#tma analysis

However, if you end this point with ‘and he was treated like this for no-reason at all’, I am going to have to sit you down and have a long talk about nuance, and how every character in TMA has a reason for what they’re doing, even if it’s not right. Engage with the material at hand. I am begging you.

And Jon being a victim, particularly in S4, does not absolve him of the consequences and harm his own actions have done. There’s a very twisted irony to me in the fact that the harm Jon does to feel a sense of control — a common C-PTSD response — is often stripped of that agency and nuance. Please, the Web does that to him enough.

The above also applies to pretty much most TMA characters, especially the S4 Archive Crew. It goes without saying that yes, Basira is a hypocrite, that Melanie clings onto Jon as a scapegoat before she takes steps to improve herself etc. All these characters have been hurt in some way, and they are reverting back to what gives them a sense of safety, even if it means hurting others people or each other. It’s not good, but you can, at the very least, understand why it is they’re acting this way.

The eastest example is the way Jon behaves towards both Peter Lukas in the Lonely and Helen in her domain when he realises that they can't do anything to him. He gets fairly predator-like, way more threatening, he genuinely reads as malicious at times, both the way he tells Peter that he can see where he is ["I wouldn't try to leave if I were you. I can see you now, I can find you wherever you go"] and how he tells Helen that he's going to kill her, and his words afterwards ["I'm not scared of you" "Helen, was that... a lie?"]. He gets so Hunt coded that it's honestly quite scary, and I doubt anyone would enjoy being on the receiving end of his words in that moment.

Other examples are in general how characters take advantage of other Fear domains to boost the effect of their own. For example Nikola telling Jon not to turn on the light, with the scary effect being both "trapped in a room with murder mannequin that is probably grotesque and horrifying" and "in a room with murder mannequin I can't see since it's dark". When you can't see what you're facing but you know whatever is in front of you is scary, your brain will create any sort of horrible mental images for it that are probably way scarier than it actually is, plus the fact that you can't see where it is and so it might jump at your throat at any moment doesn't help, so it just combines the Stranger and the Dark fairly well (and a bit of the Spiral). Or, another example: nobody can tell me the Unknowing is not also Spiral coded. You quite literally can't understand anything, can't know anything, everything is wrong. That's not only the Stranger, that's the Spiral too, but the main one, the focus remains the Stranger, that uses the twisted perception of reality to be even more uncanny.

HUGE TMA Spoiler Warning:

(I put most of this in a reply in the comments of a different one of my posts, but I'm going to make it its own thing)

I LOVE canon JMart, in the sense that it's two flawed and dysfunctional people who barely know each other in the human way, and WOULD NOT WORK outside of the horrifying circumstances they have been placed in.

-Who love each other desperately because they're all that's left. They essentially went to war and were the only survivors.

Their bond is one of DEEP and irreversible trauma, and it is unbreakable because they know that they're the only two people in existence who went through their exact experience. Tim and Sasha are dead, Melanie is blind and removed. They have been forced to understand each other, and they STILL can't communicate.

They do not make each other better people, and they don't truly accept or even SEE each other for who they really are, but that can't matter. The world is over. And they are the last lifeline to humanity, each other's anchors to an existence that they will never be a part of again.

There is a finality to their love for each other, in a flavour that can only really accompany the near certainty that neither of them will make it out of this alive. And that is okay. They're going out with the only other person who truly knows what led them to this.

Their personalities and weaknesses do not actually matter. They could have been anyone. (👁️🫶)

That is a REALLY interesting foundation for a relationship, in my opinion. As is often the comparison, it is a very Samwise and Frodo bond.

They could never have made it through the apocalypse alone. But that is also the only environment in which they work...

Therefore (Boo me if you must)-

It completely defeats the purpose of their dynamic, and disregards everything about their individual characters, to make them a fluffy, loving couple in a mundane, survivable world.

(OR, conversely, to claim that their in-canon toxicity is even CLOSE to the most damaging thing they're up against.)

That does not mean that I judge people for writing idealistic JMart fics because they want to write about a cute gay couple and they like TMA. That is absolutely understandable and fine.

It just isn't an interpretation that I can personally follow, so it is not my preference.

jane prentiss and her worm doorway, the door in jon's mind keeping the ocean of knowledge at bay, obviously helen and michael and the distortion itself manifesting as physical doors, and of course the final incantation of "i open the door" to unleash the apocalypse

the use of the physical idea of a door to give a visual for the lines that are crossed in tma is so fascinating to me as a concept, bc as a zillennial one of the lines that lives rent free in my head since 2011 is from doctor who - "a doorway, once opened can be stepped through in either direction"

Yes, Martin doesn’t want to lose his job so he tried to please his - seemingly always unhappy - boss. That’s a one explanation. And to be entirely fair with how we hear Jonathan talk about him in earlier episodes it is only natural that Martin will do his best. He doesn’t even need to be in love with him to try to prove to Jon that, yes he can do his job better than everyone else.

Actually it means nothing and doesn’t even influence my opinion about whether he could have been already in love with Jonathan at this point or not.

What does it though is the fact that Martin talks the exact same way about himself that Jonathan does.

When he says “since I got so freaked out” it’s almost as if he doesn’t realise that there wasn’t much more to do. He checked the place, talked to only two people that could give him answers, but still he couldn’t believe he done enough. Because he was never told that his efforts were enough. And not just by Jonathan either. By his mother, probably other people in his life in the past - which also on the side note made him a perfect candidate to become avatar of the lonely and we can see that all the way in season 1 already. It also makes you wonder how many times he investigated after hours, how many times he went back to the same place just to be sure he didn’t miss something.

He doesn’t even believe he deserves to be saved. He had almost two weeks to think about and “calling for help” probably came to him as an afterthought - most likely the fact that was even an option didn’t occur to him in the moment.

And then there is this. Of course he didn’t expect that. His mother always dismissing him, Jonathan always taking his research with distrust of its diligence.

But at the end because of all of that, because of how Martin sees himself he could have already been in love with Jonathan Sims. He didn’t know any better. Never had someone just reassure him that he is doing great job without questioning it, so it was natural to him.