Which characters from the magnus archives do you dislike and why? Just curious
There’s…… levels.
On the bottom we have the ‘I don’t dislike or like them’ ones. Your Jurgen Leitners. Essentially, they don’t usually cross my mind. If they’re an antagonist and I haven’t mentioned them, they’re here.
Then you have the 'I dislike them cause they irritate me to listen to’. This is where Jared Hopsworth and Peter Lukas reside. Especially Jared. They just grate on me. Auditorally. I do not want to hear it.
After that is 'I hate you because of your fans but otherwise don’t care.’ Your Micheal(s) and the Victorian era freaks. Please stop talking. You are missing the plot of the podcast. It’s kinda embarrassing.
Way higher is the 'I hate you because people constantly post about how I shouldn’t and I don’t like being told what to fucking do’. This is where the surviving girls and Martin are. And they will never leave it.
Jonah Elias Magnus Bouchard has his own little spot in hell.
Now, if you’d like, I could elaborate on any of these you want. I would be glad to go into more specifics. Might even have nuanced takes.
Hi prev anon here. Please say more about the characters whose fans you hate and the ones you hate because of fandom idolizing/"purifying" them
Okay, so, let’s start with the idea of me disliking the fandom ‘idolizing/purifying’ these characters. I don’t necessarily believe that to be. True. Mainly because I am aware it would make me a hypocrite. I cannot be objective about my opinions on Jon. That’s fact. So it’s not so much that I believe the fandom is acting in a way that glosses over their faults… it’s that the narrative and the fandom make their flaws into things that should necessarily be forgiven and therefore make them out to be entirely irreproachable.
This got super long so I will now put a read more.
Now, when we look at where the story leaves them off in the penultimate episode, where we have gotten perfunctory apologies from Georgie and Basira regarding their actions towards Jon and their place in the Mass Ritual by that eleventh fucking hour, we do not see any actual change in their perspectives. We get Jon telling Georgie she didn’t need to apologize, and we get Jon apologizing TO Basira as their final exchange. We don’t even get any kind of back and forth between Jon and Melanie in this final season that isn’t antagonistic. We get her misplaced hatred of him being validated and justified by his 'betrayal’. We get their opinion of him being a self-centered, egotistical, power-hungry monster being validated and justified.
In other words, if we are supposed to believe that we are NOT supposed to see their actions as being in the right and that they are morally just in everything they chose to do with and without coercion, then the narrative fails on that in every aspect. Regardless of what the fandom reads into it and regardless of the writers intent.
When Jon pushes against Basira’s perspective regarding her time as a police and her using both Daisy and Melanie as a metric of what is and isn’t justice, it is immediately invalidated by his own actions and Basira is back to being morally center, if not good or bad.
When Melanie has consistently verbally and physically attacked Jon, it’s justified by his own acts against her in retaliation being presented as worse. And no, despite how the narrative tried to gaslight us, no one on voice in podcast told her to look at things from his side. Ever.
When Georgie drops Jon like a hot potato after his coma, both telling him he needs people to anchor him AND the person he chooses to be anchored to that he should be cut loose, her autonomy and boundaries are all that matter and he is the one that oversteps.
This is the perspective the narrative gives, this is the perspective the fandom goes by. Basira is a fixed, level-headed point and this is good. Melanie is righteously angry and this is just. Georgie is the queen of setting boundaries and this is unquestionable. Any deviation in thought from this will be labeled as misogyny rather than simply pointing out how these characters have flaws. That these flaws are allowed to be acknowledged and not excused.
I’ve only spoken about the only surviving girls at this point but this also goes towards Martin and Daisy. And, least I be burned at the stake, Tim and Sasha as well. But I won’t be talking about them at this moment because the original archival team (and Daisy) is an entirely different beast than this. That side of the fandom doesn’t seem to hold Jon in the same contempt as the aforementioned one so my emotions towards them are more complex.
Jon’s choices and Jon’s issues are all on him. We are never allowed to point out the consistent manipulation from childhood, his upbringing as an orphan, and any neurodivergence he may have as being the reason for those choices without having to append that it is no justification. We cannot be sympathetic towards him, as to be sympathetic to a ~man~ in any degree at all means you cannot be sympathetic to his women peers in any aspect.
I do admire Basira for how secure she is in herself and her choices. Even if those choices are self-serving with no regard to others.
I do know how Melanie feels when it comes to her anger and how she cannot recognize her own kindness or give it to Jon in any capacity.
I do think Georgie had the right to decide what she was willing to handle. Even if it was callous and dismissive of everyone else.
These characters are multifaceted and nuanced and make some of the most insane decisions due to this and if I took away the voices trying to flatten them into 'girlbosses’ I could find myself enjoying writing about things from their perspective and writing about their healing and growth. As it stands, though, I cannot. Because all their nuance flies out of my brain the minute anyone tries to say that they are morally better than Jon.
Wait there are fans of the victorian era men? I never encountered them
What are they like? Why do you dislike them?
Ah. Yeah. To be fair, they’re not really around anymore and weren’t all that obtrusive. They just. Existed.
Basically, they just liked the idea that Jonah was fucking all these different men (or each other) and all that shit. Called them ‘Jonah’s Harem’ and wrote fic and smut about that time of Jonah’s life.
Mostly I just found it weird that anyone found anything interesting enough about any of those guys to care about. And yeah okay they might’ve been everywhere for a bit there so they got annoying FAST.
In any case, I just block ‘em if they crop up.
Stupid question, but. What does "meta" mean? Google won't give me a clear answer
No stupid questions! It is never stupid to educate yourself on things you don’t know!
Meta, in this case, is just a shortened way of referring to metatext. Discussing a piece of media within itself, about itself. Essentially, fandom uses it to mean talking through the narrative and character arcs while taking into account the world they are in and the themes attributed to it. Generally accepting that there might not be a real life experience to equate it to.
For example, discussing reasonings behind choices characters made and how they affect the plot because of other plot lines or backstories. Or how a plot or character choice came about at all because of the themes within the genre the media labels itself as.
You’re not necessarily looking at it as storylines and character arcs in a vacuum, you’re looking at them as parts of a whole necessarily informing each other.
That’s my understanding of it, at least.
Hope that gave you a little clarity :)
Saw you reblogged a post about Jon's asexuality and wanted to add something.
The only info we get about Jon's asexuality is 1) two short sentences and 2) in the form of gossip.
So, while it very much might be 100% true for him, it's important to know that when saying this about him, Melanie certainly didn't have his best interests in mind. While it's completely valid to imagine him as completely disinterested in anything sexual, it's not the ultimate truth. I also wish it were defined more in canon, but i am aware it's completely irrelevant to the story the podcast tells.
I don't mean to pick a fight with you or anything. This is just something I've been meaning to say for a while
It’s chill! I mean. I definitely disagree on principle, but. You’re right. It is just a throwaway line of gossip in the end. We don’t know the context of WHY Melanie and Georgie were even TALKING about his lack of sex life that lead to him being outed. So we don’t know all of what Melanie knows.
Which I guess is why I am so adamant about it being the truth? Like. It feels on theme that something so personal to him would be something talked about BEHIND HIS BACK and only to other him. I’m also ace (aro as well) so I know that feeling of othering over something you can’t control. Having it be not necessarily the whole truth lessens its impact. To me.
It absolves all parties involved in the outing as not actually… outing him. Y’know? It cements it as JUST gossip that truly wouldn’t affect him. Which. It did.
But this is going on a tangent.
I suppose what I’m saying is. I do understand it isn’t strictly the truth. And maybe I could be a bit less rigid in my viewpoint. But him being sex repulsed MEANS something to me. And I don’t like how people disregard that when writing fics or meta.
Tbh a loooot of the things the fandom says are pure imagination. The safehouse period was made up. The archival team socialising was made up. The podcast just gave a vague hint about something happening offscreen and the fandom decided that since nothing was said about their beloved blorbos directly, then there simply must have been situations in which their blorbos were caring and loving to eachother, because thats what they see them as and they're opposed to the simplest yet most possible explanation - that these people barely cared about eachother. They are sooo starved of fluff they forgot that fanfiction is only that - fan made fiction. It's not canon. It never was.
Yeppp. And I’m SURE they could take dialogue and use it as evidence for their perspectives. And maybe there’s some merit to that. But I don’t WANT to be the bigger person and view them as having complex motivations and relationships. I WANT to be angry and hurt. Isn’t that the whole point of ~tragedy~? To feel bad? So making these moments where it wasn’t so bad for Jon with the others, lessens that to me.
I firmly believe that making tmagp basically focused on the og tma verse is dumb as shit. The og podcast was already incoherent by season 5 and now its only fucking things up further. What even is the story its trying to tell? Man from different universe learns what happened in tma?
It was supposed to be a separate thing please you guys you promised this to me
I mean. That didn’t happen until the season one finale. And we’re not even halfway through season two. So it could change in the final season? In any case. Uhh. There is the alchemical thing. Something something about balance. Uhh. Computer eats you? Idk.
The person who commented under your butch daisy negativity post saying that she defied gender norms by having a male friend as a kid.... what are they even talking about
I guess I can see how only having a guy friend as a kid might be seen as defying gender norms cause… idk? Honestly I have no clue either. Something about ‘being one of the boys’? Something about tomboys? But it would be different if she and Calvin weren’t secret friends cause he was embarrassed about it. Cause then she would’ve been seen as… one of the guys.
Idk I just think they were trying to justify a harmful stereotype when the only indication that she could be gender nonconforming or any flavor of queer despite her actual vocal desire to be seen as ‘gentle’ is [checks notes] that she’s aggressive and a murderer. Cause that’s totally an indicator of THAT, amiright?
