#someone ask me my opinion about Silco or Mek I beg of you

[bluedaddysgirl]

Have you heard of the LOL/ Arcane theory popular on Twitter right now that Vi so far has been coded as a... wife-beater for a lack of a better term? What's your opinion on this? Do you feel there's any room created by the narrative to consider this?

Yeah ok that's a rough one… Might lose some followers over this lol

I stay far and away from "twitter fandom drama". I don't think the limited word count is very conducive to productive dialogue. Here? Sure. I can write an essay on silly meta and my silly mutuals (affectionate) will actually read it and even reply. So no, I use twitter to reblog art and post some of my own for Arcane, but I'm almost never on it and not interested in whatever "Arcane Twitter" has to chirp. I was completely unaware of this nonsense.

Now, to answer you…

WHERE? Where is the proof? The textual, in the show, screenshot to screenshot proof that Vi is even remotely "coded" as a "wife-beater"? Do the little birds provide it? [this is a rhetorical question, don't feel the need to provide links, I've lost as much brain power on this theory as I'm willing to]

Is it that clip I've used myself, that hints at Vi hitting Powder in the Enemy video? Has like… none of them gotten mean to your siblings when they drove you mad? Did they all have golden childhoods? Vi sure didn't. She's an orphan at this stage, just moved in with a man whose nickname is the Hound, who she just saw cave someone's head in with his fists. Her younger sister is basically her daughter, and she's already shown signs of mental illness, probably from before the bridge.

Vi, as a kid, is incredibly disadvantaged. She's dirt fucking poor, her role model rules their criminal underground with his fists, and her sister/daughter/ward is a chronic problem-maker with mental issues and probably her own boatload of trauma. I mean, they both walked into an actual charnel, amid dozens of dead bodies, to find their own dead mom (and presumably, dad?). As preteens!!

I think, by and large, we can cut Vi some slack for hitting Powder. The Enemy video hints she pushed her to the ground. Is that the wife beating coding? I see nothing else. And if that's in, then it's actual bollocks.

Meanwhile, do you know what you get if you type "What Profession Has The Highest Rate Of Domestic Violence?" in google? Yeah, that's right. Non-Fictional Enforcers

A couple between a victim who was falsely imprisoned for 5-to-10 years and is trauma ridden by the way her entire life was shaped by systemic injustice, and a cop… Who has the highest percentage chance of beating who? As you may have guessed, I'm not a big fan of Caitvi as a season 1 ship.

There is NO evidence in the show that Vi would be a wife beater. Slapping your sister for murdering your entire family in a moment of blind sorrow and rage isn't the same as being an abuser. Worse, the show takes insane pains to showcase Vi as being basically the same in act II and III as in act I.

They make such an effort to make her seem to still have that "good heart" of hers. She is precipitated into a relationship with an enforcer mere days after she's let out of prison. It's completely unrealistic. The show is ready to bend itself into a pretzel to tell us that Vi is fine, and she is SO kind actually that she will let one cute enforcer prove to her that her prejudices are wrong! uwu

Do you have any idea what 6+ years in a jail would be like, as a complete innocent, being beaten so many times the warden forgets? And please, it's a mixed prison too, since she's in there with Mek? The show bails out of making Vi as dark and traumatised as she ought to be, by all rights.

The show chickens out of taking the time to make Vi scary. To make her hate and distrust Caitlyn, who is the pretty face of oppression, who didn't even think to release her on her own after finding she was wrongfully imprisoned, and instead needed to be threatened.

They unrealistically sped up their relationship because they wanted the fandom working its teeth on their lesbian romance like a chew toy all the way to season 2.

So no, in my blunt, honest opinion, there's no "coding" for Vi being a wife beater. She's "coded" as an unrealistic goodie who came out of prison emotionally stunted, stuck in her 15 yo self, refusing to see reason when it slaps her in the face—but very ready to see how pretty the enforcer lady is—and otherwise unaffected. She's cool, she's strong, she loves her sister, she's so kind she won't even make a convincing effort at hating Cait… but she lets her ruin things between her and Jinx. Vi suffers the most in act II and III, characterisation wise.

I find it incredibly frustrating because building actual earned trust between Cait and Vi is not actually that hard. There's a few changes to be done in the way they interact, especially early on, and it becomes so much more convincing.

Worse regarding this theory, the one Arcane writer who has been… oversharing… her headcanons, is Amanda, the Caitvi bandwagon driver. You think Riot would let her hype Caitvi as a cute ship for season 2, only to tear them apart with domestic violence?? It'd be like strangling the golden goose. And after they went and took out all the police brutality lines from Vi's LoL character too! No chance.

People who speculate that Vi would hit Cait or be a wifebeater are probably projecting what they want to see and calling it "X-coded" because it makes them sound serious. The doctor's prescription is a whole day at the park touching the grass, and then a whole month watching quality essays on media literacy and analysis.

#Vi #arcane vi #arcane #meta #anon ask #thanks for the ask #i guess #that was a weird one #caitvi just not my cup of tea #making vi the aggressor when she's paired with a fucking cop #REALLY not my cup of tea #come back to me with H/C of wife beater coded Caitlyn #(jk pls don't) #someone ask me my opinion about Silco or Mek I beg of you #arcane meta #caitlyn kiramman #caitvi