Working for the Knife really do be a jonathan sims songs. in many ways.
s1 jon goes to an audio equipment repair shop after trying to record the same statement 9 times but the files keep getting corrupted
the repair guy sees there’s nothing wrong with the audio equipment and jokes that the audio distortions ‘must be ghosts’
jon denies it a little too vehemently.
– catalyst of the story is the death of someone and the person filling their job position
– conflict at least partially revolves around confirming the suspicions over who killed the person who died before the story began
– protagonist is an academic of sorts
– protagonist goes on a paranoia spiral
–themes of not knowing who to trust, suspect everyone, search for answers
– HEAVY themes of self sacrifice
– ghosts
– intervention/ intervention-esque confrontations where people ask the protagonist to stop harassing everyone around them
– nearly all of the protagonist’s friends end up dead by the end
– antagonist is very interested in a crown of some sort
– story ends with protagonist successfully killing antagonist, but in a way where he sacrifices himself right in front of his boyfriend/‘best friend’
–boyfriend/'best friend’ reacts to that with 'well then I’ll gladly die too!’
–protagonist would rather that boyfriend didn’t die.
–sad sad tragic tragic cry forever ending
absolutely devastating how everyone’s insistence that jon stops taking live statements from people just makes him more dependent on the written ones, to the point where whenever he leaves the institute he needs people to constantly send him statements (because he can’t just feed on the locals)
absolutely devastating how jon’s desperate attempt at avoiding losing his humanity directly leads to him kickstarting the apocolypse. jon’s complete dependance on the written statements is what elias was relying on. taking live statements would have prevented anyone literally putting words into jon’s mouth.
had he just been a little less committed to maintaining his humanity– had he had a little less sympathy or concern for those he had to feed on– he wouldn’t have been able to complete the ritual.
Working for the Knife really do be a jonathan sims songs. in many ways.
im the opposite of jonathan sims head archivist of the magnus institute because my #1 favorite childhood book that I forced my two living parents to read to me a hundred times is the one where the spider gets all his food stolen
rip tim stoker but if I was mad at my boss for stalking me and three other people on suspicions that one of us is a violent murderer, and then we found out that TWO of us were violent murderers, not only would I not be mad at him anymore but I’d be thanking him for his service
btw THIS Is what I mean when I say elias has such strong claudius vibes
ik I said in the tags of that other post that elias treats jon the way claudius treats laertes but it’s so.
it’s just- the way they encourage and gently guide them to lean into their impulses to make increasingly destructive decisions