'it wasn't your fault, just bad luck, though i'm sure the knowledge brings you no comfort' is probably still one of the most meaningful things tma had to say

tma episodes 82 - 106 - 118 - 160 - 200

or, in other words, things that keep me awake at night if i think about them a little too intensely for my own good

sorry today i cant stop thinking about this but like. it is such a weird thing to say for someone who's deliberately trying to hurt you. 'nothing that happened to you has been your fault, there is no reason no justification for it, it is just how it works because it is just bad luck'. it is such a fundamentally KIND thing to say.

of course it doesn't diminish the harm but it is such a deliberate choice when it comes to his characterization that it upsets me to no end this was never brought to our attention more. jonah wanted to be in control of himself so much that he damned the world for it and continuously re-addresses his own control over the narrative by stressing how the other characters instead are not.

and yet this is never explored within the framework of the narrative even if season 5 would have been the perfect moment to do so. like what brought you to such extremes. what made you so scared.

Hmmm, As well as this being about control, I also think this is about Jonah distancing himself from the harm that comes to people around him as a result of the fears.

Jonah is quite a passive evil, in many ways. He prefers to watch. He does t like to get caught up in the messy and painful process of hurting or being hurt - he simply wants to witness it all. I feel like "it's just rotten luck," is one of the ways he justifies this to himself. What happened to Barnabas Bennet was rotten luck - a shame for him to have chosen the wrong friend to help him in his hour of need.

What happens to Jon, and Sasha, and... Everyone else? It's all just terrible luck. It distances Jonah from the fact that he has the power and capacity to aid people, and chooses not to. He shifts the weight of the blame on to luck, away from himself.

while i do agree that jonah, ever the avatar of the eye of course, isn't someone who goes out of his way to hurt people -he isn't sadistic, doesn't take particular joy in hurting others except when, in his mind, is necessary-, i also don't see him as someone who needs to justify his actions in a way that takes away his responsibility for them. actually i do think it's the opposite.

he never talks about 'luck' when mentioning barnabas for example (and the comment he gives to jon is 'you might believe yourself to have friends, to have confidants, but in the end all you have is something to watch, to know, and eventually to discard' yeah i remember the quote by heart dont look at me never hints that he doesn't take accountability for what happened).

he is adamant in stressing his own agency through through throughout the whole podcast ('i've done everything because i wished to' said before admitting to killing both gertrude and leitner / 'in this world of occult dynasties the chosen one is someone i chose') and the only times he brings up 'bad luck' it's when people are already put in a position of harm or disadvantage.

he stresses and re-stresses them not having agency because his entire character arc is to realize that there are terrible forces in the world that could put you in a terrible position just because of bad luck and going 'well fuck not that's not gonna happen to me' and therefore resorting to terrible means to achieve the safety he needs. sure, he doesn't want to die, but most importantly he doesn't want to be a victim. he needs to be in a position of superiority over a world that is just set for you to fail and that could take your will away from you at any given moment. which is why i think the emphasis on 'luck' is more about that than about taking responsibility away from him: he doesn't want it! he wants responsibility as it means agency (and of course it IS very ironic given the whole web-thing [but here i could go on a tangent on how much i hate the web-thing in s5 and s5 in general and that would be off-topic] but we do love tragic irony don't we?).