Low-Maintenance Gardening

This season of arcane is about switching roles.

It's about growing up to the be the thing you hate, the thing you feared, the thing you worshipped, the thing that would save you, and it's about the roles of people being repeated, reversed, flipped, and it is fascinating.

The most obvious one is Vi, who finds herself in a situation where the choice she makes - and it doesn't feel like much of a choice, but remember there is always a choice - is to become an inforcer. Even if it's only temporary, even if it's only to track down Jinx, she does it. She puts on the uniform and the badge and raids the arcade hideout, just like the inforcers did when she was younger, and this time Jinx has no one to turn too, this time she is scared of Vi. Vi has become the monsters that hunted them.

And then there's Caitlyn, who stares down at the city, who was willing to shoot even though she might hit a child, who is mad with grief and rage and who understands now why it is so easy to hate them - and she puts on the coat, and she looks like Silco. Because she is drowning, because she feels afraid, and hateful and angry and destroyed, and she is willing to lead the forces against the other side, no matter the cost.

What really gets me though, is the parallel of Viktor and Jayce's transformations. Jayce has become Viktor, has slept in the lab, has become obsessed with hextech and Viktor's equations and notes and finding something to help him. He wants to quit the council, he wants to spend all his time with Viktor in the lab. Jayce has become what Viktor needed to save him. And Viktor, in turn, now looks like the mage that saved Jayce as a child, with his cane as a staff and his blue cloak, Viktor has become the magic Jayce has always been looking to create.

This show makes me INSANE

Cherokee Miku from my home state of North Carolina!

was sketching in my math class and it randomly turned into peter pan from that one queer-awakening-ass movie i watched as a kid

bingewatching will never come close to bingereading. there is nothing like blocking out the entire Earth for ten hours to read a book in one sitting no food no water no shower no bra and emerging at the end with no idea what time it is or where you are, a dried-up prune that's sensitive to light and loud noises because you've been in your room in the dark reading by the glow of a single LED. it's like coming back after a three-month vacation in another dimension and now you have to go downstairs and make dinner. absolutely transcendental

THE MANIPULATIVE PARENT FIGURE HAPPENS AGAIN!!

It's sad to see so many people not understanding the complexity of what we have seen in Act 1 between Caitlyn and Vi. There's no fucking reason to hate on Caitlyn, she's a victim of the big whole, just like Vi.

Her grief, overwhelming and the manipulation of Ambessa is clearly shown in several scenes. Jinx kills people in every fucking Scene, she's literally a terrorist, noone bats an eye. Caitlyn breaks down under the weight that was put on her from one day to the other and snaps? Everyone's hating.

"Make it make sense" Of course it's wrong what she did. But almost no one would have been able to keep being rational after all this. And I'm sure will understand this soon.

No one can't make me hate her. Everyone who has gone through hard times knows that you've done things you realized later that they were wrong, or stupid or whatever.

(I trust the writers and the progress of the story.)

The show’s creators are known for nuanced storytelling, and Caitlyn’s redemption will likely involve acknowledging how her pain altered her actions and how she must make amends, especially with Vi

These people are too stupid to understand a complex character development with ups and downs.

Ambessa:

Plots the entire war escalation between Piltover and Zaun

Is behind the attack at the Memorial for Caitlyn's mother, to make her rage even more and put even more pressure on her

Uses her as a puppet in her plan by putting her in a position of power she's not ready for

Those people: Caitlyn is the problem 🤡

I’m so sad I tried to pull for Xiao and got Diluc instead :’(

Update: I GOT XIAO!!! :D

I had a tattoo client ask if I ever used AI to design tattoos for me. Man I spent the better part of a decade doing shitty bit work as a graphic designer and now that I have the space to do whatever I want, I'm gonna let the computer generate random garbage for me? What next should I have a computer that eats my dinner and fucks my wife?

THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME, BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE

inspired by this post by @lilhawkeye3

Does anyone else ever think about how comparatively hard it was to get Anakin to turn to the dark side?

It may be partly because we see every step of Anakin’s journey, but… Count Dooku had spent decades as part of the Jedi Order, was raised as a traditional Jedi, and still turned to the dark side within a few years after Qui-Gon’s death. Yes, he was friends with Palpatine, but Palps was twenty years younger than Dooku. Palps probably wasn’t that huge of a deal in his life initially. And when Dooku was in the Clone Wars, he was already a Sith.

Then there’s Krell. Krell has visions of impending doom, and that’s all we have in canon. However, Krell, like Bariss and potentially Nadhir, is implied to have gone dark due in part to the pressures the war and the questions it raised. However, there is no reason to believe Palpatine was cultivating their mindset personally.

Then there’s Anakin. The guy who has at least one mental illness (A French psychiatric or psychological academy- I forget which- diagnosed him with Borderline Personality Disorder, and there are others disorders he could have), a traumatic background, and was denied contact from his mom. He has rocky relationships and more issues than a star has photons. He’s had a Sith lord and master manipulator subtly grooming him for darkness for thirteen years, putting as much effort into it as into conquering the galaxy. He was on the front lines of one hellish war at the ripe old age of nineteen, and had a ton of responsibility. And it still took the Council and Palpatine using him as a double agent, visions of someone he loved dying, and a bit of trickery to get him to turn to the dark side.

That’s actually pretty impressive resilience.

Heart of the hex