#jon: can't believe god's trying to fridge me for MY OWN character development

[yellowocaballero]

i know you don't do requests, and i don't expect you to take it as one, but: opinion on s3/s5 jonmartin wlw au? i guess it'd be joanna and martha or different names of the same origin. i feel like it has... raw power and potential. but i might also be in too deep. i just feel like there'd be so many changes that are ultimately little, and yet profound; foreshadowing akin to finding a corpse of a person long lost in spring. i'm sorry, i have no idea how to communicate it in other words.

anyway, hope you're doing well and recovering! what are some new fandoms you're beginning to dabble in?

Thanks for the ask! I’m obsessed with your depiction of the raw power and potential of lesbians. You’re absolutely right. I’ll also spend the rest of this ask assuming that they’re cis women. 

My first instinct is to say that, for Jon and Martin specifically, not too much would change. Jon might feel even more insecure about the Head Archivist job. There’s a new dimension onto the way Jon is, esp in S3, a victim of a lot of violence, aggression, and emotional manipulation, which would add a very different cast with a woman (tbh, this is probably why this element of the story is more interesting if Jon’s a guy. *reylo voice* female coded trauma). Similarly, S5 would take on an even more Kill Bill vibe. I think Tim wouldn’t hate Jon as much. The elements of him stalking them wouldn’t be seen as threatening or creepy, just really pathetic and weird. Daisy attacking and stalking Jon would also have a very different context, which I really wouldn’t like. Melanie would probably like him more, since he’d be perceived as less threatening. Similarly, Jon forcibly taking statements would be coded much less as sexual assault. 

The reason why a lot of the Assistants dislike Jon in canon is because he’s perceived as inherently threatening due to his power. It’s not due to anything he really does beyond some early stalking, but everybody’s afraid of him, but because he never actively threatens any of them then they feel comfortable being derisive. Women are perceived as less threatening, so the perception of Jon might shift more towards pathetic. 

And Martin has eldest daughter syndrome in canon, so...nothing major there would change whatsoever, at all, except probably his feelings of worthlessness and incompetence would feel different. A woman feeling incompetent can be a little bit different than a guy feeling incompetent. 

Jon and Martin are very ‘unmasculine’ characters and people, which I think is part of why people like them so much. I try do try to take into account masculinity and feminity when writing characters, but I always write Martin with absolutely no sense of masculinity, and Jon’s is much more complicated. I’m not really sure how Jonmartin would be different, although I’m sure they would be - I don’t spend too much time thinking about or writing Jonmartin as a relationship instead of a character dynamic, so I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.

TL;DR - Like with most (cis) genderbends, the actual story would be 80% the same, and most of the changes would be in the character dynamics.TMA is so refreshingly almost nongendered that the characterizations and the role of the characters would be basically unchanged. However, as with any kind of (cis) genderbending but especially for TMA, it would give a very different context and implication to a lot of the events in the story. There are very strong themes of violation, removal of agency, manipulation, and putting those onto a female Jon changes the context and would inevitably overlay a metaphor of gendered violence. 

Sorry, haha, you probably wanted me to talk more about Jonmartin and Martin! But Jon is a fascinating male lead because he occupies a deeply male AND female role in the story. He has lots of masculine traits, but male heroes are rarely treated like he is. 

And I’m doing very well. I’m taking it easy in writing so I’m going through this new story very slowly, and tbh I don’t really do fandm stuff unless I’m writing for it! The story I might work on after HR2 is a PJO fic, though! I’ve never been really good at watching TV, but I finally got around to reading Dr Faustus and I want to finish my new Beowulf translation, finish my Jeeves & Wooster book, and finally check out The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton! Thanks for the ask!