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Anonymous asked:

(same anon) I'm having such heart eyes over your description of Jon and Elias's relationship. There really is so much to it. And you know, the story's turn baffles me especially in the light of the different sides we saw of Elias in season 3. I feel like him telling Jon about Barnabas or even the statement in the s3 finale didn't actually have much to do with the "big apocalypse plan". Especially the former almost seemed like a way to forge a connection, doubly meaningful of course in light of Elias being Jonah (including the fact that it's kind of a bit of a risk for Elias to draw this connection?) I mean, don't get me wrong, obviously, he was still very much staying on the apocalypse track, but I think deepening the personal relationship between Elias and Jon would have added such layers of tension and complexity.

And season 5, by showing us the birthday party, also confirms exactly what you said - we see how pleased Jon was that Elias showed up, especially since he was his usual grouchy self, how he lied about his age because he didn't want Elias to think of him as young and clueless.

And the finale, by having Jon kill Elias with his own hands rather than by calling down the watcher on him (which, granted, may potentially have not been possible but that's besides the point) again affirms that there is a special connection there, that Elias isn't just the next avatar on Jon's kill list. So I just don't understand why a) that relationship was so neglected in the past two seasons especially given how significant the tiny hints we did get were and b) the final confrontation was resolved so quickly.

I'll also admit to being mildly biased here, but I was also displeased with the overpowered Web reveal, especially since I feel like that also could have tied into things more interestingly instead of "oh btw the web has been planning this forever and everyone was just a chess piece". Imagine for example Jon deciding to team up with Jonah despite everything, because stopping the Web is more important to him than revenge, because Jonah's literally the only one who's with Jon on this matter, even if for different reasons, and there's delicious betrayal and moral complications going around, instead of having the Good Guy kill the Bad Guy who was really just that all along at a point in the story where there's no time to examine Jon's emotional state in the aftermath because we're rushing to tie up the story.

god yeah, I fully agree with you, especially in regards to how rushed the finale was. what gets me about the so-called resolution of Elias and Jon's arcs where they tie in with each other is that the depth of their relationship and complicated feelings towards each other wasn't just hinted at during previous seasons, it was an indispensable part of the plot. maybe the creators were too caught up in the Web storyline to properly pay attention to this other, more compelling story they'd written, or maybe they saw it and simply didn't care for it; but Jon begrudgingly teaming up with Jonah, or even simply acknowledging him as anything other than a particularly cruel roadblock, would have been so much more interesting.

and while the plot relevance of Jon & Elias's dynamic is undeniable, it would also have been such a fitting avenue to explore thematically. one thing that really captivates me about tma is its exploration of the false dichotomy of fear and desire. the two are shown to be inextricably linked, so much so that a lot of the horror in tma is made manifest by characters' fears being warped into desire. avatars are absolutely fascinating because they're the human embodiment of the möbius strip-esque duality of fear and desire, and Jon and Elias's relationship is nothing if not a small-scale reproduction of the symbiotic (mutualistic? parasitic? I suppose it's less of a biological discussion than a philosophical one) relationship between the entities and their avatars — two beings intrinsically linked, one shaping the other into an extension of itself, the other feeding and recognising the one as a reflection of all that is most grotesque and abominable in itself and still (or perhaps therefore) choosing to serve it.

#p.#jonelias#asks#anonymous#I apologise for the delay in responding to this ask. I've been having what some might call a hell of a week#tma spoilers#thank you for reminding me of the statements in 92 and 120; I will now proceed to think about them for all the rest of time.#Jonah was so thrilled to see Jon's progress and push him in the right direction#and not just because of his plans. he was genuinely very taken with Jon#and how could he not be? Jon was everything he'd been looking for for literal centuries
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@corvuspanoptes

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I'm getting brainworms for corruption arc Jonelias again. They meet again, and Jon is so alone (but no more alone than he was before abandoning his former friends). They are omniscient, but there are infinite questions they have for each other. Elias's first question, of course, is whether it felt good (“what did?”/“letting go”), even though he already knows the answer, and would know it even if he didn't serve the god of knowledge. He was the same all that time ago, after all.

hii do you have any jontim and/or jonelias fic recs 💫

boy do I ever!! it'll just be jonelias, as I haven't really read much jontim, but I honestly cannot recommend these enough:

the hole the fox did make by @thornandbriar

to bleed, to die by @ante--meridiem

scenes from an epicenter

look not so fierce on me

guys only want one thing and it's fucking disgusting (hannigram/jonelias parallels)

me writing two characters who are totally not psychosexually entangled

funny how jonelias has a vice grip on my brain again all of a sudden

not to hand in unloveable hand in 2022 but jonelias I hope it stays dark forever I hope the worst isn't over and I hope you blink before I do

this is probably due to having absolutely zero contact with fandom and with the creators' own opinions on their creation prior to finishing the podcast, but I'd initially interpreted jm as "these two characters are desperately alone and have been robbed of everything they ever thought of as home, so they cling to each other despite being very obviously incompatible and scarcely even knowing each other. they don't work together in a scenario where things are even remotely okay, and if they make it in this one—however poorly—, it's only because losing each other means losing the last thing that tethers them to the world they once knew. they need each other more than they could ever want or love each other."

listening to the Q&As put everything in a very disappointing light.

still can't believe tma gave me the ending I always wanted (two characters in love dying tragically together) in the worst possible way (they had zero chemistry and one of them was M*rtin Bl*ckwood)

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