#free yourself from purity culture and find the beauty in grey characterisations i beggeth you

[messrsrarchives]

robyn i’m begging please tell me you’ve watched arcane and that you’re a caitlyn/caitvi defender i am tired of fighting alone 💔💔

I AM I AM I AM !!! and i get the dislike okay, i get the whole cop/marginalised community thing but so many of the people that are against caitvi just WATCHED arcane and didn't understand it, yk? i know the "we need more complex female characters" crowd HATEEEE to see a complex female character coming (but of course, prefacing this by saying you can like/dislike whatever characters you want ! the same way cait/caitvi enjoyers should be able to without being called facists)

first of all, mirror of jinx. if you hate cait, hate jinx too. and i know it's different because of their classes but that's the POINT. that's the whole point, they're all just people and they both lose someone important to them and are subsequently manipulated. and look, cait's morals are dicey okay - that's what makes a good character, and i mean good in terms of interesting not as a pinnacle of moral righteousness - but she is fundamentally good.

i think the big thing with caitvi, is a lot of their conversations are non-verbal and we don't actually see them discuss any of it. would i have liked to have seen it? yes. do i get that it happens without seeing it? also yes, that's what the whole end scene is. "are you still in this fight, violet?" - we've only just begun, the war is over but we have a lot to talk about and so much untangle and i need to know if there's a chance for forgiveness because i know i've done awful things. "i'm the dirt under your nails, cupcake. nothing's gonna clean me out." - i know. i know we have a lot to talk about, i know there's awful things we have to clear up, but this is me reassuring you that i'm not going anywhere, and i'm still in this fight.

and then the prison scene?! cait is so blinded by hatred and we see that, we see a complete difference between s1 cait and s2 cait and that's the POINT!!!! i'm adding a photo below of a something that's been in my drafts for ages (unedited so not very coherent) but !!! it's the whole point 😖 that prison scene is a return to the cait we know, to actual cait who isn't being manipulated and finally understands that her grief is being monopolised (there were many signs throughout that she was against this and had been manipulated, but this is The Big Revelation scene) - AND SHE APOLOGISES HERE TOO! the slow reach out to the wound, letting vi take control, stopping to be honest about maddie? the entire interaction with jinx?? "hating you, i've hated myself" - againnnn, none of this excuses her actions but it shows she isn't the big villain everyone wants her to be.

and vi forgives her.

and we joke a lot about "one cupcake and she deflects" in the mongoose/oil slick scene (lmao) but it's so much more than that. it's so much more than just liking vi, because vi is the first person she meets that shows her she doesn't have to be like her family, that the world is bigger than being head of the house, and that people contain multitudes - of courseee that reconnection is going to cause a shift, because she never truly believed in it anyway, and the physical reminder that she has a Choice has just come back into her life

and i think the most important thing is actually explicitly said: "No amount of good deeds can undo our crimes."

she's aware. she's so aware of what she's done, she becomes aware of why she did it, and whilst that doesn't excuse any of it, she explicitly acknowledges that it doesn't !! and she opens up the door in that last scene for the conversations that need to be had.

so do i think she's perfect? no. do i think any of this excuses her actions? no. do i think she's a raging facist that contributes to poor wlw rep and anyone who likes the ship should be bashed over the head with a rock? also no.

i think she's a character that contains multitudes, is an incredible example of how the human spirit and morality is not built for war, we weren't meant for this weighing of lives, and i think her character arc is so important for class consciousness and social change - we need those at the top that are more empathetic to see our struggles, and we need them to unlearn their prejudices which are embedded into them by the very same systems that oppress us. which feels pertinent today with all the eat the rich discussions and people saying luigi isn't some hero, he's the rich we need to eat - class is so much more complicated than that.

so,,, yes ! caitvi defender and a cait defender because i understand that liking a character does not equate to liking all their actions, and that morality is never going to be as black and white as we were taught to believe in disney films. humans are messy, humans are complicated and will never be easily-categorisable into good or bad, and i think that love is not always perfect, but it persists anyway and that's rather lovely for caitvi.

i think it's incredible character design, incredible relationship design, and the show asks so many questions about morality and class divisions that aren't always easy to comprehend, and aren't always explicit. you have to dig for the details - the slightly shift in lighting, the dilating of a pupil, the slow reach out; it's all there, it just isn't obvious. and i'm rambling and looking too far into it now but we also only see vi through caitlyn's eyes a couple of times. we only get caitlyn's first-person pov a few times: shes's so closed off even to herself, it's going to be difficult to decipher her character and her morality when she isn't even allowing herself that dissection. and i think she doesn't allow that because she knows she'll dislike what she finds, she knows she is fundamentally against what she's doing, she just needed a reminder that life is bigger than her predetermined role (vi coming back - see here; one of the view cait povs we get is immediately after vi coming back, and them fooling ambessa) and she can infact make that choice.

so complex and so interesting.

ANYWAY! this has been a messrsrarchives ted talk, thank you for joining me here today and i leave you with my other rant about something i keep seeing on tiktok - unedited and messy oopsie.