#soon i'll be back in my pathologic analysis hole i fear...

[thanatika]

the holy trinity of why arcane season 2 was so bad, in order:

that original show pitch the showrunner wrote that made it clear they never saw the piltover vs zaun conflict as a justified class struggle

that interview quote where one of the writers talked about how they left an immense amount of character development scenes to happen offscreen or "told with a meaningful look" as a way of doing "economical storytelling"

that other interview quote where it was revealed that compared to S1, where the animators were given the story and told what needed to be animated, but then given some leeway on details and style, the design of S2's story partially involved the animators coming to the writers with visual ideas, and the writers picking ones they liked and trying to make a story to fit it. (and to be clear, the animation in S1 is what really elevated the decent writing and covered for some of its narrative holes and made the show great. but clearly that doesn't work if you fully lean on it as a crutch.)

this isn't even getting into all of the reasons and examples within the show itself. but seeing all of these little behind-the-scenes tidbits come out over the past few weeks has made me go oh. i get it now.