Melrose Hawthorne

## Melrose

* Melrose
* Dreams & Knightmares
* Foxworth Enterprises
* Heroes and Villains

**Melrose Hawthorne** is a fictional character in the *Graffiti* series, created by David Ragin.

The series' deuteragonist, and the sister of the series protagonist Dylan Johnson, Melrose is a superhuman with telepathic and telekinetic abilities. The ambassador that officially established the Superhuman Community, Melrose has proven herself to be one of the most powerful superhumans in the world.

In film, Melrose Hawthorne is portrayed by Ariel Ragin, and has appeared in all three *Graffiti* films to date, *Graffiti: Dreams & Knightmares* (2013), *Graffiti: Welcome to Foxworth Enterprises* (2015), and *Graffiti: Heroes and Villains* (2017).

## **Background**

Shortly after she was born, Melrose's parents were killed in a car accident, and she was placed in a foster home. On her third birthday, she was adopted and met her new brother Dylan. Her new family would not last, as her new parents would disappear months later. Being placed in an orphanage, Melrose was picked on by many of the children, but she was always protected by her brother.

When she was 5, she was adopted by a newly-married couple and was forced to say goodbye to the only family she had. When she was 11, during a class presentation at her school, she found that she could read the minds of others, although she used this ability sparingly. Two weeks later, she was approached by a woman claiming to be her biological grandmother, and proved her story by telling her about her abilities. She would return to her home with her grandmother and her foster parents would relinquish parental duties to her. Together, her grandmother trained her to control her powers and learn other things she could do with her mind. For her twelfth birthday, Melrose asked her grandmother to adopt her former-foster brother Dylan, and she would later do just that. Her grandmother would buy a new house two years later for Melrose and Dylan to live in.

While attending high school, she would meet her best friend, fellow superhuman Evangeline Carter, and begin dating John Duncan, who also had powers similar to her own. Melrose would go on to be an A+ student at her high school and continued to keep up her studies and her relationship, all while learning more about her abilities.

## **Powers and Abilities**

* **Telepathy:** Melrose's main superhuman ability is that she can read and sense another person's thoughts, communicate with them mentally or affect, and otherwise interact with their minds, consciousness and thoughts. Through extensive training, she has mastered the communicative, perspective and manipulative aspects of the brain, and has shown the ability to have enough telepathic strength to send messages to people thousands of miles away, expel other telepaths from minds, and even shut down the minds and induce victims to a comatose state.

* **Telekinesis:** Melrose's secondary superhuman ability is that she can move, manipulate or otherwise interact with objects with her mind. She uses her hands to focus her energy and control the objects she targets, though she has shown the ability to move objects without moving at all. She can lift objects of varying weight, including lifting people, vehicles, and even at some points, manipulating energy and other superhuman abilities as well. She is also able to remove powers from different superhuman as shown when she took Switchblade's powers away.

* **Enhanced Durability:** As a superhuman, Melrose's body has the natural ability to sustain numerous blows of external assault, though her inner body can take damage if struck hard enough.

## **Weaknesses**

* **Mindless Beings:** Melrose's telepathy does not work on mindless beings (corpses, animated objects, robots, etc.).

* **Mental Issues:** Due to her losing her parents in car crash shortly after she was born, being placed in a foster home, her foster parents disappearing months later, being bullied and being placed in the system again, Melrose's mental health has been slowly deteriorating. Understanding the importance of maintaining her sanity and the potential dangers of her abilities, Melrose frequently attends therapy and meditates.

## **Trivia**

* Melrose Hawthorne was originally named "Melrose Ray".
* Melrose Hawthorne was originally set to lead a superhero team called *The Castaways*, which would have included Dylan Johnson, Evangeline Carter, John Armstrong, and later John Duncan before relenting leadership to Dylan. However, this entire idea was scrapped.
* A young Melrose Hawthorne was set to appear in *Graffiti: Dreams & Knightmares* portrayed by Kyla Jones.