Multi-fandom blog, though currently suf has my firstborn. Whatever I'm into at the moment, though, I'm really just here to cry, cackle, and write meta. Feel free to pop in and blabber about anything, I love to chat!
“I am glad you are here with me. Here, at the end of all things.”
I couldn’t sleep so I decided I wanted to make my own goodbye piece for TMA. I could say a lot about how Jon meant a lot to me as a person who’s had to come to terms with learning they have a trauma, yes I know it’s a grim soufflé but this show has made me happy for a while.
tma post canon au idea that i came up with IMMEDIATELY after listening to 200 while chatting with @rinnaden:
you know all that fan content of monster jon? i had this image of martin stabbing jon and just…tape spurting out. jon unraveling and wrapping around the two of them and carrying them along the web, to one of the fear’s new worlds. they wake up in the parking lot behind a convenience store that stands where the magnus archive once stood.
(possibly when one of the cashiers calls the cops on the two bloody, dirty, likely homeless men sleeping in a parking spot.)
so they’re in a new world. but the entities are still here, so i’m thinking that jon does have some access to the eye. like obviously not apocalypse powers, and the eye’s hold is new and weak here, so we’re talking early days. (either that or jon letting martin stab him counted as a rejection of the eye and he’s wholly himself, which would be a huge pain but quite interesting in itself.
point is, dumb thing that the eye is, it doesn’t hold grudges against either of them for…you know…everything…so jon’s able to figure out how to get them some papers and ids and etc.
so now the question is–the entities are here. nobody but them knows about them…
do they do anything?
martin, at this point, is ready to torch the entire world if it gives jon one less thing to sacrifice himself for, and maybe jon is willing to go along with that for a while out everything that happened…but massive guilt complexes don’t just disappear. jon definitely is gonna feel some responsibility for everything that happened. and this new world is pretty much defenseless. surely, they should try to help this world?
what i’m picturing is sort of a long, fun fic where jon and martin go on lots of adventures and get wrapped up in conspiracies as they try to help this world get ahead of the entity problem, via finding the entities’ new seats of power and destroying them, trying to convince avatars to stay away, spreading misinformation about any ideas for rituals.
it occurs to me that the real danger here would be anyone who figured out the magnus archives is real, though, huh. because as soon as you’ve got that...you have a bunch of people with all the information they need.
tma post canon au idea that i came up with IMMEDIATELY after listening to 200 while chatting with @rinnaden:
you know all that fan content of monster jon? i had this image of martin stabbing jon and just...tape spurting out. jon unraveling and wrapping around the two of them and carrying them along the web, to one of the fear’s new worlds. they wake up in the parking lot behind a convenience store that stands where the magnus archive once stood.
(possibly when one of the cashiers calls the cops on the two bloody, dirty, likely homeless men sleeping in a parking spot.)
so they’re in a new world. but the entities are still here, so i’m thinking that jon does have some access to the eye. like obviously not apocalypse powers, and the eye’s hold is new and weak here, so we’re talking early days. (either that or jon letting martin stab him counted as a rejection of the eye and he’s wholly himself, which would be a huge pain but quite interesting in itself.
point is, dumb thing that the eye is, it doesn’t hold grudges against either of them for...you know...everything...so jon’s able to figure out how to get them some papers and ids and etc.
so now the question is--the entities are here. nobody but them knows about them...
do they do anything?
martin, at this point, is ready to torch the entire world if it gives jon one less thing to sacrifice himself for, and maybe jon is willing to go along with that for a while out everything that happened...but massive guilt complexes don’t just disappear. jon definitely is gonna feel some responsibility for everything that happened. and this new world is pretty much defenseless. surely, they should try to help this world?
what i’m picturing is sort of a long, fun fic where jon and martin go on lots of adventures and get wrapped up in conspiracies as they try to help this world get ahead of the entity problem, via finding the entities’ new seats of power and destroying them, trying to convince avatars to stay away, spreading misinformation about any ideas for rituals.
SO! GREAT THINGS ABOUT THIS AU:
conveniently hooks into martin and jon’s main conflict at the end of canon, as well as tma themes of knowledge as power and (re: season 5) what you do with your privilege. martin and jon know things about what’s coming that no one else in this world does. if they play this right, they might be able to help a lot. or hurt a lot. what should they do? do they have a responsibility to help? they both would probably go back and forth on this a lot...
and like, is it even a good idea to help? for all they know, helping might just accelerate the process of someone figuring out a ritual.
martin and jon, two codependent and traumatized wrecks, having to adjust to living in a normal world. for bonus fun, no one around them could possibly understand or comprehend what they went through, and there’s almost no one they could tell without being thought crazy. ain’t that fun. setting up new lives in an entire nother dimension is a story in itself.
culture shock! a different dimension! how is it different? did the fears not appearing cause any huge historical differences that jon and martin would be surprised by?
they...would probably find out about a certain podcast eventually. that would be a thing. (...this could totally be a self insert au couldn’t it.)
jon hungers. powers = need snack. i don’t even know where to go with this because i’ve seen so many takes on it and i love all of them, and i still don’t know if it’s an addiction or a hunger or both. maybe he even feeds in an entirely new way, because he’s not part of the web anymore?
cryptid dimension traveler aesthetics! i take your “traumatized jon or martin going back in time and being all mysterious and supernatural and all-knowing” and raise you “mysterious shady boyfriends who know way too much about this stuff, how do they know, what do they know, can we trust them”. like the fact that the only beings to have swapped dimensions are a bunch of fear entities and two men that hitched a ride from their dimension...might not make jon and martin too endearing.
like ahhhh those secret keeping dynamics are fun. and even if they do tell the people they’re working with about their dimension, there’s still their role in the end of the world, as well as the release of the entities, etc.
and of course, who are they working with? do they try to meet up with this world’s jon and martin, or run into them? any of the other canon characters? like i feel like they’d eventually run into everyone, but i feel like at first it would be lots of ocs, plus maybe some canon avatars?
like you could do suchhhh good angst with how different this dimension jon and martin might be. or sasha. or tim. or melanie. or daisy and basira. or everyone, really--what’s real elias up to, huh?
like, this is an entirely new dimension. the fears could manifest in an entirely new ways, wouldn’t that be fun? since humanity is already sapient, maybe there’s a lot more “deal-striking” involved. the fears have to approach humans a little more blatantly, etc. maybe they’d go for big leaders. try to induce war, disaster, just generally the kind of atmosphere that would be welcoming for fear.
jon and martin sneaking into black tie events to infiltrate powerful people and figure out who’s most susceptible to becoming an avatar and “convincing” them not to. jon and martin covertly hiring sasha to spread misinformation online and doxx potential new avatars. those who don’t crave power, but just kind of fall into it, they can help. anyone sets up an archive, they burn the fucker to the ground. anything like leitners appear--i’m thinking it would be more digital, since this is the digital era, they try to head it off and discredit it.
you could literally just. do a crossover with this. of almost any fandom you wanted. this also erases the hard part of creating ocs. but honestly there’s lots of shows that have societies that deal with supernatural problems that would probably very much appreciate the opportunity to work with jon and martin. honestly it would be a lot easier than not doing a crossover.
and meanwhile you got that excellent background of them re-adjusting and making new friends and trying to learn to breathe in a world on the brink of apocalypse, because life just be like that.
tma 200 was....everything i thought it would be, in a lot of ways. it felt right. i think a lot of people knew that jon was absolutely gonna sneak up there.
I JUST WANTED ONE OF THE BOYS TO LIVE. I JUST WANTED TO KNOW....
HHH but okay, les go:
honestly this was kind of perfect because both options made sense thematically. jon taking jonah’s spot made perfect sense for his character and the general direction of the story, but the magnus archives has always operated on a principle of the listener of a spooky story quickly becoming its next victim--this is basically spelled out at the end of season one, with the magnus archives itself under attack. so the natural step is to have the listeners of the podcast, us ourselves, now the victims! we’re not safe, either! yes yes yes so this ending fits perfectly! we get both!
fear entity backstory! of course! how else to end it!?
jonah dying like the pathetic, clueless man he is--he was satisfied with that? one season’s worth of surveying infinite terror? that’s really something the apocalypse was worth--god while he was stuck in his stupid castle his little pawn was out there learning and living. i’m usually all for redemption arcs, but i don’t think i’ve ever had less empathy or more disdain for a villain. god job jon. i’m a bit sad martin couldn’t do it, but eh, he got his murder count in, and jon really did deserve that one.
jon and martin have really shit luck! yes! they always have.
also like, the fact that jon was able to puncture through all of that eye bullshit and talk to martin and sacrifice himself--like, jon was probably practically the eye by the end. but the eye, as this ep made clear, is nothing but a pair of eyes and the impulse to look through them. but jon...especially after s4, he was able to rise above that. he was himself. he didn’t want to look out. he wasn’t the all-seeing archivist taking his rightful place. he was just a man, trying to make the best of a bad situation. he was himself. he made his own choices. maybe they were impacted by trauma. but he didn’t pick a cold and lonely revenge of watching the entities starve, and in that, he saved himself from being a truly terrifying monster.
they really gave us a kiss and i love you to go out on. has there ever been a show so simultaneously loving and brutal to its fanbase.
the ending really had me screaming. that was it.. that was it....i was hoping that at least one would live. i never thought we wouldn’t know.
like. “it’s a mystery!”
every character was true to themselves the entire way and it’s just kind of shit that it turned out this way. great ending, terrible feels, 15/10.
no but yeah i legit adored this episode. that scene of jon and martin arguing was suchhhhh great catharsis and so angsty in all the best ways. i loveeee. and hate.
i’ve seen some folks talking about how jon’s biggest fear was becoming a mystery, and he did, and yeah that’s poetic and beautiful and horribly ironic in the best way and is an entirely legitimate way of reading the text, yes yes yes, but i’d like to propose an alternate reading.
when jon said that in season one, it was in the process of him finally breaking open from being a mystery--a stuffy, stiff man who sat in an office and insistently looked down from his high horse on all the cockamanie ghost stories coming his way. he was detached from his coworkers, showed little sympathy to the victims of the statements. nothing about him made sense.
jon’s journey throughout this series cracked him open like an egg. maybe it took an endless reel of trauma, but the outcome doesn’t change--we still have a man who is and was known, who tried to connect with other people. just because daisy is dead, does that mean their relationship meant nothing? and most people in the world saw nothing but the terrifying archivist, but basira and georgie and melanie, as often as they failed to connect and communicate with jon, knew him, they knew a lot of what he went through, and they knew how much he tried.
and for god’s sake, he died in the arms of a man who walked with him through the apocalypse, who loved him enough to damn a thousand worlds for him and then refused to leave him to die alone when that didn’t work out. they each died in the arms of man who utterly knew and loved the other. martin knew jon wouldn’t be able to resist sacrificing himself. jon knew martin was strong enough to kill him. and what they don’t know...i mean, fuck, what does knowing even matter? they loved each other. they weren’t a mystery to each other.
look, they’ll never know what happened to jon or martin. neither will we. but i think a lot of people in the world live and die and leave a legacy that’s a lot lonelier, less loved, and more closed off than jon did.
ohhhh shit this ain’t okay. jon’s smile, martin’s expression, that shaking hand--one second before disaster. they’re so worn down. this is the end. i can practically see it moving in front of me.
what we REALLY need is a time travel fic where jon or martin just
smacks the job applications out of jon’s hand
martin’s hand
everyone’s hand
guys just get out while you can working at the magus archives will end the world and destroy your life and you will die being stabbed/stabbing your beautiful boyfriend as the world collapses around you and YES that is aesthetic as hell but it’s not worth it
After the ending in MAG 200 today, I’m just gonna put this moment from MAG 186 here to remind everyone cause it’s the first thing I thought of when I finished it.
jacobvanloon
blakekathryn
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
germansingergirl
