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You ever wait what feels like an acceptable amount of time to watch something (not too long but not immediately as it comes out), watch it, and then poke fandom to see what's going on, only to wonder WTF is wrong with humanity?
I know. I do it far too often, honestly.
This week we'll babble about Arcane, which finally hit Netflix last November after keeping me waiting for three years.
Three. Years.
I wound up getting to see the first episode and then bits of a couple of the others back before COVID was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. I might've mentioned it, vaguely, at the time, because even with the measures taken to ensure no one recorded and shared without immediately getting hit with a lawsuit, it caught my interest. And it was clearly pretty far in development and I think possibly had a release date at that point? Or got one shortly thereafter, anyway.
And then COVID hit and a whole slew of delays basically conspired to keep me waiting. I finally heard it was coming out but not all at once, so I waited until it was all released. And then Ozma died and I was not in the headspace for something that I was fairly sure would emotionally suckerpunch me at every turn.
It did, btw.
We'll get the fact that I know very little about League of Legends out of the way here: heard of it. Probably seen art or heard convos in passing but couldn't tell you shit about it. Which is probably how I got picked for the focus group survey thing: they wanted to know how it played out for the newbies.
Gonna repeat that I had three years of waiting for this thing to hit. Part of that wait ultimately was me but like, only two and a half/three months, really. I'll also be honest and admit I frequently forgot what the show was called when I'd wake up and think, "huh, I wonder if THAT show finally camae out?" and then lose three hours to looking things up. My dears, I fixate like no one's business when the mood strikes.
But it lived up to my hopes and dreams and alas, also my fears. Because what little I allowed myself to pickup from my waiting time was that no matter how the show turned out, this was all very much a prequel so the ending points are kind of set.
I knew going in that I'd love doomed father figure Vander, as his was one of the arcs we were shown nearly the entirety of in our little preview. Not everything, of course, but enough to know he was there to give you hope and then to die so things could implode further. And MAYBE watching this right around the time of Dad's anniversary is not the smartest move I've ever made in my life.
But I didn't fully anticipate loving Vi as much as I did. Like, I knew I'd like her as I did way back when. However, when presented with psychotic, chaotic female characters who might've had a compelling backstory we could dole out as needed I will usually fall first and ask questions later, and let anyone else be just liked a lot, not loved.
Nope. Walked away loving Vi. Hardcore. To the point that I was (stupidly) surprised that there's apparently a very vocal part of fandom that might not loathe her but definitely blames her for everything that Jinx/Powder became.
Which leads me away from my planned happy babbling about the show (quick loves I hope to circle back to at some point: the art being gorgeous but not making every character the same kind of gorgeous, Ekko, Viktor, Cupcake, mention Vi about a million times here and you'll get the idea, kid!Powder, Vander) and instead landing in the WTF quicksand that is fandom.
I cannot stress to you enough how much I underestimated the odds of the second piece of fanart I ran across being pro Silco. I knew going in the odds were pretty high that Jinx was going to be mindbogglingly popular, so her being #1 wasn't a surprise. But the weird fixation people have for Silco and how quick they were to believe something he says at the end is just...
Guys.
He's literally a villain.
And I can't even think, "well, he's obviously a game character so I'm just missing something."
Nooooooooooo. This dude who was just the absolute worst is a show created character. So all this love? Is based on the shit shown in the series. I suppose it's possible that in the three months it's taken me to watch this there've been interviews or mentions by the writers to add to things but in general that does not seem to be the case, or isn't obvious about it.
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spoil the ending. So. Silco's entire deal has been a combo of getting his "beloved" undercity recognized as a real city and also one-upping Vander at every possible turn. Killing Vander didn't stop this, btw, as he takes Powder, Vander's youngest daughter, after Vander and the rest of her family are killed. In a situation Silco set up and Powder inadvertently kind of helped with. So he takes this poor, traumatized child and he spends the next 8 years or so convincing her that she can only trust him, that he's literally the only person who will ever and has ever loved her, and that everyone else is just, ugh, the worst.
I don't care if he did come to love her as a daughter or if that's what he told himself. That right there? Is BEYOND fucked up. And I don't mind people who admit that and still appreciate the weird little dynamic going on between Jinx and Silco. But the number of people I've seen who seem to acknowledge that fact, that Silco intentionally isolated and did further psychological damage to someone whose life he ruined without even caring? That number is currently at zero. Maybe a .5 as someone else called him out on it and my poking the fandom is very new so I absolutely believe there are people who see it and get it. But the really vocal people? Yeah, no. Silco wins Dad of the Year.
Why? How? I mean, this dude intentionally keeps his daughter from the one person she's been longing for since he took her in: her sister. And sure, he thought said sister was dead for 8 years but she shows up and he immediately realizes that if Vi gets to Jinx, his hold over Jinx is done for. So he lies and manipulates and does everything he possibly can to keep them apart.
And if I hear one more person sputter, "but he thought Vi would abandon Jinx again!" I will raaaaaaaaaaage. That's not why he hunted Vi down in the first place so you don't get to apply it to everything. She didn't abandon her sister to begin with.
After Vander's death, and the death of most of the rest of her second family, Vi does not react well to the realization that her little sister likely caused those deaths unintentionally. In an absolute moment of understandable pain, she lashes out and hurts Powder both physically and emotionally, and immediately after she freaks out and goes off to cool down for like a minute because she knows that she fucked up and staying in this moment right here is dangerous.
And in that moment Silco swoops down and takes Powder. Before Vi can even make the choice to go save her sister or not (and she's clearly going to try), Marcus swoops down, drugs her, and hauls her ass to prison where she stays, forgotten by everyone else and assumed dead.
You can't flip this and have Silco imagine she actually left Powder at this point because he thinks she's dead all this time. You can have him be pissed as shit at the thought that she'd left Jinx for dead on the bridge but this fact tends to obscure the other thing in motion at this point:
At Jinx's twisted tea party, Silco claims that he was going to give up everything he's worked for his entire life (getting the undercity recognized as the nation he believed in and then getting to RUN said nation) because he'd refuse to give Jinx up as basically their one request. And I mean, it's possible he meant it. But the look in his eye when he realizes that maybe, just maybe, Piltover is going to make good on the threat to eradicate the undercity and that they've finally got the "guts" to get their hands actively dirty? Yeah that says otherwise. And while I'd believe Silco would burn his entire life to ash to spite Vander, even in death, I don't have the same faith that he'd fail to turn Jinx in to get everything else he ever wanted. Because a dude like Silco would have a plan to get her back or would believe one sacrifice would be worth the trade. He'd believe that his having to give up the one person who meant anything to him, the one person he's fought to keep around all these years? That's the price you pay for glory.
And dude only claims he wasn't going to give Jinx up when he's about to die and trying to sway Jinx away from Vi. Vi who is willing to walk away from everything if it means keeping Jinx from killing again. We're shown that Vi would absolutely make good on that promise. She'd tell Caitlyn goodbye or hell, maybe just walk away if it kept both Caitlyn and Jinx/Powder safe. Vi's motivation has always been to get to her sister and make up for that one mistake that cost them both more than anyone would've imagined.
But sure, tell me again that the lying villain is definitely dad of the year and wouldn't say anything to win and save his own ass, even as he's lying elsewhere in this scene. Seriously, he's still telling Jinx that Vi didn't care about her, even though the moment she's out of jail and learns where Powder is, Vi runs to her. Against all odds, she keeps her promise to show up when Powder sets off that flare, and doesn't leave her willingly right after.
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I am old as fuck because I remember people having similar issues with "but if the villain can love then they aren't a villain anymore!" bullshit in the Buffy days. No, you can still be a villain while loving someone. It just adds depth to your character, it doesn't redeem you and wash away your sins and faults. How do people still not get this?
And yes, I realize this argument wasn't new then either.
Kind of want to keep poking fandom to find better takes and maybe get past all the weird character x reader fic that has never and will never be my jam in any fandom. But I'm also very tired right now so maybe I should just go back to bed.
I know. I do it far too often, honestly.
This week we'll babble about Arcane, which finally hit Netflix last November after keeping me waiting for three years.
Three. Years.
I wound up getting to see the first episode and then bits of a couple of the others back before COVID was even a glimmer in anyone's eye. I might've mentioned it, vaguely, at the time, because even with the measures taken to ensure no one recorded and shared without immediately getting hit with a lawsuit, it caught my interest. And it was clearly pretty far in development and I think possibly had a release date at that point? Or got one shortly thereafter, anyway.
And then COVID hit and a whole slew of delays basically conspired to keep me waiting. I finally heard it was coming out but not all at once, so I waited until it was all released. And then Ozma died and I was not in the headspace for something that I was fairly sure would emotionally suckerpunch me at every turn.
It did, btw.
We'll get the fact that I know very little about League of Legends out of the way here: heard of it. Probably seen art or heard convos in passing but couldn't tell you shit about it. Which is probably how I got picked for the focus group survey thing: they wanted to know how it played out for the newbies.
Gonna repeat that I had three years of waiting for this thing to hit. Part of that wait ultimately was me but like, only two and a half/three months, really. I'll also be honest and admit I frequently forgot what the show was called when I'd wake up and think, "huh, I wonder if THAT show finally camae out?" and then lose three hours to looking things up. My dears, I fixate like no one's business when the mood strikes.
But it lived up to my hopes and dreams and alas, also my fears. Because what little I allowed myself to pickup from my waiting time was that no matter how the show turned out, this was all very much a prequel so the ending points are kind of set.
I knew going in that I'd love doomed father figure Vander, as his was one of the arcs we were shown nearly the entirety of in our little preview. Not everything, of course, but enough to know he was there to give you hope and then to die so things could implode further. And MAYBE watching this right around the time of Dad's anniversary is not the smartest move I've ever made in my life.
But I didn't fully anticipate loving Vi as much as I did. Like, I knew I'd like her as I did way back when. However, when presented with psychotic, chaotic female characters who might've had a compelling backstory we could dole out as needed I will usually fall first and ask questions later, and let anyone else be just liked a lot, not loved.
Nope. Walked away loving Vi. Hardcore. To the point that I was (stupidly) surprised that there's apparently a very vocal part of fandom that might not loathe her but definitely blames her for everything that Jinx/Powder became.
Which leads me away from my planned happy babbling about the show (quick loves I hope to circle back to at some point: the art being gorgeous but not making every character the same kind of gorgeous, Ekko, Viktor, Cupcake, mention Vi about a million times here and you'll get the idea, kid!Powder, Vander) and instead landing in the WTF quicksand that is fandom.
I cannot stress to you enough how much I underestimated the odds of the second piece of fanart I ran across being pro Silco. I knew going in the odds were pretty high that Jinx was going to be mindbogglingly popular, so her being #1 wasn't a surprise. But the weird fixation people have for Silco and how quick they were to believe something he says at the end is just...
Guys.
He's literally a villain.
And I can't even think, "well, he's obviously a game character so I'm just missing something."
Nooooooooooo. This dude who was just the absolute worst is a show created character. So all this love? Is based on the shit shown in the series. I suppose it's possible that in the three months it's taken me to watch this there've been interviews or mentions by the writers to add to things but in general that does not seem to be the case, or isn't obvious about it.
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spoil the ending. So. Silco's entire deal has been a combo of getting his "beloved" undercity recognized as a real city and also one-upping Vander at every possible turn. Killing Vander didn't stop this, btw, as he takes Powder, Vander's youngest daughter, after Vander and the rest of her family are killed. In a situation Silco set up and Powder inadvertently kind of helped with. So he takes this poor, traumatized child and he spends the next 8 years or so convincing her that she can only trust him, that he's literally the only person who will ever and has ever loved her, and that everyone else is just, ugh, the worst.
I don't care if he did come to love her as a daughter or if that's what he told himself. That right there? Is BEYOND fucked up. And I don't mind people who admit that and still appreciate the weird little dynamic going on between Jinx and Silco. But the number of people I've seen who seem to acknowledge that fact, that Silco intentionally isolated and did further psychological damage to someone whose life he ruined without even caring? That number is currently at zero. Maybe a .5 as someone else called him out on it and my poking the fandom is very new so I absolutely believe there are people who see it and get it. But the really vocal people? Yeah, no. Silco wins Dad of the Year.
Why? How? I mean, this dude intentionally keeps his daughter from the one person she's been longing for since he took her in: her sister. And sure, he thought said sister was dead for 8 years but she shows up and he immediately realizes that if Vi gets to Jinx, his hold over Jinx is done for. So he lies and manipulates and does everything he possibly can to keep them apart.
And if I hear one more person sputter, "but he thought Vi would abandon Jinx again!" I will raaaaaaaaaaage. That's not why he hunted Vi down in the first place so you don't get to apply it to everything. She didn't abandon her sister to begin with.
After Vander's death, and the death of most of the rest of her second family, Vi does not react well to the realization that her little sister likely caused those deaths unintentionally. In an absolute moment of understandable pain, she lashes out and hurts Powder both physically and emotionally, and immediately after she freaks out and goes off to cool down for like a minute because she knows that she fucked up and staying in this moment right here is dangerous.
And in that moment Silco swoops down and takes Powder. Before Vi can even make the choice to go save her sister or not (and she's clearly going to try), Marcus swoops down, drugs her, and hauls her ass to prison where she stays, forgotten by everyone else and assumed dead.
You can't flip this and have Silco imagine she actually left Powder at this point because he thinks she's dead all this time. You can have him be pissed as shit at the thought that she'd left Jinx for dead on the bridge but this fact tends to obscure the other thing in motion at this point:
At Jinx's twisted tea party, Silco claims that he was going to give up everything he's worked for his entire life (getting the undercity recognized as the nation he believed in and then getting to RUN said nation) because he'd refuse to give Jinx up as basically their one request. And I mean, it's possible he meant it. But the look in his eye when he realizes that maybe, just maybe, Piltover is going to make good on the threat to eradicate the undercity and that they've finally got the "guts" to get their hands actively dirty? Yeah that says otherwise. And while I'd believe Silco would burn his entire life to ash to spite Vander, even in death, I don't have the same faith that he'd fail to turn Jinx in to get everything else he ever wanted. Because a dude like Silco would have a plan to get her back or would believe one sacrifice would be worth the trade. He'd believe that his having to give up the one person who meant anything to him, the one person he's fought to keep around all these years? That's the price you pay for glory.
And dude only claims he wasn't going to give Jinx up when he's about to die and trying to sway Jinx away from Vi. Vi who is willing to walk away from everything if it means keeping Jinx from killing again. We're shown that Vi would absolutely make good on that promise. She'd tell Caitlyn goodbye or hell, maybe just walk away if it kept both Caitlyn and Jinx/Powder safe. Vi's motivation has always been to get to her sister and make up for that one mistake that cost them both more than anyone would've imagined.
But sure, tell me again that the lying villain is definitely dad of the year and wouldn't say anything to win and save his own ass, even as he's lying elsewhere in this scene. Seriously, he's still telling Jinx that Vi didn't care about her, even though the moment she's out of jail and learns where Powder is, Vi runs to her. Against all odds, she keeps her promise to show up when Powder sets off that flare, and doesn't leave her willingly right after.
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I am old as fuck because I remember people having similar issues with "but if the villain can love then they aren't a villain anymore!" bullshit in the Buffy days. No, you can still be a villain while loving someone. It just adds depth to your character, it doesn't redeem you and wash away your sins and faults. How do people still not get this?
And yes, I realize this argument wasn't new then either.
Kind of want to keep poking fandom to find better takes and maybe get past all the weird character x reader fic that has never and will never be my jam in any fandom. But I'm also very tired right now so maybe I should just go back to bed.