#finally a tma fic where i lean into the horror aspect of the show

[morning-softness]

Last Line WIP Game

I was tagged by @wordsintimeandspace

Rules: in a new post, show the last line you wrote and tag as many people as there are words in the line.

Have the most recent sentence from my TMA Season 2 au, which I am very excited about:

He only hopes the labyrinthine tunnels are just as confusing to the creature chasing him.

Tagging @areafae @bos10blonde @gentlemancrow @journalofimprobablethings @judesstfrancis @little-lamb-lyosha @mysecretsickficblog @nyctolovian @ombreblossom @read-watch-sleep @somanyfuckedupiftruebooks @suttttton @thewrongshop @three-magpies-in-a-trenchcoat @transmascsteveharrington

If any of you want to participate!

[ghostbustermelanieking]

some thoughts on mag 200

i’ve been having trouble articulating this, but i wanted to get some thoughts down on mag 200, and the ending of tma as a whole, now that i’ve heard the finale twice and had some time to process it all. putting this under a cut in case people don’t wanna see it -- there’s gonna be a lot of praise here, but also some legit criticism. this is a way to sort through my feelings more than anything else.

first off, relistening to the finale, and sitting on it for a while, has made me feel a hell of a lot better about the whole thing. the episode comes off a lot better when you’re not vibrating with fear and anticipation, in my opinion. the final statement was very fitting and cool -- not my favorite ever, but i can appreciate it a lot as a final closing for the fears. and i don’t have an ear for soundscaping but the sound in that statement was cool as hell. the jonah magnus gets fucking murdered scene is incredibly satisfying. a lot of other people have said this, but i love that jon finally got his revenge, and was able to lash out against jonah for all the years of manipulation and beng used, and for tim and sasha and everything else. that was perfect. i genuinely thought we might not get a scene like this after 193 but i am so glad we did. incredibly satisfying. the girls made it out!! i am very glad that they’re ok and moving on and seem to be leaning on each other. (By God I Will Wring Found Family Out Of This Podcast If It Kills Me.) and the admiral’s okay. love that

and the jonmartin ending. oh my god. while i was never the biggest fan of the possibility of martin having to kill jon, the way it went down was so painful and good. i loved that final scene. i love the ambiguity -- that they might have died but maybe they didn’t, maybe they’re all right and happy and we can decide for ourselves -- i love that i got exactly what i wanted, that i get to have my cake and eat it too, all the angst of a jmart death and still the possibility of happiness... i am going buckwild. i love it. the longer i spend with this ending, the happier i am with it. i really really loved it

on another note... i do have some reservations about the finale and the season as a whole. i understand peoples’ irritations with the finale, and while i’m trying to focus on the things i did like, i definitely have some irritations. for one, i definitely wish the finale had been longer. i would’ve loved to see more of what wtgfs and basira were doing, and the actual lighting of the archives, etc. and while i completely understand why the scene at the panopticon went as quickly as it did -- it comes off very much as wild, frantic impulse in the heat of the moment where they’re in danger and trying to protect each other -- i do wish it had gone a little slower. 

in my mind, the biggest issue in season 5 ended up being pacing. and this might be a personal preference thing -- there’s a lot of things within the show that i don’t personally vibe with, but i don’t necessarily think they’re badly written. but i do think season 5 was slow. and while slow things can certainly work in a certain context (season 4 comes off wildly slow til you listen to 160), i wish more of what actually happened in season 5 had been baked into the end game. the season felt like it had a lot of filler, which drives me mildly crazy, because the end game feels rushed and i don’t think it NEEDED to be. i liked a lot of what season 5 did -- there’s some impeccable episodes, the character interactions are weirdly lighter and softer than they have been in previous seasons, and i wouldn’t trade a lot of the things that it’s given us (all the jonmartin interactions, jon and georgie briefly rebuilding their friendship, martin and melanie friendship, wtgfs scenes and intimacy, backstory, lore, etc) for anything. but i do think it could’ve been structured and paced a little differently. i also think it could’ve given some more screentime to the character stuff we got from episodes like 161, 170, 186, 190, 191, 192, 199... i absolutely love both martin centric monologue episodes, but i hate that we didn’t get anything like that for jon. (or for melanie or georgie or basira...) the best episodes of the season, imo, are the ones that broke from traditional form of domain statement domain, and the ones that focused in hard on backstory, lore, character introspection, character interaction... i wish we had more of this. 

when it comes to the jonmartin arc... i know this has been a point of contention with a lot of people, but i don’t hate it at all. maybe it’s just because i relistened to the majority of the season back in january, but a lot of the more grating moments that seemed large week to week (martin pressuring jon to smite people, the disagreements they had earlier in the season, jon using martin as bait in 176, etc etc) come off a lot more minor when you’re binging. personally, relistening to act i made those interactions come off as things they were struggling with through continued support and reassurance. there were absolutely things i wanted addressed, especially with the “kill bill arc” -- the disagreements early in the season, and how it seemed to turn on its head in the argument they have in 194. (i didn’t like martin blaming jon for the kill bill arc and i was hoping it would get brought up.) i also wanted to see a discussion of martin going with annabelle in 194 -- i wasn’t really ever mad at martin for doing it, but i did want to see them talk it out. 

but! after relistening to 200, i think i have a better handle on why that couldn’t have happened. martin goes behind jon’s back to go with annabelle and they don’t talk about it; jon goes behind martin’s back to sabotage the plan everyone agrees on in order to prevent the fears from spreading. if they’d had a big talk about trust, and working through martin going off with annabelle, and then jon turned around and did the same thing, more or less... it would’ve completely soured that discussion. jon and martin needed to be in a place of discourse for this ending to work. 

honestly, the more i’ve thought about this final JM arc, the better i feel about it. sure, jon and martin are in a bad place, and they’ve gone behind each other’s backs and been somewhat selfish, but i don’t think this ruins their relationship. for one, martin’s break in trust comes from a place of wanting to save jon and the world. and for another, jon genuinely feels he is doing the right thing, making a decision he can live with. (i have my own opinions as to how ethical jon’s decision was, but that’s another post. and i think the muddy ethics of this ending are on purpose -- it’s horror, a genre that often doesn’t offer ethical decisions.) their final decisions and final moments come from a place of love and protectiveness, and they change their decisions for the other. they still love each other, through all of it. i don’t think these late stage betrayals equivalate jonmartin necessarily being doomed as a couple (not that anyone has said that, but it’s worth saying). and i think it’s important to remember that this is still a relatively new relationship. it existed for approximately three weeks before the literal apocalypse, and it’s been under an immense amount of stress, as well as the constant fear that one or both of them would die. (which they did.) i’m not saying that excuses certain things they’ve said or done, but i am saying i don’t think the relationship is doomed. i think, if jon and martin have survived, they’ll need to work through things. they’ll need to talk it all out. and they’ll be able to! they’ll heal from this one way or another. the tragedy isn’t that jonmartin is doomed, or toxic. it’s that these moments of betrayal are what dooms them. and the beautiful undercurrent of it all is that they still manage to come together, and make decisions that mean they stay together. and that wherever they are, they’re still together. 

all in all, i don’t think season 5 has been perfect, and i can make my peace with that. (tma’s worst is a hell of a lot better than most shows’ best.) (i also think it might be worth considering how covid could have affected certain aspects of how the season was written -- pandemics are stressful, and i can’t imagine what it’s like to finish an enormous, in the works for years project like this in the middle of that. personally, i’m impressed they’ve managed to finish the show through all of this and keep it to a similar quality.) i think critiques are valuable and worth discussing. and i think plot aspects aside, there are several other critique related things that could be brought up about this season that people have articulated much better than i ever could. but i also, personally, want to walk away from the show feeling satisfied. i tend to be weirdly positive about things i love (the x files finale was horrendous, but i managed to get to a place where i was happy with it, for example), and i think that applies here -- even more so because i really did love so many aspects of that finale. i don’t necessarily want to linger in my own mind over what i disliked, especially considering the show is over. although i did want to air out my thoughts. 

i still love this show. i loved a lot of episodes this season, frustrations aside. season 5 will forever be my only live tma experience, and it got me through one of the worst years of my life, and i am very grateful for this. i genuinely did just want to air out my thoughts and get them all down on paper. these are just my opinions -- i don’t want to criticize anyone who feels differently about the finale, or the season as a whole. everyone’s opinion is their own. 

i feel a lot, lot better about mag 200, to the point of genuinely loving it. i hope my appreciation only grows as i get further from that frenzied first day and have more time to sit with it. and i can’t wait to see all the art and read all of the amazing fics that are going to come out of this ending (and write some of my own). it’s been a wild ride. i’m glad i was here for it.