it's not that caitlyn's s1 outfit wasn't dress-like. it's that the moment she had ultimate freedom to choose, no expectations on her whatsoever, no one above her, no one to tell her what to do, no one who would judge her for it, she went straight to the turtleneck and the pants and then continued to stick with them after everything was over.
that's what we mean by her making the choice and that's why whenever people fall back on that s1 enforcer outfit to argue that she would be ultra feminine that it feels strange.
I don't think she'll never wear a dress. I do think she is capable of femininity, of course. and I think she'd look really hot in a dress.
but claiming from her initial enforcer outfit that that's the pattern of what her heart desires? c'mon now, the whole thing with s1 caitlyn was that she didn't have what she truly desired, which was to be seen and taken seriously for her skills and not just what people saw or recognized at first glance.
...talking to friends who also write and coming to the horrifying conclusion that maybe some people might think fics are just things for consumption, that comments are simply letterboxd reviews, that writers don't want to talk about their fics.
that could not be further from the truth. i won't dare speak for everyone but my fondest fandom experiences have been geeking over someone's fic (or art), sometimes my own, sometimes a friend's, and enjoying talking to them about what they were thinking when they made it, what they wanted to convey, digging into the themes they're exploring and the concepts they are proposing.
in short, talk to the people in your fandom. share your thoughts. fanworks are a conversation, not a transaction.
also, fandom is a collective effort and we build the environment we want to see one considerate interaction at a time.
this is the devil on your shoulder saying do iiiitttt spilll the spicy taq caitlyn take the fandom isn't ready for
honestly if you've been reading what i've been ranting about, it shouldn't come as a surprise.
I love Caitlyn because I find her fascinating. She's fiery. She's such a strong personality. She's so kind. She never makes Vi do anything Vi doesn't want but it's not because she can't, it's cos she's considerate and thoughtful enough that she actively chooses not to. (We see this with Ekko too, in S1 with the hexgem.) Caitlyn's also not a pushover who just listens to everything Vi says, she's someone who's really good at taking in new information and processing it for herself then making the decision on what to do from there. (She doesn't betray Ambessa simply for Vi. Vi looking for Vander provided her the perfect opportunity to rope Vi into her plans, a disquiet that had already been slowly growing and was exacerbated by that Singed conversation.)
And it pisses me the hell off because in the fandom, to so many people, she's none of those things. Caitlyn's not a cardboard cutout. She's remarkably well fleshed out but peope have just been choosing not to see.
I genuinely think there are swathes of the fandom for whom Caitlyn is simply the girlfriend of Vi. OfVi, if I may. To them she's not her own character, she's simply the hanger-on, the plus-one, the simpering receptacle, the femme to the butch, the 'woman' to the 'man'.
So we'll get, for example, these weird takes from the fandom of Caitlyn being freaky but then also being shy such that her desire for kinky sex is wrapped in layers of degradation/shame (kink is sooo much more than degradation/shame, please for the love of god i need them to open their eyes). We get people using eating disorder twt photos of really thin women as 'oh this is so Cait' and we have people taking the most sexualized kpop videos and begging artists to Caitlyn-ify it.
(The only time we see Caitlyn's shoulders are when she is recovering from her injuries. Every other time she is buttoned up to the top. At home, at work, wherever. And yet you'll look at art just randomly floating down the TL and it'll be Caitlyn in a skimpy outfit next to Vi fully dressed. One of these characters wears a turtleneck. One of these characters wore bandages/binding under a leather jacket. You know which one.)
And then they translate this to jealous pillow princess Caitlyn but where did this even come from like, Caitlyn the person who'd clearly at least tried to move on with Maddie vs Vi the one who was hallucinating Cait the whole time? Cait who took the initiative to reassure a shaky Vi with their first kiss? I'm not saying it's impossible but you gotta put in the work to persuade me and not just 'well she's the woman in the relationship' which honestly they'd never say out loud but it's pretty clear.
Like we'll get comphet Caitlyn and but almost never comphet Vi. We'll get people using straight couple references and 95% of the time, Vi will be the Man even if she's shorter, and the 5% will get harassed out of their minds. The one time a friend dared to draw Vi as 'the woman' even without putting either of them in gendered dress? People got soooo mad.
Oh have I mentioned Arcane Vi is shorter? Cos people sure like to forget. Caitlyn is taller than Vi. Markedly so. I think it's cute! I don't know why people keep ignoring it!
And skintones too, like for some strange reason people sure like to make Vi the darker one when actually there's no reason for this? Vi's the white one who was locked up in prison for so, so fucking long. Like sure, East Asians can be and are sometimes pale but ya'll making it real weird. (the masc one doesn't always have to be darker yo.)
And the kicker, as defense, people loooove to point out how feminine Caitlyn skins in League are but will never refer to the Vi skins in the same vein. Not once. They'll redraw them so Caitlyn has the same figure that she does (and she does have a great figure) but Vi will lose all curves instantly. Gone.
She's expected to be the perfect girlfriend, to take everything thrown at her, to have a fathomless capacity for forgiveness, to take everything, to hold up the world, to feel bad about being rich. But she isn't allowed competence, isn't given agency, isn't allowed to unabashedly have desires, isn't allowed to be in control at all. What do you want from her then???
In every. single. aspect when it comes to this fandom the double standards for Caitlyn are horrific. It reeks of misogyny, of Caitlyn being put into 'the woman' role while Vi is slotted into 'the man' one and for a ship that is ostensibly about two lesbians, it blows my mind.
So yes, you asked, how do sizeable swathes of the fandom invalidate Caitlyn's identity?
It's really straightforward.
They don't see her at all.
p.s. (I shouldn't need to say this but clearly it's not all of the fandom cos if it were I wouldn't stick around. Are there popular fics where these are true? yes. are there similarly, popular fics where Caitlyn is actually her own person? also yes. You get me.)
my thoughts on caitvi and control are actually that Vi has always been expected to have to be in control even when she didn't actually have anything she could really control, with the pressures that Vander piled upon her, because if she wasn't, her loved ones suffered.
whereas caitlyn has always had the perceived veneer of control, it looks like she has always been in power. but in truth, she does not actually have this power and, more crucially, this is power she doesn't need, but she seeks it because she wants to make things better and do things correctly. and even then she is not often taken seriously—all through the show we see time and time again she is not given the power to be able to do anything about it even though she wants to.
so I see this concept of power and control in the context of caitvi as being something that can be explored both ways in the bedroom: Vi wanting to feel like there is something she can control, to finally being in control and have that control be manifested into power, or, on the flipside, Vi being allowed to be comfortable with not being in control and understanding that she can still have nice things without it, that she can release her deathgrip on needing to make things go her way, and that the world will not punish her for it.
for Caitlyn too, it's about being put in a situation that says it's ok to not be in control, to stop thinking so hard because she doesn't have to, there's never been a need for her to, or, her being able to explore a space where she can be in power and in control, to fulfil her desires of actually having agency for once, and seeing her actions carry out actual good.
I have my own preferences (and they are unrelated to gender presentation lmfao) but I'm actually also perfectly fine with exploring the other direction.
on handsome caitlyn and how the whole fucking kerfuffle is people failing to project moral superiority
i'm bored so you get an essay. here it goes.
if you haven't heard yet, on the n*zi site, saying you like handsome caitlyn is apparently akin to having committed serious crimes. this is because of many historical reasons, primary amongst which how many sane people who don't agree with the loud outspoken fandom police also seem to like handsome caitlyn. (is it because media literacy leads one in that direction? we can examine that another time.)
essentially, what this has yielded is that certain swathes of the fandom are deathly allergic to handsome caitlyn. these same folks have decided additionally that because they don't like it, because the people who like this hc are the ones they don't like, it must be _bad_.
so we get two main points of attack.
it is here that i will attempt to explain the cognitive dissonance and the way some people deliberately misconstrue the meanings of the identities to suit their arguments against handsome caitlyn.
1. femme caitlyn
2. asian caitlyn
firstly, femme caitlyn.
'you're invalidating her femme identity by calling her handsome'. bruh. you're just telling on yourself. anyone who says handsome caitlyn invalidates her femme identity doesn't understand either of those things.
(also, quick sidebar/digression: lol caitvi can be butchfemme duh. they're pixels. they just don't always have to be butchfemme in everyone's interpretations, and if someone chooses to not view them through a butchfemme lens, there's nothing wrong with that. caitvi being butchfemme is not actually canon.)
said this before, will say it again, if one actually understands what being femme means, one will know straight off the bat that femme caitlyn can also be handsome because being femme does not preclude one from being handsome. they're not even remotely comparable on the same grounds unless one takes femme to be purely about a more traditional feminine presentation, which is, as per my understanding, not actually what being femme is only about.
(note that I am not saying that one cannot be both femme and traditionally feminine. that would be deliberately misconstruing my words)
then again, has twt ever not attempted to twist my words?
that leads us to the second way they try to invalidate handsome caitlyn.
2. asian caitlyn
there were people who dared to use the 'you're masculinizing a POC' brush for handsome caitlyn. to that i could not laugh harder, but let me clarify before people start getting mad.
firstly, handsome caitlyn does not necessitate a masculine read of the character. does it allow for one? yes, but it does not enforce one, so it seems strange to paint everything with one brush.
secondly, over-masculinization of POC does exist! it is real, valid, and extremely problematic.
however, it has not historically applied to east asian women and honestly, it does not apply to Caitlyn. it does not, and by attempting to apply it to Caitlyn, it actually shows how one does not actually understand the racial history or concepts that one is trying to weaponize to 'win' some stupid internet argument.
let me explain further. both historical racist stereotypes of asian women (Lotus Flower/Blossom and Dragon Lady) emphasize their femininity. the former takes it in a submissive direction and the latter 'strong, domineering, and deceitful', but still using 'feminine wiles' to attract men.
nowhere in history have asian women been overly masculinized. in fact, the standard of what counts as feminine in asia is so far skewed that what might seem as perfectly feminine in the west is sometimes seen as androgynous in asia.
in fact, and this is the part that pisses certain sections of the n*zi site off, insisting that Caitlyn's presentation must only match feminine requirements (ignoring her canon outfits) and constantly choosing only the most feminine Asian women to model her after (kpop idol after kpop idol I see you) is actually what perpetuates racist stereotypes.
can you enjoy Caitlyn in a dress? yes, of course! can she be submissive in bed? sure.
does it start to sound weird if you insist that anything more 'masculine' than a dress is 'wrong' for this asian character? yes. is it edging into dangerous territory if you say things like 'i can never imagine her having a big dick' or 'she can't be dominant'? mmhm.
do you see what i'm saying here?
honestly, the crux of the matter is not 'can she be femme' or 'can she be feminine' or 'can she be submissive' or because the answer to all of those questions is yes.
it is in the insistence that she must always be those things that logic starts to break down to reveal something strange hiding underneath that feels a lot more like unconscious bias or worse.
so yeah. if you want to hate the people who like handsome caitlyn, hate the people! say my name with your whole chest lol. hate me for other reasons, just stop trying to pretend you're a better person for hating a hc because it clashes with concepts that you clearly don't understand
also to the people who keep trying to 'reclaim' handsome caitlyn, lmfao is all i can say to you. she is plenty loved and doesn't need your help.
every time someone talks about (arcane) caitlyn's (purported) jealousy it's like... the one character who literally did the 'if you love them let them go' thing? caitlyn 'you really think i needed all the guards at the hexgates' kiramman?
somehow we're making her out to be jealous? why? what basis does this have in the show? where are people reading a desire to control her loved ones and not let them go? did i magically miss possessiveness or a 'hey did you sleep with anyone while we were apart'?
truly baffling.
i mean hc whatever you want sure, but it gets strange after a point because it's almost like people spend so long forming these reads of a character to fit certain narratives that they forget that at her core Caitlyn readily puts her own needs and wants last. always has, pretty much feels like she always will.
a brief detour: you can argue that that's cos the one time she felt like she was allowed to put her desires first it ended poorly. i certainly have so many thoughts about how that does not mean she should now no longer be ever trusted with power or control or be allowed to have needs and wants—and how there are such large sections of the fandom that seem to think that exact thing in their misguided need for an apology tour of contrition; how no one holds as much guilt about caitlyn kiramman as caitlyn kiramman but how not all of that is necessarily justified, how there are any number of characters who would have done far more damage in her position and how the show literally set Salo up for that lol... and anyway this isn't what this post is discussing, i digress.
but in actual fact she constantly is the one person who shows grace and kindness to people who the average person would not, to people other characters do not, literally to her own detriment.
and not to mention, again, the canonical improbability of going 'you really think i needed all the guards at the hexgates' knowing very well that she may have never seen vi again.
that's jealousy???
anyways idek why this comes back again and again as if a ship must have a jealous character cos I think that's a load of bollocks...
also i wanted to add that one of the main reasons why Vi 'didn't fucking care' and why Vi didn't need to hear anything from Caitlyn, is that the Vi who is afraid of her choices ending up wrong, who has felt that her choices pushed Caitlyn away/hurt her (amongst many other things that were out of her control) learns that she's been given the choice and the power and the agency to set Jinx free.
It's the one thing Vi's wanted most in the world, to do good by her loved ones and have that stick, have it work (Jinx's suicidal tendencies are a separate discussion topic). And for that agency to be granted to her by Caitlyn, the one person who has the most reason to never let anyone have that choice?
It's not just that the Caitlyn she's always known and loved has been revealed, but also that it's such a raw display of how much Caitlyn understands Vi and Vi's love for her loved ones. So yes, it is 'i love you more than i hate her' (though arguably Caitlyn is all burnt out on hate) but more than anything it's 'I see you. You're not wrong.'
haven't rambled about the fandom in a while so here are some caitlyn related thoughts
and if I say that the fundamental core of a lot of this caitlyn hate is actually being quietly bolstered by the people who call themselves her fans but who also think caitlyn should have gone on an apology tour? who constantly demonstrate an aversion to enforcers in the arcane universe even though their ship is literally, canonically, two enforcers? (make this cognitive dissonance make sense)
honestly I don't care about what one Cait hater has written in one fic that has a bunch of hits, simply because there are so many other fics out there that have similarly butchered her characterization just in, I suppose, less violent ways.
so many apology tours. so much groveling. so much desire for her to no longer be wealthy. and for what? the whole point of arcane isn't that it's the kirammans' fault that the cycle of violence exists and the whole point also isn't that one person giving up money will end the cycle.
I know that the greater sociopolitical shitshow of a climate in real life makes a cheap 'fixit' setup for wish fulfillment like this very appealing but that fundamentally feels a little naive to be generous, and a little like folks are looking for a scapegoat, if I may.
honestly, at its core, it really comes down to people lacking the ability to sit themselves in Caitlyn's POV, to understand why she did what she did, to recognize that she's human too and not have unrealistic expectations of sainthood, all while preferring to live in the delusion that their own pookie has never done anything wrong ever.
which like, doesn't actually apply to any arcane character if you actually pay attention lol.
so yeah, amusing to see people come out of the woodwork to complain about it but also it's so silly to see them platforming a hate fic. cos ao3 doesn't work on clout so why would you spend the time being publicly mad about a fic someone put out there? like it'll disappear down the pages eventually? you're not gonna get it taken down? and, more importantly, it's a symptom of the broader fandom where people are trying to consume their media and their fan content in the most 'moral' way possible and so therefore anything bad can never exist and must be hated so like you're not going to win this fight, especially not on twt or tiktok of all places...
watching this all unfold is so ironic lol.
really, people should just take the horrendous fics into private servers and trash on them there 😉
oh and lastly is it just me who's never really cared about hits? like hits in this fandom don't mean all that much when it comes to fic quality (to me) - there are other metrics I find more compelling but honestly none more so than the opinions of friends I trust.
