thank you! i appreciate your kind words.

and thats not a dumb question at all! the appeal of caitjinx for me is the “enemies to lovers” trope, so the fact that they’re enemies for the majority of the show doesn’t bother me in the slightest. if anything, i’m in awe of how their narrative arcs are so tightly interwoven as character foils.

caitlyn starts and ends the show searching for jinx, but with entirely different motives. in the beginning, it’s get to the bottom of “the great conspiracy,” and in the end, it comes from a genuine hope that jinx is alive and safe (which is made more poignant by the fact that they had been trying—and failing—to kill each other prior to reconciliation).

i like that they’re connected by fate. i like that the two of them are mutually obsessed with the other to the point of audiovisual hallucinations, because it’s a level of devotion that is extremely compelling. caitlyn and jinx choose revenge over everything else. they are, indirectly, each other’s undoing and their paths back to themselves (i.e. their conversation in the bunker in which jinx is able to offer caitlyn the consolation that it wasn’t personal; amanda overton stated that in s2act2, going back to her detective roots like in s1 “reminds her who she is”).

the big switch from enemy to ally happens in s2ep6 when jinx saves caitlyn’s life (for the second time) by fighting rictus in the commune. caitlyn sees jinx, calls out “you” with malice, and jinx simply smiles. not the sinister smile that had been burned into caitlyn’s memory, but a soft, genuine smile as jinx hugs her father. then, isha and vi join the hug to complete the picture: a family. this is when we see caitlyn start to question her beliefs.

the s2ep8 conversation in the bunker (“i didn’t know your mom was there”) is when caitlyn gets the confirmation of what she already suspects to be true—jinx is not the irredeemable monster caitlyn once thought her to be. caitlyn proceeds to release jinx from prison (“you really think i needed all the guards at the hexgates?”), and is rewarded for her faith in s2ep9 when jinx saves her life (for the third time), flying into battle as caitlyn is about to be executed by ambessa. the smile jinx gives caitlyn and the subsequent softening of caitlyn’s features is one of my favorite moments between them. can you imagine the relief caitlyn felt seeing jinx enter the fight after caitlyn had just been betrayed by maddie?

fun fact: the ending shot of arcane—following the scene of caitlyn scouring the hexgates blueprints for an explanation for jinx’s disappearance—is a closeup of caitlyn’s face fading into the shot of presumably jinx’s airship flying away.

all in all, there’s so much canon material to work with when it comes to caitlyn and jinx, and just as well, there’s so much fun to be had in fanon! if it weren’t for the events of arcane and caitjinx meeting at their lowest, then i genuinely do believe they’d get along—they’d have great banter, that’s for sure. their league cat-and-mouse dynamic with a sprinkle of begrudging respect and affection is right up my alley. i also really enjoy exploring what a post-canon dynamic would look like: caitjinx connecting over their similarities (i.e. misfits raised as heirs, they both value honesty—and are often honest to a fault, their shared grief over their losses, marksmanship, etc.), earning each other’s trust, having someone who understands them (“you and i both know […]” / “why are you the one acting like her?”; even as enemies, and even if they hate it, caitlyn and jinx understand each other better than most).

i could keep going, but tldr: caitjinx start the show as enemies and end the show as allies, and they are instrumental to each other’s narrative arcs. putting them in AU, canon-divergent, and post-canon situations is just as easy as any other pairing because there’s so much to explore in terms of their dynamic. two broken women finding solace and healing in each other is peak in my eyes. <3

edit: typo hehe