#jonas spahr/phineas thatch

[thecreatorontmblr]

OH THEY’RE GAY! Good for them, good for them.

[hello-eeveev]

There is everything else in the universe, and then there is Jonas.

is such an insane bit of narration it’s so—

like. is this allowed? there is so much aching and longing in that whole sequence, but it’s so highly concentrated in that single sentence, and it feels like it should be illegal or something. how’d you do that. hey. third person. how’d you do that

[deramin2]

Phineas Thatch and Jonas Spahr long-game as militant ex-ex-gays Lloyd and Larry from But I'm A Cheerleader (1999).

[danikatze]

[ID in alt text]

✨ This scene ✨

[wardensantoineandevka]

I only realized with them all put together in this post that this is essentially the arc of the scene

[demynom]

Phineas keeps collecting fold creatures that haunt Jonas

[asamis-jodhpurs]

God the thing about Phineas and Jonas's dynamic in season one that makes it so insane-making (and unfold so badly) is that what Jonas thinks he has is a mild-mannered assistant with social anxiety who just needs a little more confidence and chill to really shine, when what he in fact has is a traumatized attack dog on a short leash who is ready to snap the second he feels even the slightest amount of slack. With social anxiety.

[jestersloverre]

Midst season three going strong

[trixeclipse]

"And it's a good one"

[soath]

midst as reductress headlines

[alicedyers]

Trustfall | MIDST 3x16

[moiras-damage-orb]

I feel that Phineas and Spahr are one of those relationships where you REALLY need to examine it with shipping goggles off. There's so much there that, if distilled solely to a romantic aspect, I think gets lost in translation. There are so many layers to their relationship - the pseudo-parental dimension, the mentor/mentee situation, Phineas' idolatry of Spahr as a moral paragon, Spahr's guilt towards his failings of Phineas, generational trauma, all of THAT and then the devotion and romantic dimension on top of that? To condense it to just the romantic component feels reductive in a way that does it a disservice. Regardless of the lens you choose to view it, these two are - and have been - the most important person in the other's life. And after an extremely high-stress, near-death situation that has them both reevaluating their entire worldview? i don't necessarily find it unrealistic that in this absolute mess of emotions, that attachment gets manifested into a kiss, but I hardly see that as the be-all and end-all. There's so much more. It's complicated and ridiculously messy but that's what I love about it.

[acaptainbyanyothername]

One of my favorite themes Midst is exploring is what it means for a person to become an idol, a symbol. How they and the narrative deal with that is FASCINATING.

Obviously we have Lark. Clara Mire was shoved into her symbol at a very young age— she became the poster child for Caneum, the boogeyman under Trustee’s beds, the universal villain. She has spent her entire life running from that symbol, adopting an alias and jumping from place to place. But her tragedy is that in running from her symbol, she has had to partially become it. Lark is TERRIFYING, and leverages that all the time, against Fuze, Phineas, even Tzila. Lark became dangerous to run from her symbol of Dangerous.

Then we have our buddy Tripotentiary Moc Weepe. Upon his transformation, he becomes the symbol of the Trust. He literally and figuratively makes the Trust translucent to show off its diseased, rotting insides. He is the true Trust, inside and out. No wonder everyone hates him.

Jonas Spahr is forced to be this golden idol— don’t show weakness, put on a media-ready smile, not a hair out of place and it’s showtime. He groomed to be this way like one of Costigan’s plants, and she’s snipped away all of his natural humanities. He is golden and perfect at the cost of his personhood, and it’s killing him.

Contrast that against Phineas Thatch. Phineas tries to become that golden idol, Spahr tries to cull his imperfections, but it doesn’t stick. Phineas is too messy, too human, he can’t become the untouchable symbol. So he’s rejected and abandoned by his idolatristic society.

I think even Hieronymous Loxlee could count as a symbol— if Weepe is the Trust, Harry’s the Breach. Secretive, in disguise, hidden in plain sight. It’s a heavy burden to carry though, causing him to have to make decisions as a symbol rather than as a person. He needs to maintain the Breach above his own personal relationships—drop the moon on Midst if it saves the Breach, even if it dooms his loved ones and his own daughter. He can’t afford to be a person, he has to be the symbol.

But then Midst episode 15: Breach comes and says they’re just people. Lark is just an old woman. Jonas Spahr is just a man. It’s a clash of these various symbols and ideologies and inflated idols but they’re all flesh and blood that can die in an explosion. Anyways

[chaosgenasi]

You exist and it doesn’t. You outlived Valor.

[danikatze]

[ID in alt text]

People on the Midst discord started talking about Phineas picking up drawing as a hobby under Tzila's influence and that they would become penpals. I had to draw it 🥰

Maybe I'll colour all of it later, but I got a bit overwhelmed lol. It's been a while since I made a comic 😵‍💫

Bonus doodle:

[ID in alt text]

[wardensantoineandevka]

shoutout to these cataclysms personified for making it to tomorrow's series finale (and so have we!)