if i can pipe murder him, i would and im not going to like it (old TMA repost)

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just playing around with some colour

It's kind of unfortunate that the only bit of characterization for original! Elias that's widely talked about is him being a stoner. It's true that for a long time that's literally the only thing we got. One funny throwaway line. But we do learn a bit more in mag 193 (one of my favorite s5 episodes incidentally) and it makes him a much more interesting and tragic character.

Elias was an aimless rich kid trying and failing to live up to his father's high expectations for him. He was raised to believe that he deserved success and power simply because of the family he was born into. It's implied that this alienated him from his peers leaving him incredibly isolated. It probably also meant he didn't have a lot of control over his own life, following the path he was expected to rather than what he acctually wanted. Even before being marked by the Eye he probably felt like was constantly watched and judged, and found wanting.

The statement draw heavy parallels between original! Elias and Jon. In fact the line between them gets very blurred as Jon "plays" Elias in the statement and Elias's VA plays Jonah in the body of James Wright. Jon and Elias are both parallels and opposites. They were both marked and drawn to the Institute by that mark.

Elias had the conviction that he was destined to be important and he was right the most perverse, twisted way possible. He was only ever there to be used and used completely. To the point were he ceased to be, leaving only his body to puppeted by Jonah.

Jon had no such conviction, and yet he became literally the most import person in the world. But that was only after being moulded and completely reshaped by Jonah. He in a way lost almost as much autonomy and control of his body as Elias did. Though he at least got to keep his mind, for the most part.

This has gotten away from me a bit, but the point remains. Elias, like a lot of TMA characters, is a fascinating person who we only get to see brief snatches of. I think about him a lot. I especially think about how horrifying it must have been to realize, for the briefest moment, that his mind and body were being completely taken over, right before his consciousness was snuffed out.

Listening to Elias/Jonah’s laugh side by side with Gwen’s, that is absolutely a Bouchard laugh. I know it’s Jonah present in TMA, but I imagine he does pick up vocal mannerism and the likes of his host.

The laughs feel so similar in a way I can’t describe, and I’m hoping that was an intentional direction. I will take every scrap of Bouchard family I can get.

There's an aspect of Original!Elias Bouchard that makes me so sad to think about in a weird kind of "meta" way.

And that's the fact that he has to be labelled as the "OG" not as Elias.

Technically speaking Elias has been dead for years. It's Jonah that's taken over - literally having his eyes removed and replacing them with his own and living as him (he even seemingly keeps his "old fashioned haircut" on Elias' hair).

And yet we as the audience don't often call that form of Jonah "JONAH". Instead it's Elias, cause he's been Elias for 4 series at this point.

"Elias started the apocalypse", "Elias beat that old man to death with a metal pipe" when it was never really Elias in the first place.

He's been so robbed of his own identity that not even death can spare him; all of Jonah's actions in his body are recognised as him.

(Btw this isn't me saying you can't call Jonah!Elias straight up Elias, I do that regularly ofc. I'm just being emo rn lol)

My darling best friend made a post about accurate UK prison wear and the fact Elias would probably be listed as a dangerous criminal, despite his special perks, and I am nothing if not a menace to society.

He makes it work?

shitpost tma version

almost all of them were drawn in june when i was stressed about college and needed a way to relax, so I started drawing these silly things

shitpost tmagp version

really looking forward to the elias reveal in protocol where he shows up the office and alice comes to the horrible realisation that her weed dealer is related to gwen

In the panopticon straight watching it. And by it, haha, well, let's juts say... literally everything

we need to talk more about the fact that before Elias was Jonah Magnus, he was Elias Bouchard. A completely different person who just happened to work at the Magnus Institute. Who just got unlucky like Jon. And now it's HIS face that caused the apocalypse and hurt so many people. But at some point, Elias was his own person. Maybe not a good person, but probably someone who didn't want to literally end the world. It's so sad to me

old men yaoi or smth like that

jon cares him :(

WIP

I'm drawing some of the avatars hehe

I want to figure out how old Elias Bouchard really is. When was he born?

In MAG 49 it’s said he joined the institute in 1991 and became head of the institute in 1996 after being body snatched by Jonah Magnus.

In MAG 192 Rosie says that “he seemed far too young for the role he had apparently found himself in” - referring to the head of the institute position.

How young is too young for a head of an institution position? Here’s a first not *exactly* evidence-based assumption - but let’s say it’s probably being below 40 years old. That is based solely on the experience of attending university, I’d say most institute heads at uni are at minimum 40 (also, not exactly related but all university institute heads have PhD’s). (I don’t want to get into too many details here, since I’m not a 100% sure how the higher education system works in the UK, but in my country at least, one must have at least a Habilitation, which is almost like a second PhD, or be a capital “P” Professor, which is the highest university rank, to become an institute head. To achieve these scientific titles, it usually takes a lot of time, so most people are over 40 when they get the position. Or even 50, when it comes to the Professor rank). 

One can assume then, that “Elias” is below 40-ish while he interviews Rosie. Unfortunately, we don’t know when exactly that happens. It could be anytime between 1996 and 2015. 

Some other information we do know about him is that he’s graduated collage with third class honours and has a PPE degree. According to google, students in the UK typically start university at the age of 18. Also, according to google, Oxford has never had a postgraduate degree course in PPE, so Elias has a bachelor’s degree in PPE (which btw stands for Philosophy, Politics and Economics), meaning he was either 21 or 22 when he finished uni. We do not hear anyone mention him finishing any other courses, so we can assume that’s all that he studied.

Another thing we don’t know is at what age he started working for the Magnus Institute. We do know it happened in 1991. The earliest he could have been recruited was at the age of 21 or 22, straight out of university. Making him 26/27 at the time he “got promoted” to the position of institute head, in 1996. As mentioned previously, at Rosie’s interview, where she found that he looked too young for his position, in between 1996 and 2015 (whenever that interview took place) he would’ve been between 26 and 45 years old (at the youngest) depending on the year the interview took place in. Taking my assumption from before, that during the interview he’d be 40 or lower, I’d assume that the interview probably took place anytime between 1996 and 2010 for the comment of him looking too young in his position to make sense. Of course, it could’ve been a few years after graduating uni when he got recruited, which would further push down the date of the Rosie interview. I think the oldest he could possibly be is in his late thirties during it. So, the eldest he could be in 1996, if that is when the interview took place, would be around 40 years old (which I also don’t think it did take place in 1996 since it would make Rosie work as his assistant for 20 years and I’m not certain that she could remain that oblivious to all the weird stuff going on for that long. But what do I know, maybe she’s got a gift for not noticing. I don’t know for sure).

So, in the year of his body being overtaken by Jonah Magnus, 1996, he’s between the ages of 26 and 40. 

We, the listeners, know him mostly from our time spent with him and the archives crew from 2015 onwards. Based on our established age range, in 2015 he would’ve been anywhere between 45 and 59 years old. Which would mean that last time we hear him speak is in 2018 in which he’s anywhere between 48 and 62 years old. 

I don’t know how old his va, Ben Meredith is exactly. I’m pretty sure he’s a millennial? Either way it doesn’t really matter how old his va is, though all we have to picture him by is his voice only, which at least in my opinion doesn’t really sound like the voice of a 62-year-old, but that is straight up just a subjective opinion. Maybe he’s a particularly young sounding 62-year-old?

Some additional information we supposedly get about “Elias” is that he was working as a filing clerk in 1972, which he says to Jonathan Sims in MAG 29, but that contradicts with the information gathered later by Jon and revealed in MAG 49 where he says that Elias joined the institute in 1991. All this might seem like just the lies of Jonah Magnus, but it presents an interesting point of having a conversation take place in 2016 with the reference to his being an institute employee in 1972. In 2016 he’s between the ages of 46 (which would make him 2 years old in 1972) and 60 (which would make him 16 in 1972), neither of which make sense, thought one would think that if he’s older and Jon doesn’t know how old he is exactly, it wouldn’t be that suspicious for him to have worked at the institute in 1972, though that seems like a stretch. Perhaps Jon just didn’t question or notice how it doesn’t really make sense for him to have worked there in that year, or maybe the writing-story-planning team didn’t put that much thought into this particular interaction/the implications of it, or maybe Elias looks older than he is. 

In conclusion, Elias Bouchard was born between the years of 1956 and 1970.

Also, fun fact I did a poll to see what age Tumblr users thought Elias was and they picked between 40 to 50, with 45 to 55 being a close second, so if anyone voted in that and picked anywhere between 45 and 59, I just want to let you know you’re right.

TLDR: Elias Bouchard is (most likely) anywhere between 45 and 59 at the start of the Magnus Archives.

Commission for @beheldandcompelled for the fic, "Immortals". Thank you for the support!