How Arcane Writes MORAL AMBIGUITY (9 Methods, 4 Rules)

what was going through your head when you watched this moment how many separate feelings like mutually exclusive feelings were you experiencing all at once were you happy for jinx because i was even though she was sad even though she was devastated even though her life was falling apart i was happy for her for finally embracing who she is and i also felt guilty for being happy because it came at the expense of all these other characters i'd grown so attached to i knew exactly what had to happen here why it had to happen everything felt right but i also felt lost i felt catharsis but i also felt hopelessness and i really think that sums up the power of a morally ambiguous story pendleton ward creator of adventure time was asked what his favorite feeling was and he said being happy and scared at the same time it's my favorite way to feel when i'm on the edge of my seat but i'm happy that sense of conflicting emotions and that really nails how i felt and how i think a lot of people felt with this story so what went into that how did they get the scene how did they make it anything you have to say is from the characters every single one of these characters we ended up with this complex relationship with before we even get to jinx silko you're perfect that scene how did they do that that moment was crazy vi we want her to get powder back when we really understand when jinx turns her back on powder and on her sister that is a complex relationship that took a lot of work to get there jace were frustrated with he finally is making a good decision but man did he make some terrible ones leading up to this nell has this moment of redemption that we respect but we see it's way too late we got seven episodes of corruption and greed and we have a hard time saying she doesn't deserve this victor we're disappointed by and we're sad that we have to be disappointed and that's not even everyone it's all the characters in the show how does all of it work can we trace all of this good complex writing into some step-by-step kind of guide so yeah let's try to do that i count nine methods of creating moral ambiguity in characters and four rules that have to do with plotting and world building there's probably more but let's start the discussion here see if we can spell out all of this clearly specifically step by step and then i'll let you tell me what else you found in the comments and we can build on this okay so let's talk about selco method number one 4d characterization and i hate that term i came up with it i know but just sounds so cheesy i do think it fits and i think it's good to name things so they're easier to talk about but yeah the name could use some work so 4d characterization what do i mean by that so let's talk about the terms people use one-dimensional and two-dimensional characters are similar any characteristics they have are surface level there's no development limited range to how this character acts we call these characters one note and flat 3d characters we call round we see different sides of them we see an arc we see that change that before and after that tells us a lot about the whole character overall by seeing how they change and what they changed into it gives us a picture of a full person 4d is a term i'm giving to characters who have two arcs that give us two pictures of two full entirely separate people these are two arcs layered on top of each other they consist of the same set of events but tell two full versions of two fully different characters even though there's only one actual character and the reason i'm stressing the difference the separateness is that these aren't two interpretations imposed on the character from the audience these are two arcs that are quite different mutually exclusive even and this is intentional by the writers it's not a door they left open for audience input and speculation this is the intended takeaway of this character so anyway i talked about this before in a couple videos about specific characters but here i really want to go into the methodology a real step-by-step look at how to do this so here are the characters they do this with and there's a really precise way of sequencing this and they do with each of these characters the surprising thing perhaps is that we must start with no ambiguity at all we are firmly on one side of the eventual contradiction this character presents but nope not yet no contradiction at this point at this point the character is 2d these characters make them off as interesting but right now they're flat they're almost caricatures silko is the shadowy villain he's scheming he's all about the corruption the under the table deals and eventually he's about breaking those deals cruelty bloodshed monsters we get the surprise appearance accompanied by the you just walked into my trap slow clap and monologue but then best that we get the ruthless warlord very robert baratheon indulging herself paling around with characters who are trying to be serious pushing them to do things for her benefit and their detriment and of course heimerdinger the wise old mentor level headed with centuries of life experience so that's step one step two is the ill-fitting moment which is exactly what it sounds like this is a very in your face moment a reaction a decision that just does not fit the character as we know them but it's a very particular type of ill-fitting it has to be three things one intentional two it has to provide us with a paradox and three it has to provide us with two ways of resolving that paradox the idea basically is that this isn't a character flaw it's not a moment of weakness this is something we didn't understand about the character with silko it's this moment it's okay the cartoonish criminal mastermind no qualms about killing at all stab vander in the back ready to kill his whole family ready to kill powder then she hugs him he does this and then this and we can see how ill-fitting this hug is by the way basically everyone around him reacts they don't get it and we don't get it either but it's this that makes us go huh okay okay i guess this is what i didn't understand about him his trauma of vander his brother's betrayal wasn't just something that changed his life it was something that isolated him and when he sees this child in the same position with hervand or her sister he sees himself in her and he empathizes he wants revenge on the world for how it treated her just like he wants revenge in the world for how it treated him or we see this moment and go i guess i can fit this into my old understanding of zoko soko the super villain he sees this kid this monster and silko's like i love monsters she takes everyone out in one shot she's a force of nature perfect and she's basically already loyal to me for some reason i'm gonna use this child it's a completely unempathetic reaction cold calculating villainous so now ambassador her ill-fitting moment is obviously the you weakened me moment because you weakened me i couldn't endure the look in your eyes whenever i made the decisions the necessary decisions to keep us safe and we're like huh i thought she was ruthless i thought she didn't care ambassador feel weak and again even mel is shocked and neither this is a revelation explains all the posturing and prophecies it's ambassador projecting strength to cover up these insecurities these vulnerabilities or she's manipulating the heck out of mel in the coolest way possible playing on her desire for acceptance it's this i loved you all along moment and also it's playing on her tendency to be soft and to give in to things that appear poor and helpless with heimerdinger it's the decade scene but give it a decade of careful research and it will be ready and this one isn't totally out of the blue like the others but it's still this wait what moment and again we get confusion from the characters and a clear moment of revaluation like i said in my heimerdinger video is this guy old and wise or is he just old so what happens after the ill-fitting moment what we see after this is the story confirming the complexity we need to see this character acting unlike how they acted before all this showing that yes this really did happen it wasn't a moment of weakness this needs to be incorporated into your understanding of this character one way or another with silico we get all the dead scenes there's clearly a bond here even though part of us and also vai think he might just be manipulating her heimerdinger's the most radical everyone just turns on him but still this question about whether he was really wrong about all this he was definitely wrong about something maybe it was the risk assessment or maybe it was just not being empathetic enough his communication skills but he was really right about everything else and ambassador she's a minor character we don't get much just this one scene where she doesn't even speak but the function of the scene is clear when we consider the contrast from what we've gotten until now every scene we see her and she's throwing her weight around she's bombastic she's indulgent she's domineering just raw warlord energy and here we have a very muted response to what mel did to the painting maybe she's upset maybe she feels guilty maybe she's calculating figuring out her next manipulation tactic she's thinking about her relationship with her daughter and it's complicated that's about all we can say for sure so confirming the complexity that's the next step and just to flesh this out a bit more bosoko who i think gives us the most thorough picture of how this double characterization is done after his ill-fitting moment we can look at each scene and ask is he the super villain brainwashing manipulator is this scene brainwashing is this scene manipulation is he gonna betray jinx for jace's deal does he actually think she's perfect or is he telling her what she needs to hear in order to do this or is he a loving dad does he discover his capacity for love here is he bonding with his daughter here does he not want to go to war during the time skip because he now has something to live for something to lose for this character who is all about breaking down barriers that keep us from power is expressing selfless genuine love the final barrier he breaks rewarding him with the war he's always wanted and we get scenes that are pulling us stronger in either direction some scenes are there to make us remember how ruthless and power-hungry he is and other scenes are there to make us question that version of the character see the good in him but the most important thing none of these scenes are conclusive they can each be worked into both narratives both arcs so that's 4d characterization we start with the 2d super villain the 2d warlord the 2d mentor and with the ill-fitting moment we create depth through two mutually exclusive arcs and that's where we get the moral ambiguity one version of this character is morally favorable the other version is morally condemnable and the story keeps us guessing okay method two defining moments of weakness and this is what we get with these characters by victor melvander and this is actually one of the more common methods in fiction in general the 4d thing pretty complex especially if you're dealing with multiple characters it has to encompass the whole character arc the moments of weakness template does work in a similar way but it's about moments in the character's arc moments that make us question our judgment of the character we see something much different in the sequencing here the character is already well developed they have goals conflicts nuance and then something unfortunate happens we see the character have an uncharacteristic moral failure and the rest of the show they're dealing with the consequences of that moral failure trying to redeem themselves both in sorry and in terms of their relationship to us in terms of our judgement of them so the moral failure is very similar in function to the ill-fitting moments but let's look at vai to see how this plays out differently so vai very developed by episode three lots that she's struggling with interesting relationships interesting challenges etc and up until this point we judge her favoritely we're on her side and then of course i told you to stay away it's heartbreaking for us she was never anything but protective and loving until that one brief moment of weakness and that changed everything and she's dealing with the consequences from that point on okay now the difference comes after that with the 4d thing after that it's confirming that this complexity exists that it happened that it's part of the character here we get the opposite after vi's moral failure she's the perfect sister she never gives up she's trying her hardest to demonstrate that she's not that person but the world around her is treating her like that person and it's not even necessarily because of that moment of weakness silko sees her as this destructive corrupting force and jinx's life because she like vander is not all about this monster stuff but he is jinx is questioning her own judgment of i because of the past but also because of kate or because how she believes via's change whatever it is so that's the general pattern we have a developed character we have a moral failure and that color is our judgment of the character and then after that the split between how the character acts and how the world treats them demonstrates that dichotomy by vice action she's this almost idealized perfect sister but the world around her treats her as the absolute worst sister and the audience we're left trying to figure out how we should treat her with our judgment so with victor we see a very similar pattern here very developed interesting etc he's altruistic courageous humble intelligent we're rooting for him we even get why he has to go to singh and when he was a shimmer it works and then in a moment of real stupidity the only time we ever see this character being dumb he realizes he's out of shimmer but uses the hex core anyway and he kills sky again a heartbreaking moral failure and by the end it is hard for us to judge this character after what he did he has the sense of doom about him for the rest of the series even though he tries to act morally and the show's reinforcement of our mixed feelings about him is the punishment he receives along with everyone else around him we'd feel a lot different about the scene if victor never did anything wrong but this is a scene of his own punishing irresponsible blind cruel pilt over and we can't fully exclude victor from that category with evander this works a little bit differently the moral failure happened before the story begins he's all about loyalty especially with family but he betrayed his own brother in arms and this haunts him it causes all of his problems and his eventual downfall and possibly his death for mel we have the inverse mel spent seven full episodes being the greedy corrupt politician risking the fate of her city on this dangerous technology and then she has a change of heart at the end we don't get an uncharacteristic moral failure we get an uncharacteristic moral triumph but it's the same dilemma do we define the character in our judgment of her based on just this moment or based on everything we see leading up to it and it's really the strange compulsion we have that this technique plays on we feel the need to resolve our feelings about characters into this overall binary judgment this character is good or this character is bad with little room for complexity as opposed to the 4d thing where we're unsure of what we're seeing it's qualitative doubt with moments of weakness the facts are clear we just don't know how to feel and no moment do we doubt if virally hurt powder in the moment of rage or if victor really made his stupid mistake and killed skye it's quantitative how much bed is too much for a character we respect how much good is enough to change your mind about a character we condemn i think lady aboshing princess monoga is a perfect example of this she's built up as this villain but we see that despite killing gods she's helped all these people the scene with her and the lepers we see that there's a lot of good along with a lot of the bad this character has done and the story leaves us in this uncomfortable place for other words hard to judge hard to define game of thrones also uses this heavily seriously is almost entirely morally reprehensible except when it comes to protecting her children she's a good mother jamie lives this whole life of being an amoral bully and then we see him change and grow and become a different person catelyn is a great person except when it comes to john so that's method two defining moments of weakness do we define you by your moments of weakness or by the full picture of the rest of what we see method number three the well-intentioned idiot and here we're talking about jace this is common enough i think people know what it is i just want to point out a few things arcane did to supercharge this archetype first of all they made sure there was no question that jace is morally pure to his core he is altruistic to the point of dumb idealism they gave us a defining moment in his past that sticks with him to this day and then they made sure that his entire arc is only about morality it's never a question of ability jace is almost unrealistically good at whatever he chooses to do this distills the focus of his arc to just these decisions him trying to do good and of course he can't each of his decisions go drastically wrong and that's step three nothing works out morally for jay stuff blows up people die there's corruption he decapitates the council of its one voice of wisdom and even though he tries really hard in the end it's his own attribute science that ultimately dooms his own city nothing worked out despite jace's pure intentions now you can do this archetype and not go this hard but arcane's version is just so potent i think this really is the way to do it so once again step one make us certain the character is moral step two make the morality the center of every decision step three make everything ultimately fail morally method four is the chronologically immoral character and our three examples of this are heimerdinger sinjin echo this is the character that may appear immoral from the time frame we're in when we first encounter them but then we realize that they're working in a different timeframe they're thinking about time differently from us they have a whole moral argument for viewing time that way and in that framework these characters are absolutely moral and there's two versions of this the character who's stuck in the future and the character who is grounded in the present for future characters heimerdinger and singed we see certain parameters they follow this character is usually old they have grand concerns and their entire life is consumed by that grand framework the grandness is what disconnects them from the present and very significantly it also disconnects them from people heimerdinger's chief concern is the city it's built over as a whole his role as a council member as the head of the academy is so consuming in his mindset that we seem unable to interact with individuals on a human level he can't find it within him to care even for the life of someone close to him for singed the grand framework of science on the whole and the way they disconnected him from people is that they disconnect the different people pretty straightforward he's a hermit the arc with these characters if they have one is usually reconnecting with the present reconnecting with people this super long-term framework the characters are in we're supposed to see as defensible but ultimately incorrect for present-oriented characters we often get the opposite the character is young the character is disconnected from grand concerns only connected with people these characters are actively engaged in humanitarian efforts that's their life it's consuming of their life in the same way the grander framework is for the future characters with echo we see this with his community he doesn't care about zhang doesn't care about piltover he doesn't care about science or politics or any of that it's just helping these people now that dominates his whole life and his whole mindset and they don't play of the ambiguity here as much but we do see it in brief ways echo tries to turn vai against jinx because that's the reality now she's a danger to people now that trump's whatever she was whatever she could be heimdanger is disturbed by how unsafe echo's hoverboard is and echo explains his present focus mindset here and in his community as a whole the arc of this character is usually convincing others to adopt his framework and this framework is usually the one confirmed as moral by the story but this time frame question is an effective way of making us unsure how to judge characters and their decisions it makes their choices understandable but often not sit quite right with us okay so at this point it's necessary to take a break and talk about world building for a bit because moral ambiguity isn't just about characters it's why you have to shape your whole story it's a way you have to craft your setting it's where you have to shave the plot so rule number one is about setting but really it's even a little broader than that things are not what they seem very simple rule very common easy way to make depth but usually just to make things more interesting here it's necessary and this is a larger fundamental in storytelling you need to signal to your audience how deeply you want them to think into your story if i see an ill-fitting moment in like sesame street i'm just gonna be confused i'm gonna think i'm misunderstanding something so these morally ambiguous stories they take a whole lot of elements early on and demonstrate clearly that we should withhold judgment until we know more princess mononoke we start out with a demon that isn't really a demon but a dying god and while killed it seems too small to kill something like this the monk is the most corrupt character don't be afraid of the kodama this is before we even get to the characters in their moral ambiguity which they also set up very carefully the first irontown people we get are helpless victims son is well son when we first see her and then in the game of thrones monsters and magic don't exist but they do the wolves are our friends the bastard is the most noble one the white knight is the most treacherous one the king is a drunk the other king is a total weirdo and this is why i'm saying it's the setting but it's also more than that it's the big picture we're seeing and in arcane we get the similar complex big picture piltover has this pristine facade like it's a utopia but then we learn the people here are two-faced crops bigoted the inner city looks like this dangerous poro eat pearl world you know everyone has each other's backs the families are close closer than in piltover you see tiny beautiful stones that can kill you the characters who boast and mock are really insecure the characters who appear to be on one side might be talking to the other side when no one's looking these little subversions may have little to do with the actual morality of the story but without a world like this a big picture like this we won't feel as compelled to question what we're seeing without this the moral ambiguity may not fit as well the audience may not even know it when they see it rule number two has to do with plot but again it's also broader than just plot rule number two the story it's themed its world must present unanswerable questions and these are mostly the kind of moral dilemmas that humanity as a whole has never and probably will never agree on these broad questions do the ends justify the means who are stealing from the rich is that morally okay or stealing wrong period law enforcement what do we think of it how much is too much is scientific progress are good for the world should we engage in corruption if that's part of how society works at what point is revolution necessary and this also includes undefinable situations where the show presents a specific scenario and withholds information from us should victor develop the hex score you cannot have an opinion on this question the hex score isn't real we only know what the show has told us and the show hasn't told us enough we don't know how dangerous it is we have to wait for the show to tell us more should piltover go to war with zahn do we know the capabilities of pelt over the capabilities of zahn enforcer numbers can bear resources no these scenarios are meant to be unanswerable and the great thing is that it doesn't solve the audience at all from having opinions on this heimerdinger was stupid for trying to stop hextech caitlyn is evil because she's a cop vander is good because he wants peace zone is evil piltover is evil from my point of view the jedi are evil and some of these opinions will be founded in some greater thought out philosophy of the person but even those opinions will slip into these not enough info situations as well and without these unanswerable questions then a lot of these archetypes just don't really function because even if the character setup itself makes us ask these questions the actual moral path is just too clear for us to be compelled by these questions so rule number two piggyback your stories more ambiguity off topics questions situations that already have that ambiguity and you can also manufacture these situations these questions by withholding info rule number three i call backwards fate characters should be punished for doing good and rewarded for doing bad this has to do with plotting in a sense but also how the world works how fate works in the world tilt over oppresses zhan and becomes wealthy soko breaks his deal with marcus stabs vander in the back and is rewarded with power jace does dangerous experiments and becomes a celebrity and then engages in corruption gains political power victor invents life-saving technology and gets shut down by hammering and then he uses it and his lab assistant is killed mel becomes rich and powerful off of corruption she decides to change her ways and then like 10 minutes into her redemption rock she gets a missile in the face this doesn't always create moral ambiguity directly but it does make us as the audience feel outraged and makes us feel lost it makes us crave justice crave moral resolutions which we won't get so basically it creates a more dynamic environment for the moral ambiguity to thrive and lastly rule number four maintain a spectrum of morality with your characters and this is what's going to lead us into our next couple archetypes more ambiguity is interesting but if you make every single character this gray mess of confusion and complexity it's exhausting it's boring and it actually usually simplifies your story ironically show the audience a variety of moral immoral amoral ways of interacting with their stars conflicts and it will let you explore these conflicts more fully and with the characters we talked about so far we see a lot of various shades of grey sting and stucco more towards the grey villain end of the spectrum vine vander towards the grey hero end jace and heim in the middle but there are a number of characters who just aren't grey for being honest the story does not leave it ambiguous it gives us a fairly clear picture and bessa and marcus are morally bad kate and nico are morally good unambiguously and that's what we're gonna have to deal with next if a story is all about the moral ambiguity what does it do with these goody two-shoes characters so that's where method five comes in method five is all about these goody two-shoes characters something that the show makes all the characters do but kate more so than the rest of them is judging other characters she judges vi multiple times throughout both characters arcs and through her judgment device she judges on as a whole as well she judges jace and pulls her as a whole the scene with marcus is partially intended to be about her judging him and the final big decision of her arc is her judging jinx and like i said this is not relegated just to kate the story is filled with characters judging each other we get sevika judging vander judging finn judging silko we get judging heimerdinger we get victor judging singed echo judging jinx by judging chinks obviously and we also get via judging all the piltover market stretching olives on and these judgments by the way should come with action it's not just about the label jay stretches heimerdinger and then kicks him off the counter as a result kate has to kill jinx if she judges her unfavorably which she can't same with echo and important to point this out this is the other side of marcus's scene with kate marcus is an unambiguously bad character we make a bad character judge a good character that's also very interesting to us and he also has act on it too and he can't so take your characters especially your most moral and immoral characters and give them these kinds of morally difficult dilemmas requiring not just judgment but action it highlights what moral ambiguity you already have and can also create it in the character's response to these dilemmas method number six redeeming qualities and this has to do with marcus and embezzle this is pretty simple these are two characters we ultimately judge as mostly evil but why mostly because they have these redeeming qualities yes marcus is a bully a bigot a corrupt cop but he's also a pretty good dad and that doesn't count for nothing and bessa is probably a sociopath but the uwe me moment shows us that maybe she's trying to be a good mother so this is something you can do with your bad characters give them something really anything that just gets in the way of us completing that moral judgment okay part two of this video is only about jinx there is that much to talk about you'll notice that our gal was conspicuously absent from all the methods we talked about above and that's not because those methods don't apply to her it's because all of those methods do apply to her and i'm being absolutely literal here every single one of those things we talked about applies to this character and i'll get to that after we talk about methods 789 which are jinx specific or jinx prominent at least so method seven excuses jinx does some of the most blatantly evil things in the entire show she kills lots of people on purpose for almost no reason really so she can sneak in a little shy who hug with sukko while he's distracted by shiny we honestly don't even get scenes of silk committing murder like that we don't see singed doing it we certainly don't see embezza or marcus doing it and jinx also kills a random animal also just for no reason like literally no reason she kidnaps people she probably tortured savika here a little bit she also demonstrates very little remorse for anything she does but she gets to pass for us in a lot of ways emotionally we want her to succeed we're still on her side how does that work you're telling me if i killed some random bird we'd still be on her side nah if kate killed some random understudy people to impress her dad no that's awful so why does jinx get a pass because jinx has excuses jinx is brainwashed by silko jinx is not fully in control of her own action drinks is suffering a corrupting influence mental illness and pain can make moral judgment a lot more difficult and we really get that with jinx that's method number seven number eight is amorality and this applies to singe too removing a character from all the moral questions of asari has this weird effect so much of how we judge morality is ideology or some big picture what are your actions contributing to if dude a beats up dude b that's bad if dude a is a racist and dude b is a race he doesn't like that's even worse there's no greater framework to jinx's actions she doesn't care about hex and the dangers to the world from weaponizing it she doesn't care about zhan doesn't care about piltover she barely cares about other people and her own crew she lives within this like four by four little bubble of her own life and this makes us that when she hurts someone it's almost innocent she's just trying to impress her daddy and her immorality also leads her to do some moral things like leaving kate alive with singed he saved jinx's life immorality just confuses us we don't know what to do with people who just don't care it's another great way of making it harder to judge okay now method number nine my absolute favorite worlds are colliding i'll defer to an expert to explain the intricacies of how this works jerry don't you see this world here this is georgia's sanctuary if susan comes into contact with this world his worlds collide you know what happens then worlds are colliding this is when you have two things that are good that we have good feelings about that are positive forces in our story and then you pit those against each other and you can do this at a fairly tame level antagonism between two disconnected characters which is what seinfeld is playing out with the exaggerated worlds colliding phrasing or you can go all out and arcane goes all out here's how to do it step one is setting up the worlds arcane does this on two levels we have two settings built over and zon we have two major plotlines one about science the other about the sisters step two keep those worlds separate piltover and zon each have their own set of characters these characters spend most of their time in their respective spheres dealing with specific problems of those spheres when characters do leave their spheres that leaving itself is highlighted they're not supposed to be in that place and the story makes that clear characters are allowed to drastically alter the status quo of their own spheres but any effect on the other sphere must be undoable manageable fixable even if it's through some great sacrifice the two plots signs and sisters happen alongside each other but they're also kept largely separate there is more cross over here with vi silicon k to some degree but again jinx doesn't care about the science plot at all j smell victor heimerdinger don't even know about the sister's plot so the worlds are kept separate step 3 emotionally invest the audience in both worlds we want the sisters to reunite we want pilgrims on to make peace and we care about all of these characters the story goes through so many steps to make sure we feel for each of the players in every plot even melhou we don't necessarily feel for it first we're on her side by the end jace redeems his foolishness finally and he makes a smart choice we don't want these characters to die and then the final step the collision itself in occasion it's not just pitting the two worlds against each other it's one world actually obliterating the other allegedly and it's also the resolution of one plot undoing the resolution of the other plot now the important thing here is that there is a universe where the worlds don't collide where everything stays separate and it all works out zom and piltover make peace the sisters reunite arcane holds this possibility out to us like a character it seems like everything is going down confined to their own worlds and then no of course not for zhan to win piltover has to lose for jinx to accept herself she has to kill half the characters we care about allegedly we want zaun to win we want jinx to find peace with herself but now we're in conflict because of how these things happened just like with the defining moments of weakness we cannot have a unified favorable judgment if we're 100 happy that jon finally fought back against their pressures that means we're also happy these people died allegedly and just to point out that was the big example of worlds are colliding but they actually do this twice with jinx the other time is in act one where we have two separate arcs the vai powder arc and the sickle vander ark and they didn't have to coincide we didn't expect them to but no then we got this we want powder to be happy but not with soco and this isn't pitting two good worlds against each other this is the inverse the good world's interests line up with those of the evil world and we see an alliance we never wanted to see a positive collision i guess you could call it a union that's constructive in a way that horrifies us so that's world's collide set of the worlds keep them separate emotionally invest us in all of them and then have the worlds finally meet but in the wrong way good against good or good embracing evil okay to tie everything up in a bow jinx isn't just method seven eight nine she's methods one through nine all of them which is nuts it's insane that they did this our 40 characterization the two parallel arcs here they even have separate names powder and jinx it's the whole question of this character in acts two and three born from this ill-fitting moment same as sulkos number two is defining moments of weakness and this is the whole question of this character in act one do we judge powder by her failings by her weakness as a jinx or should she be included in the team is she no different from these people is what makes you different makes you strong number three powder is smart enough to recognize real valdiani but not quite smart enough to not kill her family very much a well-intentioned idiot she wants to be helpful she's this little innocent kid it's hard to blame her for her mess-ups but she is a jinx she constantly is messing up she cannot get a moral outcome if she tries number four chronological immorality jinx is the inverse of echo here another present focused character she is hyper hyper hyper focused on the present her moral world is only how she feels right now and that makes her shockingly immoral or amoral depending on her feelings at this moment she's hugging you or she's stabbing you she's crying on your shoulder or she's shoving a gun in your face number five force judgment jinx is constantly judging vi and soco who's a liar who's betraying her cevica lied right is this a goodbye hug is she betraying me here who changed advice did i change and the tea party in a lot of ways is jinx forcing herself to judge vice selko and herself redeeming qualities in a lot of ways powder is jinx's redeeming quality powder is definitely what keeps us from forming a complete judgment about jinx we want to see the sisters reunite we want powder's pain to go away and that's that but also jinx is very affectionate she is innocent she's a goofball she's likable all redeeming qualities that make it hard for us to judge and 789 as we said she has excuses she's a moral worlds are colliding jinx is everything and that is the final lesson here combine these layer them on top of each other a lot of arcane's characters partake of multiple methods here and the fact that they do have a character that they just packed everything into it is mind-blowing that they did that and even more mind-blowing that it worked that it wasn't too much that it gave us one of the richest characters i've ever seen ever jinx is by far my favorite character in the show and she's also up there all time for me just incredible okay one more thing listen to this quote sometimes i would enter under the water where children were playing i would dive under the water grab one carry him under and break his neck sometimes i'd cause accidents sometimes i just slaughter them so that is a quote from a man who used to ritually sacrifice and eat children and yeah sorry for the abrupt transition but it's important to make something very clear here this is a true story this man killed children and ate them and his story demonstrates why we like not just you and me but we society need to get better at telling stories with moral ambiguity so you have this man who is already pretty morally reprehensible and then war broke out in this man's country and he became a warlord of a battalion of child soldiers he would get them addicted to drugs and convince them that if they went out into the battlefield naked they would be immune to gunfire a practice he also engaged in and that's what earned him his title his nickname general butt naked and i know it's a funny name but butt naked and his children were responsible for at least 20 000 murders during the first liberian war so where does the moral ambiguity come in well as the war was ending everything changed this guy made a complete 180. he became a born-again christian and devoted his life to humanitarian efforts he set a foundation that helped street children and former child soldiers and he really became a leader in his country for repairing the damage he caused and he even advocated for establishing a war crimes court to bring warlords like him to justice he ceased to be but naked the cannibal warlord and he became joshua bligh the humanitarian leader there's a clip of joshua bligh talking about his young daughter and how she doesn't know about his past listen to this time will come and somebody would tell her what butt naked did and then she would have the opportunity to tell them what joshua did how will history judge him will joshua have done so much good that will render the legacy of butt naked irrelevant will he have enough time to tip the skills before he dies and that's the reason why i wanted to bring in this true story as an example here joshua bly's story is methods one and two that we just talked about this is 40 characterization and defining moments of weakness a lot of people believe joshua bligh has reformed himself and a lot of people think joshua is faking all of this manipulating everyone faking his whole redemption arc just to avoid answering for his crimes and even if you do believe he's legit how do we judge a person like this 20 000 murders cannibalism child soldiers and liberia had to judge him they granted him amnesty from all of his crimes but this was a very controversial ruling as you can imagine a lot of people didn't know what to think i don't know what to think everyone i tell the story to doesn't know what to think and in my opinion this is why we need stories that force us to be actively thinking of these situations before we encounter them in real life because we will encounter them we will encounter all of these we'll meet bad people with redeeming qualities we'll meet people who are working on a time frame we don't agree with we'll meet lots of well-intentioned idiots we'll be forced to judge people and act on their judgments and worlds will collide and stories that depict these situations well and powerfully can help us have a healthier more thought out relationship to these challenges so that we can handle them better once we inevitably encounter them okay so that's what i wanted to say about that now can we skip the part where i awkwardly transition to talking about my sub count and how proud of myself i am okay so i hit 50k and yeah we're going straight from the child eater warlord sorry to this partially because i need to talk about it i need to ask you guys something i feel the need to do something special for 50k and i think a q a might be fun okay so leave questions in the comments and tag me so i see them you can also ask me on twitter if you're a patron of course you can ask me on that always talking to people on there i'll see what kind of stuff you guys throw at me and if it's enough to turn to a full thing on its own and we'll go from there okay but yeah also obviously thanks a ton for all the support i counted and it was 133 days from posting the first arcane video to 50k subs which is mind-blowing i cannot process it doesn't make any sense to me but thanks seriously from the bottom of my heart thanks for this and i mentioned the patreon i want to say a special thanks to everyone there but especially thomas bills ted neil baron arghadon and that's about it see you for another long video in two weeks lots of shorts between now and then so subscribe so you see those they'll be up as usual wednesday friday and sunday thanks for watching

Channel: schnee

Views: 270,453

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Id: o_xfBmcWPKI

Length: 33min 10sec (1990 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 10 2022