You know, I think I’ve seen some people agree with Jon’s plan in MAG 200 (trap the fears in the current world and destroy the whole thing to prevent them from spreading to others) but ALSO they didn’t agree with Gertrude sacrificing Michael–and not just because it turns out the stakes weren’t the “end of the world” just that they think got was wrong of her to trick and sacrifice him regardless.

That’s interesting to me, because I see Jon’s plan in MAG 200 as equivalent to sacrificing Michael but on a greater scale ( as in: the 7 billion-ish people trapped in hellscapes don’t deserve what Jon trapping them in any more than Michael did, even if it was arguably necessary).

Anyway, since I find this interesting I am making an informal poll. Given the stakes that they believe are in play at the moment for Gertrude and Jon, is it morally justified for them to sacrifice unwilling people? Tag or reply with your moral philosophy opinion.

Jon’s logic was morally right but Gertrude’s was not.

Gertrude’s logic was morally right but Jon’s was not.

Jon’s logic was not morally correct but it was very hot and sexy.

I didn’t find Jon sexy, but Gertrude sacrificing emotionally traumatized twinks is hot as hell. RIP Jon.

I actually find both Jon AND Gertrude sexy.

No! No! Murder and genocide is wrong and not at all sexy! Stop that!

I can excuse murder and genocide but I draw the line at lying to Martin.

Your question didn’t contain the words “Elias” or “Jonah” so I can’t understand what you’re asking.

Jon and Gertrude were both morally justified, actually.

So. That MAG finale. :/

@fakecrfan very much so re: more tragedy. maybe it’s because i’m not super invested in jonmartin, but i thought this episode’s emotional impact was really kind of underwhelming.

it was sad that jonmartin went out the way they did, but a) they're still together and b) as you say it was nebulous enough that their fate was very open. everyone else seemed to survive and be recovering.

what was genuinely gut-wrenching was that the spider won and that the fears were allowed to spread to other worlds, but i’m not sure the show engaged enough with the consequences of that to get the emotional payout.

idk maybe my expectations were too high. i’m glad people enjoyed it.

okay so i think the finale was good, but i think a really, properly gut-punching and potentially more emotionally coherent ending would have involved jon sticking to his guns and ending the world. at the beginning of the ep, he’s so committed to that:

It ends now. All of it. I am going to take this world that you used me to create, and I am going to burn it out. It’s the only way. I’m going to leave it a barren, lifeless void, cold and unafraid and then finally, when everyone’s gone, and I am all that’s left, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ll be leaving these things that you serve trapped and starving in their own private hell.

that final line was absolutely brilliant. it’s said so powerfully, and it’s got so much emotional weight. after five seasons of endless pain and suffering, jon would get his revenge. it would be twisted and pyrrhic and deeply painful, but he would end the suffering of billions, save potentially infinite other worlds, and finally kill the fears. he would have won.

instead of changing his mind (??) after an emotional conversation with martin, i’d like to see him double-down. i’d like to see him commit. if he has to kill martin, then he has to kill martin. the way it went down, one of them had to kill the other anyway.

i just think that would have made for an episode that was all-round more. more tragedy, more triumph, more purpose.

Anyone who has seen my MAG 199 conversation breakdown knows that I don’t think the other characters were wronging Jon specifically by disagreeing and trying to go with another plan. But I did think Jon had the better idea, so

What I am saying is that when he went full Gertrude and said he would burn the world out in order kill the entities I fucking cheered in my car guys. I made an actual noise.

Was it moral of Jon to go against the wishes of everyone else in the world who could still decide? Was it right to attempt to sacrifice billions for the sake of an infinity of worlds we’d never get to see? Is it ever okay for a single person to wrest power and decide the fate of others against their will, even for a Greater Good? I can’t answer those questions.

But I can say it was fucking awesome.

Wish it had worked :(

here’s how…heres how a…agnes montague and soulbond theory can still….can still win…*sobs*

okay so i think the finale was good, but i think a really, properly gut-punching and potentially more emotionally coherent ending would have involved jon sticking to his guns and ending the world. at the beginning of the ep, he’s so committed to that:

It ends now. All of it. I am going to take this world that you used me to create, and I am going to burn it out. It’s the only way. I’m going to leave it a barren, lifeless void, cold and unafraid and then finally, when everyone’s gone, and I am all that’s left, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ll be leaving these things that you serve trapped and starving in their own private hell.

that final line was absolutely brilliant. it’s said so powerfully, and it’s got so much emotional weight. after five seasons of endless pain and suffering, jon would get his revenge. it would be twisted and pyrrhic and deeply painful, but he would end the suffering of billions, save potentially infinite other worlds, and finally kill the fears. he would have won.

instead of changing his mind (??) after an emotional conversation with martin, i’d like to see him double-down. i’d like to see him commit. if he has to kill martin, then he has to kill martin. the way it went down, one of them had to kill the other anyway.

i just think that would have made for an episode that was all-round more. more tragedy, more triumph, more purpose.

i do feel like the biggest tragedy was jon being manipulated into releasing terrible eldritch fear gods into yet another innocent world(s)

makes a twisted kind of sense. jon began s5 without agency, and he ended s5 without agency.

agnes being so silent and voiceless is deeply frustrating, but it does make for a lot of fun comparisons:

the contrast with jon, whose thoughts, opinions and beliefs completely dominate the narrative. he and agnes are two sides of the same coin, chosen ones who make the opposite decisions and whose narratives go in opposite directions.

the contrast with gertrude, especially in the early seasons, when she has such a strong voice, and when we spent so long discovering the world through her notes and recordings. i like to think they would have been compatible like that.

the similarity to the spider, agnes’ mortal foe, another massive presence dancing around the edges of the story. agnes doesn’t have a voice, and the spider doesn’t want one, but it means they both unknowable.

This is so on point. One of the few consistencies in Agnes’ characterisation is her quietness. She’s regularly described as shy, soft-spoken, and of few words. Even when she does speak, people rarely seem to remember what she actually said

"Guess that's the thing about being the... chosen one... at the end of it, you're always just the point of someone else's story, everyone clamouring to say what you were, what you meant, and your thoughts on it all don't mean nothing" (MAG145)

I hate that we never heard from her directly, but I can see why it makes a twisted (if extremely disappointing) kind of sense. She is and always will be voiceless.

Man, Jonny rlly went off with Agnes Montague. Like, here is a woman made of power and fire and rage, the literal embodiment of destruction, but also she was born to fulfill someone else's dream and had spent her whole life trying to live up to other people's expectations, trying to be a messiah. She was told constantly growing up that she served a larger purpose, that her life was not her own, and she gave herself to this willingly. There was a whole cult of people who worshipped her, but none of them who really knew her, and I'm not sure if she ever had a friend. She was bound unwillingly to a woman she never met, but who was just as brutal as her, who actively opposed everything she was supposed to stand for. She burned on the inside but she was calm and soft-spoken and mild-mannered, she was destructive but she was sweet, and she died because she felt doubt. She opted for death because she doubted her purpose, doubted her ability to fulfill her role as messiah. Like, that's so much. Such incredible character building, some of the most compelling in the show, and she never appeared even once. Insane

I just want the contrast between Moorland House and Jonah’s original estate in Edinburgh. Moorland House being completely devoid of personal touches, the generations of Lonely-touched Lukases coming and going like ghosts without leaving a mark upon its polished floors and spacious halls.

Versus the first time Peter visits Jonah’s house, he’s shocked to find that, in some ways, it’s precisely the same. There are so few personal touches, so little imprint of the man who’s owned it for centuries. But it’s not empty—it’s decorated and furnished and cluttered with things, which Peter recognises as gifts given Jonah by generations of Lukases. The house is a monument to the Lukas family in a way that Moorland House never was, and Peter hates it, hates to be reminded that his ancestors existed and left a trace in someone’s life, that they were remembered, even as their memory drowns what little personality Jonah’s own touches might have lent his estate.

In one of the Q&As, Jonny talked about how horror and mystery are genres that work together wonderfully in the beginning, but start to conflict the further you get in the story.  In the beginning, the mystery of it all adds to the horror, and the horror is a mystery begging to be solved.

But the longer the story goes, the more you have to answer questions about the mystery, to progress the characters’ understanding of it, or else it just drags out and feels pointless.  However, the more you answer, the less scary it is.  The more the audience knows about The Mystery, the less horrifying they find it. 

For example, as the mystery of what is going on in these statements, what the avatars are, how entities work, etc, became more clear, they also became less scary.  Rather than being nervous about where a story is going and what will happen, I react to late season statements like, “ayyy it’s my boy Simon” or analyzing it as I go to determine which entity it falls under. 

This is a genre balancing act I’ve struggled with myself as a writer, so I find it interesting to look at the way Jonny handled it. I think he solved the dilemma excellently, because as the horror goes down, the focus on characters goes up.  In later seasons, we know too much about the mystery to be drawn in by “What Is Happening I Need To Know, I’m Scare” but by then, interest in the characters themselves and the overarching plot has replaced the statements as the main draw.

I’ve noticed this when looking at fandom surveys about favourite episodes or most frightening episodes.  It always seems that the majority of people’s “scariest episodes” or “favourite statement” are from season one or two, while their favourite episode or “favourite non-statement part of an episode” are from late seasons. 

As the horror naturally slipped due to questions being answered, any slack in tension was bulked up with progressively more plot and characterization. It was a good writing choice to very gradually ease the listener from one-shot horror stories to an serial character-focused story.

thinking about how the books stamped as from the library of jurgen leitner originally contained the fears in more concentrated forms and brought them into the world

thinking about multiverse theories and Hill Top Road and how maybe the Web used books last time to bind the fears and move them into the TMA universe for them to spread

thinking about how the tapes in TMA’s universe could be the leitners of a future parallel universe

thinking about how the new institute might refer to these horror tapes as from the recordings of jonathan sims

he wouldn’t be a mystery, but everyone would associate his name with horror for the wrong reasons :(

MAG 001 and MAG 199

best part of this episode was the angela update!! so pleased she’s out there living her best life. like, has her domain even changed? does she still sit in a cute little house making coffee, cursing men, and making ominous pronouncements to her would-be-victims?

I can’t resist a good bit of falling imagery

“Let us simply say that once there was a place. A place where the universe had... cracked.”