honestly im very happy you like caitvi, every jayvik fan ive interacted with has hated it and its just been very :(((( all around. about your point on s2: i loved the dictator and enforcer imagery actually - it shows that vi at her absolute core is dedicated to those she cares about and when confronted with the direct fact that “if caitlyn goes after jinx alone, one will end up dead” and folded. because of course she would, thats who she is. she loves so severely she will abandon anything about herself to be there for them, which is also a flaw i love of hers. i think people take caitlyns “dictatorship” a bit too on the nose and forget that, similar to how victor was being controlled by the arcane, caitlyn had a very experienced warmonger in hear ear egging her on the entire way. a girl in her early 20s whos taken no time to grieve and suddenly has all the power in the world to do the one thing shes been trying to do. it makes me really sad for her actually. one scene i love is when caitlyn pushes back against ambessa and goes “why does violence always needed for justice?” when ambessa says for her to unleash troops. caitlyn at her core is not a violent woman, nor wants to be. shes a complex female character that i think is reduced to her bad decisions, while the male characters who have done worse get a bigger pass (think silco, machine heralds arcane controlled eugenics, jayce in s1, etc).
anyway, thats my rant haha. im just so happy to have an actual complex lesbian relationship on screen done by people who love the characters and have sex in a way that is clearly for their love of each other and not because “lesbians are hot”. i miss them dearly 🥲
So late on my reply here omg!! I’m so happy to be a Jayvik fan who loves Caitvi. Like you said, their sex scene was so emotionally-driven and real, and not used for titillations like many lesbian portrayals in media. You make a VERY good point about how in general female characters (and women IRL) are not given as much grace as male characters for the flaws they make. And it got me thinking about the stuff in Arcane’s politics that I take issue with, just in general. (So I rambled on a bit about politics below..)
First off, I love your analysis of Caitlyn! What you said about her trauma and being influenced by Ambessa in the same way Viktor is by the Arcane is absolutely correct. In the same vein, Jinx’s villainy is similarly influenced by Silco. All of these characters, even with those external manipulators are also ultimately driven by trauma (with Caitlyn, the loss of her mother.)
I guess where I really find problems is not Caitlyn as a person, but the narrative and writers for writing a plotline where enforcers as a whole (and Piltover in general) are not ultimately taken to account for the harm they’ve done systemically to a marginalized group (of which the dictator arc is a part).
The show has a Black character tell a police officer about the injustices they face against the upper class, and then have that police officer say, “It’s a misunderstanding,” and then soon after, said Black character is shot in the chest without any warning by another police officer. Because Arcane just doesn’t quite grasp the weight of the images it’s putting out (like the subjugation of the lower class using gas warfare by militarized enforcement). It’s just not a good look in a world where police in many countries are being militarized by the government against their own citizens.
However, all this goes more towards Arcane’s centrist political themes, and not on Caitlyn herself, who is driven by the rawness of her grief. Unfortunately, Arcane as a show doesn’t believe that social injustices are systemic. They even have Heimerdinger comment on the entire imbalance created by the invention of hextech, saying, “I’d always presumed it was due to mankind’s turbulent relationship with power, but perhaps it is a property of the Arcane itself.” Basically invalidating one of the most important metaphors in the show––that powerful resources can and do shape the world because of the people in power. Instead of addressing the social issues they brought up in season 1, Arcane season 2 just tacks it all up to fantasy magic gone wrong. What analogue do we have for that in the real world?
(And that is why Piltover and Zaun don’t really change in the end of the show, because Arcane the show wants a gritty, persecuted undercity against the glittery topside. It’s baked into the video game and it cannot change.)
It’s the one major failing in the show and why I can’t get behind it on a deeper thematic level. I enjoy the nuanced psychology, the relationships, and the art of its animation, but its politics ultimately leave something to be desired. Season 1 was mostly great, though, often because of Caitlyn and her journey, where she starts off very naive and sheltered, then she learns the humanity of the Undercity and how her government was wrong in how it dealt with them. Her quotes are some of the BEST ones about the wrongs of Piltover against Zaun:
CAITLYN: Ekko, it's wrong what's been done to you. You'd be well within your rights to keep it. I couldn't blame you. But... if you do, this cycle of violence will never stop. This is our best shot at setting the record straight. This city needs healing. More than I ever realized. CAITLYN: You know what else reflects on the Council? It’s citizens living on the streets. Being poisoned. Having to choose between a kingpin who wants to exploit them and a government that doesn't give a shit.
It’s Season 1 plotlines like this show where Arcane can go right. It just doesn’t stick the landing.
Caitlyn’s story and her angst is purely personal and emotional. It’s a poignant drama. She’s influenced to take on more power and violence because of Ambessa’s influence, exactly like Jayce did because of Ambessa in Season 1. The show doesn’t really judge Caitlyn for what she’s done, but that’s because Arcane as a show generally sees everyone so completely from a personal and emotional lens and doesn’t really see the injustices of the class struggle as something to take a stand about.
Interestingly, though, Jayce is narratively “punished” for his involvement in creating hextech. He has to climb from the bottom of the fissures to the top of the hexgates, symbolically reliving the lives of people like Viktor and thinking about what he’s done to destroy the world. Before he’s zapped into the alternative world, Ekko tells him point-blank, “So instead of it exploding in your neighborhood, it would blow up in ours. These are the same utility ducts that carry our water and facilitate our ventilation” (gotta love Ekko). And on the bridge, Viktor tells him off specifically for his prejudice. Ultimately, Jayce dies to right the wrongs he’s committed. In addition, he realizes that, “I thought I wanted to give magic to the world, but now, I just want my partner back.” In a thematic sense, it’s basically telling us that trying to improve the world or be ambitious to change it would force us to lose the people who matter to us (this is what happened to Vander too).
In the show itself, both Silco and Viktor die because of their actions, even though both of their stories are presented very emotionally and sympathetically. But Silco quite blatantly gaslights Jinx (in quite a visceral scene in episode 1x07), and so many people around Jinx weaponize her trauma for their own ends (Sevika too). Silco has genuine love for Jinx as his child, but he’s not above using her for the Cause, which is ultimately his failure, because in the end, Vander’s philosophy is presented as the right one: some things, like the people you love, are not worth losing for a righteous cause. And so Silco dies for the fatal error he’s committed.
Mostly Arcane is telling us that your personal relationships are not worth changing the world for. Or in general, the risks of losing who you are in the pursuit of greatness. This idea is Arcane’s ultimate message. That’s reflected in the AU universe, in the convo between Ekko and Powder:
EKKO: Your ideas change the world. I can't shake the feeling that that's who you're supposed to be. POWDER: Things are good, Ekko. I like my life. I don't wanna lose what makes me "me" chasing some wild dream.
Arcane channels Jayce and Viktor’s arcs through this thematic too. Jayce tried to change the world for the better, and ultimately his actions result in the destruction of everything he cares about. Viktor tries to start a healing commune, but it’s fundamentally corrupted, because he’s killing everyone in it in order to evolve them, and he’s picking and choosing what makes a person perfect (eugenics, like you said). The narrative uses Jayce to punish Viktor, when Jayce kills him and puts an end to the farce that is Viktor’s commune. We the audience are shown that under the gold and white shell, there’s a horrifying emptiness that screams into the void as the souls of Viktor’s victims leave the world. It’s a horrifying scene that shows us exactly what sins Viktor has committed.
The show tells us that Viktor’s actions were driven by the tragedy of his disability (much like Caitlyn’s and Jinx’s actions were driven by trauma, or Silco and Ambessa who were motivated by love). All Viktor needed to know was that these human imperfections were beautiful (a wonderful thing in the context of an individual).
But I suspect the show takes the same stance towards imperfections in a society as a whole: That they’re not something we need to fix, because that much effort and risk would force us to lose who we are, and lose the people we care about.
That’s why there’s so many think-pieces about the political themes from season 1 falling on its face in season 2 (from revolution to propaganda, I think one video essay quipped), because for all its acknowledgment of the issues in society, Arcane doesn’t believe they can or should be changed. And this is where I think Arcane is wrong, because allowing the injustices in the world to fester and propagate just because “that’s how things are” is exactly what the capitalistic corporate system wants us to believe.
So yeah, whenever I talk about the failings in Arcane thematically, it’s these bigger ideas about its centrist politics more than what any one character did or didn’t do. Fandom is often too black-and-white about who’s evil and who’s good, and Arcane is one of the most psychologically nuanced and morally complex shows in the fandom space today. People like to try to compare who’s more evil or who’s blameless, but Arcane is the show that says these ideas as useless.
Anger about the themes in a show should not be directed at characters, really, but the writers and the narrative and the corporation behind the production of this show. Those are the people responsible for the ethics we are watching on the show. I don’t think it’s healthy to push more blame on one character in order to prove how much another character is morally superior. Arcane isn’t the show for that, because in Arcane, there is no good or evil. There’s just the messed-up lives of people who just want to be loved.
