arcane word vomit as vi's personal defender
Major spoilers ahead!
So Arcane ended the other day. I've essentially consumed every piece of detail noticed by other fans from my Twitter feed and just writing down my thoughts to honor the beautiful masterpiece that is this show.
Before anything, I think the show has a lot of interesting and well-written characters that resulted to sort of subgroups in the show fandom having a singular character/pairing to root for. There are a lot of discourse on who's getting good endings, bad ones and the lot. A lot of fans and even myself play favorites (apparently the authors, too). And I think it's fine as long as it makes sense for the story and I'm literally about to talk about the two sisters - Vi and Jinx.
Vi and Jinx are victims of war. The loss of their parents, despite Vander taking them under their wing, is what birthed Vi's protector persona. Ultimately established by the dynamic of Vander's home, with Mylo and Claggor regarding Vi as the leader and eldest sister when Vander's not around.
The eldest daughter personality did not matter to me that much when I first watched Arcane. Perhaps it wasn't until rewatching it after a time I stumbled upon a Reddit community of eldest children and found solidarity with people who, most of the time, are at odds and pickles and great internal conflict between the urge to provide, protect and care for family and their own personal ambitions. Especially in a South-east Asian country were family values are quite different than it is in the west.
Anyway, back to Vi. She is an eldest daughter and that is her character's cross to bear. I missed it the first time, but Vander's last words were literally for her to take care of her younger sister, Powder. Vi took that to heart.
The tragedy of the sisters' story come about after Vi's outburst and we see this as a theme for her character later on - that when she expresses her emotions and acts out of the purity of it, she will lose something or another. In this first scene, she loses Powder to Silco.
The thing and I wish a lot of people would think about is that Vi instantly regret hurting Powder. They were kids. Vi was a child, trying to parent other children. This is all just very sad for me, thinking about Vi in prison, isolated, no one to turn to, living with the regret of what went down with her last interaction with Powder and perhaps before Caitlyn's intervention she just knew she would have to live with all that forever.
In season 1, they reunite and there is no more Powder, only Jinx. Poorly timed situations and the actions of everyone around the two sisters made it impossible for them to talk things out and fully reconcile. We see the first tells of a future where Vi will eventually have to choose Caitlyn (which is choosing herself) or Jinx, which represents the last of whatever family she has left. This just rings so true for usual real-life eldest children struggle, being torn apart between being selfless or selfish.
I, ever the optimistic, hoped Vi could have it both. The story is about them, after all, but we see their bond as sisters to grow more impossible of a wedge to cross when Jinx kills Caitlyn's mother and the following events made them distant than ever, I believe even more the time when Jinx thought Vi was truly gone.
In season 2, we see more of the potential of Vi not having anything to do with Caitlyn and be rewarded with the fulfilment of family when Warwick (Vander) brought a temporary reprieve to their problems. And the existence of Isha which represented Jinx being able to gain a sense to be protective, too. I guess there was a good ending for both sisters if the show ended then and there. They would work on communicating and spending more time together! Because since being aware that the other was alive, the sisters even barely got any time to talk without a fight ensuing in some way!
I hold on to this belief that at the end of the day, Vi and Jinx cannot help but miss and care for each other, no matter how much they bury it. My sister is gone nope! Vi found it difficult to reconcile the two versions of her sister because of her morals and suspicion on Jinx's previous associations, but she overcomes them. She literally proposes the We. Of living in the commune and forget about anything else.
And so we progress with the story and the other characters' arcs are fulfilled at the expense of Vi and Jinx's true reconciliation. Capitalism wins again in the end because there really could have used a few more episodes to focus more on Vi's internal conflict but it was reduced to a 2 minute makeover, without any much of explaining to do and yeah, since they wanted it to be a collection of music videos, I wished there was a song of how tragic Jinx and Vi's sisterhood is!
But no, like in true eldest daughter fashion, she's not allowed to grieve and she has to continue on taking the role of a protector. Jinx gets away when she realizes she's the only one standing between Vi and Vi's happiness. And what did Vi have to say or how does she react to that..? How was it that she could not at least attempt to say anything that will convince Jinx otherwise? At this point in the story, I wanted so much for Vi to catch a break. Ah yes, I loved the sesbian lex. We've won, but at what cost...
We did see Vi grieve for Vander's second death - and someone pointed out that the cost of that one was her losing Jinx. And well, after that, time's just a ticking and the episode needs to end. It pains me to see Vi's character diluted down. We really can't have it all. I love the angst and how it played out. There's just too many things happening. I personally thought a few more episodes could help as to not make it feel like every character is fighting for screen time. There are of course theories on Jinx's exit but even that feels lacking because I was also rooting for Vi and Jinx the same way I was for Vi and Caitlyn. Oh don't even start with the Piltover/Zaun conflict because that's thrown out the window, too.
I love this show so much. If anyone read this without actually watching the show, I honestly encourage you to do so as it is the greatest animated series of all time.
Despite it all, I understand why the writers did what they did. The length of a show is an executive decision and they worked with that. They are trying to set up the LoL universe and keep viewers hooked on for the next. Now they are dangling the possibility of Jinx or CaitVi or anyone's cameo in the next show for the audience like a treat.
Capitalism 1, Vi's character development 0.