Hey guys, we need to talk. Because a certain little something in TMAGP 8 is causing what is genuinely the most toxic part of the Magpod fandom at large to once again rear its ugly head.
So let’s talk about podcast character appearance head canons, shall we?
I’m tagging this with the Magnus Archives, TMA and Magpod tags because I am absolutely calling all of you out, but if you don’t want spoilers for The Magnus Protocol episode 8 then stop reading right now.
.
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. Okay, so, Gerry exists in the TMAGP universe. He’s happy (or at least acts cheerful). And some people have headcanoned this to mean that he is no longer goth, or at the very least isn’t dying his hair black with bad box color.
And other people have decided to get seriously agro over this. I have literally seen with my very own eyeballs someone call “un-gothing” Gerry a “hate crime” and calling the person they were talking to “gothphobic.”
Let me make this absolutely clear for all of you: podcasts are a purely audio medium and unless a physical trait of theirs is explicitely stated, everyone’s headcanon for how a character appears is valid.
Goth TMAGP Gerry is valid.
But also
Rainbow Goth TMAGP Gerry is valid.
Pastel Goth TMAGP Gerry is valid.
Not Goth At All TMAGP Gerry is valid.
Bald Gerry who has actually gotten his brain cancer diagnosed in time and is getting treated for it is valid.
Somebody’s headcanon of a character that has no canonical description to them, or whose headcanon matches the few crumbs of canonical description we have but otherwise doesn’t look the way you imagine them to, is not going to take away from your own headcanon of what a character looks like. If someone imagining or drawing a character looking a different way from how you imagine them looking somehow takes away from your enjoyment of the fandom or otherwise makes you feel like you need to barge in and tell them that they’re Wrong and need to conform to your headcanon or else, that is a reflection on you, not them.
And this problem way predates TMAGP, let alone TMAGP 8.
The only description we have of John is that he is in his early 30’s and has prematurely greying hair.
If someone thinks he looks like the pastiest motherfucker to ever dwell in a basement, an extra-in-the-Adam’s Family or Tim Burtan protagonist of a man, let them.
What’s that? You want to tell them that John is BROWN and if they don’t headcanon him looking that way they’re WRONG and RACIST? Back away from the keyboard and go outside.
(Ironically, as someone who started getting grey hairs in my hair in my 20’s myself, I’m pretty sure everyone’s headcanon of John, with tiny little whisps of grey in his hair, is wrong, because if he was so grey that people were surprised to learn he was “a child of the 90’s,” he was probably full on salt-and-pepper when he was in his 20’s.)
The only description we have for Martin is that he (man who canonically has the self esteem of a used doormat) describes himself as “not the smallest guy”, Not-Sasha called him “roomy”, Melanie is skinner than him, and Jonny said he imagined him as a “bigger guy” who would beat Alex in a physical fight.
If someone decides to take this information and conclude that it means he’s tall, broad and has muscle, rather than that he’s overweight, fucking let them.
If your first instinct to this is to run to your keyboard and call them “fatphobic” or otherwise bash them for it, I once again urge you to back away from your keyboard and go outside.
Someone headcanons Basira not wearing a headscarf? We have exactly 0 canonical physical description of her and the people who headcanon her as having one are basing that purely off of her name alone. Fucking let them.
Someone headcanons Melanie and/ or Georgie as a skin color you don’t agree with or a hairstyle you don’t like? Fucking let them.
As long as someone’s headcanon of a character’s description doesn’t contradict the few canonical descriptions we have of a character, why do you care? Them having a different headcanon from you doesn’t take away your right to imagine the characters looking however you like, anymore than it should take away their right to do the same. Someone headcanoning John as white (or Black, or Asian, or Mixed, or whatever) isn’t going to make all of the fanart of John as brown with long hair suddenly disappear, nor the fanfiction describing him as such (although I do often wonder if the opposite is not true; is the fact that John looks the same in so much of the fanart I see on here really because of fandom “consensus”, or is it because people are absolutely awful to anyone who draws him Different?). Someone headcanoning Martin as not fat isn’t going to make the mountains of fanart of him as a fluffy little marshmallow vanish into the void (although I do remember hearing about someone getting bullied off the internet for daring to draw Martin as not fat). And someone headcanoning Gerry in TMAGP as not being goth isn’t going to take away your preciouse goth TMAGP Gerry headcanon.
That should be part of the fun of it, shouldn’t it? Seeing what different images people have conjured in their heads of these characters we only get to experience with our ears, and celebrating the differences as well as the similarities? Why are we bullying people into conforming to one appearance of a character when no actual canonical appearance of them exists?
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I found the sketches for the polaroids from Sasha’s drawer in the Unicorn pen comic, and I finally found in me to render them how I wanted them originally
For the tma asks thing, Jonmichael, either michael being protective over Jon or Michael and it's cat like behavior trying to get Jon to pay attention to it 💕💕
[Image ID: Two drawings of Michael Distortion, a white man and spiral entity with long blonde hair, interacting with Jonathan Sims, a brown man with brown hair and half-moon glasses. Michael wears a lime green fuzzy sweater under a brown cardigan, while Jonathan wears a green button-up shirt. In the first drawing, Michael hangs upside down from a trapdoor on the ceiling, talking to Jonathan, who is writing. Michael says “Archivist!” and Jonathan replies “Yes, Michael?” In the second drawing, Michael is hugging and holding onto Jonathan, saying “He’s not YOURS to take.” Jonathan looks surprised. /.End ID]
Gerry’s head flew up, startled by Michael’s surprisingly firm tone. “What?” he asked, ready to expect the worst before Michael deposited a plastic bag on the table before him. Inside were refreshingly familiar boxes of his usual brand of hair dye, in his usual black, but also one of a medium brown, a packet of gloves, and a stiff-looking brush. “Wha-”
“We’re coloring your hair today,” Michael announced, planting his hands on his hips. “We’re going to do this properly, and it’ll look great, I promise.”
“My hair is fine,” Gerry protested, grabbing the box of brown and eying it critically. As terrible as he looked as a blonde, brunette was much worse on him.
“My love, you clearly can’t reach the back of your own head,” Michael told him, circling around the table to stand behind him, pulling Gerry’s hair back and fanning it out. “You’ve got banding, and patchiness, and it’s uneven all over.” Despite his criticism, his hands were gentle as they carded through the strands. “Bit like a big cat in the shadows, you know?”
Gerry frowned, feeling the tiniest twinge of shame. “Is it that bad?” he asked uncertainly. It wasn’t like he cared overmuch about his hair, except for when the roots got too blond, but apparently he’d been missing more than he knew.
“Of course not,” Michael said at once. Gerry felt him bunch up his hair in one hand, then felt his lips brushing over his neck, soft and light and sending shivers all over him. “I only notice because I notice every single thing about you.” His lips moved over his skin with his words, ending in a deliberate kiss to his neck. “In fact, I think it’s charming. It’s very…you.” One of his hands dropped to wrap around his middle, giving him a squeeze. “I’m not…demanding you do you hair better, or that it needs to be fixed. I just want to do this for you.”
Gerry relaxed, leaning back to give Michael more access to his neck. “Are you sure you want to get your hands dirty?” he goaded with a laugh that broke into a moan when Michael sunk his teeth in a bit. “Have you ever dyed hair before?”
“I have a good enough idea,” Michael assured him, pushing aside the loose collar of his shirt to kiss the crest of his shoulder. “At least I can help. Four hands are better than two, and I can see the back of your head.”
Gerry laughed. “That’s true,” he agreed. Michael’s kisses continued, from his shoulder and back up his neck, sweet and tender and full of affection. Gerry knew that Michael’s fussy attention was borne of love, wanting only the best for him. And if Michael wanted to try his hand at making his hair look better than he ever could, he was welcome to try. “You can’t do any worse than me, at least.”
“Just you wait.” Michael teasingly tugged on his hair before he released it, coming back for one last kiss on his shoulder. “I might do it wrong and it’ll come out green.”
“You know,” Gerry shrugged as he grabbed the supplies. “That might not be a bad look.” It might also look terrible, but it couldn’t be as bad as what he’d done to himself. No matter what, he’d appreciate anything Michael would do to him.
Needles has a lot of needles and Jane Prentiss has a lot of holes. So maybe if they hugged they would be like puzzle pieces. Fit together. Food for thought.
Arthur Lester after being possessed, going blind, murdering three people, getting kidnapped, stabbed and put in a coma: you know I’m feeling rather chipper after that months sleep! Onwards and upwards!
Jonathan Sims after tripping over his shoelace: why don’t I just kill myself
honestly mentally i live in a universe where elias was just like 5% more down bad and couldn’t get anything done because everytime tim or martin or sasha said anything vaguely nice OR mean to him his brain just shortcircuited. the eyepocalypse never happened because the pupil was too busy slowly joining a polycule
literally my exact vision. they all just bully him relentlessly and he’s the happiest he’s ever been
I’ve started to say “I need time to process this.”
Not only do we take longer to process things, we can take a lot longer to *act* on things that we have processed, too.
We buy games we know we’ll enjoy, try them out, then put them down for a month, 2 months, 3, 4, a year, etc, until we finally pick it back up and *actually* get into it.
We say we’re starting a project we won’t actually start or finish for months.
Our brains take a lot of time to *do* things, as well as understand them.
This often leads to situations where people will poke us about a project we said we were starting 2 weeks ago that we haven’t actually started, and won’t start for another 2 weeks, and just
Being ashamed
Because we couldn’t start when we said we would.
Executive dysfunction and processing delays, both terrible. Bleh.
“Fem presenting” this, “Masc presenting” that, why can’t I just be Presenting? Exist without intent or meaning? Live free of the confines of the binary? Why can’t I simply be a featureless cryptid that borders on being full-on eldritch horror?
let me just say i lOVE YOUR GERRY!!!!! beloved mannn. i really love your eye tattoo design that he has, but i can’t see the full thing properly on any of the drawings. i was wondering if you would possibly gift a tiny gay man a picture of just the eye tattoo? 👉👈
Sorry this took me a hot minute to get to, but ty<3 it’s inspired by various all seeing eye tattoo designs I’ve seen around
OMG I LOVE YOUR ART!! YOU DRAW GERRY AND MICHEAL LIKE REAL PEOPLE AND AHHH OMG!! ITS CHRISTMAS EVERY-TIME YOU POST!! THANK YOU FOR BLESSING TUMBLR WITH YOUR ART
THANK YOU AAAAAGH that is the biggest compliment I could receive<3 I know I do make them prettyboys but I try… I would like to make Gerry especially a bit more gunge honestly
