The whole tragedy of jmart is that they would’ve never worked out, no matter what situation they ended up in.
In their current situation, Martin can’t bring himself to love Jon fully and honestly because he finds the “monstrous” part of Jon repulsive.
If Jon hadn’t become an Avatar, then the others wouldn’t have resented him and so he wouldn’t have turned to Martin in such a desperate attempt to maintain a connection with humanity.
If they hadn’t been working at the Magnus Institute, then they probably wouldn’t have looked in eachother’s direction twice, and they definitely wouldn’t have formed any meaningful bonds.
MAG 199 - Seeing It Through
The canon timeline is possibly the only scenario in which they ended up together, and they both know it. They are holding on by sheer willpower. Their relationship is a carefully balanced structure just one precise jab away from crashing down.
And I think there’s beauty to be found in that. How they both claw desperately at one another to remain stable.
jmart is codependence by circumstance to me, and I 100% agree fanon Martin is a huge mischaracterisation. That being said, I’m also with you on exploring the canon-accurate relationship there — what does it mean to be clinging on to each other as a last-ditch effort to keep a semblance of humanity?
Jon is with Martin because Martin keeps him grounded. Martin only likes the “human” part of Jon - the part he can easily wrap his mind around - and so belittling the “monster” part of the man is no problem to him. Without Martin, Jon would’ve succumbed to avatarhood wholly. With Martin “keeping him in check”, he’s only toeing the line and can be (harshly) pulled back a bit, if necessary.
Martin stays with Jon because it offers him protection. Without Jon, he would be likely to succumb to his own little Lonely domain (which we get a brief view of). It’s also stated that by staying with Jon, Martin is shielded from the physical aspect of the horrors - he’s still scared by them, but they cannot hurt him or wound him, and so he can walk freely through the Fearscape in the role of a viewer. It’s the best case scenario for him.
Also, by staying with Jon, who is by default more monstrous than him, Martin gets to reassure himself - by looking at Jon being very far gone, he feels more stable in his own slowly deteriorating humanity (he’s ashamed and afraid of the fact that he, too, has a domain, which makes him the perpetrator following the Fear-infested world logic - he cannot bear the thought of being just as harmful as the other avatars, who he deems terrible monsters that should be killed)
They don’t have many other reasons to stay together, because they simply hadn’t had the time to get to know eachother as people outside of their grotesque eyepocalypse hiking trip in which Jon is actively being consumed by an eldritch being.
In the half an episode we got of them pre-apocalypse, their relationship seems to have had only started blossoming. There is nothing more than the usual kind exchanges between two friendly people. It’s a nice beginning for something bigger, but it certainly isn’t love, not at that time.
After the apocalypse starts, there is suddenly a lot of weight put on their bond - they are quite literally the only ones left. They cannot afford to be casually lovey-dovey when their wellbeing and sanity are at stake.
Had each of them been on their own, I’m sure that witnessing the sufffering of countless people would have its effect on their mental health; it’s also very likely that they would’ve turned into avatars of their own. By staying together, they are also distracting eachother from the horror surrounding them.
Their days are spent walking through fear-filled landscapes, not to mention that each of them has to deal with their own problems - Jon has suddenly found himself in a position that makes him both very powerful and very fragile, and Martin is fighting off his desire to isolate himself and his fear of Avatar-Jon. Every time they say “I love you”, all I can hear is “please don’t leave me”.
I wouldn’t mind jmart being unhealthy at all if their relationship hadn’t been so… ordinary.
Let me start off by saying that it isn’t an inherently bad thing to portray toxic relationships in media. Moreover, the toxic relationships do not necessarily need to be painted as wrong or punished by the narrative. More often than not, unhealthy bonds are far more appealing to the audience than healthy ones.
I would be more forgiving of jmart being toxic if it wasn’t so very boring. I said before that making Jon and Martin a couple was essentially putting two coworkers together and making them walk through the apocalypse. They don’t know each other outside of the Institute at all.
Everything Martin knows about Jon is that he likes the tape recorders, and for most of the time he believed Jon to be a good man. He developed a crush on the man presumably because his rudeness and callousness towards him reminded him of his mother, so it was familiar.
Jon didn’t even know that Martin made up his last name. All that he knows of the man he learned during his period of paranoia-induced interrogations and stalking. He could, of course, learn infinitely more about him now that he became an Avatar, but considering Martin’s repulsion to the Eye and the Fears in general, I doubt that would improve their relationship much. If anything, it would push them further apart.
Even the toxicity of their relationship is so basic. The fact that they are in a world ruled by ancient fear entities didn’t add any interesting twists to the nature of their bond.
Martin belittles Jon for his monstrous urges and abilities, only being tolerant of them if it benefits him. While the killing spree was not explicitly started by Martin, he was the one to urge Jon to continue despite the latter’s hesitation and shame. He ordered Jon to kill the avatars that he personally disliked (Simon, Oliver) but he suddenly wasn’t all that murder-positive when it came to the ones he did not know personally (Jude Perry). He made an attempt to apologize for it, but he took back his apology almost immediately.
Jon takes it all quietly and without complaint because he hates his new self as well. It’s not at all a new thing, not even for him - Basira and Melanie already hated him for being an avatar waaaay back in season 4.
An interesting bond requires a foundation. Jon and Martin do not have that. They did not have enough time to develop that. Almost immediately after they got together the Eyepocalypse started, and that is not a good environment for a blossoming relationship.
They both need eachother, they need closure, they need someone, anyone to latch onto. But they don’t even know eachother as people.
Even their mutual desire to sacrifice themself for the other feels selfish. They wouldn’t be able to survive on their own. Without the other, it’s likely that they would’ve succumbed to the Fears fully, and neither of them wanted that.
It’s easy to offer to die for the other. It’s infinitely harder to let go.
