Icy Plant Garden

If you want your problems to be solved with brutal catharsis, then your hero should be someone who believes in brutal catharsis.

If you want your problems to be solved with forgiveness and reconciliation, then your hero should be someone who believes in forgiveness and reconciliation.

They don't have to begin there. This can be something they come around to over the course of the story, as they grow and change per their character arc. But by the time of their ultimate encounter with the villain, their values should be the values that drive the story forward.

There's this thing in D&D that some DMs do. Where, when you roll enough damage to deplete the monster's hit points, they'll turn to you and say, "That's a kill. Describe for the group how you take the monster down." And you're allowed to come up with some cool maneuver or something that your character did in order to deliver the finishing blow.

The hero's ultimate triumph over the villain is a lot like this. More than any other part of the story, this moment is their apotheosis. It should be a celebration of everything they are and everything they stand for.

That made it particularly difficult when I worked at the pizza place. It was no problem when someone said their name, but when they spelled it was like my brain was instantly replaced by panicky static.

A coworker once asked, “Why do you look petrified the second someone starts spelling?”

I just shrugged uncomfortably. It sounded silly to admit I couldn’t spell in my head. Over and over I’d hear a name and have a clear vision of how to write it only to have them start saying letters aloud and my certain spelling suddenly scrambled into gibberish. I’d stand frozen, staring down at the paper trying to remember the name and forget the terrifying jumble of individual letters.

My solution was to simply ignore people trying to spell at me. If some white girl said her name was Kristine and I spelled Christine who did it really hurt? I’d willfully stop listening and just started writing the second they said a name.

This led to a young man in line telling me his name in a light accent. He took a breath as if to start spelling but then cut off to audibly gasp, “You spelled it right!”

I looked up in confusion. “There’s another way to spell Seamus?”

“No,” he assured me.

So I would enter gibberish into the system and with 99's hacker energy tell them "They're in".

The most obvious example of this is Jinx’s scratchy hallucinations. This is an exceptionally old film technique where you literally scratch the emulsion off of the film stock frame by frame. When done correctly this results in these sharp jagged gaps in the film that light shines through, resulting in this scratchy inconsistent effect.

So whenever Jinx is having a psychotic moment, the screen takes on the qualities of film stock and becomes irregular and out of focus, almost as if whoever was scratching those lines literally took the film out of the camera, scratch it, and then is trying to re-insert it back into the shot.

There are other meta-like moments in Arcane too. In season 2 when Vi punches the jaw guy in the pit fighter scene, her punch is SO STRONG that it literally dislodges the film reel briefly. Which is hilarious to me!

But the most interesting thing about this use of meta film language to tell the story is when the Anomaly comes into play. We first get glimpses of this when Jayce is walking through the storm right before exiting into the clearing at the top of the hexgate.

Instead of scratched film and other physical media tricks, the screen starts to… glitch. Like a faulty LCD TV monitor or a bad digital broadcast signal.

We never see this effect around any other parts of the show. ONLY around the anomaly and other moments where the Arcane is coming through.

And I think the reason they do this is because it makes the Arcane feel other worldly. Up into now all the visual effects and subtle tricks have been based on physical media. Film scratches, out of focus reels, dirt on the film stock, noticeable film splicing, projection issues, etc. It’s always been quirks of physical media.

But the Arcane is different. It’s not of this world. It’s MAGIC. So they switch to using noticeable digital effects when the Arcane starts acting up. Screen tearing. Streaming glitches. Color blocks and signal loss.

However

There are people, the majority of people in fact, who go through their 40 hour jobs and then come home, make dinner, and do something with their evening that is enjoyable and not just a dead-eyed zone out. They spend time with family or friends, play with pets or kids, engage in hobbies, or even just sit and enjoy media actively.

When they talk about how much it sucks to go to work, it's a kind of general grumbling (because again, nobody likes the current system).

If you approach going to work and feel like you might just die if you have to go in again. If you come home after work and can't do anything except stare blankly at the TV or your phone. If you can barely make dinner or keep your house clean. If you feel like you're actually drowning all the time and have no ability to actively engage in any enriching activities outside of work.

That's not just the general shittiness of the system. That's a sign that you have a mental or physical health issue that's being compounded by the system. It's a sign of disability.