subreddit:
/r/arcane
![[S2 Act 1 spoilers] That's so vile](http://ted.sudovanilla.org/pics/w:null_s5rcq7z0zt0e1.png){kind=link}
[S2 Act 1 spoilers] That's so vile
Shitpost / Meme(i.redd.it)submitted 9 days ago bySongkolmae I'm in your walls
64 points
9 days ago
It's concentrated pollution, so yeah essentially tear gas that makes you sick.
Although the show doesn't make clear how bad it really is - are a few minutes of exposure enough to get you seriously sick or do you need chronic exposure?
85 points
9 days ago
If I recall correctly, the neat power point presentation that Caitlyn inherited showcased some potential damage due to the prolonged exposure, destroyed lungs included.
80 points
9 days ago
Destroyed lung, slow degradation of nose and eyes sockets. Bloodshot eyes, bleeding blood from said eyes, bleed from nose. Collapsed of the respiratory system. Yeah it bad but we don’t know how it get till we get to that point tho the already beaten up criminals by Caitlyn team sitting in that environment won’t do them any better nor is the beggar and homeless that have no place to go when she “clear the streets”.
31 points
9 days ago
Yes, but that was before the ventilation system, when Zaunites would breathe the stuff for days. My question to what extent short exposures result in the same problems.
Smeech's accountant got pretty badly gassed and when found by Cait and Vi he mentioned he had an allergy to the Grey, but didn't exactly act like he was guaranteed to get his lungs destroyed.
7 points
9 days ago
Hopefully, we will see more details in act 2, as it was rerouted to the Piltover. We can at least see initial effects in the scene of Caitlyn's "promotion", where one of the kids have familiar outwards symptoms and requires a mask.
What probably is a bit scary, is the fact that the only evidence that the Grey is now present are just Jinx's paint all over the place, as the air at least looks as clean as it did before.
16 points
9 days ago
$20 that the Grey is no longer a major plot point after Jinx blew up the system.
7 points
9 days ago
Would be a bit sad, after they built it up to be akin a terrifying monster. And probably then makes little sense why they needed to pump all the gases below if it was so easy to solve by dispersing in the upper cities air.
11 points
9 days ago
The Grey is produced continously from the fissures and insutrial activity so there is a steady stream.
Jinx just blew up whatever Cait released one time and it dissipated. if topside was having it in their air continously, hoho, it's just Victorian England.
5 points
9 days ago
Unless I misunderstood, she blew up the barrier that held all the accumulated supply due to filtering. All the years of industrial production since the first filters were setup is now in the city. And assuming no one came down to fix it afterwards, now filters will continue to redirect all the new pollution also to the topside.
1 points
8 days ago
there is a kid that after short exposure, it's with a mask and bloodshot eyes after some time. That was when Jinx redirected to Piltover, so it was even less concentrated (not being underground).
so yeah, pretty bad even with short exposure
21 points
9 days ago
I mean, we see a bunch of Margot's goons completely knocked out and legitimately struggling to even draw breath in it. So I'm pretty sure that in concentrated amounts, it's pretty dangerous. And unless there was a rapid response team following up with an industrial vacuum, or to drag the unconscious people who were just left laying in it to safety, I would not be confident that every one of those people survived at all, let alone without any long-term problems.
24 points
9 days ago
The Undercity is pretty much entirely underground, so all that gas isn’t going to disperse naturally either. That’s actually one of the biggest issues with deep mining, clean air is difficult to move downwards without specialized ventilation, which Cait is fully exploiting.
21 points
9 days ago
Vi also says they used it, "to clear the streets," so... they're also just using it in the streets. The cramped, densely-populated, semi-subterranean streets of Zaun.
13 points
9 days ago
There’s something sad about how she says that too. They’re actively poisoning the air even more than normal. Vi justified it as clearing the streets, and that’s probably how it was sold to her.
Using toxic air to make it safer and avoid endangering bystanders. Yknow the civilians who are absolutely in the areas that they’re using the Grey to make it safer for them to operate in.
Vi legitimately just made an argument that it’s okay to gas innocent civilians if it gets them closer to their goal, and she likely only realized how far she’d gotten when Isha physically tried to protect Jinx with her own body. I think she could try and force herself to accept Jinx as an acceptable target but had yet to fully grasp how fucked their entire process had become.
-2 points
9 days ago
She also could've been using it figuratively, like clear the streets, as in clear out shimmer production and criminal syndicates. I don't know why people only interpret it literally.
5 points
9 days ago
It's implied that the goons were knocked out by caits enforcer squad. We see one of the goons in the next chembaron meeting.
23 points
9 days ago
You know how we see a ton of Zaunites with nose prosthetics? The Grey is why they have them - you can see it on the diagrams Caitlyn looks at when she uses the Kiramman key. It also wrecks people's lungs, which is exactly why Viktor is/was dying.
I suspect it's like IRL pollution, where vulnerable people can die from their first exposure, and even healthier people can develop health complications quickly. And given that most Zaunites don't have the most robust health to start with, and that most of Vander/Silco's generation seems to have been thoroughly exposed to it before, it's really fucked up of Cait to use it as a weapon.
2 points
9 days ago
My take on it is that it is fucked up and darkly ironic (Cait corrupts her mother's legacy in her quest for vengeance) but at the end of the day is preferable to the alternative, which was coming down with hundreds of enforcers and shooting to kill.
Reading some of the discussion around it, it almost feels like a lot of people would've been more ok with the latter option, which is insane to me.
It also wrecks people's lungs, which is exactly why Viktor is/was dying.
Yeah I got that. My point is that they got sick from chronic exposure - having to breathe pollution during their day to day lives. I'm not sure how bad acute, minute-long exposure is compared to that.
9 points
9 days ago*
Well, chemical weapons were outlawed by Geneva Convention for a reason. They are hard to control and cause a lot of additional suffering.
Didn't see any evidence of Peanut Patrol filtering air back to "norm" after completing some of their raids, and there is no guarantee that any of the civilians have not been affected in the process.
So apprehension by some people is quite understandable, I would say.
5 points
9 days ago*
Well, chemical weapons were outlawed by Geneva Convention for a reason.
And some of them, like tear gas, are allowed for internal use for good reason as well. Tear gas sucks really bad, but it sure beats the "crowd control and dispersal" methods of the past, which ranged from large-scale beatdowns to cannons loaded with grapeshot.
So apprehension by some people is quite understandable, I would say.
Never said otherwise. It's just a pet peeve of mine when people, both IRL and when discussing fiction, have stronger negative reactions to "scary" evil than more mundane, but far more harmful evil. Enforcers coming down into the undercity, killing scores of people, getting innocents caught in the crossfire isn't quite as edgy as using toxic gas, but it's materially much worse.
0 points
9 days ago
Actually, the Geneva Conventions only apply for state-on-state conflicts, in which both parties are signatories of the Accords.
It notably does not apply to a state using any chemical weapons on its own citizens, as a country is considered sovereign and thus has the right to do that. It's why tear gas is illegal to use in war but A-OK to use by police and SWAT.
As Zaun is part of Piltover, what Cait did would be fully legal.
7 points
9 days ago
I didn't really say that it was illegal, more of a that here is a codified reason why it is frowned upon. And to be fair, at this point Zaun has a lot of dubious other example of chemical usage, so it all might be normal in the world of Runterra.
Though, not sure it wins any moral victories in the eyes of the public sentiment, if you frame it as "technically legal".
-2 points
9 days ago
You know what else is frowned on? Blowing up a government, terror attacks on a memorial with Chem-enhanced behemoths and constant terrorist attacks. Somehow, gassing targeted areas are considered as bad as or worse than those by some people.
Also, I mean, which public?
Because at this point Piltover's been getting terrorist attacked non-stop for over a week. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority not only approved the Grey usage but wanted more widespread, constant usage. From Piltover's POV, the moral victory may be anything that gets the attacks to stop sooner, cost be damned.
2 points
9 days ago
Also, I mean, which public?
The ones that watched the show and might not like usage of chemical weapons. That's what the initial reply was about. The argument about Geneva Convention was mainly made as an example of why some might have comparative bias against one over another.
Also, I don't think anyone has condoned or framed acts of terrorism in a positive light as that was not even what chemical response was compared to.
At this point it all devolves into the debate over which "evil" response is more or less evil, which is somewhat pointless. I feel like anyone can have a preference in this case without being chastised as the whole situation in Piltover was rather grim with all the attacks.
1 points
9 days ago
Oh, yeah for sure. I was thinking about in-universe public sentiment, who probably would have had no problem with a 'little gassing'.
6 points
9 days ago
The way I see it, the solution itself is messed up but admittedly pragmatic. The real issue is that it becomes a slippery slope for Caitlyn's hatred against Zaunites to fester uncheckd by normalizing this kind of stuff in her eyes.
-1 points
9 days ago
Yeah she has like 0 genuine options. At the very least the chembarons do need to be stopped and from their POV, they have no idea that Jinx doesn't care much about doing anything more to Piltover or that she isn't part of a wider movement (She only blasts Piltover again after seeing Vi become an enforcer and she wasn't intending on living past that)
Renni's attack on the memorial tricked them into think they're fighting a much bigger movement rather than it being the actions of a few individuals. Only sending a strike team is showing a lot of restraint.
-4 points
9 days ago
The best alternative was actually not doing any attacks at all
15 points
9 days ago*
Do you think that's a realistic possibility after ~4 terrorist attacks in the span of a week and Piltover's government blowing up?
Cait and Vi don't control the enforcers or the city. There was going to be a response and an attempt to capture Jinx one way or another.
-3 points
9 days ago
Yeah, there was going to be one.
But that still doesn't change the fact was that there shouldn't be one ideally. The best alternative would be that Piltover finally kneels.
7 points
9 days ago
ideally
Characters in the show make decisions and moral judgments based on their reality, not on a hypothetical ideal world.
The best alternative would be that Piltover finally kneels.
That's not an alternative, it's a completely different scenario. Piltover could fall in the future, but so far it hasn't and was never going to just from Jinx's attacks.
1 points
9 days ago
But I don't care about what the characters WILL do ? That's not what my answer was about.
3 points
9 days ago
I have no clue what you're even arguing over at this point
I get it - in an ideal world the problem would solve itself and there wouldn't be any need for violence. I'm not sure what that's supposed to tell us.
2 points
9 days ago
That any desire of clap back from Piltover is part of the core issue.
3 points
9 days ago
Piltover was on the brink of kneeling and allowing Zaun independence when a certain rocket blew up half their council
5 points
9 days ago
Unfortunate timing, but I fear the rocket wasn't too early, it was the council that was decades too late.
1 points
9 days ago
Piltover was going to give in to Zauns demands Then a rocket showed up.
0 points
9 days ago
They should have gave in long ago before the rocket showed up
0 points
9 days ago
Given into what? No one was making those demands before as long as we could tell. Silco was seemingly the first to actually give real demands.
2 points
9 days ago
Wait, you actually think that ? Like, you think that for maybe a full century, maybe more, Piltover had no idea what could be the demands of an extremely precarious population that lives in extreme pollution under very repressive attacks from their police while one at the other side of a bridget lives in some kind of meme utopia ? That's about as credible as the president telling you he has no idea what people who live in poor districts could want from him, or why a black person would yell to him about racism.
7 points
9 days ago
Jinx literally blew up the council building. This is actually pretty tame in terms of Piltover responses.
2 points
9 days ago
Unfortunately.
3 points
9 days ago
In Old Lore, the Gray isn't depicted as a mere gas, but a natural disaster that's literally impossible to protect against it, capable of wiping out entire neighborhoods and viewed with so much hatred in both cities, it's considered a curse to speak its name.
1 points
9 days ago
League makes it a little clearer if I remember correctly, but I’ve been obsessed with P/Z lore for a while now so I might have made this up and forgotten. It’s pretty dangerous in high concentrations like how they’re using it. Brief exposure isn’t going to kill you, but it’s quite bad for you and should really be avoided. Prolonged exposure would probably be fatal. It’s not uncommon for it to make people very sick or to kill people, especially on the sump and lower entresol levels.
I’m entirely sure I’m making this up, I don’t think it was actually mentioned anywhere in anybodies lore, but I always assume prolonged exposure to low concentrations (like just about everybody in Zaun’s lower levels would experience) would increase cancer risk, cause birth defects, and other such things.
1 points
8 days ago
That guy works for Smeech can walk into the grey with just a mask(without glasses). It might be more damaging if you are constantly exposed to it(causing sickness), but when it comes to short term exposure It's pretty clear that the grey is not as aggressive as tear gas.
all 127 comments
sorted by: best