Ah Ha Ha No Girl Don't Use Vampirism, Religion, And/or Cannibalism As A Metaphor For All Consuming Love

the problem with the addiction metaphor for avatars in the magnus archives isn't actually with the metaphor itself, it's that it's treated as the Only way to understand monsterhood.

"jon made the choice to go after live statements because they felt good" is true

"jon felt good when he took live statements as a metaphor for addiction" is true

"jon felt good when he took live statements because victimizing people feels empowering" is true

"jon felt good when he took live statements Because Eating Feels Good" Is Also True

it's easy to say that jon made The Choice to continue being a monster, there's plenty of characters in the show who've said as much.

but the choice to continue being a monster is Equally the choice to Survive, to continue living. and trying to have a conversation about the Morality of jon's choice, as if it is Only about how good it feels to be monstrous, as if the addiction to living can be separated from the reality of dying. is a bit ridiculous !

the whole point of jon's situation, of Being an avatar, is that it's not Fair. jon was turned into a monster without his knowledge or consent, and then was told that there was no way out of it but to die.

it's not Fair to blame someone for wanting to live, it's not Fair to hurt someone to continue living. both are true, and that's Exactly what makes it interesting ! Why avatars can be both victims and victimizers in turn.

what makes someone like jon different from someone like jared hopsworth isn't their capacity for violence or to cause pain, it's the Choice To Continue Feeling Compassion For Other People. to make the active Choice to see other human beings As People and care about the harm you cause them.

so much of the narrative of tma is about characters who are stripped of agency, who still make Meaningful Choices Anyways. by Choosing to care, even as that choice hurts you. to continue to care even though it would feel Good not to.

this isn't Separate from the metaphor about addiction, it's in Conversation with it.

gf fandom in 2016: if you so much as hint - even jokingly! - about the nature of ford and bill’s relationship being anything other than platonic (and even then you NEED to give a disclaimer that bill is manipulating him!) then you support abusive relationships

gf fandom in 2024:

scars in fiction: I got this trying to save my lover from an assassin- but tragically, I was too late. now I carry the mark of my failure with me always, and I can never forget~

scars in real life: so I was trying to open macaroni sauce with a paring knife

Alright, I know it’s out there and I need it.

Who has the Great Gatsby Slime Tutorial. Cough it up please and thank you.

(Genuinely I, like a lot of people, Really want to see it, and if I see one more clip of it on my TikTok and can’t watch the full thing I’m going to scream)

“The third text-to-speech is Elias!” “The third text-to-speech is Annabelle!” All good theories, I love it, and the voices have massive eye and/or web vibes (leaving out that the distribution of entities might be entirely different in the tmagp ‘verse) — but in the og casting announcement, Tim Fearon is listed as voicing the third glitched out character alongside Alex and Jonny, who we’ve never heard in Magnus before.

So if we assume that he is voicing Augustus, that means it’s a new voice.

Of course, there’s the option that it’s one of the new Big Bads for the series, and if so, I’m excited for when we get to meet them because evil text-to-speech program? Hell yes.

But but but!! Consider, please:

We never got to hear Jonah’s actual voice. We only ever hear Elias’s voice being used by Jonah.

So if Chester and Norris have jmart’s disembodied voices, Augustus could have Jonah’s, and it would be a voice we’ve never heard before

Everytime I struggle to find the effort to keep learning irish a little demon in the back of my head goes "DO IT OR YOU LOVE COLONIALISM"

It is surprisingly helpful

I speak the truth.

Jonah Magnus being irish whil me hating the irish is honestly great cus I can imagine him trying to hide it while everyone is completely underwhelmed by his secret

My friend's headcanon of Jonah Magnus (and by extension, Elias) hating Irish people is so ingrained into my mind that I actually thought it was real and spent ages thralling through the wiki to fact check it

Daisy Buchanan was as guilty of romanticizing the past and idealizing a mirage of a person as Gatsby was. If she was his American dream, he was her road not taken. And people jump all over her. She did not intend to kill myrtle. If anything, myrtle was tom's casualty as much as the rest of this was. I see people call Daisy a slut for cheating on her husband when like. He'd been cheating on her in multiple cities and was a horrid racist. His affair with myrtle caused her husband to beat her so violently that she ran into the street seeking help and yes we can judge Daisy for driving drunk but if you look at her within the narrative she's never in control, never given much agency, she's always at the whims of a man. And this makes her deeply unhappy. Gatsby had been poking the bear, so to speak, since the moment he revealed that he knew Tom's wife. Then he continued to antagonize him and push Daisy to break it off and proclaim that she never loved tom. This forces Daisy into the very awkward meal where Gatsby continues to push this issue though she is obviously incredibly uncomfortable, and both men continue to force her into the middle of this conflict when she makes it clear that she doesn't like this. She leaves in a state of distress. You can read her choice to drive in this state as her finally putting herself in the driver's seat of her own life, as finally trying to take control even if this is misguided. The alcohol here can harken back to earlier themes of opulence and extravagance coming back to haunt the characters as it all comes crashing down, out of control and destabilizing.

Daisy drove drunk. Daisy killed myrtle. But myrtle wouldn't have been in the street if Tom hadn't had an affair with her, Daisy wouldn't have been driven to an affair with a romantic idealized symbol of her past if Tom hadn't been so horrid, and Daisy would not have driven drunk if the fight with Tom and Gatsby hadn't occurred.

Daisy put herself in the driver's seat of her own life and killed myrtle. Her one time of exercising some control, and she accepts terrible consequences likely without ever knowing the truth of things. It's no wonder she made the passive choice to stay with her husband after that. Anyone in her position might feel that was a punishment for seeking what she wanted and at the very least she may have had her illusions about Gatsby shattered