Arcane. Season 2. November 2024. #GeekedWeek

Arcane. Season 2. November 2024. #GeekedWeek

Plot convenience? Or did Raven really not think about the fact Salem would come after her, once she possessed a relic?

neither. you gotta remember that raven is lying when she presents herself as singularly focused on her own survival. cinder took a shot at her and raven dropped her defenses to lungs forward and shout a warning to vernal.

in V4, she tries to get qrow to tell her if salem has the crown because: “i just want to know what we’re up against.”

when vernal asks her if she believes they’ll be left alone if they hand over the lamp, raven says “of course not. they’ll never leave us alone. once our purpose has come and gone, we’ll be discarded; salem only uses people until they are no longer useful. if we want to have any chance of defending ourselves against her, then we need this relic.”

“the creatures of grimm have a master named salem. she can’t be stopped, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet.”

“i’m not helping oz, and i’m not helping salem. i don’t want any part of this!” but “this path won’t be easy for us, either, but we must do what’s right for the tribe.”

the point of keeping the lamp is to keep it away from salem. raven doesn’t especially want ozpin to have it either, because she knows he’ll just put it right back in a vault, but yang convinces raven to hand it over by declaring her intention to draw salem out and then fight back, which is exactly what raven planned to do.

as far as raven is concerned, if salem gets the lamp it’s Game Over. stabbing cinder in the back and absconding with the relic will incur salem’s wrath and provoke retaliation—raven doesn’t just know that, she’s counting on it.

here’s the bet she’s making: she eliminates cinder, locking salem out of the beacon vault, then slips away with the lamp in the chaos. the tribe is all packed and ready to move; salem’s forces are entangled at haven and will likely suffer defeat at the hands of qrow and his allies. they’ll need to retreat and regroup, giving raven the advantage. she also knows where their ship is.

so she moves the tribe—destroying salem’s people’s airship on her way out to hobble them—and digs in somewhere else, knowing that salem will come after her as soon as she figures out where raven is. cinder backed her into a corner before, but this time raven gets to choose and prepare the ground—or grounds, because she can use her semblance to move people or the relic or herself back and forth between n locations, where n is however many bonds she has within the tribe.

salem’s forces are primarily grimm, which raven can handle easily (see also: winter annihilating the swarming grimm in vacuo). with cinder gone, none of salem’s remaining agents will pose a serious threat; raven is a formidable enough fighter to go toe to toe with any of them without magic, and having magic tips the fight to her. if salem herself shows up, raven can portal out with the relic. she has a massive advantage in maneuverability that effectively neutralizes salem’s most overwhelming advantage; salem can’t be stopped, but raven can’t be caught.

salem can’t outlast an enemy who slips through her fingers like smoke every time she gets close—if she wants the relic, she’ll need to catch raven completely off guard and take her down in the first blow, which is going to be difficult when raven knows she’s coming, gets to choose the terrain, has a whole tribe of loyal followers to spread out and keep watch, and can use her semblance and a single ally in a strategic location to evacuate a whole camp in a matter of minutes or, if it comes to that, disappear herself in seconds.

like… genuinely. raven could keep that relic away from salem for years while inflicting very lopsided casualties on salem’s side. in a protracted war between an immortal capable of spawning armies of monsters and a group of guerrilla fighters who can fast travel, the guerrillas win.

she was planning to fight.

"The Queen who was. The King who could have been..."

In a world where Rhaenyra got her crown and Jacaerys sat upon the iron throne after her

something that i really like about blue eye samurai, now that im thinking about it, is that it discusses violence against women without becoming torture porn. like, in a lot of media that portrays women's issues, they show you that scene. like they give you this extended visual of a woman experiencing something traumatic and then laud themselves as feminist for doing so.

blue eye samurai doesn't do that. the whole show is set in a world that is extremely antagonistic toward women, and it makes a point to tell you that being a woman right now sucks, because they are property and are used sexually. but even though it doesn't shy away from this, it doesn't show you the violence itself, which you would almost expect it to because of how graphic the rest of the show is.

im thinking specifically of kinuyo. they very well could have shown us a scene of her being abused, but they didn't. they didn't show the abuse itself, but they did show how it affected her. they showed her seeing a doctor for her sores. they could have made this incredibly traumatic and grotesque scene a spectacle, showing us exactly how powerless she is and how powerful he is. they could have shown us this incredibly triggering event in full detail for our entertainment, but they didn't. they chose not to. and i think that's how it should be.

it is not necessary to have an extended visual and auditory reenactment of violence against women. we the audience understood the gravity of the situation and were able to empathize without needing that scene. having that scene would have completely detracted from the point they are trying to make. it would have turned something completely reprehensible that women everywhere fear because it's a very real issue into entertainment.

a khaleesi of the great grass sea