#i had never seen any tma fan content before

[raymond--fielding]

i’m laughing so hard i just remembered the first time i heard michael’s voice i thought to myself “oh jesus christ this guy is definitely a tumblr sexyman :/“

[radiosandrecordings]

Do you ever see a character in fandom that's basically fanonly considered to be your identity and feel bad for not having that same headcanon? I feel like I'm supposed to agree since that's my label and it's the fandom designated character for my identity so I'm supposed to relate to them for some reason and people would be mad I don't share the headcanon. I'm not sure if I made any sense sorry.

Well addressing the question genuinely, no, I've never had that. Because bi/pan, ace, non-binary is a bit of a wordy combination (ESPECIALLY if you put grayromantic in) so I've never seen it represented before stumbling across TMA, falling in love with it, and watching as it turns out my new favourite character is coincidentally 2/3 of that canon and the other 1/3 common HC, and then occasionally seeing the 4th crop up (Charlie's art my beloved)

Non-literally, I think I understand what you mean in that you didn't have those immediate thoughts about the character and prefer what conclusion you actually came to from the text itself? I wouldn't say they're majority HCs but I don't like biromantic bisexual Sasha (I see her aro bisexual), I don't like gay Jonah because that's the antithesis of his character to me, and I don't like trans Tim... not even for any reason I just don't vibe with it for some reason but it's whatever.

I don't want to invalidate that you feel weird about not agreeing that a character has your identity, but I do feel like you're over-thinking it a little? You obviously wouldn't have bigoted roots in not agreeing, it's your own identity you're talking about, but forming your own ideas aside of the text fandom aside is part of critical thinking and a good thing, so as long as you're not like, saying Jon isn't Some Form Of M-Spec and ace, Martin isn't mlm, Melanie wlw and Georgie m-spec and Tim is bisexual then it's whatever! I doubt people would give you shit for it but if you do, you're the one in the right because popular HC isn't something you need to incorporate just because it's common.

And about the "supposed to relate to them for some reason" part, I think the only place you'd have to worry about that is if you're prioritising fan content over the actual canon where this extra non-canonical detail is being added in, so if you don't relate to them in the actual text then you just... Don't and you don't have to try and shoehorn "But if I look at it THIS WAY-" in if you don't want to! I didn't see non-binary Jon when I first listened but as other people started to add fuel to it I've grown to love it, and while I don't necessarily see it in canon it's a fun space to play in as a fan thing and less a thing I can actually SEE in canon, but I have really enjoyed the small amount of "critically examining Jon as non-binary through canon's lens" I have done because he's a very fun one to do that with because of all the performance and also inhumanity aspects.

[thezolblade]

not sure how to sum up my thoughts about the tma finale, but to get them down in words & out of my head, and for anyone who’s curious... kinda mixed feelings.

there’s a point where it’s hard to come up with meta, because my thoughts shift from ‘what would be the right thing to do in-universe?’ to ‘what would make a fun or unfun story?’, and there’s not always an easy yes/no, for each category, for each hypothetical way the plot could have gone. especially when the author makes the consequences deliberately ambiguous in canon, by having characters explicitly state that they don’t know what might happen, and that even the information they do have could be unreliable.

the worst-case scenario, complete multiverse genocide? the best-case scenario, the cosmic horror fails to take over another world? neither are a canon consequence, and anyone telling a story (hypothetical future canon or fan content) could decide to tell a story at either extreme or anywhere in between, and it’s all fiction either way.

whether it’s fun or not? a lot of the s4/5 slide into heavier trauma-horror hit too hard for me to feel like ‘so, global genocide or multiverse genocide?’ was a fun either-or to imagine, and that was the binary option that Jon was assuming. So I guess I might not be playing with the finale much in the fandom sandbox. Some people do seem to have found the heaviest parts of s5 fun, so, good for them?

i. ) If the original core of the idea for tma was something like, ‘spooky monsters caught on tape, released into another world, with a survivor giving 4th-wall breaking apology implying that they’re coming for us next!!’, and it’d all been s3-ish levels of ‘fun escapist’ horror on the way there, then i probably would have enjoyed that ending, because I’m not seriously worried about fictional monsters coming for us irl. Imagining it would just be ‘ooh, spooky’.

ii. ) So, that same ending feels like it hit heavier because we had... painfully long audio of victims realistically screaming, and in gradually more episodes I felt horrified to the point of feeling a bit sickened, instead of sad in a cathartic way. So the prospect of ‘entities released into another world to do the same but more’ makes me imagine exponentially more of the worst of it. The difference between this and my last paragraph isn’t exactly in the ending of the show being any different, or the in-universe consequences being any different for the characters making the decision. It’s in how the emotional arc hits for listeners, how much realistic pain we’re imagining.

By the 2nd half of s4 I was more worried about the Archivist’s victims than the main characters, especially when Jonny confirmed that the plot was meant to imply that the Archivist may have driven some of them to suicide off-screen. I was still rooting for the characters to try to fix things - even in a tragedy, the compelling part tends to be seeing the characters make an effort, whether it works or not. I didn’t find it all that satisfying to see the characters forget about that problem by getting desensitized/distracted until the focus shifted to constant gory torture for everyone in the world instead. And then in season 5, the ‘lighter’ moments didn’t have much impact for me because they felt thoroughly overshadowed by the constant gory torture of everyone around them.

I still love the earlier seasons, though. I liked the characters for trying to help people, whenever they put their heart into it. And I like how the worldbuilding explores people’s relationship with fear - how things can go so differently for different people, including all the minor characters, depending on their own emotional landscape and the sort of dangers that target them. And i really don’t want to give up reading ace fic by ace authors, when being able to access an ace community online has meant a lot and gotten me thinking, even if it’s come right around the time I can’t get out of the house much to figure out what sort of ace relationship might work for me irl.

I’ll stay in fandom, even if it means avoiding the parts that I’m not as interested in. I still kinda wish more of the fandom was on the same wavelength about some things, though. Why does everyone seem to treat the safehouse era as fluffy, when Jon was still stalking Jess and his other victims night and day? (He stopped attacking anyone new, but he never blinded himself to free his existing victims - and even if he had, Jonah probably would’ve killed him to bury the knowledge of how to quit before appointing another Archivist...) And the full bodycount / survivor list of the attack on the Institute was still unknown, from what Basira had told them. I used to assume that fandom would treat the safehouse era as the grim starting point for fix-it fics that end up happy, but instead almost everyone seems to treat it as a situation that was already fluffy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fic with, e.g., Martin asking Basira whether any more survivors of the shooting had gotten in touch, on the second day in Scotland. o.0