#statements of the void

[enjoyvoidblack]

Jmart being jokey and lighthearted with each other in the post-apocalypse because they don't have to stress constantly about preventing the worst when it's already happened now. Jmart finally getting the space to actually get to know each other in the form of a long walk through the hellscape. Proving Peter Lukas wrong about only liking the idea of each other. Finding no joy around them and finding out they can still make their own. Jmart knowing the relief of a simple laugh from a person you usually see harrowed but are now with often enough to see looking relieved, and knowing that a part of why they look so is you, and knowing also that the only way this moment can be possible in the first place is the loss of so much else all around you. Season 5 jmart. Do you understand

[enjoyvoidblack]

1. Extremely funny observation

2. It's more specific even than that. Every Michael (Salesa, Crew, Distortion) is some variation on an impartial observer or meddler, not having any specific loyalties or any specific reservations against causing harm if crossed. What flaky all-sides-playing Michael hurt you, Jonny,

If y’all didn’t know Jane Austen wrote some books and in most of them she names all the smart, pretty, talented characters “Jane” and all the “plain looking”, boring, stupid ones “Mary” so a lot of people wonder who Mary was which is pretty funny.

Unrelated but Jonny sims named a lot of his main characters some variation of “Jon” and a lot of the weird monster characters some variation of “Michael”.

[ofswordsandpens]

ever since I heard that RR was like "we decided that since Annabeth was so smart and 6 steps ahead of everyone, it wouldn't make sense for her to do x, y, or z like she did in the book" I've been physically ill, it haunts me

[pokemonblack3white3]

Professor Oak and always second favorite to a kid who can't ever be bothered to come down from that damn mountain Blue. Giovanni and always second favorite to a kid who can't ever be bothered to come down from that damn mountain Silver. Norman emotionally distant armchair dad to his only child. Barry only ever being able to get close to Palmer through becoming a powerful trainer. Cogita always dismissing Volo and Volo never being even halfway honest with her. Emmet's life being defined by his missing brother and Ingo only having faint memories of who Emmet is. Cilan, Cress, and Chili not being strong enough trainers on their own. Ghetsis treating Anthea and Concordia like babysitters for the son he horrifically abused. Bianca's father never believing in her and Bianca eventually thinking he's right not to. Hugh spending years never healing from a hurt done to his little sister. Lusamine creating a golden calf to catch that damn jellyfish she chose over her own children after Mohn dissappeared. Lillie and Gladion being seperated first by Lusamine and then again by their own volition when one of them goes to Kanto. Hala dedicating his life to being a kahuna while his son and Hau can never commit. Hop living in the shadow of Leon who their mother prefers. Marnie being the only hope of her hometown that Piers is the gym leader of. Rose deciding that becoming the protagonist of Peony's life wasn't enough he needed the whole world to praise him. Peony being overbearing to his daughters Peonia and Penny to make up for the love he didn't receive as a child. Arven and his parents who died or left because they couldn't learn to live with him in the present. Iris strongest trainer in the entire Unova region and Drayton barely scraping by in school, grandchildren of gym leader and mayor Drayden. Carmine not realizing how badly Kieran is spiraling. You understand.

[enjoyvoidblack]

The fact that Jon so heavily respects and roots for the one (living) person he sees who seems to be actually trying and succeeding to fight the Fears, even if it's something he'd consider too risky or futile to do himself, says so much about both how trapped he feels and how impactful Gerry's work was, and both make me insane.

The fondness in Jon's voice when he says, "that'll be our Gerard." makes me want to scream because they didn't even know each other and yet Jon likes him. Jon doesn't speak about anyone like that. Jon has heard enough about Gerry in the tapes and notes that he's formed an opinion of him. He says "our Gerard" the way others speak of a family member. In the same way someone would loving call a cousin a brat. Jon likes Gerry.

[kacievvbbbb]

Caitlyn threatens the doctor with the deepest darkest cell where’s there’s no clean air and no sunlight and like babe so…….Zaun

[kaz-identified]

Titans do not understand the void. They make crude shield to let their enemies break themselves upon. They wield it, they do not feed it. They let their enemies do that for them.

Warlocks think that they do. They think that through all their study and their practice, they understand what it means to become one with absence.

But they do not deny themselves. They do not seek to tear free endless need and want from their bones, absence purely to truly understand it.

But they cannot truly understand it. To use, to study, is not to live within. It is not to give yourself to. It is not to feed. Not to deny yourself sleep and food and drink.

As long as the Titans stay behind their walls, and Warlocks remain in their libraries, they will never understand the Void.

But they could. One day. If they left.

If they left for the far edges, learn to deny themselves everything and become one with absence, drape themselves in the shadow and learn to let the crushing weight of gravity lighten their steps.

But they never will.

They will stomp and flounce about.

They will never stalk.

My kin do not understand the Void. Oh… but they could. If they would surrender their fear. Of it. Of me.

They burn and crackle, laughing and living lives of want, dressed in fire and storms.

None of them will deny themselves.

They still fear it.

I see it in their eyes. When I reach into emptiness, and hold together dusk and moonless nights and black between stars, when I pull together absence into my hands and draw it to a singularity.

They do not see the web.

They do not hear the whispers.

They come in here, thinking of the feasts and celebrations and rest.

I know no such trinkets.

I hunger. I wait. I remain awake.

I walk on the edge of midnight, that glorious endlessness before after dusk and just before dawn.

And I glimpse beyond.

Let them fear me.

Let them stay in their fires and storms. Let the Titans stay behind their walls and the Warlocks in their libraries.

I alone know the Void. Know the hunger and the absence, hear the whispers as I draw denial into arrow. Let them feast on Light I leave in my wake.

I alone prowl forward. I alone know the color of the shadows.

I alone stalk the night.

Let them fear me.

And let my enemies come.

[enjoyvoidblack]

You are so right and correct with all of this. Elias is (by the time we meet him at least) closer to an author who is trying to make a plotline work and has a full understanding of what will make everyone in it break too early or in the wrong direction, than he is to the rest of the Archives, or to a person who doesn't feel or understand human fear at all. He is very emotionally intelligent! He would need to be empathetic, in my opinion, to know things like what would hit Melanie and Martin hardest! He just is using it all to an end, judging what measures of what emotions and reactions will leave his plan still stable and in a good enough position to work.

And also. Of course he understands their fear. Of course he feels it. He is actively being fed by feeling it. If he's anything remotely like Jon in his power, he feels it all in his core at all times, and has had 200 years to practice turning it into a generator instead of a pressure that must escape. That's. Probably worth remembering.

I don't have a problem persay with the portrayal of Jonah/Elias having problems with empathy or emotions or human connections (beyond my generalized issue that any time anyone behaves meanly they're immediately stamped as low/no empathy which. is annoying, but that's a conversation for another day), but I don't think I agree with it entirely, either.

He doesn't behave the way he does with the Archives crew or with Jon because he's incapable of understanding or perceiving their feelings, or of identifying with them. On the contrary, he's really very emotionally perceptive with the people around him, and engages fairly openly (for his personal given value) with them right up until like. mid-season 4? He's playing mind games left right and center, of course, but again that isn't because he doesn't understand that it might upset people to do that. I don't even really think it's because he doesn't care, at least not exactly.

We are following this unraveling existential fear nightmare with a group of people to whom it is new. And upon first listen, it was also new to us! Do you know who it 100% was not new to in any capacity? Elias. And in fact, it has not been new to Elias in like. 200 years.

The Archives crew and all of us listening in are babies in a scary new world, knocking into things and fumbling around on wobbly legs trying to identify what's safe and what isn't. It's not that Elias is incapable of understanding or identifying or even empathizing with how upset everyone is, it's that by comparison these are children who have skinned their knees at the playground, and he is an ostensibly 200+ year old adult who knows that, if they just get up and keep playing and learn more about the world, they're going to be fine (for his personal given value. 'you're going to like it here, in the world we've made' etc etc).

In fact, the few times that Jon directly goes to Elias for explanation or comfort or to confide his concerns, Elias actually does give him those things. He's literally, very VERY literally, been exactly in Jon's position, except when he was there it was totally without the benefit of guidance or context. I don't think his conversation about "even when you had the entire archive at your disposal you only made it through a couple a week, why do you think that is?" was insincere or unhelpful. Wanting all the answers and for everything to make sense immediately is understandable but not possible. Not for the version of Jon demanding those answers. Not for Jonah, when he was careening through all of this on his own.

This is a man who started off passionate and curious and brilliant, who poured himself into understanding and prevention of the damage done by the Fears, and it's also a man who watched everyone else in his little cohort die, who outlived them all, who watched the world changed and gained the understanding he sought and found that desperate death grip on fighting the good fight to be futile.

It isn't that he doesn't have emotions or feel empathy. It's that he has a completely different world view, different conclusions, different ends, and has had time enough to let go of the reflex to wring his hands about it all. Has that made him very nice, particularly? No lmfao. But I feel like it flattens some of the nuance of his character to be like "oh he just doesn't get people or feel human emotions and that's why he acts that way."

[gay-pidgeons]

sometimes a family is an amnesiac forum moderator, winona ryder but if she was six feet tall, and a himbo. Also it is the apocalypse

[enjoyvoidblack]

Simon mentioning he came to explain some things about the Extinction to Martin because he lost a bet to Peter, and Peter's entire recruitment of Martin being in itself a bet with Elias, I can only imagine that the last 50+ years have consisted mainly of these three terrible old men betting back and forth like schoolchildren for the sake of petty advantages and boredom and that is very fun to think about. I wonder how many hours falling at terminal velocity Elias has clocked just to pay for his losses to Simon. Imagine Peter sitting Deeply Uncomfortable through the busiest dinner party Elias could find, because he's not allowed to go into the Lonely during it since he failed to throw an Eye-touched soul into the sea on his last voyage or something of the sort. Elias just watching him from the corner the entire time and Gloating. Peter already trying to calculate whether he can get Simon to take his spot by beating him at pool. It's perfect.

[lemmonady]

I mean this as a totally straightforward statement. I’ve never seen Ilia Malinin skate more his age than in that free

[little-paper-man]

Very sick at the moment but what comes with being very sick is very crack ideas:

today it is Vontra and Shadow (wolf from 2nd book) being worsties together

[akkivee]

that’s not a problem for ichiro lol!!!!!!

[junebugtwin]

even while it was happening, you knew it wasn't going to last

[archivist-of-the-void-institute]

MAKE A STATMENT, FACE YOUR FEARS

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make a statement, face your fear! all submissions are anon, though if you want to add a name or sign of you can!

[mecharose]

im a new yorker and i majored in sociology this shit is like my personal superbowl