A small thing about gerrymichael I never see anyone mention is that I'm pretty sure if Michael somehow didn't die and continued working in the archives long enough to meet Gerry there then he would be old enough to be his father. But they're always made to be two youthful twinks and hmmm I'm not sure that's correct
"You shouldn't call Jonah Magnus Elias, you're insulting an innocent man that's being possessed by that monster" I'm sorry but I don't care for the legacy of a man who had maybe 10 minutes of screentime total
Estrogen wouldn't have saved Jonathan Archivist Sims but I think it could've made her just a little bit happier. Gaining back a fraction of control over her own life and body
Estrogen wouldn't have saved Jonathan Archivist Sims but I think it could've made her just a little bit happier. Gaining back a fraction of control over her own life and body
ALSO. HOLY FUCK. UNCONDITIONAL LOVE ISN’T INSECURE. Martin wouldn’t be jealous and ask his boyfriend to KILL that source of jealousy if his love was unconditional. Cause he wouldn’t feel threatened by any other person. So wrong and so loud.
The thing about Jonah Magnus and bodyhopping, at least by the time he is Elias Bouchard, he doesn't really go out of his way to imitate the person whose face he is wearing. He gets an old-fashioned haircut. He is figured out by Gertrude after their "little chat". All he has left of his original body is his eyes, so what remains of him if he doesn't retain his identity as Jonah Magnus? What is taking on a new name, new personality and life, if not a form of death in itself? Only through keeping the name and identity of Jonah Magnus can he truly stay immortal. That's why the ritual is the statement of Jonah Magnus.
It's so scary every time the magnus archives tag is trending it's like peacefully sitting inside your little house and suddenly hearing the loud rumble of a huge crowd of people passing by your window
Always a bit funny to see the few media literate fans succesfully point out that jonmartin canonically are very much incompatible and are staying together because of the combination of their shared circumstances and sheer willpower juuust for them to turn around and still go out of their way to sugarcoat their relationship. Girl you were almost there
Why didn’t you like tma post s4? Just asking cause I’m curious:))
ummmmm. fair warning im the least articulate person ever but um. Well. Christ this sounds mean im sorry it wasnt REALLY tma itself i had issues with as much as it was the then-rapidly growing fandom.
Not to be like. Back BEFORE you people RUINED IT 😒 or anything but the TMA fandom space was sooo wildly different before s4 ended and I DO KNOW it was post season four finale when this influx occurred. I think for a couple different reasons, one of them being that s4 ended RIGHT before 2020 and thats when people started having a lot of time on their hands to listen to long form podcasts (and also where fandom in general started getting worse but thats . Not super relevant), but also dare I say. Because jmart became canon? And because of that people Suddenly started to care ?
THAT FEELS SO MEAN and I truly dont mean any ill will but it really did seem that like. As soon as there were two dudes kissing people started getting interested in it. Which like whatever I get the draw of doomed yaoi . Sure. I was pro-jmart day one but its how I think this kind of. Effected the audiodrama space afterwards that frustrates me so much. You see it in Red Valley and in Malevolent and like Any new podcast that comes out theres this weird obsession with trying to fit these characters into a jmartin mold and ship them together when its honestly detrimental to do so.
Same with how every single new podcast is trying to follow the formula of TMA, and when its not people are still trying to fit them into this mold and call them something theyre not. No matter what you do youre still going to be compared to this bigger thing, its a looming shadow you cant escape.
I think its similar to the issue of like. Oversaturation of stuff like analog horror and mascot horror, like while its not hurting anyone ultimately it just becomes tired and frustrating. I understand trying to follow the formula that TMA had, I mean its impressive how big TMA got for what it was originally, and im happy they've found success, but it is just. I dont know. Maybe im just bitter about TMAGP still lol.
and thats not even mentioning this weird phenomena of the "fandom-wide character designs" like that was NOT a thing that happened before TMA. There were similarities and traits people adopted from eachother but it was more like. Sharing your crayons rather than doing a paint by number if youll excuse my awkward metaphor. As an artist that was one of the biggest draws of audio dramas to me, because there were no visuals, I could imagine whatever I wanted. There was basically infinite creative freedom that was so so so cool to me and lent itself to an incredible sort of modern day mythology. you could tell who it was because of themes and motifs and certain character traits and context clues, but no two designs looked exactly the same. there was so much room to play and think about these characters and put your own personal spin on them. i loved seeing how different people interpreted the same characters.
and so now to see posts like "im waiting to draw them until we've got fanon designs lol" is so??? baffling to me like where is your joy and whimsy and excitement at the freedom of expression through faceless characters. whats wrong with you. AND DOUBLY SO. to see people, MY FRIENDS, get harrassed and bullied and questioned when they dont draw these characters the way (skinny, white, male, conventionally attractive etc etc etc) that everyone else does, is infuriating and so disheartening. dont wait for other people to decide anything for you figure it out yourself !! TMA is especially steeped in this and while i dont mind the way the fandom has kind of . established these characters its just so so tired. its boring im sorry.
AND AGAIN ESPECIALLY. when it comes to the Avatars. Micheal Shelly would not look like that i am so sorry. theres nothing wrong with having fun and playing in the space but it is A Horror Podcast and thats a white twink with an arcade carpet print button down. i could go the nearest coffee shop and find like four of those. im sorry. i want to see how scary you can make these characters. i want to see how gross you could get with it. i used to see them everywhere people had such cool concepts for these. Things these manifestations of fear and they're like. nonexistent. genuinely.
and again. all of this occured when it started blowing up. theres nothing really wrong with that, again, im very happy for them and that they've found this success but its just the way it happened and the fact that it was so immediate was just like. i dont know. it left a bad taste in my mouth and i know it did for a lot of other people. and because it kind of all blew up right as the finale season came out and people were binging the whole thing in like a week and then clamoring for more more more even though it was on a direct path to end where it did has led to TMAGP and all this weird. cash grab merch nonsense. i get trying to make money in this day and age i really do and clearly theres a market and audience for it but it all just rings so hollow.
and then trying to discuss tma and its. um. many many flaws within the writing itself (the. racism and vague transphobia iirc) and how it effected the audio drama space as a whole and especially the rampant and blatant aphobia involved in the fandom is like talking to a brick wall. everyone is so defensive and up their own ass about it and its just. I DONT KNOW its exhausting. it really is. more of my friends and people i know have gotten harassed and had negative experiences within the tma sphere than any other fandom i have personally encountered.
this post really kind of sums it up and i think this sort of death spiral happened to TMA so quickly and rampantly that it was just. horrible. and it was happening WHILE the podcast was still running.
i dont know maybe im just an asshole but its this and its widespread effect on the space as a whole that has really put me off of the audiodrama sphere altogether. which is really unfortunate but true. again. maybe im just an asshole who hates fun and wants everyone to die but . whatever
and not to say you're bad or a poser for enjoying tma or enjoying it post s4 or enjoying tmagp but its really a fanspace that has felt so hostile and unwelcoming and detrimental to myself and a lot of other people that i dont want to engage with it anymore. tma is very dear to my heart but as a whole it has left too much of a bad taste in my mouth.
i think it speaks to much bigger problem within fanspaces and fandom and media and how we engage with them nowadays and how its shifted especially post-2020 but i dont have the time or energy to elaborate here. go find someone smarter than me to explain it
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 🥀
One thing I love about Jon is that he doesn't actually want to die. Jonathan Sims wants to live and it's a great source of shame for him. He is relieved when Mr Spider eats his bully and he is ashamed of it, he shouldn't be happy someone else is dead but he didn't want to die. Jon wants to live and that's why he survives the Unknowing. He knows he shouldn't be alive and there is nothing good about it because he is now fully a monster feeding on other people's pain and suffering but he wants to live. He knows he should be dead and before going down into the coffin he acts very flippant about him possibly dying and how it's just getting rid of another monster. Yet when actually in the coffin Jon regrets it because he doesn't want to die. And I love that about him
Still not over how Jon’s ‘past the event horizon’ moment, the one that fully separated him and othered him and was purposefully a parallel to Jonah FUCKING Magnus, was him not wanting to die.
And that’s why it pisses me off that people always say no one said Jon should’ve stayed dead. Cause they didn’t have to. The narrative conflated Jon breathing and speaking to him being a monster. Which is a bad thing to be. So regardless of if the girls said the words out loud, the narrative flat out says Jon morally should’ve stayed dead. That is just the truth.
i will never ever forgive the magnus archives fandom for . well a lot of things actually. i do enjoy tma but trying to interact with anyone who liked it post s4/during s5 was and is still a nightmare and i genuinely believe it changed the audiodrama sphere for the worse. anyways. i will never forgive them for what they did about Jon and his asexuality because like for me when they first talked about it i nearly cried i was so fucking happy that like. finally. someone like me . someone who didnt want to have sex and that was fine and it wasnt an issue and he was happy and like. sound in that. as a sex-repluse asexual kid it was like. i dont know it was so cool that the protag of one of the most popular podcasts was in fact. asexual. and then for all these people to go ☝️some asexuals ! 😁do have sex actuall y. and its fine and heres my 20k jmartin smut fic was like. so awful and disheartening. BECAUSE ITS LIKE. YES. THATS TRUE. there are asexuals who have and enjoy sex but none of the people writing these or talking about it were actually examining his asexuality from that angle. no one was actually willing to discuss the nuances and fluidity and spectrum of asexuality it all just felt like an excuse to write smut . which like Whatever i guess it do what you want but do you understand how upsetting and frustrating that was for me and other people like me. there is a discussion to be had about, again, the nuances and how sexuality differs for everyone and thats a beautiful thing but again. no one was actually talking about this . is it not enough that they love eachother. you're pushing this idea that sex needs to be involved for a relationship to mean anything and thats simply not fucking true. i dont know.
and its the same way and same issue with like. malevolent in that everyone is so so so fucking obsessed with jarthur, where its been specifically said in podcast iirc that arthur is kind of implied to be aro and or ace in some way, and people are still trying to like. push this. its so frustrating because genuinely not to sound like a jackass here is it Not Enough that they are friends. is it not enough that they care about eachother and love eachother in a way that does not involve romance. can two people just care about eachother is that not enough. i dont know. its so so frustrating and im unfortunately not the most articulate but it makes me so . upset and tired trying to interact with the audiodrama sphere anymore. i dont know. whataver
#i only like jmart if its a memory of a relationship long over lowkey. #bittersweet memory of safety and familiarity that was never really there. #not having to constantly guess if youre in danger or not. #youll just talk to your partner. your coworker. your familiar. you find out your worldviews and morals are drastically different. and you shut up #cause you dont want risking this relationship. even if youre incompatible even if you dont fit together. #youre the only person who has stuck by me this long. even if youre keeping me at a distance its still small enough to yank you closer #if needed. if just for a sliver of comfort. an imitation of normality. something neither of us could truly have. but together we can pretend
^^^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.
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.
controversial opinion but I think s5 Martin being the human is a bad writing choice, especially since he is very much s3 Jon in terms of being an avatar and people were already treating Jon as a monster back then
I believe the reason why it happened is that they accidentally wrote themselves into a corner regarding Martin's character. he changed during s4, was pushed further into his own head and loneliness, made less human by Peter Lukas. but he also has to stay as he was before s4 for him to be Jon's rock/human boyfriend who is his moral compass. Martin was able to vanish, he has a domain. he is as much of a monster as Jon was in s3. however, he also has to be the human one, the moral one. and it just doesn't work
While on the subject of Jon, I was compiling a few examples of times Jon very much expresses his feelings and elaborates on his needs in season 5 before Martin makes fun of him by making him say he feels "Sad. Very sad." but I found so many it just became too long and in a no small amount of them Martin shuts him down pretty early into the conversation.
And then it's Martin who, when Jon asks what Upton House was like, says it was "Nice. Really Nice."
I wish people would stop treating fictional stories as a set of events that have to happen. "this character wouldn't have failed in this situation" yes because the situation would have been different and they would have failed then because the point is the failure. Jonny Sims made a post about this and people calling horror protags stupid. they can't escape being doomed by being smart because them being doomed is the point
and another thing: martin absolutely would not have been Gertrude 2.0. no he is not "ruthless", he encourages Jon killing the avatars because he is not the one doing it (this is why the "give martin a gun" jokes make no sense). he would have been yet another disappointment to Jonah, sitting on his ass straight and filling statements. yes, he does some follow-ups but that's because Jon tells him too. and also he just wanted to prove Jon wrong. but ultimately he doesn't want to know*
i maintain that both helen and elias are characters that exist to make you ask yourself when does the punishment fit the crime.
with helen you have like, the struggling with the picture of a perfect victim being broken or symphatizing with someone who was really quite a bad person and trying to make sense of that; whereas with elias the tragedy was more like, he was really still very young and it was just a ton of wasted potential in terms of him now not being able to grow as a person.
could elias have been a better person if given the chance? does the crime of being middle class and sort of entitled and coasting through life with the help of money and the privilege of daddy’s status deserve the punishment of being killed and worn as a skin suit?
is feeling guilty for the death of a woman immoral if the woman was a bad person? did she deserve everything and anything bad that happened to her? is the tragedy that you felt bad for her, or that you can’t feel bad for her anymore, or that you wanted her punished but not like this? how do you separate yourself from the senseless violence of it when you feel personally responsible?
do horrible things only matter if they’re done to innocent people?
can you escape the horrors of capitalism even with all that privilege, and should we care if someone with all that privilege gets killed?
how much privilege is too much?
how much participation with capitalism is too much to be refused rehabilitation?
how do you know the person was a lost cause if they’re now dead without any push from anyone to figure out they should change?
actually i think “do horrible things only matter if they’re done to innocent people” is a big question in tma in general.
is the hunt and most hunt characters bad because you risk killing innocent people, or because vigilante justice and institutionalized policing are both bad? is killing bad people okay? what is the line between person and monster? if you shift the line between person and monster how long does it take for the definition to change?
what makes a monster a monster? if you can convince enough people that something is monstrous. is daisy worse than julia and trevor, or do we see institutionalized policing as inherently more violent and immoral than vigilante justice? why do we see it that way? what is dangerous enough to be killed? at what point is rehabilitation not viable anymore? were julia and trevor rehabilitatable, and do we care? was the issue with daisy that not enough people believed that the people she hurt or killed were monsters? if given enough time and power could she have shifted the definition back? would it have justified it? how do we know the current definition isnt hurting non-monsters? does it matter if they’re really monsters? if daisy wasn’t tainted by murdering monsters and people alike but tainted by doing it as a cop, does that reveal something about how we as leftists perceive community policing? state versus individual? who gets to choose where the line lies between murder and protecting the community? can those describe the same thing? daisy moved from being a cop to being a vigilante because her actions were too extreme for the police force, but we still see her worst action as her being a cop.
is vigilante justice better than police violence? can you be a good vigilante the way you can’t be a good cop?
what is a monster?
is the death penalty bad because it’s state enacted murder or is it bad because murder is bad. is the death penalty bad because you risk killing innocent people or because killing people is bad. who deserves to die? who decides it? does it matter who decides it? does it matter who does it?
did daisy have to be rehabilitated from being a cop or from hunting people down to kill them because of her own trauma and inability to see things as anything but me (and the singular person i trust to be on my side) versus them? me versus everyone out to get me? me versus the things that cannot continue to live because they are too dangerous?
do we expect trevor and julia to be rehabilitated from the exact same mindset?
what is a monster, and who gets to kill them, and how do we determine innocence, and does innocence matter when debating the ethics of killing.
in a fight between a killer cop trying to rid the world of monsters and dangerous people, and a vigilante traveling around with the goal of purging the earth of monsters, who is morally in the right? is there an answer? what is the issue with killing people? when is killing for the greater good no longer for the greater good, and can it ever be that to begin with?
In the middle of trying to draw a Jon I stopped to think about the hypothetical placements of his post-Prentiss worm scars.
Most of the time I see artists draw them just scattered across his face, but weren't the worms said to mostly burrow into flesh at first? I doubt larvae like that could just "bite" and burrow through bone, even with the surrealist horror aspect included.
I like to draw the majority of Jon's face-located hole scars on his cheeks. That would mean at one point the worms got in his mouth.... gross......
Might just be a me problem but all these years I never saw a Jon design that made me think "yepp that's him". It's always just Some Man With Lime Green Eyes who just happens to tick most of the canon characteristics drawn in a pinterest "dark academia" outfit in a combination of greens and browns (my own art included I don't know who the hell it is I'm drawing). But that is not the same man who tells me all these short horror stories and whose voice I love I'm sorry but I just do not see it
