The s2 Silco/Vander/Felicia flashback
@lady-griffin stealing the conversation from over there, because we are already yapping so long on somebody else's topic.
If I was doing that scene, without completely rewriting or removing it – I would have made it less of a flashback and more of memory.
Have things be disjointed or non-real elements included; Vander’s memories have been torn up again and again and again but Vi calling his name was enough for him to put them together and be cognizant enough to be himself again... but those memories are still broken up. It’s not 100%.
Some possible thoughts - having flickers of other people being in the bar too (making it feel more like a community and not just three best friends) and then it just becomes Vander, Silco, and Felicia because those two are who he tried so hard to remember.
Maybe we see the mom dancing with the dad, but he keeps flickering in and out and disappears altogether because Vander wasn’t desperate to remember him as much when he was being experimented on by Singed; but Felicia and Silco, his girls, his kids – he clung to those memories so they're more solid for him, but even they’re not perfectly remembered, because he literally can't.
Maybe young Silco keeps appearing with his eye after the river or the barnacle version of him creeps through for a second or two.
You know, that's a really interesting point. I have issues with that scene and not all of them are really the writing. My thoughts here are bit disjointed, so I'll try to collect em.
I don't like the fated/connected from the start stuff
ie I don't care for the "Vander named Vi/Felicia told him first" stuff, just like I don't care about the "Jayce encounted Viktor as a child". It's just genuinely a trope I don't care for much.
I don't mind CaitVi just nearly missing each other at the heist of Jayce's lab. And I don't mind Timebomb being playmates as kids and that being the origin of their story.
But if like the show had instead given us a scene for Vander and Silco where let's say Vander flashes back to his parent and the parent suddenly drops a scrawny kid into his room and says "you gonna take care of him now". That would have been just about my least favorite turn of events. Even though they are my biggest ship.
It's not great as a "fated" type story
I don't like fated type stories in general but I can see when they work like JayVik obviously did for a lot of people. And you can tell those stories about platonic love.
But to me that isn't really there.
Because the flashback emphasizes Vander's connection with Vi (he named her) but most of the season emphasizes his relationship with Jinx more. Which I don't think is that unnatural, as season 1 is more from Vi's POV and season 2 is more Jinx's POV, it makes sense that those seasons would emphasize each main characters connection with him.
But that means it doesn't work as a tragic fated story.
He named her, but he dies with Jinx. And his last scene that we know of (putting both girls to bed, blowing out the candle) emphasizes both of girls fairly equally.
If his death had been more about him dying for Vi maybe it would have rung better, more poetic more fated. Or if him and Vi had gotten one proper scene chilling together, just about the two of them.
Like let's say the scene Jinx and Vi share at the place with their height measurements, if that had been Warwick and Vi instead, maybe their story would have felt more whole.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want to change it, that scene was important for Jinx and Vi. But Warwick and Vi not getting a scene like that contributes to Vi and Vander's story feeling like it's been left dangling. (ie that Vi hallucinates Loris as Vander)
So getting a big "fated" type scene but then having the storyline feel like it's kind of dangling, doesn't really pull together. Which to me enhances the feeling that the scene feels cheesy.
Felicia's role is both too big and too small
I generally have a bit of an issue with how a lot of the minor s2 characters are written. That a lot of them feel less plausible/in the world. I have this with Isha, with Maddie and also with Felicia.
The art of season 1 was that everybody and their wants and needs felt very plausible within the world. A lot of the s2 characters (Felicia, Isha and Maddie spring to mind) feel more "plopped into the world to do their purpose and then fuck off".
Felicia before season 1 was just glimpses, dead body on the bridge, flashes in Vi's memory. And suddenly she gets this big fat scene that focuses on her and her needs and her ideas.
... and then she's pretty much gone from the story. Yes, she's not completely gone, you can argue Vi and Jinx have their bonding scene and that is the end of her "arc"/her fullfilling your purpose.
I just feel like a little bit more might have tied it together more.
ie Jinx hallucinates her and she tells her not to give up
or she shows up in Warwick's healing dream as a guide kind of like Skye
or she shows up in Vi's hallucinations as a comforting presence
or she shows up in Vander's final "putting the kids to bed" dream
or have her statement be more in line with the "message of the series" that is later voiced by Jinx's hallucination of Silco
Don't get me wrong, as I like Silco and Vander, I'm glad that that scene wasn't an intro to "oh great, now everything is going to be about her now".
But the imo relative lack of follow through makes it weird to me that the scene is like that (long, very focused on her)
I think you actually hit the nail on the head.
When wrote my review/reaction to that scene, I think I settled on this very early that my biggest pet peeve isn't what happens in that scene or is said, but that it feels off. They look too clean, too well fed. Why no dirt, no scars, no tattoos, no ripped clothes, hard muscles from work? Why not try to communicate more about the setting?
Arcane so far has been really good of really characterizing the different eras of the Last Drop. And it feels that just off that it's that empty and has that little personality. (ie if they wanted to emphasize that it's been freshly built and it's before the grand opening they could have had like tools lying around, brooms and buckets)
Or give me Felicia having the same dialogue, but have her actually be ragged, with bags under her eyes, ripped cloths, dirt on her cheek. Make them feel like proper young revolutionaries rather than like well fed students chilling.
That's why I personally prefer the little flashes of Silco in Warwicks memories as he runs through the mines. They communicate so much more personality.
Arcane has done flashbacks that felt very realistic, very plausible, like the Caitlyn or Viktor child flashbacks. And they have done flashbacks that clearly mix stuff that happened with like impressions (uninjured Silco floating in really deep water versus Silco being drowned by Vander in clearly less deep water). And then we have things like are like clearly warped, to the extent of having an off the wall style like the Remember Me video or the Isha montage.
The fact that the Drop is that empty makes it feel like a capsule in time. It doesn't feel like a realistic place that tells us a lot about the circumstances that they live in (even though it would have been super interesting to get a glimpse into the Zaun of the past).
Okay, so let's embrace it's not a realistic, scene, it's just Vander's memory. So what does it tell us abour Vander? Is it his happy place? Then why does the style look so different from other memories? Does it communicate that he cared a lot about Felicia? Then why not build on that again.
I guess the idea of the scene is to emphasize that Vander was connected and bound to the girls from the very start. And his love for the girls is like the only thing that keeps Warwick slightly tethered to thir world in s2. But I dunno, it still feels kind of off to me.
I naturally rag a lot about the writing (just because a lot of the time it's just so clear that they infused scenes with so much more personality and meaning with the animation alone, without any dialogue being needed). But that's really a scene where the writing is "okay", but the animation is kind of uninspired/they could have done more to give it personality. IMO it stands out as one of the more boring scenes of the show.
As for improvements in animation alone:
like you say, flashes of other things, to continue with the theme of Vander's memories being very fractured
make the characters more ragged, make them feel more like a realistic part of the world, imply something about how much work it was for them to get the drop
But that's kind of the thing too. I think the Remember Me montage suggests that Vi had a relatively happy childhood. Which in turn implies that period of peace between them getting the Last Drop and the Bridge.
So maybe they didn't want the implication that life in the past was a constant struggle, to make it work better as a baseline of peace that Jinx and Vi can bond over.
I dunno, to me the scene just feels "off". It feels very "blunt" and kind of not very economic in both the writing and the animation.
Like, when I think of a scene like Caitlyn telling Jayce that she's upset about Jinx. The writing is very blunt and on the nose there as well, but the animation and the scenery with the wind, it tries to communicate something to us about what Caitlyn is feeling, how "stormy" it is inside of her. It's still a building scene "because Caitlyn feels this way, she will later do X".
Compared to that the flashback scene just feels kind of ... flat to me. Very uneconomic about what it communicates compared to the length. (and I don't mean that every scene has to be economic, like clearly Arcane will hold on a scene in order to wallow deeply in that emotion, where the emotion or a badass fight scene is the kill shot of a scene, but it's not that type of scene. Or if it was meant as a "wallow in nostalgia" scene it is outdone by the much more excessive Remember Me)
It's not the worst scene, I don't hate it. There are aspects about it that I like (I like Silco's diary, I like Bozo 1 and Bozo 2, I like the ankle biters). It maybe communicates a bit about what world/backstory the writers imagined (carved from bedrock) even though it does pretty much only in dialogue rather than also in animation.
But I think of scenes like Vi and Jinx walking into Silco and Vander's old hideout and Jinx touching the jackets and imo that does just such a better, more subtle job of communicating things on so many layers (communicate something about Vi and Jinx and their relationship to each other, their relationship with Silco and Vander, Vander and Silco's relationship with each other, something about the time).
I do wonder why it was that way. Like, they clearly wanted to show as a little about Vander and Silco's past. But why do it that way?
Did they throw in the "Vander named Vi" part because they think it's important or because they were worried some people might not get that it's the same woman from Vi's flashbacks? Did they want to set up "Felicia asked both Vander and Silco to take care of the girls" to create a bedrock to explain why Vander and Silco are together in the AU?
