at the time of writing this, it seems like ~58% of this website is confused about what makes melvik appealing, so i'm here to help you all see the light
'but, tumblr user loveandlegacy, what gets you going about these two? they barely have any screentime together!'
listen. take my hand and walk with me.
imagine, if you will, that you exist in a narrative as a noncombatant main character for the entire goddamn story and then at the eleventh hour (after having your body subjected to fascinating new flavors of body-horror transformation) you become something of a walking nuke. not only are you connected to the well of all power in the world, you're a conduit for it, like a living tungsten wire, burning bright every time you try to channel the thunderous forces of the universe.
now imagine that there is only one other character in this whole story who has the same experience as you. another noncombatant who is as smart and as impassioned as you, an outsider like you; someone who has been equal parts interesting and frustrating for you in all the years you've known each other – and by the time you realize you share this terrific subjectivity, you're already on opposite sides of a world-ending crisis (that one of you started).
this is the stuff of tragic literature! the melodrama of the stage!! and it also happened to my good friends mel and viktor from the hit television show arcane league of legends.
you see before you two newborn mages who were already outsiders (before they even knew about the mage thing!) in a city that hates mages, and what's more! they've been thrust into their powers in adulthood where most mages in this world come to know their abilities in childhood. these two are the latest of late bloomers. they have no one to guide them or teach them how to accommodate their new abilities. two people whose arcs are characterized in different degrees by loneliness and isolation is certainly a recipe for Meditation if nothing else.
that's not all, of course. we don't know what the arcane does to the human body, but considering how mel and viktor both almost faint from channeling it at different points, we can assume it's not an easy and also quite possibly painful thing to experience. naturally, a bond is to be had here in the shared space of 'pain no one else in my life has ever known'!!!
are you with me yet? can you taste the flavor?
the tragedy, the isolation, the traumatic transformation, the you're-quite-literally-the-only-person-who-could-understand-what-this-is-like aura is all too much if you're like me and you like a fucked up cosmic connection. it's neither love (though it could become that) nor hate from which this tension springs, but rather the abject experience of an imperfect reflection. as much as magic binds these two, it separates them also. mel finds herself becoming the thing she never wanted to be (a weapon) in part because of viktor's descent into madness. viktor descends into madness in part because of his connection to magic, which was what brought his and mel's lives together in the first place.
just sit with that for a moment. really think about the eerie experience of looking at the one other person in the world who is like you but who has also realized a different future from yours.
do the 'what could have beens' not haunt you too?
put more simply: my friend @langarang said, they reach for each other exactly twice in the show and can't quite touch. that electric type of unfulfilled desire (whatever it may be) is the foundation for art aplenty.
it's sexy and it's haunting and, most importantly, it's juicy fucking storytelling‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️
what do you think it's like for them, to be so profoundly, viscerally changed, and to come to some diametrically opposite conclusions about what to do with that transformation? do you think mel sees a warning in viktor? a doomed promise for herself? in some story following the events on screen, do you think viktor wonders why mel, even with all that power coursing through her, never wanted to straight up brain-break everyone? she's an empath after all, you'd think maybe it crossed her mind. but when it was all said and done, only one of them almost ended the world, and it wasn't her – what does he make of that?
the answers to these questions don't matter. what matters is the questions themselves are angsty and hot and set these two up to be forever magnetized towards and also struggling with one another. ie the foundation of any good ship.
and speaking of angst, this same-but-different friction doesn't end with just magic and visual parallels. the most deliciously horrible point of intersection for mel and viktor lies not with the cosmic horror of the arcane, but with the banal recklessness of a one ambessa medarda. where mel was the weapon her mother wanted, viktor was the weapon ambessa got. look me in the eyes, soon-to-be voter, and tell me that type of "i hate that you can be what i couldn't and i hate that i might be jealous of you" energy (an energy i believe goes both ways, mind you) doesn't fuck you up just a little bit. tell me that you don't want to see that kind of ugly wound, that unfair misery, that hunt for and fear of love in equal measure end in at least One impassioned, desperate, breathless kiss.
if you said you don't, i shrimply don't believe you.
i know there will be the conscientious objector out there who points out that this doesn't make any sense and can't work because viktor's gay, and to that person i say:
what's sexuality to two people who have been made into vessels for the sublime anyway? decolonize your minds. sex and sexuality transcend the expectations of bodies when you get weird enough with it. what two characters are better suited to the exploration of 'weird sex' than the people who had their bodies thoroughly and violently reshaped by forces out of their control?
and anyway, remember when viktor went on a horny unhinged rampage in the council room at Peak Evil and this was how he looked at mel upon discovering she was also a mage?
like. let's all be serious for a minute.
i could go on but i'm trying to keep this notionally safe for work for the sake of the poll, so i'll leave you simply with the statement that what is ultimately wonderful about melvik is that their history is complicated, painful, full of grief, and in a place of mutual need. they are the only two people like them, and they have every reason to feel both bitter about and consoled by that. it's hot and kind of miserable and wonderfully messy and from such mess springs eternal the opportunity for whatever flavor of relationship you like.
art by circusmantis. art by bangg_cherry. art by abandonshapes. art by icestorming.
in the words of my groupchat:
✨✨✨kiss your gay boyfriend and vote for melvik✨✨✨
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