2024-11-10 6:14:54 ¶ ●

I love Johnathan “It seems my academic detachment has fled me” Sims with my whole heart, and honestly it’s because he’s a fucking prick. He spends all of season 1 genuinely being a massive asshole, and not just on the outside, he’s a prick through and through. I think there’s an instinct to justify his behavior because people like him, but I think that’s discounting what makes him interesting.

Yes, when he lies and pretends that he is skeptical, it is out of self-preservation. It is out of fear. But he allows his fear to become something that hurts the people around him. He implies to multiple people, traumatized people looking for help, that they’re delusional. To their faces. It’s not the only thing he says, but he says it with a heavy tone of condescension and irritation, two things that vulnerable frightened people do not need. Both Martin and Sasha almost end up dead because they’re convinced that John won’t take them seriously if they don’t have good enough evidence of their experiences. He’s a huge asshole to Martin for literally no reason. You aren’t obligated to like everybody, but goddamn, John, some thoughts are inside thoughts!

And then he realizes that he’s a massive prick, at some point in the latter half of season 2. Really realizes it, realizes how much his actions impact the people around him. And he doesn’t really stop for a long time, arguably he doesn’t stop ever. But holy shit, he tries. He tries with everything in his entire being to be better. He puts his whole life into being better than he was, into trying to fix what he feels he broke, and he will try and try and try until his hands bleed and his legs collapse under him because he let people suffer under his watch and by his own hand and Never Again. I think that’s why he leans so hard into sacrificing himself, it’s the cumulative guilt of everything, even stuff before the Magnus Institute, and he really does think that he can only be good if he destroys himself in the process because what the hell has ever been good about him?

And that’s horrifying, and tragic, and fascinating. God, he’s such a good character