It’s rare that a single post is an instablock from me, but this is just depressing. For Jon’s fatal flaw to be his curiosity would mean that, what, the story has a moral and it is that you should accept things as they are instead of interrogating the reality you live in? That is the podcast’s grand statement, “Don’t ask questions”? It’s not merely depressing, actually; it’s reactionary anti-intellectualism.
Also, “let love take precedence over knowledge and logic”? If you really want to get down to it and talk in terms of good and bad and life lessons, as the post implicitly does by mentioning fatal flaws and “changing for the better”, it’s important to remember that this isn’t just a story about two people in love (and I’ve let rivers of ink run on this blog about how badly written Jonmartin is as a loving relationship). There were entire realities as stake, so no, letting love for one individual take precedence over the knowledge of what will happen and the logical conclusions you draw from it is not positive character development; it’s selfish. I like selfish characters; I’m all for selfish, but not when they’re not acknowledged as such by the narrative or, in this case, by critics.
And as a closing remark, I will die on this hill: Jon did not change for the better. He’s mean at the start of the podcast because it is a front he is putting up. Georgie knew him before the Institute and after his presumed “positive character development” and never made a remark in the vein of “Hey, you’re nicer now.” And even if that were not the case, I think a slightly mean boss trying to be impressive is better than a traumatized man in a shitty relationship who dooms uncountable other realities because his partner is about to die.
