#agataxmelon

I don’t normally make posts like this but I’ve been thinking about Melon in my fanfic a lot lately and I just need to talk about it.

Forgive me for this but I don’t know how to explain it otherwise: Think about your life for a moment. All your childhood memories, school years, every person you ever met or talked to, everyone you’ve ever known, all your goals and accomplishments…

Now imagine if it were all a lie. Everything I just listed was all orchestrated by someone else for their own agenda. That you never had true autonomy in your actions or decisions.

That your actions and thoughts were never truly yours. And everything you thought you knew about yourself and your life was just that…A lie.

That is the position Melon is now currently in in my fanfic and it’s difficult for me to write it out because, well. This!

We all know how Melon is in the manga (and in the anime!). In canon, Melon knows exactly who he is (or what he believes he is) and fully embraces it. That being a murderous ‘love failure, half-baked freak’ who hates the world and wants to see it burn.

There are times in the anime specifically where he seems uncomfortable with the idea of anyone thinking him more than that (correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Legoshi call him beautiful?). Similarly, times where Legoshi or even Yahya in the manga sympathized with him but Melon rejected them.

It’s not so much accountability as it is..I guess acceptance? Or self awareness? Like Melon never denies what he is or pretends to be anything different (except for luring his victims or being a university professor but that’s besides the point).

I don’t know if I’d say he’s proud of who or what he is but Melon sure doesn’t want anyone to think differently of him. No, I think his sense of self is the one and only thing he has and him rejecting any notion that he could be different or anything other than that is him protecting himself.

He knows he’ll never get validation from anyone for being a murderer or a hybrid (especially that) so he doesn’t bother seeking it out or, by extension, any hope for anything better.

Now imagine if that Melon were to go through exactly what I described a moment ago. If Melon were faced with the reality that not even his sense of self was his, how do you think he would react? How broken he would be?

- Side note here!: If the Hybrid Project happened in canon (and everything else stayed the same), I don’t know if Melon could or would be able to cope. Sure I do think that Legoshi would run to his side (to support him but also to understand what this is as it may affect him too) and Yahya might have Melon in protective custody and investigate it but Melon might not even want that help: He’ll either hurt himself or go after whoever these people are.

THAT is what the Hybrid Project takes from Melon. His sense of self and security, his autonomy, his bodily autonomy, and (and I don’t know if there’s a word for it but) the peace of mind that his life, his actions and his decisions are truly his!

The difference here is in my fanfic, Melon has Agata, the Shishigumi and Gouhin to fall back on. A support system to help him pick up the pieces of whatever’s left and move on from it but even with that, Melon would still be stuck with not knowing how to.

Like seriously I can’t imagine how that level of anxiety would feel like. Especially if we consider the fact that the Hybrid Project brainwashed Melon into responding to his killing instincts and kill people. So Melon has to learn to control his urges on top of everything else.

That is pretty much what Melon’s growth will be moving forward in my fanfic. Deciding who he is and how he grows into that person.