God What I Wouldn’t Give For A Version Of TMA Where Prentiss Is The Protagonist. Not Archivist!Prentiss

God what I wouldn’t give for a version of TMA where Prentiss is the protagonist. Not Archivist!Prentiss because that wouldn’t work, she’s not that person

But just… More of her. Seeing things from her perspective. So much of S4 was telling us that actually, she and Jon aren’t that different. We just fear her and love Jon because he’s the narrator and we’ve grown fond of him, and she put him in danger. Jon said it best himself, “Then again, I suppose I’m hardly in the best position to judge. Perhaps to anyone listening to these tapes I sound remarkably similar to Hezekiah. Or to Manuela. Or to Jane.”

And we don’t. We don’t see that in the moment because we, the audience, have sat through countless episodes with Jon and we have become invested in not just his horror story but him himself. Even if he’s a monster, he has been humanised for us. Prentiss didn’t get that chance, too brief her chance to speak to us in her own words. It hurts on a relisten when you keep this in mind and pick up on all the little details you didn’t get the first time. She had hopes and dreams and fears and hobbies and a life before she gave in to that little part of her, that bit that sits behind your heart and says ‘It would be horrible if you did this thing. But you still have the option to do it.’. That piece of your soul that the entites prey on that was in her, and is in Jon, and is in every avatar in the show and is in pretty much everyone listening. 

When you take a step back, they are the same. I think a quote from The Worms can sum it up well actually. The whole of Jon’s initial fear of her, because he does not understand that some day he will be the same as her. He is afraid of the woman who stood and knocked at Martin’s door, unaware that soon he will be the thing that stands and watches in people’s nightmares. “Poor Sam has no way to know his neighbor’s name is Richard, that he once struggled in a life as hard and desperate as his own. That his dreams of the light and painful screaming climb towards it is just as keen and grueling.”

In another world, in another context, in another story, Prentiss could be our tragic hero, succumbing to the call of that which says it loves her. If we’d just got there slightly earlier, just had a little more information, a little time to hear from her and form that bond. Jon comments on this, too, “I’ve been thinking a lot about Jane. She was the first, you know. The first I actually encountered like… like us. She seemed so… inhuman. Like everything she used to be was stripped away. … I wonder how much of her was still in there. How much did she choose to be what she was? I read her statement, she was… She was scared. I assumed she’d been possessed completely against her will, but now I’m not even sure that’s possible.” 

Jon knows, now, that they’re the same. For better and worse. Knows that she was just an innocent as he is. Knows he is just as guilty as she is. That they’re the same. But he, and we, never understood her when it counted. Instead, off the bat, we were told she was scary, and horrifying and dangerous. And she was at that stage. But she wasn’t always. TMA would be a very different story if episode one started in season four, and our protagonist, our character through which we view the world, was a man working on a boat. We would fear the terrifying creature of so many eyes that dragged his secrets from him. 

TMA’s framing of morality is all about context. Who do we empathise with? Who’s sins are we willing to forgive because the narrative had us form a bond with them, gave them a motivation and friends and a heart and soul that we can project our own desires and fears upon? It works so well because I love Jon. I love that character so much, I see so much of myself in him, I took my fucking middle name after him! But it does go to show that in another story, he is the monster. And in another story, we love and mourn Jane Prentiss.