October 2025

teaboot:

My first time operating CCTV cameras I was handed control over what was essentially 50 independently moving eyes that collectively covered an area about the size of a football field and from that experience I now know that

  1. Suddenly having 50 moving eyes can make you disoriented and barfy and the adjustment period sucks ass
  2. It takes both more and less time than you’d think to figure out what the structure as a whole looks like and where those eyes ARE
  3. After you get used to it the entirety of the structure itself and all of the eyes you can see from feels like an extension of your nervous system in a very bizarre way. Like I have dreams now from the perspective of A Building and I’m not sure how to describe that.
  4. Once you are aware of an unreachable blind spot it nags at you constantly and you can feel it like a hard little lump under your skin you need to poke and scratch at and it’s ardghgguychgghhbhhhbhhh

unyieldingsilence:

fragmentedink:

writing mood™️

phantomrose96:

Season 3 Elias is so goddamn fucking funny to me I forgot what a rollercoaster he was during my first listen.

Like the s2 finale has Jurgen Leitner giving Jon the whole “monsters are real speech” and Jon’s like “I need a cigarette. NO ONE get brutal pipe murdered while I’m gone” and Jurgen fails step 1 because Elias walks in and grabs Jon’s point-and-click-adventure pipe he’d been carrying around and Brutal Pipe Murders. Which, of course, Jon walks back in on and is prime suspect #1 due to literally every single feature trait and word he’s said in the entirety of s2.

So naturally s3 starts with Jon on the lam and Officer Tonner like “I’m gonna arrest him for brutal pipe murder” and I’M like “Shit. I hate this. Elias is going to SO easily pin it on Jon and get away with it.”

EXCEPT Elias walks in and is like “hello Ms. Officer no Jon Archivist did not kill that man, also I won’t tell you anything else, also this is what you sound like” while reciting all her childhood trauma and all her illegal activity that will get HER sent to jail for brutal murder of the non-pipe variety and now I’m like “….huh.” He’s also like “Jon didn’t do it but you can kill him if you want maybe :)” Elias your alibi????

And then we come BACK with Jon storming Elias’s office with his two lesbian bodyguards as back up and he’s like “I’m gonna use my powers to make you confess to pipe murder!” At which point Elias is like “It doesn’t work on me. But I’m having fun so Martin go get everyone I need to tell you all how I committed pipe murder.” and Martin does and Elias is like “Yes I pipe murdered. I also killed Gertrude. I love murder. You will not be compensated extra for this time. Get back to work.” And they… DO… just go back to work. Because work is haunted. One of the lesbian police officers works here now, too. This just happened. “Also living dolls from Russia are about to Apocalypse the world, Jon go stop it,” Elias says, while also saying “no I’m not gonna tell you how to stop it.”

Okay???? Mr. Elias man??? And you’re like “maybe he’s a ruthless tactician? Maybe he’s brutal but it’s all in the interest of stopping the doll apocalypse??? He wants to save the earth???” Except THAT’S not even true it’s actually more like he’s trying to get the Russian dolls kicked out of line at Disney World so HE gets to meet Mickey Mouse first by which I mean, start his OWN Apocalypse, because if the dolls do it first well then what’s the point of apocalypsing a planet that’s become someone else’s sloppy seconds.

Anyway Elias’s master strategy here is to bring the human equivalent of a drowned cat to the gun fight and just sit back and watch Jon fall down every set of stairs he finds while Elias goes “This is good. This will work.” His name isn’t even fucking Elias.

anartistwhodraws:

Being fixated on niche parts of a fandom is so stupid. Like what do you mean my favorite TMA ship is between the main antagonist and a guy that was mentioned in one episode and doesn’t even have his own wiki page. Get real

thatghostthateatspeople:

day 13… kind of? prompt was fav episode (I went with 92) and it was supposed to be Barnabas visiting Jonah but by the time i was halfway through i remembered Barnabas couldn’t see anyone… sooo its INSPIRED by my favourite episode. regardless enjoy this jonahbas piece. it was very rushed and i hope to do a complete piece of them at some point soon

watchingthefog:

Barnabas and Jonah having a picnic, except Jonah seems to think he can subsist off of knowledge alone and brought only books to read 

archiverot:

One of my favorite things about Elias is how comfortable he is being underestimated. I think a lot of people tend to write him as prideful and intolerant of disrespect, but he’s really not?

His employees call him by his first name. The very first time we hear his voice it’s Jon talking back and being snippy with him, and Elias barely admonishes him for his mistake in the first place. It was under Elias’s supervision that Gertrude “let” the Archives fall apart, and Jon + his assistants are obviously aware of that.

He stole the body and identity of a weed-smoking failson that was too young for the position he was in and only joined the Institute a few years prior. The Institute itself is kind of a laughingstock, openly mocked by academics and dismissed as “crackpots” that will accept literally anything.

Elias comes off as borderline incompetent until episode 80. He dismisses Jon’s concerns about Prentiss, “admits” that he ran away like a coward and abandoned Sasha during the attack, and then apologizes because he couldn’t figure out how to work the fire suppression system fast enough.

Even in Season 3 he still comes off like a dolt sometimes. He conveniently can’t find Jon after he’s been kidnapped, and then this whole conversation happens:

Screenshot of the TMA transcripts. ELIAS  I do regret…  Gertrude’s notes on the Unknowing are… lacking. I only shared the statements for a reason.  ARCHIVIST  S– You didn’t even know why you were sending them to me, did you? Just, what, a box of random files she labelled? You were hoping I could figure out the reason Gertrude chose them!  ELIAS  There is a possibility some of them were misfiled.  [DEEP BREATH]ALT

And a bit later:

Screenshot of the TMA transcripts. ARCHIVIST  And you can’t just… See where she put it.  ELIAS  She was… She got very good at hiding things from me.  ARCHIVIST  How embarrassing for you. Is there anyone else who might know what it is, or, or where? Aside from Leitner, or Gerard?ALT

And in season four, with Basira!! He apologizes to her after she physically assaults him, and then stutters about a “miscalculation” when Basira demands to know why he sent them to the North Pole.

Screenshot of the TMA transcripts. ELIAS  [gasping] No, no, no – it’s fine… I’m sorry?  BASIRA  Oh, yeah? For which part?  ELIAS  …all of it?  BASIRA  You sent us to the North fucking Pole for no goddamn reason!  ELIAS  A, um, miscalculation –ALT

And then Peter sums it up nicely in 159, after revealing that Elias has “lost” most of his wagers against him:

Screenshot of the TMA transcripts. You know, this is one of the first bets I ever made with him I’ve actually lost. But I guess that’s how hustlers work, isn’t it? They lose and lose until you’re willing to put it all on the line, and then – the trap shuts.ALT

All of this!! Probably for 200+ years! He’s most comfortable being overlooked and underestimated, he doesn’t care about being disrespected or looked down on so long as he wins in the end. And he did.

mekrowave:

elias-rights:

elias-rights:

By the way, Elias bottoms for Peter in exchange for funding. This is funny because he presents himself as being in charge and for a man to get fucked by another man is inherently demeaning. It’s ok for me to say this because Elias isn’t one of the good normal gays like Jon and Martin. I am such a good gay rights activist <3

(via @dr-fanshawe)

Image ID: A screenshot of tags that goes as follows.

#funny timing because one of your posts on that exact thing came up in a gc when wetalked about fandom treatment of elias

#which is to say. god yes

#it’s so exhausting. you can dislike elias (and be in the wrong for it) but it should concern you that your dislike of a character makes you

#turn to homophobic tropes

#(sexual topics ahead) actually I think Jonah would have a weird relationship with sex and intimacy as a whole. obviously there’s him

#avoiding getting attached to people and emotional vulnerability. and the fact that he grew up in a very homophobic society and was forced to

#be constantly mindful of not getting caught. and the additional layer of complications with sex if his original body was trans - he’d have

#to be Very Careful in choosing partners. and of course the power dynamics in sex (both imposed by the society such as the aforementioned

#“bottoming is shameful” and any consensual or accidental dynamics he’d get into with other people). lots and lots of things to talk about

#but all we get is “it’s gay and humiliating to bottom so that’s what Elias should do. he’s so pathetic he sleeps with his sugar daddy for

#money and then underpays his employees to buy himself expensive things because he’s so flamboyant and gay”

End ID.

grendelsmilf:

fandom joke post rating: NOT FUNNY. while mischaracterization for the sake of humor can occasionally be funny, this particular post betrays a misunderstanding of the character so fundamental that the joke itself does not land.

martinblackwoodhaterfan:

So funny that tma fans decided that the man who is known to schedule his time very carefully and plan everything incredibly well would be the kind to waste his time on getting multiple pointless divorces “for fun”

kairos-polaris:

kairos-polaris:

I just realized the show really contributed to the idea of being an avatar to mean just having a cool power by not having martin suffer the consequences of being one or be changed by it or even being hungry. he can just vanish. no don’t worry he is a good person and a human <3 he doesn’t need to feed on fear to vanish into the fog <3 don’t you worry about it

the rules for everyone else is that you have to cause someone to suffer and fear, feed your god or it will feed on you. Jon is haunting people in their nightmares from the beginning, Daisy was straight up hunting people, Melanie was giving into the violence and anger (including threatening Jon). and Martin can just vanish for no reason

the logical answer is that he was feeding on Jon’s loneliness. or not just Jon’s, everyone in the Institute is lonely. except Martin faces no consequences for it, there is no intervention for it, no one performs a non-consensual surgery on him and he doesn’t have to starve. during the safe-house period he doesn’t seem to need to feed at all (and the argument with Jon doesn’t even work here because he isn’t supposed to be lonely any longer)

Martin doesn’t get a hunger or an appetite for human suffering. but he gets to vanish whenever he wants, he has the benefits of the domain (not being tortured). and the closest thing to consequences he gets is that he is cut off from his emotions which falls flat when you remember he later chides Jon for not being good at expressing his own emotions/feelings