#mel monday

[arcainworms]

mel as reductress headlines!

a very happy mel monday to all those who celebrate

[roseamongroses]

have a stupendous Sevika Sunday and a marvelous mel Monday everyone, here’s the edit for the week

[melmedarda]

Happy Mel Monday!!!

[idyllicbby]

irony, satire, and subversion in media is so rarely done correctly & it’s starting to piss me off 😭

& the main problem with this is bc most creatives never really go into detail about what exactly their politics are and don’t affirm the subversion they’re stating in their art so a huge part of their politics/the subversive message tends to be whatever their audience project onto them/it.

this becomes an issue bc the original theme/message becomes construed & highly dependent on audience’s interpretation (that is colored by each individual’s perspective and nuance they’ve lived & also internal biases) instead of the intention of the original material. so it ends with the audience agreeing with the ironic, subversive narrative instead of what the narrative is trying to highlight &/or “call out” with those literary devices. so now instead of it being subversive it looks like the artist/message is endorsing potentially harmful rhetoric & being seen as a representative/mouthpiece of those ideals.

for example: Arcane writer, Amanda Overton & others and their character Mel Medarda:

In explaining her characterization of Mel Medarda, Amanda states that Mel is supposed to be a subversive spin on the common femme fatale trope, which usually depicts a woman who embodies beauty, mystery, seduction, and danger, using her looks to manipulate people where she wants them mostly with ill intent. Amanda says that she subverts this trope from Mel because as the series goes on the audience is met with Mel's nuances, trauma, emotional turmoil, vulnerability, and compassion that are used to distinguish her away from the trope and subverts it. So the affirmation of the subversion or the switch of Mel not being the trope anymore was when we saw her become vulnerable with her love interest, Jayce, & with her mother about her being exiled from her homeland & learning she became a councilor to prove to her family that she can be powerful/successful outside of their ridged expectations of power/success.

But this subversion failed because Amanda & the other arcane writers ignored how depicting a Black female character as a manipulative, seductress reinforces the jezebel caricature rather than challenging the femme fatale trope as they initially intended. They also highly underestimated the audience’s (comprised of mostly white/non-Black people) unwillingness to unlearn their internal biases of villainizing a Black female character to acknowledge the subversion/switch in the narrative. both leading to the misinterpretation and mischaracterizing of Mel as representation of the harmful stereotype rather than a subversion of it. this shows how the consequences of not explicitly affirming subversive messaging can result in the messages being misconstrued instead of understood, because without this clarity, the artist's intent is overshadowed by the audience's perception, ultimately leading to the reinforcement of the very narratives that were meant to be challenged/critiqued.

(it’s also important to note Amanda has done this to numerous Black female characters she has written & every time she fails to do the subversion, she claims to put in the narrative correctly)

[melmedardazine]

✨ Interest Check & Mod Apps in TWO Weeks! ✨

Happy Mel Monday everyone! 💫 We're so excited for our interest check and mod applications which will be launching on April 21st!

Let's raise our glasses to Lady Mel Medarda and get ready to celebrate! 🌟🥂 For more information, visit:

✦ melzine.carrd.co

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter while you're there! 😉

Until then, Stay radiant! 🌟

✧ The luminous Lady Medarda kindly thanks you for your shares and support: @zine-scene @zinetown @zinefeed @all-zine-apps @open-zines

[zaunitecollector]

Is there anything so undoing as a mother? Nayyirah Waheed, salt.

[s0b1shiba]

It’s funny how my most noticeable personality trait is that I don’t have one outside of not really caring about things

[luvforfay]

HAPPY MEL MONDAY