vaguelyhumanoidshadow

Okay, but what about "Rusty Quill Gaming is Martin's club DnD session"??

I haven't see RQG just yet (but I am planning to), but really guys, we need more of this, there are currently none, as far as I know.

Imagine Melanie coming to make a statement and act like she and Martin are best friends. How hilarious would it be for the other archive crew to see that turns out Martin knows the ghost youtuber personally. Melanie knowing Jon has been very rude to Martin immediately pick a fight with Jon in Martin's defense.

(Perhaps then the Not-Sasha situation can go earlier and more smoothly because I think Martin would trust her (and definitely won't, you know, buy an axe in central London))

Character wise, though, might need to make original charcters because if we pick the characters that is voiced by the people in RQG we'll get Martin, Melanie, Elias, Melanie's therapist, the guy who gives a fake name and thought his friend got taken by the secret government, and the guy who's deadly afraid of spiders who's got sent to The Lonely by Peter Lukas, LMAO.

Of course, Laverne, "John Smith", and Brian Finlinson can still be their friends, we don't know their canon age, just make them into actual fleshed out character and tadaa. The problem is Elias.

If we think about the timeline, Elias won't ever be able to be inserted no matter what, because Elias "became" the Head of the institute when Martin is 9. Now, we also don't know Elias' canon age, but we can assume he's an adult.

I saw a post that had a similar idea about this, maybe that one could work, but now I'm imagining Martin coming for an interview and saw this guy who used to play DnD with him when he's a child and went "Oh, Elias! Long time no see!" XD He become horrified immediately because he knows Elias would know he lied about his age.

Jon and Martin are almost never on the same page emotionally throughout pretty much all of tma. Season one, Martin has a crush on Jon (which probably actually stems from his deep-seated mommy issues but that's a whole other can of worms that I am not getting into right now), while Jon practically hates the guy. Season two, Jon's paranoia is added to the bullshit cocktail as well.

Season three, people are telling Martin that Jon killed someone and Jon becomes more cutthroat and determined. And then he up and dies. And Martin becomes very depressed in his grief and gets involved with Peter Lukas and The Lonely.

Then, Season four, Jon just, comes back. But Martin has already grieved and accepted he wasn't coming back. And now Jon is not the same, he's more monstrous than before, having to feed off people and destroying lives in order to sustain himself, and he scares most of the archives, with most of the archive staff's feelings of him ranging from slight unease to outright despise. To remedy this, he becomes less cutthroat and more meek in an attempt to de-claw himself. Meanwhile, Martin is preparing to save the world (again) and so he's becoming more cutthroat. Both moving in exact opposite directions in terms of tactic and determination.

Jon saves Martin at the end of season 4 and love blooms (already had?), but it's tainted. Martin is basically the only person who Jon had left who didn't hate him, so the desperate cling at the end, while not completely ingenuine, was tainted.

In season 5, we get to see up-close just how different they are from seasons one and two. Martin has gone full "kill bill" and Jon has so much power in his hands he feels overwhelmed and out of control. Jon and Martin have to stay together. Martin will die if they don't and when they find Salesa's paradise, they can't stay because of Jon. So they're forced to trek through the hellscape together (aw...?..)

It also does not get better at all when they save the world end season 5, they have an entire conversation about how basically the only reason they're together was because they trauma-bonded over the world almost ending a couple times and the apocalypse and if that's not true love I don't know what is man. And, to top it all off, in the last few episodes, they're trying to figure out how to get the world back to normal and Jon is being self-sacrificing and Martin is being a bit selfish (rightfully so). They, as a group, agree to a plan and then Jon goes off and tries to do it his way and sacrifice himself anyway. Martin tries to stop him, they blip out, returning the world to normal yada, yada, you know how it goes.

I've seen many people paint Martin as bad for going "kill bill" and saying that in season 5, he's whiny, and he's selfish, and he's callous, and he's unsympathetic to Jon's situation and actively makes his moral dilemmas worse by urging him to go around killing avatars.

I've also seen people paint Jon as bad for the way he acted in the archives towards Martin as well as just in general, and for the fact that he doesn't want to kill the people torturing others all across the world, and because of his need for self-sacrifice messing up the plans to save the world.

Both of these arguments have merit and I, for the most part, agree with them. And for that reason I don't agree with any of the "____ deserved better" because they're both not good for the other, they're both flawed and again, are never on the same page emotionally ever. This podcast is about flawed people making tough decisions with insanely high stakes and when a relationship comes out of that, it will not be perfect and I feel like a lot of people aren't seeing that.

HELLO ANON YES I DO

MarTim *shakes them*

Tim has a running thing of flirting with everyone in the institute, so I’m under the firm belief that he had to head to the library for something at least a few times during the research era and probably shamelessly winked at/complimented Martin a couple times before they officially met.

Martin’s quickly filled in by the other library staff that Tim just does that. Meanwhile, Tim ‘bisexual disaster’ Stoker is demanding why Sasha didn’t tell him about the cute guy on the library shift

Every time he goes to the library and Martin’s on shift, he’s shamelessly going for it

Then Martin gets moved over to the archival assistant position and crashes into Tim while frantically chasing after that silly dog that got in, and they quickly hit it off in a new way because what’s a better coworker bonding activity than spending an hour chasing a stupidly evasive dog through rows of unsorted filing cabinets. Sasha just laughs when she sees them running around and leaves it to the boys to be boys, but after an hour of this she gets up and catches the dog first try

Tim makes another flirty pass at Martin after the fact, and Sasha smacks him on the arm with a joking comment about behaving himself. Tim will be Tim, but he stops making it quite so frequent so they can actually develop a friendship

Martin doesn’t get as flustered with Tim’s joking flirting as he does by Jon’s business glares. It’s a blow to Tim’s ego that he also finds endlessly amusing. Martin’s stupid crush on their boss is obvious, and it takes Tim all of a few days of guessing to put pieces together after the initial ‘you like someone’ conversation

Tim does bad impressions of Jon’s archivist tone to tease Martin, and Martin throws pens at him from across the room

Tim plays the “dance card’s open” comment like a joke, but there’s something genuine in it. But joking is safer than baring his soul, and getting close to someone like that with loss still fresh in his heart feels wrong. But he holds out a but of hope

Post-Prentiss, Martin worries over both Tim and Jon returning to work. But, Jon is Jon, and won’t allow fussing, so Martin’s efforts mostly get redirected to Tim. Tim pretends to ‘bear it for Martin’s sake,’ but in actuality he finds it touching.

Tim plays off a lot of the pain of recovery with little quips, and jokes about the attack… but every once in a while, when Martin slides some tea onto his desk and gently pats him on the shoulder when he’s been less talkative than usual, he mutters a quiet, genuine ‘thank you’

With Sasha being more distant afterwards too, Tim and Martin end up falling back on each other more. Some weekends where Martin feels a bit sick about being in his apartment alone after Prentiss, and Tim would rather not be alone with his own thoughts, leads to crashing in each other’s flats without much preamble

It’s why Martin immediately recognizes a photo of Tim’s home on Jon’s desk

All the shit happens with the s2 finale and over s3 Tim just… pulls away. Martin keeps trying to tug him back in- and Tim sometimes does still crash at his place, but he’s wallowing in the feelings of misery and despair TM. Martin’s stubborn and doesn’t want him suffering alone, though. After all, he knows the pain of loneliness too well

Tim isn’t sure he trusts getting close after first Danny and now Sasha. And when Martin fills him in on the fact the circus is present again, he just feels it all shatter

Off-tape, when he tells Martin about Danny, it’s more tearful. Angry and bitter and grieving. And it spirals into being about Sasha, about the Web, about everything. He scream-cries into Martin’s sweater and, when Martin insists he needs to record what happened to Danny, he hates that he knows he’d devolve into an emotional mess again doing it to Jon in person

The night after his statement is the last night he spends over at Martin’s. They end up cuddled in bed together, and in the security of darkness, he feels Martin kiss his forehead. They don’t talk about it come the morning. Martin knows as well as he does that it’s a bad idea

Everyone Tim loves ends up dead, and he doesn’t want that for Martin. When he goes out with a bang, he’s glad Martin’s nowhere nearby

And for Martin, the news of Tim’s death isn’t as surprising as it should be, but crushing nonetheless. So, when he sits next to a comatose Jon in the hospital, he makes up his mind and breaks away

SOOO TRUE BESTIE!!! Literally it would be so thematically sexy like. I'm honestly having trouble articulating just how well it works??

Like, Jon is a character driven by empathy, who gets to be painfully and overwhelmingly kind and who grows into vulnerability, who gets to be really nuanced in his morality (something NOT normally afforded to aro characters lmao), and who's interaction with the systems he specifically benefits from gets to be the measure by which his "humanity" (a concept the story itself brings into question at several points!!) is judged, rather than his capacity for traditional romance!! Like there's so many layers to it!! And it's all so good!!!!

And then there's martin who gets to have the arc about isolation and loneliness without it ever being about how romance specifically saved martin. Any type of connection can save you from the lonely, and as much as we joke about it, the fact that 159 could have an ambiguous/platonic interpretation is also interesting through an aro lense (though I obviously do still love the whole "gay love defeats eldritch forces" memes and interpretations of that episode bdjdf). And then in 170 it's his own self determination that saves him from the lonely like!!! WHAT A KING!!!

I also love the idea of exploring martins caretaking instinct in a context removed from the pursuit of romance? He performs caretaking because he cares about people, yes, but it's also a way to ingratiate himself into groups he feels he's not a part of, or in order to maintain a sense of emotional equilibrium in his environment. Those are all direct affects of abuse and I think that's an interesting aspect of his character to explore! But it's sometimes left to the wayside in interpretations because "martin makes Jon tea cause he's crushing on him" is just. Simpler for a lot of non-aro ppl to comprehend?? Idk

Also the way we never hear them kiss until 200 like. I know it's entirely an audio engineering thing but also. I am thinking abt it in aro way <3

Idk where exactly I picture them both on the spectrum tbh?? I think Jon would consider himself aro but doesn't define himself any more specific than that, just knows his patterns and preferences in romance, similar to how I feel his relationship with his bi and ace identity is. Martin I think likes the grey-ro label cause it makes sense to him, and labels are a very practical matter of words to better understand himself and to include him as part of a community (a thing he rarely seeks out but knows is generally good for him. Same reason he goes to book club somewhere else).