#tma character analysis

[cult-of-the-eye]

LEMME HEAR YOUR UNHINGED TMA RANTS! <3

Oooh I think I've already posted a lot of my rants but one of the characters who I haven't really had a whole rant on is Martin K blackwood.

THIS MAN. This man is so wonderfully written. A lot of characterisations of the "nice one" are quite flat and don't really expand much on them being nice apart from maybe giving the person low self esteem. What I love about Martin is how masterfully it uses that sort of prototype of a character and makes it much more gut wrenching and relatable. He starts off as sort of the office dunce from Jon's pov, which early on we also realise is unreliable. He's the bumbling idiot, the sweet fool and I get it. As a fat person, I feel like a lot of us feel pressured to be the comic relief or to put it more precisely, the one to be laughed at. And he's seen the gap in the archives, he's seen that role that needs to be filled and he's easily filled it. When you have the group of Tim and Sasha and then Jon, the only thing that could unite them is mutual awkward laughter towards Martin. And Martin is used to seeing what's there and filling the gaps, man is a people pleaser to a fault, he has had to guess what his mum didn't like about him and change accordingly, getting it wrong every time. He makes himself palatable which is so REAL especially for a fat person and/or traumatised people.

And then we see this more calculating side of him. He LIED to all his colleagues and his BOSS about a qualification to get a job and then kept that lie going for at least a couple of months. Listen, I don't think it's fair to label Martin as completely a manipulative calculating guy who's just put on a mask but it's also not exactly fair to characterise him as just a sweet, tea making guy who wears jumpers. And that's what I love about him. He's so complex. I feel like it delves into the idea of having both a saviour complex as well as an inferiority complex. He's had to make choices that are above his skillset early in his life and frequently, he's been blamed for causing other people's emotions so he naturally thinks he has control over how other people feel. Which gives him that sense of responsibility, like I can save anyone cause I can control their emotions, if I'm nice enough then they won't be mad/ill/sad/they'll love me. But at the same time, these sort of underhand methods of indirect communication don't resonate to him as causing any damage cause he doesn't actually think he's important enough to cause damage or have an impact on other people's lives

I don't think it's of any shock to anyone that my favourite Martin is angry Martin. It's the part that fights against both aspects of this inferiority/saviour complex because it 1. Is a path of direct communication. He has the opportunity to state exactly how he is feeling and the focus is on that rather than how can I get the other person to respond. 2. It recognises that he is important. Anger is in response to perceived injustice, frustration, annoyance and all of those things are in a way, self preserving. Obviously it's not good to do that too much (see: Tim Stoker) but there you go. I'm not saying angry Martin is perfect or anything but I'm saying that it's so satisfying and interesting to see cause it completely goes against the characterisation we've been given so far and it introduces a whole new facet to Martin - that he doesn't want to be ruled by his trauma and past experiences.

It's honestly a joy to see Martin develop into someone who fights more against the role he's been "given" while simultaneously playing into it. His whole Peter Lukas arc is very much a part of that. Essentially he's saying I'm not important enough to contribute the way you are (inferiority) but I'm still going to try and control things behind the scenes (saviour). So when Jon goes to save him it breaks that, he looks him in the eyes and tells him you, Martin K Blackwood are Important, you make an impact and you Mean Something. You don't have to save us all. It's such an important part of his character arc and honestly it blows me away every time I think about it.

Plus obviously the whole isolation thing is just so AGH it's just so built in to his character it makes complete sense that he has a tendency to isolate himself. It fulfills both the inferiority and saviour - he doesn't think he's important enough to be missed but also he feels like it'll push them into missing him. Solving the problem and putting himself down in one fell swoop.

Our final stage of Martin is one that is far from perfect, far from healed but absolutely closer than he was at the beginning. He shows more of himself, in working towards realising he makes an impact on people, telling jokes and just sharing his thoughts to Jon. So what does him stabbing Jon mean for this? Honestly I'm not entirely sure (I'm gonna be honest I did not realise this rant would be so long lol) but I'm thinking along the lines of this is an ultimate show of acceptance of his significance and rejection of his need to save people. He is committing the most direct act of all, he's doing this in the same need to help people but instead of being manipulative about it, he's just directly doing what needs to be done. But also he's not saving Jon, he's doing the complete opposite. He couldn't control Jon's response to the situation, as much as he wanted to, so he did what jon wanted. I might not be explaining this right cause I'm not entirely sure what I mean either but I'm trying to say it's a poetic end. It's separate from everything he was but in a way that's parallel to and pays homage to his struggles. He's still being sort of a saviour and he's still arguably not the most important person in this scenario but the point is that it's in a different way than he's used to. In my opinion, a better way.

Anyway yeah thank you for enabling me, I didn't know how much I needed this rant and I didn't know I had so much to say lol. <3

[girlthatlikestotalk]

the way that the entities’ pull towards the tma characters, especially jon and martin, from the first season is just so. ugh i have a lot of opinions on it. especially on martin so thats my ted talk tonight.

like don’t even get me started on him oh my god. he’s been so Lonely from the start even though he tries so hard not to be. jon and sasha underestimating him, seeing him as not as intelligent or hardworking as themselves (people who have made bad decisions and overworked themselves *cough cough jon* far past the point of detriment, but that’s not my point tonight), which has got to feel exclusionary. with everything jon says about him in season 1, with sasha thinking his experience couldn’t be too bad because he was him and if it was, he’d surely be dead. speaking of which. he was... he was trapped in his flat for weeks and just. nobody noticed. nobody checked in on him. this boy is reeking of Lonely. i can’t.

[lilyminer]

I’m so convinced I’m Your Man by Mitski is a majorly daisira coded song. Like, that song is absolutely about my favourite corrupt sapphic pairing. If you don’t believe me I’ll make my case:

So, starting with surface level cuz I gotta mention it, the whole hound theme in general. Especially the barking at the end is just so Daisy.

But the song itself feels to me like how I think of Daisy’s relationship to Basira. She knows loving her is corrupting Basira in so many ways, she can see the ways this love is sending Basira into a spiral of becoming a worse and worse person.

To me it feels like Daisy is attached to Basira but doesn’t understand why her feelings would be reciprocated. She feels like if Basira fully understood her she wouldn’t be in love with her, she assumes a logic that love doesn’t follow.

There’s just this codependency turned mutual destruction to daisira that this song absolutely nails in my opinion. This inevitability that they’ll ruin each other in the process of being in love.

To me Daisy’s final arc during season 5 is almost like her trusting Basira to kill her not only to stop her from causing further harm and as a final act of true, uncorrupted justice. But as a punishment for all the ways she’s hurt Basira herself, even if Basira doesn’t know that. Trusting her to take revenge for the ways she’s been wronged.

But this is just my interpretation of their dynamic, characterizations and the song itself. To me it’s a perfect fit.

[the-magpie-archives]

You see, Martin says 'I grieved for you' to Jon, but this doesn't do justice for just what he would have gone through.

As most people know, having a loved one in hospital is horrible, but Jon's case is an entirely different thing. Assuming Jon was initially taken to a hospital in Great Yarmouth, it would've taken Martin a while to get there, even if he left right away. He might have missed Jon's emergency treatment, but he certainly didn't miss the worst of it.

Many people assume that CPR is a quick, simple, lifesaving procedure, it is not. Jon was found not breathing, and without a pulse, so he would have had at least 20 minutes straight of CPR, and that messes up a body. On a person as weak as Jon it would badly break ribs, and cause a lot of bruising. Even if Martin didn't have to watch Jon's chest be crushed to no avail, that type of damage is often visible.

I don't know if you've ever seen a dead body, but it's different to an unconscious one in every way. Jon of course, was not dead, but he would absolutely look it. As I'm sure you know, blood being pumped is what keeps the body warm, and breathing accounts for a large part of what we perceive as living, so the absence of both of these, especially in a loved one, is jarring, and likely to send anyone into shock

In lots of TV shows you see doctors calling deaths, but in reality it's actually quite a difficult thing to diagnose. It's not a quick check of the pulse and you're done, there's a lot of tests; there are many conditions that can look like death. In Jon's case his mind and nerves were still active, meaning it would have been picked up on fairly quickly, but Jon would have been assumed dead until these tests were completed.

The thing with a case like this, is there's nothing the doctors can feasibly do; as Elias says, it's an unknown quantity. The most likely course of action would be to make him as comfortable as possible, and redo the death checks every so often. There would be no hope for his recovery, but legally the hospital would have to do this, and would be able to offer very little comfort.

Although of course you want your loved one to survive, many family members of coma patients confess to hoping that they'd just die. The limbo of waiting is impossible to process, and having them there but having no way to communicate with them can be excruciating. There's no way to properly grieve for someone if you always have it in the back of your mind that they could wake up.

Giving up on someone like that is terribly and awfully painful. You can tell them you're sorry all you want, but you'll always be thinking about how they'd have wanted you to stay. Having to create both sides of an interaction like that when truly you're in control of neither is simply impossible to recover from.

Every action Martin took after Jon's death was justified, logical, even. To succumb to the lonely after leaving the man you love, sentencing him to die alone?

It feels right.

[clown-eating-pig]

One thing that I really appreciate about martin as a character is how you can observe him becoming more open over the seasons. Specifically with how he expresses himself, I like the way he noticeably becomes more vocal in his anger and pettiness by season 5. There are several things that I think contribute to this, and all of them make me varying levels of sad and happy all at once:

Obviously being part of the magnus archives in any capacity is enough to make someone more openly angry (as evidenced by pretty much everyone), and martin isn't excluded from that general "I'm being held captive by an invisible entity and the world is on the brink of collapse" rage.

Job security. This one is probably silly, but I can imagine that part of the reason that martin's season one, people-pleasing personality eases up slightly as time goes on could genuinely be because he literally can't lose his job. He's canonically stated to be manipulative, and I'm sure that one of his main reasons for him being so is that it was one of the only ways to assure that he and his mother were taken care of. Once he has the assurance that the only way he'll lose his job is via Death or Dismemberment (and also maybe once his mom died oop) I'm sure it was a lot easier to ngaf.

Comfort!!!!! Again! Martin is a manipulative guy! Not maliciously! Maybe not even consciously sometimes, but to me it feels like he's more likely to put on the gentle, friendly face with people he doesn't trust or isn't comfortable with. Come season 4 and 5, though, he's actively more petty towards and around jon (notably in how he reacts to Jon's gouging suggestion and just his general demeanor come apocalypse times). Part of this could certainly be bitterness leaking over because of The Circumstances, but I also feel that it has a lot more to do with the fact that he isn't necessarily trying to impress jon any more. In fact, at this point jon is the one actively seeking him out. He's beyond the point of needing to prove himself or make himself smaller for jon. By season five it's clear that jon loves him and that he'd go to the ends of the earth for him, so martin lets loose. He holds a grudge and he makes jealous requests and he snaps at times. He's a little bit bossy, and he ignores requests, and he sets boundaries. And all of this is so so beautiful because this is a person that, for years, has had to make himself as passive and small and as serving as possible - if not to appease his mother (who hates him) to keep her taken care of. So slowly watching him find people that he doesn't feel the need to act small around or to act as a caretaker to (unless he WANTS to) is a wonderful wonderful thing that I love.

[tmagpposting]

Alice’s Attitude

and why I don’t think it’s going to save her.

I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about the implication of Alice's attitude towards the incidents and horror elements so far, so I’m going to. Someone else may have already made a post about this, but I haven’t found anything yet, and I couldn’t find a way to get this out of my mind without writing it down. Naturally, I’m also going to inflict this long-winded and potentially needless analysis on all of you, since I spent 2 hours typing it out (sorry in advance). TW for blatant overuse of parentheticals and politics towards the end. This draws on content from TMAGP episodes 1-3 and TMA overall, particularly the series finale.

I feel like a lot of us going into TMAGP and having listened to TMA already were probably pleasantly surprised by Alice’s attitude of “The Horrors? Just say no!” since a lot of TMA revolved around the idea that curiosity and investigation of the fears usually doomed people to be consumed by one of them, as we saw with a lot of the Archive staff, particularly Jon. I certainly was. Though her ideas about how to deal with the incident reports are definitely somewhat callous, in the context of TMA, they feel very pragmatic, and I found myself thinking, “finally, a character who knows what genre she’s in and refuses to surrender to it.” I’ve been seeing a couple people agree with this, and say that her approach might even help her stay afloat when things start to escalate as the conflicts of TMAGP develop in the coming episodes. I thought that too, at least for a while. 

After thinking about it for several days, I don’t think this is the case. Given TMA’s themes and propensity for tragedy, and Jonny’s approach to tackling social issues, I don’t think Alice’s apathy is going to save her. In fact, I think it’s potentially going to be the character flaw that will doom her in the first place.

1. Alice already cares (not about the horrors, but about people)

To start with, I’d like to point out that Alice will only be able to maintain her apathy to a limited extent, and when people she cares about start being harmed, she is going to get involved. In fact, we can already see this happening. Ep 3 notably starts and ends with Alice making a plan to get Central IT involved in looking into their computers, when she tries to mention them to Colin in the first scene, and when she asks Sam to call them on her behalf in the final scene. I’d argue that the issue comes up because she’s concerned about Colin more than fixing the OIAR’s computers. She tells Sam it’s because Colin may not be able to handle FR3-D1 as well as he thinks he can since he’s been working on it forever with very little positive progress, but given the additional context of the starting scene, I think it’s reasonable to assume she also wants to meddle for Colin’s sake. In the first scene of ep 3, she seemingly talks more softly/slowly than usual (to me, it sounds like she’s trying to be soothing when compared to how she normally talks, even outside of the times she’s actually soothing FR3-D1), she doesn’t make too many digs at Colin as he sounds increasingly stressed, and she asks gently and subtly about calling Central IT for help when she is generally pretty direct when she seriously wants something (like all the times she repeatedly shuts down Sam’s questions because she wants him to stay out of danger). It sounds like she’s trying to slip it in as a half-joke, but Colin treats it as a genuine suggestion when he usually either brushes off her jokes or plays into them instead, so I think it was her actual intent to involve Central IT even at that point. Furthermore, Gwen tells Sam something along the lines of “Alice is the only one [Colin] tolerates” in a previous episode, they have good banter throughout so far, and Colin’s explosive reaction to Sam mentioning the app completely deflates when he learns it was Alice’s idea. All of this seemingly demonstrates a bond that goes pretty far beyond what I’d think of as a basic work relationship with no actual friendship involved. Colin is already pretty deep into investigating FR3-D1 to the point that it’s probably going to be detrimental for him based on him threatening/ranting at the computers in the first episode, and Alice is already trying to intervene on his behalf. Simply put, she is doing a pretty bad job of pretending not to care and staying out of it so far, and we’re only 3 episodes in.

With that in mind, I don’t even think Colin will be the primary reason she’ll get involved as the series goes on, and I actually think Sam is being set up to be the one to draw her into much of the conflict. She cares enough about Sam to find him a job when he’s having a rough time, based on their conversation in the bar, and she tells him not to care about the incidents precisely because she cares about him, and doesn’t want him to get sucked in and hurt by them. With Sam’s propensity for curiosity established and likely being set up to be one of his fatal flaws, Alice will probably get drawn into the conflict whether she likes it or not if/when Sam goes digging and actually stumbles on something dangerous later on. As a side note, I really do think Sam’s curiosity is being set up to be something big here, since he repeatedly wants to look into the Magnus Institute and says it’s a “blast from the past,” he wonders about how the code system works and how it could be improved, and he’s generally shown to ask a lot of questions about the OIAR, Gwen’s backstory, etc. He asks about things more often than I think he would if his questions were purely an expositional device for the audience and not actual characterization (I could make a post just about this, but I think other people have definitely already done that). Finally, our very first introduction to Alice as a character in TMAGP shows her trying and failing to be glib and uncaring about Teddy leaving, where she jokes with him casually before admitting, sincerely and somewhat hesitantly, “I’m gonna miss you.” If her failing to not care about something in the opening scene of the entire series isn’t going to turn out to be important, if not Jonny Sims style foreshadowing of some kind, I’ll eat my hat.

2. Apathy kind of sucks, actually (thematically and otherwise)

Alice being saved by her refusal to care, assuming she manages to maintain it, feels too much like an easy out for the kinds of stories TMA was trying to tell, and clashes with its sensibilities in my opinion. A lot of people fall into the trap of nihilistic apathy when thinking about the state of the world right now, and TMA even acknowledged this in the series with the Extinction beginning to emerge as a new entity/fear. Between worsening climate change, the gradual rise of bigotry and the increasing trend toward fascism in the western world (especially america, it sucks here), escalating international conflict, poverty and the worsening cost/standard of living, like the fact that a majority of people my age will probably never own a house and our college debt is going to eat us alive, etc., it feels like we’re all circling the drain and no one with the power to help is interested in doing anything other than making it worse to make themselves money. A lot of people think the only way to cope with that is to decide to not give a shit, which is a pretty natural response to being constantly confronted with worse and worse news every year that shows no sign of stopping. This has also naturally inspired a lot of doomerism and a rise in insincerity/irony poisoning and cynicism in popular culture that’s really hard to escape even if you avoid the news entirely.

However, the idea that not giving a shit about the problems in the world can somehow spare you from them is a) ludicrous, since they won’t go away if you decide to ignore them (a majority of the TMA statement givers didn’t previously know or care about the fears, and they got screwed over regardless), and b) definitely not supported by TMA’s cannon or themes. Surrendering to the idea of your own helplessness is precisely what TMA ends by specifically not doing. Jon sunk into a hopeless state of mind throughout S5, with the culmination of this process being his proposal to let the world end and allow the End to consume everything, including the rest of the fears. It wasn’t necessarily that Jon didn’t care or was apathetic, especially since one of his primary motivation was to avoid inflicting the fears on another universe, rather, he didn’t think anything could be done to stop the fears from destroying his world or whatever world they ended up in, which is the same deterministic mindset that Alice’s style of apathy stems from (“I can’t change or fix it, so I don’t care”). The other characters refusing this course of action and banishing the fears is what ultimately spares TMA’s universe from the sort of extinction it would’ve had if they’d accepted that it was hopeless and Jon had gone through with what he wanted. TMA ends with the central takeaway that you can’t give in to the idea you won’t be able to fix things because then you won’t try, and shows the characters subverting their helplessness and actually solving the problem of the fears by getting rid of it at the source (the ethics of sending the fears somewhere else are definitely debatable, but that’s a totally different post). The idea that Alice could be saved from the consequences of the problems in TMAGP’s world by choosing not to care flies in the face of the conclusion to the previous series. Alice’s refusal to care won’t save her from whatever TMAGP has in store, and judging by the events of TMA, fatalism and apathy might even seal her fate. 

Some of these points of evidence might be a little bit basic “water is wet” types of statements and I probably could’ve explained this in half the time, but I really do think that Alice’s apathy isn’t going to turn out to be very useful to her and I wanted to include everything I could think of that led me to believe that.

TLDR, Alice is just as screwed as the rest of the cast, if not more so, and her attitude is not going to get her out of it.

[nylongenesis]

Here’s the thing about Timothy stoker

here it is the tim post

People who say tim is an asshole are partially correct.

People who say tim is ‘toxic’ are INCORRECT.

I am very strongly about this because. listen to me. okay.

SPOILERS UP TO TMA SEASON 3 AHEAD

Imagine BEING timothy stoker. After whats probaboy the secondmost traumatizing experience of your life in which you almost die if not by the worms then by the MEDICAL EMERGENCY (respiratory acidosis is a medical emergency :3) your body was put into- plagued with nightmares and the pain of your body being covered in holes and your medical issues, you come back to the archives expecting to see your best friend, That will make it all better. It’ll be so worth it once you can see her again.

And then she acts so distant. And you dont know why.

And you have just lost your friendship. The one that’s kept you going this whole time. The one you were starting to believe might have been unbreakable. And you Don’t. Know. Why.

Eventually after many failed attempts to reconnect, you resign yourself to the fact that she just got tired of you. That you were right this whole time. That she just pitied you. You still don’t know what you did wrong and it’s eating you alive, but she won’t tell you, so you have to settle with pretending to be glad that she’s at least alive, All while your boss is literally going insane and STALKING YOU???

Only to find out after a YEAR of believing you were just unlovable that this person? The person youve been trying to ‘reconnect’ with? That isnt your best friend, Your best friend dies and you never noticed. How could you not notice? But when you see the real picture of her she feels like a stranger and you realize you have no fucking escape from your horrible, unforgivable sin of forgetting your friend. Because no matter what you do, trying to look back at your memories, that *thing* is there instead. You can’t even enjoy your memories before she died.

So you sit there, alone and afraid. Angry, grieving, everything else. What are you supposed to do but make the thing that has haunted you since the disappearance of your Brother feel the kind of pain it is making you feel?

Tim isn’t toxic. Hell I wouldn’t even say he’s that much of an asshole.

He’s a hurt child.

Mentally, especially in season three, he’s having the equivalent of a child’s breakdown. The kind they have when they don’t know how to express the emotions they’re feeling. These emotions- this grief, this anger, this pain- it’s so big, it’s so much, and he feels so small, so incapable and weak, and he cannot properly handle it. He cannot cope. Especially since he’s still somewhat trapped in who he was when his brother was taken.

Now im not saying the way he went about this is at all great, but yknow. Everyone forgives reactions to trauma until they’re personally inconvenient or ugly.

Tim lost everything, and honestly i would be pretty damn similar if I was in his position! That’s DEVASTATING.

In the end, there’s such a horrible tragedy to his entire character that goes almost entirely unnoticed unless you’re like me and you’re insane and overanalyze someone based on one word in an extra audio thats not in the podcast.

Anyways, that’s why I love Tim.

[shadow-the-crow]

once i get to michael's backstory, i'm absolutely gonna write an essay of at least 1000 words about how much of michael the distortion is michael and what that means and how tragic it is (because i'm sure it is), and i'll post it on here, and you will all have to read it. sorry, i don't make the rules...

[zonatcannibalism]

Thinking about Jonathan sims, the man whose entire story arc is about accepting himself as something not entirely human, being ace and autistic. Thinking about how when he was the classic autism and ace stereotype he at the beginning of his arc. Thinking about how as he became less human but a better person whose more in touch with his emotions, he didn't stop being ace and autistic. Thinking about how as he became less human, he accepted himself more. Thinking about that.

[sylvermidnight]

It’s my BIRTHDAY and I’m gonna rant about Jonathan Sims. Because I do what I want on my birthday.

A lot of the fandom has a problem with Jon because they think he’s cruel or just overall don’t like him because of how he treats others. But that’s an inherent misunderstanding of the character for the following reasons.

Starting off Jon is *very* clearly autistic coded. He has to be told when things are jokes and doesn’t really seem to understand social interactions (ex: when Tim thinks he’s sleeping with Basira and Jon doesn’t really catch on to what’s being implied). So that in itself very easily explains some of the rude or “cold” behavior going on. He doesn’t do it on purpose. Secondly Jonathan Sims does not give a single flying FUCK about himself. Ever since he was eight years old he’s been hating on himself and he’s lost almost anyone that got close to him or had them hate him for things he can’t control. Both his parents died, it’s explicitly stated his grandmother didn’t try and hide her resentment of having to raise him, and the grown adult that was bullying (beating him) got eaten by a giant spider and no one believed him. So of course he’s naturally closed off and keeps people at a distance. He doesn’t see himself as worthy of good things and he knows something bad will eventually happen. Even his relationship with Georgie that ended *well* still ended in completely cut contact. Thirdly, Jon is not a logic based character. He’s an emotional one. Every choice he makes is based on immediate emotional reactions. He finds out Martin was trapped in his house for a week? Immediately offers him to stay somewhere safe and insists on it. The archives are basically his safe space and the only thing he has and he offers them to Martin without thought. He finds out Sasha was replaced? IMMEDIATELY takes an axe to the thing he thinks did it without considering the consequences. The reason everyone says he’s a worse archivist than Gertrude is because he can’t slow himself down long enough to think of something other than protecting the people he deems more worthy than himself. Even when they treat him like shit which brings me to the next point. EVERYONE in Jon’s life blames him for what is entirely Elias’ fault and/or things they themselves have partaken in. And he thinks he deserves it. Jon is a good man. And a really really hurt one and it makes me a mess every time I think about it. Because he didn’t ever get peace. Another good point I feel like should be brought up is the way people often misinterpret the Jmart dynamic. Martin Blackwood kicks ass. Martin Blackwood is not a soft baby who can do no wrong. Man was down for murder. He was prone to anger and jealousy on a much more intentional front. Which is of course no hate to Martin I love him more than air. But I do think it’s interesting that certain parts of the fandom love to condemn characters for being people with flaws and tend to overlook Martin entirely in that assessment. Anyway! That is all. That is my rant.

[thefiresofpompeii]

mike crew is like today i am going to be a walking transgender metaphor. sacrifices parents in an attempt to escape his past physically stalking him. despises being referred to with his full name. sends people who ask him prying identity questions to sky hell. short king. menacing aura. large scarf. characteristic scars. avid peruser of arcane tomes and frequenter of antique bookstores. just wants to be left alone to do his own thing

[cult-of-the-eye]

Goodbye, My Danish Sweetheart by Mitski as a jmart song:

"there's nobody better than you/it just took me a while til I knew"

Fuck it's so Jon talking to Martin. He sees Martin as a better person than him, both morally and literally in terms of humanity and it fits his whole S1 ew martin to S4 oh martin arc so well

"but you knew from the start it was us, didn't you/it just took me a while til I knew"

Yep yep yep that's Martin. He loved Jon from the start. Of course Jon's admitting that. And of course he's doing it in such a self deprecating way.

Read more cause this is long

"now I lay as I study a blank wall/would you spare me your voice if I call?"

Ok so we're in Martin's Peter Lukas era right now, Jon is fully pining he's completely checked out and dissociating and he needs Martin to ground him, to be his anchor and he's reaching out in a way that puts the focus on Martin's next move as opposed to him calling which is SO HIM

"Cause you waited and watered my heart 'til it grew/you just grew a little smarter, too"

Fuck he's like you treated me so well, you waited so long for me to like you back but then you realised it was futile and stopped, but obviously you would do that because you're an angel and blameless

"So, I don't blame you/If you want to bury me in your memory/I'm not the girl I ought to be, but/Maybe when you tell your friends/You can tell them what you saw in me/And not how I turned out to be"

Jon's love is just so self deprecating I feel like, he's so acts of service, he's like it's ok that you don't want me, I get it, I'm not loveable but at least I seemed loveable for you to have crushed on me for that long

And and cause Martin's separated from jon, the only thing he has left is his memory of him, the one that lives in his head

"There's some kind of burning inside me/It's kept me from falling apart"

Oh yeah this is so them like Jon's had this drive within him, this incessant need to keep going, to keep finding things out, to keep burrowing deeper into the problem and it's kept him alive cause it's kept him ambitious and it's kept him from being stagnant but it's also been destroying him from the inside cause he can't stop

"And I'm sure that you've seen what it's done to my heart/But it's kept me from falling apart"

But Martin sees this, Martin knows who Jon is and it's almost a plea to try and accept that what's driving him isn't a good thing

"Now here I lay as I wonder about you/would you just tell me what I'm meant to do?"

Jon's like how do I get Martin to come back, how do I get him to be near me, ive tried everything, just tell me and I'll do it

"Cause I've waited and watered my heart 'til it grew/you can see how it's blossomed for you"

Its like a look, you waited for me, now I'll wait for you, I'll take care of myself in your absence to show you how much I care about what you've done for me, I do love you, finally, thank you for waiting all this time

"And I don't mean to make your heart blue/But could we be what we're meant to be?/I'm just about to beg you, please"

God I'm so feral for this last bit

Jon's like I know me begging you to come back is hurting you but I'm finally giving into what you want, you need to come back so we can be together like we're meant to, he's at the end of his tether, he's pleading while threatening to plead

"And then, when you tell your friends/You can tell them what you saw in me/And not the way I used to be"

I'll be better for you, I promise vibes.

[sol-draws-sometimes]

Maybe it’s my fear of not being believed but I literally can’t do comedy where the other person isn’t being believed. Straight up, at first I would get stressed when the Human Centipede clip was going around. Like, do you know how terrifying it is to be in a wild ass date where you think you’re in danger and the waiter notices but has they have to open their mouth so now you have lie. Or the Elmo Rocko memes like, OF COURSE ELMO’S DISTRESSED! I WOULD BE TOO! LIKE EVERYONE IS TELLING YOU THIS ROCK IS REAL WHEN IT’S NOT(and like yah I’m sure there’s nuance to the situation but like COME ON).

Or Bibi from La Familia Peluche, I remember liking the show as kid and I still do but like, fuck man, the borderline emotional abuse than girl goes through IS WILD. LIKE EVERYONE FUCKING TELLING YOU THAT YOU’RE NOT NORMAL AND FEELING LIKE YOU’RE GOING CRAZY. I remember rewatching La Familia Peluche in Highschool and like fuck man, that period episode. Or to this day I remember the scene where they were serving food and she started to eat first and her family chastised her so she stops but then they make her feel back cause she already started so now she just continue to eat it and like I’ve literally been in a similar situation. And for those who haven’t watched the show, the whole shitck is that this is an absurd world where everyone works on a different level and Bibi’s the only who reacts normally to our eyes(the comedic straight man to alot of the jokes), which leads to the iconic line “Bibi porque no eres una niña normal”(Bibi why aren’t you a normal girl) that is said in every episode. Which from a dramatic irony perspective that we the audience know she’s the only normal person, makes it a funny joke, but if you think about it too hard, it’s so fucking sad, I just can’t help but not fully enjoy the show cause I just constantly feel bad for her.

Fuck even watching HALF LIFE VR BUT THE AI IS SELF AWARE FUCKS WITH ME! Like yes I very much enjoy the series! But, most of the time I’m just feeling bad for Gordon, like fuck man, I’d react the same way, wouldn’t you. Like ESPECIALLY BENRY! MAN DID HE STRESS ME OUT! I genuinely felt so bad for Gordon!

And then this slides into how I can’t enjoy alot of comedy(especially cringe humor) cause even though I understand the joke and think it funny on paper, I just end up feeling too bad for the character to actually enjoy. And it’s awful because I’ll STILL watch the shows because I’m invested in the characters not the humor if that makes sense??? (Oh, Community/The Office, the hate love relationship I have with you).

Anyway, yes I’m so fun to watch comedy with, I literally can’t be in the same room from some scenes. And yes, all my favorite characters follow the Only Sane Man trope, why’d you ask?

[kittenpower05]

I did a lil doodle because the tma brainrot is slowly resurfacing

Not very happy with a lot of the things but the lighting kinda rocks and that's all that matters

[ceaseless-rambler]

Okay Basira is an important character and her arc certainly adds to the story. But she pisses me off so much

- She totally ignores Daisy's killings until it inconveniences her (Jon dying making it harder to get Elias)

- Despite this, she spends all of s4 treating Jon like he's a horrible person for trying to survive, even though he had even less of a say in his avatarhood than Daisy

- A lot of people seem to like her more than Daisy, but post-Buried Daisy was constantly trying to better herself, even knowing that it couldn't absolve the wrong she'd done and not expecting forgiveness

- Basira, meanwhile, acted like she had the moral high ground in every situation. She wasn't an avatar and seemed to think that made her better, even though none of the main cast of avatars had a whole lot of choice (Jon was manipulated, Melanie had the ghost bullet, Daisy had some choice but the Hunt got her pretty young)

- She straight up thought that it would have been better if Jon died in the Unknowing and didn't even try to deny it. Jon woke up from a six month coma to her thinking he shouldn't have

I really appreciate her character arc, and good character doesn't mean good person, but also she makes me so mad

[the-magpie-archives]

Daisy and Basira's relationship is such a sweet agony, because at its foundation it's so transparent, so honest. They both know what they're doing, however much they pretend to lie or hide it. Such is the situation they're in that there's no choice but to cling to eachother.

Have you ever been in that sort of situation? The type where the closest person to you is deeply morally flawed and you're realising just how in the wrong you are, but their hand is the only one to grasp. You see the claws along their fingertips and you turn your head and hold them close.

On many occasions Basira talks about the wrong Daisy's done, she knows where Daisy's kill spot is, she figured that's where Jon would be. And yet she never tries to convince everyone that she's capable of fixing daisy, because she knows she's not. Daisy knows this just as well, and perhaps it's a foundation of their trust.

To be loved is to be changed but to be changed is to be hated; a relationship where you accept each others flaws is a commodity, and a rare one at that. Whether those flaws are mundane or deeply damaging, these kinds of connections have a tendancy to grow beyond the point of return.

To know that you're in the wrong together is a comfort. It's not good, nor is it right, but it's a place you can sit. A place you can stay. And as your comfort grows so does that leeching wrongness you protect, and in the end it may just eat you up.

To continue the way Daisy and Basira did was what drove them towards their end, but even at that last painful moment there was a tenderness, a rose in the thorns that makes the wounds worthwhile.