#save me Mel medarda

[melatonindeficient]

live laugh love mel

"Mel manipulated jayce" yeah you fucker she's a politician.

Mel isn't telling people what to or what not to think or convincing them to make drastic changes to their lives or personalities in order to bend them to her will. She just knew how to appeal to certain interests in order to achieve a goal. Jayce is an honest and sincere person—say what you want about her, but she was honest and sincere to him as well.

Not only that but she was a politician brought up by a narcissist who quite apparently skewed her perception of what relationships should look like so can we be so fucking for real.

Mel saw an opportunity for some sort of positive change and improvement and took it, and along the way she softened and began to actually love jayce. She didn't have to hold on to him any longer than season one. Hell, as smart as she is if she really didn't want to embark on a romantic relationship with him, she probably wouldn't have had to. And dude, jayce talis might be naïve but he also performed illegal operations in his apartment and performed immense scientific feats by the skin of his teeth. It's not like he just sat there without a thought in his head while him and mel first interacted.

And it never sat right with me that one can be so quick to call Mel a manipulator for wanting to use Jayce's knowledge to create hextech weapons while ignoring that that logic makes Viktor a manipulator in joining forces with Jayce to advance his own search for personal perfectability. I mean, they're parallels for a reason. And it doesn't seem so at first--because they worked as partners in the lab, but Viktor knew he couldn't do that without what Jayce knew, and he couldn't make the most of what Jayce knew without getting close--but Jayce and Viktor's lofty ideals of progress prove that they are flawed once the two of them begin to start working separately for different goals (as Jayce creates a hextech weapon and Viktor insists they must stop).

And in the end, who's the one who uses Jayce's knowledge for worse rather than better? Vik.

In addition, I saw a comment somewhere saying that when she met Ambessa again (in season 1) she realised that she didn't want to continue the cycle of transactional, manipulative relationships which her mother started and began to try and change in the way she viewed relationships, and in turn in the way she loved, and that's so fucking true like holy shit.

Jinx's projection of Silco says that "the cycle only ends when you walk away" at the very end of season 2, but Mel breaks her cycle far before she has her final encounter with her mother in episode nine of season two. No, Mel broke her cycle when she realized she didn't want to do to her great love what her mother did to her. When Ambessa tried to sink her teeth into Jayce.

(Meljay is my endgame I scream as they drag me to my enclosure)

[proxythe]

two wolves cuddling 🐺🌞

[stealingpotatoes]

Mel Medarda

you agree

I DO AGREE!!! I AGREE WHOLEHEARTEDLY!!!! mel makes me go CRAZY both bc her character/story is so incredible and also bc like... those arcane modellers knew what they were doing ok--

[guardianbee]

Hi everyone I came back because Arcane S2 treated my girls Mel & Sky like absolute GARBAGE and then Ekko is rewarded with absolutely NOTHING for saving everyone from themselves and I'm here to reblog shit AND talk shit about it.

I mean, I cannot BELIEVE the disposable black girlfriend trope was used TWICE in a show within TWO episodes of one another, oh my GOD. I cannot BELIEVE they had Jayce verbatim spew out the same anti-Mel talking points this fandom has had since Season 1 Act 1 Episode 1. I cannot BELIEVE they had Sky comfort Vik the same way Mel comforted Jayce in S1, had her be his emotional rock through all his changes with the hexcore only for him to kill her a SECOND TIME. I cannot BELIEVE how little screentime Ekko had this season given how pivotal he is to Jinx and Vi's backstories AND his overall importance to the main plotline (which was totally sidelined in the last act, wtf).

Like what the fuck black characters can't have anything lol, lmao even.

[miraofhearts2point0]

i still havent processed how insane ep5 is.

like wdym Caitlyn frees Vi from the prison she's been in for YEARS. wdym Jinx almost beats Vi's high score. wdym Vi calls Caitlyn hot. wdym Caitlyn agrees to pretend to work in the brothel. wdym SEVIKA is a regular at said brothel (!!!!!!!!) wdym Jayce and Mel's sex scene is framed as Jayce cheating on Viktor. wdym we get the Jinx baptism scene. wdym Imagine Dragons is a canonical band in the Arcane universe. wdym Sevika's cards forshadowed Viktor's transformation. wdym Viktor is dying and again, is framed like Jayce cheated on him. wdym Sevika/Vi fight (butches save me save me butch lesbians). wdym Sevika hip reveal. WDYM CAITLYN SAVED VI A SECOND TIME.

[mourn2]

Uhh so like. I've almost forgotten how to use this app but many things have happened and I finished arcane when the finale dropped. Is this anything. + More under the cut

[maneskinwh0re]

me anytime someone says “hear me out” over arcane women:

it’s like a cis straight white man saying “hear me out” over megan fox

[cvntroach5000]

i love mel so fucking much but queen why are you wearing a fucking curtain to the battlefield

[notnotravenpond]

hi

Mel Medarda

[artificialcaretaker]

-Don’t get lost in heaven-

[Haven’t cleaned up a traditional peace in a while, so this was a real nice throwback for me!!

GOD. Mel my BELOVED. I feel so bad for my wife bro she just keeps going through it. Y’know what I’m thinking of, though? She is just. SO much more emotionally mature than everyone else. Like, barely anybody in this series can actually handle grief without doing something that fucks at least a couple people over!! Everyone else loses someone and decided to blow shit up about it!! Only other character I can think of who’s gone through significant loss and STILL hasn’t lost it is Ekko, probably. Maybe it’s just the black people, maybe we’re all just really calm and composed!! Or maybe we intentionally tone down our emotional reactions in order to still be respected because even the smallest slip up knocks you RIGHT down to the Stereotype Zone with the people around you. Idk if real world racism exists in LoL it’s prolly not that lmao.

But either way, Mel’s holding a lotta emotions back, and while I sincerely doubt she’s gonna start killing people about it like everyone else I DO hope she finds SOME way to truly and finally express all of it. I WOULD be like “Oh she’ll talk to Jayce and it’ll be a beautiful moment showing their mutual love and support for each other dawwwwww” but no he’s going insane and killing their boyfriend. And their boyfriend developed a messiah complex and became a cult leader. Oh and also her buddy-in-law became a dictator with her MOM. GOD she’s gonna be so pissed when she gets back 😔😔😔

[survivalove]

everyday i log on here to see a post that makes me happy jayce is sky dust (no pun intended) and will never be in any canon media with mel again 🥰

[pinkysberg]

the flash art for mel's arcane inspired league skin is stunning!

WHO THAT IN THE BAAAACK

in mel medarda's league of legends gameplay voicelines, if she kills jayce she'll say "another love torn away"

and here i sit, rly hyperfocusing on the word another. what love could she have lost? the one person that mel laments over the loss of (that isn't of familial relation to her) is elora.

in this essay i will-

[neo--queen--serenity]

I think it was a very fascinating and deliberate choice on the creators’ part to give the two people closest to Jayce—Viktor and Mel—the same imagery that evokes the mystery mage who helped Jayce when he was a child.

We see this visual callback first in Viktor, in Act I:

This makes sense, of course, once we know the mystery mage is Viktor—albeit a future version of himself. But what struck me is the fact that they also gave Mel Medarda the same treatment.

When Jayce first sees her after the awakening of her magic, he sees that image—a being whose mere presence caused his weapon to light up in recognition, paired with a robe covering their identity—and I think there’s a great possibility that he asked himself if this was the one; the mage who saved him when he was young.

Once she reveals herself, he visibly relaxes, and they reconnect. But the physical change in her is clear in her body language. She now moves like the mage in Jayce’s memory. She hides her face in her hood often, something she never used to do before. And her mannerisms are slightly different, which could easily be accounted for due to her not being used to the magic now alive in her body. But it’s the change itself that makes the viewer do a double-take.

It could just be that Mel and Viktor are the only mages we see up close in the series. Perhaps it is simply what happens when magic transforms their wielder in subtle, physical ways.

But I think the parallel holds narrative weight as well. The two people with the most affection and influence over Jayce both end up touched by the Arcane in ways that are both transformative and involuntary. The are changed after their bodies become vessels of magic.

I think that’s why the creators gave both Mel and Viktor the same iconography that would invoke a clear memory from Jayce’s childhood as the symbol that started him on the path to magic.

Viktor actually was the mystery mage from Jayce’s memory, and after the finale, the viewer knows why. But I think, implicitly, the point was that either one of them could have been.

[melmedarda]

"I carried him in my belly, nursed him from my bosom. He was all the sweetness in my heart. For that, they took him, carved into me a wound that will never close. I pray you never suffer the agony of being forced to forsake one child to save another."

⸻ MEL & AMBESSA MEDARDA, Arcane Season 2

[iminyourwallsbabe]

I have more Meljayvik thoughts

Okay first and foremost, Jayce takes care of both Viktor and Mel. Idk where this idea came from that he doesn't but *insert loud incorrect buzzer*

Like we're talking about a guy who basically screwed over all of humanity so his gay situationship could live a little longer. The same guy who, as a child, tried to shield his mother from the freezing fucking cold. Come on now.

Let me break down just how dedicated I think he is to this

So when it comes to Mel, she's a busy woman, girlbossing takes a lot of energy out of her. Sometimes, she'll fall asleep without wrapping her hair up. No scarves, no bonnets, nothing. So he went out of his way to not only buy her satin sheets to counteract it, but he will deadass go in and put the bonnet her himself. Does he always manage to do this without waking her up? No, but she appreciates the effort. And in that same vein, he also learned how to do her hair so she wouldn't have to keep doing it herself. If she wants ankle length 613 goddess braids he will sit there for the hours it'll take to do that I'm so serious. She'd never ask for that but again, it's the thought that counts.

And ALSO. When her social battery runs out at the end of the day, nobody's allowed to speak to her unless she wants them to. "Councilor Medarda-" NO. SHUT UP. SHE DOESN'T WANNA HEAR IT. SAVE IT FOR TOMORROW. GO AWAY. He will simply not allow it. Shit, he won't even talk if she doesn't want him to (usually she likes to hear him speak though, it's comforting).

Then there's Viktor, who requires a hell of a lot more maintenance even though he can handle most of it himself. Bro will forget to eat, sleep, drink, he'd forget to breathe if that was something he could stop doing for a long period of time without dying. Jayce will come in every now and then and give him at least a snack or something. Or, he'll just drag him out of the lab and forcibly take care of him. What's he gonna do? Stop him? Bffr. Get loved, bitch. He'll take his cane if he has to. And if he happens to fall asleep in the lab, he'll take him to bed or put a blanket over him at least. He knows how the cold makes his pain worse and would rather him be warm. That being said, his room is heated and stops at a specific temperature. Viktor was actually very impressed when he realized he did that and wondered why he never thought of it.

Anyway long story short he loves them and I can confirm that all of this is canon because the creator of Arcane, Mr. John Arcane himself, came to my house to tell me

[nualaofthefaerie]

The subtle notion that it was SKY AND MEL's joint effort that saved Jayce's life is insane.

FIRST OFF, re-watch that scene yourself. I'm not here to argue, it's a theory and it's something that made a big impression on me. + i made my own gifs for this.

When Viktor chokes Jayce with the "unfortunate" realisation that he is in the way of the glorious evolution, he gets distracted as seen here 👇 Something gets his attention enough to break away from looking at Jayce:

My theory is that the glowing orb that distracts him is Sky protesting. We see during episode 8 that whatever she is, she disagrees with the path of violence Viktor embarks on. The light is blues and purples which are Sky's colors in the arcane. Viktor's are this greens and blues as seen above, but Sky's always have purple or some red in it. (The gif below is a soft merge of Sky in the episode and the orb that distracts Viktor).

Viktor's reaction 👇 comes from his disbelief that there is still something he can't control in the Arcane - Sky, his own humanity. It would never allow him to hurt Jayce the way he is choking him basically to death. My reading is Sky (his HUMANITY) trying to convince him to let go, to re-consider. And you can see the realisation and softening of his gaze. Like he was considering whatever she was whispering in his ear.

By that time Jayce is kind of a goner.

And then Mel activated and Viktor locked back in with the speed of evil light (which apparently he is greatly offended by, like sir, you're killing one of your lovers over here, what did you expect) it gives Mel enough time to gather herself and react physically.

And even if she can't control her strength yet and it hurts her, she's absolutely giving her all to shake Viktor and save Jayce. (Something completely lost in the whole 'Meljay is a manipulation ship'. I'll tell you this much, Mel Medarda always gave 110% for Jayce Talis' dreams and safety, good investment or not)

Anyways, the point is that Sky's protesting was enough to distract Viktor emotionally, so Mel can shake the marionette physically.

Girls in STEM uniting to save 1/4th of their weirdly insane polycule because one full half has gone insane in the Arcane (hint: it's none of the girls, Melsky remain level headed queens).

But all that to say that Viktor forces Sky away AFTER that fight. He cannot afford to let her keep him human. If JAYCE, Vitkor's own other half, and Mel look like they have given up on him, what is the point of fighting for a lost cause. He rather do it by himself and reach the final Glorious Evolution.