martinblackwoodhater:
tma fans will create jmart dynamics from HELL with even less understanding of Martin’s character than even me (and that’s impressive because I actively and intentionally avoid anything about him) - as well as mischaraterizing Jon obviously - and then act surprised when I say that the romance and the overfocus on shipping in the fandom negatively impacted the podcast 😒
Like please guys I understand that y'all are starved of queer rep but PLEASE there’s so much more to the podcast and so much more interesting parts of this 🤧🤧
And it’s ALWAYS the kinnies smh
No actually what is your issue with him I don’t get it
martinblackwoodhaterfan:
martinblackwoodhater:
mostly just think he’s annoying and I don’t like that he’s abusive to his bf. that’s the summary and the rest is just waffle
The main issue for me is the treatment he gets in the fandom tbh. Every single character is scrutinized and all of their wrongdoings are highlighted in fan works, like Daisy’s killings, Jon’s feedings, Melanie’s stabbings. When creating something related to that character, most fans will include those actions, because it doesn’t matter whether they were ‘good’ or 'bad’ - what matters is those actions help outline the character’s personality.
But of course the shy stuttering man can do no wrong ever!!! Awe Martin baby boi cinnamon roll i want to hold him!!! Martin my sweetie I’ll treat you better than your mother!! I don’t think I’ve seen a single good take on Martin made by a Martin fan. They’re all so shallow, and the few I’ve seen that were kinda good and actually saw nuance in his character all romanticized his flaws.
To be fair this is a problem in all fandom spaces, and as long as fandom exists, there are going to be people who actively participate in it while only engaging with the source material at a base level, which results in them confining characters to tropes just so they can ship them. And dont get me wrong, i love shipping, but i love meaningful shipping. If i wanted to see one of those “scary but soft partner x overprotective boyfriend” tropes, I’d go to a bookstore and pick up the first position in the lgbtq+ section. I live for nuance babey!!!
And also there’s the issue of Martin being the stereotypical “shitty queer boyfriend” in canon. He expresses himself in a cartoonish manner, making himself appear almost childish despite being a grown man (annoying), wallows in his sadness but doesn’t allow Jon to do the same because he’s a monster, and is generally unsympathetic and unlikable. Oh sweetie I’m so sorry your mother hates you and you have depression, but it’s not a free pass to hate on your boyfriend.
I don’t like him not because he’s a bad person, but because people like him irl are generally kinda shitty. His brand of toxicity is everything but charming and imo thats the biggest crime a fictional character can commit. He’s boring.
I listen to TMA for the cool scary stories, not to hear a grown man whine about how he’s uncomfortable witnessing the horrors to his tormented sacrificial lamb of a boyfriend. I hate jmart-teaholding-whatever-you-call-it with a burning passion. They should’ve separated. Or argued more at least. I blame the writers plus the pressure on including queer rep in 2020. Rip season 5 you could’ve been so good
Its really bothering me that people hating on jmart always make their own tags. Like baby i want to see itttt pleaseeee!!! I want to see that delicious criticism but you’re making it hard for me!!!!!
Every single ship with Jon has chemistry and an interesting dynamic except for jmart. This is truly heartbreaking
Jmart is boring to me bc it gives us nothing new.
Martin literally just does what every single other character has already done - he shits on Jon for being a monster, except that he will also occasionally say stuff like “I love you”, “I won’t let you sacrifice yourself” etc.
But under all that he feels the same disgust towards Jon as everyone else. And Jon is too busy dealing with his own guilt to notice.
Also their mutual desire to sacrifice themself for the other, while seemingly so noble and considered by fans “a proof for their love”, is selfish in its origin.
curly-eyebrows:
diversity fail! jonmartin is canon
Martin pisses me the hell off. He should've stayed in The Lonely. At least then we wouldn't have to hear him wallowing in his sadness. "I'm so lonely.... No one really knows me..... I guess i deserve it...... I should've been nicer to my mum even tho she despised me..... that would've fixed everything for sure...... also Jon is a monster now and i don't like him" (literally him in mag 186).
He simultaneously hates himself and is an egoist and it wouldn't even be that bad if he wasn't such a mean CUNT!!!! "Oh yes king pop off! Martin deserves to be mean!!!" Yeah and he also deserves to take responsibility for that. But i guess he's the narrative's special little boy who can do no wrong, and so he is never held responsible and NO ONE calls him out on that because he's not a helpless cruel monster like Jon and hes such a supportive boyfriend because he makes tea and looks at cows or whatever. Kiss my ass.
And all fan content regarding martin depicts him like hes a fucking saint. Someone kick that man in the stomach and kidnap him a couple times and maybe then he would gain some sympathy for his boyfriend and would stop acying like hes better than him bc "he's morally correct" and "not a slave to his urges". Bffr
martinblackwoodhater:
so real so real.
“no one wants to to listen to me… heh… I guess everyone leaves me… :)” i wonder WHY?? arghhhhh
Ok it seems rude to ask if you've already done it but I, like, Cannot find it so: could you please give your analysis on martin/ Jmart? I diluted myself with fanfiction (some of which addresses the problems that are there) but I'm restarting TMA and I like him less this time around but I can't put my finger on why (?) And that frustrates me but it helps to hear others organized opinions on it
Thank you
If you typed “anti jmart” and “martin blackwood critical” into the little search bar above my blog I think you would be able to find those just fine
All the jmart fanfics depicting them as fluffy domestic couples are baffling to me. I get that you want to see your favourite blorbos happy and healthy but you need to know it would take an abysmal amount of work for them to even come close to that.
This results in all of these fanfics warping the characters’ personalities so much that these aren’t even the same people anymore. They’re just reduced to traits like “grumpy but actually sensitive underneath” and “shy caring sweetie that’s also very understanding and supportive”. I get what you’re trying to achieve but at this point it feels like you’re writing about somebody else entirely
elias-rights:
Martin “I’ve never heard you laugh” Blackwood and Jonathan “I’ve never heard you say anything funny” Sims. This post is about them having no chemistry; do not derail.
elias-rights:
MARTIN
If you had died,
[The Archivist inhales again.]
MARTIN
– would the others have been able to quit?
ARCHIVIST
Yes. (pause) I didn’t know.
MARTIN
If you had, would you have told them? Would that have, have changed what happened?
Me when I’m so tactful about my partner’s self-victim-blaming and feelings of guilt: Would you have let them kill you to prevent this? Would you? Jon. Jon, would you have killed yourself for real?
itchyeye:
itchyeye:
inb4 anyone raises concerns over elias being “toxic” for jon the problem is that elias is “toxic” because he is sculpting a mortal man into a godshead for a ritual to birth the world anew. martin is toxic because he’s whiny, emotionally disregulated, and can’t even appreciate jon’s sense of humor in a pre-apocalyptic office setting. the problem is not whether je or jm would win at couple’s counceling. the problem is that jon is an avatar of the dread power that looms over the ruins of his former world, chief amongst its peers, and he’s playing house with a boring ex-coworker who he doesn’t even like.
@batemanscaped YES. GOD. the person i just reblogged who talked abt papercut theory nailed it. i have not personally been turned into a living idol of fear by a man who has devoted a dozen lifetimes to the pursuit. i have had shitty, clingy, manipulative partners who openly resented me. “lol”
they are sooooo similar like, their humor. their values. their interests. they have an established ease to the cadence of their conversations. i hate the prevalence of no fears aus lol BUT the only characters from the whole show who would maintain their existing relationship in a world w no fear entities would be jon and elias. also elias literally WORSHIPS jon he crafts him into the perfect image of their shared god. and before and beyond that, he just really likes the boy.
What’s toxic about JonMartin in canon?
elias-rights:
It’s a really interesting question to get into because there are many factors at play. Under a cut for length.
Keep reading
hello !! id say im a jonmartin fan (not my top jon ship tho lmao…jongerry forever) but i like them best with their nuances and not the blorboified version of them. so i have something to offer.
jon and martin fall in love with each other much in the same way they know to receive/take love from their family members.
martin’s mother was shown to be callous and verbally mean to him. im not saying jon is as bad as her (not even close) what i am saying is martin loved the part of jon that he was familiar with. someone who didnt like him.
jon started to noticeably fall in love with martin when he was distant from him and ignored him, much like his grandmother. thats how he’s felt love in the past.
thats how they grew up and it skewed their perception of love and relationships. its inherently unhealthy. i think that aspect of their relationship is very overlooked and interesting. i hope you understand what i mean as im not very good at explaining my thoughts 😅
Interesting take but i don’t fully agree. I mean this is obviously what happened with Martin, but Jon? Not really.
In order for this to work out we would first need to see a buildup to Jon and Martin’s relationship, which the canon didn’t provide us with. That’s my main issue - the romance came out of nowhere. We knew about Martin’s crush from almost the very beginning, but not Jon’s.
In season 4 he changed his stance on Martin - from “he’s useless and unqualified” to “we have to trust what hes doing”. That’s a nice beginning, but not really the setting stone for a romance. So my problem is we can’t really say anything about Jon’s perspective on the relationship bc there really wasn’t any journey to it. They didn’t have even one proper interaction to show us their newly developed dynamic. The romance sucks because it’s undercooked and has no real foundation, it just appeared out of thin air. If there were any developments during their period in the safehouse, we didn’t hear them. Also I cannot for the life of me understand that random timeskip there sorry
So maybe you’re right and your perspective is accurate but the canon gives us little more than a few “I love you"s. After a while it just turns to pure speculation. Season 5 should’ve let those gays simmer. Soak up the trauma juices for flavour
Real thought im the doorway anon again I'm gonna name myself doorway anon because of that misspelling
I don't give a shit about ships either but I like to read fanfics once in ages and Gerry and Michael are my favourite characters so I like it when it's focused on them especially Gerry I love Gerry I like it when something is focused mostly on him or halfly of him because I relate to him a lot
But tma would have been so much better without any canon ships though
STATEMENTS ON TOP STATEMENTS I WAT THE STATEMENTS
i was excited about jmart when I first got into it but a year later......get it away from me......
Also random but I hate timsasha and jackagnea or whatever MY AROAMANTIC QUEENS TRUST
agnes is Def aroace
Oh yeaaaah. Jmart being canon ruined the whole experience for sure. And I’m not saying it like “well since the podcast is horror focused, there shouldn’t be any romance, just scary!”. I just wish the romance included the horror aspect. More gothic perhaps? Instead we got “two coworkers walking through the apocalypse holding hands”.
Because of jmart the horror bit was pushed aside in season 5, which ironically takes place in the fearscape, so it should’ve been horror FOCUSED. Dumb as hell. Hate it forever.
Also most fanfics are either 1) Jmart centric or 2) terribly out of character. Or both. The only good tma fic I have ever read was an AU in which Jon was a fairy. And even then they had nothing left of the original characters.
I agree with aroace Agnes it’s such a cool concept. She was raised in almost complete isolation from “normality”, so I feel like her fascination with relationships in general came from the fact that it was all alien to her. She was only ever a Messiah. It’s not like she got the chance to hold hands with people before. It’s just like with the coffee she never drank - she wanted the experience, a fairytale version of something actually mundane. I mean, it’s the things you never got to try that you want the most.
i’d love to hear your thoughts on this scene!!! i copied it direct from transcript. i already know how i feel on it, but i’d love to hear yours. the whole slapping thing martin did is icky and gross and im glad jon doesnt brush over it TOO much
MARTIN (cutting in)
“No, no, no; that's enough!”
[A JANGLING AS HE - REACHES OVER?]
MARTIN (CONT'D)
“That's enough.”
[PAUSE.]
[A FEW STEPS.]
[THEN, CLOTHING SOUNDS AS THE ARCHIVIST SPEAKS:]
ARCHIVIST
“Thank you for not hitting me this time.”
[A PAUSE THAT STRETCHES ON FOR THE SPAN OF THREE HEAVY BREATHS.]
Wow, Martin actually took Jon’s feelings into consideration for once? Unbelievable. Should’ve started by not hitting him that first time. It wasn’t that hard! He could’ve just done whatever he did here instead of a slap to the face.
I think “the Jon that’s an avatar” and “the Jon that’s his lover” are two separate beings in Martin’s mind, and so slapping “the monster” didn’t matter as long as he got “his” Jon back.
It’s great that their relationship isn’t “teenage couple” level of toxic, but I still don’t care. I liked the horrors, and so the sudden unexpected appearance of canon romance soured the experience for me.
@flamingphoenix916 I had SO MUCH to say about jmart that I had to do it in a separate post. This way I can also include screenshots from the unofficial transcripts.
First of all, Jon and Martin aren’t really compatible. They don’t even know eachother outside of the Archive. Martin’s stuck on his “precious image of Jon”, as Elias stated, and Jon is way too busy Seeing everything to focus on improving their relationship.
Martin frequently cuts Jon off when he’s talking about the Fears, because he’s uncomfortable hearing it. He outright refuses to be of any help in regards to Jon’s new feeding habits - understandable, logical even, but not even attempting to help doesn’t make him a very good partner. Martin will actively isolate himself from everything that upsets him, and so I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing for him to be with a guy who’s essentially the filter for all the world’s fear and suffering. Jon’s like the liver of the Fear-infested world.
He fails to empathize with Jon on several occasions. When Jon refuses to kill Simon Fairchild (or was it Oliver Banks?) he tries to give an explanation for it, but Martin once again cuts him off and expresses annoyance, because “well they’re monsters! They deserve to die!”
This is because Martin thinks in black and white. He always looks for the simplest explanation, and gets upset when such a thing isn’t available. His morals shift to accomodate that. “The Avatars hurt people for their Patrons, so they’re Bad and deserve to die. When I revenge myself upon those monsters, it’s Good and Correct.”
He also has trouble accepting Jon as an avatar. He’s disgusted, or at least inconvenienced by Jon’s new needs and behaviours, and separates Jon into two categories: the Human Jon whom he fell in love with, and the Monster Jon who’s compelled by the Powers to hurt people.
He laughs at Jon when he’s vulnerable while they’re at Salesa’s. He slaps Jon in MAG 172 becase he didn’t feel like waiting for the man to finish his second statement. Also, I’m not a fan of the “human-monster” divide between the two of them. Martin should’ve become a full-fledged avatar instead of just toeing the line.
Here are some things i said about them in my previous posts:
“ There is no real build-up to them getting together. It’s just… one moment they’re in the Lonely, desperate to find one another, and a moment later they’re saying "I love you” and kissing eachother. When did that happen? I get the whole “grasping at eachother for balance” thing, but was there really a need to make them a couple so soon?
The build-up felt more like it would lead to a friendship, not outright romance - which is why their relationship felt so surface-level in the following season. The writers put together two people that only knew eachother as coworkers, and tossed them into the apocalypse right after that. Jon and Martin do love eachother, but they don’t know eachother besides their surface-level bickering. This relationship could’ve been salvaged in any other circumstances except the goddamn apocalypse, where both of them are constantly on edge. They can’t really sit down and talk about their feelings, when the primary feeling they’re experiencing is fear.
What I’m saying is jmart feels… kinda undercooked? It could’ve had a nice dynamic if it got actually developed. They’re just two friendly delusional coworkers. “
” I mainly have a problem not with the ship itself as the canon presents it, but with the fanon characterization - veeery often they’re watered down to “big fluffy protective boyfiend” and “dangerous but soft monster”. It’s bland, it’s shallow, and worst of all it is completely out of character. And since jmart takes up a large part of canon (they had an entire season!) and is most people’s favourite part of the podcast (back then they used to binge it just to get to season 5), there’s a TON of content of them and nearly ALL of it is blatant mischaracterization. But there’s nothing to be done about that. “
Honestly, if not for the widespread fanon version, maybe I could even be a fan of this ship! But the canon doesnt really give us much, and the fanon is absolutely attrocious.
Hehe me again 👉👈
What do you think was Jonny's reason to make Jon and Martin end up together? I, for the longest time, just accepted that it was just fanservice. We've known about Martin's crush since season three, and Jmart was popular, so he rewarded people that were hoping for it to be canon, but I don't really like that hypothesis; it kind of feels too much like a "the curtains are just blue" way of thinking.
I tried putting something together; maybe Jmart was meant to be a parallel of Daisy and Basira, with Basira loving (platonically or not) Daisy when she's at her most monstrous, and Martin hating Jon for it, but idk if it really makes sense because Martin likes the idea of killing people as long as HE sees fit.
I'm not MatPat, i'm really bad at theorising so i would like to see your perspective on this.
For me, it still feels like the first reason is true: the fans liked the characters, and so the writers just smooshed them together. I mentioned previously that Jon and Martin’s jump to romance feels rushed to me. The build-up they got felt like it would lead to a friendship at most.
The paralell to Daisy and Basira is interesting. Basira liked Daisy at her most monstrous. Martin liked Jon at his most human.
Except Basira admits that later on. The nature of her relationship with Daisy is outlined and highlited, and more visible to the viewer. The narrative never does that with Jon and Martin: it’s just made to be that whole “you are my reason” thing.
The canon provided us with an interesting dynamic and then did nothing to explore it, or at least explain it, resulting in a lot of fans seeing them as cutesy and lovey-dovey.
It also explains Martin’s reasoning in the last episodes on s5. He didn’t want for Jon to become a monster, not out of sympathy, but because he doesn’t like Jon monstrous and tied to the Eye. He is repulsed by Avatar-Jon. This also adds to the nuance of their relationship, considering that being an avatar is, at that time, a very large part of Jon’s very being. He can’t get rid of it without ripping out parts of himself. The version of Jon that Martin loves doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe it never existed at all.
MARTIN
[Petulantly] Of course it is. Of course it is! Because how could this journey possibly end with anything less than the final, supreme destiny of the Archivist, plugged into the great fear machine for all eternity and, and abandoning humanity.
Breaking his promise. (MAG 194)
MARTIN
Because she said if I did, she’d leave without me. And then… well… we’d have had to stick with crappy Plan A, and you’d… you’d end up gone. (MAG 198)
GEORGIE
Spread the fears to other realities.
Option two is John takes over from Magnus. Keeps the Powers contained here with us, and tries his best to make the place a little more… tolerable, until the end.
MARTIN
And we lose him. (MAG 199)
I still think the romance was unnecessary. All of this could’ve been done without these two kissing, and maybe that would’ve made the fans stop obsessing over the ship just beause it’s canon and actually focus on the horror part every once in a while.
Idk you or another person already talked about this, but one of the biggest reason as to why i can't understand HOW people think Jmart are a perfect couple is this
Mag 172
He literally slapped him just because he didn't want to wait? Why did everyone just forget about this? I don't remember if Jon by S5 still feels pain, but even if he didn’t, there is no reason to do that; he could just shake him or call him instead; Martin wasn't in a desperate situation where he needed Jon to wake up fast, he just did it.
Mag 173
He thanks Martin for not hitting him? Wtf. He did only slap Jon for no reason this one time, but i'm pretty sure hitting your lover more than zero times is not normal
Their relationship definitely isn’t all sunshine and rainbows like the fandom likes to paint it. And it pisses me off!! “You were starting another and I didn’t want to wait” to where are you rushing in the place where time doesn’t function anymore? You’re gonna be surrounded by horror in a few minutes anyway.
It could’ve been good if presented correctly, but all jonmartin content/fanart I see says something like “the slowest slow burn ever aww” “the Antichrist with his boyfriend!” “They’re looking at cows!” “Martin fell first Jon fell harder” and ugh. It could’ve been bearable. Fine, even. But it’s all that there is. There is NO terrible broken incompatible jmart (beyond the “ouuugh you made me stab youu, how could you do that??” thing AND EVEN THAT makes Jon seem like he’s the only one at fault).
Because of this a lot of people decide to get into TMA with the fluffy fanon version of jmart already in their minds, and when they get to season 5, they aren’t prepared to look past the “apocalyptic gays” version which they’ve internalized. Some of them even go so far as to skip the statements in favor of dialogue, because they’re boring.
Everyone collectively missed all the nuance in favor of a bland gay pairing that doesn’t even work like that in canon. Please engage with the source material beyond looking at what you want to see. There’s media with queer representation that doesn’t involve horror! You don’t have to specifically get into a horror fiction podcast just to ignore the horror part and listen to gay men talk!
There are many reasons as to why jmart is a mediocre ship at best. One of them is that for the entirety of season 5 Jon and Martin were written to be a couple. Not two people, pushed together by their awful circumstances, but as one entity. It made me feel like a lot of their depth as individuals was pushed aside, in order to label them as romantic partners.
Every single thing they did was seemingly motivated by “their love for eachother”, or at least that is the popularized fanon version worming its way into the source material. The Archivist and the Archivist’s Plus One. “Who’s that? Your boyfriend?” “Yes, actually.” This is the main thing the narrative gives us. Everything circles around the fact that they are boyfriends. They are robbed of their individuality. Even the brief moments they got on their own only served as angst material for their relationship.
If you want depth, you need to be looking at every single minor detail and dig it out, or, even better, just imagine it yourself! (The safehouse period that everyone loves sooo much). And even then, even if you manage to find something, it gets crushed and warped and shoved aside by the fandom. The source material is just not as popular as the collectively imagined version.
I feel like jonmartin fans want them to be Frodo and Sam SO bad but they never will be! They're like frodo and sam if they didn't have years of friendship and a deep bond and sam didn't actually give a fuck about frodo and pushed him into the volcano himself in the end
martinblackwoodhater:
never read the hobbit but i think ill love you forever for this nonetheless. get so freaky on my blog
Waitt this is so real. They want jmart to have a meaningful, deep, life-changing bond so BAAAAAD.
Newsflash pal! They don’t know eachother at all! It’s like trying to romance a stranger on the bus. It just won’t work.
A good romance needs a good foundation, whether it be mutual affection or resentment. Those two are hollow. Knock on their relationship and you’ll hear an echo
