honestly I see where you're coming from with jmart. Not as much with the character development- I personally feel like the characters were developed pretty smoothly. I think RQ was sort of intentionally starting martin with that "kinnie bait" nervous guy thing. Most characters like that tend to be liked by other characters, but Jon hates him through a good chunk of S1 (likely because he has said personality traits.) I think the TMA fandom grossly mischaracterizes him- (which to be completely fair was spurred on by RQ by not fully commiting to Martin's development.)

It's sort of like a Romeo and Juliet thing. People act like it's some hot take to say that their relationship wasn't great when obviously it wasn't great, it ended in a double suicide (and in jmart's case, a murder-suicide.) I personally am a huge fan of abusive characters, especially mutually abusive as jmart sort of is. I think martin certainly has a lot of potential as a concept but RQ fumbled the ball in S5. I'd say they do certainly have a shot at fixing it in TMP, but that could be wishful thinking. Honestly as someone with NPD who loves to project cluster B's onto characters I like, jmart is a PRIME example of an NPD/BPD relationship. Martin does swing wildly back and forth on a lot of things and feelings and honestly I think part of that was intentional- I don't think he's actually meant to have a solid idea about what he wants in S5. which is pretty uncommon to see in almost any narrative- characters are "supposed" to have clear motivations, and when they don't it comes off as shitty development.

anyway. sorry for ranting in your inbox lmao

i do think that yeah sometimes martin could lend himself towards being an interesting character, and i do really like your kinda interpretation of him, but for me like things are too wishy-washy with his motivations and ideas that it’s like who the hell even is this guy 🥀 i think that rq are good writers even with all their like controversies and all that which is why ughhh i just love the statements, but also like they’re so clearly most comfortable with horror writing that any idea of a healthy, non-abusive jmart just feels forced from the fandom because it’s just not like that at all, but also it feels a little forced from the writers to pander to these fans imo but that’s less relevant. sorry im rambling here im not really sure what i was trying to say