iamsooraa

[iamsooraa]

although brief, cait and maddie's very first scene in s2 act 2 reveals a lot about cait and how she's dealing with the death of her mother and her breakup with vi.

at the end of act 1, vi tells cait that she's acting like jinx, the very person cait is trying to protect herself and piltover from. up until this point, cait valued vi's honesty and forwardness because she constantly challenged her beliefs and ideals, allowing cait to grow out of her sheltered and narrow-minded upbringing. she often confides in vi when making drastic decisions, and almost always follows vi's suggestions like when she suggested they leave the rest of the team to go after jinx alone.

during act 1, cait truly believes that what they're doing (releasing the grey, incarcerating anyone related to silco, and risking shooting a child) is what's best for piltover's protection and honoring her mother's memory. but her certainty wavers as vi tells her that she's becoming the very person she swore she would bring to justice.

at first glance, maddie is pretty inconsequential to the narrative (especially since the series isn't over yet), so seeing her with cait at the beginning of act 2 was quite jarring. however, their conversation made me realize why cait chose maddie to rebound with. throughout their conversation, cait expresses her frustration with how long the occupation in zaun has lasted. maddie offers her advice, saying that she has the power to stop the occupation and reinstate the counsel. cait emphasizes that jinx is the reason she must continue, and that ambessa has taught her so much. maddie relents and just reassures her that she is in charge and that she will follow her. and there in lies the crux of their relationship.

i often heard fans bring up the power imbalance between cait and vi and cait and maddie. vi and cait often exchanged ideas without holding back, allowing vi to be on equal footing for most of their relationship (aside from the end of s2 act 1). she was not shy about putting cait in her place when it came to her actions and beliefs. on the other hand, maddie does not challenge cait at all. instead she offers unquestioning loyalty. only telling cait what she thinks she wants to hear, and never confronting her about how she's handling the uprising in zaun or her relationship with ambessa. maddie was even the first enforcer to start beating her chest with her fist when ambessa nominates her as piltover's leader during martial law. she's clearly very idealistic and optimistic (like during her conversation with vi in s2 act 1) and maybe even a little naive.

whether it was conscious or subconscious, cait sought comfort in someone who would reinforce her ideals and decisions in an attempt to suage her guilt about her mother's death and the occupation. in that moment, she wanted someone who would support her decisions even if they were morally and ethically wrong.

[iamsooraa]

Arcane is a masterclass in body language and how to properly use it in storytelling to get your message to your audience without thunking them over the head/spoon feeding it them.

Caitlyn's relationship to Vi vs her relationship to others is a great example.

Caitlyn is almost always trying to create less distance between Vi and her or "fill the gap" between them:

Cait steps over the red line in Stillwater to show Vi the evidence

After Vi ditches Cait in the brothel to jump Sevika, Cait seeks her out and saves her from Sevika

When she gives Vi the medicine for stab wound, they're breathing each other's air

She reaches across the space between them on her bed to caress Vi's face

She chases after Vi following the Council meeting not going their way

Fairly certain, she was going to go look for Vi after her shower if Jinx hadn't kidnapped her

She seeks out Vi after her dad, more or less, says he doesn't want Vi in their house. Not to kick her out but to find some comfort in being close to her (i think this is why she pushed so hard for her to be an enforcer, to keep her close)

Cait also does a fair share of looking at Vi's lips, slightly leaning in, and second guessing herself all within a span of a blink

Vi asks Cait not to change (she already has), so she closes the gap between them, and they share their first kiss as a form of reassurance

She takes down Vi mongoose style and again starts closing the gap between them by betraying Ambessa and helping Vander

Cait slightly/momentarily leans towards Vi's lips when she's pulling the bag over her head

Vi spits in her face and wipes it TOWARDS HER MOUTH and not away

After Jayce shoots Viktor and Ambessa attacks, Caitlyn has ample opportunity to go after Jinx, but she focuses on Vi and covering her back until she gets sliced across the abdomen and then she runs to her to help her to her feet

Now let's look at how Caitlyn creates gaps and space with Maddie even tho they're sleeping together:

Beginning of episode 4, while they're sitting in bed, Maddie tries to close the gap and create some intimacy. Caitlyn, in turn, leans away from her, creating space between them

Maddie is also the one trying to initiate/create emotional intimacy, and Caitlyn swerves her each time

Maddie kisses/nuzzles Caitlyn's neck, and in response, Caitlyn has the quickest expression of "eugh" before fixing her face and moving away from Maddie

Instead of leaning into the intimacy Maddie is trying to give her, Caitlyn gets up to work on something and says she'll come to bed soon

Caitlyn lets Ambessa dismiss Maddie from the room after (more than likely) overhearing the discussion about restarting the council (I really think if this were Vi, Caitlyn would've pulled rank and told her to stay)

Maddie is also very absent from the rest of s2p2, and given how we've seen Caitlyn actively seek out Vi in her absence, she honestly doesn't seem to care where Maddie is or how she's doing

And none of this is explicitly told to the audience thru dialog. All thru body language. And i just think that's really neat

[iamsooraa]

i absolutely HATE some of the vi takes i've been seeing after s2 act 2, but the one that urks me the most is the idea that vi should've been a better older sister to powder. i feel like we are not watching the same show.

at the very start of the the show, vi sees her parents being murdered my enforcers as powder clings to her for protection. as we flash forward a few years, we see that it has become a regular occurrence for vi, powder, mylo, and claggor to go out and loot. through that knowledge, we also find out that those missions usually have hiccups due to powder being a "jinx" by mylo's words. vi is constantly defending powder regardless of whether or not she's a jinx. she doesn't care about that; she only cares that she's safe, just like when she was chased and then threw the loot into the river.

vi even encourages powder to keep making her gadgets as powder confides in her about being useless to the team. something that powder (eventually jinx) carries with her well into the narrative. and we see throughout the show that physical touch is vi's love language. she treats powder with such tenderness, showing that without saying anything, she deeply cares about her. she even tells vander that powder deserves a better life than the one she's had, and that she's willing to fight for it.

as vander scolds vi about taking the rest of the kids to the topside to loot, he warns her that as the oldest, the other kids look up to her and look to her for guidance. and we see that she takes that to heart. she literally tries to turn herself in so that she can protect not only powder but the rest of the lanes as they are being harassed by enforcers due to the explosion.

when vander gets kidnapped, she tells powder to stay behind because she knows how dangerous this mission is. it's not about whether she believes powder is capable of helping or not; it's about not losing another person she loves, not losing her family. vi values family above all else. before she's even an adult, every decision she makes is for her family. that's all she has.

so when powder shows up and accidentally kills mylo, claggor, and subsequently vander, vi loses it upon finding out. she just lost most of her family in one fell swoop. and in her anger and grief, she hits powder, telling her she's a jinx. as powder cries in her hands, vi realizes what she has done and walks away to cool her head. when she sees silco approach powder, she begins to run to her before she's arrested by marcus.

she was just a kid who had the unreasonable responsibility of protecting her sister from the harsh and cruel world that they lived in. and yet, she tried to provide powder with a childhood that she never got. and because she fucked up one time, half the fandom thinks she's a horrible older sister. i wish they would extend the same grace they give to jinx or even cait in s2 to vi.

[iamsooraa]

So if I were to take away from this moment something deeper than “man Sevika's a freak”, I'd point out that we've seen the same tactic not long before.

What does this say about Caitlyn? She's fighting dirty. She's fighting like a cornered rat. She's fighting like a Zaunite.

And first of all there's hypocrisy. Caitlyn's been calling these people animals and monsters and whatnot but when placed in an identical situation she responds identically. Case in point: getting so mad at Jinx for terrorizing people out of grief that she goes ahead and starts to terrorize people out of grief. Sevika's expression afterwards is mostly “joke's on you I'm into that” but there's some surprise there too — you wouldn't expect that move from a Piltie.

Then there's desperation. Because she needs revenge; she needs it or she'll never ever forgive herself for what happened. So she'll throw away her morals and her dignity and just do whatever it takes to achieve the goal, whether it means chomping on someone like a feral raccoon or becoming a military dictator… which puts her in the same mindset as Zaunites, all of whom are desperate to survive and a lot of whom could never afford morals and dignity in the first place.

[iamsooraa]

It's all fun and memes to joke about how Caitlyn immediately switched sides the moment she hears Vi call her cupcake again. And I do it too. But to me, the switch wasn't abrupt at all.

From the first scene in episode four, Caitlyn already says that the martial law has been going on much longer than she wanted. In the next scene, you see her standing up to Ambessa, using her words back at her, for which Ambessa calls her fearless. It shows that Caitlin has not given up control and is not being puppeteered by Ambessa. She's in control still, but her singular focus is still on Jinx like it was in act 1.

Vi was right that Caitlyn is behaving like Jinx, but it was probably the worst thing Vi could have said to her, no matter how true, cause Caitlyn was too deep in her quest for 'justice' in her grief. That's why she reacted so violently.

Jinx is the target of her obsession, or her in her mind for justice, even though what she really wants is vengeance, and being compared to Jinx cut deep. Vi had noticed it before in season 1:

In the beginning of episode 4, she feels that it's been going on too long, but even after all those months, her obsession is still stronger. Her obsession with getting vengeance, finding Jinx, killing Jinx, is still stronger than her moral compass, which she has abandoned to avenge her mother and fill her mother's shoes.

But over the course of the second act before she sees Vi again, there are multiple things that happen that make Caitlyn understand she has to stop, that what she's doing isn't right or justifiable.

Some of these were not initially clear to me when I first watched it. but one thing I realized today while I was working out is that one crucial moment for Caitlyn's arc in act 2 is with Singed.

Taking her singular focus off Jinx for a moment, Caitlyn does what she does best and figures out who Singed is, and what he's responsible for. She uncovers that Singed is actually the formerly revered alchemist Dr. Corin Reveck, who used to work with Heimerdinger at the academy. Arcane implies he is from Piltover and became a Zaunite after being kicked out of Piltover. He helped build up Piltover to what it is, and now he is ravaging Zaun with shimmer, weapons and monsters.

When she calls him a monster and asks him "why do all this?", he tells her he did it 'for love'. Out of love for his deceased daughter.

And I think that that is one of the crucial moments where Caitlyn starts to realize that what she is doing is not very different from him.

She's doing things her old self would never have approved, of out of love and grief for her deceased mother.

When she sees Vi again, she doesn't suddenly switch sides, she's already been doubting her chosen course of action. She initially says "you can't be here", because Caitlyn is trying to believe she's doing the right thing still, and knows Vi is a threat to that belief/lie.

Vi calling her cupcake though, is one of the last drops in the bucket. She left Vi to do what she thought she needed to do, what her mother might have done. What she's doing out of guilt for not saving her mother when she had the chance. She even tried to be with a girl her mother would have approved of.

When Vi calls her cupcake, all the feelings she's been trying to stuff away come flooding back. She snaps out of this self-imposed love-deprived state she's been in, and she can no longer deny she loves Vi.

When Vi tells her that she's trying to save her dad, I think that is the moment she actually switches sides. That was the last drop. That is the moment where she realizes there are still people she loves, who love her, who are still alive and they need her help, and that is more important than her horrible campaign for vengeance out of grief, otherwise she's no different than Singed.

[iamsooraa]

caitlyn and ambessa's relationship portrays an interesting parallel that i haven't seen anyone talk about. at first, i couldn't see the significance of their relationship beyond the obvious narrative of a puppet dictatorship, but then i remembered the scene between mel and ambessa. mel asking her why she sent her away, and ambessa saying that she couldn't stand the look in mel's face whenever she made the decisions she thought was necessary to protect her and their family.

and this mirrors cait and vi's relationship in s1 and s2 act 1. from the very beginning, vi directly confronts cait's beliefs and biases about zaun and it's people. in their first interaction, cait says "in what mad world would i trust someone like you?" and vi instantly is pissed off by this comment (rightfully so). cait has already been made aware that there is no record of vi's incarceration, and can infer that she is being held without probable cause. vi tearing into her about that comment makes cait question her previous notions about not only vi, but about the other possible innocent people from zaun that are wrongfully imprisoned.

throughout their story in zaun, cait's ignorance is constantly confronted by not only what she sees in the undercity but by what vi tells and shows her about herself (like her childhood home). cait's value for honesty allows her to build a trusting relationship between her and vi. she begins to value her insight and relies on her to help make pivotal decisions.

cait even listened to vi when she asked her not to kill her sister, jinx (despite knowing how dangerous she was), and this unfortunately led to the death of her mother. throughout s1, vi is the source of her strength towards her conviction to find the truth. however, for the first time, vi was her weakness, and that weakness led to irreparable consequences.

after the death of her mother, and the eventual attack at the memorial, we see that vi has become an emotional anchor for cait as we see her slip into her old biases of the undercity. when cait calls the zaunites "animals", vi is there to remind her that they were trying to get a rise out of her, trying to remind her that the attack is independent of zaunites. we also see that vi is constantly checking on her and asking her not to change, seeing that her anger and grief are making her slip from the old cait that she knew.

this all comes to a head at the end of s2 act 1, when vi stops cait from shooting jinx due to isha's presence. when she tells vi that she's no different than jinx, she not only has fully slipped back into her prejudice, but she is subconsciously pushing away the last pillar of reason she has, vi. cait believes that this path to revenge is the best way to protect her people and to honor her mother's memory, but how can she make the difficult decisions when the one person she loves constantly questions her? and that's what makes her and ambessa's relationship so fascinating. just like ambessa, cait couldn't make the decisions she thought was best to protect what she cared about the most because she couldn't stand the look in vi's eyes: concern and fear. ambessa understood that vi was cait's weakness, just like how mel was hers. she knew that maintaining cait's isolation from vi (as stated in s2 act 2) was essential to maintaining power over cait and subsequently piltover and hextech.

[iamsooraa]

vi always goes back to that exact moment—when she was exposed but had a place to rest, lying on a comfortable bed after years of cold prison floors and endless fights. confessing her worries to cait, who offered her the gentlest, softest touch on her cheek… she always goes back there, maybe because that’s the moment she fell for caitlyn, the moment she allowed herself to lower her guard after so many years.

[iamsooraa]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x01 - “Heavy is the Crown”

[iamsooraa]

This this this right here is getting to me. Gif is from @terrapia

Yeah you could argue this parallels Silco but it doesn’t really. Silco didn’t want to give up jinx because she’s his daughter. Sevika doesn’t want to give up jinx because she’s a zaunite

And you know who that reminds me of so fucking much?

That’s Vander’s ideology right there. Vander could have done like Grayson suggested, picked any rando off the streets to take the fall for the apartment explosion, but he wouldn’t, because those are his people.

Vander was weak and Vander was a coward but Sevika followed him once, and there was a reason for that

Silco may have been the Eye of zaun, but Vander is its Heart, and that heart is still fucking beating

[iamsooraa]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x06 - “The Message Hidden Within the Pattern”

[iamsooraa]

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT!!

Even if most people are just joking, it bothers me when other people actually think it's all due to a failed relationship when the problem is actually bigger than that. Vi getting to this point isn't because she broke up with Caitlyn. She has bigger, more difficult things going on than just a failed relationship. Adding to that the most painful factor for Vi is when she fights Jinx, which is one of the factors that really affects her. She went from being protective of her sister to "hurting" her sister. (Even though her sister Jinx brought this on herself, but anyway)

"Losing Caitlyn was the last straw, as they say"

Caitlyn was the one who got Vi out of prison, She got her out of the worst place Vi had ever been in. And Caitlyn was the last person Vi could trust and now she's gone.

I mean you can see she wasn't that miserable when she was in prison because she said herself, "The only thing that kept me going, was the thought of getting back to you." Now her sister is gone and Caitlyn is gone, the only two people left in her life. It's only natural that she would come to this point after literally losing everything.

Vi now has no hope no purpose and no one left after all the people she's lost along the way. It's really hard for Vi.

[iamsooraa]

That which inspires us to our greatest good is also the cause of our greatest evil. (Arcane | 2x06)

[iamsooraa]

#something has just awoken inside me...

[iamsooraa]

NOT SEEING ENOUGH PEOPLE TALK ABOUT JINX'S LITTLE FOUND FAMILY AND HOW PERFECT IT IS THEMATICALLY!!!

Specifically what I want to highlight is how Jinx found the two most important parts of herself that she lost in Sevika and Isha.

In Sevika she found a new Vi, a new older sister figure. She cannot fix things with Vi, she understands that, but her relationship with Sevika is something she can fix, and she can mourn Silco with Sevika in a way she and Vi could never mourn Vander together.

In Isha she found Powder, the person she once was who she can't be anymore. In many ways Isha gives Jinx the opportunity to protect and love Powder in the way she always wished others would do for her, quite literally Isha heals Jinx's inner child.

[iamsooraa]

something about vi never wanting anyone in her life to change. something about jayce not caring at all how much viktor has changed so long as he's alive. something about the way vi associates radical change with death, perceiving jinx's continued existence as a kind of necromantic horror—the way jayce would shatter fundamental laws of nature without a second thought in order to give viktor the best chance at survival, in whatever form that may take. transformation as rebirth vs murder, hextech vs shimmer. nature has made us intolerant to change, but fortunately, we have the capacity to change our nature. and then jayce, realizing that he hasn't changed at all, not really—that he is a scientist at heart, and he shouldn't have tried to be anything else. and then vi, realizing she has become someone unrecognizable—never thought my sister would turn bluebelly. and for both of them, it's too little, too late.

[iamsooraa]

the arcane fandom can argue about literally anything, but the one thing we all agree on is that ekko, the boy savior, is the most unproblematic character ever, and that we all absolutely love him. while everyone else is caught up in gay tragedy of all kinds, my boy is just over here trying to fix his damn tree.

[iamsooraa]

even a worm will turn.