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“Jinx and Caitlyn and Vi don’t behave like they did in season 1!”

Yeah that’s true but… it’s because of the finale of season 1. You realize that, right?

Caitlyn goes down her dark path because Jinx blew her up (3 times), kidnapped her, tortured her, held her at gun point, and killed her mother.

Jinx doesn’t hear voices anymore because the conflict she had all season is resolved now. She isn’t torn between being Powder or Jinx, she’s just Jinx now. That’s why she sat in the Jinx chair.

Vi began the show hating enforcers and ended up falling in love with one. “You’ve changed too,” says Jinx. With her sister and every aspect of her family gone, she has no one left but Caitlyn. Of course she’s going to try and keep her around. “Everyone in my life has changed please promise me you won’t.”

“Season 2 is much faster than season 1!”

Yeah but… that’s because Season 1 is all setup. It’s establishing who the characters are, what the setting is like, what the stakes are, and what the consequences are. So when Season 2 rolls around we don’t have to spend an entire arc learning who Vi and Powder are, we can just dive right in.

I swear, go back and re-watch episode 9 of Season 1. It is LIGHTNING fast. Things happen off screen and you just have to play catch-up multiple times. Season 2 is the exact same style of pacing.

“They abandoned the classism conflicts that were so interesting in season 1!”

Yeah… because Jinx LITERALLY BLEW UP THEIR HOPE FOR PEACE. Once she did that, there was no saving Zaun. If you thought the under-city revolution was going to win against Piltover, you missed SO MUCH of what the show was saying to you. Jayce’s whole agreement for peace was because he knew if Piltover ever went to war with Zaun, Zaun would lose. That’s like the culmination of his arc in season 1!

You who initiated the sex scene in the jail cell?

Vi.

You know who continued the sex scene after Caitlyn took a moment to stop?

Vi.

You know who grabbed Cait when she tried to touch her side softly in apology?

Vi.

You know who willingly pushed Cait up against the wall to go down on her?

VI.

Anyone out there saying Cait pushed or manipulated her at any point in that scene are watching the show with their asscracks instead of their eyeballs.

And they keep coming into the ship and character tags to spread their gross as fuck narrative they literally made up. Without tagging the post as an anti take.

And the takes are all the same. They mostly feel like bandwagon fake-woke bullshit. Like okay, great, you didn't like it, but can you tag your bitching in a separate space, please? Some of us are tired and sad and just want a happy place to go to.

If you hate it, fine, but can you keep it out of the damn tags, please and thank you.

Yes, Caitlyn uses the vents to pump the Grey into the undercity. But she does it in TARGETED strikes. That’s what a “strike force” IS. It’s a small group of soldiers who go in quickly and precisely to attack vulnerable spots.

In this case, Caitlyn and her crew literally use the same vents they’re pumping the Grey through to get in and out of their targeted locations. Meaning Caitlyn isn’t “gassing the undercity” at all. At best she’s filling a single building with the grey while they attack and then filtering it out when they leave.

“Oh but gas dissipates differently in the undercity than in Piltover because piltover is open air and the undercity is close together and tight.”

Cool… that’s definitely a concern. But we never see any negative side effects from these targeted attacks. It’s established multiple times that you can endure the grey for a while, it just makes it harder to breathe. And while there are immediate side effects of it, you won’t develop terminally ill Viktor-like symptoms unless you’re been exposed to it consistently for years.

Everything Caitlyn is doing is to MITIGATE the loss of innocent civilian lives. Heck, they stumble across a guy Jinx has tied upside down on top of a grey exposed vent for god knows how long and the first thing the strike force does is to try and save his life!

Now compare that to what Jinx does IN THE SAME EPISODE. She sets off a bomb that blasts the entirety of Piltover with the grey. Mixing it with the paint is an even greater act of cruelty because that just makes it harder to wash away and get rid of the toxicity of the grey.

Look at how WIDE SPREAD that attack ended up being! Absolutely NOTHING Caitlyn has been doing has affected the undercity on such a scale!

And this attack affects women, children, and the elderly. We are EXPLICITLY shown this.

AND we are shown what happens to the kids afterwards. I understand this is Ambessa using this child to plead her case for Martial Law, but that doesn’t change that this kid still suffered greatly because of Jinx’s actions.’

Now yes, what Caitlyn is doing is still wrong. Nobody is suggesting otherwise. Caitlyn shouldn’t be attacking the undercity at all. But this idea that Caitlyn is somehow akin to a Nazi gassing the poor people is a really disgusting exaggeration of her crimes AND mitigates the ACTUAL terrorist attack by Jinx that DOES hurt innocent civilians.

And a lot of the justification I’ve seen for the hate against Caitlyn using the grey is often speculation based on nothing the show provides us with answers to, or wild assumptions about the physics of this grey’s toxicity.

Oh and one more thing, in relation to Viktor’s illness… just MAYBE consider that one of the reasons his illness spreads more quickly in his body than, say, Sky’s or Vi or Jinx or Vander… is because as a child he spent a lot of his time IN A TOXIC FISSURE CAVE GIVING THE TOXIC PRECURSOR TO SHIMMER TO RIO.

I dunno, just a thought that MAYBE that contributed to his ultimate health decline? Sky is literally swimming in the dirty waters outside the cave and she is fine… Jinx is baptized by Silco in the same dirty water and she’s fine. Vander and Silco both worked in the mines where the grey was most potent and they’re fine. Silco’s eye is only because of being choked out in the dirty toxic water…

And to my two favorite characters in this year Caitlyn&Vi

After all the horrors they went through, I'm glad they ended up being together.

Ambessa is the one who called for Marshall Law. She's the one who appointed Caitlyn to Commander. She's the one who has done and will do heinous acts with no remorse. She has always been one to favor violence over tact. It's her army at her command that is harming the people of Zaun.

Caitlyn wanted to try every other tactic before resorting to mass utilization of the enforcers and the Noxian soldiers. She created the small task force with Vi. She calls out Ambessa when she perceives her to use violence unnecessarily. Caitlyn has always cared about minimizing the negative effect she has on the public, but multiple factors have also blinded her to the fact that she is still doing more harm than is right or necessary.

No, this doesn't absolve Caitlyn of her actions. No, this doesn't mean she has nothing to make up for. But it's very telling that people are gung ho on demonizing Caitlyn but are silent about Ambessa.

It makes me question whether you guys care about discussing oppressive systems and their origins, or simply just care to have a scapegoat to be angry at.

"Caitlyn gassed the whole city of Zaun" wrong. She uses the grey as a weapon to incapacitate the chembarons in their hideouts, specifically. The montage SHOWS us this. She does this in a strike team she creates as a means to avoid an all out invasion led by the Noxian forces, which would have meant the deaths of several innocents. Even if the grey might have spread minutely to affect civilians, the chances are slim, and the grey is nothing more than factory smaug. Objectively, a handful of civilians breathing factory smaug for a brief amount of time is worlds better than numerous innocent people dying. Even in her rage, Caitlyn knows mercy.

And I guess these same people falsely overstating Caitlyn's actions don't want to talk about Jinx using gas bombs indiscriminately on the entirety of Piltover, intentionally harming innocent civilians. Or that her fishbones blast ALSO killed innocents.

No, I guess we only want to talk about the intentional harming of innocent people if it's Caitlyn doing it, and you have to outright lie about her intentions and the severity of which she acts in order to do so.

And the thing is, when you do shit like this, it makes it impossible to talk about other characters, like Jinx, their faults, their good and bad, without then making others assume that their character deserves hate the way you hate Caitlyn. I love Jinx. She's a fantastically written character. But I call out her actions and the way she harms others and you assume I'm calling her a bad character undeserving of an audience's love, right? The way you are with Caitlyn?

Arcane is supposed to be a show where we're able to discuss the spectrum of morality. And it's actually done phenomenally well, but people like you want to look at things in a very black and white way. You're looking at it on a class based system. If someone is from Piltover, no good deeds they do can be considered if they do something bad. If they're from Zaun, every evil thing they do must be defended in some way. Because privilege and oppression are the ultimate markers of good and evil to you. There's no complexity to be had there for you. People of privilege can't feel pain. Oppressed people can't cause pain.

It's narrow minded.

CAITVI SHIPPERS –

1. a study in scarlet women by sherry thomas 2. the lady's guide to petticoats and piracy by mackenzi lee 3. plain bad heroines by emily m. danforth 4. the unbroken by c.l. clark 5. iron widow by xiran jay zhao 6. crier's war by nina varela 7. the drowning empire trilogy by andrea stweart 8. the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon 9. the midnight lie by marie rutkoski 10. the bone shard daughter by andrea stewart

JAYVIK SHIPPERS –

1. vicious by v.e. schwab 2. if we were villains by m.l. rio 3. the secret history by donna tartt 4. the song of achilles by madeline miller 5. the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde 6. a marvelous light by freya marske 7. the magpie lord by kj charles 8. fever syndrome by angela slatter 9. the gloaming by rory power 10. boys, beasts & men by sam j. miller

TIMEBOMB SHIPPERS –

1. six of crows by leigh bardugo 2. war girls by tochi onyebuchi 3. this savage song by victoria schwab 4. the knife of never letting go by patrick ness

JINX & VI'S RELATIONSHIP –

1. we hunt the flame by hafsah faizal 2. girls of paper and fire by natasha ngan 3. the ones we're meant to find by joan he 4. burn our bodies down by rory power 5. sawkill girls by claire legrand

GENERAL ARCANE VIBES –

What a difference 10 years of representation makes

Yes, I absolutely agree that season 2 was rushed, especially Act 3, and it is undeniable that the series would have benefited from at least one more episode if not an entire act. However, the current discourse about the show is so superficial that it's impossible to have a conversation about anything deeper but a mere synopsis of the characters and story.

So many of you expected this series to hold your hand and dumb everything down so you can understand it. But when it wasn't the case, you all started rioting and calling the characters vague, the plot bad, and the ships underdeveloped.

The amount of people who value spoken text more than the actions of the characters is worrying. And more worrying than that is the amount of those who interpret the said actions so superficially. I can't believe it needs to be explained that it wasn't Vi's death that led to the "good" timeline, but the lack of hextech. The result would have been the same if either of them had died. It wasn't about Vi, but about the child that died because of dangerous technology and that therefore that technology must not be used. The mischaracterization of Vi in general is insane. Call me biased and unfair, but the moment I hear you don't like her I will assume you didn't understand the show.

Also, the whole discourse around Caitvi scene in episode 8 is giving brainsmooth. No, Vi didn't choose Cait over Jinx, quite the opposite. No, Cait didn't plan all of it to fuck Vi. No, Vi didn't do it because she felt forced or because she is a horny animal who doesn't care about her sister. No, them fucking in a cell is not about the class difference, but about the fact that Vi felt an insane rush of emotions after realizing that Cait would let go of her revenge and help Jinx escape, all for her. Yes, I do agree that it would be nice if we got a longer conversation between Vi and Caitlyn and it would feel great to hear Cait apologize, but I'll always value actions over words. Her talking to Jinx, recognizing that she is just as bad as her, and choosing to trust Vi that her sister can change, thus letting Jinx escape will always mean more than any verbal apology and I'll die on that hill.

Also, it was Jinx's decision to let go and walk away. It was not about Vi trying to get to Vander, but about Jinx being tired of everything. Even if that fight didn't happen, the result would be the same: Jinx would leave because she knows that Vi couldn't do that. She knew that the two of them couldn't have a normal life together and that Vi would never give up on her. Jinx didn't "die" because Vi pushed her or failed her, but because she loved her too much. Whether you believe that she is dead or that she escaped, it's her decision either way.

Again, I agree that too much happened too quickly, but stop confusing your stupidity and inability to read between the lines with the quality of the series.