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

[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...