now it may be my own weirdness with the nature of existence but, i dont really get why everyone in TMA cares if someone is inhuman?
so your buddy feeds on fear? ok! sure!
does being human even matter???? whats the big deal about not being human!
i think you’ve very succinctly pinpointed one of tma’s key narrative flaws!
how and why are we meant to see “inhumanity” as a bad thing when by s4 our entire cast is made exclusively of non-humans
and why do these very obviously established non-humans gang up on one particular non-human as being the personification of wanton evil and malicious corruption when he isn’t even the one doing the most damage
jonny sims never resolves the core issue which is that being a monster/avatar is way cooler than being human in every way
I’m typing this at 4:30am so I don’t have the energy to explain deeper and there is a chance I’m going to sound aggressive because I’m tired, but really? This is the take? The show explicitly went on and on a about how being inhuman isn’t just “oh ho look you’ve got cool fucked up powers isn’t that neat wahoo!”
“Feed your fear or it feeds on you”. That is the motto of all avatars. They have to hurt people because that’s how fear works. It is bad to be a monster because being a monster invariably means causing harm to people. Sure it can be argued that Jon got it easy since his Fear was based around watching other people rather than, for example, taking over a hospice and introducing a plague amongst the vulnerable elderly so they’d die alone along with the caretakers, but everyone Jon ever took a live statement from was forced to constantly relive extremely vivid nightmares of their trauma while he watched them suffer.
Being an Avatar means being a killer, a torturer, a parasite, etc. The podcast made it explicitly clear that there is no way to exist as an avatar without causing harm to strangers, innocent or otherwise. FFS Agnes literally burned her crush’s face off by accident and all she did was touch him.
OP’s original post is definitely a simplified, potentially exaggerated take partly for the funsies, but for me the issue is far less, “The series never explains why being inhuman is bad” (because as you point out it quite obviously does) but rather, “The series paints inhumanity as a whole as an intrinsically Evil thing without fully engaging with the fact that humanity can be just as willingly evil.” It’s also late where I’m at so I’m not going to go hunting my brain for a full essay, but it comes down to the extreme way that 99% of the cast (and by extension the narrative) reacts to Jon’s monstrosity in comparison to their own monstrosity and the monstrous humans around them. Gertrude never became an avatar, but committed truly heinous acts in the name of the greater good. Melanie was consumed by the slaughter and got to make some of the most informed choices of the group, but continually positioned Jon as the responsible party for her suffering and mistakes. Martin simultaneously wants to be safe in the apocalypse via being connected to the lonely/having an avatar-killing boyfriend, but remains incredibly, morally critical of those same benefits. Basira spends whole seasons being wary of Jon’s Eye alignment while indulging Daisy’s Hunt alignment.
Yes, the podcast makes it clear that being connected to a God that demands the suffering of others is A Bad Thing, but beyond that it doesn’t - to my mind - fully unpack a) The issue of people like Jon who are manipulated into this, b) The repeating flaw of characters excusing their/a loved one’s monstrosity while using another’s as a scapegoat, and c) The complicated question of, “If you’re causing suffering because you now have to for survival and a human (Gertrude, the police, etc.) are doing it because they choose to… who’s the real ‘monster’ in this scenario? Can we truly maintain this black and white thinking of, 'I’m not connected to an Entity but you are, therefore I’m morally superior - regardless of the harm I’m willingly enacting and the lengths to which you strive to still be a good person.’”?
