u/neoncats1960

Spoilers for the whole plot and especially the murder mystery outcome

I just read all of A Sea Change in one sitting, so if this question is stupid and I missed something, that's absolutely possible. I am tired and have been up all night. please let me know, I am so confused

So, when Matthew and Sylvain inspect Bart's body, Matthew notes that he was drained of blood and his throat was cut. Matthew says, "Someone made this slash to hide the puncture wounds from fangs."

Which leads them to the conclusion that the killer was a vampire.

at the end, Melody, a new vampire, confesses to killing her brother Bart in self-defense, saying he attacked her and tried to kill her to steal her necklace. She says, "I snapped his neck and ran to Virgil and the others afterward, not knowing what to do," and Matthew says, "So you had to hide the body. You threw him overboard, hoping his death would be written off as a suicide"

But if Melody snapped his neck, there obviously wouldn't be a wound. and she obviously wouldn't have created one after he was dead to obscure what happened. That would be in direct contrast to wanting his death to look like a suicide.

And there's the fact that the neck wound is what led Matthew and Sylvain to know the killer was a vampire in the first place. But if Melody never bit him or cut his neck, Matthew and Slyvain wouldn't have come to the conclusion it was a vampire at all.

Am I missing something huge here?? Or is this a massive plot hole

I even thought I knew how it would end. I figured Matthew realized the vampires didn't know he and Sylvain had inspected the body, so he was only pretending to believe Melody's self defense story to prolong his and Slyvain's lives long enough to get to Constantinople, at which time the institute would have sent a group to the dock to take action, as Matthew requested in his fire message earlier on. And then when that did happen, Melody and the rest of the vampire theater company would say, "But you swore on Raziel's name not to harm us, or cause action to be taken against us" (as they do right after the confession), and Matthew would say "I did. But these shadowhunters are here due to a fire message I sent before I made that oath. I haven't taken any action against you since then, "

And then he'd hit them with a "you can't have thought I really believed you! You're actors, I know when someone is putting on a show!" And he'd reveal he inspected the body without them knowing, so once Melody said she snapped his neck, he knew it couldn't be true due to the neck wound. Things weren't adding up, but he pretended to go along with it so he and Sylvain wouldn't be killed in the costume room.

That's what I thought would happen, and then it just ended after Melody confessed, and Matthew and Slyvain said they believed them and wouldn't take action against them. They never even followed up on Matthew's earlier fire message to the institute.

I'm either way off base, or there's a massive plot hole I can't seem to find anyone else mentioning

This is a really upsetting topic, so if you are sensitive to that sort of thing, please scroll!

I know that there is no way of knowing for sure since I was under anesthesia. But I want to know what y'all think about this.

I was 21 years old, getting my first laparoscopic surgery to look for endo. All I was told about the surgery was that they'd make a small incision in my belly button.

When I woke up, the nurse said, "Good news! They didn't find anything!" I was devastated though because that meant I still had to deal with debilitating periods.

When I was discharged and they gave me my clothes back, I stood up to change, and there was a lot of blood on the bed. Like more blood than I've ever seen in one place before. I asked the nurse why I was bleeding so much, and she said it was normal because they needed to do stuff in my uterus and put instruments up my vagina and through my cervix. I was not aware before the surgery that they were going to do any of that. The nurse acted like it was a very obvious and normal thing.

I had to ask her for a pad. She didn't think to give me one. I bled through it in 5 minutes and they sent me home wearing multiple pads at once, which were soaked through when I got home from a 20 minute car ride. The bleeding lessened after that. I was told in my follow up appointment that I probably do have endo, that they were just unable to find it.

Years later, when I was 27, I got another laparoscopic surgery from a much better doctor, who was able to find and remove the endo. I was expecting to bleed just as much in that surgery but I barely had any spotting afterwards. So I'm just left wondering wtf happened in my first surgery to cause that level of bleeding. I was gaslit into thinking it was normal, and didn't realize it probably wasn't until after my second surgery.

I mean, they didn't even acknowledge that I was bleeding a lot, and I was left to discover that on my own. That alone makes me think that there was more that happened in the surgery that they don't want me to know about. I just felt like I needed to share

Willing to weed or water flowers in exchange!

I have apples and oranges I can trade! I restarted my island recently, and I would appreciate it very much!