#jmj

Today in Hip Hop History:

.jmj as the GLaDOS dialogue from that one frame of the Lab Rat comic where Doug Rattmann looks like a TALL GLASS OF WATAH

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ .󠁩󠁩️ㅤ˙ㅤ ִ ㅤ𓉸 ㅤjiminjeong matching gifs

Absolutely loving all the new characters in protocol and needed to throw my hat in the ring for fan character designs of all these lil goobers.

Gee I sure hope none of them die 💀😭

Hear me out!

Spoilers for all of TMAGP and TMA

My grievances

So by now everyone and their uncle knows about the theory that the .jmj error stands for Jo(h)n, Martin and Jonah, and that Fr3-d1's voices correspond to them as well. This would imply that the three got trapped inside Fr3-d1 after they got sucked out of their own world. And yes, the theory does seem to hold water. Celia clearly recognises Chester's voice, Sam was getting emails from someone called John, the cases seemed to be guiding him towards the Magnus Institute, and now Gwen is being manipulated by the mysterious Augustus (though it's still unclear why she thinks it's him specifically who's trying to communicate), which really would be a nice mirror to how Jonah will always find a Bouchard to puppet. So I'm not saying that the theory is bad, there's actually a bunch of stuff supporting it. But I'm personally finding it really difficult to buy into.

My biggest issues are on a more meta level. It feels like we were given the obvious clues too early, and everything seems to be pointing to it too neatly. In a mystery story, if it looks like you're being lead to a conclusion too easily, it's usually a red herring. Given that the writers have already written a very successful mystery story, it would feel like an odd choice to make. But obviously I can't see into their minds. Perhaps the real red herring is that this easy answer is supposed to guide us away from some bigger mystery lying underneath.

My other big issue probably comes down to preference. I just don't think it would be narratively satisfying to bring back John and Martin. Their fate was left ambiguous, and it would feel really flat to push them into the computer to be ever-present ghosts in the story. I obviously see that there could be some thematic exploration of forcing them to watch everything go wrong again without being able to interact with it. But they clearly can interact with it to some extent, if the emails and the cases come from them. And it simply doesn't make sense that John would push Sam towards the Magnus Institute, when it ended so poorly for him. It would undo a lot of his character growth.

Jonah pushing everyone's buttons would make more sense, and it's still somewhat likely that TMAGP Magnus is again the big bad of the show. But it would again feel narratively unsatisfying if it was the same Jonah, the one who already got what he wanted, then found himself in a new reality and immediately hatched a plan to bring on another apocalypse. It would make sense for that Jonah to try and get a physical form again, but then what? What could he do in a world that does not work with the same rules he learned to master?

Alternative interpretation

The way I have viewed the JMJ for a long time is that if it's indeed them (and that remains an if in my mind), they are not conscious. They only exist within the cyberspace in Spirit, not in Soul. And now that I've refined my theories on the metaphysics and the astral plane between realities, I've come to the conclusion that they might only exist as fragments. As projections. Let me explain.

We now know that there is a "space between places" that divides the different realities. I've been calling this the astral plane, but the show may come up with its own term. When the Fears (and the Eye boys) were banished from their reality, this space is where they ended up. And the thing about astral planes (according to many occult traditions) is that they are not entirely separate from our material world. There are invisible correspondences between the realms. Which means that things in the astral plane will cast projections in the material reality (think Plato and his cave allegory).

I believe that the JMJ boys might exist as this kind of projections. They're not fully present, they're just echoes. And they probably exist in this form in many other universes. They've also probably dissolved into one entity, as per alchemy logic. The cyperspace is an incredibly mercurial liminal space, so there's no way they wouldn't have dissolved. But this doesn't mean that they couldn't try to reach out, it's just that they wouldn't have a particular goal in mind. They're mostly just repeating the actions they might have taken in life. Literal ghosts in the machine.

Conclusion

I know that this theory is a bit of a downer, but I find it more palatable, and it fits with the wider themes of the show. But like I said, there is no actual evidence against the popular theory, and it could very well turn out to be true. Though I might actually be a little salty if John and Martin are given their own voices back. I don't think I want to hear from them anymore. Not because I don't love them, because I do, but I feel like the writers made a point in killing both TMAGP versions of them off way earlier. Their story is done, let them rest.