#Same with Elias

[tropicalcontinental]

More crossover stuff 💥💥💥 + that one "piss off bitch boy" joke is so funny to me (Elias tries to look into Gertrude's mind and receives said response) and I feel like Collin would do it to him too

[sepezzz]

this stinker, Tma character sheet #6!

[world-fire-entity]

Being into podcasts and having s*** voice recognition means

- not being able to differentiate between Jon and Elias who are played by two different people

- Not being able to differentiate between Sasha and not Sasha who are played by two different people

- Not being able to differentiate between Alice and Norris who are played by two different people

- And being able to distinguish Arther, John, Kellen, Eddie, Dr Jeffrey, Kayne, The trader, Faust, Wallace, The Butcher, Oscar, and MARIE??? from eachother DESPITE ALL OF THEM BEING PLAYED BY THE SAME PERSON

[mcr-themed-brain]

"Old man yaoi"

[somuchbetterthanthat]

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.

[magnuspanoptes]

made a little edit of some of jon & elias's lines. spoilers for mag 1 to 161.

[aziuuu]

SEASON 3!!!!!!!!!

Jon is wearing random borrowed clothes... Not like he has time to stylize proffesional looking outfits.

Have some fresh Elias but I didn't change his outfit. Maybe I'm getting lazy lmao

I just made Tim more angry lookin sorry

Michael is the same as in last season and Helen will be in the next one!

[gammija]

a nuance that gets a bit lost in martin 'murder' blackwood is that while he's definitely not against a good killing, it's more of a fun couple's activity rather than true heartfelt passion, you know?

i mean, twice he's had the opportunity to have Jonah get shanked, and he foils them, even though he wants the guy dead. Like, murder is always an option, but he usually tries other, less direct methods first - in fact id say that his trying to be clever and moral still leading up to the end of the world is exactly what drives him to say, ok well fuck it then, let's get our murder on

[jarchivalspecialist]

I am the eye in the sky...

[sarcasticscribbles]

ART vs The ARTIST

"Oh soph you only draw one hairstyle--" HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED IT'S THE ONLY HAIR I KNOW. ALL I KNOW IS THE BISEXUAL HAIRCUT. IT'S ALL I GOT, THIS IS ALL I GOT

[quinn-fucks-shit-up]

I can't be the only one concerned about the computer gays in the context of the One Other Guy we know who was trapped in a computer who didn't have a very nice time of it

[annabelle--cane]

i'm gonna guess that recently you've come to the conclusion that TMA fandom has died down enough that you can finally start letting loose with the hot takes that back in 2020 would have been like dropping a nuclear bomb in the fandom tag leaving it inhospitable to life for three generations

maybe so.

[bugcitie]

[just-an-enby-lemon]

A huge part of the appeal of LonelyEyes for me is that Elias never lied to Peter.

I mean he did, of course, but unlike any of his other relationships he never pretended to not be evil, toxic and a manipulator. James Wright met Peter with the bright warning colors some animals have to announce they are poison and Peter somehow (the abusive way the Lukas family raises their kids likely) went for it.

Even in cannon Peter remains Eliss friend. Yes, he wants to kill Elias but only when Elias proposes it as part of their bet. There's a genuine chance Peter had not even considered Elias would've actually died even if Peter had won (and let's be honest he likely wouldn't, Elias is not one to bet his own life without a contigency plan).

Hell, we have no idea how long he did know but it is heavilly implied that Peter knew and had access to Jonah Magnus original body for a long time already. Elias trusted him to not end it.

There's the closest Elias gets to respecting someone and there's also the biggest example on the ways being raised to be part of the Lonely fucked Peter up completly.

[driedmosquito]

oh my god it feels like forever. um

[magnuspanoptes]

readings of the podcast which try to frame jon as having been tragically manipulated and forced through every decision by elias are of no interest to me. because it's not true, is it. when elias tells him in mag 92 "you always chose to see," he's being cruel, yes. victim blaming him, even. but to completely disregard it as an attempt at manipulation would be a mistake. much of the podcast is about exploiting people's trauma. as i've said before, jon's role as head archivist, back when it was still presented as a mundane office job to the audiences, and he hadn't developed any beholding powers yet, involved filing away statement givers' trauma without offering help of any kind. the institute subsists on this form of exploitation, in a literal sense obviously, because it's a temple to the eye. but even if you take that reveal away, it's also true in simply an administrative sense in season one. and jon used to ruthlessly dismiss every single statement giver with as much apathy as he could muster (while knowing that if a statement doesn't record digitally, then it's the truth), and note that faking skepticism was a form of coping mechanism for him, it was the choice between making statement givers feel small or making himself feel vulnerable—and is this not simply the bureaucratic version of what he does later as a supernatural avatar of the beholding, vampirically feeding on people's terror to stay alive or risk being consumed by the eye?

(Season 3) MAG 117 - "Testament" // (Season 4) MAG 142 - "Scrutiny"

of course, i'm not saying he bought it on himself, that he deserved to be put in an impossible situation later for being an arse in season one. jon too, has had his trauma exploited in the form of a guest for mr spider, an experience which eventually led him to the magnus institute where he would help fulfill the web's designs. so, in the grand scheme of things everyone was puppeteered by forces beyond their control, but would you excuse jonah for eveything he's ever done because of it? then why must jon be rendered completely non-agentic? yes, elias manipulated him, but he has never had to straight up coerce jon into anything. jon's just always done what's been expected of him. because they're alike. their shared desire for knowledge originates from fear. jon always chose to see because something had hurt him once and he needed answers, and we can assume jonah chose the beholding because it was the only entity which would expose him to information on all the other fears. knowledge is a means of survival for both of them, an inclination which later manifests literally as they become avatars who must subsist on terror. it all really comes down to letting yourself be exploited or exploiting someone else to escape that fate (you don't escape, not really, nobody does in the podcast), and jon did choose (with as much agency he could've possibly had in a story like this). the difference between them being that elias feels no remorse for his choice, but jon's character is defined by the enormous guilt he feels about the things he has done and what he must do to continue living, until he doesn't.