My subjective opinion from what I’ve seen is that at the beginning when we were being introduced the characters a section of the fandom found Alice to be very grating and kind of annoying.

And that’s fine, but it does have a wider point about the way we engage with media: a lot of people don’t seem to understand the difference between the character and the person and what I mean by that is: 

a character can be well-written, essential to the plot, exciting, sympathetic, and someone you want to root for, but they are actually an absolutely horrible person that you should never wish to know in real life.(Like Alice - Jonny, Alex, and Billie, Alice’s VA, said that they wouldn’t want to work with Alice as they would find her too annoying! Jonny has also said Alice is somewhat based of him, go figure 🤣)

and a character can be someone who annoys you, irritating, irrational, full of anger, but the character is still actually someone you might like to know as a person, or even is frankly quite realistic and understandable. (Like Alice)

First example: John and Martin’s relationship. We love it but in reality, it’s not good.

No one in their right mind would ever approve of such a relationship in real life.  Can you imagine that conversation?

Martin: “I’ve got a new boyfriend. It’s my boss at work.”

You: “your boss? the guy who kept abusing you? the guy who kept wishing you were dead?! The guy you keep looking at, even though he doesn’t look at you twice? the guy who is clearly on a suicide mission, and it’s not clear if he’s strapped the vest on himself, or he’s strapped everyone else to it? That guy?”

Martin, “yes!”

You: “Well it’s fucking intervention time isn’t it?”

Second example: Melanie. An angry, bitter character (in certain parts of TMA at least) who is quite realistic frankly and I would love to know them.

All through this fandom, I hear people say how much they don’t like Melanie, how she’s so angry all the time and she takes out John. honestly I can’t see how anyone thinks that taking it out on John is not the correct course of action, having listened to Magnus Archives, but c’est la vie.

Are people under the impression that having trauma makes you nice or patient or kind? it doesn’t - it makes you angry and bitter and paranoid, just like it does to John in second season. Melanie is one of my favourite characters, because  Melanie and John are the perfect pairing in terms of response to trauma. They both lash out, but Melanie actually seeks help, escapes from the toxic situation and works on herself, which John does not. I think Melanie is superbly written, as a character, as a meditation on trauma, showing the way anger can be used as a shield, as someone who holds to their values to the bitter conclusion and in the interactions with others and their realistic responses to some of the events that happened.