I think it would be really funny if both Jon and Martin had weird supernatural relationships with their glasses.
Consider:
They both have been wearing glasses for decades, since they were very small kids. (Jon has had them for longer. No one noticed Martin was having trouble until he was about 7, when one of his teachers brought it up. They have both needed them since around age 5)
Jon starts getting frequent migraines and vision headaches after his promotion, and he finally gets it checked during his recovery from the Prentiss attack. Turns out he really needs to change his prescription…
Around S4 Jon realises that he doesn’t need the glasses at all anymore. After he wakes up his vision is wildly improved. It would be noteworthy if not for literally everything else about that coma. It feels wrong to not wear them though, so he wears them Connie Maheshwaren-style.
When he becomes more Archivist than Jon, somehow the frames always seem to leave his face. Putting them back on is a grounding gesture that helps him after a particularly rough time. He also got one of those librarian pairs in Scotland, the kind with the chain, and he fiddles with that a LOT.
Martin doesn’t get Magic Eyeball God Vision, but does change after he becomes affiliated with the Lonely. He doesn’t wear them much anymore. There’s a harder edge to him now, a coldness and a wariness in his glare, more and more people around the Institute struggle to recognize him because he was always known as “that big friendly chap with the glasses”.
Peter thinks it’s a rather creative method of self-isolation, to make yourself so unrecognisable that even people who know you can’t see you.
Martin thinks it’s really annoying that he has to hold all his papers an inch from his face because all the FUCKING FOG KEEPS FOGGING UP HIS FUCKING GLASSES-
Podcast fanartists baffle and amaze me. I’ve been seeing TMA fanart for *years* on the peripherals of my feeds, and I always assumed that there was official art or clear descriptions or something because there was always variety in the designs, but there were things that were almost always the same, just like fanart of any visual media.
Here is a list of all the main character descriptions I am aware of that exist in the 200 episodes of The Magnus Archives (not counting scar descriptions):
Johnathan Sims
“Scrawny”
Premature grey hairs
Martin Blackwood
“Not the smallest guy in the world”
“Uncanny” resemblance to his father. Whatever he looks like.
Sasha James
“Tall”
“Long hair”
“Glasses”
Timothy Stoker
“The hot one”
Basira Hussain
…
Alice “Daisy” Tonner
…
Melanie King
…
Georgina Barker
…
The amount of details that everyone has just agreed on being true for all of these guys is legitimately wild
You guys I specified that this list does not include scar descriptions lmao that’s a whole separate list
@b33viemm I need you to know that I didn’t include the “grubby jesus” line because I wasn’t sure if Peter was describing his appearance or just comparing the Buried incident to the whole resurrection thing-
But that line is in fact 99% of the reason I draw him the way I do
I’m of the opinion that Martin always found Jon attractive, but didn’t develop a full crush until after he let him stay in the Archives to hide from Prentiss. I don’t have any evidence for this, I just want it to be true because comedic potential.
Imagine with me the hilarity that would ensue after Sasha outs Jon as a decade younger than he claims and Martin has to entirely recalibrate his whole view of the guy. Cause he *thought* he was fantasizing about a workplace fling with an older coworker but this bastard is literally his age, he’s just got a grandpa personality. Tim would laugh so hard he would choke
This one goes out to all the bitches who love some good Safehouse Era Horror. It’s me, I’m bitches. I want Jon and Martin to be fucked up and eldritch but I want them to be fucked up and eldritch and loved
(Notes under the cut because I can’t help myself. Heads up, I do go into some detail of how Jon gets injured so I can explain my thought process for how I designed his scars. All canon-typical and fairly clinical in tone.)
Here’s how I picture Safehouse Jon!
He doesn’t need glasses anymore by this point, so he should just be wearing empty frames, but I drew this before I settled on my glasses headcanons. This drawing looks better with the reflection anyways.
He hasn’t gotten a haircut since before his promotion to Head Archivist. He doesn’t love the weight of it on his neck, but he also uses it to fidget, and he really doesn’t want to go through the whole process of cutting it. He’s disliked haircuts since he was a kid (People: Bad. Small talk: Bad. Touching: Bad. Loud sounds: Bad. People talking all at once: Bad) and since his time with the Circus he’s only grown more reluctant to go and get it done.
At this length his hair is naturally pretty curly but he is. Not taking care of it. I actually put a lot of effort into trying to make it look brittle and tangled (I have a lot of experience lol, my hair is quite thick and I’ve always hated taking care of it. Yes I am also projecting my feelings about going to a hairdressers onto him why do you ask.)
The various scars were a bit of a strange task, but anyone who has seen my takes on The Bad Kids knows I’m not averse to selective realism in my fiction. Easiest one was the neck, I always pictured Daisy making a vertical cut based on “through the voice box”. The larynx is longer than it is wide, so I think Daisy would go for the method that dealt damage across the largest total surface area. Yes I am aware that I’m speaking the same way Martin does when he explains his corkscrew.
The worm scars were easy because I barely drew any. There are a few marks on his cheek, but they’re just surface bites. I picture most of his encounter with Prentiss showing on his legs, particularly on the right side, with enough damage there that he starts using a cane after the incident to keep weight off his right leg. More research to be done on this particular detail.
Finally the burn on his hand from Jude. This was the weirdest one to figure out just because of the nature of the injury. How do you quantify the damage done to an epidermis by a living manifestation of sometimes-boiling wax that can heat and cool at will? I settled on it being a second-degree burn that healed supernaturally fast, containing the damage to the space Jude had direct contact with. He’d probably have some mobility issues there as well. I know there are ways to help with mobility and pain after a severe burn, but I don’t know how much of it Jon would actually. Do. Like I said, definitely further research to be done on these last two.
Hey so I’m gonna ask you to stop and consider the horror of the watcher. The helplessness. The guilt. The inherent terror of being a spectator, a participant by proximity but not by action. The horror of not being able to look away, of being a bystander. Jon forgets to blink sometimes. But wouldn’t it be so much worse if there were no eyelids at all? That’s how I interpret the description of The Archivist being “All Eyes” :D
I love a good Many-Eyed Jon, so I whipped up my own interpretation here. I think the more he Becomes the more he starts to resemble the thing from the dreams. He has a lot more control of it in S5, but it still creeps up on him and he has to consciously go back to a human shape.
Me: I understand that the point of a story is not always to make the audience feel good, but to make an audience think. When we are presented with a cast of morally complex characters it is the writer’s responsibility to make those characters full and rich, and the audience’s responsibility to identify that fullness, and to question the instinct to villainize or justify any given character at any given time. In a world built on fear, largely following the perspective of one man who is just as flawed as all the people around him, it is more realistic and in some ways more interesting to embrace the emotional conflict that will come when these people all inflict trauma upon each other. They all hurt each other so deeply, because they’re all stuck in the same pressure cooker with literally no escape and no outlet and no information. The tragedy of it is the fact that there was never going to be a chance for them to work together because by the time they learn of that necessity the bridges have already been burned. Sure, they could have stopped it all from happening if they had done it differently. But could they really have done it differently? In their heart of hearts, with the context they had, could they really? And that’s what the narrative wants to make you think about.
Also me: But what if like… What if they were friends… What if things were just nice sometimes… As a treat…
I can’t find this anywhere anymore, but I read somewhere at some point that Jonny or Alex said that The Admiral is meant to be an absolutely hideous cat. I don’t know if that’s true, like I said I can’t find it again, but ever since then I’ve pictured The Admiral like this
And that has added greatly to my listening experience
