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Anonymous asked:

What do you think is the most 'human' part of Jonalias?

Human is a very abstract quality, isn't it? It's a bit ironic that the monsters considered antithetical to humanity are sustained by human fear, I've always thought. The line is explicitly blurred in canon, which we see as early as with Jane Prentiss and her terrified devotion.

But I think I know what you mean. Pain, death, and fear are immanent to the human condition; the desire to transcend these shackles is, therefore, the drive to become inhuman (this must not be equated with being evil; the only reason why Jonah's actions can be considered immoral is that his method for approaching divinity requires the suffering of others, not that there is something intrinsically wrong with not wanting to be human or an inherent moral purity or impurity in humanity). Ironically, this urge, actuated by fear, is in itself very human.

So, I'd say that the closer Jonah becomes to freeing himself of the weight of death the further away he gets from his humanity, and vice versa. Jonah is, in my opinion, a human person trying to carve himself into a god, and the closest he comes to his goal is when the Beholding makes him a part of its apotheosis. He becomes one with the sickening dread that has always haunted him, but it doesn't sink its claws into him; it merely passes through him because it recognises him as one of its own. To escape death, he must embrace it, wield it, and become it.

So I'd say Jonah is mostly human, especially since his motivation is fundamentally human. And he's at his most human in the moments after his agonised bliss is interrupted and he's faced with the reality of his imminent death; whatever criticisms I have of how that scene was written, there's something very poetic about that.

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How do you think jonelias would play out if Jon managed to figure out that Elias was Jonah this whole time? Whether through finding a journal or general stalker behavior during season 2

That's a very good question. I think that if it happened during season two Jon would immediately (out of paranoia, but coincidentally correctly in this case) classify him as an unknown variable and therefore a high-level threat. But he's attempted to wrench answers from more aggressive avatars, so it would also qualify Elias as a potential source of information. In that sense, the situation wouldn't differ much from season three: Jon is on the opposite side from Elias, but he still needs to know what he knows.

I don't imagine Elias would be very thrilled by this development, but he's adaptable, and I wager he'd find a way to use it in his favour. I think it'd be fun if he disposed of the Not-Them in an attempt to win Jon's trust and played the victimised and afraid avatar just like he played the innocuous boss before. Gaslight, gatekeep, etc.

Something about Jon blaming himself for how he was bullied as a child (a form of victimhood and powerlessness) as a way to retroactively claim agency in the same vein as Jonah emphasizing he's done everything because he wishes to.

Jonah not allowing himself to be compelled (and making his account of his motivations and anxieties so dry compared to how he talked about Jon's own terrors) can easily be read as him refusing the Eye the opportunity to feast on his fear. But I think that the Eye is probably feeding on his fear and refusal of being fed on by the Eye. It's awfully elegant.

Melanie-Jonah parallels drive me insane, and I would love to see them explored outside of my own fic that I'll probably never finish or post.

See, Melanie does not lash out at anyone unless she feels they have personally victimised her. Jon, Jonah, and Jared Hopworth are acceptable targets to her because they questioned her credibility, did non-consensual surgery on her, trapped her in the Institute, or attempted to kill her. She doesn't want to be trapped or belittled or a victim; she wants a measure of autonomy. Her anger is a function of her fear: she refuses to be a victim. It makes me think of how when Jonah's plans were threatened by Jurgen Leitner's sudden appearance he panicked and his tightly repressed violence slipped out of his control.

It's the same mechanism: the fear of being a victim cannot be expressed as fear because fear makes you a victim of itself, but anger is empowering; anger makes others be hurt rather than you.

jonah magnus is just. what a guy. he somehow figured how to transfer himself into different bodies using eyes. he's a horrible bastard. he's hot. he's the essence of being pinned down by a searching gaze and found wanting. he's fascinated by human behavior despite having 200 years to watch everyone around him. he murdered a guy with a steel pipe that one time. he started the apocalypse. he became a conduit for an eldritch god. i want to see him in a corner and weakened just to watch him squirm. i want to watch him put someone else in a corner and watch them squirm. he desperately needs to control the narrative and it's never shown Why. he let his archivist be kidnapped and forcibly moisturized (and isn't That a sentence) for a month, just to make sure the Stranger's mark stuck. he's ruthless and practical and clever. he interacts with the world like it's four different chess games stitched together, and he's winning all of them at once. i want to see him grab someone jon by the face and talk in a very quiet threatening certain tone. i want to see him in his element. i want to see him out of his element. he's terrifyingly confident. he's the Ceaseless Watcher's creature and he's been of it for two hundred years. he's Such a guy and i have so many thoughts about him and now they're your problem too

And even further: He's an old man. He's a funny bitch. He's dramatic. He's shockingly subdued. He loves scheduling. He condemned the entire world to something worse than death because he feared someone would do it to him first. He's horny about being compelled. He likes cake. He compared Jon's wounds to swiss cheese. He makes puns. He wrote a ritual in iambic meter. Nobody finds out why he's like that. When Tim was going through his crisis Elias just told him to paperwork the sorrows away. He has so much repressed anger and yet he's so civil. He views the world as a zero-sum game. He won. He lost. I want him to thrive. I want him to lose everything he has in his pursuit and not realise it until it is too late. He's genre-aware. I want the narrative to love him as much as I do. He never used his powers on Gertrude and this was mutual. He killed her with a gun and said she died in the line of duty. Either he lied about watching Melanie's channel or he just browses paranormal YouTube for fun. He was the only one who figured out how the rituals worked. He had enough architectural expertise to modify Robert Smirke's blueprints to make them evil. He had a harem. He's even sexy.

Messy midnight post incoming.

The more I think about how little compassion the narrative gives Jonah, the more baffled I find myself. Granted, it's what he would have wanted; I can't imagine being understood and pitied on a meta level would please him if he knew, but I have reasons to believe that was not intentional on Jonny's part. And that hypothesis momentarily discarded, we're left with the problem of why the narrative is so unsympathetic to Jonah specifically.

As an example, Jane Prentiss got compassion despite being a murderer because she was afraid and human, and that was an excellent narrative choice; the way Jon thinks back to her once he begins to understand what she was through is beautiful and doesn't lack subtlety. Why is that not the case for Jonah? I cannot see how he's any less sympathetic than Jane; she also attempted a ritual, after all, though she of course was unsuccessful.

Season five is when the narrative begins to split from the usual framing of avatars as complex and terrified; Annabelle being reduced to a mouthpiece for the Web when she had been hinted to be just as complicated a person as, say, Jon is a good example of this trend. Even Peter's reasoning was explained in the season four finale. And yet Jonah, the reason why the story even exists at all and arguably the most human of all the villains, disappeared for almost the entirety of the season only to be remorselessly killed in a five-minute scene. Yes, his last words left an impression, but even that was interpreted by some as being the original Elias shining through (I'm not objecting to this interpretation, mind you; I think it's interesting, but it does allow some listeners to further dismiss Jonah's character).

The lack of a humane framing of Jonah could be, as I said, interesting from a meta point of view given that in-universe he is a character who very much controls his own narrative, and it'd be fascinating for that control to extend to the audience's perception, but I'm reluctant to give Jonny credit for that. After all, if that had been his intention, he wouldn't have written Jonah dying begging for his life, now, would he?

It is dubious what they were trying to do with him: is he supposed to inspire compassion? No, Jon doesn't even hesitate, and the fans' reaction says quite a bit in itself. Is he supposed to be framed as purely inhuman? Surely not, as there are few things as sympathetic as a man terrified for his life. Is he perhaps a two-dimensional villain, and his death meant to be cause for celebration? But then, why is he the only cardboard cutout in a cast full of breathing, living morally complex individuals? And why is he hinted to have a much richer inner world throughout the podcast, then?

I don’t think people appreciate enough that Elias is an Old Man. We all lean into the fact that he’s a nerd and a business man, but not an Old Man.

Elias leaves voicemails when people don't pick up his calls. Elias wears slippers at home. Elias has a previously scheduled nap time. Elias basks in the silence of an empty supermarket at the crack of dawn. Elias writes in elaborate cursive. Elias does the crossword every morning. Elias irons his bedsheets, towels, and socks. Elias is an Old Man.

The thought of Jon burning with the Archives because they're one and the same, Elias being snapped out of his Eye induced agonised bliss and mourning a god he has brought into existence, Elias standing at the ruins of his world sadly whispering "Oh Archive...", Jonah disappearing for a century or two, waiting for a chance to try again, Knowing that there will be no one quite like Jon, but seeking his rightful place with the Eye, Jonah, Jonah, Jonah,

What in heaven and earth compelled you to haunt me with these visions? Jonah knows what it's like to directly or indirectly hurt everyone he loves and does it again and again and again, and yet, after all those sacrifices, this one still hurts.

"Oh please don't fire me you're too sexy haha"

-any of us if we were Rosie

We truly have the moral backbone of a chocolate éclair.

But really, imagine Elias Bouchard himself having a look through your memories, reminding you of your trauma for fun and no profit, enabling your nosy tendencies... That's the dream.

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