My tma hot take is that jmart is the blandest ship in the podcast canon and fanon wise. In canon theyre underdeveloped they dont get on well and their relationship ultimately goes nowhere and only serves as angst material for the ending and the fanon strips them of even that unused potential and inserts them into their little character dynamic boxes. Every single other tma ship i can think of is more interesting than these two coworkers hiking through the apocalypse and yet everyone and their mother act like this is the best ship ever and just assumes every tma fan is also a jmart shipper. Its so tiring
i lowkey forget that’s a hot take in the wider fandom atp like ive spent so long blocking jmart from my life
trolley problem: do nothign and martin blackwood and 20 innocents die, pull the lever and only 1 innocent dies what do you do
wrong! i have tied him to the rail himself and there will be no other casualties because i am deft and adept
Mahtin makes up too much of the ship name
hm the only ship in canon is between me and john and me and tim and me and sasha and me and gertrude and me and jared and me and peter so i don’t understand this at all actually
Martin Blackwood the kinda guy to brag about only ever reading classics but when you ask him what he actually reads he would list like three dostoyevski books and "no longer human" by osamu dazai
he’s like an annoying bitchass ex that’s like “heh… I just think dostoyevsky’s a lot more profound than the other works 🥴” shutupshutupshutup
I read your post on the instances of Martin hitting Jon.
As someone who believes Martin was dreadfully close to being a Web Avatar and could definitely manipulate people, I agree. While, in my opinion, him hitting Jon was a very emotionally-driven, heat-of-the-moment type of action, I do feel it wasn't necessary to do so. While I do have a neutral/positive view on Martin, it was very interesting to read your stance and also quite enlightening. 100% valid opinion, can't argue. Sorry for this text wall by the way. I just like reading about people's varying opinions.
the first time yeah 100% i can see that but i also think that if he didn’t want to hit him then he had ample time for an actual conversation or just like even a thought towards how to wake john from his statement-trance without physical violence. like literally all they’ve got is time he could 100% have Not Done That Again in the future if he was so inclined.
(particularly because of the lack of immediate threat in mag172 and how he didnt try any alternatives even with ample amounts of time. he also notably was entirely unapologetic and uncaring. i think id recognise your viewpoint more if there WAS heat in the moment but like the second time he did it there was literally none)
why are u SO against martin being fat oh my god. very little characters have ANY canon designs and jonny and alex themselves said that martins a “bigger guy” in one of the q&a’s if u want to insist that every other descriptive part implying he’s fat just “means he’s tall!”. ur takes are always bad anyway but this one specifically is so stupid. headcanoning literally anything else appearance wise is fine but the One canonically fat character we have can stay fat Shrug
im not against it chat im against the idea that there are set fanon enforced designs for a podcast with no visual media.
its not like i hate fat ppl or whatever i just think it’s not very creative to have made one token fat character in the fanon design and then just enforce it for everyone. maybe if it was tim id fw that because tim is fat 2 me but cmon gang it’s martin…. idk maybe it’s because in my headcannon narrative i lowkey gave him a mindset of restrictive and disordered eating and malnourishment throughout childhood that he still deals w (because of him being poor and the guilt around his mother and everything it just feels in character)
but like headcannon what you want obviously i lit don’t care i just think that esp with how people often mischaracterise martin it can read as like turning the ‘bubbly’ character into the fat one. which isnt bad in and of itself but like cmon now. i barely consider anything in this audio narrative 'canon’ in regards to appearance and i just think it’s a shame that the fandom designs are soooo enforced and i think that’s kinda frustrating for creativity.
particularly because it often reads as just creating an opposite to the fanon design of john, which like only annoys me because like john is sooooo obviously the fat one there in my mind if you’re gonna do this whole contrast thing 🥀 esp bc he’s pretty much always considered to be vaguely brown (usually se asian but idk….) and like idk i think it would be nice to have fat characters who aren’t white lowkey and i think people are veryyyyy fixated on just martin and i just wish sometimes they’d pause their pre-assigned character designs and make tim fat because bro we NEED more fat tim content in this fandom please god i need him he’s sooooo sexy dude it’d be peak. that’s my true motivation
like if you’re gonna have one set fat character for the audio podcast at LEAST make it the sex appeal guy cmon now think about it. having the 'sweet sheepish tea character’ (S1 interpretation) be fat is cool and all but like having the hot dude be fat is more based imo 🔥
and sasha of course we need more fat women. there are just so many more deserving than martin and they’re all overshadowed bc people have their one enforced fat character 🥀
it just feels very much like you’re not letting two things coexist? martin can be fat and tim can be fat as well. like. this can happen. you can hc the rest of them as fat too without erasing the one character that has ACTUAL textual coding. the fanon designs feeling enforced i think may just be a you issue unfortunately because i have seen so many martin designs in which all of them he is fat (which is his One canonical trait) but with a multitude of different hair colours, different skin colours, different builds etc etc… but “rarely thinking of something as canon” despite his weight quite literally Being Canon is a bit. Ok! this is the character that is fat and we can add from there. the way the fandom perceives martin is shit but i think if you can’t see beyond that then at this point you’re not even hating on the character anymore you’re hating on the fandom
also if you want to get into non canonical ed’s to continue justifying why you can’t just let go of ur hate for like two seconds and go Yeah ok martin is fat! then perhaps consider martin who was raised with no idea on portion control and terrible issues with hoarding food because of his financial situation growing up. not many people would have enough food in their house to last them 2 weeks without grocery shopping but martin did! i personally see it as as he got older and started working and started buying groceries he bought everything cheap and in bulk (which, something else i want to bring up, people in poor financial situations does not always equal skinny? it’s easier to eat dirt cheap when it’s unhealthy junk) and started making himself too much/realised things were going to expire and had to eat it all then/etc etc.
please don’t assume i have anything against anyone’s personal headcannons really because like that isn’t what i wanna do at all because like why would i gaf. you are more than welcome to headcannon anything you like (and i literally cannot stop you even if i for some reason wanted to) i just have some frustrations with the attitude that SOME people have towards fanworks and feeling entitled to have other people visualise an audio media the same way they do. like when you’ll see ppl post fanart they did and the comments will be focused on complaining abt like the character missing a non-canon trait. if you haven’t felt pressure to cha
lowkey like you made a good point abt the q&a stuff that i didn’t know and that’s mb there because i typically only really know canon that was actually in the podcast, but also like
i mean i can hate on the character and also have some frustrations with how the fandom interacts with the media sometimes but like in discussions about common designs that feels like something that the fandom obviously feels relevant in? if you want posts of me talking about his character then like there are many on my blog you can search for those they’re actually usually the posts im most proud of 😋
lowkey i literally have zero design for martin in my head (i just dont visualise things like that idk) but maybe i only saw martin as fat because i don’t think he deserves that and i want him sad and cold and miserable but my interpretation should not have to influence yours in the slightest. please be free and understand that im as much of a chud loser as the rest of you and my word is not law half of it is just projection onto characters god bless 🙏