The SECRET to ARCANE’s Depth… #ArcaneAnniversary

foreign this is my 80th video about Arcane I've made 32 long videos and 48 shorts this Show's total run time is 6 hours and 20 minutes the total runtime of my Arcane videos is over 10 hours and I don't feel like I'm straining to find topics with this show well there's that one bunny video but anyway even the shorts there's just a ton of stuff to talk about here I honestly feel like Arcane is just that deep which is obviously very unusual for a story especially a single season of a story Nine episodes let me put it this way this is a model I've been using in my head forever a good story is a full cup and I can put whatever I want in my cup I can pour in some incredible World building and some great themes and then just a little character work to fill it to the top and that's a Full Cup that's a good story or I can pour in some great characters great character development and some really memorable genre breaking moments and then some plot stuff and we're full don't need anything more or I can put in fun pirate stuff and one amazing character and then some milky other stuff and we're good we're full now there cannot be anything bad in your cup if there is a rotten vegetable in my milkshake doesn't matter how good the milkshake is so everything that's not the centerpieces has to be solid can be bad point is the star can be very good for a variety of completely different reasons we can have one or two incredible story elements or we can have a really even balance of just above average everything but Baseline what we are looking for is a full cup now Arcane doesn't have any problem with filling up its Cup on the contrary Arcane should run into a very different problem if you overstuff your cup it will leak it will break it will shatter if you try to do too much in a star you will ruin everything let's say you're a huge Lord of the Rings fan you love the themes of the World building love the good versus evil setup and you're also a huge Game of Thrones fan and you rewrite Lord of the Rings to be as character driven as Game of Thrones and you're also a huge Brandon Sanderson fan so you add in a really intricate hard magic system and also a huge Star Trek fan so you write into side plot with aliens and also Seinfeld fans so you put in an elf who's a struggling comedian in Rivendell and you're a SpongeBob fans we have them running a lemon spread Krabby Patty stand it's just not gonna work everything will suffer you cannot over stuff your cup or else it will leak it will break it will shatter so somehow Arcane has great characters incredible plot meaningful themes magnificent World building gripping emotional moments and an insane emotional range there are parts that make me laugh cry gasp side cheer Swoon hold my breath drop my jaw snap my forehead there's groundbreaking subversion of tropes revolutionary writing of women and sexuality and also fantastic writing of men every frame of Animation is a work of art the music is phenomenal the fight scenes are exciting the hot characters are hot the memes are funny every plot Arc feels rich and complete every character is deep as heck everything could be a PhD thesis the dialogue feels natural and clever and fun and moving and whatever else it has to be the nonverbal communication through expression body language is on a different level than anything I've ever seen there's a whole system of symbolism without show users colors there's a whole system of symbolism with how the show uses fashion there's also some symbolism how to show uses animals there's a whole system of symbolism of how to show uses lighters and smoking you are not supposed to be able to do this much in a single story it doesn't make sense I probably have like 50 videos that don't mention half the cast and half the plot line feels like Jinx and violone could fill up a cup easy heck second the council and Victor could fill up a cup easy so what is going on how is it so deep how is there so much how how in the world is this cup not breaking already okay so I want to share my progress in answering this question at the current date and I'm characterizing it this way because you'll see by the end but also because this is the hardest question of them all if I understood how to write a story like Arcane I'd have written a story like Arcane and I haven't so this is a developing understanding my current theories and I love to hear your theories too so leave a comment below okay so here's what I got if a story appears to be fitting more than you thought possible into its cup and if the cup is not getting bigger that means the contents of the cup must be using that space more efficiently so let me point out a pattern in Arcane that fascinates me I think a lot of us have realized this at least unconsciously but maybe not to its full extent Mel and Heimerdinger these characters are both politicians they are both on the council but one is a scientist and one isn't heimerding and Jace these characters are both politicians and scientists but one is old and one is Young Jason Victor these characters are both scientists and young but one is from piltover and one is from zon Victor and singed these characters are both scientists from zon but one leaves on and the other stays sinj and jinxi's characters are both scientists who stands on but one is old and one is Young Jinx and Echo both young scientist of stains on but one works for silicone one doesn't Echo and Vibe both young people who don't work for Soko but one is a scientist and one isn't Ryan Vander both non-scientist Fighters but one stop being a fighter and one didn't Vander and heimring are both non-fighters but one is a poor zonate character and the other is a rich pilto over character heimrating and Caden both Rich pilt over characters but one is old and one is Young Caitlyn and VI both young characters but one is super gay and the other is super gay okay you get the point let me show you the same pattern in a different area here we have a character learning the potential of hex deck and here we have a character learning the potential of hex and here we have a character learning the potential of hex deck and here we have a character learning the potential of hexa and here we have a character learning the potential of hexek and here we have a character learning the potential of hexa here we have a character's complicated relationship with her father figure and here we have the character's complicated relationship with her father figure and we have said Father Figure having to choose between his political goals and his daughter and we have said Father Figure having to choose between his political goals and his daughter we have a character accidentally killing her family and we have a character accidentally killing her family we have a character feeling betrayed by their mother and a character feeling betrayed by their mother we have a scene at the bridge and a scene of the bridge and he's seen at the bridge and the scene of the bridge and he's seen at the bridge and he's seen at the bridge and the scene of the bridge and the scene of the bridge a confrontation at the last drop and a confrontation of the last drop families torn apart at soko's place and families torn apart at silco's Place characters arguing about using violence and characters arguing about using violence and characters arguing about using violence and characters arguing about using violence and characters arguing about using violence and characters arguing about using violence and characters arguing about using violence I could go on actually almost forever I'm calling this arcane's great overlap technique and I want to differentiate this from just foils and parallels these are not just foils and parallels well they are but this is one of those situations where a quantitative increase leads to a qualitatively new category every story element in Arcane exists in a system that is designed specifically for the audience to draw connections to every other element within that system we see a character in a role we think of every other character in that role when we see a scene with a specific conflict we think of every other scene with that conflict when we see a scene in a particular setting we think of every other scene that took place in that setting when we see a character in a situation we think of all other characters who are in that same situation every single character has built-in overlap with multiple characters every important scene has built-in overlap with multiple important scenes every theme is explored by multiple characters in radically different ways every conflict is felt and dealt with by multiple characters in radically different ways and these systems of parallels are designed for us to mix and match every single moving piece if we want to explore siblings we can do sisters or brothers or brothers or brothers and sisters we can look at a brother sister relationship as it forms and as it breaks when the characters are young when the characters are less Young when the characters are even less young we can look at a heterosexual romance and a homosexual romance we can look at all young scientists Mentor in built over society and zombite Society we can look at piltoverzom Science Study Buddies with old guys and with young guys and so on and this is not just a platform to prompt questions and comparisons and Analysis Etc this is a vital way of conserving cup space if you show me 10 different scenes I gotta remember 10 different scenes everything that happens all the characters and all their beats all the different subject matters and all the themes being dealt with but if you show me 10 different versions of the same scene I know the scene the events the characters the themes the subject Etc are all mostly the same I just have to keep track of the differences that's all I need to make space for in my cup same with characters I just have to think of the super types scientist politician fighter parent child sibling and then I can apply various categories tilt over is on old or young Etc and it's the same thing here with themes and subject matters progress loneliness violence time trauma how does Victory within us how does Jace deal with loneliness powder VI Kalin Mel silco Heimerdinger how does Heimerdinger deal with trauma what about Echo what about Mel Jace powder VI silco passage of time Victor Heimerdinger Echo Vander silco VI and so on I can have more themes and I can say more about these themes since I have less for the audience to keep track of less stuff to occupy brain space okay so that was stage one of the great overlap technique stage two is something I fell head first into while trying to write a short about Jason Caitlin why does the star give them a brother-sister relationship what purpose does that serve that was the question in the answer it seemed had to do with this scene which is another scene I never really felt like I understood why is this here what is it doing but I thought about it and I realized okay Jace is on his way to make a pivotal choice actual on climax to risk it all on developing hex tech and the story adds weight to that choice by building a ramp of isolation leading up to it Jace is isolated by his mentor then betrayed by his mother then the entire scientific Community basically turns their back on him which is actually the whole city turning their back on him then his friend his little sister figure is taken away from him and he is left completely alone before we see a turn and then he decides to make this epic gamble okay so that function seems fine makes sense but then I realized wait this also happens with Caitlyn Post Time skip she is ostracized by her peers she watches her boss get murdered her relationship with her family starts to deteriorate then she's isolated by her brother figure then her girlfriend leaves her before we see a turn another chance at Reunion with VI but at the cost of a pivotal decision okay so we got this mirrored function thing going on perfect this is going to make a great short except that it actually happens with every character heimbringer you have him splitting with Jason Victor that results in the split with the council which results in his split with his City he's alone and then we see a turn and he makes a choice and that solidifies this completely New Direction in life Victor already mostly alone split with Jace kill Skye and we see a turn and he makes his pivotal decision Jinx and VI we have six different isolation ramps between the two of them Act One VI feels Duty bound to isolate to do what's right for her family powder has to be abandoned to work up the courage to use the hex crystals and then very soon this happens again both characters lose their family and are left completely alone VI we see the turn and then the climax the pivotal decision how do we see a different turn and then the decision act three VI reunites with her sister only to realize the Gap is larger than ever then she thinks her last childhood friend dies and then she leaves her girlfriend feels isolated by her and her City then we have a new ally briefly but then that's over very quickly she is completely alone we see a turn and then a pivotal decision Jinx same deal with a reunion with her sister and then she feels betrayed by her father we see a turn and then the climax decision Soko same thing daughter feels betrayed and leaves he loses built over Ally Then the city turns on him to see savika's loyalty as Shrine and then to turn the pivotal decision are kind of mixed together here Mel and Echo their arcs are shorter but we still get a pivotal decision tied up with isolation as the stakes even singe who doesn't have an arch this is implied he didn't really become the mad scientist we see here until he parted with his Heimerdinger and his daughter died so it's almost every character climax decision comes at the end of an isolation ramp with isolation as the stakes as well but that is not where it stops either because if you look at most of these climax decisions what are they what are we making decisions about Jace's big character moment in act 1 is making a pivotal decision about technology and morality and then later in act 3 he's making a pivotal decision about morality and also technology he's solving a crisis created by technology and similarly we have Victor and yes Victor's big pivotal decision is also about morality and technology and then we have a character like Jinx who's making a big decision about morality and about technology she's the one who finally weaponizes hexaf Nell's big decision is mostly about morality but it's also about technology weapons can't be unmade and they are always used and in a shocking turn vander's big decision is mostly about morality but also about technology and then you have the non-scientist characters what about them well somehow technology at least makes an appearance even if it's a minor one seko's decision isn't just about war about the moral side of things it comes back to returning the hex Crystal 2 comes back to technology the potential of his daughter as an inventor even Kate invite at the end very subtly you can argue it's not there but their decision tag outside the morality is expressed through this added factor of using technology we don't usually see them use so technology at least is making an appearance but but also each of these decisions isn't just about isolation and morality and Technology a decision about identity as well heimringer is the founder of piltober and he has to decide whether to be that anymore or whether to cast the identity off and become something completely new Vander is the pacifist leader and he has to decide whether to be that anymore or whether to become silko's monster Mel has to take off her medarta ring Soco is a top chem Baron or good dad Kaelyn is she the enforcer or is she the girlfriend Jinx and might be obviously see a lot of signs of this Vice whole life is taking care of her siblings and then all of a sudden this and her life becomes something very different how do we get this line she is not my sister we get this in the end are we still sisters and obviously this whole sequence so there are a lot of really powerful meaningful stories about morality and technology and isolation and identity politics is another one we didn't and talk about but in Arcane it's a story about all of these not one after another not side by side but all at once almost every moral beat of every character's Arc is also a beat that involves the character's relationships to their family to society and involves technology to some extent and impacts identity to the core of who the person is and it's the same with every relationship these characters are not just Science Study Buddies they are brothers and there's a moral side to it too and a political side and their life missions are aligned they're linked by who they are by their identities almost exactly the same with this relationship Soco powder is founded on silco's backstory his identity but also inextricably tied to his moral political goals and the technological potential he sees in this girl same with this relationship and here the technology is the Discord in the relationship same with this relationship same with this relationship and we see similar things with just about any mix of any two characters to some degree every component we're talking about here is the same length as any normal Arc any normal beat any normal scene relationship Arc Etc it takes up just as much narrative space as it would in any normal story it's just that everything is functioning at 500 capacity it's five times the flavor we feel all of it all at once the emotional weight of all of our feelings are about morality and the emotional weight of all of our feelings about family and isolation politics and technology and identity it's all overlapping it's all layered on top of itself without taking up any extra narrative space without crowding our cup at all so this does two things the first is really important and the second one blows my mind first we get more people caring more about all of it all these topics that are so meaningful so important to our lives we all care about our people our society is about science about morality about identity and this also tugs at a wide range of identities that are also important to us younger siblings see themselves in powder older siblings see themselves in Vibe parents see themselves in the parent characters scientists see themselves in half the cast we have the challenges of being poor the challenges of being rich we have young people with young people problems and old people with old people problems and gay people with gay people problems and Geniuses with genius problems and idiots with idiot problems this is connecting to its audience through so much with so many different Vehicles it's like I can make a story about one thing and people invested in that thing may find meaning in my story and that's like me as an author I'm fishing with my little fishing rod my hook is going to snag someone out there who cares or I can make a story about 30 things and now I have 30 hooks in the water that can snag a lot more fish and or it can tag an individual fish a lot more strongly second thing let's talk about Tortoise and the hair there is one parallel in the story that prompts questioning two animals slow animal and fast animal The Narrative prompts one simple question why did the slow animal win and the narrative itself gives us one simple answer it tells us the moral slow and steady wins the race one parallel one explicit question one explicit answer this is an important star it's a useful story but it's not a deep Story Once the story answers its own question no more discussion to be had stories that are deeper than this prompt questions but don't give answers this can generate depth because 10 different people will walk out of the theater with 10 different answers but speaking of what I'm referencing with this image we must go deeper when we're talking questions and answers generating discussion the deepest kind of story in that regard doesn't even ask the question it just presents a parallel a contrast a connection that shows us where the questions are hiding and we gotta find them we gotta ask them ourselves you give me one one parallel just one parallel one of these question hiding places and 10 different people will formulate 10 different questions and 10 more people will give 10 more answers so single parallel can give 100 people 100 different ideas to talk about Arcane has the most parallels of any story I have ever seen we have 14 different characters every one of them connects to every other one of them in multiple ways we have at least four different subject matters different lenses to view the story through before I listed anyway I killed this more each of these connects to every major plot element and every different character Arc we have settings Making Connections we have scenes paralleling each other we have all these other things color music Animals lighters fashion I had a whole discussion on the architect friend about understanding the story through its architecture and lighting and we haven't even gotten to combinations I can compare two characters I can compare three characters I can compare all the siblings all the parents the zomb characters the pills over characters the scientist characters The Fighter characters the straight characters the gay characters the women the men the old the young I can compare any combinations of any of the subject matters what is the connection the story is drawing between science and time between morality and science isolation and science identity and time time morality and science morality time in politics does that connect with these two scenes or these three scenes or every bridge scene where every beat where character encounters hexac for the first time or every blue character every red character or scenes with open structures and natural lighting are scenes with teeth and science liquid and gas or Bunny and change in time in sisters your bunny and light and isolation and weakness or Bunny and Bunny and Bunny and Bunny or Bunny and so on and so on this I believe is the secret to arcane's depth the great overlap technique creates a unique narrative with room for like 10 000 connections Each of which generates exponentially more questions Each of which generates exponentially more answers and all those answers and questions themselves can be discussed and compared and contrasted and suddenly there are like 10 million people having 100 million discussions about this one story in the AMA Christian link brought up an example Alex he uses soko's ashtray the animators took this simple ashtray and used it to tell its own little story it's this attitude this approach extra layers of Storytelling that don't take up any extra space that don't directly ask questions just show us where the questions lie so we can have whatever discussions we want it's this approach applied to literally everything that creates a story we can have Rich discussions about continuously for at least a year and undoubtedly many more and just wait for all the new connections within season 2 and between season two and season one oh my gosh we are in for some incredible ideas okay so I have to caveat two things here first I am not saying Arcane is the deepest story ever in existence I'm saying it has a unique structure that generates enormous amounts of discussion very easily and efficiently a disproportionate amount of discussion compared to the size of the story and that is one type of depth there are other types of depth as I talked about here there's stories that generate depth and discussion through complex answers they give it could be purely through the writing it could be through the subject matter lots and lots and lots of ways of generating depth and storytelling second everything I'm saying here takes us far but also not very far and this is something I actually want you to help me with leave comments if you have any ideas about what I'm about to say this methodology I'm describing this video is limited because I'm talking on an extremely broad scale here I'm talking about a structure that can contain depth and express steps but I haven't even addressed anything on more micro levels the type of nuance within individual scenes and moments that Arcane explores and how it explores the ideas and emotions of those moments Arcane is clearly in a league of Zone there as well and we can talk a lot about how individual moments are constructed individual beats of arcs and relationships but what I eventually want to discover is the big principles the overall approach of hurricane writes on various micro levels methodology with writing dialogue overall with structuring scenes overall how it approaches pacing within its scenes and within each of its episodes methodology of characterization as it applies to specific scenes and also like how it handles World building in relation to its source material where they deviated where they added Etc so commenters that's where you come in your assignment is to solve Arcane completely I expect all your essays on my desk tomorrow morning 8 AM class dismissed Happy First Birthday to Arcane and Happy First Birthday to this channel as well I want to say something in light of the last year not a whole long thing just a word of inspiration to anyone out there with big unrequited dreams or anyone who feels stuck I've written stories for almost as long as I can remember and I wanted to be an author not just as a hobby but as a career for 12 years ever since I first saw one piece and it worked really hard at improving my craft I had a set amount of hours I write per day and I kept upping the amount I spent about six months renting a short story per week just to get a lot of iteration in I had read in groups and I also did a ton of thinking about writing analysis Etc The Craft part I felt like I had an okay handle on what I was supposed to do to progress for the career part I felt totally miserably lost I don't know what it was but I hear these words I'd hear these stamens and something just didn't click networking no idea how to do that make an online platform no idea what I was supposed to do there if you got short stories published that will lead to more opportunities I got a couple publishing credits absolutely lost as to what to do after that just didn't make any sense to me I felt really really stuck and then over the following few years I changed my plan I've been traveling a lot and writing a lot about then I had a Blog and I made some videos for families and friends and I was getting some good feedback on that stuff so I decided okay let me try to become a travel influencer a travel writer and eventually I'll try to lead that road back into the fiction writer career path first trip was to Iceland the Airbnb had free Netflix I watched Arcane made a video about that on a whim and that got a lot of views and I completely scrapped my old plan immediately the whole thing I was stuck on for years out the window in just a few days what I learned and what I want to tell you to inspire you is that I was stuck for years and what got me unstuck wasn't starting this path I'm on now it was literally starting anything it was starting a totally different path just acting at all just doing anything and that ended up diverting like crazy and leading me down a totally different road which is literally perfect it's everything I want I love sharing these ideas and this fits my long-term goals just as perfectly I absolutely will one day hopefully soon be using this as a platform to promote stories that I write that I'm super excited about or you know Rye could just hire me as a writer or to work in the mail room or as an unpaid intern I'd take literally anything Wizards of the Coast too if you're out there listening but anyway it's fascinating to me that just acting at all is so fruitful even if it's in a direction you're not sure about or in a direction that you actively trash almost immediately it just gets things in your life moving it gets you in stock and it can lead you to opportunities that you never even considered second little inspirational thing I want to share which maybe some of you have suspected along the way but I think I haven't mentioned at all on this channel I edited every video every single short and every single long video for my first Arcane video all the way to this one here on my phone I have a Samsung Galaxy S10 I used a cheap stupid little editing app that I hate I recorded all the voiceover with my phone I started out just using the mic on my earbuds but I eventually bought an okay mic that I could plug into my phone thumbnails were the only thing I use my Chromebook for I use an in-browser image editor but overall my phone got me to 75 000 subscribers and why I do this is a combination of certain life circumstances and general stubbornness and inertia that's besides the point what I want to say is and this is something that a lot of YouTubers say don't let anything like equipment Hardware anything like that stop you from starting YouTube Instagram Tech talk whatever social media thing or art or filmmaking or music or whatever just start making stuff make good stuff stuff you're proud of stuff that makes you happy stuff you think people will connect with and put it out there use their phone use your 50 Chromebook just start today if possible that's it subscribe thank you so much for being with me on this year-long journey it's been incredible I'm excited for year two season two of schnee releases the public before season two of Arcane how about that FYI I've revamped my patreon I'm gonna start doing monthly hangout calls with everyone from patreon who wants in I don't know how it'll go maybe we'll adjust the format a little bit but we'll see I think it'll be fun and also there's just so many eager passion writers I've talked to I gotta introduce you to each other we can all start a big running group brainstorm together critique stuff and write the next Arcane right The Greatest Story Ever together so check that out if you're interested shout out to my new high tier patrons Quinn Umar Noam and Demon Dev thanks thanks so much for the support I realized recently that I never asked you guys to like the video because I don't know if that does anything but like the video if you want we'll try it why not it's New Year hope you all enjoyed and thanks for watching Christmas

Channel: schnee

Views: 188,893

Keywords:

Id: Kip7r8R5bdE

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 21 2022