is there anyone you think the fandom mischaracterises more than Martin?
martinblackwoodhater
this is a really good example of how analyzing a narrative based entirely on whether something is good or bad for your baby boy makes you dumb as fuck. anyway what are your thoughts on melanie kin
i don’t understand your first point lowkey im sorry 🥀 like i get the concept but i don’t understand how this applies to me mb
and yeah i like melanie i think she’s cool.
doesn’t appeal to me like intimately or personally as a character but nothing wrong with her. her hate for john felt somewhat irrational but like characters are allowed to be irrational and it made sense for her personally especially with the obvious Slaughter influence. like it would be poor writing imo if she was acting rationally at that point.
i don’t remember her that much to be honest but i like that she was the only one with the gumption to actually gouge out her eyes to leave the institute idk why none of the others didn’t.
also her relationship with georgie also felt like weirdly sudden and out of the blue when i listened? I’ll go into more detail in another post on how the like style of storytelling really doesn’t help with that so it’s not really the fault of the characters but it still just felt kinda random to me.
aside from that though i really did like a lot of her character and im just glad to have some Slaughter rep because it is one of the more underrated fears it’s one of my faves (though her interpretation of it isn’t really as interesting or appealing to me compared to some of the other statements and just the potential it holds as a Fear).
i didn’t really like season 5’s ending and i didn’t really understand her and georgie just kinda randomly appearing with their little group? felt like padding out of content a bit or maybe a way to lull fans into more of a sense of security and let them have more like jmart time which just sort of didn’t appeal to me for obvious reasons.
also i understand obviously that like it’s very hard to represent blindness in an audio medium but i would’ve appreciated a little more mention of that by the end maybe? unless im forgetting about something in which case like yeah fair enough.
her character did just feel a bit like she went from angry to nonchalant without much range in between, which makes sense of course especially considering the supernatural reasons but idk i just feel like i would’ve connected with her more if there was like a bit more of a range there?
but ultimately i think she was a great character and i like her. also controversial opinion but i really don’t think she has blue hair and pronouns 🥀 sorry liberals
i really do love the style of the podcast and i think that the tape recorder stuff is very creative and works incredibly well for the start of the podcast especially, as it really fits that early vibe where there’s still the fear of the unknowing and that’s emphasised by just the sheer amount of setting that the listener just does not know, and it’s fun to piece together all the statements and there’s just that general like exciting detective vibe.
that being said, i think it’s also a reason why some of the character writing feels less appealing to me, as we only hear snippets of the worst parts of their lives and whatever small details happen to be caught on a tape that’s focused on something bigger.
i can’t exactly tell how much of this is intentional, but, to be fair, it’s especially interesting with Sasha, as while she’s a tragic concept, it feels less devastating as she is so defined by tragedy in all that we hear from or about her - she’s so defined by the absence of humanity that it makes it more difficult to think of her as a full character, and rather just a symbol of the horror and the supernatural that can exist in this universe, as the not!them is genuinely a chilling concept. the media used works so well with Sasha as we don’t know anything about her, and we’re not meant to. but i still do wonder if the concept would be more effective if we did know her a little more, and therefore if we could feel the loss like the characters could, rather than just seeing the fallout and with her turning into more of a forgotten cautionary tale.
it feels a little less effective and a little less deliberate with some of the other characters, when the excuses for the tape recorder being there during character interactions feels flimsy (because like why would The Web want to hear coworker gossip?) and it can just feel like we’re being handed random information, especially when we get statements about character backgrounds that don’t really even apply to the fears at all. like no hate to martin specifically but dude i don’t want to hear about your issues with your mum i came here for a supernatural horror podcast this doesn’t creep me out at all 🥀
(post about martin blackwood) it is human nature to want people that you trust/care about to know the bad or complicated things that happened to you without wanting to say what happened, and i think that this is clearly something that is also felt by martin in particular due to how we see him isolating himself while still wanting john to come get him, and how we see him getting mad at john for not being able to predict exactly what he wants while also getting mad at john for having mind reading powers (a pattern he picked up from his mother presumably).
that is to say, i think that him having his experiences with his mother ripped out of his head and put on tape and without any of the biases that he would taint it with if telling the story himself is something that at least some part of him wanted to happen.
it’s sort of the perfect scenario for him in that he has a part of the whole complicated relationship with his mother shared with john (presumably) without any of the actual responsibility that would come if he had told him himself. the only way we could ever get martin’s backstory from a semi-reliable narrator is without his will, and i think martin himself knows that.
keep accidentally projecting the most awful parts of myself onto martin blackwood. i swore i would never do this but it’s just so easy…
Honestly with how you hate everyone from TMA except for Jon you should probably just rebrand to TMAhater
why would i do that i love tma and also i love other characters other than john 🥀 the characters are NOT the main point of tma
also like johns not even my fav he’s just like the main guy
isn’t it wild when a ship has so little chemistry that they have to be the last free people in the world just to get together
The way you spell Jon hurts my soul. Love the blog though you are my favorite person in the fandom
that’s literally how it’s spelled in the transcripts is it not? 😨 swear it’s john
martinblackwoodhater:
a-b-opolls:
Martin Blackwood would be…
Alpha
Beta
Omega
[Results]
he’s not interesting enough to be any of the freaky ones lowkey
he wishes he was an omega that wishes he was an alpha. does anyone see the vibe
I secretly am growing to hate Martin just as much as you do...
The thing is I LIKED Martin in season 1. As I'm sure many other Martin haters would agree—in his first few appearances he was actually pretty fun. But then came season five, and immediately he became so insufferable and irritating and now I can't really stand him in any context. Which is a shame, but I can't help it.
The fandom around jmart also annoys me immensely too. People are just SO OBSESSED with them, making cute art of them in the apocalypse even though I found that entire last season to be so insanely depressing because of jmart's constant arguing (AKA them just consistently not understanding each other and their senses of humour, oh and of course Martin trying to force his boyfriend to murder people out of jealousy!!). I genuinely don't get how anybody saw that as cute. Even the person who recommended the podcast to me told me their arguing was just playful couple bickering, when it absolutely was not.
Honestly I kind of wished I had never listened to season 5. I would probably enjoy this fandom a lot more if I could live in blissful ignorance about Martin's true personality lol. As it is I have all of the jmart tags blocked and yet I still keep coming across them constantly...
lowkey real like i miss when i was also fandom brainrotted because like the idea of a like canon fluffy gay ship where it was all hurt/comfort and one of them was a cute fat guy and the other was this fucked up scrawny loser is like genuinely really nice esp when you’re like 13 like i was. like i loved martin my first listen and i got really into jmart (wrote fanfic and everything). lowkey kinda sad i became so dissolutioned but i just can’t get back into the fandom like that anymore
I wonder
Do you think Peter Lukas made Martin worse?
I guess it depends what you mean by worse?
i mean yeah i do think that his disconnect from people can naturally make him more snappy and abrasive when he does begin to integrate back into society (esp like with the worlds most evil boss and his situationship) and therefore be worse with people just by sheer nature of being so out of practice and having spent so long only centering himself and fully having to only worry about himself at all.
sort of a situation that he could easily take advantage of as this is an environment where he can feel morally righteous for not really caring about other people, which i do think could’ve been part of the reason he was so susceptible.
and therefore, after spending so long being encouraged and justified to act on his desires to ignore others and only focus on himself, it’s obviously hard for him to come back from that, and especially because i really don’t think he’d actually want to.
If Martin is your least favorite character who is your favorite character?
i don’t really have them i like the writing and i like the concepts and i like how the characters explore these concepts, but idk for some reason none of them really appeal to me like they should? i think that’s aided by the format, which I’ve made a post about before about how it’s really wonderful and creative for the horror element and the the layout of the plot, but it doesn’t really lend itself to making as appealing characters to me. i like jane tho
