2025-05-01 3:07:08 ¶ ●

Jonmartin would’ve been so much more bearable if it weren’t canon and instead just implied, bc then I wouldn’t feel so irritated by the sheer amount of ooc fan content there is.

Fans forget there’s source material in which the characters’ relatioship is already defined (as poorly as it is, it still is.) Nearly all the content of jmart I see is just…. not accurate. “They would not have fucking said that” type deal. The canon is just used to explain Jon’s eye powers and nothing else. No tragedy no lack of compatibility no codependence by circumstance no nothing. Every single trait that might’ve made them interesting is discarded in favour of a fandom cliche.

I mean, the whole “good cows” thing that everyone is swooning over is just collective imagination. The safehouse period is practically nonexistent in canon, and yet it’s considered the most romantic jmart moment. What about the stuff that did happen?

2025-05-10 16:03:41 ¶ ●

I’m still not over season 5. I’m still not over the fact that Jon was pushed aside in his own story.

In the end, the “Ceaseless Watcher’s Special Little Boy” was no more than a disposable puppet. Nothing he had to say mattered. Not a single action he could’ve taken would’ve changed anything, and yet he was blamed for “not trying to help”. No one cared about him as a person, he was just regarded as The Archivist. No one bothered to think of him.

Not only did he get stripped of all agency regarding his own life, not only was he outright despised by all the people he valued, but on top of it all he suddenly stopped mattering in the story itself.

All nuance was forgotten. Even the audience began to see him through the prism of his relationship with Martin. The violent monster. The one who caused it all. The bloodthirsty, vengeful Antichrist. The Archive of all fear. The one who died at the end.

2025-05-14 20:02:17 ¶ ●

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I think that the biggest proof that most Martin fans don't understand Martin is that they never write him really being jealous or bitter. Not like he is in the show. They just make him sad and self-sacrificing and skim over his obvious dislike and disregard for most other people. He's rude to people who don't get along with Jon, with people who get along with Jon too well, and also Jon himself. The first time we hear him, he spends a bunch of time passive-aggressively guilting Jon for Martin getting trapped by Prentiss. Melanie and Basira joke about how rude Martin is to them because of their relationships with Jon. Martin effectively burned his friendship with Tim by acting like a mediator while showing obvious bias. He's such a dick, which I find really funny and apparently no one else does.

“He’s rude to people who don’t get along with Jon, to people who get along with Jon too well, and also to Jon himself” dear GOD you’re so right. It’s like he’s simultaneously insecure and egocentric.

From what I’ve gathered, this is caused by most fans seeing themselves in Martin. Most of their time is spent piling their own personality traits onto the man, instead of trying to understand him as he is.

The fact people prefer the popularized fanon version also adds to this. In fanon he’s a loving, caring, protective sweetheart. His biggest flaws are that he hates himself and loves too much; both perfectly harmless and relatable. There’s nothing that might make him seem unredeemable, his every trait is perfectly innocent and excusable. Sweet gay tormented blorbo.

Martin isn’t the only one who fell victim to the fandom oversimplification to be honest. Jon’s either the mean stubborn idiot or a soft and helpless gayboy who needs his boyfriend to care for him. Tim is the comic relief funny guy who’s only there to goof, and Sasha is the smart one who’s also secretly a prankster. Daisy is the Bad Cop violent butch and Basira is the Good Cop cool-and-collected hijabi. Elias is the flamboyant evil boss and Peter Lukas is his bitter sugar daddy do you see it do you see what I mean. That’s the fandom making them more digestible and versatile so that they can fit them into fanfiction tropes. This is a common occurence in every fandom but it’s sooo prominent here and dear god I hate it. Downsides of a fandom peaking in 2021

2025-05-15 11:43:54 ¶ ●

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the traits people project on martin could fit shelley better because we dont get much of him and it woudnt be mischaracterisation because we dont know much about him for it to be mischaracterisation

but just dont do the babying part on him I will peel my skin off

if I see any characters being treated like babies I will do 10000002729181918181 back flips off a goddamn cliff in mid air don't ask how I'm doing back flips in the air I don't know either I'll figure it out

Good luck doing back flips you’re gonna have to do a lot of them

You’re right, Michael Shelley is the best vessel for projection because he’s just not really present in the story. We learned what happened to him, but we never learned what he is like. You can make him into anyone.

But that’s also why nearly no one does it - it’s infinitely easier to warp the personality of an already defined character (Martin) than to write one for a character yourself (Michael)

2025-05-16 3:06:13 ¶ ●

I hate hate hate how the fandom oversimplification did not only affect the characters, but also the Fears themselves. The Eye is being a stalker and a nerd. The Lonely is being quiet and antisocial. The Slaughter is anger issues. The Desolation is arson. The Hunt is being feral. The Stranger is uncanny valley. The Web is spiders and lying. Etc etc.

The whole point is that these fears cannot be fully and separately defined. I understand that having objects and motifs you can tie to a Fear makes it more marketable and allows you to cover your clothes with eyes and spiders and stuff to show you are A Fan. But the whole point is everyone experiences fear differently and the entities are intertwined, and I loved that. It made the whole thing interesting.

This fandom is allergic to critical thinking and analysis. Fanfic tropes can be a substitute for everything apparently

2025-05-16 13:39:13 ¶ ●

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the doing back flips in mid air while I fall of a cliff anon here I am also doorway anon

i LOVED tma fandom and still kinda do but it's complicated there are so many shitty things in it why are people scared of drawing characters WITH NO CANON DESCRIPTION differently than canon

"thats not my (insert character name!" THERE IS NO (INSERT CHARACTER NAME)!!! THERE IS NO CANON LOOK FOR THEM!!! "oh but the fandom already decided!!! THEY SHOULD DRAW THE CHARACTER THE WAY WE EXPECT IT!!!" the artist is not drawing FOR YOU. SHUT IT. unless you commission them to draw a character with no canon description a certain harmless way you have no say in it

the fandom is a prison

Oh my god so TRUE!! It’s genuinely awful.

I get it, those are characters with no canon appearances so you can assign whatever traits you want to them, but don’t get mad when others don’t adhere to YOUR headcanons! A majority of fandom having the same opinion doesn’t make it the only valid option. It’s still just a headcanon. It’s only canon in your head brother

TMA fandom is all for assigning headcanons to a character until they don’t align with fanon. “That’s not my blorbo” babydoll your blorbo is an MP3 file. Have some imagination.

2025-05-16 14:00:34 ¶ ●

I feel like headcanoning Sasha as black and making NotSasha white takes away a large part of horror of the whole situation, especially with how it’s treated by the fandom: made into a joke and laughed off.

I’ve always seen it like this: The terrifying part is not that someone you knew got replaced by an entirely different person. It’s that the new person is Not Them. They are wrong in a thousand little ways. Their face is round where before it was angular. Their front teeth are now straight where they used to be crooked. They no longer have the little mole near their chin. All the little quirks that made a person themselves, that made them unique and special to you - gone.

I understand that it would be different depending on the kind of relationship you had with the person who got replaced. But making it into “the person you knew is gone and there’s this rando there instead” is misunderstanding how this is meant to be scary. Especially since fans do it just to laugh it off as the NotThem being racist. Everyone’s forgetting how terrifying suddenly not recognizing someone you knew would be. It is that deep actually

I also think that it’s icky, but I can’t quite put my finger on it and am in no position to judge that

2025-05-27 17:40:11 ¶ ●

Unpopular opinion time: the tendency of tma fans to flock to posts unrelated to the magnus archives only serves to simplify the themes of the podcast to the point of it being unrecognizable and get rid of any deeper meaning that might’ve once been there

2025-05-31 21:43:12 ¶ ●

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any strong opinions on jonelias or mr magnus in general

Jonelias could’ve been absolutely delicious. Such a shame that the fandom peaked in 2020-21 and the ship was brushed off as bad because “it’s toxic”.

As for Elias/Jonah, he was one of the only characters that I actually liked, mostly because he had an intriguing and pleasant manner of speaking. Charming. And he was a really interesting guy - since we, as the audience, saw him from Jon’s perspective he was painted as a villain, but he was really just doing what everyone else in his situation would’ve done and he was aware of it. He wasn’t really evil, at least not in that cartoony sense like everyone likes to portray him, but god was he curious. And a control freak.

Him and Jon would complete eachother in the most gruesome of ways. The creator and his creation. Jon both dehumanized and worshipped. Him hating Elias yet desiring his approval. We really could’ve had it all. But no, he was killed in one single swipe and Jon got to be badass for like three minutes despite it going against the very nature of his relationship with Elias as was previously shown and instead we got two bland gays Somewhere Else™. How tragic