#mel 'jayce you don't know war. i do.' medarda

[tacticalgrandma]

Looking in the Mel Medarda tag & seeing “Mel represents privilege & Piltover & [doesn’t actually say slut but] while Viktor represents Goodness & Virtue” takes & knowing I’m not going to be physically safe on this site when s2 comes out

[lullabyes22-blog]

Mal de Mer - Ch: 9 - Melike

Summary:

A high-seas honeymoon. Two adversaries, bound by matrimony. A future full of peril and possibility. And a word that neither enjoys adding to their lexicon: Compromise.

War was simpler business…

Part of the ‘Forward But Never Forget/XOXO’ AU. Can be read as a standalone series.

Thank you for the graphics @lipsticksandmolotovs<3

Mal de Mer on AO3

Mal de Mer on FFnet

Snippet:

Peace? he scoffed. You mean the bastard's blackmailed you.

There is no blackmail, Mel said, with a touch of steel. We've both agreed to this. I know you find him disagreeable. I know he's the last person you'd want to ally with. But if you'd look beyond the past, and focus on the present, you'd see how much good can come of this partnership.

Jayce shook his head. You're talking like this is a business merger, Mel. It's not. It's your life. And you'll throw it away, for the sake of a lie?

A lie?

Yes! You think, by pretending it's for the good of the city, I'll believe it's worth the price? That I'll let you walk down the aisle, and be married, to a man who's done nothing but spread poison everywhere?

Against her will, Mel felt a flash of anger. I'll remind you, Jayce, that I belong to neither you, nor him. If I walk down that aisle, it's because I choose to.

Jayce flinched, but held her gaze. I don't expect you to belong to me. But I do expect the truth.

That, you already have, Mel said, and her voice held a quiet conviction. I chose this, Jayce. I chose him. I'm going to make it work.

At the cost of your happiness? Softer, more ragged. At the cost of love?

Mel didn't falter. But she was aware of the wedding ring, heavy on her finger. Silco had presented it last night: a band of twenty-four carat gold, inlaid with a square-cut emerald, and flanked by twin rows of baguette diamonds. On one side, the Medarda crest; on the other, Zaun's chem-shield. 

The symbolism was plain. Not a shackle, but a pledge of fealty, freely given.

[cherryblossomshadow]

I posted 1,775 times in 2022

That's 459 more posts than 2021!

142 posts created (8%)

1,633 posts reblogged (92%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@takiki16

@castiellesbian

@whetstonefires

@cherryblossomshadow

@suibianworks

I tagged 1,775 of my posts in 2022

#star wars - 375 posts

#i ramble in the tags - 294 posts

#i speak - 270 posts

#retag - 256 posts

#i copy tags - 253 posts

#i post - 174 posts

#kenobi series - 146 posts

#funny - 119 posts

#kenobi spoilers - 100 posts

#character analysis - 98 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#when you see a character treated to an act of love or service and then they pay it forward and you can see how much that meant to them?

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Subverted Character Expectations

Viktor was introduced as feeling stifled by Heimerdinger and wanting to make scientific discoveries. “Do you think it was my life’s ambition to be an assistant?” Viktor watched his friend gain popularity, power, and a new relationship, even as Viktor’s own health deteriorated rapidly. Viktor had every right to feel jealous. But he never was.

Mel Medarda was introduced as a master manipulator. She steered the council meeting with a deft hand and openly desired more. Her family legacy of wealth and her desire to match that was one of the first things we learned about her. Honestly, I was ready to stan her as a problematic fave. I thought I knew which pitfalls her character would fall into. But she didn’t! She pursued peace! She was able to selflessly* sponsor him into the highest position in their city, without becoming subsumed into Jayce’s goals. Yet she also had no intention to use him to further her own goals. *Yes, I said selflessly, because honestly, I don’t know what she gained out of this. I know this is not necessarily the best scenario for Piltover’s citizens or even Jayce himself. But she didn’t do it for herself. I can only assume that because her family dealt in power, that helping Jayce accumulate power was something of a selfless gift from her to the boy she’s crushing on. Because who wouldn’t want power? Certainly not a Medarda.

Professor Heimerdinger was introduced as an archetype of the Old and Wise mentor. But he’s not in tune with the younger generations. He’s no Uncle Iroh or Mr Miyagi, with exactly the right nugget of wisdom for his padawan exactly when they need it most. When he explains his concerns about the arcane, he immediately offers his go-to solution ⁠— to wait. And he doesn’t take into account how maddening that feels to humans with a considerably shorter lifespan than him (especially when one of them is terminally ill). Which gets him overthrown in an absolutely believable way.

Silco was introduced as a two-dimentional, cookie-cutter villain in Act 1. His motivations were straightforward ⁠— revenge and revolution. But his relationship with Jinx really pulled him into three-dimensional space. Jinx was not just a vehicle through which to see Silco’s nicer tendencies; she was the reason he had any. And his struggle to gain independence for Zaun was that much more interesting when it caused conflict for him due to his valuing Jinx’s wellbeing (or what he saw as her wellbeing).

This is a show based on a video game! I was not expecting it to be even a little good, not to mention THIS good! I was absolutely expecting cookie-cutter characters and a million references to things I would have no way of understanding.

111 notes - Posted January 20, 2022

#4

See the full post

170 notes - Posted June 17, 2022

#3

What gets me about the SNL Try Guys video is their ignorance of context.

SNL ... honey ... that video was not for you.

You don't care about the Try Guys, and you don't have to. But that video was made for their fans, for the people who are already invested in them. You don't understand why they're upset about this abuse of power sorry breach of trust sorry "consensual kiss" so instead you made fun of men showing emotions and holding each other accountable. Look, I know there are worse situations, as you so bluntly pointed out. But that doesn't mean the Try Guys shouldn't have taken it seriously. That doesn't mean that there aren't consequences, that there aren't lives overturned (like the woman whom you dismissively called a Food Baby throughout your video)

275 notes - Posted October 13, 2022

#2

Finn's Lighter

Okay, so this detail had me howling with delight, and it’s not even that subtle. But the lighter?

How Sevika accepted Finn's deal by letting him light her cigar?

See the full post

276 notes - Posted January 16, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Soldier Boy: I always wanted kids so I could do it better than my father

Also Soldier Boy, seconds after seeing his son for the second time: You're a fucking disappointment

5,971 notes - Posted July 8, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[moonsdancer]

—your brother's gone | mel, kino, ambessa & grief

For a character who doesn't even appear onscreen in the flesh, is only mentioned 2.5x in dialogue, and is, in fact, deceased in the current timeline on the show, Kino Medarda has a pretty profound impact that I had to write about it (some more, since I find excuses to write about him already).

our first mention of him

is in episode eight, mel's nightmare-memory prologue:

Kino says war is a failure of statecraft—young Mel who's no more than twelve years old.

That one line is enough to help us understand almost everything Mel's been doing since the show began, and what comes after only reinforces that. We also see how much she admires, maybe even idolizes her big brother, and takes his wisdom and lessons as truth. We can safely assume that at some point between that nightmare and the present, that Kino eventually did become more of an embodiment of everything expected of Medarda heirs—otherwise, he would've been banished along with his sister. Such is often the plight of eldest siblings.

how much hearing about his death impacts mel.

From the moment Ambessa looks at her with a crushed expression because she's dreading having to tell Mel this news - a first indication that all the brash insensitive talk hides a mother who does care for her daughter, even if it's not in the healthiest ways at times - we start to see shades of Mel we haven't really seen before, not like this. You can see the shock and dawning grief on Mel's face. In the second row image, you can see her face half crumpling as if to cry but she quickly marshals herself and hides behind her righteous fury at Ambessa angling for weapons a few seconds later.

Throughout Vi and Caitlyn's petition before the council Mel's really subdued. In a way that's really noticeable if you watch her closely, which I do. She still holds the tether on herself though and focuses on the task at hand but she’s not herself. She's short with Jayce who keeps pushing for violent retaliation on the undercity. The last thing she wants, she’s never wanted this, and now the one person who absolutely understood why is dead. Haunted but firm, she tells Jayce, You don't know war—I do.

SIDEBAR | A lot of people don’t seem to realise that the memory is just one incident. Mel would’ve been exposed to that kind of thing and much, much worse again and again over her childhood/teen years because it’s not like Ambessa was running around conquering once in a blue moon. War and conquest are a way of life for the Medardas. In episode 5, when Mel tells Jayce that she doesn’t want to be like other Medardas who just take, take and take from the world—it’s not just about wealth or knowledge, it’s about warfare, conquest and the terrible death, suffering and horror for those left behind. And there’s no way Mel wasn’t trained / expected to engage in the warfare and conquering herself before she was banished. So, when she says Jayce doesn’t know war—if his vomiting over the side of the bridge while Mel looks on at the carnage with a horrified but painful familiarity is any indication —she knows what she’s talking about.

Much has been said about Ambessa and how her attitude/demands spur Mel’s decisions in this final act. But I think so much of the underlying motivation for Mel’s actions in this act are Kino. It’s her mercy and compassion, and it’s Kino’s philosophy of being the fox rather than the wolf, of using diplomacy rather than war that drives her on. She doesn’t want to fail, and she doesn’t want to fail him.

In that last row at the council meeting, Mel seems about one nudge from shattering any time the frame focuses on her. She appears more vulnerable than we’ve ever seen, more brittle, more fragile, and deeply, deeply sad.

We have never seen her like this.

When she looks down at the Medarda ring almost like it’s a last albatross she needs to discard, it hits even harder once we find out that mere hours before she was destroying the painting—a representation of her yearning for home and for family, for a life to which she never really belonged, to a world that she feels has nothing left for her no matter how much she still loves her mother, especially with Kino gone.

[lullabyes22-blog]

Favorite Arcane quotes?

Vander: "You know... but you don't."

Truer words could not be spoken when you're an adult trying to impart the sum of your experiences to someone younger, who hasn't undergone the same struggles, and lacks the context to tie their actions to a broader consequence. It's a Parenting 101 line.

Powder: "I only wanted to help... I only wanted to help..."

10,000 kudos to Mia Sinclair Jeness for capturing the gut-wrenching sound of a child whose world is literally collapsing in real-time as she comes to grips with what she's inadvertently done.

Mel: "But Kino says war is a failure of statecraft." (:c!)

It's just such an adorably childlike argument. Like - she so obviously looks up to her brother as much as her mother, and their contradictory worldviews are causing her hella cognitive dissonance. You can also tell Kino, like Mel, is a pacifist, but accepted as a 'true' Medarda because he weaponizes it in his sphere, much in the same way Mel learns to do.

Ambessa: "Mark me, child. If you want to survive in this world, you must learn to be both the Fox - and the Wolf."

Ambessa is paraphrasing text from Machiavelli's The Prince, and giving Mel advice on statesmanship, "One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves." She's not entirely wrong. There are certain spheres where this is deeply solid business advice. But it also runs counter to the nature of a sensitive, subtle, intellectually gifted girl like Mel...

Jayce: "Progress."

Silco: "Far be it for me to stand in the way."

Just - such a loaded exchange in what is already an interaction brimful with metatextual and symbolic meaning. Who gets to define progress? Who truly stands in the way? Who has caused more damage in its achievement - and whose cause is the purer?

Jinx on Silco: "Excise your doubts, Jinx... Be what they fear."

Silco would make a terrifying motivational speaker - but also this is terrible advice to give to a child suffering from trauma. It also shows how Silco's own methodology for addressing grief is to dive down and rip it to shreds rather than sit with it and let it breathe. Then again, in an environment like Zaun, he has little time to sit with anything - let alone something that makes him or his child vulnerable.

Vi: "I never meant to leave you."

Such fascinating - and heartbreaking - word-choice. Like Vi made the conscious decision to be parted from her sister - rather than being full-on chloroformed and dragged off by a grown man in the dead of night. So much guilt in that single line, and so much acknowledgement for the mutual dependency between the sisters, and how Vi perceives herself as having failed her 'protector' role.

[moonsdancer]

mel, this weird little rose that grew from steel

We don't talk enough about what an absolute weird kid Mel must have been, being the way she is and growing up as the child of the leader of a Noxian warhost.

It’s frankly, shocking, that someone like her came out of the Medarda Clan and made it out alive. When Ambessa says that only the hardiest type of vines survives in Noxus, and Mel tells Jayce that she "fell short of Medarda standards", they really are telling the truth. The Medardas are wolves, and it’s really important that that’s how they describe themselves because it harkens to how they embody and honour the Wolf Kindred in the way they do things as many in Noxus do, there’s no room for softness and tender-hearted mercies.

Death. War. Conquest. Are a way of life for Noxians. Strength is respected above all things. And in the time period where we are, it’s really brute strength prized above all things (Swain et al. haven’t established the Trifarix yet, where someone with Mel’s particular skill set—cunning-guile and political vision—might thrive).

When Mel says it's not often that "we [Medardas] are in a position to give" because all they do is take. She's not kidding. Noxians have been waging expansionist wars, doing their imperial conquest thing for over 500 years by the time Mel was born. Anyone who stood in their way was trampled beneath the empire. Submit or die is the credo by which they live.

This is how one of their conquered (the small nation of Kimir) describes them / excerpts from that story:

"... Noxians carried war on their backs, set it at their table with bread and meat. To defeat something like that, any who opposed them would have to give all of themselves." / "You think we're here to grind you into the dust of history... that choice is always up to the conquered." / "Noxus should have used a chisel to carve its mark in the foundations of Kimir—instead, it wielded a mason's hammer."

And then comes this kid who's more interested in painting murals and building better, more prosperous but still powerful societies instead of grinding opponents beneath the heel of the empire, in making some kind of peace not war.

Even as a child, Mel distinguishes herself stylistically from other Noxians. No blood reds or gunmetal grey boiled leathers for her. She’s out here with her gold robes and pretty ribbons in her hair. LOL, all the other young'uns her age must’ve been like, we know she’s the clan leader’s kid but whyyyy is she coming to weapons training with gold clips in her hair??

Ambessa must've just been like WTF where did this child even come from? Because if I didn’t know any better, I would say it’s not the spawn of my womb. Kino was already bad enough with all his talk of being a fox, but he clearly eventually falls somewhat in line.

But Mel, Mel's got his soft-power-loving ways and then some, and she's stubborn to boot. Stubborn enough that honestly the likely most workable solution (in Ambessa's mind) is to banish her—a teenager, barely more than a child—because she just wouldn’t have ever chiseled herself down enough to fit in with the Noxian way of being, and Ambessa, for all her ruthlessness, wasn’t prepared to wield a hammer on her like most probably would have.