#basically what i'm saying is that MARTIN YOU'RE WRONG AND JON LOVES YOU

[fridayyy-13th]

btw, i firmly believe that if Jon and Martin had met under different, more normal circumstances, they would've gotten along like a house on fire

literally the only reason they were at odds was bc Jon was already stressed about being underqualified for the head archivist position, and that was exacerbated by the Dog Incident and the idea that Elias was waiting for him to slip up & had assigned Martin to the archives to keep tabs on him

hell, i think if they got along from the start, there's a damn good chance Jon would've fallen for Martin first. not by much, given; they're both the type to fall fast and fall hard, but still. (but it would probably take Jon longer to identify his feelings, so maybe it evens out)

#friday chats #wish i had more analysis to back this i'm mostly just rambling #basically what i'm saying is that MARTIN YOU'RE WRONG AND JON LOVES YOU #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood

[anysin]

Fic: I'll Settle For You

For the anon who requested Pmart and "two miserable guests aat a wedding", have this darkfic in which Jon never woke up from his S3 coma, but Elias married him anyway. SFW but with dark subtext and angst so beware.

I'll Settle For You

Martin is a little surprised when Basira and Melanie show up at the wedding.

"I know he wasn't your- favorite person," he says, leaving the understatement to linger in the air. His words are directed at Melanie, who doesn't deny them; she just frowns as she pushes her hands into the pockets of her jacket, continuing to glare at Martin, but Martin notices from the corner of his eye how Basira glances down for a second, biting her lip. Perhaps it's out of regret; for what, Martin doesn't know. Doesn't really care, either. He just wants to know why these two are here.

"Jon still deserved better than this," Melanie grumbles, and this time she looks down, too. "I don't believe for one second that Elias is doing this out of the goodness of his heart or whatever bullshit he has been pouring into everyone's ears. This is just creepy." She shudders. "I'm surprised that you're okay with this."

"Melanie, you said you wouldn't," Basira warns, but it's obvious from her tone she doesn't expect her words to actually have an effect.

"What did he show you, Martin?" Melanie asks, looking up again. "What could have possibly convinced you that this wedding is in any way acceptable?"

Martin knows he doesn't owe her, nor Basira, any answers. But he knows that Melanie isn't wrong, either; Elias shouldn't be out of prison, Martin shouldn't be allowing this to happen, and Jon shouldn't be a living corpse. Unfortunately for all of them, none of it matters.

"Just the truth," Martin says. "That's all I will tell you. Sorry."

He is gambling a bit, hoping that Melanie isn't really that invested in the answer. It pays off as she just nods, but he feels a pang of sadness anyway.

*

The wedding itself is a quiet event. Martin is pretty sure nothing that's happening is actually legal, but the law ceased to matter the moment Elias walked out of the prison and nobody ever came after him, and decency ceased to matter once Elias made Martin understand how much Jon loved Elias and not him. Martin watches closely as Elias slides the ring onto Jon's slack finger, and when he lifts Jon's hand up to his lips to kiss it on the knuckles. He makes sure not to even glance at Jon's face.

Melanie and Basira leave immediately after the ceremony is over, Melanie as loudly as possible and Basira with quiet contempt, but Martin stays around, because he needs to remember Jon somehow. So he takes a glass of champagne and a piece of cake, ignoring Elias who is sitting in a corner table with Jon's sleeping figure, and heads over to the table where the only other guest is sitting.

"So," Martin says as he sits down, "what are your feelings about all of this?"

It hasn't escaped his notice that Peter is visibly unhappy, which is something he rarely is; although Martin's time as Peter's assistant was cut short in the end, he did gain some understanding to how Peter ticks, and this refusal to look into Martin's direction isn't part of Peter's usual facade. But Peter doesn't try to leave from the table, and eventually he sighs and turns to face Martin.

"It's a big gruesome, isn't it?" Peter comments, resting his arms on the table as he leans on it. "Elias basically just married a dead man. What is he planning to do with him exactly? He's not going to respond to anything. The Beholding has him now."

Martin flinches. "Anything could still happen," he says, but even as he says the words, he knows it's more out of habit than of any genuine belief. He waits for Peter to mock him for it, but Peter doesn't say anything, reaching out for Martin's champagne instead.

"I just don't see a point in such devotion." Peter takes the glass, meeting Martin's eyes before knowingly taking a sip from it. Martin shrugs, digging into his cake.

"They were in love, I guess. You do all kinds of stupid things when you are in love." The cake is the sweetest possible thing, and while it isn't unbearably so, Martin quickly realizes that he isn't hungry at all. But he keeps eating it, reasoning that since he took a piece, he must finish it. This is the last meal he will ever share with Jon, after all.

Even though Jon wouldn't really care, Martin does.

"Yes," Peter mumbles. "Yes, you do stupid things."

Peter takes another sip of the champagne, a big one this time, leaving a tiny bit on the bottom of the glass. Martin doesn't know where to look, glancing between the champagne glass and the cake, and he knows that his vision is getting blurrier with every bite he eats, but he doesn't try to wipe his eyes. If he does, his tears will start falling for real, and he can't have that happen in front of Peter. Why did he come sit here, anyway? He knows Peter doesn't care.

"A long time ago, I thought he loved me," Peter says. "I have known it's not true for almost as long, and yet sometimes I'm surprised."

Martin closes his eyes, continuing to shovel the cake into his mouth. But soon the piece he took is gone, and he can only bite the insides of his cheeks, try not to lose it.

He hears the champagne glass cling slightly as Peter sets it down on the table; it must be empty, too. Peter's chair scrapes against the floor seconds later; that's only to be expected, too. Martin lowers the spoon onto the cake plate, running his hand over his face, clutching his mouth to keep its corners from twisting downward.

"You should come with me." Peter's voice seems to carry over to Martin's ears from far away, but when Martin opens his eyes, he finds Peter standing right next to him. "No use staying here anymore. You did your duty, you gave them your sorrow. You can keep it for yourself now."

Martin snorts, although Peter is saying nothing funny. Well, maybe a little funny; Martin has no idea if this is an attempt to comfort him or make him feel worse, but it's making him feel something at least.

"Are you going to kill me?" he asks as he lowers his hand from his mouth, looking up at Peter. He's not entirely sure if he wants to hear a no, or a yes.

Therefore when Peter shakes his head, he doesn't know how to feel.

"Now that I no longer run the Institute, Elias is back to disapproving it if I try to kill his employees," Peter says, sounding a little bit more like his usual self, "and I will try to stay on good terms with him. So no. I just think we could- commiserate with each other."

Martin is not sure if it's a good sign that Peter wants to commiserate with him. But he can hear Elias starting to speak in the corner, loud enough for them to hear, and Martin knows that if Elias wants them to bear witness to something, he doesn't want to be around for it. He feels awful about abandoning Jon, but Peter is right; Martin has done all he can for a man who doesn't love him. He nods, standing up.

"Let's commiserate, then," he says. "Lead the way."

He doesn't expect Peter to take him by the hand, but as mist starts to gather around them, shielding them from the sound and the sight of the married couple, he doesn't pull his hand away.

#my fic #peter x martin

[girlwholovesturtles]

Connected

I shouldn't try to finish this series in a single night but here I go not getting enough sleep again!

I'm very glad Jon has his brain back.

Jon, my guy, stop looking so close.

"Somewhere Else." I've seen that in the tags a lot. People seem to love this AU whatever it is and it seems to not have a single setting. From what I've gathered, Somewhere Else is basically any AU that comes after the end of this series?

Jon! Can you please trust you friend!

Annabelle, I believe so little of what you're saying. YES, Annabelle! You have done nothing to earn anyone's trust!

20 question, re- Martin, you are a delight, as always.

Season 1 Martin probably would have had the patients for the Web but the man has grown far too smart to deal with any of the fears' garbage.

What? Oh, cool. Martin can see through the tapes?

Uh? Oh?! Annabelle, you becoming a Drider over there?

Jon, careful there?

How does Martin still sound annoyed while he's bound and gagged?

Jon, you are so angy.

The rituals where made by idiots!

You would think that at the very lest the Eye would also understand the very nature of what a successful ritual would do but maybe it's to some extent too short sighted to understand it properly?

You know what, I agree with Basira. This is a little silly.

So it was Jon, the whole goddamn time.

This feels like a bad option? Like, damning another world feels wrong...

The fucking lighter! Jon! Are you serious?! The lighter causes the tape recorders?! This is answering so many ridiculous questions!

Are you seriously not gonna kill her? I recent this decision!

#the magnus archives #tma #live blogging #episode 197

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

I loved last chapter of nhthcth!!!!! And my boy Gerry. I was so sad when Daisy described how his death(?) affected Jon (Is it death?? Or disappearance?? I am clinging to every shred of hope I have to at least let them have the opportunity to say goodbye to each other even in skinbook form they are my boys and I am so sad for them)

I am so excited by the way you write old Daisy because it's just so in character and Jon really doesn't know how to make friends does he omg he's so bad at interacting with her and the reasons why she agrees are gold too. Love it.

What I hate is how involved the Lukas family was with Jon's living situation when he was studying like ugh. Hate it so much. Neat detail the Lukas lawyer. Loved the concert hated the man. Fucking Peter Lukas involving himself in his life. HATE IT. He must have felt so smug when Gerry disappeared and Jon ended up alone I just make myself mad thinking about it.

At least he met Georgie I guess. I hope they were happy for a time.

Also quick note but I love how we are in the same fandoms because after this update I saw your other fics (the spiderman and the otgw one) and I loved them!!! So great!! I love the way you write Peter!! And him talking to the Punisher was great. Anyway! Hope you have a nice day and thanks for sharing your writing. Always brings a smile to my face to see the update in my inbox!!!

Hi!!! Thank you for coming to talk to me again!

I don't want to spoil anything for you with Gerry and what happened to him, so I won't say anything on that, but I will say that as a general rule--applying to like. basically everything that happens in this fic--any chapter from an outside perspective should be taken as inherently unreliable. Especially if it's stuff that's inferred and not seen firsthand. Daisy's inferred that Gerry's dead, because that's what her context clues suggest. But in the same way, in chapter 9, Martin inferred that Jon is an abuse victim of Gerry (and possibly Elias), and he was pretty off target, but it was still an extremely reasonable assumption to make based on his clues. And yeah, he was in the ballpark a bit, but "my boss is probably abusing his kid" is super different than "my boss kidnapped this kid and sacrificed him to an eldritch god and now the kid is having his rebellious stage against the god he was sacrificed to" like no one thinks that so no one would infer that. So if you're going to trust any inference, trust a ballpark inference, and even do that tentatively.

With Martin's chapter, of course, the reader knows the background of what happened to Jon, so we know he's dead wrong. With Daisy's, the reader doesn't have nearly so much background. The most recent backstory we got for Jon and Gerry was a decade ago. So the reader is not nearly so able to judge what they got wrong and what they got right.

Now, for the record, I'm legitmately not saying all this is about Gerry, it applies to like. Most of the plot points in the story. Maybe Gerry's dead. Maybe he's not dead. Maybe he's disappeared. Maybe he's sitting in a coffee shop wondering why Jon is running late and nothing is wrong in the world. (That last one is not true but wouldn't it be great if it were.)

The general rule that any outside perspective is going to be inherently unreliable is one that I honestly abuse wildly for a lot of things. I give y'all good, solid, true information relevant to the story but then have the characters draw entirely understandable but super wrong conclusions. It's easy to spot when it's centered on info y'all have, but not so much when it's info y'all don't have. I've already hidden the very end of the story in one of the chapters and no one (in the comments, at least) has seemed to see it as important yet. Same thing with Gerry--some clues as to what's happened to him is actually hidden in the chapters, but no one's brought any of them up yet. Granted, I only know what people have spotted from comments, so maybe someone's figured it all out, I dunno.

If you want to try to figure it out? Look for discrepancies. The little things that outside characters learn that's wrong based on what you know. But this applies to facts, not inferences--inferences are going to be wrong because they're an outside perspective and no one is going to assume their boss is serving cthulhu. The inferences will always be good reasoning but this world is so batshit that you can't rely on good reasoning. But if they get a piece of information itself that you know to be wrong, that's because there's some shit going on in the background.

Moral of the story is, cling to your hope! I'm wildly misleading you in every chapter and will continue to do so!

Oh I loveeeee Daisy and Jon's (eventual) friendship and I'm really excited to have to like, flesh it out without the intervention of the Buried keeping Daisy from the Hunt for like, several months of detox. She's full hunter and Jon is a walking disaster who is. not. good. with. people. Especially not this one. I'm also really excited for exploring Daisy having to deal with the ramifications of the hunt without the Buried's intervention once again. It's a very different process and she has a lot of. straight up atrocities to answer for.

I can assure you that Jon and Georgie were happy for a time. I can also unfortunately assure you that the Lukases were extremely smug when what happened to Gerry happened, particularly Peter. They suck and I hate them so much.

Ahhhhhhhh!! I'm so excited you're in my other fandoms!! The OTGW story I actually wrote like, most of it years ago, stumbled back on it and was like "yeah no actually that's fire," overhauled my old writing to be up to standard, tweaked the plot, filled in a few missing scenes and tossed it out into the world. I loveee that story and I'm so glad you liked it!!

And my Spider-Man/The Punisher story!! Peter Parker is my favorite comic book character, I grew up reading his comics, and he's just. so important to me. I love the Punisher, he's probably one of the best executed characters I've ever seen. It's kind of a wish fulfillment fic of mine? Because while I love spider-man and his origins and wouldn't get rid of my teenage superson for anything, I really need someone to be like "actually I'm going to call your parents what the HELL are you doing out here you're like four."

Okay, this got really long. Thank you for messaging me! I hope you have a great day!

[yellowocaballero]

I read the daemon fic last night and I loved it! That man sure does try to punch that bird! My question is: if you wrote the fic on the fly, how did you come up with such a coherent explanation for daemons and Dust in the tma universe?? (Also I'm curious if you're willing to explain your reasoning behind some of the characters' daemons bc I love hearing why authors choose the animals they do)

sweats

I don’t remember? I got kind of interrupted in the middle of writing it for Snowpocalypse and Life reasons, and I tend to figure out my writing through just daydreaming because I’m bored. It’s also possible that I was chatting it over with a friend, and it came up? Most of my story ideas and plotting are through me chatting about writing...it’s also possible that in the middle of writing the story, I was like, ‘THIS is a good idea!’. That’s also true. 

I find stories as I’m writing them. I knew the story was about grief going in, but like halfway through I was like “okay so this is about hope and new possibilities” isn’t it. I actually intended for Strix to be entirely the Beholding, and none of Jon. He would just say mean (yet true) shit that hurts his feelings in a weird negging maneuver. I always intended the story to end with Jon embracing Strix in a moment of desolation, embracing his ‘monster’ and ending the story on a creepy note. I realized while writing that Strix was serving a specific role, and that I needed to play into that - and maybe accepting him wasn’t a bad thing.

Statistically, I was probably in the middle writing and made something up...I could be wrong. But, like, come on, the Entities as Dust thing just makes so much fucking sense. I think basically I decided first off “Avatar’s daemons ‘die’ and are replaced with Evil Daemons that are the Entities.” and then I had to retroactively justify that. gromitputtingdowntraintracksasthetrainmoves.gif

Re: daemon thing...okay, I also refuse to think too hard about a story BEFORE I write it, because then I get bored and don’t write it. And figuring out daemons is something you figure out before the story happens, so...not a lot of thought there...which is something I know is kind of against the way almost everyone else thinks up daemon aus but in my defense I was too busy trying to figure out how the fuck the Avatar thing worked...but I’ll give you what I have. I did take a weird amount of time to figure out naming conventions because I think daemons are VERY tied into culture and spirituality. I also tried to go with animals that were at least vaguely from the habitat of the ethnicity of the character. I didn’t always land there exactly (I wanted a Jamacian bird but an African bird worked best, etc) but it was the attempt.

Jon’s Oxpecker: Vampiric, small, fragile. Bird...why did I decide Jon had to be a bird...uh...the Vibes.

Martin’s Large Blue Butterfly: Parasitic, imitates ant pheromones in ant hills to feed on them. Martin has insect vibes I feel because he’s kind of inscrutable and hard to read.

Daisy: Wolf, because Avatar Daemon Is ALWAYS Metaphorical. Doberman because I think there’s a police dog stereotype, so she was like. aw fuck yeah this is a great excuse to murder people. Wanted a very big and potentially dangerous dog because she’s a small woman who relies on her daemon to overpower others. 

Basira: Bee. Insect, inscrutable. Social animal. Hive animal hyuk hyuk ACAB

Georgie: Cat vibes. also just had to be admiral. come on.

Melanie: Tasmanian devil, see the most tenaciously viscous animal I could think of. Beaver because...vibes...I think I read something where she had a beaver. 

There are others but those are the main ones. (Gerry sandcat - desert for survival in difficult decisions and also fucking adorable; Gertrude blue ringed octopus for a very dumb and silly looking animal that will just fucking kill you; Tim’s ox for a protective, herd animal that can also get blindingly, thoughtlessly angry; Sasha praying mantis cause haha she gets eaten) Not much thought :(

Thanks for the ask! I wish I had better answers. 

#god the answers for this story are getting long I need to do a director's cut thing so I can be more laconic #gromittraintrack.gif #my writing #SORRY THIS STORY WAS A LITTLE THOUGHTLESS...