did u fuys know i love these two

Y’know, I’ve been thinking about why Jon got the archivist position as opposed to Sasha. And I know that the common idea is more of less that Elias is a sexist bastard — which I don’t disagree with — but I think that it’s more complicated than that. I think, from his point of view Jon fit the bill better. Not because he’s more competent than Sasha, but because he’s not.

See, at the end of the day, I think that Elias was afraid of Sasha. He had just got done with dealing with Gertrude, and whatever else she might have been, Gertrude was not incompetent. And Sasha was aware enough to question why the archives were a mess; had worked in archive storage enough to know that these things were real. She would have found Elias out, and she would have tried to stop him — maybe she even would have succeeded. At the very least she could have put a loop in his plans.

And there is another asset Sasha had: her coworkers liked her. Tim was really close to her, Martin trusted her, and even Jon grudgingly likes her. She would have been incredibly difficult to isolate from the others.

Jon, on the other had, was less competent than Sasha, but he still had the burning curiosity that wouldn’t let him drop a mystery. (Let’s face it, Jon is like a dog with a bone when he’s faced with a mystery, even when the mystery bites him.) In addition to that, Jon has a nice safety blanket that is denial. A few statements might be true, most of them aren’t. And that keeps him from investgating the institute from the beginning. But he believes just enough to try and stay alive.

And Jon is isolated. He’s not really close to any of the assistants, and he’s off putting enough for them to avoid reaching out to him. Martin is the only one that might of tried, but he doesn’t have the confidence in s1, and Sasha and Tim are mad at Jon for getting a position that they rightly think should have belonged to Sasha.

So Jon gets the Archivist position — ironically because Sasha is the one better suited to it.

This is the most common fandom interpretation: that Sasha is superior to Jon, more qualified, and more connected, and that Jonah selected Jon instead of her because he was afraid of her and knew his plans wouldn’t work without her.  It’s what you’ll come across more in fanworks, so I don’t blame you for coming to those conclusions.

However, it is 100% contradicted by canon.

Jonah flat-out says the reason he chose Jon in TMA 160; we don’t even need to guess:

Jonah was looking for a trauma punch card, and Jon came pre-marked with the most difficult one to get.  It’s really just as simple as that.  Sasha didn’t have any marks that we’re aware of pre-season 1, though given that she had collected THREE before she died, it’s not a stretch to say she would have collected more just as fast as Jon did–or, given that she’s even more reckless than him (see: her running into the worms to tackle Tim in TMA 39), even faster.

But I also want to address this idea that Sasha was superior to Jon in every way, and the tragedy of the story would have been avoided if she had been chosen as the trauma punch card instead.  People take Gertrude’s attempt at predicting Sasha as who Jonah will choose next as some sort of “picking her successor” or endorsement.  She didn’t have any say!  She was expecting Jonah to kill her, and was trying to guess his next move for who he would pick next.  So instead of guessing who the trauma punch card would be, she guessed based off of who already had experience with knowing the fears were real: someone with experience in Artefact Storage.  Gertrude and Sasha barely met, so all the deep insight and mentor/protégé interpretations that are popular don’t really fall into this.  Gertrude was also barely aware of who Jon was.  

So, there really isn’t a “Why didn’t Jonah pick Sasha?” because Sasha wasn’t even on Jonah’s radar for consideration, and there isn’t a “why didn’t Gertrude guess Jon?” because Jon wasn’t even on Gertrude’s radar for predicting Jonah’s next move.  The whole Sasha vs. Jon thing is 100% fandom-made.

(It’s also 100% not due to sexism; that was supposed to be dramatic irony for our sakes, when we already knew Jonah’s reason since the end of season 4.  Tim was just being Overly Aggressive Ally, but more than a bit misguided, given that Sasha was almost as unqualified as Jon was–none of the assistants had degrees in Library Science, Sasha included.)

For your speculation on how close she was to everyone, I would disagree there as well.  In the Q&A’s, they talked about how all of the Archives employees are isolated and don’t have close connections with others–it’s one of Jonah’s prerequisites to transferring people there.  Dozens of Season 1 Archives Found Family Sleepover Parties has kind of replaced this in fandom memory, but we don’t have any evidence that Sasha would have been impossible to isolate:

She was friends with Tim, but I think even that gets exaggerated in fandom.  She loves to gather people’s secrets, but shares none of her own: for instance, Tim told her about Danny, but when Sasha started having encounters with Michael, she kept it all secret from Tim.  She said she didn’t want to tell Jon without more evidence, but what was keeping her from giving Tim a call before she ran off to meet a monster by herself in a graveyard?  I feel that if she were Archivist, this would have been even more intensified: she would care about him, sure, but that’s nothing new: Jon cared deeply about Sasha and was devastated by her death, but that didn’t prevent him from being isolated.  

And I don’t need to put too much here for why she’s just as bad as Jon, if not worse, for needing to solve mysteries and rush into danger for information.  Just listen to her statement.  Jon spent all of season 1 hiding from the truth, while Sasha met with a creature she knew wasn’t human multiple times, by herself, without telling any of the others, all out of curiosity.  Jon started invading people’s privacy in season 2 because he was being driven to paranoia by the presence of the Not!Them, but Sasha was already invading all her coworker’s privacy in season 1…just for fun.  She was VERY suited to the Beholding, arguably more than Jon was, and would have been very easy to manipulate throwing herself into mysteries to get more marks.  

Frankly, because she only appears in 5 episodes, fandom Sasha ends up being about 99% OC and a bit of a wish fulfillment character; most examples people give for why she’d be better at Jon at everything, find out all of Jonah’s secrets, avoid losing any assistants, and save the world is just….based off of headcanons, vs. the scraps of information we get from the actual episodes.

The reason why I dig so deeply into all of this and care so much about this interpretation is it changes the entire nature of the show if oversimplified.  If Sasha really is this ultra-superior being who would have fixed everything with her mere presence, the tragedy gets whittled down to a pretty uncomplicated “everything would have been fine if this Hypercompetent Woman was in place instead of this loser man.”  But that’s not the story being told.  The tragedy we have is that whoever was doomed with the Archivist position would have been lied to, manipulated, tormented, afraid, isolated, hurt and hurt and hurt again.  If Sasha had been chosen, she would have been the one suffering through all that instead of Jon, and that’s the narrow miss that we’re left to realize from Gertrude’s tape.

Top ten sentence enders:

next tumblr update they're removing the posts

I always get a lot of comments about the 2-key pony keyboard. I wanted to explain how I think they could work. I've been told there is an input device called orbiTouch which works on the same principle.

shoutout to people who lay in bed all day when they get home from work/school, people who can't go to loud or crowded places or concerts, people who change into pajamas because other clothes are uncomfortable, people who can't consistently participate in hobbies, people who have to turn down hanging out with friends, people who have lowered their standards to improve themselves, people who need affirmations, and people who struggle to stay healthy. you deserve so much love and I hope things get better.

I am delirious is 4am

I see a lot of comics talking about smut vs fluff reactions but I see no one talk about

Vs

IT HURTS ME

WHY IS THIS POST MAKING ROUNDS AGAIN

just saw someone post “it’s common knowledge ur not supposed to spam reblog from someone ur not mutuals with” …..?????????? am i confused??? IS that common knowledge???? i try not to spam if i can help it but i actually personally love seeing spam notifs lmao??? unless i dont know what spam reblog means

Reblog if you like it when people “spam reblog” from you or whenever that means at any time

found a jean bustier at the thrift store. the justier

I found my jean jacket jress so now the joutfit is complete

Of I'm not being sarcastic when I say that you are the most fashionable person on the planet

Yippee

Good news for you, this August 23rd.

It’s that time of year again.

Nice

[ID: a text on a black background that says, “Only 69 days until Halloween”. The number 69 is colored orange, while the rest of the text is white. /End ID]

Hey check out how hard i ca]

You know who else ca]

its not that hard guys, wat]

[n portal through posts 😁

[n portal through posts 😁?

[ch- wait... guys???

I really genuinely like this site and it's original layout and premise. I like custom themes. I like mobile themes. I like how posting works. I like how tag search works. I like sending and receiving asks. I like how you can make your blog whatever the hell you want. I like this fucking platform and for some reason staff is vigorously sawing their limbs off like they have to but they're in the middle of a grocery store and everyone there is going "why the hell are you doing that?" and staff cries "you all want me to"

ABCDEFGHI KLMNOP RSTUVW Y

22/26

having a normal one today (i can go into depth but i feel like its not needed)

Are you trapped on tumblr right now?

Is there something you planned to do before you got trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Are you yelling at yourself to get up and do the thing, but you can’t, because you’re trapped in the endless tumblr scroll?

Consider this your save point.

Put tumblr down, stand up, stretch, and go do the thing you planned to do. Future you will be incredibly grateful.

Things people in the notes have been able to do thanks to this post:

I need y’all to know that you’re doing amazing, and I’m so glad that I was able to help you break out of a procrastination loop you did not want to be stuck in.

Helpful post I’ve added to my queue in case it helps someone else at the random point when it’s posted.