#where the ultimate takeways are: just accept your illness/disability no matter how negatively it affects your life

[silvershadow1711]

In a show where an oligarchy, ruling a city that has crippled and even killed the lower classes to earn its wealth and status, uses experimental technology that has a deleterious effect on living matter (including one of the only plants that provides fresh air to the aforementioned lower class) (this is never fixed or even addressed again btw) to illegally line their pockets and make weapons, the actual "bad guys", the people the show says need to be stopped at all costs are...

A disabled revolutionary who wants his people freed from the yoke of the oligarchy's opression.

A mentally-ill orphan who lost her parents to police brutality.

A disabled man who was actively dying because of the polution pumped into his home by the ruling class, who uses his magic powers to heal the sick (this is a BAD thing, according to the writers; healing the things that cause you pain makes you an empty shell)

And a scary black foreign woman who leads an invasion of also scary, barbaric foreigners to take over the oligarchal city. Which makes the lower classes that have been opressed and killed by the oligarchy decide that they want to die for oligarchal city... rather than the rich elites who actually live there and are in danger.

But, y'know, the writers didn't want to make a "political" show.

I think the thing people fail to realise about Caitlyn's "redemption" and lack thereof is that the plot contorts itself around her never having to question her core beliefs or stop following the power structures she's always followed. Isn't Caitlyn's flaw as a character a confidence in "the system"? A genuine belief that the best way to help people in to remain loyal to the government and give the police more and more destruction weapons and freedoms to use them against whoever they deem fit. Would not a "redemption arc" require her to actually question those beliefs? People seem to think her betraying Ambessa is an example of that? No, her loyalty was never to Ambessa, but to the ruling class of Piltover. She follows Ambessa when she's fooled into thinking Ambessa has the same goals as the ruling class, and betrays her when she realises that isn't the case. She defends Piltover at the end to "protect people", yes, but she only ever gets justified in her existing belief that oligarchical government and violent hyper-militarised cops are the the way to do that. She never changes, the writers just have circumstances realign to where she's now on the "good" side. If the writers had never introduced "evil disabled man who wants to destroy the entire world for no reason" and "evil black woman who loves killing for no reason", and kept the central conflict as being primarily Piltover against Zaun, Caitlyn would've had to change. The way it is, unless you think Caitlyn's arc was learning that destroying the world for no reason was bad, she has the exact same ideology in season 1 episode 1 as she does in season 2 episode 9. It was Vi who changed and decided police brutality was amazing and living in a mansion while other people eat shit is cool as fuck.

Bottom line, you can like Arcane all you want but for god's sake don't pretend it has a leftist or revolutionary message if you have a shred of media literacy.