my beautiful city meliora

Hello, long time no see, eh? 😅 I’ve been away from the fandom for a bit, but I just wanted to share with you the two artworks I created for the Meliorazine projects that will hopefully come to light soon.

This first one is based on the song “Spirit,” of course, and it will be accompanied by a brief text explaining its backstory. Both pieces revisit the 1920–30s poster style.

Yes, obviously, we haven’t seen much of them together. But I’m interested in the sheer dissonance in how Marika speaks to Cardi in the chapters VS the comics.

In the chapters (on the surface, at least), we’re given the impression of a sweet, doting mum who quite possibly spoils her son. She gushes about him to the new colleague, calling him her little boy. “Cardi – I always called him Cardi.” And she puts on this baby-like voice when referring to their familial relation, or when initially addressing him.

And then you’ve got the comics, where she seems initially excited to meet Cardi but later on, seems different. Distant. Strict. Mysterious in ways that frustrate Cardi to no end, and with barely even a hint at sweetness.

👇 This 👇 doesn’t feel like a one-off interaction to me.

What is Mom doing? Where is she going? When will she return? It seems these are things Cardi is forever being left out of, and it chafes. He’s scared.

Where’s the baby-talking? Where’s the sweet, doting mother she implied herself to be to Judith? Her facial expressions are strict or disinterested even when reassuring Cardi.

And then there’s the subtler side of the chapters. Where you realise Marika is spilling Cardi’s private information to complete strangers. Where she’s baby-talking the boss in front of his employees. Where she’s seemingly trying to make an executive decision she already knows Cardi, her boss, has made the opposite choice on (the covers EP – more on that later). Where after seeing Cardi stumble on boxes, Marika begins to look and sound fed up – and becomes progressively more so throughout their conversation.

When she goes to leave Frater’s office (“So, we go”), it’s with the attitude of someone who never wanted to be there to begin with. Someone who’s been patiently waiting for a gap in the ramblings to allow her an exit, but also doesn’t care about the rambler’s feelings enough to disguise that.

(I couldn’t get a good shot of the expression when Cardi stumbles on the boxes because it happens too quickly and just came out as a blur 😭)

The very first time Cardi called Sister “Mom” was after months of being alone with Marika, the woman he’d known as “Mom” from childhood (but has never addressed as “Mom” on-screen). My gut says that means something. There’s something bigger going on here.

I really want to see what went wrong with these two. But, y’know, months from now. I’d like to finish my WIP before its lore undoubtedly becomes non-canon, please. 🥺

Obviously, I have my own headcanons that I use for fics, but they’re not relevant here because I’m discussing canon material only.

Also: What happened to get Marika, who adopted Sister as her sister, to start thinking of Sister as her friend instead?

Seriously, there’s something going on here. More than just the mess of a parent-child relationship getting flipped into a boss-employee relationship where the child is the boss. More than just Cardi being prickly due to his V-hate. There’s something else.

BUT THERE’S MORE

Because nothing can ever be simple, can it?

In Chapter 24, Marika’s calling for something which – from the way Cardi phrases things – she knows Cardi wants the opposite of. And until Cardi returns to his office, this seems to be the uncontested truth.

But then Cardi returns to his office, and...

These two were setting Cardi up to assert himself all along!

So, Marika does care about Cardi. She wasn’t just putting on airs when she was talking to Judith about their relationship. But there’s also something more complicated going on in the background, which is as-yet undisclosed.

Well, at least something got cleared up lol