shy_magpie | TMA head canon: Web!Martin

Hi hope nobody minds but I have a head canon or at least a possible interpretation of The Magnus Archives, that I want to get down but don't want to share with people who will see it as a TMA post first & a post by me second. For starters I'm not up to date & posting in part to try to re engage with the series. TMA spoilers under the cut.

I want to talk about my Web!Martin head canon but everyone else seems to mean something very different from me when they talk about Web!Martin. I don't mean secretly evil Martin or Martin working with the Web for any reason. I mean I think a possible interpretation of Martin, which I find interesting enough to explore & shapes how I see him, is that the fear that both frightens & has a draw for him naturally is The Web.

I think a fair interpretation of TMA is that everyone has a fear that they have a natural alignment with. One that doesn't just scare them but that they feel drawn to or feel the need to act out. Tim for example, wasn't an avatar of Desolation but sure spent a lot of time thinking about both his losses & burning it all down. This doesn't make him a Bad Person, its just an aspect of his personality. In the same way, I think Martin is aligned with the Web.

The Fear you are aligned with isn't a value judgement. People aligned with The Hunt aren't better than people aligned with The Spiral. That's like saying someone is a better person for having a fear of falling over a fear of spiders.

Martin has a whole bunch of spider imagery around him, which I'm not going to bother getting into because its all been said before and frankly that usually leads to discussions of whether the author is trying to tell us Martin is webby rather than if its signs of Martin being a Web Avatar. Outside of very limited bounds I don't care what Jonny thinks is a good interpretation, he wrote the damn thing, he had his chance, now the author is dead.*

What I do find interesting is the theme of manipulation around Martin:
- People pleasing: most think of manipulation as only harming others for your own gain but people pleasing is a "nice way" of manipulating others mood & trying to endear yourself to others. It is also a manipulation usually born of fear that often harms the person doing it, as Alex put it "setting yourself on fire to keep others warm". People pleasers constant fear leading them to manipulate others must be a Web Buffet.
- Emotional Abuse: Martin's mother emotionally abused him, not arguing with anyone about this or going into proofs. That being said emotional abuse is not only manipulating the victim but often forces the victim to manipulate their abuser in self defense. Learning your abusers scripts and learning how to reframe things so they end up on the opposite side of a decision than they started without you ever openly opposing/debating them or admitting they changed their mind is 1)manipulative as fuck 2)a matter of self defense 3)leaves you with your fear of being manipulated by your abuser and your fear that doing this makes you just as bad as them. Once again a Web flavored fear buffet without Martin actually doing anything wrong.
- Various manipulations around his job separate from people pleasing: using his "boots on the ground" investigation to distract people from him not knowing actual archive research techniques; the gentle manipulations involved in those techniques like showing interest in old ladies' hobbies to get them talking; Him and Peter using each other for their own ends; etc etc

I find the idea that your natural fear alignment could be messed with, like how the Eye made its mark on all the Assistants even though they had draws towards other fears, interesting; especially since he's been doubly messed with by Elias and Peter.

So put that together you get most people have a natural fear alignment, Martin's is The Web but has been over written by being a target of both The Eye and The Lonely. Since it apparently needs to be spelled out: being aligned with the Web doesn't make him evil. We see this tendency in the spider imagery around him, his people pleasing, and various (not evil) manipulations through out the series. It probably stems from being emotionally abused since childhood, which is a form of manipulation that forces you to learn to manipulate your abuser in self defense.

*side note: this is why I don't get people who think there was hypocrisy in him saying that you could interpret Jon and Martin's relationship as just friends in the meta cast, then immediately doubled down on spelling out they are in a relationship. That is what death of the author means, you can interpret the canon as you please but the author gets to decide what the canon is, so if a lot of interpretations aren't what he was trying to write, its on him to be clearer about it.