The Magnus Archives is Listening to Me

[writerkit]

Me over on schneefink's journal last week: "I wonder what the End is like in a world where people can't die..."
The show, this week: "Let's go visit the End!"

Apparently it's listening to me.

Anyway, I'm actually somewhat more interested in talking about Martin's jealous fit. Not that I think it's unreasonable for Martin to be jealous, but he doesn't seem to be really recognizing that jealousy as an irrational reaction. Like, I would also be jealous in that situation, but I probably would not be like "So let's go do murder!" That's... not a good reaction. Let's go kill the monsters, sure, not unreasonable, but I don't think destroying the avatars destroys the *domains*, so "let's go do murder" does not actually set anyone free or help anything, except in the case of ones who are being actively sadistic/threatening. Oliver Banks is a victim as much as Jon; he just didn't retain nearly as much control of himself. I suspect he will wind up helping them in the end-- deep down, the person underneath doesn't like what he's become.

Actually, that's an interesting thought too-- Jon *is* an Avatar. So why does he have more of his own will? He was never like Helen, sure, (although I'm not sure there's not some of Helen left; there was enough of Michael left to want to eat Jon even though the Spiral didn't) but he is like Oliver Banks, and yet he's retained enough of his sense of self to want to try to set the world right, unless of course this is all some kind of cunning plan on the part of the Eye, which I really would not put past it.

And did Beholding *know* that this was going to happen when it set this all up? Like, I cannot imagine the Powers that *aren't* the End  actually wanting to do a thing they know will eventually lead to their own demise, especially since we know they are millennia old, so "we get to play for thousands of years" isn't necessarily *that* long for them. (For that matter, *did* the End know and would it have done this if it did? Or did it not know but now doesn't really care?)
 

Comments

[schneefink]

I don't think "the Beholding" set this all up, I think Jonah Magnus did. He's a servant of the Eye and the Eye obviously contributed, but I suspect that the Fears as such don't really scheme and plan or even think on those levels. I might be completely wrong on that, we'll see... Either way I'm very curious how satisfied Jonah is with this world he created.

I think Martin did recognize his jealousy as irrational, but he still thinks that monsters should be killed, and for him Jon and Oliver are on completely different levels while Jon sees their similarities. I don't necessarily think Jon has more of his own free will than other avatars: Oliver was already resigned to being a servant of the end before the apocalypse, so was Helen, and not!Sasha was always a monster. We haven't seen others yet but I look forward to it.

[writerkit]

I think the coronor's report we just saw implies that there's *some* amount with which they think, because the plotting about "we need to steal everyone else's people" wasn't coming from Oliver; it was coming from the End. (Similarly, the Spiral was pissed enough about Michael's behavior to replace him.)

I am also extremely curious about what Jonah's thinking now. (I saw another story with a villain with this same ostensible motive but without quite the same level of world-destroying-- Michelle West's Sun Sword books, which include a villain whose motive is explicitly "Immortality will let me see for myself what history chooses to record and how knowledge is passed down over the generations." But that didn't involve "Let's blow up the world" in quite the same way.)

[jducoeur]

"I wonder what the End is like in a world where people can't die..."

I know nothing at all about the Magnus Archives, but this makes me curious: have you read any of Marvel's take on this topic? It's rather horrible, arguably the worst of all their alternate universes...

[writerkit]

I haven't. In general I mostly know the movies, with Marvel, and then I've read a comic here or there-- I came into comics through my college library having several collections of very early Batman comics, so most of what I've read is DC and specifically Batman.

[jducoeur]

Suffice it to say, the keyword here is "Cancerverse" -- pretty much the most horrible of all of Marvel's many alternate realities. It's one of the more important Guardians of the Galaxy stories, and one of the rare times where Thanos is arguably one of the good guys...