I love Elias ‘Jonah Magnus’ Bouchard so much. I love this 200 year old man who loves spreadsheets and passively watching horrible shit going around him; I love him for how he heard there are horrible Fears Entities in the world, had his mentor tell him 'we need to balance them out!’ whilst all their friends where picking a side and becoming horrible monsters or tragic victims and went “actually I’ll pick one and just learn how to play the game until i’m untouchable”. I love a man who was so afraid of death he decided he would just not die and then found a way to do it for decades without being found out. I love that he has all this terrifying fear power and he oftentimes uses it to know where there is cake in his institute.
He is a scholar. He is a boring boss. He is a smug evil prick who relishes into his evilness and power. He tells his employees to do admin to feel better. He sighs when he has to torture them because they keep try to kill him. He’s impressed
and hornywhen someone successfully challenges his expectations. His idea of comfort is to ask philosophical questions about humanity. He only starts to take actions in order to manipulate this one guy into being the key to his ritual and his equal.I love a man who realized all the rituals meant nothing, went 'very well’ and instead of like, calmly going 'this means i’m in peace" went “well i’m going to be the first one to succeed by thinking of what my good mentor had said once. they all need to be together, balanced out.” and then he DID succeed. He did have his apocalypse. And it was glorious and he loved every second of horror it was.
I love a man who never once apologized for being selfish, evil, and power hungry, and embraced all his flaws quite so willingly. And who, at the end, dying, all of this going to dust, watched his most beautiful creation, his most perfect work, his legacy, rise to take his place as king,, and merely told him good luck.