temp-fandomblog

Baby Mel and Kino sketches.

- cycle of revenge and long lasting conflict between two cities/countries

- tragic protagonist who grew from a doe-eyed child with some violent tendencies to a terrifying and capable mass murderer, and made into an icon for an extremist revolution

- girl who was groomed and abused into joining the military that oppressed her her whole life, and brainwashed into fighting against her own people in a war

- big finale in which former enemies on both sides of the war have to unite in order to stop a greater enemy that threatens humankind

Also AoT really well sets up that something is not right with the origin story of the world within the walls, where when the mystery unravels - the pieces make sense.

The character arcs make sense with characters never breaking to do 180 out of nowhere.

Arcane does the opposite, the more story progresses the less sense it makes with every piece of information added.

Arcane is as if 10 chapters from the end it was revealed that Hange Zoe was the threat all along.

Both places in Zaun that she called home are gone. Like actually destroyed.

She spent the better part of a decade in prison. The Zaun she grew up in doesn't exist anymore, and every person she cared about there is gone except for Ekko.

I know she was suffering from some really bad depression at the time but when she did go back to Zaun long-term it very clearly was not good for her.

She didn't just like YOLO gonna move to Piltover now. She's staying with the woman she loves in the home said woman owns.

The animators took the time to give her a slightly more rounded face in that final shot, versus the sharper lines she had previously. A subtle way to show that she's actually eating and sleeping like a healthy human being should for a change.

I wanted for Vi and Jinx to go separate ways with mutual understanding of their relationship and end up on opposing side the river. I also wanted Caitlyn and Vi to become so enmeshed in the enforcers that they need to stay to allow Jinx to live free.

I wanted Mel to have a proper showdown with her mother about Piltover.

I wanted hextech to have a proper storyline where Jayce and Viktor continue with their proposal for undercity independence since they finished Season 1 on it being their joint idea to the council, even thou it becomes harder and harder or even impossible. In the process they have to actually understand their position in society and how their hextech dream failed because they didn't account for it. I wanted them to build something new from the ashes of it even on a tiny scale in comparison.

I wanted Ekko and firelights to build into zaun's idea proper and have his reconciliation with Jinx be because they have same goal.

Cause they build Viktor's and Sky's relationship and they show how Viktor likes talking with her and then when she disappears he says something along the lines of "I'll miss talking to you" and she suddenly and randomly says

"No you won't"

??????

Could have spent time showing us Cait actually gave a shit about vi the same way vi did her instead of putting in some useless affair that amounted to nothing in the end.

Cut the warwick healing shit...we knew he wasn't going to be healed. Have his story go another way

Cut vis screen time since yall don't give a shit about her. Like I love vi to no end but ffs if you're not going to give her an arc, cut her time on screen. Again that time could've been used showing caitlyn giving a fuck about her

Take that damn pitfighter montage out...it proved to be useless considering they did nothing to address her trauma or give her an arc.

Cut the journey with isha if it literally meant nothing. It was cute, yes, but they literally just have this suicidal character go back to wanting to end herself for things that aren't even her fault but the fault of the people in power. Wasn't isha supposed to show jinx that she can do good and help people? Why go back to her feeling like a jinx??

Isha could be easily integrated into plot between Ekko and Jinx reconciliation instead of ep. 7 AU being the cause for it.

Black rose plot could be easily solved in 2 scenes if they wanted to instead of dragging it out with all it's weird cliffhangers that lead to more exposition. It'd also allow Mel and Ambessa to proper conflict.

Cause they build Viktor's and Sky's relationship and they show how Viktor likes talking with her and then when she disappears he says something along the lines of "I'll miss talking to you" and she suddenly and randomly says

"No you won't"

??????

They put so much care into making every character lively, distinct and unique. A few lines of dialogue and mere minutes of screentime in total are enough to let each character shine and make them vibrant transporting that these are all individuals with lives lived.

If I compare that with the introduction of Isha in season 2.... Shallow combination of Save the Cat (Jinx saving Isha; and I want you all to understand this this moment serves as re-introduction/reset for Jinx because there is merely anything meaningful left from her character from s1) and Kick the Dog (Isha being saved by Jinx) in the same scene. Save the Cat (evoking virtue by a heroic act) and Kick the Dog (invoking sympathy by exposing a character to unprompted violent/humiliating treatment) are two of the laziest techniques in a writer's kit to manipulate the audience's emotions into caring about characters.

There is creating characters and there is creating devices. Poweder/Jinx of S1 is a character; Jinx of S2 is a device. Isha is a device. Period.

Honestly, folks, if you are interested in writing and are trying to find resources helping you to develop your craft, steer clear of "Save the Cat". It is popular, but not valuable, unjustifiably glorified, but doesn't have good advice on writing or storytelling at all. It gives merely good advice on crafting stereotypical, soulless formulas.

I think that's a bit too much credit to Season 2, there are so many writing problems:

making character's disappear from the plot in contrived way (Mel, Jayce, Heimerdinger, Ekko, Viktor), actually 3 different contrived ways in span of 2 episodes that end on cliffhangers,

flashbacks for frankly pointless reveals like Cait handing over Vi to Ambessa BUT it was their plan all along,

weird tone shifts that destroy tension like the circus tent convo between Jinx and Enforcer,

a flashback 15 minutes before the end that gives last part of Jayce's conversation with the mage who is also Viktor so just blatantly withholding information from the audience for cheap mystery and even cheaper reveal,

and Aesop X 2 episode just before finale episodes,

timeloop, multiverse, honestly I was just waiting for them to add "it was all a dream" at the end because that would the holy trinity

I honestly don't watch much TV, so idk. is this how TV shows usually roll? Because if so, that's fucking tragic.

Yes, I think Mel's arc is one of the most coherent with setup at end of Season 1 and end at Season 2. It's bittersweet but good.

But then I think how we got there and there are glaring problems:

- contrived way of being removed from the plot - the abduction by Black rose, Mel is now not a character influencing the plot, not even having opinion on the events of the plot - she will be in Black rose limbo until plot needs her to respawn in plot required place to get her 3 step resolution of the arc. This happens to Jayce, Ekko and Viktor too.

- over the top shocking cliffhanger that feels like something interesting is coming but in hindsight are just for cheap tension - so when Mel is abducted, it spawns speculation of what are Black Rose's intentions, I thought it was building towards something BUT it just segways into clips of exposition of her powers, of the Doomsday coming to piltover and of her mother's history. They abduct this poor woman for months on end to give us exposition. The same happens with Jayce shooting Viktor. We do not understand these actions, they just seem soo final and shocking and leading into something great. I would like to compare it to finale of S1 which is more shocking with Jinx's rocket yet we understand everything about it.

- making things emotional but in hindsight in a cheap way - so, remember when Black Rose kills Elora, Mel's friend? The emotions! The shock, right? BUT Why do they do it? Please, why would an organization that wants Mel to join them kill off her friend? What's the point of it aside for Mel to be sad? Elora actually got off well, she at least has a dialogue about her death unlike Isha or Vander or Jinx or Vander 2.0. If you compare these deaths to how logical deaths of Marcus or Finn were.

- inefficient storytelling - we get black rose scenes but they're just exposition that never flows into the main story. Never influences it. Contrary it makes the whole story worse, because now Black rose abducted Mel for months to tell her she needs to figure out how to avert the Doomsday. So months on end this organization just waited for her to solve the wall puzzle instead of trying to locate and assassinate the threat in Viktor, or influence Piltover politics to throw out Ambessa. This is cartoon logic.

- impossible to resolve conflicts - this is more on Ambessa' writing, because in ep. 8 she goes like this: Mel, it's not enough you'd join me to avenge Kino, we now have this weapon in you and this nice old chemist is lending me a hand making more weapons BUT it's impossible for me to change plans, because to stick it to Black Rose and mages in noxus as magic is unfair, I'm making this new army with the help of this nice mage I just found in the rubble. This army is also exclusively puppeteer by him. This is cartoon logic of a bad guy, not a human.

- keeping conflicts simple by keeping characters apart until 2 scenes before finale - this is hypothetical so please friends be nice, what if instead of Black rose abduction plotline the whole exposition part of it went like this: Black rose possesed Amara asks Mel to help her get introduction to her mother. Mel and Amara meet Ambessa, where Black rose reveals herself like in original scene and delivers the exposition about Mel's origins and Kino's fate. All the while changing faces between Amara, the Ionia princess and Kino to the horror of all involved. Then Mel's powers awaken like in the puzzle wall scene. Idk if that'd be better but it'd be more efficient and would keep Mel in Piltover. One scene instead of several, leaving Mel and Ambessa more time for an arc build up. Also Elora lives. Anyway, that's my stab at it while chilling and listening to 60 y/o lady showing off her spoon collection in an asmr. It's a very nice asmr.

- symbolism as character development - so when Black Rose gives Mel the Ionian processes necklace I felt really good, it felt as if Mel is finally carving her identity as Medarda from Medarda family history. But then it hit me, we don't know what she thinks of it, we don't know why she goes back to noxus on the ship, we know nothing of ot in her words. It's symbolism. Not as bad as Jayce having his whole character development this season conveyed in symbolism by role playing as Bear Grylls in Apocalypse survivor man, but it feels cheap anyway to not write character just use symbolism.

One thing that keeps bugging me is the fact that they fired almost all the professional writers by season 2. I very strongly believe that’s why the character writing was so off.

Arcane was juggling *a lot* in s1, but their team handled it well. So why on earth did they decide to fire their writers? Like, I’m so frustrated because I feel that we could have had it all. Could everyone not have worked over zoom during covid…?

I have no idea why they done away with the writing room. Maybe they thought they had enough material, and they could just finish it because logical cause to effect events are there to at least ep. 6 for the main timeline. They feel awkward but could be polished. Or maybe the writers' room was not 100% on board with the whole AU age of ultron direction, and it felt easier to just close the project by themselves. Or maybe the showruners thought their ideas were the selling point, not understanding the execution was important. 'Coz they have a problem juggling a limited amount of concepts while adding stuff that really is unnecessary imo. Like alternative universes where all 3 characters could have had this character growth in the main timeline or not establishing properly how stuff works, i.e., What is the anomaly at the hexgates, where does wild rune fit in it, how hexcore works, how Sky is still present, so on so forth... just vibes. Also, problems like Jayce saying they need to destroy hextech because it's a curse than being fine with Vi's gloves or even making Cait new rifle. What is this logic.

1. Sevika's story, please go on. Praise it. Tell me how good she was after episode 4, I am waiting?

2. The firelights. Go ahead tell me how much we saw them and how the Tree came back and was tied into the story, tell me how they got screen time and how their story got told?

3. Ekko. Tell me how good it was to make him ignore his home after he went to Jayce to get it fixed. Tell me how great his character arc was after they got rid of everything else he liked.

4. Mel. I want you to praise how much screen time she had and how the black rose didn't come out of no where. I want you to tell me it didn't feel like they wrote her out of the story and I want you to look me in the eyes and praise how well they treated her in the last act. You know, with Jayce apparently only seeing her as a sex object. Women really won.

5. Praise the Robots.

6. Go ahead tell me how good it was to kill off all the suicidal characters.

7. I need to hear people praise the time loop/travel. It was so good and made so much sense and time travel isn't mostly a weird way to not resolve anything.

8. Talk nice about the side characters, please. Maddie, Loris, Isha, Steb, Lest. You know all of them were so necessary and weren't only there for one thing and then got killed or just never to be seen again. Praise how good their writing was, go on.

9. Go ahead and tell me how well they handled Vi's character. How they didn't just completely ignore her. Praise how they made her an alcoholic for 3 seconds and then she was just able to stop, isn't she an inspiration?

10. Go ahead, tell me how well they resolved anything that happened in the first 3 episodes. The Grey is just never mentioned again outside of it being used in the last war. Tell me how the people of Zaun just supporting Piltover is worthy of Praise.

11. Vi and Ekko never interacting was so good, wasn't it? So perfectly in character for Vi to rush right past him in the finale. That was perfect.

12. Praise it how good it was that Caitlyn just completely forgets her mother in the end, you know the reason the first 3 episodes happened. Praise it how her father is off hand mentioned in episode 8, never to be seen again. You know... the parents, her reason to go nuts like this. Damn that was good

13. Jinx getting to apologize in prison to Caitlyn. What a scene am I right?

Season 1 set up a lot of interesting questions, ie. "What should we do with technology that could potentially change the world? How should we implement it?"

Season 2 delivered the answer: We shouldn't and just in case scientists that made it should die.

That's the quality of answers bestowed on the viewer after 18 episodes, it's such an Everest of wisdom and insight by the writers.

wow reading this made me low-key mad cos it was such an interesting thing in s1, one of 20 themes/ideas s1 centered on, only for every single one of them to get dropped.

Bc people felt at ease to make fried girl jokes about her bc she's a female character, bc people think she was getting in the way of shippers, bc she exists.

Bc writers used her and her violent death (that, again, was so disrespected for this fandom using the excuse of lack of development) to develop a male character. She was used as an excuse to unleash violence that said character repressed. When her actions were against his will she was discarded. Time after time writers are coming online just to make her even more dirty saying she was Hexcore manipulation, she was guilty tripping, she was anything but a person.

Sky is but a tip of iceberg of it and idk, I was soo happy seeing her and Viktor in astral plane. It felt like 2 scientists on an adventure of discovering and speculating about new things they've encountered. And the whole healing Vander thing was soo beautiful because it really felt natural for both Sky and Viktor as characters. Their scenes in ep.6 are still one of better parts of Season 2 if not the best for me.

Sky who was characterized in Season 1 with "Everyone has to do their part" in helping progress. And this is what they chose to write for her?

Idk. I feel whole characterization of Sky, Viktor and Jayce around being a scientist and hextech was sacrificed on the altar of Viktor being the final big bad.

But, as you said, Viktor became deus ex hextech, Sky became ghost in the hex and Jayce became depressed, lost and misunderstood.

I remember reading Q&A with showrunners and they cited Ghost in the Shell as one of inspirations. And I can see it, sadly, that attempt was there and the execution ate dirt.

silco wanted to win back vander's respect by . . . killing him? you think what made us relate to and root for silco was his need for validation from his brother and not his desire to be liberated from oppression???

jinx's problem was that people kept telling her who she needed to be? and not the fact that she was desperate to help and belong and couldn't accept herself bc of her failures??? so you thought the completion of her arc was just her fucking off and not doing what anyone else wanted or needed her to do????

vander was an opportunity to save powder because he came back????? you brought vander back because you wanted a useless sub-plot for a stupid metaphor on jinx getting a do-over (which she doesn't and learns nothing from anyways, like she's right back to self-loathing and self-rejection)?

additionally in retrospect we really need to give more storytelling credit to the directors and animators of s1. (I always thought that but s2 with its micro expressions really drove home how smart the animation team is and how much they are carrying the storytelling on their backs)

Bc people felt at ease to make fried girl jokes about her bc she's a female character, bc people think she was getting in the way of shippers, bc she exists.

Bc writers used her and her violent death (that, again, was so disrespected for this fandom using the excuse of lack of development) to develop a male character. She was used as an excuse to unleash violence that said character repressed. When her actions were against his will she was discarded. Time after time writers are coming online just to make her even more dirty saying she was Hexcore manipulation, she was guilty tripping, she was anything but a person.

Sky is but a tip of iceberg of it and idk, I was soo happy seeing her and Viktor in astral plane. It felt like 2 scientists on an adventure of discovering and speculating about new things they've encountered. And the whole healing Vander thing was soo beautiful because it really felt natural for both Sky and Viktor as characters. Their scenes in ep.6 are still one of better parts of Season 2 if not the best for me.

Sky who was characterized in Season 1 with "Everyone has to do their part" in helping progress. And this is what they chose to write for her?

Idk. I feel whole characterization of Sky, Viktor and Jayce around being a scientist and hextech was sacrificed on the altar of Viktor being the final big bad.