Sevika Reminded Me Of A Puppy When She Makes That Expression, So I Ended Up Drawing Her Like This

Some thoughts on Mel and Ambessa from Arcane :)

Anon this one's for you (I was originally going to put this in my answer to your ask but it got longer than I expected so here we are lol)!!

I LOVE Mel. And not just because I'm a raging lesbian ☝ She's genuinely a really well written character. She's so intelligent, not to mention manipulative (especially in s1), and it's so impressive how she utilizes that to get what she wants. I didn't really care for Jayce very much in s1 either, so whenever Mel convinced him to do what she wanted I was just sitting there like "yes queen play him like a fiddle. 😍" That aside, she genuinely has a good heart, and I appreciate that the writers let those two facets of her character coexist without defining her by one or the other. I also really enjoyed her getting more agency in s2 (or at least in act 3, I suppose, since she was effectively taken out of the game so to speak for the first couple acts)—and her actions/success became less dependent on Jayce as well which was nice. Her fighting with Cait against Ambessa was SO good omg

Speaking of Ambessa...she's also such a cool character. I can't say I like her as much specifically bc of how she took advantage of Caitlyn and her grief + status in s2, but at the same time, it makes total sense for her character and that doesn't make her any less of a great villain. In fact, that's a large part of WHY she's such a good villain. But her extremely tactical and planned takeover of Piltover aside—she's a cunning warlord and just as manipulative as Mel, but she's also a MOTHER, and words cannot express how much I enjoy the fact that that's treated as an integral part of her character instead of an afterthought. She isn't depicted as weak because she's a mother, and while she personally does feel weakened by her children (particularly Mel), it's only out of her love for them. Plus, at the end of the day, the final battle showed us that even her love for Mel wouldn't impede her lust for power, so her role as a mother doesn't cheapen her ruthlessness either. FANTASTIC stuff. Side note, but I also loved her bond with Rictus.

Ambessa's also honestly really similar to Mel. If you switched out Mel's softness/morals for an extremely strong love of family, you basically get Ambessa, and I think that's part of why they clashed the way they did. They're both incredibly intelligent, and so so skilled at manipulating any situation in their favor, influencing others, and taking power, and I imagine those are shared qualities that Ambessa loved and Mel loathed for a long time. Meanwhile, Ambessa's unshakable principles (eg. Fox vs. Wolf mentality) simply didn't allow her to fully accept Mel's empathy, just as Mel's empathy for others made Ambessa's cruelty seem intolerable to her. But they still loved each other to the end, and I adore that. Mel holding her mother as she died because of her, Ambessa finally recognizing Mel as what she deems to be the perfect leader in her dying moments....ohhhh they're so complicated.

jayce and viktors camera roll

a missed opportunity with the noxian presence in piltover, apart from the political or storytelling dimension, is the fact that they were there for three to six months and we… don’t really see how the ordinary noxians and piltovians interact? like with a military presence for that long, what was the general consensus? were there fights with the locals? disputes over resources? recruitment from schools? whirlwind romances across cultural differences tragically torn apart by the siege as you watch your former lover tear you apart with unholy metal flowing in their veins? noxian-piltover fusion cooking?

i don’t think we talk about the loss of bodily autonomy that came with black rose’s expansion of mel’s sigils enough

mel’s experience of getting the tattoo was, sans the secret magic dad and free part, pretty reflective of my own—the excitement, the rebelliousness, the satisfaction of seeing your skin marked by something you chose that is beautiful

and then the black rose arrives, and while still beautiful, i can’t emphasize enough that this a huge shift—the lines run over her whole body, even her face. they’re permanent and they were not mel’s choice—that gold she thought of as her jewelry and armor is now an impossible to escape reminder of trauma and death

i don’t know, there’s such a potential for a unique brand of body horror here

People who dislike melvika bc they think the characters would hate each other are so funny. Like damn, y’all never heard of enemies to lovers??

Mel is my Barbie to dress up

I really don't know what the story is with this but it was a fun value study hehe

it bugs me how many lesbians have issues with trans women. like, we're supposed to love women. what's next, you gonna start hating short people too? fuck off.

they r so important to me

Silco and Sevika hurrying from one business meeting to another.

I've so far shown only early moments but this is later in the sugarisnotacondiment AU, when he and Vander need to take care of two kids, and Silco goes full business mode. He tells people Sevika is his secretary, which she is but she doubles as bodyguard.