i think people have overcorrected a little in their enthusiastic criticism of wider fandom interpretation of je as elias keeping jon chained in a dungeon somewhere, because i’ve seen way too many ‘elias is not a controlling partner’ posts and. can i be honest. with you. it’s not that elias wants jon to have a choice, because he’s perfectly content with taking it away when it suits him (160), he wants jon willing (and you can’t tell me you’re not curious). and we know he gets there through lying and obfuscation and manipulation. he is absolutely a major controlling influence in jon’s life, it’s just that his methods of control are a lot more insidious. yes, jon has some agency in his becoming, elias did not personally push him through all those doors, but you also have to consider that he simply wouldn’t have made a lot of those choices if he was not being methodically kept in the dark. and s3 is very clear about how elias likes to remind jon exactly how reliant he is on him -
at this point jon’s already dependent on the statements for nourishment, it’s no longer simply a psychological pull, so all these instances of elias intervening are overt displays of the power he wields over jon because not only is he providing jon with the necessary information he needs to keep up his investigation but without that supply of statements he would be sick and dying…. grotesque in the sense that elias has so easily, neatly acquired jon’s life in his hands and in such a manner that even the act of accepting elias’s help (to stop the clown ritual—to stay alive!) is preparing and pushing jon towards the apocalypse. this is not a relationship of equals, i’m sorry to say, jon is very much a thing to be possessed and maneuvered for his own gain until 160, when jon acquires enough power to start meaningfully retaliating back. and this is why season five power dynamic reversal je hits. put that old man in saw traps ‼️
