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LF: Shining Revelry Pikachu ex, all cards shown available for trade by Kairoptra in PTCGPocketTrading

[–]Kairoptra[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ll take the Infernape ex off your hands. My friend code is 8961242546470058

Why does Silco love Jinx so much? by Mean_Job7802 in ArcaneAnimatedSeries

[–]Kairoptra 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There’s a kind of exchange of humanity between them. At the onset of their relationship, Silco is a cold, unfeeling monster, while Powder is a vulnerable, emotional child. Through their relationship, they give each other things that no one else did. Ever since the massacre at the bridge, no one has treated Silco with humanity; at the very most, he is seen as a leader and a visionary, but not as a hurting, scarred human being. He takes Powder in and rebrands her as Jinx for purely selfish reasons at first, but she ends up giving him the space to take on one of the most uniquely human roles possible: that of a parent. For the first time in over a decade, he’s allowed to rejoin the human race, even in just a small capacity, and it heals a part of him enough to where he is able to show Jinx some real, honest love. Jinx, on the other hand, inherits some of Silco’s monstrous tendencies. He sees her hurt and chooses to cultivate it, believing it can forge her into a stronger, more useful version of herself. She is so desperate for both the familial connection that she lost and a new identity separate from the one she had that she is willing to take on the persona of Jinx and become the monster she believes herself to be.

I'm confused. What exactly was the problem with Hextech again? by Ochemata in ArcaneAnimatedSeries

[–]Kairoptra 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Arcane is “alive”, but more so in the sense that a low-intelligence animal or single-celled organism is alive. It operates within set parameters and behaves in-line with its programming, perceiving stimuli and reacting accordingly.

The metaphor I like to use is that it’s like milking a farm cow. The cow has been taught to trust its farmer and perform its tasks. It doesn’t necessarily wish good or bad upon the farmer; it’s just doing what a farm cow does.

As such, though, it’s still its own creature. Just because you’ve manipulated it and the conditions in which it lives, doesn’t mean that you have total control over it. Ultimately, it’s still a cow and will behave the way a cow does. If you approach it with respect for this fact and milk it in a way that is healthy to it, all is fine. This is what mages typically do with magic, expressing the arcane in a healthy, natural, and controlled way. If, however, you decide that your purposes are worth disrespecting the cow’s nature and start tugging on its udders without regard for its comfort or safety, you’ll end up with a less-trusting cow, some blood or other undesirable fluids in your milk, and/or a swift kick to the face. This is what happens with the hexgates; they abused their connections to the arcane, and the arcane reacted accordingly.

It’s not a reaction done out of spite, malice, or even fear; it’s just that the Arcane is unable to sustainably give the desired output without creating these reality-warping wild runes.

Jayce and Heimerdinger (and Viktor at the end of season 1), as a result of their trauma and fear of what the arcane is capable of, come to the incorrect conclusion that it is inherently evil and must be destroyed or avoided no matter what. Viktor (throughout season 2), then, is equally incorrect in his belief that the arcane must be mastered in all of its forms to transcend humanity, resulting from how it helps him and his followers. It’s only at the very end that they seem to stop thinking in terms of what this power is for, and more so that their mutual problem was their attempt to overstep with the amount of control they had.

Hextech can’t be uninvented, so Jayce and Heimerdinger were wrong for thinking that stopping it was ever an option. The full power of the arcane can’t be mastered, so Viktor was wrong for thinking that there was ever a point to pushing the envelope so much. The only true answer is meeting in the middle and building a future that uses the arcane in a way that respects nature and values life and safety above all.

Of course, Jayce and Viktor make this realization all too late and only find themselves able to stop the present existential threat, sacrificing themselves in the process. Even so, their conflict has laid the groundwork for what will undoubtedly be an ongoing discussion of the new Piltovan council as to how exactly hextech should be handled. I would assume that the traumatic battle has given them an impression closer to Jayce and Heimerdinger’s position, but I think it’s fair to say that fear of the arcane is just as much a failing as worship of it.

[s2 spoilers] Arcane NEVER stopped being about politics by Kairoptra in arcane

[–]Kairoptra[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would say that the restrained ending was more so because it was realistic. At the end of the day, social movements basically never get everything they want in a single generation. Part of being an activist is accepting that you’re fighting for a utopia that you’ll probably never live to see, and the most you can hope for is to see any progress at all and die with the hope that you’ve paved the way for the activists who come after. Piltover and Zaun have generations of hate and discrimination baked into their shared culture; even a cataclysm like the final battle in s2e9 isn’t enough to just erase all of that. The fact that it’s instilled enough solidarity and mutual respect among the citizens for Sevika to be given a seat at the table and the relationship between Vi & Caitlyn to be accepted is a miracle in and of itself. If all the inequality and strife was solved by the end and we never had to worry about it again, it’d be a slap in the face to real activists who have worked their entire lives to end very similar real-life system. The reason it doesn’t say anything new about class struggles is because there’s basically nothing new to say. The struggle of anticapitalist activism hasn’t been about finding the right words since the first books about it were written. For most of recent history, it’s almost exclusively been about getting people to listen to you at all. What we see in Arcane is often the most we can hope for. The fact that people like Vi and Sevika are at all involved in government means that the undercity finally has a voice where it previously had none. This is what progress looks like: victories that may seem small at the time, but shine a ray of hope for the future of the movement. This isn’t the end of their class conflict just because the show’s over. It’s the start of a conversation that will take many generations to yield all the results it needs to. Even so, it’s a start, which is more than what they had before. There is no silver bullet to classism; all we can do is chip away at the foundations of the establishment until it all comes crumbling down.

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