The fact that Jonah ‘Thanatophobia’ Magnus double dog dares someone to kill him in cold blood not once but twice in the show and not only succeeds but makes it look incredibly hot by his sheer justified confidence in his people skills…
i think the truest form for jonah pre-fears would be of someone who could be broadly classified as a good person, with a penchant for selfishness and an empathy nearing at absolute zero, obsessive about his interest and kind of a nerd. someone who definitely prizes having the upper hand in social circles and conversations as a safeguard measure, not necessarily for malicious reasons (although he does kinda enjoy that), but mostly because he’s secretive of himself and does not like being perceived outside of his control. at the same time, someone who thinks deeply about the world around him and what it means and who seeks answers both because of an innate inquisitiveness and because to know something is to understand its meaning and purpose, and to understand its purpose is to know how to insert oneself in it to the best degree
it’s kinda crazy how like. 90% of the people who interact with jonah as a character completely skip over the sentence I first attempted prevention but the cause seemed hopeless. paying heed to his own words (which are to be held true or the statement wouldn’t have been caught on tape) he did not decide to seek power when he first discovered them (he felt curiosity and fear); nor he did so when his companions became entangled with one of the Entities; NOR when the Rituals became an active threat. he was curious, he studied them, he attempted prevention. discussing privilege around jonah is like kicking a dead horse and I shall never go there but it’s insane to me how his first instinct (or choice, either way) was not to exploit the powers to his gain and to bring the Change into the world itself but to stop it from happening and only inverted his route upon discovering that his crusade was meaningless, that there was no hope for any concrete damage control. this is why I will always, always object to any conception of jonah magnus that doesn’t start with him as a good person. sorry.
can i say something. the capitalist/corporate allegory elias bouchard thing doesn’t really work for me because. well i genuinely don’t think the archives staff is oppressed enough… it’s a hostage situation, they’re not being worked to death. both tim and melanie entirely stop doing their jobs and there are no personal consequences as long as they don’t try to actively quit. when he finally ‘disciplines’ melanie, and while that scene does have that specific kind of theatricality to it (i believe your performance has been satisfactory!), the psychological torture isn’t intended to cow her back into being a good little employee, he’s instructing her to not get in his way. there isn’t a compelling story of labour exploitation here for me even though the worldbuilding surrounding the institute (read: the eye) lends itself very nicely to that kind of thing, especially the surveillance aspect of it—but the fear of being watched within the institute is never interrogated further than just a general, nebulous sense of unease. that power isn’t being exercised by elias as a mode of authoritarian control tactics to increase worker productivity or whatever, he literally does nottt care about all that, he just wants to end the world. like, you have to give me something more than “he’s their evil boss”, for me to be interested in this reading of the character.
Trans Jonah is a crazy headcanon because he named himself Jonah. Jonah who prayed for release from the belly of the whale vs Jonah who clawed his way out by himself (but still couldn’t exempt himself from the vicious laws that rule his world). He named himself Jonah. He. Jonah <3
sorry but I fundamentally disagree with any au or alternative situation or like. whatever that has jonah reconsider or deviate from his plans because of his attraction or love for jon (not even as “don’t want to end the world anymore”, but any significant adjustment or alteration [even in the negative] made specifically to include his fondness for jon in the picture). jonah has planned this for 200 years and once set on a course of action has pushed himself to sacrifice most of the people who had meant something to him in the first place. i highly doubt he held no ounce of affection for them (in his own words!!!), and I find it rather insulting to think that love could change that. im sorry but for some people this is just not a top priority lol
I have no idea what they put in Jonah Magnus to make him so popping as a character but I think it has to do with him hitting the sweet spot where his actions cannot be traced back to a Terrible Event but he wasn’t Born Evil either.
Re: your tags: I think there's a unique sort of... loneliness in being confronted with evidence that very very strongly suggests a certain philosophical conclusion that has virtually no contemporary support. The inescapability of suffering under the Fears, the, well, absurdity of human life being just grass for eldritch monsters to graze on, is so antithetical to Enlightenment and Modern ideals of progress and reason/anthropocentrism. Idk how well I'm making my point here.
nonono you’re absolutely right!!! Like, I made a joke multiple times that Dostoevsky hadn’t even started writing Crime and Punishment when Jonah was going through the existential horror torture chamber and it must have felt so. alienating to be so distant from everyone’s perception of reality (more than he already felt im sure. autistic jonah magnus based on nothing longcon always and forever idc) and not to have any framework of reference to work his thoughts and feelings through. damn. being emotional about jonah magnus hour fr
jonathan fanshawe saw idk how many children die and im sure him and jonah had a great-inquisitor-esque dialogue at least ONCE on universal unfairness that went nowhere but that was a pivotal point in jonah’s character arc. believe me i was there (in the walls)
jonah/fanshawe is my favorite niche paring just because it allows me to project a caligula-scipio situationship onto them.
my interpretation (based on vibes) of why jonah asked him to be millbank’s doctor is of course that he wanted jonathan by his side for the watcher’s crown. my interpretation (based on even MORE vibes) of why jonah sent him to albrecht is that he wanted jonathan to come to terms with the inherent hopelessness of his profession (in particular) and of the human condition (in general). of course he could have TOLD him but we’re talking abt jonah magnus. showing him a man covered in eyeballs was as straightforward as he could get (and probably counted as flirting tbh)
By the way, Elias bottoms for Peter in exchange for funding. This is funny because he presents himself as being in charge and for a man to get fucked by another man is inherently demeaning. It’s ok for me to say this because Elias isn’t one of the good normal gays like Jon and Martin. I am such a good gay rights activist <3
Jonah Magnus is a grown man whose drive, intelligence, and strength of will I admire, but that doesn’t mean I can’t wrap him up in a blanket and give him a warm drink from time to time.
“He saw a hopeless reality and resolved to reforge the world and rebirth himself into a god just so he wouldn’t be hurt even if it seemed as impossible as defying gravity itself, which (even if I would never hurt people in real life for my goals) is a beautiful act of rebellion against the natural order, and his struggle against impossible odds is incredibly inspiring” and “he must be in constant unaddressed abject fear that he intellectualizes to the point of barely feeling anymore” are two thoughts that can coexist.
I do wish we’d get Jonah’s statement, but I think it’s neat that nearly everything that we know about him we get from him*. the “statements” that he gave (like mag 40, 160) were actually his own words devoid of the Beholding’s influence, and the ones that he read out (92, 120) were his own intentional picks. even in Elias’s statement, Jonah is in control. this is a nice detail for a character so mindful of his image
* some notable exceptions are letters from his old pen pals, but even then, he allows Jon to read them, so I would still count that as him being in control
choosing to let Barnabas die was definitely a point of no return to Jonah. his letter asks him if he is ready to follow his goals now, if he is ready to leave behind his emotional attachments, his sense of duty, and other obstacles. there really wasn’t any other choice he could’ve made; if he had chosen to save Barnabas, there would be no such person as Jonah Magnus. Jonah, who saves Barnabas, is Jonah, who is not determined enough to follow through with his plans
it does seem like this could’ve been not the first time Barnabas got himself into trouble and went to Jonah for help… and Jonah did look out for him, he warned Barnabas about Mordechai even though he had no reason to try to protect him, but Barnabas still didn’t listen to him. between that and gambling, he seems to enjoy risk-taking behaviours
and maybe previously Jonah would’ve tried to help him anyway. maybe because they had known each other for a long time, because he felt responsible for Barnabas in some way, because he loved him. still loves him, probably, or at least he’s fond of him; why keep his bones after all that time, after he changed locations from Edinburgh to London, even? it could be to just remind himself that can’t turn back now, but it also could be sentimentality. probably both
but that was such a good opportunity to just… not. the only opportunity he will ever get. I wonder when he hesitated. was it when he just noticed the letter? did he make up his mind on the spot, knowing that he has to give up Barnabas now or he will never be able to? or did he try to save him first, went to Mordechai to ask him to release Barnabas? was it Mordechai who asked him how long he would let this continue?
I subscribe to (my mutual’s) vision of jonahbas as roommates in boarding school… Jonah escaped his family to live as a man (🏳⚧) and met Barnabas. in that way, Barnabas would be the first witness of Jonah Magnus, the man, and also the beginning of Jonah Magnus, the king of the ruined world. Jonah sacrificed him to himself
the emphasis Elias places on “bad luck” and telling people it was not their fault is so interesting to me ESPECIALLY because of the contrast between it and the way he prides himself with being in control all the time “i did everything because i wished to”. one could think that something not being your fault would lift a weight off your shoulders right?
except it isn’t, not really, in a sense it only makes things worse because that way you can only think yourself as the victim, while if things go wrong but you were the perpetrator… of course there’s guilt and anger but you’re also in control.
this also ties, imho, with the fact Elias never once seems to think in terms of fairness or unfairness [as Peter does: “this isn’t fair!”], not even when Jon kills him, not even when he discovers all his efforts at the end of the day were… well, not in vain but almost.
if the world rotates about malevolent forces that wish you harm of course the luck you’re gonna have is most likely bad, that’s just the way things are. which means that the only way to place yourself above that bad luck, above pain and fear, is to be in control -of yourself, of others, of the world- all the time.
from this to ‘i’m gonna destroy the world and reshape it to my own gain’, well… i’d say the path is pretty straightforward.
i don’t know if this needs to be said but people often overlook the second part of his, “why does a man seek to destroy the world?"—"for immortality and power” when talking about jonah’s motivations. sure, he calls death ‘the last and greatest terror’ but everything else we hear from him points towards a lifelong desire of wanting to be in control, which is why in 92 he unnecessarily begins his confession with “i have done everything because i wished to”. and i think that distinction between the fear of death and the need for control is important because people bring up his reasoning of 'what i considered an inevitable transformation’ when talking about why he did all that. and it may have begun as such, but he and gertrude also figured out that the rituals were too flawed to work anyway. when he hires jon as head archivist that sense of urgency is just not there, it was no longer a proper 'race’ to conduct your own ritual, he did not have to immediately end the world.
what i’m saying is that he caused the apocalypse because he was never going to be happy with the world as it was. because the horror in the magnus archives universe operates on one basic tenet - that your life can be destroyed at any time, through absolutely no fault of your own.
MAG 106 - “A Matter of Perspective” // MAG 118 - “Stranger and Stranger” // MAG 160 - “The Eye Opens” // MAG 117 - “Testament”
the “dark and horrible reality” of the world, and in turn the specific existential dread that grips him is that of chance. to be told that you did nothing blameworthy inspires a specific feeling of powerlessness—that if you didn’t do anything wrong, there is nothing you can do, no personal behaviour you can correct to stop it from happening again. and he understands this quite well, it’s in the way whenever he really wants to twist the knife he tells them it was luck, but that doesn’t comfort you does it!
which is why the use of “freedom” here is very telling. in their universe you are always going to be a victim of the cruel caprice of gods, that in itself is a blow against all notions of personal agency and control. how can you be truly free when malevolent cosmic forces govern the world and can ruin your life without warning at any time? and 160 is above all, an attempt at escaping the grasp of the fears entirely. it’s not just about death, it’s about wanting to be in charge so no threat can touch him again and in their world you can only achieve that by causing the apocalypse. he will be free (or, at least the closest thing to being free in their world) and it will be at the expense of the entire world.
talking about jonah is hard because i’m aware the need for control thing is written to be egoism and his actions are meant to be interpreted as hubris (92 is about him. and the title is from ozymandias like they could not make it more obvious) so any favourable interpretation of him is running into the whole slight problem of oh well they wanted you to hate that guy actually. unforch i think he was funny and correct for all that. so.
another thing about elias is that people keep twisting themselves into knots to explain why he absolutely was a mediocre looking balding middle manager and love and light to everyone’s headcanons but personally if i had asenath waite body hopping powers i simply would go for conventionally attractive hosts because why wouldn’t you??? beauty is a social construct alright and most people would prefer to be on top of the social ladder. do you think jonah wasn’t carefully picking replacement bodies based on a number of social factors. what i do actually like instead is the headcanon that his original form was not particularly handsome. at all. and that’s because this is the description of count magnus in the m. r. james short story he (and mag 23) is named after
The portrait of this Magnus de la Gardie was one of the best in the house, and Mr. Wraxall studied it with no little interest after his day’s work. He gives no detailed description of it, but I gather that the face impressed him rather by its power than by its beauty or goodness; in fact, he writes that Count Magnus was an almost phenomenally ugly man.
