Listen. Listen. All headcanons are valid but I am very protective of ‘Jon’s descent into inhumanity was also his accent on the hotness scale’ Becuase. look. It’s like, Jon has a nice enough face. He has the kind of face that, if your friend were to point him out to you at some sort of establishment and say ‘I think that man is attractive’, you would be hard-pressed to find an objection.
It’s just that season 1 Jon dresses so god damn boring. If it weren’t for the scowl, he looks like he could have just walked out of the artfully diverse stock photo on the ‘join our team!’ page for literally any corporate site. He wears plain ties. He has an Haircut. When he first got hired he googled ‘professional business attire’ and bought four (4) of the first semi-affordable jacket he saw in two (2) different colours. He looks perfectly fine. He just doesn’t hold your attention.
But season 2 Jon? With the scars? The manic energy? Suddenly, you are paying attention. Suddenly you are looking back and thinking ‘oh, he actually has quite nice cheekbones, doesn’t he? Quite a nice nose? Shame about those scars….’ but then after a few minutes thinking about it, your not even sure if it is a shame, cause tbh they are Intriguing. And those eyes. You aren’t even sure what it is, is it something about how they’re so bright, even when he clearly hasn’t slept? Something about them is magnetic. You are Looking and it’s hard to tear yourself away, even though you know it’s rude to stare.
And then, Season 3 Jon? Oh, boy. Season 3 Jon is when he has completely given up on dressing the part. Season 3 Jon’s wardrobe finally has personality. He’s running around in well-loved cast members shirts, merch for old indie bands you’ve never heard of, a few weird print shirts he and Georgie used to co-own when they were dating, all under an old canvas jacket that used to be his grandfathers and yet is still somehow the least old man thing he owns. He looks like someone that would have interesting stories to tell and those fucking eyes man, those eyes draw you in. Makes you want to tell your own stories. You feel like you might drown in them, gives you moths in your stomach. How could you not stare?
But season 4 Jon is were things get maddening- Jon has been in a coma. Most people around the institute thought he was dead. He should look like shit, and he certainly looks disheveled, but… just, here he is, waltzing back into the institute, with his mussed-up hair and five a clock shadow and flagrant dress code violations, and is this really the prat who used to get huffy about people playing music in the breakroom?? Is this the fucking nerd who rants about emulsifiers at the drop of a hat??? Is this That Jon, lying on the ground in the courtyard, flicking his gold zippo open to light another cigarette to add to the halo of buts circling him on the cobblestones??
He looks like some kind of grunge-punk tortured bad-boy you’d see on-screen at a 90′s independent film festival. He looks like the kinda guy you’d meet in a hole in the wall bar and fantasize about having a torrid one-night affair with if you weren’t afraid you’d end up as a song lyric for his casual but locally loved amateur band that dominates open mike night. He looks like he rolled out of whatever burgeoning subculture is gonna be the hip new thing to bastardize right before it started to become gouache. Everyone is infuriated and confused and horrified by how well this works on him. The rest of the Institute is having an existential crisis. Only the combined work of the Lonely and threat of the Extinction keeps Martin from melting when those fucking eyes are starting deep into his, telling him how much he was missed.
Thankfully the rest of the Institute is spared the emergence of season 5 Jon, because this is where the real kicker is; this is where things get serious; This is were Jon gets nice.
Season 5 Jon is the ultimate hotness because he is the exact mixture of ‘poetically haunted by violence and cruelty’ and ‘poetically domestic and adoring’ that everyone’s inner 13-year-old edgelord secretly craves. Season 5 Jon is peak Gothic Romance softened by the gentlest of gay yearning, and if he hadn’t accidentally ended the world already the sheer human tenderness exuded by this scarred and inhuman Avatar would have torn a hole in the fabric of feasibility and created a black hole of Allure that not even the Lonely itself could have withstood.
The fact that Martin has survived so long in his presence is a testament to his big dick energy and the reason why so many Fears keep trying to hit him up. The fact that no one else gets to experience Maximum Hotness Jon would be a tragedy, except for the fact that Martin is petty and jealous and hoarding that Hotness is what he deserves. Season 5 Jon is a vision, that absolutely light of Martin’s apocalypse, and his asexual ass is 100% oblivious to the effect his looks has had on literally anybody, ever.
Anywho this has been your PSA about Hot Jon Rights, please direct your criticism towards Martin K. Blackwood, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, London, for an ass kicking
