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yellowocaballero · 3 years

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Human Relations Snippet: Jon and Sasha versus Bad Telenovelas

This is a birthday request from @hihereami who wanted something very Latin American and an excuse to show me her favorite shows. This takes place in early Season 3, before Jude Perry but with Sasha working at the office. Jon fudged some stuff. It features incredibly stupid office dynamics, bad relationships, and a shared history that produced two very different people. Happy birthday, Ami!

CW as usual for Human Relations: explicitly discussed transphobia, references to 19th century racism, and a depiction of a platonic abusive relationship.

Sasha now understood that she was talking to an expert.

“Fine,” she said grudgingly, gathering the papers back up. She left out her great outline and timetable, though, because Martin should definitely appreciate it. “But the number one rule here is to keep up an active support system, right? Which means Jon needs more than just you.” Martin gave her a hilariously prissy look, which she responded with an equally prissy one. “He thinks we have a psychic bond or something.” They did but Sasha didn’t want to admit that. “Look, I’ve been harassing Jon for months about how shitty Jonah is. But if he’s going to listen to me, he needs to know that...I guess that I care about him more than I hate Jonah. That I’m not doing it out of spite or with some ulterior motive to get something out of him.”

Martin closed the manila folder, carefully attaching a label on it and writing down their coded filing system on the tab. “You don’t care about him more than you hate Jonah. You are doing this with ulterior motives. But it would be pretty hypocritical of me to care about that, so...he likes television? And he likes hearing about your life and the things important to you. He’s like this historical, cultural, political, anthropological sponge. I mean, he knows everything about everything, but it’s his passion. So if you want to combine the two…”

And, of course, once Martin said that then the answer was obvious.

Sasha liked to be the smartest person in the room.

The problem with people like Sasha was that, very frequently, they were the smartest person in the room. For seventeen years of her life Sasha had been remarkably and thoroughly assured that she would go places, she was really going to make all of us proud, she’s going to take care of us in our old age, Mrs. Pérez’s son just wastes every day with his girlfriend but here you are, studying all day with your complete lack of friends!

Once she skipped town - well, town, country, Americas, oceans - all of that had been replaced with shiny grades and the bragging rights of Oxford and the implicit looming pressure of her scholarship. Sasha had always been the smartest person in the room. She couldn’t afford anything else - not if she wanted someone to care, not if she wanted to get anywhere in life.

Every adult was somewhat of a child inside: happily ignoring a toy until it was taken away, at which point they would scream and scream. And when Sasha didn’t feel like the smartest person in the room - or, worse, others didn’t see her as the smartest person in the room - there was nothing tolerable about it.

Upon retrospect, workplace and academic discrimination, in addition to some healthy insecurity, bothered her so much that she sold her soul to the devil about it, but apparently this was an semi-common occurrence. Abuela had been right. Teach Sasha to doubt her again.

Mrs. Pérez’s son probably hadn’t accidentally sold his soul to the devil. He and his girlfriend were probably happy with their hard working but low-paying jobs, their cute little smattering of babies, and their mass every week. They’d have long, happy lives, and the amount of life-or-death situations they were put in were probably no more than usual.

Well. Sasha would literally rather die than do that, and that resolve had been tested very thoroughly. She stood by it. Sasha had never regretted a decision she made in her life, besides the ones that sold her soul to the devil, and also maybe some things about Tim. But most of her decisions were good. And even if they weren’t good, she stubbornly stood by them.

That’s why this was difficult. For all of Sasha’s insecurity reasons that, to be fair, had mostly drifted into the background of her life while she had been on the run for murder. And because it was Martin.

“Sasha, I’m not sure what help I can give you.”

Godfuckingdammit.

“Please?” Sasha slid into the seat across from Martin, giving him her best big cow eyes. “Don’t hog the emotional manipulation. You’re the expert in making Jon do what you want, just...work your magic!”

Martin looked up from the statement he was organizing shot Sasha an extremely flat look. Martin was extremely good at looking extremely unimpressed. “Because I’m the one who can magically make people do what I want.”

Sasha winced. “At least you didn’t sell your soul to a demon about it?”

“I know you tell yourself a lot of people do that to make yourself feel better about doing it, but literally nobody does that.” At Sasha’s double wince, Martin sighed. “Don’t listen to Jonah. You didn’t do anything a normal, non-satanic person wouldn’t do. If I could…” Martin trailed off slightly, staring a little in the distance, before shaking back to himself. “I’m not helping you manipulate Jon. That’s my place in this ecosystem.”

“Then we should team up,” Sasha wheedled. She reached into her briefcase - which nowadays contained little more than alcohol and Statements, she wasn’t sure that Georgie had been a good influence on her - and yanked out the print-outs before slapping it on the table. “See, I did research!”

Martin slid the papers closer to him, leafing through them quickly. Sasha waited for him to look very impressed and appreciative of how socially competent yet intellectual she was, but he didn’t look very impressed at all. “ “Help someone in an Abusive or Controlling relationship”, ‘3 ways to support someone stuck in a controlling relationship’, ‘How can I help someone in a toxic relationship’...”

“You aren’t going to deny it, are you?” Sasha asked heatedly. “Because Tim just does not get what I mean no matter how many leaflets I show him because he ‘framed me for murder’ or whatever -”

“Do not pretend as if you’re forgiven him for the murder thing.”

“I fucking hate his guts over it. I will never, ever forgive either of them.” Sasha’s heart spiked in her chest, and she forced herself to take a few calming breaths. “This is a problem. Jon and Jonah are a problem. I don’t think we’re in a position to take on Jonah right now - even if I am working on it. But Jon is a weak link here. We know he’s impossible to kill -” At Martin’s extremely alarmed look, Sasha quickly elaborated, “ - and I wouldn’t want to, although he would really technically deserve it with all of his human rights violations. It would be far easier, and a better use of our resources, if we got Jon to our side. Then hopefully those two could...blow each other up, or something.”

Martin stared at her, expression implacable. Sasha became abruptly aware that she had just threatened to blow up this guy’s semi-boyfriend, and resisted the urge to apologize. She wasn’t apologetic. This was what she had to do, and Sasha always did what had to be done. It didn’t matter if she hated Jon so much that she wanted him dead, when he would be more useful to her alive. It doesn’t matter if she knew that, deep down, Jon was an exceptionally kind and caring person who loved very deeply, and that who he was now was a product of a great deal of influences mostly out of his control. If he was who Sasha was going to turn into, given enough time.

She would stick to the plan. Sasha was going to get herself and her Assistants - including Melanie now, for some reason, who still refused to believe them about the psychic vampire thing despite how many times Jon confessed to it - out of this.

Finally, Martin said, “I’m not going to deny it, Sasha. I’ve printed out all those guides, I’ve read all of the books, I’ve done everything. I’ve been working on this since - I think since I decided that I loved Jon more than I hated him. I’ve got Jon’s trust. And, way more importantly, Jonah is convinced that I’m harmless. He doesn’t pay any attention to me. I think he, like, secretly hates it whenever Jon has someone - whatever. But he is obsessed with everything you do.” At Sasha’s disturbed look, Martin shrugged. “He micromanages. Jon complains about it. I don’t think Jon gets that he really spills the cards on all of Jonah’s plans when he gets drunk and bitches about him.”

Sasha now understood that she was talking to an expert.

“Fine,” she said grudgingly, gathering the papers back up. She left out her great outline and timetable, though, because Martin should definitely appreciate it. “But the number one rule here is to keep up an active support system, right? Which means he needs more than just you.” Martin gave her a hilariously prissy look, which she responded with an equally prissy one. “He thinks we have a psychic bond or something.” They did but Sasha didn’t want to admit that. “Look, I’ve been harassing him for months about how shitty Jonah is. But if he’s going to listen to me, he needs to know that...I guess that I care about him more than I hate Jonah. That I’m not doing it out of spite or with some ulterior motive to get something out of him.”

And, of course, once Martin said that then the answer was obvious.

*******

Sasha was now willing to admit that Martin was smarter than she was.

It was always kind of a crapshoot when looking for Jon. He was only around the Institute half the time, probably less, and he refused to buy a cell phone so anybody could stay in contact with him. Tim had also flatly refused, because Jon would inevitably go to him for help with figuring it out, and apparently that could take hours. Sasha had volunteered to help Jon with accessing some online archives, and apparently she had explained it so confusingly that Jon was left refusing to touch a computer for a month.

The farthest they could go was convincing him to take a Jitterbug for emergencies. Tim had taken great pains to explain the LifeAlert function, to Jon’s increasing lack of amusement. When Sasha had explained the adventure to Georgie, a known social media sensation over wine at their weekly girls night, she had found it hilarious and was very impressed.

“Jon must be really attached to you guys,” Georgie had said, carefully nibbling at her luxury chocolate. Girl’s nights with Georgie were decadent. “I mean, not that he doesn’t talk about all of you nonstop, but he can spend ten years incorporating the Beholding into every piece of technology in the country while willfully refusing to learn how to work a computer.”

Sasha hadn’t missed Georgie’s word choice - deliberately refusing instead of an incapability to learn - but something else in the sentence was stranger to her. “I thought he was all about all kinds of knowledge.”

“I hear that the future can be terrifying for a lot of people,” Georgie had said wisely. “No matter how much of it they experience.”

“Is it terrifying for you?”

“Goodness, no.” Georgie had flashed her a bright grin - not so much a showing of teeth as it was a peek at a bone-white skeleton. “I always know what the future holds.”

As it stood, Sasha got lucky today. She wasn’t forced to make Jon use his dreaded phone, and as a result she wasn’t forced to understand what the fuck Jon did all day. He was in the Magnus Institute, and when Jon was in the Institute there were three places he could be.

The Archives, which Sasha had just come from. The Institute Library, occasionally terrifying the graduate students and more frequently helping them write their papers. Sasha had heard that they had communally begun sacrificing one grad student to his hunger per week in exchange for study sessions. Which...she should discourage...whatever, it was probably ethical. Or, at the very least, voluntary.

The only other location Jon visited was Magnus’ office, where he could spend hours relaxing on the evil little bastard’s couch and annoying him. That was a last resort scenario, and was usually saved for complete and total emergencies.

Thankfully, today, Sasha found Jon in the ‘D’s. He was lying on his back, legs propped up on the bookshelf across from him, reading what looked like a very fascinating philosophy text regarding humanity’s search for aliens that Sasha silently resolved to borrow from him later. He didn’t look up when Sasha approached, so she carefully tipped a book off the shelf above him to fall on his head.

He yelped, dropping his book and sitting upright. He rubbed at his head, scowling, and Sasha saw that he had restyled his hair since the last time she had seen him. It had been growing long, but instead of cutting it and returning to his short twists styled into a loose curtain over his forehead he had pulled it back into a puffy bun. It was...somewhat more fashion forward than Sasha had ever seen from him. He had swapped his greatcoat for a primmer and shorter pea coat. Even his glasses were now thin-rimmed, circular, and kind of stylish.

“Oh my god,” Sasha said, “has Martin started dressing you?”

“Martin can barely even dress himself,” Jon said automatically. “It was Georgie. She said I have to ‘clean up nice’ if I ever ‘want a man’. What does any of that mean?”

“Isn’t it kind of weird that your wife is setting you up with someone?”

“The concept of monogamy becomes ridiculous after the first eighty years,” Jon said, also automatically. Then Sasha’s words sunk into his brain, and he flushed. “Georgie and I aren’t together right now! And she’s not setting me up with - how can you even consider - what makes you think I’m a homosexual -”

Sasha stared at him flatly. Jon gave up.

“Just let me know if I need to explain gay shit to you,” Sasha said. “It’ll cost a hundred pounds for me to explain queerness and three hundred if you want to learn about trans issues. Recompense for my emotional labor.”

“Young people think they invented these things. It’s ridiculous.” Jon stored the book back on the bookshelf behind him without looking, before carefully dropping his feet and rolling up. Sasha’s back ached in sympathy. Some people got all of the demon deal luck. “What does Martin say? ‘People are gay, Steven’? Historical figures are gay and trans, Sasha.”

“...are you a historical figure that’s -”

“I apologize for being a cisgender man that’s ruined your life, yes.” Jon arched an eyebrow at her as Sasha spent a second in confused agony over whether or not she was getting through to this guy. “I assume there’s no emergency, considering this conversation, so why are you here?”

There was no way to make this offer sound genuine. Jon would look for the catch - because there was one - or what she was trying to pull. There was something she was trying to pull, but she wasn’t about to admit it.

In the end, Sasha settled for a fragment of honesty in her heart. Jon always had a way of drawing that out of people.

“I haven’t watched my telenovelas in years. And I don’t know anybody else who speaks Spanish, and so much of it doesn’t translate that I refuse to watch it subbed with someone else, and they’re something I used to watch every night but now I haven’t seen them in years. And you speak Spanish. So.”

Jon stared at her, blinking owlishly, before his mouth twitched into a small smile. It flowered, moving from a hesitant movement of the lips into a real, close-lipped smile that sent his usually severe and sharp expression into something resembling excitement. Understated enthusiasm over novelty.

How weird, Sasha thought. That you could be 200 years old and still find excitement over something novel. Over something new. Or, maybe, over someone choosing to trust you with a part of their lives.

Or maybe it wasn’t that weird. How could someone keep living for that long if something as simple as this didn’t bring you joy? Sasha was only thirty four and she already felt so tired of life, all the time. Either tired or overwhelmed. She wondered if Jon still felt overwhelmed.

“Sounds like fun,” Jon said. “Can I bring my notebook?”

“...yeah, sure.” Sasha paused, almost uncertain. “Hey. When you get to, like, two hundred -”

“Technically two hundred and twenty.”

“When you get to two hundred and twenty, do you finally feel like an adult?”

Jon stared at her, faintly surprised, before his expression settled into something a little wry. “Anybody who says that they ever feel like an adult is a liar. That’s how you know that Jonah’s full of shit.”

Somehow, it was almost a little reassuring.

First time she had ever said that about Jon.

********

Their adventures, of course, were quickly throttled by practicalities.

Sasha suggested just watching it on a laptop, but Jon’s expression had wrinkled in distaste. Jon suggested just watching it at her place, but Sasha liked to pretend that he didn’t know where she lived. Far too much intimacy, and somewhat hilariously Jon seemed very awkward about being alone with a woman in her flat. Also they were still working, technically.

Martin, overhearing their argument in the Archives as Sasha collected her laptop, suggested Jon’s place, since it was pretty nice and cozy and close to the Archives. This forbidden knowledge, the shining proof that sometimes a little knowledge could be a terrible and traumatizing thing, the sheer mental image that imprinted itself behind her eyelids, shook Sasha to her core.

“For christ’s sake,” Martin said, “we are not fucking.”

“Sounds like someone who’s fucking our boss would say!” Tim called, from his position asleep on the break room couch. Sasha had spent roughly five hours yesterday convincing him that her plan to manipulate Jon’s psychological weaknesses was the most effective defense against evil fear powers that they had, and since he had lost the argument he was now resentfully napping on the couch. “If I walk in on you doing it in the office over a desk I’m going to fucking kill both of you and then myself!”

“Does this place have an HR?” Melanie asked, from where she was sitting at her desk actually trying to work. “Can I report all of you to HR? Please?”

“Jon can hardly fire himself,” Sasha told her sympathetically. “This shit will all make sense if you accept the fact that -”

“God, I get it, enough with the workplace hazing!” Melanie threw up her hands, as Jon unsubtly whispered something in Martin’s ear that made him blush. “You can all drop it now, it was never funny!”

“If Sasha just let me prove it to you,” Jon said, exasperated, “then you can see -”

Simultaneously, all three of them snapped, “Do not!”, cowing Jon immensely.

Tim was no help in problem-solving, since he was resentful that Sasha was doing this at all. He had been spending almost all of his time lately throwing himself into research into the rituals, into anything that explained the strange and obscure rigor of this universe. Jon only explained as much to them as Jonah let him, and the most he ever did was mysteriously drop off boxes that held a lot of information about clowns and sawdust.

He always seemed a little surly as he did it. Sometimes he looked very guilty. Sasha noticed, every time. She couldn’t afford not to.

All Sasha could try to do for Tim was help him. Their relationship had already been fractured by the way they kept secrets from each other, and although they both wanted to repair it they were forced to confront the fact that now they had to tell each other things. Accept help. Sasha hated acknowledging that she couldn’t do everything by herself, and Tim hated putting Sasha in the danger he relentlessly and suicidally threw himself into, but neither of them would let the other continue on their self-destructive path.

It wasn’t sweet. But it was the most solid and tangible proof Sasha had that they loved each other. Maybe it was the most solid proof anybody could have: that, in life or death, they’d choose wherever you were.

If Sasha followed Tim into whatever dangerous shit he was getting himself into, then he would be more careful. Tim wouldn’t survive it if he lost her, and she knew it.

Between her and Tim, and Jon and Martin...why did all of their relationships feel like mutually assured destruction?

Eventually, Jon’s solution was, as usual, the worst one. Jon’s solution to every problem always worked, but it was always the one thing that nobody wanted to do and that everyone hated. But anything else was either vetoed or improbable, and Sasha refused to back out once she committed to something, so that was how Sasha stuffed a laptop and an HDMI cable into her bag to trail behind Jon as they rode the elevator up to the third floor.

The number three rule of the Archives was not relevant right now (let Sasha have two cups of coffee before bothering her about how terrible their lives were). But the number two rule of the Archives was this: don’t fuck with Rosie. They both gave her their brightest grins as they passed, impeccably polite without actually asking if Jonah was inside. Rosie smiled munificently at them and complemented Sasha on her heels. They were in. They were now breaking the number one rules of the Archives.

The number one rule of the Archives was, of course, this: never talk to Jonah Magnus unnecessarily.

On the bright side, from this perspective Sasha could see how Jon worked his magic - that is, how he always entered Jonah’s office through kicking the door open and infuriating the other man tremendously. He actually took the time to open the door a crack first, completely silently and almost imperceptibly, before crashing it open in as annoying a way as physically possible.

“I need your fucking office!” Jon called.

When Sasha poked her head in behind him, she was treated to the sight of a terrified employee cowering in the hard plastic chair in front of Jonah’s desk. Sasha was well aware how that chair could feel like an electric chair. Across from him, Jonah looked distinctly unamused, already kneading his brow.

“I’m in a meeting, Jon.”

“Good for you.” Jon pointed at the door, and the employee silently scurried out. “Not anymore. Now fuck off, I need your office.”

Impossibly, Jonah looked even more unamused. “Fucking your Archivist on my desk in the middle of the day is a bit beyond the pale even for you, Jon.”

Sasha was immediately so fucking disgusted that she switched into Spanish and called him a great deal of incredibly rude things for an incredibly long period of time.

Talking over her, Jon said, “Take out your resentment over 1899 on someone else. We want your television, we’re watching Sasha’s programmes.”

“Right. Like how you and that boy Martin are always watching programmes -”

“Me cago en tu puta madre--”

“Honestly, Jonah, just because you had all of those men over for revision of your manuscripts doesn’t mean everyone’s as euphemistic as you are. And Sasha, that’s remarkably vulgar.”

For the first time, Jonah looked alarmed. “What is she saying?”

“Sólo porque tienes un rabo chiquito -”

“Go learn Spanish.”

“Ms. James, this is a professional office, and -”

“Melanie’s fucking right, we need a fucking HR.” Now this was a matter of pride. Sasha flounced into the office, collapsing onto one of the dumb uncomfortable leather couches facing one of those screens that rich people had in their offices to show their powerpoint slides or whatever. “I’m going to Stare you to death if you don’t leave us alone to watch telly.”

Hilariously, Jonah looked at Jon, alarmed. “Can she do that?”

Jon opened his mouth, before Sasha shot him a look. “She’s progressing amazingly rapidly. At this point, not even I know what she’s capable of.”

What a wingman. Jonah looked faintly uncomfortable, but he went back to his computer anyway instead of doing the rational thing and getting out. “This grant is due in three days, Jon, and I have no time for your little fancies. Do what you will, but leave me out of it.”

Sasha was not thrilled at the prospect of Jonah fucking Magnus hanging out in the background while Sasha and Jon watched telenovelas. She’d be outnumbered by the evil fear demons, for one. But Sasha had a sneaking suspicion, and maybe if she couldn’t genuinely stop this guy’s evil plans she could annoy him to death.

At the very least, it would make her feel better. Sasha was beginning to recognize the value of anything that just made you fucking feel better. Maybe Tim was onto something with constantly being a giant bitch all the time.

“Ignore that cunt,” Sasha said in Spanish, catching Jon’s attention as she stood up to plug in the HDMI cable and turn on the television. “I got crisps and chocolate in my bag, I’m putting on Marimar.”

“Is she insulting me again?” Jonah asked. “Jon, what’s she saying?”

“I’m afraid I only consume trauma,” Jon said, also switching to Spanish. His accent was fucking bizarre. He sounded like her great uncle, or an even worse version of Sucedió en La Habana. At her boggled look, he elaborated, “The Witness gifted me with understanding of all languages very early in my development, but it bestowed verbal fluency in...1910? Perhaps? I’m afraid that without a little practice and frequent use I’m a little bit stuck there. I was able to beat my Chinese and Russian into sounding modern, but I’m afraid that people now tell me my Chinese is somewhat 1960s and my Russian is fairly 1980s.” He scowled. “Why does modernity change so much?”

“I think telenovelas can fix this for you,” Sasha decided. She paused a beat as Jon sat down beside her, a careful distance away. “The Witness? Is that a weird translation thing? You called it the Beholding last time.”

Jon shifted, a little guiltily. In English, he said, “The term Beholding’s better...it’s more academic, and more people use it…”

“What are you two -”

“Is ‘The Witness’ your word?” Sasha asked, and to her horror she found her tone almost gentle. It was almost easier, in her own words.

This time Jon truly looked uncomfortable, and he shifted back into Spanish - perhaps, Sasha thought, because Jonah could not understand it. “Smirke contributed all of the nomenclature for this, and he never...well, none of Jonah’s little circle liked me very much.”

“Wow, wonder why.”

“Exoticism only gets you so far, I suppose,” Jon joked weakly, before sharply swerving the subject. “I always felt as if it gave me its own name. When I began to understand, really understand what it was and how we could feed each other...I felt as if it told me. And that’s what it told me. So it’s always been my name.”

Hm. Sasha wondered what it was like, to have your religion be - so tangible, so grounded. Sasha believed, and she had faith with all of her heart, but - well, you wouldn’t need faith if you had incontestable proof. Faith was about believing because you knew something in your heart. But Jon...when he had nothing else, maybe, he had this.

“I just put down ‘James’ because I thought it would make that small-dicked asshole more likely to hire me,” Sasha finally offered, her only equivalent for something like this. “Tell you what. Call me James Martinez, and I’ll curse the name of the Witness, okay? If you’d like me to.”

Jon brightened, and for a second Sasha saw her own faith in his brilliant green eyes. “My gift is shared with you, Sasha. Of course you can.”

It was not a gift. It was a terrible and disgusting curse, and it was one that Jon had inflicted upon her. But Sasha was playing nice...and this was knowledge, understanding Jon was knowledge that could save her life one day...and there was something strange about Jon’s hesitant and multi-barbed trust.

It had to be the trust of somebody who had it betrayed a hundred, thousand times. But he gave it so easily, and he reached out incessantly. Sasha knew lots of people who cared too much, although she had never been one of them - Tim and Martin, for one - but she could already see how it was making them a little bitter and jaded.

Jon wasn’t. Sasha didn’t know why.

So Sasha kicked off her heels, tucking her legs underneath her as she pulled up her favorite episode of Marimar on her laptop. It was a comfort show, having context wouldn’t help, she had rights.

“Okay,” Sasha began, a little aggressively, “we’re starting a lot of the way in, so I have to catch you up. Like a lot of telenovela protagonists, Marimar is a wholesome young girl who lives in a little sad hut shack on the beach and she can’t read. She’s raised by her grandparents and her dog talks. This is the essential premise of the show.”

“Wow,” Jon whispered, “just like me.”

“I - okay, you are not obligated to give me your backstory, but what?”

“Martin keeps calling me a ‘sad little Victorian orphan’,” Jon said defensively. “And dogs talk to me too!”

“...what do they say?”

“If you’d believe it, nothing interesting.” He paused a beat. “But Georgie’s cat is kind of a psychopath, if that helps.”

“That’s a stereotype against cats,” Sasha accused. “Just because humans don’t understand cat body language -”

“Oh, no, cats are lovely, my favorite animal. But the Admiral’s kind of a freak.”

“If you two are going to sit here and trash talk me in my own office,” Jonah said, aggravated, “then please at least take it outside.”

Actually, this was a great idea.

Sasha ran through the plot of Marimar, down to the love interest with the terrible chest hair (Jon and Sasha then got into an argument over chest hair that was so heated that Sasha suspected Martin had chest hair), the evil step-mother (they both agreed that women in soaps tended to fall within the madonna/whore complex), and the weird amounts of humiliation. Sasha loved to hate Mr. Douchey McChesthair in this one - he wooed Marimar and promised to raise her up from poverty, but he ended up ditching her when she wasn’t refined enough for him. She wins him back at the end with her nice dresses and inherited money, and they settle down with a baby and a big house. Sasha always hated the ending. Marimar should have become a career woman.

“It’s massively cheesy,” Sasha warned, finally playing the episode and letting the cheery theme song play, “so don’t sit here and point out the logical inconsistencies. We know. It’s part of the experience.”

But Jon just arched an eyebrow, unbuttoning his own pea cot to throw over the back of the sofa and lounge in his seat. “Watching telenovelas, in the office of the Director of the facility where you work, with his boss, in London, is the experience? And we’re all - how do you put it - evil fear demons?”

“You haven’t met my auntie,” Sasha said darkly. But she ended up shaking her head too, picking at her stockings a little. “The experience is...eleven pm, and the whole house is dark. The kitchen light is on, this flickering yellow thing that pops and buzzes. There’s cicadas outside, and somewhere you can hear someone playing music too loudly. Dad’s in his ripped up armchair, snoring. Mom’s on the couch, reading a magazine. They’re only half-paying attention, but it’s late, and you feel like you never get enough time with them. So you sit on the couch next to Mom, and because neither of them say anything you watch the show with all of your attention, just happy to be near them...it’s family bonding, you think. It feels like it.”

Jon was silent, staring at her. Not fixedly, or intensely - just looking, as if he was waiting patiently to see if she would say anything else. But Sasha trailed off, picking at her stockings, until she forced herself to stop. She didn’t want to say anything else. She was worried that he would know what she wasn’t saying. He always did.

“My grandmother couldn’t read,” Jon said finally, and Sasha fought the surprise. Jon never talked about this, not in any specific words. “But she would darn clothing by the fire at night. She did it for the neighborhood and earned some extra money.”

“What about you?” Sasha asked, hoping it was a safe topic. “What did you do?”

Jon grinned at her, sharp and amused. “I got into trouble.”

They both turned their attention back to the television, and Sasha silently mouthed the words along with the screen as Jon paid rapt attention.

It was later in the show, when Marimar was showing up all of the people who did her dirty when she was poor. She had a fine dress, lingering on the arm of her rich and kind of creepy father, and she walked around with her head held up high. Her old husband who treated her terribly saw her at the opera and he was stunned by how hot and cool she was now.

“Good for her!” Jon said abruptly. “Go find someone better, Marimar!”

“Oh my god,” Sasha groaned. “She ends up with him!”

“What!”

Quicker than Sasha would ever have expected, Jon got wrapped up in the episode. He gasped with her at the right parts, cheered at the screen whenever Marimar said something particularly sassy, and they booed whenever Douchey McChesthair showed up.

When Sasha glanced behind her - not that she did - she saw Jonah fixedly ignoring them. He was gritting his teeth a little. Every so often he would glance at the screen, obviously look terribly confused, then go back to his computer.

When the credits rolled Jon declared this second-hand trauma, which terrified Sasha deeply but raised interesting questions about her own future diet.

“It’s about the humiliation, fear, and voyeurism,” Jon told her. “Supernatural trauma and devastation tastes rather similar to these telenovelas.”

“...what do they taste like?”

Jon thought hard. “Taste, but if it was a feeling.”

“...what’s the -”

“What’s the feeling you have?”

Sasha was forced to concede the point, and put on another episode.

In this one, Marimar’s new dad tied tragically, and she very cunningly has him sign all of his money over to her. Sasha cheered her on very enthusiastically, and Jon agreed that Marimar was the definition of girlboss, but he found it kind of a dick move.

“I thought you hated pretentious, old money rich white Britons,” Sasha accused. She knew that Martin had been working on him and trying to convert him to socialism,, but it was slow going.

“I do hate entitled, old money people,” Jon said shortly. “But it’s hardly illegal to work your way up the social ladder and improve your station in life. Marimar isn’t putting the work in, she’s just inheriting all of this blood money. If she doesn’t make something of her life then what’s the point in all of that suffering?”

“You do know how social mobility is a lie fed to the lower class by the upper class to keep them complacently participating in the system, right?”

“I’m not saying many people do it,” Jon said, ignoring Marimar’s grotesquely fake sobbing, “but it’s possible. I’ve met plenty of people who worked hard and became successful.”

“Yeah, and those people were lucky. Most of us just sit around in poverty and suffer.” Sasha rolled her eyes, unwrapping her chocolate bar. “Not all of us can be Dr. Faust.”

“You didn’t sit around,” Jon said, turning to face her. Sasha didn’t meet his eyes, focusing on her chocolate instead. “You were smart, you worked your way up, you got your scholarship, and now you’re part of something far greater than yourself. You took what happened to you and you used to make you stronger, just like I did. Anybody can do it if they work hard enough.”

Sasha’s teeth clamped down on the chocolate.

Abruptly, stupidly, she got angry.

“I’m not better than the thousands of other trans women who got kicked out, Jon,” Sasha snapped, but Jon didn’t flinch. “I’m just luckier! I know I worked hard, but I’m not more - more worthy of what I have than the brave women back home who have nothing. And I’m not going to stomp on them to make myself feel better like you do!”

“I do not -” Jon started, outraged, but Sasha cut him off.

“You tell yourself that you worked hard for the security, money, education that you never got as a child! But you deserved all of that! That’s shit that anybody who lives deserves. But because you think of it as some kind of stupid reward, then it’s something that can be taken away. And when what you have can be taken away at any moment, then you have nothing!”

She cut herself off abruptly, unwilling and incapable of saying anything more. There were lines you couldn’t cross with Jon, and lines that she didn’t deserve to cross no matter how callous he was. She couldn’t accuse him of forgetting where he came from, or of betraying his people. Sasha knew well that Jon had never forgotten, not for a second.

He had just - twisted everything around. He had to justify to himself what he’d done, so he’d taken the truth and molded it to fit his own desires and call it holy.

It had killed her. It had killed her, how Jon told her that they were the same, but he did all of this shit to her anyway. But maybe that was no surprise: Jon hadn’t done anything to her that he hadn’t done to everybody else, and he hadn’t made any justifications to himself about his behavior towards her that he hadn’t made about everybody else.

You couldn’t live like he did with emotional honesty. Good people could do bad things - Sasha knew that better than anyone - but it required a truly disgusting level of willful blindness and cowardice that Sasha had never tolerated.

“Nobody gave me being a woman,” Sasha whispered, too full of - something, to even look at Jon. “I didn’t take it from anyone. I didn’t steal it. It was something that I always deserved, and that I always was. And because of that, nobody will ever take it away from me.” She exhaled heavily, forcing herself to stop shaking. “Nobody can make me something I’m not. Not even you.”

Jon stared at her, toxic green eyes wide and something foreign in his expression. It looked almost as if he believed her. Ha. “Sasha, I -”

“I swear, it’s like you two are making an effort to be as intrusive as possible. Jon, can’t you control your own Archivist?”

Jon almost jumped, as if he had forgotten that Jonah was in the room at all. Something in his chest seized closer, and a year ago Sasha would have just called it a twitch.

It wasn’t. It was an aborted, concealed cringe, seen only once before. But there was only one other person in this world who cared about that.

“Jonah!” Jon said, switching back to English immediately. “Sorry, we were just - having a really heated discussion about - uh, about -”

“Brujeria and how it changed when adopted by members of the Catholic church,” Sasha said smoothly. “I think his weird compulsion thing is just advanced witchcraft.”

“Yes! Yes, of course - you remember, I took inspiration from p - pagan rituals, you know, for our early work. I think you called it -”

“Bizarre?” Jonah asked, arching an eyebrow. “Jon, there were bones involved.” Jon silently pointed at the human skull taking up proud residence in Jonah’s cabinet of curiosities. “That’s different, a friend gave me that.”

“ ‘Have you seen Barnabas lately, Jonah’, I said. ‘He hasn’t seemed to have written lately’, I said. ‘Have you grown distant?’, I said. And you said -”

“Yes, he was very distant,” Jonah said dryly. “You hardly complained. You hated the man.”

“I hated all of your friends,” Jon said. He was smiling, once again relaxed with his arm spread over the back of the couch. Sasha furiously bit into a chip. “Didn’t mean you let them die.”

“Yes, but he was your least favorite, so I figured there was no harm done there.”

Improbably, Jon brightened. He smiled again, a curved slash of the mouth that had always been reserved for Jonah. It always spoke of secrets, a private joke. “You do care.”

“I’ll care more if you stop chattering when I’m trying to get us funded for another cycle.”

“Whatever.” Jon turned to face the screen again, letting the smile fall into a curiously blank expression. “Next episode, Sasha?”

“Sure,” Sasha said slowly. “But it only gets worse from here.”

It would never stop being weird how - well, maybe that was no wonder. How could Sasha begin to understand a relationship as strange and esoteric as theirs? Two hundred years in the making, forged by cruelty and passion? Two lives, intertwined so closely they fed in a parasitic loop, starving the other to feed themselves?

“Oh, I don’t mind a little tragedy,” Jon said. He spoke in English, vowels carefully rounded, posh accent meticulously stretching his words. “It’s the most entertaining.”

Sasha thought about print-outs. She thought about a many-eyed, malicious tumor of fear and pain consuming humanity alive. She thought about the face of God, and the tired and resigned face of Martin. When Sasha spoke, she stayed in Spanish.

“Even though she gets married to Mr. Douchey McChestHair at the end?”

“I’m sure he’s not all bad,” Jon said, and wouldn’t say anything more.

#my writing #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #sasha james #timothy stoker #jonah magnus #elias bouchard #tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #the magnus archives fanfiction #everything said about marimar is real #however inauthentic because I ended up using the funny or die recap #me: i am not writing any more hr #my friends: but what if you did?#been seeing so many weird takes about abusive friendships lately i feel the need to very pointedly ask the question #what is the nature of the power dynamic between jon and jonah?

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creativitycache · 4 years

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hey! do u still need tma stuff to talk about to get ur mind off things? if so, what entity do u think jon would be if he wasn’t eye aligned?

Yes! Yes I DESPERATELY need distractions, the deadline might be coming up earlier but they won’t say exactly when and I am going bonkers over here. Like I am feeling nauseous probably from lack of sleep but also all these emotions with no outlet.

Well enough rambling! Time for Jon thoughts!

I think the major question comes from “How afraid of the specific Fear do Avatars need to be, vs how drawn they are to it?”

Jane Prentiss was afraid of holes in her face, and yet desperately craved connection. That left her easy pickings for the Rot to turn her into a worm hole ridden Flesh Hive provided the worms sang they loved her.

Peter Lukas loved being Lonely, by his own admission (which is influenced by childhood abuse, so, take with a grain of salt.) Jude Perry also seemed to love first, feed later.

Annabelle Cane might have had a fear of spiders, if we believe her story. The ESP Focus Group who helped her ascend certainly did. She is an unknown.

Simon Fairchild’s story didn’t seem to contain a component of fear or love, but rather obsession.

Jonah Magnus willingly chose after weighing his options, as did Mike Crew.

Gertrude Robinson, Agnes Montague, and Jonathan Sims all had no choice at all.

That is a HUGE variation! That’s a wide spectrum! What does it mean, only the Eye knows!

So I think for Jon we need to first see what doesn’t grab him. Unlike Martin King Blackwood not every Fear wants a piece of him.

Fears we can immediately rule out:

-The Lonely (Jon has been inside it multiple times and never gotten stuck)

-The Eye (Because of the question)

-The Extinction (Despite Jon being a millennial, it didn’t actually exist enough for manifestation)

Fears Jon seems ambivalent to but during the marking process gotten hurt by:

-The Vast

-The Slaughter

-The Desolation

-The Dark

Fears Jon was deeply hurt by during the marking process:

-The Buried

-The Hunt

-The Flesh

-The Corruption

-The Stranger

-The Spiral (he actually didn’t doubt his senses much, if at all, but he ALSO was extremely paranoid so it’s tempting to put this into either the category above or below, but I think it fits best here)

Fears Jon was hurt by during the marking process and ALSO showed terror outside of the events set up by Jonah:

-The Web (childhood fear, constant terror of spiders)

-The End (one of his biggest drives is not to die)

I think you could reasonably make a case for any of the Fears in fanfiction, but for the purposes of this question I’m going to say The End as it’s Jon’s biggest fear that was not triggered by an outside force and seems innate to him. Terror of death is his biggest driving force, with his secondary motivation drives being to know what’s going on and to not be forgotten. (Nota bene: Even though I put the Lonely in the category we can easily dismiss, I am still Afraid For Jon when they come across Martin’s domain. Jon isn’t afraid of Lonliness in general, but he is afraid of that specific mix of Lonely and Eye Martin’s domain consists of.)

Now, End avatars are an unusual bunch.

From statements we know all four of them killed. But Oliver Banks proves it’s not necessary to kill to feed, as he fed by telling others the method of their death, or when death was close to them. Some End Lietners fed the same way.

I think Jon would also be along the side of a more “passive” method of feeding, but with juuust enough active participation so that he feels tremendously guilty as he does in canon.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #Asks&Answers

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bubonickitten · 4 years

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MAG 167 spoilers

I am once again back to obsessing over Gertrude and Jon as narrative foils!!

And just – the narrative does such a great job of using that foil to illustrate Jon’s neverending struggle with his own humanity. Because although Gertrude didn’t embrace her Archivist powers in the same way that Jon sometimes does, she was arguably monstrous in her own way -- in ways that Jon ultimately isn’t.

I keep thinking back to Jon’s conversation with Gerry, in particular this bit:

GERARD: Well, she could make people tell her stuff, sometimes. They’d suddenly get real talkative, and lay out whatever she needed. She didn’t do it often though. I don’t think she liked it.

JON: Oh, er, I can do that, too.

GERARD: Huh. Do you like it?

JON: I – I don’t know. I never really thought about it. Yes, I… I suppose I do.

GERRY: Hmmm.

I think after his coma, Jon has a much more negative view of his abilities, but early on, he admits that there’s a part of him that does like being able to compel people. It fits, honestly – of course someone like Jon, so intolerant of mysteries, so prone to overthinking, so full of questions and so voracious for answers, fresh out of a paranoid episode that left him unable to trust any answer that anyone offered him, would like having the option to ask a question and receive a guaranteed answer and to know that the given answer was the truth. At least until he no longer has control over it, finds himself accidentally compelling people and unable to stop knowing things even when he doesn’t want to.

But even if Gertrude was further from the supernatural aspects of the Archivist role, she was still ruthless in her crusade. Her conviction and boldness made her a badass, certainly, but at what cost? The answer depends heavily on how you feel about utilitarianism as an ethical philosophy.

Gertrude Robinson would have a clear answer to the trolley problem and not apologize for it. Jonathan Sims would agonize over all the potential choices and outcomes until he’s paralyzed with indecision. (Annabelle Cane knew exactly what she was doing when she gave him that statement about the nature of free will in a moment where he was struggling so profoundly with self-doubt.)

People are always comparing Jon to Gertrude, telling him that he’d be better off behaving more like her, urging him to accept the premise that ruthlessness is a strength in a world that offers only fear and pain, and that humanity is a weakness and a liability that he doesn’t have the luxury to indulge.

And in Season 4, he tries that philosophy on for a brief while. The Eye drives him to compel people to tell their stories; he starves if he doesn’t obey that instinct. He feeds the Eye the trauma of innocent bystanders, and now he’s the monster haunting the dreams of his victims. (And, to his credit, that’s what he ultimately refers to them as: victims. He uses that word. That’s significant.)

When Basira witnesses him do that and calls him out on it, Jon replies by pointing out that Basira (among others) told him that he should be more like Gertrude: “She got the job done and didn’t care about the cost.”

Basira responds, “But I thought you did.”

And that highlights the fundamental difference between Jon and Gertrude! He’d temporarily forgotten that – he’d lost touch with that piece of himself, of his humanity. It makes sense; everyone around him saw him as a monster, and it’s hard to believe in your own humanity when no one else does, when everyone around you is building a self-fulfilling prophecy for you.

It takes Martin reaching out in the only way that he can – urging the others to talk to him – for Jon to wake up and admit that what he’s doing isn’t right and that he needs to do something to stop it. He goes back and forth with himself for a bit – Does he have any control? Is he doing it on autopilot? Is the Web influencing him? – but ultimately he decides that, no, he has to hold himself accountable. Helen asks him if he’s sure he didn’t want to do it, and he takes that hard-to-swallow pill and engages in some introspection and comes to the conclusion, Yeah, while supernatural influence is at play here, I made a choice.

BUT if he made a choice, it means that he can make a different choice going forward. He doesn’t have to be the monster that everyone else expects him to be. He doesn’t have to traumatize others in the same way that he’s been traumatized. (And, eventually, maybe he can learn to see himself as Martin sees him.) And he changes his behavior accordingly!

I keep thinking of Jon’s comment on Gertrude sacrificing Michael to end the Spiral’s Ritual:

“I thought moving away from my humanity would have made that seem more acceptable. That sort of sacrifice… But it just makes me sad. I remembered Gertrude’s notebook. We found it alongside the plastic explosives, but it rather got lost amongst the business of… saving the world at the cost of two lives.”

And this comment, from one of Jon’s many navel-gazing arguments with himself over the nature of humanity and how he fits into that:

“Why were we chosen? …Is there destiny here? Bloodlines, and prophecies? Or did we just – stumble into this. Maybe… maybe we’re the opposite of Agnes. Maybe our doubts are exactly what we need.”

What keeps Jon in touch with Jonathan Sims, human and distinct from The Archivist/The Archive isn’t just an anchor/reason (Martin) or his own intense guilt, but that capacity for doubt. I mean, it does feed into his self-loathing and it’s unhealthy for him in a number of ways, but that doubt is also what saves him from fully becoming the thing he fears, in a way?

It’s interesting how that doubt and questioning feeds into his innate curiosity. That incessant need to know, even if his discoveries might destroy him, to go with Gerry’s definition of Beholding, is Jon’s fatal flaw, and it’s what makes him so well-suited to the Eye, but it’s also so very human.

That, along with Jon’s choice to change his behavior throughout the story is, imo, the strongest argument in favor of his humanity.

From where Jon is standing, every other Avatar has become so divorced from their prior self that they barely resemble humans anymore. But the question of free will is nebulous for most of the Avatars.

Some of the Avatars seem to have sought out the power that overtook them, or at the very least openly embraced it. Jude Perry sought to destroy others to make herself feel more alive long before she met Agnes; the Desolation just lent her the power to do so to a greater degree, and she leaned into it. Jared Hopworth was already a bully; becoming the Boneturner just gave him a new way to express that preexisting pattern of behavior.

Some of the others stumbled into it out of sheer bad luck, or in some way attracted a certain power. They were initially afraid, and typically resisted, but eventually were overtaken – or… gave in? Because that’s the recurring question: How much choice is involved?

Take Oliver Banks:

“The thing is, Jon, right now you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time, but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive…. I made a choice. We all made choices. Now you have to.”

Or Daisy:

“I hate a lot of what I did back then; doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t me.”

Even if some of the Avatars could have done something differently to avoid their ultimate fate, they didn’t necessarily deserve that fate. Helen Richardson could have not opened the door, but opening a door out of curiosity shouldn’t be a punishable offense.

And when the Distortion and Helen ‘become’ one another, it’s interesting that there’s still enough of Helen left (at least at first) for her to feel guilt and doubt over what she’s becoming, in much the same way that Jon does:

“I took a man, wandering the halls of an old tenement…. It was nourishing, but… I didn’t like it. I feel… wrong.”

(Side note: I understand why Jon feels like he can’t trust the Distortion, but it does make me wonder what might have gone differently if he’d maintained an open dialogue with her re: humanity vs. monstrosity, similar to the sort of understanding Jon and Daisy have after the Buried.)

The story has been asking these questions all along, but MAG 167 put it back under the microscope in an important way. It really doesn’t matter as much what Jon is, because what he does is a much better measure of humanity and goodness.

Jon looks at his own choices, looks at Gertrude’s choices, looks at the things that neither of them had control over and looks at the things that they did, and comes to a final conclusion:

No, he doesn’t want to be like Gertrude. Human connections are important. He needs an anchor. He needs companionship. Trust and communication don’t come naturally to him, but it’s worth confronting that vulnerability in the end, because it’s what keeps him in touch with his humanity, with who he is and who he wants to be.

It really complements Martin’s philosophy, too. I’ve gone on and on about it before, but I still think the line that most exemplifies Martin’s character is his response to Simon Fairchild’s brand of flippant, fatalist nihilism:

“I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever.”

It would be so easy for Jon and Martin to just... give up. Give in to self-loathing, to guilt, to loneliness, to a world gone horribly, possibly irreversibly wrong. Early on, Jon is inclined to do just that. He tells Martin that “this is no longer a world where you can trust comfort.” But what does Martin do instead? He comforts Jon. He puts comfort into a world where it seems like none can exist. It doesn’t matter if that gesture is significant in the grand scheme of things -- however you want to define significance on a cosmic level. In that moment, Martin cared, and that mattered to him, and it mattered to Jon, and that fact won’t change, even when they’re both dead and gone.

It’s... really the same stubborn sentiment that Jon offered in the Lonely, and Martin is mirroring it back when Jon needs it most.

They make an active choice to build a relationship, to try to make a change for the better. Even if it ends in failure, the fact that they tried is still significant. Jon looks at how Gertrude lived her life, compares it with his past and current choices, and (rightly imo) comes to the conclusion that, yeah, it hurts to trust and to care, but it’s worth it, and it’s necessary if they want to survive (and, of course, he also doesn’t just want to survive). It’s just... a very brave, very compassionate, and very human way of confronting the end of the world.

#tma #the magnus archives #mag 167 #tma meta #jonathan sims #gertrude robinson #tma spoilers #long post

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ziracona · 4 years

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The tendency in fandom to take every white girl with short hair, regardless of the status of their canonical interest or lack of interest in women and explicit interest and/or sexual history with everything but, proclaim them a lesbian queen, and then ignore or absolve them of every single horrific act they take in fiction because of this. Is not doing feminism. Women. Lesbians. Or anyone. Any favors. It’s just bad.

Somehow. Some people really do apparently need to hear that...being any specific sexuality...is not a personality trait.

And also. Women aren’t inherantly less vile than men (or anyone non-binary, agender, fluid, etc, else), and whatever bad deeds they do should be judged based on just that—on the deeds, and their context. Not their sexuality, imagined sexuality, or their gender. Becuase none of those things effect whether committing murder is bad. At all. Not even a little. And none of them. Is even a personality trait. Affecting the character’s value as a person.

It’s cool, and good, to see characters with minority identities. And it’s real nice. When it’s whatever you are. But them being whatever. Is not a personality trait. Just a fact. And sometimes. People of any type. Are not good. Pretending any minority status—gender, sexuality, race, disability, neurotype, etc—is a get out of jail free card? Is not. Doing them. Or anyone. Any favors. Personality disorder. Doesn’t make you bad. Also doesn’t make you good. Your actions do. Acting like Amy from Gone Girl did nothing wrong when she date rapes her boyfriend & then frames him for doing that to her & ruins his life, then blackmails her husband who is terrified of being murdered by her into staying with her for the sake of the child she made at a fertility clinic with his sperm without his consent, bc she’s a woman. Isn’t good. Men aren’t more deserving of violence than women. Neither is anyone else. Jane. Left an infant child in an unheated car in subzero weather in a snow storm with zombies around that easily would hear it cry and go eat it. So she could lie and say she already let zombies eat it to bait a man with easily triggerable PTSD who had just lost his family to zombies for the second time into starting a fight. Because he was injured, unarmed, weak, down an eye, and 50, while she was fit, mid 20s, healthy, and armed with a hunting knife. Because she wanted an excuse to kill him without looking bad, because she wanted the 11 year old girl she was co-parenting with him, all to herself. And her immediately responding to the dude throwing a punch by stabbing him in the stomach to escalate the fight from brawl to life or death, then losing her knife, and instead of telling him the baby was alive & she’d made it up to start a fight which could have at any point ended the fight, begging the 11 year old child to gun down her oldest surviving friend with her own hands in cold blood so that she’d get what she wanted? Is evil. As is crying on the 11 year old and using pity as a weapon to get her to stay with her if she gets mad and wants to leave when she realizes Jane staged the whole thing for an excuse to murder, and so is after realizing like a month later that she is pregnant, committing suicide, and leaving the 11 year old that she just manipulated into killing her oldest surviving friend/completely isolated on purpose so she could have her to herself, totally alone in the apocalypse to care for an infant. Jennifer’s Body? Is a fantastic film. And Jennifer didn’t deserve any of what happened to her. But not one single boy she kills during the course of that film deserved it—and explicitly so. Even the guy who could easily have been a meathead jock bully is outside alone crying becuase his best friend just died and he loved him before she decides to lure him off and eat him alive. And acting like it’s totally fine & Needy should have just let her keep eating boys instead of killing her? Is fucked up. None of them deserved to die. And no one deserves death innately more because they are or are not something that is just a factual designator of their makeup as a human. The exchange student was scared and alone and nice, the catholic kid was sweet and Needy’s friend, Chip is a bad boyfriend but he meant well and being stupid doesn’t mean you deserve to die. And this girl ate them alive. That’s not funny. Or cool. Or fine becuase they were dudes. Gertrude Robinson? Chose again and again to betray people who loved her, or trusted her—sold out victims of awful trauma to their worst nightmares. Killed friends in the worst possible ways, like it was nothing. Michael loved her, and trusted her, and tried to care for her, and she without faltering fed him to his worst nightmare and forced him to become it. There is nothing excusable about that action.

Jude Perry? Has 0 redeeming features. Didn’t even stay faithful to her poor gf & was creepy obsessed w Agnes. Literally murdered her co-worker friend just because he was happy, and she wanted to destroy things: that’s it. She didn’t even dislike him. Murdered him because he had a wife and kid and house and it seemed fun, then burned down his house, took his wife’s money, and now checks in on his kid every so often in case he ever recovers from the trauma she inflicted enough to be fun to kill. There is literally nothing good about this woman. Yes. I mean that. Because being a lesbian? Is just a thing. There is no g/b tag, there is no tag at all. Amanda Young? Got kidnapped and tortured and forced to choose between killing a man who couldn’t resist but was conscious to watch her, and letting herself die, and she killed him. Then, instead of responding to that trauma with guilt or responsibility or anger at her captor, joined up with him and started helping him kidnap people just like her. She was not forced, she was not lied to. It does not matter if John was manipulative; she is a grown ass woman and like all grown ass adults, responsible for her own actions and choices. She did not get manipulated pitifully into this—she did not go unwillingly. She volunteered, with a happy vengeance, became obsessed with John and in love with him, despite his complete lack of interest. And she did not even just do what he did. She decided on her own that no one deserved redemption, & she killed them for fun in traps that wouldn’t let them go even if they did whatever awful thing the trap demanded as a price for life, just for the fun and power trip of watching them die helpless & in agony. That was all her, & her alone. She sat in a house full of people slowly dying from organ decomposition over the course of a few hours, for no crime worse than drug addiction—the thing she of all people should have been most sympathetic to—knowing full well at any time she could have saved them and stopped the game, and did nothing. She held a woman in her arms and stroked her head lovingly while she let her die in one of the most inhumane ways possible for the crime of having not been able to break an addition. She got saved by a 16 year old child multiple times, who had done nothing more than shoplift, and stood by while he had to watch a man get his brains blown out, another burn to death in an oven. As his organs slowly dissolved too. Watched the kid kill another human being & massively traumatize himself to save her life. And responded to that by attacking & knocking him out, tying him up, locking him up for days in a tiny safe bound and gagged with an oxygen supply to keep him alive, to be a piece in another game. Left his father, who had shown up to try & save him, to starve to death in chains in a horrible abandoned rotting room, & never even told him his son was alive. Let every other addict die horribly, let that kid sustain permanent damage to his organs that will kill him young, antidote taken or not, took his dad from him, & went back to torturing without a second thought. Kidnapped a woman whose worst crime was being a doctor & dating someone while maybe separated instead of divorced from her husband, put her in a trap that would take her head off with shotgun blasts, threatened her for fun, & then killed her even after she did everything she was asked, because it was more important to her that the old man she was obsessed with think she was special and great, than for the other woman to get to stay alive another day & go home to her daughter. There is nothing sympathetic about Amanda. She’s just not only evil, but too spineless to take responsibility for her own choices & actions, & tries to hide behind a “UwU I am sad & lonely & damaged & having trauma means I can literally torture people to death to feel special & it’s really tragic and sympathetic about me, not evil. Uhm. Some people??? Commit torture-murders?? To cope??” And acting like she’s somehow a victim in this becuase she is a pretty white girl with short hair? Is fucked. Up.

But every. God damn. Time. I see this. Please. It needs. To stop. People go: “UwU pretty girl short hair want” & I go “Ok. I see where u. Come from. Indeed.” But then. They go. “Girl pretty I like. So she was blameless. For this atrocity.” Those words...

Every day. I wake up. Thinking of Janic saying. Iconically. “At least me and Regina George know we’re mean,” and I weep inside. Because I cannot fathom. Or stomach. The lack of responsibility. I will kill. Characters who cannot admit they are bad. Myself. But somehow. They become. Flames. To moths. Of the “UwU pretty white girl short hair. We stan. Victim. Queen. Love her. Never done wrong.” Boy. We all done wrong. Even all my faves. At least once. I think. ...not if we count dogs probably, but people, yes. Ok. Anyway. All this is to say. Characters. Should be judged. Based on what they did. And why. And the aftermath. Not a grouping tag. I don’t mean any of these. Make bad characters. At all. Amy is a great character. So is Jennifer. So are most of them. I have quite affection even. For Jeneffer specifically. But you can like. Character. Without proclaiming. Them perfect humans. Who never did a thing wrong. Or their acts somehow. Justifiable. And ok. And you better stop saying. Ok. Because done. To men. Men do not. Deserve violence. Any more. Than anyone else. No one deserves violence defacto for factors. Outside their control. Wtf. Really people. It’s ok too. For character. To do much bad stuff. And still like character. Villains. And often just complex characters. Sometimes just characters. Do stuff. That is bad. It’s not supposed to be not their fault. Or ok. Also. Women are not a sisterhood. Of flawless beings. Who never hurt anyone or do any bad stuff. They can. And are. Often purpotrators. Of awful acts. And when they are. It is still. Very bad. Still. An awful act. Same level. Even. Of awful. Wild.

In conclusion.

Having short hair. While a girl. Doesn’t make her a butch queen. Who is absolved of all responsibility for that murder she committed. It just makes her a girl with short hair. That did a murder. I’m gonna. Kill someone. Too. And if I chop my hair off. I guess I can get away with it.

#personal #*dances wildly to abba music while delivering speech*#some of you all apparently really need a girl to come fuck up your life bc the lengths to which some of y’all so devotedly seem to believe #women are less evil is astronomical. and let me tell you. from personal experience? a girl can ruin your life. just as easily. and with as #little pity. guilt. remorse. or afterthought. as a man. and it aint any more ok. & you know what? so can a fluid person. or a nonbinary #person. legit anyone. can be bad. or good. and do bad. or good. theyre not defacto worse for coming from X starting point. and theyre also.#OuO not. better.#not everyone who likes or is sympathetic to these specific characters even be like that either like u know what? its possible to both be #sypathetic to a character & not excuse & atand their actions. I like & feel bad for Jennifer. a lot. one of my bros in college loved Jane #from twdg. Not bc she thought it was totally fine she’d been super evil though. its *dances* not that hard actually #also nothin against lovin evil lady characters or evil characters in general. just me or anyone else loving them does nothing to make their #evil deeds suddely ok or vanish into the mist #people have some real trouble w nuance huh. folks like a character & assume that means stanning everything theyve ever done. hate a charactr #and suddenly forget how to factor any outside factors into their view of said person’s actions. its a wild bad ride yo #like i get it. im a girl & ive had plenty of men ruin my life i truly get it. but is there anything truly more detrimental to feminism & to #just treating people decent in general than the WomenDoNoWrong mindset & apologism thrown up like its actually a decent counter t patriarchy #? probably actually yeah im sure there are worse. but its still REALLY not good!! feminism is just a stance that all people deserve equal #treatment & an investment in pursuing that reality. if youre excusing people of horrible actions bc girl & treating violence against non-#women as fine youre not a feminist u actually just suck generally as a person #i also lose my mind how half the characters i see get this treatment aint even lesbians & often explicitly like men yet get both assigned #that & treated like that sexuality is a hall pass for human rights violations. im dyin #this entire thought rant was prompted by reading a post earlier today about bi-phobia & gettin mad about how bi people get treated idk how #spagheti brain exactly went there to here so /fast/ but anyway. same brand of problematic. & i am v tired :] of this :] specifically :]#every time i see that post abt women killers in horror i am like ‘OP hiw are your points so good but all your examples so /terrible/.’ rip #i guess this is just life. and i feel excessively better after screaming jnto the void of my blog #also i get it gertrude robinson wanted to stop the apocalypse but fuck gertrude robinson she has no excuse. nothing could justify what she #did to people who loved her. and shes a well written and layered character whonisnt like just pure evil but she is VERY bad and i WILL kill #her (again) myself if given the chance & i have every right to.#spoilers #again. great charcters. amanda an iconic saw villain. gertrude fascinating. etc. but also. they be doing mad evil deeds & tis not ok

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emilybrowningfans · 7 years

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Emily interviewed for The Last Magazine

“My muse is not a horse and I am in no horse race and if indeed she was, still I would not harness her to this tumbrel…” It is the end of a four-day press run in New York for the new Starz series American Gods and Emily Browning is reciting to her castmates, the show’s developers—Michael Green and Brian Fuller—and the story’s original creator, English author Neil Gaiman, the infamous rejection letter penned “to all those at MTV” by fellow Australian and rock music’s ‘Prince of Darkness’ Nick Cave. “It’s incredible—he was nominated for an MTV Award for Murder Ballads and he wrote MTV a letter saying, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ and essentially that art is not a competition,” says Browning over coffee the following morning.

As Browning recalls it, her dinnertime recitation of Cave’s letter emerged from news that episodes of American Gods would be screened in front of a panel to determine whether the series might qualify for Emmy consideration. “I was telling them how scary that is to me and I ended up reading them the letter that Nick Cave wrote,” she explains.

In the hours before Browning journeys back to her adopted home of Los Angeles, the young star appears understated and authentic, her dry, self-deprecating humor ringing true to the country she called home for some twenty-plus years, the country where at just eight years old she got her start in the television movie The Echo of Thunder and where over the following five years, she would hold her own alongside Billy Connolly in the comedy The Man Who Sued God, Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom in the retelling of the life of the infamous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, and Julianna Marguiles in the Australian-filmed, American-released horror flick Ghost Ship. But her big break came in 2004 in the shape of A Series of Unfortunate Events, which saw Browning share screen time with Hollywood heavyweights Jim Carrey, Jude Law, Meryl Streep, and Connolly for the second time.

Yet despite her two decades in front of the camera racking up an impressive list of IMDB credits spanning myriad genres including everything from crime dramas (Legend, in which Browning plays Tom Hardy’s wife) to musicals (the British drama God Help the Girl, for which she took the lead), the young star speaks frankly and openly about the fears that go hand-in-hand with a burgeoning acting career.

There is the wavering skepticism surrounding award ceremonies—”If our show won awards that would be really exciting and wonderful, and yet I’ve always had a weird feeling about awards. I really don’t understand how every year there is one person from each category who is the best person at the art that they do”—but equally, if not more so, Browning’s uneasiness stems from a lingering and very real apprehension towards the ostensibly public nature of fame itself. “I have a feeling that if this show is big, it won’t be long before there are stories about me being an asshole because I wouldn’t take a photo with someone—but it is so often because it makes me panic and I don’t know how to respond,” she says. “I’m such a socially inept person in general that I’m like, How am I going to deal with it?” she concedes with a laugh.

Needless to say, with the series’ premiere last night—and a substantial pre-existing fan base by virtue of Gaiman’s award-winning novel of the same name about a clutch of Old Gods pulled from ancient mythology who confront New American Gods who represent some of the more complicated aspects of our modern society like Media and the stock market—Browning’s fear may soon become a reality. It’s a gamble the 28-year-old actress says she is willing to take in support of the series and her character, the enigmatic and pivotal Laura Moon, for whom Browning developed a profound appreciation. “I fell in love with Laura immediately,” she explains. “I had never read a character like her before who is not built to be likable, which is wonderful and really freeing.”

In many ways, Browning’s gritty portrayal of the “unapologetically crass and complicated and flawed” Laura inadvertently opens up an important conversation about what it means to be a woman in today’s Hollywood. “We’ve been having this discussion about strong, female characters and I think that a lot of people misinterpret that to mean girls who kick ass and independent women who don’t need a man, but really the strength is about characters being written in a complex and interesting way,” Browning says. “That’s what I mean when I say I want to play strong characters, I mean characters that are written well and fleshed out well. I want to play horrible people and lovely people and weak people and stupid people. I think that’s what it’s about—we just want as much range available to us as men have had forever.”

Furthermore, the series comes at a time of unprecedented change and trepidation harnessing both the current political and social landscapes, which in effect has instigated an expansive and perhaps long overdue conversation around what it means to be “American.” Throughout the eight-episode first season, questions surrounding faith, sexuality, sacrifice, loyalty, belief, and love are a guts-and-all affair, the camera’s focus holding steady during scenes that in the industry by and large are deemed too provocative to be shown in their entirety. Take for instance the gay love scene between characters Salim and Jinn, two Muslim men, which Browning cites as a favorite moment. “If you ever see a gay love scene, so often there’s a moment early on when the camera decides to look away, and I like the fact that we don’t look away from it,” she says, “and that it’s tender and awkward and emotional and lovely, and it’s also a really hot scene. I think that there’s not enough of that.”

Additionally, the series addresses such contentious issues as America’s obsession with guns and gun control, along with the ongoing immigration debate. “I definitely don’t want it to sound like the show is liberal preachiness in any way because I don’t believe that it is,” Browning explains. “I don’t think that we’re prescribing any set of beliefs. I really think that if there is a message, the message is that all faith is relevant and whatever it is that you believe in, you should be able to believe in that thing no matter what it is. The show is naturally, effortlessly diverse, which is how I think it should be. It makes me really proud to be a part of it, especially right now.”

Indeed, for someone who has “never really had a plan,” relying instead on sheer gut instinct when it comes to the projects she has pursued, Browning’s trajectory to date cuts a singular path that above all champions multiplicity over certainty. “I’m not the kind of person that wants to work nonstop—I want something special,” she says. Something like Golden Exits, for instance, which premiered at Sundance and cast Browning alongside Jason Schwartzman, Chloë Sevigny, and Mary-Louise Parker in the artfully defiant independent feature from writer-director Alex Ross Perry. “I’ve been playing a few awful characters lately, it’s great,” says Browning of her Golden Exits character, Naomi, an Australian girl whose arrival in Brooklyn sets off a train of events that, in true Perry style, depict the more cantankerous side of human behavior. “Alex thinks that that character is me,” says Browning with a laugh. “We’ve essentially talked about the fact that the character is the worst possible version of me. I mean there were a few times when I had to say to him, ‘This isn’t me, though, I’m not this horrible, I don’t actually treat men this way.’ But a lot of that character came out of stories that we shared with one another about people that we knew respectively and about ourselves, so I knew her very well from the beginning.”

As for now, Browning is taking some well-earned time to catch her breath after a grueling six months of four AM starts on set for American Gods. “I’m just having a moment to gather inspiration and ideas, and to just gather my energy before season two as well.” And of the future, no matter the course her career may take, Browning resolves to never lose her pure, unconstrained love of the craft—despite the anxiety it instills time and time again. “I still absolutely have the feeling of being a huge fan of performers and of movies,” she says. “I don’t ever want to lose that. I don’t ever want to be jaded, because I think then you’re screwed.”

American Gods continues on Sundays on Starz.

#interview #the last magazine #news #emily browning

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4yourexcitement · 5 years

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10 years ago today we were introduced to a rag tag group of losers who, with a song in their hearts, were just looking for a place to belong as they made their way through high school in Nowhereville, Ohio. We met a young teacher trying to rediscover his passion for teaching. We came across your usual high school jocks and cheerleaders, we had our first run-in with a slightly scary, slightly crazy cheerleading coach, and we heard that iconic song for the first time closing out the episode.

Yes today marks 10 years since Glee’s pilot aired. How little we knew then the impact this show about a high school glee club that was littered with song and dance numbers that ran the gamut from top 40 pop to rap to classic rock to Broadway staples would have on our lives. And it’s not just our lives that it changed, it also changed the TV landscape… bringing musicals back to TV, opening up mainstream TV to LGBT issues, and raising awareness of issues from the value of arts education to texting and driving.

Let’s take a look at where the cast are now.

Dianna Agron – Quinn Fabray

Credit: FOX

Credit: Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images North America

Dianna became a household name as the Queen Bee head cheerleader Quinn Fabray with the seemingly picture perfect life… little did we know from that very first episode. Following her character’s high school graduation at the end of season 3, Dianna only appeared in a handful of episodes for the rest of Glee’s run. Since landing Glee, Dianna has had a number of film roles. They include The Hunters (2011), I Am Number Four (2011), The Family (2013), Zipper (2015), Bare (2015), and The Crash (2017). She also made her London theatre debut as Dahlia in the play McQueen in 2015. Dianna married Mumford & Sons’ Winston Marshall in 2016.

Chris Colfer – Kurt Hummel

Credit: FOX

Credit: Chris Colfer/Instagram

Chris was a cherub-faced 19-year-old when Ryan Murphy created the role of Kurt Hummel for him and just like his character, Chris is not taking ‘no’ for an answer and forging his own career as a storyteller. Chris won a Golden Globe for best supporting actor for his portrayal of the fashion-forward countertenor in 2011. During the Glee 2011 hiatus, Chris wrote and starred in the film Struck by Lightning. Chris adapted the film’s script into a novel, which was published in November 2012. While working on the Struck and during breaks in the Glee Live! in Concert! tour through North America, the UK and Ireland, Chris was working on his draft for The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell, the first in his fantasy children’s series and earning him his first New York Times Bestseller’s list entry. The novel has spawned five sequels, two picture books and a couple of companion books, not to mention a number of other Bestseller’s list entries. It was announced last year that the first book was being adapted for film. Chris will not only serve as writer and executive producer, but will also make his directorial debut on the project. He also released his second Young Adult novel – Stranger than Fanfiction – in 2017. Although his writing has kept Chris largely busy since Glee wrapped, he has had a guest spot on Hot in Cleveland and guest starred in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie.

Jane Lynch – Sue Sylvester

Credit: FOX

Credit: Andrew Toth/WireImage

When Glee debuted 10 years ago, Jane Lynch was probably the best-known cast member. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in cheer coach and Will Schuester/Glee club antagonist Sue Sylvester. Jane had some of the best one-liners throughout the series, with many still littering social media today. From 2013, Jane has hosted NBC’s game show Hollywood Game Night (on which a number of her Glee castmates have appeared) for which she was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Host in 2018. That same year was also nominated for Outstanding Guest Actor for her role in The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Jane executive produced and starred in the comedy web series Dropping the Soap, earning an Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series Emmy nomination for her performance. Her autobiography, Happy Accidents was published in 2011, and Jane returned to the stage, making her Broadway debut as Miss Hannigan for a limited engagement in 2013 in the Annie revivial and touring her cabaret show, See Jane Sing, which debuted in 2015.

Jayma Mays – Emma Pilsbury

Credit: FOX

Credit: NBC

Jayma played the germaphobe McKinley High guidance counselor, who always had a motivational leaflet on hand for any occasion. Her infatuation with Will Schuester provided her with much angst in the first few seasons, but her patience and long-suffering was finally rewarded, notwithstanding her runaway bride escapade. Jayma starred alongside Neil Patrick Harris in the two Smurf movies and had lead roles in the TV series The Millers (2013-2015) and Trial & Error (2017-2018). Jayma and husband Adam Campbell welcomed their son, Jude in August 2016.

Kevin McHale – Artie Abrams

Credit: FOX

Credit: Roc Nation

Former boy band member, Kevin took on the role of wheelchair bound Artie Abrams. Since Glee wrapped in 2015, Kevin spent some time in the UK hosting the comedy panel show Virtually Famous for its first three seasons. He also played supporting roles in the independent film Boychoir and the docudrama miniseries When We Rise, which detailed the history of US LGBT rights advocacy from the 1970s to the 2010s. On the music front, Kevin joined fellow Glee star Darren Criss in Katy Perry’s celeb-filled video for her 2011 hit “Last Friday Night “(T.G.I.F.)” and has recently my working on new solo work, with his song “Help Me Now” released at the end of March. Kevin can also be heard every Thursday with best friend and Glee co-star Jenna Ushkowitz on their podcast Showmance – part of the Ladygang Network, of which fellow co-star Becca Tobin is co-creator of.

Lea Michele – Rachel Berry

Credit: FOX

Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Lea starred as the Broadway-obsessed, New Directions-lead diva, Rachel Berry. Following Glee’s end, Lea joined Ryan Murphy’s new Fox comedy horror series, Scream Queens. Lea played Hester Ulrich for the show’s two seasons. In 2017 she starred as Valentina Barella in ABC’s ill-fated sitcom The Mayor, which despite positive critical acclaim, was cancelled after one season. Lea made her feature film debut in 2011’s New Year’s Eve. Lea has released two studio albums: Louder (2014) and Places (2017), and has recently teased work beginning on a new album. She promoted Places in 2017 with the mini tour An Intimate Evening with Lea Michele, which took her to nine cities in the US as well as Toronto, Canada and London, UK. She teamed up with fellow Glee-alum Darren Criss for the LM/DC Tour in 2018, which saw the pair perform across North America, the UK and Ireland. Lea has also penned two books: the New York Times Bestseller Brunette Ambition and You First: Journal Your Way to Your Best Life. Lea married president of clothing brand AYR, Zandy Reich earlier this year.

Cory Monteith – Finn Hudson

Credit: FOX

Credit: rederick M. Brown/Getty Image

Cory played the lovable giant Finn Hudson, McKinley’s star quarterback who also slayed it on the drums and could nail any classic rock song. While working on Glee, Canadian native starred in Monte Carlo and Sisters & Brothers, both were released in 2011. Cory made no secret of his struggles with addiction, both before and during Glee. Cory was found dead in a Vancouver hotel in July 2013. His two films, All The Wrong Reasons and McCanick were released posthumously. The cast and crew paid tribute to both Cory and Finn in the season 5 episode, “The Quarterback”.

Matthew Morrison – Will Schuester

Credit: FOX

Credit: Getty Images

The role of McKinley High’s inept Spanish teacher who revives the glee club was played by Matthew Morrison. Matt released his first solo studio album in 2011. The self-titled album was followed up in 2013 with the release of Where It All Began, a collection of Broadway standards. Matt also starred in The Muppets (2011) and the film adaptation of bestselling book, What To Expect When You’re Expecting (2012). Matt returned to the Broadway stage in 2015, performing the title role of J.M. Barrie in the new musical Finding Neverland. The role earned him two Broadway.com Audience Awards: Favorite Actor in a Musical and Favorite Onstage Pair (with Laura Michelle Kelly). He has had recurring roles on The Good Wife and Grey’s Anatomy and earlier this year, Matt was one of the dance captain’s in BBC One’s The Greatest Dancer. He married Renee Puente in 2014. The couple welcomed their first child, Revel in 2017.

Amber Riley – Mercedes Jones

Credit: FOX

Credit: Getty Images North America

With a killer set of pipes and a huge dose of diva, Amber Riley played the unstoppable Mercedes Jones. Amber put her years of Glee dance training to use, taking out the Mirror Ball trophy on Dancing with the Stars. She starred as Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North, in NBC’s live performance of The Wiz in 2015. Amber then came across to London and made her West End debut as Effie White in Dreamgirls, a role that won her the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 2017. Later that year she was a judge on BBC One’s musical talent show Let It Shine. She also joined forces with Beverley Knight and Cassidy Janson as Leading Ladies. They released their first album, Songs from the Stage at the end of 2017.

Mark Salling – Noah “Puck” Puckerman

Credit: FOX

Credit: Earl Gibson III/Getty Images

Mark played McKinley’s resident “badass” Puck. A bully who has been in and out of juvie, he’s Finn Hudson’s best friend and teammate on the football team, however, this doesn’t stop him from knocking up Finn’s girlfriend Quinn. But this relationship does bring him to the New Directions as a way to be closer to Quinn. Mark released the studio album Pipe Dreams in 2010 where it received modest success reaching 29 on the US Indie chart. In 2013 Mark was accused of sexual battery, which was settled out of court. He was later arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. He died by suicide in January 2018 before he was sentenced.

Jenna Ushkowitz – Tina Cohen-Chang

Credit: FOX

Credit: Jenna Ushkowitz/Twitter

Jenna starred as the stuttering emo/goth Tina Cohen-Chang, though both of these attributes didn’t last beyond the first two seasons. Jenna released an autobiography, Choosing Glee in 2013. She returned to the stage in 2015 and 2016 as Julia Sullivan in The Wedding Singer in Pittsburgh and in a limited run as Dawn Williams in Broadway’s Waitress, respectively. Jenna has also turned to producing. She executive produced the documentary Twinsters in 2015, which premiered at the South by Southwest festival and she won her first Tony last year for her work as a producer on the Once on This Island musical revival. In 2016 Jenna founded the At Will Radio podcast network with Will Malnati. She hosted the podcast Infinite Positivities. More recently she has joined Glee best friend and costar Kevin McHale as co-hosts of the Ladygang Network podcast Showmance. Jenna also founded Kindred: The Foundation for Adoption with fellow adoptee Samantha Futerman.

Heather Morris – Brittany Pierce

Credit: FOX

Credit: Drop The Mic

In what was only meant to be a background role, Heather Morris so endeared ditzy cheerleader Brittany Pierce to the fans and the Glee writers that she quickly became a series regular. Heather provided the voice of Katie in Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012) and has starred in Spring Breakers (2013), Most Likely to Die (2015) and Folk Hero & Funny Guy (2016). Heather appeared in the 2017 season of Dancing with the Stars, being eliminated in the sixth week of the competition. Heather gave birth to her son, Elijah with Taylor Hubbell in 2013. Heather and Taylor were married in 2015 and welcomed their second son, Owen in 2016.

Naya Rivera – Santana Lopez

Credit: FOX

Credit: Watch What Happens Live

The third member of the Unholy Trinity, Naya starred as Latino spitfire Santana Lopez. Naya made her feature film debut in 2014 in the horror film At the Devil’s Door. She had a recurring role in the third season of Devious Maids (2015) and has starred in the YouTube Red series Step Up: High Water (2018-). Naya signed with Columbia Records in 2011 to produce a solo album. Her single “Sorry”, featuring then-boyfriend and rapper Big Sean was released in 2013, though the album was never produced. Naya has also published a memoir: Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up. Naya married Ryan Dorsey in 2014. They have a son, Josey, who was born in 2015. Naya and Ryan eventually divorced in 2018.

Harry Shum Jr. – Mike Chang

Credit: FOX

Credit: Getty Images

The dancing jock with a surprising voice, Harry starred as Mike Chang. Known for most of the first season as “Other Asian”, it was his relationship with Tina from the second season that brought Mike into the heart of the glee club and their fans. Harry was involved in a number of web series during Glee’s run, including Step Up 3-D and Mortal Kombat: Legacy. Since Glee he has starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and the hit 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians. He is best known for his role as the warlock Magnus Bane in the Freeform/Netflix series Shadowhunters, which ran from 2016 and the series finale airing earlier this month. Personally Harry married actress/dancer Shelby Rabara in 2015. The couple’s first child, Xia, was born earlier this year.

Chord Overstreet – Sam Evans

Credit: FOX

Credit: Chord Overstreet/Instagram

Chord joined the cast early on in season 2 as transfer student Sam Evans. While Chord starred as Nick in the 2015 film 4th Man Out, he has largely focused on his music career since Glee wrapped. In 2016, Chord toured with Glee season 5 recurring guest Demi Levato and Nick Jonas, opening a series of their Future Now Tour dates. He released a series of singles between 2016 and 2017, along with his debut EP Tree House Tapes in mid 2017. In 2018, he created alt-pop-rock group Overstreet. They released singles “Wasted Time” and “Carried Away” Last month they debuted new song “All Nighter” and their debut album Man on the Moon is due out later this year. They are currently touring around the US at selected cities.

Darren Criss – Blaine Anderson

Credit: FOX

Credit: Danny Moloshok/Invisionfor the Television Academy/AP Images

With a failed audition for Finn Hudson behind him, Darren Criss was cast as rival glee club Dalton Academy’s lead singer, Blaine Anderson, in season 2’s sixth episode, “Never Been Kissed”. Initially a short guest stint as a role model-type character for Kurt, the chemistry between Darren and Chris Colfer and the fan response to both Darren and his debut song “Teenage Dream” soon saw him join the regular cast. Darren made his Broadway debut in a three week stint as J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in January 2012. He went straight from Glee into rehearsals for Broadway’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, taking the stage for 12-weeks in 2015. He reprised the role for the San Francisco and LA legs of the US tour in 2016. He has starred in the films Girl Most Likely (2012) and the upcoming WWII drama Midway. The film All You Ever Wished For, which was filmed straight after his first Hedwig run and received limited cinema release, will be available on DVD from next month. Darren teamed up with Ryan Murphy again as Andrew Cunanan in The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, a role which won him a slew of awards in the past award season including the Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG for Best Actor in a Limited Series.

Darren’s first solo tour, Listen Up, played to sold out venues in Glee’s 2013 summer hiatus. He formed the band Computer Games with his brother Chuck last year. They released their debut EP Lost Boys Life and played a few concerts around the US and in Mexico. They are set to release some new tracks over the next few months. Darren released his second solo EP Homework at the end of 2017. He toured with co-star Lea Michele throughout 2018 as well as performed intimate solo sets in London and Sydney. Darren realised a long-held dream in 2015, with the launch of Elsie Fest – a Broadway and pop music festival. The festival has been held annually in New York City. Darren married long-time girlfriend Mia Swier earlier this year. They opened the piano bar Tramp Stamp Granny’s in LA last year.

Honorable Mentions

Guest star Grant Gustin (Warbler Sebastian Smythe – 2011-2013) has gone on to star as Barry Allen/The Flash in The CW’s The Flash and other Arrowverse shows. Melissa Benoist (Marley Rose – 2012-2014) currently appears as Kara Danvers/Supergirl in The CW’s Supergirl and other Arrowverse shows. Becca Tobin (Kitty Wilde – 2012-2015) has starred in a number of Hallmark movies and created the podcast Ladygang with Keltie Knight and Jac Vanek. This has spawned an E! TV series and podcast network. The ladies are about to embark on a limited tour of the US.

4YE Glee 10 Years On: What Have The Cast Been Up To Since Glee Wrapped? 10 years ago today we were introduced to a rag tag group of losers who, with a song in their hearts, were just looking for a place to belong as they made their way through high school in Nowhereville, Ohio.

#10 years of Glee #chris colfer #darren criss #glee #lea michele

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