concept: 8 year old jonathan sims finds a book containing not Mr Spider, but John Doe malevolent instead.
john now has to learn humanity not from a caustic adult that can give as good as he’s given, but by bullying an autistic child to PLEASE stop wandering into construction sites and shit im in your body too holy shit we’re going to get killed
(it still starts with John killing Jon’s bully, but thankfully no one would ever believe the 8 year old killed a grown ass adult, so they chalk it up to ‘something traumatic happened here that jon doesnt want to remember’)
i imagine John’s character growth would be like:
- “god shut up you little fuck i hate you”
- *baby jon tears*
- “oh fuck time to bring out the Soothing Voice instead”
- *baby jon is bullied and neglected*
- “oh FUCK this body i’m in is. so fucking fragile. he’s crying again. what the fuck. is this mortality???”
- *baby jon voice* “hi this is my other dad he’s a huge fucking asshole but he taught me swears and says anyone who’s mean to me will meet a horrible fate eventually. I told him that wasn’t very nice tho.”
28 years in the future, still trying to find out what John is (which was sorta backburnered while jon was a child), Jonathan Sims applies to the magnus institute. Elias takes one look in his head and has a panic attack.
this could actually go two ways:
1) jonah sees an eldrich fucking god squatting there who is VERY protective, or
2) jonah can’t look at all because jon is blind and unwittingly hires him anyway with NO FUCKING IDEA that jon is far closer to anything that could be considered an “avatar” than anyone in jonah’s world