強い者が生き残る。それがこの世界のルールだ

Kudos to fanfiction writers for writing about all the trauma and emotional and mental turmoil that the original content creators dont acknowledge when putting characters through hell

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.

we’re literally talking about chemical weapons???? two or more things can be true at the same time? using chemical weapons is still bad even with or without a fucking net?

are you having trouble making a single coherent thought? or is that just beyond your intellectual capacity?

^^^———

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????

Very Brief Guide to [tumblr], for Reddit refugees

Shit You Must Do Right Fucking Now:

Change your profile picture, blog header, and title to something other than the defaults. Do it right now. You will be mistaken for a bot otherwise, and blocked.

Go into Settings -> Dashboard, scroll down to Preferences, and turn off the options in the picture. This will get rid of most of the algorithmic stuff.

Turn off Tumblr Live. You have to snooze it once every 7 days for some stupid reason. It's hosted through another company and will steal your data if you use it.

Go to your blog settings (under the little person menu) and turn off these two settings:

Turn off infinite scroll (lags the site) and turn on timestamps on posts, in the same menu as Preferences.

Basic Features of the Site:

Reblogs drive the entire site. If you'd upvote something on Reddit, you'd reblog it on Tumblr. You can add text, images, or tags to a reblog, but you're not required to.

The dashboard is the equivalent to your Reddit feed, and contains the posts of all the people you follow, with the newest at the top

You can send an ask to someone, and it'll appear in their askbox for them to answer. You can receive them too, or turn off the settings if you don't want.

Tags aren't actually used for finding stuff (search function is dogshit), but are more for categorizing. People also talk in tags. Because Tumblr is weird, you can't use quotation marks (") or commas in them without fucking it up

You can filter both tags and phrases under Account Settings; doing this will put a filter over a post that contains them, which you'll have to click through to see the post itself. Useful for avoiding hate speech or blocking out annoying stuff

You can make polls in posts. Here's one now.

Likes are useless. They literally do fuck-all except send a notification to the OP.

Stuff Tumblr Does That Other Sites Don't:

Very old posts (I'm talking from like 2012) often circulate on this site. There's no such thing as a post being "too old" to reblog

Blocking is highly encouraged; you can block someone for any reason. Even for just being annoying.

If you and someone else are following each other, you are mutuals. Mutuals are fucking awesome and are treasured like friends. Mutuals are a thing on other sites but Tumblr treats em differently.

You can screenshot someone's tags if you like them and add them to a reblog. This is called "peer review"

Sometimes someone will find a blog and go through it and like/reblog a bunch of posts. This is totally fine and not "creepy" like it is seen as on other sites.

Tumblr jokes often rely on Continuing The Bit and a "yes, and?" attitude. Goncharov is probably the best example of this.

We are fucking infested with bots. They will either have totally blank profiles or be filled with porn. Block and report on sight.

Censorship is pretty lax here. I can say "I want to brutally stab Elon Musk to death and watch him bleed out in front of a crowd" and nobody gives a shit.

General Etiquette:

Don't try to do epic clapbacks here, you'll probably just get laughed at or blocked. If someone is bugging you or spouting bigoted bullshit, block them.

Reblog art!!! Artists often struggle to gain traction on here; reblogging will give them a boost.

Not every reblog needs a comment or tag in it

You can go all out with tagging your stuff to organize it, or you can just leave it all blank. Someone might ask "hey, can you tag these posts as [x]?" and you can decide if you want to do that or not. It's generally polite to oblige, but "no" is still reasonable.

Avoid discourse like the plague. Filter it, block people who start it, scroll past it when you see it. Just don't get involved in it. Ever.

Don't put fandom tags or jokes on someone's posts about serious matters or personal shit

You're responsible for curating your own dashboard; if you complain about constantly seeing stuff you don't like, that's probably on you. Don't be afraid to unfollow.

Follower count doesn't matter much here and you don't have to make yours known if you don't want to.

Reblog, don't repost. Reblogging keeps the credit and doesn't "steal" engagement like Twitter retweets.

If someone likes something a LOT, they might reblog it like 30 times in a row. This is normal

Having a post blow up is actually kinda a bad thing, since it floods your notifications. There's a sort of in-joke about how having a big post is awful and people jokingly try to stop their own posts from blowing up, often in vain.

Tips:

Get XKit Rewritten if you're on desktop, it's a really helpful extension

In the little drop-down menu next to the 'Post now' button you can either save a draft, schedule a post, or add it to your queue. The queue lets you post things in order at a certain interval, which you can change. It's good for spreading stuff out over time.

You can use Shift+R to quickly reblog stuff and Shift+Q to queue!

Filter your notifications under Activity - you can also see some neat graphs

Find each other! If you want your old Reddit communities to stick together, seek out other refugees and follow them.

Have fun on [tumblr], everyone!

I love how here on tumblr dot website we regularly cast the greatest curse we can muster on each other by pointing our long creepy fingers and intoning "10,000 notes" in a voice that carries the winds of the mountain with it.

Reblog if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender or a supporter.

This should be reblogged by everyone. Even if you’re straight, you should be a supporter.

“I’m expecting great things from you”

A family of cheetahs sleep with the forest guard every night. When the Forest Dept. heard about it, they decided to check the veracity of the claim by installing a CCTV camera. This is what the camera recorded! Just amazing.

Kitties will be kitties 🐈‍⬛

Hitting all the spots there :)

Riad Yasmine, Morocco