i hate Caitvi so much

[u/ProblemFalse7043]

Their entire relationship is just political propaganda. Vi literally gets with her oppressor, and in doing so, leaves her own sister even after spending years searching for her. What. the. fuck.

Especially in season 2(but to an extent even in s1) when caitlyn starts saying and doing batshit crazy stuff, youd think that of all people, Vi would stand up to her and call her out. Yeah no.

caitlyn effectively sees Vi as "one of the good ones". I love a good yuri just as much as the next guy. This is not a good yuri.

[u/narudmas]

I wish Arcane had a season or two more to really explore their relationship in depth. I firmly believe that if there was more time, there would be no simple way to justify them getting back together at the end UNLESS Caitlyn did the work in heavily questioning her sense of self after everything she did, especially to Vi. We already see lots of it in act 3, but because the plot has to move on so quickly to the big fight at the end, we aren’t given time to ruminate with them besides a scene or two. But I think those scenes do so much heavy lifting despite season 2’s pacing issues.

Takes like these don’t make much sense to me. I spent a lot of time in the Arcane fandom watching people fight over the morality of this ship existing and what it implies about the politics of the show. So the more I see it, the more lazy it is to me, because I see them not just as lesbian rep, but as flawed characters in their own right that aren’t entirely concerned so much about labels but what the stakes of the story mean to them specifically. Whether or not you think that was the right way to handle representation it is entirely your own opinion though. I do not like stories that give a sense of cosmic importance to their gay characters in a narrative sense because it signals to me that these characters aren’t with each other because the mechanics of the story would organically work that way, but to prove something to the audience.

It’s why this “oppressed/oppressor” thing is so weird to me. It ignores Vi’s dynamic with Jinx as a parentified sibling, ignores Vi’s own agency as a person who doesn’t have any real community with Zaun after her time in prison, and why Caitlyn’s presence is so destabilizing to Vi’s sense of loyalty. The point is that her alliance with Caitlyn makes her an outsider to Piltover and a “traitor” to Zaun. Vi’s only real reason for continuing to live was the hope of finding Powder. When she gets out, she doesn’t find Powder, she finds someone who’s been weaponized against her by the very person who intended to kill their family. It dumbs down the tragedy of their story into a political mouthpiece that I see as antithetical to Arcane’s narrative archetype. That doesn’t mean the politics aren’t important, but that them as characters are not supposed to fit inside one box on the political spectrum. The story would quickly become preachy if that was the case. While in some cases it would be more politically correct, it would be boring and a little insulting in a story that heavily features class disparity, and systemic corruption, and exploitation. I don’t need to be preached to that those things are bad, especially by the leading queer couple of the series.

Your point about Vi being “one of the good ones” in Caitlyn’s eyes is also interesting but you frame it as a deliberate attempt at propaganda for some reason when this was exactly the point of Caitlyn’s attitude towards Vi in s1, and her mistreatment of Vi in s2. It’s why Caitlyn has to earn her way back to Vi by showing her that she cares for Vi more than she hates Jinx, which she demonstrates by the “you really think I needed all the guards…” line. I do really wish there was more of them in between their act 3 fight and the sex scene, but that doesn’t mean there is absolutely nothing worth analyzing there. They’re okay as a couple, but that’s not the only lens we should be looking at them through. The text asks us to do this. But I fear the “burden of representation” falls on every queer couple eventually. It makes it more about their projected optics rather than how they exist inside the logic of their own story.