#getting back on my jmart discourse again

[mamahersh]

Right... right. MAG 192-194 thoughts. fuck.

Ok, so MAG 192-193 kinda felt like one bigger episode together, so I’m gonna lump them together. Starting off: 193 was really cool with how they set up the sound and the reveal in 194 about the difference in power levels between Jon and Elias in the ascendant Panopticon. Like, we are told in the Jonah room that nothing can really interrupt Jonah’s connection with the Eye as he is the focal point of the apocalypse all the terror is siphoned through and into the Eye. However, less than 5 minutes later we have Jon “taking a Statement” about Elias where Jonah is forced to participate in the Statement instead of Watching the apocalypse. So that was really cool, and actually even more cool for this being the first “collaborative” Statement we’ve ever had? Like, I think this is the first (and probably only) time in TMA that more than one person has participated in a Statement.

Also, I guess, to address Rosie: about all I can say is oof. No one deserves what happens to them in TMA, but Rosie definitely ended up pulling a “Jon” in that she was too close to Beholding and fed it it she could no longer escape even if she wanted. Not quite as literally as Jon, but she’s practically a Revenant or a Vampire’s slave at this point. She has thoughts of her own, but she exists only to serve the Pupil of the Eye at this point. Or just “Elias”? I don’t know if we ever get an answer about what happens to her during the events of MAG 200 from what little I’ve heard about the episode, but I’m definitely curious to find out. (And isn’t that the problem? Wanting to Know but never interfere, no matter how terrible it ends up being. And 100% that’s how Jon was Jonah’s perfect Archivist, because Jonah’s Archivist for Marking needed to fight the Watcher’s implicit tendency to Watch but never interfere just enough to get himself into situations where the other Powers had access to him, but not enough to try to escape the supernatural in any serious capacity. fuck, getting this “on paper” made it actually click holy shit.)

One last note about 193: I know the Statement is OG!Elias’s, but why do I have a very strong suspicion that Jon’s interview went very similarly to Elias’s, and that’s why Jonah/Elias played a part in the Statement recital? What are the odds that Jon pulled something similar in both the “What are you afraid of” and “Why are you here” sections of the interview? Even worse: do you think Jonah managed to give Jon a minor panic attack in his interview as well? Things to think about I guess.

And finally, 194: #1) that was rough. They needed that argument don’t get me wrong, because Jon still can’t actually communicate but he also still struggles with falling to his monstrous tendencies; and Martin is still trying to keep Jon on the straight and narrow. I will say, I thought the “sending all of humanity to it’s ultimate demise faster“ plan had been synthesized with this revelation about being able to control the apocalypse. I thought Jon had told Martin about this plan before the evil spider plan. He still might, and probably will, and it shouldn’t still surprise me that Jon is still incapable of making good plans, but this definitely recontextualizes some of the time travel fix it fics I’ve read in the last several months. (How on earth have I only been in this fandom for upwards of 4 months? It feels like years and my bookmarked fics hit over 120 recently.)

#2) It’s very amusing to me the Eye tries to communicate through Statements. It makes sense that a sapient fear god communicates through other’s trauma, and opens the floodgates to questions like: if the Stranger created it’s own version of Magnus’s apocalypse, how would it communicate with it’s designated linchpin? The Hunt? The Dark? ect.

#3) Ok Martin, I get it. Your BF is impossible and the spider lady who you seem to hate way more now than you used to has a plan, and by God you need literally anything all to convince your BF to not metaphysically kill himself in a bid to move the suffering around to people who “deserve” it. Because you don’t trust that he’ll come back from “thinking” without trying to convince you again that it’s a good idea.

It fucking kills me how terrible these two are at trusting each other. I know at the start of the season I was bemoaning their unhealthy dynamic, got excited mid-season that things were turning and they were making baby steps towards maybe being healthier towards each other.... But nooooooooo.

I think what gets me most though, is that all these problems are normally fine in long form slow burn relationship portrayals. Like, even in a healthy relationship these kinds of pressures would be sure to cause some strife. But we never get to see them have a functional relationship. The 3 weeks in the cabin we can presume they at best “honeymooned” at, was all off screen. We went from them having a moment to reconnect for the first time in months - over a year, to them sounding relatively happy together before Jon accidentally kicks off the apocalypse. I mean, we get snippets of Martin trying to help Jon cope in the cabin, but the moment they’re on their first domain they’re falling apart at the seams with little moments sprinkled throughout that almost feel forced because there’s just... no background to it? augh, I’m so terrible with words, but does any of this make sense?

In any case, I feel for both Jon and Martin in this, but due to my particular leanings towards Jon as Blorbo of my Show; I’m probably going to be more sympathetic to him even if Martin is generally speaking, the better person in every conceivable way possible.

[kenanda]

Thursday is inevitably going to bring back bullsgit discourse into the tma theory pool so while i prepare myself for that... may im see ur current tma theories? Whether theyre about who killed gertrude, what the supernatural/spooky stuff is like in the tma-verse, and/or what characters' relationships will be like in canon (there are some heavy discussions on relationships of all sorts currently– not just romantic– so feel free to go ham about any character dynamics) blease i love reading early theories

is that something that happens a lot? oh boy... good luck, then! buckle up, this is gonna be a long one lmao

look, i don't know if i have any solid theories, they're more like hunches? there are so many pieces to this puzzle and only now they're beginning to make some sense. imma try and sum up my thoughts topic by topic. 1. what's the creepy stuff? heck i sure would love to know lmao but like, i believe that all these cases connect, some more evidently than others. a strong indicator of that was the ep Dreamer, in which those death tendrils spread throughout London and and seemed to concentrate around the magnus institute. this ep also led me to believe that there's something about the position head archivist that's positively CURSED, and ep 53 (crusader) nudges me even further in that direction cuz if alexandria was a previous attempt at an Archive and if the creature that phillip brown saw there used to be an archivist, then there must be some sort of tradition or maybe even a condition to becoming a head archivist and i believe (from both a listener's and from a storytelling pov) that this THING might be the premise "if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee" which would make a lot of sense, given that towards the end gertrude seemed to be dealing with severe paranoia that SOMETHING or someone was watching her.

whether this something is singular or plural, only time will tell. i mean, there sure are a bunch of different beasts, but do they all come from the same place? do they all follow the same logic? is there a hierarchy and if so, who/what is the big boss? there have been some hints pointing towards something bigger than life slowly approaching them, some sort of monster idk. they foreshadowed this in ep literary heights, in which the guy talks about the ex altiora and its contents, and also in ep high pressure, in which antonia hayley talks about sticking her head into a hole and gazing upon something that seemed too big to be true.

so there, maybe these cases are just the symptoms of something much bigger and much more terrible that's slowly paving the way of its descent upon the mortal realm. maybe it is too big to just come in hot, so it's trying to create enough unbalance/chaos that its slipping into our (theirs, thank god) reality will be somewhat easier? there sure are creatures out there that are capable of bending the fabric of reality however the fuck they want (sasha's michael, or as i like to call him, blonde edward scissorhands)

but like, do they SERVE this "alpha" being? i can't say for sure, but there seem to be at least different segments or cults led by people, by entire families even that appear to worship these monsters. i get the feeling that they might even be rivals or smth, cuz i remember one episode where a girl (dunno if prentiss or that super religious chick who was only able to cook soggy spinach -gross) said she wasn't one of those idiots who kept searching after fractals (and there have been multiple mentions of said "idiots") all in all my ideas boil down to "who's gonna get daddy cthulhu down on earth first? there'll be a prize for who does!"

2. who killed gertrude? at first glance, elias seems super suspicious. i mean, he's hot but that doesn't exempt him. if i were to look at this from a mere listener's pov i'd say elias seems to have enough reasons to want to shut gertrude up for good, since he's always coming onto jon about keeping the lukas family out of the statements. if elias is their dog and gertrude had found something major about the lukas's, then that'd make sense for him to kill her.

if i look at it from a storytelling pov, it would seem rather too obvious that elias did it. but then again, obvious doesn't necessarily mean bad, and i'd be rather pleased if my theory was right and i got to see WHY it was right, with good, solid build up towards a sensible explanation. if it makes sense within the story, i'm happy.

3. relationships i haven't thought much about this one beyond the evident jmart brainrot that you can see all over my blog lately (it took me 3 captain america movies to ship stucky, my all-time otp, and like... 3s to ship jmart. i don't know how i feel about that.)

when i started s2 and i saw jon getting all paranoid over the smallest things and suspecting every single one of his assistants i was like yeahhh this is gonna be a long ride.

he still is suspicious as fuck up to ep57, but something happened that i NEVER saw coming which was jon confronting martin (in a rather asshole-ish way, if i may add) and then the tension of mistrust dissolving, which leads me to believe that their relationship might start to deepen in s2, because martin will be (for a while at least) the only one that jon can trust (i WEEP)

i haven't got a clue how the not-sasha thing will turn out, but i'm hella curious because like??? WHERE IS SASHA. does michael have her?does the mcfucking TABLE have her?????

all in all, these are my thoughts so far, there's still a lot of redstringing to be done here lol i'm sure i must've forgotten something, but this post is already hella long as it is so if you've reached this far i can only say congrats haha (oh and thank you for allowing me the great opportunity to ramble obnoxiously)