You know how sometimes Tim will get portrayed as really goofy and flirty, Sasha as this perfectly rational person, and Jon as a stick-in-the-mud who isn’t very nice, in fanfic? (I know that comma’s not supposed to be there but it made the sentence read better.)

Well, that’s how the characters want to be perceived. Or at least how they think they are perceived. We hear all these stories from Jon of Tim being super charming and flirty, which, even if he does this all the time, is still basically an act. Charm is a show. Sasha thinks she’s rational, and calls Martin out for not being so, but she is quite impulsive. And Jon, as we all know, is going way too overboard in being professional and is in denial. Even he knows; he appears to lampshade himself (can you do that?) by saying that “even I don’t have a heart of stone” or whatever. I think it’s “A Sturdy Lock” where he says this.

The point is, they fooled us. Or some of us, I guess? Even Martin, who I forgot to mention until now. See how I forgot to mention him until now? Yes. He’s trying to be forgettable, to be a helpful part of the scenery. But that’s not the real him. We know that by Season 5 at least! They all showed us, even the audience, exactly what they wanted us to see.