#I GOT TO HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT TMA!!!!!!! WITH OTHER TMA FANS!!!! IN PERSON!!!!!

[continuousmeowing]

i just had the most wonderful evening of my life. family dinners can actually be fun sometimes.

[mybedroomceilingsbored]

hey y'all!

you can call me Mouse! i'm a nerdy, artsy-craftsy, music-loving, socially awkward, incredibly enthusiastic GEEK.

i love chatting with people and making new friends, always feel free to shoot me an ask/dm :)

about me

☼ she/her pronouns are great! ☼ i'm a minor ☼ lesbian (or something like that) ☼ i'm a dancer! (ballet, pointe, modern, jazz, tap, and hip-hop) ☼ i play the piano, flute, and ukulele, and i'm learning trumpet ☼ i love hugs and physical touch ☼ i use a ton of pet names-lmk what you're comfortable with! ☼ pisces sun/moon, scorpio rising ☼ infp-t 2w3 (explanations linked, if you're curious) ☼ one (1) beach completed, on my way to becoming an Official Certified Ken (credit: my very dear @green-binder) ☼ i tend to forget things-please don't take anything i do/don't do personally! chances are it just slipped my mind. ☼ i love interacting with people, but i do sometimes burn out. sometimes i just don't have the energy to reply to something or continue a conversation, please don't take it personally!

not rlly doing chain mail atm, sorry!

i've got a funky lil tma sideblog @consumedbywhatlovesme if you're interested, hyperfixation still going STRONG 💪

things i love...

☼ cavetown!! ☼ the magnus archives ☼ coraline ☼ hozier ☼ plants/gardening ☼ ancient greek mythology and culture ☼ microbiology ☼ slime molds! ☼ mushrooms and other fungi ☼ stranger things ☼ pjo ☼ cats! ☼ good omens ☼ baking ☼ crochet/knitting ☼ long bike rides ☼ sketching and painting ☼ rainy days

... and people i love!

@15millionfireflies, @bleep-bloop-boo, @brains-out-rn, @ch3rry-t0mat0, @currently-becoming-potatoes, @dormienscattus,

@fairyycoffin, @forever-bi-panic, @galaxys-universe, @green-binder, @hugallurfriends,

@i-eat-so-much-grass, @joespookyregardinghappenenings, @margaret-the-duck, @marisolebio, @mossy-stormcloud,

@remithegayshoebill, @sad-girl-shit11, @sagaofa-dying-star, @scatteredraysofhope,

@small-giggle, @that-dam-heartstopper-fan, @the-chaotic-snek, @theladyofpaintedstars, @thestrawberryapologist,

@totheidiot, @trans-lobotomy, @urlocalsadkid-l, @wistfulenchantress, @yelenapines

comfort books...

☼ a psalm for the wild built, a prayer for the crown-shy, coraline, the electric kingdom, the song of achilles, truly devious, a wrinkle in time, inward, heartstopper, the secret garden, severance, they

... movies, tv, and podcasts...

☼ coraline, the magnus archives, heartstopper, spirited away, stranger things, good omens, various concert films, over the garden wall, gravity falls

... and foods

☼ hot cocoa, peach tea, lemon cookies, asparagus, fresh sourdough, grapefruit, chocolate chip cookie dough, berries of any kind

currently listening to

favorite artists

☼ cavetown, hozier, lizzy mcalpine, luz, wallows, girl in red, taylor swift, mother mother, billie eilish, david kushner, madilyn mei, coin, tv girl, fuvk, gregory alan isakov, mxmtoon, boygenius (+ solo work), hayd, maya hawke, pomme, the paper kites, novo amor

songs i try to live by

☼ talk to you (cavetown) ☼ hug all ur friends (cavetown) ☼ carry you (novo amor) ☼ words (gregory alan isakov) ☼ pancakes for dinner (lizzy mcalpine) ☼ let light be light (lizzy mcalpine) ☼ cold (novo amor) ☼ crooked the road (mon rovia)

please send me music recs!! i usually listen to indie pop, indie folk, and indie rock/modern rock, but i'm always happy to listen to something new :)

moodboard by my darling @wistfulenchantress <33

congrats on making it all the way to the end haha!!

have a beautiful day/night sweetheart, love ya :)

(dividers by @/saradika-graphics, their stuff is absolutely gorgeous)

[sleepy-seal]

tmagp & treats: episode 7 & 8

we have a very quick one for you because, despite the fact i Did make these treats on the respective days that they came out, i did not write anything down. it's a very unfortunate situation. but i am on a bit of an upswing with writing things so i write them down now! no analysis on this one unfortunately, but i will have it in the next post!

episode 7 was nutella cookies (they were Awful don't make them) and episode 8 was vanilla pudding (placeholder image because i didn't take any pictures before it got thrown in the sink :( )

THOUGHTS (because i didn't write any when i first listened):

- i'm very interested in celia's deal. she knows a lot more than she lets on. it seems like she gets a lot of her knowledge from the tma universe, with the whole "being buried alive" and "meat" thing

- hilltop road has now been turned into a thrifty shop! all your horrors in one locatio- oh

- "all for a good cause" makes me think of a perhaps second attempt at a ritual

- very intriguing how celia recognizes jon's voice! i'm still not sure if she's from the tma universe (like if she maybe had a cleaning lady house on hilltop road moment or if she just recognized A Jon Sims before all jons in the universe was just wiped from existence)

- LEAVE SAM ALONE COLIN !!!!!!

- very interested in the conversation between lena and gwen. also the implication from lena does seem to imply that the bouchards are indeed wealthy. it probably explains gwen's hunger for power

- also not to be That Person but i'm a really big fan of lena now

- i actually really like episode 8! i'm a big fan of the concept of "brutal liminality". i think he should have gotten an A for the case study. then again academia is brutal

- this guy just went through a traumatic experience and had to turn in the case study late. relatable

- i think alice is right to have that kind of reaction. too many changes and things getting weirder can really confuse someone. i appreciate alice trying to be the straightwoman in this horror podcast

- GERRY!!!!!!!! MY MAN GERRY IS HERE AND HE'S ALIVE AND WELL AND HE PAINTS AND HE LIVES WITH HIS GRANNY GERTRUDE

- very interesting though. gerry doesn't really remember much about the time at the magnus institute and gertrude seems a bit prickly about it

- i think the artist who made made the "gertrude is still alive au" must be whooping and hollering because they turned out to be the most correct out of anyone

- VERY INTERESTED THAT CELIA IS LOOKING INTO TIME TRAVEL AND OTHER DIMENTIONS. WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING INTO......

- i hope celia enjoys her painting :] she deserves it

[misnomera]

On racial stereotyping of the Haans in TMA...

Right so as someone who is ethnically Chinese I have NO FUCKING clue how I didn’t notice this more distinctly in my initial binge of tma (going too fast and not paying closer attention to character names and descriptions, probably) but the Haan family storyline is, all horror elements aside, pretty fucked up in terms of racial representation re: stereotyping. This got long as hell, but please please please take a moment to read through if you’ve got time for it. thanks.

To start off, the Haans are one of the few characters in tma with an explicitly specified race and ethnicity—Chinese—and pretty much the only explicitly Chinese characters in tma, other than the mostly unimportant librarian (Zhang Xiaoling) from Beijing. But like, Haan isn’t even a properly Chinese surname, at least not in the way that it’s spelled in canon (it should be Han, one a. A quick google search tells me that Haan as a surname has...Dutch origins??).

Of course, that could be chalked up to shoddy anglicization processes within family histories, which certainly isn’t uncommon with immigrant families, so I’m not going to dwell on names too much (although I also find it interesting that John Haan’s name is so specifically and weirdly anglicized that he changed his own surname?? Hun Yung to John Haan is a very big leap of a name change and frankly not very believable. ANYWAY, this is not that important. I don’t expect Jonny, a white Englishman, to come up with perfectly unquestionable non-Cho-Chang-like Chinese names, though it certainly would be nice. Moving on).

What really bothers me about the Haans is how they almost exclusively and explicitly play into negative Chinese immigrant stereotypes. I don’t even feel like I need to say it because it’s like...it’s literally Right There, folks. John Haan (in ep 72) owns and operates a sketchy takeout restaurant. They’re all avatars of the Flesh—and John Haan is Specifically horrific and terrifying because he cooked his wife’s human meat and fed it to his unknowing customers. Does that remind you of any stereotypes which accuse Chinese people of consuming societally unacceptable and ethically questionable things like dog/cat/bat meat (which, if it’s not already crystal fucking clear, we don’t. do that.), which in turn characterize us as horrible unfeeling monsters? John Haan’s characterization feeds (haha, badum tss) directly into this harmful stereotype that have caused very real pain for Chinese people and East Asians in general. 

And Jonny does nothing to address that from within his writing (and not out of it either). And, speaking on a more meta level, Jonny could’ve easily had these flesh avatars be individuals of any race (like, what’s Jared Hopworth’s ethnicity? Do we know? No? Well then). Conversely, he could’ve easily, easily had a Chinese person be an avatar of any other entity. So why did he have to chose specifically the Flesh?

(This is a rhetorical question. You know why. Racial stereotyping and invoking a fear of the other in an attempt to enhance horror, babey~)

On Tom Haan’s side, Jonny seems weirdly intent on having other characters repeatedly comment on his accent (or rather, lack thereof) in relation to his race. Think about how, in ep 30 (killing floor), the fact that Tom Haan had spoken a line to the statement giver in “perfect English” was an emphasized beat in that statement, and a beat that was supposed to be “chilling” and meant to signify to us that something was, quote-unquote, “not right” with Tom Haan. Implicitly, that’s saying that it was unexpected, not “normal”, and in this case even eerie, for someone who looks Chinese to have spoken in fluid, unbroken English. Mind you, the line itself was perfectly scary on its own (“you cannot stop the slaughter by closing the door”), so why did Jonny feel the need to note the accent in which it was spoken in? Why did Jonny HAVE to have that statement giver note, that he initially “wasn’t even sure how much English [Haan] spoke”? 

This happens again in episode 72 with a Chinese man (and again, his ethnicity is Explicitly Noted) who we assume is also Tom Haan. This one is rather ironically funny and kind of painfully self aware, because the statement giver expresses surprise at Haan’s “crisp RP accent” and then immediately “felt bad about making the assumption that he couldn’t speak English,” and subsequently admitted that thought was “low-key racist.” Like, from a writing perspective, this entire passage is roundabout, pointless, and says absolutely nothing helpful to enhance the horror genre experience for listeners (instead it just sounded like some sort of half-assed excuse so Jonny or other listeners could say “look! We’ve addressed the racism!” You didn’t. It just made me vaguely uncomfortable). And again, having other people comment on our accents/lack thereof while assuming we are foreign is a Very Real microaggression that east asians face on the daily. If Jonny needed some filler sentences for pacing he could’ve written about Literally anything else. So why point out, yet again, that the crazy murderous man was foreign and Chinese? 

At this point, you might say, right, but yknow, it was just that the statement givers were kind of racist! It happens! Yeah sure, ok, that’s a passable in-universe explanation for descriptions of Tom Haan (though not John Haan, mind you), but the statement givers are fake made up people, and statement’s still written by Jonny, who absolutely has all the power to write overt discrimination out of his stories. And he does! Think about just how many minor (and major!!) characters are so, so carefully written as completely aracial, and do not have their ethnicity implicated at all in whatever horrors they may or may not be committing. Think about how many lgbtq+ characters have given statements, and have been in statements, without having faced direct forms of discrimination, or portrayed as embodying blatant stereotypes in their stories (though lgbtq+ rep in tma certainly has their own issues that I won’t go into here). Jonny can clearly write characters this way, and he can do it well. So why, why, am I being constantly, repeatedly reminded in-text of the fact that the Haans are East Asian, that they’re from China, that they’re Chinese immigrants, that they’re second-generation British Chinese or whatever the fuck, and that they’re also horrifying conduits for blood, gore, and general fucked-up-ness? It’s absolutely not something that is Needed for the stories to be an effective piece of horror; the only thing it does is perpetuate incredibly harmful and hurtful stereotypes.

And listen, I love tma to bits. It’s taken over my blog. I’ve really loved my interactions with the fandom. And I am consistently blown away by Jonny’s writing and how well he’s able to weave foreshadowing and plot into an incredibly complex collection of stories. But I absolutely Cannot stop thinking about the Haans because it’s just. It’s such a blatant display of racial stereotyping in writing. And I’ve certainly seen a few voices talking about it here and there, and I don’t know if I’m just not looking in the right places, but it certainly feels like something that is just straight up not on the radar for a lot of tma fans. And I’m disappointed about that. 

Just, I don’t know. Take a look at those episodes again and do some of your own thinking about why these characters had to be specifically Chinese (answer: they didn’t.). And in general, PLEASE for the love of god turn a critical eye on character portrayals and descriptions whenever they are assigned specific races/ethnicities (Some examples that come to mind are Jude Perry, Annabelle Cane, and Diego Molina), because similar issues, to an extent, extend beyond the Haans, though I haven’t covered them here. 

You shouldn’t need a POC to do point out these problems for you when they’re so glaringly There. But for those of you who really didn’t know, hope this was informative in some way. I’m tired, man. If some of the only significant Chinese characters you write are violent cannibalistic men with a perverted relationship with meat, just don’t do it. Please don’t do it. 

EDIT: Since the making of this post Jonny has acknowledged and apologized for these portrayals on his twitter and in the Rusty Quill Operations Update, which went up September 2020. A long time coming, but better late than never. This of course doesn’t necessarily negate the harm done by Jonny’s writing, and doesn’t make me much less angry about it, but is appreciated nonetheless. For more on this topic there’s a lot of productive discussions happening in my “#tma crit” tag and in the notes of this post

[dangerous-disposition]

On Tragedy vs. Bad Endings

[Image ID: user @frostyfrogz​ replied to your post “my mag171 #thots: I fully agree with. I love jonmartin I want nothing but the best for them. I know my answer today was an obvious twisting of dialogue but its just frustrating sometimes because it seems like people dont understand some sort of tragedy will indeed happen. I have never and will never suggest that something will happen to Jon and Martin’s relationship I’ve just been saying the shows not going to end well no matter what.]

So I have a lot of thoughts about this very subject, and too much for the replies on my post, so allow me to try to articulate what I mean, and what a lot of us mean when we say “it does not make sense for either Jon or Martin to turn evil in the end,” even in a show that has been advertised from day one as a tragedy.

First of all, no one thinks this is going to end happy. The few who do are usually unaware that this show is billed as a tragedy, and are quick to be corrected. I didn’t know it was a tragedy until I was on season 3 and someone told me. It’s overall just best to assume that the OP knows it’s not going to be a happy ending, because “reminding” people or “explaining” to people that the ending is going to be sad is a fast way from people to get annoyed and defensive.

Anyway! It appears, above all, that people have either fundamentally different ideas of what a tragedy is or accomplishes, or that people have a fundamentally flawed understanding of tragedy and it’s place as a narrative device/theme.

My thoughts are that tragedies hurt, and tragedies can be devastating, but they have to have a message and they should not be cruel to the audience.

A cruel ending would involve leading the audience to believe one thing for the entire book, show, movie, podcast, what have you, just to rip it away at the last minute like a big “fuck you” to the audience. Those sorts of endings are inherently mocking of the audience, and ultimately disrespectful. The only people in the audience that “benefit” from this sort of writing are the cynics who spent the entire show talking down to everyone for seeing the silver lining in the impending tragedy, even if, up until the finale, the silver lining was always part of the narrative. Like it took actual twisting and outright ignoring of the narrative as it’s written to be cynical and sceptical all the way until the end.

That is, plain and simple, bad writing. Jonny Sims is not a bad writer.

Now tragedies often have “happy endings,” they just also have an element of sadness colouring that ending. A good, tragic ending should, in my opinion, feel bittersweet. We should see it coming, we should know it will hurt, but it should be for the greater good and should further the narrative that has been told from the beginning.

I said a few weeks ago that a tragic ending without a silver lining is just torture porn, and I stand by it.

Now, if Jon or Martin are revealed to be Actually Evil in the end, where is the silver lining in that? What narrative has even possibly hinted at this outcome, without putting on cynic glasses?

Every single plot point and plot “twist” in TMA has been clearly detailed, never relegated to pure subtext that you would have to comb through a single interraction and analyzing the tone in which it was said (which could easily be actor shortcomings or error). They have always been obvious, at least in hindsight. This is why, for a while, I subscribed to the Web!Martin theory, but due to recent episodes I’m more inclined to believe those “obvious things” were red herrings.

Throughout The Magnus Archives, the common theme in every. Single. Season finale is that “we are stronger together.” What do I mean by that? Well, here’s the general idea:

Season 1: The one time someone gets separated by the group for any significant length of time, like I mean the main group, she gets killed by the NotThem and replaced.

Season 2: Jon is alone, due to his intense paranoia and his reluctance to reach out for help. This leads to a disastrous series of events that leaves him a suspect of murder, and his friends even more doubtful of his character.

Season 3: In the episode just before they deal with the Unknowing, Jon literally says that isolation was his downfall, and he was going to work on trusting his friends more. When they got separated during the Unknowing, things went to shit. When they found each other again, they were able to rally and they “succeeded.” Conversely, they are also teamed up with Melanie and Martin who hung back to bring down Elias. They were successful, working as teams on separate objectives, etc.

Season 4: This is, by far, their most “successful” feats while simultaneously their least. The whole season was again showing the downfalls of isolation. In the season finale, Jon has Basira and Daisy’s help, and while bolstering himself with their strength, and the strength in his conviction to save Martin to be with Martin, Jon was successful in stopping Peter Lukas and saving Martin. Conversely, Martin and Jon’s isolation in Scotland could be, theoretically, implicated in how Jonah Magnus was able to succeed in the end like that.

Now evidence of this same train of thought in season 5? Jon literally says it: Gertrude would not have done well in this post-apocalyptic world, because she had no friendships, no anchors, no reason to stay human. And then Jon says “you are my reason” to Martin.

It is in the text of the story that the only way to succeed, or win, or survive, is through trust, friendship, and love. One of the main factors in so many of the statements, on why the statement givers succumbed to the fear in their story, for even a moment, had to do with very little personal ties to anyone else. Many of the statements feature isolation and, as Jon put it, “lack of corroboration.” On the flipside, many of the statements that ended with the statement giver escaping successfully, and surviving long enough to be reached out to for follow-up questions, involved them having close personal ties to someone else that kept them safe, somehow. Like the girl from Italy; remembering her mom saved her from the Lonely. Or, more ridiculously, the guy and his dog that escaped the spiral because he was so distracted by his dog and had to be home for dinner. In MAG170, it was Martin’s love for Jon, and his trust in the love from Jon and his friends, that saved him from the Lonely again. Jon’s incredible amount of love, and respect, and trust in his friends is what’s kept him from becoming another Jared Hopworth or Jude Perry. In MAG155, Cost of Living, he expresses open disgust in how that particular avatar of The End justified her actions, killing and killing and killing again because she viewed herself as more worthy of life than that person. In that same episode, he talks of not blinding himself because he hopes to use his powers to protect his friends, that without them they’re too vulnerable. Honestly, this is the same reason Peter Lukas is unsuccessful, because Martin only helped him at all to protect his friends. The fact that he didn’t see his failure coming was hilarious.

Gerry said in Family Business that there is no “entities of love”, and that might be true, but love and trust is literally what saves you from fear. How many of us deal with things that are scary in our lives, if only because we have some level of trust in the people or things around us. How many of us have been brought out of a panic attack by someone we love and trust?

So all of this has been presented to us, over and over and over again, which is what I, and others, mean when we say “it does not make sense for one of them to be evil.” That’s what we mean when we say “it would be Bad Writing to make one of them evil in the end.” The entire show has driven home the message that we need love, we need personal connections to survive fear. To rip that away from the main characters at the last minute and call it “tragedy” would be a spit in the face of every single listener who took the story at face value, without picking it apart and reading lines out of context. And Jonny Sims and Alex J. Newall have both said they hate lazy writing.

Now, none of the JonMartin fans I follow are deluding themselves to think this show will have a happy ending outside of very self-indulgent fix-it au fanfics.

The way I see this going down is that Jon and Martin will figure out how to put the world back to the way it was, but Jon will not be able to be part of the new world with Martin. That’s the tragedy; that the world gets saved, and Jon helps save it, but he doesn’t get to benefit from his efforts in any way. The tragedy is Jon loves Martin so much, and they deserve their happy ending, but they don’t get it. But, they still saved the world so others can have their happy endings.

Idk about you, but between the “Jon turns evil in the end” and “Jon stays good and sacrifices himself to save the world” endings, only one of them has me in tears right now as I type this out, and it’s not the former.

I’m not against sad endings,I’m against bad endings that punish the audience for having even a bittersweet hope. I’m against sad endings that are just sad for the sake of being sad, with zero pay-off or reason to happen, especially when those endings throw out 5 years of hard work.

And hey, I might just be forced to eat my words in the end, but not before I fly all the way to England and make Jonny Sims eat a knuckle sandwich.

This was a lot longer than I meant for it to be, but I just have a lot of feelings.

[aegialia]

self-indulgent reflection on being on tumblr

so i recently hit 1000 followers on here and this blog has existed for almost exactly 8 years, so i wanted to ramble about tumblr and my experience of it for awhile. under the cut so definitely feel free to ignore this.

i started this blog right around when i was fourteen and had just started high school. at that point, i was out to my parents (and no one else) as bi, i had an inkling i was Struggling with something but i had no idea what and felt like i couldnt actually acknowledge it, and i had left leaning but very vague politics. tumblr definitely has shaped my journey around sexuality/gender/mental health/politics, both for good and for ill. 

for good: 

seeing other ppl talk about being lesbians helped me realize i could be a lesbian w/o being a traitor to the concept of bisexuality. hearing trans ppl talk about their experiences and explaining non-binary stuff and dysphoria helped me understand what i was going through 

i don’t like talking about my mental health stuff in detail on here, but suffice to say, i was Going Through it in high school. i’m still going through it now, but i am in a much better place (thank you medication and 7 years of therapy!). seeing ppl talk about the weird, dumb, awful parts of mental illness let me acknowledge that i was going through those things too, that i wasnt like evil for feeling like that, that i could change. people talking about adhd/autism was particularly helpful---being able to identify why i’d always felt like my brain just didn’t work right is the first step in the (ongoing) process of not hating myself for the way my brain works

politics is definitely the area where i think tumblr was the best for me. i got exposed to so many opinions i definitely wasn’t hearing in school, from intelligent, well-read people who could articulate theory in ways i could understand. tumblr didn’t give me my politics and i didn’t learn everything i know about theory from it, but the communities of people i was around pointed me in the right directions. tumblr was also a good place to learn how to react to criticism. this doesn’t seem to be most people’s experience, but getting called out over minor things on tumblr genuinely helped me learn how to take a step back, look at my behavior, apologize, and try to change, which, as it turns out, is a helpful skill irl as well

for ill:

wrt sexuality and gender, it’s probably pretty obvious someone who’s journey is ‘cis bi girl -> cis with a million different microlabels -> nb w a million different microlabels for both sexuality and gender -> nb butch lesbian who’s not super into romance’ would have some bad times on tumblr. the bi circles i was in made being a lesbian seem like an immoral choice, the ‘’’mogai’’’ (or whatever u wanna call them) circles made me feel like i had to divy up and perfectly label every aspect of myself in a way that really wasn’t helpful for me, the lesbian circles i was in made me feel like being a lesbian was about ending up in a monogamous butch/femme cottagecore relationship and that there was something wrong with me for not really wanting that. to be clear i think microlabels can be very helpful for people/a monogamous butch/femme relationship is a perfectly fine thing to want, they just didn’t work for me. im very very glad ive reached a point in my life where i dont feel the need to stay up to date on the latest discourse and am more focused on finding a way to exist that is comfortable for me and supporting my community irl. 10/10 would recommend to everyone

not going to get deep into it, but social media is. not good for my brain in general. i still enjoy using tumblr, but these days im pretty careful to step back from it frequently and treat it as an occasional hobby. 

the cons of political stuff on tumblr are probably also very obvious. there are some just awful discussions on here and the culture surrounding the way we handle bad behavior and justice and accountability and working to become a better person and make up for the harm you’ve caused has historically been fucking awful and trying to unlearn it and find new ways to engage with this stuff is exhausting. 

for all that i’ve changed over the course of having this blog, this blog has stayed pretty fucking static. i started out being super into diana wynne jones and the iliad and those are still two of my biggest interests and things i talk about the most on here. there are definitely specific things that have petered away (i started this blog almost entirely to keep up with good omens fan stuff and i pretty much haven’t touched it since the miniseries came out, i haven’t sought out pacific rim/supernatural/elementary/mcu content in years), but im still pretty much interested in the same things. i like relatively small fandoms, i like weird side characters, i like to be a grumpy child playing with my toys in the corner. when a fandom im in gets popular, i tend to stop engaging with it entirely (hello rqg/tma/good omens/enola holmes!). i dont think its a pretentious ‘i liked it before it was cool’ thing so much as a ‘people get Weird and awful when a fandom hits a certain level of popularity and there’s too much content and i really, really hate the bad faith arguments larger fandoms tend to spawn’ thing. i’ll consume content from big fandoms, but i pretty much refuse to actually engage with them at this point.

one of the stranger parts of my experience of tumblr is the social side. i’ve never really known how people make friends online---how do you go from liking each other’s posts and occasionally replying to them to actually being friends who communicate off social media? i’ve had conversations with ppl on tumblr and i’ve had sort-of friendships that are contained to tumblr where i’d like to get to know them better, but i’ve never figured out how to do that. my best friend’s job is pretty much to make friends/connections on the internet (she’s an activist and artist), my dad knows people everywhere in the world from twitter, and i’m just sitting here like a little old grandpa who doesn’t understand how you can have internet friends. 

at this point in my life, i’m fine with this, but this has made me feel real fucking bad in the past---like, if everyone online, even the ppl who say they’re weird and brainbad in a similar way to me, can make friends on the internet, what’s wrong with me? particularly in high school and my first year of college, when i was just horribly lonely all the time, it made me feel super disconnected and like there was something fundamentally bad about me. these days, i’m a lot chiller about it. i use social media to engage with stuff i enjoy and share my thoughts about it. it’s okay that my social difficulties extend to me not knowing how to use the internet to socialize.

on a somewhat related topic, it’s wild that i have 1000 followers. obviously, that’s not an actually super large number and a huge number of them are probably bots or inactive. if you post consistently for eight years and follow lots of people, like i do, it’s not a surprise to end up with this many followers. it is also, thankfully, the sort of followers that are not fans. probably most ppl following this blog dont remember why they followed and dont know anything about me or my interests. this sounds like its meant to be depressing but it’s not. i like that my way of engaging w the internet lets me do pretty much whatever i want and no one will care. the mere concept of being. like. tumblr famous in any capacity, even just in one community/fandom, is viscerally horrifying to me. 

i really enjoy the space i’ve created for myself on here. on one hand, going back through my blog is obviously embarrassing and full of hating my past self. on the other hand, i now have a very nice collection of things i enjoy in this blog. i like seeing what i’ve been interested in and (when i’m in a good mental health place) i like to be able to remember how i thought and talked about the things i loved when i was younger. im not at the place in my life where i can love a younger version of myself, but sometimes i can laugh at zir with a level of fondness. 

i’ve always been paranoid about sharing details about my life on here (and the fact that my parents have always been able to see it certainly contributed), so the version of jack on here is a carefully curated version, who’s super enthusiastic about the things they love, was very conscientious about apologizing and trying to do better when ze messed up, and tried to be polite to others. that’s a younger version of myself that i’m closer to being able to have compassion for than the version i find in essays and poems and memories. 

i’m starting grad school in ten days and i’m still using the blog i started when i began high school. tumblr has helped me in a lot of ways and hurt me in a lot of ways, but i still have to admit that it’s been a significant factor in shaping me. i’d be incredibly embarrassed to admit that irl, but it’s true. other than my family and like one friend, this blog is one of the only things that’s ‘known’ me since i started high school. i’ve changed so much in that time and im glad to have this weird little record of myself throughout those changes, even if i’d probably warn my younger self away from tumblr if i could go back in time.

tl;dr i have had a mixed experience on tumblr and i have mixed feelings about that experience. no idea if anyone read any of this very long, very rambling internet memoir

p.s. fun facts about this blog:

i’ve never changed my icon or blog title

i recently got a second version of the poster i got my blog title from. i chose my blog title by looking at what was hanging on the wall directly in front of me. 

my original url was gloomthkin. this was not, as you’d probably assume, an otherkin thing. i had literally no idea what otherkin was at that point. i’d just learned the word gloomth from a bill bryson book and thought it would be cool n edgy to be the child of the quality of gloom. i changed my url after i learned what otherkin was and realized everyone probably assumed something about me that wasn’t true which i hated (not bc i had an issue w otherkin, just bc i don’t like ppl thinking untrue things about me)

during my good omens days, i once sent a tumblr ask to nail guyman which, in retrospect, was kinda rude. i stand by the content but id never send an ask like that now. he replied to it privately in a way that so deeply embarrassed and shamed 15 year old me that i’ve never gotten over it. i still get nervous and embarrassed when i see anything about him or his books

[pronouncingitwang]

I posted 4,490 times in 2021

333 posts created (7%)

4157 posts reblogged (93%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 12.5 posts.

I added 1,938 tags in 2021

#the magnus archives - 630 posts

#personal - 216 posts

#tma spoilers - 213 posts

#jonathan sims - 205 posts

#donations - 157 posts

#lgbt - 151 posts

#jonmartin - 100 posts

#food mention - 99 posts

#martin blackwood - 86 posts

#stories - 81 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#i love doing tasks. starting tasks. planning tasks. carrying out tasks. i'm so great at tasks just a big fan of tasks i can do them so good

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

tma trailer: everything is terrible. be afraid. bad things are comin-

me: 😍😍 HELEN GOULD IS THAT YOU?? 😍😍

788 notes • Posted 2021-01-07 16:06:29 GMT

#4

me: :(

melanie and georgie: *despite having a few communication hiccups, are so undeniably good for each other’s mental health, both keeping the other in check when they lean too much in one direction, tackling hard conversations together, and being clear about when an issue is something the other should talk through with someone else instead*

me: :)

1392 notes • Posted 2021-01-21 16:26:44 GMT

#3

jonny, alex, sasha, god, the universe, mx. archives themself: the magnus archives is going to end in tragedy

annabelle cane, avatar of the web: neither of you need to die or be consumed by any dark power

me: omg maybe neither or them have to die or be consumed by any dark power

1943 notes • Posted 2021-02-25 16:26:39 GMT

#2

cute annabelle things from this ep:

- saying that not answering questions directly was an attempt to make things “feel familiar” for martin like what a fun jon roast

- the dramatic way she says “step into my parlor” like she knows she’s playing a role and she’s having fun with it! and the fact that it was a direct response to martin saying he wanted things to be “more dramatic” like. miss cane you would have so much fun sitting at the theater kid lunch table with jon and tim i just know it

- the way her statement is written! especially the beginning, with the short paragraphs and the “stop, no”s; the fairytale vibes are excellent. we know annabelle likes to read, and i’m glad she got to stretch her creative writing muscles with this one

- you cannot tell me she didn’t know what she was doing with “aching hole.” comedic genius. martin can’t appreciate it because he’s in danger but i can!

- WHEN SHE SAID SHE’S NOT USED TO EXPLAINING THINGS BUT SHE’S TRYING TO PRACTICE. we love to see character development and avatars fighting against their ““nature””!

conclusion: i love her

1957 notes • Posted 2021-02-25 16:26:33 GMT

#1

i think the childhood mythology of “it’s okay to share food when you’re family because you all have the same spit” is so beautiful actually like love is about eating each other’s leftovers it is about my parents eating the heads off the shrimp in my plate because they know i don’t like the idea of eating eyes and it’s about asking your friends to “waterfall” you when you’re running the mile at P.E. but if they like you enough they won’t yell ew if your mouth touches the bottle and it’s about my sister taking a bite of a cookie, making a face, and handing it to me

5221 notes • Posted 2021-06-24 04:38:49 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[thedreadvampy]

So this was sent to me by @atiredpan weeks ago when the White Jon conversation was very live and I'm posting it (belatedly) with their blessing (they didn't want to put it up publicly and have it seem like an attack which I really very much appreciate but wouldn't have minded) and I percolated for a few days and then got very busy for a few weeks. Response follows.

So I feel weird about how I'm responding to this stuff, I'm launching rapidly into taking about/explaining my own experience in a way I'm worried maybe comes across as a direct comparison. It kind of feels like I'm talking in a way that's like brushing off your experience and saying OK BUT HERE'S WHY I'M RIGHT and that's not what I'm trying to do, it's just that there's not much I can usefully add to what you've said - you know your experience better than I do, and I'm not gonna go around trying to read into it or reexplain it. So I'm going to talk about where I am/have been coming from, but not with the intention of countering your points, all of which I think really resonate.

First off, the post where I was like "Jon is white and if you disagree you're Wrong" was, unreservedly, just a shitty post and I'm not suprised it upset a lot of people. I'm really very sorry about that, it was thoughtlessly written and pretty stupidly posted.

I totally get that my whiteness has fed into how I hced Jon (and as I think I've said before I saw Jon a certain way well before I engaged with any fanworks, just as you did). There's a lot of reasons I imagined Jon as white from pretty early on, a non-negligible one of which was like...That's Jonny. This is a podcast by Jonny, about a character with the same name and mannerisms as Jonny, and Jonny is extremely white. It would have felt weird, when I was listening to TMA as a Friend Podcast, to stick a brown face onto what at least appeared at the time to basically be a self-insert character of my white friend. Now that's a really personal thing informed less by the story and more by the circumstances under which I've interacted with it, but it certainly laid a baseline. I didn't really have a clear mental picture of Jon (or most of the characters) for a looooooong time (for an artist I'm really not a very visual thinker) but I had a few sort of mental sketches (Jon is short white balding and awkward, Martin is tall biracial and scruffy Basira is fat and somali Melanie is my friend from work etc) which I developed a long time before I encountered fanworks.

I saw the alienation you mentioned and I connected it to class and gender, not race, because I’ve met a lot of cis men, white and otherwise, who interpolate trauma, class insecurity, insecurity about their own abilities, and so on into withdrawal, denial and snappiness. So for me I had an interpretation of that element of his personality which was pretty much race-neutral, and then I had these existing cues leading me to assuming he was white (largely that Jonny is white, but also wee stuff in the story that...it’s not like anything substantial enough to remember, let alone justify, but there were certainly interactions that pinged whiteness for me personally)

There are actually iirc a few throwaway references to Jon being promoted above more qualified candidates throughout (or at least I thought I knew that before s5), but the time I decided I thought White Jon was an obvious conclusion was of course the conversation where Sasha expresses frustration about it. and the context of that conclusion (at least as far as I can see) wasn't "people of colour can only exist in subservient positions/defined by oppression" but was informed by two things that were going on with my life around the time that episode aired

I had been having several conversations with friends of mine (and largely friends of Jonny's) who work in London in the museums/archiving sector and who are the only women of colour in whole departments or even whole museums, and who experience so little career mobility compared to their less-qualified white counterparts (we're talking about women graduating top of their class at Oxbridge with anthropology or library science masters and stellar original research, with a decade or more of impeccable work experience and acting up, being left in internship and low-grade positions, while white men who "fit the culture" but have 0 museums experience sail into upper management positions and then stay there until they retire). So I'd come almost directly from these conversations into what to me sounded like exactly the same gripe in TMA.

I'd been at that point working for about a year and a half on co-coordinating the anti-oppression committee in my workplace, which was a very Good Progressive Activist Charity with Good Lefty Principles, and over the course of experience sharing and discussions both with colleagues of colour and along lines of wealth, disability, class etc, I was very much confronted with the realisation of how much 'being adequately qualified' meant different things for middle-class good-university white men vs much more highly skilled and hardworking women of colour or people of different class and wealth backgrounds. Obviously I'd known that before in principle, but not really having been in Salaried Workplaces (as opposed to like. service and retail hourlies) I hadn’t got so up close and personal with it. So that was also very fresh in my mind, this like...big substantial experience of how Good, Well-Meaning, Caring, Thoughtful, Woke white men just........did not need to think about this. at all. and were startled and discomforted to face it. and that this was also true of most white middle-class women. and these conversations were really carved down the middle between white middle-class European women saying ‘this is such a surprise when we have such an equitable hiring policy and diverse staff, that there’s this gender gap’ and women of colour in the room wearily saying ‘yeah, there’s a gender gap, there’s always a gender gap and it is always a racialised gender gap’ so yeah I was definitely thinking about the intersection between being passed over at work because of gender and because of race.

The point about Tim is interesting because I think for me what’s getting lost is that I don’t think Jon is entitled as like...a Character Trait. He’s not like...Toxic Masculinity Man. He is very anxious about boundaries and about his own capacity to do harm. But it has to be pointed out to him where he’s doing harm. He doesn’t notice where he’s been unfairly advantaged, and that’s to me much more reflective of most people’s relationship to white or male entitlement. 

As I say, that exchange with Tim and Sasha cemented the Jon Is White hc in my head specifically because it was so reflective of conversations I had had with women of colour working in similar workplaces, about white men, usually about white men they generally liked or at least didn’t have beef with beyond their unfair advantages. 

It seems odd to me to frame ‘bitching about your boss on your friend’s behalf to make her feel better’ as more similar to white entitlement/white privilege than any of that tbh? That’s just...being friends with someone? 

Anyway I recognise that it’s not white entitlement to accept a job. Obviously it’s not, it’s just sensible under the circumstances, you get lucky and you grab it. For me my sense of Jon as white-because-of-this is not “he took a job he shouldn’t have taken,” it’s more about his obliviousness to the impact he has on others, and also primarily how people react to him. The interaction between Sasha and Tim is saturated with the of course it would be him I mentioned above, but even before that he walks through the world not expecting to have to think about anything but his conscious decisions, and he’s caught aback when people see him as out of place or as having power above his station.

I think it’s impossible to extricate ‘this is where my head was at’ from that interpretation, and also like obviously my own whiteness is a big factor. And not just my own personal whiteness but the place I grew up (which was 98.3% white) and the world which reflects back whiteness. So this is in no way intended as a bolshy This Is The Correct Headcanon the way my Bad Post was bc examining it I’m like...yeah I mean this is about how I personally interpreted this based on where I was at at the time. But I do feel like there’s some communication gap in what it is about this unqualified promotion thing that pinged me - it’s not that All Bosses Must Be White And All Brown People Must Be Downtrod, it’s something quite specific about the tone and tenor of the interactions around the getting-a-job.

But also? Idk. Kind of unrelatedly, and people obviously should feel free to disagree with me on this, it feels kind of off to frame this as defaulting to a white Jon? I sort of think that my idea of Jon as white is very much not ‘white until proven otherwise’ - part of the reason for my original strident tone was that I felt that I was being expected to drop a headcanon I had for specific reasons and default to the fanon version of Jon without actually having any reason other than ‘this is how the community thinks he should look,’ and without really understanding anything about what that means, and while obviously defaulting to a non-white headcanon isn’t like...entrenched in the way that defaulting to a white headcanon is, it does seem to me like this is perhaps part of why white fans slap brown skin onto a character without thinking into what that means or why they’re doing it.

The thing I’m struggling with as regards my personal headcanon here is that I could decide to only ever draw Jon as Fanon Jon, but it wouldn’t be because I had strong reasons to see him that way, it wouldn’t be the same as why you see Jon as brown, or why I see like...Melanie as Indian, it would literally be Default To Standard in a way it isn’t for you. And I don’t feel that I have Defaulted To Whiteness, or where I have it is for reasons specifically to do with Jon (I visualised Jon as white because I visualised him as Jonny, who is white), not because I think every character is White Until Proven Otherwise. Like, my reasons for understanding Jon as white may be bad reasons, but they are reasons, not post-hoc excuses (I can’t like...prove that. but I know it to be true at least on a conscious level). I didn’t go Oh Jon Is White Because Everyone Is Unless I Have Reason To Think They Aren’t, Hooray, Here Is A Post-Hoc Justification For Why It Isn’t Racist To Think That. So while I am totally on board with the idea that it may be shitty, harmful or poorly thought through to hc Jon as white, I’m not sure I can fully see it in myself as being default. But I do understand that that isn’t necessarily what came across in my original short post.

Honestly, the reason I took issue with Fanon Jon and Fanon Martin in such a bolshy way in the first place was that I didn’t get why these characters were universally seen as Asian and white, respectively, and had such strong and consistent fanon images, when none of the other characters did, and when I was seeing people drawing people like Sasha and Melanie and Tim as white way more when in my mind there was no reason to assume they were white. On an emotional level I guess I think either there’s Fanon As Lore, or there’s no fanon (and I prefer the latter) and my discomfort came from the place that the one character I absolutely saw as coded as white in the core cast had this one really specific Ambiguously Brown Fanon Look (which from what I’d seen at the time didn’t seem to be like...backed with anything or coming from any personal interpretation for most of the white fans I was seeing on like Twitter and Tumblr) but white headcanons are everywhere for characters like Melanie or Sasha or Georgie, who seemed to me to be unambiguously people of colour, or characters like Tim or Martin (who could perfectly reasonably be people of colour and who I hc as Rroma and biracial respectively)? I don’t know, it’s difficult to express, but I find it frustrating.

[yaboyspodcastpalace]

For the character asks: Jon, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane? (giving multiple suggestions so you can pick one in case you get the same character twice in different asks)

very kind of you to assume i get many asks :') THANKS ill do all of them u_u

[Send me a character and i'll tell you...]

(under the cut bc i love talking and this got long lmao)

Jon

First impression

he's a uptight prick with obvious favoritism for sasha and tim and i love him so! much!!!!!!

Impression now

my poor little mew mew hm................I've got a complicated relationship w/ jon bc i love him a lot, but i loved s1 him the most, and literally everything else just makes me really, brutally, sad ;_; The way he tries so desperately to cling to his humanity and how other characters just call him by the title imposed to him makes me wanna cry

...also he just cares so much ;_; i cry

Favorite moment

probably his interactions with georgie at the beginning of season 3!!! From s5 id say when he killed not!sasha, it felt vindictive ù_ú

Idea for a story

Dhfhdh im p basic when it comes to him ngl, either jon/tim/sasha friends to lovers or jon and desolation!tim or *something*!sasha trying to stay as human as possible, together 😔 (or just any of them living and coping together in s4 n s5)

Unpopular opinion

Im just not a fan of monster jon, at all! He's not the type of character that i enjoy seeing having a corruption arc unfortunately!! It just hurts!!! (and this Is from someone that Loves corruption arcs!!!)

Also i really hate moth jon imagery??? For not particular reason, moths are pretty, but i still hate it u_u AND THE ASSOCIATION OF GREEN W/ JON (or the beholding in general!) I CANNOT STAND IT!! i know its bc of the tma logo but guess what! Its wrong! Purple jon rights!!!

ALSO ALSO the so called pining he had for martin just.... didnt felt like that at all! i have Many feelings abt this!

Favorite relationship

either georgie in s3, or sasha!!! i love how he always praises sasha in her research in s1 and even thought he's at his driest & sharp Trying-To-Project-Professionalism-And-Skepticism she still rolls into his office, interrupts him mid statement to banter w/ him abt pronunciation n stuff and its just Normal, like that speaks volumes of how comfortable they felt around each other! they were friends gdi! the moment he realizes she died and then everytime the not!them mocks him w/ her death makes me wanna break smth q_q

im not even gonna mention tim bc even though i love their relationship It 👏 makes me👏 very 👏 sad 👏

non shippy and also staying strictly canon, i love his relationship with melanie!

Favorite headcanon

sometimes i think abt that one hc that hes really good with arcade games bc he lived near the coast and i smile bc thats cute :) also hes a trans man 💙💗🤍💗💙

Peter

First impression

Mystery evil captain man!!! Fog?? I LOVE him :)

Impression now

I STILL LOVE HIM SO MUCH!!!!!!!!! Hes an asshole and has a lovely voice and smile and hes not, hes not Dumb but also he's far from the whooooa evil lonely influence he think he is (played like a cheap fiddle). He also makes me sad in ways i cannot and wont describe, and its a shame that he died cuz he was the best part of season 4 😔 rip you beautiful bastard man i still miss you </3

Favorite moment

"It has blood on it" "thats Leitner's too :D". Also when martin was angry abt idk, breekon? Jon going into the coffin? Cant remember, but peter was like I said id protect the institute, that guys not my problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Idea for a story

dfgdfg i have..... a petermart story that dealt with the different flavor of loneliness they both had, half smut half genuine meta of both of them and theorization on the branching of an Entity & how their powers manifested in other people...

basically, peter thinks hes hot shit when it comes to loneliness but gets overwhelmed when martin accidentally projects his feelings abt *fic's plot stuff* on him, its fun stuff!

Unpopular opinion

people either paint him like an absolute devil or an incompetent idiot and hes neither of them! hes an asshole who loves being an asshole but far from the worst monster in the show and he tried to do a clever scheme TWICE on his life and 1. while it was established that any of the rituals wouldnt work singularly the Silence was still a pretty clever attempt if it weren't for gertrude! and 2. well... he tried to manipulate someone petty and formerly supposed to be a web avatar, again not his fault, cant call him stupid for trying dfgdfg

i Do think hes kinda pathetic in some sense considering his backstory, but more out of personal pity than anything else

Favorite relationship

Canonically speaking him and martin! The pull and push of them was The best thing about season 4! Peter being a quite dangerous avatar and martin, beautiful and scared and kinda feisty, confronting him every chance he gets, peter doing his best to manipulate him and martin letting him believe hes succeeding (even thought, he is, partly). They're fascinating characters to have side by side

Favorite headcanon

Partly canonically speaking him and mikaele salesa :) they do bets together! They're lonely sea men! What else could you possibly want?

Also non shippy i like thinking abt peter's and simon's relationship but thats entirely non canon ♡

Diversity wins! The heir of the lonely is a gay man!

Also I think as every rich household(?) the lukases had many paintings and peter as a kid saw the ones w/ sailing ships and imagined sailing far far away from his family. That and seaman aesthetic fucks, which is why he always has the same vibe going on as an adult. He does Not know half of the things he'd need to know to have a ship though but hey he's rich and thats all he needs

Annabelle

First impression

thats a horrible psychological experiment they're making there D:

Impression now

THATS STILL A HORRIBLE EXPERIMENT AND ANNABELLE DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER............. idk! she makes me sad in the same way jon (and to a degree, peter) does! to be a living puppet for the thing that traumatized you as a kid and that later kinda killed you / is the only thing keeping you alive, to be devoted to it scrambling to believe in a higher reason for all of it to happen bc to believe otherwise is............. anyway. i love her, and i feel so so sorry for her

Favorite moment

her "maybe ive never been to the beach" at the end of ehr statement (that i fully believe its bullshit but, yknow, i love that she adds that), most of her convos with martin, her "i told you this might happen" "you did, you did" with mikaele

Idea for a story

i think a lot about her having conversations w/ either mikaele (platonically) or sasha (shippy) and their different points of views and treat with her making her doubt the web a bit

Unpopular opinion

listen, listen, i know it sounds like im woobifying her i Know it but reading the scraps of her story how can i Not feel sorry for her? when the story framed her very similar to jon? the supernatural childhood encounter that gave them arachnophobia and the subsequential joining with an Entity against her will? the fact that both the story and the fans treat her like a spider woman always sat very very bad to me, and the fact that the story itself always framed her like a villain (considering All The Other Characters that get the benefit of the doubt) was extremely disappointing

Favorite relationship

her and mikaele!!!!!!! wish we could have seen more scenes of just the two of them!!!!!! *singing* he is her daaaaaad, hes her dad! boogie boogie boogie! (ok no but like... their offscreen friendship is my favorite thing of season 5 ;_;)

Favorite headcanon

Sigh i dont know...i still think she's scared of spiders which make her current existence harder but thats a sadcanon :/ umm...... i love the idea of mikaele and her cooking together from time to time! Mikaele showing her some plates he used to eat as a kid as he talks stories about his life :) and she listens and sometimes tells a story of her own! its been so long since he had a quasy normal conversation! its weird yet nice!

[protectmartinblackwood]

T, X, Z for ask meme?

HURRYING TO ANSWER THESE BEFORE MY WIFI GOES OUT AGAIN. I finished typing this ENTIRE THING before and it died right when I hit post.

Let’s see, let’s see:

T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

M A R T I N  B I G. And I mean, short Martins are valid obviously and I can respect them, but I’m just. Very attached to Tall Martin. Conversely, I am also very attached to Small Jon. Short Small Archivists made to be scooped by Large Martins.

Also ADHD Jon - particularly with RSD - is very dear to my heart because I love to project aggressively onto my favorite characters and it just. Fits :’)These are like... I wouldn’t Die Defending these so much, but they are some of the ones I cling to more closely. OH ALSO aro!Sasha has grown on me to the point that I have trouble seeing her as anything else.

X - A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Oh okay, let me think. I’m SO WEAK for Found Families of any sort. A group of previous strangers coming together and finding belonging and family with each other? A bunch of people who would never have looked twice at one another in other circumstances developing an unbreakable bond and being ready to die for each other??? People finding non-romantic fulfilling lifebonds with other humans??? LET ME project my personal yearnings all over that.

Also, enemies-to-lovers/friends/some kind of deep attachment is my shit.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go! (Prompts optional but encouraged.)

Hmmm my only fandom at the moment is TMA. And I have no idea what to ramble about so I’m just gonna let my brain take this where it will:

I would love more insight or fan depictions of what Jon was like as a kid and/or teen. I don’t normally care about characters’ childhoods really? Or think about it. But something about Jon’s character just makes me want to imagine what he was like at any given point.

I think it’s because he’s such an interesting character with such complex and real motivations, and you can so easily put together the little pieces we have of his life and go “Ah, right, I can look at this man before us today and see how that happened” and it just makes me want to dig deeper.

Did he have friends in school at all? Some other weird kids he hung out with after class? Did he have a rebellious phase? I love thinking that he had a typical rebellious phase - he was a traumatized, outcast kid with insatiable curiosity, you know he AT LEAST experimented with some awkward brand of rebellion. Maybe tried to let someone’s brother’s older cousin give him an illegal piercing and then got freaked out because he’d READ ABOUT WHAT CAN HAPPEN to badly done piercings and couldn’t go through with it, and has always regretted it just a tiny bit.

Maybe he gave himself a terrible edgy haircut in the bathroom and started wearing eyeliner and those emo arm warmers and--

Emo kid Jon? He’s in his early 30s. He was a teenager at precisely the right time. He’s dramatic as hell. You know what? Angsty emo kid Jon.

Thank you!! :)

[dykedistortion]

I think your MLM/WLW post is super interesting and important... and honestly, I don't think what I'm about to say in any way negates what you've pointed out (or what is largely an issue in fandom period - i.e. prioritizing white male ships over wlw ships). But I think something frustrating for me with TMA is how unlikeable I find most of the women, particularly in their treatment of the character I ID with most (Jon): the abusive/enabling cops Daisy and Basira, as well as Melanie.

[Georgie, I understand and respect, Sasha, I loved, but she died at the end of season 1. and I know that many of these women undergo changes as the series progresses, i.e. Melanie and Daisy, but... I think some of those characters could've been handled in a better way? And ofc there are great women in this series - Helen and Agnes... and ofc, Elias and Peter are TERRIBLE, so it's not that problematic women justifies prioritizing mlm. I just... I don't know. Sorry for rambling on your blog.]

Read more because this got a little long:

Tbh, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, I think getting different people’s views and having a conversation would be more informative and such! I do think it’s worth noting that every single major character in TMA is complicated in some way, none of our heroes are entirely good people who haven’t made any mistakes. And some of them, like Basira and Daisy, are actively representing corrupt systems in our world! Even Jon, our protagonist, makes plenty of mistakes and even forcibly takes statements, which, while a complicated situation over all and something he fights against is still directly damaging to others. But, (and you addressed this some as well), despite the entire cast’s nuance, I do think that the women are treated more harshly as a whole, both in terms of general treatment and especially shipping. Like, people jump through hoops to humanize and give this deep pathos to characters as wholly evil as Jonah and Peter, so it’s even more disheartening when female characters aren’t given nearly that much dimension by fans in comparison (not you specifically, you seem aware of this issue, I’m just talking about in general)

Of course disliking characters is okay! I totally get where you’re coming from here in terms of really vibing with Jon, and you’re not obligated to like all female characters. I do think that properly examining those feelings is very important, to make sure that there aren’t any underlying biases, but of course you don’t have to like every character/ship. Personally I’ve grown to like characters I wasn’t initially super attached to a lot more through engaging with fic and meta of them, which both draws more attention to them and makes me think of them in ways I might not’ve before. This kind of thing is mostly only a problem when it’s so prevalent in fandom as a whole, and it’s definitely a major issue outside of TMA as well. 

TLDR: It’s okay to have preferences within fan content, but it’s necessary and important t to carefully consider where those preferences are coming from and make sure you’re being fair, especially when it may be part of a widespread problem. 

[foxgloveinspace]

YouTubers AU Part One

Also On Ao3

Ed didn't want to be YouTube famous across three channels, but here he is. In a crappy little apartment, with great sound proofing, an amazing view and access to the roof from his bedroom window.

Yeah, that was the good parts.

The bad parts where Al yelling at him cause he killed the cat in their current Minecraft Hard Mode playthrough. They where on their second one, after the first was a whopping 7 episodes long, and honestly, he didn't mean to.

He really didn't mean to bring his wolf in their house, and then have said wolf kill the cat when he went to eat and then accidentally hit the cat. That Al had spent about half an hour trying, and some how succeeding, to herd into their house without fish, cause 'I don't have a fish right now brother, and if I go to get one, she will be gone before I get back!' While Al was currently going to get the fish to tame it.

So yeah, this playthrough has ended with Ed dead, cause Al killed him and Al getting sad that Ed was dead even though "You deserve this Brother!" and then Al dying because of creepers, which "This wouldn't be a problem is you hadn't killed my cat!"

Again.

Well, not exactly, but it's very similar to how the first one went, which is very weird!

At least they made more progress this time, making it to a total of 9 episodes. And also filling their quota of Minecraft for three months. All in one recording session!

But that was earlier today. At the moment he was trying to find all the ingredients to try and make Al's favorite dinner, to appease him of said earlier cat incident.

"Al, we're out of... well everything!"

Maybe he would get away with making it this weekend, when it wasn't almost nine at night, and all he wanted to do was put a frozen pizza in the oven.

Instead he heard the jingle of keys from the kitchen door way. Turning he saw Al, already in his shoes, tucking his wallet into his back pocket.

Ed groaned.

"Fuck, ok."

Al smiled big.

"I love you"

Ed rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, you better. Love you too."

----

They heard the baby crying way before they got to the isle the baby was in. Al making a little grimace at him when they first heard it. They both love kids a lot, and hearing any baby cry makes them want to find the baby and cheer it up.

They have gotten good at ignoring that instinct since they reached their late teens, and now that they are adults it's very easy to ignore.

But then they are down the same isle as the crying baby, and her (if the flower headband and frilly dress are anything to go by, you never know these days, and honestly does it fucking matter?) almost equally in tears father. He's holder her on his shoulder and trying to bounce her while hes looking at the frozen empty ravioli. Which is right where they need to be.

The dad kinda looks familiar, if Ed stops to think about it, maybe they shop at the same time a lot? But he doesn't stop to think about, just hands the basket with their other groceries in it to Al, and gets to work. Smiling, puffing up his cheeks and then pressing on them while crossing his eyes, sticking out his tongue, and then playing peak-a-boo by hiding behind Al and speaking up over his shoulders (the only time he will admit being shorter than Al is a good thing).

Slowly the baby stops crying, and then starts smiling, and then she starts giggling like crazy!

That's when her dad turns around with his pick of frozen ravioli and stops short as he sees two young men, one of which pops up from behind the other.

" Uh. Hello there?"

Oh! Ed did know him! But he didn't. He was one Al and his' current favorite YouTube channel.

"Hello! Please don't mind my brother."

Hughes (that's his name, fuck isn't that weird, they know his name but he might not know theirs) just laughs.

"That's fine, I think he got Elicia to calm down, so thank you"

Ed smiled big at him

"No problem! Happy to help."

Hughes just smiles at them.

Ed takes the basket back from Al while Hughes put the now calm baby (Elicia), into the buggy, he also hands her a set of baby keys, which she happily shakes and then starts chewing on.

"Ah, I know this might be sudden, but we really like your dnd channel."

Ed elbows him in the side. What is he thinking! They hate being recognized, why would they-

Hughes was staring at them, kind of in a weird way.

"You watch our channel? Well, its Roy's channel, but you watch it?? What do you think, do you like it? Of course you like it, you just said that."

Elicia threw her keys. Hughes just sighs and picks them up as she giggles. He scoots down the isle a little as he does, and Ed goes to get the frozen ravioli, he knows exactly which ones, cause they are the only ones Al will eat, and hes done in two seconds. He also grabs pizza rolls, cause they are right there, and Al isn't looking. He's talking with Hughes.

"Yes! We are big fans, Ed has been binge watching the first campaign again, cause he always loses it laughing when-"

Ed tunes it out. He has gotten too used to Al trying to embarrass him like this. He cringes as he remembers the last youtube meet up they went to. He is never going to be able to interact with some of those other creators ever again. Not like he really wanted to they where all mostly assholes in real life, but gosh did Al have to tell them about how they 'inspired them' or some shit? Fuck, its silent. Ed looks up to see them both staring.

"Uhh."

Good job Ed.

"Mr. Hughes just asked what our opinions on them switching dms is."

Oh.

"Oh. Well, I think Sheska does a good job! Not as good as you, you put more personality into it, but I think shes gotten better. More lose in her story telling I guess."

He's rambling, fuck.

Hughes just smiles at him though, so he guesses he didn't fuck up too much.

"Yeah. I didn't really want to stop, but my beautiful daughter was born! And it was hard to go from work, straight to Roy's and then not see her at night during the week. But that was before they decided on the new film schedule, I could come back now anytime I want to, but I'm waiting til this campaign ends."

Ed and Al nodded. They didn't exactly understand, cause they had no prior knowledge of their film schedule, but they decided it was ok, since he was a tired father.

"Well. What brings you two here so late at night?"

They start walking, looks like they are all done and headed to the check outs.

"Oh, Brother killed my cat in Minecraft earlier, and now he's making me ricotta stuffed ravioli. But we didn't have ricotta. Or ravioli."

Hughes looks at them funny for a second, and then looks at Ed with an eyebrow raised.

Ed shrugs.

"What Al wants, Al gets"

Al just nods.

Hughes pauses, and then looks at Elicia, and gives an understanding nod.

They get to the check outs, and part ways, Ed and Al waving goodbye to Elicia, which she gives a cute little wave back, then said bye to Hughes before going to the 15 items or less self check out.

They are walking back to the car when Al starts talking.

"Well that was nice."

"That was awkward."

"Brother! We made his first fan experience nice! We could have been rude! Remember that girl from last month! That was awful!"

Ed just sighed. That was awful. Nothing like some random chick insisting you and your brother do... stuff, for you to never want to do any fan meets every again.

They climb in the car, and promptly Al starts talking about how excited he is for ravioli, even though it's almost ten thirty.

---

He doesn't really think about it again until two days later during their next recording session.

They are just grinding levels, and talking about random shit, when Ed remembers.

"Oh, hey, you guys are never gonna believe it! We randomly meet one of our own favorite YouTubers! Hughes from TeamMustangAdventures. He was super nice even though we meet at a Walmart, not sponsored, at like 10 pm, it was great!"

Wow, Ed didn't really think about saying that.

He also didn't think it would turn into a long conversation where him and Al talked about their favorite episodes.

He really forgets sometimes that his voice has impacts on things, mainly that by the next week, after the episode goes up, TMA would have almost a million subs, when the night before they had about two hundred thousand. He also didn't expect all their fans to comment "Ed&AlPlayGames sent us here!" He really didn't expect the request for a Twitter conversation from one Roy Mustang to be in their inbox that night.

Oh boy.

[flockofdoves]

i’m not saying this to deflect from any genuine criticisms of tma as a piece of media i’m invested in or anything but i’m genuinely kinda upset today seeing people refer to jonmartin as a “toxic relationship” i honestly feel like anyone who listened to the whole show so far and came out of it with that conclusion is some combo of not being good at media interpretation, not understanding what working out disagreements in healthy relationships can look like, or projecting stuff from personal experience that isn’t there in canon.

and its fine if people are averse to something personally because of their own stuff of course i’m not saying everyone who gets into tma has to be invested in their relationship (and ppl don’t even need serious reasons for that of course) but its a whole nother thing to try to blanket claim that they’re demonstrably a toxic relationship/”poor gay rep”/that people invested in their relationship are ignoring them being “toxic”/etc

i feel like maybe some people came into this podcast hearing that jon and martin got together and resented when they caught up that even though they’re canon, the focus of the show isn’t entirely on them as a romance, and see them coping with the current plot as a let down. and thats fine in the sense that everyone has different tastes but going from personally wanting a podcast more focused directly on romance to resenting all the questions the narrative brings up through martin and jon sometimes having different ideas about how to navigate this new and stressful world as them “always arguing” and being “toxic” is a serious misinterpretation imo, i think their dedication to communicating with each other and growing in understanding each others needs and boundaries even when put into a dramatically different situation than any they’ve experienced before shows that they’re a pretty healthy relationship, just in a bad position considering they’re literally in the apocalypse.

and yeah idk. i know this stuff doesn’t matter too much in the grand scheme of things but i just think its still harmful to claim based on personal reaction that they’re “toxic” when thats demonstrably not true and i feel it only really serves to make fans who have found solace in their relationship feel bad for no good reason. and its especially upsetting me because people who’ve apparently caught up to canon are saying this to people i follow who are not caught up or have not listened or have no interest in listening already, so the idea that theyre an unhealthy relationship is being spread further through that. i don’t blame friends who arent into tma for not knowing or anything of course, theyre under no obligation to know anything about any piece of media they’re not into and i don’t mean this as a vague or anything, i just don’t want to message people out of the blue about this when its maybe more my problem being hung up about it. but its just upsetting seeing people talk about this as if its fact when mentioning it in part of larger conversations or as jokes.

[cantskank]

i think i’m having to accept that tma is just not the fan space for me.  i enjoy it now, but the only reason i got into was for the ace rep.  i’m not a fan of horror OR scripted podcasts (like i am neutral to actively dislike them pretty much).  i was not expecting it to be a romance.  not to be the grouchy aro but i thought getting into a horror podcast would be like “safe” for not having romance.  and i really like the pairing actually!  and like literally everyone else i project so heavily onto martin.  my relationship with romance in fiction is usually like- i like the part where they’re falling in love/getting together.  then the actual relationship itself is...like dicey at best for me (in terms of enjoyment).  it depends how it is portrayed really- sometimes i get it, and a lot of times it just seems so unappealing.  and like now is not the best time for either of them so i don’t really...get it.  honestly it just feels like they’re getting on each other’s nerves but are still together?  idk why that aggravates me- i acknowledge this isn’t a rational way to feel about this fictional relationship.

ANYWAYS.  idk i guess i hoped getting into tma that i would really relate to jon’s experience.  but we don’t even get his experience!  we find out secondhand, and it’s not even clear what we find out- so much so that it took someone asking a question and the creator’s response to clear it up.  even then, it was some “HE might not think of it that way but that’s what it is i guess” which is some straight BULLSHIT (pardon the pun).  i just wanna state for the record that that is WEAKSAUCE FUCKING REPRESENTATION.  at least don’t be so much of a coward that we can barely tell you’re trying to out him as ace (without him knowing) and then skirt the issue

and i don’t think he really got how important ace rep is so i maybe can’t fault him for that but...it sucks.  at least like...educate yourself on ways it might be good to portray aces in media.  again, though, my expectations are a me problem.  i just think that like we don’t have enough extant ace rep to like...casually make a character that misses the mark in those ways.  like yeah there’s a vast wealth of ace experiences and there are tons of aces who would probably not be like super ready to accept that they are ace!  like i’m basically not out at ALL irl and so i get it!  but at least like you could maybe not make that one of the few ace characters we have to represent us?  ace rep is not at that point yet!  we need characters that are open and unashamed to be ace.  todd chavez was a really weird character for me to watch!  i was like way thrown off by how comfortable he was with talking about being asexual (even though it did take some time for him to accept it!  which is totally reasonable!).  but i think it was necessary because it weirdly went such a long way to normalizing it for me?  like i’m asexual!  i spent a large formative part of my late teens/early twenties interacting with almost all asexuals on the internet (aven).  if anyone is accustomed to asexuality it should be me, right??  but actually seeing a character be asexual and even discuss it proudly made me realize how much of a shameful secret i thought of my asexuality as.  i’ve definitely framed it as a forbidden or taboo topic and really separated my active, open asexual persona online from my irl persona.  anyway the fact that that one character had such an impact on me just goes to show how much we still need that kind of representation and not some bullshit rep.

okay onto fandom shit:

i just find there’s so much fan content (mostly fic!  because i don’t really engage in any other way and i don’t really have any desire to!  because it’s even worse for this than fic i have a sense!) that doesn’t want to think critically about what an asexual relationship means/looks like.  either they are not ace and have heard “oh okay aces ‘can’ have sex, well jon will just have sex!” or they are ace and idk have internalized that message as well?  either way i fucking hate people who don’t think about how that relationship might diverge from an allo one.  THEY ARE DIFFERENT.  ASEXUALITY IS ITS OWN THING.  IT IS NOT A THING WHERE YOU JUST DO WHAT YOUR PARTNER WANTS.  IT IS NOT A THING WHERE YOU SAY “OKAY SURE” AND NEVER DISCUSS BEYOND THAT OR BOTHER TO SET BOUNDARIES.  IT IS NOT JUST ONE CONVERSATION AND THEN DONE.  like an asexual relationship can be those things but i don’t think that’s an ideal relationship anyways?  (even for allos tbh..)  and idk why you’d want to idealize that in fandom anyways?  like you can make that relationship look like whatever you want!  why would you make it look like that?  (not to generalize or like invalidate anyone’s experience but i....feel like there is some internalized shit there.  especially when these things are presented without question?  like it’s one thing to present things one way and it’s another to do it without questioning.  one of my favorite ace fics (notably, not tma) is all about the ace character exploring his sexuality!  and having sex with his partner!  but it’s presented with such attention to all characters that i have no trouble at all.  having sex as an asexual is not inherently negative, but i cannot deal with media that doesn’t consider and address the implications of having sex as an asexual.

and honestly there’s so much discussion around the Issue (that i don’t even get involved in but it swirls around my peripheries of my fandom experience) that that aspect distresses me a lot!  because the people who disagree with me make me feel like shit.  i’m sure it is really confusing and difficult to be an asexual who is okay with sex, or interested in exploring sex, or whatever people would consider themselves.  it just feels antithetical to the asexual activism of ‘sex can be cool but it’s not necessarily for everyone.’  like, if you’re an ace who has sex or whatever, cool!  and i hope you can find your corner of the ace community that vibes with that.  i cannot, and like.  compulsory sexuality does not need propping up.  if sex is for you, then congrats!  you fit into the norm in that way!  you might not fit into the norm re: sexual attraction and i’m sure that’s not easy to reconcile.  however, i am not personally in a place where i can be the person who supports that uncritically when i’m still working within myself to understand where compulsory sexuality and amatonormativity have worked within me.  because i have been hurt by both of those things, MY primary goal is to work on dismantling those things (at least in myself, ideally in the world around me).  and people who do not have that as a goal and who instead want to mirror allo-ness in writing an ace character just don’t get the same consideration from me, unfortunately.  i guess this has helped me see that i should just fuck that noise.  if you want to make that the big thing you complain about on the internet i won’t stop you.  and...it occurs to me that’s what i’m doing!  so i’m going to refocus and stop just moping about my aro aceness and how i’m being ignored.  i’ve got better things to focus my time on than haters online.  i will not be dragged down to their mopey level!

also i feel weird and way too old for the fandom demographic (even though there are certainly fans waaaay older than me in the fandom!)  i think i’ve outgrown a lot of the fandom mentality.  wait is hockey fandom for old people?  (i’m fully not old but i’m probably old-ish for tumblr/fandom.  certainly old for tma fandom)  it occurs to me it’s sort of a graduation into a societally-acceptable form of fandom and it probably doesn’t appeal as much to younger audiences.  AND things can be as sexy/romantic or platonic as you like.

anyway all this is to say that i thought getting into media with aspec rep would be good for me but i think i must conclude that it has NOT.  it has actually just upset me way more than it has helped me feel good about being ace (which was the whole goal!).  i will be glad when it is over.  AND i’m glad i’ve really just been engaging with rqg fandom.  it is much more fun and a much better story! 

[haberdashing]

Curiosity

TMA fic, part of my Elias Feels series. Elias Bouchard and Jonathan Sims have an uncomfortable but ultimately helpful conversation.

on AO3

They were having another get-together. “They” being the weird gaggle of people who hate Jonah Magnus that Elias Bouchard had found himself growing closer to as he got used to living in 2019, that is. Georgie--who turned out to be Melanie’s girlfriend as well as her living partner, which wasn’t all that much of a surprise to Elias, really--had gotten over her cold, and they were celebrating Magnus’ death again, though this time Georgie and Melanie were hosting at their place.

Elias still felt like he didn’t quite belong in the group, for a couple reasons. For one, they all by and large shared a history that he was missing--two histories, really, one big picture and one on a more personal level. It was one thing to be told it’s 2019 now and another to catch all the new slang and jargon and references that had come to be since 1996; it was one thing to be told a tale of paranormal happenings and another to understand brief references and allusions to events and powers that he hadn’t experienced firsthand.

(Christ, he didn’t even believe in the paranormal--well, hadn’t in 1996. Even while working as James Wright’s personal secretary, and Elias had known well enough that James was a fervent believer in the supernatural, even before he’d learned that James himself was supernatural. The trick, one that Elias had honed over the years, was to get a handle on people’s expectations and preferences and follow them or flout them as best suited his own purpose, and with something as important as a potential career that often meant smiling and nodding and pretending he agreed wholeheartedly with his immediate superiors. Oh, absolutely, the supernatural is real, these statements are important, of course, now where am I supposed to file this one again?)

Also, while he had been absent for all that history, Jonah Magnus using his body had been all too present, and though everyone was at least willing to believe that he wasn’t the same guy, he could sense that it was still... awkward for them. Couldn’t blame them, he supposed, but he couldn’t help having the face and voice they associated with the asshole who’d ruined their lives, either.

It wasn’t too much of a surprise, then, that Elias was already literally as well as physically on the outskirts of things when Jon gently nudged his shoulder and whispered, “Can I have a word with you in private, Eli?”

There was something in Jon’s tone that reminded Elias uncomfortably of being taken aside by a schoolteacher after misbehaving, but then again, he wasn’t positive that that wasn’t just his imagination, that that wasn’t just Jon.

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

They navigated into a side room, Elias gently smacking Jon with his cane when he tried to guide Elias’ walking a little too much for his own comfort. (Melanie was a godsend, really. She’d been through a lot of what he had, knew the right numbers to call, the right doctors to consult. He was already starting to get comfortable using a cane, though he still missed his eyesight, much as he knew that losing it was the only reason he was still around at all.)

Jon shut the door most of the way behind them, though it didn’t click all the way  shut.

“I just... learned something about you, Eli. I didn’t mean to, it just sort of... happens sometimes.”

Elias nodded numbly; he still didn’t have a clue what this was actually about, but Jon was clearly getting there soon enough.

“Something you did, specifically, except--I didn’t learn when exactly it happened, so I don’t know if it was actually you that did it, or...”

“Or Jonah Magnus in my body?”

“Quite.” Jon breathed in and out once, softly, before continuing. “If it was you, it- it’s really none of my business, I suppose-”

Elias considered making some remark about how from what he knew of Jon, something being none of his business wouldn’t necessarily stop him from investigating it just the same, but decided to stay silent and hear the rest of Jon’s statement out.

“But if it was Magnus, then I think you ought to know.”

“Right. Got it. So what is it you saw, then?” The way Jon had avoided mentioning the subject matter thus far led Elias to suspect that it was some kind of unsavory, but then, between Jonah Magnus doing all kinds of messed-up shit as him and Elias himself having done his fair share of poorly-thought-out things in his life, that didn’t really narrow things down.

“Well... let me start by saying it has to do with one Joshua Ritter. I don’t know if that name means anything to you-”

Elias could feel his face heat up, imagined that it was probably as bright of a red as Josh’s ginger hair, maybe even as dark as the freckles that were spread all across Josh’s face, across his arms, across every inch of his body, as Elias had learned first-hand when-

“Y-yes. I... I know that name. That was me.” Elias paused, considered further. “I mean, I assume it was me, depends what you saw I guess--but Josh didn’t care for the supernatural, I doubt Magnus would have any reason to, to do anything with him-”

“I saw the two of you... together.”

“You mean we were fucking?”

Jon made a weird choked noise at that, which Elias considered as a strange sort of personal success. Who’s the one feeling awkward about this conversation now, Jon?

“That’d be me, I imagine. Josh and I didn’t part on the best of terms, I doubt he’d have been interested in... doing that again.”

“I-I’m sorry, like I said, it’s none of my business really then-”

“I’m not gay, though. For what it’s worth.”

Jon had an awkward sort of cough that Elias half-suspected was feigned before saying, “Didn’t say you were.”

“I mean, I’ve had girlfriends before--Katie Sullivan in secondary, Annie White and Liz Culvert in uni, Sara Holmes after--I’m not gay.”

“First, that’s not actually proof you’re not gay, and second, there’s nothing wrong with it if you are. I mean, none of us are homophobic here--you know Georgie and Melanie are dating, right?”

“Yeah, and you and Martin probably go off and snog every chance you get, too, right?”

Jon made another one of those weird noises, having to take a few deep breaths before saying, “...guess I owe Martin a tenner now.”

“What, you made a bet about that? Seriously?”

“Martin bet me ten pounds that you’d figure out we were together without either of us having to tell you first.”

Elias snorted. “That was a sucker’s bet. I figured that out the night we met. You two aren’t as subtle as you seem to think you are.”

“Now you tell me...” Jon let out an exaggerated-sounding sigh. “You know you can be interested in guys without being gay specifically, right?”

“I mean, I guess I was a little bi-curious back then...”

“Never been a fan of that term, myself. Either you’re interested in a certain gender or you’re not. So if you had feelings for this Josh-”

He did. Oh, he did. He could still remember every word of the argument they’d had that’d ended in them breaking up, the way Josh had looked like he was halfway in between screaming and crying, slamming the door of Josh’s flat behind him and trying to pretend that his hands weren’t shaking, that he wasn’t on the verge of tears himself...

The ache of losing Josh had faded, as time went on, but Elias wasn’t sure it would ever fully go away.

“-and for those women as well, perhaps you’re simply bi, not ‘bi-curious’--or pan, for that matter-”

“Pan?”

“Pansexual. It means feeling sexual attraction towards someone regardless of their physical sex or gender identity.”

“Did you memorize that out of a dictionary, or did you just know the definition word for word when you needed it?” As Jon started to reply, Elias cut him off, saying, “It doesn’t really matter, I suppose, it’s just... it’s weird that both of those seem like real possibilities.”

“I feel like you’re trying to change the subject.”

“Look, it- it’s complicated, alright? I mean, my dad always claimed he’s fine with that stuff, but then he’d make a face and avoid it whenever it came up. I didn’t dare tell him about Josh--I don’t think he’d have, like, done anything, but... you never know, you know? Maybe I’m just not as brave as you and your- I don’t know what term you use for each other, boyfriend, partner, snog buddy-”

Elias was expecting Jon to make that awkward noise again, catch him off guard and have him stammer through a response.

Elias definitely wasn’t expecting Jon to reply gently but firmly, without even a hint of hesitation, with the single word “Husband.”

Elias’ mind reeled at the implications of that one simple word.

“Husband? Wait, you two got married--you can get married? Is that even legal?”

“It’s been legal since 2014, yes. Admittedly, our ceremony was a bit... unorthodox, given the circumstances, but it counts just the same in the eyes of the law.” Jon laughed a little before adding, “Things have changed since 1996, Eli, and not all for the worse, either.”

Elias sat there for a long moment, letting Jon’s words sink in. He thought maybe this group he’d found himself part of was just unusually understanding about... that sort of thing, but if same-sex marriage was legal, it couldn’t just be them, could it? He knew it was a different world out there than the one he was used to, but that... that was comforting, in a strange sort of way. Not that Elias saw himself rushing out into the dating scene any time soon, for a partner of any gender, but...

Elias shot Jon a weak smile as he said, “Good to know.”

[pricklyest]

okay under a cut because it’s probably long but I’m out of the bath and here’s those tma themed asks

The Eye: If you were an avatar of any entity, which one would it be?

there are so many possible answers to this like wow but I’m caught between the eye because I am Thirsty for knowledge 1000% of the time if someone is talking about something with another person and I am near the conversation but not involved you can bet I’m trying to figure out what’s going on and if I know either of the people I will almost definitely ask what’s going on and be intrusive as hell because I have no self restraint; and the lonely because like I am a very alone person but in the words of my fav jamilah woods I’m not lonely, I’m alone and I feel like that is a very peter lukas vibe, yknow? he enjoys being alone? also I too am a sailor and I would like to mysteriously hang out on my ship in the ocean surrounded by fog with no other human being for miles.

The Spiral: Are you good at math?

listen, I spend all of my free time listening to calculus the musical and if you asked me to I would probably rewrite every song I have ever listened to to be about mathematics. in another universe I am probably a math major and in this universe I am deeply, deeply in love with every single second of martin gardner’s work. 

but also no I am not good at math because nobody is good at math, ask any math major and they will tell you we are all terrible at math. engineers (of which I am one) think they’re good at math but they are wrong. that’s how you know I’m meant to be a math major. I know that I’m bad at math. no one can ever be good at math. 

anyway in case anyone ever was wondering my favorite number is euler’s number and I almost named my animal crossing new horizons island eigen as in eigenvectors/values because I am a huge fucking nerd. 

The End: What would you do with your time if you never died?

literally study every single thing I ever could. like. why would the cullens repeat high school over and over again where you’re just relearning the same shit and not just like. major in every single thing a person could possibly major in. that’s just like. the thing to do. 

The Stranger: Are you normally a fan of horror?

not really, but it’s growing on me? I’m like really into psychological horror type stuff and obviously the line between scifi and fantasy and horror is not really a line and especially like things like black mirror that’s scifi gone Wrong is very specifically my jam? but like classic horror stuff has not historically been my thing but like I said. it’s growing on me. 

The Lonely: Name a few of your friends and your favorite things about them.

listen. I don’t have any friends. I mean I do, I am literally snapchatting w merle rn but like. I don’t know how to publicly say words about my friends. I don’t know my friends? I know the feelings that I have in relation to them? 

god, that sounds. enormously self centered and like. really rude. that is not in any way true. okay let’s try this again. 

[redacted]

okay I got waylaid for like 40min doing this writing about my friends and what’s actually going to happen is tomorrow I am going to go back to what I was writing and finish it because I actually do want to sit down and appreciate my friends? because that is a thing everyone should do and also I specifically v much need to because I am not good at feeling close to people so I intentionally downplay how important relationships are to me and that’s objectively Bad and we need to stop doing that. 

what I mean to say in the mean time is that I love my friends and here I will put some of their names so they know they are loved and they are in order of how long I’ve known them so no one feels bad about whatever other order they might be in: alex amy musa carter emma lexi quinn kara merle jasper 

wow I stopped to look at something on my phone and came across the phone number of someone I used to go sailing with who’s dead now and I cried a little bit so that’s something. 

The Desolation: Have you ever been in love?

yes. we’re not going to to talk about that. 

The Slaughter: What kind of music do you like?

what a vague and unanswerable question. idk get some idea of some of my music tastes but definitely not all of them via the post I made a little bit ago with songs that start with the letters in my url. 

The Vast: Can you swim?

yes, but not particularly well. I mean. I’m a sailor. I swim well enough. but like my mom’s side of the family is a lot of competitive swimmers and I’m definitely not one of them. 

The Buried: How do you do in large crowds?

I like the idea of crowds and anonymity and being alone while surrounded but I also get anxious and claustrophobic feeling and I am glad I have a service animal trained in blocking. 

The Dark: Dark colors or pastels?

dark colors bc I am goth

The Corruption: Do you kill bugs?

sometimes yes sometimes I put them outside. depends on the bug. spiders I leave alone unless they’re right by my bed. centipedes get killed on sight. 

The Web: Are you any good at lying?

I don’t think so but I also don’t lie v often and when I do it’s usually to my mother about school.

The Flesh: Are you flexible?

I am somewhat hypermobile but not particularly flexible. whatever that means. 

The Hunt: Would you be a monster hunter?

I have a high pain tolerance, which is a plus, but I am also v chronic pain and so like I would be able to hunt monsters one night but then spend the next three days in bed, so like. probably not. 

The Extinction: Would you survive the apocalypse?

oh god, no. I’m disabled.