#arcanethoughts

[ravenking1771]

This is why I can never rate season 2 as high as Season 1. It is still good but the ridiculous emphasis on Jinx, and their inability to give Vi anything to do and tearing her down were massive flaws.

I remember a review of Star Trek V by a guy named SF Debris where he summed the major problem with the move that the director William Shatner couldn't raise his character, Captain Kirk, up without tearing down everyone-else.

Was there a way to write Jinx and Vi so they didn't fall into this trap? Absolutely and I think it would have been definitely possible with the time restraints and the general plot structure of the story. But it would mean among other things not portraying Jinx as this all important special person.

Why I find episodes 5 and 7 so galling is that they are a direct result of this favouritism. Episode 5 is all about sabotaging Vi's character, neutering her intelligence and her independence. They in short write her like an idiot. Vi could have and really should have called Jinx out on her reckless decisions, murderous violence and her complicity in the devastation of Zaun. Vi knew this stuff and if we are to take her pit-fighting career montage at face value in the head-space to really mix it up with Jinx verbally and physically. Being that the writers are going to use Vander like relationship superglue to get them back together this can be actually ugly. Instead the writers have to make Vi make stupid points (ugly gadgets), fail to make the easiest points (I didn't murder anyone Jinx) and make moronic confessions like pretending Vi's problem with Jinx was that she was over protective (you don't need my help anymore). jinx and Vi's relationship ended because Jinx chose Silco, his vindictiveness and hate and then committed reckless, murderous, selfish, and evil actions that Vi could not endure and had to stop.

Episode 7 is even worse in some respects because A.) it engages in some truly stupid world building by having Vi's death being the thing that leads the two cities to reconcile, something so stupid politically it's like claiming I can use ketchup to replace to someone's blood. B.) the AU universe is solely setup so that the writers can find someway to get Ekko and Jinx together because otherwise Ekko would not want anything to do with Jinx and to also once again steal any sort of victory or closure from Vi by saving her sister because the writers had to cram in a romance/ship in an already overstuffed and rushed season. Seriously this episode could be eliminated entirely by having Vi get through to her sister in the jail cell (Jinx can still leave to rally the Under-city instead of her suicide attempt.) and have Ekko and Jayce hideout in the Firefights base so Ambessa can't force Jayce to make weapons. Ekko can invent his Z-drive(?) thing to contain the anomaly in the Hexgates. There I just freed of 50 minutes for interesting character moments.

At the end it feels so meaningless, annoying, and arbitrary. Its like I am trying to enjoy the story and authors insist on poking me in the ye and getting in the way of the natural flow of the story.

In the game lore, Vi is a good mechanic and engineer who built her own gauntlets. In the show, only Jinx is the engineer and gets to insult Vi on not knowing how to build her own weapons.

Vi was an exceptional boxer in Season 1 and Jinx couldn't beat teen Vi's high score in hand to hand combat no matter how hard she tried. In Season 2, Jinx is a Shimmer supersoldier who goes toe to toe with Vi + Hextech gauntlets, something Shimmer Chemtanks weren't able to do.

In Season 1 Powder idolizes Vi's physical strength, watches her box with awe, and wishes she could be a strong fighter like her. In Season 2, Jinx scoffs that she never got to do fun things with Vi because Vi only liked to hit things.

In Season 2 Jinx gets to call out Vi for joining the enforcers who killed their parents. Vi never gets to retort that Jinx joined the man who killed Vander, and the only reason Vi joined the enforcers was to prevent a large scale invasion of Zaun and stop a harmful Chembaron civil war, both of which were caused by Jinx's reckless actions.

Jinx insults Vi's alcoholism and passiveness towards the oppression the Undercity was facing, even though Jinx herself hid in her hideout playing with bugs and let countless innocents face the brunt of the punishment for her crimes, and only went to the prison for Isha, not out of altruism.

There are many scenes in both seasons depicting Jinx's trauma + mental illness in depth and she gets many long monologue scenes spelling out her emotions for the audience. Vi doesn't, despite spending her entire childhood in a horrible prison while Jinx was the doted-on princess of a crime lord.

It's clear. To the show writers, Jinx is a genius engineer supersoldier expert combatant who is also a sympathetic traumatized victim and revolutionary hero. Vi is her big dumb meathead older sister.

[utaesthetics]

DM-ArcaneThought