#oglias

[drowsy-salamander]

But like imagine you're organising your secondary school reunion and you look into Elias Bouchard. Like yeah, he's pretty weird, used to be a drop out stoner and then at the last reunion had completely changed fashion, hairstyles and mannerisms and was apparently head of a research institute and made a comment about your affair that there is no way he knew about, and then you find out he's been arrested for a two murders.

[drowsy-salamander]

Okay so what do we know about the original Elias Bouchard?

Information on Elias prior to his body snatching is rather sparse, we only have two things. Thing 1: Elias was ‘something of a pothead’, what I absolutely love is how much the fandom took this one piece of info and just ran with it. Weed is Elias’ whole fandom personality. It’s great.

But I want to interrogate the other fact we have about Elias Bouchard. He got a third in PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) from Christchurch in Oxford. For anyone unfamiliar with this grading system, a third is between 40 to 49 and is barely passing. It’s a bad degree. So what can we extrapolate from this? 

1. His family is wealthy enough. Oxford is hardly cheap and the fact he could afford to go there (and not do well) shows that he was probably on the upper side of upper-middle class.

2. He still had to actually get into Oxford so he was probably reasonably personable/charismatic to get through the interviewing process. That or his family is even more wealthy.

3. Elias probably didn’t have any particular life goals. This one is a bit more of a stretch but hear me out. PPE is quite a general degree, it’s one that’s commonly used a starting off point but it doesn’t naturally feed into any career path (except maybe politics). It’s the sort of degree you either do because you’re passionate about the topics or you just want a degree and didn’t really know what you wanted. I doubt it was the former and the fact that Elias ended up in the Magnus Institute suggests that Elias didn’t exactly have a career in mind.

4. Elias Bouchard was probably a fucking idiot. He got a third. Now this could be because he didn’t particularly care too much about the topics and didn’t apply himself or he was too busy getting high but when it comes down to it, he got a third.

Conclusion: Elias Bouchard was probably a rich idiot who could be charming but was ultimately directionless.

Honestly it’s no wonder Jonah chose him.

[drowsy-salamander]

Toying around with a fic idea where after Tim blows up the Unknowing he gets sent back to the 90s Archive. And at first he wants nothing to do with the Institute but like he’s just time traveled, what is he supposed to do? And Gertrude does seem to be actively fighting the monsters and might be willing to help him stop anything from happening to Danny because Danny hasn’t been taken yet. And yeah, he’s just a kid right now but Tim has a chance to kill the monster before it takes him. So Tim signs up to work in the Archive under Gertrude. 

Featuring

Sarah Carpenter as an investigative type who wants to work out just what’s going on. No one’s filled her in per say about the entities but she has her own theories and is fully ready to fight them. She’s already been guinea pig to Emma Harvey a couple times

She and Tim butt heads because they’re both stubborn and proud but they actually form a pretty close friendship

Sarah reminds Tim of Sasha and he has a lot of feelings because of that

Tim really doesn’t know what to make of Emma Harvey. She seems nice enough but there’s something about her that just sets his teeth on edge but she’s Gertrude’s most trusted assistant and he is her least trusted assistant so there’s not really much he can say/do

He does eventually pick up on her putting Sarah into danger constantly and it ends in a very public confrontation

As for the third assistant, Tim finds Michael very uncomfortable

He recognises Michael as the thing that trapped him and Martin in eternal corridors and when he first saw the man, instinctively assumed that he was still a monster

It takes Tim several months of Michael bringing in homemade biscuits, gushing about his dog and Sarah and Emma’s general dismissal of him for Tim to stop feeling as though Michael might stab him

But once he accepts this man is human he’s very confused as to what the hell happened/will happen to him

And also why Michael has no idea what’s going on? He sees literally everyone in the Archive’s lying to him and tries to ask why but Sarah doesn’t know why, it’s just the done thing and anyway he’s so much happier not knowing, he gets all the fake statements lucky bastard

Tim is confusion and eventually manages to slam the fact that the supernatural is real into Michael’s head and in the process accidentally takes Michael’s statement about his friend he lost to the Spiral

Anyway, Tim has his monster hunting squad of him, Sarah and Michael and is keeping an eye on any statements about the Stranger or circuses or anything

Gertrude doesn’t exactly encourage him per say, but Tim is useful to have around with his future knowledge and everything. Unfortunately Tim doesn’t know a lot of the answers to Gertrude’s questions. She’s mostly content to keep him as another potentially useful ally for when things go to hell

James Wright is fascinated by Tim and the potential future knowledge but Gertrude is as obstructive as possible and Tim met Wright once and decided that he also hated ‘Elias’ mentor’

Speaking of Elias, Elias is full on stoner disaster in Artifact Storage. He has a mullet. His shirt is always rumpled. The first time Tim meets Elias is when Elias comes down to the Archives to ask for a statement relating to an object AS got recently and is wearing sunglasses because he is hella hungover

Tim is like ‘how????’

Tim is kinda fascinated by Elias and ends up accidentally befriending him and ends up even more confused because Elias is an idiot. A nice idiot. This does not check out. 

But also Wright is hella creepy and way too much like the Elias Tim knew. 

Does Tim unravel the Jonah conspiracy? I have no idea

On one of Tim’s monster hunts he goes after a Leitner and ends up wrestling fourteen year old Gerry Keay for it.

Tim somehow looses the fight

I just have many thoughts about this but I’m already writing a fic. Ah, limited time

[drowsy-salamander]

I just have many feelings about Elias Bouchard