well, that's a thing that has happened

[kindkit]

Spoilers for a character development in The Magnus Archives round about . . . maybe episode 106? I've been listening to so many that I've lost track.

So, I'd read enough general stuff about TMA to know that it has a major asexual character, and I'd long thought it likely that the character would be Jon. That's now been confirmed.

And . . . on the one hand, queer representation is good. Asexual representation is good. Queer solidarity, etc. etc.

On the other hand . . . I do not like, and cannot be happy about, the fact that the only "onscreen" male/male relationship that was even slightly likely to happen is now extremely unlikely. I mean, it was never very likely, because Jon is manifestly uninterested in Martin. But feelings can change; asexuality doesn't.

And yeah, here's a list of possible objections to my point, all of which I have thought about:

1) Tim is bi, or pan, or in any case canonically has relationships with both women and men.
2) Romance and sex are not a big part of this story.
3) A f/f relationship could still happen or still be revealed.
4) It's still possible (down at some subatomic level of minuscule possibilities) that there will be a Jon/Martin romance of some kind, one explicitly dealing with how Jon's asexuality would affect that relationship.
5) There have been a number of m/m relationships featuring in the statements.
6) Fanfic is a thing.

My thoughts on these:
1) Yes, and that's good. But it was mentioned once, some 80-odd episodes ago.

2) Fine. And if it weren't for Martin's canonical feelings for Jon, I would (I think and hope) not be disturbed by this development. But as they are canonical, this is not a story where none of the main characters is romantically interested in any of the others. Not a romance-free canon.

3) That would be awesome! But I have what might mildly be called issues with male writers who are perfectly comfortable writing f/f but either avoid m/m entirely or write it in a much more distanced, "offscreen" way than their f/f (m/m relegated to minor characters, or mentioned but never seen onscreen, or it happened in the past and now his husband is tragically dead). Here I am side-eyeing, among others, Steven Moffat and Chris Chibnall and Ben Aaronovitch and Joss Whedon and (with much more regret than any of the others) Max Gladstone. (N.B. I don't know Jonny Sims' other writing, so I don't know if this is a pattern for him. Nor do I know what his own sexuality is.)

4) That would be a really interesting storytelling choice, though I don't think the show is likely to want to invest the kind of time in it that would be needed to do it right. (And I trust Jonny and Alex enough to believe they wouldn't want to do it wrong.) However (and despite the fact that asexual representation is inherently good), it would have to be seen in a troubling context of gay men being desexualized in mainstream media: all those gay best friends presented as accessories to straight women, all those lonely gay men who never know happiness. Having the only onscreen male/male romance be necessarily non-sexual definitely raises questions, in that context.

Which makes me ask: why does representation of other marginalized queer groups (e.g. bisexual people, asexual people) so often come at the representational cost of gay men in particular? In Torchwood, where there were bisexuals everywhere but no gay men and Ianto's official backstory was "straight except for Jack." In The Exorcist, where a seemingly gay character played by a gay actor got retconned as bisexual; none of the seemingly-straight characters got a similar revelation. Why isn't this being done to straight characters instead? Straight people don't need any more representation than they've already got. Why isn't a potential het relationship being made impossible, or at least deeply altered, by the revelation of a character's asexuality? Call me greedy, but I don't only want queer characters, I want same-sex relationships, same-sex desire, same-sex sex and romance in my stories.

4a) There is of course a converse tradition of gay and bisexual men being hypersexualized in the mainstream media, but that tends to happen in texts that are actively gay-hostile, which isn't the case in TMA.

5) Yes, but see my response to point (3) about the sidelining of gay men and male/male desire.

6) Now that it's been revealed that Jon is asexual, I think fanfic needs to be careful and responsible about not erasing that. There can be, and probably already is, fanfic that gives him love and romance while respecting his asexuality. But, because I don't think fanfic that erases a character's canonical, marginalized sexuality is okay, I don't want to write or read fanfic that handwaves or retcons Jon's asexuality now that it's established. (I feel the same way about fics that take canonically lesbian or gay characters and handwave/retcon/erase their sexuality in order to write them in het relationships. Queer het can be done, but it has to be done super carefully.) So, in other words, for me fanfic is not a solution, it's not a way to wave a wand and make my ridiculous soppy Jon/Martin wish-fulfillment fantasies happen. (Because, I'd better own this, as someone who is not asexual, my wish-fulfillment fantasies for what a happy relationship--of the kind that I want to vicariously indulge in and over-identify with--looks like, include sex. The more cerebral side of me is interested in reading fic about Jon's asexuality, either in the context of a relationship or not, but that fic won't touch my id in the same way. And I say the queer id is not just personal, it's political too.)

[On the third hand, the part of me that likes things dark and fucked up has now started imagining Jon/Elias with extremely dubious consent, but that's not a wish-fulfillment fantasy for me in anything like the same way.]


Besides all of this, you know, I feel bad for Martin. I just do. Like a lot of us geeks, I identify pretty damn intensely with his awkwardness and shyness and his goddamn unrequited love that was probably always going to be unrequited, but now is doubleplusunpossible.


And just to be crystal clear for the conclusion: asexual representation is good. But I do question the choice of having it be Jon who is asexual, in the context of all the previous canon establishing Martin's feelings for him. (If Martin had been in love with Tim all this time--which is somehow an even worse scenario for Martin's emotional well-being than the actual canonical one--I would not have any problem at all with the revelation of Jon's asexuality. This is 90% about a storytelling dynamic I find troubling, and 10% about poor sweet hapless Martin, and 0% about my objecting to asexual representation per se.)

Comments

[rydra_wong]

This is an interesting post most of which I cannot respond to in any way which is not either MASSIVELY SPOILERY or disingenuous to the point of being dishonest.

So this is mainly a comment to register: hi! I am listening! I cannot reply!

But I do question the choice of having it be Jon who is asexual, in the context of all the previous canon establishing Martin's feelings for him.

The one bit I can add is that (according to a recent Q&A) Jonny thought of Jon as ace pretty much from the start. So it wasn't a "new" decision relative to when it became canon.

Because, I'd better own this, as someone who is not asexual, my wish-fulfillment fantasies for what a happy relationship--of the kind that I want to vicariously indulge in and over-identify with--looks like, include sex.

Many of the ace members of the fandom have pointed out that despite not experiencing sexual attraction (exceptions may apply for demi and grey-a people), asexual people can and do sometimes engage in sexual activity for various reasons, including intimacy and physical enjoyment, and there are sex-neutral and sex-favourable as well as sex-repulsed ace people.

So to cut a long story short, there's a lot of fic acknowledging and respecting Jon's asexuality, and some of it is cheerfully filthy, and much of that is being written by ace writers who are THRILLED to have a character to project all over and explore through.

(Not to mention all the fucked-up Jon/Elias dubcon/noncon you could want. It's not my personal reading preference but WHOO BOY I can see why people go there from canon and WHOO BOY it is out there. *g*)

Btw

[rydra_wong]

Possibly relevant to your interests: the "Do Not Archive" tag, used on Tumblr and AO3 to mean NO-ONE FROM RUSTY QUILL READ THIS.

People involved in story decisions -- Jonny and Alex -- don't read fanfic, but some others do. So by mutual agreement an OH DEAR GOD PLEASE DON'T LOOK AT THIS signal has been arranged.

ETA: basically, the fannish id is happier if it can rest assured that Ben Meredith (voice of Elias) isn't going to read certain things.

Re: Btw

[kindkit]

Ah, thanks, that is helpful to know. I'm not going near fanfic yet because spoilers, but once I'm caught up I'll be checking it out.

the fannish id is happier if it can rest assured that Ben Meredith (voice of Elias) isn't going to read certain things

*laughs* I wonder if he actually then doesn't read those things, or if curiosity gets the better of him.

Re: Btw

[rydra_wong]

If so, he only has himself to blame ...

During the most recent charity livestream, there was a moment during the Coup game when Lydia Nicholas (voice of Melanie) yelled enthusiastically "Kill me faster, Ben Meredith!", to which he immediately replied with something like "And there's a whole section of AO3 where I won't be going".

So, you know. They are Aware. *g*

ETA: I do appreciate the idea of the "Do Not Archive" tag, because it strikes me as a very thoughtful way of combining a fairly high level of interaction between cast/creators and fandom with recognition of, you know, separate sandpits, and that sometimes fandom needs to be able to do its thing without having to worry about creeping out/squicking aforementioned cast/crew.

[kindkit]

Thanks for replying, and for not spoiling me. (I realize that, given this canon, literally anything could be going on, ranging from "Martin and Jon actually get together and it's the one bit of happiness for them in the whole dreadful world" to "Jon has been a skin-covered puppet since the end of S3 and all this is irrelevant.")

Jonny thought of Jon as ace pretty much from the start

Oh, I didn't mean to imply that it was a new decision from Jonny. But it is a new revelation, and it comes right at the point where Martin's feelings go from hinted at to textually acknowledged and talked about by the other characters, and I really do feel like the implications of that combination could have been thought out better.

My sense from the various Q&As I've listened to so far is that both Jon and Alex (in his role as, essentially, Jon's beta reader) are amazingly attentive to implications, stereotypes, problematic tropes, etc. And I'm really really really trying to hope that Martin is not just going to be another sad gay* man with a hopeless longing for a man who doesn't want him, when that is very much a problematic trope. (*Acknowledging here that Martin may be bi or pan. Or for all I know, gay but ace and he and Jon will get together after all--although the one person Jon has canonically dated, at my current point in canon, is a woman.)

Part of my suspicion and frustration is that I have seen SO MANY canons queerbait male/male relationships and then literally laugh at fans for having hoped that this time the relationship would actually happen onscreen. And while I know intellectually that that isn't what happening here, and also I have been expecting Jon to turn out to be ace, part of me still feels . . . betrayed? Played? I have been through so many fandoms where the storytellers have turned out to be untrustworthy shits about relationships between men. It makes me always braced for the worst unless storytellers include actual requited non-subtextual male/male romance in their stories, and even then I'm usually expecting one of them to be killed off.

I dunno. On the one hand, a canon full of queerness, including two canonically gay/bi/pan men in the main ensemble. On the other hand, no actual ongoing queer relationships of any kind, including f/f, that are more than a mention.

ace writers who are THRILLED to have a character to project all over and explore through

Which is good! And I am very much aware that ace people have even less representation than other flavors of queer people.

But I also don't think it invalidates my point? The show has asexual representation which is good and makes asexual people happy to feel seen and acknowledged, AND at the same time the show is maybe falling into a tropey Sad Pathetic Gay* Man's Unrequited Love thing, and the two are unfortunately directly connected by the storytelling choices?

(Tangentially, there are other areas where I feel like the show is, so far, more problematic than it wants to be. It's pretty white, for one thing, or at least it's allowing a lot of characters to be read as white-default. And the persistent association of Chinese people with eating/selling dodgy meat is bugging the hell out of me, though I am expecting Jonny and co. to do something with that because I find it hard to imagine that they're unaware of using such a blatantly racist trope.)

despite not experiencing sexual attraction (exceptions may apply for demi and grey-a people), asexual people can and do sometimes engage in sexual activity for various reasons, including intimacy and physical enjoyment, and there are sex-neutral and sex-favourable as well as sex-repulsed ace people.

Yeah, but--and this is purely a personal thing to me and nothing to do with representation at all--stories with that dynamic aren't my cup of tea. And at my point in canon, anyway, the information canon has given me is "Jon doesn't have sex."

(I don't feel that I could now write the kind of Jon/Martin story *I* would want to write, without erasing Jon's asexuality. It's disappointing and frustrating, because I'm used to being able to get around minor points like "this male character has only canonically shown sexual interest in woman" to create the stories I want to see without doing anything ethically gross, since "straight" is not a marginalized identity. But this is a pairing that I can't make be what I want it to be, and it's hard because I am super invested in Martin.

I'm trying to be glad that people who, I presume, are as desperate for stories about asexual characters as I'm desperate for stories about gay men--only more so, because asexual people are even more under-represented--have a canonically asexual character and a space to write and read the kinds of stories they want.)

Not to mention all the fucked-up Jon/Elias dubcon/noncon you could want. It's not my personal reading preference

*nods* It's not always my thing, but for these characters and their dynamic it very much is. Even though my estimate of Elias's monstrosity has just gone up a lot after what he did to Melanie during her performance review.

[rydra_wong]

It's a pity this is a text-only medium, because otherwise I feel you might be highly amused by my body language in the last few moments, which has involved a lot of complicated facial expressions with lips pressed tightly together, and wild but vague waving of my hands, even though I am in a room on my own with a computer screen.

Such is the degree to which I am trying not to spoil you even by implication.

(I realize that, given this canon, literally anything could be going on, ranging from "Martin and Jon actually get together and it's the one bit of happiness for them in the whole dreadful world" to "Jon has been a skin-covered puppet since the end of S3 and all this is irrelevant.")

CAN NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY EITHER OF THESE POSSIBILITIES.

My sense from the various Q&As I've listened to so far is that both Jon and Alex (in his role as, essentially, Jon's beta reader) are amazingly attentive to implications, stereotypes, problematic tropes, etc.

Yup, I've been really impressed -- not that they necessarily get everything right, but the level of thoughtfulness and good faith effort is striking.

Even though my estimate of Elias's monstrosity has just gone up a lot after what he did to Melanie during her performance review.

Yup. *shudders*

[kindkit]

It's a pity this is a text-only medium, because otherwise I feel you might be highly amused by my body language in the last few moments, which has involved a lot of complicated facial expressions with lips pressed tightly together, and wild but vague waving of my hands, even though I am in a room on my own with a computer screen.

Such is the degree to which I am trying not to spoil you even by implication.

*laughs sympathetically in retrospect*

[rydra_wong]

Also I think I can safely say: I too am super invested in Martin (as is 99.99% of the fandom). He is the best. I feel the show rewards investment in Martin.

[mllesatine]

I feel you. So far I've been very disappointed by the fanfic I've read in TMA. Much of it doesn't hit the tone of the show for me. It's either too much horror or too much fluff. I'm in general not that interested in domestic life in fic and I had hoped some fanfiction would deal with the terrible work situation in a somewhat realistic way and maybe how warped many of the relationships within the Insitute would become. I don't want Martin to offer tea to people because he is a helpful person but because he uses it as a shield in an awful situation.