Tell me why this happens whenever a lead is Black? Why even when it's a male lead. Nobody shipped Diggle x Ollie in Arrow it was Olicity forever until it murdered the show. But Diggle and Ollie's relationship was the heart of the show for 8 years. Same for Sam and Buck in thier show, he'll or even Sarah and Bucky, who is Sam's sister. Nobody is shipping it.
When Andrew Garfield suggested a Micheal B Jordan as a male MJ people shat thier pants over a bisexuality Peter Parker, and Black MJ. No fandom content was created and the biggest takeaway was that people were grossed out and disgusted by MJ being Black.
Don't believe me, research what Zendaya has to say about it.
This exposure of antiblackness in fandom spaces which is mega exposed when romantic leads are black women started about 15 years ago when the pilots for True Blood, Merlin (BBC), and Vampire Diaries aired and professional critics and high volume content creators lost it when the lead actresses for Gwen and Bonnie Bennett weren't immediately killed off and replaced. When confronted about the quality of thier performances their haters suddenly fell back on these excuses:
NO CHEMISTY WITH MALE LEADS OR THE REST OF THE CAST: they were casted because of thier chemistry reads
Badly written characters: this coming from monster of the week shows were secrets were kept about super powers
Bad female characters: the female villains were mass murders, sadists, and one note woe is me characters
Badly written black characters: they were token characters who were they being compared to...other token ass characters??
Their love interest have more chemisty with their same sex best friend!!!: well that's what happens when you underwrite a love interest and have their friend spend the vast majority of thier time with the male lead but here we a bigger problem.
Who should write the story? The professional storytellers who know exactly what's going on, why, how, and when certain narrative events will happen? Or should the fandom have their demands met?
Fans should never ever ever demand anything from content creators. Content, yes. But not creators. First, creators have very little say over the finished product when there is money involved or a production cycle. Secondly fans tend to forget, well at least non black fans do, that if you don't like the narrative, you can leave. That rectangular hole in the wall can be used at any time. I'm being serious. If the official content hurts more than helps, for your sake leave. I left so many shows and fandoms once the black character was killed or never started fandoms if there are no black women. Why would I spend my precious free time and energy only to get kicked in the teeth AGAIN? For me it's a bye bitch or a never-hello to begin with.
Black fans, particularly Sci fi/fantasy female fans are used to being excluded, overlooked, mocked, written out, ignored by fandom content, and mainstream fans in and if themselves. In every poll or survey for any of these shows when asked who is the character you most dislike, it will always be a black character. Always, doest matter who best-friendly, how subservient, how useful, or what ever the character is. The audience will ALWAYS see a black character as annoying, shady, manipulative, selfish, self centered, and just not up the most woobified white leads ass enough. Every fucking time.
Non white characters are never thier own leads, unless the cast is of the same ethnicity. Ever. To have nuance, the full scale of human emotions has always escaped minority characters. So here for Arcane, Jayce isn't white and he loves Mel who never once manipulatived him? What did she get out of it...dick? I mean she offered a grown man options that were already there and asked him to choose time and time again. It's not Mel's fault Jayce likes to go rouge.
If anything Jayce manipulated Mel several times and got hugely rewarded for it. He put her on the spot for Hiermerdinger's expulsion and for the vote for Zaun. BuT WhAt AbOuT tHe OpErA???? You mean, again, where Mel offered options about deal making in politics and explained the carrot on the string theory and JAYCE WENT ROUGE AND OFFERED UP HEXTECH AS AN IPO WITHOUT THE PUBLIC NOTICE???
That was the most currupt thing he did all by himself but Mel, who by the way is flabbergasted or just agast at his actions, gets the blame for it. Which happens to ALL black characters by the way. They are always held responsible for other characters reprensible actions.
So why doest the Jayvik fandom say anything? Because the Jayvik fandom hates Jayce. They are Viktor's fans. They tolerate Jayce for his supply truck build and good looks, but hate everything else about him. Unless he dotes on Viktor, then he is behaving and therefore tolerable.
Which is why he's own curruption that he is solely responsible for gets blamed on Mel. Because Viktor would never, and therefore Mel an evil seductress can be blamed for a grown man's decisions. Don't believe me about black women being written out of their own narrative think back to the jokes you laughed at on Mel's expense when Jayce went to visit Viktor at the hospital.
Now think about what you were thinking when Jayce apologized to Mel when he went back to her in the next episode. Did the cheating jokes become more or less funny when you realized that Jayce had fallen for Mel right before the time jump and Mel had grown an interest in Jayce during the trial? So the whole forced het, forced relationship argument doest work because it started at the trial really?
Or did the jokes fall entire flat when you realized that yes, Mel, is the only one who got a genuine un -promted apology from Jayce.
I doubt it. Because Jayvik fans don't want to realize that the painting scene actually happened, or that Mel manipulated Jayce into being there...or whatever instead of realizing that Jayce is there of his own volition, and never wanted to leave. Mel is...wait for it...getting written out of, ignored, and mocked out of her own narrative by fandom.
See the pattern now. Great! Now imagine almost 2 God dam fucking decades of this. And don't you dare hide behind the lack of mlm content because it happens there too.