Jon: If you need a vessel so bad why don't you just become-

Elias: Because I'm not scared of them.

Jon: ......

Elias: I don't need your body, Jon. I need your fear. 😈

Meanwhile, Elias the Gaslight King in earlier seasons: Jon you know I'd never let anything bad happen to you, I'm only trying to help. We need to save the world together, isn't that what we're trying to achieve? Oh Jon, Jon, Jon, bad things are only happening because you do not trust me. Trust me, and we can save everyone. Don't you believe me?

Then it went the exact opposite with Peter and Martin.💀😂💔

Peter: I've got the perfect plan to beat Elias. Can you do what it takes to become the hero?

Martin: I'm going to save the world?

Peter: Yes, and it will be you and you alone. Do you trust me?

Martin: I trust you.

That same season 💀

Peter: You played me! 😳😭 You've been lying to me this entire time.

Martin: You lied first 🙄 and I knew it the instant you told me I'd save the world. I can't save the world. I've never saved anything in my entire life. I'm not important enough to be the hero.

the essay: childhood trauma, responsibility, and tma. part 1: jon

in a tma fic i published like six months ago, i left an authors note that promised an essay on jon and tim’s trauma to anyone who asked. several people asked, and so here i am!

the fic is called a deeply annoying child. it’s about being a kid and seeing something horrible, and it’s about jon and tim’s rocky relationship. 

this post isn’t actually about the fic. it’s a breakdown of jon’s mental state through s1-3. im going to make another post about tim, and then a final one linking it all back to the fic. i’ll chuck links to those on here when they’re posted!

but first, let’s talk about my boy, JON ‘JARCHIVIST’ SIMS.  

(fair warning- this isn’t a fully backed up meta post, it’s my interpretation of canon. any thoughts/queries/additions welcome! my askbox is always open <3) 

part o: a note on guilt

hey, you know what’s fucked up? an eight-year-old kid with survivors guilt. 

as a child, jon watched someone he knew die, due to circumstances that, while they were not his fault, were set in motion by his actions. children (and often teens!) think in black-and-white. complex logic often just doesn’t occur to them.  jon, at 8, looks at what happened, and says that’s my fault. i did that. jon didn’t like his bully, and wanted him to go away, and then he did. that instinctive reaction is something i think he never grows out of. when you already hate yourself, it’s easy to pile more fuel onto that flame.  he doesn’t think about risk, not to him, because he deserves whatever happens. he let someone die. he doesn’t ever forgive himself for that.

part i: belief (precanon+s1)

now, i have a headcanon about why jon doesn’t believe statement givers, and imma lay it all out for you right here. 

when jon was 8, and freshly traumatised, i think he tried to tell someone what happened. beneath all the layers, jon is compassionate, and tries to help people. now, picture this. a kid, one with a history of troubled behaviour and an atypical home life, goes up to someone (a police officer, his carer, a teacher) and tells them a giant spider ate someone. what’s that person, someone who is a rational adult, someone who doesn’t believe in silly things, going to say back? are they going to believe that kid? 

no. no way. they’re going to tell that kid that they’re making up stories, that they had a nightmare, that they should stop making jokes about someone who actually disappeared, jon, you need to be more sensitive about these things. 

now, that kind of dissonance- ‘this did happen, it was real’ and ‘everyone i talk to is telling me it’s not real’- is hard on adults. to a kid? devastating. 

jon, because he’s jon, would have been desperately searching for a way to explain this, and i think the thing he grabs on to is evidence. if he had some evidence of what happened, if he could prove what happened, people would believe him.*

but he doesn’t have evidence. and he resents that, and he resents that so much that by the time he’s an adult he’s settled into a mindset towards the supernatural somewhat akin to ‘i didn’t get believed, but you think you should be believed? what’s so good about you? you think you’re better than me?** fuck you! i don’t believe you!’   this is also a way of keeping himself safe. if the monsters aren’t real, they can’t hurt him.

and then, through s1, that mindset is chipped at. the statement givers start being real people, who come into jon’s office and cry when he dismisses them, and that clearly makes him uncomfortable. martin gives his statement, and martin has evidence. jon knows martin, and knows that he’s a good person, so martin having evidence isn’t likely to be an attack at jon. 

jane prentiss attacks the institute, and then suddenly jon’s shield of denial and anger is ripped away, because the monsters are real, and they can hurt him. 

*would they? i don’t know. people can be very attached to believing that the world is good, and kids are misguided, and there are a hundred thousand ways to explain away a piece of evidence, as jon comes to know well. 

** this ties into jon’s self hatred, as people saying they are better than him kicks him right in the Issues. 

part ii: paranoia (s2)

after prentiss attacks, jon is left floundering. his old I Do Not See It mindset has been smashed to pieces, and underneath all the trauma he’s been brutally suppressing is bubbling up. jon has no real experience in judging threats, because for the last 20 years he’s been burying his head in the sand and yelling he can’t see any threats. so he overcompensates, and assumes everything is a threat. his experience re:not being believed tells him that everyone around him is stupid and wrong and the only person he can rely on is himself.  

so he investigates. he’s convinced that his life is in imminent danger, that everyone around him is plotting to kill him. he doesn’t hold back, because you don’t hold back in a life-or-death scenario.  he knows something is wrong. something is very wrong. he’s sure it’s a threat to him, a threat to his life. but he can’t put a finger on what it is.

this is when his friendship with tim breaks down. i’ll talk about tim in a minute. 

jon spirals, and obsesses, and wrings answers out of the ether until it all falls together. he understands what is wrong, that it’s sasha that wants him dead. or, well, not sasha. he’s been winding up tighter and tighter all series, and he lets loose by striking out, acting for once instead of reacting. it is remarkably easy to buy an axe in central london, after all.

and then, well, that doesn’t go well. 

 part iii: desperation (s3)

after what jon did backfired so badly, he goes to georgie, because he has no other option. and he thinks, what went wrong? and the answer he comes up with is i didn’t know enough.* that’s why it all went wrong, because he didn’t know what he was dealing with. and so the solution is to find out more.

he’s starting to realise that he’s changing.** he wants to find out more about that as well, to control it. 

so he goes and finds out more. or, tries to. he doesn’t have many leads.*** jon is not good at judging threat, and doesn’t know the danger he is putting himself in. he’s stubborn, and locked onto getting more knowledge like a dog and a bone.****

and then he does get more knowledge, but it’s the knowledge that the world is ending, and he’s the only one who can fix it.***** he can’t process his trauma. he doesn’t have time. the world is ending. 

in late s3, jon is desperate. he’s overworking himself. he feels alone: daisy’s at his throat, elias is dangling information over his head, tim... 

we’ll talk about tim later. 

basira doesn’t trust him, georgie isn’t happy with him, melanie’s never liked him. he gets kidnapped for a month, and no one notices. the only person jon has firmly in his corner is martin.****** and he doesn’t have time to talk to martin, because he’s getting kidnapped, and jetting across the world chasing shadows, and desperately, desperately trying not to fuck everything up again. 

and he doesn’t! they build a plan. it’s dangerous, sure, but jon doesn’t even know what that means anymore. his whole life is dangerous. jon going into the unknowing is cautiously, waveringly hopeful. maybe this time it won’t go wrong. this time they know what to do, they know what they’re dealing with. 

and, the tragedy is, it doesn’t go wrong. they save the world. they send elias to prison. it all goes to plan. and tim is dead, and daisy is buried, and jon is lost in dreams. 

*👁️ **👁️ ***👁️ ****👁️  ***** he’s not the only one, of course, there are a whole team of people working on stopping the Unknowing, but jon is the Archivist. he’s the heir to gertrude’s legacy. 

****** this is where they fall in love, after all. which is a good thing, of course, but it adds an extra weight to every interaction they have, guessing and double-guessing how the other feels, until jon actually can’t talk to martin, not how he wants to, because he’s not sure if they’re there yet. (martin is there. jon doesn’t have time to be.) 

see yall next time 

i would like to cover s4 and s5, but this post is 1.5k already, and i’ve covered up to when the fic takes place! next time i will be ranting incoherently about timothy stoker, punctuated by bursts on uncontrollable sobbing. when that’s up, i’ll chuck a link here, and on the author notes of the fic i’m doing this for. see you then!

Since @im-the-king-of-the-ocean did a post about what TMA fear entities the RWBY characters are aligned/avatars of, I’ve been itching to do one myself because as a result of overlapping hyper fixations I think about this A LOT

The basic concept is that avatars in TMA become what they fear most or embrace a fear they have developed the most complex relationship with that plays into their motivations and drive as a character. What negative impulses they have to constantly fight themselves on, the shape of the monster that lives in their heart.

To quote the RWBY song Fear, “But our greatest fear will be realised, if we fall and lose ourselves to fear, we’ll become what we’ve feared all our lives” yeah that’s a very loose definition of what becoming an avatar is.

Since MAG s5 has proven that you can be an avatar of more than one fear, (Like Martin serving both the Eye and the Lonely) some of the RWBY characters might have more than one, but I’ll try to limit it to two to avoid getting complicated, but at the end of the day it’s all fear soup, we might categorise them according to Robert Smirke’s 14, but they all bleed into one another, like Gerard’s colour analogy in 111:

GERARD

I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red? Y’know? I don’t know, that’s just how it works.

And like colours, some of these powers, they feed into or balance each other. Some really clash, and you just can’t put them together. I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.

O-Of course, with these things it’s not a simple spectrum, y’know, it’s more like –

ARCHIVIST

An infinite amorphous blob of terror bleeding out in every direction at once.

GERARD

Now you’re getting it.

ARCHIVIST

Like colours, but if colours hated me. Got it. 

Ruby Rose: The End. The fear of death itself, uncaring and unstoppable. Man this was hard to think about but I have a lot of Big Feelings about this one. Initially I really, really wanted to give Ruby the Eye simply because “can laser beam monsters with their eyeballs once they become powerful enough” and there is a fascinating overlap in how the Beholding powers and Silver Eyes function in the same way, (especially in how Cinder being exposed to the Silver Eyes fills her with an overpowering fear and reopens old wounds from trauma that have never properly healed; which is VERY similar in the psychological affect Jon’s has on his victims when he Beholds them) they’re both direct enemies/opposites to the Dark that expose their enemies/victims true nature and destroying them in the process at times. Only one feeds on fear and the trauma of others while the other feeds off of hope and love (Gerard says there’s no such thing as an avatar of hope and love, clearly he’s never heard of Ruby). 

But nope! The fear and nature of the Beholding just doesn’t really match with Ruby at all. She isn’t driven by a need of knowledge, nor does she fear being watched, followed or having her secrets exposed. The End though? Death itself? Ruby outright states that’s her biggest fear in volume 5 to Oscar “It doesn’t matter if you’re standing in Salem’s way or not. She’ll kill anyone. And that, scares me most of all” to me Ruby’s fear of death itself is projected onto Salem here, I think. It’s uncaring, unstoppable, it doesn’t discriminate, and it could come for the people she cares about at any time. What matters though is the context she says this is in explaining her motives to Oscar. Her whole life has been shaped by her inability to process death, her relationship with grief, all starting with the tragic and abrupt death of her mother Summer as a child. She’s also surrounded by a lot of death motif too, the hooded cape, mostly wearing black, the giant grim reaper scythe. She’s the End. 

Of course, her being an Avatar of the End means having to imagine the worst version of Ruby, one that is fully consumed by that fear. Avatars of the End are not malicious or destructive in nature but instead are… very apathetic. They don’t need to seek out victims to feed off of, nor do they have a ritual, because the End comes for all. And that fits with what Ruby would be like if that fear fully consumed her. It’s more or less established in vol6 during the apathy arc when she tries so hard to fight against their influence and how horrified she is when everyone around her falls prey to it. Giving up, not caring, accepting the inevitable demise of everyone and yourself? Ruby was terrified of that. And when looking at the vol8 opening where we see Ruby being dragged down by what looks like the arms of the apathy? She fights the hardest against it because it’s what she’s most afraid of, but because of her inability to process her grief properly is ultimately what will make her the most vulnerable to it when she’s pushed to her limit. All Salem needs to do to break Ruby is to remind her of Summer’s death. Not even what actually happened to her or how she died, just the death itself. Hell, the first time we see Ruby in the Red trailer, she’s at her mother’s grave, the first verse in Red like Roses that’s about Ruby “Red like Roses fills my dreams and brings me to the place you rest” in which we come to understand that the “Red like roses” lyrics in both part one and two of the song is referring to Summer’s abrupt death which Ruby apparently dreams about, which brings to mind Oliver Banks, our most prominent Avatar of the End, whose first statement to The Magnus Institute in 011 (underneath the fake alias of “Antonio Blake”) is concerning how he started dreaming about the deaths of others, which he didn’t begin to take seriously- until it was his father that he saw in his dream. Upon which Oliver realised how terrifying death really was and that fear began to consume him. 

Okay I’ve probably gone off long enough about this but yeah. Ruby is the End. I mean, she also just got a song in the v7 soundtrack called Until the End 

Weiss Schnee: The Lonely. The fear of isolation, of being completely cut off and alone or disconnected from the rest of society. I don’t really have to go too deeply into this one. It’s pretty cut and dry. “The loneliest of all”? And the Schnees basically are the Lukas family. Actually thinking about it the Lukas’ are actually somewhat better? They were the only ones in the whole of TMA that understood to raise a child to be an heir/avatar of their fear they needed room to reject it or actively choose it, even if that had an 80% success rate. Both are still awful though. (Damn, I can’t believe Jaques is an actively worse parent than an eldritch fear avatar)

When Weiss comes back to Atlas in v4 she’s more aware of her loneliness than ever, feels more aware of how she and atlas high society as a whole is disconnected from the rest of the world and its struggles. Whitley commenting on her being in her room for months implies she’s purposefully been isolating herself during this time as well, in order to avoid her family members “A pleasure to see you out of your room for a change” (sidenote; the fact that whenever Whitley shows up it always catches Weiss off guard, like she didn’t even notice his presence until he wanted her too. That’s. That’s a BIG Lonely thing. Given Peter’s siblings eventually ran away and he was the only heir I can imagine Peter being what Whitley would end up like if no one intervenes)

I’d say they might also be an possibility of the Stranger due to her struggling to find her own identity and inability to recognise oneself, but that can be an aspect of the Lonely too, as we see when Martin is in a house that is a domain of the Lonely in s5, and is unable to recognise himself in the mirror or recall who he is.

What I do have to say about this is it’s pretty interesting considering at this point in the show Weiss’ relationship with loneliness is actually somewhat healthy and something she can use to relate to and help others. She understands other people’s loneliness, that Blake in v5 needed space and in time she’d come back, and Weiss would be ready to be there for her when she did. And she also understands Yang’s loneliness in the same volume and that she needed someone there to support her.

“But you’re right. I don’t know loneliness like you do. I have my own version. And I bet  Blake has her own version too.” 

Speaking of Blake…

 Blake Belladonna: The Stranger, I Do Not Know You. The fear that you cannot trust the perception of yourself or of others. The creeping sense that something isn’t right. I considered the Spiral, but the Stranger and the Spiral overlap more than any other two entities so I’m just gonna go with the Stranger. Especially with her semblance being a metaphor for disassociation, a coping mechanism for the abuse and gaslighting from her relationship with Adam being kind of the biggest thing here, since the Stranger and Spiral deal with that a lot. She literally creates false copies of herself, shadow clones which she uses to feint, distract and evade. As well as statues/mannequins when dust is involved, which the Stranger is known for manifesting. Her fighting style centres around misdirection, stealth and fooling people’s senses. She also used to be part of the White Fang, known within Sienna and Adam’s faction to wear the masks of monsters, appearing anonymous. And she literally disguises her identity as a Faunus in order to escape the White Fang and enroll at Beacon. Blake at first was hesitant to trust and rely on the others in the earlier volumes, to let her guard down, and when she finally did, the worst happened and her fears were proven right. In s2 Jonathan becomes more paranoid due to being marked and in close daily proximity to the Stranger (as Not-Sasha), much like how Blake in v2 becomes far more paranoid and less trusting of her team. She also does seek knowledge or answers even at the cost of her wellbeing, which is an Eye thing, but Blake’s desire for knowledge and answers isn’t really consistent or important enough with her character and motives beyond vol2 for me personally to consider her an Avatar of it, but I do think she is Eye aligned. 

Yang Xiao Long- The Eye. The Ceaseless Watcher, It Knows You, as well as The Hunt. For the Eye, the first time we see Yang is her trying to find information on her mother, and we see Raven in bird form at the beginning too, as she has followed Yang her whole life, never actually interacting or doing anything for her, just… watching her. We learn in vol2 that her search for answers surrounding her mother has been a part of her entire life, almost overwhelmingly so to the point where in her childhood she and Ruby nearly lost their lives to the Grimm when she decided to journey to a shack in the woods she thought would lead to clues in finding her mother. She is adamant because of that experience to never let her need for the truth and answers control her, but it is a need that is always there. When she finally meets Raven, she’s encouraged to “start questioning everything she knows” which, she does. Questioning and knowledge is a big part of Yang’s character, even now. She’s the one who questions Ozpin the most, as well as Raven herself, and in the recent volumes is the one who challenges and questions Ruby’s leadership the most. There’s also a moment in vol7 of her drawing parallels between herself and Robyn and relating to her when she says “I won’t stop until I find out the truth” Her being the one to take the relic of knowledge is hugely significant in this too, especially given the context that she acquires it right after confronting her mother, getting the answers she’s searched for her whole life, holding an artefact possessing infinite knowledge, and she sinks to her knees and cries because there is no sense of closure, that anything is better because of her knowing who and what her mother is, and that her choosing this path might have cost her ever having a relationship with Raven (which is more Raven’s fault of course, and Yang knows that, but that’s not how she’s feeling at that exact moment). 

For the Hunt, this one’s a bit simpler. The thrill seeker aspect to Yang’s character and motives in becoming a huntress and enjoying the chase and fighting in of itself. There’s another element in that as most Avatars of the Hunt start out as monster hunters who then develop the need to hunt and kill monsters, and gradually what qualifies as “monster” starts to blur more and more as they become consumed by the need and thrill of the chase and hunt itself. I bring this up because in vol3 Blake draws parallels between Yang and Adam after she is disqualified for attacking and injuring Mercury, worries with how familiar this all feels and that Yang might turn out the same as him (and just for the record Adam is a full blown Avatar of the Hunt, and the Slaughter too most like) 

 “I had someone very dear to me change. It wasn’t in an instant, it was gradual. Little choices that began to pile up. He told me not to worry. At first they were accidents, then it was self-defence. Before long, even I began to think he was right. This is all just… very familiar.” What Blake describes is… kind of similar to Basira’s relationship with Daisy with how Daisy, an Avatar of the Hunt, would justify to Basira and explain away how the violence and murders she committed as being for the greater good. 

Also just one more, because I have to

 Pyrrha Nikos: WebwebWEBWEB. Hoo boi Pyrrha is the Webbiest of Web Avatars as they come. Her whole character’s themes surrounding destiny, control and agency, feeling like her whole life had been decided for her, the fact she’d been blessed with incredible talents and opportunities meant she was supposed to be a huntress, the fact her talent as a world champion meant she was placed on a pedestal without her realising, becoming separate from the people who placed her there in the first place, that Ozpin and his inner circle tell her she has been chosen as the next Fall Maiden, but the method in which she must become so might result in the loss of her identity, that though they ultimately leave the choice to her do pressure and manipulate her into it. The idea of destiny being a predetermined fate you can’t escape is Pyrrha’s greatest fear, and rejects that idea in that she will not let her life be manipulated but will be the one to take control it instead, which is manifested in her having a semblance that she uses to subtly control and manipulate her surroundings. As Cinder puts it, “People assume she’s fated for victory when really she’s really taken fate into her own hands”.  

Lost

roughly based on MAG 186 “Quiet”

.

A couple minutes of standing alone in the gray drizzle and Martin realizes something might be off.  His stomach squirms at the thought.  Through every domain they’ve passed through, Jon has remained relatively unaffected.  He’s been caught up in statements, lost in the words that have pushed their way out of him, sure, but this feels different.

Why hasn’t Jon found him yet?

Martin tells himself it, whatever it is, doesn’t bother him.  It probably has nothing to do with the fact he didn’t want to be with Jon in his domain, and he can probably exert some sort of control here, however small, to make that true.  Except, the fact is, it’s no longer true to what he wants, and his alone state hasn’t altered.

“Jon?”  Martin calls out and receives no reply.  He frowns, starts walking.  Standing around won’t do any good.  It would be best if he made his way to the end of his domain.  Jon is probably already there waiting for him, with some comment about how Martin needed to go through this particular place on his own or something.

Martin could imagine that, imagine Jon, and how they’d joke about it.  Briefly, he lets his thoughts disappear into fantasy, of playful bantering like they aren’t in the middle of the apocalypse, like they’re any other newly minted couple still trying to get their footing.  Martin knows it’s not real.  He’s more than aware that, however this journey ends, the odds are against it being a ‘happily ever after’ type deal.  He’s come to accept that.

At the same time, the universe, he reasons, owes him this much.  It’s not fair that he finally, finally gets the opportunity to be with Jon and this is the circumstance their relationship blossomed under.  Martin deserves to have his fantasies, however unrealistic they’ll truly end up being, he thinks.

He sighs, sticks his hands in his pockets, and walks through the wet, dreary weather that’s honestly probably not actually real weather.

He comes to the border of his domain, and he doesn’t find Jon.

He stands there, alone, wondering why.

He waits.

Then, Martin begins to search, which is difficult.  He’s not meant to find anyone here.  No one is.  That’s the point.  To suffer in silence.  For your pain to go unnoticed.  You’re invisible, but keenly aware that someone, in all likeliness, can see you, but just doesn’t care enough about you to help.

It makes sense, in a way, that its Avatar should be wandering around quietly trying to see whoever’s there.

Maybe it’s because Jon isn’t supposed to be there that Martin eventually finds him.  The claim the Eye has on Jon distinguishes him from the domain’s prisoners, makes him findable.  Maybe it’s because Martin can know about the people in his domain, but he didn’t want to push the boundary of knowing too much until he made finding Jon his goal.

Regardless, Martin finds Jon.  He’s mutters to himself, his words nearing incomprehensible.  At first, Martin thinks Jon is intoning a statement.  This being Martin’s domain wouldn’t change the fact that Jon needs to do a recording.

This one, Martin realizes as he listens, isn’t quite like Jon’s other statements.  Not exactly.  Perhaps it’s because of their location, but he understands more about it.  About the lonely boy who always felt distant from everyone else, who told himself he didn’t need the connections of friendship others had and longed for them at the same time, who never was left wanting for companionship but could never quite bridge the large chasm between himself and everyone else either.

When Jon had gone to fulfill his duty to witness for the Eye, this particular domain’s Avatar hadn’t wanted him to See it out of his own shame.  And Jon had promised he wouldn’t Look without permission, so he’d refused to.

The only way to alleviate the pressure of the opposing forces had been to allow them access inward, to that tiny kernel of loneliness that may have led Jon to being a prisoner in such a place as this, if he hadn’t been chosen and claimed by a different Entity first.  To allow them to feast on it.  To ensnare him, unwittingly, in his own torment.

The Eye is patient.  It knows its Archivist cannot be separate from it for long.  It will allow him to fall in this trap, feed hungrily on the meal he provides, and then wait for him to return to his path.  It knows he will.  Eventually.  Because, after all, he is never truly alone.  It won’t let him be.

Martin refuses to let himself feel the familiar comfortableness of guilt.  Instead, he takes Jon’s hand in his own, squeezes it, and then leads him away.  Jon follows numbly.  Martin knows he won’t be fully cognizant until they’re out of there.

It’s a weird feeling that sits in Martin’s chest.  He hates that the pain of the one he loves feeds him.  More than anything.  Yet, at the same time, there is an odd comfort in it.  A feeling of rightness he supposes is close to what Jon must feel like with the knowledge of everything in the world rushing into his head in unstoppable waves.  Martin may not like it, but it’s part of what he’s been twisted into.

Perhaps he can help Jon better cope with his struggles now that he understands them more.

There’s another thing, too.  A feeling Martin isn’t quite sure he can describe.  An odd relief.  Jon has been just as lonely as he has.  He understands that loneliness.  They share it.  Except, by being together, they also vanquish it, because neither of them is truly alone (or lonely) anymore.

There is so much that could consume them, but none of it will, because they have each other and they can alleviate their pain together.

Though, of course, that relies on the notion that they’ll always be able to be there for each other and, as the dark tower on the horizon grows ever bigger, their ability to be certain of that incrementally diminishes.

fuck this is long...tldr i’ve been lame but getting better

the last post is brought to you by me getting into the magnus archives for some positive ace rep

then having the absolute and overwhelming focus of the fandom be focused on that character’s romantic relationship

then the people who ignore or gloss over the fact that jon is ace or make him have sex anyway to make martin happy????  which just like fucks me up a bit

(esp bc exact quote, “jon...doesn’t” really disputes the idea that he would have sex with martin)

(also much more minor but it bugs me to see people in the fandom refer to jon and martin together as gay.  jon is biro ace, i think gay is not particularly accurate.  and gayness is excellent!  don’t get me wrong.  but that’s just not accurate to what jon is.  and it would not at all bother me if there were equal amounts of “aww look at them they’re so asexual together!”  and that description probably feels weird and wrong.  but it’s just as correct as saying “they’re so gay and cute!” or whatever i keep seeing people say about it!  it is just as accurate to call their relationship ace as it is to call it gay!  and not wanting to acknowledge or even consider that is really telling in what it reveals about how non-aces feel about asexuality.  it just builds to a picture of ‘we want our own representation and we will discard or ignore the ‘uglier’ bits of one of the ship character’s identity because asexuality is foreign to me/irrelevant/unnatural/weird/something i don’t fully understand and am afraid to/uninteresting.’  and i very much want to sympathize with the former (again, the whole reason i got into the magnus archives) and very much want to kill the latter with fire. this is also relevant to me in that about a year ago, i started thinking a lot about how as an aro ace, being told i had straight passing privilege, and the fact that i am not out (but would not lie and call myself straight) and just generally allow people to assume whatever they want about me when it comes to my orientation, whether that’s gay, straight, bi, ace, whatever, (and also having had mostly straight friends for the couple of years before that when it had very much been the opposite prior to that (and that does make a difference, to me at least),)  had resulted in me very much creating this narrative of being ‘effectively straight.’  not at all in the sense that ‘yes i’m basically straight and i feel mostly straight’ but in that i felt like ace-ness and aro-ness, if i wasn’t going to be out about it (which i’m not but which i may end up changing down the line), was not something i was allowed to consider as separate and distinct and special and important about myself?  because society would not like to think about aros/aces.  what society wants is to send the message that “not having sex is not important.  not having sex is not normal and makes you a loser.  not feeling romantic attraction is shameful and unnatural.  not feeling romantic attraction is something that makes you a monster.  do not talk about your disinterest in these things, it is at once completely unimportant/irrelevant and for our comfort and to allow you to conform socially you should not talk about it AND it is disgusting and freakish and makes you broken.”  so.  it is somehow unimportant AND deeply disturbing at the same time.  anyway, for me this resulted in feeling that my aro ace-ness was unremarkable and i should not consider it something exceptional about me, and i should just settle into viewing myself as close to the default.  and maybe you would think i am part of the default, as a first impression, and that’s fine.  but i realized i didn’t want to think of myself that way.  even if people will insist it is this way, asexual =/= straight.  i get to, and i want to, think of asexuality as its own distinct thing, and it does not have to fit into the paradigm of gay vs straight because it cannot fit into that paradigm.  i had refused to give myself the space to think of it as special because no one was telling me it was special.  and not being out definitely had a huge effect on this.  but it is just factually untrue to view myself as unremarkable for being asexual and as ‘effectively straight’ because it’s wrong!  it’s just wrong!  and if i am firmly of the belief that i am not straight, i must be equally firmly of the belief that i am not gay.  there is no judgment involved in either of those statements, but i must respect myself and my identity enough to firmly believe it is its own identity, and worthy of being considered that way, and not merely framed in which ways it relates the false dichotomy of gay and straight.  meaning, i cannot frame my asexuality as “not quite gay but not quite straight” but as its own entity: i have my own distinct orientation and it is aromantic asexual and i do not experience attraction.  full-stop.”  which may seem basic (and may seem like a very minute difference) but it was an important step for me in my identity.  i don’t think i’m quite explaining it right.  i will say: whether they realize it consciously or not, i think a lot of people think of sexuality by how much you deviate from the norm.  the norm is straight.  the most extreme not-norm (by, again, the false dichotomy that has been set up) is gay.  how different you are from the norm will probably determine how important your sexuality is to you because non-normative sexualities are oppressed and the fight to be allowed to feel you are worthy of respect means your sexuality feels and is highly personal.  and, this would be a measure of how gay you are.  before my perspective shift, i felt very little about my sexuality (other than mostly dread at dying alone.  which i still feel!).  therefore, i was not very different from the norm, and my sexuality was not worthy of consideration.  it was not allowed to be very important to me, especially if i was not going to be very out.  BUT!  this is not a good perspective!  again, false! dichotomy!  there is no reason to view yourself on a sliding scale of gay and straight!  i am Neither!  and it is for this reason that i feel very strongly that gay is not the right way to describe jon!  it can be, and if it feels right to him then that is a fine and excellent way to identify!  but his identity is asexual and, by necessity, he is not gay.  just as he is not straight.  which is okay and allowed.  and by many people choosing exclusively to refer to jon and martin as gay, while extremely understandable, feels like a failure to understand the above.  allo identities do not hold precedence over aspec identities because aspec identities are worthy of their own consideration, not just as something “missing” and inherently lower priority to allo identities.  and calling the relationship gay exclusively, feels like they kind of believe that.  and any reluctance to call their relationship ace (which i think MOST people would find very strange and weird and uncomfortable) is a lack of education and understanding on what asexuality looks like, the kinds of relationships asexuals have.  asexuals are not some remote, gross thing that cannot be understood and must be ignored, we are people and we are here.  if you haven’t noticed, our entire online presence is BUILT around education and visibility.  these are things you can find out and understand very quickly.  and hopefully people will not view asexuality as something weird and shameful and something that should just be ignored. holy shit that was a long aside.)

and the post was precipitated by seeing fanart of a very romantically intimate moment and not being at all interested in that for myself.  i really want to be close to someone (/some people which is too much to hope for) but just so emphatically not in that way.  just...a lot of clarity in what i want?  because i am sometimes so miserable for being aro specifically that i wonder if my identifying this way is wrong and unhealthy, whether it’s worse to consider myself aro and causing more problems than it’s solving.  sometimes i wonder if i was too quick to dismiss romance and all my self-discovery and self-reliance has been for nothing?  maybe being miserable about amatonormativity has just been because i’m alloro but just miserable and self-hating and trying to ruin the fun for everyone and the problem is not that romance has been artificially elevated but just that i have deep-seated issues with romance?

anyway it was more of a relief than anything to have my aro-ness confirmed by my gut reaction.  um, i still think i need to let go of some of my bitterness about amatonormativity, only because it’s not serving me to be my happiest self (not because it’s not bullshit), but it’s not because i’m unconsciously not aro. 

here’s what i think i want for myself:

like i said above, letting go of some of my anger at romance and at amatonormativity in general.  there’s definitely a place for that in me, but people talking about romance should not make me miserable like it’s starting to do.  in a lot of ways this comes from me being jealous and bitter about not having this supposedly wonderful, normal, natural experience, and not being confident in it being okay- great, even!- to be aro and not experience that.  i want to become more neutral about romance, since it is equally okay to not experience that.  my existence and validity is not threatened by other people having romantic relationships.  it’s okay for that to be an important thing for them, and (/because) it’s equally okay for it NOT to be important to me.

sorta referenced in my point above, but i want to rely less on other people to make me valid.  it doesn’t matter how anyone else feels, i am the way i am.  i want to be much more confident in that for myself.  i can’t progress and build a better relationship with myself if i don’t trust my own experience and emotions over what other people would tell me is true about myself (or how the rest of the world works). 

i know this is kinda what got me feeling not great in the first place, but i want to find more ace/aro rep for myself.  potentially this could make things worse (in the way i mentioned above; relying on that representation to really speak to my experience and finding that it does not, and that fandom in particular is very caught up the romance- and just generally allo- side of things).  but i am hoping/relying on the possibility that increasing ace/aro rep will give me way more options and a higher chance that i will have my own experience reflected.  i want to start listening to the penumbra podcast, since i’ve heard there are at least two aspec characters, one of whom is even aro ace! side note, thinking about it a bit: the first ace rep i had was a few months ago, when i watched bojack horseman and saw todd’s story.  i think i was a bit spoiled in that rep.  todd’s story was really focused on his own self-discovery.  he was alloro and wanted a relationship, but in my mind he didn’t care so much about getting that.  even when he was in a relationship, he still got to be cool and have his own adventures.  having a romantic relationship was secondary to his story and, you got the sense, secondary to him as a person.  and, his asexuality was very important to him once he realized he was ace.  he was very open about it to people, not ashamed, and he did have a journey with his sexuality that the audience was brought along.  that is everything i want in an ace character!!!  then i got into the magnus archives, expecting to have a similar experience.  instead, we find out jon is ace because we as the audience hear him being outed without his knowledge between his friends, based on information from his ex (again, presumably without his knowledge).  and word of god says "although whether that’s how the archivist himself would actively identify, who knows?”  also a very different take on ace rep than bojack horseman.  and i love jon and martin as a couple, but i have just been really overwhelmed with how much of that is the focus of the fandom (plus my normal/main fandom is hockey and that can be VERY platonic.  i can make it as platonic as it gets).  those are two different ways of being asexual, and they are both valid!  they probably each ring true for many.  from my perspective i prefer the bojack approach because i feel more affirmed by todd’s rep than by jon’s, but that doesn’t make todd more accurate representation.  i guess the moral of the story is, not all ace rep is the same, and don’t get invested in seeing yourself (or the kind of rep you want) in every ace story.  and my solution is to broaden my ace rep rather than only have a few and ultimately not be happy with it.  (also i want to be very clear that the importance of ace rep is something that is built up entirely in my mind.  jonny said they always considered jon to be asexual from s1, way before he was revealed to be in the show.  they were not going for ace rep, they just felt asexuality fit his character best.  it is me (and others like me probably) who came to this story knowing this and placing expectations and stakes onto this character as The One Who Represents Us.  i relate waaaay more to martin (as we all do i’m sure) but because my other options are so! very! limited! when it comes to asexuality i put all my emotions and expectations and self-worth on how this one character could represent my entire experience.  which has nothing to do with the creators of the show, who are just telling the story they want to tell.  so they can’t give “bad ace rep” because there are so many ace stories to tell and it’s not their fault or their problem that options are so limited that we end up building up any character that is ace into the one who represents all ace experiences.  my fault, not theirs, is what i’m saying.)

probably obvious after my word-vomit but cut back on actively seeking out magnus archives fandom/content!!!!  it does not make me feel better about myself.  romantic relationships do NOT make you more worthy.

just generally being more positive and affirming about being aro ace (and being aro in particular!)  it is excellent and there are so many good things about being this way!  i would like to focus on those more for myself :)

holy shit i wrote a lot.  i had a lot of feelings that i wanted to get out.