So if I were to take away from this moment something deeper than “man Sevika's a freak”, I'd point out that we've seen the same tactic not long before.
What does this say about Caitlyn? She's fighting dirty. She's fighting like a cornered rat. She's fighting like a Zaunite.
And first of all there's hypocrisy. Caitlyn's been calling these people animals and monsters and whatnot but when placed in an identical situation she responds identically. Case in point: getting so mad at Jinx for terrorizing people out of grief that she goes ahead and starts to terrorize people out of grief. Sevika's expression afterwards is mostly “joke's on you I'm into that” but there's some surprise there too — you wouldn't expect that move from a Piltie.
Then there's desperation. Because she needs revenge; she needs it or she'll never ever forgive herself for what happened. So she'll throw away her morals and her dignity and just do whatever it takes to achieve the goal, whether it means chomping on someone like a feral raccoon or becoming a military dictator… which puts her in the same mindset as Zaunites, all of whom are desperate to survive and a lot of whom could never afford morals and dignity in the first place.
is anybody else screaming and crying about this parallel or is it just me
Post-war sketches!
Support course! Deku <3
ohhhhhhh something just hit me while i was watching this scene again
this episode is called "the monster you created"... talking about jinx, of course. "you" is either vi or silco, or both, or the entire system that created these circumstances.
but. BUT.
another monster was created in this episode. the monster jinx created. the cycle of violence continues, baby!
(thanks @solidsmax for the gif!)
just realised that jinx was the product of all three of them. she was raised by felicia, then vander, then silco. sounds like felicia, leads like vander, fights like silco. has her smile, his heart and his wits. has her braid and his scruff and his bangs. she's the best of them. i cant get over it
God, if it WAS a timeloop, if Arcane Jayce has been experiencing version after version of The Horrors of not stopping Hextech, if him shooting Viktor isn't "killing" it's the final act of attempt after attempt after attempt at SAVING HIM I will walk of a ledge I swear, it's all coming together, I am a "Jayce was trapped in a time loop" truther now, I'm losing my damn mind. There is no way Jayce killed his partner unless another Viktor told him to do it or he has tried so many times over and seen the consequences of not doing so that he's completely broken, or he just knows from all those other versions that this is not Viktor or it's the only way to actually save Viktor... anyway I'm officially chewing glass and losing my mind I take back every version of "that is not Jayce" I am now a "That IS Jayce several decades of trauma later, trauma caused by trying over and over to save the world and save Viktor" I think we're going to be repaid for all of our "The goodbye was too brief" or "There was no emotion when Jayce killed Viktor" with an ENTIRE SEQUENCE that is just all the emotions Jayce has been pouring into trying to fix all of this any other way
Tune in next week at the end of my psychological breakdown to see if I was right or just ridiculous!
chat does he know about marriage
They know how to deal with each other better
The X right on her head we never stood a fucking chance
i think there is something to be said about the way a lot of popular western media (both within fiction and outside of it, now that i think about it) uses the pretense of nuance to obfuscate existing power dynamics.
the example i'm mulling over at the moment is netflix's Arcane, which depicts a pretty straightforward conflict between a brutally oppressive ruling class and an underclass that is out gunned, out manned, and lacks even the means to support its own population. despite this, the show takes a very even-handed "everybody's flawed" approach to how it portrays this conflict, one that seems to be increasingly popular in popular western media. this makes for a compelling story, the show takes the time to make sure we understand all the characters involved, their motivations, their flaws, their hopes, their dreams etc, but i think when people engage with that kind of narrative uncritically, they tend to miss the forest for the trees and get lost in pointless debates over which characters were more in the right or who's actions were more justified by their trauma etc. this kind of weightless, individualist approach seems to always lead to the same conclusion: that changing society is scary and traumatic and everybody is too flawed to be trusted with leading such a shift. how convenient that this always seems to benefit those already in power.
i'm thinking about this in regards to the reactions to the latest developments in the story of Arcane, which sees caitlyn supporting a military dictatorship, in part as a response to the trauma of losing her mother in jinx's terror attack. the reactions are pretty typical fandom discourse about whether or not her actions are understandable given what she's going through as a character, but what no one seems to be considering is that she's only able to undergo this change in the first place because of her class position, not just as a member of the wealthy elite of the overcity, but also as a respected member of the overcity's law enforcement. see, while the individual characters involved might be complex, the moral dimensions of the overall conflict really are not. one side has all the power and resources, as well as a vested interest in keeping the other side subjugated to maintain its dominant status quo. just because the dominant side is populated primarily with skinny attractive people a who're shown to be doing their best with the situation and the other are mostly grotesque caricatures of poverty stricken degenerates doesn't mean this is a difficult choice.
it remains to be seen how the actual show will play out, but i can't help but see it as continuing a trend of what i can only describe as a kind of smug liberal nihilism, crafting a brutal class conflict only to revel in the horrific spectacle of it all, basking in the complex moral greyness of its protagonists, uninterested in taking an actual stance. there's a point when nuance becomes a form of cowardice, imo