If you think about it, Mary Keay got exactly what she wanted. She wanted to start a family like the lukas’s, and she did. She, Eric, and Gerard all wound up in that book. Guess you cant actually get a family out of the fear of death.
In the later seasons, everyone deciding not to help Jon and instead cutting him off was theoretically reasonable. After all, they didn’t owe him anything. He caused himself to become like this, nobody turned him into an avatar. Cutting him off was a good and healthy choice for them. Yet I can’t help but notice that it was also cruel, in a way.
Yes, it wasn’t their fault that Jon became an avatar, but it wasn’t his fault either. He was in a coma. He didn’t want to die. It was the most likely choice not only for him - everyone else would’ve chosen the same, had they been in his position. His fate was arranged by others ever since he picked up that book at eight years old. It wasn’t his fault.
He emerged from the coma forever changed. It turned him weak, gave him new needs that had to be met. I understand that for the archive crew, Jon extracting the statements from innocent bystanders was disgusting and cruel. But he needed that to live. He lost his humanity piece by piece, and his entire self shifted into something strange. And everyone hated that new, broken Jon. But it wasn’t his fault.
The sudden change of Jon’s mind and body followed by everyone’s hatred and resulting in his isolation reminds me of someone suddenly becoming very ill or disabled.
Jon’s avatarhood was like a sickness. It was gradually destroying him from inside out. And no one wanted to help him. They saw the death of a normal man and the birth of this new, twisted version, and deemed him lesser than them, not worthy of their time. The damage helping him would cause them outweighted the benefits of that help. They deemed him something disposable. “It should’ve been you. You should’ve died and not Tim.” Jon was forced to suffer for something entirely out of his control.
Not even his boyfriend tried to help him, beyond trying to get rid of the symptoms that inconvenienced him personally. It’s not like Jon was a healthy, normal man, traversing through the apocalypse with just the occasional desire to describe his awful surroundings. He was assaulted by the fear from the very moment the apocalypse began. It gradually built up, until it was too much for him to bear and he had to unceremoniously vomit the horrors he felt. He was holding back his needs, denying himself any relief just because it was inconveniencing for the people around him. Martin didn’t even try to offer him an alternative, he just said the statements upset him and he didn’t want to hear them. Jon was forced to neglect his needs just so his boyfriend didn’t have to be uncomfortable. Martin could’ve at least shown some compassion.
It’s like doctors trying to manage the bothersome and abnormal symptoms instead of getting to the root of the problem and helping the patient function as they are. You should strive to be normal, because it’s the standard. You should do everything in your power to fit in. Anything not meeting the norm is deemed as less worthy and undesirable.
It also fits with how the last few episodes played out. Jon’s a monstrous avatar, so he is no longer given the right to decide for himself. He didn’t have a say in the discussion that regarded his own life. Like a disabled person. “You either submit to us entirely and we give you the help you need, or you keep your autonomy and we deny you help, because if you’re so self-sufficient, that means you don’t need it anymore”. He could either keep quiet and let others decide his fate, or he could disregard them and make the choice for himself, risking the loss of the only people who still tolerated him. And guess which path he chose.
The hatred I feel towards people who have any positive thoughts regarding Jon and Georgie’s relationship is absolutely pathological and is ruining my life lol
Since there are now takes that the tma s5 ending was more nuanced than people who dislike it give it credit for I’m just going to say: no, I don’t think Johnny meant to wholly endorse Martin & Basira & co. as uncomplicated good people making an uncomplicatedly moral choice. But. The reason people feel like the horror of it was accidental is because that’s not what the emotional beats focused on. The entire climax was written in such a way that getting a satisfying emotional response depended on being invested in the fate of jonmartin as a couple more than in anything else. If the horror had been deliberate the tone would not have been bittersweet, it would have been overwhelmingly bitter. Having I Do Not See It characters can be a well written flaw, but it doesn’t work if you make it easy for the audience to also go I Do Not See It. And the writing did allow for that - we were shown the positive (for Martin & Basira & co) consequences of the choice, that’s the note the show ended on*, and the only counterbalancing note to it was dissent from a character who was set up for a corruption arc and thus easily written off as only dissenting because he was corrupted by the Eye. I do think Johnny understood the horror of the choice M & B & co were making - but I don’t think he adequately emphasised or portrayed it, not just because of the audience response but because that audience response was shaped by what was shown and what wasn’t and what kind of emotional notes (hopeful) things ended on, and it’s the job of a horror writer to make an audience feel the full weight of horror of things that are meant to be horrifying.
*I refuse to take tmagp into consideration since that wasn’t even planned at the time
Something that I noticed recently while listening to some random TMA episodes is that Jon only does things if he thinks they’ll make a difference.
I know, why would anyone do something if they didn’t think it would make a difference? What I mean is, where other characters might do things that they know almost definitely won’t help Jon doesn’t even bother to try.
In MAG 39, when Tim comes back from lunch Sasha and Martin are yelling to him to look around, but Jon doesn’t bother, he knows the room is soundproof.
In MAG 118, Jon doesn’t bother to try to help the victims in the Unknowing, because there’s not really any way that he could help them.
In MAG 178, this is where I really noticed it, Martin keeps trying to talk to the victims of the domain, but Jon keeps telling him not to bother because they aren’t aware of them.
There probably some instances where he will do something that he knows won’t have any affects, but I don’t remember.
I’m not really going somewhere with this, just that it’s an interesting character trait.
Author and Artist final products due: October 15th
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There’s this misconception that in s5 Martin was bloodthirsty and wanted to kill. No, he didn’t. He just wanted these people dead. He didn’t want to do the killing himself. He used Jon to kill for him, so that he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about it. And I’m sure that if he was the one with the power to kill, he wouldn’t have been as eager to abuse it. Because then he would have to take responsibility for his own actions for once.
“BECAUSE THEN HE WOULD HAVE TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS OWN ACTIONS FOR ONCE”
🗣️🗣️🗣️
Not only that, but him calling Jon monstrous is just another layer in that, cause if it’s in Jon’s nature, then neither of them can be held culpable! WHICH JON RECOGNIZES. AND IN TURN REFUSES TO BE PART OF. BECAUSE IT WAS BEAT INTO HIM OVER THE COURSE OF THE ENTIRE GODDAMN PODCAST.
“jon and martin aren’t boring” this. “jon and martin are toxic” that. “jon and martin are sooooo fucked up for-”
*extremely loud buzzer*
ANYWAY lets talk about jon and daisy
what if you tried to kill me because i violated your autonomy and gave you endless nightmares. what if i was terrified of you as we were forced to work together. what if i was terrified of myself. what if i became what you tried to kill. what if the relief i felt at your death was overshadowed by the relief i felt knowing you weren’t dead and could give someone who also wanted me dead the gift of your survival. what if i thought saving you would ensure my death, whether by your hands or not. what if you decided i was someone you could become better with because you decided you were wrong. what if you were wrong about being wrong. what if, even after my faults were revealed, you still tried to do better and help me be better. what if this meant you lost yourself. what if you tried to kill me again but this time it didn’t matter. what if i wanted you to recognize me as anything other than prey because you were the only one who TRULY SAW ME.
…or…
what if i tried to kill you because most of my life i got away with extra-judiciously killing people i deemed monsters. what if i didn’t get away with it. what if i planned on still killing you but instead i was stuck with the weight of everything i did and found myself lacking. what if you came in to save me because you hoped i would kill you. what if i forgot why i thought you deserved to die in the first place. what if we tried to be better together but there was no real trust between us because a part of you still expected to die by my hands and a part of me still wanted you dead. what if you were weak and failed and i didn’t care because i knew what i did was no better. what if I couldn’t find it in myself to blame you. what if i still tried despite your failure. what if, in the end, you helped show me what really needed saving and protection AND IT WASN’T MYSELF.
anyway, your honor, in conclusion, i plead insanity
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?
I’m gonna be honest. I am, to an extent, okay with the fact people were awful to Jon. I’m not entirely unaware that the shit he did doesn’t exactly inspire sympathy or empathy and shouldn’t. That’s, y’know, a complete sentence.
What I will not and cannot be okay with is just how hypocritical they and the fandom act about it.
If you can excuse Melanie for wanting to succumb to the Slaughter, you can excuse Jon’s own descent into the Eye. If you can excuse Georgie cutting Jon out of her life again, you can excuse Jon keeping everyone else at a distance. If you can excuse Basira’s ‘us vs them’ mentality, you can excuse Jon’s paranoia. Because at the end of they day they’re not just narrative foils. They’re mirrors.
now that I’m here i notice a lot of people either don’t acknowledge or overlook the fact that Oliver is just as if not more fucking unhinged than the rest of the avatars.
With the Martin being human and Jon being an avatar arc there are no positive conclusions drawn from it. There is no “love makes you a better person”. It’s just Martin berating Jon for who he has become but also saying that he cares about him (?)
It’s not love that made Jon come back to his senses when he was getting too close to the powers. It was the occasional act of physical violence (slapping/shaking) and I doubt that those particular actions were prompted by love and adoration, rather than Martin’s momentary fear and disgust of fear-influenced Jon. What I’m saying is that any other person could’ve done that, had they been travelling with Jon. Love didn’t play a significant role. We witnessed that others despised Jon for being an avatar as well, and I think it’s safe to assume that they too would do everything in their power to stop Jon from feeding or hurting innconents - but that’s because they hated him and/or perceived avatarhood as violent and monstrous.
Martin’s supposed affection for Jon only resurfaces when Jon tries to go across with his own plan in the last episode, and that one singularact prompted by Martin’s love caused Jon to go with the Web’s plan last minute. The only thing love did for Jon was to strip him of any agency regarding his own life whatsoever. He had to throw away the only decision he could’ve made for himself to appease Martin. His love lost him. His love made him go against everything he believed in.
Love doesn’t fix you, it smashes you into pieces until there is nothing left for you to pick up. The Magnus Archives is not a tragic love story, it isn’t a love story at all. Among many other themes, it is a story about one’s loss of agency. But somehow the narrative completely overlooked that, and instead all that everyone picked up from it was “well they might’ve ended up somewhere else so maybe they’re fine!”. But that is not horror. There is no conclusion drawn it just ends vaguely and hopefully and not at all horror-esque despite it being a horror podcast.
ALT
