Hi, this is an ask granting you permission to rant about Mel without feeling weird. Tell me everything! What's most exciting for you to write/think about when it comes to her? What's the best and worst thing about her? Which relationship of hers do you like to explore the most?
I mean I’ll feel weird regardless despite the fact that this is my blog and I can talk about what I want but I figured it’s best to go this route so I don’t have, like, a long post of my ramblings that just annoys people. (Just my perception, I like to think I’m not annoying.) Anyway!
I think the part that’s most exciting when it comes to her, and what makes me keep coming back to her and fleshing her out and making her more real, is she’s uncharted territory for me. Mostly in the sense that I’ve never written a character that could easily be labeled a “ditz” or “quirky” (which is intentional because I wanted to stretch my writing abilities and such). But, more importantly, I’ve never written a character like that and make them more than their label. Yeah, she’s silly and goofy and, on the surface, appears like a manic pixie dream girl (again, intentional) but she’s not. She’s more than that and I love being able to explore that about her. Plus, coming up with her siren abilities/being a siren in the show could shake things up is a lot of fun.
The best thing about her, easily, is her supportive nature. No one can talk bad about themselves within her vicinity, she will make you regret it until you start to believe all the good things she will counter with. She goes out of her way to turn a bad mood around and has no problem making a fool of herself if it means getting someone else to smile. The worst thing about her I would say is that she’s flippant in a self-preservation sort of way. Throughout the first season of the show she is downright excited about everything going on and most of it is a distraction to the fact that things are going really wrong really fast. It’s not until it gets to the point that she’s been attacked by Peter, chased after by Kate, and her parents sacrifice themselves for her that the danger finally settles in. Plus, it doesn’t help that she’s since learned that she (and her unknown siren abilities) killed her best friend. And, to a lesser degree, despite being so supportive she’s so supportive that it can easily cross the line to being toxic positivity and she’s dismissive of other’s concerns.
If you look at my blog you could see that, right now, it’s most likely her relationship with Isaac because it’s the one I’ve posted about the most (he has the advantage compared to her relationship with Erica because he stays alive and she dies early on in the show). However that’s a cop-out and truly the one I love the most right now, despite posting little about it, is her relationship with Allison.
As I delved more into Mel’s role in the show I realized that she and Allison are similar and I leaned into it to make it intentional; they are basically different sides of the same coin. I wanted to showcase how nature vs nurture could take people who grew up under similar circumstances (being daughters of at least one hunter) have them turn out so differently. Allison’s parents (subtly) pushed her towards the hunter life and gave her strict guidelines and taught her to lead with her head. Mel’s parents turned her away from the hunter life and allowed her freedom to explore and do what she wanted and to lead with her emotions.
On paper they should be friends; they’re both sweet, friendly, caring, strong-minded, and charming. However, the main difference falls to what they view as weaknesses: Allison sees being physically weak, needing help, being viewed as silly or stupid as a bad thing. Something that needs to be fixed. Mel, on the other hand, embraces that she sometimes needs help, that she needs other people, that she can’t do things on her own and that she can be silly or stupid. To Mel, being too prideful to ask for help is being weak and a bad thing. Thus, their outlooks on certain situations has them on opposite sides and butt heads but, at the same time, they push each other and make each other grow and become stronger people. It’s a fun relationship to think about and plan.
