Pink Apples

TLDR; Many viewers accuse Mel of hating or having disdain for Viktor. However, Mel has consistently shown she respects and cares about him as a person.

1. The Lab Scene

“Mel looked at Viktor with disdain and ignored him”

- Mel focused on Jayce because he was more likely to be persuaded. She was being pragmatic and defending her stance. She isn’t making a personal dig against Viktor.

- Making sweeping assumptions about Mel’s perception of Vik based on ONE scene is crazy. More on this later.

2. Hextech Weapons

“Mel wanted to turn Viktor’s invention into a weapon”

-Jayce used hextech to attack a factory and outfit a kill squad. Viktor used hextech to make super soldiers for a warlord. Yet Mel gets so much hate for suggesting weapons ONCE? And, for the rest of the show she is strictly against Hextech as a weapon.

- In S2E1 Mel tells Jayce, “I won’t let them corrupt your dream,” then the shot pointedly draws attention to her grasping Viktor’s cane. She’s most likely referring to both of them. In any case, Mel ultimately respected Viktor’s wishes (looking at you Jayce).

3. Mel’s perception of Viktor

- Mel respects Viktor’s skills and abilities. In S2E8 Mel describes Jayce and Viktor as “two brilliant young inventors…rallying the hope and hearts of a nation.” She sponsored hextech for years because she believed in the two of them.

- Mel has empathy for Viktor. You can see it in her expression when she learns he’s dying. She encourages Jayce to spend time with Vik so he won’t be alone. She goes to check on him after the explosion and is visibly concerned. “He’ll come back to us”

4. Other Thoughts

- Mel doesn’t hate Zaunites. She’s the first to vote for their independence. After the attack she and Caitlyn argue it was caused one person, not all of Zaun, and advocate against invasion. When Caitlyn reveals her plan she’s clearly disturbed. (Might make a separate post on this)

- One conversation doesn’t indicate the whole scope of a relationship. Here’s an example, Jayce told Viktor, to his face, that Zaunites are dangerous and scolded him like a child. Does that mean Jayce hated Vik? No, was a lapse in judgement, not an indication he secretly looked down on Viktor. Why does Mel get so much more hate?

- Mel, at her core, is a good hearted person who values peace and mercy. Yes she has many flaws but characterizing her as a cold, self-serving person is incredibly unfair.

- If Jayce could see how two of the most important people to him are pitted against each other he’d be disappointed.

Arcane

Arcane

the cage is locked! .... 😃 with a key!💃

..... the drægun keeps it around his neck!🥴

So, originally, Princess Daphne was meant to be an homage/parody of traditional damsels in distress from classic sword and sorcery stories, in the same way the rest of the game is a parody of those elements (the lair is hyperlethal to a cartoonish degree, Dirk is a overconfident bumbling oaf that acts all stoic until he's actually in danger, most of the monster designs are meant to be evocative of classic Conan or Tarzan foes, etc.)

That's all pretty self evident, Daphne is a giggling ditz that doesn't do anything because the cultural idea of a sword and sorcery damsel in distress is that they're vapid arm candy that only exist to be trophies acquired at the end by dashing protagonists for doing something heroic.

However, when the time came to expand Dragon's Lair into a full franchise with its own TV show (done because the arcade industry was on the brink of collapse, and Don Bluth's video game division needed to scrounge up as much money from the IP as possible to keep itself going) they naturally realized that Daphne had to be an important character in it, and having her original characterization of "being the hot lady that Dirk saves at the end" from the games wouldn't really work for any form of extensive storytelling as a member of an action-comedy cartoon cast (even for a low budget tie-in one in the 80s.) So, they went for a different stock character archetype popular around that time: the put-upon clever female lead that has to wrangle in the stupid men in her life. Basically, the Dragon 's Lair cartoon is just the old Legend of Zelda cartoon, but with the serial numbers filed off and Ganon is a dragon instead of a pig.

Anyways, the show didn't do very well, only getting a single season of thirteen 30 minute episodes, but fans of the franchise DID like elements of it, and it's still treated as a canon prequel. Here's the problem, though: Daphne in the cartoon is a smart, no-nonsense adventurer who's often just as competent as Dirk. So... how does she go from that to the classic Princess Daphne characterization?

The answer is given to us by the Dragon's Lair comics that released to commemorate the series's 20th anniversary back in 2003, and it is...

The Author's Barely Disguised Fetish!

In the comic, Daphne starts out with her cartoon characterization as a spunky tomboy, even repelling an attack by Singe's minions by herself in a prologue story, but eventually does get captured. When she does, they finally explain what that weird-ass bubble prison actually is:

it fucking bimbofies you.

Literally, they describe it as it sapping your intelligence and making you more "frivolous", and make a point to state and show that Singe had used it on plenty of other princesses in the past, keeping them as his private slave harem in his treasure room.

Admittedly, it's a decently clever way to explain why a character would have two different characterizations between their major depictions, it does come off a little weird and tasteless? I'll leave that for the jury to decide, though.

I apologize for this not being as brief as I promised, but I think knowing why an initial characterization happened and then what the later justification for that characterization is was important to discussing it. But for anybody not wanting to sit through the whole blather...

Tl;Dr: Daphne is a weird ditz either because she's just another parody of sword and sorcery tropes OR she's basically a Mid-Bimbofication Princess Zelda, depending if you prefer your explanations Doyleist or Watsonian.

I really do believe the boom in the melvik ship has nothing to do with the show (obviously since they barely interacted) and more with black fans and fans of mel ( a black female character that they, by proxy, would have to be exposed to misogynoir when trying to engage with her content) separating themselves from the anti-black fandom into more niche places where outsiders are less likely to scrutinize. especially when you consider that the ship really started gaining more traction months after the show’s end (as opposed to right after or during, which is usually the case) and I think that correlates to the online harassment of mel (and meljay) fans ramping up. if someone is looking for non-art fan content of a character, most of it is revolved around shipping since solo, non-romantic fan fiction is unpopular and un-incentivized.

anybody who’s been a fan of mel since s1 (or has scrolled more than 3 times in her tags on social media) knows that meljay, despite being one of the few actually canon ships on the show, was disparaged, minimized and scrutinized basically since its inception, with most of the onus being on Mel. as her most popular ship arguably until now, that meant if you were somebody that enjoyed mel (or meljay) you were basically getting flashbanged by vitriol to the point a lot of her content was a) people trashing her character or ship b) people fighting back against that undue backlash and coming in dead last c) actual content for the ship in question. This got significantly worse after the arcane writers took 3 percs each during the s2 writing period and validated fanon malice against her character within the show, further emboldening them. if you were a fan of mel or her most popular ship (and once again, canon relationship), you were signing up to be bombarded by bad takes (im being generous) every time you wanted to engage.

sometimes what happens in huge fandoms amongst marginalized fans, I’ve seen people exhausted of dealing with the vitriol branch off into an unlikely, unpopular ship and make that the new “safe space” and I definitely think that’s what happened here.

with that being said, there’s something very funny (/positive) about melvik now compared to its earliest iterations. a lot of early fan-content had a mean-spirited slant to their interactions that you can tell was adopted from the larger, jayvik fanon that they despised each other. there were also a fair amount of consolation prize polycule fan fiction that felt like the writers weren’t confident in mel and viktor’s relationship on its own and the only thing that glued the love triangle together was wanting to appease jayce which is…lol. now it has its own fanon (e.i. pre-canon bitter exes) and better recognizes the merit of these characters outside of a polyamorous relationship. I’ve also noticed that there seems to be an uptick in fan content (art and fan fiction) that centers mel, or just outright de-centers jayce even if there is polyamorous relationship which wasn’t as common before. i wonder how much that has to do with mel fans using the ship as an escape from the hatred in her other tags.

i think now, despite the parallels the writers either unintentionally created or failed to capitalize on, one of the biggest appeals to the ship (and fandom) is that it just embraces absurdism as a crack-ship that could’ve actually had some merit in the show if arcane wasn’t written like that™️. meljay is always diminished and those two character’s love for each other gets debated every day ending in y, but with melvik there’s no real need to prove itself. it’s a “why the hell not” ship and now that the arcane fandom at large is starting to catch onto the fact it exists, it’s very funny seeing people argue about how a relationship like that could never happen in canon, as if fandom has ever upheld the original content as something non-transformative and above individual interpretation LMAO….

anyway. all of this to say that im a #nooticer and i #nootice things