#jon: lol elias you too

[miyuskye]

Imagine this. You're preparing to go stop an eldritch horror, while simultaneously trying to get an edge over your evil boss. It's a very tense situation and what does one of your comrades do? He starts having this weird joke exchange with said evil boss. Wow.

Basira is way stronger that me because I would've yelled at them to please get a room.

[gooboogy]

(image ID in alt text)

My TMA oc "The Witness" I don't have a name for him yet but he's a servant of the Eye and he's a serial chronic statement giver. He's just always around witnessing things to bring back and give a statement for. He is obsessive about being a voyeur, to the point that he even unsettles Elias (who he's INFATUATED with)

I don't think he has like eye observing abilities, but I think he's able to just be in the middle of situations and influence people to want to let him go as a witness of their atrocities. He gets nightmares still after giving statements but rather he has a lot more autonomy than Jon does. He gets to experience the horrors again as well as Jon's horror, a little bit of eye powers cannibalism as a treat. He also adores Jon, really he loves loves anyone connected with the eye but especially other avatars.

I wanna say he has some sort of avatar immortality too, but also I think that if his eyes get taken he just dies, like he's just dead. Any other part of him can heal. If he has one eye then he can regrow the other. But also you just reeeallly want to show him something and let him go.

Anyone he Witnesses won't have nightmares but they'll have daymares. Any time they lose focus and start to drift off Suddenly they are Being Watched and those memories resurface, always following them, keeping them hyper vigilant. Eye with a dash of lonely and distortion

part two here

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

literally so done with rhaegar antis at this point. we know practically nothing about this character besides all the good things other characters say about him and the fact that robert baratheon hates him and says things about rhaegar that ned disagrees with. and robert baratheon is a pos so being hated by him only does favors for rhaegar’s character imo.

but somehow all these characters who think well of rhaegar are just lying. even though almost all of the characters who have spoken/thought well of rhaegar come from different families and have different allegiances. make it make sense. explain it to me like i’m five. what do jamie and ned have to gain by thinking positively about rhaegar? what about jorah? and barristan?

seriously. stop with the “prophecy obsessed freak” and the “rhaegar was mad” bs. none of this is supported in the books.

for 1) the prophecy is real! this is a fantasy series! and it’s very likely that jon snow (his likely son) is one of the azor ahai/prince that was promised figures! the other completely certain azor ahai figure is his own sister! so yes this prophecy seems to be centered around rhaegar’s family.

2) rhaegar being “mad” is not supported whatsoever. prophecies and magic are very real in asoiaf. so believing/trying to figure out prophecies is not an act of a madman. if anything, we should praise rhaegar for having the foresight to be actively concerned about this world ending threat! he was right. and one mention, if not the first mention, of the song of ice and fire comes from a vision in the house of the undying… from rhaegar. please remember what the title of this series is…

now, it is fair to criticize rhaegar for how he treated elia at the tourney at harrenhall. he was wrong there and that was a terrible thing to do to elia. however, saying that rhaegar was awful to elia throughout their whole marriage is not supported. and saying that rhaegar was awful to his children is not supported at all.

also, getting angry at a fictional character for needing a son to secure the succession to the throne is hilarious, especially since it was necessary for not just rhaegar, but also for elia to secure their own positions at court. they both needed a male heir, but elia needed to have a son more than rhaegar to secure her position. so why are people so mad that rhaegar and elia had aegon? andal tradition says that a son comes before a daughter and a daughter before an uncle… but aerys had viserys to threaten rhaegar with because aerys was king and had the power to change the succession. having aegon was very important for both rhaegar and elias futures and protected rhaenys position as well. just look at what happened to alys karstark when all of her male brothers were gone. she was almost usurped by her uncle. do you really think aerys would let the throne pass to a girl? aerys??

anyways, we don’t know enough about rhaegar and elias relationship to actually make any concrete statements about them, but, from danys house of the undying vision of rhaegar and (likely) elia, their relationship seemed fine and they seemed open with each other. not every marriage of duty ends in nedcat and five kids, but their marriage was clearly far from the robert and cersei nightmare.

another thing rhaegar antis love to harp about is how he is a pedophile. i’m literally so sick of it. rhaegar, someone who seemingly struggled with some form of depression, finally found some joy outside of a marriage of duty. the author himself called rhaegar a love struck prince. ned never thinks ill of rhaegar, even though if the stories robert baratheon would have us believe were true then ned would be the first character who thinks rhaegar is some sort of monster. but ned doesn’t. back to the pedo argument… anyways i have issues with the age gap as well. but i know where to lay my criticism. with george. he’s weird about ages and it pisses me off. however, i won’t let this change the way i see a character, especially since westeros doesn’t have any age of consent laws.

god just criticize george already.

but to be clear, rhaegar, a tragic character who died trying to protect his family, who’s daughter hid underneath his bed for protection, is not some monster. he was born in grief, lived in grief, found some joy, and died whispering the name of the woman he loved. that’s sad. and it’s horrible that he’s blamed for his family’s deaths even though he fought and died trying to protect them. and then robert baratheon sat on his throne and drunk and whored the realm into debt. thank you mr. boar. and good riddance. cersei slayed with this one.

now if you want to blame someone for the war and what came after, then blame aerys for his cruelty. blame brandon for his foolishness. blame robert for his warmongering. blame tywin for his monstrous actions. blame gregor and amory for their terrible violence.

stop blaming the guy who died trying to protect his loved ones.

and tbh, we literally have so little knowledge of what happened before the rebellion and after harrenhall. we just don’t know what happened between rhaegar and lyanna besides what george has told us and whatever small scraps we get in the book. we don’t know if it was a rash decision or if there was some plan in place when rhaegar and lyanna ran off. we just don’t know.

so please stop treating your headcanons like canon facts. especially when your headcanon isn’t supported anywhere in the books! it’s so tiring to see! i get it! you hate this character! whatever! but stop acting like what you’re saying is canon!

rhaegar is simply a ghost haunting the narrative. but his legacy lives on in dany and (likely) jon. and both of them are saviors fighting the good fight. and based on the descriptions we have of rhaegar, i can say that he’s likely very proud of his sister and son.

[fiendishartist2]

height chart/character sheet for all of the main tma cast feat. my headcanons (and misconceptions about canon desc. O_O) of them

and an extra georgie <3

[atopvisenyashill]

idk it’s like. rhaenyra’s fear and paranoia over what alicent will do to her kids gets her killed. alicent’s fear and hostility over what rhaenyra might do to her kids gets all her kids killed. daeron’s hostility towards daemon (there’s a difference in how he treats brynden & shiera and how he treats daemon & aegor and it’s pointed even if it makes sense) over whether daemon will be a threat to his kids kicks off more than one war! davos is willing to die to protect edric from stannis. jon gets sent to the wall bc of catelyn’s resentment and paranoia and ned’s refusal to deal with the situation and not only does jon’s entire arc in agot deal with the fact that even if the wall is less cruel it still sucks and is a wild miscarriage of justice against all the boys who get pressed into it and crucially, jon is now dead over this shit! maybe the problem is that all of these people keep reacting with fear and hostility and paranoia when confronted with a child who, through no fault of their own, has the potential to be dangerous later in life. maybe the problem is the entire concept of legitimacy and the way it destroys every family it comes into contact with, and keeping that system going is a moral failure on the part of our heroes, from the patriarchs who set their families up for failure to the ladies who understandably react with hostility and isolation towards their husband’s bastards to the noble born children who are learn from their parents’ example and make sure to drive home the fact that their siblings are lesser, base creatures because of something they have no control over. perhaps the point is that everyone in this system has blood on their hands and the series is saying “so now you know you’re complicit. now what are you going to do about it?”

[jouxlskaard]

elias in hades, perchance?

if tma were a hades-style roguelike I think it'd be entertaining to have elias just show up like a little bitch and give you tasks that eventually give you rewards. I don't think he'd show up as the final boss until much later on in the story (equivalent to the hades epilogue) where he'll become the eye's pupil and the player (presumably jon) has to kill him to stop the eyepocalypse or smth (don't question my thought process too much I haven't actually rationalised it all in my head yet lol)

[just-a-multi-fandom-mess]

okay I gotta ask. what is your ‘Leitner is Martin’s Dad’ theory basis

ok wow i wasn't expecting someone to actually ask but okay here goes (this may be a little disjointed but i swear i'm going somewhere lol) in mag35: old passages, leitner is described, and they mention his history and the fact that he's polish (or at least his parents were). this is mentioned again in mag80: the librarian, and both the names jurgen and leitner have some of either polish or german origin. in mag12: first aid, martin is shown to know some polish, and alludes to the fact that he has polish heritage. in mag181: ignorance, mikaele salecea says that martin reminds him very much of a younger leitner, and in mag118: the masquerade, elias mentions that martin is quite similar to his missing father, and that's why his mum hates him so much. in the same episode, it's also mentioned that his dad went missing when he was around eight or nine. given all this, and the fact that in mag56: children of the night, martin reveals that he's only twenty nine, as well as what leitner says in mag80 (that his library was destroyed and he went into hiding about twenty years ago), it's completely plausible that when leitner's library was destroyed, he went into hiding and left his wife and young son (or daughter if you agree with the trans martin headcanon) behind because he thought this world would be too dangerous for them, or because he just didn't really care. there is some evidence to the contrary, such as the fact that jon, martin, and tim all met/saw leitner and did not make any connection, but this can be mostly explained away if you take into account that when jon met him it was in the tunnels and presumably quite dark (also he was uber paranoid and also somehow not very observant at the time), and when tim and martin saw him he had just had been [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER]ed. anyway, i will stand by this theory especially since leitner is voiced by jonny's dad so it would be funny if he was actually martin's dad. anyway if you notice any mistakes i've made, or further evidence, or something that disproves all of this entirely, feel free to point that out because this is just a theory (a PODCAST THEORY)

[wolfythewitch]

hi I feel like I've been attempting to interact with your stuff way too much and I'm probably annoying you but I wanted you to see some of my own sketches of your Hadestown au bc it had a chokehold on me yesterday and it wouldn't leave me alone. I decided Elias would be Hermes for several reasons

(You don't have to read this bit if you don't want to lol)

Tim doesn't have anything close to a guide/mentor figure in tma and Elias is probably the only person who a) has a connection to him and b) actively utilises Tim's decisions for his own ends. He's a bitch yes, and his Hermes would be a much more insidious, manipulative one, but there's really nobody else who fits the bill as much as Elias does. He enjoys the tragedy, actively basks in it in fact, and I think while Hermes continues to tell the story hoping that it might end well one day, Elias would tell it knowing that it never will and enjoying the inevitability of it all. He would appear genuine to the other characters, but the audience would know that he's a rat bastard - and this would show through to Tim during "Hey, the big artiste...".

Also I gave Jon a bundle of heliotropes instead of a red carnation bc they signify devoted, undying love and they have a tragic origin derived from an old Greek myth.

enjoy (or don't, whatever floats your boat). your art is very cool and got me to enjoy my own art process for the first time in a very long time so thank you a lot for that :)

Oh this is so cool!! Your style is so pretty and aaa jonmartin dancing <33 I've thought more about Elias as Hermes but I've come to the decision that I don't want the tone to shift that much haha, and Elias being hermes would definitely switch the tone of hadestown needing you to think every time that maybe, maybe this time it will end with a happy ending

[spiral-man]

Hey all you sick freaks out there,

The way they talk about the movie theatre worker this episode reminds me of Mr. Jonathan sims lol.

“It’s what on the inside that matters” just seems like such an ominously Jon thing to say and “That poor guy, They have him ushering too! They really need to hire more staff...” sounds like a review Tim/Martin/Sasha would leave at the Magnus institute to try and get Elias to hire more help.

“He looks super old and they’re really putting him to work” just makes me giggle because it’s that whole joke of Jon is 29 and everyone thinks he’s 45 or 98 When they first meet him.

Stay bloody!

[yellow-faerie]

@wormsontoast I do indeed have some thoughts about Archivist!Georgie (from the au vaguely outlined here) and since you showed a mild interest in it, I shall now tell you all about it here haha

So there are two things I kinda want to say before I keep going because this au has been changing and shifting in my head a lot and I want to get a bit more of it out into the world.

The first is that each archivist au is based off of as few changes as possible to the canon timeline, aiming (ideally) for only one change that causes ripples throughout the timeline. For example, in the Gertrude-causes-the-apocalypse au, the one change is that Agnes and Gertrude get bound when they are both much younger and the web manipulates things from there, yada yada that's not why we're here BUT you see the vision.

The other thing is that my initial intention was that most people would have a pair, forming some sort of couple or QPR, two people against the world kinda thing - one of them would be the Archivist and one of them would be their apocalypse + 1. This was mostly because (in my head at least) I saw one very eye-aligned character in each couple.

BUT I have recently been doing a re-listen and one thing that stands out to me is that so many of the main characters want to know things, that I think a lot of them could have ended up in the Archivist position in fact. Martin seems to actively encourage reading statements in S3, and Tim definitely has the motivation (when the circus gets involved at least) to be manipulated into the position - more curious though are Daisy and Georgie.

I'll leave a potential archivist!Daisy post for another day (because that's a wild au and a half haha) and talk instead about Georgie, who was meant to be the purpose of this post lol (I'll pop it under a readmore)

So, Georgie - the first thing is how does she become the Archivist? I think the point of divergence for this au would be that Georgie and Jon don't break up during Uni (or just after) and keep their relationship kinda going for a while, and when Jon mentions joining the Magnus Institute, Georgie goes with him.

The real question is why. Georgie in the podcast is fairly avidly against chasing the monsters, so I can see her as taking a job there as a way of keeping Jon safe - I think she sees him as quite naive for his scepticisim and knows that she will not talk him out of it, so she better just be there to stop him from going somewhere he shouldn't.

Jon and Georgie do break-up though, although fairly amicably. They keep living together because it's way cheaper than living alone in London and they are friends. Georgie also starts WTG but it's very much a side project to work (one that she keeps putting off making her full time job, even though she wants to, because the Institute's library is just too good for research).

She's also the one to push him towards the cute librarian with whom Jon has several cringefail attempts to woo before they start tentatively dating.

I reckon that during the course of being in research (with Jon and Tim and Sasha), Georgie gets marked by the web. They'd marked Jon but then Georgie had come, and so they saw an opportunity in her (or wanted a back-up just in case).

Either way, by the time that Gertrude dies, Georgie is the one that Elias chooses as the next Archivist (and I honestly think that Gertrude might have thought that Georgie would be the next Archivist too - Sasha is good but you can't beat actual fearlessness coupled with good sense).

She gets to take with her Jon and Sasha and Tim (Elias is like...let's make sure I have plenty of hostages to work with when the time is right) and that's the Archives team sorted. They're fairly competent, considering the fact that none of them have a library science degree.

Season 1 goes much the same but we meet Martin when he escapes Prentiss. Jon has been going to the library for Georgie, getting out books on archiving and the like and periodically finding references, mostly because he's the one who's closest to the library staff (well, one library staff member in particular).

But Jon mentions that Georgie assigned him the Vittery statement - something about facing his fears - and he hates it, so Martin suggests they go together after work, and he would deal with any remaining spiders for Jon. (Who is Martin, if not down bad for Jon?)

(That is, of course, a rhetorical question lol)

Something something, Martin gets trapped in his apartment for two weeks by the Worm Woman despite not actually being in the Archives. Then he comes straight to the Archives to give a statement, where Jon is working late and waiting for Georgie to finish so they can go home. Jon is the one that suggests Martin stay in the Archives, after he turned down the offer of staying on their sofa.

So Martin lives in document storage and continues working in the library with the rest of his coworkers none-the-wiser, and gets kinda absorbed into the Archives nonsense as Sasha meets Michael etc. etc. And Martin and Jon get really close, from late nights and evenings and weird little dates.

It goes from like...dating to being genuinely quite serious; they have been together for probably like 2 or 3 years by this point but this is a tipping point in their relationship. They keep talking about how they'll move in together after all this is over, so Georgie can finally have her home studio and Martin doesn't have to go back to his flat.

Anyway-

There's also Melanie. She comes in because Georgie was one of the people she contacted in her search for answers and Georgie was like...come and make a statement, maybe we can do something.

Melanie is slightly less derisive of the Magnus Institute (only slightly) mostly because she likes Georgie more lol

Martin is in the library when Prentiss attacks, and is the one that Sasha finds when she runs up from the Archives. Jon and Georgie and Tim are down in the archives, knocking in walls and fighting off worms, and Sasha and Martin go find the CO2 suppression system.

Sasha turns the right corner; Martin doesn't and ends up in Artefact Storage.

Tim finds Gertrude's body. The tide of worms split him off from Georgie and Jon who end up getting wormed in the archives before the fire suppression system gets set off.

They have a few weeks off. Not!Martin and Jon do move in together as had been planned, staying at Georgie's while sorting out a place together. Before everyone returns to the Institute (Martin got the time off too because he was deemed sufficiently traumatised by it all), Jon and Martin move in together, Sasha and Tim have another ill-advised hook-up and Georgie ends up...alone.

Queue the paranoia arc. Georgie might not be able to feel fear but I think that would make a paranoia arc even funnier, because she is convinced that she is seeing things Rationally only for her very much not doing that.

So the thoughts get a bit vague from here. I have some thoughts for each character though!

Martin is obviously taken by the Not!Them in this and so that really fucks Jon up. Jon is Georgie's oldest friend and very much her closest support net, often being the one to feel fear in her place (like she uses him to gauge how she should react to a situation, something that developed because there hasn't really been a time since Georgie returned to Uni where they haven't been in relatively close proximity).

So Jon goes off the deep-end after the revelation of Martin's death and the fact that he wasn't even living with the guy. He takes the responsibility of Martin's mother onto his shoulders, he literally ties up all of Martin's loose ends and then I think he just...stops caring.

It's a mix between Tim's complete S3 despair and Jon's S2 paranoia. He literally cannot trust anyone anymore, no matter how hard he tries, except maybe Georgie because of the whole Archivist thing. And so he goes to the circus with Georgie and Tim and Basira and Daisy.

And he is the one to press the button and die.

I don't usually like taking that away from Tim, because it is a decision so tightly linked to his backstory but I actually put him as ending up in the Coffin in this, shoved in there by a well-meaning Gerogie with her mind being twisted by the Unknowing.

I like the idea of Georgie having a bit of a superiority complex in this AU, where she is sure that she knows better than everyone else because she can't feel fear so she can see things Rationally and Correctly (she wildly underestimates how much other emotions can influence you).

Anyway, back to Tim. He wasn't as depressed during S3 because Georgie's own mini-paranoia arc involved a lot more of digging into statements because she is much more certain that the knowledge of who killed Gertrude is in there, and also Sasha is very much alive and well.

I mean, Jon's rancid vibes are definitely off-putting but like this is at the point where they realise they can't leave and the dread powers exist so the vibes aren't great anyway.

So Tim ends up in the Buried. How does he get out you ask?

Sasha.

I have been waiting for a potential AU in which to put Vast!Sasha and I have decided this is the one. No I don't know how yet but this is my decision - I love the idea of Buried!Tim and Vast!Sasha being something of a couple.

Beyond that for them though, it's mostly vibes.

I think Basira might actually choose to work with Peter Lukas in this one. I wouldn't have Georgie go into a coma post-Unknowing because she's already touched by the End and I don't think she would choose to wake up again, because she simply doesn't have the fear of death that influenced Jon, so she's around for the inter-season shenanigans that occurred.

So Basira doesn't trust her or Elias or Peter, but she decides that as she knows Elias and Georgie, and she's been offered this position by Peter, she'll take it.

(She's trying to ignore the pull of Daisy, hunting out there somewhere, lost after the circus - she never even got the chance to fight against it)

Melanie would be a very interesting one indeed, because part of what attracted her to Georgie in the first place (I think) is that Georgie knows about the entities and can understand her trauma, but is determined to not be a part of it, so they would be so much more messy than in canon.

I honestly couldn't say how her story would thus change. Melanie is a very fascinating character to me and I struggle to sort her out in my head without writing her (and so is Georgie - that's the problem with not writing them as much as some other characters :/) - that said, I do think she doesn't go full eye gouging because she does really love Georgie and doesn't want to leave her in hell alone.

(Hand in unlovable hand and all)

(I also think that Tim and Sasha might decide to do some eye-gouging with friends, as not-quite fully realised avatars of other powers, and try and settle down together somewhere, just in time for the apocalypse)

I'm not sure what all of Georgie's marks would be, or how she'd get them, and if you've got this far I am sure you understand my thoughts are vague and disjointed; but know it will be tragic and upsetting because I refuse to let myself write happy AUs lol

ANYWAY, thank you for showing an interest in this AU :)

[swordsandarms]

i know you just tend to lurk (me too) but your fandomised rhaegar thoughts are very validating lol. ive always thought blue roses are symbolic of a child born from love, not symbolic of a woman. like lyanna has the roses cause she's jon's mother and rhaegar's love, not because they're her "thing"? never thought that was far fetched til coming online lmao.

OK, this was in my drafts for like a decade.

The roses aren't really the child or the woman, but a representation of the (tragic, but bittersweet) love itself. Though, of course, Jon as the "fruit"/"proof" of it is still at the centre of it all.

Used to hate the concept of "tragedy" and not understand how that can be compelling/satisfying. Turns out a lot of tragedy is badly done, hence the feeling of meaningless/pointlessness of it all some of them give you. Look at HOTD. The problem with the writing is that everything is made meaningless, not that your "favourite" isn't winning everything. It is the fact that it's all bitter and no sweet at the end of the day. (Not the book version, which is also a matter of how much better ASOIAF handles the "continuation" of the tragedy better than GOT).

I see Rhaelya as a representation of the concept: "The love was there. It didn't save anyone, it didn't change anything, but the love was there."

Once you get to look at it like that, it becomes very annoying when people in the fandom sound like a broken record of "what's nice about this?? EveRYoNE dIeS". Yeah, that's how tragedies work, but look at it as such and you'll see the nice, too.

It's not about how "oh, why would you think the author is trying to paint Romeo and Juliet as a romance when he liked Rosaline before, and now suddenly her overnight?"/"oh, it's all about how they are dumb teenagers messing up"/"oh, isn't Orpheus the dumbest for turning round".

Romeo and Juliet are young people finding a shiny thing in a shitty society that creates generational cycles of pain and hate for stupid reasons. The ending is satisfying not because the love is successful but because the characters - and readers are meant to - finally get that. Orpheus turns round because he loves Eurydice and if you did you would, too.

Westeros is a hellscape of ambition, heartlessness, and corruption. Everyone is stabbing everyone's back for a bit more of land, a bit more of wealth, a bit more political influence. Selling and pawning their loved ones for a corn chip. (Controversial opinion, neither Elia or Lyanna should have been in that position, but that's the reason why, "loving families" and all. Even more Controversial, Rhaegar shouldn't have been in that position also. And that's the "good" people - as Controversial as people might think that statement is for Rhaegar. But also OH, you mean selling off Cersei didn't work out well cause she was meant to be a pretty object and didn't have to be taught about armies and resources, just vanity? Or Lysa for some reason wasn't all that grateful to papa to give armies to the great alliance when they needed them, for reasons of keeping the one "trueborn child" she had sheltered, cause that's the one thing you promised her she could get if she did your bidding?) Looking away from what is fair when it is "lawful" according to the status quo (and fandom finds it easy to pinpoint it when it's someone deemed hateworthy, but will be 1000% lenient towards a Ned Stark, and will even hold characters they hate accountable when putting FAIRNESS ABOVE LAW).

And the thing about ASOIAF fandom is THEY LOVE THIS SHIT. They love to romanticise it all. But there's the paradox of it all. Romanticising comes with this idea of unrealistic wistfulness, I guess. If a character lives in "the cruel real world", the romanticised ideal is nice to think about. If they actually reach for ideals, they are fools who should get real about living in the "cruel real world".

Oop, I ventured far from the point. But I just love the whole CONCEPT of the blue rose at its roots. 💙 It literally means just that at its roots. Something wistful but unattainable.

[miyuskye]

HERE I GO with this super interesting event from the All Ships Ship Week event hosted by @ficwip

The ship dossier! And what ship I could've dossiered if not my current hyperfixation, aka Jon/Elias??? Sooo, the thing with loving a podcast is that you don't get a lot of official art, since the physical descriptions are also very scarce by author's choice. BUT! they recently made a TTRPG game based on the podcast, which these semi-canon designs. My personal image of the characters in influenced by the huge amount of fanarts circulating around, but, probably an unpopular opinion, I like these designs too. With reference to the image, the top one (not in the ship sense) is Jon, aka the Archivist, aka the pet project/obsession and the bottom one (again, not in the ship sense) is Elias/spoiler, aka the mentor/obsessed.

It would have been great, if I did actually understand the assignment and not gone off the trail with a full AO3 statistical analysis. Under the cut because probably not a lot of people are interested in my ramblings. The dossier is intended for both people familiar with the series, but also for people who know nothing about it. Warning for sparse spoilers about the whole TMA series (not TMP since I still have to listen to it!) (as I said, Elias is a big spoiler himself lol)

Let's begin this trip with a biiig disclaimer. Sadly for us avid AO3 users, the AO3 fandom does not represent the fandom in whole, so these stats are based only on the number of works in the AO3 context. Looking around at non-fanfic related site, i.e. reddit, I know there are some JE shipper there too, though I can't really be sure in what percentage with respect to the non-shipping community (or the people only shipping the canon couple). Links to the guru of fandom stats! toastystats (tumblr), AO3. There's also a github repository but I personally found it a bit cranky to use and it doesn't use an AO3 updated DB, though for big data statistics is fine due to the central limit theorem but for smaller fandom/tags it might be a bit inaccurate. Also the code is in python 2, which is now a bit difficult to use. I personally made my stats by doing targeted searches using the AO3 search function! Super easy to use, albeit a bit repetitive. Stats were made on Oct, 19-22, 2024. Again, I think the results won't change much through the years, especially regarding the main TMA tag data, but who knows if JonElias will surge in popularity (hehe it's a distant hope, I'm pretty much sure that the population distribution is already well-established).

TMA (The Magnus Archive) is a horror podcast, following the events of Jonathan Sims, aka Jon, aka the first part of my ship, who works at the Magnus Institute. This Institute is a facility researching in supernatural events and records supernatural encounters in the form of statements given by volunteering people. Jon is the Head Archivist, meaning he manages the statements and records some "odd ones", as per request of the Head of the Institute and his direct superior, Elias. Sooo yes, he's also his boss. :) lovely for them.

My lovely idiots are the 3rd most popular ship! Such a big achievement for me, who I usually ship obscure ships. As of today, we have 1434 JE works out of the whole 29751 works in the TMA tag. Way to go, JE community, let's keep this up!

The Jon/Martin ship is actually canon in the podcast, so that big percentage, compared to other fandoms, is largely explained by that (instead of simple popularity like Oikawa/Iwaizumi in the Haikyuu fandom). My other favorite ship is Jon/Tim, and I proudly contributed to that 2.78% (ofc also to the 4.8% of JE but it seemed quite superfluous to write).

Fun fact: speaking of spoilers, Elias' character tag in AO3 is a MASSIVE spoiler. It was what ruined the plot twist for me, because I looked for fanfics around ep 40ish (out of 200) and got that spoiled :( I understand why AO3 did that, because before the reveal the tags referring to Jonah and Elias were separated and I guess they wanted to unite them (since I also read some Jonah/Jon works before the reveal - all of them ended up having Elias being somewhat connected to Jonah OF COURSE, but I believe that before The Reveal there was also the belief that Elias was one of his descendants. I became part of the fandom after that, though, so it's just speculation based on older posts I came across).

This is probably my most favourite slide. JonElias has the highest Mature-to-Gen ratio (based on the AO3 rating system) with respect to the other ships. Jon/Martin, being 40% of the works also leads most of the general fandom stats, so it's more correct to actually cite the ship that makes the stat. I also believe that a lot of the more Gen-oriented fics feature Jon/Martin due to them being canon, that is also one of the possible factors influencing their and the whole tag ratios. Due to this, I believe that the Elias/Peter ratio might actually influenced by that, since they're a non-conflicting couple with the main one and are thus frequently included in their fanfics. The other fave of mine also has a higher Mature-to-Gen ratio than the general one, but not as high as JE.

Jon is the main character, so it's obvious that he is the most cited in all the works. Elias is the villain, so it's not so strange. Also, this refers to the characters tags, and this means that Elias might be included as a character even in other ships-based works. I believe the same happens with Tim, since ships with him have a lower presence in the fandom, but he is the third most included character. It's probably because he gets included into most of the Gen/JMart works.

These are the most used AO3 tags for the JonElias main ship tag. Do I really need to explain? They just do the talking in my place lol

A few words on the Alternate universe tag: AUs are somewhat canon in the show, due to plot-related reasons, and I believe this gives us space to imagine, stories where Jon is as deranged as Elias without denaturing canon. I personally believe Jon has the capacity of being feral as, if not even more than, Elias. Canon showed us a glimpse of what we could have but ended up not getting, again, due to plot-related reasons. Some fanfics are based on those glimpses. Also the Do not Archive will be an interesting topic to talk about later!

These are the most used tags for the individual characters. Some of them are also matching but not in their JE tagged works. For example, the tag Fluff might be present in 12% of Elias' works but more than half of those works are Jon/Martin-based works, so he's included in the work but, in a way, not actively participating in the fluff. Also, Jon is canonically asexual, hence the related tag! A few words on that, this doesn't and rightly won't stop people from producing M and E-rated works with him and characters (not necessarily Elias), contrary to what some people might think. And I assure you, as an asexual person, that no one of the JE fanfics I read (even the ones without the Asexual character tag) erased Jon's asexuality. If anything, the ones where Jon's asexuality was present and acknowledged were also my favorites!

Small digression on the Do not archive tag. I noticed that both JE and Elias' tag had a percentage of works being under that tag. Which is used when an author does not want the series staff to read their works. It's mostly used on M+E works (77% of DNA tagged works are M or E rated on AO3), as one would expect. At first I guessed it was related to the pronounced M-to-T ratio of the JE tag (which is even more pronounced on the DNA tag), buuut it turns out the main cause was just a quirk of the data/bias of the data case. As I said, there are only 1434 (as of end-October 2024) works in the JE tag and this means that this number can be biased by a single external source, which causes the shift in the data. This means that this is not a trend!

By excluding the cause from the analysis, the Do not archive tag percentages for JE are still higher than the other ships, but not by such a large margin (around 7% which makes sense).

Nothing to say here, the series reaching its peak in terms of fandom response and also due to COVID making people consume more media content, the JE rise followed the general raise of fanfics in the TMA tag. Which isn't surprising but not to be taken for granted either! Another sad but probably not a trend fact is that Jon/Elias production was slightly more flourishing during the earlier years of the series (especially 2018-2019), than it is now. This might probably related to a ship actually being made canon or probably fandom disappointment in the TMA finale (which I can understand). I read in a lot of earlier JE fanfics very excited comments about "omg I can't wait to see him and Jon in s4/5" and I was like *sad violin noises*, because they didn't get the amount of (canon-expected) interactions the JE fandom thought they would get. Again, this is just speculation and to be taken with a grain of salt.

Unexpectedly, M+E JE works have more words that Gen-rated ones (expected on the JE tag due to their M-to-T ratio, but kinda unexpected compared to the whole TMA tag).

JE fanfics are slightly more kudo-ed and bookmarked than the general fandom trend.

A conclusive remark, is that I made this just to see what behaviours could be extrapolated from such a tiny tag in an otherwise medium fandom (as for 2020, median number of fanworks in labelled big fandom was 45k. Havign roughly half of that number means that TMA is, on AO3, a medium fandom to me).

Anyhow, I wish you happy JonElias day which for me is once again every day since twp months ago :)

[purple-egg-yolk]

Magnus archives Cosmere crossover

The fear entities are a shard (Fear) that doesn’t have a vessel and is also in the process of shattering but not completely shattered. Hence the different entities but they are all still connected. Each entity could be considered a splinter of the shard once it finished shattering.

The rituals are all attempts to create a perpendicularity. They don’t work unless you use the power of the entire shard; one entity is not powerful enough on its own to create a perpendicularity.

The entities exist in a realm adjacent to ours, could 100% be the cognitive realm.

Avatars are amazed and jealous of Radiants abilities to manifest their spren in the physical realm at will.

Much like the Dor on Sel, some entities are developing sentience without a vessel, like the web.

Jon ascends to become the vessel of the fear shard in the season 4 finale.

Michael/Helen were the spirals attempt to cause an ascension, but similarly to the rituals, to fully ascend you need to be marked by all the entities.

Silverlight researchers are fascinated by how the fear shard is naturally splintering, and are studying the formations of the fears in relation to the formations of spren on Roshar.

Researchers do not like the Magnus institute on moral grounds but are also more or less willing to work with them because they want to know more. The eye absolutely steals people visiting from the Silverlight universities.

The avatars are interested in emotional allomancy and wonder if they could feed off fear caused by allomancy.

The cult of the lightness flame is incredibly proud of the fact that on Roshar, the wars are al called Desolations. They love the True Desolation and would absolutely help Odium.

Avatars are embarrassed by Roshars fear spren. Their fear spren are clearly superior.

Radiants are jealous of Vast avatars seemingly endless ability to use the surge of gravitation without oaths or need for stormlight.

Avatars who do not want to feed off of fear could feed off pure dor, but not stormlight. Basically fear is being converted into investiture to feed the entities and much like Elantrians, (but unlike radiants or allomancers) they need investiture to sustain them.

Near death experiences to become avatars work in a similar way as snapping in allomancy/trauma for radiants. Gotta have that to rip a hole into your soul wide enough for a fear entity to slip in.

Eye avatars are terrified by shard blades and their abilities to burn out eyes. Also they don’t like deadeyes. Also steel inquisitors. Hemalurgy would be very scary.

Salesa’s camera works just like aluminum, or maybe like soothing fear or a copper cloud. All three maybe lol.

Artifact storage really wants a soul caster. Or any fabrial really.

Forgery could be used to mimic avatar powers or mimic a mark of an entity

Aviar could be used like selasa’s camera.

The web uses spirit webs and connection to manipulate people.

The End is the only entity with future sight, as seen with Oliver Banks who knows people will die before they do. Other entities do not have this.

The slaughter and the thrill would get alone very well.

Kelsier would be a hunt avatar if he was ever able to get his ass off scadrial and to tma earth. As would a lot of the rosharan ghostbloods I guess loll.

Most avatars could not become radiants, but eye and spiral avatars could be come lightweavers. Lightweavers because they don’t need oaths beyond the first. And they speak truths specifically, which I think the eye would like. Spiral not so much but it would appreciate the lies lightweavers tell enough to not complain too much. Maybe the eye avatars could also become truth watchers.

Cryptics would be fascinated by the spiral. Avatars would initially assume cryptics are manifestations of the spiral.

Avatars would have mixed feelings on Harmony because balance is such a big deal with the fears.

Elias would be pissed that so many people figured out immortality before him.

Any Radiant gets thrown into the lonely:

immediately summons shardblade. “What is this place?”

Spren, “I think it’s the lonely, I’ve heard about it!” Radiant,” Well it didn’t work very well”

Elias and the fused are both body hopping cognitive shadows.

These are just my ideas that have been rattling around in my brain, I would love to hear others! What would hoid think of this world? Could he even get to the physical realm? He would need to get through the fear entities so maybe?

[aspenlovesmedia]

Okay, here’s a bit of a thought dump on Basira in the Shifted Gaze au.

So, I was playing around with the idea of having her be the victim to the NotThem, but I decided not to as while it would have some very fun implications with her and Daisy’s dynamic, I don’t think it would work as well with the other characters as they wouldn’t have known Basira at all before hand. Like there is some interesting stuff there, but it wouldn’t hurt the characters in the way I would want it to.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to use the NotThem or not. I have a couple of ideas for it but there are only so many main characters in TMA and I don’t want to use ocs and I don’t know if the NotThem will fit with what I have planned.

Anyway, like in canon, Basira gets assigned Gertrude’s murder case. Sasha is the prime suspect as she doesn’t seem surprised or even too upset by the discovery of Gertrude’s body. There is of course no evidence of it though, so Basira gets to work. As in canon, she brings Sasha tapes, but there isn’t the same level of sneaking around the Archives since Sasha isn’t paranoid like Jon was. Because of this, Basira does interact a bit with the other archival staff, and she picks up on something being off with Jon very quickly. Martin does his best to protect him, but Basira is a good detective, and Jon’s slipping humanity is not the easiest thing to hide.

This actually leads to Basira wondering if Jon is the one who killed Gertrude (it wasn’t, it was still Elias), and let’s just say this is really where things start to go wrong for the archival team.

I want to say in advance I am very sorry for what I do to Jon in this story. And Martin. And everyone to be honest. If you think Sasha makes ebtter decisions than Jon you are very mistaken lol.

[nezumithewriter]

season three of the magnus archives was fucking awesome

ep 81: "guess who got framed for murder" "anyways my childhood was fucked up"

ep 82: "it was a little bloody and i didn't like daisy" - my mother

ep 83: "JON? There's a weird letter in the mailbox for you. Says.. uh... 'statement of'" jon crashing through the wall with tape recorder sfx

ep 84: I GOT A JOB AT THE MAGNUS INSTITUTE?!? (I'M INEXTRICABLY TIED TO A BEING BEYOND MY COMPREHENSION)

ep 85: The man was there but also wasn't, fuck you want from me?

ep 86: Holy fuck i love melanie king i can't think of a funny 3am joke for this one except i can WORKING MY JOB AT THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES (READ A PAPER ABOUT CHILDHOOD TRAUMA) (MY COWORKERS NEED THERAPY) but seriously i love melanie king so much i need her to get out of there and to safety

ep 87: the Stranger watching this plumber with adhd swag walk in, fix their pipes, and leave despite all of the dead people's faces being cut off around him

ep 88: DIG.

ep 89: girlboss explains her fire fetish to concerned eldritch entity in training, oh and also AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ep 90: dude calm the fuck down they're just doing some reps on the high bar so what if they have no eyes it's fine dude why are you running

ep 91: Daisy Tonner kills mr. blue sky

ep 92: Elias really said "acab, also i killed gertrude and leitner lol. we're at war with a dozen or so eldritch abominations"

ep 93: Jonathan Sims explains the magnus archives lore to his friends after reading a statement about the corruption from terraria

ep 94: "the monster stole all of my 'give a damn' many years ago"

ep 95: Basira reading her alchemy book two feet away while Martin has a crisis over the fact he can feel the emotions of the statement giver when recording

ep 96: Jon and Daisy do a silly and commit a crime or two (broke and entered, murdered a mandela catalogue alternate, etc)

ep 97: "Are you going to kill me?" "What?? No!!!" "..." "well not rn!!!"

ep 98: "Are you worried about getting fired?" Melanie on her way to commit attempted murder

ep 99: Jonathan Sims gets kidnapped by the clown police (ASMR)

ep 100: can't believe we got The Spiral, The Desolation, The Web, the Dark/Buried, the Lonely in the same episode. the statements were so well done and the were clear and precise

ep 101: "why is the door locked" michael, 2 seconds before helen has a gamer's rise up moment

ep 102: knives, beetle wives, french, oh my!

ep 103: jon really said "fuck it we ball" and decided to use his eldritch powers to be petty

ep 104: "Tim! I might be an eldritch monster but that was unacceptable!"

ep 105: "你说中文?" "no i don't speak chinese"

ep 106: FUCK YOU ELIAS (GONE WRONG) (I WANT THIS BITCH DEAD)

ep 107: JON EATS THE STATEMENTS AND ALSO TREVOR AND JULIA ARE THERE THIS IS THE FIRST EPISODE WHERE I FELT INCREDIBLY EXCITED IS THIS WHAT MCU FANS FELT LIKE ENDGAME

ep 108: "Was he… woOoOo?" -- Basira Hussain, 2017

ep 109: FNAF but with three screaming corpses and a guy

ep 110: trans cinematographer deconstructs the film industry (and mr spider is there too)

ep 111: Jon interviews an emo book (real)

ep 112: #1 Victory Royale

ep 113: "STOP-- touching the plastic explosive"

ep 114: daisy and tim getting happy over the prospect of exploding a circus

ep 115: delicious, finally some good fucking food

ep 116: fuck your dance in particular *CANNON SFX*

ep 117: "hope we don't die!" vs tim and daisy's "fuck it we ball"

ep 118: Martin gets to commit arson-- FUCK YOU ELIAS FUCK YOU ELIAS FUCK YOU ELIAS FU

ep 119: genuinely one of the coolest episodes i've ever listened to due in part to the fact that i was just as confused as the characters (i listened without a transcript). The ways the stranger fucks with the archives team while they're slowly going insane from how much they've forgotten and no longer understand is phenomenal. I'm gonna miss Tim.

ep 120: world's weirdest clipshow that ends with police brutality

[rise-my-angel]

Once saw some Dany stans on twitter theorizing about Jon and Dany's future children they are so sure they will have lol and they were concerned about the kid's coming out with brown hair instead of looking like perfect little Valyrians with silver hair. When you totally don't stan the targs because of white blood purity racial aesthetics. Mind you, these are the same stans that get offended when you tell them they literally sound like white supremacists who want to use eugenics to keep the 'bloodline pure' and produce perfect blonde, pale, violet eyed Aryan babies.

These people probably think it's only a coincidence too that the grandchild Aerys refused to even hold in public court, was the one who was born with darker skin and hair just like Elia.

He probably would have been much happier holding little silver haired purple eyed Aegon.

Honestly Jon came out looking so much like Lyanna and so heavily like a Northerner, that the Targaryeans probably would've all been like "OH GODS WHAT IS THAT THING?"

Targ stans so desperately want their purple eyed silver haired incest babies to all be incestual with each other so that they can go one to have more purple eyed silver haired incest babies. And they somehow think that is perfectly normal behavior to engage in.

Also lmao cus even if Danys womb wasn't 360 noscoped by blood magic, she is so terribly inbred that she probably couldn't even have children anyways. The more inbred Targaryean women are the more they seem to have either very traumatic childbirths or they die on the birthing bed completely. Targaryean women born from such direct incest like Dany have very little chance of having a viable, live birth.

She is too influenced by extremely damaged genetics to have children anyways even if there wasn't the whole magic debate behind it.

Also me even discussing them having children makes me feel gross.

She's his aunt, you weirdos.