#from mel-loves-all

[carylerxsecretsanta]

Happy Holidays! @tigereyes45​

Have a blessed and Merry Christmas! I hope you like this first gift. Your Caryl Secret Santa. xoxo Mel ( @mel-loves-all )

[egophiliac]

:) hello! :D hope you have a nice day and absolutely do not think of the possibility of one of the last story cards being of silver! and that his groovy will very probably be crying!!! THERE'S SO MANY CRYING PEOPLE IN STORY CARDS LATELY!!! SPECIALLY LIGHT USERS!! I AM!!! SCARED!!!! bc so far we got Lilia and Sebek in the beginning book 7.... so at the end.... so we're missing story Silver... and Malleus is the one with less cards, so they might add one for him... but... the tears... ego.... THE TEARS!!!! EGOOOO!! (LOVE YOUR ART BTW EVERYTIME I GET A NOTIF FROM YOUR BLOG I RUN HERE TO SEE!)

(thank you! 💚💜💚)

YES I am ALSO like...90-95% convinced that we're going to be getting a story card for Silver once we wrap around back to diasomnia. 👀 especially because the way things are going, Silver will be the only character whose dream we haven't seen -- yet???? -- and that just. y'know. makes me wonder!

although I do think it would be VERY funny if he got a story card and the groovy was just "regular Silver except with one beautiful single crystal tear". this is actually a lot coming from him.

(he used up all his emotion yelling at a baby that one time, there's none left for a proper groovy-level cry.)

[animucrystal]

not sure if anyone on here has seen it yet but the chances of arospec / aromantic melinoe have grown exponentially large. honestly may be canon atp

((screenshot from: @/TheScruffyCat on twitter))

[arcanegifs]

[popomegranate]

This is as far into Caitlyn discourse as I want to go because I honestly don’t wanna debate about it

But anyway,

You can like Caitlyn and not defend her actions. You can be her biggest Stan and biggest fan and acknowledge that what she has done and is doing is wrong.

You can understand how they got to this point and what drove them to this place without excusing their worst actions.

Understanding the nuance and complexities of a character is one of my favorite parts of watching and analyzing the media I love and an important part of that is liking characters and not defending their worst actions. Especially when their actions have very evident parallels to our real world.

And of course you can believe and hope for their redemption.

In my opinion the best way to love a character is by acknowledging their wrong doings and wanting them to own up to their mistakes and do better. Because that’s human.

[teleportationmagic]

The thing about Jayce and Mel is that like. She does not view him as an investment. That is just certifiably false. You have to skip over all her scenes to believe that.

In the beginning she does! She absolutely does! She conceives of their relationship as a business one - where she makes profit off his inventions, and he profits from her business and political acumen, both monetarily and powerwise. And overall, she believes she's fulfilled her half of the bargain.

It's only when he comes back to her after Viktor gets sick that she realizes he believes this is something deeper. And it's notable that she responds to that emotion - she opens up about herself too, comforts him, and expresses real emotionality about it. It's then that we see his ideals start to influence her - especially reawakening in her a desire for nonviolence.

Wanting to do things peacefully is something that's been with her since she was a child. It is what guides her away from Noxus, because her pacifism just does not fit there. It's why she loved Piltover so - they aren't a violent expansionist empire, which is a really low bar, but that's what she's grown up in.

She never finds the violence in Zaun, because she never goes looking for it. This is her fault, and her flaw, let me make that clear. She has some of the most power in the city, and should know about what kind of violence is holding up, and work to resolve it, truly. But she doesn't, because she's focused on her own exploits, and has so insulated herself away from the class struggle that it does not register for her until it grows to violence.

And then, once that violence comes, she maintains that pacifism with an iron grip, more than Jayce himself. It is Jayce who constructs (almost) all the HexTech weapons that are used in the Undercity, in Caitlyn's police squadron. He betrays the oaths that he's made to his partner, where Mel keeps the promise she's made to her's. She is the only politician left to try to tamp down on the worst of Ambessa's instincts, and her removal from Piltover is what marks it's descent into militarism.

She is ultimately a complicated woman, with a bunch of interesting relationships to Piltover and Zaun. I think you can divide Piltover as a city neatly between her, Jayce, and Caitlyn - each of them standing for some of Piltover's best instincts, and some of its worst.

[autumnoakes]

okay but going back to zagreus and melinoë for a second... i think when they meet they're going to have a LOT to work on with each other if they're going to get along. zagreus likes to push boundaries and he doesn't like leaving things unresolved if there's something he can do about it and melinoë is a LOT like hades in so many ways (temperment and sometimes her tone in particular). they're going to get on each others' nerves. they're going to drive each other up the wall. they're going to need time to get to know each other and understand each other and they might not get the chance to during hades 2 (what with mel's task seeming pretty nonstop. i know she's a goddess but girl don't you get tired???).

[st4rshiptr00per]

if i dont draw a funny littel picture of six every day ill pass away….

[valzhangism]

i know i said i was happy about how mel's story went, but the more i think about it the less i'm sure about that. this is very much connected to how the themes of classism and wealth disappeared in s2, but mel in the beginning was the epitome of piltover. she wanted to advance piltover to prove herself to her mother. to "put piltover—" and by extension herself, "—on the map."

she wanted wealth just to have it. and i'm not blaming her for anything that happened, especially with hextech! she, just like jayce and viktor, could not have known what it would lead to. i mean yeah heimerdinger said so but who the hell listens to heimerdinger? but anyway i think mel changed throughout s1, much in thanks to jayce. by the end she's become more cognisant of the mistreatment of zaunites. she's the first to vote for their peace. she was a good person all along but now she knows how to act on it. it's also seen more in s2 act 1. when she covers her painting with gold, it's symbolic—she won't act according to what her mother might think. she won't let her desire for approval dictate her anymore.

so somehow i wish those themes were. continued, somehow? like again they were dropped not just with mel but the whole show and it makes her story a off to me. there's no meaningful commentary on war or classism or how her ideology stands opposite to her mother's. like some people have said, it feels like she doesn't have much agency, even if she is really cool. and that to me is a shame because agency felt like her thing. "to shape your own destiny" as she says to jayce in s1. i know her collaborating with the black rose (but not fully joining them) and learning magic is supposed to represent becoming independent from her mother, taking her own path, but some other aspects of her character were thrown away... the more i think about it the more i'm thinking they kind of #girlboss-ed her a little bit. maybe to sell another champion. i can't help but feel like even though i enjoyed seeing her on screen, the payoff didn't feel proportionally satisfying compared to her setup in s1.

[beastking-golion]

Viktor became god, lost his boytoy and realized “this fucking sucks actually” and restarted everything

[carylerxsecretsanta]

I really enjoyed using your favorite color purple as accents and added your favorite characters @tigereyes45

Your Caryl Secret Santa. xoxo Mel ( @mel-loves-all )

[fauvester]

chains of love got a hold on me..

[melit0n]

Hands down, Give is one of Sleep Token's yearn-iest songs. Ever. It's not on par with TLYW, Jaws etc. (because that's a whole different layer of Sleep Token's yearning onion), but it's got a kick to it.

When I say that song is the epitome of desperate, I mean it.

Without thinking about it too much, the first time I listened to it my first thoughts were 'ah, okay, wanting to give all for your lover and be able to trust them, got it', but then I thought about it a bit more.

Like with all Sleep Token songs, it has a bit of an eerie undertone, which borders on slightly obsessive, depending on who you're talking to, with the lyrics. We have "I picture you when you are all alone", "I am the shadow, you're a passenger", "I'll be the limit of your light again" and, of course, "give me all that you can give" with "and if you want to give me anything, then give (give in again)".

Vessel is describing himself as literal darkness; he's a shadow in the gloom and whoever this is is a star glowing in the darkness. A light he aims to dampen because he wants a taste of that light. A taste of them.

However, it's this desperation for attention that gets me. "Give me all that you can give" is an easy example; he's desperately giving all he can possibly give in hopes of getting the same, or more, back. It's repeated over and over, half begging half demanding with soft dulcet tones and promises that he'll be watching for their enemies, to let them know that they contend with him etc.

Give becomes this two-faced thing of someone giving with all their might to someone who is afraid to trust, bringing up empathy from us, and someone who will not accept anything except everything. It's this sexually charged fight between who is a victim (or if there really is one here) and who is the abuser.

Further, to "give in" is to 'cease fighting or arguing; admitting defeat.' It's something primal and angry hidden under, or rather, mixed with passion, and it's incredibly well hidden.

[one-sleepy-dragon]

y'know what, i've had it. from now on, every arcane character who doesn't have an explicit love interest in the show is aro, ace, or aroace.

viktor? aroace.

sevika? aro lesbian.

ambessa? aro bisexual.

jinx and ekko? demi aces, both of them.

silco? heimerdinger? grayson? aroace, the whole lot. jayce and mel are straight, cait and vi are lesbians, everyone else is aro, ace, or both. end of story.

[jamethinks]

One of my favourite headcanons (that I came up with, of course) is that not only is Melinda a good cook but she also loves cooking. Food is her love language, she is always cooking up a storm.

It's obviously based on her making Damian breakfast after the bus incident and now we have additional lore of Jeeves suggesting she cooks for him again. Bit the way I see it is that she didn't just do it to be nice she did it to provide him with a sense of comfort and an attempt to bond with him (even if she dashed immediately).

In the early days of her marriage, before tragedy (Damian) struck, she used to cook for Donovan all the time. At first, he would tell her not to, and she should focus on other stuff, but he actually really enjoyed her cooking and preferred it over all the top chefs in the world. He would actually travel for hours to get home and eat her food. He was really stubborn though and refuse to just flat out ask her to cook but she knew. Then he got the lobotomy (Damian)...

And when they were babies, she would cook everything the boys. Every meal they ate was hand-made by her. Demetrius actually got sick when he had to start eating the maids cooking and refused to eat the food provided by the dorm. She stopped doing it while Damian was fairly young, so he doesn't remember it much. Nowadays, she mostly makes desserts and pastries and give it to Jeeves to deliver to them and tell him not to say she made them because she's scared the boys would come looking for more. Only Demetrius can tell the difference. Damian, the dumbass would go home and compliment the chef for the amazing cookies he sent, and he would just be like yeah sure lil dude.

And I can imagine Yor finding this out. She finds a distressed Melinda cooking up a storm and is just in awe like this what she meant when she said she was the first lady. Then melinda gets all shy and flustered because she doesn't really think if her cooking skills are as anything special. When she first hot married, it was essentially the only thing she could do for Donovan, and it made her feel worthless and would even tell herself he was only eating to humor her. But then Yor just goes ballistic over her food because it's just so damn good and is begging her for lessons. Of course Yor Can't Cook Forger just fucks everything up and it scares Melinda but also comforts her as she realises maybe she does has a talent or two. Or maybe Yor is just a really really bad cook.

[sophsun1]

Queer as Folk – 2.16: You Say It's Your Birthday! I Couldn't Care Less!