#S1 jon is not really a skeptic he's in DENIAL

[symphony-calamity]

No one understands him (Jon Sims) like I do...

[tired-fandom-ndn]

ok so im curious. ive just started listening to tma and im in s1/havent seen too much plot from coworkers stuff yet, but jon kind of strikes me as like. A Jerk. like hes very rude and dismissive to the statements and the ppl giving them & i know its the Skeptic thing but its a bit much for me. but also i know hes like very babygirled by fans it seems? from what little ive seen. so do you think theres an evolving arc where hes dislikable and becomes more sympathetic or do you reckon disliking him from the beginning means i just wont like him or his role in the story? feel free to spoiler i have a lot of fandom osmosis lol its part of why im surprised i find him so offputting at the beginning

I am so so so sorry for taking three months to answer this, anon. I hope it's still helpful to you or someone else!

The thing to know about Jon, more than anything else in the early seasons, is that he's meant to be a jerk! He's putting on a very specific persona, both for himself and for his colleagues, as a Professional™. He's in a new job that is, quite frankly, an absolute mess for him to clean up and one that he doesn't feel at all qualified or prepared for. He's got colleagues who he feels don't respect him or aren't qualified for their own positions. He's even pretending to be older than he is to make himself seem more suited for his position. He knows people don't like him and he also knows that they don't take him seriously and it's the latter that he's really trying very hard to fix so that he can actually do his job.

He's also very seriously traumatized and trying very hard to distance himself from the work he's doing. Early Jon, along with being a Professional™, is also a Skeptic™ because denial is what keeps him going every day lmao. He is a man very much driven by fear and an intimate knowledge of the kind of things that could be lurking around him.

As the show progresses, you learn more about his actual personality underneath the persona, his relationships with and perspectives of his coworkers, and past events that have led him to being who he is and while it doesn't make him less of a jerk, it DOES make him significantly more sympathetic and compelling as a character. You've probably noticed that traumatized neurodivergent people latch onto him A LOT and there's definitely reasons for that lmao

[fox-guardian]

ALSO PEOPLE TREAT S1 JON LIKE WAY MORE OF A SKEPTIC THAN HE REALLY WAS. he agreed most of the statements have some evidence to them! the ONLY time he went into absurd territory was in arachnophobia, with the body encased in webs having a "perfectly normal explanation". and like... hm, I wonder why the man with supernatural spider trauma (whose experiences parallel the statement imo) who uses denial to cope is so insistent the supernatural spider isn't real... truly a mystery... the fandom uses this ONE instance of a TRAUMA RESPONSE to treat s1 jon like he's skeptical to a comical degree and it frustrates me so much

some fans see jon having a trauma response and go "haha idiot" with their whole chest without even thinking twice

[lyrebright]

Everything about S1 of TMA from like, the last five episodes on is just really hype, but the final two episodes--which, alongside the closing statement of MAG038 really just feel like one long finale--kick it up to an wholly new level.

And it's very cool.

MAG039 is here,

and so is the worm wife

(and her worm kids)

(who are very hungry)

MAG039 is entirely and definitely my favourite episode of TMA thus far. It's got so much.

archives crew interactions. jon's facade finally cracking. joe spooky.

Okay so. I'm going to be all over the place with this episode because FUCK chronology apparently

So in my last post I mentioned I was going to leave my thoughts about the Table (You Know The One) for this one because. Well.

(Two for two for homophobic furniture :/)

Ironically the night before I listened to MAG039, I was discussing TMA with friend @jackassrabbit and we got to talking about the statements that had really gotten us, and I mentioned a very early statement that had still stuck with me--MAG003, "Across The Street."

I actually mentioned this in a post really early on in my liveblog tag, but the gaslighty unreality of someone being replaced but only you knowing is a deep seated irrational fear of mine. So I remembered this statement because of this conversation with my friend.

And then my friend said this:

Which, uh. Definitely put me in the mind to be paying attention and remembering MAG003, both because I was intrigued and it is, again, a personal fear I was now bracing for.

When I was joking in an earlier post about Sasha having the gumption of a horror movie final girl I should have know that was me cursing her to not have their survivability.

my friends who like to bully me so much

rest in peace queen

the MOMENT she went into artefact storage I was like Oh No She's Dead because I was now VISCERALLY REMEMBERING the MAG003 table and the fact that it was in there

Audio work was a lot for this episode actually btw

I had to yank my earphones out when Sasha screamed ):

HONESTLY I'm sad she's gone and I'm gonna be stressed about the FAKE SASHA NO ONE REALISES IS FAKE for forever but at least she went out as episode MVP

Saving Tim. Corkscrewing Jon's worms. Setting off the fire alarm. Going to bug Elias about Saving Her Boys. Sasha James I have feelings for you and now they are sad ones.

Speaking of feelings. Jon ♡

Glad to see him finally having that mental breakdown (they would soon regret this statement); when I said that I thought his skeptic act was breaking down around him j didn't think it was like. Actually an act?

Like Jon as a paranormal happenings denier has been super interesting because it wasn't a case of flat out denial, because there were things he clearly did believe in even if he was trying to rationalize it, so his confession that he's been feeling Watched this entire time and has been suffering Rampant Paranoia is...i have thoughts but theyre not solid yet. They're percolating.

Thinking back to how tired and strung out he seems post "real" statements now like I noticed with the knowledge that he Feels Watched during them is also like Oh That Makes Sense

BTW "you didn't...die here, did you?" would 100% win funniest line in any other episode but unfortunately here it has to compete with joe spooky, so

This conversation between Jon and Martin made my heart go aww though.

God. In any other episode Tim would have won MVP (unfortunately for him Sasha exists and never will again so SHE gets play of the game). Even though he didn't quite take the crown I love him.

WORM WKFE

hi jane

she says only one word but I love her so much

God this got long I will. Give MAG040 it's entirely own post and end this one here, I am so sorry.

[bidrums]

It's weird hearing Jon say "I need to feed again"

I know why he's saying it and it makes perfect sense, but it's still weird because it's a bit of a finalization of him becoming something else. Like, it goes from a mental and emotional and energetic dependence on the statements in order to keep the connection between him and the eye strong enough for him to do his job to an actual physical act that he has to perform and has to decide wether or not to follow the instincts driving him to search out ways to fulfill said act

It's also really sad. He sounds so defeated when he says he gets hungry and needs to feed on the statements. He's just so numb from being scared constantly of losing his humanity and becoming something like the avatars and once he admits to the others that he's at the point he's at, there's no way he can deny it anymore and he's past the point of resignation

It's like in S1 where Martin asks him why he's so skeptic and he replies that denial is a defense mechanism because he's so scared of what the implications of what acceptance would be. He's been denying just how far from human he's become because he's more scared of what it means and what it could mean. And he finally admits it, and he's so drained from the denial and fear that he can't find the energy to convey anything but ashamed resignation.

So yeah, I'm veru emotional about this

[dathen]

I actually have been thinking of putting together a list of Jon’s responses to the season 1 statements, because the first time I relistened through them after being saturated in months of “Jon denies everything supernatural” I was genuinely shocked at how much credit he gives them. In fact, he usually gives them more credit that the authorities’ conclusions—the two-part Confession/Desecrated Host statement is a great example. In this, Jon says he feels there’s more to the story than the police concluded, deducing that someone else had to have been present for the actual murders and suggests the police closed the case too quickly.

I’m an auditor, and we use a term called “professional skepticism” as the core of our work. Since we’re literally hired just to ascertain whether things are true, we have to come at it with professional skepticism to not just take everything at face value just because someone told us. Given that most of the statements received by the Archives (especially around Halloweeen!) record digitally, they receive a lot of fake ones, so I imagine that being a researcher requires a level of professional skepticism as well. Even Sasha considers herself a skeptic, but immediately goes on to say she’s not in denial of the supernatural.

(In my first listen-through, the only case of skepticism that struck me as over-the-top was in Arachnophobia, which we now know was a major trauma trigger for Jon. Martin, meanwhile, thinks Jon dismisses too many statements, but is absolutely including the ones that Jon already knows are fake.)

There’s a really fun implication in the s1 finale that Elias hints at, that Jon was a bit of a wildfire in research. He tells Sasha that he didn’t take Jon’s demands for protection vs Prentiss seriously, because “oh I thought Jon was exaggerating, you know how he and Martin are.” As early as episode 17, Jon also complains about being repeatedly dismissed by Elias when he tries to get him to actually act:

Jon: I’m going to have a discussion with Elias as to what we can do to address the issue. I know he’ll just give me the old “record and study, not interfere or contain” speech again, but I at least need to make him aware of it.

It paints kind of an amazing potential interpretation of Jon making a reputation for himself as being TOO believing of the supernatural, and wanting to get in there and STOP it, only to turn around and play himself up as a skeptic as soon as he’s promoted. The former makes even more sense when you consider his background and the reason why he joined the Institute in the first place—and why his “I need to pretend I don’t believe this to fool the Thing Watching Me” act completely vanishes when it comes to making sure Leitners can’t hurt anyone else.

people act like Jon didn’t believe in anything supernatural at the beginning of TMA and like, yeah he was often skeptical, but he speaks at great length to the veracity of certain statements like anything to do with the fans’ wife jane prentiss and fuck boy jurgen leitner. he’s been working at the institute for a few years, the boy is on board just not for bullshit!! and ngl, some of those statements, if i didn’t have prior knowledge, sound like bullshit!!!