TMA S1 relisten
Jan. 18th, 2020 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitI've only relistened through episode 18, "The Man Upstairs," but discussion and comments will include major spoilers through the end of S4.
Of course I'm struck by how cruel Jon is about Martin. He's not wrong to doubt Martin's competence in some areas (like Latin), but really, Jon? Really? Sending him off on the scariest bits of research, like going to find Angela from "Piecemeal," and then laughingly claiming that you don't really want to get him killed? I hope you feel terrible about that now. (He does. Of course he does.)
Jon's opinions of Martin vs. the Martin we actually will meet in episode 22, who survives a very bad situation and is far from a fool, is an interesting storytelling choice. It tells us a lot about Jon himself (namely, do not trust his opinions of people), but also a lot about how the story is going to build little by little, one person's partial viewpoint at a time. Nobody knows as much of the truth as they think they do, and their limited understandings cause them to make huge mistakes.
(I'm hoping this will turn out to be true of Elias as well. He is, after all, an avatar of a single Entity; Jon, who has been marked by fourteen, may in the end be able to see clearer.)
Returning to Martin (as you do), I want to know how he ever got hired and how he kept the job afterwards, because lying on your CV will only get you so far. Especially if you don't have either the smooth, plausible personality to bullshit your way through, which Martin doesn't, or the class privilege to get away with it, Boris Johnson style (or original!Elias style), which Martin also doesn't. He clearly learned to function in the job, to some extent; he's able to find out people's current addresses and things like that, but it would be blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention that he doesn't have the academic training he claimed. I'm assuming Elias made Martin one of Jon's assistants specifically to slow Jon down and prevent him from working too much out too soon.
I started writing a little fic about it, and it made perfect sense, but then I had a closer look at the timeline and it won't work. (My second line of explanation is that the Institute's reputation is so bad that it's actually a haven for semi-incompetent misfits, and thus camouflaged, Martin went unnoticed.)
. . . now that I think about it, I'm also trying to figure out how Jon didn't know Martin before becoming Head Archivist, when Jon had worked in research for several years before then, and that's presumably where Martin was also. I suppose they could have known each other, but Jon just successfully avoided Martin most of the time. (I'd be tempted to think Martin actually started out as the tea boy, but not with that fake MA in parapsychology.)
Argh, I hate having to think this hard about tiny little plot details, but that's what happens when you start to write fic.
Hoping I can repurpose the bit where Elias tests Martin's Latin. Because I think it's hilarious.
Of course I'm struck by how cruel Jon is about Martin. He's not wrong to doubt Martin's competence in some areas (like Latin), but really, Jon? Really? Sending him off on the scariest bits of research, like going to find Angela from "Piecemeal," and then laughingly claiming that you don't really want to get him killed? I hope you feel terrible about that now. (He does. Of course he does.)
Jon's opinions of Martin vs. the Martin we actually will meet in episode 22, who survives a very bad situation and is far from a fool, is an interesting storytelling choice. It tells us a lot about Jon himself (namely, do not trust his opinions of people), but also a lot about how the story is going to build little by little, one person's partial viewpoint at a time. Nobody knows as much of the truth as they think they do, and their limited understandings cause them to make huge mistakes.
(I'm hoping this will turn out to be true of Elias as well. He is, after all, an avatar of a single Entity; Jon, who has been marked by fourteen, may in the end be able to see clearer.)
Returning to Martin (as you do), I want to know how he ever got hired and how he kept the job afterwards, because lying on your CV will only get you so far. Especially if you don't have either the smooth, plausible personality to bullshit your way through, which Martin doesn't, or the class privilege to get away with it, Boris Johnson style (or original!Elias style), which Martin also doesn't. He clearly learned to function in the job, to some extent; he's able to find out people's current addresses and things like that, but it would be blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention that he doesn't have the academic training he claimed. I'm assuming Elias made Martin one of Jon's assistants specifically to slow Jon down and prevent him from working too much out too soon.
I started writing a little fic about it, and it made perfect sense, but then I had a closer look at the timeline and it won't work. (My second line of explanation is that the Institute's reputation is so bad that it's actually a haven for semi-incompetent misfits, and thus camouflaged, Martin went unnoticed.)
. . . now that I think about it, I'm also trying to figure out how Jon didn't know Martin before becoming Head Archivist, when Jon had worked in research for several years before then, and that's presumably where Martin was also. I suppose they could have known each other, but Jon just successfully avoided Martin most of the time. (I'd be tempted to think Martin actually started out as the tea boy, but not with that fake MA in parapsychology.)
Argh, I hate having to think this hard about tiny little plot details, but that's what happens when you start to write fic.
Hoping I can repurpose the bit where Elias tests Martin's Latin. Because I think it's hilarious.
