Anyway literally no line makes me go more insane than “The Chosen one is simply that… Someone I chose.” the INTIMACY, the ROMANCE, the PURPOSEFULNESS OF IT ALL. No, Jon; I don’t believe in any other fate than the one I make; and I decided you’d be part of mine.
Another sketch drop. Have a slutty & drugged young Jonah attending a party with wealthy men, regency au with Jon getting them a cat to fix Jonah, another au and them just being sweet
I hate how everyone decides to call Elias/Jonah etc. someone who lacks empathy. When the whole thing about TMA is that there are people who feel so hard that those feelings (though negative) themselves grant the person in question super human powers. Also the process of taking and reading statements requires you to feel what the statement giver goes through in order for the fear to be fed. I could argue that he feels everything too much.
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elias-rights:
Mm, have you read the one-shot “Cactus Tree” by blue_blue_electricblue on AO3? I think it takes a similar approach to his characterisation, positing that Jonah does love all the people he betrays but simply loves being alive more, and I liked how it was written.
But to tackle the main point, yeah, it feels to me like people are attempting to reach a definition of humanity that excludes him by any means possible. I’ve seen a lot of short-sighted discourse about which characters are “the most human”, and it seems very silly to use love or empathy as parts of that definition, not only because real-life people often have low empathy or just don’t love easily or at all, but also because Jane Prentiss is right there.
Jonah can be hyperempathetic or be a low-empathy king, and this has no bearing on how “human” he is. To argue otherwise is a disservice to people with low or no empathy, and also just misses the point of the very nuanced discussions of humanity and lack thereof in the podcast.
one has to imagine that jonah magnus, who did his bookkeeping by hand for centuries (and loved it), lost his mind when computerized spreadsheets dropped. he’s using ctrl + f to expatiate finding flaws in budgeting write ups so he can send a vaguely threatening interoffice memo.
Puts on clown nose guys I’m throwing wings onto characters again
anyways. Lonely Avatar Barnabas. Would be so cruel if he were immortal or like. Akin to immortal,,, they watch as Jonah seem to be unaffected by their death,,, as he swaps from body to body,, watches as she simply moves on like she didn’t care,,, and he could recognize Jonah’s eyes /anywhere/ even as they started losing the green and olive hues and
And Jonah simply doesn’t recognize Barnabas
Anyways I’m going through HEAVY brainrot of them oliver, orphy, if you see this neither of you are helping at all if anything you both have so much good brainworms of them thankyou for the food
Nice post! Unfortunately, you referred to Jonah Magnus as a “capitalist” when he canonically runs a nonprofit research organisation, so I’m going to be sending you to the torture pit now.
A huge appeal of jonelias to me is that the both of them are genuinely just unlikeable people. Theyre both sticks in the mud with superiority complexes who spend far far too much of their lives thinking about work. Jon is abrasive and rude to literally everyone while elias is bland and speaks in middle manager talk that is just polite enough you feel dumb getting mad at but you know its all a mask
Nobody wants to be around them and once people get over the shock of either of them dating anyone it makes perfect sense the two most insufferable people at the institute would like each other. All they talk about with each other is work and they *like* it that way. Absolute freaks
Oh yeah and all the spooky shit. Everyone in the institute thinks its a myth either of them blink
