I think making the choices Jon and Martin made regarding the end of the end of the world out to be just about the other is extremely reductive.
Martin didn’t go with the Webs plan because it would ‘keep Jon with him.’ He went with the Webs plan cause it would cause the least amount of suffering. The ‘cosmic scale’ of human suffering he would have to ‘live with’ was HYPOTHETICAL. It wasn’t real. Not to him or the others. Saying that him wanting to stop the suffering of the people who, to him, ACTUALLY exist, was a byproduct of him wanting to ‘keep Jon with him’ is ignoring that even if Martin doesn’t care about others he still will do what he thinks to save them. Or buy enough time for someone else to. Why the FUCK are you making me DEFEND HIM. I fucking hate you.
On Jon’s end. Why do you think, if any of the others had gone up to stop him, that he wouldn’t do the exact same thing for them? Especially Georgie. I can understand not considering them cause they would leave his ass the moment the Panopticon went up, but let’s present a hypothetical. Say Georgie decided to stay or whatever. Convince him to try and release the fears. Whatever. Do you really think he would be fine and watch her burn with him? He was killing the world for hypotheticals. Would that not change when seeing the reality of it in front of him? With even some random person off the street? We can’t know the answer, but if you think he wouldn’t, you don’t know Jon at all.
Anyway. Convictions are for people not being tortured.
Placing all the weight of their choices when it comes to the suffering around them onto the other is reducing them to that relationship, ignoring their autonomy, and I hate you for it.
In addition, acting like their choices at the very end were because of some cosmic soulmate driven whatever is also extremely reductive and ignores that the show explicitly states that they are not fated to be with each other in every universe, let alone that one, and also the entire theme of free will and your choices being your own regardless of any influences. And I hate you for it.
I’m the exact opposite of “the statements are boring I just skip straight to dialogue” people. I love the statements more than anything. Yeessss….. give me one thousand million hours of Jonathan Sims narrating short horror stories…. wish there was a version of tma without the plot stuff so I could enjoy the stories without having to hear Jonathan Archivist Sims suffer all the time
If you even jokingly reference that stupid fucking ‘Elias/Jonah and Peter have been married and divorced multiple times’ meme, I automatically ignore every take you have about any of the characters because clearly you’re too entrenched in the fandom and likely didn’t actually listen to the fucking podcast.
You wanna talk about the fandomization of Jon and Martin when you’re spouting the same tired jokes about divorce and kayaks???? Kill yourself.
Daisy was acting off when Jon came back to London after his trip around the world because she could smell other hunters on him and got jealous send post
I used to enjoy your takes even though i didn't agree with some of them but i do think youre becoming too spiteful and angry and you lashing out over things that arent too serious is just hurting yourself and others
Never stop posting its always so validating to see theres someone more angry abt fandom stuff than me. "Well everyone engages with media differently" yeah and some people engage with it wrong. Why bother listening to a horror fiction podacst if youre gonna throw all the conflict and horror out the window and replace them with cookie cutter fandom dynamics and tropes. Why are you even here.
YEAH. It’s like. I get that I’m rude and abrasive and spiteful and mean and vindictive. And I could definitely reign that in. But the thing is. I don’t go onto people posts or inboxes and harass them anymore. I make my own posts and if people want to engage with them they can. I’m not forcing anyone to comment or come onto my blog. I tag, yes, but the block button is there for a reason. I get it, I really do, about looking at things that piss you off. But the only person I’m in control of is myself. If I want to put something into the ether that’ll piss someone in general off then what does that have to do with me?
Anyway. I can say and do whatever the hell I want forever. Other people will just have to deal.
“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.
Y’know. Thinking about it. I think my frustrations about certain listeners of TMA come from viewing it all through the lense of tropes and shit.
Like. It boggles my mind that essentially no one when they first listen immediately clocks Jon’s skepticism as a facade. Between him believing some of the horrors (Leitners and Jane Prentiss), it was obvious he had some encounter we would eventually learn. Not only that, but does no one realize — from a metatextual perspective — that during the first season, all the points where Jon brings up contradictions and possible logical reasons behind the horrors, it’s a way to show how these horrors are able to go under the radar and AREN’T a matter of worldwide attention? And not, y’know, just him being a skeptic?
I may be insane about him, but Jon isn’t a real person and these aren’t real events that happen and at a point you’ve got to stop viewing things from a Watsonian perspective and instead thinking like a Doyalist.
there’s a frustrating habit to portray sex as a given, an expectation, an inevitability in relationships. Anyway, I want more fic of Jonathan Sims not enjoying and not being interested in it and having that be the norm. Some people just don’t like it! And that’s okay and good. Or, you know, tag your fics if he’s sex favorable so I’m not blindsided, that’d be cool too.
Dunno if anyone doesn’t know this, but if you block someone, they can still see your side blogs. You have to go into your side blogs’ settings and manually enter their username to block them from seeing it as well. I just learned this. And I am NOT about to go through and do that cause I don’t care enough. Just thought anyone seeing this would like to know.
I think my hyper-fixation on this show has dimmed considerably since TMAGP is on hiatus and we have no further info about the live show’s recording yet. TBH I keep trying to rekindle it cause I don’t have anything else to fill that hole and I know the show is gonna return and therefore so will it. But in any case. Maybe I’ll do some other things in the meantime that aren’t related. And maybe that’ll make me less of a bitch.
‘Martin’s obsession with [Jon]’ and it’s just him bringing him tea and telling him he looks like shit and should get better sleep like he does to literally every other character at the slightest provocation.
If Martin’s love of Jon was unconditional, he wouldn’t call him the antichrist behind his back or question him to his face about his humanity before they died btw 🫶
ALSO. HOLY FUCK. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE ISN’T INSECURE. Martin wouldn’t be jealous and ask his boyfriend to KILL that source of jealousy if his love was unconditional. Cause he wouldn’t feel threatened by any other person. So wrong and so loud.
Love the sudden jmart and martin criticism its so on point youre literally right. Was it prompted by something specific or is it just the hater spirit possesing you for a brief moment i need to know
Tbh it was something specific but also tbh it’s a sentiment I see a lot but this specific time just really grated on me and I wanted to scream about it.
People will be on this blogging site saying shit about the Magnus Archives so loudly and confidently and WRONG but I shouldn’t blame them cause this is the same podcast that had Georgie introduce the term Avatar then turned around and dunked on Smirke and that era as if they were the ones who came up with it.
Again with the same question: was ur jonelias hate prompted by something specific?
Nah, just every so often like to remind my followers of my intense and deeply held hatred of that fuckass ship and anyone who has any positive thoughts related to it.
Still not over how Jon’s ‘past the event horizon’ moment, the one that fully separated him and othered him and was purposefully a parallel to Jonah FUCKING Magnus, was him not wanting to die.
And that’s why it pisses me off that people always say no one said Jon should’ve stayed dead. Cause they didn’t have to. The narrative conflated Jon breathing and speaking to him being a monster. Which is a bad thing to be. So regardless of if the girls said the words out loud, the narrative flat out says Jon morally should’ve stayed dead. That is just the truth.
It just occurred to me that I no longer have to pretend I like TMA for the sake of friendship.
I. Hate. The ending. The whole apocalypse thing?? Seriously it was so BORING and reminded me of the law of diminishing returns. They just kept giving us more and more and more until eventually it just felt. Idk it just wasn’t worth it anymore.
Still not over how Jon’s ‘past the event horizon’ moment, the one that fully separated him and othered him and was purposefully a parallel to Jonah FUCKING Magnus, was him not wanting to die.
And that’s why it pisses me off that people always say no one said Jon should’ve stayed dead. Cause they didn’t have to. The narrative conflated Jon breathing and speaking to him being a monster. Which is a bad thing to be. So regardless of if the girls said the words out loud, the narrative flat out says Jon morally should’ve stayed dead. That is just the truth.
Anyway. Fight me about it.
The tragedy of the world portrayed in the story is that most people seem to choose becoming a monster instead of dying. You can pass whatever moral judgement YOU want, but I don’t think the “story” does. It’s a tragedy. One common feature of tragedies is COMPLETELY understandable decisions that lead to ruin.
Like genuinely I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean by “moral judgement.” it’s not a morality play 🫠. It’s a story about Some Awful Shit That Happened that people like to project The Office onto.
Replying from my sideblog fyi so you don’t think this is out of left field.
You literally made a moral judgement by that first sentence. In a dichotomy of dying human versus living as a monster, you are saying it’s a tragedy that they didn’t die rather than becoming a monster. Something isn’t a tragedy because something good happened. It’s a tragedy because something bad did. And if becoming a monster is the tragedy, then the opposite would’ve made it not so. Ergo, dying was the better outcome. Dying was the correct choice to prevent the ‘awful shit that happened’. Especially so in Jon’s case, as his death literally would’ve prevented the end of the world.
Like. The penultimate episode went heavily into the morality of all the characters and the final episode nailed the head on the coffin of the question of if Jon was a monster by literally having one of the last things Martin do is question if he was even him anymore. After an entire season of waffling between the idea of the ‘avatars’ still being themselves and choosing to do what they did regardless of any influence. Like. I’m sorry. I can’t understand where you’re coming from that that the podcast isn’t making a moral judgment about people who choose to survive by any means necessary.
Still not over how Jon’s ‘past the event horizon’ moment, the one that fully separated him and othered him and was purposefully a parallel to Jonah FUCKING Magnus, was him not wanting to die.
And that’s why it pisses me off that people always say no one said Jon should’ve stayed dead. Cause they didn’t have to. The narrative conflated Jon breathing and speaking to him being a monster. Which is a bad thing to be. So regardless of if the girls said the words out loud, the narrative flat out says Jon morally should’ve stayed dead. That is just the truth.
Anyway. Fight me about it.
The tragedy of the world portrayed in the story is that most people seem to choose becoming a monster instead of dying. You can pass whatever moral judgement YOU want, but I don’t think the “story” does. It’s a tragedy. One common feature of tragedies is COMPLETELY understandable decisions that lead to ruin.
Like genuinely I’m not entirely sure I understand what you mean by “moral judgement.” it’s not a morality play 🫠. It’s a story about Some Awful Shit That Happened that people like to project The Office onto.
Replying from my sideblog fyi so you don’t think this is out of left field.
You literally made a moral judgement by that first sentence. In a dichotomy of dying human versus living as a monster, you are saying it’s a tragedy that they didn’t die rather than becoming a monster. Something isn’t a tragedy because something good happened. It’s a tragedy because something bad did. And if becoming a monster is the tragedy, then the opposite would’ve made it not so. Ergo, dying was the better outcome. Dying was the correct choice to prevent the ‘awful shit that happened’. Especially so in Jon’s case, as his death literally would’ve prevented the end of the world.
Like. The penultimate episode went heavily into the morality of all the characters and the final episode nailed the head on the coffin of the question of if Jon was a monster by literally having one of the last things Martin do is question if he was even him anymore. After an entire season of waffling between the idea of the ‘avatars’ still being themselves and choosing to do what they did regardless of any influence. Like. I’m sorry. I can’t understand where you’re coming from that that the podcast isn’t making a moral judgment about people who choose to survive by any means necessary.
The story pretty solidly lands on the side of “avatars slowly lose their humanity.” It goes back and forth between “the original person has to actually want to become an avatar” and “the original person is magically compelled to become an avatar” because in the canon of the show it seems to be a mixture of the two. People in the former category tend to retain more of their personality than the later but that’s it.
Like…. idk what to tell you dude. This is not a story where the monsters are just people who are weird. The monsters in this story compulsively hunt and kill in the service of eldritch god-adjacent entities. I don’t think the story is “casting a moral judgement” so much as the world the writer built is one where “becoming a monster” means one thing, but you wanted it to mean something else.
I don’t think you know what argument you’re making. In fact, I think you’re a fucking dumbass and this conversation is over. You are literally too stupid for me to continue having this discussion.
I feel crazy for feeling like the ritual causing marks weren’t shown as anything other than signs of blame. That the narrative did nothing but explicitly state that Jon’s choices were why he got them and caused the end of the world. There’s a whole episode dedicated to spelling out how if not Jonah then the Web set him up to receive them, yet the show does nothing but say they were still his choices and have the characters implicitly state they still blamed him for it all regardless of any signs showing them otherwise. Because he could have made the right choices. So it didn’t matter that they were stacked against him. There was a way out for him. He just didn’t take it. So all the trauma. All the pain he suffered. Was his fault. So why should we bother to care. We should think about other people suffering cause of him. Isn’t that more important. That his suffering only led to more. That he was weak and could’ve broken away from it but didn’t cause he was egotistical and WEAK.
No. I’m pretty sure you’re only supposed to read that “don’t touch me” scene as Jon being a monster. I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to think back to all the other times he was stabbed and hurt and violated to view it as a reasonable response. I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to take the through line of ‘you chose this’ to its logical conclusion that Jon enjoyed every act of violence against him and therefore wanted to have the power he had so he could exert it over people he deemed unworthy. Pretty sure there’s not supposed to be an ounce of sympathy given to someone with that much power. That you’re supposed to view Jon — sorry, the Archivist — as the true villain that joyfully and without restraint caused global suffering and torture. In fact, I think if you think otherwise that Jonny and Alexander will look down their noses at you and shake their heads in disgust.
It’s funny to me that no one gets that when I say inflammatory shit I’m being hyperbolic. Do y’all genuinely think I would actually kill someone because of a fictional character? Do y’all genuinely think I’m sitting here at my desk at my 9-5 seething endlessly because of bad fandom takes? That I plot ways of finding where people who likely live across the country or even oceans just to find and murder them?
I’m sorry y’all are scared of some 33 year old who doesn’t leave their house except to go to work and therapy but it sounds to me like y’all need to lighten up and realize this isn’t real. No one in real life will assault you for your opinions on a podcast.
Georgie’s perspective on Jon versus Melanie is really based on how they acted around her and not the reality of their conditions.
Like Melanie was clearly going to a lot of effort to fake coherence and normalcy around her, whereas Jon was living with her while framed for murder and realizing he was becoming less human but having zero knowledge as to how. Jon just couldn’t fake being alright (not that that has ever been his speciality).
But Melanie only got better because Jon and Basira staged an intervention to limit her connection to the slaughter. An intervention that was 100% against her will that she tried to murder Jon for. Likewise, being cut off from the hunt have Daisy the disconnect needed to get better. But, if no outside force does anything about Jon than of course he’s only gonna get worse.
Also, the effect of grieving Jon’s apparent death cannot be forgotten for how it tanks a relationship.
Which of course clashes horribly with Martin’s perspective. He was exposed to Melanie’s slaughter excesses and he does understand that Jon desperately wants help but has no support. But to Martin, that emotional support can’t compete with saving Jon’s life.
Still, it’s sad. Jon desperately wants help and support and a solution to his increased need to feed but he only gets hostility. Melanie didn’t want help and got it. Personal perspective really is everything. Jon values Melanie far more than she does him so helping her with the bullet is an easy choice, but no one is there for him with a solution to his struggles.
Which is of course the beauty of this show. Everything sucks for Jon because he’s the main character, and people can perpetuate that suffering while still being 100% in character. In Georgie’s case, she’s probably even making a good call, although she’d be better off cutting ties with everyone at the institute.
ALT
