martin blackwood is never beating the web aligned allegations (rant under the cut, no seriously, it is long)
it's martin blackwood monday
ok i need to talk about this man so bad because he is one of my fav characters in fiction Ever. he is So Much in one.
my favorite bit about him is that none of it is a façade. not really. that seems like the wrong word. because i like to think all the tea giving wasn't only because he wanted jon to like him back but because he's just a kind person overall. and from mag 118, i think he really is used to talking care of people, like his mother. even when they treat him terribly.
but he can also be mean, he can be cunning, he can get Sick Of Your Shit. the martin that gives jon tea, and writes terrible poetry is the same martin who put elias in jail, committed arson, and lied on his CV. and it's either going to be such a shock that people hate him for it, or completely glossed over. because everyone has already accepted that martin is 'the nice one'.
why? because he's been being just that ever since he was a kid, and he's been putting up this persona for so long, that hes managed to trick everyone, including himself into believing that he's just a good person. and if i said this only worsened his spiral into the lonely???? because he doesn't even know who he is anymore?????
he is completely aware of this. it's his greatest strength, but it's also destroying him. he'll always have the upper hand, but doesn't even know who 'he' is.
and i am completely here for it
my god i love character depth
I love that everyone in TMA is just. Unremarkable. Jon isnt a heroic character; he's self-loathing and depressed and he exhibits the same self-pity as I do when I'm self-loathing and depressed. He doesn't stand out for his strength of will or quick-thinking or virtue. He's a good person but he stops trying to stay human when it gets uncomfortable. He's everything that a regular person is when theyre trapped in a horrible situation and it's ugly and insufferable and Real.
Thinking about how, by all laws of Horror Story Trope, Jon should not be the protagonist. If I'd never heard of tma and you showed me a lineup of the archives crew and asked me to guess who died first I would have pointed to Jon. He's the paranoid professor archetype. The one who dies discovering some crucial bit of information at the beginning to push the plot forward. He's unfriendly, cowardly, insecure, and makes other people do his investigation for him for all of season 1. He doesn't do anything even remotely heroic until the second half of the show. He has no interest in romance for the first half of the show. The audience wasn't even aware Jon had a dark past until he starts telling us about A Guest for Mr. Spider. But he is *Chosen.* Despite the fact that he has no actual qualities of a hero, he's chosen as the eyes special boy. Over the course of the show he starts to become more and more like an actual protagonist. He starts trying to save the world, resist the eye, all that jazz. For one reason or another, being the Archivist turns Jonathan "definition of a side character" Sims into the main character.
Then we have Sam. Sam starts acting like a horror/mystery protagonist almost immediately. He is young, charming, has a mysterious past (that we are made aware of pretty much right away) and a curiosity that causes him to frequently put himself personally in the path of The Horrors. He pokes around where he doesn't belong and looks for clues. He's the center of an office love triangle for goodness sake. He has a strong sense of duty to others and will put himself in harms way to protect those he loves. He exudes main character energy. He has everything a horror protagonist needs to push the plot along. But Sam wasn't *Chosen.* Despite being exactly the person you'd expect the plot to follow. And I can't help but wonder if, in the same way that the narrative made Jon important, it's going to make Sam unimportant. Irrelevant. If, with his rejection from The Magnus Institute, Sam is going to disappear completely. Become a mystery.
Because at the end of the day, so much of your life, your impact on the world, your relevance, has absolutely nothing to do with you. So much of it has everything to do with those in power, and whether they decide you're important.
AHLAAM, SIA, AND DAKKAR FORM A DYNAMIC TRIO???? ONE THAT WE WILL LEAN ON HEAVILY FOR EPISODE 4???? I AM SO EXCITED????
hi I already adore all these characters and I can't wait to get to know them better in just three days (holy shit)
Ahlaam â
Traveler proficient in several magical disciplines
okay so we know there's different kinds of magic, even more than just the Radiance and Ahlaam's sick waterbending. I'm guessing that the Radiance could be the primary magic and the other disciplines are more secondary, maybe?
valuable leader, has more fun than all the other islanders combined, quick to help people smile
I am so glad that Ahlaam is the fun Traveler just like I'd been hoping. It also speaks to Matt's character writing skills because we get like 2 minutes with her in TGOA and that was enough to be like "oh she's a silly one" lol <3
also ayyyyyy confirmation that there are more people on Lincoln Island than just these named characters!
guiding hand, glue that holds Lincoln Island together
....I am suddenly afraid that something could happen to Ahlaam. If she's that important to the island and the Bad Guys know it, then she could be a target to try and make everyone vulnerable and weak.
Dakkar â
serious and intense, unmatched fighting spirit
oh my god I hope he's broody. if he's the opposite to Ahlaam then he's gotta be a tortured, brooding guy, right? please? he can fill the Haunted Soldier Man void AJ left behind!
chiseled by his past & anchored by time, always right here while being somewhere else
hi! đ what the fuck does this mean? â€
fr tho are we going to get more time weirdness beyond just traveling through it??? is Dakkar split between time and/or space?? is that an intentional magic thing, or an invention thing, or a curse of some kind? lab accident? is he conscious of different times/places at the same time? when he's with Rose two weeks in the past, is he ALSO with the others in the present, like some sort of Traveler bridge??? is he even a traveler??? it didn't explicitly say he's a traveler???
his magic is critical to the operation & safety of the island
oh okay, so he could also be in serious danger from the Bads. gotcha. goooootcha. welp, I'm fucked, I'm already attached. Matt Dahan has so many ways to hurt me in three days, lmao. I'm lowkey scared. (Bring it on Mr. Dahan, I will make art as revenge for any and all future heartbreak. đ„°)
fiercely protective of those close to him
...Dakkar, buddy, you're not beating the AJ similarities allegations.
oh god if I wasn't already 99% certain that Morgan won't be in this episode then I would be going crazy over thinking about these two interacting. ...might go crazy over it later, just for fun.
has a knack for science and technology
and if I said Anna is hanging out in his cool traveler lab and that's where she and John reuniteâ /hj
if Dakkar does technology stuff, could he have created the orreries? I've had a theory that Margaret could have made them (my only evidence is the orrery in her apartment and Kal saying it's fitting that he found her while looking for an orrery) so maybe they had developed them together? idk, just a thought
also, if Ahlaam is the Fun One and Dakkar is the Serious One then I can totally see Sia as the common ground between themâmore serious than Ahlaam but more lighthearted than Dakkar. and was Margaret once a part of this group? where does she fit in? OH MY GOD WHAT IF SIA TEAMED UP WITH AHLAAM AND DAKKAR AFTER SHE LOST KAL AND MARGARET???? if Kal was the fun one and Margaret was the serious one....... aough please excuse me while I scream internally for a while.
Captain Addison Arvad â
is on Lincoln Island
how????? Sia didn't know what happened to her, how long has she been here????
enthusiastic, knowledgeable, the kind of person that's used to doing ten things at once
adhd multitasking queen captain, I love her
important part of the story that unfolds for our heroes
ahem....
AS THE #1 ADDISON FAN AND THE FIRST PERSON TO MAKE A POST IN HER TAG,
I, PERSONALLY, WIN.
she has a dog, Top, who works just as hard as anyone else on the island
đ„șđ„șđ„ș
okay, maybe Addison didn't see her captain's journal as a Wreck This Journal. maybe Top saw it as a chew toy. maybe her dog tried to eat her captain work.
if anything happens to this dog I swear to god... đ
Searcher is a type of person with their own set of guidelines and rules
fascinated by this bit. what guidelines and rules are these? are they about morals? about how to use their magic, if they have magic at all? is it about how they engage with the world(s) and the people in it? what are the rules and guidelines for Travelers?
feeling very John Herschel in my living room right now (I have so many questions) and have I mentioned I already adore these characters???
yall with adhd or autism or such ever just getâŠ. bored. like so Painfully bored. like its not âoh hehe i was so bored and i made thisâ to flex or âoh im so bored bc i have nothing to doâ but like a âi am physically incapable of ending this horrible understimulation with any activity i might attemptâ and its genuinely fucking painful
Bonus points if you try a bunch of things and none of them are right so youâre just walking a circuit around your place, getting increasingly frustrated about all the things you donât want to be doing and not being able to settle on a task
Yes. And when they say itâs genuinely painful it is genuinely, literally painful. Feels like⊠I dunno, feels like static electricity building up under my skin. Like I have a desperate desire to do Everything, but every time I try to do anything my body buzzes like a shock collar and my legs feel like theyâre encased in lead and Iâm breaking down because I wasnât instantly successful at the thing Iâm trying to do
And the worst part is how irritated you get at everything and everyone, because you need a hyperfocus to channel all that body buzzing into, itâs the only thing that can fix you, but if you arenât hyperfocused on something in that moment itâs just energy smacking around inside of you
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