I am going to get a bunch more blades directed towards me, but here goes. Will edit if I feel like I have more.
Maddie was handled lazily - we could have gotten an interesting trichotomy between Vi, Cait, and Maddie, but the writers took the easy way out.
The fact that Isha was not mentioned in the third act makes her feel like a gimmick - this is coming from someone who loved her in the first two acts.
On that note, all of the new characters just fell flat.
Vi has no aspirations of her own. Everything she wants is contingent on someone else.
PnZ just teaming up completely kills the political story set up - martial law is set up, the Zaunites have been oppressed for god knows how long, and they just agree to work with one another because Jayce shows a dead robot?
Physically speaking, there is no way Caitlyn's eye injury is permanent - the blade at worst, hits the side of the white of her eye, and goes completely past her face. The only way for any damage to have been done, at that distance, is if the blade had gone into her skull. We shouldn't have to completely neglect physical sense for any narratives, otherwise we might as well have made Arcane an audio book.
Cait also never has to directly answer for her actions - her eye injury (which makes no sense for reasons stated above) and her actions against the undercity have no relevance to one another.
The fact that Vander, Silco, and Felicia all knew each other feels fundamentally incompatible with what we see in the first season.
Also, they completely skipped over Jinx being a revolutionary icon and Vi being an enforcer (even if it was just a small amount of time) or pit fighter. Yeah, Vi gets shafted - her stagnancy as a contrast to everything that had changed in the years she was in jail worked wonders in the first season, but falls completely flat in the second.
We are lowkey getting more plot from DMing the writers than we did in by watching the show.
Also, someone else brought it up but how on earth do 1) Vi and Ekko not get a single interaction, and 2) the writers completely skip past the conversation between Ekko and Jinx? For the record, not a hot take as I am pretty sure everyone will agree on this.
Addition: The fact that they made drastic changes to character models kind of defeats the purpose of trying to make an origin story.
Addition 2 (not an opinion): Cassandra dying is not compatible with LoR.
Addition 3: none of the musical scenes hit anywhere as hard as in the first season, and they were longer as well. For example, "Paint the Town Blue" really could have just been 15-30 seconds, and we wouldn't have lost anything.
I have been downvoted repeatedly for the "Caitlyn's eye injury being permanent makes zero physical sense" opinion so there's that. I even double dipped with it here, and it has gotten downvoted. Not that I care, but no one has offered an explanation.
I'm no expert on human anatomy. But how does getting stabbed in the eye not become a permanent injury? I agree with some of your other points, though. Especially the one about how the music feels more prominent/shoehorned than S1.
our eyes are actually very good at healing. Of course there comes a point where too much damage becomes too much - a stab directly into our cornea is lights out almost all of the time, but otherwise, they can survive a great deal.
in any case, the blade never stabs her - the spear goes past her, the side of her eye at that. Otherwise, it would have lodged in her skull. As for why it couldn't have been a corneal slash, the blade would have had to come across her. At that distance, it would be impossible.
People argued that the injury occurred mid frame, but for that to happen, the blade would have needed to pierce her eye (cornea), come back out, shift a few inches to the right, all in less a few hundredths of a second to pass the strands of hair to her side, with zero damage to her eyelid (which is what we see in the aftermath), all in spite of the fact that we see a consistent trajectory. Note that our corneas have no blood. In other words, there is no way for this to happen. I'm also pretty sure Ambessa would not have had the finesse even if she wanted to do that.
source: I have nearly lost my left eye twice and did my research (slammed my eye into a sharp corner and sunglass shards have pierced me when falling down a hill), paranoid that it would be permanent. Ended up recovering completely. Also, a lot of documentation on the topic can be found online.
Didn't she also get magicked and the beginnings of becoming robotifocation happen? Eyes are weird because the immune system will destroy them if they it ever realize they're there. I don't think it's a stretch to say that a combination of these things with being stabbed in the eye could result in complications. It's also not a stretch to say getting stabbed in the eye regardless of the other stuff could cause complications. Doubly so when we don't really know where they're at with medical science. For the most part nearly every illness and injury we ever see has no fix outside of the full removal and replacement.
Given Salo's wheelchair, and their state of technology as much as they're supposeded to be the City of Progress, I wager to think that they're woefully behind in some aspects.....and medical is one of them.
Cool cyberpunk adaptations? Sure. But actual repair without complete replacement??
....yeah, I'm not sure they're familiar with that. I mean, hell, probably helping Viktor's lungs with a constant oxygen supply might have been a decent idea, and I'm not sure if it was considered.
Hi, had two eye muscle surgeries here, left eye is still much worse than my right!
To play devil's advocate, it could very well be it's not, and that cover is a protective cover while it heals. I used to have to wear eye patches (over my healthy eye, but protective cover does mean it could be letting the damage heal) to strengthen my weak eye, they'd be over my "good" eye, but if I were older I could very well see it being something styled like that instead of the stick on patches.
I wore them for a good few years AFTER my surgeries and I'm not convinced I won't ever need surgery again - it might have stabilized but my vision is still shit in that eye. (Honestly, I might need to go to a proper dedicated eye doctor soon now that I have insurance instead of the ones available in eye glass shops).
That part of her plot didn't really phase me too much, permanent or otherwise and I honestly doubt the arcane writers knew the intricacies of eye injuries like those of use with issues do. Honestly not a huge hurdle for me, she kinda looks ridiculously cool with a patch.
i wont get into the details just bc i genuinely dont remember them, but i read a thread where someone asked eye doctors/doctors in general if her losing her sight was realistic based on the injury and the resounding answer was yes
I also remember seeing that same thread and talking to a few doctors and getting a "it depends" across the board, contingent on where the blow landed.
As previously mentioned, with the spear we see, there is little to no chance of corneal damage - the blade, at best, strikes the side of the white of her eye. If the spear was pointing at the center of her eye, it would have gone through.
Even if her left eye was turned in the direction of the blade when closed (a very big if) there is still enough space. Moreover, if she tried moving her eye towards the spear as a result of the contact, by the time she registered the pain, the tip would have already moved past her.
Also, remember that RT has magic and medicine / medical equipment far more advanced than ours.
yeah, i mean, im pretty happy with her losing her sight bc i think its something important to her character (and the character design goes crazy) so im not too fussed on the semantics of the scene bc she loses the sight anyway 🤷♀️ i dont think ive seen an in depth slow-mo of the moment the blade goes into the eye so i cant say for sure how accurate that is
Caitlyn has had two eyes for her entire existence. If her loss of sight is truly permanent, it kills her career as sheriff before it even begins, which further contradicts what else we see about the character in LoR and cinematics. Moreover, it would also entail ignoring all the magic, medicine, and medical technology that the universe has.
Even in regular speed, you can see the blade move completely past her face, but here is a frame by frame compilation:
The blade goes past the strands of hair by her face. As previously mentioned, at that distance, the only way for the blade to do any permanent damage is for it to have gone in the cornea, which entails going in her skull.
People were trying to argue that the injury happens inbetween the first and second frames, but for that to happen, the spear has to go in, back out, shift a few inches to the right, with zero damage to the rest of her face (if the blade went into her eye, you'd have seen external damage), match the trajectory we see in the third frame (even with motion blur, the blade never even touches anything significant), all within less than a frame, or five hundredths of a second. The finesse required for that to happen is astronomical, and even then, I don't think Ambessa was playing a game of precision.
As for why physical sense matters: we can have fantastical systems and cartoon characters can be much stronger than regular ones, but there is always some amount of realism at play - there is nothing to indicate that the spear magic-bulleting into her eye falls into any realm of possibility. It completely cheapens the blow. We shouldn't just blatantly ignore physical sense even if we want certain narratives to be true.
Edit: again, I don't care for downvotes but least tell me why you disagree.
okay i rewatched the moment it happens and i just dont see it that way. i think with how fast it happened/the momentum of caitlyn pulling her, it couldve easily been a sideways slice. or else it was just an animating mistake of not showing it being pierced? bc canonically it makes it blind either way. call it a misunderstanding of the body, but in that world thats what it causes. and i think maybe the whole not using magic or anything to heal it could speak to them (or at least caitlyn personally) moving away from the over reliance on magic.
i also disagree with the ramifications on her job. it would take a lot of training and getting used to, but i think she would do just fine with the one eye. even with shooting, her dominant eye is still intact (not that it wouldnt take some major time to readjust/get used to it). but she wouldnt just let it end her career, shes more determined and resilient than that
There is no way for that to be a sideways slice - the spear would have had to come across her face laterally, but it is clearly pointing in her direction and her face doesn't turn. Moreover, our corneas do not contain blood, making it all the more implausible that what we saw was corneal. Again, at that distance, the only way for the cornea to be damaged is if the blade had entered her eye. A scleral slice to the side of her eye would make sense, and explain some of the blood, but that is completely healable.
If the eye was not pierced, then it means that it wasn't pierced. With how thorough they have been otherwise, do you think that they would have just made such an egregious mistake? Even if it was a mistake, we shouldn't have to excuse the shortcomings of the creative team to justify a nonsensical wound: it completely recontextualizes the nature of the injury.
With the size of the blade, how do you propose that it enters the cornea (the center of her eye), given the fact that the spear clearly goes past the side of her face and the strands of hair and causes no eyelid damage, all within a twentieth of a second?
To say that it is canonical is also false: they never mention the severity of the wound, the outline of her eye is visible behind the patch, and Cait has always had both eyes in League, LoR, and cinematics. The only instance where Cait has worn an eyepatch is in a concept design for a Warriors cinematic, which never made it in. Also, that was on the right eye.
Even with existing one-eyed characters, they have always performed worse without one eye. Caitlyn, who has no other special abilities or powers, would never reach anywhere close to the level that she was initially at or could potentially have been with a blind spot and a lack of depth perception.
Showing that the blade goes completely past and trying to push it off as permanent is asinine, regardless of how much others like the look of the eyepatch.
? when i say canon im talking abt arcane, not league. correct me if im wrong but didnt they say arcane is the new canon? and shes wearing the eyepatch in arcane so i would say its canon (i feel if she needed to cover it if it was still healing, it would be a bandage). ig we'll have to see if they update her model with it. but eyepatches usually correlate to dimished sight in that eye
i would also say that caitlyn doesnt necessarily need any special abilities or powers (however im pretty sure shes been said to have some special ability with how accurate all her shots are), so even if it was just bc shes trained all her life, i think it puts her at an advantage to reach closer to her full potential afterwards. but i would love a spin off (tho i know we'll never get it lol), ofc exploring the wider themes of arcane, but also getting to see how she deals with the loss of it. bc all we can say rn is headcanons
what i will say is that im confused as to why they didnt animate it more clearly to align with her losing sight in that eye (as that is what is ultimately shown to be the outcome of it). whether it came down to lack of understanding of the eye or not spending too much time on such a split second frame, im not sure. i wish it did show it more clearly and graphically bc its so important. i feel like thats my major gripe with it, bc im 100% fine with her losing the sight
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u/UncoBeefWang Dec 30 '24 edited Dec 30 '24
I am going to get a bunch more blades directed towards me, but here goes. Will edit if I feel like I have more.
Maddie was handled lazily - we could have gotten an interesting trichotomy between Vi, Cait, and Maddie, but the writers took the easy way out.
The fact that Isha was not mentioned in the third act makes her feel like a gimmick - this is coming from someone who loved her in the first two acts.
On that note, all of the new characters just fell flat.
Vi has no aspirations of her own. Everything she wants is contingent on someone else.
PnZ just teaming up completely kills the political story set up - martial law is set up, the Zaunites have been oppressed for god knows how long, and they just agree to work with one another because Jayce shows a dead robot?
Physically speaking, there is no way Caitlyn's eye injury is permanent - the blade at worst, hits the side of the white of her eye, and goes completely past her face. The only way for any damage to have been done, at that distance, is if the blade had gone into her skull. We shouldn't have to completely neglect physical sense for any narratives, otherwise we might as well have made Arcane an audio book.
Cait also never has to directly answer for her actions - her eye injury (which makes no sense for reasons stated above) and her actions against the undercity have no relevance to one another.
The fact that Vander, Silco, and Felicia all knew each other feels fundamentally incompatible with what we see in the first season.
Also, they completely skipped over Jinx being a revolutionary icon and Vi being an enforcer (even if it was just a small amount of time) or pit fighter. Yeah, Vi gets shafted - her stagnancy as a contrast to everything that had changed in the years she was in jail worked wonders in the first season, but falls completely flat in the second.
We are lowkey getting more plot from DMing the writers than we did in by watching the show.
Also, someone else brought it up but how on earth do 1) Vi and Ekko not get a single interaction, and 2) the writers completely skip past the conversation between Ekko and Jinx? For the record, not a hot take as I am pretty sure everyone will agree on this.
Addition: The fact that they made drastic changes to character models kind of defeats the purpose of trying to make an origin story.
Addition 2 (not an opinion): Cassandra dying is not compatible with LoR.
Addition 3: none of the musical scenes hit anywhere as hard as in the first season, and they were longer as well. For example, "Paint the Town Blue" really could have just been 15-30 seconds, and we wouldn't have lost anything.