The Gilded Wolf, Mel Medarda ✨💛

guys dont worry, i got this!! they did nothing wrong!!! (maybe except cate but im a good lawyer, dw)

what if mage mel had a cunty bodysuit and thigh highs??? what then??

Sevika reminded me of a puppy when she makes that expression, so I ended up drawing her like this

I lost the file so I regret the final resolution of this picture

medieval au because i'm so normal about them

(prints!)

Mel Medarda the Woman that you are <3

Some thoughts on Mel and Ambessa from Arcane :)

Anon this one's for you (I was originally going to put this in my answer to your ask but it got longer than I expected so here we are lol)!!

I LOVE Mel. And not just because I'm a raging lesbian ☝ She's genuinely a really well written character. She's so intelligent, not to mention manipulative (especially in s1), and it's so impressive how she utilizes that to get what she wants. I didn't really care for Jayce very much in s1 either, so whenever Mel convinced him to do what she wanted I was just sitting there like "yes queen play him like a fiddle. 😍" That aside, she genuinely has a good heart, and I appreciate that the writers let those two facets of her character coexist without defining her by one or the other. I also really enjoyed her getting more agency in s2 (or at least in act 3, I suppose, since she was effectively taken out of the game so to speak for the first couple acts)—and her actions/success became less dependent on Jayce as well which was nice. Her fighting with Cait against Ambessa was SO good omg

Speaking of Ambessa...she's also such a cool character. I can't say I like her as much specifically bc of how she took advantage of Caitlyn and her grief + status in s2, but at the same time, it makes total sense for her character and that doesn't make her any less of a great villain. In fact, that's a large part of WHY she's such a good villain. But her extremely tactical and planned takeover of Piltover aside—she's a cunning warlord and just as manipulative as Mel, but she's also a MOTHER, and words cannot express how much I enjoy the fact that that's treated as an integral part of her character instead of an afterthought. She isn't depicted as weak because she's a mother, and while she personally does feel weakened by her children (particularly Mel), it's only out of her love for them. Plus, at the end of the day, the final battle showed us that even her love for Mel wouldn't impede her lust for power, so her role as a mother doesn't cheapen her ruthlessness either. FANTASTIC stuff. Side note, but I also loved her bond with Rictus.

Ambessa's also honestly really similar to Mel. If you switched out Mel's softness/morals for an extremely strong love of family, you basically get Ambessa, and I think that's part of why they clashed the way they did. They're both incredibly intelligent, and so so skilled at manipulating any situation in their favor, influencing others, and taking power, and I imagine those are shared qualities that Ambessa loved and Mel loathed for a long time. Meanwhile, Ambessa's unshakable principles (eg. Fox vs. Wolf mentality) simply didn't allow her to fully accept Mel's empathy, just as Mel's empathy for others made Ambessa's cruelty seem intolerable to her. But they still loved each other to the end, and I adore that. Mel holding her mother as she died because of her, Ambessa finally recognizing Mel as what she deems to be the perfect leader in her dying moments....ohhhh they're so complicated.

yeah they go way back 🐶🦾

scratch my bellayy

I think the Arcane fanbase as a whole is very quick to clock Mel's manipulative tactics & condemn them without ever asking themselves why it is she acts that way. They either go 'problematic girlboss go queen' or 'what a horrible conniving bitch!' and move on, and it's been bugging me for a while.

Mel is the daughter of a Noxian Warmonger, raised in a 'might makes right' sort of environment that encourages violence as the means to settle conflict. The strong are always the winners, the losers must die. What made Mel such an outcast is primarily her resistance to such violence. Mel, at her very core, doesn't want to hurt people. We see this when she insists to her mother in that flashback to her childhood that they should spare that girl to "show the people that we are merciful," as she puts it.

To Mel, manipulation is the only way to avoid violence. Being too directly honest, not appealing to people, can be dangerous. It can lead to bloodshed. And if you look at things through her perspective in that sense, it's kind of obvious why she's constantly utilizing her cunning to get her way- because the only other way would actively put lives in danger. Mel's conniving nature is quite literally a coping mechanism that's followed her to Piltover, fortunately for her that makes her a very formidable politician.

My favorite Mel's concept design (she looks like a goddess)