countcait

[countcait]

Well said. The fandom doesn't know how to seperate civilians from the ruling class. This causes them to think all Piltovans are rich and evil AND it causes them to think the soulless crime bosses of Zaun are actually representative of the poor people they're exploiting. It's a one-two punch of stupid.

In terms of who's in power, Zaun is an oligarchy just as much as Piltover is. In fact the two circles of oligarchs have some overlap since Silco uses his money and influence to control the enforcers. Honestly, he has more control over the Sherrif of Piltover than anyone on the council. Silco could have extorted the enforcers into treating Zaunites better but that would have made it harder for him to oppress the Zaunite populace for his own gain. Just because Zaun's rich, megalomaniac despots are the underdogs compared to Piltover's doesn't make them any less deplorable. They're both largely money and ego driven, no matter what "city of progress" platitudes the council parades and no matter what "nation of Zaun" diatribes Silco pulls from his shriveled little ass.

I'm convinced yall don't know how anything works but that's also neither here nor there. No the grey is not sentient you nob head, but it's a point of where it's applied. Some of yall close an eye the moment we get to the part where sevika/jinx released the grey on the entirety of piltover. Comparing that to the tactical precision of releasing it in only certain areas, closed off areas. Do you know how walls and isolation work?

Criminals are still human yes. But let's not forget there have been multiple actions of war committed by zaun to piltover. Let's not forget there are exigent circumstances that do not allow for Caitlyn and the strike force time to think. There was going to be a full on invasion on zaun where innocents would actually get caught in the crossfire. Nobody is saying gassing is okay, I have seen nobody say that, but yall continue to nibble at portions of the story and ignore the rest in order to try and prove your forced hatred on caitlyn. It's more work lying and doing all these mental gymnastics than simply watching what is given and shown to you.

Also! It's such a wild and classist/ignorant thing to say that people in zaun HAVE to resort to crime. Also a wildly incorrect view of s1 to say Vi and Co. were stealing to survive. Just saying you didn't watch the show would be less embarrassing for you.

[countcait]

Kindly drink some drain cleaner.

[countcait]

Using the recoil from firing at the ground to bash it into Maddie's face...James Bond could never.

We don't talk enough about how cool and badass Caitlyn looked when she disarmed Maddie and almost managed to kill Ambessa

[countcait]

I'm convinced yall don't know how anything works but that's also neither here nor there. No the grey is not sentient you nob head, but it's a point of where it's applied. Some of yall close an eye the moment we get to the part where sevika/jinx released the grey on the entirety of piltover. Comparing that to the tactical precision of releasing it in only certain areas, closed off areas. Do you know how walls and isolation work?

Criminals are still human yes. But let's not forget there have been multiple actions of war committed by zaun to piltover. Let's not forget there are exigent circumstances that do not allow for Caitlyn and the strike force time to think. There was going to be a full on invasion on zaun where innocents would actually get caught in the crossfire. Nobody is saying gassing is okay, I have seen nobody say that, but yall continue to nibble at portions of the story and ignore the rest in order to try and prove your forced hatred on caitlyn. It's more work lying and doing all these mental gymnastics than simply watching what is given and shown to you.

Also! It's such a wild and classist/ignorant thing to say that people in zaun HAVE to resort to crime. Also a wildly incorrect view of s1 to say Vi and Co. were stealing to survive. Just saying you didn't watch the show would be less embarrassing for you.

[countcait]

There's also a night and day difference between non-violently robbing rich people like Vi and her siblings, and being child slave traffickers and drug lords like the fiends targeted by Caitlyn.

OP in the screenshot really doesn't even distinguish between the severity of the crimes. So long as it's a sad widdle poor, they can't possibly be held to basic human standards of morality. Poor baby can't help but enslave children to produce addictive drugs that will destroy the lives of the most vulnerable people. But a rich person using controlled amounts of non-lethal gas to help arrest criminals that would happily kill her is a bridge too far. What's a consistent system of ethics? Don't know her.

When is the terminally online left going to figure out that infantilization is not flattery?

I'm convinced yall don't know how anything works but that's also neither here nor there. No the grey is not sentient you nob head, but it's a point of where it's applied. Some of yall close an eye the moment we get to the part where sevika/jinx released the grey on the entirety of piltover. Comparing that to the tactical precision of releasing it in only certain areas, closed off areas. Do you know how walls and isolation work?

Criminals are still human yes. But let's not forget there have been multiple actions of war committed by zaun to piltover. Let's not forget there are exigent circumstances that do not allow for Caitlyn and the strike force time to think. There was going to be a full on invasion on zaun where innocents would actually get caught in the crossfire. Nobody is saying gassing is okay, I have seen nobody say that, but yall continue to nibble at portions of the story and ignore the rest in order to try and prove your forced hatred on caitlyn. It's more work lying and doing all these mental gymnastics than simply watching what is given and shown to you.

Also! It's such a wild and classist/ignorant thing to say that people in zaun HAVE to resort to crime. Also a wildly incorrect view of s1 to say Vi and Co. were stealing to survive. Just saying you didn't watch the show would be less embarrassing for you.

[countcait]

Thank you, Caitlyn haters, for getting me into Caitvi

I never watched Arcane until S2 came out, even though I had friends who were telling me how good it was. I was (and still am) cynical about f/f relationships in popular media. So often it's either bait that goes nowhere, or it's artifically crafted preachy political virtue signaling, or pornified shit for men, or the characters get killed off arbitrarily.

I kind of assumed that Arcane was going to be the first two categories. I thought there was a good chance the subtext between Cait and Vi would stay subtext, and Arcane fans gave me the impression that the show was heavy-handed with its social comentary. Plus the fact that the show was based on a pay-to-win videogame made me think the show would be self-indulgent and self-promoting.

I was uuuh wrong. The two things that convinced me to finally watch the show were 1) seeing gifs of the sex scene, and 2) seeing tumblr go apeshit hating on Caitlyn and Caitvi for not being ideologically pure and uncomplicated. I know that if this hellsite obsessively hates a female character, it means the show writers have done something right. So cheers, antis, you were good advertisers.

[countcait]

I never payed any attention to it, so for a long time I thought timebomb was just about the S2 E7 AU, plus like, the tragic childhood crushes-to-enemies situation in the main timeline. I didn't realize until recently that a lot of people (including Ekko's VA apparently?) actually think that Jinx and Ekko should have ended up together in canon...and genuinely think that wouldn't be an absurdly horrible situation for Ekko...

It's actually something when people talk about the treatment of black characters, or talk about the abuse in caitvi, while shipping timebomb and/or putting jinx on a pedestal. You do not care about the poor people of the undercity. You do not care about the abuse and watering down of someone's trauma. You are performative when the way you view things does not align.

How can you look at Ekko and the way Jinx harmed him, murdered his people who were fighting for the betterment of the undercity, his people that weren't further harming and taking advantage of already disadvantaged people. And not talk about that shit. These are the people that say caitlyn is abusive to vi... that vi deserves better... but then turn around and don't see anything wrong with the shit Jinx did to Ekko. Because it's performative. It's very dependant and subjective.

[countcait]

THIS. I think part of what makes Arcane's writing so much fun is that nearly every character is a subversion of a trope. Mel appears to be a self-serving manipulative aristocrat archetype, but its revealed that there's actually empathy and guilt and other complexities driving her machinations.

Vi is rugged and standofish, but motherly and sensitive beneath the surface. Caitlyn seems idealist and naïve at first, but she has a sharp edge to her.

Softspoken, reclusive Victor becomes a dark, eldritch god. Powder goes from a clumsy, misunderstood kid to a Joker-like menace.

None of the characters really end up being what you expect based on first impressions, and most of them go in surprisingly dark directions. It's good shit. Why do some people in the fandom want to flatten the fuck out of the characters?

I've made a post like this before but I want to say it again: I'm glad to see people push back against the "Mel is an evil seductress" type of thing, but I'd be careful not to go too hard in the other direction.

Mel is a politician from a ruling-class family who is desperate to prove to her warmonger mother that you can attain power through politics rather than through violence. Guile is one of the forms of strength that is so valued by Noxus. In the book about Ambessa's backstory, Mel and her cousin mutually become friends so they can spy on each other for their parents, because their family is so fucked up. She *is* manipulative because that's how she was raised and that's the context she exists in. The binary that's presented to her is between being a fox and a wolf, that is cleverness and cunning, versus violence. She chose cunning. (I was going to go into a big thing about her season 1 flashback but I think I'll just make that another post).

Mel can be manipulative and not be evil because of it. But she is manipulative. In her second scene in the show we see her flatter Hoskel so that he stays loyal to her. She calls the rest of the council "old fools" behind their backs while smiling to their faces. She gets Jayce onto the council to serve her agenda of being able to keep developing hextech.

People say Mel is manipulative because that *is* how her character is introduced. What the haters fail to notice, though, is that the show then *subverts* the femme fatale character trope that she was introduced as. Her backstory is revealed, showing that her approach to politics is her way of eschewing her mother's violence. Because she is a soft-hearted and caring person. Her character *development* (that is, the way her character changes) in season 1 is that being with Jayce brings out her softer, more idealistic side, a side that she had had to supress in order to try to prove herself as a Medarda.

No character in Arcane is purely good or bad. And Mel is a kind and caring person who behaves in a kind of fucked-up way because of her context. And that is what makes her *so* interesting as character.

[countcait]

My based theory as to the origins of the "Caitlyn gassed Zaunites to death" meme:

One 46 year old male who likes to larp as a 16 year old was watching Arcane, his landlord came to his apartment to evict him but was instantly gassed to death from his noxious chronically online gamer fumes. He can't distiguish fiction from reality so believed Caitlyn gassed the landlord to death from inside the TV. He also can't count so he thought the one dead landlord was hundreds of people. He then posted about Caitlyn's crimes on twitter and everyone believed him.

No actually you have no media literacy because that's not how or why things happened and you are literally simplifying/ignoring things for the sole purpose of painting caitlyn in this purely negative light.

Caitlyn didn't gas the chembarons because of her mother, who was killed by jinx in an act of terrorism and war(let's stop willfully ignoring that part. Because that part is important to the way everything plays out) People love love love to act like caitlyn's mom just died from natural causes. They never say the full sentence; Jinx murdered Cassandra. Jinx bombed the council. Yall can't say that shit with your chest but can continue to lie on caitlyn's actions.

There were so many options? Bitch what options? She chose the worst one?? With the most casualties??? The worst one would've actually been folding to salo and the pressure of other citizens that wanted them to fully invade the undercity. This is a moment where caitlyn stepped into her goddamn position in order to keep the innocence out of a full scale war. She literally says this shit. I truly wonder what show yall watched if yall watched it at all.

Back to the use of the grey. She didn't do it solely to find jinx. Again, ignoring big events in the narrative, never saying it with your chests; the chembarons attacked innocent people in piltover during a memorial. An act of terrorism and war. Further fueling the tension and the desire for invasion from the piltover side into zaun. Do you understand the potential casualties and innocence that would be caught in a full scale battle?

So once again, to say she folded is just narratively incorrect. She took charge so there would be minimal casualties. And no deaths. Gassing people isn't right, she was literally in a lose lose situation, not to mention long term affects vs short term affects of something like the grey. Speaking on the grey and innocence; nobody brings up sevika & jinx actively harming innocent lives and children with their retaliation that was not calculated.

[countcait]

There's a lot of elements of S2 that are vague and open to interpretation, but the intent behind Caitlyn's strike team is spelled out in plain language. If it's not media illiteracy then it's willful misinterpretation and lies, only two options.

The seat of Piltover's governance was just bombed, there's no country real or fictional that would take that without retaliating. Violence against Zaun was inevitable, but Caitlyn managed to convince the counsil not to launch a deadly ground invasion that would have killed Zaunite civilians. In symbolic terms, her use of the grey was fucked up, but in practical terms, it was brilliant and it saved countless lives.

Imo, Caitlyn's fuckups in season 2 only started when she hit Vi, then everything spiralled from there. The use of the grey was thematically heavy and it was forshadowing Caitlyn's dark arc, but it wasn't the actual start of her dark arc.

I think antis focus so much on repeating lies about the Act 1 strike team because if they focused on Caitlyn's Act 2 dark arc it'd be harder to ignore Ambessa's huge and obvious role in everything.

No actually you have no media literacy because that's not how or why things happened and you are literally simplifying/ignoring things for the sole purpose of painting caitlyn in this purely negative light.

Caitlyn didn't gas the chembarons because of her mother, who was killed by jinx in an act of terrorism and war(let's stop willfully ignoring that part. Because that part is important to the way everything plays out) People love love love to act like caitlyn's mom just died from natural causes. They never say the full sentence; Jinx murdered Cassandra. Jinx bombed the council. Yall can't say that shit with your chest but can continue to lie on caitlyn's actions.

There were so many options? Bitch what options? She chose the worst one?? With the most casualties??? The worst one would've actually been folding to salo and the pressure of other citizens that wanted them to fully invade the undercity. This is a moment where caitlyn stepped into her goddamn position in order to keep the innocence out of a full scale war. She literally says this shit. I truly wonder what show yall watched if yall watched it at all.

Back to the use of the grey. She didn't do it solely to find jinx. Again, ignoring big events in the narrative, never saying it with your chests; the chembarons attacked innocent people in piltover during a memorial. An act of terrorism and war. Further fueling the tension and the desire for invasion from the piltover side into zaun. Do you understand the potential casualties and innocence that would be caught in a full scale battle?

So once again, to say she folded is just narratively incorrect. She took charge so there would be minimal casualties. And no deaths. Gassing people isn't right, she was literally in a lose lose situation, not to mention long term affects vs short term affects of something like the grey. Speaking on the grey and innocence; nobody brings up sevika & jinx actively harming innocent lives and children with their retaliation that was not calculated.

[countcait]

Long story short but princess bubblegum is a straight up mad scientist, initially played for laughs (eating a bit of her citizens while stressed) but after she briefly dies after literally being possessed by an avatar of cosmic genocide, she becomes MUCH more controlling and afraid of what will happen without her, and previously had a young girl (a fire elemental, who could become a weapon of mass destruction) imprisoned indefinitely, shes morally ambiguous and usually in a greater good way. It helps that the world is littered with the remnants of human civilization, which created the setting by nuking itself into destruction and unleashing that cosmic genocide entity, so it sort of illustrates what could happen without control.

So she's a lovecraftian horror in kiddie show princess form?

[countcait]

I've literally never seen a Caitlyn fan that thinks Caitlyn did nothing wrong in S2. We acknowledge her fuckups, we just analyse the actual show instead of filtering everything through the most bad faith lense possible.

Side note: lmaooo I need to know what a character named "Princess Bubblegum" did to get cancelled. Is she a pretty pink fascist war criminal? Did she genocide the molars of the world with illegal cavity warfare?

SOME people gotta understand that part of understanding a complex character (yes I'm looking at you "complex female characters defender"), is admitting that they did something wrong, atrocities even. Rose quartz, princess bubblegum, caitlyn kiramman, fucking miguel o hara.

A part of understanding their character, is admitting they did something wrong. Defending them all the way is just not it, they did something wrong and presumably their backstory or character arc makes up for it, not justify completely.

So defend the character, sure, but did they commit war crimes? Yes.

[countcait]

I totally agree. I've always thought that the way the anti-Caitlyn brigade treats Ambessa and Sevika smacks of paternalistic racism. I love Sevika, but for fuck sake, she's not a noble, heroic champion of the undercity. She was an active part in Silco's attempt to kill Vi and Powder's whole family in the third episode. Her whole job was extorting/intimidating/killing primarily other Zaunites to perpetuate a drug empire and make money. She was present the whole time that Silco was warping Jinx's mind and training her to kill.

Yet people talk about her like she's a civil rights leader. They're holding her to a vastly lower moral standard because she's brown and a Zaunite. Of course circumstance and systemic hardship can limit a person's life choices, but at the end of the day, everyone's a human with autonomy.

Fringe leftists try to combat the right's "bootstraps" mentality by jumping to the other extreme and acting like marginalized people are abused dogs that can't possibly know any better. That way they get to position themselves as the white savior. It's infantalizing and demeaning but they think it's anti racist.

Ambessa's not even poor like Sevika, she was born into luxury and she's the epitome of a bloodthirsty imperialist warlord. She's basically Runeterra's Alexander the Great. Yet the Caitlyn haters erase her role in the show completely and only mention her in the form of fetishy, exploitative smut posts. Would they treat her the same if she were white?

And yeah, the fact that they throw around klan references so casually shows that it caries no weight or historical trauma for them. Same with holocaust and hitler references. That shit killed my ancestors, it's not a joke. We're talking about a goddamn make believe TV show ffs.

2 things: I want the fandom to stop saying words they heard online. Ambessa isn’t a butch, like by definition she isn’t, cause she’s not a lesbian, she’s bisexual. She is also very much fem presenting. Yall are equating her being dark skin, tall and having muscles with masculinity. Which by itself is a very binary way of thinking from a supposed “woke”fandom also it’s kind of racist or at the very least colorist.

Caitlyn isn’t a fascist. That’s not what happened, go to your local library and pick up a history book or dictionary and circle that word so you don’t forget it. Also the Kkkiraman “jokes” aren’t funny, especially cause a lot of yall are white. And I ask what is funny to you as a white person about the klan that has killed, raped and terrorized black folks for a better part of a century ? Also didn’t think I needed to say this but the kkk also lynched and terrorized anyone who wasn’t a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon protestant), that includes Asian people. Asian people have been lynched by the kkk, there are records. Also how the kkk operates and do their stuff isn’t how Caitlyn did hers so I’m confused as to why this even came up other than the fact that her last name starts with a K, which such surface level thinking tracks for this fandom. I can’t for the life of me understand how other black people are letting this slide. You don’t like Cait, cause ACAB, fine it’s kind of juvenile giving that Cait’s whole story revolves around unlearning the indoctrination of the enforcing system but whatevs. Like as a black woman, I’m begging other black folks to stop letting white people play in your face. I’m not telling you to glaze Cait or even like her but I am asking yall to A : stop lying on her and B: to fight the bigotry that is being spewed towards her.

Second thing, it’s weird that this fandom disengage with a character like Ambessa. It’s also super telling that this fandom has no problem WRONGFULLY portraying Mel as this heartless manipulator or harden classist when that’s not who she is. Also does no one find it strange that very few people acknowledge that Ambessa was manipulating Cait? It almost feels like the fandom is scared to label Ambessa an antagonist. Which is really weird when you again take into account how these same people treat Mel and Cait.

Mel the soft spined idealist who was casted out for her compassion is somehow this heartless Jezebel harpy, but Ambessa isn’t even labeled as manipulative. Like this also feels racist. Ambessa like Mel is just over sexualized by their haters and fandom. Ambessa is a veteran warlord Noxian, why is it so hard to believe that this woman can manipulate Cait, a 20 something small time enforcer, who is still wet behind the ears? She is literally called the Matriarch of War. She upholds and personifies Noxian ideals to a toxic degree.I mean we all know why yall don’t come down as nearly as hard on Ambessa like yall do Mel and Cait. It’s not cause she’s portrayed as a villain, so don’t even try it. This moral puritanical fandom would still rip her apart if that was the case. Not joking, this feels racist too. It feels like yall are saying Ambessa is too dumb to manipulate Cait even though Ambessa is one of the smartest people in the show. She’s emotionally intelligent and has a situational awareness that rivals no one in the show thus far.

The Arcane fandom is weird and yall get on my nerves.

Ps what I’ve said about Ambessa also applies to Sevika. This fandom just do thirst traps for these women and no actual insight on them as characters. Before anyone says it, I love a good thirst trap and believe both type of content can exist at the same time. It’s just weird, giving the lack of critical thinking in this fandom.

Pss before yall try it, don’t even try to come in here acting aggressive towards Ambessa. She is literally my shayla, one scroll on my page will show as such.

PSss this is a show about magic. It’s crazy that these type of convos need to be had. I’m 26, so this ain’t my first rodeo, but it’s so infuriating to fight such a performative activist fandom like arcane fandom.

[countcait]

Feelin up those arms

💙CaitVi❤️

[countcait]

Water, Arcane comic

Angst time! This one started as a parallel to the Maddie bed scene where she pushes Caitlyn to act like it's expected of her and Cait can't stand herself so she leaves.

This time, Vi meets her where she is, right in the middle of the storm.

[countcait]

Fractured

[countcait]

The most radical thing a woman can do is love herself and her body unconditionally.

Since time immemorial, the female has been hated, degraded, defiled, objectified, religiously scrutinized and shamed, condemned and branded as temptress, whore, witch, hag. Simultaneously revered and repulsive. Grotesque, a mere lesser derivative of the male. Deserving of pain.

Refuse to bow to the world’s constant attempts to put you in the place they think a woman should remain. Love yourself relentlessly. Prioritize yourself. You have always been worthy, human, and enough as you are. Your body is wondrous.