#tangentially related but one of these days i'm gonna write the post abt basira | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theoestofocs · 1 year

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but the thing is, melanie hates jon because he is so very much like her.

they work in adjacent fields, they've got such similar temperaments - they both run straight for whatever supernatural horror they need to understand, they both suck at planning ahead (poisoned coffee, melanie?) and they both lash out as a primary defense mechanism - and jon wasn't qualified for his job, and martin's only "degree" was in paranormal psychology, so clearly the Institute was hiring from a broader pool than "qualified archivists." i can't imagine ghost studies are all that lucrative as a field. if melanie hadn't made it as a youtuber, what would she have done? we don't know a lot about her educational background but - she knows what it's like, to need to know. she walked into the Institute and got a job because Elias saw that he could use her.

If she'd had a legitimate encounter sooner, if she'd started her quest a few years early, if she'd come to the Institute to give her statement and stayed to use their library before Gertrude had died -

Or even if she just couldn't survive on a youtuber's salary, if she'd gone looking for job postings in relevant fields -

It could have been her. She looks at Jon, and she sees exactly who she could have been. It's only luck that it wasn't.

And that's the kicker, isn't it? It's luck, that she's in her shoes instead of Jon's.

And is she supposed to feel lucky? To feel thankful that she's had to suffer through attack after attack, Elias showing her how her father (her dad, who called her his little moth) died screaming, her body torn open by things that don't exist, her sense of self slipping as she ripped into flesh with no recognizable form, her trust violated as she woke up to two of the few remaining people who are supposed to be on her side cutting into her against her will - to feel lucky, because she had to gouge her eyes out just to have her body back in her control -

Is she supposed to be happy that she lived through all that? Is she supposed to be glad, just because she could have been Jon?

Nobody told Melanie she needed to feel sorry for Jon, or give him her sympathy, or any other kind of pity. She just wants to give it, because God, what he'd gone through -

(Thank God it wasn't her -)

- Fuck that, she isn't lucky.

She hates Jon, because she refuses to feel grateful for the horror show her life has been. (Because she's grateful, that it wasn't her; and she's furious, because - yes it was. she paid the price of the apocalypse in blood and scars and trauma, too. She wasn't Jon, and could have been - but fuck it, she was still Melanie. and the hell that she has lived through isn't nothing.)

It's just bad luck, that it was Jon of all people. It's just bad luck, that it was Melanie.

No one here is lucky.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma meta #melanie king #linden's originals #i just have a lot of Feelings ok #tangentially related but one of these days i'm gonna write the post abt basira #bc i love to joke abt jon relying on the local lesbians to make good decisions! it is very fun. but also #incredibly inaccurate. jon made bad decisions (mainly due to a dearth of information and a wealth of fear)#but he didn't make better decisions when he let the wlw take charge!#basira was the one who convinced(/coerced? definitely pressured but details beyond that are lacking) jon into performing surgery #on melanie's leg. left to his own devices idk what jon would have done but it sure as hell wouldn't have been #''roofie my coworker to perform nonconsensual surgery''#if only bc that is Not something that would occur to him. & idc man it's a messy situation all around #there was no good choice there (there never was) but that? that wasn't the right one. and i think that's the other piece at play here #melanie didn't forgive him for that. i sure wouldn't. and she gets it - she does: there were no good choices -#but how is she supposed to care about the suffering that guy of all people went through? when it feels like it invalidates her own?#how are you supposed to feel about your reflection in a face that stars in all your nightmare memories?#melanie hates jon because he never gave her a reason to like him; and because he violated her (no matter how necessary it was); and #because she could have been him. because it's luck that it wasn't.#except there is no good luck in this world. not in this apocalypse - the one that's been going on for much longer for her - for them -#than since that final ritual. she's been living an apocalypse since she saw that monster in a hospital. and that matters too.#not one of them has been free in a long time. maybe ever #melanie can't pity him because feeling ''pity'' requires a level of distance she doesn't have #pity means ''there but for the grace of God go -'' but what grace?#there but for the grace of god go i? is she meant to thank someone for giving her the lot she got in life?#how is she supposed to feel glad about that?#she cannot pity him. and she cannot commiserate; those bridges have long since been burned. all that's left to feel #is a guilty kind of hatred and resentment. because in another life she might've been him; in another life still they might have been twins #linden in the tags

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