I Just Can't Turn My Brain Off For Episode 7 Because It's Foundations Are So Contradictory. How Can We

op, i hope that your pillows are always cold on both sides, that you always have an umbrella when it’s raining and that you always catch yourself before you stub your toes because you deserve all of it.

i actually hated A LOT of choices the writers made in season 2 and you basically listed almost all of it. thank you. this deserves so much more notes.

arcane s2 didn't stick the landing

i feel like the second season didn't build on top of what was established in the first season

i actually hate the "cycle of hate" narrative at this point in my life, especially with how it relates to real world conflicts.

there is no both sides in most cases. there's the oppressed and the oppressors. racism and related is the privileged oppressing the less privileged. and the oppressed who are fighting back are doing it in a situation where there is no other option. and a lot of the time, the burden and criticism of finding the moral way to go about freeing themselves is put on them. oh the black panthers are dangerous and they were forced to end their activities yet the KKK are still around? oh the palestinians attacked israel and took hostages to bargain with while they've lived generations of israel keeping them in an open air prison, having control of what goes in and out of their borders, taking over their homes, kidnapping their children to put in jail, killing them without repercussions, the activists that come from other countries are killed. you can't criticize a people who are trying to survive, who have already tried peaceful methods, who have been pushed to a corner of biting back.

back to this silly media analysis after unloading actual real world issues

in arcane we have piltover: the privileged and zaun the less privileged.

zaun has less of everything, they're literally the lowest class of this uppercity/undercity situation.

i hated how Jayce laid down his weapon in that one scene where he killed a child worker in the factory. and Vi rightly criticizes him by saying,

"You've always been a part of this. You just never had to look it in the eye. One dead kid? There's hundreds more where he came from, thanks to Silco and thanks to people like you who stuck their heads in the dirt."

"This is over," Jayce says.

"Not for me."

he has the privilege of keeping his hands clean, of turning away. Vi accuses him of "sticking his head in the dirt" ignoring what's happening in the undercity and even now he has the privilege of doing it again, meanwhile it's never over for Vi. because these are her people who are suffering, and because she doesn't have the privilege of looking away.

there's a shot where it pans over the group of children who were working at the shimmer factory with their hands behind their heads. the reason they're working there is because of the abysmal conditions the undercity are in, that the upper classes turned a blind eye to. Jayce gets to wash his hands clean of it by walking away.

I'm not saying he should be prepared to kill children if it comes down to it. it's just the fact that he can walk away. he's a councilmember with all the power in his hands, he's part of the reason why these kids are here, and he can't bear putting up with a silver of the pain the undercity goes through everyday.

we see Vi establishing her identity as one of them when they say,

"I can't let you leave with them," Jayce says, referring to the gauntlets.

"Then I guess you're going to have to kill another trencher," Vi retorts. (is that the right word?)

either way, she's one of them.

I was looking forward to Caitlyn becoming prejudiced against the people of the undercity, because it meant conflict, it meant Vi would have to fight her. whether or not it would result in Caitlyn realizing that she was wrong or not. it's a clashing, and during a clashing characters and their ideologies shine.

we didn't really get that.

we got the buildup for it where Cait's dad says "what is she still doing here?" in loathing (though this may be more due to her blood relation to jinx)

and Cait says "You can (help). As one of us." while handing over the police badge

which directly contrasts Vi's standoff with Jayce where she claims her side as a person of Zaun. Here Cait is giving her a symbol of everything she's stood against, her oppressors. (and i heard that the piltover soldiers weren't supposed to be representative of police brutality by the writers and i mean c'mon are you serious??? especially with the scene where they set up barricades between the upper and undercity and where ambessa's right hand man beats up the jinx supporter in line??? where they have them torturing that same jinx supporter in the prison??? where they arrest all of the people at Sevika's rally???)

and sure Vi joins the police force eventually and even at this point I'm still thinking okay she's going to realize she's on the wrong side and leave them, which she eventually does by stopping Cait from shooting isha. but that was more of a "that's a child" moment rather than a "i'm on the side that's oppressing my people" moment.

and jinx rightly calls her out on it later.

In terms of Cait, again, I think they did a good job setting up her falling into prejudice:

"I just understand now, how easy it is to hate them. One vicious act." and i thought this was a moment of introspection where Cait is essentially seeing how easy it is to villainize a whole group of people but she is aware of it enough that she won't do it herself.

"A memorial," Cait says as they both watch a soldier pick up a crying child, "what kind of animals!"

this is where she's falling into it.

again as many other people pointed out, the privilege of living one day in the same terror that the undercity lives in daily and it's enough for piltover to be scared. not to mention, it was by ambessa's hand that this attack happened, and the undercity will have to pay for the political moves people in privilege are playing.

again if we were to compare this to real world issues, it's insurance companies putting people in debt to save a loved one, its banks evicting people from their homes, its the homeless who are put into prisons and used for labor without proper pay or rights. and the "one vicious act" being the bullet that the healthcare ceo assassin shot.

and then we see her weaponize polluted air to terrorize the people of the undercity. went against everything her mother believed in and worked for.

it's crazy that Vi agreed to this. stood beside cait for this.

it reminds me of what silco said,

"Have you forgotten where we came from? The mines they had us in? We came from a world where there was never enough to go around."

"You're too young to remember what the undercity was before it became... an enterprise."

The fact that Silco could still be that composed while he breathed in the toxic air. unless he was scientifically enhanced, i like to think it's because he's the oldest, he's been in the mines longer than the chem-barons, longer than Vi. I don't think Vi ever had to deal with the toxic air.

Vi has forgotten where she came from and here she is weaponizing that same pollution, the Grey, against her own people.

but again I had hope that Vi would see that this is wrong

Vi puts herself next to the undercity man, Heenot?, they were interrogating once Cait threatened him with her gun, giving her a look. these are her people.

"I thought you were on our side," Cait had said after staunchly defending the people of the undercity to her parents in the first season. creating sides, putting Vi on hers.

Vi stops her from shooting Isha and Cait says

"I keep telling myself that you're different." saying essentially "you're one of the good ones" a common thing the privileged/oppressors say about the oppressed.

and that's where the conflict ends???

and then when they reunite??? nothing happens??? they never go over what Cait did??? never confront her about it??? just forgot about all that buildup??? oh no we're too busy now with the end of the world i guess

as I said in the beginning, they set it up for the piltover characters to clash with the zaun characters, between Cait and Vi, between Jayce and Victor.

"You didn't say they were from the undercity!"

"What difference does that make?"

"What—they're dangerous!"

"I'm from the undercity."

but that got washed away once victor got taken over by the hextech and became a "oh both sides are bad" guy and actually free will is overrated.

I was excited for Ekko to show Hemierdinger the conditions they were living in and working together to fix it, for Hemerdinger to fix what he's done to the people because he didn't pay them any attention.

Ambessa and the hextech possession over victor really derailed all the buildup between the undercity and the uppercity that's been set up and then did nothing with it.

oh we have to come together to stop the end of their nation.

fuck that, where's the revolution??? Jinx is the face of the resistance and they do nothing with that??? sure it's the reason why the undercity go fight against ambessa and victor because jinx was their hope, but that hope was building up against piltover, with the border patrols, with the police brutality, with how they tortured their people in the jails, with how they all got arrested at a rally.

where's the face off between cait and vi??? not even that, where was Vi's arc??? like everybody's been saying she did nothing this season. Vi should've been Vander's successor, she should've joined hands with jinx, ending the cycle.

victor should've had his own conflict with jayce, should've been a leader to his people.

the writers really didn't deliver this seaons, the art and animation was so cool though

the only time "both sides are bad" actually works is between the elves and dwarves in lord of the rings because as far as I know one hasn't oppressed/enslaved/taken rights away from the other and it's just petty squabbles and cultural differences and more serious squabbles. (it may be different in the books, but this is what I got from my time in the hobbit fandom).

anyway, i'm sure someone else has already said all this. thanks for reading.

Memories - Nanami and Hibara

i’ll never get over this

psa for the yoi fandom: russian names & how to use them

Russian guides: masterpost | patronyms | terms of affection | answered asks

I’m going to start by swearing this isn’t me just complaining but a general resource for the Yuri on Ice fandom because I’ve noticed some mistakes in the naming conventions used among the fandom and want to help correct them. Especially in how the fandom treats diminutives. I absolutely love seeing the huge amount of interest in Russian diminutives, etc. in fanart and fics and hopefully this breakdown will help continue that trend and interest and even spur some more ideas in fandom content.

So let’s go through some important details below the cut!

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TikTokers are such pussies when it comes to ships. “B-but they’re not canon 🥺🥺🥺😭😭😖😖” honey back in my day we shipped characters from entirely different medias uphill both ways in the snow

i never said that i agree with it? you ASKED me what's the moral thing for piltover to do and i ANSWERED.

but just because i map out a believable scenario doesn't fucking mean i have to agree with it?

have you never engaged in thoughts exercises ever? and what's with the insistence to read what i never fucking wrote.

and if you just keep asking me questions just to be intentionally obtuse about it, stop bothering me.

^^^———

It is WILD that you say “selling drugs and engaging in gang turf war does not make you not a citizen” as if that changes the fact that they’re still CRIMES.

I mean, if your logic is that Zaun is technically part of Piltover and thus falls under Piltover’s jurisdiction… committing a CRIME under their jurisdiction means you can suffer consequences from your actions. No? It doesn’t MATTER if you’re a citizen or not. Being a citizen doesn’t give you free rein to do whatever you want! You have to obey laws!

If I’m a citizen of a city in America, and I do a crime, the police of that city are allowed to take away my rights as a citizen. That’s what being a citizen in a functional society MEANS!

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT YOU WEIRD ASS MOTHER FUCKERS????

一緒に・Together

sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four

AHH MY HEART

Domestic bliss

Harry's voicemail

“Hi this is Harry Potter, sorry i couldn’t pick up your call

If you’re hermione please limit your message to at the most 4 minutes. I’m a busy man ‘mione, really.

If you’re ron, yeah hi to you too i’ll be at yours on tuesday night for drinks don’t worry i haven’t forgotten.

If you’re neville, er, congrats on whatever new plant you just got.

If you’re luna, yes i’ve renewed my Quibbler subscription, tell your dad i said hello.

If you’re ginny, congrats on that match you won and have come to call and scream to me about.

If you’re draco, i’ll be home soon, don’t leave the stove on, finish the laundry if you haven’t already, yes i’m okay, yes i miss you too, yes i know you want my ‘bloody arse’ home. I love you too.

And i’ll get back to you as soon as possible!”