getting into tma as an aroace person because everyone has told you the main character is ace and it's a horror podcast is just such a disappointment. like the horror is great and then it fizzles out because they're too busy doing amatonormativity.
omg PLEASE expand on this i wanna hear your complaints pls pls trust 🔥🔥
Im glad that theres a lot of martin haters here but like. Nearly all of them say "well martin is actually evil and abusive and manipulative and selfish!!!" And yeah youre broadly right. But youre giving him wayy too much credit
My biggest problem with him is that hes a fucking idiot. Liiike all the shitty things he did wouldve been more bearable if he wasnt so infuriatingly oblivious to them. Hes dumb as shit he thinks like a little child with the fairytale concepts of good and evil ingrained into his brain.... he wasnt even smart about his manipulation he just did it for his own gain thats it. Throughout the whole seried he is a dumb baby and it was bearable when he was still trying to be kind. But thinking like a dumbass kid AND being a cunt? Chill bro i know you didnt get to go to school but certain events expire when you reach a specific age. And being thirty-something i dont think throwing temper tantrums makes you look like a competent adult
god i knowwww like he’s both like almost naïve and also has like the most extreme black and white thinking style and it’s like omgggg this dude’s never formed a thought in his life lmao 😭 and that would be fine but then he’s a condescending dick to anyone who wants a bit of nuance 🥀
idk it you hate ajn for other reasons other than writing Martin like that, but so real. I also rejoices when I heard he disliked Martin. But also!!! he could’ve played!!! him differently!!!! and also maybe told Jonny that the romance was a dumb idea instead of encouraging it to pander to fans and maybe we would’ve had a halfway good season 5
i don’t like to criticise the real people and writers or whatever but like yeah he does have agency lmao 😭 but likeeee maybe he just hates martin for what he’s come to like represent or smth maybe its symbolic to him or smth you never know 🙏
On that note, I don’t get why it’s so hard for people to believe that Jon went against the plan and became the Pupil because he genuinely believed it was the right thing to do? Like he made himself very clear during the entirety of TMA 199, we don’t have to guess at his motivations at all, but it’s MORE common for me to see some completely different reason given in meta or fics instead of…what he plainly said….including:
- He just did it in order to die (despite him expecting to live for centuries with Martin at his side while the fears starve) (despite him changing his mind to ASK MARTIN TO KILL HIM)
- He just did it for revenge (despite the ENTIRE SMITING ARC being about him deciding his revenge wasn’t worth it)
- He just did it because of the ~evil influence of the Eye~ (this one just feels cheap, like the only way anyone could disagree with the WEB’S PLAN was if they were being puppeted by Evil Forces).
- He “didn’t realize he’d be killing Martin” when…he wouldn’t be! Martin wasn’t in a domain, and Jon would have no reason to move him to the End domain! Martin would have lived as long as the world itself did, probably several lifetimes!
- He just “didn’t think it through” and “lol Jon stupid and reckless” and in the fluffy Somewhere Else fics he goes on and on about how Martin was clearly right about everything and now that he can think straight he realizes that :))
- That he really just wanted to be a part of the Eye and all the reasons and crying were just an act to cover up his ~monster lust~
Like. We got a finale centered around a moral quandary with no right answer. Jon was the ONLY one who chose one side of the options. We have a whole show building up to that choice, it makes perfect sense in character and he doesn’t try to hide his reasoning!! He tries to convince the others! He breaks down crying because he hates what they’re planning to do so much!! And it kills me that the last true choice of what Jon actually wanted and actually believed in just gets discarded and ignored because people are so intent on making a “the Web plan was 100% right, Jon should always just do what Martin says, love wins!!” moral out of it.
You don’t have to think Jon was RIGHT to respect that he had beliefs!
Question: if they had taken Martin in a different direction would he have been any more redeemable? (I'm specifically referring to if he had gone down the Web!Martin path which I think would have made him significantly better because he's still just being manipulative but not also pretending he's a kind silly guy)
hey chat am i allowed to be a hater for a sec. I think my biggest issue with jmart as a ship (and the tma fandom as a whole tbh) is the insistence on love being the solution for everything. I always see takes like “it was love that was Jon’s last sliver of humanity!!” or “love pulled Martin out of the Lonely!!” or “the only good thing during the eyepocalpse was love!!” and it’s just like. do you guys hear yourselves. you sound like my alloromantic ass mom who’s about to tell me that I’ll find someone eventually
is it really a suprise the anti jmart blog would be reblogging anti jmart posts
i lowkey just don’t ship tma idk why it just doesn’t really lend itself to romance to me. i like some dynamics of jontim and sometimes toxic jonelias but like idk that’s only when separated from canon and in a different au tbh. like idk i’ll very easily make ships in different media (i make fandom-esque headcannon ships of my own ocs even) but for some reason tma just doesn’t feel right, even with canon relationships
As a person of color, to me, Martin comes off as such a wannabe white savior character in both canon and ESPECIALLY fandom depiction that his whole character in general just gives me the ick whenever he shows up/mentioned. It’s especially apparent when it comes to j/mart.
It boggles my mind how the fandom hc’s Jon as a poc, usually SE Asian in most characterizations but only at an aesthetically surface level, when they get into his backstory they never or rarely bring up how his darker skin tone might have influenced his experiences with others, especially with how prevalent micro-aggression is in European countries. Then they turn around and depict Martin as the “reasonable” innocent but secretly badass one (I cringed writing this description of what they think of him) who only does what is "right", then there’s Jon who’s either this unreasonable brute that Martin needs to “civilized” or in this case, “humanized,” OR a completely dependent maiden in need of rescuing (from Mr. big bad Elias Bouchard, who will huff and puff and blow their ship away) fanon Jon falls under so many negative asian stereotypes that you would think they’re doing it on purpose.
Does this make sense or am I reading into it too much/projecting? Because I am SE Asian and Jon happens to be my favorite as well. 😭
omgggg that makes perfect sense and i think you’ve really put into words something that’s been bugging me for a while in this fandom. i think that the way it’s so clearly just like an aesthetic change and to make john like a complete visual contrast from martin really annoys me because like it just feels like such a weird way of using race as like a prop for the white character’s design without anything deeper. and also because people will go into the comments of any brown man w long hair on tiktok and be like “erm- jonathan sims ⁉️”
obviously not my place to try remove representation and that’s not what i wanna do at all, but it does confuse me when john is treated as if he’s actual se asian representation when like there’s nothing supported by the creators, the writer and actor are both white, and there’s no indicator of his race in canon at all 😭
but also like god bless anyone that projects their own race onto john (or any of the characters) and gives him a little more depth 🔥
As a person of color, to me, Martin comes off as such a wannabe white savior character in both canon and ESPECIALLY fandom depiction that his whole character in general just gives me the ick whenever he shows up/mentioned. It’s especially apparent when it comes to j/mart.
It boggles my mind how the fandom hc’s Jon as a poc, usually SE Asian in most characterizations but only at an aesthetically surface level, when they get into his backstory they never or rarely bring up how his darker skin tone might have influenced his experiences with others, especially with how prevalent micro-aggression is in European countries. Then they turn around and depict Martin as the “reasonable” innocent but secretly badass one (I cringed writing this description of what they think of him) who only does what is "right", then there’s Jon who’s either this unreasonable brute that Martin needs to “civilized” or in this case, “humanized,” OR a completely dependent maiden in need of rescuing (from Mr. big bad Elias Bouchard, who will huff and puff and blow their ship away) fanon Jon falls under so many negative asian stereotypes that you would think they’re doing it on purpose.
Does this make sense or am I reading into it too much/projecting? Because I am SE Asian and Jon happens to be my favorite as well. 😭
omgggg that makes perfect sense and i think you’ve really put into words something that’s been bugging me for a while in this fandom. i think that the way it’s so clearly just like an aesthetic change and to make john like a complete visual contrast from martin really annoys me because like it just feels like such a weird way of using race as like a prop for the white character’s design without anything deeper. and also because people will go into the comments of any brown man w long hair on tiktok and be like “erm- jonathan sims ⁉️”
obviously not my place to try remove representation and that’s not what i wanna do at all, but it does confuse me when john is treated as if he’s actual se asian representation when like there’s nothing supported by the creators, the writer and actor are both white, and there’s no indicator of his race in canon at all 😭
but also like god bless anyone that projects their own race onto john (or any of the characters) and gives him a little more depth 🔥
adding onto this i don’t always like the portrayal of humanity being granted more to those the fandom perceives as white (martin + melanie) and it kinda feels a little weird, with helen and john being the ones treated as evil or lesser and inhuman. obviously this isn’t a severe pattern, with like georgie and stuff and obviously there are avatars that are pretty firmly cast as white by the problem. but just with how there’s so little indicator of race in the podcast it feels kinda a bit odd to me with how set in stone it is, particularly with how both martin and john are almost similar levels of avatar-ness (because martin has like three sections of apocalypse all to himself or smth) and yet martin’s the one who’s cast as being completely human and the only one who can redeem johns own humanity, like u were saying in the ask 🥀
Being aro, I semi relate to the ace anon who was also disappointed when season 5 turned into Amatonormativity Land 🙂
I had less expectations going in because no one really panders to aros but I at least liked that the podcast was less personal drama and more actual horror stuff for a while, but when I tell you the disgusted whiplash I felt listening to season 5 and seeing what they did to Jon and Martin...
I wasn't romance repulsed before that experience but I swear that was the straw that broke the camels back
Seeing what I felt was an overwhelming flanderization for the sake of ao3 "doomed" yaoi pandering was just too much so I didn't even finish season 5
And I never will 😁
not romance repulsed but definitely jmart repulsed‼️‼️
and you’re so real for not finishing season 5. i lowkey wouldn’t bother with the ending or anything but to be fair it definitely had some of the prettiest writing so I’d recommend still listening to the individual statements themself and just maybe skipping the rest 😋
^^^OH I forgot to add this but people who hc’s Jon as brown and then characterizes him as greasy looking vs Martin who appears to have perfect hygienes or is barely mentioned as looking unkept, while they’re in the middle of an apocalypse together genuinely pisses me off
That other post I just sent almost broke my Tumblr (im on the website ver) gonna keep my asks shorter 😓 apologies for the text wall
omggggg i forgot to mention this too and it irritates me SO much. because like i swear there’s like no reason for that in canon, and john is a pretty put-together guy who’s clearly intended (at least at first) to be a bit of a like posh british gentleman stereotype who clearly values organisation at the very least. i can see somewhat why this might be due to his obvious (understandable) mental health spiral in s2 onwards, but it does unsettled me that it’s always JUST john while tim was actively suicidal and being stalked by his boss and martin is literally over there walking around the workplace in his pants and living in a cupboard. and they both look all perfect or whatever. like i dont believe there’s no subconscious bias there don’t pmo
Hi!! The anon that brought up the asian stereotypes the fandom depicts onto Jon here, thank you for your response and I’m so glad this topic is being discussed!!
I like that you brought up other characters treatments as examples with Melanie versus that of Helen’s because whether or not the fandom realizes it, like you said, they really do like to pick and choose who they view as “human” or morally sound (with a common pattern of them choosing the characters they like to depict with the lighter skin tone but WHATEVER :\ ig) Speaking of Martin’s character/powers breaking the established norm compared to other avatars, because for some reason he doesn’t struggle with his powers anymore after an arc while Jon does for the rest of his life is, hm, ok. Also it definitely reminds me of how colonization tend to pick and choose cultural aspects from locals they do like and incorporating them into their own culture, then demonizing the rest that doesn’t fit their world view. How Martin has the audacity to shame Jon for his powers and in the same breath uses Jon’s for his own benefit disgusts me.
It irks me the golden opportunity they created (unintentionally?) and wasting it up to just an aesthetic standpoint to pair with Martin, when they literally like to depict Jon as Indian, INDIAN, one of the most beautiful and culturally oldest, diverse people in the world. Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism all have common themes of omnipresent divine gazes correlating with wisdom and it’s never utilized in this fandom.
Another thing I wanted to go into further detail from my previous ask is the specific historic fetishization of asian men being feminized and looked down upon based on physicality and achievements which fanon Jon gets so much of this treatment already because they (and he) don’t align with western standards of masculinity. It gets more gritty and I’m not sure how tumblr will react so for a more modern but short real life example, Jon’s treatment from the fandom is similar to how asian boybands are treated by the western industry and adult men.
That’s enough of my thoughts of fanon for now.
As for canon, Jon our white manTM, I can’t deny that. My previous thought of Martin being similar to that of a typical white savior character isn’t just in regards with Jon but also stems my own reaction to him?? As I’ve met people just like him that it has instilled a fight or flight response to his character, so when he continuously treats Jon the way others have treated me and other people like me in the canon, I can’t help but project onto Jon even if he isn’t the same demographic.
TMA fans will see a green character with lots of eyes (literally a common symbol of Eldritch beings or just horror in general) and instantly mention TMA as if it created the concept.
tma fans will see a brown man with long hair and instantly mention tma as if it created the concept
i dunno where people got that martin has the hots for “monster” jon or jon in his full-avatar-s5 form. he was actively shunning him for that part at best, being annoyed at him having to be like that and doing whatever he could to make him remain human, even if he wasn’t one. he was not drooling over it, he was begrudgingly following along and keeping it in check.
you know who was in full support of awakened avatar jon and wanted him to be comfortable in that form and would absolutely had the hots for him? jonah magnus.
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.
fandom WILL without fail always pick the INCORRECT character to be the omega/submissive/mpregged guy and then you just have to sit there and try not to cry about how wrong they are and they’re torturing mr bodily autonomy issues with all these unwanted pregnancies when mr wants to be pregnant is right there but he’s 6 feet tall and has 2 more muscles so he can’t get pregnant i guess
heyx as a transmasc person, people who headcanon Martin as transmasc are awful. I've been called transphobic multiple times over this. and the amount of people who act like he's transmasc because he cared for his mum, so clearly he can't be a cis guy? awful.
ALT
