octave's cornerARCANE: LEAGUE OF LEGENDS - !!will contain spoilers for season 1 and 2!!
ohhhh i have so many thoughts about this showwwww!!!!!!
arcane overall
god arcane means so much to me. when my dad first reccommended i should watch it i sort of hesitantly put it on while i was cleaning my room but by a few episodes in i was invested. the artstyle, the music, the character arcs and development, just, all of this show is absolutely incredible. i think it takes the spot as my favourite tv show ever honestly. i dont even know how to word it very well how much i adore arcane. like. GOSH i love it so so so much.
anyway, enough of that rambling, onto some stuff with actual substance.
"♫ oh the misery, everybody wants to be my enemy ♫"
arcane has an absolutely beautiful soundtrack, and it's awesome to see all the different artists featured in the tracks. im a big fan of a lot of the big, loud, angry, synth based songs that are used quite a lot- my fav is probably Hellfire by FEVER 333. but also i do like some of the less angry songs, like The Line by Twenty One Pilots and Spin The Wheel by Mick Wingert. just, overall the music they use in the show is wonderful. that goes for the orchestral score too- one of my favourites is catharsis. i plan on making a musical analysis post where i look at the significance of Promise Me and I Promised You because they're so interlinked and are used as characterisation for viktor and jayce. there's also an awful lot to say about lyrical detail in like, every single song on the score. as far as i know, most of the songs from the soundtrack were written specifically for arcane so it makes sense that most of the lyrics will align with the story, but it's still cool to find all the little metaphors and references added. i ♥ symbolism. maybe at some point ill make some lyrical analysis posts with my opinions on the songs :3
im gonna go on a quick tangent about season 2's intro song because this version of Enemy with JID makes my music nerd heart go a little bit insane.
from the very beginning of this version, there's definitely a more dramatic feel to it, the orchestra- particularly the strings- used, deeefinitely help with that. in particular, the tense string line used in the second verse and the ASCENDING STRINGS IN THE POST CHORUS I AM IN LOVEE. im absolutely a sucker for good scales and arpeggios. i like the way that JID's verse has a ticking sound, it kiiiinda feels like a callback to ekko and his powers, but i might be reading too far into it. and then in the last chorus, the ascending string line is back and the last post chorus adds A BUNCH OF BRASS AUUGGHHHH i absolutely love it so much. the flourishes!! so dramatic!! and it gives it this sort of twinge of sadness- like you're supposed to feel sympathy for the singer. i LOVE orchestral music. the visuals for arcane's intro also holds a lot of symbolism and foreshadowing but that doesn't go in the music section. i dont have an awful lot to say about the lyrics of the song but it certainly feels like it's either supposed to be about jinx, or its supposed to have aspects from each character. im not really sure, im not too good at words.
love and arcane
arcane is a show about love. it's about family and friends and lovers, and that means so much to me. it's also about class divide, and war, and league of legends lore but thats not what i'd like to focus on here. i want to focus on the way everything that all the characters do is for love. vi needs to find jinx and wants to save jinx because they're sisters, and she still loves her unconditionally. there's like one moment in the entire series where vi decides that she needs to kill jinx for the betterment of everyone else, and she goes back on that not long after. there's the familial love between silco and jinx ("is there anything so undoing as a daughter?"), and the familial love between vi and jinx and vander. vi and jinx stop fighting because they reach common ground- wanting to save their dad. there's the sudden yet strong familial love between jinx and isha- i like that their bond could be interpreted as sisterly or mother and daughter, or both. i saw a post somewhere the other day talking about how they thought isha was just there to grab emotions and make us love her, but that's how children work in the undercity, they turn up and you love them, and i think that's so true, particularly as we see in the first few episodes that barely any children in the undercity end up staying with their birth parents as it seems. maybe isha was also used to show jinx why the parental figures (+ vi probably) in her life did all the things they did. there's so much love in arcane and all of it is so beautiful, and we haven't even touched on romantic ships yet (and i have a lot to say about those).
it also means a lot to me the way that friendships are portrayed in arcane. the way that jayce and caitlyn's bond is so much like siblings, in that it's playful and teasing and fun but also serious when needs be. the way that when jayce and vi team up they become so incredibly stupid. friendships with full trust and support of each other.
throughout the whole show, everything is for love. whether the characters realise that, or whether they realise that what they're doing is bad, they do it for love. maybe apart from when caitlyn has her little evil era, but thats mostly out of grief (and an urge for revenge), which i'd like to argue is love-based anyway.
"in all timelines, in all possibilities, only you could show me this"
im gonna be so for real rn, i made this blogpost so i can talk about how incredibly insane i am about jayce and viktor. their relationship in the end is intended to be up to interpretation but i just can't see how they could be interpreted as non-romantic. thats probably just a me thing though. so. anyways. jayvik drives me absolutely insane but in the best way ever in the world because they're so incredibly in love with each other
viktor fell for jayce IMMEDIATELY. if you look back at their first meeting, not only is there the "wait a minute, this isnt my bedroom" (viktor arcane the gay icon you are) but like. when they're first powering up the hextech, they have literal magic in front of them and viktor still spends his time glancing up at jayce with such love in his eyes. GODDD they're so in love. there are SO MANYYY tiny little details that you see when you look closely at all the little interactions that jayce and v have. the way that jayce and mel's scene cuts to viktor periodically to make it feel like jayce is cheating in a literal sense while it also represents jayce's shift from science to politics OHHH ARCANE I LOVE YOU ARCANEE. jayce is just about the most bisexual man i have ever seen in media. rahhhrhrhhhrhahhr (sorry i really don't know how to organise these thoughts into good paragraphs)
and of course i need to yap about their fuckass (affectionate) ending. the way jayce is willing to give up his whole life's work to just, have viktor back. the way that jayce tells v his imperfections are beautiful and he's always seen it that way (his hallucination of viktor in the fire in s2e7 includes his cane- jayce loves all of him, always has and always will.) and obviously there's the parallel to s1e9 (i think?) of viktor's "promise me" to jayce's "i promised you" (which just so happen to be the names of the tracks playing during those moments too), and THEY LOOK AT EACH OTHERS' LIPS BEFORE LOOKING IN EACH OTHERS' EYES I AM SO UNWELL I CANT DO THIS. the way that jayce brings up viktor all of the time, the way he very bitterly adds "...and me" to when he says "i thought you were done with hextech", the way he VERY BITTERLY says "my partner died in this room" that man is OBSESSED with viktor and you can't convince me otherwise.
