all those ‘say no to drugs’ assemblies in school where WACK i never once had the pot head kids push the Devils Lettuce on me. they’d be like ‘hey u wanna smoke some of this here Blunt of Marajoouana?’ and i’d be like ‘no thanks i dont smoke’ and they’d be like ‘ok cool’ and never bother me about it again
drinkers? NO CHILL AT ALL. even into adulthood people act like i’ve slain their child when i say i am completely sober. like every single time i’ve said no to drinking some person is like ‘what about jello shots there’s barely any in it’ or they’ll leave me a solo cup of wine ‘in case you change your mind’ and when by the end of the night i haven’t had it they’re all ‘you didn’t want any?’ LIKE? YAH I SAID I DIDNT?
anti drug psa’s are fine but they gotta talk about drinking too bc never once did anyone i know who did drugs push me to do it too but everyone i tell i am sober tries to find a way to get me to drink like i said ‘i am sober but change my mind’ or smth
Will someone dear God ramble to me about the nuances or even just anything about under the silver lake bc I can’t shut the fuck up and I’m getting annoying to all my friends but I love him and the film
its all pirates of the caribbean this, jack sparrow that, but what about him
[ID: An image of Captain Shakespeare from the Stardust film standing in the middle of his amazing walk-in wardrobe surrounded by colourful feathers and garments, his hands clasped across his chest. /End ID]
perhaps jon ‘i was a deeply annoying child’ sims actually developed that particular (unhealthy) habit where he tries to be his Most Annoying and Pedantic Self around new people so that they can decide if they hate that part of him BEFORE he gets attached (rather than trying to be less annoying and then having them hate him later when they find out). while this does not excuse his behavior, it would explain why he’s such an ass towards people that he has just met, such as statement givers, other avatars, and in s1, martin (given that jon and tim used to work together in research, and sasha was friends with tim for years, it is likely that they were both already exposed to jon at Max Annoying, which is why he was so comfortable with them already). in this essay i will
where’s the rest of the essay, op
i seem to have misplaced it, maybe near that strange fractal vase… in the meantime, you may enjoy this follow-up essay:
martin ‘my mother is just… strong-willed’ blackwood was forced to sacrifice huge parts of his life for his mother, who hated and continuously rejected him. these years of conditioning set him up both as a literary foil for jon’s assholery, and as someone with complementary trauma and bad coping mechanisms. he was perfectly suited to both feed on and enable jon’s behavior, and while at first this likely seems an ideal situation for both of them, it ultimately took significant changes in both of their ways of thinking and responding to other people and each other before their interactions and relationship became anything like healthy. building on my previous work, in this essay i will
hey actually thinking about it, it’s fascinating that jon and martin have similar traumas (rejection and resentment from a parental figure who should have loved and cared for them) but reacted in such radically different ways to create opposite but complementary coping mechanisms, while both having similar underlying motivations (to keep themselves from being abandoned by people they loved, also to protect the people they loved). and of course, in s4 we see them essentially swapping how they deal with fear and pain (martin pushes people away, jon pulls people closer even when he’s rejected), thus growing my initial essay from speculation about one character’s motivations in specific circumstances to a metatextual analysis of multiple characters’ parallels to each other’s arcs and the overall writing style, as all literary essays are doomed to become.
the more we learn about who sasha actually was as a person, the more im convinced an archivist!sasha au would still be a tragedy, just a very different tragedy. sasha who hacks into her coworkers’ private information apparently just for fun, just because she can? sasha who, by mag26, isn’t going to quit a job that’s risking her life not because she can’t leave but because she’s “too damn curious” to leave things be? sasha who leaves the safe room to rescue tim during the prentiss attack and takes michael up on his deal to save the rest of the archive crew? sasha who gets on rather easily with monsters (and maybe even sees that the best way to survive these statements is to become one)? sasha who, maybe, finds gertrude’s tape talking about sacrifices that must be made without hesitation and warning her of elias? sasha who looks around the archives, at friends she has decided are hers to protect, at a mystery that needs solving, at knowledge shes going to uncover whether the world wants her to or not, and thinks i can be that kind of monster.
sasha, who descends to inhumanity with her eyes wide open, because she believes that’s the sacrifice thatll keep people safe. and because she likes it.
While we don’t know if “the world is saved but Jon won’t survive long in it” is going to be the ending of TMA, I’m realizing that would connect to an extra piece of the puzzle that hasn’t fit anywhere so far: Jon’s character arc in season 4.
In season 4, Jon hit his worst low, taking victims to survive and becoming the monster people give statements about. He was caught, confronted, and forced to stop, but struggled with being willing to let himself die rather than give in. He wondered if he should just leave guilt over hurting people behind like so many other avatars chose to do. In the end, he began fighting back, actively defying the will of the Eye rather than sliding towards the inevitability of “When does the Eye make me monstrous?”
And then ended up being resolved with…that choice being taken out of his hands, and that fear being force-fed to him against his will?
It’s definitely a layer of tragedy, but I feel like all that time and attention given to that arc is going to have a larger purpose. The choice may have been ripped from Jon’s hands, but that doesn’t mean that decision didn’t shape who Jon is as a person. And that person ended up being one willing to give up his own life rather than cause others’ suffering.
After TMA 181, I am very sure that Jon knows he probably wouldn’t survive in a world that was saved. He’s facing a similar choice as he did in season 4, just with impossibly higher stakes. What if Jon had continued to rationalize taking victims in season 4? What if he decided that traumatizing others to extend his own life was justified? I don’t think he would be pressing on like he is now. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” really just means “I’m fully aware of the possibility, but won’t let that stop me.”
Instead of Jon’s choice being made meaningless when his agency was taken away, that choice could be what makes the difference between a saved world and a ruined one.
The Mods of the Magnus Writers discord server and community are putting together a variety of resources for Magnus Archives fan creators; these have been collated from articles on the topics, our own experiences, and the experiences of the members of the Magnus Writers discord. These are definitely not comprehensive or the only viewpoints out there, and are by no means meant as a way to police fanworks, but as a way to support and inspire fan creators in creating thoughtful and diverse works. Please note that external links will be added in a reblog to outsmart tumblr’s terrible tagging system, so make sure to check those out as well!
This resource in particular was put together by Mod Jasmine: hi, all!
While there are no canonically Muslim characters in TMA, Muslim headcanons are common in fanworks—particularly for Basira, and sometimes Jon (which I love to see!). I have cobbled together this post from my own experiences to help support and inform fans in these areas, and as part of my diabolical plan to get more Muslim!Basira and Muslim!Jon fics to shove into my brain.
First, two gigantic caveats:
I was raised Sunni Muslim in Egypt, which is a majority Sunni Muslim country, and still live there. This means my experience will be very different from someone raised in a majority Christian country like the UK, and different again if they are not Sunni and not Arab.
I am currently ex-Muslim. This does not mean I bear any ill will towards Islam or Muslims, just that it wasn’t for me, and I felt it was important to be upfront about that. I’ll be linking to resources by practicing Muslims in the reblog to this post, whether to add to my opinions and experiences or provide you with a different opinion. I am not here to put my voice over that of Muslims, just to do some of the work so they don’t have to. Obviously, if any Muslims have any additions or suggestions for this post, I’m happy to accommodate them.
Alright. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started with the basics of writing a Muslim character.
i said it in the tags of that other post but the only way to accept the utter incompetence of the entire archives staff, up to and including the head archivist, is to understand that the magnus institute is not a reputable organization. its a shell company built to thinly conceal a death cult dedicated to an unknowable god of knowledge. jonah magnus never bothered to familiarize himself with any aspect of any section of the business, and the only people he hired who know at all what theyre doing are the people in payroll, because if anyone knew shit about shit the whole scam would fall apart in minutes. we zero in on martins blatantly false cv because hes a main character and hes not confident in his tenure, but if you were to examine the applications of the entire staff across the board youd find only severely underqualified individuals who have been making it up as they go along for decades, and every one of them just assumes that they must be doing it right since they havent been fired yet. jonah throws out any resumes submitted by people with degrees in relevant fields without looking at the rest of the form.
i see that you have a masters in library science from oxford and more than a decade of experience as head archivist at the same, but were going to go with the twenty-something with the bachelors in english who had a nervous breakdown in the bathroom following his interview. hes been touched by demon, which far outweighs your own “qualifications.” maybe try the mcdonalds on the corner.
oxc’s masterlist of reasons why stede and izzy should sleep together (before stede and ed do):
- because izzy represents ed’s darker half that stede has to come to terms with/learn to love in order to accept ed as a whole (and vice versa)
- because its Izzy’s job to do all the vetting/training/orders on ed’s behalf and ed clearly wants stede so *sigh* izzy has to train him
- but izzy loves to manufacture the ideal pirate captain and stede wants to be a good captain ;)
- izzy’s literal job title is first mate
- the whole love as hate dichotomy between them which results in izzy giving stede a bit more of a backbone and stede softening Izzy’s edges (which both need)
- dominating stede is hot, but stede dominating back is even hotter!
- they’re each others type
- they hit it off before stede and ed even met. Gentlehands literally came before blackbonnet
- because ofmd is a romantic comedy and it would be fucking funny
I know we all love giving whumpees violent, thrashing, waking-up-screaming nightmares that bring concerned caretakers running but consider: a whumpee who suffers through nightmares silently, never even whimpering. a whumpee who wakes alone and scared, who can never bring themselves to admit to the nightmares cause, hey, they can’t be that bad if no one else can even tell they’re dreaming, right?
