#gerry is goth and the only things different about him is that he lives with his grandmother

[small-jar]

People are misscharactering gerry and it is making me upset >:(

People are like "he wouldn't be goth anymore bc he doesn't have the trauma" and I've seen a couple of different takes that people are like gerry wouldn't dress goth or he is actually a metalhead and like No? And people don't know what makes someone goth it seems bc you have to listen to the music as the baseline and boom you can know learn about the history, dress it, and you have to understand the political stuff too(since it came from punk) and normies think that you have to have trauma? To be goth and like that's just factual incorrect. So they are making this thing that tmp gerry is a normal man now and like he can still be goth like bro just dressed that way in tma and just bc he has a support system now doesn't mean he got his goth card taken away

[welcometogrouchland]

AU where it's possible to take Gerry out of the book so that he's alive?

1. Gerry survives by becoming an avatar of the end. It wouldn't be his first choice. He's still fairly aligned with the eye, in a way that his role is to be the Spectre who Observes and catalogues, unbeknownst to the living. He's not really thrilled about being an avatar, especially considering the only people who can See him is those with a connection to the eye, meaning his only human contact is the archives staff. But it doesn't hurt the same way the book did, and he figures he can still find some way to make himself useful. Not ideal, but when has his life ever been ideal?

2. Y'know the bit in the retrospectives where Jonny and Alex say Jon and Gerry would be a great buddy cop duo? Yeah that's Jon and Gerry in this au. Assuming Gerry makes The Choice to be an avatar soon after meeting Jon, they probably spend a lot of late season 3 together, bouncing ideas back and forth, Gerry not letting on everything he knows because he's just really not in the mood to be used shockingly enough, and Jon, despite and insatiable want for knowledge, respects this boundary as much as possible, trying to let Gerry know he doesn't see him as an encyclopedia. For a while it's nice! And then the unknowing happens and when jon wakes up again it's not so nice...

3. Speaking of which, in season 4 Gerry doesn't exactly go out of his way to talk to basira or Melanie at first- basira doesn't trust him (she doesn't trust anyone at that point), and she only talks to him when she needs something from him (a dynamic Gerry really doesn't appreciate considering his history with Julia and Trevor). Gerry and melanie actually got along before everything went down hill. They had similar taste in a lot of things and Melanie was excited to talk to a ghost that didn't want to hurt her, but after a while, Gerry's awkward attempts to reach out just frustrated Melanie. She kept lashing out and Gerry could tell she wanted to be alone. So he left her alone, left basira alone, and consigned himself to being alone too. He never really gets along with basira until the end of it all, and he at least makes up with Melanie before she blinds herself (she stops being able to see him after that)

4. But speaking of being lonely, oh boy the Gerry and Martin dynamic in this au. Look, everyone and their mum has gone on about these two, but I gotta reiterate how much potential there is for their dynamic. Late season 3 when Gerry becomes an addition to the archives martin is predicably jealous. Of course, right when he's starting to think Jon might like him (though martin doubts Jon returns his feelings it's nice to at least be friends), some hot goth has to swoop in and steal his thunder! It's all very funny and petty considering Gerry is really not paying attention to any romantic drama in the archives- including the drama supposedly involving him. Gerry just isn't that type of guy. The period in between seasons 3 and 4 (one of my favorite pieces of unexplored canon tbh) has a different Gerry and Martin dynamic. Lots of them silently sitting beside jon's hospital bed, awkward exchanges. At least one stilted conversation where they almost bond over their relationships with their mothers. Then in season 4 even after martin turns to the lonely Gerry keeps trying to reach out, much to Martin's annoyance considering he's not allowed to talk to people (there's lots of snarky "well I'm not technically a person anymore, am I?" Remarks from Gerry in response). By season 5 martin has basically warmed up to Gerry and considers him a good friend, as does Gerry. It's something neither of them have had in a long while.

5. In season 5 Gerry keeps watch over the archives in the eyepocalypse. He has a domain, the twisted corpse of pinhole books which I can imagine is similar to the "endless library that's always shrinking" idea that Alex mentioned in the Q and A. It's a bit of a metaphor for the way Gerry's life, social circle and opportunities narrowed the more knowledge he gained of the supernatural world, as those trapped in pinhole books learn more and more, gaining more incentives to keep them locked away in the library forever, even if they find the exit, until they waste away and die. You can imagine Gerry wouldn't want to be there very often. He spends a lot of time with wtgfs- Georgie can see him because of her connection to the end and relays all the things Gerry says to Melanie. It's not perfect but they're happy they can talk again. I like to think Gerry is one of the avatars who ends up somewhere else, but honestly? I think his last moments are spent in the newly restored earth, before fading away. He's finally rid of the entities. He can rest now.

[ofdreamsanddoodles]

i feel like some people don’t recognize how much isolation plays into the fate’s of gertrude’s assistants, especially her manipulation of gerry & leitner. like, the obvious ones is just if sarah or fiona had someone else to watch their back, they might not’ve have fallen victim to the avatars that killed/trapped them, but if michael felt like he could depend on literally anyone other than gertrude and emma, he probably wouldn’t of had the kind of single-minded loyalty that led him to stopping the spiral’s ritual. it’s only because he’d spent decades placing gertrude and emma’s interpretations of events above his own that she was able to convince him to move forward when the distortion’s ritual was actively breaking his mind. if he had anyone encourage him to trust his own thoughts, he would have tried pushing back, or arguing when gertrude asked him to destroy himself for her. but because the archives had convinced him so thoroughly that all he should do was whatever gertrude thought was right, that’s what he did.

anyways. with that out of the way. let’s talk about the 5D chess gertrude was playing with gerry and leitner and how she used gerry’s hatred of leitner & leitners fear of repercussions to stop them from asking questions

it’s not that much of a reach to assume that they both probably felt they owed gertrude. leitner for letting him hide out in her archives, and gerry for killing his mom. at the end of the day, even if they wanted to go against her, it’d feel like a slap in the face to the “hospitality” she was showing them. even if gertrude had known about gerry for years and had only killed mary now that she was lacking assistants, even if she reminded him of his mom, she was still someone who promised him freedom and gave him purpose when he didn’t have one. (note: this is not a good thing. but gerry had mainly been destroying leitner’s to stop his mom from getting them, which means he has less of a reason to continue now that she’s dead) also, we have no idea how long leitner’s been in those tunnels (please correct me if he mentions it at some point) which means he could have gone over a decade with no one but her to talk to. if gertrude’s behavior is a red flag, it’s unlikely either of them would have really noticed what for, because they just... aren’t around a lot of people. i’m sure they both knew that she was using them, because this is gertrude, but that didn’t mean they felt her behavior was bad enough to warrant leaving.

and if either of them knew the other was working with gertrude, that would change in an instant. if leitner thinks gerry hurt him because gerry was a random person with a vendetta against him, he’s more likely to stay in the tunnels because it’s a safe place literally no one knows about, meaning he’ll be there to help when gertrude tries to burn down the institute, and be a source of information for the next archivist if they fail. it means she can continue to press him for details about the different leitner’s he’s used in order for her (and gerry) to see if anyone’s found them and then use that to their advantage. and, because some random 30 y/o just started beating him up out of the blue, leitner’s not going to be thinking about gertrudes actions because he’ll be too busy worrying if that goth he met is going to come back and kill him. which means that if he finds out gerry was only in the archives because gertrude invited him, leitner’s not going to stay. gerry hates him, and he knows where he lives. that means both gertrude & the tunnels are unsafe, so he needs to find somewhere else to live

and gerry’s the same way! in his statement, he admits to jon he was too distracted thinking about revenge on leitner to really question gertrude, which meant she could convince gerry to strengthen his relationship to the eye without him realizing that all this is just insurance to ensure he’s strong enough to stop the unknowing for her. (or, you know, she could trap him in the skinbook once again providing a resource for the future archivist where elias wouldn’t be watching.) gerry says he noticed that gertrude had a “weird look in her eye” when she talked about the two of them going back to london together, but doesn’t say much about it other than “gertrude doesn’t tell jokes.” yes, she’s doing things that are suspicious, but he has cancer, and there’s other things on his mind. it’s easy for him to brush off any weirdness as something to deal with for later, but it’s unlikely he would have gone to america in the first place if he knew gertrude was working with jurgen fucking leitner.

but if leitner and gerry did realize they were both working for gertrude and actually like, talked about it, they’d learn gertrude wanted to use them for completely different reasons. gerry was told that gertrude had a plan for the dark. as far as we know, leitner was that plan. elias assumes that gertrude had a back-up in case the ritual did work, but even if she didn’t, it gives gerry one very important question: why the hell should he be spending so much time saving the world from a ritual that might not even work? sure, he might still have gone with gertrude if he knew she was suspicious about the rituals being doomed to fail, but i’m guessing that after a point of dealing with his increasingly poor health, he’s going to say “fuck it, this doesn’t matter, i’m going to go to a doctor.” the tragedy of tma is that there’s a hundred ways i could think of to save gerry, and every character mentioned, but none of that could happen in canon because they all require other people

in his statement, eric accuses gertrude of keeping him in the dark to make sure he doesn’t stop being useful, and that’s a fate he mostly avoids thanks to his proximity to mary. even though he dies, eric gets out of the archives because he has someone to validate his experience of how fucking weird everything is, which is probably one of the things that convinces him to quit. i could write so much about why eric choses to stay with mary, but the reality is, he doesn’t have another option. no one who comes to the archives has anyone they can count on, which is why they’re constantly forced to make the choice between the lesser of two evils--like his choice between gertrude or mary. eric wants to choose gerry, and it a better world, he would have, but spending so long immersed in archive-typical entity drama, his only option is to choose the one he thinks can offer him (and gerry!) the best protection.

from what we’ve seen of the interactions between them, gertrude’s brushed aside leitner’s concerns with using one of his books despite the fact it was giving him like, actually harming him, yells at gerry for forgetting something (which, you know, is a symptom of both brain cancer and abuse) immediately following that up with the abuser tactic of “i’m doing this because i care,” then mocks him for asking about passageways in the institute when she knows the tunnels exist. and despite all that, they still stay with her because she’s the closest thing they have to safety. no matter how intentional it was, gertrude spent her time as archivist constantly surrounding herself with people who had no choice but to depend on her, something that almost always led to their doom

[radiosandrecordings]

I’m thinking about the fundamental differences in how Jonmartin and Jongerry are often perceived/content of them is created and I think the difference is that they kind of serve two different purposes narratively? 

JM will always be more complex because it’s the canon route. Anything we say about it will be based off of what they interact like in canon, especially since content for them is often created without divergence from canon. Hypothetical endings or missing scenes between the recordings. And when it’s set within the world of the show - divergences included I just mean no fairytale or coffee shop aus - primarily their dynamic either seems to serve two purposes. 

(Rest under the cut because this got. long)

A) To talk about recovery. Safehouse - and good end post canon - fics exemplify this. It’s about holding each other through the night until the nightmares go away, if only briefly. It is about knowing you have been through hell and came out if not singing, then humming as you clean the dishes. You have suffered and now it is over and even if there is still lingering effects, you have moved on and get to live freely. There is a life after pain. 

B) Succumbing. It can be about not being able to escape from what we’ve done. I’ve never seen this done with Martin, because I think we can all agree him falling back to the Lonely after all of this is not pleasant for anyone to read, it’s a metaphor for depression the thought is just appalling. But with Jon... He’s done some bad things in canon. He’s hurt people. These fics say ‘you suffered under a machine of hurt’ but they also say ‘you were, intentionally or not, a part of it’. It likely means Jon dies. But, the fics don’t tend to paint him as a villain who must die for his sins, in my experience of reading it’s usually more... He can’t forgive himself? It’s just general angst fuel.

But then there’s Jongerry. And Jongerry is very different from Jonmartin, the canon endgame couple with 160 episodes of build up, in that Jon and Gerry only ever met once. When Gerry was dead. And their dynamic was so phenomenal that it launched a whole ship that I cannot stop thinking about. 

I think one of the main points in Jongerry’s difference is timeline. Jonmartin met on the day they entered the archives and from that day they were trapped in the narrative. They literally could not leave, as canon shows. But when we want to give Jon and Gerry a space within canon - the powers and the institute and 2000′s london - we can choose wherever we want. And pre-canon is often chosen. This is usually because people who write Jongerry also have a fondness for Jonmartin (It’s literally their show anyway, they’re unavoidable) and don’t want to have to deal with getting Martin out of the way if they’re in the Archives, because having him there would both complicate Jon’s feelings, and just make people who like JM feel sad that he was getting turned over in favour of this new cool dude we’ve written in. 

And so we put them in uni (or uni-age, Gerry doesn’t usually attend) together. And sometimes, even, they go back further than that. Knowing each other since they were teenagers. Because in one beautiful episode, 111 Family Business, their dynamic is that strong that people can look at them and go ‘Yeah, these are two people that Get each other. The way they talk, joke, convey concepts, they bounce off each other with such ease when Jon jars with literally everyone else. They have something that goes back a long time.’ 

And that set up - That placing them as being capital I Important to each other before canon starts - sets them up for the whole meaning behind a lot of Jongerry content. They are not on a trapped, set path yet. They both know about the entities, but are not bound to them. So Jongerry stories become stories about fighting back. They are two young people who have been informed at a young age that the world is cruel and unfair and evil in a way that most people don’t know about, but they do. And so they say no, and they say fuck that, and they say I am going to fix this because this is not how it should be and I am choosing to care about humanity. Both could so easily become like Mary, like Elias, use their knowledge to become Avatars but they’re both good people. And they have each other for support, someone to talk to and lean on and I think it’s extremely apt, that Gerry is this punk-ish goth with Jon oftening picking up bits of this from him. It’s about rebelling before you can become trapped in a system that would force you to hurt others and I love it so dearly. 

This is all obviously very biased as just being from the perspective of me and from the stuff I personally have read or seen and the way I’ve interpreted it but I just needed to get it out. And while I love JM with my whole heart, I think by the end of writing this, I might understand why I find myself drawn to JG... More? 

[bluejayblueskies]

AU in which, instead of agreeing to burn Gerry's page in exchange for information, Jon agrees to burn Gerry's page only if he actively helps them to stop the Unknowing first and returns from America with the ghost of a begrudgingly helpful goth

send me an au and i'll give you 5+ headcanons about it!

i am about to jongerrymartin so hard--

there are definitely plot-related things that happen here, like the rest of the team finding out about gerry, gerry actually helping with the unknowing, maybe things going differently, etc. etc., but assuming that everything goes roughly the same:

1. jon and gerry talk a lot. to start out, it's a lot of shop talk--about the entities, talking about what they know, how to stop the unknowing, etc. etc.--but as the days go by it gets more and more personal until they're just... talking. jon doesn't have a lot of other people to talk to, save maybe martin, and it's nice, he thinks, to have someone to talk to who doesn't seem to have any opinions one way or another about whether or not he uses his powers and what he's done in his past. they get along well, too, and jon decides that he really likes gerry. gerry decides that he really likes jon as well. they grow close over the short period of time, and by the time jon leaves for the unknowing, gerry realizes that he likes jon. a lot.

2. jon introduces gerry to everyone pretty much right away after getting back from america. gerry decides that he likes martin on first sight, and melanie's very fond of 'actually-a-ghost' gerry. it gets around to tim at some point, but he eventually meets gerry in person shortly before the unknowing. i think, in a less stressful time, tim and gerry would be friends. now, though, tim's sole thought is pretty much 'everyone attached to this archive dies in one way or another' and gerry's a reminder of that. basira would probably just take it in stride, and i don't think daisy would care one way or another.

3. jon leaves gerry behind with martin. gerry argues, saying that he'll be more use at the actual unknowing, but the certainty that they won't be coming back has gripped jon and he needs someone to be around to burn gerry's page like he promised he'd do and, well. martin will already be burning statements. martin's portion goes as planned, and then martin tentatively asks gerry if he wants his page burned, or if he wants to wait for jon to get back.

gerry, who has Definitely already said goodbye: ah, i. i haven't said goodbye yet! better wait i think.

martin, who had Not been looking forward to burning gerry's page: yeah, that- that sounds like a good idea haha

(jon never gets back)

4. jon wakes up in the hospital six months later and after georgie comes, basira gives him the statement and then, after a moment, gerry's page, then leaves, and jon is confused because didn't they burn this? he reads the statement then and waits to read gerry's page until he's back at the institute in his office. and then there gerry is, and gerry's like 'ah, back in the land of the living then. i told martin you would be, but i... i don't think he believed me'

jon, already Missing Martin™️: he... he never burned your page. do... do you want me to burn your page?

gerry, who is 87% sure that he's a little bit in love with jon by this point and is also pretty sure he's in love with martin as well: um. so here's the thing--

5. plot happens, gerry's page is not burned, and there are now three people sharing one bed at the safehouse 💛

gerry, amused: you could just dismiss me, you know. it's not like you can actually cuddle me, your arms just pass right through

jon, with his arm fully encased in the blue mist that is gerry's chest: no 💕

(and then there's no apocalypse because gerry goes to get martin when jon starts reading The Statement™️ because there's no canonical limit to how far a ghost can go from their page and they all have a happy ending 💛)

6. at some point jon and gerry shotgun. that is all.

[beholdme]

All the Many Shades of Gerry - Chapter 8

Chapters: 8/19

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay/Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Gertrude Robinson, Elias Bouchard

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Library AU, Librarian Jon, Artist Gerry, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Asexual Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist, Ace Subtype - Sex Positive, Polyamory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Falling In Love, Boys in Skirts, Kissing, Demisexual Gerard Keay, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Flirting, Minor Jonathan “Jon” Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Adventures in Hair Dying, Happy Ending, Banter, Gerry has a lot of sass, Gerard Keay is Morticia Adams, Jon is a very grumpy Librarian, Martin adores them anyway.

Summary: In which Gerry is a kaleidoscope and Jon and Martin can’t help falling in love with him.

He happens to love them back.

Find it on Ao3

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

“We shouldn’t go in,” Jon tells his giggling partners very firmly, but they pay him no mind, and he gets dragged by the hand into the storefront.

The girl working the front desk looks up with a vaguely alarmed look on her face, probably because Gerry and Martin look drunk, despite it being 11 A.M. on a Sunday. They are not, although Jon can understand why someone would think that, as they march right up to the desk, faces flushed, still laughing boisterously.

“Is Melanie in? She’s a good mate of mine.” Gerry tells the receptionist.

“Yes, I’ll check with her if she has a second for you.” And she scuttles off to the back.

“It’s Gerry!” He calls off behind her, before turning to grin at Jon. “Don’t hover in the doorway, babe, Melanie doesn’t bite.”

“Melanie is in fact, perfectly capable of biting,” Jon mutters petulantly, as he moves further into the room to eye the art on the walls. “Especially when you used to date her girlfriend.”

“Oh look, my favorite emo goth boy!” Melanie yells, exploding out the back of the store, all 5 feet of her filled with frenzied energy. Her face immediately sours when she catches sight of Jon, hiding behind Martin. “And my least favourite douche bag.”

“Now, now firecracker, be nice to my boyfriend.” Gerry pulls her into a hug, which leads to a headlock and a swift jab to his ribs.

“I’m very happy to be nice to Martin,” She responds sweetly, blowing him a kiss. “What brings you lot over to darken my doorstep?”

“Piercings,” Gerry tells her with an unnatural amount of glee.

“Jon agreed to let me pierce him?” Melanie asks, perking right up at the idea of causing Jon pain.

“No!” Jon exclaims.

At the same time, Gerry says, “Nah, he’s not interested, but Martin and I were wanting something each.”

“Martin?” Melanie asks dubiously, eyeing up sweet-looking, pink-haired, cardigan-clad Martin.

“Yes,” Martin confirms with false solemnity. “Boyfriends who bleed together stay together.”

“You know,” Melanie remarks, grinning at them, “I have heard about that Pagan ritual.”

Jon has slunk over to a wall of healed artwork and concept designs, managing to avoid Melanie's barbs. As far as he is concerned, the art isn’t as interesting as Gerry’s work. Although, he supposes that what you can make beautiful on a canvas is very different from what you can make beautiful on someone's skin.

“I’ve got a bit of an opening now, what do you want to get?” She asks Gerry.

“Well, you know I’ve been wanting to have my nipples done.” He offers, teal eyes looking slightly wild.

“Yeah?” She grins in triumph, “I’ve been waiting for this day.”

“Yup and Martin has been considering something for his ears.”

“Hmmm,” She wanders over to Martin to examine him. “Open for suggestions?”

“Maybe.”

“They’re a good shape. Double helix?” She looks to Gerry for affirmation.

“Definitely.” He smirks, eyes lighting up with satisfaction.

"Two?" Martin looks slightly dubious.

"If you do them together, the pain is only a tiny bit more, and the healing time is two-for-one," Melanie reassures him, and Jon thinks it's the nicest she's ever sounded. "It's up to you though, of course."

Jon steals himself to brave the fray, going over to take Martin's hand. It's slightly clammy with the nerves that Gerry's enthusiasm has prevented up until this point.

"It won't be so bad, love." He presses a kiss to Martin's cheek, offering his support. "Just a small jab, then it's done."

"Let's do it."

***

There's a brief fuss with consent forms, aftercare instructions, and payment.

"I don't know what you lot," Melanie instructs Gerry firmly, gesturing between them, "get up to in the bedroom, but no twisting, no pulling, no biting, no sucking your nipples for 12 weeks."

Jon blushes, but Gerry and Martin aren't bothered. "Yeah, firecracker, I know the drill. This isn't my first circus."

"Kinky little shit," Jon mutters under his breath, but the goth only winks at him.

Martin's care instructions are less suggestive, and Gerry and Jon both promise to help him with it.

“Martin should go first,” Melanie pronounces, patting the piercing chair as she disinfects her hands and gloves up.

“Me?” Martin asks.

“Yup, yours will be a lot simpler, and I don’t want to traumatise you by making you watch nipple piercings before your turn.”

Martin climbs on the chair, looking a little pale, but resolute. Jon stands on the side not occupied by Melanie, gripping his hand reassuringly. Gerry stands slightly behind the chair, hand on Martin's shoulder.

The ear piercings are almost comically quick and easy. Two quick pinches, less painful than bee stings, and then Martin's ear is pierced and adorned with small hoops.

He sighs with relief and oh's with delight when Gerry hands him a mirror to check them out.

"I love it!" He exclaims, beaming at Jon and Gerry. They smile back at him, each taking a turn to kiss him on the cheek or forehead, their own relief palpable.

"It's just you and me now," Melanie grins at Gerry and gestures for him to strip.

He shucks off his trench coat and black t-shirt, and stands in front of her, completely at ease.

Jon takes a moment to wonder if he has managed to get himself into a relationship with a masochist. Not because of the piercings, but because Gerry seems to genuinely enjoy being friends with Melanie.

The nipple piercings seem to be a much more complicated process, with markings and adjustments, but several rounds of cleaning and disinfecting later, Melanie runs a metal piercing bar through first one nipple and then the other. Gerry hisses with discomfort but stands carefully steady.

She steps back to make sure they look straight and even, before declaring it a success.

"Nice," Gerry says succinctly, looking in the large upright mirror, nodding his head enthusiastically. He and Melanie high five, and she condescends to grip him in a firm hug from the side.

"You sure I can't tempt you, Jon?" Melanie asks him sweetly as she starts to clean up her station, Gerry putting his clothes back on close by.

Knowing she just wants to cause him pain, Jon tells her firmly, "No, thank you."

He is over by the wall again, looking at different art this time, including a picture of a tattoo that catches his focus. It's a playing card amid a complex arm sleeve, an Ace of diamonds, and despite a lifelong disinterest in tattoos, it speaks to him.

"I think you'd look better with a spade, love.” Gerry manages to startle Jon slightly, appearing beside him and wrapping an arm around his waist. Jon marvels at his apparent ability to read his mind.

“You think so?” Jon queries, softly. Gerry hums his affirmation. “It's a bit much though, don't you think?”

"You don't need the whole card, for what you want. Just the A and the spade. Small and bold." He picks up Jon's hand, indicating the spot below his thumb on his wrist.

Gently releasing it, Gerry grabs a pen and scrap of paper and rapidly draws out a solid, simple design.

Jon glances over at Melanie, extremely dubious. "Maybe we can go somewhere else to get it?" He whispers.

Gerry laughs warmly, tapping the small piece of paper. "I could do it for you myself."

Jon blinks at him, rather owlishly. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I can give you the tattoo. I'm probably a bit rusty, but I did survive a full tattoo apprenticeship. I’ve done about a million over the years, although I had to give up my machine when I moved to London."

"You did a tattoo apprenticeship?" Martin asks from nearby, tone skeptical.

"Yup, when I was living in Edinburgh. All three years." Gerry tells them casually. "That's where I met Melanie, actually."

Jon and Martin exchange a baffled look, but choose to simply file it under 'Things Gerry tells us out of order.'

“Well, if you can do it...” Jon sounds a bit floaty but he is staring at the design yearningly, which Gerry knows is a good sign.

"Firecracker," Gerry yells over to Melanie, "Can I borrow your machine?"

***

Melanie makes the stencil while Gerry reacquaints himself with the tattoo gun, setting everything up and getting used to the weight of it in his hand again. The rhythm is always the same with tattooing and he feels himself fall into the past a bit.

When everything is ready, he gestures Jon over to sit in the chair, smiling beatifically.

Jon is shaking a little as he slides up onto it, and Gerry presses a reassuring kiss to his hand before he starts the prep.

"You ready?"

Jon gulps. "Yes."

Martin comes over to take Jon's other hand and Melanie hovers nearby, wanting to watch Gerry like a hawk the entire time he's handling her machine. ("It's the true love of her life," Gerry had confessed to Martin earlier. "Don't tell Georgie.")

Gerry follows the same procedure with any tattoo: cleanse, shave, cleanse again. Numbing cream, in this case, to prevent nerve twitches, then alcohol rub down. Eventually, he applies the stencil carefully, making sure to get it straight and in the correct place.

He checks with Jon, making sure that it is where he wants it. Jon confirms, smiling to see the design on his skin for the very first time.

As the buzz of the machine fills the space, Jon and Gerry make eye contact for a moment. Jon's earthy green eyes are wide, and Gerry can almost see where his pulse pounds through his jaguar vein. He stills a moment, really checking Jon's energy.

He's nervous, it's obvious to see, but Gerry can also see the real desire in him, and with a wink, turns to look down at his new canvas. He sets to work, the buzzing of the needle filling the air.

***

"I love it," Jon whispers to Gerry later, lying in the circle of his arms, Martin's warm weight at his back.

"I love it too." Gerry kisses his forehead sweetly, almost asleep. "Martin, what do you think of your ear?"

"I think boyfriends who commit to pain together stay together," Martin mutters drowsily, repeating his sentiment from earlier.

"Ah, yes," Jon mutters, "The great cosmic bond of suffering."

They laugh easily, the hot excitement of the day echoing within them, yet another thread in the colourful tapestry of their relationship.

[gerrydelano]

what kind of pet do you think gerry would have wanted? i always picture him with like. a little bearded dragon chilling in a hoodie

oh that is SO precious please i love that. reptiles are really up his alley!

i’m personally VERY attached to gerry with snakes! he might have always really wanted something like that but not been at all confident in his ability to take care of one considering their 20+ year lifespan, and considering his living situation. it’s a massive commitment! neither constant travel nor mary keay do a pet friendly environment make. he wouldn’t have the stability to offer another living creature, to keep it properly safe when it needs him. when it’s in the vulnerable state of transition between skins.

so my proposal to you is this: 

gerry lives au, he has a mystic potion ball python and it is his pride and joy. he brings it to delano family gatherings and wears it around his neck and entertains all the little kids by very dramatically pretending that its strangling him or something only to Miraculously Wrestle His Way Free and cuddle it into submission. this is one of MANY reasons why he is the favorite weird cousin. he jokes to all the adults that they just like the snake more than him, but really, it’s how he handles it.

to name her, he accessed this article a total of 14 times:

he settles on absinthe (and spells it absynthe because he makes the rules) but he’s so fixated on “mush” being on this list that he just has to go out and get another snake. where does he get the money for a highway morph? oh, you know. don’t worry about it. the important thing is that that is one mushy boy.

he’d be such a good snake dad too he DOTES on them their habitat is SUBLIME they are WELL TENDED and HAPPY. any social media he actually has just constantly features so many snake pictures (probably literally runs a snake account somewhere). in 90% of the selfies he takes there is just a whole snake wrapped around his arm like it’s not even actually there, he doesn’t even notice anymore. favorite accessory: snake. how much more goth can you get like seriously. he is winning at his brand.

not to mention that it just feels really good to take proper care of something that relies on you. interacts with you, clings onto you with its entire body, loves you in whatever way it knows how to show in the absence of conversation. i really pity the fool who thinks something with scales can’t be as affectionate or rewarding to have around as something fluffy. the strangeness in it is something gerry really identifies with, i think. the associations people have with snakes, versus the truth that comes with actually getting up close and personal. knowing them.

it’s just… really good to have something tangible and alive nearby that demonstrates the difference between shedding your own skin as an act of growth, an act of freeing yourself from parasites and harm and haunting, and having it torn right off of your back by someone else. good to see evidence of the capacity for becoming new over and over without losing foundations steeped in love, and trust, and comfort both in and out of not a cage, but a home.

old skin is left in the corner of the habitat every now and then, but absynthe still clings onto him with her whole body when he reaches for her. still just coexists with him while he lives his life, while he paints. they’re pretty peaceful pets to keep, overall. i think that’s something he’d really appreciate.

long story short: pets mean things! you spend that long raising an animal you’re gonna start personifying the hell out of them, too. gerry loves his snakes.

now if you’ll excuse me i’m going to write this into every gerry fic i have!

[mymomanddadaregonnabesomadatme]

"Hey Khyle, why are you obsessed with a rarepair with a dead guy in it?"

Or, JonGerry manifesto time

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS: Gerry vs Jon's misandry

Let's talk about how Jon hates men! Jon hates men. Listen to how he conducts himself around Martin, Tim and Elias in season one versus how he gets along with Sasha and the tone is so hilariously different. He has NO patience for the men around him and even though he's still pretty crusty to the women who come in to make statements (Naomi Herne & Melanie in s1) the way he handles talking to Sasha as a colleague is wildly different from how he talks to the men he works with. The same with when he meets Basira! His social comfort around women feels distinctly different from the way he feels about, navigates around and talks to men. So it's very, VERY fun to contrast this not only with how well he and Gerry get along (even after a pretty terse greeting from Gerry!!), but also to how excited he gets talking and thinking about Gerry when he reads about him in statements and goes to America hoping he's still alive. I think being an exciting Idea of a person makes it slightly easier for Jon to digest him before meeting him, and I also think it's the reason that...

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS: Gerry is Jon's celebrity crush

If you need convincing, look no further than the fondness with which Jon says "that would be our Gerard" to Jurgen Leitner and your heart will open to this reality...Jon read about a cool goth in some statements and idealized him so hard he started crushing on him. Is Jon out to himself? No idea! Will that stop him from doing the very Jon thing of having very transparent feelings about something? Nope!

I've mentioned it in other posts but I do think it's significant how excited Jon is when he hopes Gerry is alive in America so he can meet him. There are a lot of little notes and quips Jon makes about Gerry throughout the series thay really solidify the idea that he's excited about him. I think Jon gets excited to pull information together and recognize figures from other statements -- he is the Archivist after all -- but I think some of the fondness Jon applies when talking about Gerry is significant and distinct from how he talks about other figures from statements. Plus, Jon has a reason to empathize with and relate to Gerry, given the fact that Leitners were one of the few things he allowed for the existence of even in season one, and Gerry is clearly so upset by their existence that he's gone around destroying them and beating up Jurgen Leitner himself. Probably hard for Jon not to idealize someone doing the work that he was so desperate for Elias to let him engage in during season one, huh? I think we all idealize and build parasocial relationships based on a feeling of relating to the people who are somewhat out of our reach...a cool goth who destroys evil books and punched the man whose library ruined your life? Might be a little hard not to get excited about the idea of him...🤔

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS: Gerry in the (quasi-) flesh vs. Gerry on the page

So, maybe you're convinced there were some celebrity crush feelings, maybe you aren't, but there's definitely some idealization at play with how Jon views Gerard Keay, Book-Hunting Goth Of Legend. Now let's talk about how that idea contrasts with Gerry, the regular (ish) dude that comes out of a book in America!!!

I think something very fun to note is how much they joke around with each other, basically right off the bat. It's pretty clear to me how much fun they have in each other's company, especially considering Gerry cites literally being in pain while he's existing as a page in the book. Both the crusty intro and Jon's reluctance to take and burn the page could have soured the entire interaction, but they both enjoy each other's company pretty transparently for the whole exchange. Gerry is straight with Jon in a way no one has been through basically his entire time learning about his position as the Archivist, and despite the fact that Jon summons Gerry for a purpose, it's hard not to view the exchange as largely social because of the tone. The fact that Gerry has ONE conversation with him and thinks of him as a friend is I think pretty telling as far as how Gerry views Jon's intentions and trustworthiness. He has a backlog of experience with Gertrude and insight into the ruthlessness of an Archivist, one that we never see calling him Gerry, and he still meets Jon for 20 minutes and goes yeah. I could befriend this dude. I also think this reinforces how Jon feels about Gerry: he's pretty forthcoming with information, even if he fucks around with him a bit, and there's some trust and transparency there that I think reinforces Jon's rare positive view of a dude in his life.

Like, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jongerry lives in the passage through the Jon Misandry Zone. He can only like a cool fictional goth that he has a reasonable amount of distance from but he's so excited when he meets him irl it forces him to actually learn about him as a person. Idealizing Gerry gives him the motivation to actually learn about another man and untangle how he feels about them!!!

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS: One of these dudes is literally dead

Honestly I'm only Marginally stopped from my rarepair dedication by this fact, but if it's an issue, let's consider:

It's literally a horror tragedy podcast so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say literally any happy romantic ending for characters is inherently an AU anyway, even if the ones folks are invested in somehow all end up living to the end lol. I guess folks can pray for postgame potential but I've already succumbed to how inherently doomed a lot of these characters seem so...the world is gonna be my rarepair oyster I guess!!!

Also, it's a podcast with some level of worldbuilding around reincarnation. Gerry got brought back once, could he be again? Imo we're only limited by our imaginations on that one. Lots of potential to play around with the form him being brough back and sustained could be...and, honestly, same with any rarepairs where one or both parties are dead imo! I'm here to push my jongerry agenda AND support the kneading of canon into something your faves could be brought back to life in. Death should stop no one from wanting Jon to kiss a hot goth dude!!!

LAST ORDER OF BUSINESS: Compatibility??? CHEMISTRY???

Alright I mean...I can't force anyone to find their back and forths cute and flirty like I do but I CAN say why I think this couple has so much fun potential:

Gerry is already used to being around An Archivist and seems to already think Jon is more friendworthy based on the Gerry request. He would probably be a lot more comfortable navigating around him than some of Jon's other colleagues, occasional snacktime or not. I think being in a book owned by two hunters probably gives him enough context for "monsters, but trying to be good in their own way" for him to be pretty levelheaded about Jon. A human connection that's based on enjoyment of each other's company with someone smart enough to not sign a contract might just be good for our spooky little Archivist...Also...

JON IS A STUFFY DWEEB AND GERRY IS A COOL GOTH THAT'S KILLED A GUY!!! Is this NOT the greatest couple concept this podcast could have offered us? The contrast...the meeting of worlds...Jon idealizing Gerry because he's a cool sexy goth and Gerry getting excited because he's got a sexy scary monster boyfriend...it's all there!!! Rife with entertaining potential!!!

Anyway these are my pro-jongerry arguments I hope you all enjoyed my rarepair shipping manifesto. Don't forget to like comment and subcribe and let me just say...once more for the road...

JonGerry Rights

[sinnhelmingrmoved]

tma au rundown. warning. long with too many bullet points.

basics:

her name is leah lindqvist. no, this is not her birth name, not even a name in any official records, but it’s what she goes by and what the majority of characters will know her as. the only exceptions to this are those who knew her in her human life and those who have stumbled upon her in statements -- more on that later.

appears to be in her late 20s-early 30s, with an old world aristocracy look under her gothic leanings. has a propensity for elegant/historical looks in her day to day life, being rather more put together than the setting’s primary goth. notable for her bloodless complexion and bright green eyes. tall and thin.

has lived in london for the last three years, looking for an in to the institute to further her own research. changes living arrangements at around season 3 to better stalk keep an eye on our main protagonist.

originally scandinavian, specifically danish, though her accent seems strangely lax for someone who claims to have only left her motherland a few years before.

is an avatar, though her exact ‘patron’ is a question she’s been trying to answer for a long, long time. the circumstances of what she deems her ‘becoming’ seemed to involve at least 4 separate entities, only one of which could have won her.

backstory:

was born the youngest of three children in a happy copenhagen home, her father from good stock and her mother a force to be reckoned with in the community. at some point, the house of cards crumbled for the couple, and their children were shuffled off to what relatives would take them. leah, or whoever she was before, went to her father’s brother specifically.

said uncle was a proper gentleman, a pillar of the community, worldly and wealthy. he had a particular fondness for the macabre, and venerated a man known as jonah magnus and his various associates. this man about town had such dreams for his latest acquisition, for this bright and tender child who wanted the whole of the world in her hands.

leah was raised alongside but differently from odin’s four sons, groomed for something beyond her understanding. she was expected to read and recite, to observe others, and to mind her ps and qs more than her cousins ever would. as she grew towards adolescence, odin took to traveling the world with his ward, haunting locations of past or ongoing fear activity. leah was meant to observe, and to be seen.

that was a perilous thing, and got her on the wrong side of various avatars and monsters more often than she cares to remember. she has had confirmed run-ins with the spiral, the stranger, the desolation, and the dark through these ‘misadventures,’ and has had at least one brush with the lukas family in her youth that leaves open the possibility of later lonely interference.

it should be noted, however, that leah’s moments of what her uncle would dub martyrdom -- that is, to be made to witness the influence of fears on the world -- were almost invariably fatal for the subject of observation. while odin perceived her as witnessing the world and following the path of the eye, leah herself was chasing death.

the dawning realization that her life was to be given solely in service to this all-seeing eye led to brief fits of rebellion or anxiety that her uncle worked to curtail. her panic at the situation came to a head at some point in her twenties when, according to all involved, leah attacked odin’s favored son. immediately afterwards, leah was ousted from the family, abandoned to a distant property. the outside world, however, would receive the fiction that she had gone missing and would never be recovered.

left to a rarely-traveled island on the norwegian sea, stripped of the protections her uncle offered under the sheltering eye, those entities who marked her soon came begging their pound of flesh. locking herself into a small cabin on the property, she endured bouts of darkness and mist rolling over the outside world, a constant knocking or clawing at the cabin door, and an apparent loss of self. after some perceived months of this isolation, some hallucination or dream came to her in which she perceived her patron reaching out and taking all of the fear away.

once awakened, she was discovered by a passing ship and returned to the mainland, walking and hitchhiking her way back to the main family estate. she found her uncle badly aged in the months of her absence, striking when he was alone and demanding answers from him : what was her intended purpose? what did the eye have to do with this? what had she become? why did he choose her? at some point, her interrogation became too much for the old man, and he passed before she received the answers she sought. after disposing of his body, odin became another missing person’s case in the family, and leah made her way across europe for the next few years seeking the answers she had not received from the source.

has had a past attempt to breach the institute and lasted a good few days hidden among the archives. was eventually found out, however, and was made to escape. all the way to the mainland, in fact, due to whatever she uncovered about the place rattling her deeply enough to keep away from england for some years.

eventually, with all other avenues of knowledge running dry, leah was forced to return and consider that the answers she sought lie in the institute itself. to that end, she had taken up residence in a london apartment complex and tried to get in several times.

recent events: 

has been an accomplice in several fear-motivated disappearances of young men in the london area. it’s an open secret among those who know her status as avatar that she makes offerings for her ‘partner’ out of human sacrifices.

tried to infiltrate the institute and got far enough to nearly get eaten by worms in season one, saved only by the timely intervention of her partner. none of the actual archival staff are aware of said event until she actively brings it up.

has developed a growing fascination with the latest archivist, including reaching out to him in season 3 once he’s on the run.

eventually offers him her statement in exchange for a chance to delve the archives resources for the explanations she’s been without. becomes an occasional feature from there on until she once again flees into the night after a brush with its master.

spoilers:

has been completely divorced from the concept of time as it flows for others. many of the discrepancies about her story as she tells it can be explained through this: her months abandoned on the island actually took place over a number of years, her time spent combing through the european continent took more than a decade, and she can no longer remember her birth year because it does not align to her perceptions of self. even those she knew in humanity, such as gerry or peter, register as oddities for having aged in accordance with real time rather than her own.

her patron is the end, who had indelibly marked her at some point in her youth and seems to have intervened and claimed her once she was in serious danger. her exact role as an avatar of this fear is muddled by her decades of self-serving pursuit of knowledge rather than living up to whatever she was meant to do.

odin really stumbled into getting an intended avatar of the eye marked by different fears. it was not his intention, but rather a result of caretaker negligence in trying to make a witness of the girl. he never expected that it would have meant something in the grand scheme of things.

despite appearing all of 32 at most, leah was already in her twenties by the 90s. she’s actually in her 50s though her general issues with time mean she has not realized this fact and her status as an avatar has left her pretty ageless.

relationships:

alliance/partnership/friendship with sittimoranimiinterfectorem‘s michael. michael was the first of her kind leah met, and one she looked up to as a potential font of answers. instead, michael has been toying with her for years, as a liar ought to. outsiders can infer a variety of potential takes on the relationship, as outlined here.

alliance/mentorship/unrequited feelings with sittimoranimiinterfectorem’s jon. leah’s initial trepidation in approaching the new archivist soon turned to a soft spot for this man the world was going to eat alive. she realizes he is walking down the same path her uncle forced her down, and has taken on a slightly protective and wise elder role over him. that said, she has also has a fancy for him, attracted to his dark eyes and devotion to his humanity.

former companion/occasional ally of bookburnt‘s gerry. the two crossed paths every once in a blue moon during the years, given odin and mary were associated with one another in their travels and overlapping ideals. leah tried to take on a supportive role for the teen, sometimes sending gifts, while gerry in turn tended to cut loose with someone who got it. in adulthood, the two sometimes ran into one another in the weird world in which they inhabited, though leah had no idea this man was the same boy she had tried to bond with years before.

potential acolyte/student of medisinals‘s blackwell. we’re still plotting it out but the two have each other’s acquaintance as avatars of the end.

relevant statements:

statement of frida hoarr, concerning the disappearance and life of her husband odin. first mention of the hoarr family and leah’s original identity. (2001)

statement of olaf agner, concerning his time working for the hoarr family in north zealand. a less rose colored view of odin’s ‘visionary’ work and his 'creepy’ niece. (1987)

miscellany statements referencing a one eyed man and dark-haired girl/young woman at or around the scene of various incidents involving the fears across europe. sometimes references the girl in question reaching out to those that are marked. (80s-90s)

statement of torsten hoarr, concerning the personal records of his father and the disappearance of his cousin. (2007)

reference to leah’s invasion of the institute archives in an incidental discussion with michael shelley about his having been deceived into allowing a certain young woman into the archives (2009)

miscellany statements establishing odin as a sort of chessmaster invariably working with the eye before, during, and after leah’s part in his life. (60s-2001)

statement of james berger on the subject of his friend ethan hamilton going missing. first clear picture of leah and michael working in tandem. (2014)

statement of leah lindqvist concerning her personal history and... ‘becoming.’ statement recorded direct from subject. (2017)

[bookburnt]

        i don’t think it’s a reach to say that gerry is... pretty emotionally intelligent, though obviously not perfect. 

        the way he talks about his own experiences and relationships in 111 really sounds like someone who’s done a lot of work unpacking what he’s been through, and the way he interacts with... almost everyone we see him interact with as an adult... shows that he’s someone who takes that experience and makes it a lens for kindness.

        at the same time, he’s not exactly living his own galaxy brain life.  even though he seems very aware of the bad relationship pattern he was in with Mary and then Gertrude, he never actually managed to break that pattern - though of course this was complicated by the fact that his partnership with Gertrude was sustained by his own desire to protect the world.

        and of course, being emotionally intelligent and emotionally communicative are two different things.  Gerry was never exactly the all-on-the-table sort, but he wasn’t keeping everything bottled in, either.  most of what we see of him in the series is through the eyes of strangers, and obviously he’s not spilling his guts to them.  it’s not uncommon for the people telling us about him to not even know his name - just a weird goth who came into their life at a weird time, did something incomprehensible that may or may not have saved their life, and then walked out again.  of course he’s not going to be super open during these kinds of interactions; there’s just no time for that.

          when we see him interact with people more closely, though, he’s not unwilling to shed his veils of mystery.  talking with jon in 111, he shares an abbreviation of his life story that actually more-or-less hits a fairly healthy line between being honest and not burdening others with all the gory details of his own trauma.  which, again, being able to walk that line and open up without just dumping everything onto someone who isn’t prepared to hear it?  that takes emotional intelligence, that takes work, and that takes consideration for others as well as for oneself.

        that being said, i do think it’s possible he might have been a little more open in death than he was in life, so for another example, let’s look at the way he brings his own anxiety up years before, in 162.  no, he’s not super overt about it - what we see is someone who’s working hard at reading the room, seeking reassurance but only ever approaching it sideways. 

        now, i’m not gonna act like this is necessarily healthy behavior.  i think a lot of his reluctance to explicitly address the anxiety / his eagerness to downplay it and laugh it off comes from a) growing up in a household where showing fear was a sign of weakness, and b) knowing Gertrude wouldn’t have the patience or the inclination to deal with him if he started talking about his emotions in an emotional way.  it’s pretty common for people who grew up in abusive situations to be hypersensitive to the emotional states of others in conversation, and overly indirect/inactive in addressing their own needs.  both of which are in line with how Gerry acts in this scene.

        still, he does actually bring it up, which can’t have been an insignificant effort on his part.  and even if his sideways communication style here is the product of unhealthy situations, in this context it works - it enables him and Gertrude to communicate in their own way about an extremely important topic.  (turns out survival mechanisms are helpful when you’re still in a survival situation, i guess.)

        i dunno.  basically what i’m saying, i guess, is that while Gerry might not have been the best at looking out for himself and might have tended to play things pretty close to his chest, he was NOT some emotionally constipated, emotionally illiterate painslab.  he was really, genuinely trying.  and considering where he was starting from?  he accomplished a lot of really hard work.

[collectoroflovelythings]

TMA Season 3 Live-blog Part 2

Disclaimer: I kinda feel like I’ve been putting this show over my mental health so this is likely as far as I’m listening. I really like it, it’s just I’m kind of pushing myself further than I should trying to listen to it and ignoring my generally distressing response to it at times. So yeah. I’m glad I gave it a shot. It’s as good as you all say it is and there were a lot of moments that were really fun. I’m proud that I made it this far as I thought I couldn’t handle any horror. I just feel like it’s irresponsible for me to continue and risk my health like that. I do want to post the live blog for those of you that liked them.

I got into TMA right around the same time I got obsessed with Tessa Violet’s Games and while I know it’s going on nobody’s character playlist I fundamentally feel like it’s a TMA, specifically a Jon, song (and The Outsiders by Marina and the Diamonds and Simon Says by Allie X kinda are too)

Also it has nothing to do with TMA but I’ve also become hooked on the song “Cult of Dionysus” and maybe if you stretch it’s a TMA villain song. Maybe. I’m very bad at fan playlists

Me listening to Michael’s story like yes I get this

How does Jon’s power work? Like he can force people to say things but how true are they, like is everything they’re saying as true as the person believes it to be or does his power overturn the person’s subjective viewpoint and makes them explain things as they actually happen regardless if that’s how the person sees it

Helen!

I hate Elias but there’s something kind of funny in him acting like an angry father “Look, I’m sorry I’m not an omnipotent god yet, but you shouldn’t have snuck out of your room and done your mind control homework”

Except it’s also terrifying because Elias is the last person I want to become dependent on

There’s something terrifying in a miserable sort of way about being dependent on a person who is clearly despicable and manipulating you yet is also your only source of knowledge

Did Jon just walk up to a random stranger and started asking personal questions about their life?

It is occurring to me that mind control isn’t good for the mental for someone with horrible communication skills and emotional intelligence

I love how everyone pretty has pretty much settled into their lives of being archivists “oh did we never get around to explaining to you the end of the world ritual?”

Every single one of them has a different response to being trapped (Melanie: revolting, Tim: anger , Basira: acceptance, Martin: forced optimism, Jon: plotting) and every single one of them is heartbreaking.

I hate listening to this knowing Tim dies

With a tonal change I feel like TMA could be a sitcom about the wacky hijinks where characters are constantly shouting “Jon!” followed by a laugh track

“Jon, did you get kidnapped again” cut to Jon making an oh shit face while the end card reads “That’s our Jonny”

The way Lukas talks to Peter makes me sick

I don’t know why I’m so shocked when I find the evil men in this podcast sound like normal people and not like cackling Disney villains

Yay, Gerry! I’ve been waiting to meet him

Gerry is a goth child who never stopped rebelling and I would die for him and kill for him

I don’t think I get the impression the TMA crew hates true crime fans but I do get the impression they like making fun of them

Tim breaks my heart. Shit. Shit. Shit. I told myself not get attached to him. I hate knowing this won’t end well. I hate it.

Jon’s growing as a character. He’s actually talking to people about his problems and check up on them

You see the entities are great because I have currently spent the past ten minutes putting more effort trying to memorize them than I have on an assignment I’ve gotten in the past week. I have no feasible idea of how statistics work but if you woke me up at midnight I could names all of the entities.

(Ep 117): Look at Jon’s sweet character growth

Whump, whump, whump

*knows I adopted Martin for a reason and that he’s beautiful and strong and brave, and a complete badass*

(Ep 119): This episode really started unsettling me so I had to take a break.

Ugh, I hate Lukas’s manipulative face

Final Thoughts: The show’s starting to get scarier, or at least something like that. Before it wasn’t really all that frightening because the stories were all about one off characters told in the past tense where I at least knew they survived the initial incident, now it’s happening to characters I care about in a world I’m understanding to be miserable and merciless.