I *NEED* therapy after this episode! 😭 Therapist reacts to S1E3 of Arcane League of Legends 

Please do. Powder's story gets even more interesting from a psychological standpoint, I would love to see you react to it!

Please continue reacting! There's LOADS more to analyze. Plus the rest of it is awesome, too. Also, this episode makes me tear up just about every dang time, no matter how many reactions I watch.

Yes please keep reacting to arcane. It gets better and better + the characters and storylines get even more complex and interesting. I can't wait to see your reaction and opinion on powder in the next few episodes 🙏🏻

If you could sweep up Powder and Vi right now, how would you handle their situation?

I have a question (or topic) for the next episode (without spoilers): What do you think all the characters did in the timeframe between episode 3 and 4? It would be awesome if you could adress the topic in your next video! 😁

Indeed >> but if you imagine reading a news article titled "11-year old tries to rescue family with homemade bomb", and she's probably not even 11 given she's prepubescent. If I was to geuss her age, 9 or 10 tops.

Yeah, normally when you're aware that you're not thinking rationally or reacting properly (especially if it's violent) the best thing to do is to step away until you're able to return & resolve things without causing more harm.

I'm completely fine now. But I used to have major panic attacks. Simple breathing control didnt help one bit. The best thing you can do is to feel the fear and let it reside. And take a moment to realise that its okay.

every story by rito, basically

It is, by far, one of the best examples you can provide anyone when trying to understand Empathy. From a narative prespective especially. My mentor told me once that if I could not express the right emotion at the right time to the audiance, regardless of medium, then I had failed as a writer. Though, I am not so sure I see where you are coming from about it being a "crash course" in empathy. These first three episodes (Act 1) is, by far, baked in Empathy through every passing moment. Not a single minute of time on screen is waisted for pointless conversations or debates or leasure time. This can, in fact, be said about the whole series thus far. If Arcane has done one thing right, it is how well the writing evokes Empathy. But, there is nothing to show "How" it is done, as your commment suggests. I just want to be sure I understood that right though, because it was confusing to read.

I read Vi's examination of her hand after slapping Powder this way too. There is a subtle through-line between Vander and Vi about violence not being the right answer for everything. (He says something akin to that in the 1st episode, and tries to further impress the lesson on her in the 2nd episode when he is talking with her at the bridge where he parents died.) Vi walking away from Powder was her only option at that point. She was FURIOUS and in horrible pain so she did what she knew and lashed out. I think she shocked herself when she realized what she had done. This was a no-win situation, because what Vi needed was to LEAVE the situation to recollect herself, but what Powder needed was for Vi to STAY.

true, but in the end vi is just a teenager, even though she seems to be a parenting figure to "powder"

this is it! vi's way of problem-solving is either 1. punching 2. push people away so she can protect them she's a very emotional person, so the actions she does reflects on it, very much reminds me of jayce. the two similarities are quite uncanny, and they both had partners in which, are opposite. caitlyn and mel solves problems in a very different way, wise and cognitive. weighing the pros and cons and looking the box in another point of view. it becomes much more apparent in ep 8 (no spoilers), vi does wears her heart on sleeve. we can't really blame her tho since she's stuck without a social interaction for god knows how long?

You're missing the biggest blame of all, Vander. 1. Vander started a rebellion, either it was righteous or not so: 1a. If the rebellion was righteous, Vander betrayed the righteous fight which only caused the anger to fester, putting the responsibility for another rebellion onto future generations. Vander had an ally, Silco, someone willing and able to do amazing and horrific things who he could have guided towards properly using Shimmer or other methods to do what was needed to get the redress that was righteously needed. He threw away that opportunity out of fear to "protect" the children which did NOTHING OF THE SORT and never does. True oppressor/subjugated scenarios that have come to a head like theirs had NEVER just smooth over. 1b. If the rebellion wasn't righteous, Vander stoked power dreams in Silco, and gave him a vision of Zaun when it wasn't needed. Vander pushed a psychopath into a wartime mentality and then tried to kill him only to let him live. He never should've started the war, but at the very least he should've cleaned up the mess he made by getting Silco out of the picture. 2. Vander ignored Powder's needs. How many conversations did Vander have with Powder? How many times did he hug her? How many times did he even run his finger in her hair. Vander was an AWFUL father to Powder for her to be that young and get none of the attention that we clearly see Vander give Violet. She was the younger, more impressionable child, less capable, more needy, yet Vander practically ignores her whilst spending time with Violet and Claggor giving them advice, fathering them, etc. 3. Vander refused to "turn one of his in" by working with the sheriff to have Violet incarcerated for what were clearly her crimes. If you had someone break into YOUR house and take YOUR things and blow up half of it, would you say it's "justice" to have the jerk that did it get off because their dad said "take me instead"? Violet had abused another person, she had initiated violence against an innocent. She needed to take accountability and Vander wouldn't let her. Even she knew she had to turn herself in and he screwed that up. 4. Vander, having seen the way his family was treated, the way Violet was growing up with hate in her heart chooses to make "the lanes" and a bar IN THAT VERY WORLD. Know what it takes to set up a bar? Money. Vander had enough money that he could've protected his family by moving somewhere else, but he chose to keep them in the oppressive environment. I don't know exactly what the topsiders did that is worse than all of that. I'm sure there's stuff that would push Vander down the list of "most to blame" but for me, with the information I have, Vander's the worst of the lot.

@@NativeNewMexican ooof... 1. it's not about vander being in the right or not, but about his insight that he can't win by force. he instead chose cooperation of sorts. silko did not subscribe to this and would've kept the violence going, endangering all of them. also mind you, silko only became silko after nearly being drowned by vander. we don't know why exactly that happened, but it is stated that this happened before vander made peace with piltover. at this point silko didn't have the insight that he had to do anything possible even if immoral to overcome a superior enemy, that he gained during the drowning. 2. agreed, additionally he pushes vi into a parental role. but then again we don't know what obligations he has. 3. not as clear cut as you make it out to be. clearly she initiated the heist, but she didn't know about the explosives nor did she trigger the explosion. 4. once again speculation. you assume they have a property system, but it might simply be squatters rights and he possibly build the bar out of scrap. also you don't know if somewhere else is an option, since your knowledge of runeterra is limited. you can't just pick up your stuff and move into a rural area and live off the land if you never did that. well, piltover caused the natural disaster that plagues zaun by diverting some river, themselves gaining prosperity. so it's not just that they are more wealthy but that they directly caused the toxic air and suffering. all in all I don't know how you can weigh the stuff vander does against actions or inactions of others. making a moral judgement seems very hard with such a complex situation.

not only the animation, the voice acting for powder particularly in this episode during that critical scene is just superb.

I've watched this scene dozens of times and it never fails to touch my heart. I cry every single time. Mia Sinclair Jenness, Powders voice actress, knocked this ball so far out of the park that it hasn't even landed yet.

yes yes yes

I agree It makes sense to watch each character in the Arcane series from their own perspective. The characters don't know what we know. They just go on with their lives before their eyes. Every person has flaws and mistakes. There are many details to be analyzed in certain scenes about violet and powder in the first 3 episodes. For instance. Even the opening scene of Episode 1 is the scene that tells the most about the series.

Love this! Yes, I was rewatching my reaction and I thought about this. How could Vi have known?! She couldn’t have. Thanks for sharing this!

A lot of this stuff is confusing on a first watch. Like, it took me a bit to realize the monkey wasn't exploding multiple times. Now that seems obvious, but man, a lot of stuff happens fast.

@@wtimmins yep I also thought that thing has gone off 3 times at first LOL. I guess it was because she put 3 inside, so I catched that and thought "Well yeah, 2 were fine, but the third one was too much"....well, past me was too overwhelmed with everything happening at once :D

@@the.truth.doctor Yeah, but I was also thinking that when I watched it for the first time. So much stuff happening at once. You really need to watch the whole show for a few times, so you can see more. Heck, I still found new stuff after I watched it for like 20 times xD

Thank you!

Yes. She wanted to take a moment to process so she could deal with Powder without being violent again. On one hand I’m furious with Marcus for taking her away right then but on the other hand maybe he saved their lives. If Vi came back she would have fought and Powder wouldn’t have connected with Silco.

I think that people go through this show a lot looking for "fault." They're trying to find out who is ultimately to blame. In the end, I think it's honestly NONE of the people involved in this scene at all - it's upper Piltover. Piltover put all of them in a situation that was untenable. They created a powder keg (no pun intended) that was bound to blow up at some point. People are desperate and looking for ways to escape, all of them through different means. When it comes to who is to blame, it's society, systemic inequality that is the culprit. Greed is the purest form of hatred, I think. To have "enough" and decide you want more *at the expense of others* to the point of forcing others into desperation mode - it takes a special kind of hatred for your fellow human that goes beyond apathy. So while there are plenty of places that these people could've ultimately made better decisions than they did, the circumstances they were put in caused them to make the decisions they made. In then end, Silco was right. Vi was right.

Vi hitting Powder wasn't the problem, if you see the animation that's not what hurts her, the words that followed is what hurt Powder more deeply than a punch and it haunts her for the rest of her life, because those words coming from anybody else only bother her, but from her own sister it hurt her and no matter what Vi does during the rest of the series, that it's one thing she would never be able to fix.

​@@nightnaughty You could say the same for what Powder ended up doing as well, it will haunt Vi for the rest of her life. But like Vi, Powder/Jinx needs to grow into a better person an acknowledge her mistakes and reconcile with her sister. We've yet to see that so far and I hope it does happen. PS: Nice flag. Cool to see lesbians who aren't ashamed of using the OG labrys flag.

Thank you for watching! ❤

Thank you! I appreciate the feedback! I would think that they do. Honestly, I would love to be one if they do or don't!

I remember suicide squad was in the news for hiring psychologists for the mental health of their actors. That whole movie turned out to be a dumpster fire, but they did hire some!

That part broke me because not only did Powder lose her sister but now her mother figure is gone too 😭

Ooo, the Tyrion quote! I'd never thought to apply that to Powder, that's amazing.

Wise words from a wise gno... Man :D

Nice reference! I can't help but feel it cuts a little every time she hears it though, Jinx doesn't accept herself like Tyrion has learned to.

++ Yes, they aired it on netflix as 3 episodes every week. The creators of the series probably made it like a movie trilogy, so watching it one by one can make you forget the stories and scenes that may refer to later episodes. I'm totally making it up. A scene that will happen in episode 8 may be related to episode 2 so you may forget and not understand certain things. That's why I'm making it up, you can watch every act 2 days apart in a week, you can leave a gap of 1 week when act 2 or act 3 is passed. But I'm not the one to decide that, just a suggestion.

Nah, she's just mumbling words.

@@XiaoyuuuYT I never thought that until someone said it so I had to go to Netflix right now and see if subtitles would clear it up. You are correct. She mumbles no, no, no, violet according to subtitles.

I also hear and see her lips say "mom", it's right before she cuts 13:43

still feels like the important aspect of silcos hard won lesson was overlooked which is that to overcome impossible odds one is allowed any means necessary. and also that he doesn't have to defeat the topsiders but only to "scare them".

Yes! Thank you. We are learning slowly :)

I would be surprised at someone not getting emotional, personally.

I'm not a therapist, but as a veteran I can tell you that Vi couldn't have handled things differently with powder because she didn't have access to her emotions or empathy at that time - she was in a prolonged state of "fight or flight" which didn't start to end until she was screaming over Vander's body. We see her break down in grief and fear at the beginning when she sees Grayson and Benzo murdered, and thinks Vander was murdered too, but she turns it around when Ekko comes in. If Vi was a 2D action hero, it would be normal for her to shake it off, rub some dirt in it, man up, and bravely sally forth to make the script happen, but courage does not exist when you are really in those moments. In reality, extreme trauma shuts down major portions of your brain, while focussing more energy on others, and Vi would have been shutting down when Ekko walked in, but protecting someone weaker is one of her coping mechanisms (shown in the very first scene of the series), so she focussed on Ekko as a way of pushing aside her own fear, grief, and impotence. We also saw in the first episode that when Vi is in a stressful situation, she plans (which is a way to cope with fear or uncertainty), so when Ekko mentioned that Vander was alive, that gave her another way to shove her emotions to the side. Finally, when Vi doesn't know what to do, she askes herself "What would Vander do". Be clear: at no point did she actually process everything she saw, she just found ways to take the "fight" option instead of "flee" or "freeze". When a person is in that headspace, we don't really have a full set of emotions or the ability to empathize with others. The way Vi told Powder to stay was more or less what Vander would have said to Vi, but Vi probably couldn't process anything about emotions at the time, and was only concerned about death or dismemberment. Vi's action is her way of putting aside emotional trauma until later, and it's the reason that the "P" in "PTSD" stands for "Post". As soon as Vi is pinned down and unable to act we see tears streaming down her face, and as soon as she's "safe" we see her freaking explode. I'm sure there are things which would have been healthier for Powder to hear, but whatever Vi "should" have done, I don't think she had the ability to make an emotional connection at that moment, and could only give very patterned responses ("what would Vander do?). It's easy to miss that Vi is just as traumatized as Powder (maybe more, since she tried to keep Powder from seeing the worst) because Vi's ways of dealing with it are seen as "brave" and are pretty standard for movies and TV, but Vi is supressing a lot through most of this episode. Vi's way might even be "healthy" (she is using her stress system for the sort of life-or-death threats it's designed to help us through), but she's still shutting down extraneous emotions until she overcomes danger. Vi shouldn't have slapped Powder, but at that point Vi was okay to finally start feeling things, so she felt all of episode 3 in about 20 seconds leading up to that slap. I can't tell you how many times I've seen soldier lash out right after a period of prolonged stress; when people try to kill a teenager for 3 hours straight, basically anything that teenager does right after is "normal". I'm not trying to be dismissive, just pointing out that realistically, Vi would have been incapable of healthy emotion for most of the episode.

@@cavalryscout9519 That was an excellent post. I’ve always wondered why Vi didn’t think to give Powder something to do (lookout, or go to alert help, anything except leaving her behind) but your analysis really showed me the headspace Vi was in. Vi’s lashing out is shocking, but there’s another factor at work - Vander is the _second_ father she’s lost to violence, and she’s barely sixteen. Jesus would probably lash out after that. And by Jesus, I mean Caitlyn, of course.

@@cavalryscout9519 That was an amazing post and excellent explanation! Thank you so much for sharing your experience as a veteran and spending so much time in answering my question. I understand Vi's headspace much better now and why she lashed out. I don't blame Vi for behaving that way, I probably would have done the same.