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Post about Jonah and luck just made me think about MORE Jonah and Jon stuff... the way both of their stories are centered around agency and choices... but whereas Jon constantly wonder if he had a choice, if he didn’t, if he was set up, if he can even break free, questioning himself at every turn and having bouts of impulsivity in the mix, Jonah decided long ago that no. He has agency and he will keep agency and everything is his choice

and the THING IS, I think maybe that’s why Jonah, despite seemingly a good fit for the web, is ultimately not, because the same way Basira logic her way out of the unknowing, Jonah determines his own free will and doesn’t let doubt pester him.

Cause in my head at least, the web is all about choices and agency, but what feeds it is your own fears and questions about free will and choices and such. A good avatar will have ever given up the idea of the answer being given (is there free will? who knows!), a victim might slowly fall prey when they fully stops believing they have free will at all, it’s not even a question anymore, and therefore it makes it “true” and turns them into puppets. Inescapable fate, self-fulling prophecies, etc.

JON is perfect for the web because he keeps pondering, -- and admitedly was set up (ha.) -- not to trust hs judgement, his feelings, his free will. S4 is all about that!

.. and in the light of that (yes i’m thinking as i write), you COULD interpret Jonah in S3 telling him that it is, in fact, all his choices, trying to lurr Jon closer to beholding and further away from the web (I feel S3 Jonah was trying to make Jon a mirror, he was trying to be as much a mentor as he could be while still using Jon for his own purposes. Hence why he tells Jon about discarding relationships - might get Jon in the end - , hence why he tells him no jon don’t doubt this was all you - because that possibly removes the fear of the spider, hence why he helps him grow his powers further, even if it means having to be away from him later on). AND EVEN WHEN HE TELLS JON THAT JON IS JUST THAT, SOMEONE HE CHOSE, he’s also giving Jon the ... choice not to doubt anymore. He’s giving him a proper answer about free will;

the comparison between Annabelle’s first statement, when she feeds Jon’s fear of lack of free will, and Jonah’s 160 statement, when he tells him, so clearly, no jon, there is a free will, no destiny except the one i make, the one WE can make, it’s just so FASCINATING

(how did i not think of that before... fuck. now i’m having feelings again over Annabelle and Elias fighting in backstage for Jon .........nngh.)

#i don't know if this makes any sense because honestly i'm just throwing all my feelings at once in the middle of the work day so#the magnus archives#what's better for the soul than a little bit of tma musing in the middle of the day#tma rambles#jonah magnus#jonelias#assume every post of mine being even a lil bit about jon and jonah is jonelias
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anyway in this house we love unshamedly, excessively romantic Jonelias ;; yes yes, Elias using Jon, yes yes Jon killing Elias, yes yes Jon being corrupted,  but what if instead Jon loved Jonah Magnus just a little too much to consider killing him or going against him an option, and what if Jonah Magnus loved Jonathan Sims just a little too much to force him down a path he knows Jon doesn’t want; what if they both made the very dangerous choice of trusting each other with each other’s everything, because they loved one another just a little too much? what if they found a strangely strong equilibrium. what if they kissed also sometimes. 

People don't understand how much I want and need AUs where Jon is left with the semi-corpse of Jonah Magnus, the one who's much more instinctive that the man with his eyes, and who wants Jon, the way he hasn't wanted in sooo long, and won't let him go.

(bonus point if it happens in an isolated part of Scotland, etc. WHY would Jonah Magnus be there and not the Institute, i Don't KNOW, I just want it.)

weeping thinking of Jonah saying he knew deep down this would never last, thinking of Jonah in the last seconds of his life probably scared out of his mind but also he’s not really dying is he, he’s staring into jon’s eyes, jon killed him but jon is his, his creation, his work, his his his, so really he died from his own hand, and isn’t he what he has been doing for centuries, a little death every few decades to survive beyond bodies, his legacy has killed him but there is a part of his soul that is anchored in jon’s heart and that’s why he gets to say good luck and that’s why OBVIOUSLY if there is a somewhere else Jonah is here also, a phantom limb escaping from jon the moment Martin also brings the knife to his chest---

Thinking of Jon’s last words for Jonah... His justification being for gertrude, Sasha and Tim... Not Jon. Not the entire world (well, you could count the world in “all the others” I suppose). Thinking on how this rings of this being so personal for Jon, in a way his previous stance (what he’s doing rn literally means he’s dooming his loved ones and the world for other worlds) sort of contradicts.

I know S5 gives Jon that revenge arc that he doesn’t seem to enjoy as much as the narrative would like you to believe, and it would feel like the completion of that IF JON INCLUDED HIMSELF. He doesn’t. Here is the man who, out of all the others, excepted perhaps Annabelle, is the one who got him there. He was the one with the plan. He was the one who made Jon do the unthinkable. But Jon doesn’t talk of himself.

Jon talks about the deaths he feels guilty about (Sasha and Tim), the death that started him on the path of no return (Gertrude) and the deaths that live inside his head, all the time (”all the others”).

I don’t know exactly where I’m going with this, but I can’t help but think it’s Jon killing not Jonah, but killing What He has Become, in a very metaphorical way. I can’t help but feel like this is Jon putting a knife into a mirror, because that’s what he believes he sees, when he stares at Jonah.

(...In another possible S5, where we learn more about Jonah’s own descent into evil, that image would be. wow.) 

...To be clear, I still think if there was any moment for Jon to say “for me” or something that like that, that was it. Or, on the contrary, having Jonah being like “is that all for you?” because he cannot imagine complete selflessness to this degree, and Jon being like “no, for all the others” to show the difference between who he was at the beginning of the journey, and what he’s decided now, could have worked as well (and show, again, the inherent differences between them both --)

how woozy our eyes and fickle our hearts - RavenXavier - The Magnus Archives (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]

archiveofourown.org

A Jon/Elias Summer Exchange!

anyway in this house we love unshamedly, excessively romantic Jonelias ;; yes yes, Elias using Jon, yes yes Jon killing Elias, yes yes Jon being corrupted,  but what if instead Jon loved Jonah Magnus just a little too much to consider killing him or going against him an option, and what if Jonah Magnus loved Jonathan Sims just a little too much to force him down a path he knows Jon doesn’t want; what if they both made the very dangerous choice of trusting each other with each other’s everything, because they loved one another just a little too much? what if they found a strangely strong equilibrium. what if they kissed also sometimes. 

There's a different Season 4 out there where Jon, desperate to find proof that being a Fully Fledged Avatar that Eats People Trauma can still, somehow, be good in some fashion, doesn't find Fanshawe's letter first and therefore immediately concludes, with no shred of doubt (and with endless self-loathing because he's mirroring, his boyfriend is ghosting him, nobody is happy he's back, and he's like few episodes away from jumping in a coffin being like 'eh, it ever works or i die') that Jonah Magnus was an evil man all along and there was never anything good to the Institute.

Maybe instead of he finds a letter from Jonah to Smirke that tells the fall of yet another of their friends, maybe a letter that, on paper, is perfectly polite, but that Jon reads with the undertone of anger and fear (you said balance is the key but prevention is doing nothing we need more knowledge, we need to understand more, Robert-). Maybe, if we want to keep it at "we never hear from Jonah directly" (which does also have sexy implications, find) he finds a letter from yet another friend who actually recalls WHAT happened the day Smirke told his buddies about all this, that shows that Jonah immediately was with Smirke on the whole "balance thing", at least on paper.

In any case, what he finds is not a downright "oh, Jonah bad" and Jon wants to believe SO badly that he can still do some good; also he's obsessive and doesn't know when to quit, as we know <3 so he just keeps. finding new letters to read, which, of course, parallels his own journey, and so, of course, when we reach the final, actual reveal of Elias being Jonah, it's just. oh. Oh.

(Side note: got distracted by the end of this post because I was reminded again that, genuinely, when this podcast is good it's brillant, and Elias going "Exactly where they've always been, Martin. Watching over my institute." is just. so. fucking good. what a delicious, perfect, satisfying reveal. I adore him so much. It's just so perfectly dramatic. that whole scene!! THat whole episode. god. anyway. what was i saying? i don't remember)

Canon might have been terrified of the power of Jonelias but it still gave me Elias Jonah Magnus Bouchard at the very end of his life, DYING, something he'd literally doomed the world to try to escape, telling Jon "Good Luck" and for that I will forever have peace with the finale even if I want to nitpick and pull apart to completely remake S5 every other day.

The only way Jonah was going to be "at peace" dying was by dying by Jon's hand, because dying by Jon's hand is a little like dying by his own hand, because he made Jon a God and this might, in fact, have been inevitable, and he accepts that, and i'm obsessed with it, and I love them, and I love that they die stabbed by the same knife, GOD

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