i see you

His first 4 Marks (Web, Eye, Corruption, and Spiral) were things that were done to him. He didn't seek them out. Mr Spider was in the pile of books his grandma gave him. he had no way of knowing The Magnus Institute was haunted. Jane Prentiss hunted him down, and so did Michael.

the next 2 were brought about by his own curiosity. he knew the risks of accosting Jude and Mike, but he went willingly. his desire to seek out knowledge got him Marked by the Desolation and the Vast.

Elias sent Daisy to Hunt Jon, so that would make it the 5th Mark that Jon had no agency in, and the 7th Mark total.

then comes the Unknowing. in an attempt to save the world, Jon's willing to give his life to destroy the ritual. Marks 8 and 9 (Stranger and End) are purely altruistic on his part.

and from there on out, he continues to only get Marked via Protecting People.

Slaughter's from saving Melanie. Flesh and Buried are from saving Daisy. Dark is from trying to stop yet another ritual, something that he still believes could potentially end the world. Lonely is from saving Martin.

[this brings the final count to an exactly even split; 7 from external forces, 7 from Jon's attempts at protecting people]

as Jon becomes less and less human, he tries to save more and more people. and he's willing to give his life to do so!! he's willing to die!

and then I'd go home and immediately call him and be like "hey elias I forgot what time I put the burekas in the oven, how much longer should I leave them in"

[ID: A three-panel comic strip of a TMA time travel AU.

Panel 1: Jon from season one - wearing glasses, dressed in business casual, jaw length hair, greying slightly at the temples- sits at his desk and looks up at Jon from season five. long greying hair, no glasses, wearing pajamas, including a slouchy, scratchy green cardigan, subconjunctival hemorrhaging in both eyes-. Future Jon has a hand on Past Jon's shoulder.

Future Jon: And so that's the moral of the story. If all you do is look at stuff, then you will become an eyeball."

Past Jon: Damn.

Panel 2: Both Jons have turned their heads to look straight on at the viewer.

Both Jons: What do you think about all of this, Martin?

Panel 3: Past Martin, wearing a button-up shirt and scratchy green cardigan, stares forward with a blank face, blushing intensely; his glasses are opaque. He has a speech bubble that says "Hm?" but behind him is a large thought bubble filled entirely with the following phrases:

Please kiss, please please please please, kiss each other in front of me, holy shit, PLEASE, where I can see it in front of meeee, kiss on the mouth, please kiss on the mouth, I hope they kiss.

End ID]

Time Travel Au

I do not know why the hive chose me, but it did.

And I think that it always had. The song is loud and beautiful and I am so very afraid.

There is a wasps’ nest in my attic.

Perhaps it can soothe my itching soul.

Mag 1: Angler fish

Gravity (2013) It's a movie about being stuck in space, so far away from home that most people can't even really comprehend the distance, and trying to get back down to Earth despite all odds. The main character has to cross extreme distances on very slim chances while constantly under threat of running out of oxygen. At least one character does just drift away into the distance, never to be seen again, except in a hypoxia induced hallucination. It's one of those movies where it really knows how to make space feel huge and empty and terrifying.

Project Hail Mary (2026) Four words: being alone in space. But aside from being flung lightyears from home, our protagonist starts out with amnesia, adrift in every sense of the word. Another Vast motif represented is the "multitude of smaller creatures combining into something else" one: here, a swarm of microorganisms forms a strange channel in space, connecting to the Sun and more or less eating it, threatening the Earth with an ice age.

It's in space, it's cold, it's disorienting, it's full of self-doubt - it's Vast.

at this point i forgot what episode was the one with the pig but i just thought it would be funny to have a timeline where they just retrieved it and used it like a pokemon