Remember when that one christmas themed helluva boss episode came out and all tma fans lost their minds because it had a gay couple that was “literally jmart” and it was like a skinny brownish twink and a chubby blonde guy. That was odd
After warming up to a character, tma fans very often decide to take it out of the source material completely and instead write them a new reality, in which they’re a happy, normal citizen living a blissful domestic life.
And that’s okay. Expected, even. Of course you want your favourite little guy to be happy. But at some point you have to realize that those characters are by default incapable of living a normal life. That they all were affected by the Fears, that the Fears are what brought them together in the first place. And if you take out the horror element, you’re obligated to practically write them all again, start from the ground up. Because their encounters with the Fears, the very beings who ruined their lives, shaped them into the people we, the audience, know them as.
Jon wouldn’t be a paranoid, depressed mess if it hadn’t been for the Leitner he read when he was a child. Tim wouldn’t be working at the Institute if he wasn’t so desperate to find his brother. Sasha wouldn’t be a researcher if she wasn’t secretly drawn to the Fears.
The main and possibly only thing bringing them together was the Magnus Institute. They were prisoners in its walls. They don’t even like eachother all that much, all their bonds were shallow and superficial before the horrors started to happen. They wouldn’t all be in a big happy friend group and go out for ice cream every Friday afternoon. You have to take that into account.
This fandom lives on imagined scenarios for their gay little blorbos and at times seems to discard the source material, only taking bits of the characters’ personalities from it (even then, it’s barely enough to make them recognizable - they only take the “good”, easily digestible bits and omit the more harsh, “bad” ones - you know, the ones that made them complex and realistic?) A lot of fan content runs purely on imagination, and the problem is that everyone’s imagination is different.
Write cute fluffy domestic established couple aus all you like. But at some point you will have stripped those characters of everything that made them unique and interesting just so you could fit them in your flowershop meet cute.
No guys you dont get it the whole point of the magnus archives is that there are monsters in england and london is evil
Was it ever stated that helen distortion is a black woman. This hit me rn
I keep finding gerryjonmartin fics and I won't yuck someone's yum to their face but there's not a single bone in my body that believes that would EVER work and it's mostly because of martin
I’ve talked about it before. It’s just fans slapping their two favourite pairings together without caring for the characters as separate people. But it’s mostly jmart shippers so it’s no surprise they care more for the characters’ designs and fitting them into a gay polycule rather than making the whole thing cohesive. It’s treated as an extension of jmart, they see themselves in Martin, and the only reason they don’t skip straight to shipping gerrymartin is because even they are aware that the ship would make absolutely zero sense. So they need Jon as a binding agent
I respect yall headcanoning Gerry as goth cause it’s sexy obviously but you forget that he’s canonically a metalhead. It’s in the scripture
To whoever wrote the jurgen leitner rant: there is a special place in hell for you and it’s called the forever ikea maze
You people will get into a piece of media with the most broken husk of a man as a protagonist and then insist on making him normal
Jon and Gerry on a smoke break am I right or am I right
late to this but as a black tma fan the fact one of the only characters thats near-unanimously depicted as a black woman is the canonically tory real estate agent is ummm well i feel a certain way about it. not only does most of the main cast usually get depicted as white or ambiguously brown but of the couple side characters who are depicted as explicitly black one of them is a reactionary? it really seems like some fans thought they needed to design *someone* as black to not look racist and just picked a side character at random without any thought put into it.
Wait you’re so right. It’s both quite strange and completely predictable, considering that the show peaked during covid and the majority of the fans were young white queers drooling over (gay) representation.
You have a few canonically black characters like Anabelle, and yet fans instead decided to take one of the characters least likely to be black (if you take their canon political views into consideration) and made them black for some reason. Possibly only so that the two Distortions contrast, since it has no other nareative significance from a fan point of view, and Michael is universally depicted as a skinny blonde twig.
Same as making Martin “the police would never do anything bad” Blackwood black
It’s kinda hilarious that every few months I will see a post saying “I had this funny fanart idea for Jon” and it’s always “ceaseless watcher are you seeing this shit”. This fandom is going in a wretched circle
I very much agree with those points but would like to say that I think most Helen-Distortion designs are very, very pretty. Would you say it's wrong to enjoy them?
Idk man i don’t think I have the right to judge that. Do whatever you want just do it away from me
While we're talking about popular fanon character designs that people maybe didn't think through, as a butch lesbian I'm not quite sure how I feel about the fandom deciding Daisy is the only woman in the cast they'll consistently portray as masc? I actually pictured her as relatively feminine while I was listening because of that line about her enjoying having a "soft" flower themed nickname. Did we just decide Daisy is the token butch because she flies into murderous police brutality rages? Because that's not...great.
Yes on GOD!!! I’m almost certain I’ve already made several posts about this exact thing, but I can’t find them now so I’m gonna say it again.
Daisy canonically enjoys feminine things. But the fans wanted to squeeze her into a lesbian pairing, and since she’s known to enjoy violence, they all jumped to the assumption that violence = masculinity. Which is both mischaracterization in regards of her character and just straight up an AWFUL stereotype. SHE’S NOT EVEN A BUTCH IN CANON!
I just had a realization regarding TMA fan character portrayals in general. Gonna make a separate post about it
I despise the popularized fanon tma character designs with my whole heart because they’re just. Awfully stereotypical at times. But they are the only thing people will recognize so anytime I have a banging fanart idea I HAVE to draw the fanon version of a character. Plus my own private version of them disintegrated the moment I saw the fanon designs
Jane should’ve been at the clubbbbb
I have several more tma complaints in my drafts with varying levels of seriousness but I fear I’ve exhausted my complaint limit for the month already
Seeing people say “the tma fandom” is so funny to me. The the magnus archives
This still kills me. Why would he say that
MAG 174 “The Great Beast”
MAG 166 “The Worms”
I thought yall said Martin was a caring and compassionate partner to Jon. Ok so what’s this then. Where’s the kindness and compassion. Did he not have even an ounce of empathy to spare
But noo guys it’s okay cause it was implied that they kissed right after!! The only parts that count are the few explicitly romantic gestures right???
Every time I go into into tma tags on tumblr I am forced to play a fun little game called “How Much Untagged JonMartin Will I See”
pride month means there will be an uptick in supremely unfunny gay homophobic elias jokes, as well as bad jonmartin takes
Is this hating on me I don’t get it
Oh my god it’s been years why is this fandom repeating itself why are you still reheating jokes and things that have been told a million times already. Yes I get it Dev Patel is fancast Jon and Harvey Guillen is fancast Martin. Haha omg guysss this podcast has scary doors haha we are shipping a door and a book it’s hilariousss the people outside this fandom think we’re degenerates. The NotThem is racist bc I headcanon Sasha as black and the NotThem as white. Jurgen Leitner stupid idiot motherfucking Jurgen Leitner amirite. Jon has negative rizz my sopping wet kitten old man he’s such a paranoid dumbass why is he so mean to my sweetie Martin. My beloved Martin deserves a gun he deserves to kill everyone who’s ever been mean to him. For the love of god can you think of something different. It’s not even about repeating things that are in the podcast you guys are endlessly parroting fanmade content too. If you have nothing to say then just don’t say anything it’s okay