February 2023

OK but if TMA was really an office comedy then in MAG 153 when Trevor and Julia were gonna kill Jon, Trevor would’ve said “Any last words?”, and then Jon would say “uhh…. Yeah, guess how old I am.” and Trevor would’ve pushed his chair over.

I’ve finally managed to persuade two of my friends to listen to The Magnus Archives, and since neither of them have seen any fan content, I asked them to describe Jon to me. These were their descriptions:

S: Olive skin, little moustache, peach fuzz, light brown short fluffy hair, thin black glasses, wears nice brown suit with dark green waistcoat.

A: Double breasted pinstripe suit, red satin lining, matching straight cut trousers a bit too big, high neck shirt collar, winklepickers, monocle, short brown hair in finger wave, roman nose, green eyes, big ears, very pale (because he’s in the dark all the time), deep set eyes from lack of sleep, clean shaven, thin lips, definitely carries a pocket knife, has a briefcase backpack (like a French school child) that has stickers on it from different airports, a walking stick with a handle shaped like an otter with visitor centre pins on it.

I’ve been thinking about Martin and Jon’s relationship in season 2, and came across an aspect I hadn’t previously considered.

When Micheal stabs Jon it’s just them, meaning after Micheal slipped away he left Jon alone in his office. The cut was bad, obviously, bad enough to need stitches, but after a shock like that there’s no way Jon took himself to A&E.

He lies that he cut himself with a bread knife, but this lie makes no sense if he was in his office. What I think happened, is upon realising the seriousness of his injury, Jon went to find the nearest first aid kit, most often found in kitchen areas of course.

When Martin comes into the kitchen he finds Jon bleeding all over himself, struggling to open a cheap first aid kit, very stressed, and obviously in a lot of pain. You’d be surprised, but even the most willing people are often incredibly opposed to the idea of hospitalisation for anything less than life threatening, and Jon is NOT the type of person to take a hospital trip lightly.

So, after extensive argument (only ended by Jon becoming too lightheaded to argue his case), they’d go down to A&E, and sit awkwardly together for the hours it takes to finally get seen. There’s something so bonding about sitting with someone in their moment of need, even if you’re not doing much else but being there.

When you’re physically vulnerable like that you also tend to be more emotionally vulnerable; it’s easy to blurt out something profound when you’re more focused on handling pain and bleeding then you are on censoring yourself.

This experience, especially so soon after Prentiss’s attack and all that ensued, opens up that raw connection you can only really ever have in crisis, it may be a trauma bond, as I’m certain they have one, but I think it’s also more than that. It’s seeing eachother at rock bottom and realising just how important they are to you, and just how awful it’d be to lose them.

It’s so early on in their journey, but I think this relatively small event changed the course of their relationship. Martin knew Jon was having a hard time, he complained with Tim, it was clearly distressing, but he still kept an eye on Jon, looked after him. Even in the depths of his distrust this surely broke through Jon’s armour, no matter how little he seemed to show it at the time.

The shared crisis of Jon’s injury gave Martin an excuse to hang around Jon when he needed it the most and didn’t even see it himself.

I like to think that outside of the archives Elias was known only as the silly, overenthusiastic, eccentric boss who enjoys paperwork way too much. Realistically he was equally feared by everyone but it makes the idea of Tim trying to expose the whole plot a lot funnier.

“Elias is evil and hes masterminding a terrible plan and if we don’t stop him we’ll all end up dead!”

“Elias….? Like, Elias Bouchard? The guy who religiously does his paperwork on the same day every week… The guy who once sat me down to ask if that weird plant in the hall was freaking me out?”

I’VE BEEN SO CONFUSED FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR SINCE I STARTED LISTENING TO TMA ABOUT THE QUOTE THAT MENTIONS JON’S ASEXUALITY AND ‘WHAT ELIAS SAID TO MELANIE’ AND IT TURNS OUT I JUST NEVER LISTENED TO THE SECOND HALF OF MAG 106???? WHAT THE FUCK… YOU GUYS HAD ALL THIS, THIS WHOLE TIME??? HOW DID I MISS THIS IN LIKE, 5 COMPLETE RELISTENS???

“Haha Jonny’s so silly he only knows like 3 names!! Why do all the characters have the same names that’s funny, that’s weird! There should be more variety!”

Me:

*please put your country in the tags! :)

Cosplaying Jon at comicon back in October was truly an unparalleled experience… Having people run up to me and say “OH MY GOD ARE YOU JONATHAN SIMS?” Whilst THE real life Jonathan Sims was in the building was SUPREMELY CONFUSING.

Martin’s always a carer, a protector, a helper… Someone who’s willing to jump in and do what’s needed, someone that watches out and tries to predict what’s going to happen so he can help, so he can stop things from going wrong.

I don’t need to tell you that this is probably a product of his mother’s behaviour; if he kept everything in check then what reason would she have to hate him anymore? It never worked, of course, but that’s besides the point.

We see it too in early seasons. Anyone would be eager to impress their boss (particularly if they’re in love with them), but Martin’s eagerness is always filled with such care, such desperation to please. Just because a trait came from a bad place, does not necessarily mean it is a bad thing.

Along with this, his Web-like desire to keep things under control makes him irreplaceable, a valuable person to have around, because he’s entirely unable to conceive that he could be valuable solely as himself. He’s so devoted to others that committing himself to the lonely to save them was an obvious choice, which says more on the matter than I ever could.

These traits all shine through particularly visibly when things are out of control, like during Daisy’s appearance in season 5. From the beginning of the situation it’s clearly not going how it’s supposed to, and Martin finds himself alone faced by a monster that he can do nothing about.

Without Martin there, there’s a chance that Basira and Jon could’ve missed Daisy altogether, so as usual he’s responsible for holding things in place, but as the situation degrades so does his handle on it. Of course his kindness makes it hard to deal with, makes him flinch at the wrong moment-what’s another thing to blame himself for?

But when Daisy attacks Jon, that’s when things really fall apart. Seeing his partner at risk and in pain after the comfort of his resistance to injury? Attacked not only by a beast, but one that was a friend at some point, if she ever really was… Perhaps this was what was in front of him the whole time but he never could bring himself to look hard enough.

Jon trying to sacrifice himself, Basira trying to take action, Daisy uncontrollable; all Martin has in him is to yell! To scramble for control and some semblance of survivability. And there’s no relief at Jon’s release, the mess carries on.

The injury is bad. The type of wound that makes you feel the blood drain from your face, that makes you want to burst into tears, but no, there’s no time for that. Feeling emotions is not as important as regaining composure. But God, there’s barely enough time to even help Jon, Basira needs guidance too, if she can’t go through with this who knows what will happen?

Basira and Jon are living through the experience whilst Martin tries to control it, but some things cannot be controlled and there’s simply no use trying to fight against the tide. Nothing could be done to change the outcome, but if Martin doesn’t try then of course it’s his fault.

Whatever he did, things would end the way they did. You can hear him reaching out though, desperately trying to keep the group tied together; being bound by the archives was awful but at least the group was kept together to some extent.

But here there’s nothing he can do. Their paths have parted, things play out the way they always would, and they’re sent marching towards their awful fate.

I think you’ll all be happy to know that this very ominous spiral-core message is pasted inside the window of the shop next to the Notting Hill Gate Oxfam.

A while back I was really drunk at a party, and instead of socialising like a normal person I spent my time deliberating over why on earth people obsess over the fact that Jon pronounces Martin with an ah sound, because that’s just the way you say it!

Anyways it took me about an hour of deep thought and desperate attempts to figure out how to fit a harsh R sound into it before I remembered other accents exist.

For around six months now I’ve been living next to an actual real life archive, and it’s unnervingly similar to TMA! Here’s a few notable things from these past months:

-i watched a balding man in a very posh suit carry a massive antique briefcase out of the building and put it into his car at 4am

-at 12:30am i made direct eye contact with someone working at a computer on a floor I’d never seen anyone go before. (there’s a section of car park and pavement between my building and the archive so this was pretty impressive! )

-The smoking area is always full at weirdly specific hours of day and night (presumably breaks), and completely empty the rest of the time. Clearly archiving really does encourage a smoking habit!

-one of the floors has really bright LED lights which were left on day and night for a week, then off for four days, and now are on with every single blind closed.

-for the first few months I only ever saw three people go in or out of the building- a generic looking security guard who yells at people that park in front of the entrance; and a dishevelled looking man, pursued by another man from the smoking area.

-from my window I can see directly into a room that’s filled with mannequins! I couldn’t tell what they were at first due to the sheer amount, but they range from cpr dummies to full body mannequins.

-despite being able to see many desks I’ve only consistently seen two people working at them.

-the fire alarm once went off for hours and nobody evacuated.

-recently at 3am I watched a security guard from the building come out to feed bagels to the fox in the car park (not really that relevant but I thought it was quite nice)

-two of the windows have humanlike figures in them at all times, but they’re impossible to focus on so I have no idea what they are.

I know the implication in Basira getting rid of Jon’s spare clothes from the archives was that they were ruined when the flesh attacked, but wouldn’t it be so much sadder if it was because of how his absence affected them?

You know how smells stick to fabrics better than most things? Even if you don’t know a colleague that well there’s a good chance you know what they smell like, even subconsciously. But everyone in the archives knew eachother well, even if they didn’t like it.

With Jon gone everything was left to Basira, we all know how much she had to do to hold the group together, even at the expense of her own emotions. Perhaps she could tell herself it was for the benefit of others that she bundled up the neatly folded clothes, still strongly scented with that fresh, bright, laundry powder smell.

After all, she’d seen Martin standing there in the office, before Peter Lukas showed up of course. Standing there like he’d been looking for something, the cupboard open but his arms hanging by his sides. The smell of clean clothes in the air and a tear on his cheek.

And Melanie, her anger almost as potent as Martin’s grief, but her tears were tears of anger. She’d been looking for a pen-Jon always seemed to have them on hand, but being in that office, that scent in the air mixed with the musty smell of the old books in the place that has her trapped, the place that caused the death of friends, that stripped her of her liberty.

And so perhaps as Basira held a bin liner full of slightly dusty clean clothes and a handful of pens from a desk drawer, she told herself she didn’t feel guilty. She had to do this, for the good of her team. Or at least what was left of it.

That lovely feeling when the guy who nearly ruined your evil plans but disappeared so you couldn’t kill him finally comes out of hiding in an attempt to ruin your evil plans again but this time there’s a metal pipe right there and you bash his head in and further your evil plan instead!

Me, on trial for two murders that I may or may not have committed: Your honour, I’m LITERALLY in my Jonathan Sims era.

In MAG 160 Jonah says through Jon that he hopes Jon will “keep an eye on” Martin after the change, aside from being a wonderful pun, it makes me wonder if he didn’t expect Martin to be powerful enough to travel through domains of his own accord.

He comments that he knows Jon would be reading it alone, so it’s fair to assume if he though Jon and Martin would be together at the time he knew Martin would at least be somewhere else for the execution of the ritual.

And Martin’s clearly susceptible to the domains-MAG 170 proves that. If Martin hadn’t got back from his walk in time would he have been sent into one?

Yes Jon would’ve found him, freed him, but he would’ve had to watch Martin suffering until he could manage it. He struggled enough having to watch Martin’s nightmares, what would seeing Martin truly tortured have done to him?

But equally, would that have been the fairest thing to do? The ability to wander the domains is often more a curse than a blessing. To have to survey that level of suffering, ignore the agony that so many innocents face in every domain. Is it better to suffer yourself, or to be free of pain but forced to ignore the pain of others? Martin has a great deal of care and empathy, if given the choice would Jon force him to endure all that they did?

Martin is Jon’s reason. His reason to carry on, to fight for himself, but if Martin wasn’t in a position to choose, would Jon afford himself that kindness at the possible expense of Martin? Yes if he did nothing he’d be in pain for a while, but he wouldn’t die, he’d be safe eventually.

The question is, could he put his reason on the line for the sake of his venture? And if he didn’t have Martin would he even have been able to get up off the cabin floor in the first place?

One under appreciated detail of TMA is that despite how awful Jon had it, in almost every situation he was in he could have had it worse, which is pleasantly terrifying.

I think the real reason Jared Hopworth wanted a second rib from Jon is because he wanted him to be symmetrical, wanted to give him a neat waistline. He is, after all, notorious for creating so called ‘perfect bodies’!

One thing I love about Jon is the complete horrified awe he has for the work of the other fears. When something truly horrific happens he’s rarely enraged or disgusted, but simply filled with total blatant awe at the inconceivable exquisite grotesquery of it.

I love it when podcasts romanticise being paranoid… I’m totally being stalked by otherworldly fears, that’s why I’m pacing round the shop flustered. It’s not cos the security guard looked at me why would it be that…

Obviously I love looking at all TMA fanart but I must say, it’s pretty clear that some of you have never seen a British person in real life.

People will really say “Jonathan Sims is a good guy!” or “Jonathan Sims is a bad person!” as if a prominent message of his character arc wasn’t that no matter who you are, what you do, or how you behave your actions can cause harm or good without intention, and baselessly assigning morals to people who aren’t deliberately causing harm is pointless because our view of them is more about how they affect us than how they actually are.

For better or worse, everyone is just a person. We’re all both not at fault and entirely to blame.

Completely irrelevant, incredibly specific headcanons I have for certain TMA characters

Rosie: Uses margarine instead of butter.

Daisy: Doesn’t turn the volume up in multiples of 5.

Martin: Hates that seam inside the toes of socks that kinda digs in sometimes.

Melanie: Always has a bottle or can of fizzy drink around.

Jon: Has a thing about the quality of paper.

Elias: Rhythmically taps the tip of his toe on the ground whilst waiting.

Basira: Likes notebooks.

Georgie: Has pink headphones.

Sasha: Always wears boots that click on the floor.

Tim: Ties his shoelaces weirdly.