Here and then I think about Elias being a genuinely boring person to 99% of the world by the time it’s the 2000s and all his circle of Good Society Gentlemen Horny for their weird Academic friend obsessed with Ghosts Stories are dead.
Not just boring, but easily dismissed, as well (“waste of a suit”), (“A dull little man” // “Gertrude was the one who scared me”).
And I don’t know, it always drives me a little insane in the BEST way. I love it. I love that his little joys in life are spreadsheets, filing, The Horror Stories of Other People that Are Not Him Thank You, and cake. I love that he is mild, that he looks utterly inoffensive, that he’s passive and only shows glimpses of how Cruel and /how much he enjoys being Cruel/ in very specific situations (1. i have all the power and everybody in the room knows, 2. They want to see an evil man i’ll show them an evil man 3. EVERYTHING I WORKED TOWARDS FOR CENTURIES IS SET INTO MOTION I AM WINNING)
It makes it extra tasty, with that additional external point of view from characters, that Jon explicitely says that Elias is the most knowledgeable man he knows when it comes to paranormal: Jon actively seeked out Elias enough to be aware of that. It’s also delicious to have him say “Elias is a hard man to pin down” because it means that Jon RECOGNIZES that Elias is not just his boring, inefficient superior; that there are myriads of other things he’s yet to uncover about him and all.
I think it’s nice for us all boring people to have represention in villainy. I said it over on bluesky and all but I know in my heart his perfectly tailored three-piece suits are all different shades of grey (Ah,,), except for the black ones that are for fancy events, and the “extravagant” navy blue ones for “fun” events like Institute parties.
he has inside jokes with himself with his cufflinks and that’s basically it.
What if I told you that something like that happened in real life?
I don’t know how much you guys know about German poetry, but the names Goethe and Schiller might ring a bell.
Anyway, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller werebest friends for a really long time with Goethe having been the older one. Schiller got sick with pretty much everything at some point, however, and died, leaving Goethe devastated.
So what did Goethe do? Keep Schiller’s skull in his office. You know, like friends do… On a blue velvet cushion because why not (He even wrote a poem in 1826 called Bei Betrachtung von Schiller’s Schädel [While looking at Schiller’s skull] like any totally normal person would)
The funny part is that until this day no one knows where the original skull is because it got lost at some point.
But I can’t stop thinking about the implications of keeping someone’s bones near you. There’s absolutely no way you do this when you don’t love someone. Like, you’re literally keeping a very visual reminder of that person. Of their death especially. It almost seems desperate. Grief, loss, and love entwined for eternity. It’s a constant memento mori and that’s what makes it so tragic. With pictures you’re reminded of who a person was but with this there’s nothing but the need for acceptance that they’re gone for good. There’s no lying to yourself.
You loved and you lost and you have to live with that.
I honestly do not believe that jmart would have lasted without the apocalypse
like i think the relationship would have developed into something too toxic if it was allowed to progress
i feel like their entire relationship was built on desperation and theres no real foundation to it. It was built on their need for each other. They were the only surviving people of the original group and with the things they went through with each other. They needed that support and they needed that understanding that someone knows what theyre going through.
Sure they had Basira, Melanie, and Georgie, but they didnt know sasha and tim like they had. They knew elias when he was simply just their boss. They knew each other when things were still normal.
The Web wanted Martin for a reason, he’s manipulative and knows how to get his way. You can see him do this even with Jon in season 5, whether intentional or not.
Aswell as Jon’s self-centeredness, like im aware that he’s literally the protagonist but taking that out of the equation, Jon has a tendency to disregard others in favor for his own. When he went see Melanie, when she literally gouged out her fucking eyes to get away from all of that. When at the end he went up to kill Elias and going against everyone.
I think both of these combined would have not led to a long lasting happy relationship. Also i just dont think they would have gotten together in the first place if all of the traumatizing shit didnt happen. I do think Martin loves Jon and vice versa but I think it’s the kind of love that festers and turns into animosity overtime.
