your soulmate is the man you hate. you cant be with him but you need to be with him. you understand him perfectly and you wish you didn’t. you want to kill him but you don’t think you’ll be able to live without him
it’s the way you would tend a calf destined for veal but fr the way early-season elias dotes on jon… fusses over his habits. oh, he’s not smoking again, is he? jon, please, you look like a mummy you need sleep. jon, you’ll need statements while you’re gone, to sustain yourself. how did you know that? that’s remarkable. you’re doing so well. my archivist.
i’m not generally a fan of soulmate aus but magverse has really appealing mechanics for executing them in the most malevolent way possible… pov the mother of puppets has cocooned you together with your red string of fate… you never wanted this, no. but i’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. in a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on… do you love him? i don’t know. i believe he is my fate.
Thanks a lot for the ask Rovent, it’s a great pick! From those.
5. What work are you most proud of (regardless of likes/reblogs)?
I’m torn between a few, as I guess I’m proud of different works for different reasons, but the one I really felt like a bit of an achievement and I’m still equally pleased with has to be my burning Jonelias piece.
I really missed the golden era on that ship, and I don’t even like the fandom that much… But I remain just as proud of this piece as I was then. I asked for some feedback to do Jon’s locks and felt like I learned a lot.
It was also my first time drawing people kissing. Ever. How very ace of me lol
Jon re-ends the world. Destroys most of it, really, after he consumes the entities/becomes them/Becomes. Then he rebuilds. He intends to make the people he cares for happy, which includes himself, so he does not bring Peter Lukas back. Martin’s mother does not get sick, and she is good enough. Mary Keay unexpectedly dies during the birth of her son, and Eric Delano raises him. Michael Shelley and Helen Richardson remain themselves, untwisted. He makes many changes, but mostly keeps things the same.
As for himself, he creates a hidden place. Hidden from ordinary eyes, anyways; he can See everything now.
This place he creates is a field, and a forest, with a river in it. It’s nice. He relaxes, Knowing nothing will sneak up on him, Knowing nothing unexpected will ever happen again. He Knows everything, and everything is as it should be.
Well.
There is one problem, he thinks, curled up on his ‘bed’, a mostly flat area of the cave he deigns as his home, covered in created furs and blankets and long scrawls of paper that he summons when he sleeps and cannot suppress the instinct to write down everything.
He has no anchors. This has rendered him some sort of beast-thing, solid to the touch but rendered out of infinitely dark ink, all fur, antlers, strong paws and sharp claws and fangs, and Eyes like storms and fires and death and webs, on him and around him. One night (one of the 3.675 hours of sleep he has gotten since he reincarnated himself), he was startled awake by a sudden sound, and had opened every Eye he had, giving himself a painful migraine for what was just a branch falling from a tree during high winds.
There are very few solutions to this problem. Martin is not the Martin he knew, and besides he does not want to drag him into this. Nobody on this Earth has been touched by the Fears, and if he can help it, nobody ever will be. Passive fear of being watched and spiders and death is more than enough for him. He would love a statement, but nobody alive remembers enough to give him one.
Of course, there is always Jonah.
Jon has Known since he began reshaping the world that Jonah would not be bested by his efforts to remove the memories of the apocalypse. Besides, he much prefers a world without Jonah in it (and when the parts of himself that are very firmly Beholding and Archives tell him this is a Lie, he vehemently refuses it.)
Although, for all he’d done to Jon, he also Knows that Jonah would be the only one who could truly understand him.
Those are his second and third problems with finding someone he used to know and asking them to help him. They would never understand; and they would not be Jonah. They wouldn’t be the Pupil, the Heart - arguably Jon’s Heart now that he’s also the Eye. That thought in particular both calms him and furthers the storm in his mind.
He Knows he needs an anchor, much as he tries to deny it. He doesn’t know how to handle this much power, and every day he grows more unstable, his internal Archive growing disorganised and himself unstable. Jonah - even if Jon only talks to him once, to gain this information, even if Jon kills him again after - Jonah is the only one who can tell him. Jonah made him, even if he didn’t make him this. Jonah is the only one.
Ultimately he/the Eye/the Archive lasts a month and a half without him.
On the edges of the forest he situates a cabin. He doesn’t care about how there is electricity or running water or heating; he orders it to be so, and it is.
Then he presses into his/the Eye’s memory and Looks for Jonah. Every single scrap he can find, coalescing it into a concept, and turning this concept into a mindscape, and he/the Flesh creates a body for this mindscape, and he puts the concept/mindscape/body/Jonah in the living room, lying on the sofa, and he waits. Observes.
Jonah (and it is Jonah, Jon made sure to give him his original body) is asleep, at first. This is fine. Jon can tell the body he/the Flesh made is alive. Heart beats. Breathing, rhythmic, calm. Muscle twitch, reflexive. Neuron fires once, twice, millions, as the concept/mindscape/Jonah settles into his new body, becomes familiar. Chemical flickers, transports. Anxious, confused, groggy. Awake. Hands, arms, tense, sitting up. Jonah blinks, and rubs his eyes, and says “Jon?”
Jon doesn’t stop Looking, because he doesn’t see a reason to, but he stands and begins to make his way towards the cottage before remembering that he can simply Lie to the world, tell it he is already there, and make that True. He stands on his hind legs, uncomfortable, pushes open the front door, pun in that.
Jonah startles. Confused, curious at his Archive’s new form, anxious, did he die, did Jon kill him?
“Yes.” Jon says from a tape recorder on the table. There is no point clarifying Jonah’s question; they both Know.
Jonah attempts to push into his mind. Jon stops him, effortless. He does not explain that there is far too much information for him to handle, far too much information for Jon, does not explain that he needs Jonah’s help. Jonah doesn’t ask. Jon approaches him.
Chemical fire. Sympathetic nervous system activates, fight or flight, as Jonah notices Jon’s teeth. Jon smiles, although it mostly looks like he/the Hunt is baring his teeth, ready for a fight. Muscles tense. Heartrate increases. Breathing speeds up. Jon does not stop approaching. Jonah does not ask him to; he wants to, Jon Knows this without even trying, but he does not.
Jon climbs onto the sofa and carefully places his head on Jonah’s lap. Mostly soft fabric against his cheek. The Heart blinks a little, surprise, confusion. Chemical response; endorphin release, feels like fondness. Likens Jon to a cat. Jon laughs; Jonah is “privately” amused. Jonah moves his hand down to pet him.
The moment they make skin on skin contact Jon’s mind goes completely silent. He doesn’t know how Jonah’s done that, and isn’t sure he needs to right now.
“Oh,” he says, from the tape recorder still. And then “oh,” again, quieter, now that he has the space to feel relief, feel the migraine he didn’t realise he had fading.
There is no more rapid information intake, no more constant attempts to discard useless information and primarily failing due to his purpose/existence as the Archive/the Beholding. Jon does not Notice the way he begins purring, the way his tail begins flicking in a happy way, the way Jonah is even more fond of him for all of these things. He observes them, independent from his nature as the Archive, and catalogues them easily. He sighs, relaxes. Jonah kisses him on the forehead and it’s so soft, so affectionate, that Jon doesn’t even notice that that’s what he did, simply cataloguing it away with everything else until a couple seconds after the fact. He frowns, a little.
“You need to relax, Jon. It’s okay. You’ve done very well for us.”
It is so nice to be told that. Jon whines in the back of his throat. Something feels painful. His stomach? He briefly checks but no, his body is fine. Jonah laughs, and wipes away Jon’s unnoticed tears, not necessarily joy or sadness, just emotion. Then, almost polite in the way he sticks to the edges of Jon’s frayed and tired mind/Archive, informs him that his tears look like streams of stars.
Jon shifts so that he can bury his face into Jonah’s chest. He catalogues it all; the way the fabric feels against his face, the way that Jonah smells, the way his hands run through Jon’s fur, the way Jonah smiles, the way that Jonah presses their foreheads together so that he can give full clarity to the Knowledge that Jonah is so, so proud of him. Jon sobs.
“I killed you,” he whispers. His voice is hoarse with tears and static.
“I know.” Jonah says, and there is fear in that, and Jon takes it without really thinking. Jonah seems happy about it, though. “But you brought me back.”
“I-” Jon doesn’t want to admit it. He really doesn’t. Jonah doesn’t make him say it, either, doesn’t Look in Jon’s internal Archive for it. He just waits. “I needed you.”
“Why?” Jonah says, quiet and gentle. It’s not cruel, not asked to push Jon, and it soothes Jon’s tears. Jonah genuinely doesn’t understand why Jon would need him, now that Jon is Truly all powerful. It is a rare moment, and Jon takes a moment to Archive it properly.
“You’re the only one who understands me. The-” Jon takes a deep breath, not wanting to start crying again. “Nobody I knew, before, would’ve wanted me, like this. But, you…”
Jonah doesn’t say anything. He just keeps petting Jon, and it is quiet, a cool balm to his exhausted mind after the storm that was Knowing everything. Jon closes his eyes, and his Eyes, and finally, finally falls asleep.
(When Jon wakes up, he is in bed. He opens some Eyes and finds Jonah in the kitchen, making breakfast, humming a song Jon could identify but doesn’t. When he checks his Archives for any pertinent information from his dreams, he instead finds some well filed Information, detailing how, exactly, he should get used to Seeing everything, and some hypotheses on how, if he intends to, to return to his human form.
“Thank you.” he says from a tape recorder spawned onto the kitchen side. Jonah smiles.
“I love you too, Jon,” all gentle and fond. Jon doesn’t bother examining what it means that Jonah has responded with that, as though there’s any need, as though they don’t both already Know, as though Jon won’t keep ignoring it and Jonah won’t keep making him confront it. He just closes his Eyes and goes back to sleep.)
this headline i just saw is making me lose it. searching ‘dracula’ on google images and scrolling the results for an hour every morning nodding solemnly at each pic like they’re motivational quotes before clocking into work
I feel like I need to tell everyone how brilliantly the Globe incorporated a deaf Gildenstern into the 2018 Hamlet and then force all of you to watch it
ok, so Gildenstern is played by a deaf actor, Nadia Nadarajah. he* signs all his lines, and either Rosencratz interprets for him, or the person he’s talking to says something that makes it obvious what he just said, depending. how each character reacts to Gildenstern is completely in-character and often hilarious
Claudius and Gertrude are intensely awkward around Gildenstern. they obviously don’t know BSL so they just gesture emphatically but aimlessly when they talk.
Hamlet, who of course is friends with R&G, *does* know BSL. he starts off by signing fluently whenever he’s talking to them but, as his distrust of them grows, he signs less and less until he’s only signing the equivalent of “fuck off” whenever he talks
Polonius just shouts really loud whenever he tries to talk to Gildenstern
it’s all brilliant and adds another layer of humor and pathos and you should all watch it
*casting at the Globe right now is gender neutral so I’m just going to use the character’s pronouns
guys I know I’m wittering on about this but the thing I want to emphasize is that there is no tokenism here. they didn’t just shove a deaf actor into a speaking role so they could pat themselves on the back about how progressive they are. they went to the effort of fully integrating Nadarajah’s deafness into the story so that it not only fit organically within the narrative but actually enhanced it. watching Hamlet’s signing disintegrate as his trust in R&G disintegrates adds a depth to that storyline I’ve never seen before. Claudius has exactly the awkwardness of someone who thinks of himself as a good person and therefore thinks he’s being kind and generous with his accommodations for disability, but has never even once actually asked a disabled person what they need, which is so on-point for his character it hurts.
I know Michelle Terry gets a lot of hate mail for her policy of race-, gender-, and disability-blind casting, but fuck all those people. long may that policy continue.
the glenda jackson production of king lear on broadway did something similar with the Duke of Cornwall, and it was actually the best part of the play, imo. because when Cornwall was speaking to Lear or to the Court, he had a sign language interpreter to speak the actual literal words aloud, but when he was talking to and conspiring with Regan, his wife, they were just signing back and forth with no translation for the audience, and it emphasized the intimacy between the two even as they turn against literally everyone else in the play, which was fantastic.
and the best part of it was, by the second half of the play, you were so used to it, that you didn’t even blink anymore when watching him and listening to the spoken words come from the interpreter - you just watched the actor playing Cornwall and let the words come from the other guy, but the guy kind of fades into the background. it didn’t hurt that the actor for Cornwall was one of the tallest on stage, and had bright red hair - it was easy to watch him, instead of his interpreter.
which is why it was so shocking and so perfect when the interpreter is the one who kills him.
See, they folded the character of the servant who kills Cornwall into the person of this character who had been such a non-entity that you almost forgot he was on stage - until you realize, no, this is another person, and he’s been here, watching all this the whole time, and he finally gets to the breaking point where he can’t stand by and translate anymore, he has to do something to stop the cruelty he’s seeing, and it’s not just a random guy who comes in for the scene and sees them blinding Gloucester, it’s the man whose been by his side for the entire play, the man who was his voice who finally has a line of his own. who finally speaks on his own behalf to say “no.”
and then, of course, he gets killed, but Cornwall dies in the same scene so it’s not like they need to get a new translator or anything. but it was the most fucking brilliant choice i’ve ever seen re: casting in a Shakespearean production, and the rest of the play pales in my memory in comparison.
the waste of potential is so tragic… im thinking of jon opening up about his weakness to elias by asking “am i still human?” to him! the very man responsible for his dehumanization! in the end it’s really *will graham voice* where else would i go? we’re both alone without each other
the jonah magnus trans hc that was popular back in 2020 really was so genius. i love to see jonah’s crawl towards immortality through a trans lens because on top of the ambition and the “to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear” of it all it’s just an interesting bargain to make with the beholding…being able to bodyhop (and probably to an extent align people’s perceptions of him as a Man) but at the same time feeding the beholding with his own fear of being outed (and the resulting social repercussion)(especially for someone who has to leverage his authority and power to stay alive because he doesn’t have horror murder superpowers like the other avatars)…the beholding in general has some fun implications for gender anyways it’s all about perception and performance after all innit. why not trans jonah
a jonelias affair that starts in s2 is so charming because this man is descending into the kind of paranoia you don’t find outside of absurdist russian samizdat literature living off cigarettes cold coffee and terror in his studio apartment sleeping on a bare mattress turning all his walls into a pepe silve corkboard meanwhile his pressed collar matching cufflink dry cleaning twice a week boss stops in every now and again to make a comment about the number of cobwebs he’s let build up in the corners before blowing his back out and leaving
picturing elias in jon’s absolutely pathetic /r/malelivingspaces apartment is a heartwarming activity to me he’s really like (mouth filling with drool) damn bitch, you really live like this?
I need to do a top 10 jonelias moments for real but honestly #1 is all of mag92 like all of it is just too good. the way that the two of them push and pull during the course of the episode…jon and elias are the two people with the most information/power in the initial confrontation, everyone else is just getting up to speed about leitner’s murder and sasha’s death but jon really does think he has something to leverage over elias in that moment before it’s maneuvered away from him…but at the same time he actually also does have the power of compulsion ! it’s not enough yet but it should be starting to scare elias a little bit!
and of course [pleasured exhalation] is just so iconic I feel like it would’ve deserved the single #1 moment alone if it wasn’t followed up by their private conversation after the thing with daisy. like. whew. elias really does just say ok everyone! if you’ll all give me and jon a moment alone im sure we have some things to discuss (actual quote) tee hee everyone get out. AND EVERYONE DOES ?! LIKE it’s honestly kind of funny that after all that they just leave him alone with elias again like not even martin is like umm no let’s go jon don’t listen to this crazy guy. hilarious. like guys did you know that after you left they had an incredibly intense conversation about the monster that jon was becoming and the nature of their twisted humanity (and then elias wrote jon a nice little return to work form kissed him on his cheek and sent him on his way)? and the PRAISE the MANIPULATION the GOADING?? jon BEGGING elias to tell him what to do??? “what are you” “I…the archivist” <-???? CRAZY!! “Am I…elias am I still human?” (vulnerable) “Jon, what does human even mean?” (in control) <- !!!! INSANE??
oh yeah i was thinking also about jon being raised by his grandmother…it’s just such a great flavor for an already repressed and uptight character, like of course those are mannerisms that come from being raised by someone old-fashioned (especially someone who explicitly resented him !! even though he acknowledges that she tried her best it was still apparent enough that it couldnt have not hurt him…)
i also like to think that jonah magnus was probably “precocious and impatient, quick to talk back, and even quicker to wander off whenever I grew bored”…i feel like they were similar in many ways right down to their childhood, two lonely guys driven by their curiosity into the arms of the unknown…
I fucking LOVE Jonah’s response to Jon’s question of whether he’s still human. It refuses to give a straight definition of humanity because he’s a chad who understands nuances and complexities. It includes Jonah himself but not what Jonah aspires to be (can still die). It’s subtle manipulation by placing Jon’s will in his hands (your will is still your own, mostly) when in MAG 160 he explicitly takes it away (your own rotten luck). It infuriatingly answers a question with a question with a tone of voice like he’s disappointed Jon even asked such a pedestrian question. King.
sorry. sorry! i know it’s been said. but how is it possible to write two characters who are so deeply connected to one another. across lifetimes, over oceans of time… you never wanted this, no. but I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. in a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. you sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see… how you turn my world, you precious thing, you starve and near exhaust me, everything i’ve done i’ve done for you… it does tickle me, that in this world of would-be occult dynasties and ageless monsters, the chosen one is simply that – someone I chose. it’s not in your blood, or your soul, or your destiny. it’s just in your own, rotten luck… with all my knowledge and intrusion i could never entirely predict you. i can feed the caterpillar and i can whisper through the chrysalis, but… what hatches, follows its own nature and is beyond me… you’ll come to love it here, in this world that we’ve created… and you do this over the course of almost six years. over two hundred episodes. by accident.
i think it’s made very obvious in canon that avatars see regular humans as being ontologically beneath them as like a ready made food source for them and their patrons
so like jonelias from peter’s perspective is like… imagine your husband came home from the delicatessen with this sad-eyed dog,
love when a dynamic is like. this would be deeply toxic for anyone else but considering the people involved this is actually far and away the healthiest option
Jon re-ends the world. Destroys most of it, really, after he consumes the entities/becomes them/Becomes. Then he rebuilds. He intends to make the people he cares for happy, which includes himself, so he does not bring Peter Lukas back. Martin’s mother does not get sick, and she is good enough. Mary Keay unexpectedly dies during the birth of her son, and Eric Delano raises him. Michael Shelley and Helen Richardson remain themselves, untwisted. He makes many changes, but mostly keeps things the same.
As for himself, he creates a hidden place. Hidden from ordinary eyes, anyways; he can See everything now.
This place he creates is a field, and a forest, with a river in it. It’s nice. He relaxes, Knowing nothing will sneak up on him, Knowing nothing unexpected will ever happen again. He Knows everything, and everything is as it should be.
Well.
There is one problem, he thinks, curled up on his ‘bed’, a mostly flat area of the cave he deigns as his home, covered in created furs and blankets and long scrawls of paper that he summons when he sleeps and cannot suppress the instinct to write down everything.
He has no anchors. This has rendered him some sort of beast-thing, solid to the touch but rendered out of infinitely dark ink, all fur, antlers, strong paws and sharp claws and fangs, and Eyes like storms and fires and death and webs, on him and around him. One night (one of the 3.675 hours of sleep he has gotten since he reincarnated himself), he was startled awake by a sudden sound, and had opened every Eye he had, giving himself a painful migraine for what was just a branch falling from a tree during high winds.
There are very few solutions to this problem. Martin is not the Martin he knew, and besides he does not want to drag him into this. Nobody on this Earth has been touched by the Fears, and if he can help it, nobody ever will be. Passive fear of being watched and spiders and death is more than enough for him. He would love a statement, but nobody alive remembers enough to give him one.
characters who view themselves as tools/weapons first and people second… characters who martyr themselves for a cause because they think that’s the only way they can be worth something… characters who push themselves past their breaking point again and again and again… characters for whom devotion and masochism are inseparable… characters whose self-sacrifice becomes self-annihilation…… what was my point again? i had a point. anyway.
“there’s no evidence this character wears sock garters and shirt stays” nothing admissible in court no but circumstantially yes and the circumstances are he’s fancy and theyre sexy
Jon re-ends the world. Destroys most of it, really, after he consumes the entities/becomes them/Becomes. Then he rebuilds. He intends to make the people he cares for happy, which includes himself, so he does not bring Peter Lukas back. Martin’s mother does not get sick, and she is good enough. Mary Keay unexpectedly dies during the birth of her son, and Eric Delano raises him. Michael Shelley and Helen Richardson remain themselves, untwisted. He makes many changes, but mostly keeps things the same.
As for himself, he creates a hidden place. Hidden from ordinary eyes, anyways; he can See everything now.
This place he creates is a field, and a forest, with a river in it. It’s nice. He relaxes, Knowing nothing will sneak up on him, Knowing nothing unexpected will ever happen again. He Knows everything, and everything is as it should be.
Well.
There is one problem, he thinks, curled up on his ‘bed’.
He has no anchors. This has rendered him some sort of beast-thing, solid to the touch but rendered out of infinitely dark ink, all fur, antlers, strong paws and sharp claws and fangs, and Eyes like storms and fires and death and webs, on him and around him. One night (one of the 3.675 hours of sleep he has gotten since he reincarnated himself), he was startled by a sudden sound, and had opened every Eye he had, giving himself a painful migraine for what was just a branch falling from a tree during high winds.
There are very few solutions to this problem. Martin is not the Martin he knew, and besides he does not want to drag him into this. Nobody on this Earth has been touched by the Fears, and if he can help it, nobody ever will be. Passive fear of being watched and spiders and death is more than enough for him. He would love a statement, but nobody alive remembers enough to give him one.
I like cruel and manipulative jonelias just as much as the next person but I have a huge soft spot for post-s2 jonelias where Jon is doing everything he can to remain on guard around Elias but keeps finding himself falling back into familiar banter, genuinely enjoying being with Elias (not with the mask Elias puts on, but with the snarky and dry-witted man Jon always liked) against his best efforts to stay distant, especially as his relationships with his assistants get more and more strained.
and in saying you loved me made things harder at best and these words changing nothing as your body remains there’s no room in this hell there’s no room in the next
Jonelias thought of the day is that Elias must come across as so stuffy and boring to those at the Institute - which, you know, very much helps hide his true nature - but as an avatar of the Eye and a man determined to avoid the End, Elias is someone whose entire being revolves around the interplay of knowledge and experiences. He’s compelled to Know it all and his efforts to avoid death invite him to Experience it all too, a fascinating combination of passive observer and, by virtue of being a 200+ year-old in search of true immortality, an active participant too. This is a man whose longevity and thirst for knowledge invites an obsession with life that contradicts the ‘Sits in his office doing nothing but spreadsheets all day’ image he’s learned to cultivate. (Though, to be clear, he does love the spreadsheets.) And I don’t just mean “obsession with life” in the sense of him avoiding the finality of death, but actually loving the act of being alive.
perpetually annoyed by character criticism that is just “is this character sympathetic? is this character relatable? does this character get an ending they ‘deserve’ (as it correlates with their own moral goodness)?” so what if they’re unsympathetic. so what if they’re unrelatable. so what if they are made suffer. so what if they’re a symbol. they’re not real! fictional characters are tools in a story, like setting, or tropes, or tone, or style, or pacing, or medium. they are a figment, a fragment. they are not human beings, and they do not exist in a real life moral framework. this is not good analysis. ask better questions.
i loooove toxic and codependent relationships in fiction. they are so narratively juicy. if they don’t even warp and mangle each other to the point they create a single, fucked up entity then what’s the point.
Jon tries so hard to hate Elias for everything he’s done, but at the end of the day he’s got some sick ass powers and kind of enjoys not being the weakest guy around anymore. He’s craved knowledge his whole life, yeah, but he’s also wanted strength.
His confidence was building in both himself and in his friends. Elias enjoyed watching him grow.
My favorite thing about S1 Jon is just how lost he is while everyone else already knows what’s up. He’s on his own mission to figure out the whole Mr Spider trauma when that’s only the tip of the Horror Iceberg
I just want Jon and Martin making their trek to the panopticon with different ideas about how the “boss battle” is gonna turn out.
Martin wants to kill Elias and Jon’s not entirely sure how to broach the topic that he has no intentions of killing Elias. Not anymore. Things have changed. He needs him.
ALT
