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[statementends]

OOC INFO;

NAME: Hal
AGE: 29
CONTACT: discord: overlysensitiveowl#5925
CHARACTERS IN GAME: none!

IC INFO;

CHARACTER NAME: Jonathan Sims
AGE: 30
CANON The Magnus Archives
CANON POINT end of episode 99, Dust to Dust
HISTORY: The Magnus Archives takes place in London, the most current episode taking place in 2017. The series takes place in a world similar to the real one in appearance but intensely supernatural under the surface. This history section is going to have spoilers up to episode 100 of season 3, just as a warning.

Jonathan Sims was orphaned at a young age- his father dying of a fall when he was two and his mother of complications during routine surgery two years later. His only available family to take him in was his paternal grandmother, who raised him in Bournemouth, England. Their relationship was strained, with Jon being a difficult know-it-all of a child and his grandmother resentful of the obligation when she had already raised and lost her own child. Despite this Jon speaks of his early childhood as being mostly uneventful until he turned eight.

In the series books with supernatural properties were once housed in the library of Jurgen Leitner, which burned down a few years before Jon turned eight. The books ended up back in the world and Jon found one, a picture book called 'A Guest For Mr. Spider' that his grandmother bought to keep him busy and ignorant of what it was.

The book lured him out of the house as he read it, hypnotically and without his realizing what exactly was happening, and before he could reach the end of the book a teenager who routinely bullied him pushed him to the ground. That broke the spell, and the teenager ended up picking up the book and beginning to read it instead, which led to him going into the same trance. He walked and Jon followed, until the teenager reached a door of a random house, knocked, and was dragged inside by long, inhuman arms not unlike a spider, taking the book with him. The teenager was lost and Jon could find no substantial clues about the incident.

Witnessing this traumatized and changed Jon's view of the world, leading him to a lifelong fascination with the supernatural. He went to Oxford for university before becoming a researcher for The Magnus Institute in London. The Institute studies and records incidents of the paranormal, taking itself very seriously but largely being seen as a joke.

Jon's grandmother died in 2012, and he spent four years as a researcher before Elias Bouchard, the Head of the Institute, promoted him to be the Head Archivist in the Archives. Jon requested a man named Timothy Stoker, a fellow researcher, follow him to the archives to become one of his assistants, and this is where the podcast starts.

The last Archivist was a woman named Gertrude Robinson, who Jon knew to have gone missing and was presumed dead. When he took over he found the archives in a complete mess, the organizational system extremely difficult to decipher and essentially a lot of damn work for him. He and his assistants, Tim, Martin Blackwood and Sasha James, begin organizing everything and trying to digitalize things. Often he reads and records written statements to be saved on the computer, but some refuse to record digitally and he's stuck recording them on tape.

Jon stays skeptical as he goes through the various statements detailing supernatural experiences in and occasionally out of London. Eventually Martin, one of the assistants, is attacked and forced to hide in his apartment for several days by a woman known as Jane Prentiss. She was made into a living hive of worms, and though Martin manages to make it out unharmed Jon tells him to stay in the archives for safety.

Sightings of worms continue around the Institute, and Sasha has a run in with another person made a hive where she learns fire extinguishers kill the worms. It's pretty great she learns that, because at the end of season one a broken shelf in the archives reveals there were tunnels behind that particular wall, and worms breeding in those tunnels.

Worms flood in, Prentiss attacks the Institute and a lot of things happen. Tim and Jon get nearly eaten alive by the worms, leaving them both injured, traumatized and scarred but saved when Elias triggers the fire suppressant system and kills all the worms. Sasha, unbeknownst to Jon or the others, is attacked and replaced by a monster that has the ability to make everyone believe it is the real Sasha. Martin gets separated in the tunnels and finds the body of Gertrude Robinson, killed by a gunshot.

So starts the saga of Paranoid As Heck season 2 Jon, who begins obsessing over finding Gertrude's killer and stalks his coworkers in the process. He eventually meets Basira Hussain, a local cop and one of the few who are regularly tasked with handling supernatural affairs. She agrees to hook him up with some of the tapes found with Gertrude's body, and Jon spends the season looking into everything, doing his normal job and pissing off/worrying all his coworkers.

Eventually he figures out that Sasha is not actually Sasha James but a monster typically known as the the Not Them. He tries to send Martin and Tim away for the day so he can go destroy a table he thinks will destroy the monster. Spoilers, this is dumb and it does not do that, it just frees the Not Them from certain restrictions. He ends up running from the Not Them in the tunnels and is nearly killed before Jurgen Leitner saves him.

Leitner makes a statement, explains he made his library to keep the dangerous books contained until his library was attacked and destroyed. He tells Jon he was working with Gertrude, living in the tunnels after her death. He also explains their world has entities somewhat like eldritch monsters manipulating the world and it's people. The book of Jon's childhood was part of the Web, the Not Them part of the Stranger, and Jon himself was marked by one known as the Eye or the Beholding. His title as Archivist was more than just a job.

Jon takes this poorly and goes out for a smoke, only to return to find Leitner's body. Leitner was beaten to death by Elias, who also killed Gertrude to stop her from destroying the archives. He admits to Leitner he wants Jon to leave the archives and see things for himself, even if it's dangerous. Upon finding the body Jon leaves, and so ends season 2.

And so season 3 finds Jon staying with Georgie Barker, someone he hasn't seen in years but knew well in university. Georgie not only lets him stay but doesn't harshly question why he was suddenly homeless and, as she'd later find out when the police visited, wanted for murder. Jon continues to be sent statements even at Georgie's, much to Georgie's dismay at the creepiness, and eventually he does go out to take statements from some of the monsters around.

Doing so does not leave him unscathed, as he gets his arm and wrist burnt by a wax woman of the Desolation domain and made to think he was falling through endless sky by a man from the Vast. While with this man a woman named Alice Tonner, or Daisy, finds him. She is another cop left to deal with supernatural matters, a job she has been doing with increasing violence ever since Basira retired. She kills the Vast man, takes Jon to where she typically buries her bodies and nearly cuts out his vocal chords before Basira finds them.

Basira convinces her to take the fight to Elias, and that Jon can help them. When interviewing the wax woman Jon came to learn as Archivist he can 'compel' people to give him their statements- basically when he asks a question with that intent they will tell him the answer he wants in a clean, enjoyable story format. Basira, Daisy and Jon head back to the Institute, confront Elias and all hell breaks loose.

Elias explains that yes, he killed Gertrude and Leitner, and manages to manipulate Basira into signing on as an official part of the archives and Institute. In doing so, he explains, she and everyone connected to the archives will die if he does, because Elias is the 'heart' of the Institute. He proves himself to have supernatural abilities of his own, able to see and know things no one should. The meeting ends with the assistants, Basira, Daisy and Jon now knowing they cannot leave, Basira effectively a hostage and Daisy very reluctantly working with them to keep Basira safe.

Jon and Elias speak after, and Jon learns more about what Elias wants from him. The domain known as the Stranger was trying to complete a ritual known as the Unknowing, which would shape the world into something more like the Stranger itself. Elias refuses to give Jon Gertrude's notes on the subject or more information, explaining he had to 'figure it out on his own' for reasons still somewhat unclear.

Jon continues looking into things after, keeping his distance from the assistants out of the mistaken belief it would be safer than being near them. Nikola Orsinov, the leading monster of the Stranger, corners him in Georgie's place and demands he finds an old skin Gertrude stole or they'd kill him. He agrees without much choice in the matter, and looks into it.

He is then abruptly kidnapped by Nikola's lackey's, the pair claiming she 'changed her mind.' This is where he's taken from.

PERSONALITY: Jon, in season one and at first glance on a good day, comes across as a very typical stuffy academic. He tends towards grandiose vocabulary and he's highly skeptical to the point of being offensive to those who believe in whatever he's picking apart. By season three he's soften somewhat, too beaten down by the horrors he's seen and experienced for the same facade but his defense mechanisms still tend towards dry and biting. Even in the face of dangerous monsters, monsters he's openly scared of, he'll often slip with sarcasm. His inability to make good choices is something we will certainly get to.

With all this new horror he also has a tendency to come off as more than a little paranoid. This is a man who expects monsters, maybe not around every corner but he knows of some that bring doors that were never there and can wear face of any skin it peels off a body. Jon's had a disconnect from the mundane world for a while now, so fully engrossed and obsessed with the mysteries around him he'd likely be be shocked and suspicious of a conversation about the weather. Every new statement he gets he digs into more than he ever has, not only trying to find the facts and connections but trying to find meaning- as though he can understand why Elias sent it, or how it reflects his current situation in a metaphorical sense.

So, basically, he's not great with people. This isn't new, given Jon is that weird, precocious kid that nobody really wanted around, even his guardian. The prickliness is an easy way to protect himself, to cover up he's not always sure how to even be around people let alone befriend them. It's stated a few times that other characters didn't believe he even had any friends outside of work, and the one he turns to, Georgie, he hadn't seen in years and took quite the leap of faith in hopes she'd help. Even with his assistants the situation is varied- Martin is endlessly empathetic and forgiving, almost to a fault, and puts up with his unpleasantness more than he should sometimes. Tim, by season two, is so irritated and hurt by Jon's lack of empathy and seeming lack of care for what Tim also went through with Prentiss. The fact Jon is too intensely caught up in his own paranoia to properly see or address that and how he lets their relationship deteriorate is a good example of how his laser focus often cuts out and hurts those he's close to.

All in all Jon tends to be that friend people learn to tolerate the prickly, sometimes unintentionally bad behavior of because they know he means well. Both Georgie and Martin fall into that category, trying to give him advice to fix his social situations and, usually, having that advice lead nowhere because Jon is already too set on whatever path he's on. He seems to take their thoughts into account, even admits some level of knowing they're right, yet he keeps stubbornly going forward more often than not. Jon himself says he's not a brave man but a very stubborn one, and boy is that the truth.

This stubbornness obviously gets him into trouble more often than not. Georgie says that even before the influence of the Eye and becoming the Archivist Jon had a tendency to ask too many questions, annoy or piss off people by not letting well enough be. Elias also makes a comment about it, saying that while Jon didn't want to be signed up for what happened he did make decision after decision that led him to this point, that he unrelentingly sought knowledge no matter the cost. This is somewhat literal, as he gets the burns from Jude Perry, the Desolation wax monster, by agreeing to shake her hand for more information. He clearly knows this will not end well but he does so regardless, exchanging pain for information.

And despite all the doom and gloom he doesn't completely loath it all. He does very much strive to learn what he can, naturally nosy and naturally inclined to question until he understands. When he and Daisy question a puppet of the Stranger's he's smiling by the end, thrilled when they manage to learn something new despite everything that led them to that point. In a lot of ways he's becoming hardened in the face of repeated trauma. He says as much when Elias sends him to an area and he finds a grotesquely mutilated corpse, when he barely reacts and laments becoming used to such things as time went on.

A very big concern for him in recent episodes is his own humanity as well. With the discovery of his new ability, the compulsion, he starts to question what exactly he's becoming and what it means. In an earlier statement Gertrude speaks of a literal, horrifying monster stalking the halls of an abandoned place and wonders if they were and Archivist too. This is something Jon clearly fears, that whatever he is now could lead to becoming something like that. He's processed a great many statements that involve people who become abominations, and a reoccurring struggle between him and Georgie is her trying to convince him not to push people away for his own sake and theirs.

So that's Jon really, a nightmare man trying to make his way in a nightmare world. Despite being a huge pain he genuinely cares about the people in his life. He's deeply affected by Sasha's death when he realizes and still reacts strongly when she's brought up. Despite the method being poor he is trying his best to protect Martin, Tim and the others by keeping them at arm's length and ignorant of things. He has an incredible memory, able to recall names and long statement numbers off the top of his head time and time again. Leitner himself says that Jon and Gertrude weren't very good at putting things together despite that, since their role is observation more than anything.

He's the kind of person that talks to cats when they demand pets but makes a big huffy deal when Martin brings a dog to the workplace. When he lets his guard down he can even be somewhat casual rather than repressed and uptight. He's quick to get frustrated, especially when information is being kept from him. Even though he's clearly somewhat intimidated by Elias he still calls him a cocky prick, and loses his patience with the very dangerous monster Jude Perry when she threatens him too much, saying she might as well just kill him then if she's going to go on about it.

CANON POWERS: Compulsion: when Jon asks a question people are compelled to answer it, usually in the form of a well formatted story. Jon in recent canon seems to be able to control it well enough to choose not to use it, and most people don't realize it's happening to them. Other supernatural beings seem to know, and possibly people who deeply do not want to answer the question.

OTHER:

GAME INFO;

CRAU INFO: none
MAGIC ABILITY: His canon power, compulsion. It would obviously be completely up to the player if he used it, and I think in terms of an rp it'd be good to add a level of everyone can tell it's happening and can potentially stop themselves from answering if willful enough. Taking statements in general seems to drain Jon and effect him with the feelings of the story as well. Canonly he can't handle more than one statement a week before it starts to strongly affect him, with him nearly passing out after taking about three or four in a week.

ANY WEAPONS/MAGICAL ITEMS?: He has a dull pocket knife with no magical properties. He also would have his tape recorder and blank tapes, which technically isn't magical but when he takes statements it does use his abilities to some extent.
ANY PETS?: none.

SAMPLE;

LINKED SAMPLE: TDM