You know what drives me insane about fandoms nowadays??? That I can give any critiques on characters or even make simple fucking observations without it being taken like I’m staking all of my morality on my opinions of them.
Right now I’m talking about The Magnus Archives specifically. I LIKE that the characters are a bunch of traumatized fucked up hypocrites that can’t communicate for shit because that’s literally what make this story a horror story and not just sci-fi fantasy or action. What made this horror was the characters each being isolated in their own little trauma bubbles when an easy solution to the entire thing would have been teamwork, patience, understanding, and explosives.
I LIKE Daisy and Basira BECAUSE OF THEIR CHARACTER FLAWS. Daisy is an actual crooked cop that kills when she sees fit and gets away with it like actual cops do and Basira covers for her and makes excuses just like “good cops” actually do. Both of them are hypocrites and part of the fear/suspense in the story was not knowing if Basira really would try to kill Jon or “put him down” like an animal which is so fucking ironic considering what Daisy is.
I LIKE that Melanie was an insulting ass to him right off the bat and that she blamed Jon for her being there when it literally wasn’t his fault at all. I finally get to see a female character with actual anger issues just like we see men with anger issues in media constantly and it added to the story brilliantly
And I LIKE that Martin has huge manipulation and trust issues that bleed into his relationship with Jon in season 4 and 5 and he says things that are downright hurtful to Jon to get him to do what he wants even though he thinks it’s what’s best for Jon. It’s one of the only examples I’ve seen in media where someone who suffered abuse as a child wasn’t made into a “sympathetic villain” or a can-do-no-wrong character.
And don’t even get me started on Jon’s flaws, others go into that area much better than I could. But I LIKE that he went off the walls crazy in season 2 because if Jane’s worms hadn’t made him toxic to be around and paranoid he would have come to the conclusion that he needed to trust and work with other people much sooner and the whole story would probably have been a lot less of a horror story and more of a found family sci-fi.
I’m really tired of people acting like all queer characters have to be perfect role models that spew therapy talk and shit rainbows and anybody that doesn’t make post condemning their “toxic” behavior must also be a bad person, or the other way around where you can’t criticize any characters actions without other people in the fandom taking it like a personal attack. If you want to be spoon fed wholesome media that isn’t problematic or whatever go watch cat videos or something but I’m not going to justify my appreciation for characters every time I post about them. I’ve literally stopped myself from posting any fanfics I’ve wanted to because I didn’t want to deal with all the crap and I’ve decided that I don’t care anymore.
Oh my GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDD would y’all PLEASE STFU ABOUT ~MISCHARACTERIZING~ FEMALE CHARACTERS.
For FIVE FUCKING MINUTESSSSS
It’s not fucking misogyny to dislike a fucking fictional female character. Stop putting it into your head that people who don’t like female characters would excuse male characters for the same things they don’t like about them. Stop putting it into your head that a person will only dislike a female character because they think she’s irrational. Stop fucking making straw-men to get angry about.
I remember vividly when the rhetoric behind well written female characters, advice given to male writers, was simply to just. Write them as people. Write them as they would any male character.
AND YET. NOW Y’ALL WANT TO ACT AS THOUGH ITS CRIMINAL TO DISLIKE WELL WRITTEN, MULTIFACETED CHARACTERS … BECAUSE THEY HAVE BREASTS AND A VAGINA.
you’re so real. i also kind of hate martin except for that one episode when he was in the lonely and talking to himself because i really liked that episode. but every other episode i agree with you. that i don’t really like martin. i think jon and tim should have dated instead honestly they have the best dynamic
HATED that episode omggg literally the worst one we do not need more of that whiney little bitch ughhhh one Martin is far more than too many Martins already
Jontim bores me and I think there’s too much focus on shipping in this fandom and it can hinder understanding of the actual characters as individuals but at least it’s not Jmart 💞
this is about villains/antagonists/general horrible people who finally face up to what they’ve done. especially if they try to pull the good ole “Dramatically Does One Good Thing To Redeem Themselves And Dies,” but despite their best efforts they DON’T die. like yes motherfucker there’s no easy way out for you, there’s only the slow, awkward and painful process of learning to live with yourself. of learning to live with the weight of your mistakes. you get a second chance regardless of if you think you deserve it. you get to try to make amends and do good. you get to live.
this is also about every self-sacrificial bastard of a protagonist who puts themselves in harm’s way again and again and again to a wildly unhealthy and unnecessary degree. see, there’s something so compelling to me in the unspoken suicidality of repeated heroic self-sacrifice, and the thing about implicitly suicidal characters is that i want them to live. and that can be used to make a death so much more tragic and impactful - noble sacrifices and last stands certainly can and have been done beautifully - but there’s also something special to me in seeing such a character make it. because you’d die for the people you love, yes, but would you live for them?
I think another sticking point about my perspective of avatars dying if they refuse to feed their patron, is that I am wholly convinced that Evan Lukas was a fledgling avatar of the Lonely. But he fell in love with Naomi Herne and he decided to shun his “family’s religion” and then died for it. In a way that didn’t cement his full fledged status as an avatar, unlike the others. Which only made him dissolve INTO the Lonely, giving him a chance to save her from it posthumously.
So yeah. I absolutely believe that both rejecting AND embracing the antithesis of the fear you’re being subjected by would only lead to total death instead of ascending to full avatar status. Or something like that.
some of you take elias’ “you didn’t want this but you did choose this” speech too literally and not think of the context of the quote and who is saying it to who…elias is actively manipulating jon at this point of COURSE he would try to tell him he “technically chose it” why are we acting like the antagonist telling their victim that they chose their abusive situation is something the narrative 100% agrees with …. its not a source for the truth of the situation in the narrative like i've seen a lot of people use it
sometimes when characters say things theyre wrong!!!!!! especially when the character is actively grooming the other character for a certain purpose and is Notorious For Manipulation like lets think about context
yes a big theme in tma is choice but it more so proposes and explores questions about that theme in the narrative instead of giving us a specific set answer for those questions….you shouldn't take everything a character says as truth you should infer from the context of the character and the situation
tldr: elias telling jon he technically chose his situation doesnt mean thats true because theres this thing called informed consent + elias uses manipulation and emotional abuse tactics all the time
you ever think about how Daisy established that Jon is one of the two meaningful connections in her life and someone she would like to stick around and keep in her life, and said it so casually she probably wasn’t even realizing it?
That line in S5 where Jon tells Martin they probably don’t even like each other in other universes and it took 5 season of trauma to get to that point made me sad
OK but unless they talked about this twice in season 5 and I have completely forgotten the first conversation they had about it, this is wrong? This is actually the opposite of what happened?
In episode 199 Jon thought they could have gotten together without all the trauma.
ALT
Martin is the one who thought they wouldn’t have been compatible without it.
I find it funny the way Jon blames himself for the apocalypse. Cause essentially what happened is that Jonah put a nuke in his lunch and he blames himself for it.
Like, imagine you got a sandwich for lunch. You’ve been looking forward to eating this sandwich for so long, you haven’t had one in weeks. Your friend got it for you from a restaurant and you are so so excited.
It looks amazing, it smells amazing, you are so excited. Then, you go to take a bite and there’s a fucking nuke in it. It explodes and kills everyone around you, except for you. Then you blame yourself.
You didn’t put that nuke in it. You didn’t know there was one there. You were just trying to eat lunch.
It was the guy from that restaurant, he put a nuke in your sandwich! And it wasn’t even like he put it in a random sandwich and you just happened to get it. No, he put it specifically in your sandwich so when you try to eat your lunch it will explode.
And you know that he put the nuke in your sandwich. Cause he wrote you a note explaining to you exactly why and how he did it. He told you it was so it would explode and kill everyone, and he told you that he put it specifically in your sandwich. And he hid the note so you would only see it after you started eating, at which point it was already too lat.
And you still blame yourself. Even though you had no idea. How does that make sense?
Jon, it is not yourfault there was a nuke in your sandwich
Excuse me waiter, there’s a nuke in my sandwich
^^^Ok but fr this is what Jon thinks he should have done
Hi op I hope you don’t mind me hopping onto your post but Jon’s guilt complex drives me up the wall insane and I love talking about him!!!!! So Jon realizes that he isn’t the one that put a nuke in his sandwich, right? But I think he feels like he should have known (or maybe even capital-K Known) to check. He’s gotta be kicking himself - just before fleeing to Scotland he found out that his evil boss is actually the literal evil founder of the literal evil institute - so it is a fundamental failing on his part that he did not check the sandwich coming from the said evil institute for a nuke. Yes, even though the sandwich did not appear to be from the newly revealed evil founder, even though he’s had hundreds of these sandwiches before and they’ve never caused harm, even though he literally had no reason to suspect that eating what seemed to be the same sandwich he’s been eating for years now was how his short time of reprieve was going to come to an end, not just for him but for literally everybody. He should have checked for a nuke anyways!! Even though they don’t belong in sandwiches!!
And to make matters worse, as @samwise1548 pointed out in their tags, Jon has benefited from the nuke going off and he’s well aware of it. For one, he was already spontaneously Knowing things before, and now that the whole world has ended and belongs to the Eye he’s gained full control over that ability. I wonder if he beats himself up over that, wonders what could have happened if he’d made himself try just a little bit harder to control all that Knowledge before the nuke went off. Forget what he’d said about feeling like opening that door would be like drowning - if Jon sees this situation as losing himself vs losing the whole world, I’m sure he feels like he should have just given up on his humanity, if there’s a chance that would have been enough to circumvent the nuke sandwich. So, would it have been enough? Is there an alternative where he was able to Know about the nuke early and get rid of the sandwich? Don’t know! But Jon is absolutely the type of guy to beat himself horribly up over “what-ifs.”
TLDR Jon thinks he should have checked his sandwich for a nuke even though the precedent set over the last few years had given him no reason to do so. But he didn’t, so in his eyes, he is just as responsible, if not moreso, than Jonah-Elias.
why would you like media that is good if you can like media that is bad instead and pace around your room like an insane person thinking about What If It Was Good
personally i’m a fan of when a story is like. the love was there. unfortunately. this all could have actually gone a lot easier for everyone if the love hadn’t been there but here we are
Thinking about how trauma and reconciliation presents itself in The Magnus Archives and Moon Knight. Thinking about how both Jon and Marc were traumatized at young ages by watching someone they knew die in front of them, among other things. Thinking about how they ended up in positions where people are hurt or worse because of them in direct cause of that formative experience. Thinking about how they’re not given any forgiveness for that pain by those they hurt… however…
Thinking about how Marc is told his trauma wasn’t his fault and despite still not being forgiven for his actions because of it, in the end he’s able to choose a different way and will eventually be able reconcile with those he hurt and forgive himself.
Thinking about how Jon was told his trauma was the reason everyone around him was being hurt and that it wouldn’t matter if he tried to fix anything, it would still be his fault simply for existing, and he would never deserve forgiveness.
Thinking about how a key component to this is how both of them are unable to be open about that trauma. Thinking about how both pushed away any support system they had out of a misguided need to protect them. Thinking about how Marc had people begging him to be open about it and his feelings in order to understand and help him. Thinking about how Jon was consistently ignored or silenced when he eventually tried to make his emotions and actions known. Thinking about how both of their support systems were also dealing with trauma. Thinking about how Marc’s support system never once thought of his trauma as lesser than theirs. Thinking about how Jon’s support system only ever saw his trauma as an excuse that belittled theirs. Thinking about how Marc’s worked with him while Jon’s worked against him.
Thinking about how it wasn’t love that saved Marc, at least not the kind of love that’s valued, but the simple recognition that he wasn’t alone in his pain and how that meant placing his heart in their hand for protection. Thinking about how love saved Jon’s world, if not him, but the kind of love that meant giving someone the ability to kill you and knowing they would because of it rather than in spite of it as that’s all he knew love was.
Thinking about how trauma and reconciliation presents itself in The Magnus Archives and Moon Knight and how cynicism will always be weaker than hope.
i don’t understand the insistence that jon treated martin awfully for most of the show. in season one, martin was incompetent and unable to do his job. everyone in the archives was fully aware of it. jon was not the only one making snide comments on it. after season one is over and they’ve sorted it out and gotten on better terms, literally the only thing that jon does wrong in terms of his relationships with others is the fact that he stalks tim during his breakdown. he snaps at martin once. one time. one solitary time he yells at him out of stress and then they deal with it and it never happens again. genuinely where are you guys getting this idea that jon was somehow awful to martin beyond some shitty comments behind his back in season one? the sort of comments that if not for the voyeuristic nature of the tapes, would never be heard by anyone? the sort of comments that are common in workplaces and we know are also common in the archives? how many times have we heard other characters make snide comments about jon or discuss his sexuality or complain about each other behind their backs? getting a bit dickish and insensitive in some office gossip is not the same thing as extended bad treatment and violent hostility.
“Jon shouldn’t have talked about Martin and called him incompetent and humiliated him behind his back on official archival material that would be used by other researchers!”
Jon shouldn’t have said ANYTHING about ANYONE on official archival material in the way he did! I don’t work in a library or an archive, but I’ve worked with sensitive material and proprietary information and can safely say he should’ve left out any detail regarding any employee under him or above him AND DEFINITELY LEFT OUT ANY INTRUSIONS INTO HIS RECORDINGS THAT WOULD MENTION SHAREHOLDERS BY NAME.
If you’re going to listen to this podcast, there HAS to be a level of understanding that there’s no attempt to relate it to real life archival methods and real life privacy laws and conventions. So much so, that by the third season, it’s almost a given that the only reason he’s still recording as he does is that it’s a compulsion and literally supernatural in nature. “You missed him too, didn’t you?” “I don’t even turn them on anymore […]” etcetera etcetera.
That’s something Protocol has above it that I absolutely love, and that there’s no conceit that it is supposed to be official documentation. It’s all streamed to us like we’re some voyeuristic third party they have no idea about.
So trying to turn what should’ve been, if they’d thought the premise through, off-the-record idle gossip and work complaints into harassment, is kind of… nonsensical to me. Especially when, as someone who worked a ~normal office job~ for eight years straight, complaining about your coworkers TO your friends and family and even OTHER COWORKERS is actually really normal and doesn’t mean you’re Satan himself.
Point is. Just cause Jon made a comment about Martin being piecemealed apart by Angela, doesn’t mean he actually wanted that to happen. A THOUGHT CAN’T BE EVIL. Y'all can talk about how intent doesn’t matter all you want, but at that point you’ve got to understand all you’re doing is calling out thoughtcrimes.
And no. Just cause Jon sent HIM out there, and just cause he believed that the ones that could only record on tape were real, doesn’t mean he genuinely put Martin in harms way. Especially cause we’re literally told the only way to get the curse turned back to you. And that interacting with Angela neutrally doesn’t automatically put a target on your back. Martin was as safe as anyone else, so long as he didn’t ASK HER FOR A FAVOR and then DIDN’T WAIT FOR IT TO BE FOLLOWED THROUGH. Or did you not pay attention to how the dude that brought the victim to Angela mentioned someone he knew asked her a favor and was fine afterwards?
Sorry. I’ve just had that pent up for a bit. Jon was an asshole, don’t get me wrong, but no more an asshole than anyone else on the planet with a shitty job and shitty co-workers and shitty mental health. It just mattered more cause it had consequences.
This is the ideal gymnast body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like…
Natalie M’phylgwnth from Carcosa just finished her beam routine, which has left another judge screaming and blind. We’re going to take a break as they look for another volunteer.
I find it interesting when Georgie says it’s bizarre jon thinks everything is his fault “because you weren’t able to outsmart the literal embodiment of manipulation and scheming” when jon has been beating himself up for not outsmarting the web his whole life. ever since he was eight in fact
I do not understand the appeal of any ship that has Tim in it. Like all power to you if that's your jam but not for me, thank you. Everytime I see ship art that includes Tim I weep. I don't even know why?? I just find his dynamic with every character painfully uninteresting. Again all power to the Tim fans I'm sure you're all fun and cool but man does he bore me.
some of the reasons for why literally EVERY CHARACTER in tma hated jon didn’t even make sense to me. some of them did, i can acknowledge that jon isn’t perfect. but a lot of it seemed like people just wanted to make him the scapegoat for everything, it honestly just pissed me off sometimes. like yes, complex people in difficult situations and all that but why was jon specifically the scapegoat when elias was right there?
It still boggles me how we’re supposed to believe Jon jumped at the chance to start going after those that marked him for the world ending ritual. When the very first time* he does, his voice is literally filled with disgust and horror at what he did without even realizing.
And then Martin tells him not to feel bad and when he listens to his ANCHOR and decides to instead enact revenge… suddenly Jon is an inhuman, bloodthirsty monster hellbent on causing as much pain to others as possible.
nothing personal but this kind of comment rlly exemplifies to me a disconnect between canon and popular fanon jmart characterization because they almost literally had this conversation in canon - except, their lines are swapped!
ALT
ALT
jon, for all his scared grouchiness, is a secret romantic, while martin, for all his forced optimism, is at his core a pragmatist
Sorry. My criteria for liking a character is said character being told directly to their face by someone they love (or should be able to trust) that they’re an inhuman monster that needs to be killed. And that just so happens to be male characters. Maybe THAT says something about society that YOU don’t want to hear.
I think we don’t talk enough about the amount of unprocessed trauma Jon must have. Like, all of his experiences, everything left a mark, a trauma. We talk enough about his scars, but some of his traumas are more talked about than others.
For exemple, the lotion trauma and the arachnophobia are the ones I see the most talked about. Of course he hates the feeling of lotion on his skin after that month with the Circus, and of course he is afraid of spiders – though I feel like the latter is very discussed because of how proheminent it is in the show. The fact that he can’t stand knocking on a door a certain way because of Mr Spider, or checks for a Leitner plaque every time he reads something are well known and accepted, too.
But do we talk about how much he probably can’t stand seeing a mannequin exposed in the vitrin of a shop ?
How he probably had a panic attack once when he stumbled a bit and fell ? He doesn’t even need to fall from high to be triggered, because even a second of falling makes him feel like Mike Crew is in front of him, and that he’s going to be falling forever this time, that he won’t ever touch ground.
He probably became entirely vegetarian after meeting Jared Hopworth, but I doubt he cooked much meat since his encounter with Jude Perry, with the sound and the smell of the pan sizzling reminding him too much of his own skin melting.
He has at least five CO2 extinguishers in his home alongside a large stash of insecticide, all because even if he knows Prentiss is dead, he feels like vomitting every time he so much as see a wasp or a worm of any kind.
We can take the autistic headcanon, maybe he liked weighted blankets before the Coffin – but now ? That item of comfort has become a source of constant anxiety, something else taken by the Fears.
After learning about Sasha, he probably frantically passed over every single polaroid he possessed from uni or before, those showing his parents, friends, grandmother, asking a single question – is it really them ? Are the people in my memory the same ones as in those photos ?
Yes, he checks for a Leitner plaque at the beginning of every book he reads, but did he stop reading for a while by fear of Mr Spider returning ? Did he have someone checking his books for him, making sure they wouldn’t control him and feeling terribly guilty at the posibility of dooming someone else if the book is indeed dangerous ?
He probably can’t stand the scent of chemicals either, after six months in a hospital.
Did he take that long to notice Jonah and Elias had the same eyes because he can’t look at any of the portraits hanging in the Institute, too overwhelmed by the sensation of scrutiny all the while feeling guilty because he knows he’s inflicting the same thing on others ?
Clinging onto Martin every time the weather is a bit foggy, terrified he will lose him ?
Jon got so much trauma responses that are too rarely considered, and I wish we as a fandom explored more of this aspect in fics.
Yeah, sure, blah blah blah, you’re not required to like everyone, blah blah blah, male protagonist centered morality and women as character development with none of their own is boring, blah blah blah, I. Don’t. Care.
No one. Liked Jon. Within. The podcast.
I don’t care about outside of it. I’m not even gonna point out how the writers themselves hated him. The entire fandom could love him. I don’t care. No one was on Jon’s side at all in the podcast. Everyone saw him as a problem or an obstacle or an extension of their trauma, even when he had nothing to do with it.
And I’m not talking about the things he actually did, like the stalking or the trauma eating. This is about the fact that at every turn everyone assumed the worse of him. From Tim, even when they were still friends, acting as if he wouldn’t care if Sasha had been replaced/forgotten. From Basira, who had assumed HE was the one who killed Gertrude off of no evidence at all, simply because he got her position. From Georgie, who assumed he was refusing help because he enjoyed being tormented, and continued to do so even when given evidence to the contrary. To Melanie, who was already putting him on the defensive, thinking he was underestimating her and orchestrated her being trapped. To Martin, who thought he truly wanted him to be chopped up by Angela, who believed Jon was only acting on the desire to martyr himself, who didn’t even think Jon was himself at the end.
At what point does that become them actually caring about him staying human? At what point are we supposed to see them as NOT boxing him into a corner where, no matter what he does, they’re going to continue treating him as a rabid dog that needs to be put down. Where? Enlighten me.
![A screenshot from the transcript of TMA 199. It reads as follows: "ARCHIVIST
Sometimes… I imagine if none of this had happened. If we had just… met. Been together, without… all of this.
MARTIN
[Softly] Me, too.
…
But we wouldn’t have, would we? Been together, I mean.
ARCHIVIST
Huh? W-What do you mean?
MARTIN
Well, we had that, didn’t we? Almost a year of just working a normal job together, and you hated me.
ARCHIVIST
I didn’t ‘hate’ you."](../media/0a8cd239b3abb164e7031b9385bf7c564bd5c435.jpg)
![Screenshot of a TMA script.
ARCHIVIST:
Sometimes… I imagine if none of this had happened. If we had just… met. Been together, without… all of this.
MARTIN
[Softly] Me, too.
…
But we wouldn’t have, would we? Been together, I mean.](../media/88515a7a21386c385da0b61f5b4789431d2f5a0d.png)
