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#even two full years later
amorphousbl0b · 3 months
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Arcane does a fun thing with its narrative Darkest Hour.
Or: yet another post about how insanely smart this show is and how absolutely genius its writers are (and how jealous of them I am).
For the uninitiated, the Darkest Hour is the moment just before the climax in which the heroes are at their lowest point. When the Avengers are scattered and Loki opens the portal in NYC, when the Falcon has escaped the Death Star but lost Obi-Wan, when the Fire Nation is set to annihilate the Earth Kingdom, when Frodo fails to destroy the Ring at the Crack of Doom. The heroes must confront their flaws and change for the better for a happy ending.
Arcane’s darkest hour is, of course, in Act 3. One might place it at the very end of episode 9, and that’s certainly where the story is at its most hopeless. But I’d contend it starts as early as the end of episode 8 and carries on through the entirety of episode 9.
After all, that’s when Caitlyn and Vi have separated, lost all hope, and Cait is kidnapped by Jinx. Jinx’s mind is fully gone and throughout the episode everything falls apart around her. Silco is losing control of his chembarons and may well have lost his daughter, the thing most precious to him, and is only barely keeping his powerful façade in line. Zaun has realized how ridiculously outmatched they are in a war with Piltover and the revolutionary cause has become almost impossible. Viktor has manslaughtered his assistant and may never be cured. Jayce has manslaughtered a child and finally realizes how quickly he’s losing his morals. Mel and her mother are fully separating and she is struggling with her warlike destiny. Sevika gets the absolute snot beat out of her and limps to an empty office without a boss.
So yeah. Lot of personal Darkest Hours going on.
“But what’s the interesting thing?” I hear you ask in my ear. I don’t know why I hear you. Shut up. I’m writing. Are you even real?
Excuse me.
Arcane’s interesting twist on the Darkest Hour lies in part of the trope that I didn’t mention. That’s in the villain.
Most stories with a clear-cut villain have a plot structure something like this:
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Whether things are going well for one side is inversely proportional to the other. During the Darkest Hour, when the hero is at their weakest, the villain is at their most dominant.
Wait… isn’t Silco the villain of Arcane? Not to be too blunt, but he’s having a shit time. Things are falling apart for him just as badly as for everyone else.
That's the trick. Caitlyn and Vi are suffering. Jinx is suffering. Silco is suffering. Jayce is suffering. Viktor is suffering. Zaun as a whole is suffering. There is only one party in the whole story that isn't suffering, that actually is benefitting from this horrid state of affairs...
EKKO AND HEIMERDINGER
Kidding. They're not really a part of this dance. A big part of Arcane's theming is that acting to help people without an agenda is simply more virtuous than fighting for any invariably-flawed nation that innately perpetuates the cycle of violence.
No, the side that is doing fine is the other that is conspicuously absent from my two prior lists. While the characters that make up its leadership are experiencing personal Darkest Hours, the organization itself is essentially on top of the world, having just scored a huge victory and getting set to bring the war to an end before it even begins. I mentioned how poor the situation for the Undercity looks, but not its counterpart.
Piltover.
Wasn't it so that Piltover started this whole mess? Didn't their oppression cause the revolt that orphaned Vi and Powder's parents? Isn't it their actions that drive Silco to ever greater extremes? Isn't it their normalized political backstabbing that causes Jayce to sacrifice his principles because that's the only way to get ahead? Isn't it their corrupt police force that lets Silco operate his drug empire with impunity?
Silco might look the part. He might be the most personally evil character, might be the one who causes the most misery for our main protagonists Vi and Powder.
But structurally, the shining city of Piltover, its political machine, and its Enforcers are the actual villains of Arcane.
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stuckinapril · 16 minutes
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I’m making Europe/Iraq hybrid trip happen this year idc
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unohanadaydreams · 4 months
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Celebrating the coming of 2024 made me realize I've been unwell about Bleach characters for almost 20 years.
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sunmoontruth-stiles · 19 days
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I need a completely rewritten teen wolf series with Derek Hale as the main character. I think it would heal me.
#we follow Derek from New York. Laura left for beacon hills. it’s been six years since he was back but he hasn’t heard from her#and hes going stir crazy waiting. he packs up and travels back. it’s almost too much immediately. he still can’t get a hold of Laura#he can’t resist going home. it’s like a natural pull that guides him back. all at once he’s 16 again. staring at the wreckage of his life#deputy stilinski is sherrif now. it’s reassuring in the slightest that the police force seems to have moved on from how corrupt it was#he catches her scent and it’s putrid. bile catches in his throat. he seeks it out. still in denial to what he knows it means.#when he finds Laura it’s like the world ends all over again. he can’t stand to see her like this. he gives her a proper burial.#the best he can do at least#he visits Peter. he’s not the man Derek remembers- so full of fire and cunning. their relationship may have been strained at times.#often Derek felt more like Eve being swayed by the snake than a normal friendship#but this isn’t the sharp tongued uncle who guided him. this is a broken shell. all that remained of his family. he was so lost.#22 but he barely knew how to function without his family- his pack paving the way#Laura handled everything. she got the apartment. she made sure they had food. Derek looks back and feels so useless#he was so lost in his grief. Laura must of felt the same way but she never let them drown in it#she made sure he got his GED. even got him to enroll in community college classes.#he took them online. he never was able to warm up to people the same way. he used to be so full of life. now he just wanted to be left alone#he studied English. never finished his degree. doesn’t look like he ever will now. he can’t go back to Laura and his shared home.#can’t bare to see another shell of a home#he vents to the vacant audience of Peter and his cold fixed eyes#Derek leaves. he wants to promise he’ll return soon#but promises feel costly these days#he decides to go back to the reserve. maybe he can find some clue as to what happened to Laura#someone lured her here. someone who knew them and their history here#his mind went to the worst. Kate. why would she go through the trouble six years later. why wait so long.#Derek couldn’t stomach the thought of facing her. he focused on the woods. the scents were all over the place.#clearly multiple people had been through here recently. two scents were much stronger. Derek follows them#but when he hears the crunch of leaves he realizes why the scents are so strong. they’re still here#he ducks behind some trees. listening in on their conversation. but an echo of their scent catches his attention#he spots an inhaler on the ground. he puts two and two together and swipes it from the leaves.#he comes out once they’re closer. tossing over the inhaler- he figures they’ll leave. dumb kids messing around in the woods#he reminds them this is private property. though that may not be true anymore. he recognizes the scent of a new beta. interesting.
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lecliss · 24 days
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I'll never be able to take the theory that Vincent is Sephiroth's real father seriously cuz I cannot stress enough how important I think it is to the plot that Vincent wanted to fuck Lucrecia and did not get to.
#once again i jest but now i have to actually talk about it#like. okay we have no proof of any actual timeline for the dirge flashbacks other than. it was at least 30 years ago#so who knows how long they were at the manor. could have been weeks before The Incident. or months. or maybe a full year! who knows#but to me a timeline of like. they fucked and like a week later vincent found The Evidence and lucercia had her little breakdown#AND THEN EXTREMELY QUICKLY SHE AGREED TO THE EXPERIMENT AND IT COULD GO ONE OF TWO WAYS#1. she knew she was pregnant and thats why she agreed to the experiment cuz there was already a usable subject#and therefore she must have fucked hojo like a week after she fucked vincent AND THATS STUPID FAST FOR THESE EVENTS#or 2. she didnt know. agreed to the experiment. fucked hojo. and therefore thought seph was hojo's and NOT vincent's#AND BY THE WAY. i dont even actually believe hojo fucked either!!! cuz theyre both scientists so why wouldnt they think IVF was the best way#okay. well.... hojo is canonically a fucked up little freak. so. he might have taken the opportunity to... get in there.#also when did ivf even start being a thing? cuz that may play a factor into this if nomura even considered that#well either way lets just unfortunately assume hojo got in there#ITS STILL AN ODDLY FAST TIMELINE#also. fuck man doesnt lucrecia have a later line in dirge where she actually says shes in love with hojo? or something along those lines#IMPLYING ITS BEEN AWHILE SINCE SHE HAD THE FALLING OUT WITH VINCENT. YOU WOULDNT FUCK THE GUY AFTER ALL THAT SHIT#AND WHILE CLAIMING TO LOVE/CURRENTLY FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOJO!!!! LIKE CMON MAN!!!! SHE SUCKS BUT SHES NOT THAT KIND OF A MESS#i dont think vincent would fuck her until they sorted out their issues anyway and that CLEARLY didnt happen.#its VITAL that that did not happen!!!!#its just. if vincent and lucrecia fucked. everything would have had to happen EXTREMELY fast within like a 2 week timespan#and im just talking about up to when vincent learns shes partaking in the experiment. it was probably another week or two until vincent died#SO. logically it must have been like#fall in love->learn about the gimoire incident->refuse to speak to vincent->get obsessed with hojo->fall in love(?)#and then thats where i think its ambiguous on did the experiment become an idea before or after seph started to exist?#like chicken or the egg ya know. experiment idea or sephiroth zygote?#that feels fucked up to say. im so fucking sorry to seph to talk about this. yeah sorry i have to debate who fucked your mom bro#god imagine telling him that. like not even as a reveal thing cuz he knows who his father is. just like as a sick joke. your mom joke.#NO OH M Y GOD I HAVE A QUESTION NOW#in accordance to him having a photo of lucrecia in ever crisis. after he reads that jenova is an ancient (incorrect btw)#does he think that picture is still her? what about when he takes jenova's body from the lab????#oh my god 30 tag limit. FUCK. i need like a rant blog for all this vincent talk now. my brain is going a mile a minute
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puppyeared · 5 months
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save me old flipnote studio MVs.......
#im going thru old flipnotes i used to watch years ago and ouggghhg so many good ones#is twenty one pilots still popular.... do people still remember the TRNDSTTER and marble soda meme.........#its like im unlocking some sort of primal part of my brain and everything is coming back to me. one of my biggest inspirations as a kid#i still remember thinking the final transmission lyrics were the coolest thing and watching =TopHat= Bee and Melissa over and over#theres a very specific feeling of longing and nostalgia looking back and watching these again years later#especially when there isnt anything genshin or mcyt and instead its either fnaf undertale eddsworld or another obscure#interest... and not even fnaf sister location its like fnaf 3 and 2. its THAT old. and a lot of oc MVs especially pokemon ocs and furries..#god but they were so creative u know. i still find it amazing ppl took this little lightbox animation on the fucking NINTENDO DS and#cranked it all the way to 11.. like if u look at the transitions and movement its so fucking fluid its insane..!! HOW DO YOU MAKE THE#CHARACTERS SPIN??? AND CHANGING CAMERA ANGLES??? and keep in mind youre doing this all with a shitty stylus#on a THREE BY TWO INCH SCREEN. you only get two layers you can go up to 29FPS and you only have 999 slides to work with#and 24FPS eats up a lot of that. absolutely insane it literally boggles my mind every time i think about it. AND SOME ARE EVEN FULL COLOR#i forgot how popular EDM was back then too...they were really good for timing beats though so you get a lot of MVs with#strobe last and marble soda. porter robinsons goodbye to a world was also popular with undertale and oc MVs. also a lot of vocaloid#someone made a flipnote abt the warner bros fnaf movie being announced EIGHT FUCKING YEARS AGO. it even used the stay calm audio from#the office.... i wonder how theyre doing now... i love you shitty grainy MV audio.. but i have mixed feelings abt the flashing colors#ppl LOVED animating the sans vs frisk fight. aishite and primadonna were also big ones they were SICK AS FUCK#lots of these inspired my old oc designs.. a lot of my characters had side bangs with one eye covered. animal ears and simple eyes too#now i kinda wanna try my hand at the marble soda meme cause i loved it as a kid lol.. i wonder if i should compare my old and new art here#UGHHHH IM SO NORMAL ABOUT NOSTALGIA. IM SO NORMAL ABT MY SCHOOL BOOK DRAWINGS WITH SHIBA BROWS#yapping#nostalgia
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blujayonthewing · 1 year
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I've had Elyss for eight years today and I'm feeling very normal about it
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magentagalaxies · 5 days
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after using some of my instrumental tracks from other girls in my video essay i couldn't get over how much some of them still slapped even without the vocals so i decided to post this one. i still want to record full versions of the other girls songs eventually with vocals and everything but for now i'm good with just vibing to these demos
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yume-fanfare · 8 months
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really feeling the need to send anon hate right now <-licensing company took down only existing dubbed copy of anime i love Again
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fuckyeahyukiharu · 5 months
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yOU ALL IM LAUGHING SO HARD
The archive is still there too, and all those fans who created works in the past still deserve some attention too, so please check out the archive if you haven't in a while and if you're also missing Tsuritama!!
Also, if you're interested, please check out my YukiHaru A.M.V \o/ (Made a few years back for YukiHarus shared birthdays specifically!)
{All I did was reblog some old gifs I missed to keep blog active, but I'm glad if people still appreciate this blog existing!!!}
(I may also have another A.M.V. or two planned for future years, if I can finish them in decent time!)
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dezwade · 1 year
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started thinking about Marcus too hard again. 50 dead, 100 injured
#!!!#like he was just a KID. he was fucking FIFTEEN and he died because his own DAD didnt see him as a person#he was too human to complete his missions because again he was a fucking kid#of course he was going to be petty and let his emotions get in the way#but he wasnt human enough for his dad who literally refers to him as a weapon and only saw him as a convenient replacement.#a means to end that could be discarded once he fulfilled his purpose#douglas knew he was going to die but did fuck all to stop it#but marcus doesnt know that and doesnt know families arent supposed to be full of thinning ice and conditional love#he thinks that their pizza nights and douglas' stage dad behavior actually MEAN something#and its not just douglas using him as a way to temporarily fill the void donald made when he took ab&c#so he dies in a last ditch attempt to see his dad's plan through and prove hes good enough#and then#hes not dead?#hes not dead and its two years later than its supposed to be and his dad never fucking came back for him#his dad went off and reconciled with his brother - therefore making marcus' very EXISTENCE obsolete#- even though it was supposed to them against donald. them against the world#but it turns out that was just another fucking lie#and now the world's moved on without him and he doesnt even recognize his own body#and theres this woman who says that she saved him and is offering revenge and (to him) a new family in one fell swoop#and heres the thing: she saved him. she went out of her way to find him and repair him which is more than douglas ever did#so what is supposed to do? say no?#shake off years of being taught that when someone wrongs you you have fight tooth and nail for revenge?#douglas has had two years to grow as a person but from marcus' perspective its only been a couple of days#hes never been given the time or chance to learn anything besides bloodshed and violence.#to see himself as anything beaides a force of destuction#so of course he says yes and of course it all goes wrong#and he dies and no one grieves and his own dad CELEBRATES his murder like this whole thing wasnt his fault in the first place#and just#yeah he did some fucked up things but he wasnt worse than douglas#and how can you hold a teenager to higher standards than the man that raised him
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rusanya-does-edits · 1 month
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Something weirdly specific for at least some of us, that we've had in mind for awhile; unfortunately this was the closest we could get with a picrew tbh.
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Like, fortunately for us; while we have some things that irk us with this one, but this hits pretty close in a metaphorical sense at least for the people we're thinking of. Unfortunately for us, some of those are more obvious than others so we hesitated on weather we needed to share this or not LOL.
#stimboard#cn // highly personal#highly personal#GOD THAT PINK IN THE BACKGROUND. SO THREATENING.#THAT “SHE KNOWS” THING A MONTH BACK IN THE GAME SESSION. // OC-related tangent in the tags incoming#(<- hits differently in some situations)#(<- *stares at the plural OCs who we made an entire past for.*)#(<- *stares at the fact their whole thing is. dysphoria made them plural. and THEN they became functionally immortal.*)#(<- you don't skip town for no reason. they lived in a generation where being both would throw them in The Loony Bin)#(<- but only the QUEERNESS became more acceptable later on.)#(<- these bozos are a mirror to our own life and frustration. and that realistically. people are starting to accept endogenics to a degree.#(<- but the world we want and how endos are treated is NOT going to happen next yer. it MIGHT happen in like 20 years.)#(<- “she knows” has been and always will be our greatest fear and pushing through that is HARD.)#(<- So what would it look like INSTEAD to be hiding under queerness. which is still stigmatized as hell)#(<- but you can AT LEAST find a margin of community somewhere that isn't full of abusers and bootlickers/idenity-medicalists for that ID)#NONE OF THIS IS NEGATIVE we're actually kind of glad the GM saw the full implications of that even implicitly -#- getting the shivers just remembering that. But also it's interesting to implement that onto their younger singletsona lmao.#WERE SO PISSED THO THAT WE COULDNT FIND A GREYSCALE MASK THAT WASNT. HORROR OR PARTY. THESE FUCKERS ARE NOT VILLAINS YNKOW.#like how the fuck do we have a hoard of gifs in our tumblr likes and found NOTHING for that specifically lolsob?#yes these ARE the same two chucklefucks we blabbed on and on about for like a week on our main account.#but its their “singletsona”. kind of. kind of sort of. we have wholeass ideas on this narratively.#like we just need to WRITE as in actually write but the issue is every time we do we hit A Wall(tm)#but yeah. anyways. we have headmates playing a TTRPG and we may have projected our frustrations onto two OCs that we don't even play. 😭😭😭
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riddlerosehearts · 4 months
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the emperor's new groove and the little mermaid being some of the only walt disney animation studios films released in the last 35 years to never get an art/making of book, even though fucking chicken little has one, is going to be my villain origin story tbh
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espresso-cookie · 6 months
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my bitchass thinking about cookie run multi animator projects again
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ikosburneraccount · 1 year
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drop your unpopular tlc opinions in the tags
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starlooove · 6 months
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Fumbled the social interaction 💔
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