missiur reblogged
ARCANE | 1.09 The Monster You Created
Heart of the hex
EVERY character has had shadows on their face in their posters, or their faces partially covered, but Mel's is not. Mel is surrounded by light and her eyes are not covered or shadowed. And then the hands? What do the hand placements mean? WHAT DOES IT MEAN.
made another in honor of season 2. everyone sucks. i love them.
I hate Mel Medarda discourse because she’s an insanely well-written character with a lot of depth, but people almost always have only two things to say about her: 1) evil girlboss or 2) never did anything wrong. both make me want to krill myself 🦐
In front of you, there’s a female character born of war who rejects the physical brutality of her family’s name and the regime she was born under. except said violence never really goes away because if it ever does leave, nothing else would remain
This character can and will reproduce the hatred she has always known, just in more palpable ways, ways where she’s allowed to look away — or even better, ways where she’s so distanced from the action itself that where she “looks” doesn’t even matter
It’s also so interesting to think that maybe Mel doesn’t dislike physical violence because it’s “bad” but simply because she does not excel at it The thought that if Mel was maybe stronger or a more skilled fighter, she would be just like her mother tickles my brain. yaaaas Although, to me, that's a more "what-if" scenario than the actual characterization Arcane deceipts
By the way, I do not think Mel is a monster. She clearly does try to be what she considers a "good" person, but the violence she’s always known sometimes escapes (just like in the Viktor scene above — she does not like to be disagreed with).
Sooo insane that she’s a diplomat/politician because yes. what other job in the world would allow her to exercise that repressed violence while also giving her the sense of duty—of goodness.
Mel is stuck at the scene of the execution form her childhood. All she does is repeat the same scenario in her head with different outcomes: sometimes one where she saves the prisoner, another where she doesn’t hesitate (that being the keyword here) to kill her
This reverberation of the violence she suffered is just her manner of coping with that traumatic scene. a way of lessening the pain without actually confronting its cause.
I feel like I need to clarify that no, I do not think Mel is “evil”. I don’t even think she is intentionally manipulative (most of the time), I think she handles people the only way she knows how to, which is probably one of the only reasons she survived Noxus at all (as, to how I see it, there's only a certain extent your House will guarantee your protection in Noxus).
I know the fandom talks a lot about Viktor and Jayce being idealistic, but I rarely see people mention how Mel is just as romantic. Jesus- that’s literally a huge source of conflict with her mother: Ambessa thinks Mel is naive, which to her means weakness, which to her is unacceptable.
I hate that Mel Medarda is forced to be subjected to fandom spaces, because, no, she is not a small bean. no, she’s not an evil girlboss.
Do I believe she is a good person? I think she tries to be (even if her notion of goodness is so heavily aligned with honor, too), and that tells me a lot more about her character than how successful she is at it
missiur reblogged
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It's a sad truth that those who shine brightest often burn the fastest.
