#university gave you a paper

[ritualwritten]

(( some Assorted Thoughts for elias with one of jonah’s eyes AU

content warnings:  eye horror, discussions of death, generally a bit gross ))

Jonah’s eye is in Elias’s right eye socket.

Elias can’t get the eye out.  It doesn’t sit in the socket quite right and is pretty visible in that fact, however, despite how tentative the connection appears to be, it won’t just... fall out.  That said, it could be removed with force, but Elias can’t even imagine doing so without having a panic attack and flashbacks to Jonah assaulting him.  So there it remains.

He did try going to the police in the immediate aftermath, but nothing came of it.  No one wants to deal with anything happening in the Institute and Jonah’s rich enough to make any problems disappear anyway.

The eye socket doesn’t want to heal.  It’ll remain permanently raw until either Jonah finishes possessing Elias, the eye is removed, or Jonah dies.  The Eye’s influence keeps it from becoming infected outright, similar to how it keeps Jonah’s body from rotting to pieces in the Panopticon.

By the start of the podcast, Elias knows how to endure the constant aching.  But the socket does regularly bleed or otherwise ooze, so he wears a gauze eyepatch.  This also has the benefit of hiding the fact Jonah’s eye moves entirely independently from Elias.  Jonah’s eye responds to where Jonah is looking. 

Elias can’t see out of Jonah’s eye so he wouldn’t be bothered by the chameleon-ing of his eyes, but that comes with the caveat that he was living with monocular vision.  I say was because I keep Elias’s blindness consistent throughout all verses, so by the podcast start, the vision in his own eye has deteriorated to the point where he’s legally blind and uses a cane to get around. 

Elias can be away from the Institute like he is because of Jonah’s eye.  He’s never “too far” from Jonah.  The eye’s kinda like a fucked up portable charger for not getting sick due to an eldritch connection to a research institute.  Conceivably, Elias could leave the country entirely, but Jonah’s eye wants to stay close by and exerts some minor influence to stay orbiting its body.  Once Elias is blind, he is totally divorced from the Institute and could remove Jonah’s eye while Jonah lives and bear no ill-consequences.  Jonah could also be killed and Elias would be fine.  Before the vision loss, if Jonah was killed then it would kill Elias too.

There are still records of Elias’s employment and those records say he is still 100% employed.  Funnily enough, he’s still getting paychecks from the Institute.  Elias doesn’t like it but, like, free money’s free money.

As always, Elias still wears those ridiculous triangle glasses, though once he’s using a cane, they no longer have prescription lenses in them.  He just likes the style.

From Jonah’s eye, as it’s kinda like a living Artifact, he does get some Spooky Effects.  Notably, if he has the eye uncovered and looks at someone, he can tell both if they’ve been Marked and their greatest fear.  Given he knows jackshit about the Entities, it’s an intense feeling that he’d have no idea how to describe.  Once he’s blind, he can’t pinpoint it to any individual unless that’s the only person he’s facing, but the feeling is still there.

Also, unfortunately, he gets blasted by visions and facts that Jonah dredges up from the Eye.  For example, when Jonah told Melanie about her father, Elias was getting the same experience.  He couldn’t hear what Jonah was saying, but out of nowhere he was bombarded with the same knowledge Melanie was, with the bonus of getting those details which Jonah was withholding.

Elias also suffers from near-nightly horrific nightmares.

Obviously, Jonah could very easily track down Elias and finish the possession or get his eye back.  He does not out of fear of what Elias would do once cornered.  Either damaging the eye or killing Jonah outright.  So long as both of his eyes are undamaged, Jonah retains his connection to the Eye, if he lost one... well, he doesn’t want to risk it.  Too busy watching Gertrude, he hasn’t had the time to set things up to try a more oblique way of getting it back and, once he realizes how he could start the Apocalypse, he figures that would solve the problem.

Honestly, he had thought Elias’s employment meant that he’d have to return eventually or fall ill, but that never happened.

It is fortunate for Jonah that Elias wears an eyepatch as, by default, he looks out of his eyes.  So, if Elias had Jonah’s eye uncovered, his vision would be split half-and-half between locations.  Which is disorienting.

To make up for the fact he would normally only have half his vision, Jonah wears an eyepatch with the owl logo of the Institute (embroidered in gold thread because he’s a dramatic bastard like that).  He just looks out of those eyes for his day-to-day. 

Jonah is still stuck in James Wright because he cannot complete a possession without both of his eyes.  Wright’s body’s aging adds an extra dash of desperation to Jonah’s plans to get the Apocalypse going.  He can’t risk the stolen body falling apart before then.

Jonah cannot influence Elias’s movements.  The eye itself has a desire to remain relatively close to its body, but that is essentially the extent of the influence.

Jonah is also slightly weaker without both of his eyes in his possession.

[acemenagerie-a]

@ elias 🍉

questions! || ACCEPTING 🍉: Could you stay with the same person all your life? Do you feel comfortable with a commitment like that? Why or why not?

“If someone would have me that long!”  Elias laughs, belatedly realizing that 'that long' is shorter than he had immediately estimated.  He, pointedly, ignores that realization.

“I think it would be nice, yeah?   Getting to wake up and feel a warm weight next to me, always having someone to cook for, having a wedding ring to fidget with...”   A wistful smile that grows faded at the edges.   “It'd feel like they're settling for me, though, and I wouldn't want that.”

He shakes his head with a cocked, lazy smile.  “Also, ah, monogamy isn't the only thing I'd be up for.”

[ritualwritten]

Lonely! and Distortion!Elias both have a party motif and do a lot of hunting at parties.

Lonely!Elias leans on the more, well, lonely aspects of being a wallflower (seeing the party yet not participating nor being invited into the merriment and the isolation therein) or the feeling when you step outside for a smoke or close the bathroom door (muffled music and conversations creating a distance).  And his corner of the Lonely is very much reminiscent of a the morning after a party - all the remnants of life and fun and socialization but none of the people.

Distortion!Elias is more the sensory overload, the being unable to hear quite right, finding it hard to see, the difficulty of navigating a stranger’s home.  And he has placed the door in the perfect spot to be chosen accidentally, trap and relentlessly hunt the person in his halls to the point of hysteria, only to spit them back out at the peak of fear, babbling about monsters and impossible hallways.

And sometimes he doesn’t even have to chime in to have everyone start laughing or tell them it’s just a bad trip or say they’ve had too much for the night.

[ritualwritten]

(( just woke up thinking about dark!elias being so terrified the Church will come for him despite the failed ritual fracturing them that he locks himself in his flat that he starts keeping entirely lit 24/7, keeping bulbs on hand when his stress/anxiety/new nature inevitably causes some to pop, because he knows none of them can get him like this

but it makes him sick and weak too and this panicked hiding away is ended when the gnawing hunger gets excruciating and he decides he won't die of that, of all things

once he's clearer-headed he realizes it'd probably be better to stay in fighting form at the risk of his possible pursuers being able to take advantage of the environment too. still, i'd imagine that sometimes the anxiety is bad enough that he'll sit in a brightly lit room until his teeth ache ))

[ritualwritten]

(( tbh that u.quiz made me think that elias deserved an office romcom meet-cute and was robbed by existing in the horror genre :/ ))

[ritualwritten]

ELIAS TAGS

[acemenagerie-a]

this is a vital question: would elias own a bong with a trademarked character on it

(( why must u curse me like this

he probably saw like... a pac man b.ong in college and thought it was the coolest shit & i will say probably got one along those lines then.

as of his post-possession existence, he probably wouldn't want one, but i could see him ending up with one after bad impulse shopping choices ))

[acemenagerie-a]

(( Bits and bobs about: Elias!

While Elias is nonbinary, he doesn’t super mind when people call him a man or think of him as one; he’s not, but it’s whatever, he knows who he is.  If he’s going to be addressed formally, though, he only accepts being ‘Mx. Bouchard.’  Over everything, he prefers just being ‘Elias’ but sometimes that doesn’t work out.

In his conscious-while-possessed verses, he honestly finds it nice that Jonah goes for being ‘Mr. Bouchard’ because it adds some distance.  When he gets his body back it feels like as clean of a break as he can hope for to be ‘Mx. Bouchard’ and have an address that is his 100%.

In all post-possession scenarios, he still wears his glasses, though they are useless, just because he likes them.  They’re triangles and it makes him happy.  They pretty much always sit on the tip of his nose. ))

[acemenagerie-a]

One thing Elias was realizing about existing post-being possessed for two decades was that, while sometimes he was utterly paralyzed into inactivity, other times he immediately went and did whatever nonsense popped into his head.  After all, what if he got possessed again?  What if he lost another two decades?  He can’t risk not doing what he wants!

Which is how he is now sitting in his apartment with fingers gently bandaged that - when unbandaged - will read TOMAT OSOUP.

That bastard’s money well spent.

[acemenagerie-a]

(( lonely! and dark!elias are just

🤝 uses supernatural powers to fuck off in the middle of a conversation ))

[acemenagerie-a]

(( idk when or how else to say this but Elias doesn’t have an ass

this enby is 90% leg and the lankiest motherfucker and it’s just flat as a board back there ))

[acemenagerie-a]

@auspicium asked:  🍕 i need to know elias’s top soups meme || ACCEPTING 🍕 for a moodboard about my muse’s favorite foods

(( again, bc it was u who sent it, it is vaguely oliver flavored - in that idk how much elias would actually like french onion soup, but because he made it w oliver on new year’s, it is now #1 soup ))

[acemenagerie-a]

(( I have been thinking abt how certain muses approach relationships in general and I just

How Elias is so terrified of disappointment that he self-sabotages constantly so that no one has any expectations of him.  He can’t fail to meet expectations that don’t exist.  But that also means that the second anyone likes him or expresses any sentiment like “You are not garbage,” he flips shit because now he can let them down.  

Then Salesa has a transactional view of relationships.  At the very least there’s a sense of “The care I receive is directly proportional to what I have to offer.”  Which, to be fair, is generally true given what he does.  But I am just losing my mind over him and Dekker pining for literal decades and Salesa’s over here like “When I retire, I won’t have anything to offer Adelard, so he’s not going to want to see me.”

Meanwhile Fanshawe’s just “Yes I will devote every single scrap of my own being to helping every single person I possibly can at a fever pitch” and then someone tries to direct some of that care back and he just “Oh no, I don’t think it’s supposed to go in this direction.” ))

[acemenagerie-a]

(( Also an Elias headcanon note!  Elias, post-possession is, unsurprisingly, incredibly sensitive about his Face Region.  Cheeks and stuff suddenly being brushed or touched freak him out and he’ll still be nervous even if someone warns him first.

Him taking someone’s hands and putting them on his cheeks ( *wink wink wink to this reply* ) is one of the biggest nonverbal gestures of trust he gives.  I don’t know if he himself entirely processes that consciously, but subconsciously it is definitely “I literally trust this person with my life.” ))

[acemenagerie-a]

(( i decided to make NPC network docs for the muses that have specifically developed NPCs but that meant i finally had to give elias’s dad a name

so elias’s dead dad is now named Alek J. D. Bouchard

i am highlighting this because it is a shitty pun

“Al” and then “J. D.” put together could be pronounced like algid, a word meaning cold.  Like a fridge.  Because I fridged him. ))

[acemenagerie-a]

12, 26, 28 for elias, perhaps?

peek inside... || ACCEPTING

12.     frequently used emojis.

Elias actually doesn’t use emojis that much!  While emojis are easier for him to receive because of screen readers and their associated alt text, he’s never gotten into using them himself.  He's more familiar with ASCII emoticons and has a habit of dictating those over emojis.  But on that note:

1 - :-) 2 - :-D 3 - :-p 4 - :-o 5 - :-(

He also tends to picture emoticons rather than something closer to a smiley when receiving smiley emojis.  So like ‘face with tears of joy’ would be closer to :’-) or :’-D than 😂 or an actual smiling person in Elias’s head.

26.     most used playlist.

oops i made a jam playlist elias would make ( i’d recommend shuffling but i cant tell u want to do )

It is a lot of classic rock, some stuff with a humorous tint to it.  It’s definitely a more upbeat, ‘dance in your underwear’ sort of playlist with a few songs that lowkey would hit him weird if he listened to the lyrics too closely.  

Some of it is late-70s so stuff he may have heard as a kid, some is 80-90s so more stuff he’d have been into at the time.  A few are from after the bodysnatch, but he’s allowed to “catch-up” on music and see what his fave artists had been up to or just listen to new things.  He’s not a fan of most modern radio hits.  The other sorts of songs I imagine him liking are more like... This Playlist Is To Have A Breakdown To

Yes, he may have had a few breakdowns listening to ‘If It Makes You Happy’ but he just loves him some Sheryl Crow normally too. 

28.     five most recent sent text messages

[ ✉ ➡ Oliver Banks ] I just remembered all those ads that bastard happened to see about Star Wars [ ✉ ➡ Oliver Banks ] I think I remember critic buzz being bad?  Of all the shit he spied on, couldn’t keep up with modern media worth shit [ ✉ ➡ Oliver Banks ] I told you about that creepy reality show he was into yeah?  [ ✉ ➡ Oliver Banks ] Anyway what I’m saying is that I don’t care about critics there are 2 whole new Star Wars trilogies and I want to see them! :-D [ ✉ ➡ Oliver Banks ] Do you want to have a movie night?  I’ll make dinner ;-)