ARCANE
November 27, 2021 2:34 PM Subscribe
Forbes - ‘Arcane’ Is Still Putting Up Review Scores Like Netflix Has Never Seen Before. Arcane has a 9.4 rating on IMDB, which not only makes it Netflix’s top original series by a wide margin, but puts it in the same lifetime tier of shows like Breaking Bad, The Wire, Band of Brothers, Chernobyl and beloved animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Netflix Official Trailer. (some usual spoilers)
Imagine Dragons: Enemy (music video with no spoilers, animation showcase using footage not in the series).
Rotten Tomatoes Critic Consensus - Arcane makes an arresting first impression, combining a spectacular mix of 2D and 3D animation with an emotionally compelling story to deliver a video game adaptation that could become legendary. (100% Tomatometer rating over 17 critic reviews and 98% Audience Score.
Polygon - Arcane is great TV even if you don't care about League of Legends: I can’t overstate my disinterest in playing League of Legends // However Arcane: League of Legends, the animated series that just wrapped its first season on Netflix? Devoured it in a weekend, and you should too.
Arcane is the #2 most watched TV series on Netflix worldwide for week of Nov 13 behind Squid Game, and #2 most watched for week of Nov 21 behind Hellbound.
Netflix Official Trailer. (some usual spoilers)
Imagine Dragons: Enemy (music video with no spoilers, animation showcase using footage not in the series).
Rotten Tomatoes Critic Consensus - Arcane makes an arresting first impression, combining a spectacular mix of 2D and 3D animation with an emotionally compelling story to deliver a video game adaptation that could become legendary. (100% Tomatometer rating over 17 critic reviews and 98% Audience Score.
Polygon - Arcane is great TV even if you don't care about League of Legends: I can’t overstate my disinterest in playing League of Legends // However Arcane: League of Legends, the animated series that just wrapped its first season on Netflix? Devoured it in a weekend, and you should too.
Arcane is the #2 most watched TV series on Netflix worldwide for week of Nov 13 behind Squid Game, and #2 most watched for week of Nov 21 behind Hellbound.
I had low expectations for this TV series given the poor quality of other video game adaptations but I was pleasantly surprised. You don't need to have any knowledge of the source material to watch it, as this is essentially a prequel.
It's one of the best animated series I've seen, it has such a lavish budget, the visuals, voice work, motion capture, all top rate. A lot of my non gamer friends really liked the show as well. The team said the project took 6 years and they only managed an average of 3 seconds of animation per day.
Riot Games have put out some really good short animations in the past, which have led to fans asking them (half in jest) to put out a TV series. Here are two that were notable:
Awaken (ft. Valerie Broussard)
I think this is one of the better animations put out by Riot Games, showing the ongoing stories playing out in 3 different locations. The level of detail in the shots is astounding in 4K resolution, this could easily be one of those animations used to show off 4K TV sets.
First is Jhin, a psychopathic mass murderer, having just completed a terrorist attack in a theatre in Piltover. (he may or may not be the Ionian musician you see in Arcane). Shortly after, Camille, the Principal Intelligencer of Piltover, arrives to arrest him.
Second is Riven and Draven, in the gladiator pits of Noxus. Riven is a Noxian soldier who defected to Ionia and then voluntarily returned to face punishment.
Third is Irelia, defending her homeland of Ionia against the Noxian invasion. Noxus is the brutal, militaristic and expansionist empire - you see a hint of this in the TV series. Ionia initially pursued a path of non-resistance which caused a splintering in the leadership into different factions. It also led to Jhin being broken out from prison.
RISE (ft. The Glitch Mob, Mako, and The Word Alive)
This animation is esports related, it details the rise of Ambition, a player for SSG, in his quest to win Worlds 2017.
It starts with the aftermath of Worlds 2016 - with muffled audio of the final moments of the grand finals where SKT defeat SSG. Ambition "wakes up" amidst the ruins littered with the banners of defeated teams.
He picks up 3 weapons from champions he plays the most - Kha'zix, Jarvan and Sejuani.
First he beats Perkz from G2 on Yasuo (SSG beats G2 in groups 2017).
Then he meets Uzi from RNG on Vayne. Ambition gets hit by two arrows, signifying that SSG lost to RNG twice in the group stage, but manage to advance out of groups anyway. SKT eliminated RNG in the playoffs so SSG never actually defeated them - that's why we see Ambition dodge Uzi, rather than defeat him.
Finally he climbs to the top of the mountain, and on the top you see huge statues representing the former World Champions - FNC, TPA, SKT, SSW - but the SSW statue isn't lit up, because the team disbanded. And there he defeats Faker from SKT on his signature champion, Ryze, as his team wins Worlds 2017.
The post credits scene is Uzi waking up from his loss. It’s now the start of Worlds 2018.
posted by xdvesper at 2:43 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
It's one of the best animated series I've seen, it has such a lavish budget, the visuals, voice work, motion capture, all top rate. A lot of my non gamer friends really liked the show as well. The team said the project took 6 years and they only managed an average of 3 seconds of animation per day.
Riot Games have put out some really good short animations in the past, which have led to fans asking them (half in jest) to put out a TV series. Here are two that were notable:
Awaken (ft. Valerie Broussard)
I think this is one of the better animations put out by Riot Games, showing the ongoing stories playing out in 3 different locations. The level of detail in the shots is astounding in 4K resolution, this could easily be one of those animations used to show off 4K TV sets.
First is Jhin, a psychopathic mass murderer, having just completed a terrorist attack in a theatre in Piltover. (he may or may not be the Ionian musician you see in Arcane). Shortly after, Camille, the Principal Intelligencer of Piltover, arrives to arrest him.
Second is Riven and Draven, in the gladiator pits of Noxus. Riven is a Noxian soldier who defected to Ionia and then voluntarily returned to face punishment.
Third is Irelia, defending her homeland of Ionia against the Noxian invasion. Noxus is the brutal, militaristic and expansionist empire - you see a hint of this in the TV series. Ionia initially pursued a path of non-resistance which caused a splintering in the leadership into different factions. It also led to Jhin being broken out from prison.
RISE (ft. The Glitch Mob, Mako, and The Word Alive)
This animation is esports related, it details the rise of Ambition, a player for SSG, in his quest to win Worlds 2017.
It starts with the aftermath of Worlds 2016 - with muffled audio of the final moments of the grand finals where SKT defeat SSG. Ambition "wakes up" amidst the ruins littered with the banners of defeated teams.
He picks up 3 weapons from champions he plays the most - Kha'zix, Jarvan and Sejuani.
First he beats Perkz from G2 on Yasuo (SSG beats G2 in groups 2017).
Then he meets Uzi from RNG on Vayne. Ambition gets hit by two arrows, signifying that SSG lost to RNG twice in the group stage, but manage to advance out of groups anyway. SKT eliminated RNG in the playoffs so SSG never actually defeated them - that's why we see Ambition dodge Uzi, rather than defeat him.
Finally he climbs to the top of the mountain, and on the top you see huge statues representing the former World Champions - FNC, TPA, SKT, SSW - but the SSW statue isn't lit up, because the team disbanded. And there he defeats Faker from SKT on his signature champion, Ryze, as his team wins Worlds 2017.
The post credits scene is Uzi waking up from his loss. It’s now the start of Worlds 2018.
posted by xdvesper at 2:43 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
I ran across this last night, and was intrigued. Will a non-gamer be able to enjoy this, or will some background knowledge of LoL be helpful/necessary in order understand what’s happening?
posted by Thorzdad at 2:56 PM on November 27, 2021
posted by Thorzdad at 2:56 PM on November 27, 2021
It's interesting to watch Riot scrambling to fix their image after all of the cases of sexual harassment, intimidation and poor treatment of their employees. Having a hit TV show that conveniently allows people to engage with their IP in a way that doesn't require them to actually play the game will help a lot with that, I imagine.
I've heard some good things about the show and some friends are enjoying it, but my experiences of Riot's community building and LoL have put me off for life. There are very few games you couldn't pay me to play again, but LoL is one of them.
Or, to put it another way:
I've heard some good things about the show and some friends are enjoying it, but my experiences of Riot's community building and LoL have put me off for life. There are very few games you couldn't pay me to play again, but LoL is one of them.
Or, to put it another way:
League of Legends has an incredible world filled with lots of great stories, but you won’t really get any of that by playing League of Legends. You will get called a slur though.posted by fight or flight at 3:01 PM on November 27, 2021 [27 favorites]
League of Legends has an incredible world filled with lots of great stories, but you won’t really get any of that by playing League of Legends. You will get called a slur though.
Really? Great stories? League's lore basically originates from a hackneyed system that was tacked on to give the waifu parade some measure of differentiation. You had fox waifu, ice waifu, ice waifu but evil, sun waifu, moon waifu, loli bUT sHE's ActuAllY lEgAL waifu, etc.
The fact that someone at Riot has actually managed to assemble that superfund site into a working media property is beyond my comprehension. Especially since absolutely none of it is actually visible in the game world itself.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:38 PM on November 27, 2021 [12 favorites]
Really? Great stories? League's lore basically originates from a hackneyed system that was tacked on to give the waifu parade some measure of differentiation. You had fox waifu, ice waifu, ice waifu but evil, sun waifu, moon waifu, loli bUT sHE's ActuAllY lEgAL waifu, etc.
The fact that someone at Riot has actually managed to assemble that superfund site into a working media property is beyond my comprehension. Especially since absolutely none of it is actually visible in the game world itself.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 3:38 PM on November 27, 2021 [12 favorites]
I ran across this last night, and was intrigued. Will a non-gamer be able to enjoy this, or will some background knowledge of LoL be helpful/necessary in order understand what’s happening?
I didn't know this game from Adam and was able to enjoy it. The art is beautiful.
posted by Selena777 at 3:49 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
I didn't know this game from Adam and was able to enjoy it. The art is beautiful.
posted by Selena777 at 3:49 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
It seems possible that properties can rack up such a high score when they find their audience and only their audience (excluding the kind of people who will watch it and end up disliking it.) An animation based on a video game is probably drawing a somewhat narrow, self-selecting set of eyeballs, and obviously it delivers what those people want to see and more, so that's great.
But the idea that the rating means that it is "as good as The Wire" would probably require a head-to-head comparison with 100 randomized viewers, or something. That would be kind of an interesting approach.
posted by anhedonic at 3:54 PM on November 27, 2021 [16 favorites]
But the idea that the rating means that it is "as good as The Wire" would probably require a head-to-head comparison with 100 randomized viewers, or something. That would be kind of an interesting approach.
posted by anhedonic at 3:54 PM on November 27, 2021 [16 favorites]
An animation based on a video game is probably drawing a somewhat narrow, self-selecting set of eyeballs, and obviously it delivers what those people want to see
The opposite seems to me to be true. The word of mouth praise I've been hearing is coming from people who actively dislike the game.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:06 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
The opposite seems to me to be true. The word of mouth praise I've been hearing is coming from people who actively dislike the game.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:06 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
Have Netflix reinstated the transgender employees they sacked after the Chapelle incident, and put into place procedures to not platform bigotry in future? If not, I don't want to know about their latest media event, and I'm not sure it's a good topic for the Blue.
posted by acb at 4:08 PM on November 27, 2021 [16 favorites]
posted by acb at 4:08 PM on November 27, 2021 [16 favorites]
The word of mouth praise I've been hearing is coming from people who actively dislike the game.so, like, LoL players then
posted by DoctorFedora at 4:09 PM on November 27, 2021 [25 favorites]
Counting down the seconds until my kids (13 and 10) ask to watch this. Can someone give me some opinions on age appropriateness?
posted by q*ben at 4:09 PM on November 27, 2021
posted by q*ben at 4:09 PM on November 27, 2021
Netflix was able to produce a surprisingly compelling four-season animated series based on an 8-bit video game about a man who walks around very slowly hitting walls with a whip until delicious, plated roasts fall out. It seems entirely reasonable they could repeat the trick with a more recent video game about hordes of 14 year olds with potty mouths wearing anime-girl avatars and whaling on each other.
posted by JmacDotOrg at 4:10 PM on November 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by JmacDotOrg at 4:10 PM on November 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
It's wild it keeps popping up. I won't watch it, I think Riot is worth boycotting. They abuse their workers and infamously are known as the company where bosses were farting in workers' faces in addition to the kind of shitty sexual harassment culture too common in the industry.
Riot is making a huge push to become some cross-media IP thing but as long as their work culture of harassment and face-farting management around I'm not giving them a dime and I'm going to bring up their shittiness whenever they come up.
posted by GoblinHoney at 4:14 PM on November 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
Riot is making a huge push to become some cross-media IP thing but as long as their work culture of harassment and face-farting management around I'm not giving them a dime and I'm going to bring up their shittiness whenever they come up.
posted by GoblinHoney at 4:14 PM on November 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
Metafilter is aware that Riot Games has massive problems.
If more comes out, I'm sure we'll see another post.
But can let people discuss and enjoy the show in this thread? Posts about Marvel movies don't get this sort of ridiculous reaction. Posts about other Netflix shows don't get derailed about how bad working conditions are there.
I'm not saying this to give Riot Games (or the shitty gamer community) a pass, but just to say, "hey can we keep the conversation focused on a fun show"?
posted by explosion at 4:40 PM on November 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
If more comes out, I'm sure we'll see another post.
But can let people discuss and enjoy the show in this thread? Posts about Marvel movies don't get this sort of ridiculous reaction. Posts about other Netflix shows don't get derailed about how bad working conditions are there.
I'm not saying this to give Riot Games (or the shitty gamer community) a pass, but just to say, "hey can we keep the conversation focused on a fun show"?
posted by explosion at 4:40 PM on November 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
If you're using a FPP to advertise a product (with, imo, a fairly ridiculous amount of overselling), I think it's reasonable to expect that some people will have an issue with it and might want to raise the reasons why. I don't think I've seen a single thread on here about either Marvel or Netflix that hasn't touched on their issues as a company.
Also, respectfully, but isn't "enjoyment without criticism" what FanFare is for, not the main blue?
posted by fight or flight at 4:46 PM on November 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
Also, respectfully, but isn't "enjoyment without criticism" what FanFare is for, not the main blue?
posted by fight or flight at 4:46 PM on November 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
It seems possible that properties can rack up such a high score when they find their audience and only their audience
That's kind of what surprised me, I would have thought it would have a niche audience but to chart as #2 most watched on Netflix for multiple weeks means it's attracting viewers way beyond the origin IP audience. Also you can't rely on fans of the original IP to automatically give you good reviews they are often the harshest critics and have the highest expectations - see all the book vs movie debates. Ironically it's people who are least familiar with the IP who might give more generous reviews because they're new to the IP and experiencing it new for the first time.
It's hard to target a specific niche nowadays because the moment anything becomes poplular then the mass market starts watching it anyway and start criticizing its flaws. League is niche, hardly anyone I know plays it, but heaps of people I see on social media have never played League yet are raving about Arcane.
posted by xdvesper at 4:50 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
That's kind of what surprised me, I would have thought it would have a niche audience but to chart as #2 most watched on Netflix for multiple weeks means it's attracting viewers way beyond the origin IP audience. Also you can't rely on fans of the original IP to automatically give you good reviews they are often the harshest critics and have the highest expectations - see all the book vs movie debates. Ironically it's people who are least familiar with the IP who might give more generous reviews because they're new to the IP and experiencing it new for the first time.
It's hard to target a specific niche nowadays because the moment anything becomes poplular then the mass market starts watching it anyway and start criticizing its flaws. League is niche, hardly anyone I know plays it, but heaps of people I see on social media have never played League yet are raving about Arcane.
posted by xdvesper at 4:50 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
If someone came into a thread about Netflix's shitty policies and started talking about the shows they like on Netflix I'm pretty sure that would get deleted and rightly so.
posted by wierdo at 4:52 PM on November 27, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by wierdo at 4:52 PM on November 27, 2021 [8 favorites]
I think there is something to be said, though, about it being a YA animated show. That's going to make people self-select right out; I doubt I could get my partner to watch it.
Like, what overlap is there between the audiences of Breaking Bad or the Wire and this? Is it enough to say it's "same lifetime tier of shows" in any meaningful way? It's obviously very popular with some people, but I can't imagine they're the same people.
posted by sagc at 4:53 PM on November 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
Like, what overlap is there between the audiences of Breaking Bad or the Wire and this? Is it enough to say it's "same lifetime tier of shows" in any meaningful way? It's obviously very popular with some people, but I can't imagine they're the same people.
posted by sagc at 4:53 PM on November 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think it's reasonable to expect that some people will have an issue with it and might want to raise the reasons why.
Definitely this, this is precisely what the "meta" in Metafilter stands for, I think.
I think their high review scores are even more remarkable considering a lot of people are primed to hate on it because of its association with a company with a poor reputation. Even the Dota community which automatically hates anything from Riot due to a long standing grudge has mostly positive things to say about it.
posted by xdvesper at 4:59 PM on November 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
Definitely this, this is precisely what the "meta" in Metafilter stands for, I think.
I think their high review scores are even more remarkable considering a lot of people are primed to hate on it because of its association with a company with a poor reputation. Even the Dota community which automatically hates anything from Riot due to a long standing grudge has mostly positive things to say about it.
posted by xdvesper at 4:59 PM on November 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
Like, what overlap is there between the audiences of Breaking Bad or the Wire and this? Is it enough to say it's "same lifetime tier of shows" in any meaningful way?
Right here.
A lot of YA shows have gotten a lot smarter, more enjoyable for adult audiences. I most recently binged Owl House, and I'm sure Disney wasn't planning on catching viewers in their 30s, but YA shows are weirdly often funnier and more enjoyable than sitcoms aimed at adults.
I can watch "prestige TV" like Succession and Breaking Bad, I can watch "kids' shows" like Gravity Falls, and ATLA. I contain multitudes.
posted by explosion at 5:00 PM on November 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
Right here.
A lot of YA shows have gotten a lot smarter, more enjoyable for adult audiences. I most recently binged Owl House, and I'm sure Disney wasn't planning on catching viewers in their 30s, but YA shows are weirdly often funnier and more enjoyable than sitcoms aimed at adults.
I can watch "prestige TV" like Succession and Breaking Bad, I can watch "kids' shows" like Gravity Falls, and ATLA. I contain multitudes.
posted by explosion at 5:00 PM on November 27, 2021 [11 favorites]
I'm not saying this to give Riot Games (or the shitty gamer community) a pass, but just to say, "hey can we keep the conversation focused on a fun show"?
If that's the rules or moderators want to erase the comments or whatever so be it, but for me personally, no, not really? I don't want their company to succeed or be financially rewarded in any way by consumption of their media and I know there's a lot of media I don't consume specifically because I saw someone mentioning how the company is bad. I would hope Marvel threads also mention boycotting Disney, heck, that one needs a guide at this point given how they own so much and more every chance they get.
posted by GoblinHoney at 5:09 PM on November 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
If that's the rules or moderators want to erase the comments or whatever so be it, but for me personally, no, not really? I don't want their company to succeed or be financially rewarded in any way by consumption of their media and I know there's a lot of media I don't consume specifically because I saw someone mentioning how the company is bad. I would hope Marvel threads also mention boycotting Disney, heck, that one needs a guide at this point given how they own so much and more every chance they get.
posted by GoblinHoney at 5:09 PM on November 27, 2021 [6 favorites]
@acb: One resigned and both have dropped their labor complaints. Doesn’t sound like anyone is exactly happy with the result.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 5:59 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 5:59 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think their high review scores are even more remarkable considering a lot of people are primed to hate on it because of its association with a company with a poor reputation. Even the Dota community which automatically hates anything from Riot due to a long standing grudge has mostly positive things to say about it.
This (and other similar comments) is kind of hilarious to me, a person who just has literally no personal interest in any initialized multiplayer video games. It's like saying "Well, Packers fans, Steelers fans and Cowboys fans all like it, and they're primed to hate each other so it must have some real intrinsic merit."
posted by Superilla at 6:23 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
This (and other similar comments) is kind of hilarious to me, a person who just has literally no personal interest in any initialized multiplayer video games. It's like saying "Well, Packers fans, Steelers fans and Cowboys fans all like it, and they're primed to hate each other so it must have some real intrinsic merit."
posted by Superilla at 6:23 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
@q*ben - re: age appropriate-ness, hard to say. Knowing nothing about your kids, I'd say
13-maybe but you watch with them
10-hard no
If your kids are unusually mature and you are on the fence, I'd suggest you watch the last episode by yourself first. It's probably the most "intense" episode in terms of violence and emotional stakes.
if you watch that episode and go " yeah my kids would be totally fine with us and I'd be totally fine with them watching it," it's probably okay.
I'm tempted to call out a couple other things from earlier episodes but I don't know how to do spoiler tags.
posted by ®@ at 6:27 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
13-maybe but you watch with them
10-hard no
If your kids are unusually mature and you are on the fence, I'd suggest you watch the last episode by yourself first. It's probably the most "intense" episode in terms of violence and emotional stakes.
if you watch that episode and go " yeah my kids would be totally fine with us and I'd be totally fine with them watching it," it's probably okay.
I'm tempted to call out a couple other things from earlier episodes but I don't know how to do spoiler tags.
posted by ®@ at 6:27 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
Bit of a tangent, but from the Polygon item: Arcane is a story about very hot people
...so can I just say how very, very, very tired I am of this kind of thing? After lo these many years of Hollywood Perfect People and their trivial mindless goings-on broadcast on every available medium, to say nothing of the eternity of YA fiction where everyone is just so perfect except for oh noes she wears glasses and now she's hideous omg how difficult her life must be let us now show you her rising above her terrible malformity and Becoming Queen Popular and falling for the Ugly Guy who Is Beautiful Except He Has A Scar so now he is Dangerous!
I mean, OK, sure, I was always an Algren/Thewlis/Jones/Crook kinda guy but geez, can we someday just stop?
So tired. So very very very tired.
/falls over
posted by aramaic at 6:41 PM on November 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
...so can I just say how very, very, very tired I am of this kind of thing? After lo these many years of Hollywood Perfect People and their trivial mindless goings-on broadcast on every available medium, to say nothing of the eternity of YA fiction where everyone is just so perfect except for oh noes she wears glasses and now she's hideous omg how difficult her life must be let us now show you her rising above her terrible malformity and Becoming Queen Popular and falling for the Ugly Guy who Is Beautiful Except He Has A Scar so now he is Dangerous!
I mean, OK, sure, I was always an Algren/Thewlis/Jones/Crook kinda guy but geez, can we someday just stop?
So tired. So very very very tired.
/falls over
posted by aramaic at 6:41 PM on November 27, 2021 [3 favorites]
Count me as one of the people who is shocked by how watchable this show is. I was primed for it to be garbage, or maybe "okay."
In this case the fact that Lol's story is so... thin... helps. There aren't any critical beats they have to hit or characters they have to include. It's a steampunk world and there's magic.
So here's a short list of things that worked for me:
-Character motivations made sense.
-Character conflicts felt organic.
-Characters made reasonable decisions based on the information they had available.
-Lotta diversity! Only one major character is a cis white dude and he is not the star.
-Character designs are less sexualized than you usually get in this genre, and WAY less sexualized than the source material.
-For a story that is ostensibly a prequel to a game where people die and respawn with no consequences, deaths were shockingly serious affairs.
-Good-looking fights, but again, often with heavier consequences and we usually get in fantasy.
-The animation is incredibly strong. Scenes with two people talking are rich with tiny expressions and barely perceptible movements. The best moments in the fights are the little human moments, not the explosions. Watch for all the scenes that would be "money savers" in any other animation. Here, they bleed detail.
posted by ®@ at 6:51 PM on November 27, 2021 [7 favorites]
In this case the fact that Lol's story is so... thin... helps. There aren't any critical beats they have to hit or characters they have to include. It's a steampunk world and there's magic.
So here's a short list of things that worked for me:
-Character motivations made sense.
-Character conflicts felt organic.
-Characters made reasonable decisions based on the information they had available.
-Lotta diversity! Only one major character is a cis white dude and he is not the star.
-Character designs are less sexualized than you usually get in this genre, and WAY less sexualized than the source material.
-For a story that is ostensibly a prequel to a game where people die and respawn with no consequences, deaths were shockingly serious affairs.
-Good-looking fights, but again, often with heavier consequences and we usually get in fantasy.
-The animation is incredibly strong. Scenes with two people talking are rich with tiny expressions and barely perceptible movements. The best moments in the fights are the little human moments, not the explosions. Watch for all the scenes that would be "money savers" in any other animation. Here, they bleed detail.
posted by ®@ at 6:51 PM on November 27, 2021 [7 favorites]
I watched the first episode. I know nothing about the game it is based on. The animation was lush, with lots of color saturation, heaps of detail in characters and backgrounds, and consistently good voice acting throughout the episode I watched. With the single episode, I can't say whether the story will build to something great, but it definitely is setting a framework for a multidimensional story and at least a few somewhat complex, nuanced characters. I don't recall any gore, violence or peril in the first episode that you couldn't find an equal example of in a Disney animated movie like Tarzan or Beauty and the Beast. Having said that; I've only seen episode 1.
Contrast with Castlevania, (of which I have watched a season plus a few episodes, and know nothing about the game): I liked the animation style a lot, and the framework of the story seemed promising, but the voice acting was not great, the characters were not very complex, and I lost interest and have stopped watching it. As with anything, your mileage may vary.
posted by coppertop at 6:55 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
Contrast with Castlevania, (of which I have watched a season plus a few episodes, and know nothing about the game): I liked the animation style a lot, and the framework of the story seemed promising, but the voice acting was not great, the characters were not very complex, and I lost interest and have stopped watching it. As with anything, your mileage may vary.
posted by coppertop at 6:55 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
Never played the game. Started watching it because I was curious. Stuck with it for the gorgeous animation, world-building, and interesting story.
posted by blue_beetle at 6:57 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by blue_beetle at 6:57 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
Okay! I finally figured out the right analogy:
Remember when we heard that they were making a Sonic movie?
Then remember how shocked everyone was when it was Not The Worst Thing Ever?
Okay, now pretend it was As Good as something you really liked. Like, Avatar, or something. Not saying it is that good, but that was my level of shock. I did not think Riot was capable of this level of storytelling or nuance.
posted by ®@ at 6:59 PM on November 27, 2021
Remember when we heard that they were making a Sonic movie?
Then remember how shocked everyone was when it was Not The Worst Thing Ever?
Okay, now pretend it was As Good as something you really liked. Like, Avatar, or something. Not saying it is that good, but that was my level of shock. I did not think Riot was capable of this level of storytelling or nuance.
posted by ®@ at 6:59 PM on November 27, 2021
Mod note: > I'm not saying this to give Riot Games (or the shitty gamer community) a pass, but just to say, "hey can we keep the conversation focused on a fun show"?
If that's the rules or moderators want to erase the comments or whatever so be it, but for me personally, no, not really? I don't want their company to succeed or be financially rewarded in any way by consumption of their media and I know there's a lot of media I don't consume specifically because I saw someone mentioning how the company is bad.
I figure it's worth briefly addressing this: there's room for both in discussion threads here. We can have both direct engagement with a piece of media and discussion of the context in which it's made. My main concern as a moderator, with this kind of dichotomy, is that people be sure to focus on talking about what they want to talk about and avoid giving other folks trouble for talking about what they want to talk about.
Want to talk about the show in its own right? Go for it! This is a sensible thread to do that. Want to talk about the context of the production and marketing? That's also okay! If folks can avoid turning it into an either/or standoff or going after each other for picking a different line of discussion, we'll be okay and folks can maintain multiple sub-threads of conversation in the same room.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:11 PM on November 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
If that's the rules or moderators want to erase the comments or whatever so be it, but for me personally, no, not really? I don't want their company to succeed or be financially rewarded in any way by consumption of their media and I know there's a lot of media I don't consume specifically because I saw someone mentioning how the company is bad.
I figure it's worth briefly addressing this: there's room for both in discussion threads here. We can have both direct engagement with a piece of media and discussion of the context in which it's made. My main concern as a moderator, with this kind of dichotomy, is that people be sure to focus on talking about what they want to talk about and avoid giving other folks trouble for talking about what they want to talk about.
Want to talk about the show in its own right? Go for it! This is a sensible thread to do that. Want to talk about the context of the production and marketing? That's also okay! If folks can avoid turning it into an either/or standoff or going after each other for picking a different line of discussion, we'll be okay and folks can maintain multiple sub-threads of conversation in the same room.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:11 PM on November 27, 2021 [19 favorites]
All Riot horribleness aside, all, uh, basically everything aside:
A good story is a thing unto itself. The first Guardians of the Galaxy movie? They took some rando third string 70’s era comic book characters and wrote a goddamn story. A good story can spin gold out of dross.
The eight deadly words of storytelling are “I don’t care what happens to these people.” It sounds like people are caring about this story, and that’s a sign of craft.
There are struggles to be had in the real world, metoos and insurrections and suppressions and climate changes. Take a breath, take a moment, find hope in a story for a brief span of time. Get back to the fighting later. It’s not going anywhere.
I’m drunk and I’m tired and I haven’t watched the series in question because I don’t consume a lot of media these days. But damn, folks. Call a time out for a minute. Take the joys where you can find them, and get back to the grind again on Monday.
posted by notoriety public at 7:17 PM on November 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
A good story is a thing unto itself. The first Guardians of the Galaxy movie? They took some rando third string 70’s era comic book characters and wrote a goddamn story. A good story can spin gold out of dross.
The eight deadly words of storytelling are “I don’t care what happens to these people.” It sounds like people are caring about this story, and that’s a sign of craft.
There are struggles to be had in the real world, metoos and insurrections and suppressions and climate changes. Take a breath, take a moment, find hope in a story for a brief span of time. Get back to the fighting later. It’s not going anywhere.
I’m drunk and I’m tired and I haven’t watched the series in question because I don’t consume a lot of media these days. But damn, folks. Call a time out for a minute. Take the joys where you can find them, and get back to the grind again on Monday.
posted by notoriety public at 7:17 PM on November 27, 2021 [5 favorites]
A lot of YA shows have gotten a lot smarter, more enjoyable for adult audiences.
So much this. I'm impressed by the scriptwriting, especially how well they "tied up" a lot of the storylines without actually resolving them completely. Usually shows make the mistake of trying to tie everything up in a hurry, with unsatisfactory results, or worse, don't even bother trying to create any kind of narrative arc, for example in recent memory, Dune - the show just randomly ends after the weird duel that Paul has with Jamis.
As an example of what I'm talking about (spoilers, obviously) I really like what they did with Viktor. In one of his earlier flashbacks it shows him as a child with a crippled leg, so he's unable to run and play with his friends, he makes a model mechanical boat and lets it go down the river. He tries to run alongside the tiny boat and he stumbles and falls, and the boat rushes on without him and he loses it.
At the end of the series, he's a successful scientist, but he delves into dangerous technology / magic (Hextech) which allows him to heal his leg. He stands on the docks in the harbor and drops his crutches, and in the background, you can see a ship in the harbor moving past him. Then he starts to walk, for the first, faster and faster and then he overtakes the ship and leaves it behind. He starts to scream in joy and wow, that is one emotional moment.
This mini-arc is bracketed by another layer outside it, where he stands on the sewer outlet between Piltover and Zaun - representing the border between the two worlds.
At the beginning, Jayce - the original scientist experimenting with Hextech - has had his work confiscated because it was deemed too dangerous, and was expelled from the academy. He stood at the sewer outlet and considered committing suicide, but was unknowingly stopped by Viktor - who came looking for him, because he had illegally saved Jayce's research from destruction and wanted to work on it in secret with him.
In the middle, both Jayce and Viktor have a falling out, because Jayce wanted to use Hextech as a way to create weaponry, while Viktor naively believed the technology was only meant to do good. They were also working on a way to use the Hexcore to save Viktor's life (the same disease which crippled his leg is also killing him).
At the end, Viktor is back in the same sewer outlet - the Hexcore technology he was hoping to use to save his life accidentally vaporized one of his assistants. No one else but him knew what happened, and he was contemplating committing suicide himself in the same spot. This time Jayce appears, and unknowingly stops him. Jayce has his own narrative (which I won't go into here) but his Hextech weapons accidentally killed a child and caused him to to into a moral crisis. Viktor says "You know it must be destroyed" and Jayce answers heavily "Yes, I know" thinking Viktor meant the Hextech weapons, but Viktor really meant the Hexcore, which was meant to save his life. Viktor says he's too weak to destroy the Hexcore himself (he doesn't have the willpower to do so) and makes Jayce promise to do it. So in this moment the two good friends reconcile, in a way, but only after each causes a tragedy: leaving the ending words "We strived for greatness, but failed to do good" as the devastating ending to their arc in season 1.
So you have, visually, two mirrored arcs inside each other, that leave the viewer feeling satisfied the story is "narratively closed", but the overall story is still wide open. Will Viktor end up using the Hexcore to save his life? Will Jayce still employ Hextech in the defense of Piltover?
The cast of characters (Vi, Jinx, Silco, Jayce, Viktor, Mel) all have their own fully realised personalities, hopes and aspirations, I daresay even better fleshed out than what Game of Thrones set out to do. Caityln, Ekko, Heimer, are kind of bland, but I guess there's only so much you can do in the limited time available.
posted by xdvesper at 7:18 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
So much this. I'm impressed by the scriptwriting, especially how well they "tied up" a lot of the storylines without actually resolving them completely. Usually shows make the mistake of trying to tie everything up in a hurry, with unsatisfactory results, or worse, don't even bother trying to create any kind of narrative arc, for example in recent memory, Dune - the show just randomly ends after the weird duel that Paul has with Jamis.
As an example of what I'm talking about (spoilers, obviously) I really like what they did with Viktor. In one of his earlier flashbacks it shows him as a child with a crippled leg, so he's unable to run and play with his friends, he makes a model mechanical boat and lets it go down the river. He tries to run alongside the tiny boat and he stumbles and falls, and the boat rushes on without him and he loses it.
At the end of the series, he's a successful scientist, but he delves into dangerous technology / magic (Hextech) which allows him to heal his leg. He stands on the docks in the harbor and drops his crutches, and in the background, you can see a ship in the harbor moving past him. Then he starts to walk, for the first, faster and faster and then he overtakes the ship and leaves it behind. He starts to scream in joy and wow, that is one emotional moment.
This mini-arc is bracketed by another layer outside it, where he stands on the sewer outlet between Piltover and Zaun - representing the border between the two worlds.
At the beginning, Jayce - the original scientist experimenting with Hextech - has had his work confiscated because it was deemed too dangerous, and was expelled from the academy. He stood at the sewer outlet and considered committing suicide, but was unknowingly stopped by Viktor - who came looking for him, because he had illegally saved Jayce's research from destruction and wanted to work on it in secret with him.
In the middle, both Jayce and Viktor have a falling out, because Jayce wanted to use Hextech as a way to create weaponry, while Viktor naively believed the technology was only meant to do good. They were also working on a way to use the Hexcore to save Viktor's life (the same disease which crippled his leg is also killing him).
At the end, Viktor is back in the same sewer outlet - the Hexcore technology he was hoping to use to save his life accidentally vaporized one of his assistants. No one else but him knew what happened, and he was contemplating committing suicide himself in the same spot. This time Jayce appears, and unknowingly stops him. Jayce has his own narrative (which I won't go into here) but his Hextech weapons accidentally killed a child and caused him to to into a moral crisis. Viktor says "You know it must be destroyed" and Jayce answers heavily "Yes, I know" thinking Viktor meant the Hextech weapons, but Viktor really meant the Hexcore, which was meant to save his life. Viktor says he's too weak to destroy the Hexcore himself (he doesn't have the willpower to do so) and makes Jayce promise to do it. So in this moment the two good friends reconcile, in a way, but only after each causes a tragedy: leaving the ending words "We strived for greatness, but failed to do good" as the devastating ending to their arc in season 1.
So you have, visually, two mirrored arcs inside each other, that leave the viewer feeling satisfied the story is "narratively closed", but the overall story is still wide open. Will Viktor end up using the Hexcore to save his life? Will Jayce still employ Hextech in the defense of Piltover?
The cast of characters (Vi, Jinx, Silco, Jayce, Viktor, Mel) all have their own fully realised personalities, hopes and aspirations, I daresay even better fleshed out than what Game of Thrones set out to do. Caityln, Ekko, Heimer, are kind of bland, but I guess there's only so much you can do in the limited time available.
posted by xdvesper at 7:18 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
This (and other similar comments) is kind of hilarious to me, a person who just has literally no personal interest in any initialized multiplayer video games. It's like saying "Well, Packers fans, Steelers fans and Cowboys fans all like it, and they're primed to hate each other so it must have some real intrinsic merit."
I get what you're saying, but I don't think the comparison is that far out there - as in, that's a subset of the original argument, #2 most watched series on Netflix is getting rave reviews + another subset of people also like it.
It's like, if I wanted to know if the latest Ford car was any good, I'd ask someone who is a lifelong Toyota driver to see if they liked the latest Ford car, I wouldn't ask a Ford enthusiast.
I also wouldn't really ask someone who's never driven a car before. In general, yeah you have to ask both, and it lends more weight to the argument if a non-car driver and a car driver of a competing company both like it.
posted by xdvesper at 7:35 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
I get what you're saying, but I don't think the comparison is that far out there - as in, that's a subset of the original argument, #2 most watched series on Netflix is getting rave reviews + another subset of people also like it.
It's like, if I wanted to know if the latest Ford car was any good, I'd ask someone who is a lifelong Toyota driver to see if they liked the latest Ford car, I wouldn't ask a Ford enthusiast.
I also wouldn't really ask someone who's never driven a car before. In general, yeah you have to ask both, and it lends more weight to the argument if a non-car driver and a car driver of a competing company both like it.
posted by xdvesper at 7:35 PM on November 27, 2021 [1 favorite]
It's a steampunk world and there's magic.
Perhaps I've been watching too much anime, but other than the gorgeous art the whole thing seems really really derivative to me. Admittedly I only made it through the fourth episode before realizing they were following the "let's just have unrelenting bad shit happen" style of story telling, but with that restriction they easily could built their entire story using the "find a random link" function on tvtropes.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:48 PM on November 27, 2021
Perhaps I've been watching too much anime, but other than the gorgeous art the whole thing seems really really derivative to me. Admittedly I only made it through the fourth episode before realizing they were following the "let's just have unrelenting bad shit happen" style of story telling, but with that restriction they easily could built their entire story using the "find a random link" function on tvtropes.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:48 PM on November 27, 2021
Also, respectfully, but isn't "enjoyment without criticism" what FanFare is for, not the main blue?
You haven't really spent much time in FanFare, have you?
posted by mstokes650 at 8:39 PM on November 27, 2021 [15 favorites]
You haven't really spent much time in FanFare, have you?
posted by mstokes650 at 8:39 PM on November 27, 2021 [15 favorites]
I've never played and have no idea what League of Legends is like but Arcane has made it into the top two Netflix series of all time for me besides Queen's Gambit.
(Maybe top three if you include Breaking Bad - not a Netflix only show, but that's where I ended up watching it.)
The animation is just so lush and nice to look at it. It's like Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse but with League of Legends as its source material. And just like Spiderverse, there were characters that had such emotional gravity and authenticity to them, thinking about them later made me teary eyed.
[Spoilers: One of the throw away scenes in the first episode where Vi is talking to Mylo on the couch and she's just telling him to shut up. It's just voice acted and animated so well that it left an impression and make me think, "wow, that was brilliantly executed."]
posted by kuroikenshi at 9:01 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
(Maybe top three if you include Breaking Bad - not a Netflix only show, but that's where I ended up watching it.)
The animation is just so lush and nice to look at it. It's like Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse but with League of Legends as its source material. And just like Spiderverse, there were characters that had such emotional gravity and authenticity to them, thinking about them later made me teary eyed.
[Spoilers: One of the throw away scenes in the first episode where Vi is talking to Mylo on the couch and she's just telling him to shut up. It's just voice acted and animated so well that it left an impression and make me think, "wow, that was brilliantly executed."]
posted by kuroikenshi at 9:01 PM on November 27, 2021 [2 favorites]
If Arcane is good, it is good in spite of its association with League of Legends, not because of it. Others have already brought up the problems with Riot as a company, but it's helpful to understand the broader context of this particular game and why it's so maligned.
This all starts with Blizzard, a company still going through its own much-deserved reckoning since the summer. Their flagship Warcraft franchise was never the most original setting, but they experienced enough success to develop a significant modding scene over the years, and one of the most popular mods to emerge was something called "Defense of the Ancients", or DOTA. Just as tabletop wargames were reimagined as a cooperative group adventure with the advent of tabletop roleplaying through D&D and its descendants, computer strategy wargames were repurposed into team-based heroics in DOTA. Electronic RPGs already presented the storytelling, settings, and specific mechanical concepts of tabletop RPGs on computers and game consoles, so DOTA presented a new evolutionary path emphasizing the arc of progression, the need for teamwork, and a new competitive element that pitted five-player teams against one another on a constrained and predefined map.
That competitive element is the important part: playing against human opponents makes for more exciting and unpredictable matches, but it also turned DOTA into a zero-sum game. Sure, each match has five winners (or fewer, if players drop out but the team still manages to win somehow), but it also definitely has five losers, and because the focus on progression of player power requires matches to be relatively long affairs, players tend to resent their teammates if they feel they aren't performing at an acceptable level. Communication channels intended to coordinate teamwork descend into toxicity, players intentionally throw matches as they grow more hostile to their own teammates than to their opponents, and the game as a whole gets a reputation for being unpleasant.
Despite this—or because of it?—DOTA is enormous in its success and spawns imitators. League of Legends is among the first, and among the most successful.
Like the other games in this format, League achieves much of its longevity by having a large number of playable characters. My uncharitable view is that they've taken as many fantasy character concepts as they could and simply created the most simple incarnation of them as possible, often copying (or being copied by) other game creators in this space. The most obvious example is Blizzard, whose IP was the original material used to construct the DOTA mod; since the DOTA competitors wanted to cannibalize their competition and make it easy and intuitive for players to switch to their new take on the genre, it often seemed more valuable to be an overt reference to the game you're deriving from than to be original.
All of this is preamble to my point that, despite my hostility toward these companies and their products, people I trust have underscored that the animation in Arcane is really, really good. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but I like to try to thread that needle anyway, and in my case that meant downloading a torrent and finding a couple folks on this cast/crew page to add to my Patreon list afterward. I don't want to support Riot, but the fact that their trash-fire of a game can produce a story that may be worthwhile is worth investigating. Would I rather Netflix be putting its money towards adaptations of Ursula K Le Guin or Samuel Delany? Of course. Does that mean the people working under the yoke of companies like Riot should have their work disregarded? I'm not sure; perhaps, if the work as a whole is enjoying as much widespread and mainstream appreciation as this is. That's a hard thing for me to evaluate.
I do just want to say that Jinx is just Harley Quinn with the serial numbers filed off, and without her equivalent Poison Ivy, she's extremely disappointing to me as a character. However, the fight she has with that guy on the bridge whose name I've omitted for plot-related reasons? That was almost enough for me to get past my disappointment. Almost.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 10:33 PM on November 27, 2021 [7 favorites]
This all starts with Blizzard, a company still going through its own much-deserved reckoning since the summer. Their flagship Warcraft franchise was never the most original setting, but they experienced enough success to develop a significant modding scene over the years, and one of the most popular mods to emerge was something called "Defense of the Ancients", or DOTA. Just as tabletop wargames were reimagined as a cooperative group adventure with the advent of tabletop roleplaying through D&D and its descendants, computer strategy wargames were repurposed into team-based heroics in DOTA. Electronic RPGs already presented the storytelling, settings, and specific mechanical concepts of tabletop RPGs on computers and game consoles, so DOTA presented a new evolutionary path emphasizing the arc of progression, the need for teamwork, and a new competitive element that pitted five-player teams against one another on a constrained and predefined map.
That competitive element is the important part: playing against human opponents makes for more exciting and unpredictable matches, but it also turned DOTA into a zero-sum game. Sure, each match has five winners (or fewer, if players drop out but the team still manages to win somehow), but it also definitely has five losers, and because the focus on progression of player power requires matches to be relatively long affairs, players tend to resent their teammates if they feel they aren't performing at an acceptable level. Communication channels intended to coordinate teamwork descend into toxicity, players intentionally throw matches as they grow more hostile to their own teammates than to their opponents, and the game as a whole gets a reputation for being unpleasant.
Despite this—or because of it?—DOTA is enormous in its success and spawns imitators. League of Legends is among the first, and among the most successful.
Like the other games in this format, League achieves much of its longevity by having a large number of playable characters. My uncharitable view is that they've taken as many fantasy character concepts as they could and simply created the most simple incarnation of them as possible, often copying (or being copied by) other game creators in this space. The most obvious example is Blizzard, whose IP was the original material used to construct the DOTA mod; since the DOTA competitors wanted to cannibalize their competition and make it easy and intuitive for players to switch to their new take on the genre, it often seemed more valuable to be an overt reference to the game you're deriving from than to be original.
All of this is preamble to my point that, despite my hostility toward these companies and their products, people I trust have underscored that the animation in Arcane is really, really good. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but I like to try to thread that needle anyway, and in my case that meant downloading a torrent and finding a couple folks on this cast/crew page to add to my Patreon list afterward. I don't want to support Riot, but the fact that their trash-fire of a game can produce a story that may be worthwhile is worth investigating. Would I rather Netflix be putting its money towards adaptations of Ursula K Le Guin or Samuel Delany? Of course. Does that mean the people working under the yoke of companies like Riot should have their work disregarded? I'm not sure; perhaps, if the work as a whole is enjoying as much widespread and mainstream appreciation as this is. That's a hard thing for me to evaluate.
I do just want to say that Jinx is just Harley Quinn with the serial numbers filed off, and without her equivalent Poison Ivy, she's extremely disappointing to me as a character. However, the fight she has with that guy on the bridge whose name I've omitted for plot-related reasons? That was almost enough for me to get past my disappointment. Almost.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 10:33 PM on November 27, 2021 [7 favorites]
without her equivalent Poison Ivy
well Riot does have Zyra...
a lot of League champions/characters (especially early champions) were based on familiar characters from other fantasy worlds/games and/or well-known folklore characters.
posted by aielen at 12:43 AM on November 28, 2021
well Riot does have Zyra...
a lot of League champions/characters (especially early champions) were based on familiar characters from other fantasy worlds/games and/or well-known folklore characters.
posted by aielen at 12:43 AM on November 28, 2021
I bounced hard off of The Wire and Breaking Bad. I might give this a try.
posted by signal at 3:35 AM on November 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 3:35 AM on November 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
Will a non-gamer be able to enjoy this, or will some background knowledge of LoL be helpful/necessary in order understand what’s happening?
I was halfway through the series before I bothered to Google "League of Legends" to find out what it was (apparently some kind of online multiplayer team combat game?), if that answers your question.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:36 AM on November 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
I was halfway through the series before I bothered to Google "League of Legends" to find out what it was (apparently some kind of online multiplayer team combat game?), if that answers your question.
posted by soundguy99 at 3:36 AM on November 28, 2021 [1 favorite]
cases of sexual harassment
Most of the women who are fighting have sleeves.
posted by bendy at 4:10 AM on November 28, 2021
Most of the women who are fighting have sleeves.
posted by bendy at 4:10 AM on November 28, 2021
Doesn’t sound like anyone is exactly happy with the result.
If I claimed to have zero tolerance for transphobia, but maintained a Netflix subscription and breathlessly gushed over the latest Must-See Netflix Cultural Milestone Event around the watercooler at work, how self-deluding and/or hypocritical would I be?
posted by acb at 5:21 AM on November 28, 2021
If I claimed to have zero tolerance for transphobia, but maintained a Netflix subscription and breathlessly gushed over the latest Must-See Netflix Cultural Milestone Event around the watercooler at work, how self-deluding and/or hypocritical would I be?
posted by acb at 5:21 AM on November 28, 2021
If I claimed to have zero tolerance for transphobia, but maintained a Netflix subscription and breathlessly gushed over the latest Must-See Netflix Cultural Milestone Event around the watercooler at work, how self-deluding and/or hypocritical would I be?
I think the point you are trying to make would be better served by saying what you mean instead of a combination hypothetical / rhetorical question. I'm not sure what you're getting at. Is someone in this thread embodying your hypothetical?
---
Overall, my spouse and I really loved the show. I think mostly the animation quality is what kept us watching. I play League (though I always have chat turned off, because holy hell the League community is one of the worst in gaming, and that's saying something) but my spouse does not. They also aren't really super into animated shows save a couple of bigger IP shows -- Star Trek: Lower Decks and What If? come to mind.
Leaving aside the gorgeous animation, the plot was...okay? A touch uneven in quality, imo, and with some problematic stuff for sure. But the villain had that quality that all good villains have -- sympathetic motivations!
Overall, I think the show is likely getting somewhat inflated praise based on the quality of the art and just sort of breaking the curse of media properties that are based on games, but if 9.4/10 on IMDB is inflated, I'd still say the first series is a solid 7/10 for me. We'll watch next season for sure, and hope that the themes and plot catch up to the art a bit.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:24 AM on November 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
I think the point you are trying to make would be better served by saying what you mean instead of a combination hypothetical / rhetorical question. I'm not sure what you're getting at. Is someone in this thread embodying your hypothetical?
---
Overall, my spouse and I really loved the show. I think mostly the animation quality is what kept us watching. I play League (though I always have chat turned off, because holy hell the League community is one of the worst in gaming, and that's saying something) but my spouse does not. They also aren't really super into animated shows save a couple of bigger IP shows -- Star Trek: Lower Decks and What If? come to mind.
Leaving aside the gorgeous animation, the plot was...okay? A touch uneven in quality, imo, and with some problematic stuff for sure. But the villain had that quality that all good villains have -- sympathetic motivations!
Overall, I think the show is likely getting somewhat inflated praise based on the quality of the art and just sort of breaking the curse of media properties that are based on games, but if 9.4/10 on IMDB is inflated, I'd still say the first series is a solid 7/10 for me. We'll watch next season for sure, and hope that the themes and plot catch up to the art a bit.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:24 AM on November 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'll watch a few more episodes before giving a more fulsome review on the show, but holy shit I hate the music. I guess I'm showing my age, and Imagine Dragons is a popular band, but the theme music is like a platonic distillation of the ufc music supervisor's fever dream. Precisely the Linkin-Parky, Blink182-y, corporate version of rebellion that inspires dickheads. Almost a pantomime of rebellion, the "don't bother me I'm eating" or "fuck you, Mom" brand of rebellion that flat-brimmed baseball cap people enjoy. All of this is to say, I'm withholding judgment on the show.
posted by ishmael at 7:35 AM on November 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by ishmael at 7:35 AM on November 28, 2021 [4 favorites]
cases of sexual harassment
Most of the women who are fighting have sleeves.
What does this mean?
posted by cooker girl at 7:37 AM on November 28, 2021 [13 favorites]
Most of the women who are fighting have sleeves.
What does this mean?
posted by cooker girl at 7:37 AM on November 28, 2021 [13 favorites]
About Riot, and Netflix, and other shitty big companies, it's important I think to note that they really are big companies. Once a company gets to a certain size some problems are almost inevitable. I mean, they're technically not inevitable, but much like how the phrase "All software has bugs" is untrue yet is practically true and serves to illustrate a real problem, so it is with big companies. And it doesn't help that many of them have a way of funneling the exceptionally shitty people right to the top, if they didn't start out there in the first place.
Meanwhile, the people who actually worked on the show may have nothing to do with the shittiness. It's true that the company profits from their work and thus in some way their efforts advance the shit, but its largely random where people get hired, and until you make a name for yourself, quitting in protest will be mostly ineffectual, and put your livelihood on the line, with no guarantee that anyone else will hire you. It's one of the many problems with capitalism.
But. We can recognize these things, we can separate the people who made a work we enjoy from the crappy organization that sponsored its makers' efforts. To some extent, we can enjoy the work without forgiving the company.
To some extent. It's definitely possible for this to be taken so far, to let the cool things a company made whitewash its reputation, and that's going to be a case-by-case thing for people. If Bill Cosby came out and sponsored something new and good, would it be right to forgive him enough to enjoy it? Of course, Cosby is one person, in his case the blame is concentrated there, whereas in many big companies, one arm might not only not know what the other is doing, but may not even realize it exists.
I am reminded how some of the most vocal critics of Disney, especially Cory Doctorow, still love its theme parks. Sometimes in fact, the amount people love the work causes them to criticize the company that made it more, for the discomfort they feel liking something that came from a a dungheap.
There is an internet phenomenon, however (there's a lot of however in this comment), where fans of a work conflate it with the company that made it, and any criticism of the company is taken as criticism of the work, and vice versa. Legions of fans that will attack any poor soul who dares criticize the behemoth that birthed it. This is especially rife in video game fandom. But that's a grade school approach IMO, and we don't have to buy into it.
posted by JHarris at 8:47 AM on November 28, 2021 [7 favorites]
Meanwhile, the people who actually worked on the show may have nothing to do with the shittiness. It's true that the company profits from their work and thus in some way their efforts advance the shit, but its largely random where people get hired, and until you make a name for yourself, quitting in protest will be mostly ineffectual, and put your livelihood on the line, with no guarantee that anyone else will hire you. It's one of the many problems with capitalism.
But. We can recognize these things, we can separate the people who made a work we enjoy from the crappy organization that sponsored its makers' efforts. To some extent, we can enjoy the work without forgiving the company.
To some extent. It's definitely possible for this to be taken so far, to let the cool things a company made whitewash its reputation, and that's going to be a case-by-case thing for people. If Bill Cosby came out and sponsored something new and good, would it be right to forgive him enough to enjoy it? Of course, Cosby is one person, in his case the blame is concentrated there, whereas in many big companies, one arm might not only not know what the other is doing, but may not even realize it exists.
I am reminded how some of the most vocal critics of Disney, especially Cory Doctorow, still love its theme parks. Sometimes in fact, the amount people love the work causes them to criticize the company that made it more, for the discomfort they feel liking something that came from a a dungheap.
There is an internet phenomenon, however (there's a lot of however in this comment), where fans of a work conflate it with the company that made it, and any criticism of the company is taken as criticism of the work, and vice versa. Legions of fans that will attack any poor soul who dares criticize the behemoth that birthed it. This is especially rife in video game fandom. But that's a grade school approach IMO, and we don't have to buy into it.
posted by JHarris at 8:47 AM on November 28, 2021 [7 favorites]
Wow, MeFi’s really showing off its old-man-yells-at-cloud credentials in this thread. Somebody crank up the drawbridge or some of those “flat-brimmed baseball cap people” might make it in!
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 9:51 AM on November 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 9:51 AM on November 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
It’s certainly contentious for a discussion of a media property (even one with a toxic past). Maybe it’s the long weekend in the US?
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:01 AM on November 28, 2021
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:01 AM on November 28, 2021
It's just an incredible show. Quite a triumph. Source material liking or knowledge not required. It is self contained and sets itself up for much more.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:39 AM on November 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:39 AM on November 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
So here’s a question: I like that we are seeing more non-white characters (and actors), but race/ethnicity designator in this show seem completely unmoored from society or culture; some characters are just randomly dark skinned. Does this really improve representation?
Add to that the whole “bad side of the city,” which might be a colonized country (it’s very murky)? It’s a very unexamined bit of backstory that could have been used for some kind of commentary, but I guess not?
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:41 AM on November 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
Add to that the whole “bad side of the city,” which might be a colonized country (it’s very murky)? It’s a very unexamined bit of backstory that could have been used for some kind of commentary, but I guess not?
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:41 AM on November 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
>cases of sexual harassment
>
>Most of the women who are fighting have sleeves.
What does this mean?
I believe that it is in reference to the fact that the women on the show, unlike the women at Riot headquarters, are treated as fully human characters instead of the half-dressed cheesecake that typifies this genre.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:18 PM on November 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
>
>Most of the women who are fighting have sleeves.
What does this mean?
I believe that it is in reference to the fact that the women on the show, unlike the women at Riot headquarters, are treated as fully human characters instead of the half-dressed cheesecake that typifies this genre.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:18 PM on November 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
So here’s a question: I like that we are seeing more non-white characters (and actors), but race/ethnicity designator in this show seem completely unmoored from society or culture; some characters are just randomly dark skinned. Does this really improve representation?
Add to that the whole “bad side of the city,” which might be a colonized country (it’s very murky)? It’s a very unexamined bit of backstory that could have been used for some kind of commentary, but I guess not?
They don't touch much on the wider world's backstory (which is a good choice, I think, as there's plenty for a viewer to bite into just with Piltover/Zaun), but I think I recall them referring at the first Council meeting in episode 2 to Piltover/Zaun being basically founded as a refugee city for people running away from magical wars. That's why they're initially skeptical about Jayce's idea of messing around with magic, even second-hand. So I imagine the population mixture (which seems to include not just multiple flavors of human but also non-human species as well, as with the giant guard character on the prison island and Ekko's second-in-command) is due to it being settled by the descendants of just whoever made it there alive. With the exception of more recent immigrants, such as Mel.
It looks like we're getting a whole 'nother season at least, still set mainly in Piltover/Zaun, so there's plenty of space to delve into Big Themes if they want to.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:14 PM on November 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
Add to that the whole “bad side of the city,” which might be a colonized country (it’s very murky)? It’s a very unexamined bit of backstory that could have been used for some kind of commentary, but I guess not?
They don't touch much on the wider world's backstory (which is a good choice, I think, as there's plenty for a viewer to bite into just with Piltover/Zaun), but I think I recall them referring at the first Council meeting in episode 2 to Piltover/Zaun being basically founded as a refugee city for people running away from magical wars. That's why they're initially skeptical about Jayce's idea of messing around with magic, even second-hand. So I imagine the population mixture (which seems to include not just multiple flavors of human but also non-human species as well, as with the giant guard character on the prison island and Ekko's second-in-command) is due to it being settled by the descendants of just whoever made it there alive. With the exception of more recent immigrants, such as Mel.
It looks like we're getting a whole 'nother season at least, still set mainly in Piltover/Zaun, so there's plenty of space to delve into Big Themes if they want to.
posted by AdamCSnider at 2:14 PM on November 28, 2021 [3 favorites]
So here’s a question: I like that we are seeing more non-white characters (and actors), but race/ethnicity designator in this show seem completely unmoored from society or culture; some characters are just randomly dark skinned. Does this really improve representation?
Improve relative to what?
Part of the answer is that yes, it is obviously far, far better than the all white fantasy settings that cropped up in so much SFF for so long, in which POC were either non-existent or treated as outsiders whose presence needed to explained. Or who get relegated to a subordinate social role. (I'm showing my age, but I know non-white fans of my generation speaking warmly about the few instances of this they had available to them, like Lando Calrissian or the Wizard of Earthsea.)
I think it's a complicated question though and am not saying that the perspective above is the last word on it.
posted by mark k at 2:23 PM on November 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
Improve relative to what?
Part of the answer is that yes, it is obviously far, far better than the all white fantasy settings that cropped up in so much SFF for so long, in which POC were either non-existent or treated as outsiders whose presence needed to explained. Or who get relegated to a subordinate social role. (I'm showing my age, but I know non-white fans of my generation speaking warmly about the few instances of this they had available to them, like Lando Calrissian or the Wizard of Earthsea.)
I think it's a complicated question though and am not saying that the perspective above is the last word on it.
posted by mark k at 2:23 PM on November 28, 2021 [5 favorites]
I appreciate this post, as I wasn't planning on watching the show, never having played the game, but now want to take a look.
Also, weird moment: I read this thread after listening to a new On the Media podcast, so the voice in the trailer speaking from :01 and :10 sounded a lot like Brooke Gladstone. Which gave me a very different view of the video.
posted by doctornemo at 2:26 PM on November 28, 2021
Also, weird moment: I read this thread after listening to a new On the Media podcast, so the voice in the trailer speaking from :01 and :10 sounded a lot like Brooke Gladstone. Which gave me a very different view of the video.
posted by doctornemo at 2:26 PM on November 28, 2021
Just finished s1 and would put it at a solid 7.5. It's weighed down a bit by clunky fantasy terminology and derivative character archetypes and storylines, but the voice acting and animation are phenomenal.
Also, lots of very serious dialogue has to include the name "Heimerdinger" in it, and that's fantastic.
I'm not subscribed to Netflix, btw, and this show isn't worth it if that's a consideration for you.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 7:06 PM on November 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also, lots of very serious dialogue has to include the name "Heimerdinger" in it, and that's fantastic.
I'm not subscribed to Netflix, btw, and this show isn't worth it if that's a consideration for you.
posted by knuckle tattoos at 7:06 PM on November 28, 2021 [2 favorites]
I watched the show and am in camp "7/10". The production values are incredible, and the plot and characters are good enough that I enjoyed the whole thing. YMM definitely V though, and if any issues that people highlight in this thread seem like deal breakers, I don't think you're missing anything if you give the show a pass.
That definitely includes the production context of the show. Having read enough about the going's on at Riot, I was reluctant to watch the show when I first heard about it, but I'm also a sucker for pretty-video-gamey-nonsense, so... 1 point for Riot, I guess. Personally though, I wouldn't go around recommending the show without mentioning how fucked up Riot and the whole LoL scene are. And while the show mostly avoids the generalized Boyzone atmosphere that is apparent by say... looking at the list of League of Legend characters on their website, there were still some moments in the show that elicited some very big eyerolls from me.
I don't think the mods should have to be so heavy handed that they nix a fan oriented post like this, but if the OP is not going to mention some of the issues around the show, I definitely feel like others shouldn't be discouraged from bringing them up.
posted by Alex404 at 12:00 AM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
That definitely includes the production context of the show. Having read enough about the going's on at Riot, I was reluctant to watch the show when I first heard about it, but I'm also a sucker for pretty-video-gamey-nonsense, so... 1 point for Riot, I guess. Personally though, I wouldn't go around recommending the show without mentioning how fucked up Riot and the whole LoL scene are. And while the show mostly avoids the generalized Boyzone atmosphere that is apparent by say... looking at the list of League of Legend characters on their website, there were still some moments in the show that elicited some very big eyerolls from me.
I don't think the mods should have to be so heavy handed that they nix a fan oriented post like this, but if the OP is not going to mention some of the issues around the show, I definitely feel like others shouldn't be discouraged from bringing them up.
posted by Alex404 at 12:00 AM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
Mod note: A couple deleted. Hey, sorry, but while it's fine to discuss the show and also discuss related problematic / damaging aspects of Netflix, Riot, Blizzard, etc. in relation to that, the question of whether Netflix (et al.) productions or airings should be allowed to be posted on Metafilter is really a conversation for Metatalk.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:36 AM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 12:36 AM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
The bits of this I saw online made me think of RWBY which would be a hard pass, but these reviews are giving me second thoughts.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 7:07 AM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 7:07 AM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Somebody crank up the drawbridge or some of those “flat-brimmed baseball cap people” might make it in!
Point taken. I shouldn't have focused on a clothing preference. What I meant was "douchebag". Hashtag notallflatbrimmedhats.
posted by ishmael at 10:17 AM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Point taken. I shouldn't have focused on a clothing preference. What I meant was "douchebag". Hashtag notallflatbrimmedhats.
posted by ishmael at 10:17 AM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
some characters are just randomly dark skinned
Or maybe some characters are randomly light-skinned?
You seem to be operating from the assumption that light skin is--or should be--the default for this show/world and the dark-skinned characters are "randomly" sprinkled in. As opposed to assuming that dark skin is the default and the light skin is random or that there is a natural cultural reason that the world is integrated. Furthermore, this is set in a techno-magic world where people engage in superhuman feats separate from any real-world understanding of physics or biology, and you're questioning whether the portrayal of skin color is realistic?
I gently suggest that you engage in some self-examination and consider where your assumptions and questions come from.
posted by Anonymous at 10:46 AM on November 29, 2021
Or maybe some characters are randomly light-skinned?
You seem to be operating from the assumption that light skin is--or should be--the default for this show/world and the dark-skinned characters are "randomly" sprinkled in. As opposed to assuming that dark skin is the default and the light skin is random or that there is a natural cultural reason that the world is integrated. Furthermore, this is set in a techno-magic world where people engage in superhuman feats separate from any real-world understanding of physics or biology, and you're questioning whether the portrayal of skin color is realistic?
I gently suggest that you engage in some self-examination and consider where your assumptions and questions come from.
posted by Anonymous at 10:46 AM on November 29, 2021
Furthermore, this is set in a techno-magic world where people engage in superhuman feats separate from any real-world understanding of physics or biology, and you're questioning whether the portrayal of skin color is realistic?
My least-favorite thing about MetaFilter is when people invent a comment that didn't actually happen and then get mad about that comment.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:38 AM on November 29, 2021 [7 favorites]
My least-favorite thing about MetaFilter is when people invent a comment that didn't actually happen and then get mad about that comment.
posted by mstokes650 at 11:38 AM on November 29, 2021 [7 favorites]
race/ethnicity designator in this show seem completely unmoored from society or culture; some characters are just randomly dark skinned
Please explain how designating dark-skinned characters as "random" does not imply that their presence is unrealistic.
posted by Anonymous at 12:33 PM on November 29, 2021
Please explain how designating dark-skinned characters as "random" does not imply that their presence is unrealistic.
posted by Anonymous at 12:33 PM on November 29, 2021
As opposed to assuming that dark skin is the default and the light skin is random or that there is a natural cultural reason that the world is integrated.
Um, I've sat through about half the episodes so far, and unless the the demographics radically change, non-white characters are pretty outnumbered. In the show's defense, there are multiple non-white characters with significant speaking roles (although outnumbered by the white characters and just ahead of the non-humans), but, since they are set in a world without context (I mean, what even is going on with Piltover and Zaun?), it does seem random. Like almost any of the characters could be reworked to be any race/ethnicity, and it wouldn't matter to the story. This is better than we would have seen a decade ago, but, contrast Arcane with, say, Kipo and the Age of Wonder Beasts, which is much more deliberate about its use of race and identity.
Add to this the show's grotesque treatment of mental illness, and I don't think my perceptions are the problem.
I do take mark k's "Improve relative to what?" as a much more useful response, and the show is better in representation in characters and voice actors, than a decade ago, but surely we can expect more from a show that people are rating so highly?
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:33 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
Um, I've sat through about half the episodes so far, and unless the the demographics radically change, non-white characters are pretty outnumbered. In the show's defense, there are multiple non-white characters with significant speaking roles (although outnumbered by the white characters and just ahead of the non-humans), but, since they are set in a world without context (I mean, what even is going on with Piltover and Zaun?), it does seem random. Like almost any of the characters could be reworked to be any race/ethnicity, and it wouldn't matter to the story. This is better than we would have seen a decade ago, but, contrast Arcane with, say, Kipo and the Age of Wonder Beasts, which is much more deliberate about its use of race and identity.
Add to this the show's grotesque treatment of mental illness, and I don't think my perceptions are the problem.
I do take mark k's "Improve relative to what?" as a much more useful response, and the show is better in representation in characters and voice actors, than a decade ago, but surely we can expect more from a show that people are rating so highly?
posted by GenjiandProust at 12:33 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
Does anyone else see a non-racialized system of class stratification as a welcome break from American reality?
posted by Selena777 at 12:42 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Selena777 at 12:42 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
You seem to be operating from the assumption that light skin is--or should be--the default for this show/world
The architecture and organizational principles of this world are very clearly based on Europe of a certain era. Expecting further similarities is not particularly out of line.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:05 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
The architecture and organizational principles of this world are very clearly based on Europe of a certain era. Expecting further similarities is not particularly out of line.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:05 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Like almost any of the characters could be reworked to be any race/ethnicity, and it wouldn't matter to the story.
I guess I don't see this as an inherent problem. There is a space for media that engages specifically on the basis of race with historical markers analogous to those in the real world, but there's also a space for media that doesn't.
posted by Anonymous at 1:14 PM on November 29, 2021
I guess I don't see this as an inherent problem. There is a space for media that engages specifically on the basis of race with historical markers analogous to those in the real world, but there's also a space for media that doesn't.
posted by Anonymous at 1:14 PM on November 29, 2021
it's not a problem, but it's also not the same as cultural diversity in a real-world setting, which to me was very obviously what GenjiandProust was getting at.
posted by sagc at 1:15 PM on November 29, 2021
posted by sagc at 1:15 PM on November 29, 2021
Does anyone else see a non-racialized system of class stratification as a welcome break from American reality?
I don't see how you get that from my comment.
The frustrating thing for me is that the show does almost no world-building, which is a pity given the length of the episodes and the erratic direction (there is a shocking amount of dead space for an animated show). Now, maybe it's unfair to expect context or world-building from a show which can't mess with the game's lore too much, but this is a show that is getting a lot of praise, so maybe it's ok to earn that.
For example, the Council is made up (at the beginning) of 7 Councilors, apparently each from a major "House," which seems from context to a family and retainers. There are 2 black Councillors, 3 white, a rather angry robot-ish being, and Professor Heimerdinger, another non-human. So far, however, their roles could be pretty much exchanged (with the exception of Heimerdinger, who I gather is a playable character in the game) without affecting the story at all. So my question still stands -- is that that good representation? Or, rather, while it's better than it could be, is this good enough representation considering the accolades the show is getting?
Maybe I'm just disappointed that the Councilor with the finger-coverings and clockwork necklace isn't being given a backstory or anything to do, because I like the character design.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:16 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
I don't see how you get that from my comment.
The frustrating thing for me is that the show does almost no world-building, which is a pity given the length of the episodes and the erratic direction (there is a shocking amount of dead space for an animated show). Now, maybe it's unfair to expect context or world-building from a show which can't mess with the game's lore too much, but this is a show that is getting a lot of praise, so maybe it's ok to earn that.
For example, the Council is made up (at the beginning) of 7 Councilors, apparently each from a major "House," which seems from context to a family and retainers. There are 2 black Councillors, 3 white, a rather angry robot-ish being, and Professor Heimerdinger, another non-human. So far, however, their roles could be pretty much exchanged (with the exception of Heimerdinger, who I gather is a playable character in the game) without affecting the story at all. So my question still stands -- is that that good representation? Or, rather, while it's better than it could be, is this good enough representation considering the accolades the show is getting?
Maybe I'm just disappointed that the Councilor with the finger-coverings and clockwork necklace isn't being given a backstory or anything to do, because I like the character design.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:16 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
I don't see how you get that from my comment.
It was a response to the representation topic in general - I interpreted "unmoored from society/culture" in general as assimilated and free from the color-based casteism that characterizes a lot of RL earth societies.
posted by Selena777 at 1:23 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
It was a response to the representation topic in general - I interpreted "unmoored from society/culture" in general as assimilated and free from the color-based casteism that characterizes a lot of RL earth societies.
posted by Selena777 at 1:23 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Does anyone else see a non-racialized system of class stratification as a welcome break from American reality?
This is a sort of interesting point, where shows walk a fine balance between reinforcing existing racial stereotypes, versus a kind of cultural erasure where you cast black and white people in exactly the same roles and have them speak with the same accent. Then there's also the desire for "representation" of our existing cultures and dialects superimposed into a fantasy world, which then, as this comments puts it, "recreates" the racialized system of class stratification - imagine a minority trying to escape in some SF and then coming straight back to this.
I think Arcane has done a pretty good job in this regard. Fantasy shows often use a cultural shorthand to transpose our own lived experiences and common fantasy tropes built by other fantasy stories into the story they want to tell. The shorthand I see here is that the people on the council have shed their black cultural markers as they moved up on society (kind of like Obama) while people like Ekko living in the under city, haven't.
What's even more interesting to me is that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company - and gaming has been under huge scrutiny in China at the moment. They usually try to achieve a kind of forced diversity - recall the Ironman movie where there was a special scene only meant for China where Tony Stark gets "saved" by a talented Chinese surgeon in a Chinese hospital, if you watched the movie in the West you didn't see this scene lol, this was part of the contract funding terms when making the movie.
Anyway, where are the Chinese / Asian people in Piltover? Seraphine is canonically Chinese, while she appears later in the timeline, they've already shown themselves willing to retcon anything they like. Ionia is traditionally the "Asian" region, and we see a musician in the theatre who the characters mention is from Ionia (I suspect he's an easter egg for Jhin). They gave Caitlyn chinese-looking features, which is a retcon, in addition to giving her a British accent to make her seem more exoctic, but I'm laughing at the fits the CCP cultural watchdogs are going to have when they see this... YOU ONLY MADE ONE HALF CHINESE PERSON IN THIS WHOLE PRODUCTION AND SHE'S GAY????
posted by xdvesper at 3:13 PM on November 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
This is a sort of interesting point, where shows walk a fine balance between reinforcing existing racial stereotypes, versus a kind of cultural erasure where you cast black and white people in exactly the same roles and have them speak with the same accent. Then there's also the desire for "representation" of our existing cultures and dialects superimposed into a fantasy world, which then, as this comments puts it, "recreates" the racialized system of class stratification - imagine a minority trying to escape in some SF and then coming straight back to this.
I think Arcane has done a pretty good job in this regard. Fantasy shows often use a cultural shorthand to transpose our own lived experiences and common fantasy tropes built by other fantasy stories into the story they want to tell. The shorthand I see here is that the people on the council have shed their black cultural markers as they moved up on society (kind of like Obama) while people like Ekko living in the under city, haven't.
What's even more interesting to me is that Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a Chinese company - and gaming has been under huge scrutiny in China at the moment. They usually try to achieve a kind of forced diversity - recall the Ironman movie where there was a special scene only meant for China where Tony Stark gets "saved" by a talented Chinese surgeon in a Chinese hospital, if you watched the movie in the West you didn't see this scene lol, this was part of the contract funding terms when making the movie.
Anyway, where are the Chinese / Asian people in Piltover? Seraphine is canonically Chinese, while she appears later in the timeline, they've already shown themselves willing to retcon anything they like. Ionia is traditionally the "Asian" region, and we see a musician in the theatre who the characters mention is from Ionia (I suspect he's an easter egg for Jhin). They gave Caitlyn chinese-looking features, which is a retcon, in addition to giving her a British accent to make her seem more exoctic, but I'm laughing at the fits the CCP cultural watchdogs are going to have when they see this... YOU ONLY MADE ONE HALF CHINESE PERSON IN THIS WHOLE PRODUCTION AND SHE'S GAY????
posted by xdvesper at 3:13 PM on November 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
I think Arcane has done a pretty good job in this regard.
Huh, I’d say “fails badly,” but it takes all sorts.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:46 PM on November 29, 2021
Huh, I’d say “fails badly,” but it takes all sorts.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:46 PM on November 29, 2021
Huh, I’d say “fails badly,” but it takes all sorts.
That's why the Tomatometer audience rating is 98% not 100% =P
But what are your thoughts? I mentioned I'd have liked to see more Asian representation in the show, and I think they got the balance right between how they portrayed POC in the council vs POC in Zaun. If you were the showrunner, how would you have written the show instead?
posted by xdvesper at 5:07 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
That's why the Tomatometer audience rating is 98% not 100% =P
But what are your thoughts? I mentioned I'd have liked to see more Asian representation in the show, and I think they got the balance right between how they portrayed POC in the council vs POC in Zaun. If you were the showrunner, how would you have written the show instead?
posted by xdvesper at 5:07 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
They gave Caitlyn chinese-looking features, which is a retcon, in addition to giving her a British accent to make her seem more exocticc
Caitlyn has always had a British accent since she (the champion) was released 10 years ago.
I went into Arcane not expecting much "Asian" representation because it's a story about Piltover and Zaun, not Ionia. As for whether Chinese people will like the series - so far reception seems pretty good, Eason Chan did a song + music video for Arcane's Chinese audience specifically (and Eason Chan is kinda a big deal in China), and Chinese LoL players have always liked (and particularly excelled at) ADCs, which Jinx and Caitlyn both are in LoL. (Which is probably great for skin sales in China too...)
posted by aielen at 5:29 PM on November 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
Caitlyn has always had a British accent since she (the champion) was released 10 years ago.
I went into Arcane not expecting much "Asian" representation because it's a story about Piltover and Zaun, not Ionia. As for whether Chinese people will like the series - so far reception seems pretty good, Eason Chan did a song + music video for Arcane's Chinese audience specifically (and Eason Chan is kinda a big deal in China), and Chinese LoL players have always liked (and particularly excelled at) ADCs, which Jinx and Caitlyn both are in LoL. (Which is probably great for skin sales in China too...)
posted by aielen at 5:29 PM on November 29, 2021 [3 favorites]
IIf you were the showrunner, how would you have written the show instead?
Let’s see:
1. I would have provided more context, so the story wasn’t happening in a vacuum. This would be paid for by the 5-10 minutes of wasted time every episode.
2. I word try to make he situations in the world feel real, rather than random. This would have likely meant violating the game logic, but who cares about that?
3. I would have avoided the sexualization of Jinx, and the gross treatment of mental illness.
4. I would avoid the pathos of Viktor and the fetishization of physical disability.
5. I would prioritize gay relationships over “lesbian” relationships no
Matter how my teen boy fanbase squirmed.
6. I would try to make the world feel lived in.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:37 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Let’s see:
1. I would have provided more context, so the story wasn’t happening in a vacuum. This would be paid for by the 5-10 minutes of wasted time every episode.
2. I word try to make he situations in the world feel real, rather than random. This would have likely meant violating the game logic, but who cares about that?
3. I would have avoided the sexualization of Jinx, and the gross treatment of mental illness.
4. I would avoid the pathos of Viktor and the fetishization of physical disability.
5. I would prioritize gay relationships over “lesbian” relationships no
Matter how my teen boy fanbase squirmed.
6. I would try to make the world feel lived in.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:37 PM on November 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
Ahh Aielen, that's my fault for my poorly formed sentence, typos and all, lol. I meant to say the Chinese ancestry and features is a retcon. Yes she's always had a British accent, but it doesn't mean they had to keep it, I'd still consider it a deliberate choice.
Eg, I particularly like how in Star Wars, they made all the Imperials on the Death Star speak with British accents, while the Rebels were mostly American, and then they used it as shorthand to mirror the American revolution. I don't see any attempt at using accent in this way in Arcane, but that's fine too, not every film needs to do it.
posted by xdvesper at 7:48 PM on November 29, 2021
Eg, I particularly like how in Star Wars, they made all the Imperials on the Death Star speak with British accents, while the Rebels were mostly American, and then they used it as shorthand to mirror the American revolution. I don't see any attempt at using accent in this way in Arcane, but that's fine too, not every film needs to do it.
posted by xdvesper at 7:48 PM on November 29, 2021
Wow GeniandProust, those points are kind of the exact opposite of the reactions I've been hearing from people - that the worldbuilding is fantastic, it paints a very lived-in and real world within a few minutes, and the stakes are real and make people care about those characters, with clear cause and effect and satisfying narrative arcs with solid starts and ends.
I agree with that the weirdly sexual relationship Jinx has with Silco is weird and could have been written out without harming the rest of the story. She's meant to have a father - daughter type relationship with him, which is then papered over with "well they're both fucked up people in a fucked up environment" - maybe they were going for the Harley x Joker thing, who knows, but Jinx is her own character, she's neither Harley nor Joker.
Personally, the highlight of the show for me was the Viktor and Jayce male friendship modeled in the story: I think that kind of supportive relationship - and willingness to call out the other when you think they're going down the wrong path - to have really high role modelling value. Eg, Jayce abandons Mel when he finds out Viktor is in trouble, he clearly prioritizes Viktor over his own romantic pursuits. I think the power of the story would have been greatly diminished if it was a gay type relationship.
posted by xdvesper at 7:58 PM on November 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
I agree with that the weirdly sexual relationship Jinx has with Silco is weird and could have been written out without harming the rest of the story. She's meant to have a father - daughter type relationship with him, which is then papered over with "well they're both fucked up people in a fucked up environment" - maybe they were going for the Harley x Joker thing, who knows, but Jinx is her own character, she's neither Harley nor Joker.
Personally, the highlight of the show for me was the Viktor and Jayce male friendship modeled in the story: I think that kind of supportive relationship - and willingness to call out the other when you think they're going down the wrong path - to have really high role modelling value. Eg, Jayce abandons Mel when he finds out Viktor is in trouble, he clearly prioritizes Viktor over his own romantic pursuits. I think the power of the story would have been greatly diminished if it was a gay type relationship.
posted by xdvesper at 7:58 PM on November 29, 2021 [4 favorites]
that the worldbuilding is fantastic, it paints a very lived-in and real world within a few minutes
I found that applied to the scenery, but not the people. I didn’t get much sense of depth to either of the main societies.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:28 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
I found that applied to the scenery, but not the people. I didn’t get much sense of depth to either of the main societies.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:28 PM on November 29, 2021 [2 favorites]
w/r/t skin color in Arcane -- I'm personally trying an experiment where I am trying to set aside my US-centric idea of Whiteness entirely. In the US, Whiteness isn't a real cultural identifier. There's no such thing as "white culture" qua "white culture". Whiteness is pretty much entirely constructed as a white supremacist category defined only in its opposition to Blackness.
Like, what would US white culture even be? German? British? Irish? The inclusion / exclusion criteria are always shifting. My Italian spouse would not be considered white in many places where I grew up in the South, despite having a pretty light skintone. This shifting categorization is a feature of white supremacy -- it allows for the flexible inclusion or exclusion of groups depending on the white supremacist needs of the moment.
In Arcane, and within the limited subset of the world we are shown in season 1 (Piltover and Zaun) I'm not sure there's an easy way to quantify how much diversity is present based on how much perceived Whiteness is present. When I was watching it, I personally perceived the Piltover rich people as coding as White, British, and Shitty, while the Zaun mixture of skin tones all coded as immigrant / oppressed peoples trying to scrape by, and who didn't have access to any dominant group privileges even if they had skintones comparable to Rich White British Shitty people. I wasn't really getting racial conflict strife vibes out of any of the storylines -- seemed more class based to me.
w/r/t mental illness and jinx + the weird sexualization of the jinx / silco relationship...yeah. That sucks. I think they are trying to go for a "traumatic event happens that is so awful it breaks the mind" kind of thing but hoo boy did it trip my red flags for problematic handling for sure. I'm not sure how they could have done that better, though. I don't personally know what a more sensitive / realistic portrayal of trauma-induced psychosis for someone in Jinx's societal station would look like. See also: Jane in Doom Patrol (though I'm only 4 episodes in there).
posted by lazaruslong at 2:08 AM on November 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
Like, what would US white culture even be? German? British? Irish? The inclusion / exclusion criteria are always shifting. My Italian spouse would not be considered white in many places where I grew up in the South, despite having a pretty light skintone. This shifting categorization is a feature of white supremacy -- it allows for the flexible inclusion or exclusion of groups depending on the white supremacist needs of the moment.
In Arcane, and within the limited subset of the world we are shown in season 1 (Piltover and Zaun) I'm not sure there's an easy way to quantify how much diversity is present based on how much perceived Whiteness is present. When I was watching it, I personally perceived the Piltover rich people as coding as White, British, and Shitty, while the Zaun mixture of skin tones all coded as immigrant / oppressed peoples trying to scrape by, and who didn't have access to any dominant group privileges even if they had skintones comparable to Rich White British Shitty people. I wasn't really getting racial conflict strife vibes out of any of the storylines -- seemed more class based to me.
w/r/t mental illness and jinx + the weird sexualization of the jinx / silco relationship...yeah. That sucks. I think they are trying to go for a "traumatic event happens that is so awful it breaks the mind" kind of thing but hoo boy did it trip my red flags for problematic handling for sure. I'm not sure how they could have done that better, though. I don't personally know what a more sensitive / realistic portrayal of trauma-induced psychosis for someone in Jinx's societal station would look like. See also: Jane in Doom Patrol (though I'm only 4 episodes in there).
posted by lazaruslong at 2:08 AM on November 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
In Arcane, and within the limited subset of the world we are shown in season 1 (Piltover and Zaun) I'm not sure there's an easy way to quantify how much diversity is present based on how much perceived Whiteness is present.
For me, this is the wrong way to look at it. Arcane is a TV series created by a US company (although the animation was done in France and the voice actors are from all over). They are working primarily from a US viewpoint, race extremely included, although they must also have an eye on the international market. So by setting aside US ideas of whiteness, you are just clouding your ability to analyze the decisions Riot is making in the series (and the game, I suppose). If anything, you should be keeping both US and French ideas about race in your head while watching the series, depending on how free a hand the animators had in filling in crowd scenes.
Appealing to the demographics of a fantasy setting as an excuse for low racial representation in modern terms is also a dead end. It's not like Piltover/Zaun is a real place; Riot made it up, and the demographics can be whatever they choose. If they were making a series set in, say, Medieval Iceland, you might appeal to demographics to explain the lack of Black and/or Asian characters (but not Indigenous ones), but, if there are few Black characters in Piltover, that's not the result of demographics; that's a decision by Riot and the animation company.
Also, racial representation in a fantasy world does not have to mean racial conflict or that it should replicate real world racial economic injustice; one advantage of fantasy is that you can imagine a better and/or different world.
Lastly, I suspect that it would take a very very good set of writers to do anything with Jinx that wasn't crossing some sort of line; it seems kind of baked into her character as depicted in the game. It's like the way most Batman villains are traps for writers; most of them are "evil/criminal by way of mental illness," and there isn't much that can be done with that that doesn't trivialize or demonize mental illness.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:37 AM on November 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
For me, this is the wrong way to look at it. Arcane is a TV series created by a US company (although the animation was done in France and the voice actors are from all over). They are working primarily from a US viewpoint, race extremely included, although they must also have an eye on the international market. So by setting aside US ideas of whiteness, you are just clouding your ability to analyze the decisions Riot is making in the series (and the game, I suppose). If anything, you should be keeping both US and French ideas about race in your head while watching the series, depending on how free a hand the animators had in filling in crowd scenes.
Appealing to the demographics of a fantasy setting as an excuse for low racial representation in modern terms is also a dead end. It's not like Piltover/Zaun is a real place; Riot made it up, and the demographics can be whatever they choose. If they were making a series set in, say, Medieval Iceland, you might appeal to demographics to explain the lack of Black and/or Asian characters (but not Indigenous ones), but, if there are few Black characters in Piltover, that's not the result of demographics; that's a decision by Riot and the animation company.
Also, racial representation in a fantasy world does not have to mean racial conflict or that it should replicate real world racial economic injustice; one advantage of fantasy is that you can imagine a better and/or different world.
Lastly, I suspect that it would take a very very good set of writers to do anything with Jinx that wasn't crossing some sort of line; it seems kind of baked into her character as depicted in the game. It's like the way most Batman villains are traps for writers; most of them are "evil/criminal by way of mental illness," and there isn't much that can be done with that that doesn't trivialize or demonize mental illness.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:37 AM on November 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
For me, this is the wrong way to look at it. Arcane is a TV series created by a US company (although the animation was done in France and the voice actors are from all over). They are working primarily from a US viewpoint, race extremely included, although they must also have an eye on the international market. So by setting aside US ideas of whiteness, you are just clouding your ability to analyze the decisions Riot is making in the series (and the game, I suppose). If anything, you should be keeping both US and French ideas about race in your head while watching the series, depending on how free a hand the animators had in filling in crowd scenes
I take your point, but I'm really not sure it's this simple. Riot is a US company, yes, but their flagship product is League of Legends and Arcane is based in that world. League of Legends is popular in the US, but much more popular in Asian countries, especially Korea, China, and Taiwan. Arcane itself premiered simultaneously on Netflix and Tencent. I think it's more than just an eye to the international market. Here's a pic of the show’s co-creator Christian Linke; CEO Nicolo Laurent; global president of entertainment Shauna Spenley, company co-founders Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck; show co-creator Alex Yee.
I dunno. I'm definitely open to the idea of engaging with racial dynamics in Arcane critically (obv, I'm here and enjoying our conversations in this thread!) but I'm not sure that doing so with a US / French race framework is the most helpful way to do so. Of course I may be wrong! I've tried googling a bit for articles about racial dynamics in Arcane from smart folks but haven't found much. Perhaps some will come along and help me understand more (and this thread is certainly helping too).
posted by lazaruslong at 3:57 AM on November 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
I take your point, but I'm really not sure it's this simple. Riot is a US company, yes, but their flagship product is League of Legends and Arcane is based in that world. League of Legends is popular in the US, but much more popular in Asian countries, especially Korea, China, and Taiwan. Arcane itself premiered simultaneously on Netflix and Tencent. I think it's more than just an eye to the international market. Here's a pic of the show’s co-creator Christian Linke; CEO Nicolo Laurent; global president of entertainment Shauna Spenley, company co-founders Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck; show co-creator Alex Yee.
I dunno. I'm definitely open to the idea of engaging with racial dynamics in Arcane critically (obv, I'm here and enjoying our conversations in this thread!) but I'm not sure that doing so with a US / French race framework is the most helpful way to do so. Of course I may be wrong! I've tried googling a bit for articles about racial dynamics in Arcane from smart folks but haven't found much. Perhaps some will come along and help me understand more (and this thread is certainly helping too).
posted by lazaruslong at 3:57 AM on November 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
Lastly, I suspect that it would take a very very good set of writers to do anything with Jinx that wasn't crossing some sort of line; it seems kind of baked into her character as depicted in the game. It's like the way most Batman villains are traps for writers; most of them are "evil/criminal by way of mental illness," and there isn't much that can be done with that that doesn't trivialize or demonize mental illness.
Yeah, I think you're spot on here. Looking at her TV Tropes entry, I think it's the combination of a few tropes that just set off so many bells. As someone who lives w/ mental illness I could honestly be okay with never seeing another harley quinn haha psychosis character again. I really liked Powder for a lot of reasons, but the Jinx Joker heel turn was disappointing.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:05 AM on November 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I think you're spot on here. Looking at her TV Tropes entry, I think it's the combination of a few tropes that just set off so many bells. As someone who lives w/ mental illness I could honestly be okay with never seeing another harley quinn haha psychosis character again. I really liked Powder for a lot of reasons, but the Jinx Joker heel turn was disappointing.
posted by lazaruslong at 4:05 AM on November 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm not super on board with the idea that "Riot is a US company" and thus all criticism must flow through the lens of US racial politics or else we're analyzing it wrongly.
League is a competitive multiplayer game, and as mentioned, is more popular in Asia, and no US team has ever won the world title. In fact, every world title since 2011 has been won by a Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese team except for the first tournament, which they weren't invited to play in...
Furthermore, Riot Games is 100% owned by Tencent, a Chinese gaming giant.
As an example: if Mihoyo (a Chinese studio) creates a TV series, should they get a free pass on having poor representation of black cultures but get judged more harshly if they mess up ethnic Asian representation?
Does the creator more, or does the audience matter more, when deciding if a work of art respects diversity... or should neither matter?
posted by xdvesper at 5:48 AM on November 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
League is a competitive multiplayer game, and as mentioned, is more popular in Asia, and no US team has ever won the world title. In fact, every world title since 2011 has been won by a Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese team except for the first tournament, which they weren't invited to play in...
Furthermore, Riot Games is 100% owned by Tencent, a Chinese gaming giant.
As an example: if Mihoyo (a Chinese studio) creates a TV series, should they get a free pass on having poor representation of black cultures but get judged more harshly if they mess up ethnic Asian representation?
Does the creator more, or does the audience matter more, when deciding if a work of art respects diversity... or should neither matter?
posted by xdvesper at 5:48 AM on November 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
If they were making a series set in, say, Medieval Iceland, you might appeal to demographics to explain the lack of Black and/or Asian characters (but not Indigenous ones)
Huh? Iceland doesn’t have an indigenous population. In what way does “demographics” not explain their absence, but does explain the absence of Black or Asian characters?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 10:09 AM on November 30, 2021
Huh? Iceland doesn’t have an indigenous population. In what way does “demographics” not explain their absence, but does explain the absence of Black or Asian characters?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 10:09 AM on November 30, 2021
I feel like I am being "take on all comers" in this thread, so, after this I think I'll step back and let others talk. I am putting some more thoughts in the episode threads on FanFare, if people care. Anyway:
xdvesper -- Personally, the highlight of the show for me was the Viktor and Jayce male friendship modeled in the story: I think that kind of supportive relationship - and willingness to call out the other when you think they're going down the wrong path - to have really high role modelling value. Eg, Jayce abandons Mel when he finds out Viktor is in trouble, he clearly prioritizes Viktor over his own romantic pursuits. I think the power of the story would have been greatly diminished if it was a gay type relationship.
Eh, tastes may differ, but this is also an issue of representation. I personally am happy to see a gay relationship in almost any show, and Viktor and Jayce have as much chemistry in their first couple of episodes ans Caitlyn and Vi do. The romance between Medarda and Jayce really hit me as "Hey, he's totally not gay!" signalling, which, you know, not surprised.
As an example: if Mihoyo (a Chinese studio) creates a TV series, should they get a free pass on having poor representation of black cultures but get judged more harshly if they mess up ethnic Asian representation?
No, but, if you are watching that show, you would need to be alert to how,say, Chinese anti-Black racism manifests to recognize and process it, and you might have to be very knowledgeable to recognize that a depiction of a minority within China is being misrepresented.
lazaruslong -- I take your point, but I'm really not sure it's this simple. Riot is a US company, yes, but their flagship product is League of Legends and Arcane is based in that world. League of Legends is popular in the US, but much more popular in Asian countries, especially Korea, China, and Taiwan. Arcane itself premiered simultaneously on Netflix and Tencent.
This is definitely true, and I imagine there is a strong feedback loop between the interests of the parent company, Riot, and the interests and reactions of the players, especially in Asia which makes it more complicated than I drew it, but it seems* that Riot is the primary creative driver, which still means the baseline is US attitudes and tropes**. After all, sticking with Black representation, how likely is it that Tencent or Asian gamers are going to push to have more Black characters in the game or show? Also, I have never said that I though the depictions of the Black characters in the show were particularly racist***; just there there weren't a lot of them.
* I confess that I haven't made a deep study of how Riot functions creatively, and based on comments above, I don't particularly care to. I'm going on relatively quick internet searches.
** And, of course, those tropes, filtered through years of cultural exchange, are not entirely of of US origin anyway.
** Although Ekko's face paint gives me pause.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:50 AM on November 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
xdvesper -- Personally, the highlight of the show for me was the Viktor and Jayce male friendship modeled in the story: I think that kind of supportive relationship - and willingness to call out the other when you think they're going down the wrong path - to have really high role modelling value. Eg, Jayce abandons Mel when he finds out Viktor is in trouble, he clearly prioritizes Viktor over his own romantic pursuits. I think the power of the story would have been greatly diminished if it was a gay type relationship.
Eh, tastes may differ, but this is also an issue of representation. I personally am happy to see a gay relationship in almost any show, and Viktor and Jayce have as much chemistry in their first couple of episodes ans Caitlyn and Vi do. The romance between Medarda and Jayce really hit me as "Hey, he's totally not gay!" signalling, which, you know, not surprised.
As an example: if Mihoyo (a Chinese studio) creates a TV series, should they get a free pass on having poor representation of black cultures but get judged more harshly if they mess up ethnic Asian representation?
No, but, if you are watching that show, you would need to be alert to how,say, Chinese anti-Black racism manifests to recognize and process it, and you might have to be very knowledgeable to recognize that a depiction of a minority within China is being misrepresented.
lazaruslong -- I take your point, but I'm really not sure it's this simple. Riot is a US company, yes, but their flagship product is League of Legends and Arcane is based in that world. League of Legends is popular in the US, but much more popular in Asian countries, especially Korea, China, and Taiwan. Arcane itself premiered simultaneously on Netflix and Tencent.
This is definitely true, and I imagine there is a strong feedback loop between the interests of the parent company, Riot, and the interests and reactions of the players, especially in Asia which makes it more complicated than I drew it, but it seems* that Riot is the primary creative driver, which still means the baseline is US attitudes and tropes**. After all, sticking with Black representation, how likely is it that Tencent or Asian gamers are going to push to have more Black characters in the game or show? Also, I have never said that I though the depictions of the Black characters in the show were particularly racist***; just there there weren't a lot of them.
* I confess that I haven't made a deep study of how Riot functions creatively, and based on comments above, I don't particularly care to. I'm going on relatively quick internet searches.
** And, of course, those tropes, filtered through years of cultural exchange, are not entirely of of US origin anyway.
** Although Ekko's face paint gives me pause.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:50 AM on November 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
Iceland doesn’t have an indigenous population.
How odd. This appears to be the general consensus, but the original settlers quickly developed their own language and customs and "Icelandic" is recognized as an ethnicity. The only difference between them and, say Hawaiians, is that we have records of when they arrived.
Ah well, consistency is overrated...
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:01 AM on November 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
How odd. This appears to be the general consensus, but the original settlers quickly developed their own language and customs and "Icelandic" is recognized as an ethnicity. The only difference between them and, say Hawaiians, is that we have records of when they arrived.
Ah well, consistency is overrated...
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:01 AM on November 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
The only difference between them and, say Hawaiians, is that we have records of when they arrived.
This is definitely turning into a derail, but you might want to look up “indigenous people”. The idea that Icelanders are indigenous in the way Hawaiians are is potentially pretty darn offensive.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 11:17 AM on November 30, 2021
This is definitely turning into a derail, but you might want to look up “indigenous people”. The idea that Icelanders are indigenous in the way Hawaiians are is potentially pretty darn offensive.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 11:17 AM on November 30, 2021
Sorry, breaking my promise.
Huh? Iceland doesn’t have an indigenous population.
Indigenous Greenlanders and Saami characters appear, sometimes living in Iceland, in a number of sagas.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:46 AM on November 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
Huh? Iceland doesn’t have an indigenous population.
Indigenous Greenlanders and Saami characters appear, sometimes living in Iceland, in a number of sagas.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:46 AM on November 30, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is definitely turning into a derail, but you might want to look up “indigenous people”. The idea that Icelanders are indigenous in the way Hawaiians are is potentially pretty darn offensive.
Yeah, they both qualify by the dictionary definition but looking at the broader usage there has to be an element of being colonized/dominated by a different culture later. So, never mind.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:01 PM on November 30, 2021
Yeah, they both qualify by the dictionary definition but looking at the broader usage there has to be an element of being colonized/dominated by a different culture later. So, never mind.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 12:01 PM on November 30, 2021
Indigenous Greenlanders and Saami characters appear, sometimes living in Iceland, in a number of sagas.
Huh, that’s really interesting. Do you happen know which sagas/eddas?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 12:18 PM on November 30, 2021
Huh, that’s really interesting. Do you happen know which sagas/eddas?
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 12:18 PM on November 30, 2021
I'm not super on board with the idea that "Riot is a US company" and thus all criticism must flow through the lens of US racial politics or else we're analyzing it wrongly.
League is a competitive multiplayer game, and as mentioned, is more popular in Asia, and no US team has ever won the world title. In fact, every world title since 2011 has been won by a Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese team except for the first tournament, which they weren't invited to play in...
Furthermore, Riot Games is 100% owned by Tencent, a Chinese gaming giant.
Wow, shows how much I know! I literally had no idea that Riot Games was 100% owned by Tencent.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:36 AM on December 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
League is a competitive multiplayer game, and as mentioned, is more popular in Asia, and no US team has ever won the world title. In fact, every world title since 2011 has been won by a Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese team except for the first tournament, which they weren't invited to play in...
Furthermore, Riot Games is 100% owned by Tencent, a Chinese gaming giant.
Wow, shows how much I know! I literally had no idea that Riot Games was 100% owned by Tencent.
posted by lazaruslong at 2:36 AM on December 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wow, shows how much I know! I literally had no idea that Riot Games was 100% owned by Tencent.
More interestingly, Tencent tried to tell Riot to make a mobile version of League back in 2015 when they acquired them fully, but Riot weren't interested, saying it was impossible to replicate the gameplay on a phone. At the time, there was just one mobile MOBA in the market - Vainglory - made by ex-Riot employees. I remember my friends playing it at the time.
Since Riot declined to make a mobile version of League, Tencent went ahead and told their two internal studios to make their own League clones... which pretty much directly ripped off League of Legends gameplay, art and IP.... it turned out to be insanely popular - Honor of Kings has grossed over $13 billion in revenue so far, with over 100 million daily active players. It was even unofficially marketed as the "mobile" version of League. Riot of course complained, but, what can you do?
After Tencent showed Riot it was possible to make a successful mobile version of League, they finally got around to making Wild Rift, and Tencent agreed to segment the market so that Wild Rift would be dominant in Europe / US while Honor of Kings would be dominant in Asia.
Ironically, Wild Rift, the mobile version of League, might be the very best way for players to experience it today. There's no chatting, so there's no toxicity. The controls and systems are streamlined, and it's genuinely fun to play on a phone compared to the PC. Even the graphics are updated.
posted by xdvesper at 3:29 AM on December 1, 2021 [4 favorites]
More interestingly, Tencent tried to tell Riot to make a mobile version of League back in 2015 when they acquired them fully, but Riot weren't interested, saying it was impossible to replicate the gameplay on a phone. At the time, there was just one mobile MOBA in the market - Vainglory - made by ex-Riot employees. I remember my friends playing it at the time.
Since Riot declined to make a mobile version of League, Tencent went ahead and told their two internal studios to make their own League clones... which pretty much directly ripped off League of Legends gameplay, art and IP.... it turned out to be insanely popular - Honor of Kings has grossed over $13 billion in revenue so far, with over 100 million daily active players. It was even unofficially marketed as the "mobile" version of League. Riot of course complained, but, what can you do?
After Tencent showed Riot it was possible to make a successful mobile version of League, they finally got around to making Wild Rift, and Tencent agreed to segment the market so that Wild Rift would be dominant in Europe / US while Honor of Kings would be dominant in Asia.
Ironically, Wild Rift, the mobile version of League, might be the very best way for players to experience it today. There's no chatting, so there's no toxicity. The controls and systems are streamlined, and it's genuinely fun to play on a phone compared to the PC. Even the graphics are updated.
posted by xdvesper at 3:29 AM on December 1, 2021 [4 favorites]
Holy cow. What a miss from that 2015 team. Crazy stuff.
NB: Hideo Kojima is praising Arcane (art specifically) saying it is the "future of animation and CG".
posted by lazaruslong at 6:02 AM on December 1, 2021
NB: Hideo Kojima is praising Arcane (art specifically) saying it is the "future of animation and CG".
posted by lazaruslong at 6:02 AM on December 1, 2021
It's like the way most Batman villains are traps for writers; most of them are "evil/criminal by way of mental illness," and there isn't much that can be done with that that doesn't trivialize or demonize mental illness.
I'm not sure I agree. I think it can be handled with a throwaway line.
Hero: "She was doomed when she was born schizophrenic."
Random wise character: "That's not enough. There are many schizophrenic people but only she has gone on to be twisted and evil. Some event changed her."
Hero: [Feels really guilty about their role in that event]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:17 AM on December 1, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm not sure I agree. I think it can be handled with a throwaway line.
Hero: "She was doomed when she was born schizophrenic."
Random wise character: "That's not enough. There are many schizophrenic people but only she has gone on to be twisted and evil. Some event changed her."
Hero: [Feels really guilty about their role in that event]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:17 AM on December 1, 2021 [4 favorites]
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