#BC BOTH OF THEM HAD THE BONETURNERS TALE | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bananonbinary · 3 years

Text

Time for a Salty Meta Post about Martin!

people who’ve followed this blog for a bit know that spending six hours combing through text for some goddamn sources is my specialty, so i compiled every time jon ever talked about martin’s work in season 1. which for the record, he stopped complaining about all the way back in episode 26, where he was angry that martin of all people got hurt.

things jon gets mad at martin for:

not being able to find records that don’t exist

not being able to find someone based only on a first name

the Dog

not wearing trousers in his off-hours

being the one that got caught up in the jane prentiss thing

mag 004 and mag 012 both have jon taking potshots at martin over research that was proven accurate by outside sources

things jon has never once complained about:

martin not understanding the filing system and just putting stuff away at random

martin being clumsy, constantly ruining things, spilling tea everywhere everyday, etc

martin turning in incompetent, poorly-edited, or badly formatted reports

martin not understanding the terminology used, skills expected, etc., and generally being extremely new to the field

please for the love of god stop making martin the silly bumbling idiot who can’t do anything right just because he doesn’t have a formal education. there’s zero evidence for it in the text, and it’s really weird to act like a 4 year degree would outweigh the *10 years* of job experience he has, not just in academia, but in the institute itself by season one. my boy has worked there longer than ANY of the rest of the main cast. screw you guys.

tl;dr: martin is never once shown to be bad at his job, jon pretty much only ever gets mad at him for the really stupid first impression and also not finding stuff that no one else was able to find either. after martin got hurt, jon talks about his research basically the same way he talks about tim’s or sasha’s work.

fucking proof under the cut:

(i didnt include the s1 finale or martin’s statement bc that’s just...two entire episodes of them talking to each other, but there isn’t really any notable Martin Complaints in either of them imo)

I swear, if he’s brought another dog in here, I’m going to peel him.

[pre-launch trailer]

Well, technically three, but I don’t count Martin as he’s unlikely to contribute anything but delays.

[...] Alongside this Tim, Sasha and, yes, I suppose, Martin will be doing some supplementary investigation to see what details may be missing from what we have.

[MAG001 Anglerfish]

Martin couldn’t find any records of Ex Altiora as a title in existent catalogues of esoteric or similar literature, so I assigned Sasha to double-check. Still nothing.

[MAG004 Pageturner]

I had Martin conduct a follow-up interview with Mr. Woodward last week, but it was unenlightening. Apparently there have been no further bags at number 93 and in the intervening years he has largely discounted many of the stranger aspects of his experience. I wasn’t expecting much, as time generally makes people inclined to forget what they would rather not believe, but at least it got Martin out of the Institute for an afternoon, which is always a welcome relief.

[MAG005 Thrown Away]

Martin was unable to find the exact date the original house was built but the earliest records he could find list it as being bought by Walter Fielding in 1891.

[...]

We cannot prove any connection, but Martin unearthed a report on an Agnes Montague, who was found dead in her Sheffield flat on the evening of November 23rd 2006, the same day Mr. Lensik claims to have uprooted the tree.

[MAG008 Burned Out]

According to Martin, who was here when they took this statement, it was at this point in writing that Mr. Herbert announced he needed some sleep before continuing. He was shown to the break room where he went to sleep on the couch. He did not awaken; unfortunately succumbing to the lung cancer right there. Martin says the staff had been aware of how serious Mr. Herbert’s condition was, and had advised him to seek medical aid prior to giving his statement, but were told rather bluntly by the old man that he would not wait another second to state his case. I can’t decide whether this lends more or less credibility to his tale.

[MAG010 Vampire Killer]

“Veepalach” might also be a mishearing of the Polish word “wypalać”, according to Martin, which means to cauterize or brand. Admittedly, if Martin speaks Polish in the same way he “speaks Latin,” then he might be talking nonsense again, but I’ve looked it up and it appears to check out.

[MAG012 First Aid]

I sent Martin to look into this ‘Angela’ character - not that I want him to get chopped up, of course, but someone had to. Apparently, he spent three days looking into every woman named Angela in Bexley over the age of 50. He could not find anyone that matches the admittedly vague description given here, though he informs me that he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaws. Useless ass.

[MAG014 Piecemeal]

Martin declined to help with this investigation as he’s “a bit claustrophobic”

[MAG015 Lost John’s Cave]

There simply aren’t enough details given in this statement to actually investigate, short of Martin confirming that Mr. Vittery did indeed live at the addresses he provided.

[MAG016 Arachnophobia]

Oh, he’s off sick this week. Stomach problems, I think.

Blessed relief if you ask me.

[...]

I asked Martin to try and hunt down Mr. Adekoya himself for a follow-up, but have been informed that he passed away in 2006.

[MAG017 The Boneturner’s Tale]

MARTIN

Well, I need to tell someone what happened, and you can vouch for the soundness of my mind, can’t you?

ARCHIVIST

…

That is beside the point.

[MAG022 Colony]

Martin! Good lord man, if you’re going to be staying in the Archives, at least have the decency to put some trousers on!

[MAG023 Schwartzwald]

Martin found one other thing while combing through police reports for the Hither Green area. About a month after this statement was given, on May 15th, 2015, police were called out to once again investigate the chapel.

[MAG025 Growing Dark]

I know, but it would have to have been Martin, wouldn’t it? I mean, anything goes wrong around here, it always seems to happen to him. Anyway, we’re getting off topic. Why didn’t you report this?

[MAG026 A Distortion]

Martin made contact with the son, Marcus McKenzie, but he declined to talk to us, saying that he’d “already made his statement.”

[MAG027 A Sturdy Lock]

Tim and Martin had a bit more luck investigating Tom Haan, though only really enough to confirm that he seems to have completely vanished following his departure from Aver Meats on the 12th of July.

[MAG030 Killing Floor]

Martin’s research would seem to indicate the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books

[...]

TIM

Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it?

ARCHIVIST

No, he… Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk drawer, hold on.

[MAG036 Taken Ill]

#the magnus archives #LISTEN #i am once again asking people to remember that martin has MORE job experience at the institute than literally any other character #(except elias or i guess maybe rosie)#he's the goddamn veteran not the newbie #fan wank /

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skelelephant · 3 years

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You should talk about jared hopworth more 👀👀👀 we would like to hear your thoughts about him

Hey anon, I saw your ask when you sent it four days ago and was immediately paralyzed by the enormity of my feelings for this meat man but now I am HERE I am READY I have an entire fucking essay

*slams a whole stack of notes onto the table*

Alright folks it’s infodumping time (speaking of which thank u so much for this opportunity I am eternally in your debt)

I’m putting the bulk of this under the cut bc it ended up being long and I don’t want to clog people’s dashes with my Boneturner analysis hehehfhfhs

So I’ve spent a LOT of time thinking about Jared’s story bc I connected with his character in a way that I was,,, wholly unprepared for, but here we are.

I think what I love most about his whole arc is that the transformation from “regular guy” into “horrible, Bad To Look At meat monstrosity” happens at the exact same time as his transformation from “high school bully who never grew up” to “chill gardener who just wants to tend to his plants.”

Jared’s story begins as a story about having a lot of expectations put on you because of the way you are and sort of growing into those expectations because that’s all you ever hear.

I think what rlly endeared me to him was when he commented to Jon how his dad loved how he towered over people, even when he was really young. As someone who’s also been considerably taller than most of her peers and even a good number of the adults in her life since she was young, I could empathize with the experience of being touted around and shown off bc you’re more than what you should be at that age. It leaves awkwardly large shoes to fill from a person that doesn’t exist outside of people’s perception of you, but you still find yourself struggling to fill them all the same. (Maybe that’s me projecting a little but I think it makes sense with Jared given how we know he ends up.)

And so with Jared, I think the positive emphasis on his physical appearance contrasted with intellectual and emotional pursuits being negative, (Sebastian did say he’d always been “thick as mud”,) I think the fact that he put the most stock in his physical abilities and based his self-worth around being bigger and stronger than everyone around him was really a self-fulfilling prophecy in terms of how he turned out.

Which brings us to his supernatural elements. Jared basing his entire self-worth around his physical strength and the power he could lord over others made him an ideal candidate for the Flesh. He gained a power that allowed him to take from others and make himself stronger for it, basically amplifying his already aggressive and destructive tendencies.

But underneath the obvious benefits, the Boneturner’s Tale gave Jared a way forward.

When Jon takes Jared’s statement in the Spiral’s corridors, Jared talks about trying to look ahead and see some sort of future for himself, but everything that had sustained him up until that point had stopped, and he was faced with the unpleasant reality that he had nowhere to go. His one actual friend had gone off to university without him and had moved on with his life, but Jared was still stuck.

The Boneturner’s Tale solved that problem for him and gave him a purpose, (thought he ended up being mostly self-serving.) Jared himself even admits that he doesn’t know what would’ve happened to him if he hadn’t gotten the book from Sebastian.

And then, after a life of meat crimes and bone stealing, we find Jared Hopworth in a garden.

And I cannot fucking TELL YOU how much I’ve thought about the significance of Jared’s domain being a garden.

Throughout his life, both pre and post-Flesh avatar, Jared’s used destruction and intimidation to preserve his self worth. He “wrecked” his high school, he only had one friendship ever that wasn’t built entirely off of fear (and he killed Seb himself,) and he only ever used his Boneturning abilities to hurt and kill those around him. (Even the people in the gym ended up being intimidated by Jared, so you can’t really count them as friends.)

But his domain isn’t the meat processing plant we see later on, or the endless butcher shop, or even a bigger version of the gym— it’s the Mortal Garden.

A place where Jared is actively nurturing the plants under his care. (I use those words loosely, of course, we all know what it was.) That in itself demonstrates how Jared’s intentions have shifted.

And the characterization in his interaction with Jon and Martin also goes to show just how much Jared’s changed over the course of his time as the Boneturner. Jared knows Jon’s going to kill him, and at first it seems as though he’s going to resort back to his old ways and fight Jon using brute force.

But then Martin asks him to stop.

Martin, who by all accounts is exactly the kind of person who Jared would’ve looked down on before as someone weaker than himself.

Martin, who is entirely smaller than Jared’s monstrous body and just does not measure up in the skewed point of view that Jared used to look at the world from.

(For the record, I don’t think Martin’s weak. I think he’s a very kickass man and I love him sm. This is just me looking at him through Jared POV so it’s a little toxic oops—)

But the point of that scene is that Jared does stop. And while he probably holds no respect for Martin, he does listen to him in the end.

And I just keep thinking about how pre-Boneturner Jared wouldn’t have backed down from that fight. His pride and his self-worth being attached to being the biggest and the strongest wouldn’t have allowed him to accept that he was outmatched. If Jared truly kept the same mindset he had at the beginning of his story he would’ve died trying to kill Jon and Martin before Jon got him, and he would’ve lost.

But instead he asks to hear about his garden, and before he dies his last thoughts are of what will happen to it after he’s gone.

Hshdhfhdhsha so that’s it!! Cheers to you if you actually read this whole thing bc honestly there’s probably very few people who actually care enough about Jared Hopworth to read a whole character analysis about him. Honestly I’m just happy to have an excuse to talk about him bc I love this horrible meaty man so so much and if he’s only remembered by that one comment about Martin being Jon’s boyfriend I will perish

#THIS ENDED UP BEING SO LONG HHAHSHSH #headass lesbian talks about her weird comfort character for too long asmr #the self projection in this one is. entirely embarassing #anyway if youre out there and you also have thoughts and feelings about jared boneturner hopworth pls reach out #i am literally always down to talk about him #tma #the magnus archives #jared hopworth #my favourite chords

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