How can I modify the mesh of a linked character? I have a fun problem:

In character.blend I have an armature and a mesh with shapekeys inside a Group. In a new scene (pose.blend) I have Linked in Group. I then created a proxy (Make Proxy) and posed out the character. Now I'm noticing a small problem that I would like to fix for just this pose.blend file. How can I modify the mesh?

In my Outliner (under All Scenes) I have:


character which is just an empty containing everything that was in
the group, however I cannot select the mesh or armature
character_proxy which is the armature that I was able to move and
manipulate


Some things I've tried:


Making local the whole group. I still cannot select the mesh
Making local the objects in the outliner, the mesh is no where to be found and I cannot edit character (it is stuck in Object mode.)
Running Make Single User U on character or character_proxy, there is still no mesh, and the mesh is not selectable from Groups Outliner.


Now I did successfully do this (thanks Olson from #blender irc!):


Select character from the outliner and Make Proxy the mesh
Make the mesh local and then manipulate it.


This works but the problem is the mesh is in T-Pose (ignoring the armature.) I can 'fix' the pose but it is cumbersome (since it is not posed out.)

Any help would be appreciated :D!
Just link in the character rig's group as usual, then append the object. It will be shown read-only in the outliner. To make it editable, select the object through the outliner, then convert both the object itself and its mesh to local instance.



Using Make Proxy for mesh object isn't recommended, because it will lose all modifiers and vertex groups: