pretty big red flag for me at this point.

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Honestly, at this point Mary Sue is a terminology which has degraded so much that it basically just means "female character I do not like". It's degraded to the point where people actively start looking for excuses to try and fit into this mold.

Just look at how little it takes for you to dump a character in that basket.

All that Caitlyn did is ignore a orders from superiors to pursue her own private investigation. This is a trope that has been done by dozens of male detectives before her, and Caitlyn is actually depicted as less overwhelmingly competent than many of them. She's no Sherlock Holmes, and is pretty much entirely dependent on Vi to figure out what's going on and how to navigate the underworld.

On the other hand, you have Jayce who ignores authority too and in doing so revolutionizes an entire society bringing untold prosperity. You don't see people calling him a Mary Sue though.

 

[megamiaouh]

Honestly, at this point Mary Sue is a terminology which has degraded so much that it basically just means "female character I do not like".

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The vast majority of Sues are actually male, when I made mention of fanfics it was mostly Naruto In Name Only, Harry PotterINO, Xander HarrisINO, etc.

The 'so little' is a toxic trope that has existed for decades and is endemic to inexperienced writers who are afraid or unable to give their characters proper flaws, it's a 'character arc' that always end with the haters proven wrong, the people who abused Marty Stue's good heart getting trampled by the consequences of their action and Marty starting a reformation that will fix everything in a very childish messianic way.
The worst offenders are 'bashing' fics that Flanderize characters to make an obvious bad guy to shoulder all the blame for everything wrong with the setting and/or the Main Characters life.

An exemple would be an HP fic where Dumbledore is an evil mastermind who bribed the Weasleys into spying on Harry, the Weasly thinks that Harry (and sometimes Hermione) being a mudblood wouldn't notice but he does, so he steals their bribed money, or uses a Mathematical tricks to get them to transfer most of their savings to him in a 'muggle' way, then he uses those funds to buy trainers and books to become a great student, discovers an ancient but easy way to get rid of his Horcrux tricks Voldemort or kills him with a gun, bring Dumbledore to justice and graduate to became Minister and fix the ministry. That's a fic. That's hundreds of HP fics and the 'Harry' character is very similar to Cait as of now.

If by the end of Arcane Cait still has had no proper flaws, barelly made any mistakes and becomes Sheriff to 'fix Piltover the right way' then she was a Mary Sue. It's not the end of the world but it would be disappointing.

 

[10ebbor10]

If by the end of Arcane Cait still has had no proper flaws, barelly made any mistakes and becomes Sheriff to 'fix Piltover the right way' then she was a Mary Sue. It's not the end of the world but it would be disappointing.

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She falsified orders, potentially throwing a friend under the bus in order to get what she wants.

I'm not sure in what world that isn't a flaw.

Edit : And for your defense that Sue is actually male characters. I don't believe it.
The internet consistently applies the definition primarily to female characters.
Even if we limit ourselves to the scope of this show, Jayce is a far better example of the trend you claim to be criticizing than Cait is. After all, Jayce has literally proven everyone wrong by inventing awesome new technology, is being worshipped as this awesome man of technology, got his own council seat and so on.

An exemple would be an HP fic where Dumbledore is an evil mastermind who bribed the Weasleys into spying on Harry, the Weasly thinks that Harry (and sometimes Hermione) being a mudblood wouldn't notice but he does, so he steals their bribed money, or uses a Mathematical tricks to get them to transfer most of their savings to him in a 'muggle' way, then he uses those funds to buy trainers and books to become a great student, discovers an ancient but easy way to get rid of his Horcrux tricks Voldemort or kills him with a gun, bring Dumbledore to justice and graduate to became Minister and fix the ministry. That's a fic. That's hundreds of HP fics and the 'Harry' character is very similar to Cait as of now.

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There is literally zero resemblance between that scenario and Cait as depicted in the show.
The only action of deception that Cait engages in is forging some paperwork, and she gets caught doing that before she is even back from the mission for which she forged the paperwork.

Hardly fanfic hypercompetence.

You seem to have made up a character to get mad at.

 

[megamiaouh]

She falsified orders, potentially throwing a friend under the bus in order to get what she wants.

I'm not sure in what world that isn't a flaw.

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That's not a flaw, a flaw is part of a character.

Heimerdinger has obstructed technological progress numerous times, that's an action which he undertook because of his flaw as a character, his detachment from mortals that left him unable to understand and communicate with humans properly.

Cait took the action of getting Vi out by falsifying documents to get a murderer to justice, by getting an unlawfully imprisoned person out of a place where she was regularly beaten. She did that because she's dutiful and a good person. Nobody in their right mind would argue that one false document is worth stopping the search for a terrorist OR keep an innocent in prison, let alone both.

 

[10ebbor10]

That's not a flaw, a flaw is part of a character.

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Not considering the consequences for your actions because you're a rich girl from a rich family who always got away with a slap of the wrist is absolutely a flaw.

Cait took the action of getting Vi out by falsifying documents to get a murderer to justice, by getting an unlawfully imprisoned person out of a place where she was regularly beaten. She did that because she's dutiful and a good person. Nobody in their right mind would argue that one false document is worth stopping the search for a terrorist OR keep an innocent in prison, let alone both.

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Everyone in their right mind would argue that a lowly constable (not even that, she got fired) does not have the authority to write orders for a councillor. Certainly not orders that allow someone who's been locked up permanently to go scot free.
Her responsibility, once she discovered the anomaly, was to tell her friend that, and see if he wanted to give said order.

Not fake an order for him.

Incidentally, are we watching the same show? Because the Enforcers we've seen in the show would absolutely argue that sometimes beating prisoners is necessary, or that sometimes you need to bend the law to maintain order. A huge point of the plot is that 2 generations of police chiefs are making deals with the criminal underworld in the Lanes to ignore certain problems.

 

[megamiaouh]

You seem to really hyper focus on her gender, to the point you're losing your reading comprehension.

My HP fic example was chosen because I was being literal that there are hundreds of them, that way you can look them up instead of arbitrarily deciding 'the internet' doesn't like women and you can read the first few chapters to get an idea of how the character is presented and works without having to slog trough the whole story which is not a pleasant experience.

Or you can read up on the history of Mary Sues and realize it's a woman who first coined the trope, because she was sick and tired of it it's existence has nothing to do with sexism, outside of the few people who bandy the term around without understanding what it means. Just because assholes turn a phrase into an insult doesn't mean you should dismiss where that phrase came from or what it really means. Use some critical thinking please.

As for your flaw 'example', I'm sorry but I believe you're arguing in bad faith now. You're advocating for her to ignore Vi's present physical danger and potential life saving leads since Jinx stole what could become a Nuke just to follow protocol.

 

[10ebbor10]

You seem to really hyper focus on her gender, to the point you're losing your reading comprehension.

My HP fic example was chosen because I was being literal that there are hundreds of them, that way you can look them up instead of arbitrarily deciding 'the internet' doesn't like women and you can read the first few chapters to get an idea of how the character is presented and works without having to slog trough the whole story which is not a pleasant experience.

Or you can read up on the history of Mary Sues and realize it's a woman who first coined the trope, because she was sick and tired of it it's existence has nothing to do with sexism, outside of the few people who bandy the term around without understanding what it means. Just because assholes turn a phrase into an insult doesn't mean you should dismiss where that phrase came from or what it really means. Use some critical thinking please.

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I find it interesting that you decide to ignore pretty much all of my arguments to talk about a single paragraph on gender 3 posts ago, and then accuse me of hyperfocusing on gender.

To dismantle your argument entirely :

1) The fact that the terminology was invented by a woman has no effect on whether it's used in a sexist fashion now. To argue that it is relevant is to make an etymological fallacy, which critical thinkers would obviously avoid.
2) The fact that much fan fiction exists with terribly written characters yet female characters are still more likely to be called Mary Sue is evidence of sexism, not evidence against it. You can't just side all the bad male characters that largely avoid said criticism as if it supports your point. It supports mine.
3) As I pointed out before, your comparison between fic and series doesn't work because the flaws in the fiction are not in the series.

Edit : If you actually read the tv tropes article on Mary Sue, you'll see that she fails to fit pretty much all the tropes.

Mary Sue - TV Tropes

Mary Sue is a derogatory term primarily used in Fan Fic circles to describe a particular type of character. This much everyone can agree on. What that character type is, exactly, differs wildly from circle to circle, and often from person to …

tvtropes.org

As for your flaw 'example', I'm sorry but I believe you're arguing in bad faith now. You're advocating for her to ignore Vi's present physical danger and potential life saving leads since Jinx stole what could become a Nuke just to follow protocol.

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By this logic, no character in the series has flaws. They all have their reasons for why they act the way they do.

Your definition of flaw seems weird and inconsistent. What do you think a character flaw is?

 

[megamiaouh]

Appeal to probability

Non Sequitur

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Well I can take only so many fallacies in one day so I'll let you have this one.

 

[IfIhadaHammer]

Well I can take only so many fallacies in one day so I'll let you have this one.

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Obnoxiously proclaiming the logical fallacies you think you see is not in fact a counterargument, despite what the internet may have taught you.

 

[10ebbor10]

Obnoxiously proclaiming the logical fallacies you think you see is not in fact a counterargument, despite what the internet may have taught you.

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Especially when you don't even pick the right ones?

 

[CatOnTheWeb]

Anyway, here's my thoughts on Arc 2.

It's solid. Not as great as Arc 1, but still really good. I think it's because there isn't as much of the character conflicts in this one. In Arc 1 almost every scene had people at odds. Heimerdinger and Jayce, Vander and Vi, Marcus and Vander, Vi and Powder.

Not to say Arc 2 didn't have those. Vi and Cait, Jinx and herself, there's tangible clashes and back and forth through the episodes. Just not as much.

Here, Silco was working with subordinates, or threatening Marcus. Jayce and Mel were working together, with the conflict being his reticence to play politics. A lot more of the conflicts are characters against some inner conflict. Stuff like that. There were scenes like those in Arc 1, but my impression is there's more of them here, thanks to the needs to keep the plot moving.

I find that less engaging and motivating, but that might just be personal taste.

 

[Dogboy]

Honestly there's almost no company involved in this show that I would want to overcome my disgust of to watch this show. Riot for it's mysoginistic and toxic dudebro work culture and Netflix for it's transphobia. I don't know anything about the company who actually made it though, so maybe they are alright.

 

[Renewal]

Honestly there's almost no company involved in this show that I would want to overcome my disgust of to watch this show. Riot for it's mysoginistic and toxic dudebro work culture and Netflix for it's transphobia. I don't know anything about the company who actually made it though, so maybe they are alright.

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Fortiche is the animation studio; from their website it seems they've mostly done music videos and trailers for Riot, most notably Jinx's original trailer and the KDA Popstars debut. Arcane seems to be their first big episodic production.

 

[Tyran]

If by the end of Arcane Cait still has had no proper flaws, barelly made any mistakes and becomes Sheriff to 'fix Piltover the right way' then she was a Mary Sue. It's not the end of the world but it would be disappointing.

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You do not even understand what a Mary Sue is. A Mary Sue is not character without flaws, it is a character that bends the narrative around them.

You know why Cait has almost no flaws? Because before Act 2 she barely had any scenes, and even in Act 2 she plays a second role to Vi. She never bends the narrative around her, in fact she only contributes to advance the narrative of other characters.

Is she a little flat character? Sure, but time is a limited resource and not every character can be fully developed. Caitlyn is not central character, she is a secondary character and thus she is not a priority for character development. And none of that makes her a Mary Sue.

 

[Mook]

I find it hilarious that Cait is being accused of being a Mary Sue when we see a ton of scenes of her just failing at or sucking at stuff.

Vi completely schools her in terms of parkour*, she gets tricked by Vi into posing as a hooker seeminly just for Vi's amusement (since they only needed to talk to the Madame to get intel from the brothel), she apparently didn't think to bring any money (or doesn't have any) on her investigation so she's forced to trade away her only weapon for a healing potion, she fails to realize that a junkie might be willing to sell her out for a new fix which leads Silco right to them and while it was her idea to topple the building to stop their pursuers she's too weak to enact her plan on her own while Vi brings it down with a single punch.

Cait has a ton of flaws and limitations. She's a top tier markswoman and a skilled detective but other than that she's mostly just a normal smartish person who has some things they're good at and a lot of things they're not so good at, just like anyone else.


* (in fact TvTropes pointed out that Cait took so much time climbing down that the super slow + super old man who boarded the lift got to street level faster than Cait did)

 

[BossFight]

On episode 5, and I know that Silco is going to refuse to tell Jinx that Vi is still alive so he can better control her and this will lead to him and Jinx falling out as Jinx goes back to the side of angels...

And I really hope that isn't the case. I actually really like Silco and Jinx's father/daughter dynamic and while Silco isn't the best person in the world he isn't an out and out villain.

Also, really hoping the plot of this city isn't just another rehash of "Revolution is bad and enacting real change is too messy. Do nothing and hope that the people in charge will grant you some token symbolic gesture in the vague direction of change". But given how the narrative validates Vender I am pretty sure that is exactly what is going to happen.

 

[Tyran]

There is no way Jinx "returns to the side of the angels".

There is a good chance she will kill Silco, and that will be what permanently shatters her.

 

[Dream Logic]

So are they ever going to address that Vander almost restarted the civil war? I'm not saying he should have turned in the kids but he waited an awfully long time before he made his play. Given that its also well known who actually did it I'd imagine they either want the kids blood or to 'rescue' them.

 

[Tyran]

So are they ever going to address that Vander almost restarted the civil war?

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Not his fault, and not a lot of options for him to get out of that mess. There is no point in addressing that.

 

[Xicree]

Thanks, the animation is pretty, but given their corporate culture I think I'll pass.

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Wow you must not watch anything at all then...


To be more serious there does seem to have been steps to address some of the more egreegious happenings.

Actually wonder if they'll consider the fact that Vanders milquetoast centrism was a direct response to a horrible experience. That and how despite keeping things from getting worse he never actually makes things noticeably better either.

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Its even better.

His clear and direct Analogue is HEIMERDINGER.

And thematically both he and Heimer are deposed for the same reason. Their attempts at stop-gapping things and leaving them to fester, as well meaning as they were... let things fester.