#existential-butterflies

Don’t call The Archivist adorable. He can’t handle it.

my wisdom is that jon IS hot and if he did anything about it he’d be devastating.

as a human, he’s hot but doesn’t know it and doesn’t do anything about it on purpose. this frustrates tim to no end. he just has decent skincare and is very particular about his hair routine. its part of his ‘im a normal, functional, totally knowledgeable person’ persona, to be really well put together at all times. He dresses well at work and gives off Hot Professor or Hot Librarian vibes depending on if hes wearing pants or a skirt. kind of intimidating especially when hes speaking, but hes also like 5′3″. everyone thinks he’s hamming up the #aesthetic but no he’s actually just unironically worn a glasses chain since he was like 17 bc his ADHD ass kept losing them and yeah ok his cane is carved wood but it was a gift from his grandma, sooooo.

he gets a solid 9.5/10 on the attractiveness scale on sheer accident and it makes everyone else in the institute big mad except for elias who thinks its funny

after Prentiss, he gets into makeup to cover his facial scars. never anything really fancy, and it turns into a crutch quickly. and when his hand gets burnt and things pile up it doesnt do anything but exhaust him to apply every day. but it does create the effect of him being untouchable and distant, when him and tim should have had matching scars. ok so thats more depressing than about hotness, but u know what i mean. no one has any clue that he’s going off the rails to the extent that he is and he works really hard to keep it that way. overpresents as Competent and Normal. Totally fools rosie every day. places more of his agency on it than whats healthy. georgie never saw him without it until he was in the hospital.

he uses it as a disguise in s2 so no one suspects him, then as an anchor to normalcy in s3 and eventually for fun in s4, when he bothers with it less due to Circumstances. him, melanie, and daisy sometimes have Girls Nights and he gives them makeovers

without makeup his scars are prominent and just make him look like a very tragic victim instead of Rugged Survivor Man like tim’s do. s4 jon is a tragic little waif with big doe eyes asking pls sir can i have ur trauma? and u just cant say no to that he clearly needs it look at him hes dying

but after his death/ascension as an avatar he’s uncannily attractive. Like nothing about him changed physically, but he draws eyes. people remember him. he’s compelling. it’s a little eerie bc he is not everyones type and not quite at instagram model levels of hotness, but theres just something about him thats magnetic. he walks in a room and conversation stops. david from HR adds him to his Cheat List. the grad students put him at 10/10 on the Naughty Librarian rating scale. it makes people want to trust him, talk to him, unable to ignore him...

he still doesnt know.

TREXEL: [coldly] They died of old age!

DAVID: I don’t really know what happened to my parents…

[beat]

i mean...................

mostly i just think these people are agonizingly fucking boring. they are the milquetoast of fandom. they are the milky toast of fandom. they think black pepper is spicy. they are basic bitches and assume everyone around them who wants something more should be mocked or ostracized.

LMAO yes here you go, these are the three most recent that I’ve seen:

Felidae; or, How Jon Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Catboy by Serendipital

A late night in the Archives, a well-disguised Leitner, and Jon is on a one-way trip to feline transmogrification. A well-meaning gesture, a poorly-positioned hat, and Martin is wrapped up in the whole mess, much to Jon's displeasure. Now Jon must 1) avoid further humiliation from his coworkers and 2) reverse his transformation before becoming a cat entirely--all while the web he's been wrapped in for decades begins to unravel. Really, it's all for the best.

Maine Coon Grey by wired_tired_witchcraft

Jon wasn't even halfways through the book before he realized that it was a Leitner. Nothing was ever easy for him was it?

Curiosity Killed the Archivist (or at Least Inconvienced Him) by bluebirdishere

Jon reads a Leitner and turns into a catboy. That's it, that's the plot