#caitlyn s1 i loved so much but i dont even know if i wanna look at s1 again anymore

[funnyscienceman]

every time i look at caitlyn now i just get sad.

we know the gray is why viktor's sick and dying young

we know that caitlyn knows very well what the gray does to people

we know that the gray is a gas and gas cannot be controlled, we literally see it spill out of a building

and

and nothing comes out of it

nothing comes out of cait releasing a deadly toxin that has caused the suffering and death of generations of zaunites

one of whom she literally asks after because she did know him in some level and was concerned for, and/or because jayce is close to him and she knows that

cait who hugged a victim of drug addiction with no hint of hesitation or disgust, just grateful that he helped out, immediately suggesting that he meet vi because her new friend might be happy to see a familiar face

what

what the fuck

what the fuck???

like i know i know, smth abt grief and how it can turn you into a monster, yeah sure but like

are you. gonna do anything about that?

Oh

No

You're just

"angry oil slick" and "mongoose" and marvel quips and "im here to save my dad" and oh she's betraying ambessa now i guess. "why is peace always the excuse for violence," dude, you. brought back. deadly gas. that has killed generations of zaunites. this gas that is killing viktor. like 1/2 the reason why the world nearly ends at the finale because piltover's capitalism forced this guy's hand. i. i just.

what the fuck???

[guileheroine]

arcane thoughts

as usual, putting things down for posterity so i dont forget my fresh impressions!  [spoilers]

i’ve watched the show twice in the last ~week and i love it!

didn’t rly know anything going in (apart from hearing it was good) but what i didn’t expect is that it would fulfil one of my deepest narrative kinks: the intense, fucked up, tragic (found)family stuff here is my bread, butter, juice & jam!! vi & jinx, vi & vander (😖😖 i found them the immediate emotional core pre-timeskip), jinx & silco (😖😖😖!!!!!), vander & silco, it’s a LOT. the angst, the difficult loyalties, the being each other’s achilles heels of it all. front-and-center family dynamics in spec-fic are always a lance to my heart and few things have scratched this itch so good. out of a strong ensemble cast where i like everyone i’d prob pick those characters as my fav for this reason

jinx shouldn’t work as well as she does bc girl!joker isn’t usually my vibe wrt character types but the groundwork is solid, there’s much more going on than those aesthetics & her being ~teehee crazy! vi was my early fave (kids who act like adults are just ugh… the responsibility she felt not just for the siblings but also vander like. i cant think about it tbh), and maybe i’m still dean winchester-pilled but the eldest child x bruiser combo is simply elite, stacking that temperament over that backstory. kinda love how woobifiable they both are yes i will put them in a jar. the contrast between their trauma is compelling—jinx is erratic & indulgent, and frayed by silco’s influence, while vi clearly represses out of a sense of guilt/responsibility and prison survival mode. and then with all these divergences theyre just talking over each other, even tho they sort of want the same thing they dont know how to get there! irreparable (?) sibling drama! abandonment drama! knife and fork please!! (sidenote after wading into fandom a bit, im truly ecstatic they made complicated & mutually raw family dynamics the show’s centre, even tho it’s predictably not that legible to Fandom and its ‘ship/stan or bust’ orientation)

i think part 1 was the strongest — the whole show is tight but the later parts, as more of a setup for the future, don’t have a bow around them in the same way

ep 3 specifically was where i became thoroughly engaged, it’s like this masterful Greek Tragedy conga, definitely sth i’ll return to when i want to be emotionally hollowed out. just writing this makes me wanna go back 

mel is STUNNING, maybe the most aesthetically pleasing character design i’ve ever seen. saw a pic of her before i knew the show and i was like 😩😩😩. the gold accents, arm/thigh braces, goooorgeous. i didn’t find her as interesting until the stuff with her mum came in, but rewatching in that light rly endeared me. looking forward to how she squares what happens at the end of s1 with her anti-war convictions (if she survives). also would like to know more about what her brother was like?

deeply intrigued by what viktor’s Final Form will look like, he feels like a little gnaw on my heart when i think about the show. a quietly magnetic understated character. viktor and mel doing a lot of legwork in dragging jayce into relevance for me. solid ot3 potential there, but i also dig the two jayce pairings (the fact that i think he and mel have basically no chemistry but it’s still cute lol) jayce is cute tbh! and there’s that dash of overreach to all three that i adore, good foils

he talks shit but heimerdinger getting kicked off the council and scurrying off destroyed me, whyyy did they make him look like the devastating combo of old man + babie

plotwise, much to consider & my thoughts congealed better on rewatch- the class warfare plotline could go well, fingers are crossed. it’d be cool to see the piltover charas that are being positioned as heroes like jayce and caitlyn have their moral frameworks blown open and excavated more (bc there’s a point where the good cop naivete becomes odd/grating in smart grownup characters no matter how well intentioned). ensure the inequality, corruption etc is a character motive rather than an overly accentuated but ultimately incidental detail (im looking darkly at lok s1). basically ig i hope the show knows it hasnt set up a both-sides situation in its deep, sustained worldbuilding even if a few enforcers got blown up. likewise really hope they don’t file off the chip on vi’s shoulder just bc she’s working with piltover and jinx made a mess

one thing i had a little trouble with was silco’s motivations—if he wanted justice for the undercity then why the drug kingpin stuff that laid it low? i guess he’s pretty fucked up and the profit + power motive can definitely coexist with high ideals esp in a brutal survival context but now he’s gone i’m excited to see how the undercity charas negotiate their future, amongst themselves even more so than with piltover. also when he went to vander’s statue after the parley w jayce and drew that dad/daughter parallel hurgleee

sevika. she could be such a good anti-hero! im not usually a villain person but tbh no one really read as a villain. i wonder what underlied her striking loyalty and how she’ll configure her place w/o silco, and yeah better articulation of the zaunites’ motivations🙏🏽 

caitlyn/vi: good!! a normally paced gay ship comfortably nestled between ship tease and canon. the class dynamic they keep gesturing to is very tasty (the scene in the rain?? bollywood!) hope there’s more angst before it goes Canon canon— the ship has a lovely crackle to it and would be well served by a fuller contention w their differences (which are big + interesting even if theyve become close in a war-bond/chemistry way. otherwise yeah might feel like a disservice to the charas if swept under for ship preservation)

i neeeeed more ekko (and the firelights) loved their whole setup! no punk like solarpunk. wish we saw him with jinx more—would have made their charged reunion mega effective if we saw him with her as a kid the way we saw him with vi

the quality and density of the writing for such a short show bodes well. they’re juggling a lot very deftly so happy to give the benefit of the doubt wrt any nitpicks/worries. the characters all feel like dimensional and nuanced manifestations of their archetypes, in a way that makes me wanna keep a permanent distance from fanon bc i know how it goes there

the two vi/sevika fights 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽. the first time in my life that ive felt like an action fan. (also is there #content of them?? asking for a whore)

the pov shot of mel leaning in to kiss jayce is theee funniest thing ever, idk why i find them so funny (affectionate). that pov shot of vi when caitlyn strokes her cheek makes me want to kiss the animators’ feeeeet

whole show makes me wanna kiss the artists’ feet tbh. you can tell they got to express themselves, and all the stylistic stuff is super cool—rly works and the visual intensity didn’t put me off even tho it’s something i can find very overstimulating in the wrong show. it recalls spiderverse very strongly. i want to watch it on like a home cinema screen (rich people hmu). the gestures are so expressive and subtle in a way i often miss when watching animation (coming to cartoons from live action, i admit that ive never rly been convinced that cartoon charas can have a physical- not just textual- chemistry). this feels like the best of both worlds but it’s actually only animation. masterful

soundtrack slaps. the songs are used to great tonal effect. that sequence to ‘our love’ when the enforcers are coming in and vi’s going to give herself up was excellent and caused stirrings even when i had barely any attachment to the charas. the show is so cinematic. also i highly dont recommend carefully listening to the sting song in ep9 and thinking about the abandonment drama. 

grateful that it has really lit my fire as a fan!! it’s been a few years since i felt so engaged with sth that actually feels like a world, and not just for one or two aspects of it. i was honestly almost certain that i had just aged out of that kind of hyperfixation-excitement. very happy :D

in conclusion: