I love your posts because me and my friends have been screaming about how badly Jon was treated by the Archive Crew despite him doing his best, and also about how the poor man never got any agency in the end. It’s nice to see that we’re not the only ones who have Issues with the Finale.
The thing is, this really is a masterwork of eldritch/existential horror within its genre. Amazingly terrifying, infinitely soul-crushing. Where similar stories play up the dread by keeping the bogeymen in the dark and their purposes Arcane and Unknowable, Jonny Sims put 15 spotlights on his entities and still managed to horrify us so much more than some random evil squid god. It’s a good story and a great tragedy.
But yes, the Issue with the Finale is very much the absolute vacuum where Jon’s agency and validation should be. The man got fuck-all from the narrative and even less than fuck-all from the holier than thou hypocrites he was forced to call friends for lack of anyone better around him. Much as I am very much onboard with blaming the Web for most of Jon’s plight, I’ve come to revise my initial hope that the others on Team Archive were being forced to be cruel/isolating to Jon.
Now I’m forced to believe the Web’s only move there was arranging things to have Jon surrounded by the least supportive support network it could give him who would be malleable enough to use for its own ends once they reached the climax. People with just enough moral fortitude*** to slap Jon’s wrists through s3-s4 for simply surviving, only to have them turn around and jump at the first easy fix-it for themselves at the cost of others’ lives in s5.
The Fears I can hate because they are the Fears.
These people I hate because they did the one thing Jon never did throughout the entire series, including MAG 160–they chose to willingly deliver torment unto innocent victims for their own sake. Maybe one world’s worth. Potentially many more. Potentially an infinity more. They spent a total of ten fucking minutes pretending to ‘debate it’ before coming to the decision.
And the only excuses they can make for themselves is ‘Well, we don’t know for sure; the best we can do is hope!’
So say these understandable, believable, traumatized people–who have suffered less than an nth of all the torturous bullshit Jon has been dragged through. Jon, who was so conditioned by the narrative to bite the bullet that he was willing to pull a euthanasia on the world he’d tried so hard to save just to be sure the Fears would die with them, never to touch or torture anyplace else.
and that would be a fine ending for a cosmic horror tragedy. it’s fine for horror to explore dark themes and morality. the issue for me is that it’s framed as happy. we’re not supposed to be sad about the way Jon’s agency was taken from him. we’re not supposed to be angry that Martin betrays jon and berates him for going behind his back even though he did the same thing twice (with Annabelle and with the lighter) to deny jon the option to say “no.” We’re not supposed to be sad about the people in countless other universes who will suffer now. we’re supposed to cheer for the ending.
it’s also especially weird bc it doesn’t really feel like the others have that much empathy even for the people in their own world. the cult members are taken and Georgie and Melanie have barely any reaction despite having lived with them for months. jon cannot bear to leave Jordan Kennedy to suffer even though he knows the only succor he can offer him is its own kind of torment. Martin just wants to get out of the caves and doesn’t seem to really understand Jon’s choice or his conflict. He also says he doesn’t care about Salesa’s victims because he doesn’t know them and Salesa was nice to him (and given the way s5 created a direct link between the fears and oppressive systems that is concerning since it’s the same mindset that lets someone say “well this person was nice to ME so who cares if they’re bigoted towards people of other groups?”). In the end no one seems that sad or worried about Jon and Martin.
So Martin & Co’s choice feels less like it is born out of empathy for the people who are suffering and an inability to let the people in their own world die or continue suffering just because the same fate MIGHT befall others in the future, and more like it is born out of self interest.
only jon seems to feel the weight of what they are choosing to do. and they silence him. they also say that it is the responsibility of the people in the other worlds to deal with the fears. jon is very much defined by his guilt. he even feels bad about things he had no control over. in contrast the others entirely absolve themselves of any responsibility for choices they took of their own free will.
It almost feels like there was a direction change in the writing and they became determined to give the story a happy ending, no matter the cost. and in this case the cost was the thematic and emotional integrity of the story.