#it’s as if they don’t want to see Piltover and Zaun reconcile

[idkwhatimdoingbutslay]

Sorry my tags got long and don’t even cover everything in the post 🏃🏾‍♀️

OP articulated everything here so well, sorry my tags got long and don’t even cover everything in the post 🏃🏾‍♀️

@mdccanon I'm not sure what you are getting at. I never claimed that Mel was without flaws.

In fact, in my most recent post on her I specifically wrote:

Also, Mel doesn't have a conquered nation? Just because she is an exiled citizen of Noxus. Nor does Noxus own Piltover and Zaun at this point. And reading kid!Mel trying to come up with a justification to save the live of the captured girl as "Mel is promoting manipulation against her conquered nations", I'm sorry, that is a pretty messed up take on 1.) a young child 2.) who clearly didn't have any say or else her mother wouldn't have done the opposite of what her kid just asked her for 3.) IMO clearly motivated by compassion and not "aha, I'm the Moriaty level master mind at at age 13 already and I have deduced that sparing the life of the other girl will indeed be more effective in subjugating!".

I'm also not saying that Mel is not using sneaky tactics. I actually said that I don't think that in season 1 Mel had an arc about NOT being manipulative. I say this because Mel in season 1, to me, never had a "oh shit, that blew up in my face" moment, the way let's say Jayce has when his violence gets a kid killed.

If Mel is a major character in season 2, I wouldn't except her to be anti politics/anti manipulation at this point. Mel to me sees manipulation/politics as a tool.

IMO she could still have an arc in season 2 where she realizes those tools are bad, but that to me is the case because she did not have this arc in season 1.

To me Mel in season 1 gets puts into situations where she doesn't particularly need manipulation and she adapts to it. But at this point, if faced with a situation where manipulation is useful, from her point of view, why shouldn't she use it when she has found it useful for some circumstances in the past? Again, there was no big "aha" moment in the show where using politics blew up in her face.

I guess the closest could be that Jayce goes rogue and takes over the council in ways she didn't intend to, but she doesn't react on that by swearing off Jayce or swearing off politics. Instead she sticks with him and actually teams up with him/subsigns his cause.

In the future, she could turn away from it if she has a "blow up in your face moment" that makes her think that manipulation is immoral. Or she could have a moment where she becomes disillusioned by politics and wants blood instead. Point being, that didn't happen in season 1, so Mel's season 1 arc was not about learning that manipulation is bad.

To me the climax of Mel's storyline in season 1 was her confrontation with her mother, where she stands against her mother and defends Piltover to her, which leads over into her supporting that Piltover should give Zaun freedom. (I actually think that that is an actually poignant and real feeling story, that sometimes immigrants can have a more rosy and idealistic view on a place and be more starry eyed about how a place should live up to its potential and "what it says on the tin") Within this arc to me Mel has a moment of weakness in that she slides into fear/Noxian thinking about the weapons, but through exchanges with Jayce and Viktor and through coming face to face with her mom and being reminded of what she dislikes about her mom and Noxus, she jumped out of Noxian/pro violence thinking again and (back?) into idealism. I don't think that that says anything about her stance on manipulation/flattery.

Other arcs I can see for her is that she learns to warm up more to Jayce and that she shares Heimer's arc of "they all realize that they've been ignoring the undercity".

I guess it's feasible that she could have her "oh, right, manipulation is bad" arc in seaason 2, but considering that she isn't the most major character and considering the themes of the season, I would put my money that if she has an arc like this at all, it might be more about "she gets scared off idealism and back into violence" again, after her support of Zaunite freedom literally blew up in her face. So the lesson she could draw from that could be "idealism and peace is wrong". I'm not sure how that would circle back to politics/manipulation for now.

Again, I'm sure it will depend heavily on how large a role both Mel or her mother have next season. Maybe Mel will spend most of next season in a coma while her mom tears apart the city. Maybe Mel's mom will get murdered within the first episode by Jinx or Warwick. Maybe both of them will have only small roles. Maybe they will continue the dynamic of Ambessa being the challenge Mel's idealism or the reminder of what she doesn't want to be, or maybe Arcane will try some more sneaky fliparounds. The sky's the limit. But to me, in season 1, Mel the character, the "person" did not have an arc about how manipulation is bad.

As a character we see Mel use manipulation mostly in relation to the other council members. I actually don't think that she uses particularly with Jayce. She sees him, she likes him, she sponsors him, she sexually approaches him imo because she wants to combine the useful with the fun and because they live in a setting where they have no concept of sexual harassment laws. I think she invites him into "her world" by showing him how the council ticks because to her that is a really cool thing she is teaching him, something that will help him live up to his potential, something she genuinely doesn't see as bad, something that she finds useful and is sharing with him.

Jayce then has his own "student supercedes the master" moment when he does things at the council which Mel didn't count on. Mel then overall spends more time with people like Jayce and Viktor where she doesn't need manipulation (compared to the council) and hence she stays away from it mostly.

I think she show was intentionally playing with the idea that Mel COULD be trying to manipulate Jayce, but I also think that after dangling the idea the show also comes hard down on the answer being "actually no, she doesn't". Or at least not in the truly devious "Actually Mel is spying for Noxus and waiting to sell Piltover out kind of way" kind of way.

Arcane is very, very in tune with the League of Legends fanbase, this was very clear based on all the promo and interviews they were doing with streamers and lore fans when the show started. IMO they were very aware that when they dumped the first hints of Mel being Noxian (though Mel's painting and later though the promos that showed Ambessa's guards) this would raise certain expectations within the League fanbase. Because League fanbase is conditioned to see Noxus as a place of bad news, of violence and conquering and evil spy cults.

IF Mel for example was spying for Noxus or working for the Black Rose that would give her a motivation to want to seduce Jayce and install him in the council for more insidious reasons as opposed to "she thinks he's kind hot and he shows a lot of promise and she wants to make a name for herself within Piltover". But this does not happen. Mel lacks the truly mastermind motive for manipulating him.

Mel's scene with Ambessa is her equivalent of Silco's scene where he offers to take responsibility of Jinx's crime with Jayce and the scene where he rants to the Vander statue.

The show intentionally plays with the idea "does Silco actually care about Jinx or is he coldly using her as a tool". The scene with Jayce shows that to Silco Jinx isn't just a tool to be discareded, he at the very least feels loyalty to her. While the scene with the Vander statue shows that he's deeply emotionally affected. (with Silco you can still debate whether on the whole he stil made Jinx's life worse despite his genuine attachment to her, but imo you can no longer claim that he was just coldly, indifferently using her)

In Mel's scene with Ambessa, there are not witnesses that she could be trying to impress with her defense of Piltover. It the scene that shows that she's loyal to Piltover, not Noxus. Again, meaningful if like the other loreheads you were expecting her to have been a spy all along or a Black Rose member.

Arcane loves subverting certain expectations. Many youtubers have made long videos about it. IMO Mel is part of that tradition. "We'll make the League fans think she's a Black Rose spy or working for Swain, but nope, actually her big secret is that she's the peaceful Noxian".

(and generally: yes, even if manipulating and politicing isn't great, it is indeed better than slitting people's throat (this is indeed non negotiable, people who are being politiked at least have a chance to wise up to that and resist, people who are dead don't have that option) and yes, even if Piltover is a place of assholes, being loyal to it is indeed superior to being loyal to Noxus which is an even worse place of assholes)

[darkeyedjunco]

Another Arcane analysis! I can’t get this show out of my head.

I haven’t read or heard any analyses of this detail before, so I wanted to talk about the firelight bombs in Episode 7!

On my first watch, I thought it was pretty obvious that firelights were symbols of hope. They were associated with Ekko, who is one of the only characters in the show who is actively working towards a more peaceful, kinder future for the undercity. The firelights are also green, a color that represents vitality and life, and of course they are modelled after real-world fireflies that literally provide lights in the dark. So I had this association between firelights and hope cemented in my brain.

However this is all turned on its head in Episode 7, when Jinx makes fake bomb-firelights to blow up the enforcers on the bridge. Why did the show decide to subvert the firelight = hope symbol? I don’t think they did it *just* to shock us. I think it was a foreshadowing of the sisters’ relationship, and by extension the relationship between Piltover and its undercity.

Just before the firelight bombs go off, we see Vi splitting off with Caitlyn and Ekko to go find her sister: Vi still has hope that she can reach Powder. When the firelights explode on the bridge, with a sinking feeling in our stomachs we realize that Vi’s plan to reunite with Powder is ruined (yet again). The false firelights aren’t hopeful for Vi at all in the bridge scene.

While real firelights and Ekko still symbolize real hope, I think the *false* firelights here symbolize Vi’s *false* hope that she can go back to how things were with Powder. Until the season finale, I don’t think Vi completely lost hope that she and Powder could understand each other – but it’s pretty clear in the final scene of Episode 9 that Powder/Jinx and Vi won’t reconcile their differences and go back to how they used to be.

I think that the false firelights on the bridge in Episode 7 foreshadow the ending of the season by hinting at the futility in Vi’s attempts to bring Powder back. Jinx inspired an ultimately false hope in Vi, just as Jinx’s bombs *looked* like symbols of hope but were ultimately traps.

And of course, what applies to the relationship between Jinx and Vi also applies to the broader Piltover and Zaun! I think that the firelight-bombs also foreshadow the impending war between the two cities by showing that any hope the Vi, Cait, and Ekko had in preventing war was futile (for now at least! Who knows what Season 2 will bring!).