#fly posts

I’ve seen a ton of jokes about how the fandom can’t agree what the statement in 194 was telling Jon that he found so obvious, which is hilarious I agree. But also I would love to spend some time cuddling up with the fact that that’s the whole point.

This is how Jon thinks now, this is how the beholding views things and speaks about things and that’s Jon!! This is a method of communication through statements that makes sense to Jon and to the Eye and not to anyone else. I bet if Martin had been there he’d have been like wait what? He’d appreciate the turnaround but the message wasn’t designed for him just like it wasn’t designed for us.

Jon and the Eye share their own private language and understanding of the world. Or rather, the eye has its own unique language and Jon is its only interpreter (who hasn’t also lost his mind somewhat). We can guess at it, but it doesn’t come obviously and natural.

And I refuse to sleep on the hilarious possibility of a Jon and Beholding buddy sitcom where like

Jon: Hi

Jon, intoning in the dread tones of the Eye: RICHARD HAWKINS COULD NOT SMILE WITHOUT THE CRAWLING CREATURES SEEPING FROM THE CRACKS BETWEEN HIS TEETH

Jon: geez, fine, I’ll get a haircut.

It has been a hot minute since I last did some meta but let’s crack our knuckles and dig right in because I want to talk about ROSIE.

And more specifically: I wanna talk about the concept of Rosie as victim.

I’ve seen some folks comparing Rosie to Jon and crew, just another victim of the institute forced into being trapped forever under the whim of Jonah Magnus, and she certainly starts out that way. When Rosie is interviewing, this is just a job for her, a way to earn a living after what sounds like a messy divorce.

(There’s an implication later that she might have had her own childhood supernatural experience, like Jon did, but it certainly wasn’t a conscious driving force that made her actively want to work at the Institute the way it was for Jon or Tim. She’s more on the Martin end of things, maybe a bit desperate to be hired but she could have fit in anywhere.)

So where does her path diverge? Because spoiler alert: this post is about why Rosie is not a victim the way Jon is, and I don’t even mean that just because she isn’t being purposefully victimized for marks by the eyeball man.

You could argue that it came up earlier, but I wanna double down on that moment in season three. Episode goddamn 92 where everything happens, my favorite episode in the world. When daisy drags jon into Elias’s office and confronts him. While this goes on, Rosie sits on the other side of that door and she doesn’t phone the police, and she doesn’t alert them of the situation when they arrive, she sends them away when Elias asks her to, and then she watches the archives folks file out of the office silent and defeated.

She says, verbatim, in her statement: “Thats when she knew…She was working for evil…and she was going to sit there and ignore that fact.”

Conveniently, Rosie learns that Elias is genuinely evil right at the same time team archives does. Just as they get to find out elias is a multiple murderer, she comes to the realization that he is evil. So we can perfectly contrast their reactions. And Rosie’s reaction is to sit there and pretend she doesn’t know. Why? Because she’s afraid. She is afraid of Elias and what he might do to her if she is a threat.

Actually, her reaction isn’t even parallel to team archive because they receive the information in that office that Elias is the heart of the institute, and they now think killing him would kill all the employees. Rosie has no reason to believe the same, her reaction is purely based in self interested fear.

Now you may have noticed (sarcasm) that fear is a pretty big thing in this show. Both the things people fear and what they do because of that fear. The decisions they make. Jonah started trying to end the world because he was afraid one of his contemporaries would end it first and victimize him. Similarly, Rosie can see how people less fortunate than her are suffering (she sees the broken defeat of the archives crew as they file out of Elias’s office and thinks if I step out of line that could be me) and so she makes the decision to protect herself because of that fear.

Now I’m not saying Rosie’s reaction isn’t understandable, or sympathetic, or relatable. It’s certainly exacerbated by her position as a woman in business. In her statement, Rosie mentions several times that she smiles just in case someone around is watching her. There is intense pressure on women, especially public facing ones like a secretary, to always be pleasant, professional, not take up space, not rock the boat, not become a nuisance. It is easy to empathize with her position. Maybe even see yourself in her anxiety.

But these rationale are not an excuse. Just because she is not Jonah, just because she is also working in this position where she is afraid, that does not make her a victim in the way Jon is. When she learned what he did, that Elias is evil and doing evil things and chose to remain helping him, doing her job, saying nothing? She became complicit. Jon and everyone else in the archives? They prove that it’s possible to fight back, even working under greater emotional duress than Rosie!! They think killing Elias will kill dozens of innocent people, and yet they never stop working to undermine him.

And not to be that guy who brings up nazis because I know it’ll make people think I’m trying to shut down the conversation, but it’s legitimately difficult for me to listen to this statement without thinking about the fact that:

I have to do it, it’s my jobandif I make a fuss about the people he’s currently hurting I might become the next target

Have inescapable real world connections.

Just because Rosie is a working class woman, who needed this job and got just as unlucky as everybody else who stumbled into the Institute, just because she is afraid for her own safety doesn’t excuse the fact that she was actively complicit in world ending levels of evil. And in an almost poetic turn, sitting by silently and doing her job while allowing evil to prevail when she is (by her own admission) potentially the only person who could have helped, leads to an eternity in the apocalypse of having to continue to sit and watch all the horrors around her. She has been passive for so long that now she is trapped by her own fear and complicity, too afraid to do the right thing. To try and make a difference before it was too late, before they got to the last verse in “and then they came for the archives crew and I said nothing, because I did not work in the archives.”

And none of this is to say Rosie is now cancelled or bad to like or shouldn’t be relatable. The whole point of her is to be relatable, especially to young women who have it ingrained in them not to be disruptive. I’m not telling you that it’s bad to see yourself in Rosie, but I am saying that it’s a good opportunity to take that introspection. Check yourself and make sure that you’re aware how easy it is to do nothing in the face of evil.

In spite of our fear, we need to be like Jon. Always making active choices, working hard to try and do good, to help free whoever we can around us. The world could certainly use it.

I’d like to make a quick PSA about Ao3 bookmarks.

I’ve seen lots of posts about commenting etiquette, and what you should and should not put in a comment on someone’s fic including unasked for constructive criticism, negativity, and insults, but I haven’t seen many that expand this discussion to bookmark tags.

FUN FACT! In spite of the way ao3 sets up bookmarks to look like recommendations, they should not be treated like Yelp reviews! It is very easy and often common for an author to check the bookmarks on their own work, and public tags are easily visible. It is no different to bookmark a work with public tags than it is to leave a comment so

DONT SAY ANYTHING IN A PUBLIC BOOKMARK TAG THAT YOU WOULDNT SAY IN A COMMENT.

If you want to remind yourself of your personal thoughts on a story, you can make a private, hidden bookmark. If you think your middling, criticizing review is absolutely crucial to pass on to your followers, do it somewhere the author cannot easily find it.

Basically—be courteous. If you didn’t know before that your bookmark tags were visible, now you know. Don’t leave rude comments where hardworking authors can see them.

Thanks

I love baby-faced Martin as much as the next touch-starved romantic, but please join me in considering: Martin who looks much older than he is, just like Jon.

Martin who felt confident in lying about his age being ten years older on his CV, and then wasn’t questioned on it even by folks who aren’t eldritchly aware of the truth.

Martin who’s managed to get part time gigs starting when he was high school aged, who’s always working and stressed doing everything for his mum and it makes him look older faster, look EXACTLY like his dad when he’s still just a teenager.

Martin who confesses I’m only 29!! as if it’s a huge revelation (and Jon who immediately recognizes a kindred spirit even when he didn’t know why his gut was telling him that)

And then a jonmartin 32 year old power couple who look like a nice old pair of retirees moving up to the highlands, especially if the lonely made Martin’s hair go white, and everyone keeps offering to carry his shopping for him and give him early bird discounts.  Jon is dying but Martin thinks it’s hilarious and it saves money, Jon so he puts on a terrible old man accent and starts calling everyone sonny and Jon has to kiss him to shut him up before he dies of second hand embarrassment.