So like, THANK YOU for siding with Jon and his whole "I don't want to condemn several realities to the Fears" and his friends going "But then it's US who will have to deal with them!!" and... I may be overthinking this but with everything, it feels like a very abusive dynamic? Idk if you know about the Golden Child/Parent/Escapegoat dynamic, but it's common in disfunctional families to have a favorite for the parent to project on, and a escapegoat to put blame
You know what? We’re at the end of the series and I’ve been trying to be placid about this for a long time. But screw it.
I honestly do not enjoy 75% of Team Archive. At all.
Because every last one of them is a hypocrite and a half.
This puts into words what I’ve been thinking about Team Archive for a long time. Tysm.
If I may I’d like to add as well that I really wish the narrative would have cut Jon a break at some point in almost 200 episodes. I get moral ambiguity, I get what Jonny’s going for with the ‘nobody’s perfect’ angle. Yet Jon is so rarely given a shred of sympathy by literally /any/ other character, including his own damn boyfriend, that it has really kinda ruined the other characters for me. I’d feel less unhappy about it if I thought the narrative itself was portraying this as a bad thing, and there was a little bit of this in the last episode, but it’s so quickly swept under the rug and then they’re right back to shitting on him. Jon has been traumatised, beaten, stabbed, bitten, mauled, disfigured, burned, gaslit, manipulated and tortured. He literally fucking died for the other characters and has made it plainly clear that he wishes to do so again. Melanie and Basira have absolutely no moral high ground here and I really wish the narrative of TMA would acknowledge (and properly, explicitly) that the other characters have made serious mistakes, not just Jon
tags via @gyllgii
^^^^^^^
I honestly believe that part of the reason behind this is the kneejerk Creator Response of ‘I’m basing a lot of this character off me, but I don’t want to make it seem like they’re some too-perfect extra special self insert. Better make sure they take their lumps from the narrative so they know I’m not using this character to puff myself up.’
Only Jonny Sims went way too overboard with that narrative beatdown and skimped too much on letting the poor dude get some validation after the fact.
As a result, all the supporting characters who are ostensibly ‘the good guys’ never get actually called out for any of their own personal bullshit, especially the hypocritical crap they used to beat Jon over the head. Only Jon gets routinely insulted or chastised or shouted down–and even then, so many of the ‘many, many issues’ (thanks Foggy Also-Martin) he supposedly has seem to be the result of being in a constant state of trauma and abuse caused by literally every single factor of his life.
All of which would be made more palatable if the narrative ever bothered to feed Team Archive some of their own medicine; to make them A) suffer consequences for their dogpiling or B) actually develop out of it beyond a few lackluster pity-lines in the penultimate episode.
The whole thing leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because we only have the last episode to go and it’s almost definitely not going to resolve anything for Jon. He’s not going to get any catharsis, or any real apology from the others, or any proof from the narrative that he isn’t the loathsome thing he’s been constantly conditioned to believe he is.
Which also leaves me just as bitter that I can’t fully embrace the Team Archive cast without putting blinders on, plugging my ears, and going “LOL Look At These Competent Women © Being Competent © © ©, Where Would Jon Be without You??/?”
Much as I love the offshoot AUs where these people are all somehow friendly and chilling together, being each others’ support network…the narrative just is not written like that. Jon’s perpetually fucked over, most of the people he calls his friends give a fraction of a shit about him on a good day, and much as Martin loves him, he’s spent a whole season doing his best not to acknowledge any of the grim mess Jon Knows/is going through, treating the statements Jon’s forced to make like some annoying quirk rather than something Jon physically has little to no control over.
All that said, I just want to pry Jon out of there and drop him somewhere a little more hospitable. Like the Junji Ito universe.