Good morning! I’m in a nice frothy rage so!
Everyone was being hypocritical about Jon becoming a ‘monster’ :)
It doesn’t help that, unlike him, Melanie and Martin’s abilities were seen as useful and without cost :)
But the fact everyone decided THEY, and Daisy, were still ‘human’ enough to be cared for :)
Is supremely hypocritical :)
This isn’t up for debate :)
Fuck you.
The bullet in Melanie’s leg was seen as a good thing. That gave her strength to defend them. Sure, Basira immediately agreed to get it out, but she sure as fuck also regretted it, and Melanie definitely wasn’t seen by Georgie as culpable for her act in wanting it to stay there.
Martin so quickly accepted the lonely that it didn’t take long for him to be able to use it for his disappearing acts. Yet no one at all ever called HIM an avatar or a monster for passively embracing the same kind of entity Jon did, nor did they confront him about it.
Daisy, as a near lifelong Hunter, was the only one of the three that had any real idea of what Jon was going through, who actually wanted to change and not be who she was. Even if it was way too little too late.
And the thing of it is. This isn’t addressed in the podcast. At no point is this disconnect discussed. Martin is SHOCKED, SHOCKED I SAY, at the fact he has a domain in the apocalypse… on top of him egging on Jon to smite people. Melanie barely has the wherewithal to say that Jon probably wouldn’t have caused the apocalypse on purpose. Probably.
This doesn’t bode well for y’all’s narrative that the point of TMA was to show how power corrupts or what the fuck ever y’all wanna say it was about.
Because they had that power. They used that power. And Melanie gouging her eyes out after having her connection to the Slaughter severed and Martin never outright being said to have fed the Lonely shouldn’t absolve them of that. Yet they were. Melanie was outside of the dichotomy of Watcher and Watched and at peace even with all the suffering around her. Martin’s push to kill every active avatar was only seen as bad when we’re told JON enjoyed and actively wanted to continue it.
Their choice to follow the Web’s scheme, the scheme that MADE JON INTO WHAT HE WAS, THAT WAS HIS SOLE PURPOSE FOR EXISTING AFTER IT CHOSE HIM, was the good and righteous choice. We hear that with the reconstruction and birdsong in the background of the very end scene. We hear that with Martin railing against and questioning if Jon was even human enough to know his own choices.
If the story wanted to sell me that Jon had no right to have a happy life because he made evil choices. That he was just as bad as Jonah in wanting to survive. Then the story shouldn’t have made me care that at every chance he was broken. It shouldn’t have made him sympathetic. If power is evil then I shouldn’t have cared that he died the villain.