#i think i'd really go for the martin kills jonah and is forced to be killed by jon somehow? or something along those lines

[pocketsizedquasar]

it’s been a bit now so. misc 200/end of mag in general thoughts? under a cut because this is a bit long, and i will preface this to say that i mostly enjoyed the episode but this is going to be mostly my criticisms, bc i feel like the good parts have already been well covered by people other than me. so yeah just a warning this is mostly crit

- it’s Still very hard for me to parse how i feel about this episode, but i think after sitting on it for a bit, i’ve come to the general conclusion that i am very satisfied plot-wise (in terms of tragedy/the structure of tragedies, the open-endedness of our ending, the general Writing TM), but not so much satisfied character-wise (in terms of arc and relationship resolution). I think we deserved more resolution on wtgfs -- i wanted more with them! more with melanie and jon; more with the melanie and georgie and basira’s side of the plan. more than that really small tidbit that we got at the end! and... honestly? a little bit more emphasis on the weight of Jon actually dooming other worlds in the end, and what that means for Jon and for wtgfs/basira. Especially with the context of the consequences re: the Web...won. no caveats or complications, the Web got. Exactly what it wanted.

- on that note,  From a uh. Critique against capitalism standpoint I’m not sure how I feel about the ending? And I don’t really want to. Read too much into what isn’t there? But I mean mag has long been a pretty explicit anticapitalist narrative so...? Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the implications of WTGFs and basira basically just being treated as narratively right in terms of letting the eldritch evil stand-in for capitalism have whatever it wanted and feeding it and doing exactly what it asked them to do. and having Little consequence as a result of that. Obviously they’ll still face loads of hardship, but that comes from the apocalypse, not from, like,.,, doing the direct bidding of the Capitalist Monster/System/etc to be clear, i’m not like...mad they made the “wrong” decision; there was no wrong or right decision here. but I am a little upset that for all they spent 199 discussing the various consequences of each choice, we got to see very little of that actual consequence playing out...none of the survivors seem to really be carrying the guilt or even the full understanding of what they did, because they never saw the suffering they could create as anything more than a hypothetical. i feel like we could have spent just a bit more time with them dealing with that. a bit more time even with jon dealing with that, a bit more time spent on jon changing his mind. other people have said as much better than me but. yeah

- i feel like there was a lot of character stuff brought up in s5 and especially act iii that i would’ve loved to have seen more resolution of. why have that whole thing about Georgie telling jon to give melanie his last words himself, if Jon was going to come back but then never bring that up again (full disclosure this is smthn that @pronouncingitwang​ brought up!)? Why have Jon say he was “going to go  apologize to [his] boyfriend”/Jon tell Martin multiple times that they were going to talk about their fight “later” and then not have that happen on screen? Why did we have two whole episodes of cultist interactions if they were just going to be removed off screen? Why have martin’s “I’ll get jon to destroy me like the others” decision if that doesn’t really come up? what about salesa!! why tell us melanie hating jon is a projection of her self hatred and then not bring that up again? why give annabelle all those juicy interactions with martin and then turn her into a monster when jon shows up, why give her so much character and backstory and then so thoroughly remove her agency? why have all these really cool parallels between jon and annabelle if annabelle is just going to be this monstrous and agency-less plot device with no follow-up? what happened to her!

- on that note...annabelle. They... really took this character who is a Black woman and who had so many parallels to Jon and who they could’ve like. very easily Actually made into a protagonist of color (because we only got one!! and she’s a cop!!!!) (or if not protagonist, at least smthn more sympathetic), (which wouldn’t have negated previous racial problems w tma, but would’ve shown growth from them) and made her a scary monster who just Serves her capitalist entity overlord without personal agency and then bows out when she’s no longer needed...you can have whatever diagetic/watsonian explanations you want for how 197 went, like sure she was just ~being dramatic~ and putting on a show for jon, but all that is still something the writers Decided to do in the real world, and the racial implications of her character arc are just. not great. and her character had So much more narrative potential. idk i will forever be salty about annabelle

- i Still Don’t Like the web being sentient!! i said this after 197 and i’m sayin it again! i think it makes it less frightening and less interesting! with the End being aware of its own, well, end, I actually thought that worked, and i really liked the corpse routes ep, but for some reason I didn’t with the Web? which seems hypocritical of me, I know, but, look: The embodiment of the fear of dying being aware of and welcoming its own dying emphasizes the inevitability and the truth of that fear. Which is why it works for the End. It’s still not recognizably /human/, because it is inexorable and certain, in a way nothing human can be. So its awareness of its own end DOESNT feel like flattening the worldbuilding. And using my own logic, I guess sure you could say the embodiment of the fear of manipulation and schemes being capable of scheming does the same thing but it. It rly doesn’t feel the same to me? Bc that’s rly a fear borne of human sentience & behavior. and so to give it that sentience makes it feel more human, and less interesting within the context of the horror. this is definitely just a personal taste thing as far as how i like horror and eldritch deities and such but yeah.

- i liked the statement a lot like, as a little self contained story? it was really nice to have jon give us one last story before the end. I thought that was sweet and i liked how the statement was written! on the same note though, i could’ve also gone without knowing like. the entire cosmology of how the fears came into being. again, just a personal thing, i don’t like my horror to be known, even at the end of it all when it doesn’t matter what we’re still scared of anymore. I just. I want my fears to be frightening and beyond comprehension and unknowable. it just leads me to have more questions than i really need at the Final episode? i would love to keep the jon giving us one final statement thing, and you know what? i would've loved: statement of the archivist, regarding jonathan sims. no idea what you’d do with that but it sounds cool in my head.

- very minor and very specific-to-me thing but i Don’t Like that basira got to be the Last Words...sorry y’all I just don’t like basira i can’t get behind trying to make me feel sympathetic for a cop who stood by and let people get murdered by the state for years and only felt bad about it bc fearpocalypse i just can’t. i don’t like her never have never will and also melanie and georgie are right there why didn’t they get to have the last words it would have been so much better ... why not have the person who loved jon and Knew very deeply his tendency to self-sacrifice say something or why not the person who is in-canon very similar to Jon and self-admittedly projecting her self hatred onto him say some sort of her own attempt at peace why not either of these two ahhhh

- i uhhhh. really liked jon killing jonah. jon for once getting to be angry for himself. that felt really nice. no ceaseless watcher nonsense either, just him and a knife and beating the shit out of this guy who even now continues to underestimate and belittle him. and i liked jon doing what he did in general -- i actually changed my mind on this; i really didn’t like it at first but i do now. i’m sad that it came at the expense of his promise to martin, but it makes sense and...i don’t want to say jon was right, because i again don’t think any of the decisions were right per se, but in terms of like... not doing what the “elder fear deity who wants to feed on fear and pain for literal eternity” wanted... yeah. i get it. he would never have been able to go along with that willingly. and he really shouldn’t have been, considering all that he went through being a puppet for said elder fear deity. and from a tragedy standpoint too, i actually think it’s a really really well written end for him. considering how my favorite tragedies are structured and how the way out has to be presented to us, but the tragic hero Ultimately will always fall back on their faults, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. hamlet is granted a way out and he doesn’t take it; he always always hesitates. captain ahab is granted the chance to turn and leave his chase and love instead, and he doesn’t take it. orpheus turns around. etc etc. I think it was also really lovely that jon got a twist on that, that in the end he did change, for just a moment, and chose love instead. even in the face of all the horror that that might mean. i really like that he and martin are together, wherever or however they are. that martin is allowed to feel (rightly) furious and betrayed and still so, so unconditionally in love. 

idk i have more thoughts probably but again they’re very hard to parse and mostly just getting into the super specific realm which i don’t think is particularly helpful

i have a lot of feelings for jon and martin and their ending i think it was the best possible ending we could’ve gotten for those two and i Am really. I just have a lot of feelings.

#mag 200 #tma #the magnus archives #jon sims #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #melanie king #basira hussain #annabelle cane #georgie barker #tma crit #the magnus archives crit #tma spoilers #the magnus archives spoilers #quasartalks #yeah i don't know lots of mixed feelings!! #i think for me i'd go about it one of two ways: #first if i'm just redoing 200 to my own taste and not anything else #i think i'd really go for the martin kills jonah and is forced to be killed by jon somehow? or something along those lines #i really wanted a callback to his decision in his own domain #i'd likely still have them die together? idk most of their stuff felt pretty good i'd just spend more time with them AND the girls #but i think if i really had my way i'd go back to 197 #remove the web's sentience and have it be just another desperate guess of a human trying to understand their patron's wants #(which i've talked abt before so i won't rehash here) #annabelle jon team up please let's go #and then ASIDE from that i can have my own completely happy ending au in addition lmao #but i do like me some tragedy #also tbc i don't mean to imply that like. 'things that i would've done differently' and 'things that are bad' are the same thing #they're not! just bc i wouldn't have made a writing decision doesn't mean it is bad. i just wanted to get these thoughts out.