How (NOT) To Write Madness | Arcane vs Game Of Thrones 

Had to reupload due to a copyright thing! Sorry for the delay! Enjoy the vid!

The craziest part about Arcane is that they created all this amazing story for a character that up until that point was just "funny psycho girl we all love"

I loved how they portrayed Jinx's psychotic break. It never felt like it was a means to an end, but rather Jinx finally letting go of Powder and fully becoming Jinx.

jinx's voice acting is also phenomenal. sometimes you can close your eyes, and imagine what's on screen solely from the way lines are delivered.

I think this is a good way to frame it. When Jinx blew up the Council, fans went “No Jinx! No!” But when Danny destroyed Kings Landing, fans went “Why Danny! Why!” We know why Jinx did what she did, and that’s what makes it more tragic, we can see her pain and desperately want to help her, but as the audience we are helpless. When Danny destroyed Kings Landing, fans could see that they were trying to paint her as mad, but it didn’t come off as genuine because the trigger moment and buildup wasn’t there.

Another thing about jinx is that she seems like she never stopped being a child. She has all the qualities of a child, but with all the hope sucked out. Her imagination, creativity, the way she speaks, and the way she conducts herself. However, they haven't used this to create sympathy, in a "she's still a child underneath all the trauma" kinda way. Instead, they use this to show her madness. She is always surrounded by her imaginary friends, to a point that it haunts her. The weapons she uses can cause extreme destruction, but to her, they're toys. Her brain, in moments of distress, thinks in scratches that look like drawing's she would make when she was younger. She seems like she died at the moment Vi left her with silco, and is now some ghost of her past self. The scary part is not that she's a different person than she was earlier, it's that she's way too similar in all the wrong ways.

“A Netflix animated show based on LoL characters handled and wrote madness better than the HBO live action adaptation of GRRM’s ASOIaF series” is a sentence I never thought I’d say. But here we are.

Tbh Jinx’s “madness” never left the sympathy & empathy phase for me - I think that’s part of what made her character so brilliant. Like frankly she should be terrifying considering the power she yields & how little control she sometimes has at where that’s directed….but weve seen so much of the process of her gradual decline that it feels understandable & we see her so weak at times so I just feel sympathy

not to get deeply personal in a youtube comment section, but as someone who does experience both auditory and visual hallucinations as a result of ptsd, i just LOVE the way they portray jinx's. i can't explain exactly how, but they nailed it, they conveyed the feeling perfectly. i'm fully convinced that somebody on the writing team has experienced hallucinations, it's just too accurate.

I love the insanity that feels logically sane. You can understand why the character did all those things, it makes sense, it’s even reasonable to an extent. Yet somehow the logic starts to contradict itself and that’s when you realize the true depths of their madness

Jinx is THE BEST depiction of what psychosis is like. She is never sane, but tries to hide it. The writers navigate around her psychosis, and her story follows as a natural consequence of her mental disorder. Daenerys is whatever mood the writers feel would progress the story.

One thing concerning Jinx's madness: We see the scratches over top of people's faces in the very first scene where Vi is leading her as Powder across the bridge looking for their parents. She's got her eyes closed and is singing but the scratchy scribbles are still there briefly. So it was there, in a minor capacity, for a very long time.

I was honestly surprised when Danny did not go completely mad when her dragon babies died. Like, imo, that would have been the best tipping point. I would have gone ballistic if that was me considering what she and her dragons went through lol

Avatar the last Airbender also did madness right, even with a short timeline. Azula had a few scenes to herself where she was obviously losing her sense of self and had many dialogues with her two identities, they also showed a CLEAR diversion from her usual organized meticulous behaviour...(unkempt hair, being afraid of her own staff instead of strategizing to keep them in line). Your suggestion of having the two dragons die, be the Dam Breaking trigger was a very good one, especially since she viewed the dragons as her children

I'm Austrian and grew up around elderly people who had often a very hard time coming to terms with the duality of Nazism. For them it was a time of so much euphoria and enthusiasm, the regime was so popular because they provided jobs, cars, travel and all these organizations for every gender and age group to create a cult like feeling of community, many people were doing better than ever before and constantly told they were special. But this paradise was built on creating hell for millions of other people and this was so hard to grasp for my grandparents and their generation that many ended up in denial.

I love that line “It’s celebrating trauma, It’s beautiful doom, it’s DOUBLE BUNNY.”

I gotta say, Daenyrys manifesting her insanity through wearing dragon scales and collecting dragon bones and being obsessed with fire is brilliant and terrifying. I also love the new empire idea, it gives Daeny a goal.

The thing about Jinx is that at the start of the show it's kind of a mystery how she would become the psychopath she eventually becomes. But they show that even as a child she was already mentally unstable, it's just that nobody really knew it, and they illustrate this by showing her instability only when nobody is around to see it. She didn't really change, rather a part of her that was always under the surface slowly grew and expanded until it overtook her.

One thing arcane did right is madness does not equate to failure and personal destruction. All other examples of madness you show, the character "falls" into madness, but Jinx rises into it, achieves apotheosis through it. Dany could dream of a great second valaria, kill half of kings landing... and then build it. She could rise in her madness to become the greatest player in the game of thrones. She could build the 400,000 seat stadium, the 2x colossus, all on a strong foundation of ash. We cheer for Jinx because, at the end of the day, she furthers the plot toward where we instinctually know the world of Arcane is going. GOT should head toward a world where someone win's the 'game of thrones' but her madness prevents that realization rather than resolving it.

I think Danny's problem is the fact that she shouldn't be mad. Like, during the series they kept telling us that “oh she is gonna be crazy” and it's just cheap. When Cersei got mad I thought they would do an inversion, the mad one is actually not mad and the one who shouldn't be mad, is mad. But no, they just went whit the cliche

I think the idiom “the straw that breaks the camel’s back” refers to the little things, it’s the small moments that build up over time that drive the characters closer and closer the breaking point

I think Jinx saying "Powder fell down a well" was also a parallel to silco being drowned by Vander. Powder falling out of the building and Silco being drowned are both turning points in their lives and and both are associated with a betrayal from an older sibling who was also a role model.

So to the "straw that breaks the camel's back" statement, I always understood that to be like this: everyone has a limit and there is a breaking point to that limit and we can keep adding little things one after another until the last little thing "the last straw" breaks that limit or pushes someone past their breaking point and it's obvious not that literal like you said, a single straw won't break the camel's back, but a camel with the ability to carry a half ton of straw "can't" carry more than that ton so the straw in excess of that limit breaks the camel

I think GOT writers were desperately trying to make Danny’s descent into madness a major unexpected plot twist, but that meant not preparing for it properly

Imagine having a character development across many seasons, spaning several years, with almost an endless budget and a show with 9 episodes, that were indeed very carefully crafted, with care and love, beats it in such a way, no one dares to question it...

Small correction (from my point of view), he said that she (Powder/Jinx) CHOSE to be Jinx at the end. I have seen many people express this. But in my opinion she didn't choose to be Jinx, but rather after having unintentionally caused the death of yet another father figure, she just stopped resisting and accepted that this is indeed all she is. To me this was rather a moment of defeat for her, having to accept a stigma that others blamed her off and admitting they were right... After which she fully committed to that role.

I was surprised you didn’t mention Dracula from Netflix Castlevania. His madness is due to the sorrow of the death of Lisa. In Alucard’s own words “This is nothing but history’s longest suicide note”

I instantly fell in love with Jinx’s character (not Powder, just Jinx). She is a stereotypical quirky girl character, but there is something different about it. She had a reason to be the quirky psychopath girl, because of the trauma she endured. Like when she used the monkey face as her sign, when it was the same monkey toy that killed her family. It really showed how messed up she became and made me more interested in her character.

31:55 I absolutely love how the "dream city" fix pairs PERFECTLY with the intro animation of buildings popping into place; you can imagine the dream sequence being entirely "toy castles" or at least start that way and crystalize into a more realistic city she walks through. If they'd have done that, it'd have felt like it was part of some master plan the showrunners knew about from the start.

When Jinx said "nothing ever stays dead", my first idea was she wanted to finally end her struggle on the bridge and was devastated to see it's still there. She pulled the pin of the grenade and left it to fall right beside her. She had this face that read as that was the purpose- to finally end it. Mylo and Claggor are still alive in her head and she wants them to finally die too, but when she's pulled back from her own death and goes through a brand new traumatic transformation, she sees that through all that they're still there. "I should have known, nothing ever stays dead" even if she tries to kill them- and herself- again. But besides that, I don't even watch GoT and watching you figure out & theorize about a better madness arc for this character was fascinating. I always look forward to your videos , even on topics I know nothing about.

That "out of body" experience happens with Jinx too. When she sees the pink haired Firelight at the Hexgates and she shoots her, there's this involuntary sort of tic she gives. Like she didn't mean to, and her hand automatically reached for her gun and shot her.

I think the main problem is that Daenerys was not mad in the first place, and was actually quite mentally stable. They just re-wrote the characters in the last two seasons to reach the garbage "controversial" bad ending they wanted.

I'm hoping that Jinx's phrase 'Nothing ever stays dead' will also turn into foreshadowing for Powder not staying 'dead'. Jinx definitely chose to be 'Jinx' and believes she has abandoned 'Powder' and all the weakness that she represents to Jinx at the end of S1, but it would be interesting to see that internal conflict renew in a later season and have her realise that Powder *isn't* truly gone.

as some with PTSD myself, I interpret the "scratching" as a visual representation of the "triggers" of the past that linger and you want to run away from but can't, because many of those triggers exist within your own mind, and are not 100% external. I haven't had psychotic episodes like Jinx has regularly, I don't see/hear things in a literal sense, but I will often have memories sudden intrude into my mind and take over for a moment if I don't fight it every day through methods my therapist helped me with, though anti-anxiety meds help a little as well. To me, the animators are trying to convey the idea of a mental irritant that leads you to return to that moment which is the representation of that trauma. Mine is not an extremely acute PTSD like Jinx's, mines more of a CPTSD from 25 long years of more moderate traumas, but it feels very similar. To me, at least. Jinx feels like a victim of PTSD, but one who doesn't know how to accept help due to how severe it is, and how her world is even less equipped than ours to help victims

I think another thing that worked so well for Jinx is that her choosing Powder would be like her choosing naivety and innocence again which we all know is literally impossible so the only "real" option is choosing Jinx, it's just tragic madness the way that final decision comes about.

as someone with a similar but more realistic background to jinx, i was blown away by how accurate the portrayal of psychosis or "madness" was. the shapes, the overlays - can really be seen. they became a prominent part of my life and i remember some of my first hallucinations more vividly than i remember big stepping stones in life. jinx shows a rich inner world, which is my theory for why soooo many people who were nothing like her tried to emulate her, in order to try and suggest the wealth of their inner world. Repressed emotions can even lead to hallucinations, and after long term hallucinations, the "people" and images become like possessions.

Jinx's madness made sense. You could see and feel her break as she realized she is the one who killed all her friends, and even before she broke, there was plenty of foreshadowing that showed her attachment issues. . Khaleesi on the other hand... came out of nowhere. I get the showrunners tried to have a few things happen to lead up to her "downfall". But they had spent 7 seasons developing a kind, caring, defend the innocent type character. And then all of a sudden she just changes... because... subversion I guess? There was never a point where I felt Khaleesi break... They didn't even seem to make an attempt to show anything like that. Her first sign of breaking is literally when she's sitting on top of her dragon about to wipe everyone out. . I don't understand how that level of terrible writing ever was allowed on screen.

Along with not having enough time to fully develop Dany's character turn I think the writers also fell in love with the amount of praise and attention they got from shocking and unexpected moments earlier in the series. Instead of setting something up through logical paths in the story they instead tried to subvert expectations with the goal of more shock and catching the audience off guard. You can only go to this well so many times before it is no longer impactful and they carried it on all the way through the end of the show when they should have dropped it for a proper build. I don't think the writers wanted us to see Dany's turn coming when in fact seeing it coming is exactly what would have made it believable.

When you add the context that even Jinx herself didn't stay dead - she was essentially monstrously resurrected on Singed's table - it adds a layer of personal pain to the statement.

I think a lot of writers who haven't experienced significant loss multiple times, think that losses kind of accumulate into one bigger and bigger grief, until even the smallest thing finally gives it enough mass to break through that metaphorical dam. But in truth, that dam scales with every moment of grief, but the grief slowly shrinks over time. I recently had a heart to heart with someone who is currently losing their life partner in a very awful way, and they get a lot of compliments for their resilience. They looked me dead in the eye and told me that what these people don't understand is: "I had to watch my own child die, and bury them all by myself. I survived that, I'll survive this too." That absolutely wrecked me tbh.

Jynx’s breakdown scene as a kid will never cease to give me chills. It is horrifying to watch

I have never considered the idea of a “new Valyria” but that is actually such a great direction for Danny should things sort of play out the way they did in the show

I really think the only way the “Dany is mad” arc could work is if they spent the entire series with her struggling with her Targaryen blood. Sure, we saw her say “I won’t be the mad king”, but we needed to see her wrestle with “mad king” choices and muscle through the better choice, which should get harder as time progresses. Then the big war for Westeros begins and there needs to be questions as to whether she actually is going to do good (and not just characters saying “I have a bad feeling about her”). Then she makes the bad choice, and it should feel as tragic as Frodo saying “the ring is mine.” In addition, I feel like the show needed Dany to actually be in Westeros for much longer than she was. She seemed like an alien in that kingdom after being across the sea for so long.

Huge huge props to you for specific sympathy *or* empathy. As a low empathy person I almost never see people recognizing the distinction and it genuinely means so much

I really love one interpretation of Jinx's scratching. The scratching and the delusions are the conflict between Jinx and Powder, them fighting over what they are doing. And this gives two ideas for the final scene, with no scratching there is no conflict between Jinx and Powder, so either Powder is "dead" and we are seeing Jinx prevail as the one true identity, or we are seeing them agree, Jinx and Powder on the same side, both committed to this choice this action.

I always thought the straw that broke the camels back was more about how little things add up. In isolation the final straw may not be the worse thing to happen to the person. But at that point the load was at full capacity, so that a straw was enough to make it break.

Jinx being compared to Vader is way more in line with her character than Harley Quinn or Azula. They even have their own similar identity crises.

I've never even watched a single bit of Game of Thrones, and when you got to the description of Old Valyria, I knew exactly where it was going and i got *chills* at how good that could have been. Also, your explanation of making these huge projects as signs of an unstable leader overblowing their own importance helped me realize how common that is, and how I've felt that exact thing in other works even if i couldn't verbalize it

Jinx's scratching is reality vs the story her brain creates to stop herself from shutting down. Pinpointing Caitlyn as the villan leaves room to keep idealising Vi despite none of the characters being completely good or evil. Jinx needs that thing to hold onto to stop herself from losing it all together. It's her way of coping which simotaniously drives her insane

"make her have a baby, than burn it. that would be the worst and most perfect" it is sentences like these that make me love the writers of the world (edit: omg thank you all for the likes!)

Arcane is just way too well done to the point where you will really really really struggle to fault it in the slightest. The animation is stunning, the different facial expressions portrayed flawlessly. You litrally feel sad during the first 3 minutes of the first episode when you rewatch it for the first time. The writing is just great in every conceivable way. There is a reason it is still holding 100% on rotten tomatoes

I think rule number 7 is actually realistic and applicable irl. The mad character wants to get back at whatever/whomever, yes but I also think that the large dramatic responsive act is also to help themselves regain a feeling of control. Our characters in these situations feel like they are not in control of the things that are around them, so they do these big acts to show themselves that they can still do things, they can still control something. That's what I think at least

I think one of the better written and crafted "Descent into Madness" arks for a character I've ever seen is the story of Arthas Menethil from warcraft. That is believable, raw and outright masterful.

Having read the books (which, at present, end at the point where Dany has to flee the coliseum on Drogon's back) there was a potential building seed for Dany's madness. Namely, she only ever Wins when she goes wild. She gets dragons when she burns the witch to death. She breaks her deal with the slavemasters and gets an army of free unsullied. She spends her entire time in Mereen trying to be nice and just and solve things kindly but runs into problem after problem. It's not working. It's a possible arc for book Dany where she grapples with the fact that becoming what she is feared to become - the mad, ruthless dragon - is the only way for her to get what she wants.

I’d say that Jinx’s triggers started even before the explosions but because she had those connections you were talking about, it was contained. It was during that first intro in the bridge where they find their parents dead and Vander takes them in. You can hear her singing to herself as a way of selfcomfort as she covers her eyes and clings to Vi. It was probably Vi who told her to do this so Powder doesn’t see or hear the devastation and the cries, but in a way, this is an introduction to how she started developing certain coping mechanisms. Covering her eyes and ears to reality. When she stops and sees her parents, it is Vi that crumbles down expressing her grief and just letting it out. In the meantime, Powder is obviously in pain and scared too but she holds it in and hugs Vi tight once more, both as an attempt to comfort her and establishing her as Powder’s grip on herself, making sure neither her or Vi ‘disappear’ like the people in the bridge and her parents. I understand that nobody grieves the same way but to me that’s when the repression started. I don’t think she ever got the opportunity to properly address that trauma. Even in those years where she had Vi, Vander and the boys, it’s not clear they ever talked about those events, eventhough they continued to live that “quiet” oppression due to Vander’s agreement with Grayson. We can see another glimpse of this mental distress when they ask her to stay behind as they go and rescue Vander. It always seemed odd to me how erratic her crying was in the scene she’s alone on her bed. Surely, anyone would feel crushingly impotent if you knew your loved ones were putting themselves at risk to rescue your other loved one and you had to stay behind. But what caught my attention was how self-destructive she was being, just completely out of herself. A hatred that was directed to herself and what she identified in herself as broken, fragile and useless ((often ‘confirmed’ by those around her like Mylo.. which is why, aside from the guilt for what happened, I think that Mylo was the main hallucination she had whenever she was being self-critical or letting her insecurities over being abandoned/replaced take over)) as opposed to Vi’s strength, leadership and determination. She only pulled herself together once she realized she might be of help, and we all know how that turned out. Also, just a little margin note because I already lost my train of thought, love the parallel between that shot where Powder glances up from Silco’s hug and the shot in the intro where Vi glances up from Vander’s hug.

I think that a madness arc for Dany should have been implied a lot earlier in the series if they wanted to go that route from the beginning. Her whole character in the first 4 seasons was literally helping slaves be freed, even if it meant dalaying her own plans of winning the iron throne. If you build up a character who is so concerned with the "low-life" and using that as a contrast with Cersei who despises anyone who isn't of high birth, making that character burn the poor parts of the city just doesn't work very well. It would be a whole lot different if she just decided to destroy the red keep, accidentally triggering all the stashes of wildfire Cersei placed in the city and having crumbling towers fall on streets full of innocent people. That would have made sense, not that much of a shocker compared to what actually happened in the series but in my opinion a lot more reasonable.

Arcane is by far one of my favourite shows- and your videos have helped me understand it to a deeper level and take inspiration!! I am currently writing a manipulative character who ends up driving herself to madness through the delusion of her superiority- so this video was UNBELIEVABLY helpful!!!

In awe of how you pump out good quality videos so quickly

I disagree with you here. I don't think Jinx shot the tower with Fishbone (her 'burn it all down') simply because she was insane and unpredictable, she's not that a simplistic a character. In my view she fired her mega-weapon out of grief. Destroying the council was what SILCO wanted and she did it in honour of HIM. She didn't care about the council, she owed them nothing (but they gave her and the people she cared about a life of misery), Silco had her plan & build Fishbones from quite early in the series and she fired it because as far as she knew that's what he wanted even if he wasn't around to see it. -at no point did we see that Silco explain his agreement with Jayce to Jinx (she had no idea about the peace deal), but more importantly for her the final moments of the final episode was a moment of clarity for Jinx. After she killed Silco there was no madness, no stress, no being pulled apart by the people around her; she was just finally HER. No Vander, no Milo, No Clagger, no Silco, no Powder and she's beaten Vi and Cait (and probably thought Echo was dead too), after her entire life there was finally peace in that there was only Jinx which was made clear by her sitting in the Jinx chair. From then on there was no jagged lines of madness, her voice was clear and strong, only clarity of purpose. The rocket was a thank you of sorts, a goodbye to her foster-father by giving him his dying wish. Madness didn't fire the rocket, Silcos death did; It was HIS dream. If she had just lashed out in rage & insanity she would have lashed out at her personal world, she would have attacked the undercity with a series of bombs but a single long range attack was HIS view, shooting a far away enemy being the council was HIS idea and his mindset. Jinx didn't attack the council out of any retaliation tipped over the edge. She was finally free and it was a parting gift to the one that gave her that strength; the monstrous Silco. Silco was 'the monster that you created' and in his final act freed her by telling her she was perfect.

In the books they are building towards Dany’s change. She keeps making decicions where she chooses cruelty. In the beginning it is people who are Evil, corrupt and clearly enemies. But she moves to people she suspects, she begins to develop paranoia about the three betrayals. If the books are ever finished, we will see How it was supposed to happen. But most likely, Unfortunately, that will never happen.

Hi Schnee, I've been watching your Arcane videos for a while and I wanted to say thank you for putting this series out. The show is an incredible base for human exploration with the complex plot and storytelling, but the way you extrapolate these concepts and phrase them in a way they can relate to us on a personal level, that's really an amazing gift. Crazy enough, this one video made me look at my own thoughts, the ones that feel "mad" and uncontrollable, in a new light. I couldn't crack this mechanism in my mind and somehow you managed to give me the tools. It doesn't make the thing better, but knowing where it comes from is incredibly comforting. You use psychology in such a creative way and very original. Your dad must be proud.

The tragic thing is, the foundations for Dany's madness were there, you can see it as early as the end of season 1. The woman she orders to heal Khal Drogo takes her unborn child from her, and only restores Drogo to be a husk of his former self. Dany's response is to tie the woman to Drogo's pyre and burn her alive. Even this early, the duality in her starts building. She wants to be a good queen, but when someone wrongs her, it seems to be almost a reflex for Dany to burn them alive, just like her father did before her. The death penalty is common in Game of Thrones, but even by those standards, burning someone alive is a cruel and unusual way to do it. The problem is, the writers seemed more intent on making her likeable than tragic, which is where Arcane went right. So for the next six seasons, they focus on making Dany likeable, even through all the horrible things that she does. It's how they wrote themselves into a corner. Season 8 was a failure of writing, Dany being the most obvious example, but it was a slow descent into failure that was years in the making. Conversely, every time Jinx does something horrible, Arcane pulls no punches to remind us that the things she did were horrible. The enforcers she kills in episode 4 are a good example. The enforcers are corrupt as a system, but the worst we ever see those guys do is that they are jerks to Caitlyn. Because ten seconds later, they don't hesitate to run into a burning building because they think there is a little girl trapped inside. We see their funeral, and Marcus reminds us that they had families. The creators never wrote Jinx to be likeable, they wrote her to be a tragic but inevitable product of her world.

The solution that I like the most would actually ditch the madness arch and would make Circi much more evil. She would fly in and Circi would be standing on the top of the castle. Dani would fly in and light her on fire but she would have set up wildfire inside the castle and strategically throughout the city. Dani was trying to just kill Circi but Circi out maneuvered her. Everyone believes that Dani went mad and destroyed the city and Jon has to choose whether to betray her or side with her.

Dany being held in captivity would be an interesting parallel to her father. I am pretty sure the madness trigger for him in the books was being held captive in duskendale and Tywin refusing to parley and sieging the city instead.

The part at the end where Jinx asks Vi "Get rid of her please" Vi looks at Cait, but I think she was really referring to herself as Jinx and she knew she couldn't stop that side of her so that was Powder's last ditch effort to be "saved".

Not only did GoT barely set it up by comparison, but in Arcane Jinx's mental instability is subtly hinted at even when she was younger before the tragedy (second tragedy really). We must remember that the Act one doesn't just end with Powder killing her family and losing Vi, but began with her losing her parents, seem them dead right in front of her. Even in act 1 as a little girl Powder has moments showing she isn't perfectly well and even the scratches and screen effects shown later in the show when Jinx is having an episode is shown in act 1 with Powder. It's just upon first viewing the audience doesn't know it's in association with her in particular. It's at first played off as just stylization on it's own. So even before Jinx fully goes mad, she was foreshadowed having issues as the young and innocent Powder, but as Powder she seemed not too far gone yet and like with the right upbringing she could rebound and become more happy and stable.

Daenerys would NEVER idolize her father, ever. It goes against everything she's in the books, and the series directors did a great job at fucking up with her book arcs and didn't translate half of what she IS or what she endured. Benioff and Weiss (especially Benioff) never got what her character is from the get-go. They thought her to be this stoic woman who never shows emotions, didn't allow the actress to show the full extents of the character's warmth, and profited off her only to discard her like a pile of shit. The family member she admires is RHAEGAR, her brother, not Aerys II.

I found your video essays(?) when I was looking for learning to analyse stories, because I like to tell mine with more depth. I think I came across your channel through Arcane stuff and have been hooked since then. I love the way you question things, look into depth and bring new perspectives. Your videos have taught me how to look at things differently and allows me to understand how "things" work. So thank you!

Fantastic video. Nailed everything I felt watching both GoT and Arcane. One of my biggest annoyances with Dany's arc was that they never once had her question whether she might potentially go mad in the future. She was such a good and intelligent character initially, and she never once asked whether she was actually the right person to break the wheel, knowing what could happen if her coin flip landed wrong once she had power. Someone that smart, who was as determined to be a good queen, should've at least considered that she might follow in her father's footsteps. It's not like the Targaryen madness was a secret, after all.

As someone who has experience with dissociative identity disorder and schitzophrenia like situations Jinx is the absolute best depiction on screen that I've ever seen of what it feels like to be out of control of your own mind. The overlay of scritchiness onto reality is EXACTLY what it feels like. Not necessarily what it looks like or sounds like, because that is different for each person, but this is what it FEELS like. Also my wife had really intense panic attacks while she was experiencing post-partum depression, and when I showed her the part in the music video (shown here around 9:23) where powder is banging her head while the shadows of her head are going crazy, her eyes got huge and she said, "That's exactly what it feels like. I've never felt more understood."

I think Tokyo Ghoul has a good depiction of this in the manga with Kaneki's centipede form. The deeper he starts to embrace his new roots as a ghoul, the more he starts to rely on and weaponize his trauma, it causes him to fly off the hinge and completely lose himself. The new form that breeds from it is a visual actualization of that descent into madness. His kagune takes the form of a centipede, something he remembers vividly from his time being tortured by Jason.

I’ve been meaning to watch this vid for like a year so happy I finally watched it the way you analyze and put out your ideas makes a lot of sense

What I have taken from this video is that I need to watch Arcane. Also, Dany's madness arc really needed one thing: Time. The entire show needed at least two more seasons to pull off what it was trying to do. It probably wouldn't have stuck the landing then either but Dany's arc would have been at least somewhat more believable.

There are two Targaryens. They could have gone further and had two parallel madness arcs, one for Dany and the other (more subtle) for Jon, then have them reach their breaking point at about the same time and have one choose madness and the other choose sanity. Jon even has a great moment to start his descent into madness (getting betrayed and murdered will do that to you).

Powder's facial expressions felt so accurated along all the serie. It was heartbreaking how real it was and the evolution of her mind break.

Hot take: Danny needed to fail in Essos, to make her arc better. She tried to be friendly and good and it blew up in her face, she got rejected be the people she tried to save. So now (season 7 and 8) she views every little bit of rejection as treason.

You did a great job explaining that, I genuinely can't remember when was the last time I've listened to a 45 min monologue and lasted till the end. A perfectly logical, interesting, in-depth explanation. Thanks.

So about jinx's scratching. I can't speak for everyone, but when I saw them I immediately recognized the feeling. It's hard to explain, but that's what tramatic thoughts/memories "feel" like during a manic episode. It's jarring, like a shock to your brain, scattered and forceful. The dinner table scene where Vi is trying to make her remember in episode 9 was a perfect example. I think someone with experience designed those visuals.

"Anakin sometimes thinks of the dread that eats at his heart as a dragon. Children on Tatooine tell each other of the dragons that live inside the suns "But Anakin's fear is another kind of dragon. A cold kind. A dead kind. Not nearly dead enough. Not long after he became Obi-Wan's Padawan all those years ago, a minor mission had brought them to a dead system: one so immeasurably old that its star had long ago turned to a frigid dwarf of hyper compacted trace metals, hovering a quantum fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Anakin couldn't even remember what the mission might have been, but he'd never forgotten that dead star. It had scared him. "Stars can die?" "It is the way of universe, which is another manner of saying that it is the will of the Force,” Obi-Wan had told him. “Everything dies. In time, even stars burn out." "that is the kind of fear that lives inside Anakin Skywalker: the dragon of that dead star. It is an ancient, cold dead voice within his heart that whispers: all things die" The general trigger of Anakin's arc is fear of loss, that is what always haunted him through his life building up with each and every time he lost someone (His mother, Qui-gon, Ahsoka) and the fear of Padme's death, the person he loved the most being the final trigger.

this is truly one of the best film analytical videos I've watched. It's very articulate in its deep dive, pulling evidence and reasoning for every claim and observation, just so so impressive

Fun fact, a lot of Jinx's symptoms can be tied to schizophrenia which makes me hurt for her more.

I wonder if the appeal of Nazism was a paradise where there's no moral grayness, no deliberation. Of getting so swept up in unified screams of glory, that you forget life could never be a paradise of conformity. It reminds me of doublethink, from 1984: "War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength." If unified ignorance is all it takes to block out a painful world, it's much harder to say no. (NOT glorifying naziism, just pointing out the similar mindsets)

I love how you fixed dany’s ending. Your suggestions were so twisted, but also made so much sense as a frequent viewing of GoT and HotD

Brilliant analysis and breakdown. The madness part of the video could easily have been its own video essay, then the GoT breakdown and rewriting was the cherry on top that make me wish we could all get a S8 reboot with you as the main writer.

"It's hard to do madness in the show because it had 8 seasons of no madness." They could've fixed this by having other characters like Jon, or Cersei get more and more self-conflict moments, or straight up could turn a character like Arya mad in order to create parallels between characters that is regularly encountered in the series. For Jon, he could go in a self-conflict, or paranoia after learning about his lineage. He has had an initial push back when his fellow Night's Watch members betrayed him, the one who loved, Ygritte betraying him by nearly attempting to kill him, and now the fear of betrayal by the North when they learn that the man that leads them is the same one that comes from the lineage that the North hate so much, so he could get in a major conflict with himself over accepting his lineage, or dismissing it. Sort of regularly getting conflicted between his Targaryen side, and his Stark side. As for Cersei, it would be the children and the family that would push her over the edge. Since forever, her character was all about protecting her family and her lineage. The story handled it well by having people vanish from her family one by one, her son, her father, Tyrion, Myrcella, Tommen and later on even Jamie also leaves her. It would actually have been a very good madness story to develop, because she had all the right pieces to set up a good mad queen story. Instead of her blowing up the sept that lead up to Tommen's suicide, it could've been other way around. They could've written a story where Tommen went in a huge self-conflict about deciding between his mother, and his wife, which eventually could've lead up to a little teenager like him to end his own life instead of choosing between them, and in a rage Cersei, leaning towards getting mad could have started hearing voices that blamed the faith for his death, just as how she blamed Tyrion instantly for Joffrey's death. After this, she could get herself isolated from grief, or Jamie could betray her by saying something like "You're not Cersei" after she tells him some insane thought. And the one that would be the best choice for a madness arc imo is Arya. She was a kid, her sister and the prince betrayed her, she had to give her wolf away, her sister's wolf got killed in front of her, which could initially start thoughts like "I'm the one who killed him, it was my actions." And later, her father is killed in front of her, she becomes isolated after the Hound isn't with her, and she goes to a place where she has to decide between two identities, and kill other people in order to become an assassin that has no emotions? Like the whole no one plot was almost the same as Jinx's character. She has a tragic past where she had her family killed in front of her, got seperated from them, was influenced to force another personality onto herself and forget the past, had only one person (Jaqen, or lady Crane) that she could trust in the entire city. There was a part where they did try to make it seem like Arya was struggling between the two while she was trying to become no one, but in the end out of nowhere she decides she's Arya, gets assassinated, and spits on every plot device that was trying to make her more of a no one, then the plot says she's now no one? No, she could have gotten paranoia from the whole faceless men idea after seeing how they decieve people and kill them and are master at lies, which would make her Arya side give her doubts about trusting them, but the no one side would try to fight back. They could've established more of a teacher-student bond between her and Waif, or Jaqen, and then made her accidentally hear the waif tell Jaqen about how Arya's not a suitable candidate to become no one, as all her missions failed, thus setting off to assassinate her. In another reveal of betrayal, and shock from killing Jaqen in self-defense, her no one side would convince her that all this was her fault because she could not accept to become no one, which had led her to lose the only other person she could trust, her mentor. They even could've pulled a Silco moment by having Jaqen give some final words to Arya, such as the "Now a girl truly is no one", or "I was mistaken, a girl could never truly be Arya Stark", and they would give her the final decision, as Jinx goes to pick her identity, arya could have picked no one, and become no one, her post-trauma self.

I was terribly abused as a child and at some point I forgot most of the shit that happened to me. But after I started remembering, in distressing moments I felt like this whole other self was trying to inhabit my brain. I started calling that self Little Cedar because they were the person I put all that hurt I went through on so I wouldn’t have to deal with it. I was very torn about how to handle this younger self because I wanted to comfort them but also make them stay away. I didn’t want that person to be me. Seeing Jinx being torn between Powder and Jinx and talking about how Powder is gone, Powder is dead or lost, very much reminds me of how I separated myself from Little Cedar to make living easier. I would talk to my therapist about what Little Cedar was feeling and what Little Cedar went through instead of what I went through. I’ve incorporated Little Cedar now. It makes me sad that Jinx couldn’t incorporate Powder but I remember how difficult it was for me to do.

I'm late to the party on this one but I wanted to thank you for making it. It's very well done. I'd throw on this one thing is that Jinx's experience resonated with my traumatic experiences but especially with other people who have more similar foundations of their trauma. The word that kept coming up was "Believable." Traumatic experiences don't simply reside in the mind. They reside in the body. Her experiences to me strike me as an wonderfully crafted artistic representation of what it's like to have that fear/hurt still soaked into her nervous system. Your body's experiences determine your mind's inputs. It's like trying to solve random BSODs on your computer by working on software when your motherboard or power supply is failing/not solidly hooked up. It's all red herrings until you go through something (either a person or some new info) that recontextualizes what you've been seeing and you can finally begin to unravel the root of the problem. Jinx is what happens when someone's hurt that bad and nobody, even the people who genuinely care about her, knows how to be that person for them and they have no idea how to find/retain that person.

I always saw the straw that breaks the camels back as it is a build up, and that last straw is the limit of what it can hold. The straw is alone, its a stacked up problem right at the brink of the limit and then one staw is added and it spills over.

In my eyes Jinx did not "choose madness", she just accepted in a moment of absolute clarity (the voices in her head go completely silent after Silcos death) the sad reality that she is a real danger to everyone surrounding her and that she causes people to get hurt or die, no matter if she wants it or not. She accepted that she has become a real Jinx due to her mental illness and thanks to Silcos inconsequential upbringing and that Vi - who is now in love with an enforcer - could never see her as anything else than a Monster now.

The better way for Dany to go mad is of course much earlier. We need to see hints of it in Qarth and Mereen. And I would turn her into her brother, whom she new intimately, not her father she never did. She despised her brother for his weakness and disconnection from reality, so seeing her become him when she realizes governing a city is hard and people don't love her would be very powerful.

I so enjoy your analyses on shows, it always help me see more cool, interesting things! Thanks for doing what you're doing! :)

Thanks for introducing me to Arcane! I love that show so much! This was the first video of yours I ever saw. I was late to the party and had happened to finish it before your video here first came out. It was in my recommendations again today, so I thought I'd just tell you that I'm glad I saw it and found out about such an awesome series!

jinx is one of the fictional charachters i’ve related to the most because of how well they represent her mental issues and stuff. it’s like watching myself on screen, even in the first few episodes. it’s rare that i see the ugly side of myself represented like this if that makes sense. when people write mental illness , they tend to romanticise it. but im all honesty , my illness makes me both a victim and a villain at times. this was a ramble but

I think the idea you had about fire being a way for Danny to "purify" or "clean" herself and the world would've been awesome to see done little by little in the story. The fact that she does not burn disconnecting her more and more from the world around her, getting to the point where she does not quite understand the actual consequences of fire. Also, the idea of burning down King's Landing to "cleanse" it and create New Valyria would make sense in that context, like a dream she started having somewhere along the story and we begin to see that little by little on those dreams she had. That would've been a great way to build up her madness. Great video! It always makes me so sad to think what could have been with GoT 😢

I love the way you put, super interesting. When I see a video that’s 45 minutes I get uninterested usually. But I enjoyed it beginning to end. Thank you. (:

Thank you so much for this. First video I've watched from you and 16 minutes in and I've subscribed. You've really helped me with finishing my first novel.

i’m very sorry to hear about your mentor’s passing. he’d be so proud seeing your analysis videos reach so many people! they’ve helped me a lot as a young writer, and i really appreciate what you do. congratulations on 100k💗

I think another hidden meaning in the "Nothing ever stays dead." line, while not as super meaningful and poetic, could be that when she was getting the shimmer she was in Singed's lab with Warwick. While Jinx is crazy, she isn't dumb; a genius actually. It wouldn't be unrealistic to assume that after waking up she looked up at least once and saw him.

Wow. This video was SO much more than I expected. Thank you. Subscribed and looking through your other content.

I enjoy your commentary. I find it engaging, and at the same time relaxing. Thank you for sharing. Subbed.