Webcomic / Melvina's Therapy

Anxiety, loneliness, depression... with a regular therapy you can deal with these issues, but Melvina's Therapy is about something deeper: creepy secrets remaining in the darkest space of your mind, waiting for you...

"In order for therapy to work, you must find a psychologist with whom you connect. I found one. I connected in a way I had never imagined. More and more it felt as though she were inside me. But I was wrong. I should have never visited her. I should never have opened up to her! Because while she pulled me from the ashes of my life... Little by little she was dragging me to hell."

Melvina's Therapy is an episodic horror webcomic by A. Rasen. The frame story is centered around the eponymous Melvina, a mysterious and cruel therapist whose patients have an unfortunate tendency to meet grisly ends when trying to confront traumas of their past.

---

Melvina's Therapy contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: A recurring theme in the backstories of a lot of the cast. A good rule of thumb is that if the parents are not absent they are abusive.
• Ambiguously Bi:
  • Margret in "Chairs" was in a loving relationship with Annie before her death and had previously been in a loveless and abusive relationship with her ex-husband. While the story never touches on whether she actually ever had any interest in men, by the time of the story she is uninterested in men because of her violent misandry.
  • Olive in "Antique" never has her sexuality directly come up during the course of the story, but she wears a jacket with "LOVE DOESN'T KNOW GENDER" on the back heavily implying she is Bi or Pan.
• Ambiguously Human: Melvina physically appears to a regular woman in her sixties or seventies, and aside from her surprising foreknowledge of what her patients are dealing with, she displays no supernatural powers at first. However, as the series goes on and her backstory is revealed, it becomes more and more clear that she is something else.
• Artifact of Death: The titular wheelchair in the second story results in the eventual death of anyone who sits in it. Downplayed when it's eventually revealed that the chair only appears to those who are nearing an end to their life, literal or symbolic, and it's less that the chair kills you than it's that sitting down in the chair represents accepting that that your life is at its end.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Melvina refers to this as going beyond the fishbowl and encourages Aldrin to escape reality by doing this. This is also her ultimate goal.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Emily and Sarah Dunne in "Opposite Therapies" are exceptionally cruel bullies.
  • Owen in "Hare's Arms" pushes his girlfriend into a therapy she doesn't want mostly because he wants to avoid social embarrassment, rather then actually helping her.
• The Atoner: Annie in "Chairs" wanted to leave to reconnect with her long-abandoned son when she realized she was dying. She never gets the chance but her warnings and the money she left him end up saving his life.
• Battle Axe Nurse: The nurse in "Antique" hurls abuse at her patients and is more than happy to drug and kidnap two children if she is ordered to.
• Bedlam House: The care home in "Antique" fits the trope despite officially being an assisted living facility not a psychiatric ward. Mutilated patients wander the halls or are locked up tight in rooms decorating the walls in horrific art. The staff are abusive at best full-on Mad Scientists at worst.
• Big Bad: Melvina is the Villain Protagonist of the comic, and most of the supernatural threats in the series are either a result of her actions or are at least being taken advantage of by her for her own ends.
• Bittersweet Ending: When the patients don't have straight-up Downer Endings, this is usually the best they can hope for.
• Body Horror: Reaches its peak in "Back to Mornau".
• Broken Record: The infected in "Back to Mornau" can only repeat whatever they were doing when they were infected over and over again. If they were speaking, this means that they repeat the same phrase over and over again.
• Bystander Syndrome: Grethel could not bring herself to intervene to protect Melvina from being bullied as a child and blames herself for some of the abuse as a result.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The patient Beatriz in "Opposite Therapies" initially gets less focus than most of the series Patients of the Week, as the story focuses more or Melvina's backstory rather than the patients' issues. At the end of the story, it is revealed that the patient is plotting to take down Melvina, and she becomes the protagonist going forward.
• Continuity Creep: The early stories are mostly standalone and focus on a patient of Melvina's facing off against some supernatural threat. Then "Opposite Therapies" has the reveal of Melvina's backstory and the introduction of new patient Beatriz; and the series quickly becomes more plot heavy.
• Clingy MacGuffin: The wheelchair in "Chairs".
• Continuity Cavalcade: "The End Of..." has Beatriz encountering elements from almost every previous story, fitting for a Grand Finale.
• Creepy Crows: Birds in general are a positive symbol throughout the series, but crows and ravens tend to show up only when things are about to go bad and are a symbol of Melvina's influence.
• Creepy Doll: An old doll on a bed is one of the many things that unnerves Gina as she explores the old house in "Hare's Arms".
• Decoy Protagonist: Melvina starts out as the Villain Protagonist of the comic until "Opposite Therapies" introduces Beatriz, who quickly takes over as the protagonist going forward.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Most stories are deliberately drawn in black and white, but colour is sometimes used for certain effects.
• Determinator: Beatriz's ability to withstand manipulation and abuse is the reason why her Origins Episode is called "Resilience". Whether it's Gur's cult or Melvina's therapy, she manages to keep working towards her goals, no matter what horrors she finds herself up against.
• Dirty Coward: Freddie's father in "Back to Mornau" accuses him of being this after he left his life in town behind.
• Double-Meaning Title:
  • The series title both refers to the therapy that Melvina conducts on her patients and how she uses these sessions as a way of treating her own fears.
  • "Opposite Therapies" refers to how this story is the opposite of the normal therapy sessions that make up the comic, as we are focusing on Melvina not her patient. It also refers to the fact that the patient Beatriz is attempting to psychoanalyze Melvina.
  • "Filling Gaps" is a reference to how the story is filling in the gaps of Melvina backstory by showing what happened after the events of "Opposite Therapies". The ending gives it a Body Horror-infused meaning, as Beatriz unintentionally masturbates using an open wound on her stomach, suggesting that the lies about her mental health she was using justify seeing Melvina are coming true.
• Downer Ending: It is a horror comic, so it should be no surprise that many stories end with all or most of the sympathetic characters dead or experiencing Fates Worse Than Death. This happens in "Hare's Arms", "Back to Mornau", "The Overview Effect" and "Antique".
• Driven to Suicide: Melvina has driven at least one of her former patients to suicide, which is what gets Beatriz to start investigating her.
• Dying Alone:
  • In "Chairs", Annie is locked up in her house forced to die alone and in pain.
  • In the finale, Melvina begs Beatriz to stay by her side as she dies in the hospital. Beatriz refuses, and Melvina's final death happens offscreen.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The cruel bully Sarah Dunne is legitimately heartbroken at the disappearance of her twin. Also, Margret in "Chairs" legitimately loved Annie until jealousy and trauma caused her to lash out and imprisoner when she wanted to go be with her son at the end of her life.
• Eye Scream: Melvina's first successful "therapy" made her friend Grethel rip her own eyes out.
• Fan Disservice: A lot of scenes featuring sexuality or nakedness are followed up by some very serious Body Horror. A prime example is during "Resilience" when we see the attractive Emma fully naked from the back, including the cancerous tumors all over her back. Then we get a panel of her fully naked from the front as Gur starts Gaslighting her and physically contorts her face into a terrifying Slasher Smile while she cries.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Grandma in "Antique" explicitly does not fear death but is horrified at the thought of watching her grandchildren be tortured to death in front of her. Melvina is heavily implied to do just that at the end of the chapter.
• Foil: Melvina and Beatriz serve as foils to each other. Both are therapists motivated by the traumas of the past and willing to bend or break therapeutic ethics in search of their goals. But Melvina does what she does for her own gain and is willing to harm anyone who gets in her way or who she believes have wronged her.Beatriz is motivated by empathy for others suffering and will put herself through hell to protect others from dangers especially when Melvina is involved. She also is willing to work on and process her issues rather than cling to desperate emotional shortcuts like Melvina. In the end Beatriz explicitly says that despite their professions and determination, they were Not So Similar.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: Commander Joseph Conrad in "The Overview Effect".
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: "Back to Mornau".
• Freudian Excuse: Almost every major character has one, especially the major antagonists.
• Hair-Raising Hare: Gina in "Hare's Arms" has a horrible fear of rabbits after encountering something in the woods with her friends on a school trip. Her boyfriend convinces her to return to the scene and try to get to the bottom of her Repressed Memories of the event. Subverted once she realizes that what she remembered as rabbit's ears are actually her own arms, bent painfully behind her back as she transformed into her true form.
• Imprinting: Ayrn in "Back to Mornau" was the first thing a duckling saw once it hatched. It would follow her around thinking she was its family until she accidentally stepped on it while playing. The same thing happened with Freddie and the Eldritch Abomination in the mines, and now he is the only one who can kill it because it leaves its guard down around him.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Melvina and Aldrin's description of how they feel disconnected from the world around them sounds like they are realizing that they are characters in a comic. Aldrin's description of how he is seeing the fishbowl in his dreams sounds like he's realizing that everything he's seeing is in a comic panel. Notably, Melvina's final attempt to get outside the fish bowl requires her to try to take over the body of Beatriz, who the final chapter reveals to be the only character directly based on an actual Real Life person.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: When Beatriz attempts to bring police to Melvina's office after strangling her, all she finds is a disused alleyway.
• Madness Mantra: "They are not hares. They are arms. I was so wrong. It was never the place."
• Mark of the Supernatural: Melvina had a grey streak in her hair as a child, which was one of the reasons bullies decided to target her. It also pointed towards her supernatural nature and bleached all her hair once she accepted it.
• Medical Horror:
  • Most of the series falls under the psychological variation as we watch Melvina drug and abuse her patients.
  • "Antique" features the common surgical Body Horror flavor.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate:Aside from Melvina herself there is also the unnamed surgeon working for her willing to perform non consensual brain surgery on the elderly and on children.
• Mundanger: In "Chairs", the true physical threat to Edward is not the ghost of his mother or the haunted wheelchair, it's his neighbor Marget, a regular retiree.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Annie in "Chairs".
• Nightmare Face: Gina in "Hare's Arms" and Gur in "Resilience". Most people affected by the curse in "Back to Mornau".
• Non-Action Big Bad: Melvina may be able to manipulate and abuse her patients into getting her way with ease, but in any physical confrontation she is an elderly woman. Once Beatriz has enough of her manipulation and abuse following Ziggy's death, she easily strangles Melvina to death in a fit of rage.
• Nothing Is Scarier: While we do eventually get an insight to the goals of some of the supernatural forces at play, there is never an explanation for what exactly they are leaving them all the more terrifying.
• Not So Above It All: Melvina normally gives off a stoic and outwardly professional presentation for her clients, which only makes her getting bored and doodling ducks on her notepad during a session in "Back to Mornau" even funnier.
• Old, Dark House: Gina in "Hare's Arms" remembers going to a house with pictures of animals on the doors alongside a group of schoolmates as a child. The other students were never seen again, and Gina eventually returns to the house as an adult to discover what happened there and why her experiences there made her afraid of rabbits. It is eventually revealed that the house is entirely mundane and just an abandoned house previously used by the park for housing school children on trips. It was never the place, it was Gina herself.
• Origins Episode: "Resilience" gives Backstory for Beatriz and Ziggy as they meet at a mental health retreat that is actually a cover for a Cult.
• Ouroboros: Matt in "Escape to Mornau" recounts a time when he and Freddie startled a snake in a graveyard which started to eat itself to escape. Aside from the standard symbolism of the ouroboros it also serves as Visual Innuendo and A Visual Pun since Matt gives Freddie a blowjob, swallowing his snake, immediately after reminiscing about it.
• Patient of the Week: The Frame Story focuses on various patients coming to visit Melvina to discuss their problems and Melvina normally gives some form of diagnosis for their physiological issues at the end of the story. Crosses over with Victim of the Week because Melvina's treatments more often than not result in the deaths or at least suffering of her patients.
• Parental Abandonment: Melvina was abandoned by her parents as a baby and spent most of her childhood as a ward of the church. Edward from "Chairs" was abandoned by his mother as a child and heard nothing from her for years, only becoming aware of her death through a notary.
• Playing with Syringes:
  • Melvina drugs and draws blood from most of her patients during most sessions.
  • The nurse in "Antique" also tries to drug Olive into unconsciousness as she tries to leave. This shared tactic is our first clue they are working together.
• Posthumous Character: Beatriz's mother passed away years before the series started but her actions and the trauma she inflicted on Beatriz resonate throughout the comic.
• Psycho Lesbian: Margaret from "Chairs" is a surprisingly straightforward example in a series with a lot of major LGBT characters.
• Psychopomp: The actual purpose of the wheelchair in "Chairs". That it reappears to Melvina at the end of the story serves as our first hint that she is Secretly Dying.
• Psycho Psychologist: Melvina herself is an unusually subtle and terrifying example. Also, Gur in "Resilience".
• Psychosexual Horror: The Patient of the Week in the frame story of "Opposite Therapies" comes into discuss her tendency to intentionally cause injuries to remain and deepen so she can use them as pseudo-vaginas for masturbation. Subverted when this turns out to all be a lie so that the patient Beatriz can investigate Melvina. Then Double Subverted later on when we see Beatriz actually masturbating at the end of "Filling Gaps", which eventually results in her subconsciously digging a bloody hole into her stomach.
• Rape as Backstory: Melvina was set up to be sexually assaulted as a child by bullies in her boarding school. The resulting trauma lead to her attempting to throw herself off a cliff.
• Rape Discretion Shot: Melvina's sexual assault happens mostly offscreen, with the panel focusing mostly on a flower opening up nearby.
• Red Right Hand: Margret in "Chairs" has serious facial scarring after her abusive husband forced her face into a pan of boiling oil. She is also a repeated domestic abuser herself.
• Redemption Equals Death: Emma in "Resilience" breaks free of Gur's control, tackles him and allows Beatriz and Ziggy to escape the burning cult compound. She does not escape the fire herself.
• Repressed Memories: A recurring theme in the stories.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Freddie's father in "Back to Mornau" can remember some parts of previous loops and is confused by them. His attempts to explain what's going on and how to break the loop always fail.
• The Runaway:
  • Freddie in "Back to Mornau" ran away from home for reasons he truly cannot remember.
  • Ziggy ran away after experiencing extreme abuse from his parents.
• Serial Killer: A serial killer known as the Black Crow who breaks into houses to slaughter families while leaving the children alive to discover the bodies is alluded to several times before finally showing up in "The Black Crow". It turns out to be Ziggy.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: Freddie and Matt's sex scene in the graveyard plays out this way, cutting away to a nearby gravestone before cutting back to Freddie zipping up his pants and Matt wiping his mouth.
• Significant Anagram: Melvina is an anagram of "Evil Man".
• Space Isolation Horror: "The Overview Effect".
• Start of Darkness: "Opposite Therapies" and "Filling Gaps" turn out to be this for Melvina.
• Stealth Sequel: The last few chapters heavily imply that the series is a sequel to Rasen's earlier short story "PHASMATODEA". A dream sequence showing Melvina's birth more or less says she is the stick-bug covered baby from the story abandoned by her father after her mother's death.
• Superhuman Transfusion:
  • An inversion serves as the the core of Melvina's plan. She aims to steal the blood of people about to experience horrific events so she can use that blood to "vaccinate" herself against the fear they experienced in preparation for her going beyond the fishbowl. The people she takes the blood from are mundane people in over their heads, but Melvina is clearly somehow supernatural. By the time the series starts, she has vaccinated against all but one fear, the fear of her own death.
  • A straight example occurs in the final chapter when Grethel injects Beatriz with Melvina's supernaturally empowered blood as a final attempt to break the fishbowl.
• Surreal Horror: "Back to Mornau".
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Beatriz starts out as this, seeking to end Melvina's abuse and manipulation of her patients. Subverted when she almost immediately becomes the focus character taking over the protagonist role from Melvina.
• Title Drop: Beatriz at the end of "Opposite Therapies" after she discovered what Melvina did to one of her former patients:

Beatriz: I will bring to light what she is doing, and I will end Melvina's Therapy forever.

• The Topic of Cancer: Emma in "Resilience" claims that skin cancer was healed by the power of positive thinking and following Gur's teachings. In reality, it just keeps getting worse, and Gur blames her doubt on the technique failing.
• Thematic Series: The first in a trilogy by Rasen that also includes GremoryLand and Counting Sheep. While there are small details that imply a shared setting, for example Edward's painting briefly appears in Counting Sheep, the primary connections are the metafictional natures of the stories and the shared idea of going outside the fishbowl.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Gina in "Hare's Arms".
• Villain Protagonist: Melvina pushes all her patients towards self-destruction to meet her own selfish goals. She is also the main viewpoint character for much of the story.
• Wham Episode: Both of the season finale stories serve as massive changes to the status quo.
  • "Opposite Therapies" gives Melvina's backstory and introduces Beatriz, the story's true protagonist.
  • "The Black Crow" reveals that Ziggy is the titular Serial Killer, having been manipulated into it by Melvina, and has him commit suicide rather than hurt Beatriz once she discovers it. This in turn causes Beatriz to snap during her next therapy session, strangling Melvina to death. Melvina's office disappears when Beatriz tries to lead police to the body, removing the main setting of the series and leaving open the question of whether or not Melvina is truly dead. The season ends with Beatriz institutionalized and haunted by visions of Melvina's corpse taunting her.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • What happens to all of Melvina's accomplices is left unresolved at the end of the story. This is most notable with Grethel, who is last seen screaming as Beatriz leaps from her balcony at the beginning of the final chapter.
  • There is also no explanation of what happened to the people of Mornau following Melvina's death, as she served as a vital part of the "Groundhog Day" Loop trapping them.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • In "Hare's Arms", Owen eventually finds the bodies of several school children killed by the Hare years ago.
  • In "Chairs", Alice beat her baby for crying too much and is implied to have suffered similar abuse at the hands of her father.
  • In "Back to Mornau", the Eldritch Abomination causing the citizens of Mornau to repeat the same action kills at least one child when it forces their mother to keep driving directly off a cliff.
  • The bullies in "Opposite Therapies" almost drown young Melvina in a toilet because they thought she wasn't good enough to use one. Then they manipulate the developmentally disabled boy who Melvina considered her only friend into sexually assulting her. Melvina herself kidnaps them and ties their heads to a drainpipe to slowly drown in toilet water.
  • The care home staff (including Melvina) in "Antique" are happy to kidnap two children for use in their experiments.
• Yandere: Margaret in "Chairs", who, motivated by her hatred of men and fear of losing her life-partner, killed Annie rather than let her contact her son.

---