the main problem is that all the threads woven into four seasons got solved at 99.9% by the end of ep 160. which could have just very well been the actual finale (would have packed a bigger punch for sure at least). also i still dont understand why the web would want for a ritual to succeed when it knew that it would only lead to the fears to ultimately starve. what was the point
the secret sauce of jonah magnus is refusing to become a victim in a world where that is fundamentally impossible so you damn your whole species to the slaughterhouse for the privilege of being its administrator hope this helps <3
CAMUS, Caligula tr. Stuart Gilbert || THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES (050, 160)
SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet | MAG 081 | cut dialogue from The Art of Matrix | MAG 162
I always thought that the end of arachnaphobia was hysterical bc hes like fake news. Lies. Stupid. He was wrapped up in spiders but I’m sure theres a reasonable explanation for it.
But when I remembered that jon is faking the skeptic thing it got a lot more intense. Like, jon knows hes being watched. Every time a statement comes in that he knows down to his bones is true he can feel whatever it is watching him wants to believe it.
In arachnaphobia I imagine jon is reading it, probably more and more aware that whatever it is watching him *knows* why its personal for him, hes scared, but hes also so stubborn so at the end when he says I’m sure theres a perfectly reasonable explanation, this boy is looking beholding dead in the eye and saying you havent gotten to me yet. I’m not scared. I’m not giving in.
terminallyonlinecat-deactivated:
terminallyonlinecat-deactivated:
There is some discussion about Elias being, if not directly representative, at least reminiscent of a surveillance state (different from the capitalism takes), and on my end, I’m personally… sceptical that he’s meant to speak to an anything state. The idea of totalitarianisms is that they have all the resources at their disposal. But Elias needs to use quick-thinking strategies and blackmail to keep a few police officers doing what he wants them to, and it still doesn’t stop him from being punched in the gut by one of them. Maybe I’m taking things too literally, but I don’t see an angle where he resonates as a political authority from our world.
He’s not meant to represent a surveillance state. If we must bring politics into it, then Elias would be a representation of those within a surveillance state (but who do not control it) seeking to use its permeation of society to advance their own personal goals. He’s not his own boss, he works for the Eye, which is using him just as it uses everyone else. The biggest lie Elias tells is the lie that he is in control. He’s not.
That said, political and economic readings of Magnus rub me the wrong way because I feel they box the Fears into too small a space. They speak less about discrete systems and more about aspects of the human condition, regardless of the particular society humans happen to be in at any one point in history. That’s why they resonate.
I fully agree! I think straight political readings are constrictive, but if we analyse which political ideas resonate with the text, Elias comes up as someone who is still a victim of the system but has a single ounce of power that he leverages against his fellow victims as an attempt to rise above his circumstances.
Oh yes
Basically, Elias is an opportunistic bastard. He sees a chance to rise to the top and in so doing just climbs over everyone else.
Also I thought about it some more and realized… Elias being an ideology within a reading doesn’t make sense in the first place because he is a character, not a system. He can’t *be* the system, that’s not how systems work. Even those at the top who do control systems are operating within them.
every day I am burdened by the fact that the Web is about having your story written for you whilst the Beholding is about narrativising yourself, under the ‘Eye’s clarifying influence’, putting on a show rather than being puppeted, whilst also forcing everyone around you to replay their trauma over and over as if they were stuck on a stage, spotlit to hell, and there is very little difference between the two, the choice is illusory because one is always free at someone else’s expense &c. &c. and none of that mattered bc the Eye is stupid apparently. be so serious rn
can I be mean for a sec? I hate how the majority of the fandom cites Joshua Gillespie as someone who ‘won’ against the Fears. he really, really didn’t; in fact, he gives us one of my favourite lines + the most devastating, fundamental truth about the tma world:
