Why ARCANE's Characters are LONELY | (Character Breakdown: VIKTOR)

i want to talk about this scene loneliness is often the byproduct of a gifted mind i think this scene is really conveying a lot it's a theme that's far broader than just these two characters but the thing that's weird is that it doesn't really seem true not even in the show jace is a gifted mind and he's not lonely heimerdinger also is gift is mine he's not lonely either but singh is a pretty smart pretty clever dude so let's actually go through it arcane has a lot of scientist characters let's test this theory by looking at seven of them jace victor stan heimerdinger jinx echo and singed and i'll make one qualification if you'll allow me when sims says gifted mind i think it's fair to say he's talking about science here mel is really smart and bess is really smart soco's smart i don't think he's talking about that kind of smarts cinch is a scientist victor's a scientist it's a conversation between scientists and he's saying true scientific intelligence prowess achievement comes hand in hand with loneliness so let's see let's lay these characters out along two tracks and see if scientific prowess matches up with isolation let's see if there's something theme out of going on here okay so first heimerdinger heimerdinger is the most socially integrated of all of arcane's scientist characters and at this point in his life he's barely a scientist for all we can tell he's a figurehead and a politician a supervisor we don't see him in the lab doing science at all we don't see him making big breakthroughs we see him advising students playing politics going to shows and we see him celebrated by society so not very lonely and not very much of a scientist until what when do we see him pick up science again once he gets kicked out of society when he's at his most lonely next we have stan and i hope when i said stan earlier i got everything going huh who's stan stan stand with bedell you don't remember him stanwick but diddly ah you thought this was a throwaway scene listen everything he built either exploded melted or toppled over and yet here he stands stanwix set his personal ambitions aside and focused on something far more important our future he realized nothing he could accomplish could compare to the contributions of his students heimerdinger is praising this guy for being a bad scientist everything he invented broke but the important thing to heimerdinger he gained social prestige so stan also not a very good scientist not very isolated let's look at jinx one of the best scientists in the whole show figures out the hex crystal on her own and what do we see pretty isolated she spends a lot of time in her lab alone talking to herself she has silko and that's pretty much it very good scientist very lonely echo good scientist we don't see him doing anything on the level of jinx definitely not on the level of j so we'll get into in a bit but good scientist and as expected he's kind of in the middle he has a community but the community itself isolated it's a community outcast basically society turned their back on them and they turn their back on society and they make use of the tech that they invent so pretty consistent middle-of-the-road on both counts singe cincinnati's one of the pivotal technologies of the era shimmer so amazing scientist and i think by far the most isolated character okay now jace jace is interesting like i mentioned before jason's arc looks like he contradicts all of this he invents hexsec and becomes a celebrity and this is how he wanted to work but his ark isn't what it looks like and our king does a great job of making us see this general picture that looks great this idealized picture of a scientific meritocratic society but if we look closer that's not what happened at all when does jace have his biggest scientific breakthrough when he's about to get kicked out of society then when he becomes more socially successful his inventions get smaller scale we see less progress and no more breakthroughs then when he makes the decision to cast aside progress for politics he ceases to be assigned us all together it's all politics from him from then on out the one exception is the hammer that decision itself is going against mel it's going into the council it's going against his best friend he turns away from people in his life and that's when he goes back to science okay so where is victor on our scale as a kid he's a scientist and he's isolated he eventually finds a way to integrate into society and he gets a fairly prestigious position but not one he really wants and he probably has time to do some science at this point in his life but he's also running errands for heimerdinger then we see him on the same road as jace ribbit his biggest success comes simultaneously with the threat of being kicked out of society then he tones it down and progress gets smaller but then what happens while jace is off playing politics victor keeps going with hexsec and he starts having bigger and bigger breakthroughs and how does society respond pretty terribly heimerdinger basically vows to destroy the most important research of victor's whole life then he pretty much condemns him to death sort of eulogizing him to his face while he's alive subtly kind of boasting about his immortality and then trying to get viktor to accept his own death this is society casting him out again society is ready for victor to die but he's not ready he still has work to do so he goes to singed the man who can speak to him as someone in this exact position a great scientist whose society has cast out and it's in this episode that we get victor remembering what cinch told him about loneliness loneliness is often the byproduct of a gifted mind when singh says this line he just made an observation in world but narratively i think it's a lot more than that i think sinja's vocally acknowledging a thematic rule of arcane's story look again at jinx she has two scientific breakthroughs in her life the first is when she finally gets an invention of hers to work and when does that happen it coincides with her losing everyone and her second breakthrough is fish bones and when does that happen again she triumphs scientifically in the exact moment she's lost everyone it's a very interesting motif here arcane is trying to tell us something about the self-annihilation aspect of science when you venture deep into science you sacrifice you lose perspective you really step out of the world with jason sorry seems to want him to get to this point where the world has betrayed him his patrons his admirers even his mom to the point that he's really ready to self-annihilate literally before the story presents the chance for him to have his breakthrough and i think self-annihilation is an integral part not just of victor's arc but of his personality he is extremely self-effacing more so than anyone else in the cast he hides he stays backstage half his scenes he's in the shadows and it's interesting if you notice that victor and jace are both risk takers but for completely opposite reasons jace takes risks because they're not risks he knows it's gonna work this hextech theory of yours it's not a theory why because he's so full of himself a little egotistical don't you think he was raised with self-confidence of a rich pilty kid the victor for victor it's the opposite victor's from the undercity and we know how kids in the undercity grow up i grew up knowing i'm less than them that my place is down there victor takes risks because he doesn't have much motivation to value his own life which is really sad the worst that can happen is that he loses his own life a little sooner or ruins his life which will end soon enough anyway and victor really embodies that undercity sense of inferiority in a literal way the undercity made his body inferior in his own eyes to the point that when singh asks him why he isn't playing with the other children victor worthlessly kind of gives sinja just look at me and it's not just a physical thing you can see it on the look on his face victor is never risking anything he has nothing to lose nothing of value so you have this interesting parallel both characters would say this it's not a risk because it's mean for jace it's not risk because it's me it's me the guy on your mug the guy on the blimp me the golden boy piltover for victor it's not a risk because it's me it's me the guy with the broken body it's me the guy who's dying it's only me worthless me and you look at the way victor does science how he relates to his science it's so tragic in that scene where he showed cinch his body when cinch asked why he wasn't with the other kids contrast that with when one of the other children comes along and takes an interest in him what does he do he takes that attention and directs it to the boat to what he made this thing that's sturdier than him faster than him better than him don't look at me look at my invention you're not interested in me no one could possibly be interested in me then maybe you'll like this and this relationship to science is also an interesting point of divergence with jason victor very characteristic of both of them look at the signs they each choose to embrace and i don't mean hextech itself i mean the other stuff jace makes accessories house talus makes tools things to help the people that use them inventors that enhance the user where the user and the user's power is the focus victor goes along with some of that accessory stuff but throughout all of our cane he seems obsessed with things external to himself that are better than him he makes something more interesting than him something faster than him he obsesses over this creature that's different from him and also faster and happier than him and with the hex score he's not creating a tool that accessorizes him he is creating an external heart a magical heart a hex core and with it he doesn't just seek to heal himself he is replacing his body with something else something that's completely new something that's not of this cruel world that gave him his actual body and you look at all this and victor actually seems like the perfect candidate to rise to the top of arcane's cast of scientific geniuses he's already isolated from the world he's already self-annihilated he's been alone for as long as he can remember and with singed he's given his chance to truly ascend if you take this path they will despise you love and legacy are the sacrifices we make for progress everyone is already waiting for him to die jace is the only friend he has left and that's the one person he thinks of here in this scene a person that could leave him and we see hesitation but in the end he seems ready to risk that too it's a unique decision this character is making when powder is about to have a breakthrough if she knew how this worked if she knew what she risked losing she wouldn't have done it no question and with jinx she's ready to cast aside the tech not use it at all depending on how the tea party turns out because all things being equal she absolutely would rather have vai or soko than have that fish one's moment she has at the end and jake's typical jc doesn't even think about risking anything about his life because he's so sure it will work the wrist finds him and that's what we see for the rest of the characters this was the decision that was made for them the world pushes them into isolation to give them their breakthrough but victor victor has told the consequences straight up they will despise you everyone will turn on you and he accepts that fate because like we said he's already alone except no in reality he's not and that's where this character comes in i know there's some disagreement about this character whether she's developed enough whether her fate is warranted or just another fridging of an innocent female character maybe i'll make another video on that at some point but let me tell you my take on the character the point of sky is to show that victor has always been wrong about himself when he was a kid working to build things to make other kids interested no they were interested in him skye doesn't want to look at the boat she's curious about the boy who made it when he has grown and is working desperately to build some kind of legacy something that would outlast him instead of as he put it he's already won the respect and admiration and love of those around him in this scene he hasn't figured out the hex score yet and skye is asking to spend time with him anyway even without any discovery or breakthrough whatsoever skye loves the man behind the research and in sky's final scene when victor is literally reaching out desperately to hold on to the science sky reaches for him victor's not just crying because he killed someone he's crying because listen to what she says victor i know this will probably never see the light of day but watching how you work so tirelessly to make the world a better place well i couldn't forgive myself if i didn't try victor is seeing what inspired sky he's realizing she doesn't mention anything about what he did or what he made he realizes there's always been someone looking at him not his inventions not his science him this passionate hard-working genius this good man with a good heart and a great mind and i think he realizes that all of his relationships are like that jace also values him the person the victor the scientist not the science heimerdinger as we talked about in friday's short gives victor a chance because he saw the man behind the uniform victor thought he knew isolation no now he knows now he realizes what he's given up now he's alone like he's never experienced before the love he could have had torn away from him before he even knew about it the show leaves him at the same point the rest of our cast was at the moment their breakthrough opportunity came to them actual isolation and that's supposed to coincide with something amazing that's supposed to precede the true breakthrough moment according to arcane's thematic rule of loneliness and gifted minds but victor doesn't want it anymore he turns his back on it and embraces self-annihilation instead but obvi that's not where it ends he doesn't end up doing it at least he doesn't end up embracing self-annihilation in that particular way and to explore why i think we need to unlock the final piece of this puzzle we live you did this i thought you understand the mutation must survive i understand now now i've heard other explanations for this and long story short they're not satisfying to me i'll leave a comment going over the answers i've seen and elaborate on my objections to them but i will say the problems with the answers i've seen is that they focus on this i understand now not this i thought you understood the theories all focus on what victor is realizing at this point in his arc but leave out the question whatever this is about why did singed expect victor to understand it when he was nine years old or whatever i thought you understood he's shocked but as we said sinjar is a smart guy smart enough that he must have some reasoning behind this expectation even if in the end it's clear he miscalculated it's a miscalculation not a shot in the dark so my answer is predicated on our first point loneliness is a byproduct of a gifted mind the mutation must survive this is the priority of a developed intellect i thought you understood that we play by different rules that we don't have to listen to them because our superior minds make us value something more i thought you understood that stuff like this that breaks their silly societal rules that doesn't matter to people like us our intelligence puts us above those who abandon us those foolish people playing without us leave them behind while we work on science we don't need to be bothered by what they're bothered by society is a burden isolation is freedom isolation is just a result of inferior minds failing to comprehend superior minds and even more we should embrace what makes them hate us interestingly put a different way what makes you different makes you strong and as we know this is a concept that children who feel isolated can definitely understand and i go even further the more isolated the child the more we can expect them to understand the events of season one basically show us the collapse that piltover has to society and over the course of the nine episodes characters like jason victor lose respect for these institutions they've never questioned this broken city with its broken leaders and its broken values victor realizes this early he realizes it when the man he respects the most threatens to destroy his life's work and condemn him to death he realizes this when the corruption built into the society pushes his best friend to break the values they both hold so dear something is wrong with the society and victor begins to look outside that society to achieve his goals i think that's what's going to stick with him beyond season one no matter what he feels about sky about his own values his own efforts to change the world he cannot go back to embracing the piltover way because piltover failed him and failed itself knowing how episode 9 ended society is going to be in an active state of collapse when season 2 starts all the characters are going to be questioning the rules that build that society and now there's not going to be any societal barriers to keep them from losing themselves again and victor he's already on that road he's already questioning society and to some extent as cinch hypothesized victor has always been on that road society has always failed him and some part of victor has always realized that now society needs an alternative and victor will have the technology to give it to them with he himself as the herald of this new era and that's the foreshadowing here that's how this becomes well you know what he becomes next week cevica subscribe so you don't miss it i know i've been teasing this video forever it's finally coming don't worry big thanks to the patrons had some great discussions on there this past week read my comic minor champion a superhero parody about solving really small problems in the most intensely serious way you can imagine new chapter coming soon the topic is constipation new videos every wednesday friday and sunday thank you for watching

Channel: schnee

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Id: rKAH-YZWGlM

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 20 2022