#My ranting discourse on this character I've written for 10 years

[xshingie]

Roundup of my Writings, etc.

About: So...I revived my 10 year old fangirl tumblr blog as a corner to vomit my Castlevania Nocturne feelings. I'm so fucking embarrassed to find out people went through my blog lol, so I guess I should tidy up around here bc I have followers now I guess oop

I. Published Written Works:

This Moment Between Us (Annette-focused)

The Distance Between Us (Richter-focused)

Yours Truly (Annette/Edouard, Dual POV)

The Incredibly Infamous, and Utterly Incorrigible Belmont Reputation (Richter/Annette, Richter-focused)

Holding on and Letting Go (Richter/Annette, Edouard/Annette)

II. Character Analysis/Essays:

Edouard Character Profile and Analysis: A deep dive into the life Edouard might have lived, in context of historical Saint Domingue's theatre culture and society

Richter Character Profile and Analysis: The deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of an archetype of a hero.

A Rant on Annette's Inclusion in Castlevania Nocturne: How Annette is best girl, but also, a very long rant about the discourse surrounding black female characters/representation in historical fantasy setting

Nonsensical headcanons, ramblings:

"Haitian Vodou: Life and Survival" - How Cecile's lesson to Annette embodies the tenet, spirit, philosophy of Vodou

Haitian Maroonage - Saint Domingue Population Demographics

Annette/Edouard: thematic writing inspirations, on headcanons on the "ship" (i.e., whether it was romantic or platonic), green scarf

Exploring the Narrative Significance of Edouard's Blue Eyes

Continuing Annette's personal character arc and growth and how it relates to Richter

But seriously, a huge thank you to anybody who has taken the time out of their day to read my nonsense, I'm so grateful. All this time I've been pretty lonely rambling to myself for the most part. (╥﹏╥)

... post to be updated with more to come, hopefully! Thanks for stopping by!

Last Updated: February 3rd, 2025

[indyflanery]

1, 3 and 11 :)

As usual, it got lengthy when I was given a chance to explain Indy's background. But I welcome all questions even without prompts!

Also with Indy 5 coming out, I retain my dibs on RPing this version of the Indiana Jones character, as I haven't seen anyone else write it as long as I have on this hellsite. Lol

1. What made you pick up this character?

It was a no brainer. I've been watching Indiana Jones basically since it originally released. It's my go-to comfort movie series. I watched the TV show when it aired, or at least I have vague memories of watching it! Any archaeologist who says they didn't want to be Indiana Jones when they grew up is a liar, and I stand by that.

When I first picked up RP with then-friends as it developed from a side AU that started from The Boondock Saints, the Sean Patrick Flanery character for the group that I picked had to be Young Indy. Plus, I was still in grad school for archaeology at the time. It definitely wasn't a stretch and I have not regretted writing him.

3. What’s the best thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.?

There's too many good things about the movies/series/character. It's hard to decide. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles really tried to go for that exciting, educational aspect for its audience, however outrageous of a time frame for all his adventures. Not to mention, Lucas developed a lot of Skywalker Sound's digital editing with this show.

I think the best thing is between the show and the supplemental novels, they tried to fill in the gaps that hadn't previously been fleshed out for Indy's life, like details on his mother, the shitty relationship with his father mentioned in Crusade, and the backstory of the search for the diamond shown at the start of Temple. Fuck, Harrison Ford was actually in an episode! Thankfully, they confirmed the show as canon in the fourth shan't be named movie (the Pancho Villa reference). Too bad they canceled it before young Indy could first meet Marion Ravenwood and Rene Belloq.

Problem being, however, is that a lot of people just getting into the Indiana Jones world don't know about the novels/TV show, so there's crazy ass postulations out there that makes me go, 'No, they answered that already!'

11. Are there some things you dislike about how the show/series/etc. portray the character you have picked up? If so, what?

Hmm...I mean the given answer is that he's a terrible archaeologist and so many people are like 'Concept: Indiana Jones but he returns things to museums!' You can't actually divorce the context of the time the movies and the TV show takes place in from the character's actions. Archaeology in the early 1900s was a horrible, unethical discipline and that's just who Indy was - at that time there was nothing wrong with his actions.

Otherwise, I think things that irked me a little were some episodes like the one that takes place during the 1916 Irish Rebellion with vague hints of depth to Indy's character that in today's world could have been explored in different ways (i.e., sexual tension with another male character because a few scenes came across as very loaded). He was also a bit overly naive and they probably could have chipped away harder at the naivety once he experienced the Somme.

Also, just the sheer amount of shit he did in his life - not just as a young adult, but also as an adult. He'd have no time to do anything else with the small gaps in between adventures.

[moonsdancer]

This is a good question @fleursdusang. I've done a lot of thinking about this with the other eight or so MelJay shippers I communicate with on Discord 😭 , and we'd long ago agreed that MelJay is an ironic rare-pair. But more on that below.

@arcane-rarepair-week has done a great write-up of what "constitutes" a rare pair in fandom, and they've broken it down here: (they do include MelJay on their list). Fandom Wiktionary describes it as:

A ship that generally receives little attention from fans and has few associated fanworks.

Ultimately, a ship is a rare pair based on output / engagement and not whether it's canon or not. Generally, the most "fair" metric to use is ao3 (although in some cases, it becomes apparent looking at fanart, or fan discourse, and other creative outputs what's what). MelJay has the unique 'distinction' of being one of the least supported / celebrated / whatever canon ships in maybe the history of any fandom. I ran the numbers, and it's pretty dire, just a quick summary from Sunday when I did this exercise to ask:

Is MelJay a "rare pair"?

based on ao3, only -

There were 8568 fanworks dedicated to Arcane on ao3. Of those fanworks, in terms of popularty by tag (including explicitly romantic and ships defined by '&' which are sometimes still romantic but not always), MelJay doesn't even appear in the top ten or fifteen.

Filtering out some of the "&" pairings allowed MelJay to edge its way in at about no. 9 or 10 with 213 stories.

Of those 213 stories: 116 were JayVik stories that weren't about MelJay. A good majority were often about breaking MelJay up or killing off Mel or whatever other narrative device in order to tell a story about JayVik. 74 of those are Violyn stories that tag MelJay despite it not being a factor in said story (I assume they do so because it's a canon ship, so folks just toss it in there). 51 of those were MelJayVik stories.

Once you filter those out, we come to 56 overall stories tagged MelJay. Of those 56, roughly 17 were actually about viktor with someone i.e. viktor / you or viktor / reader or viktor / original character. we can, if we're generous, pretend that about a third of those are as much about meljay as they are about viktor and whoever else, but even that would be a bit of a lie.

Once you filter those out, we were left with about 46 stories. And even in those, a quick review of the content showed some of them weren't even about MelJay.

A weird and non-self-aggrandizing fact that was pointed out to me today - just stating it to show the reality of things - I've written 15 of those stories, so that's about a third of stories, that are explicitly and materially in terms of the content about Mel Medarda and Jayce Talis in a relationship of some kind, were written by one person. That's weird, for the only confirmed, together, onscreen, canon romantic ship - but that's the reality.

ANYWAY.

The above rambling answer to your comment from this post is really my way of just reflecting on all this for my own reasons and opening the discussion which we'll all probably only have in an honest way in a few years across fandom about this and not to rant at you in anyway. Because the treatment of / reception / backlash (in many ways especially in the first few months) to MelJay is a bit weird. That's the word I'll use so I don't use different words that piss folks off.

This was a bit of a Ted Talk, sorry! 😂✨

ETA: Because someone did mention this, I know the '&' tag is generally used for platonic or familial relationships. But I notice people in a lot of cases in this fandom use it interchangeably with the bigger ships. May not always be the case. But either way, the situation for MelJay is dire. And those '&' ships don't really detract from that conclusion.