I don't know what to think

[kindkit]

Spoilers for TMA through episode 154, "Bloody Mary," .

This episode, for me, moved the show from "painful in a good ouchy powerful storytelling sort of way" to "so painful I'm not sure I can bear it."

It's probably ridiculous that, with an apocalypse threatening and more and more characters facing a choice between monstrosity and death, what's hurting me most is the frustrated romance between Jon and Martin. But it hurts so. fucking. much. And, I mean, it's no small thing when a fictional universe is so bleak that "let's blind ourselves and probably die, because it may be the best escape we're going to get and at least we'd be together" would be a happy ending.

Could they please just have a little goddamn happiness before whatever awful doom is coming arrives? Other characters get some consolation: Basira and Daisy have each other, Melanie is piecing herself together and has her friendship or romance or whatever it is with Georgie. Meanwhile, Jon is alone and scared and hating himself for various reasons (including not having the courage, as Martin ruthlessly but accurately pointed out, to do what it takes to get free), and he's discovered love just in time to learn what it means to have your love refused. And Martin has literally dedicated himself to loneliness, but still has love and feeling enough for it to make him suffer.

It's starting to make me angry again. I've been angry at this show before, and then various developments soothed it, but now it's back.

My feeling is, there is tragedy, and then there is "these characters that we have made you care deeply about will be progressively lonelier and more unhappy until they die, and they may not even stop the apocalypse in the process. Or maybe the apocalypse doesn't actually need stopping, maybe it would've just fizzled out on its own, and all that pain won't even have been necessary." I . . . don't actually care for storytelling in bitterly ironic mode.

As the famous, apparently ubiquitous political graffiti asks, "Is there life before death?" I want Jon and Martin to have life before death, preferably together.

A lot of the recent statements have been about love in its various forms. My hopes were raised by "Cul-de-Sac," but subsequent episodes have been grinding them down again. Things we know to be true in this universe include: that people can be one another's anchors, and their selves can be entwined on some cosmic level, and that love can sometimes save you. Just the tiniest bit of love can be enough to stop an apocalypse. Things we also know to be true: love doesn't always make a difference. And sometimes it's what ruins you. And monsters can love and still be monsters.

*sigh* What I guess, ultimately, I'm afraid of here is the feeling of a storyteller mocking me. I've felt it before in other canons: in Sherlock, for instance, where Moffat seemed to take a positive pleasure in frustrating the audience, or in various works by Joss Whedon, who infamously bragged about giving audiences the story they needed rather than the story they wanted. And that story was: don't hope. You are stupid and wrong to hope, and what you need is for smarter, more sophisticated me to teach you that.

I'm hoping (ha!) that Jonny Sims' gleeful tweet about how he keeps finding ways to layer more tragedy into TMA's conclusion doesn't mean he's mocking us. (If you're thinking that I am suspicious of creators to the point of near-paranoia . . . you're not wrong. I've been in fandom a long time, enduring many disappointments, and I have come to expect them without them ever becoming less painful. And the more viscerally and overwhelmingly a story moves me, the more suspicious and fearful of disappointment I become.)

I accept that TMA is going to be tragic. I knew that going in, or soon after. But tragedy doesn't have to mean endless unmitigated suffering for the story's two central characters.

There can be life before death.


(A final note: This has a lot to do with what queer male characters mean to me. I identify/overidentify with them so much, and their unhappiness resonates for me in ways I can't be entirely rational about. I do not have detachment. And . . . I get that this makes me not the ideal audience in certain ways, but I also think creators should know, when they choose to tell queer stories, that they're taking on a kind of responsibility. Even now, with so many more queer stories to choose from, each one carries some folks' hearts and hopes with it in a way that goes beyond entertainment. We still have to struggle so hard to imagine ourselves being happy, even for a moment, in a world that is indeed growing darker all the time.)

Comments

Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[rydra_wong]

This I will absolutely say -- as it happens ,I was thinking about it anyway yesterday, in terms of the contrast between Sims (and Newall) and certain creators we have have known (I was rereading some posts about the Magicians debacle) --

They are not mocking us (cheerfully performative Twitter evil aside). I believe this with great certainty, and it's relatively rare for me to feel that level of trust in showrunners.

And that story was: don't hope. You are stupid and wrong to hope, and what you need is for smarter, more sophisticated me to teach you that.

It isn't that story. It really, really isn't.And I don't believe the end of S5 will be that story, either.

(And I HATE THAT FUCKING STORY AND CREATORS WHO PUSH IT, FUCK THEM SO VERY MUCH. So, you know.)

154 is an emotionally brutal ep, but ... hang in there.

*sits on hands again*

[sovay]

Joss Whedon, who infamously bragged about giving audiences the story they needed rather than the story they wanted.

And was wrong! I don't believe he ever knew what his audience needed, because I don't believe he ever cared about them enough to consider the question. He knew what he wanted to do to them. That's different.

(I bounced very hard off Joss Whedon.)

Re: Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[rydra_wong]

(And I HATE THAT FUCKING STORY AND CREATORS WHO PUSH IT, FUCK THEM SO VERY MUCH. So, you know.)

And I wouldn't be trying to drag other people into this handbasket if it was that story.

[rydra_wong]

(including not having the courage, as Martin ruthlessly but accurately pointed out, to do what it takes to get free)

Though Martin's also painfully wrong in various ways in that scene, I think, in ways that are indicative of how enmeshed in the Lonely he is by this point (and also the existing issues the Lonely's hooked into).

Like: Martin, Jon didn't come to you because he thought you'd give him a convenient excuse not to, he came to you BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU.

Someone made the very good comment that Jon's not coming to him for a reason not to, he's coming to him for a reason TO. Of course he's scared of gouging his eyes out and possibly dying, especially if it means doing it alone. But if Martin had said yeah, let's get out of here, we can do this together, I think Jon would have been there in a heartbeat.

Re: Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[kindkit]

*hangs on, grimly*

Every time I've been frustrated by or suspicious of the show's direction, things have turned out okay (by which I mean good, sensitive, careful storytelling) in the end. But I think I have what amounts to story-related trauma, especially about queer characters, and a kind of hyper-vigilance and anxiety as a result.

[kindkit]

Buffy was my first fandom, and I loved it a lot and still have fond memories of it (while being increasingly able to see everything that was problematic about it), but I've bounced increasingly hard off of everything Whedon has done since then. I really, passionately hate his attitude of "I will kill/make suffer the character you love most, to teach you that life is hard." FUCK YOU JOSS WHEDON, I KNOW LIFE IS HARD BECAUSE MY LIFE IS HARD TOO. I DON'T NEED THE GODDAMN LESSON AND I THINK YOU'RE JUST SMUGLY JUSTIFYING YOUR OWN POWER TRIP.

[kindkit]

Jon didn't come to you because he thought you'd give him a convenient excuse not to, he came to you BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU.

Jon didn't really help matters by saying "I came to you because I don't want to be alone and also I don't trust the others," either. It's interesting (by which I mean painful) to think about how differently things might have gone if Jon had actually said, in so many words, "I came to you because I love you." (And to be fair to Jon, I think that's what he thought he was saying, or at least what he was trying to say. But Martin would never have found it easy to interpret, since he assumes that no one will love him. Though on the other hand, pre-Lonely Martin would have taken any crumb of affection he could get, from Jon. But under the influence of the Lonely, Martin definitely couldn't hear what Jon was really saying, gave it the worst possible interpretation instead, and was able to reject him.)

Someone made the very good comment that Jon's not coming to him for a reason not to, he's coming to him for a reason TO.

*nods* My own feeling, as of right now and not having listened to any further episodes yet, is that it was both? Of course he was hoping for a way out, because eye-gouging and lingering starvation are not actually a happy vision of the future. And at the same time, hoping for Martin to help and support him in doing that if necessary, because he really couldn't face it alone (and something I love about the show is that it doesn't insist that the only real courage lies in going it alone; instead it constantly focuses on the importance of connection in making people better, braver, more--as it were--human).

Several recent episodes seem to have hammered home the point that Jon is a dumpster fire of a person, but . . . thinking about it, those interpretations are mostly coming either from other avatars, who may have their own reasons for wanting to undermine Jon's confidence in his own ability to ever make the right choice, or from Jon himself, who . . . well. Not that Jon isn't a massive fuck-up who's done some awful things, but he's been fighting his worst impulses really hard. And even given the massive interpretive uncertainty that S4 has created (is the apocalypse even coming, is it actually necessary to stop it or do the rituals not even work, is it possible to fight monsters without becoming one, is picking the least bad choice just an ethical abdication, can you in fact fight the evil from within, etc.), it's probably just as well to assume that the voices telling Jon that his best option is to give up and die are . . . maybe not trustworthy?

Re: Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[kindkit]

*nods* I hope what I said above didn't come across as a dig at you. Even if TMA were that kind of story, there's nothing wrong with you liking and recommending it! It's a kind of story that a lot of people do like; it's just not my thing.

But I do appreciate the reassurance that TMA isn't that.

[kindkit]

In re: eye gouging, I wonder whether Jon could even if he tried. His finger kept healing when he tried to cut it off, and he looked into the Black Sun without any permanent damage.

[sovay]

Buffy was my first fandom, and I loved it a lot and still have fond memories of it

I was shown selected episodes of Buffy in grad school, which is where I picked up my entirely unsurprising attachment to Giles and Ethan; with the exception of the first Avengers movie, which surprised me and was then in any case undone by the second Avengers movie, I have attached to nothing of his since. The sense that the point of his storytelling is to jerk his audience around is very offputting.

I DON'T NEED THE GODDAMN LESSON AND I THINK YOU'RE JUST SMUGLY JUSTIFYING YOUR OWN POWER TRIP.

+1.

[rydra_wong]

Several recent episodes seem to have hammered home the point that Jon is a dumpster fire of a person, but . . . thinking about it, those interpretations are mostly coming either from other avatars, who may have their own reasons for wanting to undermine Jon's confidence in his own ability to ever make the right choice, or from Jon himself, who . . . well. Not that Jon isn't a massive fuck-up who's done some awful things, but he's been fighting his worst impulses really hard.

Yup. And I think the conversation between Georgie and Martin is fascinating, because -- I fucking love Georgie, and I respect her right to nope out of there and not be the one who tries to rescue Jon, because: she doesn't have an obligation to keep trying to save this guy just because she used to date him. She gets to decide where her boundaries are, and who she wants to help.

But I also think she's wrong about him in significant ways (I suspect because, very understandably, she feels she's got to defend and justify her decision to herself, and to Martin).

And, I mean, Jon is frequently a garbage-fire of poor decision-making! He has crossed a line by feeding on innocent people! But, for example, the "some people don’t want help, they just want other people suffering with them" etc. -- that really isn't what's going on with him, I think.

As well as the fuck-ups, S4's been when he's been at his most courageous, his most willing to put himself at risk to protect others, his most determined to try to connect and make relationships even when it's so awkward and difficult for him, and all in the face of an environment which ranges between "totally unsupportive" and "actively hostile".

He is trying so fucking hard, and being so "human" against all the odds, and I find that terribly moving.

it's probably just as well to assume that the voices telling Jon that his best option is to give up and die are . . . maybe not trustworthy?

That's my read on it, certainly. And S4 has a lot of intricate stuff I'm still thinking about re: exactly where statements are coming from, who's picking them and why -- e.g. Peter giving specific ones to Martin to try to convince him about the Extinction, Annabelle deliberately leaving Jon her statement, Jon seeing which ones are "calling" to him but also picking from the box hidden in Elias's office, finding the tape in 154 because Beholding really doesn't want him to hear it, etc.. There are a lot of vested interests in which messages get sent.

Re: Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[rydra_wong]

Nooooo, I didn't take it as any kind of dig.

But this is me trying to communicate, FWIW: I personally HATE THAT FUCKING STORY.

And also I completely get why the hyper-vigilance, because so many people have been badly burned by that kind of shit from creators (especially when it comes to queer characters, as you say).

I am on for tragedy, I am on for dark; I am not on for the stuff that feels like creators shitting on an audience for being stupid enough to care about the characters (that, you know, they asked us to care about in the first place).

(And I'm also not on for "nothing matters in the end and it was stupid to try anyway" stories because that is ... essentially poisonous to me, given my particular depressive tendencies. I can go for "people tried and they failed, but it was still noble and meaningful to try!" but that's different.)

[rydra_wong]

It's interesting (by which I mean painful) to think about how differently things might have gone if Jon had actually said, in so many words, "I came to you because I love you." (And to be fair to Jon, I think that's what he thought he was saying, or at least what he was trying to say.

I can go with different takes on whether Jon's even been able to articulate it to himself in those words yet, let alone whether he'd be able to get them out of his mouth.

But Martin's definitely not at a point where he can correctly hear what Jon's not saying in the things that he does manage to say.

Of course he was hoping for a way out, because eye-gouging and lingering starvation are not actually a happy vision of the future. And at the same time, hoping for Martin to help and support him in doing that if necessary, because he really couldn't face it alone (and something I love about the show is that it doesn't insist that the only real courage lies in going it alone; instead it constantly focuses on the importance of connection in making people better, braver, more--as it were--human).

*nodnodnod*

And Jon starts out with such a tendency to self-isolate, which we see at its most counter-productive in S2 -- first in the paranoia spiral, then in the "sending everyone off so he doesn't put anyone else at risk" before facing the Not-Them. *head-desks in remembrance*

I got very fond of him in ep 81 for spontaneously recognizing that it was a disaster and that he needs to reach out to other people for help and allies (even though it takes him a lot of S3 to start trying to put it into practice).

It's important and meaningful that his first response in 154 is to go and tell someone he trusts and cares about and try to make the decision with them.

(ETA: and then of course he gets the door slammed in his face because this show will twist the knife with everyone's terrible, terrible timing. But hang in there.)

Re: Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[rydra_wong]

*hangs on, grimly*

Seat-belts definitely required for the next few eps, as we head into the traumatic waters of a Magnus season finale. But ... there is upcoming stuff that I think you will feel very not-grim about.

Re: Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[kindkit]

creators shitting on an audience for being stupid enough to care about the characters

And behaving as though "rocks fall, everyone dies" is some kind of morally superior storytelling approach, because Life Is Hard. Not that I think stories have to be uplifting--like you, I'm on for tragedy and darkness, at least some of the time, and I hate being given a life lesson--but the other extreme is not only cynical, it's just as unrealistic in its own way as stories where our square-jawed heroes always win because they are righteous.

[kindkit]

Georgie has also presumably been hearing a lot about Jon from Melanie, who has plenty of reasons to be furious with him (even though she recognizes that Jon often had no options that weren't in some way bad ones).

Something I want to think about more, now that I've finished S4, is situational irony (which is distinct from the kind of ironic-cynical storytelling I hate). You can make a choice for all the right reasons, a choice that is on some level the right choice, and it can still have terrible consequences. It can still be, on other incompatible levels, the wrong choice. Which I guess relates to stuff I've been musing on about perspective, too: whether a choice is good or bad depends on what perspective we're taking about its consequences. And the genius and cruelty of TMA is that we keep getting all the perspectives.

Re: Still trying to keep this minimal spoilage

[rydra_wong]

What you said, so much:

FUCK YOU JOSS WHEDON, I KNOW LIFE IS HARD BECAUSE MY LIFE IS HARD TOO. I DON'T NEED THE GODDAMN LESSON AND I THINK YOU'RE JUST SMUGLY JUSTIFYING YOUR OWN POWER TRIP.

I mean, I already know that sometimes awful shit happens for no reason, thanks very much! Got that!

And in my case that means I am in fact very interested in stories that are about awful shit happening and how people live with it, people being heroic in the face of awful shit, etc..

But if all a story has to say is "awful shit happens sometimes for no reason" -- I'm not going to be like "whoa that's so deep man, I really needed to be shaken out of my comfortable complacency because I never knew that".

[rydra_wong]

I also feel like we tend to underestimate the importance of the fact that Georgie recognizes Oliver Banks as an avatar of the End (as she tells Basira).

Jon's already told her in S3 that avatars tend to go full monster and he's afraid he's slipping.

From her perspective: she walks into Jon's hospital room, sees someone she recognizes as an avatar of the fear entity that nearly destroyed her, and chases him out, but not before he says "Make your choice, Jon."

After which she sees the tape recorder, and then almost immediately Jon starts to breathe. And then right after she's got Basira there, Jon wakes up and is instantly lucid and fully-functioning in a way that people waking up from comas generally aren't at first.

So it's not surprising if she makes the inference that Jon's probably made a Very Bad Choice in order to wake up.

And she says "Jon. If this really is a second chance, please try to take it. But I don’t think that it is," and then bolts.

[rydra_wong]

You're not the only one to wonder about that possibility. It's one of the AUs in this fic (content warning for SO MUCH EYE-GOUGING, predictably enough):

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20701802

[kindkit]

Ah, yeah. A lot of those details hadn't clicked for me--I thought Oliver was just a ghost, but of course it makes more sense that he's an avatar. (The filter through which I listened to S4 was "But what about Martin" which meant I missed some important things. Now that I'm not in horrible suspense I'm relistening from the beginning, though it'll be a while before I get to S4 again.)

[kindkit]

Ooh, that's a very good fic. Thank you!

[rydra_wong]

Yeah, and I think Georgie's perspective from the start, ever since Jon showed up on her doorstep in the gap between S2 and S3, has been that Jon's involved in something horrible, which he's obsessed with and behaving compulsively about, and that he needs to try to get out of it.

So it's not really that surprising that she interprets all this in terms of him wilfully going deeper into it (and also, again, she was nearly destroyed by an entity, it's also not surprising that she's like HOLY FUCK I AM STAYING AWAY FROM THIS SHIT, I'VE MET IT ONCE AND NEVER AGAIN). And that's in contrast to Melanie, who's trying to sort herself out, who is trying to get out whatever it takes.

Obviously, for the audience who've been in Jon's perspective a lot more, we have a more complicated view and can see all the reasons why he's getting deeper and deeper into things (some of them genuinely altruistic, like wanting to save the world from a ritual succeeding).

And it'll be interesting to see if/how her view changes post-apocalypse, when there is no "out" any more.

[kindkit]

that Jon's involved in something horrible

It's mentioned, as I recall, that Jon had fallen out of touch with her and in fact with all his friends, and my guess would be that this coincided with him starting to work at the Institute. Or perhaps with him becoming Head Archivist. But anyway, it's another reason why she might think that: friend takes job at spooky occult research group, suddenly you never see him anymore, then he turns up years later wildly paranoid and literally on the run.

[astrogirl]

Anyway, yeah, popping over to this old post to comment rather than dragging it out into my space. This reaction does totally make sense to me, although it's very much not my own reaction. I mean it hurts like hell, for exactly all reasons you articulate, but for me it's still very much on the "good pain" side of things. But then, I think I have a pretty high tolerance for that in drama, and I actually like "bitterly ironic" storytelling if it's done properly (which, admittedly, can be a pretty big "if"), plus, hoo, boy, yeah, everybody's got their own personal buttons for their own personal reasons, and mine aren't located in the same places as yours (although I'm sure a lot of other people's are, for extremely understandable reasons).

I'll be interested to see, in the end, whether you felt the anger you were experiencing here was validated or assuaged. I will say that while I find this very painful and sad (as well as a whole bunch of other things, too), and I'm also thinking "could they please just have a little goddamn happiness?" it doesn't feel remotely hopeless to me that they will, even if it's just a glimmering in the darkness. (And I personally love glimmerings in the darkness. They can make me feel hopeful in ways that actual happy endings often don't.) I also cannot imagine the moral of this story, in the end, being "You are stupid and wrong to hope." That's just not ever the vibe I get from it, I guess? Maybe "you are stupid to hope, but it's meaningful and important and human that you kept on doing it, anyway."

But I guess I'll see! Geez, it's really, really weird, commenting on this post and knowing that now you've long since learned the ending, while I'm back here wondering how this post's future you, which is now past you, feels about a thing that's still in my own future. :) Don't tell me, obviously, but I'm hoping you came to feel happier with it. I'm guessing so, since at the very least you clearly didn't ragequit the whole thing!

For whatever it's worth, I'm really, really not feeling any mockery. Maybe part of it is having some folks who've already listened to the whole thing telling me that, yeah, they think it's worth it. But I totally feel like I trust the storytelling here, and that however it goes, the intent is sincerely to take me along on an emotional journey in good faith, rather than to pull the rug out from under me and laugh at me for it.

[kindkit]

The thing that was particularly hard for me about this episode was the way Martin reacts to Jon's plan. He's so angry, and more than that, so contemptuous of Jon.

In a Q&A later, Alex talked about how he recorded many takes of Martin's dialogue here in many emotional tones, from sad and longing through angry/contemptuous. This was the angriest of the angry takes, and since for some unknown reason Alex allowed the dialogue editor--who was still pretty new and hadn't listened to all the previous episodes!--free choice about which take to use, this is the one that got chosen. To this day I think they should have gone with something sadder and softer; I don't think Martin's fury here is in keeping with anything we've seen previously about how he thinks about Jon (let alone how he feels about Jon) and that was a big part of the reason I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me.

everybody's got their own personal buttons for their own personal reasons

If I said I had trauma about media depictions of queer men and m/m relationships, I would be only half joking. Even now, in every new story I encounter*, I'm always on edge that the storytellers are just playing a cruel trick on me.


*Unless it's specifically a m/m romance, which is one reason why I read some of them even though I'm not actually a huge fan of romance as a genre. It can be nice to know exactly what I'm getting into and that there's not going to be either a Sudden Tragedy or a "ha ha, fooled you, we didn't mean that!"

[astrogirl]

Ooh, that's interesting. I don't know that I read it as sincerely contemptuous, myself, as sort of... bitter and disillusioned-feeling and needing to put up a layer of cynicism between himself and the emotional vulnerability that would come with letting himself believe Jon actually cares about him, especially now.

But then, I realize that my whole sense of that is completely informed by absolutely believing, going into it, that Martin does love the guy but has decided, for the sake of both the world and his own emotional state, that he shouldn't. So, questionable editing choices or not, it worked for me. I came away from it thinking that Martin's angry tone said a lot more about his own mental state and the general awfulness of everything about his situation than how he actually thinks about Jon. But I can totally see that if I didn't trust the writing as much as I do, I might have a completely different sense of it.

Even now, in every new story I encounter*, I'm always on edge that the storytellers are just playing a cruel trick on me.

That is incredibly sad, and, sadly, not without justification. :(