a functionally immortal body hopping gay man who is the most powerful avatar of a voyeur god that expresses itself in surveillance, invasions of privacy, paranoid delusions/illusions etc. could have a truly incredible body of thoughtful fanwork and meta analysis about how the reality of living in a deeply homophobic society as a target of its oppression and ire could influence that and instead we have a gajillion “gay men i would love to hatecrime” memes
One of my coworkers collects eyeballs from dead wildlife, and I need to convince her to show me how to do this. For fanfic research purposes and also so I too can have a jar of tiny eyeballs
Jonathan Sims has got to be the only character who could try to become God in order to kill everyone on Earth and still have me believing in his fundamental goodness as a person.
i will never run out of unhinged rants about this but do u actually know the kind of strength necessary to bludgeon a man to death? idc how heavy the metal pipe is, killing someone through repeated blunt force trauma takes a significant level of resolve and physical strength to accomplish. that is a cold, iron willed, terrifying thing to be able to do. especially on a whim because the man whose head you’re beating into a paste got slightly in your way a bit.
Also as an aside, I’d like to add how many people, including Peter Lucas, were so taken aback that Elias finally “got his hands dirty”. It was mentioned how unlike him doing that was, and considering how long he’s lived, and from what I can tell his general avoidance of offing anyone generally (his mentioning to Tim when confronted to “just kill him” when genuinely it would be the easier out and his response of “I’d rather not”, plus I believe mentioning in a different conversation about preferring not to “resort” to that) like to me that is FASCINATING. Elias being a villain who objectively does not prefer to kill others, especially, it seems, by his own hands.
And yet here with Leitner, in a rare bout of breaking habit and his typical ideal, he did. And in the most brutal and gruesome and personal way possible. In his own way, he did it all to protect Jon and frankly, what Jon represented.
it makes my pupils turn into little beating cartoon hearts that elias’ mask of burecratic, academic, clerical work is so effective that he has to warn the people he imprisons dozens of times not to cross him and they all keep pushing. because they just don’t think he has it in him to hurt them! they don’t believe that their lives are tied to his. they don’t believe he has the capacity for violence. he’s just a suit!! a hands off manager with more interest in admin than management. and gracefully. effortless. on a dime. he can pull their darkest secrets out from the centers of their skulls like fistfuls of writhing maggots forced from their burrowholes into the blinding light of day. he can find you and pin you and look at you in the one place every living creature thinks themselves safe: inside your own head! there is nowhere you can curl up to hide from him. your inner monologue isn’t yours anymore. he can listen in and contribute any time he wants. he can show you what you’ve spent your whole life avoiding. he can force your eyes open when you screw them shut. and maybe if you’d believed him the first time he told you to back down, well….then this really needn’t have happened.
to me jonah is such a control freak he could never be a sub. this man beat someone to death in a split second decision when his well laid plans were possibly under threat. i highly doubt he would give up control in any kind of intimate setting
(though frankly I don’t see him willingly being intimate physically or emotionally very often if at all- too many risks. and he cant trust anyone)
*taps mic* at the time of the podcast, Elias Bouchard is middle aged and therefore most likely would not be built like a onceler twink with a slim waist and flat tummy *I am booed offstage*
Thinking about trans Jonah Magnus being a confirmed bachelor in the 1800s and historians poring over the letters from his lovers and records of his life.
Two parents who only had one daughter on record, with said daughter disappearing as a teenager (not uncommon, teen pregnancies usually resulted in girls being sent away to a distant relative or monastery, sometimes returning and sometimes not). A month later, the parents’ nephew coming to live with them, with no records of him before that.
Letters to and from Mordechai Lukas and Jonathan Fanshawe and Barnabas Bennett, filled with subtle (and not so subtle) flirtation and invitations to their estates.
Jonah never marrying, never having children, but almost always being seen in the company of another man.
Jonah starting the Magnus Institute with the support of a wealthy man whom he has a very close relationship with.
The Institute becoming well known as a sort of haven for social rejects, one of the few places that would give real work to anyone regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. This reputation continuing even well into the 21st century, and it being one of the reasons why the Institute is so looked down on.
the other thing about elias is that he is like a tumblrina to me essentially. like he saw a wet mean little man he liked and he said oh he’s perfect i’m going to put him in a jar and shake him around i’m going to put him in so many hideous situations. like any time you want to put a man in the microwave it was then that elias bouchard carried you. but unlike tumblr bloggers he managed to leverage this for career advancement slash becoming king of the fucking world which no one here has ever accomplished. you know they say if you do what you love you never work a day in your life.
my favorite thing about tma has always been the avatars who love the fears they serve, who show that love so vibrantly that, for just a moment, they sway you into feeling like you could learn to love that fear the way they do. when jane prentiss said “not loved as you would understand it, a deeper, more primal love, a need as much as a feeling” and when jude perry said “as the heat warped my bones and bubbled my flesh, all i heard was the loving exaltation of my god” and when mike crew said “falling had always held a special place in my heart, that wonderful border between terror and delight” and when manuela dominguez said “and at his words i felt afraid, and my heart soared in terror and elation as my eyes brimmed with tears, for i knew he spoke the truth” and when hezekiah wakely said “i had never felt such safety as within the crushing weight of earth all around me, the pressing embrace of the buried.” do you get me
Was thinking about the Lukas family while washing dishes and how it makes way more sense for Evan Lukas to have been killed by that one asshole End avatar than to have died from rejecting the Lonely.
We know for a fact that Lukases have left the family with no consequences. Peter said that he has two sisters who left on their own and are living full and happy lives away from the family, and that he had two brothers that were sent away when they were children because they didn’t take to the Lonely. Staying with the family, and with the Lonely, is clearly a choice that the Lukases make (or as much of one as it can be in their circumstances).
Even if he had died from rejecting the Lonely, his cause of death makes no sense. The Lonely, when it’s used to kill, is a slow and tedious death, focused on making the victim feel completely isolated before they finally die. If it was going to kill him through an illness, it would be something slow and drawn out, like a terminal illness meant to make him feel completely alone in his pain. It wouldn’t be through a sudden heart complication.
If the family forced him to come back, it would not be by faking hia death like I’ve seen in the fandom sometimes. It would be something like forcing him to leave Naomi to her face, to make her feel like he was leaving her willingly, like there was no one in the world who could love her enough to stay.
Evan was well-liked and popular and loved with a long and happy life ahead of him. He also died in an extremely sudden way, from undiagnosed heart complications. That one fucking avatar, whose name I don’t remember because I hate her, extended her own lifespan by targeting deeply loved people, who all died from sudden and undiagnosed illnesses.
I find Lonelyeyes hilarious as a concept, especially those posts about Peter frantically running around to make sure the James to Elias body swap happens, implying that he was around before and after the body switching.
Especially considering how this would look to almost everyone else in the world.
Peter may not be around very much but I imagine people would know that James has a husband. Then after the swap Peter’s still around like “I miss my dear husband James so much, taken from us too soon” while it appears to everyone else that Peter waited 3 business days and got together with a much younger man.
And it’s James successor, Elias at that. The gossip! Which is only fueled by Elias using his powers to show up when people are talking about it so he can “overhear” comments at the worst possible moment and make everyone uncomfortable. Feeding off his employees fear of being caught talking about him.
Elias is having a great time being dramatic. (Literally no one else is having a good time)
im tired of people making fictional characters they dont like randomly homo/transphobic it’s always way funnier when character who suck are inexplicably allies
I find it a little baffling in fics Elias is constantly calling Jon ‘Archivist’ when talking to him, when he only does so in three episodes and he calls Jon Archivist when talking to him in only one of those. yet it’s the opposite for fics and I just wonder why lol
@myusernameisstolen YOU ARE SO RIGHT. God I will NEVER get over how much fic writers to a disservice to Elias/Jonah. He presents himself as boring and unremarkable on purpose and he’s good at it!! It’s not out of character to write him as just Some Guy, especially if the fic is from another character’s POV and takes place in seasons 1 and 2, because that’s how he is! Fic writers just seem to have the mindset of “this guy is the antagonist so therefore he has to be evil 24/7” even though that’s not how he is in the podcast.
I have already talked about Elias calling Jon the Archivists exclusively and how it does not make sense here but I want to talk about what it means narratively for Elias to continuously call Jon by his name and not Archivist.
First, there is very strong theme of ‘us’ vs 'them’ in the podcast, humans vs monsters/avatars, which is the underlying cause of the conflict between Jon and the Archival staff (something that deserves its own post). But Jon himself has that separation, most clearly expressed via what name is used to refer to him. The Archival staff calls him Jon, the avatars say Archivist. Thus Elias puts himself firmly in the former by only calling Jon by his name, which has a bigger impact in s3, than say s4, when Jon is still confused about his role and what it means. Jon has certain association with what name people use for him, considering the context of the previous times he had been called Archivist. Something Elias takes advantage of, putting himself in the category of 'us’.
This is supported by the fact that those only instances where Elias calls Jon Archivist are in the end of s3, after s3 when he no longer needs this kind of relationship to influence Jon. And the first/last time he does that is very early on, when Jon knows even less.
You could, of course, argue that he could call Jon Archivist for the sake of reminding him of his role and further dehumanising him. But he already does so successfully, without further needing to alienate Jon. And he does do that, kind of, but not with Jon. He does it to Martin, in mag 139, when he says “our dear Archivist”, reminding Martin of who, or what, Jon is.
However. I am a firm believer that Elias does view Jon as a person first and the Archivist being what he does/who he serves. In part, it’s because he sees and acknowledges their similarities. Elias always views himself as a person, existing outside of the Eye, and thus has the same view when it comes to Jon, who is most similar to him.
The biggest support of this is mag 160 and mag 200. In the entirety of his letter he doesn’t call Jon 'Archivist’, in the beginning he says “Hello, John” at a point where there is no reason for him to create that sense of closeness. He has won, if he viewed Jon solely as the Archivist, now there is no point to concealing him. Yet he continuously calls him by his name. Same in mag 200, when Jon drags him out of his place as the pupil. He says “John? I-I-Is that you? Uh, I, I was having the most wonderful dream….”. And while him using Jon’s name later could be seen as his way of appealing to Jon’s humanity and pity out of fear for his life, at that exact moment he is disoriented and has no reason to fear for his life just yet. He is sharing his thoughts openly (perhaps for the first time in a long time) and at the moment he calls Jon by his name.
I barely follow any serial media nowadays so I only ever encounter this in epistolary artifacts, like a found-footage horror movie, but one thing I really think is funny is when people are following along with something as it releases and talking about how it’s being really clever and setting up a rare, compelling thematic commentary, and then later on it turns out that none of that panned out and the ending was mediocre and everyone was just extrapolating an illusory better plot in their mind’s eye
normally when a post gets this many notes this fast I mute it but I’m having a great time reading all the different stuff people are applying it to, placed in the reblog tags like burnt offerings
ALT
