Melanie has this self-image that she's—not just angry but dangerous, a hairsbreadth from violence.
We hear it in 131 when she talks about her past:
Anger is… Anger’s been all I’ve had for a very long time. Years. Maybe since… oh, I, I don’t know. … Angry at being passed over, being disrespected, ignored. That sort of anger, it – it powers you. Right up until it slips out and hurts someone.
and in 190 when she talks about how she feels about the cult:
If I didn’t have Georgie, I think I might just snap and beat them all to death. … I swear, if it’s another hymn I am going to break something!
But look at how she actually reacts to Arun:
MELANIE: [Awkward] Oh, okay, um… Right, so… Arun, I just think that the…
GEORGIE: I don’t think either of us is particularly comfortable with your use of the word “redeemers”.
MELANIE: That’s… that’s not how it works. Is it? John?
ARCHIVIST: Oh? No. That’s not how it works.
John and Georgie are included to demonstrate what “person being distinctly less gentle with Arun than Melanie is” looks like. Actually, ‘gentle’ is a bit of an understatement—I might be better to say ‘timid’.
And it’s not like this is the product of the therapy or, idk, Georgie. Rewind to her first appearance:
I waited for another five minutes, but when Sarah still hadn’t returned I started to get a bit worried. I should have woken the others, but if it turned out she’d just gone to the bathroom, I didn’t want to embarrass her in front of everyone. In that case she should have got one of us up to take over watching, anyway, but she’d hardly been the most professional while she was working with us, so it wouldn’t have surprised me if she hadn’t. After another five minutes, I decided to go look for her.
Like, Sarah is not fulfilling her responsibilities that she agreed to carry out. (and in a kinda dangerous way) But Melanie’s worried about embarrassing her.
In the end it was actually Toni that asked we not work with Sarah Baldwin again. Apparently she’d gotten “weird vibes” and didn’t feel comfortable around her. I agreed, though I didn’t share my reasons.
She doesn’t even speak up first to say “let’s not work with her again”—again, this is kinda crossing the line from ‘gentle’ to 'timid’. Like, you can react to things that negatively affect you without over-reacting?
(This is something she works on in therapy! Speaking up that she doesn’t like 'Mel’; work-stoppage at her evil work: constructive responses.) (the apocalypse, uh, derails this a tad. :| )
What effect does the Slaughter have on this? Well, the next example is while she’s got the bullet in her.
In episode 100, she’s already tired and frustrated when Brian comes in. (let’s get this over with. I just don’t hold out a lot of hope for… coherence.) She does not get coherence. Instead she gets a panic attack.
(Admittedly kinda her fault, because she said that the archives couldn’t help with his spider problem. But like, that’s more about the circumstances being objectively panic-inducing, she wasn’t being Mean or anything.) And… she’s gentle.
I…
Please, just…
There’s, there’s tea there.
Okay. Right. Yes.
Okay, breathe.
Yeah… well…
Drink, drink the tea.
I’ll, I’ll get you some biscuits. I’ll get you, I’ll get you, I’ll get you… something… Just breathe!
Breathe for me… [BRIAN TAKES SOME CALMING DEEP BREATHS]
Okay, yes. Good. Good.
She’s not confident or practiced or comfortable at it.
She’s out of her depth and kinda at the end of her rope and… gentle. Trying.
I think the through-thread is—people she has power over. She feels that anger and chokes it down because she could hurt them.
It’s difficult to strike the right balance, when you’re doing that.
(There’s another bucket of just—equals. Basira’s always there; John is for the rest of season 4 after 125; Helen :| ; Martin at least in season 5; etc. She has casual, unguarded conversations, too; and ones that are mostly focused on some goal, and ones where she’s getting what she wants, and all sorts of things.)
Towards people with power over her (the guy with the steady office job and authority over whether her experience counts as genuine; apparent boys’ club; evil mindreading murder boss; etc) she bites back. The difference is it’s safe to do that because—one part she can’t hurt them, and one part it’d be deserved.
(Melanie as a comedian who always punches up.)
Except, you know… there’s this bit in where 106 Basira and Melanie discuss how she 'literally’ made Tim and Martin cry, and… while you can construct reasons they could 'have power over her'—seniority, gender—Basira’s only been around since 092. Since that point, it’s obvious that those aren’t real power here. That’s what the Slaughter is doing to her with her; validating seeing the world as more and more against her, handing her power and encouraging her to see herself as a put-upon victim, free to fight back guiltlessly.
And then she wakes up to a numb, wounded leg and stabs John. I wonder—what if “Right up until it slips out and hurts someone. I hurt someone.” & “It didn’t stay in my leg because of some ghostly master plan. It stayed because I wanted it.” in 131 are saying that - like - it wasn’t taking out the bullet that de-Slaughtered her? That it was the wake-up call that she hurt John, someone who was trying to help her, and she didn’t want to do that.
@melaniemonth I don’t know if this is Platonic, or Health: therapy&recovery, or simply Self, but it is very, very Melanie.
