Portrait of a Character – Melissa Madden
Melissa Madden arose out of an idea I had for Lili, actually. Since Lili was going to have a particular arrangement, there had to be what was essentially a counterpart arrangement. Enter Melissa.
Origins
In Intolerance, there are four crew members who are worse off than the others. One of them is Melissa. At the time, I was already thinking about Together and so I wanted the name to be out there, perhaps in the back of the minds of readers. Melissa was also intended as homage to canon character Martin Madden, who is Steven Culp‘s character in Star Trek: Nemesis. The character is only a part of additional footage; the actual scene went to the cutting room floor.
I also wanted Melissa to be a direct expression of a day/night dichotomy. Hence, she is bisexual, and the day is devoted to a female lover, Leonora, whereas the night is devoted to a male lover, Doug. Switching up the dichotomy even more is the fact that, when introduced, she is working the night shift.
Portrayal
Catherine Bell as Melissa Madden (image is for educational purposes only)
Due to the connection to Culp, I opted for actress Catherine Bell. I also chose Bell because she has a rather different look from both Lili and Leonora. I also wanted a physical portrayal of someone who would be believable as both a mother and an athlete.
This would be someone with almost a fly-boy (fly-girl, I suppose) swagger, too, reflecting the character’s occupation as a pilot. At the same time, the character needed to be feminine but also not too terribly young. Even though she is a lot younger than Doug, I show enough of her later life that it’s almost more than of her younger years. In fact, I have no writings of her childhood or young adulthood, like I do for the Norri, Lili, and Doug.
Symbolism
Five of the six main characters (everyone but Pamela Hudson) is associated with an element. Melissa is the earth element, even though she’s a pilot. A part of this is her earthiness, another part is her hunting and back to nature behaviors. She’s a lot more comfortable out of doors than either Norri or Lili are. To me, she symbolizes solidity.
Personality
Beyond the day/night, two lovers situation, Melissa is a skilled pilot and devoted to her family. She becomes a mother three times (all boys) and imparts her love of Starfleet to Tommy and her split persona to Neil.
Kevin, though, is tragic – she buries him when he is less than a month old. This changes her, making her more pensive in her later years. In her much later years, she develops the canon disease Irumodic Syndrome, which is an analogue to Alzheimer’s. In Fortune, the reader witnesses some of her decline. I follow up on this snippet with The Decision.
Relationships
Catherine Bell as Melissa Madden (image is for educational purposes only)
For Melissa, relationships follow the day and the night. She is a kind of split personality character. Her whole romantic persona has two sides to it.
Leonora Digiorno
They meet cute, when both are on vacation on Ceres. Melissa essentially crooks her finger, and Norri comes running. They originally settle on Ceres.
Doug Beckett
Melissa and Doug are paired up during Together, and she is a direct reason why Lili and Doug open up their marriage. It’s not just due to her pregnancy; it is also because they truly love each other.
Andrew Miller
In the Mirror Universe, Andy is the Empress Hoshi Sato‘s boy toy, and Melissa knows that. But she goes after him anyway.
Shelby Pike
This is never confirmed (I may write it at some point), but at minimum, Melissa and Shelby tease the hell out of the Mirror Travis.
Music
As might be expected, her initial music is the Allman Brothers’ Sweet Melissa. With Doug, her theme is the Cure’s Let’s Go to Bed. With Norri, the theme is k. d. lang’s Constant Craving. Her final theme is Joe Jackson’s Get That Girl.
Quote
“I never loved another man. Never wanted to.”
Mirror Universe
Catherine Bell as MU Melissa Madden (image is for educational purposes only)
The Mirror Melissa’s life is defined by poor choices and tragedy. Her death is one of the scenes in Fortune, and she is also remembered by her lover, Andrew, in Escape.
Upshot
Kind and sometimes a little silly, the perceptive peacemaker is a part of the glue holding the main characters in the In Between Days series together. And as a foundational member of the family, her descendants are just as important as Lili’s are.
[…] teacup. Because they are not together (Malcolm is her other fellow in her open marriage with Doug; Melissa Madden is Doug’s side girl in that same arrangement), there are a lot of good-byes and hellos. The […]
[…] Fortune, Doug, Lili, Malcolm, Melissa Madden and Leonora Digiorno all, eventually, meet their ends. By showing a pivotal moment in later life, […]
[…] Hudson, Blair Claymore and Karin Bernstein, Lucy isn’t a man’s plaything. And unlike Melissa Madden, she isn’t carrying on a betrayal of the […]
[…] ostensibly Malcolm’s story in the same way that Reversal is Lili‘s story, Together is Melissa‘s, Temper is Doug‘s and Fortune is Leonora‘s, but it’s also very much […]
[…] as important as their daylight lives. To really bring the point home, I created a bi character, Melissa Madden. But Melissa needed a lesbian lover in order to pull it all off, so Norri […]
[…] he is something of an air element. As Leonora is communication, Lili is fire, Malcolm is water and Melissa is the earth, Doug is the […]
[…] Lili and her fellow and their many supporting cast members, like Chip Masterson, Leonora Digiorno, Melissa Madden, Pamela Hudson, Andrew Miller, Brian Delacroix and Jun Daniels Sato and many […]
[…] and nurse it back to health. Kevin, always, is one of the good guys. He is a remote descendant of Melissa and […]
[…] Jeffrey Hunter in that role. I’ve tried to reconcile the two timelines, at least in part. Melissa and Doug‘s middle son, Tommy, dies in the service of his captain, George Kirk, on the Kelvin, […]
[…] who is stuck with her until he leaves via suicide. He is, in this instance, cheating on her, with Melissa Madden, who dies, pregnant by him, in a shuttle crash. When he refers to MM in his suicide note, Hoshi […]
[…] Lucas Donnelly, plus Christian Harris is asexual and Kelsey Haber is possibly bi (main character Melissa Madden definitely is) and is definitely a cross-dresser (I’m still kind of on the fence about Kelsey […]
[…] all because of the death of Melissa Madden, a fact disclosed in Fortune. After Andy and Melissa meet (during The Play at the Plate), a sexual […]
[…] Hudson was still not considered to be a main character), e. g. Doug Beckett, Leonora Digiorno, Melissa Madden, Lili O’Day and Malcolm Reed. Four of the characters had already had a story more or less […]
[…] It’s 2162, not too long after the events of Temper and Fortune, and Andrew Miller is calling for bets for a mirror baseball game as catcher David Constantine seeks to block runner Ty Janeway from scoring. Andrew is the Empress’s current toy. But in walks the new pilot, Melissa Madden. […]
[…] for a time travel series. And two, I wanted to not only continue the story of Doug, Lili, Malcolm, Melissa and Leonora, but I wanted the kids to be older without aging Lili and Doug quite so much. After […]
[…] a shout-out to character Sarah MacKenzie. Both are called “Mac”. In addition, character Melissa Madden is “played” by Catherine Bell, who of course played Sarah […]
[…] Melissa Madden, in part it’s a shout-out to future canon character Martin […]
[…] is Probably Moot, the consequences of a different romantic choice are shown, where he fathered Melissa Madden‘s son. Andy’s life does not end well in the mirror, but at least it’s on his own […]
[…] and himself) were needed to bring down the big beast. Therefore, in Temper, when it’s only Melissa and him on a hunting trip, they don’t go after elekai, and instead hunt for linfep and […]
[…] mirror, Leah is not a woman of God. Instead, she is a pilot, and is meant to be somewhat similar to Melissa Madden, who the Mirror Norri never […]
[…] more of a skilled hunter, and not just a blind shooter. Hence, when he hunts game (with or without Melissa, and with or without Calafan friends), he uses a phase […]
[…] although, like the other Sato offspring, he does have an analogue in the Beckett-O’Day-Madden-Digiorno-Reed family. That person is Tommy Digiorno-Madden, as they are both impulsive warrior […]
[…] Travis and Tripp complain of headaches, Hoshi cries, and Deborah watches Jonathan from afar. Melissa is not there (she isn’t invited to the reception, so she’s with Norri). But what about […]
[…] rivalry is alive, well and living in the Beckett-O’Day-Reed-Digiorno-Madden family, and Marie Patrice is one of its biggest proponents and […]
[…] is another distant descendant of Doug and Melissa, and is a very distant cousin of Kevin O’Connor and Rick […]
[…] to Neil Digiorno-Madden, Yimar and her family forge a permanent connection to the Beckett-Digiorno-Madden-Reed […]
[…] with his two women, Yinora (Yimar‘s daughter) and Ines Ramirez, daughter of Jenny and Frank. Melissa and Leonora are also there, as is Jia’s sole family on the planet, her mother, […]
[…] this small planet in the Lafa System, Melissa and Doug hunt and bring down a perrazin (Temper). Linfep live here, but they were likely brought […]
[…] Jones, Preece Ti, Leonora Digiorno and Leah Benson are all lesbians. Melissa Madden is bi. Preston Jennings, Dave Constantine, and Luke Donnelly are all gay […]
[…] food animals for the Calafans. Furthermore, I had already established that both Doug and Melissa enjoy hunting, partly for sport, but mainly for food. In Together, I briefly mention perrazin and […]
[…] he becomes a father. His daughter, Ines, takes up with Melissa and Doug‘s second son, Neil Digiorno-Madden, and they have two children […]
[…] children, he cannot have a Prime Universe counterpart. However, he has an analogue in Doug and Melissa‘s part of the big arrangement – Neil Digiorno-Madden, who also has a head for business. But […]
[…] This was a Star Trek fanfiction prompt about family. Rather than have Leonora come out, I decided to instead have her announce that she’d met someone special. That person is Melissa. […]
[…] That’s Elliott all the way on the left in this photograph. Plus the actress I have playing Melissa, Catherine Bell, is in the […]
[…] month, I called it Linfep Linfep Linfep. I responded to a prompt about embarrassment by posting a Melissa-Leonora story, Red. I posted […]
[…] slaves who can perform calculations, a neat prefiguring of Fortune and the Mirror Universe‘s Melissa Madden‘s death in a shuttle […]
[…] wanted one of the Beckett-O’Day-Madden-Digiorno-Reed children to have a Calafan-style set of dual day/night relationships, much like Lili, […]
[…] November of 2159, Malcolm takes Melissa to Movie […]
[…] Doug, there was an early victim named Harris. Plus I needed an extra pilot for the E2 timeline, as Melissa isn’t a part of those stories. And so Chris was […]
[…] Mirror Travis, while he is dying for some fun times with women like the Mirror versions of Melissa Madden and Shelby Pike, is beholden to the Empress. In Coveted Commodity in particular, he is essentially […]
[…] to as Miss Elekai. She sends Tommy back to the Beckett house, where he is staying with Neil, Melissa, and Norri, as their apartment in Fep City is being renovated. Doug and Lili have a full house. […]
[…] and Melissa – here, Doug’s frustrations with Lili are balanced with Melissa’s bisexuality, e. […]
[…] May of 2206, the family gathers on Lafa II to make an important decision about Norri and Melissa‘s […]
[…] his parents’ death, Declan first cares for an aging Melissa and Norri and then, after their deaths, he returns to Earth to visit […]
[…] first woman he remembers, naturally, is his mother, Melissa Madden. As he talks about her in the initial chapter, and he mentions her descent into Irumodic Syndrome […]
[…] I disliked the scene so much that I felt Madden needed a measure of justice. He is the reason that Melissa has her last name, as she is his forebear, via her middle son, […]
[…] Melissa, who suffers tremendously, suicide seems like the most logical solution. She even plans it in […]
[…] the end of Together, Doug, Lili, Malcolm, Melissa, and Leonora are ready to start the arrangement and live their lives in […]
[…] when they died. Malcolm and Lili are already named on it. Although no one names her in the story, Melissa would also be on it. Miva points out that Karin and Ethan are still alive, as are Azar Hamidi and […]
[…] I like the idea of him. In particular, his existence means the Reed-Hayes–O’Day-Beckett-Madden–Digiorno family lasts into the deep future in more than one place. It’s not just […]
[…] Dana MacKenzie, born in 2329 (Melissa Madden‘s […]