give me a hot sec to pathetically gush over my favourite arcane scene and probably one of the best sequences of a tv show ever because the brainrot has set in too deep
I'm gonna try to be semi articulate and not just scream incoherently about the sheer flawlessness of every aspect of it so
the stunning, haunting visual manifestation of jinx's trauma and deep obsessive guilt / always carrying the family she's killed on her back like ghosts / the weight of her guilt and her inability to escape the past, living in that moment of loss and death forever... Claggor died instantly so his ghost on her back is expressionless. Quiet. Mylo is screaming in agony because a) his death was slow and painful, bleeding out on that floor feeling every explosion set off by jinx's bombs b) I think also because Mylo represents the negative voice in her head and claggor represents the more 'positive' and the negative always drowns out the positive inside of her. IMMACULATE. Haunting.
Match cutting Caitlyn and Vi sliding down that tunnel like bullets to the enforcers loading their rifles is a shiver inducing genius foreshadowing / metaphor
The little moment of Vi fucking losing it over that dude in her way, furiously shoving him away and flipping him off despite being in a frantic rush to get away (a tiny flicker of comedic relief because she's a FIRECRACKER) then looking up and seeing jinx's flare because of it. I'M ON MY KNEES somewhere in piltover crying screaming
WHEREVER YOU ARE LIGHT IT UP AND I'LL FIND YOU !!!!!!!! and jinx's desperate attempt to reach out to her sister. She's kept that flare tucked away in a box for YEARS hoping that one day it'll help her guide vi back to her. The later tragedy of them both wanting their sister back but both of them wanting the idealised version of the other... One of them stuck in the past the other diving head first into what is to come (slightly irrelevant but im a firm believer that enforcer vi is coming, if not next season, then s3)
Silco's blind rage and violence, thrashing around in furious disbelief, punching, kicking, screaming, stumbling back and collapsing onto the ground in his breathless fury!! STUNNINGLY portrayed.
The visuals, the music, the bouncing, throbbing pulse of its pace!! The massive outpouring of feelings (hope, desperation, rage, devotion...) This sequence serves as one of the best executed boiling points in a show that I have ever seen!!
The bridge scene! A throwback to the bridge scene on episode 1 and how it all began for the sisters! The terrifying finality of it, like, look at us. this is the world: there's them (under city) and us (piltover) and the gap can never be bridged. They've come FULL CIRCLE with this moment.
ALSO
because I'm pathetic
This
10 notes
·
View notes
“Fear Haunts us all, child”
Sometimes I think about the fact that Silco - a survivor of attempted murder via strangulation - wears a tie. Like a literal piece of fabric that is tied around his neck. All. The. Time. And let me tell you - I’m emotional about it.
In the drowning flashback we see a snippet of what Silco used to wear - a ragged loose-necked shirt and pants - similar to the style we see Vander in.
Now, I have never been strangled, but I would think that after trauma like that you would want to avoid things touching your neck. So why does Silco go from something looser and utilitarian, that literally exposes his collarbone, to wearing something that is buttoned all the way up and tied around his neck?
Yes, his new wardrobe is a status symbol; it sends a deliberate message to everyone who sees him that he can afford to dress like this, that he doesn’t do the dirty work himself, and that he is in charge.
But, more significantly, I think it’s about control. Control over himself. Like, I think about the fact that the clothes he wears now are the product of years of forced exposure to his trauma. It’s worth pointing out that the other Chem-Barons don’t really dress the way Silco does; Silco did not have to wear a suit and tie. He chose to.
Silco is a man who has to be in control all the time; he will go so far as to overpower his natural fear reaction when presented with a direct trigger of his near death experience. And that leads me down a rabbit hole where I can see him in the mornings, hands shaking as he tries to button his shirt up past his chest (This is where he is in Act I with the infamous clip-on tie). I think about the way he must have grit his teeth so hard they nearly cracked day after day when he was finally able to wear a proper tie (Acts II and III). In Act III I don’t think he really pays much attention to it anymore, but just imaging the amount of effort it must have taken him to get to that point...My god.
Silco wearing a tie is about him taking ownership of his trauma and proving to himself that there is a version of him - this version of him - that will not be controlled by what Vander did.
“Fear haunts us all, child” Is what he said to Jinx - and I think that is the point Silco has worked very hard to get to; a place where fear is merely haunting him rather than actively controlling him.
There is a LOT more to say about how Silco coped with his boatload of trauma, but the image of him sweating while trying to get dressed - forcing himself to endure actual trauma just to prove to himself that the can - really underlines what a strong person he is; he will truly do anything he needs to do to get what he wants. Wearing a tie for him is deliberate fuck you to Vander, and a symbol in more ways than one about how far he has come since that day.
260 notes
·
View notes
Deleted Scene: Only Ghosts
After a dealing turns bloody, Silco and Sevika reassess their options. Jinx tries to help.
A deleted scene from 'both sides of the moon,' a oneshot exploring Silco and Sevika's relationship through a series of business ventures.
cw: violence, blood, wound treating
Full story on AO3
"I'd seen the misreports."
The hiss comes a near hour later: fingers pitting a crescent into his temple, while she douses a blood-soaked hand with the type of alcohol that made one's lashes curl backwards. He's gone, worlds away, staring at some chip of varnish in his desk—but his voice takes the stillness of the air by its chin, and suffocates it.
"I'd seen it."
She cuts a glance through her fringe: crooks her mouth at a frown. "Lucky you don't need stitches."
Teal and amber flit sharply to her. She holds them, for a breath. Turns back to her work.
"Gave him the benefit of the doubt," she grumbles, eventually. "We needed his position in the market."
Silco scoffs through his teeth. "They'll be vying for position, now." His fingers brush the hook of his jaw: pit, half-mindedly, beneath his chin. "A bloody hindrance."
Sevika flicks out a roll of gauze. Starts on her wrappings: one spiral, and two. "Could use it to your advantage." She tugs the bandaging tight across the cool points of his knuckles. "He wasn't the only one with connections."
He only hums, to that. Low, drawling. Miles in thought: lingering on the crooked flay of the carpet.
Absently, she watches the dark shadow of his lashes flicker: the turn of his thumb, a thin sweep down the underside of his jaw, dipping into the start of his throat. Watches, as he hunts out his pulse-point.
A ghost eats through the silence of the room, like a living thing.
Vander made you.
She doesn't know the truth of that, either. Doesn't want to guess what space Vander had occupied in this bar, this office, in the empty space beside him; to fill in the gaps with half-truths and presumptions about what they were and weren't; to try and pick apart why the reminder of his partnership, ownership, had cut so deeply under Silco's skin.
But she studies him, now: watches the scarred line of his mouth tense: and wonders.
The door to his office creaks open. Sevika twists over her shoulder, hackles raised. She finds a sight she just as well expects.
The little devil holds her breath, blinking her storm-cloud eyes. The light paints her scrawny bones in a sickly halo, green-glossed. She's got that ratty old toy squeezed between her fingers, her wild hair untied—and she's pattering across the floor, in a lightning-streak of blue, before Sevika can steel herself.
"Mister Lock said you—you came back all, all bloody—did you—are you—?"
Sevika tears her hands away, quick as she gets those wrappings finished: as Silco slips back into his skin, blinks strangely down at the little girl whirling around the edge of his desk, looking for all her worth like some deranged orphan cracked free from a holding cell.
"Child," he puzzles, one wise thought away from sending her back where she came. He has his arms full of her, before he can get out another word. The kid weasels between his knees like a rogue bullet, and sucker-punches to his waist.
"I'm sorry," Jinx is heaving. "I'm sorry, I'm—"
Silco's hand finds the back of the girl's trembling shoulders, slow as something dredging through water. "You've done nothing wrong," he hushes.
"But—but you—you—?"
"We've taken care of it.," he continues, low and firm. "What's done is done."
The runt blinks up at him, bleary-eyed and snotty nosed and miserable, and it makes Sevika think of her gutless younger sisters—of the years, few and far between, where she'd been young enough to feel so much, herself: before this city crushed that part of her girlhood, and left her steel-edged with resolve.
Jinx sniffs. "You're okay?" she mumbles.
Silco looks at her, like he hasn't just walked in from a kill anyone in their right mind would have blamed on a demon: would have denied 'til they were blue in the face had come from a man's bare hands, and not a beast's claws; like there isn't still blood on his shoulder, in his hair, stained through his skin from a lifetime of climbing rung after red-soaked rung.
His palm sweeps along the frazzled crown of the brat's hair, and smooths it down. "I'm alright," he murmurs back.
Jinx frowns at her nails. Narrows her eyes up at him, leering through her fringe for a long, silent moment. "Just ghosts?"
Something tightens in his shoulders. Knifes itself in—and eases. A strangeness in his teal eye, in the furrow of his brow.
Quietly, he agrees, "Only ghosts."
The brat buries herself into his waistcoat, as though trying to build a nest of his very bones, and says nothing. Just ticks her fingers at the fabric, incessantly; snuffles and frowns. Then the blubbering strikes up again: haggard as much as chilling, coming from a body so small.
"I can scare'em away. I'll—I'll get Chompers to blow'em all up. They'll go away." Her knobby hands turn white-knuckled at his sides. "I'll make them."
Silco eases out a breath. Slowly, gingerly, he lets his hand sink to the girl's bird-thin nape, and leans down into her. Allows her to knit her soot-stained fingers about his collar, and crawl up into him, like a monkey burrowing into a tree branch. "It's alright, child," he hushes, her blue head wedged to his shoulder. "We're alright."
Whether that is meant to tie him and the sniffling brat together, or indicate that she would even be worrying over the two of them, Sevika doesn't want to know.
Irritation blisters and flares.
The girl will have him wrapped around her finger, the rest of the night. It's a sight she has no interest being privy to.
She snaps up their med-kit between her fingers, and takes her leave.
9 notes
·
View notes