The Magnus Archives fandom confuses me so much.

I don’t go on discords or have chats with others in the fandom, I just look at post and occasionally post my own, so maybe I’m missing something.

But I’m so confused, I’ll see posts that are like “this fandom only cares about Jon and if you like any of the female characters you get hated on in every interaction, why do the girls get so much hate?” The I’ll turn around and see post that are just “the TMA girls did nothing wrong ever, Jon sucks, he’s a misogynist because he had an argument with a girl.”

Like, I keep seeing post mentioning TMA girl haters, but honestly, I tend to see more post being critical of Jon than the girls, and maybe that’s just because of who I follow (although Jon’s my favorite character in the show)

In my opinion, there’s more post being critical of Jon, because he’s the main character and therefor we see his journey a lot more, than the rest of the characters, so I think it’s easier to say “wow, this character, is so much better than Jon, because at least they didn’t [insert anything Jon did.]”

On the flip side, if another character did something wrong, we don’t always get to see what led them to that point, so we can say “Jon wouldn’t do something like this, this character sucks compared to Jon.”

And I think that’s the issue, comparing them. While comparing them may work if you’re talking about narrative foils or parallels, comparing them for moral discussions (as in, this character’s morally better then that one) doesn’t really work, because all the characters are well written characters that have motivations and morals that we can only speculate.

Sorry, I got distracted, what I’m trying to say is that I’ve seen post that hate on Jon, I’ve seen posts that hate on the girls, and both types of posts tend to turn one or all of the characters into boring one dimensional stereotypes instead of considering the nuances of all the characters.

You can’t say Jon’s never done anything wrong, he most certainly has, his actions hurt several people, but you can’t deny that he’s trying to be a good person.

You can’t say Melanie’s just mean and angry, that ignores everything that has happened and been done to her, but also her anger shouldn’t be excused, she’s hurt people, including herself.

Two things can exist at the same time; “Georgie has every right to distance herself from Jon” and “the lack of support Jon receives in season 4 from Georgie negatively impacted his health” can both be true, and it doesn’t put either of them in the wrong. Georgie isn’t obligated to stay when it would be detrimental to her, but that doesn’t mean that her choice doesn’t affect Jon.

The thing about TMA is that it’s very realistic, the characters don’t just make choices that have no later consequences, other characters aren’t just ok with everything Jon does because he’s the Main Character, and everything Jon does isn’t always right just because he’s the Main Character.

It’s like the real world in that everyone’s choices can positively or negatively affect others, and there’s not much “right” or “wrong” in those choices.