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Florence Pugh asYelena Belovain Black Widow (2021)  Director Cate Shortland

Caitlyn as a symptom of Piltover’s violence

No because i need to throw hands with both her haters and lovers.

Mass spoilers for Arcane, season 1 & 2, for every characters.

(post is like 2k words)

(small edit it's been five hours and you guys are so kind and positive?? i love you so much, the conversations are so fun! the reblogs i see u and ily, my ego is soaring! i got more arcane rants coming if u wanna tag along idk lmao)

(thanks a lot is all i mean to say)

Was what Caitlyn did in season 2 act 1 terrible? yes. Does that make her a terrible person? debatable. Is she the best girl ever and above any criticism? also no what the fuck.

What happens to Caitlyn, essentially, is that she loses her mother and burns for justice and vengeance, and is willing to do all she can to reach her goal. Which is not an uncommon arc in Arcane, to be willing to burn it all for your family and getting overwhelmed by anger and loss.

The main difference is the scale and power dynamics. Because the chembarons have their shimmer, Vi has her gauntlets, Powder and Jinx have bombs, Silco and Vander have allies but they quite match each other when it comes to power until the very end.

So why is Caitlyn’s case so apart from the others? Here’s the thesis: Caitlyn is a symptom and the harm she causes is a consequence of Piltover’s domination over Zaun. I will argue for it thank you.

The main characteristic of Caitlyn, in the context of Piltover leading a targeted assault on Zaun, is that she is the one with power. Caitlyn is, first and foremost, a Kiramman. The show’s explicit about the power of the name, because with the name comes respectability, status, wealth. The Kiramman family is a powerful one, that’s why Ambessa chooses her above Salo. Both Cait and Salo have enough hatred for the Undercity to follow her lead if she plays her cards right, but Caitlyn, even if not officially appointed, has the power to exist in the Council’s room. Salo is nothing beyond the Council — and while it gives him power, his own family or personal entreprises are irrelevant enough that we do not know of them — while Caitlyn is powerful even without the Council — she does bypass every standard enforcers recruitment procedures to get Vi in, and thus we are told that she is one of the most important if not the main funder of the enforcers. In a state holding its peace through sheer violence and constant repression (especially after Jinx’s rocket), if one private actor owns your police force, you are at that actor’s mercy (which, yes, does turn on Cait when Ambessa’s soldiers take over).

Most importantly for us, the Kiramman hold one monopoly of power over Zaun. A vital need of Zaun they are the only ones to answer. Yes, we’re talking about the vent system. Caitlyn, in her anger and in her determination to do whatever it takes to get to Jinx, is willing to use every power she has. That includes her rifle and her aim, when she takes the shot at Jinx despite Isha and Vi standing in between, but also the vent system.

And as we’ve said, Caitlyn is going through a fairly usual character arc in Arcane of becoming a monster for love, for family, only to be brought back by love and family (Vander i’m looking at you) (and then that culminated into nothing to serve Viktor’s character arc tihi) (i mean it when i say Caitlyn has an amazing arc). It just so happens that Caitlyn owns Zaunites’ right to breathe. Is it immoral to weaponize it? Absolutely, and we can deplore the lack of political repercussions on the Kiramman in the show but that’s a more general criticism: the audience and the Zaunites are expected to just forgive Piltover to ally against Noxus. We can have sincere grievances about that (i do, and a lot of caitlyn hate comes from there from what i’ve seen) but it’s not a Caitlyn exclusive problem.

The thing is, Caitlyn’s weaponizing of the vent system isn’t the root of Piltover’s oppression or of enforcers’ violence. It’s a symptom of this violence. Cait can weaponize the vents because she owns them, because Zaun’s clean air is her possession. Because Zaun’s vital needs are dependent on Piltover. Cait doesn’t even realize just how much she’s hurting Zaun. She knows she’s gassing them but, and to her credit, it’s a fairly targeted assault (what Cait is doing isn’t terrorism!) but she is a reminder that whatever little fresh air they have, it’s still a mercy from Piltover. Piltover engineers a problem and a solution and holds that solution above Zaun’s head to silence their protest. This is domination, this is the root of that vent system being oppression still: the Kiramman hold Zaun’s air hostage and it took two mourning girls for that hand to cut off the air flow.

Caitlyn makes herself an enforcer of that violence in her grief, and that’s the symptom of a deeply ingrained disease. The root of that disease is always, always the inequalities between Piltover and Zaun.

The violence is the symptom of a system that is critically failing, repression means your governing body is illegitimate, weaponizing clean air is oppression to its finest.

To argue this point a bit further, we’re gonna circle back to Silco and Vander and how their power dynamic influences their behaviors and how their power struggle drives the entire undercity.

Vander and Silco both benefit from powerful allies. Vander has Grayson, Benzo and his position as bartender of the Last Drop makes him a valued member of the Undercity for Zaunites. Silco has Singed, Sevika and an entire network himself. They are two pillars of Zaun, creating a status quo that they work to maintain (at least their own position of domination) while furthering their own goals: Vander wants to raise his kids, Silco wants the independence of Zaun. Two vastly different sets of goals admittedly and that’s what leads them to reach out to vastly different individuals to help maintain it. Vander seeks out Grayson with whom he strikes a deal, while Silco allies with Singed for shimmer.

And when power suddenly shifts, when the right conditions appear, when the status quo is shaken, that’s when Silco asserts his power over Vander and his domination over the Undercity. Vander is put in a vulnerable position (his deal with Grayson isn’t enough anymore and he’s arrested) and Silco seizes the opportunity, deploys a power he has a monopoly over (shimmer). And after Silco wins against Vander, he can deploy his power over all of Zaun.

The status quo between Piltover and Zaun is constantly imbalanced. Piltover has already won at the beginning of the show and has been asserting, over and over again, through violence and in an abusive fashion, its domination on the Undercity. Caitlyn is like Silco in that comparison, she uses a power over which she has a monopoly (vent instead shimmer), in an unbalanced situation that puts her in the situation of the oppressor.

(And facing her, there is someone who is willing to turn that power against her. Just like Vander using Shimmer to protect his children, Sevika and Jinx using the vents for their own colorful clouds.)

Cait isn’t a poor innocent victim of circumstances but you have to acknowledge context and, in a show where parallels are so frequent, you can’t pretend she’s a completely unique character going through a completely unique arc completely unrelated to anyone else. If you hate her, hate a lot of other people too!

And, as is typical in Arcane, characters are monsters for love, and brought back by love.

And Caitlyn’s arc shows that! Past arc 1, she was lost. Vi had left, Jayce was missing, her mother was still dead even if after all she did, her father was a shadow of himself, the only one she had was Ambessa who was fueling her vendetta to further her own colonialist agenda. Suddenly she was alone, serving as a puppet on top of a pile of gold and too much power she couldn’t control. She can’t call back the gas once it’s out after all, she can’t call back the martial law Ambessa installed now that the resentment is growing in Zaun and that Ambessa is the one holding the reins of enforcers.

That’s why her switching sides was so immediate: when Vi calls her cupcake, she brings the girl forth, before the monster. She gives her love and Cait latches onto it, and uses it to pull herself away from that trap she walked right in. “Why does anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable? For love” & “Is there anything as undoing as a daughter?”: love is forever the way in and out of hate.

I am very disappointed that we never got a proper conclusion to the tensions between Zaun and Piltover. I wish we had witnessed negotiations between Ekko/Sevika/Jinx/a representative of Zaun and the Council, I wish they had gotten control of the vent system, promises of fair trade, independence, something. I wish Caitlyn had been made to apologize and deliver herself the keys to the vent system to Zaunites. I wish for a lot of things about the political resolution in season 2 and the show did not go how i wanted it to. Does deviating from what I wanted inherently make the show bad? No, although I do think it wasn’t the greatest this time around.

I however can not talk shit about the character arcs. Not all are as well crafted as Caitlyn but i will take no more Caitlyn slander on the basis of “she’s a fascist!”. 1- that’s not what fascism is, although she did walk a line close by; 2- she’s a symptom of oppression, and by reproducing she makes herself an agent of it. She weaponises Zaun’s air because she can because she’s in power because she’s the heiress to the Kiramman. Doesn’t make what she’s doing less harmful, but it has to be treated in context. Caitlyn is still a twenty something grieving girl with her entire world shaken up, she just so happens to also be the heiress to an extremely wealthy and powerful family in an oppressive system and every path that opens to her, in the midst of her hatred, brings her to reproduce that domination in the most efficient way she has access to: the vents and the enforcers.

And, yes, by reproducing domination she is also an engineer of it. It’s important to acknowledge that what she's done is bad to put it simply, but do not denature her character to fit a conception of her that is easy to hate. I will put part of the blame on internalized misogyny too, as it pushes us to have less leniency and tolerance for women’s mistakes. No because I haven’t seen half that much hate towards Silco who, reminder, made the Undercity kneel by giving them severe shimmer addiction (engineering an issue and making himself the sole owner of the solution while maintaining it as a form of domination, everyone see where i’m going with this?).

Again, do I wish we’d seen more of the political consequences on Caitlyn of that? Yep, absolutely. But I will not blindly hate on her while ignoring the global context of her actions and I invite you to do the same.

Tell me, do you hate Jinx for her so-called terrorist acts or do you see them as part of resistance against Piltover? You can not see the context when you like it only i’m afraid, and, in an unprecedented show of nuance for the internet, we can understand context and acknowledge moral complexity and still hate someone.

Hate Caitlyn if you want, but do it in a constructed way so we can argue together please! I need to talk about this show so badly, please hate the enforcers and the change in Cait’s character but do so in a well-argued fashion, i beg of you.

All of these summaries of what the hell goes through their brains gives me life 😂😂

WHAT A YEAR THIS GAME WAS

okay, it’s minute 76 of utah royals vs portland thorns and in what is probably the most chaotic three minutes in all of 2019 soccer, this happens:

emily sonnett, in an accidental attempt to kick things into overdrive, proceeds to tap amy rodriguez like one of those rodents you whack at the carnival sending her headlong into the turf and lindsey michelle horan HAS. HAD. IT. i know what you’re thinking: isn’t sonny the star or this capital C chaos? no, it’s lindsey.

first of all, i’m in love with her. second, the great horan has spent this entire game pushing and screaming and shoving, so that fucks! but let’s get back to a-rod, who in the midst of falling face first onto the field, hears: RECORD SCRATCH-FREEZE FRAME-YEP, THAT’S ME and instead of clutching an ankle and wondering how she got into this situation until a foul is called, she springs from the grass like a cat on it’s 8th life and proceeds to yell, not regular, but BLOODY murder to the entirety of rio tinto stadium:

she is PISSED. she wants a foul, a red card, and probably the keys to a mansion in beverly hills at the rate the ref has pranced over to her defense— like okay law and order, we get it, you literally hold the cards afaksksk. if that weren’t nuts and granola crazy enough, a-rod decides soccer isn’t any fun without a chaotic outburst and i’d be out of a job (lol i wish someone would pay me to do this) and realizes: why accept this utterly plebeian form of justice when you can… start a brawl in the middle of the pitch!

she marches over to sonnett like she’s invading a small country or kicking off a protest in the street, sending her ponytail sashaying with the sort of supermodel swagger tyra banks would be proud of. if this were a made-for-tv musical, someone’s honor would be defended by a dance-off. but this isn’t hollywood and no one is pirouette-battling to a synth-pop beat. instead this is a friday night in sandy, utah and apparently that’s all it takes for 22 people to go from earnestly playing sports to completely fucking losing it. because let’s be realistic, this is a chaotic choice. screaming and pointing at a confused frat daddy junior is chaotic. defending your ten sheets to the wind teammate while also stopping her from starting a revolution is pure, that’s right, chaos. dagný brynjarsdóttir, appearing utterly unfazed by this whole thing but still managing to scream ‘HEY’ really loudly from two feet away is one thousand percent chaotic. and still more chaos ensues when lindsey and tobin arrive:

lindsey could maybe buy a little zen garden and rake some sand around but instead she settles for one tiny tap of aggression and low-key look at this restraint, she’ll be saving that energy for later. tobin however literally shoves two people, and maybe the earth’s center of gravity, into next week the way you would shove someone into on-coming traffic in the middle of rush hour. never mind the fact that her girlfriend (wife?) is wearing the same jersey as the enemy. never mind SPORTS BEING PLAYED. tobin, who historically cannot be bothered to spare one simple fuck for shenanigans, has stolen the flag of chaos and is now waving it wildly across the field. honorable mention goes to christine ‘get off my lawn’ sinclair for the arm swinging/head nod combo that seems to say, “yeah, and don’t come back to utah, either!” but take a look at one emily sonnett crossing the middle of the screen as she…

SLINKS QUIETLY AWAY??? WTEF. sonnett took one look at this family-dividing mess of a murder and said, ‘NO MA’AM, NO HOW.’ she is in and out of this crime scene like a thief in the night. she just, and i cannot stress this enough, strikes the match for this dumpster fire then floats over that river of chaos like a baby in a basket. AND LITERALLY NO ONE NOTICES because they’re too busy grasping at the last desperate straws of sanity. PHEW. even becky sauerbrunn is like ‘linds, chill’ and lindsey gives her a look like, ‘team usa, MY ASS.’

so for the first time in her freshman frat boy life, emily ‘well what happened was’ sonnett decides to act like the only adult on the field and casually goes to check in with the ref. with the mass hysteria going on, it’s clear red refy has completely forgotten sonnett’s previous offenses and the gentle, some may even call it soft, elbow touch alerts him to the fact that her playing time is over but not forgotten. sonnett takes one long walk back to the bench and just when we think things have taken a turn for the mundane, lindsey love of my life horan decides, IT’S TIME TO RUN THIS MF TRAIN AGROUND:

lindsey takes one look at a-rod standing over the ball and charges over like some little christmas elf about to pilfer frosted cookies, yeets her a foot off the ground, and then casually scampers away because LINDSEY SAID NO ONE TREATS FRAT DADDY JUNIOR THAT WAY. LINDSEY SAID GAY RIGHTS. LINDSEY SAID WORLD PEACE AND DIVINE UNIVERSAL ORDER. she just launches her with the velocity of a ten-ton truck, backwards, WITH A FLIP. (another special s/o to dagný brynjarsdóttir because wtef do they pipe into the water in iceland that no amount of first-hand murder witnessing will ever phase her?? SHE LITERALLY LOOKS UP THEN LOOKS AWAY HOLY FUCK)

idk what lindsey is saying here but she’s screaming. and if you listen closely, you can hear laura harvey screaming. everyone is screaming. in fact, everyone is losing it. FFS WHERE ARE THE LOCUSTS?? but also, if ever you were going to order more soup for say, twenty-five people at an italian fast-casual restaurant and then encourage the waiter to throw in free breadsticks, it might look something like this?? maybe a teammate of club and country can help calm things down…

with an ass pat??? ad franch, my guy, it is too late for ass pats of tranquility. you tried. but that card the ref is hunched over is yellow and it has lindsey’s name on it. does she care? no. but for the rest of the game, lindsey will roam from box to box, leaving no square of grass un-crunched, daring any utah player, even the injured ones somewhere hundreds of miles away on a stationary bike slowly pedaling through rehab training, to challenge her. she is both lonesome cowboy and trusty hunting dog, tracking signs of royals blood through the vast plains of utah and that distant sound you hear? lindsey. howling in the name of emily ann sonnett at the crescent moon.

Dear Beatrice,

Have you ever been to IKEA?

I saw a movie once where this couple was pretending to live out their lives in a bunch of fake IKEA sets and in retrospect it was a little weird, probably, and super inconvenient for everyone around them, but that’s the point, right? That they were so in love with each other that they were selfish in a way that was okay.

I want to go to IKEA and not care about anyone else or anything else. I want to be dumb and cheesy. I want to inconvenience people in ways that doesn't lead to the world ending. I want to get a free pass for being young and stupid and in love. I want to be selfish like that with you.

Do you know where I’m going with this?

I don’t. Not really. Not right now. But you will, by the time you’re reading this. Because I’ll have told you that I want you to go to IKEA and dance in the rain or share a plate of spaghetti with someone under the moonlight or spin around on hilltops while singing about the sound of music or spread your arms out wide and shout something from the front of a ship. Or… honestly, hopefully I’ll have told you something way better than all that because I’m still working on how I’m going to tell you and I don’t think movie references are the way to go. But you know what I mean. Hopefully, I’ll have told you that I want you to do the things I couldn’t, that you couldn’t, that we couldn’t do together. Hopefully, I’ll have found a way to tell you that doesn’t sound stupid or make you cry or make it seem like I'm taking the easy way out. Hopefully, by now, you’ll know that I love you and in a movie, that would be enough to change the universe and give us a happy ending. But here, we are what we are, and it isn’t.

That’s okay. Or… okay, fine. It’s not. It’s bullshit! It sucks! I want to be selfish and I want to be with you and I want to do all this stuff together! But it is worth it. I’m not going to make it through this, but if you’re reading this letter, that means you do and that’s worth it. Though... not fair. I know it’s not fair. But I’m doing this so you can live your life.

Maybe that’s what I’ll say to you. Because that’s actually pretty good, isn’t it? And it’s the truth too. I’m doing this so you can live your life. It doesn’t have to be the movie stuff that I always put on my dumb to-do lists. But it has to be something. The only way I’ll be able to do this is if I know that you’ll go on and do something that will make you happy. That’s a pretty shitty burden to place on someone, I know. But you can handle it. You can handle anything. (I'm sorry, but that's the truth too.) And I think it’ll be less of a burden in the end, because I think you’ll find something beautiful out there.

So… go to IKEA. Get a tattoo. Help a baby turtle make its way back to the sea. Spend an entire day reading in bed and eating ice cream. Swim with whale sharks. See the northern lights. Go to a drive-in theater and see the end of that stupid movie that I don’t remember the name of.

Live your life, Beatrice, and I promise you’ll find something every day to keep living for. Because the universe owes you that much. And by now, it owes me that much too.

I love you. If you’re right about everything that happens afterwards, then I’ll still be loving you when you read this. I think maybe I’ll love you forever, even if you’re wrong.

I’ve been thinking about The Half Of It all weekend (the trailer of which just started randomly playing when I logged into Netflix on Friday and I was curious enough to give it a shot and have no regrets) and when I was gushing to my brother about it earlier, I realized why I love it so much:

See, setting up the whole “nerdy girl helps jock boy get popular girl” cliche and then throwing in the twist that “nerdy girl loves popular girl too” is fantastic, every part of the queer storyline was beautiful, the opening monologue and how it was a direct parallel to the water scene, the painting metaphors, the jean jacket, the cliche religious hick small-town that could have been mine, the fact that they literally showed a mountain and prompted me to spend a whole day making a Landslide AMV (cough), the secret looks they give each other throughout the movie, that final kiss and the promise of something more in the future, all wonderful, beautiful, NEEDED…

But none of that compares to the amazing love story that happened between Paul and Ellie. These two going from being rivals to being tentative friends to having a genuine love for each other that confuses Paul because he’s a teenager in a small-town and, let’s face it, he probably only learned “you either feel a casual friendship with this person or you feel horny af” because that’s the binary they teach in these small town high schools, so it makes sense that he looks all sorts of confused when he realizes how much he likes her, and you can tell that he’s still confused, even as he goes to kiss her, then she immediately pushes him away which adds to even more confusion, then he realizes that she’s queer, which goes against every bit of small-town-religious-hick lesson that he had ever learned. So, he lashes out at her and he runs away and I do wish he had been supportive all along but then we wouldn’t get the scene in the kitchen so it was honestly worth it because…

The scene in the kitchen. When Ellie’s father is reminiscing about his own familial love towards his daughter and he asks, “Have you ever loved someone so much you don’t want anything about her to change?” and you just see Paul’s reaction, just look at this:

That is someone who just realized what platonic love is!

Not only that, he realized that his platonic love for Ellie is so strong that he is willing to accept her, no matter what, and help her, no matter what, and love her, no matter what. Not a romantic love, not a familial love, but a pure, genuine, deep, platonic love between a boy and a girl! WHAT A CONCEPT!

Then, of course, he stands up for her, literally, in church. He does so without outing her and, just a note, he never outs her to her father, even when her father begs him to say why Ellie is so upset, Paul never outs her and I know, I know, people shouldn’t usually get props for not being jerks, but seeing as how every other guy in that school is that stereotypical hick/jock, the fact that he’s able to subconsciously keep her secret shows how deep his love is, even when he doesn’t even realize it.

Then, of course, you have him crying on the platform and chasing the train to show her how much he loves her, to make her laugh and cry and whisper, “Moron!” and you know that, whatever the future holds for Ellie and Aster, that’s nothing compared to the love and support that Ellie will always get from Paul and that’s nothing compared to the love and support I have for this movie, it’s so good, you need to watch it…

I probably enjoyed this "quick sketch" a little too much.

This country claims to be democratic but 9 unelected people who's values and opinions formed decades prior, who can get into this position without strong or even any valid credentials, can decide to negatively impact or even destroy millions of lives and they cannot be held accountable for it. They can't be impeached or voted out. It's only the most convoluted combination of election-year voting, voter suppression/lack thereof, and idk fucking cowardice from both sides that got any of them to where they are now. 9 people who are cemented in their beliefs and then use the law and constitution to justify their moral opinions that they insist don't influence their rulings at all. We can't vote then out. We just have to hope they retire or die under the presidency of someone who doesn't want to actively kill everything, and eve then we have to contend with any given republican or spineless Democrat in the Senate.

And even then, we cannot get rid of them. Nine people make decisions for 300+ million, affecting their ability to defend themselves, to live peacefully, to lead healthy and happy and safe lives. Nine people can ruin lives for decades to come.

Nine people. Nine. People.

So are you obsessed with the brilliant and highly skilled but repressed rich girl falls for the energetic and super powerful golden retriever type of girl and they become ride or die for each other dynamic or….are you normal?

(x)

New view of them on the carpet! Love seeing Paige's smile!