#study: melissa.

[itchose]

so much of this is based purely on speculation because i think there are a lot of gaps to be filled between season 3's ending and melissa faking her death,   primarily between tai's "i got you now this time" + melissa implying she didn't feel safe from the others once they returned because she "wasn't one of them."  but i think we see some hints of it in episode 3x09,   how melissa is basically crying out to the entire group begging for them to see that she not only recognizes how bad shauna has gotten but desperately needs them all to be on her side.   which is something melissa doesn't typically expect from anyone (and has hardly even really needed/wanted before).  she was okay not necessarily being noticed by people until she was with shauna and that suddenly mattered to her and it gave her some twisted sense of pride  (because she was so excited, and she liked the sudden attention).  anyway not the point —

“we all went to your funeral” is so crazy.  just the concept of them all being in the same place like that at all, same with shauna’s wedding,  but i don’t think melissa expected any of them to go to her funeral.  between all the pacts they made to never tell anyone what happened out there + the promises to protect each other going forward,  melissa never felt like she was actually a part of it,  just so certain that if she was the one who needed help,  she could not count on the only people who would understand.  the only way to truly protect herself was to “kill” melissa,  to not be a “target” for them anymore (and maybe she never was, maybe that was solely melissa’s paranoia).  of course there’s a lot that she wants to hide from — the media and the conspiracy theorists, etc etc — but it was her own team / fellow survivors that she feared the most and that was ultimately why she faked her death.  it was the only way she felt she could actually get away — to become someone else, to disappear.

the death of a flight 2525 survivor would’ve been heavily publicized — just as every one of those survivors attending the funeral would be (i have my own thoughts on travis Not attending but that’s another conversation entirely) — so melissa,  even after she’s disappeared,  would find out (and it doesn’t seem like adult melissa takes ‘we all went to your funeral’ as new information).  i think as soon as she fakes her death,  she tries to forget + let go of everything tying her back to all of that,  including trying to avoid all news about the survivors and everything else,  which would mean she didn’t want to know who did or didn’t attend her funeral.   because even though she assumed they wouldn’t,  it was still going to hurt her,  so i don’t think she ever truly processes the fact that they did come and she spends so much of her life wondering why they did, what it meant to them, what it meant for her.  

and she keeps up with them even though she told herself she wouldn’t.  the whole point of her disappearing was to let all that go,  but she can’t help the curiosity — all she had tying her to her former life is what they’re all doing with theirs now.  she’s casual about it, though—  she doesn’t go digging,  she just takes an interest in whatever she happens to see about them.  there are times over the years that she’s tempted to come out of hiding because she wants to understand where they all are at mentally— and of course,  it’s obviously very lonely,  trying to cope with everything that happened to them knowing she can’t rely on anyone else  (because even if the others also were lonely and choosing not to be in contact with the others,  it was still always an option in some way). 

[doomdays]

melissa is someone who plays multiple sports. soccer isn't even her main sport, it's just something she's good at + something to stay active all year around. she's a catcher on the softball team and that's her main priority. she's not bad at soccer, but it's clear she's on the team mostly just to be there, not because she has bigger goals with it, and she's on the jv team. it may not be her main sport, but now it defines her entire life because of what happened and what it now keeps her from. nationals were just one last thing she had to get through before she could focus all her energy on softball season, but... alas.

[itchose]

melissa btw

[itchose]

melissa always wanted kids. that normal, boring life fantasy didn't just come from being away from civilization for so long and being desperate for any sense of security / normalcy, but there was something so much more genuine to it.

in present day we immediately meet her with her child + wearing a hat of her child's softball team. lilah is celebrated all over that house between photos everywhere and the height chart, etc. and even though a lot of that specific life is fabricated, and she took on a life that was false + entered her relationship with alex under false pretenses, the family that they made was still very real (but i am not talking about alex here because i do read into melissa's step back about her relationship with alex after she claims it's real— this is just about melissa's desire to have kids for now).

of course she has her feelings for shauna but what she does in an effort to try to respect the wilderness baby is genuine too, it isn't just an attempt to get shauna's attention (though i won't claim it was an accident that she got caught leaving a flower on the grave, because, well, she did want the credit, but more so, wanted shauna to understand someone saw her beyond just taking that baby/that grief and making it into something else out there). but the point is she could tell that shauna wasn't comfortable with how the group had turned her grief into this big ritual that she never agreed to but melissa still wanted to honor her in some way and to tell her that she understands why shauna buried him elsewhere in private.

and hannah's reveal of having a child is what initially draws her closer to hannah, to understanding her + seeing her as more than just an outsider (which of course was hannah's intention, to use that to her advantage to get at least one person to see her as someone who deserves to get back to her life, and maybe she got lucky or maybe she could read melissa well enough to see it would have an effect on her). she immediately becomes defensive of her, tries to use that to help her, even with shauna, who she knows well enough at this point to know she likely won't give into. but melissa genuinely cares that hannah's a mother and that she has a daughter waiting for her (and yet it's technically a lie but melissa doesn't question it at all because even the possibility of her having a kid back at home makes her want to help hannah).

i don't particularly like the melissa/alex stuff so i don't wanna get into it much but i do think that seeking her out is primarily about trying to pay her respects to hannah because she failed to protect her with what little power she really had in the end.

but going off my own background for melissa's family— she has a lot of siblings, she has a rocky relationship with her mother, and she loves being a part of a big family even though she never felt like her family was entirely welcoming to who she was, exactly. and she dreams of creating an environment where she can give children a warm, welcoming home, where they're free to figure out who they are and be supported by it rather than disregarded for it. and i think after she fakes her death that's even more important to her because she has to cut her own family off entirely after that, but she still longs to have one of her own.

that doesn't mean it's all perfect though because as much as she once thought this was everything she wanted, after those 19 months in the wilderness + the slightly similar freedom of killing her old self and living with the freedom of becoming someone new, she got bored. and part of her is very aware that this life would not have bored her had she not gone through what she went through, but now it feels like she's gotten herself stuck in a life that is no longer meant for her, but it was her daughter that kept her holding onto it as long as she did.

[itchose]

melissa has a rough relationship with her mother in that they get along on the surface but there's a lot of passive aggression between them beyond that that they never really address with each other. it's generally comments about how she should dress more stereotypically feminine + do more (what she deems) feminine activities. her mother hates that she plays softball and soccer. tried to force her into cheerleading as a child but she really just embarrassed her mother but how uninterested she was. her mother has been aware for a while that melissa is gay but she doesn't address it; instead she constantly makes comments about different boys in school she can imagine would be good for her, etc.

because melissa is the youngest to 4 older brothers, there's a lot of pressure coming from her mother to be the perfect daughter. they kept having kids because she wanted a daughter and when she finally got one, melissa grew up wanting so badly to be one of the bros and mostly objected to all things deemed 'girly,' no matter how hard her mother pressed on her. she was supposed to be the one her mother could dress up in pretty dresses + do her hair + paint her nails etc, and none of that has ever been of interest to melissa. despite only being a teenager, the topic of her eventually giving her mother grandchildren is also constantly brought up, mostly in passive aggressive comments that are framed as entirely innocent but definitely get under melissa's skin. her mother wanted a daughter but melissa's behavior was more modeled after her brothers because she wanted to be another brother. she didn't want to be the perfect, yet also very specific version of a daughter her mother kept wishing for.

melissa returned from the party before their nationals trip past curfew, and when her mother confronted her about it, melissa told her she was with a girl and that's why she was late. her mother tried to write it off but melissa forced her to see it for what it was, both to prove a point and because she was tired. and it helped knowing she'd be gone for the next week (...19 months, or forever, potential rip). melissa is generally a brave person and can stand up to most of her family members but there's always been a bit of a wall between her and her mother where she never fully knew how to talk to her, and the night before nationals, she had a bit more strength. she doesn't regret forcing her mom to open her eyes that night about who her daughter was but she does regret some of the things she said to her / the way she said things to her once they're stuck in the wilderness and she's forced to realize she may never speak to her again.

[itchose]

compiling a list of thoughts i've had about melissa for the last few months that i never actually did anything with + a few thoughts so far now that lex and i have started rewatching for the 400th time

for context, there's an unnamed blonde extra in season 1 before melissa was cast that i'm claiming as her, obviously

her entire head is covered in blood after the crash so she had a head wound of some sort (details tba please) but that's why she generally always wears a hat. also because lesbians in backwards hats <3 more on this later.

she's mostly mute those first few days after the crash through her recovery + just the trauma of it all. she's generally not someone who talks a lot regardless, though.

number 18 on the varsity team + a striker, maybe, idk soccer.

she was a junior and it was her first year playing for the varsity team. she played basically every sport she could growing up, but mostly landed on soccer and softball. she was also on the softball team as a catcher (hi laura) and hoped to go on to play softball in college.

she has four brothers, ages 26, 23, 19, and 14 (subject to change)

nonbinary lesbian did i even have to say it

[itchose]

the final season + a post-rescue arc is upon us and i've spent 2 seasons developing a character i didn't expect to ever get any real background so it could all fall apart on me with 10 new episodes but. since season 2 i have really built so much of my characterization around the fact that melissa 1) is the youngest sister of a bunch of older brothers + 2) has a complicated relationship with her mother that mostly stems from uncomfortable gender norms. and i don't know how much of her family life we'll really be getting but i am sticking to what i know 🙂‍↕️

and i think she has so many siblings because her mother really wanted a girl and didn't feel like her family was "complete" until she got one, and then she did, and melissa turned out to be the opposite of everything her mother wanted in a daughter which led to a lot of resentment from her. her mother wanted a daughter for herself and never really considered who that daughter wanted to be once she started growing up. melissa's always been uncomfortable with stereotypically feminine clothing + toys + decor unless she can twist it into her own style for her own comfortability. growing up melissa is so influenced by her brothers and by the idea of being One Of Them, yet forced to be Separated, to be something else. she's not supposed to be like them because she's a girl, she's their sole daughter, she's supposed to be like her mother, meaning melissa and her mother were constantly at odds, pushing and pulling, never finding a compromise, because the things melissa's mother bought her were an attempt to mold her into the perfect daughter for her own needs and not considering any of melissa's own desires. she'd hoped that melissa would just eventually grow out of her "tomboy phase" as she grows up to become a woman. melissa was never going to be what her mother thought she could be.

and obviously some of the fits in the wilderness in general can be a little ridiculous because they're simply working with what they got, but melissa's style is so noticeably ridiculous and intentionally so. not that she followed her mother's desires but she did at least try not to piss her off entirely — but now she has the freedom to wear whatever she wants and she really does. it very often doesn't look good. it can be truly horrendous. but it doesn't matter because she finally has the chance to just wear what she wants, without societal structures and gender norms and a mother pressuring her to behave a certain way.

based on one blurry bts photo from filming, i wouldn't be surprised if melissa is stuck wearing more feminine clothing again and both feeling uncomfortable by it but also feeling like it's something she has to do, some attempt to revert back to the mundane and accept that this is just part of life and maybe that's okay (but it's not and doesn't have to be). and i still believe that there are enough clues to indicate melissa didn't feel safe with the other survivors and that drove her to fake her own death, but i think she felt trapped in a lot of other ways beyond that too.

[itchose]

thinking about jeff saying being married to shauna is lonely and how much melissa can relate to that, how she yes, willingly isolated herself with shauna because there was a time when it felt like nothing mattered to her more than getting to be with this girl she liked in any way that shauna would have her (which is such a tragically teenage thought of hers),  but she never could have really prepared for what that kind of relationship was like.  the reaction to this relationship is always “melissa knew what she was getting into”  but she did not (not even going to get into how victim blamey that is this time but i digress). there is no way she could’ve truly ever prepared for what that relationship would evolve into—  and how it would inevitably crash and burn,  not just their dynamic,  but melissa’s own mental state.

it's why the melissa + gen dynamic is so good (even if so many moments had been cut per vanessa) because that is melissa's best friend and her roommate and her safe space and she ignored all of that when shauna really started to let her in. she stopped sleeping in her own hut without talking to gen about it, she started spending all her time with shauna (privately + amongst the others, even before anything felt 'real,' trying to make herself present for shauna when shauna was ready for it). even gen was pushing her own limits to at least attempt to regain that closeness with melissa but melissa was so caught up in this that she wasn't thinking about what a bad friend she had become to gen and hadn't really processed all the horrible things she did to impress shauna / to align herself with her (mostly, ben. not hearing him out in his trial and just blindly going with shauna, trying to force gen's hand with it, being so adamant about his death following that, then actually hurting him even though she didn't want to / didn't think she could).

she really lost herself in that relationship and the worst part is shauna wasn't even really there for her. and of course we as viewers knew that was going to be the case but again it is so tragically naive teenager of melissa to believe that it could be something good and something real and she had so much hope for it that she was willing to give up so much to try to mold herself into the perfect person for her. there's so much about melissa that feels performative sometimes because she's not just trying to convince shauna she's the right person for her — she's trying to convince herself that she's the right fit too. that she can be. that she could be someone that someone like her, who she admires, would want.

so she pulls away from her friends, she releases any morals she had up until then + leaned into these harsher choices + ideals. in season 2, she's so hesitant when she does speak up and she doesn't ever feel like she's allowed a voice and then she has more confidence in it in season 3 but it hardly feels real for her. and months living with shauna as shauna's own arc progresses and they, frankly, get worse together — she is so far away from herself / who she was + what mattered to her before this relationship.

and anything that feels off with shauna (which i can imagine.. is a lot) is stuff that melissa has to keep pushing down and convincing herself is okay. but it's not. she can't turn to her friend about it because if she admits out loud that she's not happy, then she has to confront that. there's a part of melissa that knows that shauna is no good for her but she doesn't want to give into that, and she doesn't want to hear the inevitable from gen — that shauna is no good for her. this being her first real relationship (and likely not even defined like that on the other end, something melissa also recognizes and fears and doesn't know how to process herself) makes her want to hold onto it even more. even if it's just going to keep hurting her worse and worse.

“it’s the arrow. you know cupid has two arrows. one makes you fall in love, one makes you fall out of love. i love that parallel and so it’s almost like the idea of getting sensed knocked into you. so i knew melissa would break up with shauna at the end of the season - that was the only thing i knew. my plan, with the first three scripts, i was told 'it’s gonna end by the end of the season, to a certain extent, and melissa’s gonna think shauna went too far."

thinking about this quote and how it took melissa physically being hurt to force her to actually face how much she'd been hurting emotionally. she was alone in that relationship, she couldn't talk to shauna like she would've talked to her friends or even how she would've been able to talk to a girlfriend had it been any normal circumstances. and yet she still spends that entire night after she gets shot just replaying shauna leaving in her head over and over and questioning it to death if shauna even cared about her. in another circumstance, shauna saying "if she dies, you die" in her honor might've lit melissa up, but she really thought she was going to die, and all she wanted was for shauna to actually show up for her for once, and that was never going to happen. and she sits with that all night, with her best friend right there holding her all night there for her and choosing her and caring for her, but she still can't express to her what she's been feeling because that makes it real.

it's always been my interpretation that melissa spent that night knowing she couldn't forgive shauna for this but that she was going to anyway. she wanted to believe that she could stand up to shauna and choose herself, but ultimately she knew she wasn't strong enough to do that — that if shauna made the smallest amount of effort, melissa was inevitably going to give in. and that's exactly what happens — she tries to stand her ground. shauna immediately takes that, turns it around, manipulates melissa, and melissa has no choice (in her mind!) but to accept it. because some part of her is aware that shauna is manipulating her — but as fucked up as it is, and how tragic as it is for melissa, that means that shauna is putting in some kind of effort with her, even if it's not the right kind, not the kind melissa actually needs or wants. and that's enough for her in that moment. and she tells herself it's a good thing she never told gen how much she wanted to get out of things with shauna because now she knows she doesn't have to stand by it and doesn't have to feel embarrassed once she forgives shauna.

and it's so fucked up!! and i do believe adult melissa when she says she doesn't believe she was ever in love with shauna. she grew up and she lived a very fucked up life hiding her real self away and trying to become someone else, deep down knowing she could never truly get away from her past — but she did still grow up, she learned more about herself while becoming someone else. she understood what she had been doing to herself as a teenager when shauna had that power over her and she was so afraid to break free of it because she liked shauna and so badly wanted to believe that someday, shauna would just be better. and she never was and never was going to be and deep down melissa knew that and was terrified of that.

melissa's hope is her own downfall, it's what's hurt her the most. her conversation with hannah excited her because finally it felt like someone was taking an interest in her, a real one, after months spent with shauna — she finally just gets to talk about silly stuff with someone who feels attentive (and yes hannah was lying to her too and working her own angle and shauna was mostly right about that, but it's because of how shauna was with melissa that melissa was so desperate for the conversation in the first place). all of this is also just a testament of what a good friend gen is, because she could've easily refused to take melissa back in after everything, but she didn't. she not only took her back in but she was willing to trust her with their plans, after everything. was willing to take her on the trip back home. and melissa's never going to feel like her life was worth losing gen's and i think, however gen does die, it's going to inform a lot about adult melissa and ultimately her choice to fake her own death to protect herself in the first place.