#Mel Fair

[blackramhall]

Amsterdam - Written and Directed by David O. Russell (2022)

[showsandstuff]

I am so conflicted about the drama in the arcane fandom regarding Meljayvik because it's all just so messy.

For one, not everyone likes every ship and that is okay. You don't have to like Meljayce or Jayvik, it's okay to only like one of the two or none at all.

But then there is the disposable black gf trope that makes this whole thing tricky. I hate this trope so damn much, it isn't fair. At all.

But then also Mel is SO MUCH more than Jayces lover in the story, like her romantic relationship with Jayce was a tiny part of her character and their relationship with each other as well. So I don't like the idea of reducing her to just that. Mel's arc this season was all about her other qualities, her intelligence, her power and her relationship to her mother, not about her love for Jayce or whatever.

I absolutely love Mel as a character. She went from someone who I thought would be a cunning villain, to this caring and intelligent leader, who will do whatever she thinks is best for her people.

Yet people always reduce her to "the girl that gets in the way of the Yaoi" or "Jayce’s love interest", like no come on?! She never got in the way of anything and she isn't just Jayce’s girlfriend. She doesn't lose her purpose if people don't like her together with Jayce, because that wasn't even what her arc was about! Free my girl!

[rookie-critic]

Rookie-Critic's Top 25 Films of 2022: Honorable Mentions - The Menu (dir. Mark Mylod)

When I saw the trailer for The Menu, I was torn between interest and worry. It looked like it would be a fun thriller, but it also looked like it might be a film making fun of "foodie culture" at the expense of people who just genuinely love food. Thankfully, while it sometimes rides the line of doing so, it ultimately leans more on making fun of people who seek out fine dining and lavish food experiences as a status symbol, coming after patrons and creators in equal measure. Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, and Nicholas Hoult all turn in fantastic performances, as does the whole cast, and the surprisingly comedic tone the film takes make the darkness of the happenings of the plot more tolerable by audience that might otherwise not be able to watch something like this. The climactic moment between Fiennes and Taylor-Joy's characters is one of the more memorable movie moments of 2022, and it caps the film's narrative off with a beautiful bite that I still think about sometimes.

Currently streaming on HBO Max. Read my full review of The Menu here.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

All the Black Femmes || Arcane

Mel Medarda: Toks Olagundoye, Imogen Faires

Ambessa Medarda: Ellen Thomas

Sevika, Apothecary: Amirah Vann

Shoola, Jules: Mara Junot

Sky Young, (Additional Voices): Kimberly Brooks

Other Additional Voices: Debra Wilson, Kimberly Bailey, Shondalia White

[mollysunder]

Not to sound shallow or anything, but Mel's hair, make up, and the customizations on her jump suit are different than her finale look. Look at one of the last shots of Mel.

Now look at Mel in "Welcome to Noxus".

Even the fabric that's wrapped around her is different. In Arcane, the fabric Mel uses looks luxurious and silky, the kind worn for a fashion statement. Imagine the fabric people wear in music videos explicitly so it can billow beautifully in the wind behind the singer as they pose dramatically, that's that kind of fabric.

In "Welcome to Noxus", Mel has on something shorter, more functional, and just coarser by comparison.

This isn't a serious post btw, just things I noticed. "Welcome to Noxus" is a trailer for LoL not Arcane, it's just interesting to see how Mel's design translates to LoL so she can be more action-oriented.

[cl-0v3r]

Riot needs to take this poor woman out of their basement before I tweak out and do it myself

Everyone's been getting baby treatment and all us Mel connoisseurs have been living off of SCRAPS AND A SINGLE POSTER AND ITS NOT FAIIIRRR

Im actually going insane i need her back.

[kurthummeldeservesbetter]

Viktor started topping and Jayce was like well this is not our dynamic at ALL and therefore that’s the moment he was like okay gotta see how I can reverse this back to the way it was

[mellohiizz]

wanted to talk about odyssey duo and my um. view on their dynamic and relationship.

probably going to be a pretty long yap, but i really wanted to talk about them since there's been some talk about them after the last uu video. it caused me to think deeper into their relationship and i wanted to write it down.

(putting it here just in case: not targeted at anyone. just yapping about the codependent silly guys that i hate.)

the thing about odyssey duo, to me, is that yes, they are in some ways unhealthy. they're codependent and messy. but that doesn't mean that they're "toxic" or their friendship is not working.

they're both flawed characters with destructive traits. parrot is dry and unable to express his emotions properly, which leads to misunderstandings over his intentions. wifies is not a saint either, he's stubborn and can get very pushy when it comes to his own decisions. (insisting on dean leaving without explaining anything and trying to do it without parrot knowing, burning the compass to forcefully keep parrot from going to farlands)

but the main thing about them to me is that if you really look into it, they're both trying to make it work. they do care about each other and have both shown it more than once in different ways.

they both did and said things that aren't great. but it doesn't make one or the other good or bad. yes, parrot came out quite cold and uncaring a couple of times, but it doesn't automatically makes him a bad person, or means that he's mistreating, or even 'abusing' wifies in any sense.

if we're pushing it to that point, you could say wifies also used parrot in a sense of wanting to feel human and wanting someone who would 'want him back' without knowing his real self. (im being dramatic with this, obviously)

parrot comes off as uncaring because of how dry and unable to show his actual emotions he seems to be. which is a valid character trait considering how often he just couldn't because of the circumstances. parrot is someone who's very goal oriented. when he needs to focus on something, he locks in. it's the only thing he thinks about and everything else goes to the back of his mind.

which also brings me to the point of the way parrot deals with grief. one thing is how often parrot just couldn't express his grief over losing someone. he grieved luigi, yes, because it was one time he actually was allowed to take a little bit of time to actually process the fact that someone died in front of him. and even then, instead of fully allowing himself to grieve, he had to focus on other things.

same goes for dean. dean's death was pretty much shock value for both parrot and viewers, and parrot tried to grieve him too. but during it, he was interrupted by literally the number one threat at the time.

so of course when another loss comes into picture, parrot doesn't allow himself to grieve him. he acknowledges his loss ("your leader just killed my best friend"), but there was no time for him to actually let himself properly grieve wifies or even allow himself to react. they were in the middle of dealing with the mafia, and he needed to focus on that instead.

we only see the impact wifies' death had on him by the end of the episode. where he does listens. he lights the beacon despite expressing his indifference to them the whole episode. that, once again, shows that he does care.

he was hesitant on letting wifies go through with joining the mafia in the first place. he agreed because he trusted wifies to be safe and know what he's doing. it was already shown to us that wifies is parrot's weak point. he tried so many times to keep wifies away from the danger simply because he didn't want to lose him. back in the video where clown was hunting parrot, there was a very clear parallel between branzy being clown's weak point and wifies being parrot's. the difference in that was parrot knew clown wouldn't have hesitated to kill wifies.

they both changed the ways the go about things for the other. they care, but unfortunately, they were doomed by the narrative. the universe screwed them over by putting them into circumstances where they just wouldn't have worked it out.

in conclusion, because this is already very long, yes, odyssey duo are messy. they're not the healthiest duo, and they do have issues. but they tried to overstep those and work, and that's what i like about them.

[houruponthestage]

I’m so curious. Personally, I quite liked episodes 2 and 3. I wonder if the finale will get any votes. 👀

[kat-chan02]

oh. my. god. i swear if i see one more person hating on and complaining about the caitvi sex scene im gonna throw hands!!! it's like they've forgotten that,, you know THERE WAS ANOTHER SEX SCENE IN SEASON 1 ?! don't remember hearing any complaints over that. just because it's a queer couple doesn't mean that people should just hate on the scene. if you weren't mad about Mel and Jayce getting it on,, you shouldn't be mad about Cait and Vi either.

[tikiki05]

“you people cant handle complex/morally gray characters!!1! 🤓”

DUDE. WHAT IF I K*LLED YOU. IF A CHARACTER IS COMPLEX AND/OR MORALLY GREY, THEN WE’RE GONNA TALK ABOUT HOW THEIR ACTIONS ARE COMPLEX, AND MORALLY GREY, AND HOW THEY DID BAD THINGS. THAT DOESN’T MEAN WE CAN’T HANDLE THEM. ITS CALLED DISCUSSING AND ANALYZING MEDIA!!!!!!! YOURE THE ONES WHO CAN’T HANDLE THAT!!!!!!

[moonlightflower-queen]

Rip Persephone she only ever got to raise plants

[fallen-exorcist]

Should I make an ao3 acc that's only purpose is bookmarking the fics that are actually about Chaggie so people would have an easier time finding them 🤔 ? Since I go through the tag at least once a day anyways lol. But within bookmarks, you can't sort by word count/kudos, etc. ...

I also thought about doing a rec blog here on tumblr but that would be less efficient imo.

I just think a lot of people are held back/thrown off by the tag being so clogged with fics of other ships where Chaggie in only a background pairing, which is a shame because there are so many amazing fics out there that get overlooked because of that.

Filtering by F/F only is not perfect either because Chaggie fics can have side pairs tagged as well.

[rhaesaria]

Sorry to talk about the show canon but imagine in season 6, when Sansa reunites with Jon at the wall, she arrives before they brought him back to life, instead of getting there afterward and never even knowing he was dead. You travel to the edge of the kingdom to find your last family member and he was already murdered, you just missed him

[audreyhepburninblackandwhite]

Audrey Hepburn, in a Givenchy satin robe from Charade and a René Manciny pair of shoes, and her first husband Mel Ferrer at the Warner Brothers Burbank Studios during a break in the production of My Fair Lady in September 1963 Photography by Bob Willoughby