ava

Anyway, Martin’s response when Basira said she wanted to go out on her own? Imagine you’re Martin and you just spent roughly the last year completely isolated after the person/people you cared most about “died” you know how it feels to feel completely alone in the world, like everyone who used to care about you is either gone or never liked you in the first place. Now you know all this and someone you know has the person they trusted more than anyone else in the world die, and at their hands. Imagine how it must have felt for him to sit there asking her to stay telling her it’s ok if she stays, eventually even going so far as to try to pull a little bit of empathy out of her since Jon’s leg is hurt while she insists that she has to go out on her own, insists this her her thing to handle and Jon just keep agreeing with her. Jon keeps on saying that this is for the best, that if this is what she wants to do she can do it, even after he acknowledges that he can’t garuntee her survival without them. Was Jon making excuses like this while he was isolating? While Martin pushed everything and everyone away was Jon just sitting there telling the others not to “bother” him? That if he wanted to do this he could? That it was probably “for the best”? Martin already has a habit of thinking for the worst scenario at times and seeing how Jon reacts to Basira leaving couldn’t have felt good. To see Jon, the person he loves most, trusts most, and believes loves him in return, just letting someone they’re supposed to care about walk away, completely alone, goalless into a fear apocalypse.

(Please be kind I didnt have the heart to listen to the end of TAZ: Balance and TAZ: Amnesty [or season 2 of 2 Princes] upon first listen because I was too attached to the characters and wanted them to all be safe and happy. However, upon listening to The Magnus Archives that is no longer a problem because all my favorites from there are MEGA dead and that has changed nothing)

The Bright Sessions was the first one I stuck through the whole way, which was very pleasant, considering it was all done and tied off with a nice little bow and a promise for more content in the form of a few podcasts and some books. I was very excited to find out that, due to listening in early 2020, the first book was already out and the second was on its way. HOWEVER, I come from a very conservative family who aren’t big on “radical ideas” like therapy, or mental illness, or any part of the LGBTQIA+ community, meaning there would have been no possible way for me to gain access to the books without a lecture and a half and getting sat down in front of Fox News to get stuff straightened out. (Not kidding here, they sat me down in front of Tucker Carlson clips after I implied that maybe people are justified in protesting for less murder, preferably none, sometimes I just have to smile and nod like this grown man yelling at Elmo has completely erased all the liberal from my body to avoid worse consequences)

Anywho, the public library where I live is finally opening back up to the public with masks and distancing, amounting other precautions (you know, aside from the damage left by the derecho that hit the Midwest a few weeks ago) so I decided to go out on a limb and see if my very slow to get new books library in my pretty conservative town had a copy of this rather new, rather gay story. And it did. So, as a semi-functioning member of society with a car and a job and a library card I have a plan for as soon as I can get my card from my mom. And thankfully, school start up again September 8th (delayed from August 25 due to the derecho wiping out all power in town and we’re still working on restoring it) meaning I can slip it in my school bag and not have to explain any of it to my parents.

I already had to give my mom a extremely straight-washed synapses of The Bright Sessions, The Magnus Archives, and most recently The Penumbra Podcast. Which has felt grosser and gotten harder with each podcast I listen to. However, as a deeply closeted for my own safety teen, these things mean a lot to me. It took 16 years to even allow myself to consider that I might be ace, let alone deal with the fact that biromantic seems to fit too, the “problem for another day” mentality is strong with this one. Seeing characters out and about living their lives just so happening to be queer has meant a lot and I am very excited to be able to read more into some of the first queer content I was able to experience. Special thanks to whoever invented earbuds by the way, much easier for a parent to look over my shoulder at a book or video than pry an earbud out of my ear to figure out what I’m listening to.