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I think it's extraneous. The current version already tells everything that needs to be said in a very efficient scene. I can't even think of what I'd cut from Episodes 1-2 for more Ekko, and Ekko and Powder hijinks would feel tonally strange and jar the pace for the growing dread leading to episode 3. At the end of the day, Ekko just isn't that important to the main narrative of Vi and Jinx or main subplot of Jayce and Viktor; showing more of the relationship between Jinx and Ekko helps Ekko, but doesn't do a lot for Jinx and the main conflict. Insofar as he's going to gain more importance in the next season, I think it'll be his interaction/cooperation with Heimerdinger and the existence of Firelights as a faction as an alternative to the chem barons. Thinking on it, his scenes have always been very efficient: 1. Plot driving (following Jayce to get the target for the heist; overhearing the Grayson convo to relay the information to Vi) / Jayce characterization (didn't even haggle) / very minor characterization of Vi (practice fighting to show that the younger kids look up to Vi) 2. Plot driving (Firelights hitting the Shimmer supply => Jinx feeling the need to prove herself; kidnapping of Vi and Caitlyn) / Jinx characterization (as a mad bomber murderer that's considered by most of the Undercity, including her allies except for Silco, to be unstable and unhelpful) / overall setting (Firelights as a viable alternative faction to Silco and chem barons informing overall Piltover-Undercity relations) / Vi + Cait characterization and relationship development (Cait getting to show off her compassion and her ideals to Vi's growing infatuation when talking with Ekko) 3. Jinx characterization (relaying Jinx history to Vi; the possibility of Powder is still there) / plot driving (win => Jinx bombed => Shimmer healing => physical autonomy in the dinner scene) / potential impetus to Heimerdinger character growth (not enough to survive, have to live; build faster when life short / depends on it) => impact on overall arcane progress theme as it affects Piltover-Zaun Katreus fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Dec 5, 2021 |
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Dec 5, 2021 15:54
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The Boy Saviour fight owns, and does a good job of establishing that they used to play-fight as kids, but I think it undercuts some of the emotions of the fight that we never really get to see that. I can't even remember what scene Ekko and Powder had as kids, so when he appeared on the bridge it didn't really feel that significant. Would have been good to establish a bit more of their relationship as kids. Would also have been good just to have this: 
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Dec 5, 2021 16:09
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Their scene would not have worked nearly as well had it been previously shown/referenced. Ekko tapping into their past during their fight to gain an advantage was cool as hell. The disbelief from Jinx to getting in position has a big "wtf is going" then you see Powder flash on the screen and it all clicks. The wow and surprise factor of how Ekko is going through the fight (with some seriously whiplash between happy kid Ekko and I'm going to kill her adult Ekko) to reflect his ultimate in-game was a brilliant move that references the game and his expanded past with Powder. Any additional fluff to this prior to this moment would have taken way from it. We had already seen Powder play with the rest of the gang and how she was a proficient shot even as a kid.
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Dec 5, 2021 16:14
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I just finished this season and while I have sporadic little nitpicks like I have with everything, I also feel like this show revolutionizes animation and visual storytelling as we know it. I'm simultaneously contemptuous towards other shows for failing to achieve even half of what Arcane has achieved, while also being perfectly aware that the heights this show reached were far beyond the pale, a total redefinition of the heights that could even be reached. The nearest thing that I've seen is probably Into The Spider-Verse, and even then I'd say that all in all doesn't quite enter the same weight class that this show has established. Unfortunately at no point did anyone pet that floofy dog thing, so I'ma have to rate this 0/10 for zero floofy dog thing pets.
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Dec 5, 2021 16:39
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It’s called a poro and they will almost certainly be endemic to the series
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Dec 5, 2021 17:53
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As shown in Legends of Runeterra, you don't pet poros. They pet you.
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Dec 5, 2021 18:12
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pidan posted:I mean, we do see the chemtanks take down a bunch of masked Enforcers easily seconds before. And then the Hextech weapons easily obliterate them, because that's what they do. That's why Jayce can later say he doesn't want to slaughter the Zaunists, if he had barely survived the fight it would be a strange conclusion. The problem with the Chemtanks is the problem with Shimmer in this show in general: They have super speed until they don't.
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Dec 5, 2021 20:05
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Captain Oblivious posted:The problem with the Chemtanks is the problem with Shimmer in this show in general: I mean, the point of shimmer is that it runs out. They don't give a ruleset or anything, but we see characters refill and eventually return to normal after a while. The only exception is Jinx, who gets shimmered pretty intensely and the time that passes between that and the end is probably still less than a day. Personal_Nirvana posted:That MV is awesome, but they really should have found a way to put the important bits in the show. Ekko characterization, what little there is, is pretty good and plot-relevant as Katreus listed. But I still think the act 1 scenes could have found some way to have them interact a bit more, I don't remember them being in the same scene at any point. It's kind of the same problem as the Sky plot, they try to wring a lot of emotional impact out of basically a last-minute flashback. And it does work to some degree, but could probably have been improved a lot by spending a few more seconds on the characters earlier in the season. I mean, the Jinx-Ekko fight is pretty intense, she barely even looks this upset when talking to Vi. And with the MV it makes a lot more sense.
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Dec 5, 2021 20:35
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pidan posted:
Right before the enforcers search for the kids under Vander's bar, in episode 2, they are shown, briefly, sitting together and looking at some of Jinx' gadgets, right before the alarm goes off. I think that is pretty much it.
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Dec 5, 2021 20:53
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pidan posted:I mean, the point of shimmer is that it runs out. They don't give a ruleset or anything, but we see characters refill and eventually return to normal after a while. The only exception is Jinx, who gets shimmered pretty intensely and the time that passes between that and the end is probably still less than a day. Thing to consider is that though we didn’t see it a lot, by the time we catch up after the factory explosion and Vander dying it’s pretty heavily implied Jinx and Ekko have been trying to kill each other for a while, and she probably already knew who he was even if he attacked masked. That’s been the defining nature of their relationship for a while, so drawing it back to the idea they were kids together once, and that he shows how he’s grown from his failures in a way she hasn’t isn’t nothing.
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Dec 5, 2021 21:01
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I would have liked a little more interaction with Vi and Powder and the boys as well. Obviously they were the girls' brothers, all of them adopted by Vander, but it would have been nice to see a bit more than Vi just getting mad at Mylo as their big interaction (even if he had it coming).
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Dec 5, 2021 21:07
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I feel like a lot of the relationships in this show got kind of short shrift. Viktor/Sky, Jayce/Medarda, Vi/Caitlyn, they all felt to me like they skipped an episode somewhere between “casual flirtation” and “meaningful romance”.
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Dec 5, 2021 21:57
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Phylodox posted:I feel like a lot of the relationships in this show got kind of short shrift. Viktor/Sky, Jayce/Medarda, Vi/Caitlyn, they all felt to me like they skipped an episode somewhere between “casual flirtation” and “meaningful romance”. To be fair, the only one of these that is supposed to be "meaningful romance" is Vi/Cait, which does get a lot of space. And I think the show spends about as much time on the Jayce plot as necessary, that's the last place where I'd add stuff. From Sky if anything I'd remove the romance angle, and make it more of a work related thing, because "she has a crush on Viktor and dies" is a pretty stupid plot. If she's his colleague and shares his interests / characteristics, which is also part of her plot, it makes more sense for him to identify with her and care about losing her.
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Dec 5, 2021 22:06
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Also this show taught me you're supposed to use a crutch on the opposite side from the bad leg, I always thought it was the other way around. This bothered me until I looked it up, and I learned something.
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Dec 5, 2021 22:12
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pidan posted:To be fair, the only one of these that is supposed to be "meaningful romance" is Vi/Cait, which does get a lot of space. And I think the show spends about as much time on the Jayce plot as necessary, that's the last place where I'd add stuff. From Sky if anything I'd remove the romance angle, and make it more of a work related thing, because "she has a crush on Viktor and dies" is a pretty stupid plot. If she's his colleague and shares his interests / characteristics, which is also part of her plot, it makes more sense for him to identify with her and care about losing her. Yeah sky is there to demonstrate Viktor eschews connections with others. Show his tendency towards solitude
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Dec 5, 2021 22:15
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:Yeah sky is there to demonstrate Viktor eschews connections with others. Show his tendency towards solitude Agree about the scenes where she hits on him and he just wants to work. But later when she dies he completely loses his mind, crawling around on the floor sobbing and all. If it's just because of the circumstances, and he would have reacted the same if it had been some random person, then just ditch the cringey monologue. If he somehow does care about her specifically, that needs a bit more fleshing out.
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Dec 5, 2021 23:24
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Sky was the girl among the kids swimming in toxic waste who found Viktor all by himself. She matters to Viktor because she's a Zaunite in exactly the same position he was (an assistant to a bigshot with her own ideas, trying to make it), and he doesn't realize the significance of this until after she dies. She represents his motivations, remembering where he came from, and his shifting relationship to these things. But it's pretty easy to miss this and just think of it as an attempt at cheap pathos.
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Dec 6, 2021 00:19
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This show is super loving dense. Nearly every shot has information which is more relevant than it might first seem. 
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Dec 6, 2021 00:31
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Huh. That also seems like it could be a reference to how vision wards used to look in LoL, green ones just saw normal stuff but purple ones (now they're red) were the ones used to reveal stealthed characters and both used to just be eyeballs on a stick
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Dec 6, 2021 00:43
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Ormi posted:Sky was the girl among the kids swimming in toxic waste who found Viktor all by himself. She matters to Viktor because she's a Zaunite in exactly the same position he was (an assistant to a bigshot with her own ideas, trying to make it), and he doesn't realize the significance of this until after she dies. She represents his motivations, remembering where he came from, and his shifting relationship to these things. But it's pretty easy to miss this and just think of it as an attempt at cheap pathos. I agree with you, and I kind of made my own headcanon interpretation of how they must have inspired each other growing up, or at least definitely bonded over being the rare Zaunie once they were at the university. But the main reason the text gives us to care about their relationship is Sky having some intense, unrequited crush on Viktor, the other stuff you basically have to reconstruct from the two seconds of her gazing at him as a child. And imo that could have easily been fixed by adding a few lines of dialogue relating to Sky doing some valuable research for the project, or maybe about their shared background. As it is, she's just "starstruck secretary" unless you're paying very close attention. Maybe they'll come back to that in season two, I could see a number of ways it might matter. Either because she kind of represents the undercity that Viktor has let down (and now wants to make up for it) or because Viktor not appreciating Sky is somehow contrasted with his relationship to Jayce and maybe Heimer going forward. But I could also see it just never coming up again which would suck. Yeah I care about this storyline a lot for some reason.
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Dec 6, 2021 00:57
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Ormi posted:Sky was the girl among the kids swimming in toxic waste who found Viktor all by himself. She matters to Viktor because she's a Zaunite in exactly the same position he was (an assistant to a bigshot with her own ideas, trying to make it), and he doesn't realize the significance of this until after she dies. She represents his motivations, remembering where he came from, and his shifting relationship to these things. But it's pretty easy to miss this and just think of it as an attempt at cheap pathos. It could be both!
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Dec 6, 2021 01:35
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Sky's purpose in the story was to get killed by Viktor's reckless experimentation and nothing more. The show gave enough of background for the audience to care about her death. This is like that nerdy girl from Stranger Things that gets killed by the monster and got fans to start petitions to bring her back.
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Dec 6, 2021 01:38
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Sure, it's just a shame because in a show that makes more good decisions than bad in its politics (and the ones that aren't perfect, there is at least room to argue - see: the depictions of disability in the show), this character very obviously existing just to be fridged sticks out even more. It feels like unforced error in a show that's remarkably free of such things.
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Dec 6, 2021 02:25
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I mean, why dont people ask the kid that got experimented upon by LoL Mengele get a deeper backstory? The way I see it, it's cool that the show got us to feel invested in a minor character. Personally, it did not feel exploitative to me, so I would not call this "fridging", but at this point it becomes pretty subjective, so I would not argue.
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Dec 6, 2021 02:44
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I mean we're supposed to care when Sky died, primarily because it makes Viktor sad, and we're supposed to care about Viktor. We're not supposed to care that Deckerd died because there are more important things going on and none of the more important characters care. That's a pretty big difference.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:00
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The pattern of a woman existing to suffer exclusively to provide emotional stakes for a male character is the specific trope. The blonde kid's suffering was not intended to drive vi's story the way Sky's is pretty clearly intended for Vik. Even if it were, a dude character existing just to suffer so that a lady character's plot has some more pathos wouldn't be as big an issue, because that's not the plot device. Those details are the ones that matter. I'm not sure whether its specifically exploitative is really the point. The idea is more that there's a pattern in nerd fiction especially where women are reduced in narrative importance by virtue of being jammed into this specific pigeonhole. (EDIT: That idea might just be "exploitative" with extra words, I'm not sure, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Which is why seeing it happen here was so jarring, I think - like I said, the show is obviously really good about not loving up those sorts of things, by and large. Also, wait, did the show ever give Singed a name? I feel like I never heard anyone call him "singed," but now I'm struggling to remember anyone calling him anything.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:00
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"Fridging" isn't just having a woman character be killed instrumentally to advance the plot; the qualities surrounding the death are important. Fridging is used to contrast a notion of feminine weakness, helplessness and passivity with proactive and heroic masculine anger and violence. Men cannot be emotionally injured save through the weaknesses their relationships represent. You know. Gender stuff. And Arcane goes out of its way to show that isn't what's happening at all.
Ormi fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Dec 6, 2021 |
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Dec 6, 2021 03:02
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Boxman posted:Also, wait, did the show ever give Singed a name? I feel like I never heard anyone call him "singed," but now I'm struggling to remember anyone calling him anything. The subtitles do -- there are a few lines explicitly attributed to [Singed]. But I can't think of an in-world character explicitly saying his name.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:11
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Boxman posted:Also, wait, did the show ever give Singed a name? I feel like I never heard anyone call him "singed," but now I'm struggling to remember anyone calling him anything. He's called "doctor" a few times and named in the credits, but no one ever says the word Singed. The show clearly wants avoid slightly goofy stuff like that or give it a ton of justification, like they did for Jinx's name or Vi's cheek tattoo.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:14
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That was the most forced thing to me about the show - how Powder got the name Jynx. I'm not a native speaker, but every time someone said "jinx" it felt out of place to me. Like if Jynx's name was Goof or whatever in game, and Vi said: " You killed our adoptive dad and siblings, you goofed!" But it's probably hard to write that kind of stuff into the story, so fair enough.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:27
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Ormi posted:"Fridging" isn't just having a woman character be killed instrumentally to advance the plot; the qualities surrounding the death are important. Fridging is used to contrast a notion of feminine weakness, helplessness and passivity with proactive and heroic masculine anger and violence. This is a good call, especially considering the medium the term came from. Monglo posted:Like if Jynx's name was Goof or whatever in game, and Vi said: " You killed our adoptive dad and siblings, you goofed!" Finally that LoL/Kingdom Hearts Crossover.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:30
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Maybe it's a colloquial thing but jinx feels like a pretty natural term to me. It's just a slightly callow, offhand way to say that someone is cursed, a bringer of bad luck.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:37
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pidan posted:And imo that could have easily been fixed by adding a few lines of dialogue relating to Sky doing some valuable research for the project, or maybe about their shared background. As it is, she's just "starstruck secretary" unless you're paying very close attention. One of the show's few but real problems is that we're expected to infer a lot. If we're being honest we probably should have seen more of the type of thing in episode 3 where Powder has her breakdown before sneaking off to follow Vi and the boys. There's a lot of 0-60 moments.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:42
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Monglo posted:That was the most forced thing to me about the show - how Powder got the name Jynx. I'm not a native speaker, but every time someone said "jinx" it felt out of place to me. To expand on what BrianWilly said, it doesn't have a sense of messing up; it's a superstitious reference to something which brings ill fortune. You might say "oh no, I jinxed it" if you start talking about how your team is doing well and has it in the bag, and then starts losing horribly.
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Dec 6, 2021 03:54
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Yeah it was totally fine imo. vi saying "you're a jinx" was a bit of a "we're some kind of Suicide Squad" moment but was probably the best they could've done all things considered
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Dec 6, 2021 04:32
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I knew absolutely about LoL coming into it and the jinx thing sounded perfectly natural. People get called a jinx, its a thing that happens. It only sounds forced because you have the foreknowledge of where its going.
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Dec 6, 2021 04:50
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Yeah, I came in completely blind too and Jinx didn’t seem forced. The only moment in act 1 that really felt “this is obviously something for the fans” for me was Viktor’s extremely weighty name drop.
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Dec 6, 2021 05:05
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I think Powder is a super weird name that really stands out in a world where everyone else just had a normal name. The Jinx thing seemed fine to me, but then I'm not a native speaker (I wonder how they dealt with that in translations). It generally stood out a bit to me that so many characters in the show have just the one name, and everyone calls then that, because that's how it is in the game. But then a handful of them end up having last names after all. Ormi posted:"Fridging" isn't just having a woman character be killed instrumentally to advance the plot; the qualities surrounding the death are important. Fridging is used to contrast a notion of feminine weakness, helplessness and passivity with proactive and heroic masculine anger and violence. Men cannot be emotionally injured save through the weaknesses their relationships represent. You know. Gender stuff. And Arcane goes out of its way to show that isn't what's happening at all. As far as I'm aware, fridging means killing a female character just to make a man sad. Of course, it kind of demands that the female character get too little characterization compared to her role in the story - I wouldn't say Grayson got fridged for Marcus, for example. I guess the typical example also has some male possessiveness angle, like the many films where someone goes on a rampage because their wife is killed at the start. But Sky (as presented in the text, without things that might be implied) just exists to make Viktor sad by dying, so that's a fridging. Solution: either make her less of a character, by not giving her that crush /monologue. Then Viktor can just be sad that he killed someone, which would make perfect sense with his character and the things he's been thinking about. Or make her a bit more of a character, similar to Grayson. As it is, it's just jarring in a show that generally doesn't go for cheap tricks like that. The Shimmer kid can't compare because we're not expected to care when he dies. The little redhead kid killed by Jayce is also fine, because it doesn't particularly matter who he is, the main character is sad because a kid died, could explicitly have been any kid. pidan fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Dec 6, 2021 |
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Dec 6, 2021 06:49
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Speaking of knowledge from the terrible game, apparently the name Jinx gives her mini gun is pow-pow, which is the nickname Vi gives Powder in the show. I don't know if there's supposed to be some symbolism to that or it's just a cute nod to the game but I thought it was neat. It's probably just a cute nod.
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Dec 6, 2021 06:54
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I did myself such a disservice trying to binge the last three episodes in the middle of the night the first go round. By the end of episode 9 I was only just barely hanging in there, and I missed so much nuance on the final showdown that it hurts me. That goddamn line delivery. First you have the Jinx line of "I thought you could love me, even though I'm... different". So powerfully delivered, and the double meaning of her being changed but also aware of the fact that she's not right, that she's 'different' from other people is just goddamn. But by far the single most powerful thing in the series is that last line from Silco. Jinx is (from a certain point of view, another mans freedom fighter etc) doing a terrorism. She's shooting a missile at the political center of the people she hates, while they are in the midst of agreeing to a peace deal. And despite all of that context, you get this masterfully quiet 'We'll show them". Goddamn Obi-Wan Kenobi telling Jinx to do a warcrime, but you can't help but feel sorry that the brutal drug kingpin who just tried to kill the ostensible protagonist is dead. I want, at any point in my life, to write anything as goddamn compelling as the last ten minutes of this show.
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Dec 6, 2021 09:48
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