biting so many people in this fandom (in positive and negative ways) Alll these bitches are Nuanced! In super complicated ways! and I AAAAAALK:Fsdgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg;ESUTIEO IO ok well my brain not working so uh.
recognize the complexity of characters, you can not like characters and still see there complexities, you can like characters and still see their complexities. Liking or disliking characters should not be seen a a hard moral standing. For The Love Of God if you are going to write something examining a character fact check your shit. Georgie did not say Jon should die! That did not happen! Your misremembering things and before you go on a rant go check yourself! You can still not like Georgie but don't spread misinformation about her
sorry if this sounds aggressive, its not meant to be I'm just a bit out of it and annoyed.
People say she said he should die because she may as fucking well have. It was HEAVILY implied. In fact, all of them implied, or outright said, those words. To his face. All of them. Every last one of them. Even Martin.
(Note I'm seeing this through lens of being horribly ill and struggling with health providers rn but)
I never saw it as an addiction metaphor I saw but how disabled people are denied aid and stuff because its 'wrong' and you 'should just be able to exist without it'.
But 'it hurts me to see you using cane/meds/wheelchair'
So it made sense to me that yeah he'd feel great using it but also feel horrible guilty
I didn’t get into this in the original post because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to word it right (in part because I haven’t finished my relisten, and in part because this is More than just meta about a story I like and I didn’t want to say anything ignorant).
BUT I’m absolutely glad that you’re bringing this up.
because the truth is that my Other problem with the discussion about monsterhood in the magnus archives as addiction (in holding characters morally accountable for being monsters because they “should” be able to just Choose not to do monstrous things if they were good people) is that it Is accurate to how people treat addicts, and that’s a bad thing when people parrot it without realizing that.
because the truth is, addicts often Do need their addiction to survive. medically, emotionally, or just. You Know. because addiction often means you can’t just cut cold turkey without major consequences (consequences that, to be clear, Can Kill You). and they Are often treated poorly by the people around them for not just being able to Do Better as if anyone could be expected to do “better” in their situation.
when “"better”“ means being in pain, when ”“better”“ is unlivable without the necessary support to Make it bearable.
and this Absolutely crosses over with ableism. in real life And in the show.
you don’t Need to be an addict for someone to treat you like you’re immoral for needing aid they don’t. though I think it’d be a mistake to talk about it without Also keeping addiction in the conversation, because it’s not right when people do it to addicts either.
needing aid to survive And being an addict aren’t mutually exclusive, and that’s what I meant when I said my last post was In Conversation with the addiction metaphor.
jon’s situation being a mirror (in many ways, it’s not an exact one to one of course) with addiction doesn’t mean that he’s Less deserving of compassion or that his situation was somehow his own fault, it means that we should be taking that compassion and understanding of his situation and Apply That to the real people who are also deserving of those things.
we Watched jon be stripped of his own agency and forced into a position where he could Only be a monster or die, and in response many people have said that he should’ve just Chosen not to be, as if the choice is Reasonable. as if asking him to starve or die is Reasonable.
and of course, I’m not qualified to speak about addiction in detail, but it’s just something that’s sat wrong with me for years. the Show’s use of addiction as a metaphor works for me because of the empathy and humanity it’s Meant to show to addiction. but the fandom’s reception to that messaging isn’t. always stellar.
and I don’t think people necessarily do it on purpose, but I Do wish there was more of an awareness of it. how it might come across, you know?
i saw the ask about how people taking elias’s “you didn’t want this but you did choose this” speech literally is wrong and you can’t trust it because elias was trying to manipulate and groom and emotionally abuse jon and therefore everything he said was bullshit and just. wow. did you forget that the main theme of the podcast is choice and the blurriness of free will? did you miss the entire arc where jon began to willingly give himself to the eye? did you miss how the story makes it clear that becoming an avatar requires voluntarily becoming a servant of your patron? no, it’s not a contract with set terms and conditions, but anyone who becomes an avatar knows damn well what they’re doing, and jon was well on his way to avatarhood before elias even knew who he was.
also, it always strikes me as a little silly when people try to label elias as a groomer, and say he’s a bad and untrustworthy person because of the emotional manipulation. like yeah he was manipulative! that is correct! remind me, how many violent mass murders have been committed in this podcast so far? how many of the “good” main characters have personally killed people and committed atrocities?
they’re talking about my confession, so i just wanted to respond with a bit more depth since theres a character limit in the comments..
you argued that one of the main themes of the podcast is the blurry line between fate and free will, and yeah! i was talking about that! the line gets blurry when you’re being groomed and manipulated and unknowingly nudged by circumstance and people beyond your control
jon was in fact groomed and violated by elias throughout the show, thats just the truth of the situation. and elias was using manipulation tactics in that conversation with him…its not too crazy to point out how the central antagonist of the show who’s notorious for his extensive manipulation is in fact manipulating someone!
one of the main themes in the show is the blurriness of choice, sure, but it’s also fundamentally a dissection on how fear affects different people and what people are driven to do under desperate circumstances under fear and traumatic stress…we as people are made irrational by fear, and that’s apparent with most of our cast. all the main characters have made bad and immoral decisions in some capacity (some more than others, like daisy vs someone like melanie for example) but that doesn’t take away from the fact that elias is still a bad person who definitively emotionally abused the protagonist ? i’m not sure what saying “the main characters are bad too so you cant say elias is bad!” proves…two things can be true at once
you ask if i’ve “missed the arc where jon willingly gives himself to the eye” which in my opinion is a very gross oversimplification of his character arc. if you’re referring to season 3, he had barely realized this was happening to him but was already becoming physically reliant on statements by that point and was told by ELIAS that the literal world was at stake, and that jon was the only person who could save it .. what choice does he have then?? in his perspective he HAD to keep feeding into the eye because he was made to believe the fate of the world was at stake because of the unknowing, and then by season 4 he was then fully reliant on statements and would experience extreme physical repercussions if he didnt continue taking them … the idea of free will and consent become blurry under abusive circumstances where you’re being continuously manipulated (this situation also ties into the addiction allegory, which is another whole complicated topic that i won’t get into right now)
the point you made about how the show tells us avatars knew exactly what they were doing is Also a very gross oversimplification of the shows themes…did YOU miss the part of the show where the audience is made to watch as our protagonist slowly becomes one of these avatars due to circumstances beyond his control and desparate decisions he made under helpless situations, causing us to sympathize with him therefore having to reevaluate the simplified views we had of the other avatars? did you miss how characters like agnes and gerry showed us that its never quite that simple, how certain circumstances we’re placed under cause us to make desperate decisions because it’s all we know to do? how situations leading up to avatarhood are extremely complicated especially when its all someones ever known? how the show DIRECTLY criticizes the whole “avatar and human” system because it forces very complex ideas into strict boxes of good or bad, monster or human, perpetuator or victim? how humans will find a way to simplify and categorize very complicated things under a strict narrative? its barely even subtext, its TEXT!
the bit about how “jon was becoming an avatar before elias even knew him” is just kind of ridiculous to me..are you referring to when he was a child?? or when he first joined the institute and didnt even know what the fears or an avatar was?? what?? how is that possibly his own choice? was it not literally revealed to us that the web has been subtley nudging and manipulating him since he was a child? are you implying its his choice because he read some childrens book, really? this part just kind of confuses me, it seems like you’re just going through mental gymnastics to defend elias at this point instead of actually discussing the nuances of choice and consent.
the podcast shows how the concept of choice isn’t a simple thing, and how sometimes, we just don’t have one to make because of situations we’re backed into that make us desperate . jon’s situation is fictional, yeah, but to me it’s very much applicable to real life abusive situations, and the way the fandom discusses the show sometimes seems reminiscent to how people irl will blame victims and claim they chose their situation. this fandom will often take things in the podcast at face value and say very victim-blaming-esque things under the guise of “WELL A BIG THEME IS FREE WILL!” without even wanting to discuss the nuances of that theme. that’s kind of just what my initial ask was talking about
the literal embodiment of manipulation and deception set jon’s path for him, placing him in desparate situations where he often was denied agency and had very limited choices. the show tells us this.
i saw the ask about how people taking elias’s “you didn’t want this but you did choose this” speech literally is wrong and you can’t trust it because elias was trying to manipulate and groom and emotionally abuse jon and therefore everything he said was bullshit and just. wow. did you forget that the main theme of the podcast is choice and the blurriness of free will? did you miss the entire arc where jon began to willingly give himself to the eye? did you miss how the story makes it clear that becoming an avatar requires voluntarily becoming a servant of your patron? no, it’s not a contract with set terms and conditions, but anyone who becomes an avatar knows damn well what they’re doing, and jon was well on his way to avatarhood before elias even knew who he was.
also, it always strikes me as a little silly when people try to label elias as a groomer, and say he’s a bad and untrustworthy person because of the emotional manipulation. like yeah he was manipulative! that is correct! remind me, how many violent mass murders have been committed in this podcast so far? how many of the “good” main characters have personally killed people and committed atrocities?
they’re talking about my confession, so i just wanted to respond with a bit more depth since theres a character limit in the comments..
you argued that one of the main themes of the podcast is the blurry line between fate and free will, and yeah! i was talking about that! the line gets blurry when you’re being groomed and manipulated and unknowingly nudged by circumstance and people beyond your control
jon was in fact groomed and violated by elias throughout the show, thats just the truth of the situation. and elias was using manipulation tactics in that conversation with him…its not too crazy to point out how the central antagonist of the show who’s notorious for his extensive manipulation is in fact manipulating someone!
one of the main themes in the show is the blurriness of choice, sure, but it’s also fundamentally a dissection on how fear affects different people and what people are driven to do under desperate circumstances under fear and traumatic stress…we as people are made irrational by fear, and that’s apparent with most of our cast. all the main characters have made bad and immoral decisions in some capacity (some more than others, like daisy vs someone like melanie for example) but that doesn’t take away from the fact that elias is still a bad person who definitively emotionally abused the protagonist ? i’m not sure what saying “the main characters are bad too so you cant say elias is bad!” proves…two things can be true at once
you ask if i’ve “missed the arc where jon willingly gives himself to the eye” which in my opinion is a very gross oversimplification of his character arc. if you’re referring to season 3, he had barely realized this was happening to him but was already becoming physically reliant on statements by that point and was told by ELIAS that the literal world was at stake, and that jon was the only person who could save it .. what choice does he have then?? in his perspective he HAD to keep feeding into the eye because he was made to believe the fate of the world was at stake because of the unknowing, and then by season 4 he was then fully reliant on statements and would experience extreme physical repercussions if he didnt continue taking them … the idea of free will and consent become blurry under abusive circumstances where you’re being continuously manipulated (this situation also ties into the addiction allegory, which is another whole complicated topic that i won’t get into right now)
the point you made about how the show tells us avatars knew exactly what they were doing is Also a very gross oversimplification of the shows themes…did YOU miss the part of the show where the audience is made to watch as our protagonist slowly becomes one of these avatars due to circumstances beyond his control and desparate decisions he made under helpless situations, causing us to sympathize with him therefore having to reevaluate the simplified views we had of the other avatars? did you miss how characters like agnes and gerry showed us that its never quite that simple, how certain circumstances we’re placed under cause us to make desperate decisions because it’s all we know to do? how situations leading up to avatarhood are extremely complicated especially when its all someones ever known? how the show DIRECTLY criticizes the whole “avatar and human” system because it forces very complex ideas into strict boxes of good or bad, monster or human, perpetuator or victim? how humans will find a way to simplify and categorize very complicated things under a strict narrative? its barely even subtext, its TEXT!
the bit about how “jon was becoming an avatar before elias even knew him” is just kind of ridiculous to me..are you referring to when he was a child?? or when he first joined the institute and didnt even know what the fears or an avatar was?? what?? how is that possibly his own choice? was it not literally revealed to us that the web has been subtley nudging and manipulating him since he was a child? are you implying its his choice because he read some childrens book, really? this part just kind of confuses me, it seems like you’re just going through mental gymnastics to defend elias at this point instead of actually discussing the nuances of choice and consent.
the podcast shows how the concept of choice isn’t a simple thing, and how sometimes, we just don’t have one to make because of situations we’re backed into that make us desperate . jon’s situation is fictional, yeah, but to me it’s very much applicable to real life abusive situations, and the way the fandom discusses the show sometimes seems reminiscent to how people irl will blame victims and claim they chose their situation. this fandom will often take things in the podcast at face value and say very victim-blaming-esque things under the guise of “WELL A BIG THEME IS FREE WILL!” without even wanting to discuss the nuances of that theme. that’s kind of just what my initial ask was talking about
the literal embodiment of manipulation and deception set jon’s path for him, placing him in desparate situations where he often was denied agency and had very limited choices. the show tells us this.
I already said this but I want to add this again that I think a very important part of the podcast is what abuse and violation does to victims, how sometimes, a literal predator (Jonah) can take a very traumatic thing which deeply hurt them and over which they had no control over (Jon’s childhood trauma) to twist it in a way that would help a predator to gain control over the victim and later paint it as “the victim chose it.”
To me, the podcast is about how abuse, grooming and violation chips away at a person’s control, self-esteem and the ability to make correct decisions, often ostracizes and isolates them. Just like Jon, people in abusive situations don’t often have social network of support because the abuser stripped them of that too, and just like Jon, they start blaming and loathing themselves, denied kindness or understanding which they need to heal. No one took Jon’s side. In fact, characters surrounding him believed JONAH, who painted Jon as a monster. His words, “you chose it,” were nothing more than guilt-trip Jon, knowing that Jon, already suffering from guilt, would fall for it and hate himself, as well as others (Basira, for example) would blame him too. This is absolutely terrifying and sadly, if we take away the supernatural part, very realistic too. For me, the podcast is about that. How sometimes, someone can use you and hurt you without your knowledge or consent, cloud your judgement with constant gaslighting and emotional abuse to trip you into serving their goal, and sometimes, you can do nothing to prevent it. What happened to Jon can just as easily happen to anyone, because people like Jonah exist and the problem lies in them, rather than in their victims’ “wrongdoings” or “mistakes.”
But I see that many people in the fandom take this and treat this as “Jon was SO asking for this because he did X and he did Y” and you know what’s funny? It is NEVER a question of what JONAH did. Never. No one questions HIS actions. It is ALWAYS about Jon or how wrong was JON or how JON “shouldn’t have done this and shouldn’t have done that so this is his fault actually cause free will etc etc.” You know, almost like in real life no one questions the actions of the aggressor, it’s always the victim who has to justify their behavior and prove that they were, in fact, hurt and didn’t want it.
And I’m used to it. I mean, I come from somewhere where this kind of victim-blaming rhetoric is (unfortunately) a very wide-spread thing (as you can guess, typically against women.) But hearing it in supposedly progressive spaces, I'm… flabbergasted, honestly. And I know the podcast is just the podcast and it’s entirely fictional and no one actually got hurt, but I can’t shake the feeling that saying “It was Jon’s fault entirely” may kind of gradually shape the way we as a society (a progressive society, too) view and treat victims. I hope it’s not the case, but for someone who knows irl people who were severely emotionally abused and got blamed for it (and who blamed themselves) it’s painful and upsetting to hear.
Anyway, I just want to repeat this: Jon was groomed, force-fed trauma, drugged against his will, consent or knowledge, violated, made to compromise his bodily and psychological autonomy, got stripped off his agency, humiliated and traumatized, with Jonah Magnus in ep 160 taking full control over him and violating him completely. It is cruel, it’s disgusting, it’s repulsive, it’s abusive, and I view everything that happened as Jonah Magnus’s fault, because HE knew what he was doing, HE actively, actually chose it without remorse, he planned and orchestrated this for his own benefit, and then, as typical abuser, painted it as Jon’s choice and Jon’s fault, in typically abusive, manipulative ways.
Everything else is confetti.
And using mental gymnastics to justify and defend Jonah’s behavior to paint Jon as the villain is… well, let’s say I’m not interested in this kind of “perspective” at all.
Y’all remember how the first and only time Jon reassured a live statement giver that he believed them that said live statement giver was eaten immediately after he did so? Just like his childhood bully? :)
Decided to go ahead and write down a few fics I am gonna be writing in the coming months. Just to, like, keep myself accountable.
spun sugar, ground spice, not everything is nice.
My ‘post!apocalypse, not!elsewhere, single!dad, barista!Jon AU. Essentially, Jon doesn’t get to kill Jonah, which changes things. Obviously. He ends up raising his three-year-old cousin while working at a coffee shop in Bournemouth. Alone. The others show up, obviously, but…
I have some (potentially out-dated) sketches for it here :) And I have a playlist here :)
Scream, Scream, Scream
The great therapy fic! Another canon divergent post series version of events where Jon doesn’t end up killing Jonah. Starting a year after the end of the end, he’s all but forced into therapy by the others. It’s an examination of every scar and trauma he got over the course of his life and how they affected him.
I want this one to be about healing and growing, not resentment.
Okay, so… by a few I mean a couple. These are both multi-chaptered fics, so they’re gonna take up most of my mental energy. In any case, I hope to start actually writing them soon. Attempting to get them all plotted before I’m back in uni in a couple-ish weeks.
Chapters:
7/7
Fandom:
The Magnus Archives (Podcast), Supernatural (TV 2005)
Rating:
Not Rated
Warnings:
Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships:
Martin Blackwood/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist
Characters:
Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Bobby Singer
Additional Tags:
Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s05e22 Swan Song (Supernatural), Post-Episode: e200 Last Words (The Magnus Archives), Location: Somewhere Else (The Magnus Archives), where Somewhere Else is South Dakota, Crossover
Summary:
When Jon and Martin are sent Somewhere!Else, that place turns out to be a junkyard owned by a man named Bobby Singer in a city called Sioux Falls in the North American state of South Dakota. As they nurse back to health in his home, they begin to learn and deal with how their arrival and the arrival of the Fears affected this version of their world. When Dean and Sam Winchester show up and give them more context, they might even begin to heal from their trauma. That is, unless they can’t keep from feeding their patrons.
Figured I should post this here now that it’s done….
Jonmathin Sims was really tied to a chair by an evil clown for one (1) month and when he got free everyone including him was just kinda like, ah well that was unfortunate, and never talked about it again.
also not to pile on the negativity but every time i see a jm post where it’s like, m*rtin Fondly Tolerating jon in infodump mode, i just like……….did we listen to the same podcast??? m*rtin’s “shut up jon” energy is only outmatched by melanie’s, this is the man who makes jon go sit in a corner or literally covers his ears when jon has to statement-eat, m*rtin isn’t a Softe Tolerant Boyfriend he’s the guy you break up with because he never listens to you
sometimes i think about the fact that when this first started jon was actively trying to tell martin shit about what was happening and how that slowly started to dwindle because martin repeatedly told him that he didn’t want to know/that what jon could do made him uncomfortable and how martin now not being told stuff is somehow jon’s fault. like you can’t repeatedly tell someone not to do something and then get mad at them when they internalise it and don’t do the thing that’s not how it fucking works
Jonmathin Sims was really tied to a chair by an evil clown for one (1) month and when he got free everyone including him was just kinda like, ah well that was unfortunate, and never talked about again.
Oh we WISH they were like “that was unfortunate.” That would have been an outpouring of compassion compared to the reality! (yelling at him for “not being there”)
Psychically exploding everyone on tumblr dot com who genuinely believe that because Jon liked and enjoyed his abilities, that he was lying when he said he was disgusted by said powers and himself.
Your name is Jonathan Sims you hate yourself and have self destructive tendency’s. most people hate you as well and think you are a monster and actively avoid you. You are extremely isolated. Ok. And as a bonus your only friend is the cop who brutally assaulted you and who you know planned on murdering you. twice. Ok. Oh and she viewed you as a prey item as well uh huh alright cool. she repeatedly dehumanized you as well and made you feel the most powerless and scared you ever been and actively still has to hold back from maiming you. You know this. She is your only friend because you are both monsters. You are both alone.
This isn’t commonly known but one of the rings of hell is actually being in a fandom wherein the popular bloggers have the worst opinions known to man that everyone else parrots
I should add: the worst opinions known to man that go unchallenged bc if you challenge them you’re practically blacklisted or otherwise scorned
i think the reason why people hate characters like basira and melanie is not because of sexism but because they were so rarely called out for being wrong or treating other characters like shit.
like yeah, some of the male characters were shitty and annoying too. but the narrative doesn't deny that. tim was an annoying jerk in s2 and he was called out by martin for it. jon was.. practically called out by everyone, even when something wasn't his fault. he was basically the scapegoat. martin's manipulative and sometimes possessive nature was highlighted a few times. everyone hated elias and he got the punishment he deserved.
in short, the male characters were held accountable for their actions while some of the female characters weren't. keyword being "some". daisy was, for example, and that's why she's one of my favorite characters. the narrative actually acknowledges that she was a corrupted and aggressive person, but we also see her trying to be better.
but with melanie and basira specifically, they usually had the last word to any argument. jon did call out basira in s5 regarding her turning a blind eye to daisy's crimes, and that was satisfying, but it was the only time jon was actually assertive about something. and melanie's aggressive behavior doesn't get called out at all, she just gets away with it.
yes, these are all complex characters who are suffering and enduring tough situations. but it feels unfair when some of them are held responsible for their shitty behavior, while others aren't.
you have to stick to one.
either all these characters were controlled by their fears and therefore aren't responsible for their actions, or they were all independent to some extent and deserve to be blamed. you can't use the “they were controlled by their respective entity!” or “they were going through a difficult situation!” excuse for only a few characters.
Okey, okey, okey. Im going to sleep now, I’m done with season 1, this doodles were done during episodes 38-40…I guess? Not really good, but it doesn’t really matter. Just. I get my friend now. Its hard to be normal about it, about them and about him
Sure Jon did not sleep after all, but Im going to–
tma is a show which spends the first 100 episodes going “look at these monsters. aren’t they fucked up. yeah and they’re all so happy being monsters who hurt people monstrously” and then the protagonist who you’ve spent hours listening to at this point becomes one of those fucked up monsters, forcing you to either dismiss him as evil or you have to fully change how you view all the previous monsters. and then they spend the next 100 episodes dealing with that
I’m so sick of the whole attitude people in this fandom have of “If you think these female characters are pricks, why don’t you hate the male characters just as much? Obviously it’s just misogyny.” First off, quite often I DO also hate the male characters just as much as the female characters with similar behaviors. I hate both Melanie AND Tim. I think they’re both frustrating to listen to, because I don’t like people who make their anger everyone else’s problem, regardless of how justified that anger might be. I’m an equal opportunity hater, and it’s very irritating to me when people assume otherwise.
Plus a lot of the male characters started out tolerable and then became more blatantly dickish over time, whereas characters like Basira, Daisy, and Melanie showed a lot of their most hateable traits (like being a cop or being an asshole to everyone around them) in the beginning and then got better over time. And it can be a lot easier to hold a grudge than it is to grow to hate a character you already like. Especially for me personally, because I’m very loyal to those who I like, but I’m really not the forgiving sort.
((CW for mentions of police brutality and SA) Plus, sometimes it’s just that some of the characters have shitty behaviors that feel more grounded in reality than others. As a kid, I was never told to be careful not to cross paths with a scary Eye man who will force me to tell him all my secrets. Because that’s not something that happens irl. But when I was younger, I WAS told not to fight back if an on-duty cop tried to rape me, because if they arrested me for assaulting an officer, it would be my word against theirs. So emotionally, I have a much stronger reaction to, say, Daisy doing police brutality than I do to Jon doing spooky shit, and I think I’m perfectly justified in that reaction.)
Anyways, I just want to be a hater in peace without having to try to prove that I don’t hate my entire gender. 90% of my favorite fictional characters are women. I’m allowed to have 3 fictional women who I don’t like.
i feel like the addiction metaphor for statements doesn’t really work. it does work for parts of it, like how his decaying relationships with others and his dependence on statements being a higher priority for him than his own health could be viewed as an allegory for addiction from certain angles. some of the themes are similar, like when someone has an addiction, their reliance on it often ends up harming both themselves and the people around them.
however, the main reason this just doesn’t work for me is that the statements are not an addictive substance that he can be weaned off of and recover from. they are food.
the s4 archival staff are not practicing tough love or doing something misguided but with good intentions, trying to break him of an addiction. they are not removing his access to a harmful substance, they are starving him to death. trying to stop jon’s live statement intake is not removing a drug addict’s access to their supplier, it’s forcing a vampire to live off lettuce.
it’s kind of like the “fears are capitalism” allegory i hear going around sometimes. on a surface level, some aspects are similar, but fundamentally, these things just can’t be equated to each other.
I genuinely think that the reason people want to say that Jon deserved to be hated and that he caused everything that happened to him is because they’re over compensating for every other piece of media with a male main character by turning any criticism towards the female main characters into misogyny and infantilization instead of, y’know, that some people relate more to Jon due to their own issues with dehumanization and that their ‘shallow’ read of the plot and themes is due to that.
I’m gonna show y’all two photos and a transcript and then I’m gonna ask y’all to think about exactly what kind of connections can be made from them, alright?
[Photo IDs : screen caps of two The Magnus Archives episodes, the first being for episode 79, Hide And Seek, and episode 81, A Guest For Mr. Spider. In brief, I highlighted the dates the episodes were set. February 16th 2017 and February 18th 2017 respectively. End ID.]
Now. Here’s the quote.
[Photo ID : transcript from Episode 81, A Guest For Mr. Spider, of Georgie verbatim asking “You… looking for a new job yet?” End ID.]
Now that that’s out of the way… let’s talk about the presumption that Jon made his way to Georgie’s covered in Leitner’s blood. Or even just appearing otherwise disheveled and traumatized.
I will forgive people for not realizing this, but it’s apparently canonical that Leitner dying and Jon recording his statement about his childhood trauma was two days apart. If that. So here we have Jon in a state of total mental breakdown. Being informed he’s beholden to some evil entity and becoming a tool for it to use for evil by the first person he ever hated as a child and then seeing the bashed in remains of his head just barely 48 hours prior. Going to the only place he believes he could be safe. And after a brief convo about dishes and the cat, he’s asked if he’s trying… to find… a new… job…
I’m not gonna speculate about what happened between the moment Jon showed up on Georgie’s doorstep to her coming home from wherever she was. I’m gonna talk about facts and the fact is if he gave any indication that he was in distress, her asking that would be seen as a dick move. Now. The fact that she even alludes to not believing him a bit on in the conversation leads me to think it was apparent he was not okay, that things weren’t okay, and he desperately needed help.
But she still asks if he’s looking for a new job.
Do I think, potentially, this was just her way of broaching the subject in a way that won’t put his hackles up? Maybe. But I find that fairly hard to believe. Even with all her reassurance that it’s fine he’s staying there. Cause that’s not what the tone of her voice indicated. And that’s not what her eventual bringing up of her disbelief about an ‘employment dispute’ indicated.
Georgie Barker let Jon into her home and not two days later asked when he’d be out while condescending to him about losing his job, home, and possessions.
It’s very VERY clear here that she had no idea what happened. It’s very clear she wanted to figure out why he was in her home so he would get out. There is no concern for his well-being beyond getting him able to leave. Yet we’re expected to believe that she’s a kind individual with his best interests at heart.
Her next appearance is to be angry at him for… what… reading paper into an old recorder? Staring at paper and not sleeping — on a couch, I might add — for four days? She says she has no clue, yet sees Jon act ~weird~ about paper for four days and comes to a conclusion, while right, has no logical sense unless he’s completely losing it. But instead of understanding, she berates him for it. She knows something is wrong with him but all she does is tell him to quit it and get over it.
At this point, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that Jon was absolutely taking advantage of Georgie’s hospitality. But truer to the point, she never should’ve let him in her home in the first place. If she was not capable of or willing to help him navigate his issues, seeing him on her doorstep and in distress, she should’ve turned him away immediately. Or at the least tell him exactly how long he was welcome. Which was, as seen, two nights.
I’m not gonna go through every other instance of Georgie in season 3. It’d take forever and I think I’ve made my point. My point being that if you’re gonna offer assistance to someone in dire straits, it might be kinder to tell them fuck off from the outset rather than tell them at every step how much of a burden they are for even existing in your presence. If your ~boundaries~ are so fucking important then maybe enforce them to begin with instead of acting holier-than-thou.
There’s a lot to be said irt Melanie and her relationship w Jon but I think the most important thing they have in common is that they are both very very insecure and terrified of feeling powerless, and they both demean and look down on others in order to get that power back. And unfortunately that means they are doomed to bully each other LITERALLY until the end days
I think we glossed over the fact that Martin asked Jon if him dying would’ve both freed the assistants from the archives and prevented the end of the world.
The fact is, and no one’s gonna believe me when I say this, but of the three final girls, Melanie is actually my favorite. And even above Jon, I relate to her the most.
There’s a quote from the webcomic A Softer World that goes, “There isn’t a word for the things I will do to the people who wronged me. I have so much rage. Just waiting for someone to wrong me,” that I think sums up what the Slaughter feels like to me.
Rage and anger with nowhere to go is useless. It just leaves you shaking and tired and empty. But when you have a target, when you can point yourself like a weapon at the enemy? It’s cathartic on a level you cannot grasp. And even after, it still feels good and righteous. Because they shouldn’t have been in your way, they shouldn’t have provoked you, it’s their fault.
I think that’s why I’m so defensive of Jon?
Cause I know that need. The need to have a punching bag that screams back, that is the exact reason for your pain and suffering and torment. The thing is though. It’s not about having one around all the time. Getting to the point where you’re going to explode and release it is the point, not letting it out slowly. It has to build and build for maximum impact. Otherwise it’s weak and ineffective. Not even worth the effort.
My baby sister was my Jon. I did awful things to her I can’t even begin to make up for when I was a teenager and justified it because, and tell me if this sounds familiar, ‘she was annoying’. She ‘wouldn’t leave well enough alone’.
She was barely five. She’s my blood. But that didn’t matter. None of that mattered. She was an easy target.
I know it wasn’t her fault, why I did what I did. I know I only had myself to blame for my actions. I know there was no amount of justification that made it okay. I know that, I knew that, and I’ve since done all I can to let go of that unbridled anger and hate.
So that’s why I’m so defensive of Jon and so critical of Melanie. Why, when she said, “I can still hate him, even if I don’t, y’know, blame him[…]”, I gagged. Cause no. You can’t. You don’t get to. When you accept that your anger and hate is only on you, you CANNOT give yourself any leeway. You have to accept the responsibility and consequences of it. Not let it simmer. Not let it build back up and up.
Now you may say, “well she did have reasons. He did [x] to her”. But that’s not the point. Cause her hate and scorn started before they even first interacted with each other, if her first statement is any indication. She already justified her anger when she could direct it towards him. He just helped give her more fuel. And that was on him. Lord knows no one will let him forget that. But what WAS on her, was not letting him get to her. Was letting that anger go so she would actually be in the right when it came down to it. Cause what anger also does is cloud your ability to reason. It makes you make mistakes.
It makes anyone in front of you a target.
I can relate to and understand and empathize with Melanie. But I cannot and will not sympathize with her. She has way too much to learn and I couldn’t stand me when I was at that stage in my mental and emotional health development. It’d be hypocritical of me to not.
did you guys know you can enjoy fiction even when you want to kill some of the characters with hammers on account of they are interesting and evocative characters that cause strong emotions and those strong emotions do not always need to be positive. crazy stuff
In what world is this not Martin not listening nor caring that Jon is deeply upset at everything that was forced upon him, lol. In what world is this not Jon attempting to talk about his emotions so he can deal with them but instead being steamrolled into ~suppressing them~ again cause his “”anchor“” thinks it’s chill.
In what world is this not Martin not listening nor caring that Jon is deeply upset at everything that was forced upon him, lol. In what world is this not Jon attempting to talk about his emotions so he can deal with them but instead being steamrolled into ~suppressing them~ again cause his “”anchor“” thinks it’s chill.
Enlighten me.
[…]
Did… did Jon start it? Or did he unconsciously do something he HAD NO IDEA HE COULD DO? Something he was so disgusted by? And then MARTIN started “”cheerleading“” the “”magical murder spree“”??? Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe I’m an idiot.
In what world is this not Martin not listening nor caring that Jon is deeply upset at everything that was forced upon him, lol. In what world is this not Jon attempting to talk about his emotions so he can deal with them but instead being steamrolled into ~suppressing them~ again cause his “”anchor“” thinks it’s chill.
Enlighten me.
[…]
Did… did Jon start it? Or did he unconsciously do something he HAD NO IDEA HE COULD DO? Something he was so disgusted by? And then MARTIN started “”cheerleading“” the “”magical murder spree“”??? Maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe I’m an idiot.
Martin: “Have you thought maybe the world wouldn’t be consumed by eldritch horrors if you’d just killed yourself? Also, have you thought maybe you’re such a terrible person that, had you known, you wouldn’t have told them? Nor allow them to kill you? Like they had attempted to already multiple times? Because you’re such a monster that you don’t want to die, even if it was to save the world?”
there’s a very specific flavor of passive aggression from elias bouchard that i feel like a lot of people forget about. before he was fully mask-off, he didn’t say things like “now jon, i’m very disappointed in you letting the archives get attacked by worms.” that’s too easy, too obviously evil. it’s more like “oh jon, i’m so sorry, are you alright? you should go home immediately. don’t even think about coming back here and exploring the tunnels, i mean it.”
he has plausible deniability of caring, while we also know he dragged his feet for ages before actually doing anything like updating the fire suppression system, and shittalking both jon and martin behind their backs to sasha. but crucially, he planted toxic ideas without actually taking ownership of them. even when he WAS shittalking to sasha, he was still like “oh geez, i was wrong about them, i thought they were exaggerating, but i mean, you know what THEY’RE like.” simultaneously making himself look like a doofus and letting SASHA fill in the blanks about how her friends are stupid and unreliable, while also implying that of course that would be WRONG to think.
master of the “don’t think of pink elephants” technique.
If I can leave a hot take about the Magnus Archives on this, the Magnus Archives website.
I preferred it when it didn’t really have an overarching plot to be honest. Jane Prentiss was fine, because it was *mostly* just a wormy monster with a grudge.
But then it started going into doppelgangers under the Archive, being framed for murders and on the run, and physical eldritch manifestations on primal fears and I was kinda just
Anyway. Couldn’t sleep last night from rotating the realization that Jon’s compelling shouldn’t work on Georgie and then I got even angrier that the ritual worked.
Anyway yeah season four of The Magnus Archives is nothing but people being mean to Jon for hypocritical and ridiculous reasons. Give me any evidence to the contrary and I will refute it.
Actually. Y’know what? Less about my personal grievances with the characters, more about the internal inconsistencies of the world building and lore.
The Archivist can compel people to tell the truth regardless of if they want to… but the statements that feed and empower them can have unreliable narrators.
Georgie was unaffected by the apocalypse due to her loss of fear… but Jon was able to compel her to tell him a truth and feed from her statement?
Martin had a domain and was able to hide in the Lonely, but he never had to feed on anyone to strengthen these abilities.
I genuinely don’t care if the way Jon was treated by Georgie and Basira and Melanie and Martin was warranted. I genuinely don’t care that Jon did awful things and didn’t deserve kindness. I don’t. I really fucking don’t. And I’m tired of reading people write about what Jon did as if every last bit of it was something he chose or wanted to happen. As if he ENJOYED BEING A MONSTER. So I don’t care that they were justified in not treating him like a human being. I don’t care that he fed on fear and “”traumatized“” people. I really fucking don’t. Because at the end of the day, no matter whatever the writers SAY was their intent, all I heard was a man being tortured and tormented and vilified and hated and none of what he did justified it. None of it. And this isn’t me saying he was hurt more than anyone else. That’s absolutely not what this is about. This is about how within the text it’s clear that everything that happened to him was intended to be seen as HIS fault and that HE deserved it all. When in actuality none of it was. And I’m just. So tired of people screaming about fucking accountability as if being turned into a fear eating monster is anyway analogous to real life. Fuck addiction metaphors. Fuck power dynamics metaphors. Fuck all that. All I saw was someone be thoroughly and LITERALLY dehumanized, someone incapable of fully being human ever again, and receiving nothing but threats on his life for it. Who received no understanding for his situation and instead was treated like a weapon of mass destruction. That’s what I saw. And any of y’all who wanna argue against that can eat my entire fucking ass.
Call me toxic but if you were to tell me that the only reason you were in a relationship with me was because of shared trauma and that without said trauma (that ended the world, natch) you wouldn’t be with me and that you also don’t want that trauma bonding to be meaningless… I wouldn’t say it was sweet of you to say that. In fact I’d probably dump you right then and there. Because what the fuck, Martin :|
But nah it’s fine Jon doesn’t deserve to have a few minutes of pretend with the person he loves. He has to be reminded that he’s an awful human being who caused the end of the world and that Martin only loves him because he has no other options.
Actually. Y’know what? Less about my personal grievances with the characters, more about the internal inconsistencies of the world building and lore.
The Archivist can compel people to tell the truth regardless of if they want to… but the statements that feed and empower them can have unreliable narrators.
Georgie was unaffected by the apocalypse due to her loss of fear… but Jon was able to compel her to tell him a truth and feed from her statement?
Martin had a domain and was able to hide in the Lonely, but he never had to feed on anyone to strengthen these abilities.
I just. Don’t get it. Can someone explain?
I’m sorry if this was more of a rhetorical question, but I’m gonna answer (what I think) if this is a genuine question.
Hey! Never apologize for answering potentially rhetorical questions! It’s not a crime and usually the other person is being an asshole so you taking it seriously only emphasizes their asshole behaviour!
To that end, yes! I did concede that, with regards to the compelling of statements, that unreliable narrators happen as a result of said narrators either believing their statements to be true or wanting them to be true. I was, quite frankly, not being charitable at that moment. Still aren’t, to be honest, but I’m trying.
It’s hard to conceptualize my actual feelings on ‘dream logic’ vis a vis the Fears so I will just leave it at… it feels lazy. A way to be allowed to not have to keep track of past plot points. Lets not forget the mess of a timeline Jonny gets pissy about anyone calling him out for.
Per Georgie being compelled and giving a statement, I will concede that her live statement could be considered among the written statements. That would make sense! I just personally don’t see it as such. We do not have any indication that Jon’s 'dreams’ (read: nightmares) include those! For that matter, were that the case, wouldn’t she be trapped in that moment in the same way as she was in her dream during the apocalypse? Further to the point, why would the Eye trap her in Jon’s dream if it weren’t to continue to wring fear out of her? Why would it trap ANY of them, were that not the case? Taking Jess Tyrell’s statement into account, its clear that’s the whole point. Unless we’re intended to believe that, prior to Jon’s death and becoming, none of the statement givers he saw in his nightmares were as haunted as those he fed from afterwards. Which would make sense, considering their lack of reaction or questioning of him! But does not take into account him actively needing to feed his patron in order to develop the abilities he does, which (in a rare act of consistency) we are told is only through him reading and taking statements. Something we have to ignore when it comes to the other archival workers reading the statements, because that would only raise further questions as to the actual cause and effect of becoming and I am already on a wild tangent.
Briefly, to address the Martin situation, those assumptions aren’t refuted within the podcast, and I cannot accept them as truth. They are excellent head canons, but they are just that. Head canons. Jon’s isolation could just as easily be a result of Peter FUCKING Lukas’s influence. More so, even, considering his experience using the Lonely spanned decades while Martin’s only just started.
In the case of Jon potentially already having powers from the moment he accepted the title of Head Archivist, that’s very possible! Definitely retroactive intention! Or possibly just the intention! Not to mention, Melanie did have the bullet in her for a lengthy period of time! I don’t recall where I stated her abilities by season 4 didn’t make sense. Only with how sudden and easily Martin was able to utilize the Lonely to both erase his presence from Georgie’s memory and become invisible. Though, I will concede that could be a result of the six months time skip. He was already being isolated due to working with Peter FUCKING Lukas before Basira and Jon’s corpse even got back from the Unknowing, as far as I recall.
I don’t agree that it wasn’t saying Avatars aren’t real. Jon, verbatim, says as much, at a time period we’re supposed to believe him as all knowing and all powerful. While rambling nonsense about Smirke and the others calling them that, when it was Georgie that coined the term. Georgie who said the word that would be how we classify those being used by and using the Fears as fuel to sow… fear. Why wouldn’t he be telling the truth? And I am sorry, but that’s just how I see it. I do like how you perceive it, though, as anyone that can elicit more fear than they themselves generate is a “watcher” and those that can’t are “watched”. That perspective, at least, makes sense.
Thanks for this discussion! I enjoyed it! I hope it didn’t step on your toes or upset you.
