I Still Havent Actually Listened To TMA

I wish gay people were real and not just made up for hit 2010s steampunk cabaret band The Mechanisms 😔

Ceaseless Watcher, did you pay for that train ticket?

please I need this as a crack fic so bad

TMA AU in which Jonathan Sims got himself a car after the promotion. He's not exactly a car person, but that's what people do, he's pretty sure of it. And he can do so much with that car. He can bitch about the parking in central London, he can use it to spy on his assistants, he can name the car, live in it for a while, have it stolen, have it confiscated, have it vandalized by every avatar in Britain. When Jon is on a run, he throws away his license plates and can't find them after his charges are cleared. He loses his driving license too, but that's alright, he can just consult with the Beholding to avoid police. At this point everyone tells Jon to leave the cursed pile of metal somewhere in the woods already, but he can't just abandon his beloved automobile! What do you think he named it? I think Barnabas. I also think the car became sentient and drove away after the apocalypse, as per the laws of the genre. Jon met Basira in one of the domains, asked if she's seen his car and got smacked immediately.

Gerry my beloved 🖤

I think a lot about how often people talk about 'humanity' in TMA and I feel like debating who is 'human' and why really misses the mark. Not one of these posts (as far as I've seen) definitively defines 'humanity' and I think to some degree that's because maybe people realize how hard it is to define without Diogenes figuratively breaking down the door to prove them wrong.

Like a huuuge part of the story delves into the edges between what we call "human" and what we call "monster." Some examples:

Gertrude is consistently referred to as "staying human" because of never becoming an avatar, yet she committed greater atrocities than most anyone else in the story.

Daisy's whole deal was hunting down 'monsters' and in the apocalypse, many of her victims were the 'watched' being tortured in domains. (She didn't kill Dr. David; she went for one of his victims. Iirc all of her kills in s5 were victims in domains.)

Basira never truly became an avatar, and yet admitted herself to the ways she enabled and egged Daisy on while turning a blind eye to her actions

As a foil to Gertrude, Jon became full on 'monster' and yet never lost sight of how much people were suffering. He made remarks about how nobody 'deserves' one fate or another, and constantly wrestled with the idea of making choices that would have sweeping consequences that victims couldn't have a say in.

Jonah's incredibly mundane and physical death despite his near godly status

Let's talk about how often avatars were victims of the fears they came to serve; Oliver Banks, Tova McHugh, Nathaniel Thorp, and so on

My point here is, 'human' and 'monster' are arbitrary categories and I've always read it as this being an intentional blurring. Whether Jon was human or not is irrelevant, for a few reasons that the story hit on not-so-subtly:

Humans (Gertrude) are capable of atrocities

"Monsters" are often defined differently depending on who you ask (Daisy)

People who do awful things are still capable of being victims of systems/institutions/circumstances (Helen, Callum Brodie, Jane Prentiss, arguably Annabelle)

Jonny has said before that he tries not to push a "moral" or a "message" in his work and instead prefers to ask a question and explore it. I think TMA was, at least in part, an examination of both humanity and dehumanization. The work truly never actually defined either and dug into whether one was right or wrong, recognizing that people tend to build their own rationalization for why a person should be in one of these boxes. Most people who talked like this within the story had very clear criteria for what they considered "monsters" and they varied drastically.

Idk I've read Thirteen Storeys and Family Business and one thing that I've always felt is present in Jonny's writing is that people are capable of both incredible good and incredible evil and a lot of people have done both. Trying to ignore that wholeness and define individuals as exclusively victims ('humans') or perpetrators ('monsters') is truly not possible without selectively judging people, and human judgment is notoriously flawed.

ok i'll bite. *just starts fucking biting you*

I think Jared Hopworth and Jane Prentiss would actually hit it off and then have wild freaky t4t hatesex tbh.

then they'd invent abt 12 new STIs together as like bonding + aftercare.

every month is autism month if youre autistic

"Michael but his hands are sticky hand toys. He just slaps them at people" -my roommate

(inspired very much by this lovely post)