[ID: fan art of Jonathan Sims from the Magnus archives. A bust shot of Jonathan sims looking at the viewer, he is covered in orange glowing eyes and his own eyes are glowing too. The lighting is dark and green and the orange stands out against it. He looks quite shocked, poor guy. End ID]
I wanted to draw this lad normally but the urge to green squiggle was too great :>
[ID: Magnus Archives fanart of Jon Sims sitting at his desk, clicking a tape recorder and beginning to read a statement. Much of the background is filled by the snaking green coils of Jon’s speech bubble, which contains the opening lines of MAG75- A Long Way Down.
The next two paragraphs are the statement text; otherwise, the ID ends here.
Jon reads: “Statement of Stephen Walker, regarding his brother’s disappearance from the top of Tour Montparnasse in October 2006.
Original statement given November 7th 2006.
Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
"I hope my brother is dead. He must be dead. I would love to believe that this is all some elaborate prank, some bizarre attempt to fake his own disappearance, but deep down I know that’s not my…” End ID]
society if knowledge and secrets (the Eye) vs. narrative and meaning (the Web) wasn’t presented as a strict dichotomy where one Fear alone developed the ability to Think but rather our amorphous blob of terror being an exploration of epistemology and metafiction. society if there was at the very least an actual discussion of the Spider’s desire to proliferate in and feed on infinite realities being the same hunger that drove Jonah Magnus and how they both deified the same man over it, making him the site of violence in this cosmic struggle between fate and free will.
do we talk enough about how Jonah was probably listening in on Jon reading his letters and probably had shrimp emotions when Jon said “my dear Jonah”
Oh my god hello
He can’t keep doing this. He told himself he’d stop, and yet here he is, Watching as Jon cautiously picks up the statement, aware of its age and not wanting to damage any part of his Archives, and clears his throat, turning on the tape.
The Eye’s attention on him is palpable, awaiting its offering. Jon shifts a little in his seat, uncomfortable with all the attention. Jonah’s sure he’ll get used to it.
Jon speaking his name - his actual name - is still delightful and terrifying enough to have him flinch in his seat, a tiny gasp escaping him. And the way Jon says it, too: even now Albrecht’s affections for him bleed in, beyond his death and through his terror, into Jonah’s Archivist and into the Eye, and it makes hearing it all the more sweet.
The statement itself was fitting. It had been, after all, Jonah that had gotten Albrecht killed. His love was like that; everyone he’d touched had been consumed. Smirke, and Albrecht, and dear, sweet Barnabas, and now Jon too. His plans for Jon are going to ruin him anyway. Jonah can’t let his love for his Archive destroy him further.
jon having a history crush on jonah is one of my favourite flavours of jonelias. maybe it’s the fact that i am a gay little classics student but it speaks to me. the learning about someone, reading their personal letters, taking in every drop of knowledge that you can until you feel as though you know them. that you wonder what it might have been like to be there at the time they were alive. to be their friend. perhaps even their lover
and then it turns out they’re actually still alive and they like you and you can Literally Kiss Your History Crush. like okay
i think jonelias should always be about jonah’s desperation to be understood. i think he should cling to jon with both hands and sob and beg “please, please, please don’t leave, not you, you can’t leave, i need you, i need you to listen, i need to be heard, i need to be seen.”
So I saw the post about the calliope and Jon going to Elias first and decided to look into something. And I stumbled across something that is even more damming…
In MAG35 Martin signs for the delivery of some things. He leaves the lighter in Jon’s desk drawer. This is when Breekon and Hope bring the table
In MAG36 Tim tells Jon that Elias was asking about the delivery. Jon didn’t know the table was there. He ends the episode with “I need to talk to Martin”. Seems sensible, get all the info before you go answer to your boss. Martin is still living in the archives iirc, shouldn’t be an issue
MAG37 oh it starts with the talk that makes sen-… “…we should destroy the table…” “Elias told me the same thing.” He. Went. To. Elias. Anyway.(he also asked rosie but like) JONATHAN SIMS I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE
I am not joking when I’m telling you that over the course of that season he like explicitly mentions that he’s going to talk to Elias about something or that he already has NINE TIMES if we count the Pre-Launch trailer then it’s TEN
And like sure, sometimes it’s about his concerns regarding the worms (CO2, security), but like you have mag33 where he’s like “I know Elias told me to not look into the Lukas family, but maybe I should bring it up with him anyway” the most stubborn man in London fr
it’s so insane to me how differently jonah treats jon compared to how he treats everyone else. throughout his life he treated people like tools, like something “to watch, to know, and ultimately to discard”. he doesn’t care about their suffering as long as it benefits Him. but even though he separates himself from other people, puts himself on a higher pedestal, it never seems to apply to jon. with jon it’s always “our master”, “our victory”, “the world that we have made”. everyone else is for us to use. the world is our playground. he’s been living with this “use or be used” mindset for centuries, always on the run, never safe, never trusting anyone, just to meet jon and decide to include him in his life-long plan… and yes, part of this was out of the necessity (he did need to get an archivist for this to work), but if it was purely transactional, then why would he say all that. gayass
thinking about mag 194 which jon recognizes as jonah using the statement to say that jonah will always be part of him no matter what he does (“I know what you’re trying to do but it won’t work”). like nio3fj9erf i09vfierofk jonah. that’s a real shit way of convincing someone not to stab you. really fucking gay though and really the absolute opposite of discarding someone after you’ve used them.
Weird thought, what if Jane Prentiss’ worms weren’t actually worms?
They are described as “around an inch long, with silver segmented bodies and blackened heads” and it was only assumed by the characters that they were worms. But that sounds nothing like how one would commonly describe worms. You might be saying that’s because of the horrors it doesn’t have to be accurate, but I say that’s true but dream logic often has some type of anchor to real world logic.
While that description doesn’t fit any worm I know, it does however fit another insect to a t. A wasp larvae. Wasp larvae are often silver/translucent, with segmented bodies and a black tip for a head. And what started Jane’s descent into the Corruption? A wasp nest. A wasp nest that sang to her of belonging and want, a song the “worms” continue to sing based on Jane’s comments.
the way people are inclined to believe jonah magnus who doesn’t believe in fate/bloodlines and who longed to become an immaterial extension of a fear ‘deity’ is more likely to be tory-aligned than og!elias who was raised to believe he is better and more deserving simply because he is a bouchard is honestly. very strange
Jonah may rationalise his actions as self-defence (and it is partially that: a drive to avoid being a victim after realising he lives in a world where he is that by default), but I also think it’s an act of revenge against the entire universe.
I want you to imagine—not just as you you, raised in postmodernism, but in the shoes of a man who is seeing Modern ideals and technological progress evolve far beyond the expectations of any point in history—discovering definitive proof once and for all that there is something that exists and is greater than yourself, a purpose that predates you (pun intended) and will endure long after you’re gone, and that this purpose is for vast, unknowable entities to have a nibble at the expense of your toiling and fearing. Then come back and tell me Jonah Magnus is unsympathetic.
See, what gets me is that Smirke and Jonah’s merry band must have felt like such a hopeful endeavour at first. They were witnessing how scientific knowledge was reshaping society in real time (let’s not forget that they lived during the Industrial Revolution). Smirke’s ideas of balance, in that light, make perfect sense. I just wonder when it was that Jonah realised that there would be no answer to neatly organize his new world into happy little columns—and, consequently, when the initial attempts to stop the rituals became a race to complete his first.
trans jonah magnus is so real to Me… a lot of his traits could be partially ascribed to his experience as a 19th century trans person
it would create a separation between him and hisbody, make him a guest in his own flesh, form a “my body is not my own” sentiment that would last for 200+ years (even if for different reasons). it would force him to create himself, and to fight for recognition. it would form the “it’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny” belief (he wouldn’t believe in biological determinism at least, which is a solid argument, i think). it would make him afraid of being outed, and thus afraid of being truly known, and yet make him long for someone who would understand
i have two opposite headcanons on jonah’s name:
1. magnus is a family name. jonah changed only his first name and reclaimed his last by founding an institute in his name
2. jonah magnus is a fully made up name, that he immortalised, again, through his institute
in both cases i see his institute as a way to claim the name. honestly, the institute is probably one of the most important things in his life. not only it’s a life-long passion project, it’s also a continuation of himself (he’s a self-described “beating heart of the institute”), so!! i believe he has a soft spot for it and everything it represents
