Mel

Most people’s first impression of Mel is one of a permanently crabby short artist who always gets up on the wrong side of the bed and hasn’t gone a day without coffee in her life. While this is a mildly accurate first impression, Mel is not, in fact, permanently crabby. What she is is perpetually stressed by deadlines, which ruins her mood far too much.

Beneath her grouchy exterior though, Mel is an incredibly creative person. She’s always thinking right outside the box and is brimming with ideas. A lot of these ideas come from those around them - sometimes, Mel will take notes when people talk because the things people say give them a lot of inspiration. It’ll be the weirdest things too, like the consistency of poison dart frog venom or something, and yet Mel will end up taking it and turning it into something interesting.

Mel is also a very brave little idiot. She’s the one you go to if you’ve got a problem you don’t want to go to officials about. After all, Mel is very good at getting rogue ghosts to shut up and dealing with things that no one else would touch with a ten-foot pole. She’s got more guts than most professionals.

It takes Mel quite a while to show off their soft side. They like to pretend that they don’t have it. They do. Softness is just buried beneath layers and layers of grump. Very few people actually get to witness Mel being an absolute dork about kittens. Those that do, however, think that she’s the best thing ever.

Mel also has an incredibly low self esteem. She’s smart enough not to say things about it when doing business and such, but she can’t help feeling like she’s nothing more than someone for people to flaunt and never having any feelings of her own. Although intellectually Mel knows this isn’t true, it’s a wound that has scarred them for a really long time.

Mel doesn’t remember much about their birth family. They couldn’t, really, their parents died when they were 3 and they had no siblings. So, Mel was raised by a wealthy non-auracorn adoptive family who were just so delighted to have an auracorn child.

In fact, they were so delighted that they flaunted Mel at every possible turn to their rich friends, dolling them up in the most extravagant clothing and never giving them a chance to express what they wanted out of life. All of this led Mel to feel like they were some exotic pet rather than a living person.

So, at age 15 and a quarter, Mel ran away from home. It was rather tricky to stay out of their family’s way at first - they had lots of money and wanted them back badly. However, Mel was eventually able to find a place to stay that would keep them far away from their so-called “family”.

Mel worked for a while until they were finally able to pursue their dream of becoming a graphic novel artist. It took a long time, a lot of failure, some frustrating classes, and even more therapy (for proper self care, of course) until it happened. But it happened! They’re very happy about it.

Now, Mel is living fairly comfortably. Although the mortifying ordeal of being known is difficult, Mel is very happy with their life and is even tentatively dating a lovely woman known as Annabelle.