about arcane

arcane is an animated series first released in 2021. it was in production for six years beforehand, and the first season involves themes of sacrifice, police brutality, and corruption in general. though the overarching theme of the show has always been love.

i first watched the show a little before season two came out. it was during a point where i was figuring out a lot of things about myself and overall just going through a rough patch. the art in arcane was a huge part of why i loved it so much, and it motivated me to keep studying. i probably would have given up on art a long time ago if it wasn't for this show.

and then there's the lead couple of arcane, caitlyn and vi. up until this point my only other experience with a sapphic couple in media was the owl house, and it's infamous for how the show ended up because of the presence of a queer ship. at the time i was getting over my own internalized homophobia, and i don't think i need to explain the importance of positive representation. arcane never buried all of it's gays.

caitlyn and vi are a wonderful couple. the fandom coddles them too much, especially vi. mlm ships are allowed to be messy and not treated with the same viciousness. the fanbase pre season two was understanding of that, and even though caitlyn and vi weren't cannon yet, it was clear that there was a certain amount of affection between them and that attracted a largely sapphic audience.

but that's not the case post season two. the show exploded in popularity and a lot of straight people came into the fan base due to that. that's obviously not the problem here, the problem is that it seems like so many people were watching the show with their eyes closed. the fanbase pisses me off so much, and i think that leaks into how i talk about the show. so i can't recommend it to everyone, and you shouldn't try it unless you're going to give it your attention.

i have my issues with season two, though. overall, i really enjoyed it. but it was rushed, and cut down. people tend to overlook the reason why arcane exists at all, because they want to get self righteous about liking it or disliking it. and i do understand that, i'm even being a little self righteous right now as a treat.

it's a beautiful show, and on surface level it does seem like it was trying to comment on heavier topics. i believe that it was, but the motivations behind it were still to sell league of legends. the show is very different from the game, in design and art style. they took enough creative liberties while making it that some people don't even know it's based off of that godforsaken game. but at the end of the day, it was made to sell the game, and that's why it feels like season two took such a drastic change, from focusing on family and police brutality to introducing a seemingly unrelated oppressor.

!!! this section contains spoilers for arcane, watch it first !!!

caitlyn wasn't my favorite character from the get go. i really loved jinx my first time watching, and i remember rewatching the season one scenes with jinx over and over, especially progress day. she was just super cool and fascinating to me, and it's no wonder she's a fan favorite. she's very easy to sympathize with. but after spending a little time in the online fanbase, i began to hate. not jinx, but her advocates.

some people can't just like a character without making them into something they're not. i think most love works that way though; no matter what we love, if we want to love something more we have to twist it to eradicate any reasons we wouldn't love them. by that point what we see and what's there are totally different. and i really hate it when that happens with characters. or anything, it's not cute. "limits one's abilities to remain objective" or something.

a side effect of people glorifying jinx was villainizing caitlyn. not that she didn't have a villain arc for a reason, but c'mon guys. i've gotten into a lot of internet arguments about this, looking back i think that's a good thing. it led me to educating myself politically outside of tiktok comment sections. i wasn't drastically ignorant before, but i wasn't informed enough to be able to back myself up in an argument.

people were throwing some pretty nasty allegations about caitlyn, which from what i remember was largely just anger about season two's downfall, along with a feeling of helplessness about the state of the world. it can be validating to argue with each other on the internet over fictional characters and feel like calling one a real world hate group with little to no basis means you're calling out the hate group.

when we misinterpret a character like that, it takes away from real world harm and waters it down. caitlyn kiramman is a fictional character. and out of any fictional character, she does not make a good example for what a dictator is. it waters down the weight of that word, and real world oppression does not manifest the way caitlyn's support of ambessa's occupation did.

caitlyn helped kill ambessa herself, and lost an eye for it. she more than helped fix the problem she created, and narratively sacrificed a lot for it. from that narrative standpoint, if we treat fiction like fiction, caitlyn was being manipulated and isolated on all sides. she had just lost a very close family member from jinx's hand, and then her support from vi. the council was incompetent, jayce had gone missing, and her father was greiving. she is already unused to real suffering, and with ambessa swooping in to act like a mother figure, it was very easy for her to start using that as a crutch.

this isn't the first time she's seen jinx kill someone. up until then, she was trying to navigate the case she was sacrificing her job for. a job she didn't have by the way; i very rarely see people point out that she was fired early from being an enforcer, a job that for her was a glorified security gaurd due to her mother's sheltering. if you want an example, look at her first adult appearance in progress day. not to say she wasn't an enforcer for season two, but up until then she was pretty much pretending. all cops are bastards, and caitlyn can be a hell of a bastard. yet even then the fanbase can't figure out what's different between a bastard and a nazi.

anyway, she saw jinx through vi's eyes for the most part. we can see this when they were first investigating the undercity together, though there was distrust between them she tried to handle things rationally. her motivations have always been what she thought was justice, regardless of her privileged background. caitlyn believes herself to be logical. and for the most part she is, because it's not personal to her. but the loss of her mother obviously changed that, and so she begins to change. she blames herself at times, believing she could have stopped things if she killed jinx while she could. during her arc, ambessa and maddie are the only people around her. caitlyn's background is part of this, even though her relationship with her mother is strained, it wasn't as though she didn't care about her.

there was a cut scene of her having a breakdown, which i feel would have been valuable to include. a lack of emotional expression made her far less understandable to the people who weren't paying attention. there's a few times she cries in the show, but she's quiet about it and the art style doesn't show it clearly. jinx is different, whenever she expresses emotion it's very clear, personable, and understandable. we can get that her violence is out of desperation.

caitlyn and jinx are two sides of the same coin. they mirror each other while opposing each other. the fanbase often glues the tails side down and ignores that it's there. the head rusts like that, while unbalanced and exposed. some people need to please get a grip and watch the show without shutting their eyes, plugging their ears and screaming twitter words.