#but I’m almost 100% convinced we might see jmart … maybe?????

[buildoblivion]

oh shit magnus protocol on thursday!!!??!!?

[radiosandrecordings]

I am feeling... Strangely vindicated, by what Martin said this episode about how their whole relationship is just kind of built on a trauma bond. I think it’s always bugged me when people describe them as soulmates, because so much of jmart to me is that they’re not. As much as they love each other, that love is a choice. They don’t always click, they get on each other’s nerves and argue and don’t get each other’s jokes but they still love each other. Yes it’s as a product of their circumstances, but that love doesn’t make it any less real. 

(Under the cut because oh lordy this one got long apparently) 

I think to summarise my own feelings on it, I am legitimately going to have to quote a fanfiction here. One of the first TMA fics I read when it was still updating was Weaver, a superhero style Web!Martin au that I still recommend because it’s wonderful, if a little outdated plot and characterisation wise because it was posting two years ago. But a line that always stuck with me was (spoilers) in the chapter in which Spider-Martin gets de-masked and Jon finds out who he is (It’s also the love confession chapter. For obvious reasons.) 

“If it were a different world, one where the Weaver didn’t exist, maybe Jon would never have fallen for Martin. But that isn’t the world they’re in. They’re in this one, and in this one, Jon has fallen for Martin. There’s no doubt about that.”

And I did not like this at the time! Because I was a little more naïve about romance at the time and I really felt that that took away from it instead of adding to it. I thought that Jon’s admittance that in a different timeline he wouldn’t have loved Martin was a sign of weakness, that because they weren’t ‘perfect soulmates’ then it was... I don’t know how to phrase it better than in meme format: “I’m going to get a bad grade in relationship, something that is both possible to achieve and normal to fear”. That even if they were entirely happy together that this was a flaw and meant it wasn’t the 100% run Perfect Storybook Romance I thought I wanted to read. Obviously since then I’ve realised that’s all bullshit and this is actually a lovely line because it’s stating that he does love him, here and now. And this is what canon reiterates to us in 199: 

MARTIN: But we wouldn’t have, would we? Been together I mean. [....] Face it, John, it took almost two years of crisis and trauma to even make us compatible. And that sucks. But here we are. And I don’t want it to be for nothing. I won’t let it.

And I just... Love that Martin is aware of that. He’s never been under any illusions about his relationship with Jon. Of course we don’t know if it’s actually true because we don’t know these timelines, we cannot get a solid answer (Unless 200 REALLY pulls it out of the bag and shows us. After all, Martin did say “Their own Martin” when listing things that the other universes probably had). Jon doesn’t seem to like this idea, being confused at first, then rejecting that he hated Martin, and then trying to divert the topic, so maybe they would work, or at least Jon is looking back retrospectively and seeing ways he could have changed to make it so he was more aware of his feelings, but hindsight is 2020 and rose coloured glasses y’know. 

Plus, Martin himself admits in 186 that he knows most of the reason Jon hated him was projection of his fear: 

MARTIN: Hey, to be fair, he still kind of hated me back then. I’m really not sure it would have been the time to take my shot. ALSO MARTIN: Fair. He was projecting hard. Between us, that guy’s got some real issues. MARTIN: Hey! Pretty sure we love ‘that guy’. ALSO MARTIN: Yeah, and all his many, many problems.

So Martin here is already showing his “I am aware Jon hated me” cards, but Martin’s inner self is also going “Yeah, but also, he did have a reason”, which is odd since it makes it seem like the internal Martin, who was generally much more open and blunt about harsh truths that episode, is the one actually defending Jon.

So with Jon’s rejection of the sentiment, I don’t think we can take it as a definitive truth that they wouldn’t work in another timeline. I think it might just implicate they wouldn’t work in the dynamic they had before. Martin is right in that I don’t think that would have worked out without the layers of trauma bringing them together. Jon seems to think, though possibly through flawed hindsight, that they could have. Personally I’m interpreting it as they could work if, as Jon said, “If we had just... met. Been together, without all of this.”, ‘this’ entailing the institute as well, meeting as peers somewhere else without all of the weight of That bearing down on Jon, affecting him even in a mundane capacity before becoming a supernatural one. 

I’m glad it’s in there though. The way I had described Jonmartin before is that they’re not soulmates, by any capacity. But, if you want to assign them a romantic trope of that type, red string of fate might just work. Because they don’t match, not perfectly, but they always had each other, and really, there was no doubt that they wouldn’t end up together in some capacity. And I like that it gives a layer of self-awareness to Martin! I am so glad for every line and interaction that kicks back against early season characterisation, or fanon misinterpretation, that he’s naïve or just a love interest. It gives him this really lovely bit of depth that he, the one who was always painted more as the lovestruck one than Jon “What Are Feelings” Sims, is the one hyperaware of their status to each other than Jon, who seems to want to convince himself that they were always meant to be, whether that statement is true or not.