#One is a Janice/Melina request for this is relevant

[101flavoursofweird]

The Time Traveller and the Eternal Queen

If Layton and Janice parallel one another, then so do their partners, Claire and Melina.

In the present of their respective stories, Claire and Melina are both ghosts. Memories. Dead women walking. 

One died ten years prior to PL3 in an experiment gone wrong. The other died of illness a year before Eternal Diva.

It’s easy to blame Bill Hawks for Claire’s ‘killing’, but what if they hadn’t run the experiment early, behind Dimitri’s back? What if they have worked through those fatal complications? Travelling through time still would have been a dangerous endeavour, regardless, and I think Claire still would have offered to be the test subject.

There’s no one to blame for Melina’s illness, unless you believe the Azran marked her with the same fate as the Ambrosian queen. (It’s me, I believe that because Azran were awful.) I’m sure Whister and Descole did everything they could to cure Melina. Maybe a Golden Garden with its pure air could have helped…

Although Claire appears in the present, her body shows signs of molecular instability. Dimitri— gripped by heartbreak and guilt and pride— struggles to stabilise Claire’s existence, like Whistler and even Janice fight to stabilise Melina’s existence. 

In the Eternal Diva novelisation, after Melina’s death, Melina describes waking up in Janice’s body and communicating with Janice. Melina is determined to ‘disappear’ (much like Claire wanted to disappear) but Janice insists she needs to stay.

“I’ve just found you again… Do you realise how much I missed you? I can’t let you go on like this. This isn’t just for you. This is also for me. Melina, you may not understand, but the grief and suffering of those left behind is so strong… Losing my best friend not once, but twice, would surely break my heart…”

Janice’s determination and desperation here reminds me so much of Dimitri!

Melina champions Janice’s self-sacrifice and her noble, pure heart. If you look at Dimitri in another light, his ten long years of dedication to the time travel and saving Claire could be seen as noble and self-sacrificing… kidnapping scientists aside!

Janice voluntarily buries her personality and persuades Melina to stay, so there’s no problem, right…?

I love how Melina enjoys living life through Janice and it takes Melina a while (Maybe a couple of months?) to realise this is wrong, both for her and for Janice. The two of them need to move on, even if it hurts.

It makes Melina feel more flawed and realistic. It makes me wonder if Claire had similar hopes of surviving when she first landed in the present.

Claire and Melinas’ lives were preserved through scientific means that broke the laws of nature— requiring memories— by grieving loved ones, who were manipulated by a mastermind.

Claire begged Dimitri to quit his work on the time machine and to free the kidnapped scientists. Melina wanted her father to stop stealing the lives with the Detragon so that she could survive.

When Claire and Melina felt they alone couldn’t get through to their misguided ‘saviours’, they turned to Hershel Layton.

‘Celeste’, after helping the gang escape from the research facility, confides to Layton that she knows Claire was quite fond of him. Melina, after her identity is revealed, admits that Janice is very fond of the Professor indeed. 

Melina, through Janice, wrote to the professor. Although Janice had assured Melina he would be able to help, Melina kept her identity hidden. Maybe Melina feared her father and Descole would find out, which would have made it difficult for her to slip away.

Claire pretended to be ‘Celeste’, her younger sister. This would have spared Layton, Paul and others from more heartbreak…

Unfortunately, when Layton reveals Melina’s identity, this enables Descole to complete his plan. He whisks Melina away on the Detra-Gigant and orders her to sing A Song of the Sea. Melina— hoping to save her father and friends— complies. Layton and Luke, in turn, fly up to save Melina. 

There’s nothing wrong with a character needing to be saved, as long as they’re given time to interact with others and actually… be a character, as Melina is. Layton isn’t there insisting Janice stays in the shed while he and Luke investigate the gothic castle. See Level 5 where was this writing for Flora

Luke convinces Layton that he should be the one to leap onto the giant machine to rescue Melina…

Similarly, Claire convinces Layton to let her go back for Clive on the Mobile Fortress, because Clive isn’t the only one to blame. 

Both Claire and Melina take an underserved amount of self-recrimination and regret for the grief that their deaths caused others. Even Claire, knowing the risks of time travel, didn’t ask to die. She didn’t ask Dimitri to build another Time Machine, anymore than Melina asked Whistler to use the Detragon.

It’s not fair how Claire and Melina each lost the futures they were looking forward to - it’s not fair how Layton and Janice were left grieving twice - it’s not fair that Bill and Descole got away with their crimes (Redemption or not, how many of those kidnapped people needed therapy?) - but fate isn’t fair.

At the very least, Claire and Melina live on through everyone’s memories. The time traveller and the eternal diva, immortalised.