the ody cipher

painting for a final grade

See I really love Jon and Mike’s dynamic in nhthcth because I saw them as just like. The ultimate foils to each other. The dynamic was fascinating to me.

Mike was picked in part because I saw him as one of the few avatars Jon could probably make a deal with? Daisy was out—she couldn’t babysit Danny and Tim if she was busy helping Jon with the Circus.

Most of the avatars aren’t rational enough to deal with. Someone would refuse because they fucking hate jon. A few of the ones you could make deals with were out of the question because they were in Elias’s pocket. Jon initially went into this hoping to keep both Jon and Tim free and clear of Elias and the Institute in general. Odds of that are a lot lower if Peter Lukas is the one he’s calling up.

From what little we saw of him, Mike seemed to retain enough of his appearance of humanity to be able to make a deal—if you had something he wanted.

But what sealed the deal for me are the exact parallels that you’ve nailed on here.

I think they fucking hate each other so much in part because of how much they remind each other of their own failings. They’re mirror images. Identical but inverted.

Mike and Jon had very similar paths to avatarhood, but when it came down to their own mental and emotional reactions to it? Couldn’t be more different.

Mike went to his fate at gunpoint, but he still went. He was about as consciously willing as you could get when it comes to becoming an avatar. He got to pick the thing that ate him.

Jon had the same setup. He had something hungry ahead of him and something hungry behind. He was forced into his fate at gunpoint. Except when it came to Jon, he tried to shoot himself with the gun.

Jon’s talked about it a few times, but he didn’t realize what he was doing when he became an avatar. He thought he was letting it eat him. He didn’t realize something could eat you and you’d still have to be here after.

It didn’t make any fucking difference, in the end. Mike and Jon both ended up in the same place. Mike just got to feel a little bit more control with his choice, and Jon got to feel a little bit more human with his, and both hate the other for having what they lack. Jon’s never managed to wring an ounce of control over his own life, and Mike hadn’t been brave enough to pick the gun.

I’ve talked about this in other places, but one of the biggest themes in nhthcth is whether you can change anything/whether fighting matters. For all of Jon’s fighting, he hasn’t been able to divert any of the major points of canon. Gertrude’s still dead. Jon’s still the Archivist. Every single person who was an assistant in canon became an assistant in nhthcth. All roads led to the same shitty Rome, in the end.

That theme is a little bit reflected in Jon’s relationship with Mike. They’re the same in every practical respect. Do their differences even matter?

Mike’s never tried to save someone in his entire goddamn life. Jon tries to save everyone and fails. Does it matter that Jon tried? They’ve got the same success rate either way.

Mike feels nothing. Nothing matters to him. Everything and everyone is so small and unimportant compared to the vastness of history. Jon, in contrast, feels everything. He feels and he fights and he struggles and he loves and it changes nothing, absolutely nothing. Does it matter that Jon cared?

Mike wants the memory of his Becoming to prove to himself that the way he became an Avatar was different than Jon. To prove to himself that he wasn’t a scared just little boy running from the thing that wanted to eat him. Jon knows he was. Knowing hasn’t made him any happier, and it hasn’t changed anything.

And that’s why it pisses me off that people always say no one said Jon should’ve stayed dead. Cause they didn’t have to. The narrative conflated Jon breathing and speaking to him being a monster. Which is a bad thing to be. So regardless of if the girls said the words out loud, the narrative flat out says Jon morally should’ve stayed dead. That is just the truth.

If some wibbly wobby timey whimy stuff happened

How would danny interact with baby jon pre gerry and/or baby jon and gerry after becomeing freinds but before running away

Danny would speedrun from “general concern for those two kids radiating distress” to single fatherhood. They’d be his two little buddies he takes on adventures and would kill and die for. Which would come to the test with Elias

The Danny in my head is a very creative problem solver. Like he can’t kill Elias without hurting Jon but that doesn’t mean he can’t just keep him tied up in his own basement like a bargain bin serial killer. Jon can sit in the Institute lobby for half an hour every few weeks to keep the contract from killing him while Danny figures out how to break this thing. Gertrude would be. Fine with this. They make prolonged eye contact every time he rolls up and she just sort of laughs and leaves him to it. No she won’t be helping Elias he can just enjoy this