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stars-and-darkness · 2 months ago

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the thing about caitlyn fucking kiramman is that i don't even LIKE her, but i also can't stop thinking about her. she could've been SO GREAT. like in s1 i didn't particularly care about her (she was just ... there. there was nothing offensive about her character, she just didn't stand out among all the others in the main cast), but in s2???? so much of what goes on with her in s2 is just so utterly delicious and right up my alley ... in theory. in concept.

but the execution is just so utterly atrocious, and combined with the rest of s2's general idiocy, it makes me so furious, but i still can't not think about the WHAT IF, ya know?

what if we maybe deferred the magical hive mind robots and the wizard cult and the multiverse to the next show (or never ... never's good) and the focus remained on piltover and zaun. what if we had a season or two more, so that the necessity of a redemption within the next six 40 min episodes didn't bog cait down (or ... you know. no redemption arc. i actually prefer that. let her be evil, lmao.)

if they had spent the time and the effort into actually exploring her inner world in order for us to see her slow descent into fascism, it could've been SO GOOD. if they had taken this kind, painfully naive yet so well-intentioned girl who descended down into zaun and saw the suffering inflicted by the system she herself has benefited from her entire life, put her through an event that actually challenges both her ingrained kindness and the newly-formed awareness of the oppressive dynamic that permeates the society she lives in and then asked the question: is caitlyn kiramman the sort of person who can suffer a huge personal loss like her mother due to this exact oppressive dynamic and still come out recognising that it's a symptom of the system her mother, PERSONALLY, propagated?

and if the answer is no, like s2 attempts to do, if, as someone much funnier than i am said somewhere on this webbed site, she takes zaun lives matter out of her instagram bio ... that's okay. hell, for me, a known enjoyer of characters who are terrible people, it's excellent. it takes the s1 character i didn't much care for and makes her into someone i would be extremely intrigued by.

but ... that's not what happens. or rather, an arc that would require a lot of work to do justice is so condensed that she goes from 0 to 100 in one 40 min episode, and i understand why it's so hard to swallow for so many people. and the worst part is that i can SEE the outline of what could've been, and it makes the switch that much more jarring. cait seemed to be going in one direction, until the memorial attack when she did a complete 180. worse than that, when she decided to form her sexy lil copaganda war crimes task force, she immediately pulled out the big guns.

(i have seen ... so much discussion on how much harm unleashing the grey on zaun actually did, and in case my opinion is somehow relevant to this discussion let me just come out and say:

how do you think gas works? we are shown, explicitly on screen, cait and the war crimes gang release it in the streets of an underground city where her family controls the vents. i think any discussion that doesn't conclude with yes, caitlyn did in fact bring unfathomable harm to hundreds if not thousands of people is a waste of time.)

more than that, while cait herself doesn't live in our world, the creators who wrote and animated this, and the viewers who saw it do, and we all have a cultural awareness of chemical warfare and its associations. it's insane to me that people go against common sense to defend her here, both because i don't think it can be defended unless you have a HEAVY case of fave-can-do-no-wrong goggles on, but also for me personally because ... why would we want to? she's finally being interesting.

all that said, and i cannot overemphasise this enough, gassing zaun should've been a moral event horizon for cait. it should've been the point at which even the people around her--most notably, bloody VI--turn on her. it should not have been the very first thing she does.

hell, she establishes the task force specifically BECAUSE she believes that the council attack, in mel's own words, was an act of one deranged individual, and she wants a small force that can extract/kill jinx, rather than a full-scale invasion that is going to harm innocents. so WHY is the first thing she and the task force do EXACTLY THAT?

the war crimes task force should have been shown to struggle in zaun for an extended period of time, during which cait grows more strained, as do her relationships with her loved ones. she should have been shown struggling with ptsd from the dinner party and guilt over not taking that shot at jinx when she had the chance. vi is the one who convinced her not to--what if she finds herself blaming her for that. what if vi (this post isn't about her so i'm struggling so bad not to derail it completely but oh my poor girl what did they do to you) is pulling away from her, more and more conflicted about what they're doing, both on a systematic level as enforcers rampaging through the undercity and on a personal level as an older sister (just give me vi actually struggling with being an enforcer, PLS, give me her feeling cornered and seeing no other way forward, give me SOMETHING). it would bring in an interesting bit of interpersonal conflict for caitvi that isn't predicated on cait fucking punching vi only for it to never come up again.

point is, we should have seen cait struggling under the weight of being the head of her house, the weight of expectations, the weight of her guilt, we should have seen her barely holding together and feeling like everyone in her life is against her (again! vi!), BEFORE she makes the choice to unleash the grey, to do exactly what she formed the task force to prevent, to take something her mother built to actually do some good (pls insert all the arguments why the kiramman vents are fucked up actually here, i'm too tired to bring them up) and turn it against zaunites, in her mother's memory.

moral. event. horizon.

(insert here something about how jinx turning the grey back onto piltover should've been a major moment for HER, and something to actually lock in all those unconnected and thematically insignificant cait-jinx parallels. how we should've seen her struggling just as much with her own rage and hate, which all stems from guilt--because cait isn't the only one who lost a parent that night. how that moment should have been a CHOICE jinx makes, not just a terrorist attack but the moment in which she chooses to fight for zaun--for selfish reasons, of course, because she's not an idealist, she's not a revolutionary--but does her motivation really matter if the result is an actual resistance movement? look, i have even more thoughts on jinx than i do cait, and if i go on i'll never stop so let's just--let's just go back to cait.)

instead, the gassing is the first thing she does, it's shown to us within a single music video, and then she's being hailed as a dictator. and as rushed a job as the first three episodes do in establishing how she got there, what really pisses me off about cait in s2 and what prompted me to furiously type up a post about a stupid cartoon when i should be translating latin texts for class is ... what now?

the timeskip between ep 3 and 4 is the most fascinating bit here! here's where she's at her angriest--her guilt is eating her alive, because she didn't take that shot, because she alienated vi (what a nice way to say she punched her and left her curling up in pain, alone, wow), everything that made her angry is still there, she still sees jinx's face in her nightmares, except now she has the ultimate power. she has avenues opened up to her that she didn't up until now, and she has ambessa whispering in her ear, fuelling her rage for her own purposes.

this should have been caitlyn at her worst. just as angry as before, just as guilty, but with the full power of a city under martial law under her fingertips.

in a world where we have revolutionary!jinx, we could've had the scene where cait lets ambessa put the Cloak of Dictatorship around her shoulders intersped with flashes of jinx digging out silco's old coat and shrugging it on. caitlyn's cloak hangs heavy and just keeps dragging her deeper underwater as she chokes on her own rage, but jinx nuzzles into the collar of her coat. caitlyn's cloak is a shackle; jinx's coat is a comfort as much as a promise.

in a world where we have revolutionary!jinx, we could've had cait have actual war on her hands.

(it doesn't even have to be jinx. i mean, i WANT it to be, but the war could happen without her, too. i just need IT to happen instead of arcane age of ultron.)

and this could do wonders for her character from so many directions--it could fuel her hatred more because zaunites aren't just rolling over as they did when she gassed them, now they're fighting back, and they're fighting dirty. it could push her deeper into ambessa's embrace because she sure as hell doesn't know anything about warfare, so isn't it lucky she has a decorated general as her mentor?

this is where i get to one more thing i'd have loved to see and that's ... no redemption. not every villain needs redemption, and they sure as hell don't need it to be sympathetic.

because arcane only had two seasons to work with, and because we HAD to have cait redeemed by the end, we get to see none of what would realistically have been her worst era. instead, when we meet her again in ep4 she is already tired, already done with all this, already disillusioned with ambessa. the most interesting part of her arc is completely skipped over in favour of a "redemption arc", and i use the that phrase HIGHLY ironically, given that it was less of an arc and more of someone from the writers' room pointing a gun at my forehead and threatening to shoot if i didn't agree with them that she was redeemed now and that it's all roses and daisies from now on.

ultimately ... i don't WANT her redeemed, but if we must, then i wish more thought and time and effort went into it, just as i wish it did with her descent.

and you know what? caitlyn as the main villain of s2 might've fit nicely into the whole theme of monster you created from s1. of how revolutionary ideas are significantly easier to hold onto when someone you love isn't at stake. you know, all the things that would make the big-collar-and-injured-eye visual parallels s2 draws to silco actually make a lick of sense.

s2 cait stumbles through a multi-season arc in nine episodes, and about as gracefully as a broken-legged foal.

#i have so many ideas about the secret good s2 #and this is like ... a fraction of that #the fraction focuses on cait (ergo all the references to vi and jinx rip they have their own thing going on)#ONE DAY i'll actually put my money where my mouth is and write that coriolanus snow/caitlyn kiramman/snowbaird/caitvi essay #that i've been promising to my bff #ugh what to tag this monstrosity #anti caitlyn kiramman #not really but you know #anti caitvi #also not really #arcane s2 critical #most definitely #also obligatory disclaimer that if you clown on this post i am legally allowed to bite you #ella originals #arcane

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offorestsongs · 7 months ago

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[SSR] Rosienne Minuit - The Rose Festival

after many tears, the main star is here!! 🌟 or, Rosienne's card for my fan event (which is also, technically, his hometown event)

surprisingly, he's not in a dress this time, but i saw the coat on Pinterest and couldn't resist myself. the yellow is, of course, a reference to Belle because one he deserves to be the main character for once and second because i wanted to drive home that he's got some inspiration from her too

[ voicelines under the cut // mention of @cheerleaderman's Astrid ]

Summon Line: Ah, you should be careful around here. Wouldn’t want to get your fingers pricked by the roses, would you? When Summoned: You better not slack off, Prefect. We have to get everything ready on time. Don’t look at me like that. I’m the boss here, I can lay down. Groooovy!!: [locked] Home: How was it like growing up in a castle like this? Well, cold, mostly. Home Idle 1: I’ve been helping my dad run this place ever since I was a little kid. You can probably find lots of embarrassing photos of baby me in period clothes. Home Idle 2: Back in middle school, I never really invited any of my classmates to the festival. It’s kind of nice to do so now, you know? Home Idle 3: Somebody falling for you even despite your monstrous appearance, such a beautiful tale! That doesn’t happen in real life, of course, but it’s fun to indulge from time to time. Home Idle - Login: Yes, yes, I know, it’s weird seeing me in such bright colors. You don’t have to say it. Home Idle - Groovy: [locked] Home Tap 1: That dress looks spectacular on Astrid. Who knew he could look anything other than a sad medieval orphan? Home Tap 2: I invited Silver mostly because I’ve expected him to look real prince-like in here. And he does! His face is great at driving more guests in. Home Tap 3: My dad’s been so excited to meet my friends… and I’ve been stressed somebody will embarrass me before him. Home Tap 4: Despite her name, it is said that the Beautiful Princess valued inner beauty more than the person’s looks. I’m sure a certain someone could learn from her. Okay, okay, that was a joke! You don’t have to go repeating it to him! Home Tap 5: Riddle’s took to teach people historical tableside manners. Usually, only our staff knows so much about this sort of stuff. I’m kind of impressed. Home Tap - Groovy: [locked]

Duo Magic

ROSIENNE: You better not fall behind, pretty boy. VIL: Oh, I'd rather worry if you can keep up.

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