“[…] why does pretty much all georgie discourse ignore her s5 scenes?”
Probably because most Georgie discourse isn’t about Georgie herself but instead about the fandom’s need to put her on a pedestal as the queen of self-care and boundary setting.
And how the podcast does nothing to discredit this.
Even with her apology.
Cause Jon automatically denies it and continues to deny it and by not accepting it — no matter how much SHE acknowledges her faults — narratively, her actions are venerated while his are despised.
It’s the same issue with almost every single other character when it comes to their actions and emotions towards Jon. Narratively, no matter how much the fandom or the writers themselves wants to disagree, Jon is the Big Bad and everyone against him are the heroes. And narratively, that means the heroes are in the right and he’s in the wrong.
It would be different if Jon wasn’t the linchpin of the apocalypse. It would be different if his role wasn’t to become the anti-Christ. Because if he didn’t have the power he had, he wouldn’t have been who they were needing to stop. If he was less of a manifestation of all the pain and fear they were needing to stop, the weight of his actions would’ve been equal to theirs.
But narratively it wasn’t. They weren’t.
His actions were absolutely greater in their effect than theirs against him. That’s the whole point.
So. To bring this back around. Narratively, any apology or ~aCoUnTaBiLiTy~ the others make have less importance than anything Jon does. So. No. We don’t think about or acknowledge the weak ass platitudes they give him in the goddamn penultimate episode because it doesn’t actually matter. Narratively.
@coulson-is-an-avenger and @pocketsizedquasar were talking about Jon and how he’d probably have had a cane in S2 at least since he was at physio after Prentiss, so I took a shot at editing that in.
did anyone tell jon that it wasn’t his fault? did they tell him? did he ever have that thought cross his mind that it was time to let go of the blame? did he ever forgive himself? i would. i want him to know that i would.
So normal about Jon being like I don’t remember what you looked like but the man who let you die is going to suffer for what he did to you. If only Sasha coulda seen that.
So normal about Jon being like you died hating me and wanting me dead but I’m still gonna make sure this man knows I’m ending him in your name. Sure wish Tim coulda seen that.
So normal about the fact that everyone believed Jon was losing his humanity but no one got to see the ways his love and compassion for the people he lost or who hurt him drove him to that final moment.
So normal about the fact that even after everything Jonah’s done to Jon, the only person he never thinks to get justice for is himself.
Just…Jon Was Going To Leave The Room. She Was Going To Be Okay. BUT SHE DIDN’T WANT TO FEEL LONELY SO SHE ASKED HIM TO STAY. AND HE DID!!!! JON DID!!! BECAUSE SHE ASKED AND HE WAS BEING KIND IM-
I will never get over how much that one little scene retroactively just wrecks me so much.
#I’ve said it once but I’ll say it again: Jon’s first act of kindness in the series is technically also his first monsterous one#and I will NEVER get over that#And it’s this scene that just makes the whole CHOICES thing just feels like BULLSHIT#he chose to stay SURE but it wasn’t because he wanted to hear her#It wasn’t for any academic element#NO HE STAYED BC A YOUNG WOMAN WANTED TO FEEL SAFE AND IT’S UNFAIR THAT IN TRYING TO DO GOOD HE ENDED UP MAKING IT WORSE#Is it really a choice if you don’t know what you’re choosing?#Like Jon’s other choices feel like his own fault his own short sightedness and just in general things he needs to improve upon#Naomi and taking her statement was made not from the worst side of Jon but THE BEST at the time….. and there’s something just awful in tha#It’s brilliant writing but it doesn’t make it any less AWFUL of a realization
Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”
The thing that I don’t think people understand is that Jon and Daisy are so obviously parallels of each other. They both experienced traumas that pushed them towards their respective entities as children (Mr. Spider, the story of Daisy’s scar), they both go into jobs related to that trauma because of how they have been marked, and they both slowly become corrupted by their respective entities.
The only difference? Daisy didn’t have anyone to stop her. Jon had Martin and Tim and Sasha (memory of) and Melanie and Georgie and everyone else there to remind of his humanity. When he started hurting people and succumbing more to the Eye he had people there to stop him and pull him back. Daisy didn’t have that.
All Daisy had was Basira, and she herself admits to enabling Daisy’s behaviour and turning a blind eye to it. Daisy does stop, or tries to, even though it hurts, her after being in the coffin. She gets reminded of her humanity and is able to, like Jon, resist the pull of the Hunt.
In episode 160 Daisy does exactly what Jon does in episode 200. She gives in to the Hunt to save everyone else, the same way Jon becomes the pupil of the eye so that Martin can kill him (like Basira later kills her) to both keep the people they love safe.
Jon would have turned out exactly like Daisy if it hadn’t been for the rest of the people in the institute, and Daisy would have been much more like Jon if she’d had good friends who called her out on her shit.
Yes, Daisy was very much a part of a corrupt institution and committed awful deeds, but she was driven there by the Hunt the same way Jon was pulled to the institute by the Web’s manipulation and stayed there because of the Eye. Let’s not forget that Jon also hurt innocent people because of the Eye, the same way Daisy hurt innocent people because of the Hunt. Daisy hurt people and so did Jon. The only thing separating them is the fact that Jon had Martin and Daisy had Basira.
Love TMA meta that is essentially just “god Jon is such a terrible person he doesn’t even realize it isn’t that so devastating??? that he actually assumed he was a human being but was actually a monster incapable of social interactions <3”.
Just say you think autistic people are subhuman freaks who deserve to be unpersoned and die
Nah, but, y’know, the fact that Jon’s month of being prisoner of the Circus, non consensually moisturized not regarded, is made out to be a huge fucking joke, that no one cared how by the end of it, Jon was resigned to die by the Distortions door like how he was going to die by Mr Spiders door… really emphasizes how no one cared about Jon. No one even noticed. Martin even tried to make him feel guilty for the fact he hadn’t been around enough before being kidnapped. It’s so fucking disappointing. No one cared about Jon. No one. It’s a wonder he didn’t accept dying in the Unknowing. And even that was seen as fucking arrogance and egotism.
JON IS THR GRENADE. JON IS THE GRENADE YOU ABSOLUTE WALNUT.
How does no one get this? How does no one understand that his choices and autonomy are nonexistent? Why on gods green earth do they accept what Jonah fucking Magnus says about his culpability in what JONAH GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING MAGNUS AND THE FUCKING WEB did to him as the truth???
But no. Every crumb they used to lead him around was just an excuse for his lack of willpower. He should’ve just not. He could’ve just left.
No. I just can’t get over the cognitive dissonance of what we were told and heard versus what actually happened.
The entire time, Jon was judged and dehumanized for perpetuating and inflicting trauma on people. His actions were solely his own and he had to own up to them in order to regain trust. He was rightfully labeled a monster because he had power and abused it.
AND. FUCKING. YET.
At the end, when we get to the final decision, that’s exactly what the others decided was the right and moral thing to do. To pass on and perpetuate the same suffering they’d been subjected to BEFORE the ritual even fully realized. To unknown universes.
“But that’s all hypothetical, and the ritual could be prevented by those other universes!”
Okay but like. Did they just forget how awful things were for people? That people still suffered and died and were irrevocably affected by the Fears? That THEY were? That the reason they were even trying to stop it was because they know how horrible it was?
And they were just. Going. To pass. It on.
So, yeah, no fucking shit Jon was like, ‘fuck y’all, I’m going to kill them right here and now’. BECAUSE HE WAS TOLD AND SHOWN THE WHOLE TIME THAT WHAT HE DID AND WHAT HE BECAME WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A MONSTER. THAT HIS ACTIONS DESERVED NO FORGIVENESS.
WHY WOULD HE EVER BE OKAY WITH LETTING ANYONE ELSE BECOME THAT? EVEN HYPOTHETICALLY???
He learned and listened and took in every criticism and judgment and went ‘alright, bet’. And they still didn’t see that he was fighting and fighting against the thing that told him to enjoy and relish in what he caused. They still didn’t allow him his humanity. They STILL SAW HIS CHOICE AS HIM BEING POWER HUNGRY AND INHUMANE.
So yeah. No. I’m sorry, but the fact they saw allowing the Fears to spread if it meant their world survived as the right and moral choice completely doesn’t make any sense with how they viewed Jon as a perpetrator of their and other’s suffering and how he should’ve just not done any of that.
Y’all can argue with me if y’all want and I will listen and if there’s things I misremembered or misinterpreted then go right ahead and point them out. I legitimately only listened to the last season once and the fourth twice. And that was a good year and a half ago. But this is how I feel and this is what I got from it.
so insane how some pieces of media have changed me irreversibly. tma has done permanent damage to my mind body and soul that i dont think anything else could ever rival.
I think about Jon telling Martin he imagines what it would have been like to meet and fall in love without the Institute and Martin saying that never would have worked out so much. Because Martin’s right, Jon was an absolute asshole to him for the first few seasons, and it did take years of trauma to make them compatible. Except the mannerisms that made Jon so cruel and critical of Martin in the first place are themselves trauma responses caused by the Fears. If Jon hadn’t been Chosen, traumatized, and manipulated through his entire life to become exactly what the Web wanted him to be, he could be an entirely different person. He may not have had that omnipotent fear that followed him everywhere and colored all of his interactions with everyone. He wouldn’t have dismissed everyone else’s trauma because acknowledging the truth of it would mean he has to acknowledge the truth of his own. He may not have felt like he had to always work himself to the point of harming himself to find answers, and hate anyone else who he thinks doesn’t have to work as hard as he does to survive. He may not have cultivated a cruel, uncaring persona because he was scared of getting too close to people and having them either hurt him or get hurt because of him. He could have been someone who was kind, who was empathetic, who was forgiving- both to himself and the people around him. But that wouldn’t have been the kind of person who would bring about the apocalypse, so he never got to be that person. And maybe it wasn’t the web, maybe he would have been exactly the same person with exactly the same faults, but he’ll never know. He can see everything but he can’t see who he could have been of the evil eldritch horrors hadn’t decided to destroy his life as a way to destroy everyone’s life. But he can imagine it. He can fantasize about being a better person and being someone who could have fallen in love with Martin in a normal life, and be loved in return. But Martin can’t understand that, because he can’t imagine a world where Jon isn’t what he was made into.
Y’all are building this narrative that the relationship Martin had with Jon paralleled his relationship with his mom as they are both ““addicts””. Off of a two sentence conversation.
Jon, while not technically qualified for archival work, absolutely did have to have SOME experience with things relating to the field. Especially as a researcher with a Master’s in English, which is the most common head-canon for his degree.
I am saying this as someone currently in my first year as an undergrad Library and Information Science major. There’s no possible way he isn’t at least familiar with one or two catalogue systems or any citation styles. It’s the basics, ffs.
Of all of them, the only one I wouldn’t believe to have any knowledge of what the fuck they were doing would be Martin. All of them, to get their jobs in research, would have to have the same credentials. And assuming Miss Sasha ‘lets staple important documents together’ James would have certification to be in the archives, is laughable. I guess they just let fucking ANYONE in artifact storage.
Sorry. Like. On one hand, I know within the podcast, he truly doesn’t have a damn clue, but on the other hand? It’d be insane to me to say he knew nothing. Even slightly. Even tangentially.
What I’m saying is. Let the man know what collection development is and how to budget for weeding and repairing. Please. Let him have had at least one Information Ethics class. I beg of you.
Love how people will be, “Martin has to learn that he doesn’t have to earn love, that he should be loved unconditionally despite how his parents were,”… and then unironically talk about how Jon was selfish and an idiot for doing things without peer review and permission. In other words…
