Hits Them With My Yuri Beam

Doechii's fit at the Schiaparelli Show 2025 was made for Mel Medarda 🔥

Sometimes I want to join arcanetwt because the community is more active there, but then I actually see the conversations happening there and go “nope”.

mom, i'm tired. can i sleep in your arms tonight?

melvika grown on me. give sevika 40 minutes with mel and all of Piltover & Zauns issues are fixed

Mel is my Barbie to dress up

I really don't know what the story is with this but it was a fun value study hehe

my arcane x asoiaf // Melvika heart is singing because of @/olgasnoww on Twitter.

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.

like, i love stories where good people are flawed and at odds with each other, and can be unfair to each other or themselves. i don't need all the characters to be friends or never have conflict.

but it is very different from the fandom concept of 'portraying flaws' where an already routinely demonized character of color is constantly getting chewed out by other characters who are basically props, who are only there to voice the fandoms anger, and all for the sake of the fandom's chosen white woobie's catharsis.

and of course, when you want to focus more on the underappreciated characters and point out fandoms racism and misogyny, it's "why don't you create for your blorbos yourself instead of complaining!" but when it's a 100th post in the character tag demanding more 'flawed' portrayals for the character (while all popular artists and writers in fandom are already hyper-critical of the character at best or bash them at worst) it's considered fine.

(and when you see what fics are getting recommended under those posts... it becomes even more clear that it's not about nuanced portrayals)

The Arcane fandom is so unserious. Like, why would you post anti shit in a ship tag and then play victim when you get jumped by all the people who follow that tag??

These people really don’t understand the basics of fandom engagement and it’s pissing me atp.

i don’t think we talk about the loss of bodily autonomy that came with black rose’s expansion of mel’s sigils enough

mel’s experience of getting the tattoo was, sans the secret magic dad and free part, pretty reflective of my own—the excitement, the rebelliousness, the satisfaction of seeing your skin marked by something you chose that is beautiful

and then the black rose arrives, and while still beautiful, i can’t emphasize enough that this a huge shift—the lines run over her whole body, even her face. they’re permanent and they were not mel’s choice—that gold she thought of as her jewelry and armor is now an impossible to escape reminder of trauma and death

i don’t know, there’s such a potential for a unique brand of body horror here