Dec 28, 2025
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If I could write Bruce and Steph's relationship in the modern day, I think I'd layer on it two things - firstly, a kind of comfortable distance. They know too much about each other, and not enough at all, and neither one of them is particularily plussed about changing the former. Steph doesn't need his approval in the same way she did, and he doesn't exert his authority over her life. They exist with a kind of almost-amicable silence.
Secondly, I want Steph to have a deep and fundamental personal distrust of Batman, that neither he nor she know about. If you asked her, of course she trusts him - it's Batman! - but when it's time to walk the walk, when it's just her on the line, she will balk and scream and hate having anything resembling reliance on him for reasons she does not know and does not want to acknoweldge. The past is real and alive but neither of them will ever look it in the eye, and Steph has never been good at pinning down her own motivations.
Inspired by the latest Batgirl issue
Ambessa is so so abusive to Mel precisely because she thinks that this is what good parenting is. She is embodying hyperrealization of cultural standard that is fundamentally messed up and built on violence and conquest. They are the parts of herself that bring her alive, and that she finds to come naturally to her. How do you raise a daughter so deeply unlike you, when your way is the only way you know to stay alive, especially in Noxus?
Because Ambessa loves her daughter! Deeply! Stupidly! And that love does not point her to kindness or adoration the way so many of Arcane's other parents are pointed - it points her to fear and violence, because to Ambessa, that is what love is. Her voice lines in the game literally indicate this - she considers motherhood and battle to be two sides of the same thing, conflated into one cohesive whole. How can her mothering be anything but a fight against their nature, to ensure they will survive anything she fears?
And the Black Rose is then the embodiment of those fears made flesh. There is actually something after her, her family, her children. There is something that has killed her son. There is something that has taken her daughter. What kind of mother would she be, if she did not fight for them?
Nevermind that this was an enemy she delivered to their doorstep. Nevermind the ways her own politicking have places Mel under risk. Nevermind that Ambessa has herself triggered actions that placed her daughter directly under a gun. This is the way to ensure her family will be safe.
I think we're going to see all the tdac charecters backslide in a big way - esp. Zooble and Jax - but gosh, Ragatha.
It's like - we've seen her, in episode 7, have just that little bit more confidence - willing to contradict Abel, willing to put a hand out to Pomni even though she was terrified of rejection, finally being emotionally engaged enough to figure out Kinger - she's letting the mask slip! She's letting herself be a person!
And at the end, her expression, her voice, of just absolute terror. It's like... I know a lot of people read that last scene as heartbroken, and I think that's true, but there's also that question - she's the one who asks what would have happened if they pushed the other button. What would have happened if they rejected Cain.
And he gives a nonsense answer but buried in that is that he didn't even consider it as a possibility. Because he doesn't know what he'd do, if that were true.
And for her - I think we're going to see her slide back into smiles and goodness and sweetness and optimism because the all seeing god of their universe has shown that he is willing to do something absolutely terrible to confirm that they all love him. And she, more than anyone else out of the cast is used to adapting herself to become palatable to an unstable authority figure who will lash out if things don't feel Right.
You never truly leave home, yanno?
A lot of people write Kinger comforting Ragatha right when she enters the Circus and as much as I adore those fics (and I will continue to read them!) I don't necessarily think that's the only outline of what could have happened.
Kinger, when she arrives, describes himself as in the throes of guilt (and probably also in the throes of grief, since Ragatha doesn't seem to know about Queenie). While it's possible that he was making up for that grief in niceness, I don't really think that's him - it's a very Ragatha tendancy, and that's something in her he kinda struggles to recognize (see him talking abour Ragatha overextending herself as fear over losing a relationship, rather than Ragatha's other fear of rejection if she is her honest self).
What could have also happened is that he was really distant from her for the first few days and weeks - that he was distant from everyone, that noone could get through to him or connect to him, and that it was Ragatha - in part her newness but also her steadfast kindness - that allowed her to reach out and into him. At a time where he could only see himself as vile and unworthy of connections because of the mistakes he made, she showed that she believed he deserved better.
The thing is that there are parts of the Jax conversation that I like - it's very true to the experience of having a terrible coworker or an abusive sibling, where you can't really get away from them, and you can't change them, and so your only option is to do (as the crew said) make your peace with that reality. Jax is a dog who bites and they don't know why he bites and he may very well keep biting, but the only other option would be to put him down, to let him abstract himself, and they care too much about him to let that happen. It's a little bleak and inherantly compromising, but that goes back to the themes of the show present that same conversation - that sometimes circumstances are unchangeable, and that all you can do is make your peace with them, and find joy and purpose and meaning where you can. Anger serves no purpose here unless you want to take action on it, and Zooble admits in episode 7 that even they don't want to see Jax gone. They've gotta let go.
And (apologies for the negativity) that's why I hate it when Pomni says "And we've all done bad things!" because it isn't really emotionally true to that reality. Gangle's bitten them, yes - she's been mean and cruel as a manager, she was mean to Jax through EP 5 - but it is nearly uniformly in response to Jax's cruelty (with the exception of the Clockwork Orange bit). How much that justifies it is up to you, but she can be trusted, in general, not to bite. Ragatha is the same, as are all of them save Jax - they have their moments of meanness and cruelty, but those are exceptions, and sometimes they make that choice of restitution - especially relevant with Ragatha, who apologies both to Jax and to Gangle. Zooble tracks down similar lines, and what has Pomni or Kinger done that comes even remotely close?
Because the point of this conversation isn't that Jax is forgivable, or redeemed, or even safe - he is not any of those things, evidenced by the fact that he begins the conversation by trying to flip it on Zooble, and he's going to try his old techniques on them and Pomni when he's having feelings in the coffeeshop. The point is that they have too many damned problems to try to stay angry at him, and so they have to live with him, and find the easiest way to do that - notably, presenting a unified front that he can't pick away at.
It's an interesting thing to see, starting in EP 5 again, that when the cast has the power to vote, they answer his meanness in kind over and over again. Jax isn't free to mock and abuse them - they actually do some incredibly mean things to him, whenever does something even a little out of line. The vegan thing, for example, is directly related to him eating Gangle, the maid dress is right after he insults Ragatha, the corn and Ragatha crashout follow him making a pass at Gangle for her potential failure to bat. That's not to say that these were perfectly equivical - they weren't - but also something purely equivical wouldn't work. They shift the power dynamic here permanently, leaving Jax at the absolute bottom, because he cannot be trusted anyplace higher.
That follows in EP 6, where Zooble protects Gangle, and Pomni takes him on to spare both Kinger (who probably didn't need it) and Ragatha (who definetly did). It persists in 8, where Zooble and Pomni stonewall him. It's markedly different to their interactions in EP 1-3, where the only person who really tried to stop him was Ragatha to deeply ineffective results, because she was doing it alone (and as the kind of person who doesn't really have the tools to check him).
That's not to say he's incapable of being redeemed - I really do expect it, more than anything else. But I also expect him to end the series at the beginning of a long road that might someday lead to real trust with the crew, real comraderie, a real sense that they can put their guards down because he doesn't bite anymore.
"You weakened me!" By Ambessa is not a declaration of apathy! It is not her blaming Mel! It is when Mel finally learns that her mother isn't apathetic to her, that she isn't disinterested in her fate or disappointing in her, but instead she loved her too much and too deeply. That Mel threatened Ambessa with ruination, because the only way Ambessa has ever known to survive is by embracing brutality and sacrificing a peaceful death, while all Mel has ever wanted is peace. That a peaceful death would have literally meant the death of her child, back when she was still pregnant with one of them!
And Mel's disapproval of her meant that Ambessa could feel herself tumbling into a path of peace. Into a better path, maybe, but a path that for Ambessa has only ever meant death. If she could be more hardhearted, maybe she could have kept both - her family's survival, and her daughter - but alas. Her sending Mel away is not a failure on Mel's part, but in fact a failure on Ambessa's - because she could not withstand the arrows of her disapproval, now she needs to come to Piltover to collect her before whatever older enemies she has catch up with them both. She comes to Piltover to correct that mistake, to show Mel a harder heart, and yet! It's doeesn't work! Because Mel still demands of her vulnerability and she cannot help giving it to her!
Is there no greater expression of love, for her? To even contemplate opening herself up to that which is deadly, for the sake of the life and soul of her daughter? Is there nothing so undoing?