Literally an apartheid state and we're rooting for characters that are committed to "keeping it safe" (this means further militarizing the border between Piltover and the undercity and killing children on accident and feeling really bad about it). There's plot elements that expose how bad Piltover is for undercity citizens, but that's just the other half of both-sidesing the issue and calling it a cycle of violence. No, the REAL and IMMEDIATE threat is Silco, the guy actually committed to resistance against apartheid Piltover and even the Good and Right characters are opposed to him - to the point that they're more willing to work with Piltover, the state that has been oppressing them their whole lives and which they constantly talk about how its oppressed them their whole lives, to take him down. There's even the gem at the end where Piltover is on the verge of granting the undercity sovereignty and freedom to end the fighting, but then someone decides to fire a fucking rocket straight into the room this decision is being made in. It almost feels 1 for 1 equivalents being made to Israel and Palestine based on hasbara narratives.
Season 1 was cool.
Season 2 is when everyone cool becomes a cop and does a lot of violence against the oppressed and then we're supposed to feel bad for the cops I guess. Oh and then the oppressed also become cops because magic big scary thing and then they all die so that the main cops can live.
Libs have zero imagination
I genuinely debated myself about posting, because it's not that serious and I know Hexbear has made up its mind about this show and I don't want everyone jumping down my throat, but I think people don't give this show the nuance it actually has. Like I'm not trying to defend the show completely, there are for sure issues, but I mean at no point did I get the impression that we were supposed to root for Piltover. It's made clear from the jump that the entire council is heavily corrupt, and that even someone idealistic like Jayce ultimately has no chance at really changing the system. On top of that, the show does go to lengths to humanize Silco throughout the show - if anything, that's his whole character arc throughout Season 1, going from someone who is ready to spearhead a revolution at any cost to someone who feels like he has something to lose due to Jinx. I mean, the guy's a drug baron and we start off with him murdering the main character's father figure, but they do a lot throughout the season that by the end of it he comes across as a sympathetic character, which is the opposite direction that these things usually go with both-sidesing.
Which reminds me of the other thing that seems to get lost - I know we're communists, we're analysing it from a communist perspective, but the show at it's core is moreso about family and trauma than it is about politics. The entire reason that a rocket gets shot at the negotiation table at the end of Season 1 has less to do with intracity politics and more to do with the breaking down of familial bonds, and then as an addendum that's paralleled with the breaking down of peace relations. Again, there's a lot of issues with Arcane, and I know a lot of issues have specifically been brought up about Season 2, but idk it feels like people are taking a surface level analysis and writing takes about an imagined anti-leftist reading, at least one much further than the politics actually presented.
the show at it's core is moreso about family and trauma than it is about politics
Jinx wouldn't have her trauma if Piltover wouldn't wage hextech-based class war against Zaun. S2 makes it pretty clear that in a less repressive world, she could have just grown up to be Powder and live a mostly happy life even if there's significant loss and grief in it. Psychology and politics cannot be seperate spheres when you live in a system that inflicts trauma on you and your people and takes away your ressources to deal with it.
but the show at it's core is moreso about family and trauma than it is about politics
I don't entirely agree with this, especially for season 1. Stories tend to have more than one theme, and Arcane has both non-political ones and explicitly political ones. It's more than just a backdrop to a story about family. The main conflict we're present in the show is political in a very obvious way, and the show doesn't hide it: plenty of runtime is used to show us characters discuss and ruminate about the the zaun and piltover situation and what they think should be done about it.
Part of the reason the end of season 2 felt disappointing imo, was that at some point they just completely gave up on those themes that HAD been a central part of the show. Nothing gets resolved and everything stays basically the same, no one in piltover has to take responsiblity for their actions, but it's treated as a happy ending, which really gives the impression that piltover was who we were supposed to root for all along, even if it felt like that was mostly not the case in season 1.
I strongly suspect that the awkward plotting in season two is at least partially because of October 7th and the resulting genocide leading to them to do rewrites.
I kinda agree. It's a Lib show I won't deny that.
I think Silco is presented as a bit more complex than that though. The guy is brutal, but season one ends with him ALMOST achieving his goal, Jayce agrees to give the Undercity independence with a few reasonable concessions which Silco agrees to uphold. I feel like an even more Lib version of the show would have had him continue to escalate the conflict our of stubbornness and hate, but not he has a clear goal, pursues it without compromise, and seems happy to end the conflict when his goal is reached. I've known a surprising number of Libs who actually sympathize with the character, so I'd argue his writing is pretty effective.
no it doesn't. it looks like stylized CGI. please don't insult digital artists by comparing their work to AI when what they do takes an incredible amount of skill and hard work
Stable Diffusion 1.5 tended to produce sort of quasi-brushstrokes that look a lot like the shading in Arcane, but that's not what I think of when I think "obvious AI slop" anymore. Now the cliched AI look is either that shitty Pixar look or "what if hyper detailed mixed media Artstation concept art was even more uncanny and also had serious and obvious errors in its scene composition."
there is even a stable diffusion model trained specifically to look like Arcane
check out this AI portrait of Elon Musk in Arcane-style to die instantly
Show
one of the reasons it rubs me the wrong way when real artwork is compared to AI is because the opposite is true - the AI is being trained on their work
I think the only problem is that the show is too subtle to be Zionist propaganda.
the guy actually committed to resistance against apartheid
the drug-lord objectively lowering the standard of living and life expectancy of 'his people', but don't worry some of that blood money is sponsoring putting him on the throne of a "liberated" state. i think we're allowed to have stories where nationalists/representatives of oppressed groups can be shitty in their own right, without that equaling an endorsement of the oppression. Should we not criticize the Nation of Islam because of stated support for nationalism? How about the Palestinian Authority?
I think the bigger issue is that we so rarely get to see a "clean" revolution where the opressed class is led by people with good motives. That's not on Arcane specifically, but there is a lot of media where the scrappy upstarts sucessfully overthrow power only to have the new power be just as evil, but maybe in a different way (Hunger Games is a notable example).
Arcane plays into that ttope somewhat, but I wouldn't say it plays it straight
They always have to kick the dog, you can't make the revolutionaries too emphatic.
My understanding from the flashbacks is that both Silco and Vander wanted the Zaun independence via revolution, Piltover responded with violence and during that Vi/Jinx's mom died and that was Silco fault? Maybe he is the one pushing for revolution? I don't understand that part. Than he meets Singed and become a drug lord to finance another try at the independence.
Both Silco before Singed and in the alternate universe tried to achieve the Zaun independence by not doing something awful.
I don't know if I'd say it's 1:1 because it's missing the colonizer aspect, but the artificial division between the healthy world and the underworld (I can't recall the names of the places; I saw this show when it first came out and it didn't work for me) was ridiculous. Both sidesing it was also pretty ridiculous and just feeds the modern liberal's 'both sides bad' understanding of the world. Silco's not a great guy but he's absolutely right if he wants to end this apartheid; no hero is perfect, and some villains are so awful they overshadow the negatives on the villain.
Honestly this is like watching game of thrones and thinking any of the noble families, who are pitting their slave-peasants against one another, are the good guys; heck in real life nobles tended to avoid killing one another and instead only allowed their armies to take nobles as hostages while entirely allowing their armies to kill one another.
EDIT: Oh, also in the real world the guys in that meeting room would've voted to 'mow the lawn' with the underworld, or flat out eradicate the place, and they would've made it sound like they're still the good guys.
I know I watched all of season 2 but I can't remember how it ended.
Season 2 was garbage. This show was so obviously written with more seasons in mind, and it needed them
