Canon Jonah Magnus is way funnier than fanon Jonah Magnus. Why does everyone try to change him. He’s perfect.
Everyone writes him like Stereotypical Creepy Looking Villain Who Is Easily Angered Into Mistakes but he’s so much funnier than that. He’s trying to destroy the world and put everyone in perpetual misery specifically to avoid someone doing that to him first and his Secret Fear Factory is a shitty paranormal research institute full of offices and bureaucracy because he genuinely prefers it that way. The highlight of his week is on Wednesdays when he does the scheduling for next week and the protagonists trying to get out of their shitty fear jobs use this against him.
He almost never gets angry at anyone because he genuinely does not care, he does actually try to be reasonable and convince his employees not to try to kill him or break his stuff, and considers using his See Everything Powers and Evil Mental Torture powers on them to be a strenuous inconvenience. When he is annoyed or threatened enough to pull out the Evil Torture Mind Powers in self defense, he just does it and then washes his hands of it and goes back to being the Totally Normal Institute Manager he genuinely enjoys being. Dude could hire and blackmail people into doing all the boring tedious parts of his job but he just likes doing them himself.
Half of the dude’s character is how Totally Normal he is. Whenever someone has a big revelation about his evil mind powers or his secret immortality or about how he’s killed someone or screwed them over in some way he completely takes the wind out of their sails by acting like this is a normal thing and he forgot they didn’t already know, like they’re inquiring about when they need to attend a new HR seminar by. He treats them like they’re being unreasonable and need to keep up and it’s funny every single time. He’s so good at being a Helpful but Incompetent Office Manager that it’s usually impossible for the protagonists to tell how much he knows and whether he’s screwing them over on purpose at any given time (he always is). He considers little matters like “my employee keeps trying to kill me” and “my employee got me sent to prison for murder” to be minor inconveniences and never holds grudges against anyone because he genuinely doesn’t care about them enough to be angry.
It’s never stated why he has so little control over what the Head Archivist decides to do at any given time; he just seems to hate micromanagement. He let Gertrude do whatever the fuck she wanted for 50 years no matter what danger or inconvenience it caused (it’s reasonable to assume that the vast majority of attacks on the archives during Gertrude’s day were from people who were specifically pissed off at Gertrude’s actions) and only killed her when it was necessary for self-defense. The whole thing is just a sitcom to him. Everyone is an NPC in his Destroy the World Adventure and he doesn’t seem to take anything personally. He’s Owen Burnett who thinks he’s David Xanotos and it’s the funniest fucking thing.
He overreacted and killed ONE GUY with a lead pipe and now half the fanfic treats him like an incredibly weird little murdergoblin who can be incensed into making mistakes with a bit of namecalling and throws his Eye abilities around constantly. The canon version is so much funnier.
#won’t use his psychic murderpowers bc it goes against his principle (singular) which is ‘don’t do anything i don’t want to be doing rn’#has death anxiety specifically because dying would be a scheduling issue#and also wants to eat the whole world essentially for time management purposes#i dont know where you all got the murderboy concept for him he would literally rather just be sitting there at any given moment#sitting on the bench listening to his favorite podcast the magnus archives happening in real time
@distortiondyke gets it.
People find out about his Two (2) Canon Murders and go “wait you mean OUR Jonah?” even when they are his Villainous Allies who do regular murders themselves. “That seems like WAY too much effort for him,” says his friend the Evil Fog Man “He’d have to leave his office and everything”
#All I KNOW is the fanon interpretations of these characters#I have faith in my moot here tho to give at least mostly correct interpretations#But I am still caught off guard the LEVEL of Normal Man energy with mild inconvenience about things#Oh my god
Oh man just you wait.
- Elias and Peter aren’t canonically married, divorced, or indicated to have any romantic relationship of any kind. The fandom decided they had Divorced Guy Energy and ran with it, which is completely fine, but entirely headcanon. In the show they barely interact, and when they do it’s as vaguely hostile business partners fulfilling the terms of a bet they’ve made with each other.
- Basira is not indicated to have any religion. There’s no reason to think she’s *not* Muslim; she very well could be, but it’s not canonically indicated either way. People heard the name ‘Basira Hussain’ and went ‘that character must be Muslim’. Her relationship with her partner may or may not be romantic; it was left deliberately ambiguous, as going either way would distract from the actual relationship between them that the show is exploring, which is entirely separate from either friendship or romance. ‘Basira and Daisy are girlfriends’ is not contradicted by canon and not necessarily canon either.
- Jon’s race is never indicated; if anything, he gives me serious White Guy Vibes, given both his past and the things he is (and more tellingly is not) insecure about. The fandom, however, has decided to make him a man of colour (usually with some flavour of Indian descent) and gets really upset if you don’t treat that as canon. His hair length is never indicated either, everyone just decided it was really long. Similarly, he does an awful lot of running about and stuff and having a cane is never mentioned, but he seems to get given a cane a lot in fics. He gets badly injured a few times but no ongoing walking difficulty is ever mentioned and these guys do a lot of walking, running, and crawling around. He is canonically asexual, canonically insecure in his job and masks said insecurity by being a smarter-than-thou arsehole, and canonically a Cat Person. He also does end up in a relationship with Martin by season five, that relationship is canon.
- Martin’s long-term crush on Jon and general work incompetence are both canon. His tendency to make tea a lot is also canon. However, being super good with and knowledgeable about tea is a fandom invention. He very well could be – he makes a lot of tea, maybe he’s really into tea – but there’s no reason to necessarily think he’s better with tea than anyone else. Martin is They Guy Who Doesn’t Know How To Help and Makes Tea To keep Busy. He’s the guy who uses shitty office tea made in a shitty office kettle and from shitty office tea bags as a security blanket, social lubricant, something to do and something to offer. I know five of this guy. I AM this guy – if I’m looking for something to do, I put the kettle on. And let me tell you, we generally make the worst tea you’ve ever had in your life.
- The tattooed monster-hunting ghost of a goth with a bad dye job is real, but isn’t happy about being real.