#taking part in the jinx vs caitlyn agenda

[allgreekbitch]

hating on an arcane character bc “they’re a bad person” is so funny bc there’s literally no character that can be considered a good person in the entire fucking show and that’s the charm of it

[jinxie-117]

i'll have to rewatch the season but it almost feels like the cait/jinx parallel was completely lost on season 2? what made these two so cool and their conflict so interesting was that they were such incredibly similar people, but there's very little of that in season 2.

at the end of season 2 they both lost a parental figure (and additionally, both of them blame themselves!!) that was incredibly vital to their upbringing and the way they are now as adults. season 2 should have been about the grief they both suffered after losing their parents.

have both of them spearhead their respective war fronts. caitlyn fights zaun through organised ranks and precision fighting with rifles, heck, even bring in the grey, etc (basically how she does it in the show). meanwhile, jinx fights piltover through random, unpredictable terrorist attacks and her sheer volume of followers throwing themselves at the opposition, with her taking an active role in rallying them to be as chaotic as possible. this would work even further to highlight their differences, showing how though they begin at similar starting points, they both lean into each extreme (while both of them might originally be closer on the spectrum of chaos to control, they both go to polar opposites during s2).

then, have vi stuck in the middle. too chaotic for caitlyn's almost controlling, dictator-esque agenda, but too controlled for jinx's reckless abandon. create the show's conflict here, instead of bringing in third parties and other unneeded aspects of the story. caitvi divorce because vi isn't 'committed enough to the cause.' jinx won't take her sister back because she's 'chosen her side' and hasn't proven herself to have changed since the tea party. linger in this conflict between zaun and piltover, cait and jinx, and express it through vi. you could literally express all of the differences between zaun and piltover and a possible route for peace through this one interpersonal conflict that has already been set up in season 2!!!!

this should be the main plot, same how vi + cait vs silco + jinx was in the first season (arguably s1 has so many important things to it that there isn't really one main plot, but the climax of the show is during the tea party which is the resolution to this particular plot. so i am calling it the main plot). THIS IS WHAT THE SHOW IS ABOUT!!! the story writes itself tbh. it's a huge shock to me that the writers didn't go with this.

the cait/jinx parallel, not to mention the countless other foils and parallels (which was what made the show so good!!!) are seemingly abandoned in s2 and that's why it falls so flat. connections are hardly drawn between characters. isha is SUPPOSED to be a parallel to powder, but the connection is visual, nothing more. isha possesses none of powder's original characteristics - in fact, she has no characteristics, because all she exists as is a plot device, a ticking time bomb to go off when jinx needs to have her emo arc! if you can draw any parallels that operate as well as season one's did, you are welcome to point them out, but imo none of them hit as good as season one, where we had silco and vander opposite to jinx and vi, jinx vs cait, viktor vs mel, sevika vs vi, i mean i could go on. these connections feel sidelined or even absent from season 2 - or at least are not the highlight.

for example, viktor and mel are both mages, and how they obtain this power is evident of their differences, but we do not spend near enough time on these plots to warrant me giving a fuck, nor are the differences stark enough - because yes, mel is more privileged and has a birthright to power, but a big part of her character is that she was exiled from noxus and had to build her empire in piltover instead of relying on her family. the difference needs to be more dramatic to drive the point home - in season one, they differ so much because viktor cares about what hextech can do for others, using himself in the process, while mel cares about what hextech can do for her, using others in the process. the development for both of them comes when the opposite occurs - viktor accidentally kills sky, and mel sacrifices her pride and her place within her family to side with jayce in his effort to reunite piltover and zaun. the parallel was on multiple layers and carried through their entire character arc. frankly, we don't see enough of mel or viktor (or at least, anything that showcases their motivations) to draw proper connections in season 2, which is why both of their mage arcs feel lacking.

what made the story work so well in arcane is that you could look up and see that absolutely everything was connected, right down to the last detail. they've forgotten that connection in season 2, and it's made the scenes, the arcs, and the conflicts feel completely detached from one another, leading to the season feeling stilted. it's like the writers forgot what they had done so well in season 1 and decided to just throw everything they had in their brains onto the page without any regard for the care that had been previously put into them.