#jon archivist

(this is a response to this ask meme about wips)

This one was prompted by The Magnus Archives, actually! It was an essay about how the character of Jon singlehandedly undid a lot of the damage that the problematic overlay of aspec identities and horror had done to me growing up, from the perspective of the overlay of my aroace identity and my OCD.

Some unedited highlights:

Sex and horror is…complicated. On the one hand, you have all those slasher films telling you how punishable “promiscuity” is but, on the other, a lack of sexual attraction or a lack of sexual drive is used as the prime ingredient for the creation of serial killers and abusers.

So, the fact that the majority of the times I saw people who were depicted as not being in consistent sexual relationships and experiencing sexual attraction was negatively, when the fact was mentioned at all, either as a humiliating joke or a prompt for a serial killer, it didn’t help.

Horror, I believe, is much like fairy tales. It can say a lot about a place and a time, a society and a culture. It represents not only the fears or concerns of a group of people in a moment in time, it also expresses the ideas that were considered negative or positive, as well as the things that were considered of value. 

Jon marked the first time I came across a canonically ace character in horror who was humane. He wasn’t just a victim of his identity, like the sacrificial virgin of slasher horror, or the monster who snaps for not “having gotten some” as a teen, like the slasher themselves. He wasn’t completely innocent or completely guilty, he wasn’t always right and wasn’t always wrong.  Jon was, like me, afraid of becoming a monster.  It wasn’t his asexuality what made that scenario happen, it wasn’t obsessions like mine, but it was still relatable to me. He struggled with the line between who he was and who he wanted to be and, amidst the chaos of his story, he loved and was loved. He had friends, he had a boyfriend, he had people around him that were also hurt and vulnerable and didn’t completely stand unharmed, but they proved that Jon deserved to be listened to and cared for as much as the next person.  What I found the most rewarding from Jon being ace was the fact that he was overwhelmingly human. Fallible, sensitive, resilient and capable of sacrifice for the wellbeing of others, and never shown as incomplete. 

My new favorite mii 🥹 jon archivist