ᴳᴵᴸᴰᴱᴰ, 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔣𝔬𝔵

The Blood Barn

Remember what Mel suggested in S1?

Find someone with a kind face, whom the people trust, who is good and sympathetic. Let them do your bidding.

That's what happens. From Piltover's perspective, Caitlyn is the most sympathetic figure at the time. As far as Piltover's concerned, she's an idealist who trusted her instincts, going behind her corrupt superior officer's back to investigate crimes that kept happening under his responsibility. From Piltover's perspective, she risked her life and family's name to uncover injustice. From Piltover's perspective, she confronted the Council and was dismissed. She was kidnapped, held hostage, and lost her mother in a terror attack. From Piltover's perspective, she suffered for advocating on behalf of Zaunites. From Piltover's perspective, she is the only one of them who risked everything for the undercity and thus the person with the most moral credibility.

That's flashback!Mel's logic and Ambessa, she can deploy it just as elegantly as her daughter. She deserves more credit for understanding statecraft just as brilliantly as Mel.

Also, notice how Mel plants someone vulnerable (Lest) in Salo's bed to spy for her. Ambessa likewise planted someone vulnerable (Maddie) in Caitlyn's bed to spy.

MEL: I'm one of you? A mage? LEBLANC: We each have our own expressions. Yours is quite rare. An empath. Attuned to the ethereal. Able to sense others' inner selves and bend their magic. A conduit and a mirror. [...] [Ambessa] hid you because you are that which she covets most: a weapon.

Above, we have the snippet of dialogue from the intro of s2e8 “Killing Is a Cycle” that’s been haunting my thoughts, because while I do think Mel’s mage arc could have been executed better and not crammed into a handful of scenes across *checks notes* two episodes, there’s a lot of interesting information packed into here

So empath is a loaded word, especially since the way it's used within the general "narcissist" discourse on tiktok (i believe, i don't have nor plan to get on there anytime soon), but it's originally from the ancient greek ἐμπάθ which more closely correlates to passion, and then there's the self-proclaimed clairvoyant Judith Orloff, who identifies "empaths" as people able to both sense emotion and use it to the benefit of those around them—the classic definition found in scifi and fantasy literature, but in Mel's case, I'll argue that the more important words are the ones Leblanc says (aligning with the first part of Orloff's definition): "A conduit and a mirror"

So obviously this has the technical application where Mel's powers work as a mirror, from deflecting Maddie's bullet to being able to hijack Leblanc's black rose shadow dimension with light, but then there's the emotional aspect: apart from simply having high emotional intelligence, throughout season one, Mel is Piltover's clearest "mirror" and enactor of its principles, despite being an outsider: she rewards scientific brilliance coinciding with economic gain and dreams of pushing the city to the future and brings enterprise directly into the decision-making room with Jayce, and also takes on its faults, making deals in shadowed balconies of opera houses and not fully acknowledging Piltover's responsibility in having laid the grounds of the conflict, as Ambessa points out

Thus: in regards to Mel's political modus operandi and magical powers, I'd argue that the primary key to both is reflection rather than the healing/nurturing associations that the word "empath" has, and we can see this immediately when Leblanc adds "[Ambessa] hid you because you are that which she covets most: a weapon", which of course could be Leblanc attempting to turn Mel against her mother by playing on Mel's aversion to violence, but in context of the previous quote I think there's a chance Leblanc genuinely believes that this "reflecting" power is what makes Ambessa love Mel by seeing herself in her

And maybe that's why she reveals her true nature and her plans to Mel so soon after she destroys the Oculorum, hoping that, destabilized, she'll mirror Leblanc's cloak-and-dagger mannerisms as she once mirrored Piltover's elite, but then the finale Mel manages to outsmart her by "reflecting" both of her mentor figures—Leblanc by turning on her ("sly girl") and Ambessa by defeating her ("you are the wolf")

Ibrahim Tuqan, tr. by A.M. El Messeri, from The Palestinian Wedding: A Bilingual Anthology of Contemporary Palestinian Resistance Poetry