imagine being so scared of death that you become an avatar of an eldritch fear entity. You dedicate your WHOLE life to said fear entity. You sacrifice everyone around you, everyone you’ve ever loved, everyone you’ve ever had a close relationship with. You ruin the lives of countless people. You live for over 200 years in which you watch everyone you ever love die. You do all of this and more, you end the world. You do all that because you’re so terrified of dying, of the cold embrace of nothing, forever. You did awful things but it will be alright, you haven’t done it all for nothing, you’re gonna live . And when it all ends, when the fear entity promised you eternal life, it discards you like a used toy. You are replaced by the Archive you made, by a man willing to doom the entities in order for the people he loves to live. You are replaced by a man unwilling to dedicate himself to fear. And he kills you, and your dear dear fear entity does nothing. It wanted you gone the Archive was a perfect replacement. And you die. After everything, you die. It was all for nothing.
best thing you can do with a repressed character is hit them with various hammers and sharp objects until they crack open to reveal beautiful sparkling homosexuality inside. geode guy
welcome everyone to the au I like to call Barnabas Lives And Gives Everyone A Horrible Time With It. first of all keep in mind this is entirely self-indulgent. and extremely disorganised. and probably very ooc. and there’s lots of things I haven’t really defined yet. with that said
if you know me (or my rp account) you know I love the idea of Corruption!Barnabas. so basically this started with me thinking about Barnabas Somehow pulling his ass out of the Lonely (maybe on his own, maybe with help, who knows) and becoming a Corruption avatar to. compensate in a way. dear old moth princess, we’ve been through that.
so, now we have a fledgling avatar with no fucks left to give about anything roaming around. and he feels. hurt. in a lot of ways. but at the same time he’d always expected something like this to happen. he’s feeling a lot of things in general so for the first couple months he just acts like nothing ever happened, even if his newly gained confidence makes him look like an entirely different person. he dies his little jobs, tends to his little plants, has his little feedings, goes to his little social gatherings (bonus info if you’ve heard me ramble about the last couple years before this man died. essentially he was not having a good time at these events), and in one of those gatherings he runs into Mordechai.
and that whole thing is so funny in my brain, even if I don’t have a single coherent thought about it. basically Barnabas greets him like he’s just seen him yesterday and goes oh here’s your money btw :D (my headcanon is that he actually had the money to pay that little debt all along, the dumbass just decided he didn’t want to. which ties to issues with the lack of control over himself and his life that are part of the bonus info), all while Mordechai is just standing there like ??????????
at some point, of course, he has to run into Jonah too. and that’s when Barnabas realises that huh, he’s far less hurt and angry than he’d thought. literally all he can feel is glad that Jonah’s doing ok. again, barely any fucks given. he’d been avoiding Jonah because. it was hard to think of seeing him and feeling the sorrow he’d imagined he’d feel but. nothing. and Jonah, not having realised Barnabas was alive (not having Looked, as he hadn’t Looked at him in years), is a little bit Confused. and confused means curious, so they end up talking. eventually. it’s pretty awkward tbh, with the whole Situation and Jonah not being all that fond of the Rot, but soon enough it feels almost like none of that had happened. and it’s. weird. for both of them. but it’s nice to see each other doing well after literal years without talking so.
so now. this rb comes from what is by far the most horribly self-indulgent part of this au. another headcanon of mine is, when the institute was but a dream in Jonah’s little head, he’d offered Barnabas to work with him. but back then Barnabas hadn’t even entertained the idea of believing in the supernatural. it wasn’t real, and if it was he didn’t care. now tho things are a little but different aren’t they. so he shows up at the institute one day like hey Jonah my darling my sweetheart love of my life :D is that offer still standing :D just out of curiosity :D and out if curiosity Jonah ends up letting him stay (bc tbh I doubt Mordechai would give two shits about Barnabas or what he does once he’s been paid what he’s owed).
so one day let’s say some other avatars attack either the institute or just Jonah himself as he’s doing his thing. and Barnabas happens to be there for it. and he just absolutely rocks their shit. fills them up with bugs. gives them every disease ever. and that’s when Jonah realises that oh that’s right. this guy is a whole ass avatar. who serves the fear of disease. and could give me every disease ever whenever he wanted. hey that’s a little bit scary! and also a little bit hot! but of course Barnabas would sooner kill himself and all of his bugs (little ones <3) before hurting Jonah.
years later Jonah tells Barnabas about the whole ritual plan, expecting Barnabas to be at least a little bit unsure about it, but, again, Barnabas has very little to care about. as long as he can keep his loved ones safe the rest of the world can go fuck itself. not like the world has ever done anything for him anyway.
now if I get really really self-indulgent with this it can turn into a All of jonahbarnshawe lives until the modern day au. cue in the most toxic and also the sweetest old man yaoi you’ve ever seen in your life. and some Mordechai/Barnabas (but if I get into lonebones self-indulgence I will never shut up and this will become even worse (which is very much possible, believe me)), and lots of general chaos.
so anyway that’s most of it! I’m not proofreading this shit I’m far too lazy and it’s bad anyway so I’m just going to leave before I get killed with hammers bye :D
sometimes, I feel weird about taking Jonathan Fanshawe, one of the few men who managed to escape Jonah, and making up his story in such a way that it turns out that he didn’t actually manage to do that. and then I realize how hot and cool it would be if Jonathan only thought that severing ties with Jonah would be enough to save him. if Jonathan’s hope that he could resist the natural disaster that Jonah is was just his naivety. if Jonah was more like a plague than a person to everyone around him – if you linger around him, you are as good as dead; there is no way to stop the progression of that illness once it touched you. no way to get out of the downward spiral of otherworldly horrors and madness if you were careless enough to let that charming handsome man lead you to the first steps of it. how fitting would it be if everything dear to Jonah rotted under his touch, first against his will, then for his entertainment. and I calm down ❤️
to add to this. this is why I occasionally enjoy corruption!Jonah. I don’t think it makes that much sense for him on a personal level (yes, he is lonely, but I think it’s not the sort of lonely that makes you accept the Rot), but it makes sense from the perspective of his interactions with everyone around him. he literally corrupts everything and everyone
so normal about dehumanization of Jonah by his peers – both dehumanization as in seeing him as less than and dehumanization as in making him into a godlike figure. very very normal about the latter specificly. don’t ask me about that because I’d have nothing to say. because I’m so normal
sometimes, I feel weird about taking Jonathan Fanshawe, one of the few men who managed to escape Jonah, and making up his story in such a way that it turns out that he didn’t actually manage to do that. and then I realize how hot and cool it would be if Jonathan only thought that severing ties with Jonah would be enough to save him. if Jonathan’s hope that he could resist the natural disaster that Jonah is was just his naivety. if Jonah was more like a plague than a person to everyone around him – if you linger around him, you are as good as dead; there is no way to stop the progression of that illness once it touched you. no way to get out of the downward spiral of otherworldly horrors and madness if you were careless enough to let that charming handsome man lead you to the first steps of it. how fitting would it be if everything dear to Jonah rotted under his touch, first against his will, then for his entertainment. and I calm down ❤️
Respectfully, but I have a completely different opinion as to why Jon keeps calling Elias “Jonah” in the last season as I feel like most of the je fandom on tumblr.
So like, for me, Jon is SUPER Eye. He always was, I feel like he was even more suited towards the Eye than Jonah, he’s more after the concept of knowledge itself than after the goal of using the Eye to defeat Death and reign all-powerful.
So, when Jon keeps calling him “Jonah” I don’t think it’s to distance the both of them, to deny the man he knew as Elias is now their enemy and has to be defeated at all costs. I just don’t feel like it works with Jon’s character, it just feels… Wrong, to me, to have him be so firmly in denial and never have it be solved.
I think instead, he’s using that name because it’s the truth. Using someone’s real name, acknowledging their real past and accepting it, is more important to him than anything. He’s seen behind the curtain; he’s seen Elias’ real self, secret identity, revealed a mystery and gorged himself on knowing parts of his story and the reason why he became like that. He’s not going to go back to using a borrowed name, because it’s not the truth, it’s someone else, it’s a pretense and an act. “Elias Bouchard” is someone he thought he knew, yes, his boss who was nice but kind of useless, the normal guy with all the edges softened down. Jonah Magnus is who he actually interacted with, who he admired, the one who is so irritating and mysterious but has a grander purpose, the one who parallels him in so many ways and feeds his obsession for the Eye and his powers, the one who is a monster too and accepts it, the one who tells Jon “It’s fine. What does it even mean to be human?”
It’s, to me, acknowledging Elias’ real identity as a body-hopping monster and loving him anyways.
I definitely missed the anniversary, but it’s been over a year since I listened to tma and about a year since I admitted that I am obsessed with Jonah Magnus. I am yet to get rid of him, and I’m quite happy about that. I’m not as active here as I would like to be but I’m still very comfortable with the niche I occupy in this fandom :) and not to be sappy but I’m thankful for all the wonderful people that I’ve met here. thanks for being my friends, that’s very nice of you
[ID: Magnus Archives fanart looking down on Jon Sims from a high perspective. He is a thin brown man sitting in his dim office and looking upward. The only light comes from a spiky halo around his head which casts him in warm yellow light. End ID]
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