u/Bingleboper

In S1, the Piltover-Zaun relationship isn't massively complicated. This is no disrespect to S1, but it's very much a "yeah you can gather what's going on here from context clues, it's nothing special". To surmise... Pilty don't care, 'snot rocket science. It's not some hands on police state, like in S2 act 2, it's just a low disdain and a lack of care. The Undercity is an ugly place, tolerated for its practical use. We don't actually see much practical use, but presumably it pivots heavily around mining. Silco was also considered to be an industrialist, so there's some degree of manufacturing. They do the menial, thankless work, and the people upstairs do all the glitzy, glamorous stuff and reap the rewards, with fuck all trickling down. Very simple, very functional, which is why not much time is spent on specifically fleshing out the nuts and bolts of it, like the tax policy or whatever.

Then S2 introduces the vent system. An extraordinary, city scale megaproject created by Cassandra Kiramman. Probably the most impressive thing Piltover ever built, and all of it going towards one specific purpose. Improving the health of those living in the Undercity. This is strictly a humanitarian venture.

Piltover, in recent memory, knuckled down and created an impossibly ornate and complex ventilation megaproject just to be nice? Really? I feel like this is pretty massive for the relationship between the cities, and might've been brought up by, like, anyone in S1. Hell, Silco took credit for the air being breathable, which seemingly is just a bold faced lie.

We see one comparable megaproject. Which is the HexGates. This is completed admirably quickly, but... like, it's above ground, and it actually prints money. It's like building a fusion reactor to power the entire United States, it's so stupidly, overwhelmingly useful and profitable that any lender would throw themselves at the opportunity to back it. Compare this to the Vents... so, uhh, we're going to cleave massive pipes through the ground and build stupidly massive fans and steampunk shit, so... what, so the poors can breathe better? Is the plan to save on healthcare costs? We don't give those fuckers healthcare, why should I invest in this?!

Of course, this project was morally right, but I feel like introducing a massive bleeding heart project, that makes no money, and was just made to be nice, is nutty bearing in mind Piltover are supposed to be assholes who are above it all. Even Viktor and Jayce are making inventions that will improve profitability as well as general welfare (Alright Viktor's Hexclaw isn't really doing either, but the intention is there), is a city wide niceness effort really, uhh, in the cards here?

This isn't a Donger spearheaded project, either. Someone who we know means well but has his head buried in the sciences, and could've perhaps looked up from his books and saw Zaun was choking, and thought "golly gee, science can help this!". Donger just kind of roping everyone else into this would be one thing... Cassandra? Really? Turns out there was just someone with a massive bleeding heart on the council we never noticed, way more charitable than Mel, or even Donger, against all odds.

You could make a story about a Piltover who does actually occasionally care and do really great things, but are just still so off the ball Zaun is fucking furious with them. But I don't feel like we did. We wrote a "Pilties don't care 'bout us" story, and then just kind of tried to sneak in Pilties caring beyond any and all expectations in in a music video.

TLDR: "What have Piltover ever done for us?!" Apparently, unbeknownst to you and everyone else in S1, they massively improved everyone's lives in a righteous humanitarian effort, within living memory. This is a serious thing that totally existed when S1 was being written, definitely.

For a brief moment in S2, it looked as if Caitlyn might pardon Jinx. She said words to that effect, and while the ultimate conclusion was Jinx faking her death to avoid the justice system, I think this is still something worth discussing.

S2 heavily, HEAVILY focuses on Caitlyn as Jinx's prime victim. The most aggrieved, "no one's suffered like Caitlyn" is a sentiment I've seen around. This is a tinge completely off base. I do not think that it's a huge leap to say Caitlyn wouldn't hit top 10.

Caitlyn had a loved one murdered by Jinx, and was briefly tormented in the end of S1. Now, were we dealing with a normal criminal, you'd be up there with this status. But, well, Jinx killed like 30 + people on screen, and we know that she killed a considerable number offscreen. Presumably, everyone on the Council had a Caitlyn-like figure who lost them. And so did all of the Enforcers, and the Firelights, etc etc.

To indulge in an illustrative example, let's say each person Jinx killed was part of a 5 person nuclear family. 2 siblings, 2 parents. That's, uhh, four people horrifically aggrieved per death, and this is of course completely disregarding literally any other relationship one could have. We're hitting triple digits here, and this really is just the most surface level investigation. Killing people makes people who knew them sad, who knew?

But I think we can get lost in the sauce when it comes to off screen people. While, of course, killing someone the show doesn't focus on isn't really morally better, let us be honest, the viewers don't care about John Doe, Firelight extraordinaire, shot dead offscreen inbetween S1E3 and S1E4. So I will be focusing on 3 specific characters given screentime in S1, as people Caitlyn really should have in mind when proposing this insane pardon.

First is Cassandra Kiramman. I know she's not really much of a character, but, like, she's dead. She, alongside the other dead people, would almost certainly get joint first, were we to do some sort of trauma Olympics. Just because they're not in Caitlyn's ear moaning (because they're dead) doesn't mean that they shouldn't be remembered.

Second is distinctively absent in S2, but unfortunately for S2 no one was able to airbrush her out of S1. Marcus' daughter. She has no mother, and given her father is very much having a closed casket funeral after Jinx's actions, she is now an orphan. We hit on the notion of Jinx serially orphaning kids in S2E3, before we kind of soften the language to just being "you're, like, such a psycho", and this is really quite a morally heinous thing to do, which demands justice.

While Jinx only killed one of their parents each, Caitlyn is a grown woman. Her father is still alive, and even if he wasn't... well, again, she's a grown woman. While, of course, losing ones parents is horrible... once you're a grown ass woman you aren't structurally dependant on them for your entire life. The issue is the grief, which is ultimately similar enough to when one might lose, say, a son or a brother. It's that someone deeply close to you was murdered.

Whereas with Marcus' daughter, and the other implied orphans... grief ain't the only problem here. Daddy ain't coming home, and mommy's been in a box for years, it's going to be an awfully empty house for a 6 year old, isn't it? Is Caitlyn really at liberty to wash all this away?

And third is someone not necessarily worse off, one could make arguments either way. But he's been pretty thoroughly fucked over. It's Jayce, Man of Progress. Who had his life's work bastardized, was traumatized by the massacre at the bridge, had his political dreams of piece shattered into a billion pieces, Jinx attempted to murder him, and most relevant here, Jinx successfully snapped his best friend 5 eva's body like a cheap action figure, killing him, right in front of Jayce.

I know we don't pay much attention to how Jayce was victimized, because Jayce, politics and S2 do not mix, but... are you really just going to pardon Jinx without asking him? Caitlyn and Jayce had a very close relationship, at least in S1. It's completely insane to booze cruise into a full pardon for the man who murdered Viktor, without so much as a heads up.

This is not said to diminish Caitlyn as a victim of Jinx. But deciding you're all tuckered out after months of running an authoritarian regime to catch Jinx, and you're just tired of being angry, and, like, she iiiisss your girlfriend's sister, so maybe she should be let off... like, that's completely fucking insane. Just because YOU are tired of being angry doesn't mean that all of the other people, who haven't be able to use the city of Zaun like a stress ball, aren't still angry. And just because the dead aren't all worked up and angry doesn't mean you don't have a moral duty to ensure justice for them. While S2 does focus 99% on Caitlyn as Jinx's main victim, there's a lot of other people that serial murder tends to aggrieve, and those people do deserve justice

This all came to nothing in the show, because Jinx dodged accountability and flew off on an airship, but I still think it's very important. Especially with the ending, where Caitlyn's smiling while she looks at the HexGate blueprints, like she isn't currently using her detective skills to find out that Jinx didn't actually die, and is just drinking cocktails in fantasy Tahiti. Her not raising any notion of this to anyone else functions not dissimilar to a pardon, just letting Jinx off.

(To address briefly Jinx's actions redeeming her, as this isn't really the focus of the post... pulling some offscreen nonsense and somehow getting Caitlyn out of S2E6 is logistically incredible, but it realllyyy doesn't wipe the slate clean for the orphaning. And her fighting Viktor... if Piltover loses, everyone dies, including Jinx and everyone she cares about. 'Snot really a massive moral W to be anti everyone including you dying)

TLDR. Caitlyn, I know you're tired, but there's a lot of orphaned kids and murdered innocents that are kind of relying on you for justice here. Maybe drink a coffee or something.

Hextech is supposedly what the entire show is based around, down to the name. It is immensely important in S1, and, allegedly, in S2. But while S1 intelligently makes the small amount of Hextech applications extraordinary and distinct, S2 makes no such effort. S1 has Hextech, and Hextech weapons, as a complete game changer. It's like transitioning from horses to cars. S2 goes back and makes it little more than a faster horse.

I could talk for a long time about how teleportation is a brilliant way of making Hextech generally useful, from a worldbuilding perspective, but since there's no real civilian applications of Hextech in S2, it seems more prudent to focus on the weapons.

S1 has two official Hextech weapons (Missile launcher and Hammer), and two official Hextech gadget-cum-weapons (Hexclaw and Gauntlets). We only see one of each in an actual fight, and they're both very, very extraordinary. Both the Gauntlets and the Hammer are ridiculous, impractical designs, but this is entirely compensated for by the weight reduction ability of Hextech. You can't make these designs work without that, they rely entirely on magic.

Jayce's Hammer is, as expected, the more advanced of the two, with a ranged option. And the ranged option is laughably overpowered, sending out instant kill electric death balls that just drop Chemtanks and kids on the spot, without even seemingly doing any physical damage. This is the sort of thing I would expect a high level mage to be slinging around.

And, of course, the biggest thing everyone remembers from S1 Hextech weapons... Shields? Remember shields? I remember shields... Shields prove critical to both Vi and Jayce in their fights (Jayce's shield looks a little wacky and has an energy blast feature, but it still protected him). And they are a completely different sort of ability than a weapon would usually have. Riktus is never going to be able to lock in and make his spear work like an energy shield. This is a fantastical, magical ability, and one that fits very well with Hextech, as this is both within the design philosophy one would expect from Jayce, and the sort of thing you would expect a mage to cast. "Big magic shield" is a classic supernatural ability.

Now, contrast this with season 2. As basically everyone noted when the season first came out, that shield ability completely disappeared from Vi's gauntlets. While that, and the Hextech Cargo Flinger thing that dealt about as much damage as a cannon despite... y'know, hurling container boxes, and Jinx's bug zapper, are great places to focus on for S2, I think Caitlyn's rifle illustrates the point best. Because Caitlyn's rifle, the most advanced Hextech weapon ever designed in the history of Runeterra, is just a rifle with faster bullets.

This is the absolute epitome of "faster horse" design. The integration of Hextech just ups the penetration stat, there is no design implications. It's not like it shoots out a constant laser beam like the Hexclaw, allowing for a functionally infinite fire rate and completely changing how the weapon would be used... no, it's just faster boolet. This alteration, on screen, does not have any practical effects to my memory. In fact, in the S2E3 fight, it's very distinctive that they do absolutely nothing with this, when Caitlyn is shooting her super high penetration rifle in the direction of the pressurized Grey tank, and nothing happens.

There are no shields. There are no things one would expect from a mage. There are no quality of life features, or anything at all to make this weapon interesting. It is literally just a stat change, and in practice this stat change is massively outweighed by Hextech glitching out or being countered by Ambessa's wards. To call this a failure in design feels unfair, because I don't feel like an attempt at designing a real Hextech weapon in the vein of S1 was even attempted.

In S1, they say Hextech weapons are important, and you believe them. They can do new, unprecedented things, and are overwhelmingly useful in combat. In S2, they try to say Hextech weapons are the entire reason why the plot happens, but... the Hextech weapons they introduce are exactly as useful as a Noxian's throwing arm. There is nothing special, nothing unique, just a stat boost, like you're infusing a gem into a sword in a video game. Where as S1 pivots around a world changing new paradigm, S2 pivots around a faster horse.

TLDR: Maybe we shouldn't have written shields, laser beams and energy blasts out of the story if we wanted Hextech to seem extraordinary.

Viktor's a major focus in S2. He's plot critical, and ends the world 99.9% of the time. But, despite that, Viktor as a person really does not make his presence felt. He's shunted around by outside forces, and the only un-hindered decision he makes in the season is to kill himself in the end.

Like, he is involuntarily fused with the Hexcore, causing severe changes to his entire brain. Then he does the entire commune thing and just kind of sits on his hands, inert and doing his own thing, storywise.

Jayce then kicks down the door, kills him, and he is forced to "choose" to become Spacehitler or die. Viktor lacks basically any information on any aspect of this decision, from Jayce's motivations or what "SpaceHitler" actually entails.

From becoming SpaceHitler, Viktor ceases to exist. This is shown pretty effectively in Jayce's big end speech, which, despite its many flaws, one would expect to draw a reaction out of Viktor. He totally stonewalled it, he don't care. Ekko then comes in, turns him back to normal, and as one would expect Viktor is horrified and decides to kill himself to stop all this. Because of course he would, he never changed as a character in the season, we just kept putting artificial magical shit in his brain to screw with his thoughts.

Wouldn't it have been an awful lot more interesting if Viktor as a person stayed around, and was the engine of his story? If instead of the Hexcore lobotomizing him twice, he personally chose to alter his brain because that was something he thought was a good idea? If instead of magically healing his commune members by effectively pressing a heal button like in a video game, he actually personally altered them, showing off what he valued in a person? And, y'know, if he showed up to the big final battle and fought for some actual values and interests, instead of just being the Hexcore's skinsuit?

As things are in S2, I find it difficult to say he either "fell" or was "redeemed", like normal characters would be. Jinx and Caitlyn did bad things with their free will, and then went on to try and atone. Viktor got lobotomized and then bodysnatched, and the moment free will returned he immediately ditched what he was doing and killed himself. "His" entire story was just that of the Hexcore, and the magical artifact of eviiiilll wasn't quite as interesting as Viktor from S1.