How ARCANE Writes Women

Arcane just makes you forget that there is a gender issue in the first place. It comes so natural that you forget to think about the whole thing. It’s phenomenal.

As a woman I loved seeing Vi get beat up so much, usually even "fighter" women don't get decked in the face like that. It was weirdly refreshing. And Vi constantly getting the shit kicked out of her is a strong contrast to Jinx almost never getting touched in fights. The one or two times Jinx gets physically hurt, it's a big deal.

Mel; a strong, black, complex, nuanced female ORIGINAL character. Can't be Disney.

As a black girl- Mel was quite literally the best animated black woman I have seen so far.

Something kinda specific-but I love, LOVE that women in the show scream*, They *cry they sob & panic in such a human way & it’s never played in a ‘pretty’, fetishized way. They also get the snot beat out of them, they fucking fight like humans fight, not in a ‘sexy’, voyeuristic way

Arcane does a thing that I wish more media would. It doesn't write women. It writes characters who are women. It's a facet of who they are, but it isn't their identity. And they don't focus on that part more than they focus on the core traits. And I love it.

The thing is one: Arcane is TRUE. It doesn't talk about "men", "women", "children", "adults", it talks about PEOPLE. They made a great, great job in these. I hope every future serie script (not only videogames inspired) will take notes from now on.

Something you missed: Caitlyn is of upper class who have the luxury of being soft on people. She has the option of showing mercy on an enemy who would possibly come back and try to kill her. Vi does not. Caitlyn has the luxury of long range weapon tech, while Vi must slug it out with bits of metal strapped to her fist. Caitlyn has the luxury of honing accuracy, while Vi has to beat through by sheer brute force. It is not a matter of feminine VS masculine, but rather haves VS have nots. They highlighted this in the show.

The genius thing about Caitlyn's shower scene was that it's different from most shower scenes in that it just wasn't... sexy? There are no objectifying angles, every time we see her in the scene she's weirdly (yet believably) hunched over, we're basically shown only three parts of her body: extremely tense shoulders, her bleeding wound, her exasperated face. The point of the scene isn't to show us she's attractive of objectify her, it's to a) show that she's extremely tense and frustrated and b) create a parallel between her, in water, and Vi, under the rain. As you said, the center isn't her body, it's her as a character. The viewer is forced to feel what she feels to the point where you don't even think about her naked boobs or whatever

The underlying reason why Arcane can get all these female characters right is that the story has a lot of them. Female characters make up half the cast, almost as if half the population of humanity is female or something. It allows them to do so many things without overloading any single character. No one character has to be the "science one" and the "caring one" and the "fighting one" and "crazy one" all in a single package.

I LOVE the “lack of stigma in fantasy world” in any type of media. It is my absolute favourite. I think it does more for representation than having a minority character’s only struggle be bigotry. Visualizing a world where there isn’t a standard for femininity or masculinity, and where sexuality isn’t so heavily defined is so fun and it demonstrates a world I hope we get to eventually

Moral of the story: the more women you have in your show playing different roles, having different motivations, positions, opinions and personalities, the easier it is for you to escape making bad women characters.

I also love that you can clearly see the fighters having muscles. I hated seeing women fighters who looked fragile and thin like a stick. It was always hard to believe they are actually strong. That´s one aspect I really love about Vi, aswell as her nose looking like it has been broken at some point. THAT´S how a fighter like her looks like!

As a wise man once said “Don’t write FEMALE characters, Write female CHARACTERS.”

Writing women characters well, doesn't require making poor male characters. Arcane avoided that trap. They did a GREAT job writing this series.

A video game adaptation has no right being as nuanced and well written as Arcane was.

Holding women accountable for actions you’d condemn or dismiss in a man is important thematically, character wise, and avoiding favoritism. Obviously bias is an unavoidable factor, but pausing to ask yourself “How would I feel about this if a character of another gender was doing it?” is a great way to avoid pitfalls, and examine personal bias.

This may seem strange but I also really appreciated that the women looked very different! They had different body types owing to their different experiences/jobs (you know, like everyone does). They also had different faces!!! Which is extremely basic but shockingly hard to come across in animation for women regardless of style. While male characters often can have different nose shapes and body types, in designing female characters, most studios will just change hair and eye color (and maybe breast size) on the same attractive but bland frame. I think Arcane's approach really helped visualize the diversity within the female cast and made them actually feel like their own characters and not variations on each other.

"She's a character with an amazing story, so who cares about the trope." Nailed it right there.

Even as a female writer, I find this analysis and advise very eye opening. Just a lot of ideas i hadn't even considered previously.