#opticalillusion

I want to preface this by saying that oftennnn I think people have mixed feelings with Jonmichael, so I am going to start off by saying that I don't think the Distortion experiences romantic/sexual attraction as much as they experience fascination. Particularly with the Archivist, for every reason under the sun (I will name them shortly). I lovelove Helenie because of the scenes where they talk about each other in such a strange way — so suspicious of everyone, no shoulders to lean on, Melanie especially after Jon returns in season 4, and the climax by defeating the flesh? That's yuri.

But Jonmichael?

[deep breath]

Jesus christ.

Background; this ship started off as an idea — a "not my thing, but I get it" idea (cough cough THANKS for THAT @theclownfromdowntown) and one I shared with one of my partners, @chiffchaffinch, after I posted a short short fic that I secretly called checkmate, but should really either rewrite or rename (ooo WANT). It spiralled (haha) quickly. I couldn't stop thinking and overanalysing their interactions. I've gone too far now. I'm never going back...

FIVE REASONS I BELIEVE MICHAEL DISTORTION TO BE OVERTLY OBSESSED WITH JONATHAN SIMS (TO THE POINT WHERE IT'S IN A GAY WAY) AND ONE REASON I THINK IT'S RECIPROCATED (A THESIS) (?)

1. Time; let's begin with time. The amount of sheer time that Michael spends tormenting or thinking about Jonathan Sims is actually borderline crazy. No other Power-aligned entity (I believe) (obviously eliminating characters like Martin and Elias/Jonah who HAVE to think about Jon (and are also morbidly obsessed with him)) has spent so much time thinking things over when it comes to Jon Sims. Most other entities/avatars begrudgingly interact with The Archivist, maybe they spend an episode together (Jude Perry) before injuring him and then hoping to forget about him forever, on a rare occasion they change his perception of the world (Gerry Keay<3333333333333), but Michael does both.......and then comes back? Michael plants the seed of lies in Jon's mind, "do you even know they're lying to you..?", and then returns again (when Jon is escaping Not!Sasha (why did he appear? What? What business did he have there?), following Jon to Nikola's circus), and seals himself in Jon's mind (we will get to this in a bit).

That last bit (Mag101, Another Twist, w Nikola) is kinda my biggest piece of evidence here. When Jon is freed by Helen, and Elias is trying to calm him down, Jonathan says "a month, Elias! And you did what?" Why did Michael wait a month? We're back to time. At around this point in the podcast, everyone is under the impression that each Power has a ritual, and, when one wins, everybody else loses. Michael has a ritual, a Power to serve and feed — Hell, as the Distortion themselves isn't a person and never was, they themselves were a part of that Power once — and...by giving Nikola a month with Jon, Michael is giving her... a chance..? No. That is very unlikely; Michael likes to toy with people, but he didn't give Not!Sasha a chance. He gave Jon a door, and then closed it behind him. No. Instead, I believe that Michael was torn. "They can't hide you from me." He wasn't lost, he was mulling over the idea of an existence without the Archivist to keep him occupied. I think this is because Michael does not actually want Jon to die, much less to kill him. If Jon meant nothing to Michael, he'd have killed him for sport, cut him into pieces, or relished in someone else killing him. But no, Michael hesitates. Why. Michael check-mates himself (tells Jon everything, waits ages before setting him free, teases him) at every turn, rather than taking his life.

"It is earlier than I'd hoped," and this slow-burn psycho-erotic filler plot is taking longer than I'd hoped. Jeez!!

NOW THAT WE HAVE THE BIG ONE OUT OF THE WAY

2. THE SCENE IN ITSELF IS GAY. Even if Michael and Jon's relationship was strictly hateful, and Michael's juggling of "I kill him, I kill him not" was PURELY for Michael's entertainment value, I do not believe that it was necessary to make their interactions That Unsubtly Erotically Charged. Michael removes Jon's gag, Jon gasps, Michael says things like the aforementioned "can't hide you", "ohhh, Archivist" — do I have the scene memorised? No but I know people who do — "what have you done now? It's almost sad to see you like this...", the intimacy of whispering to each other in a HUGE tent, come off it already. The acts of beholding/compelling someone are already intimate, considering that you're literally exposing someone's deepest and most hidden secrets, and considering that Ben Meredith (Elias's VA) has consistently been known to make it as sexy as possible (e.g. the Jon compelling Elias scene in whatever episode that was, or "I'm very intimate with Beholding", GUYS!!!!) so it really isn't too much of a stretch to say that this scene isn't at least a little bit kinky. Plus there's my next point...

3. Michael LETTING Jon do this to him is Deranged. But also very in character if you think about it.

Another piece of this puzzle that is exceptionally important to me is that This Scene in Itself is so against everything the Spiral stands for. On sacred soil of the supreme diety of not knowing, or barely recognising, a servant and direct offshoot of a god of lies gives the Archivist over fifteen beautiful minutes of untainted true backstory, after consistently preventing Jon from having the chance to do so in the past (not to mention that Helen prevents him from doing this in the future, which goes to show that this isn't just the Distortion playing around). What the heck is even that. Why do that? Out of the goodness of your heart? Michael...your heart is a door, get a grip.

No, the truth is that while it is very out of character to do this for the Spiral or for the Distortion, for Michael to do this is actually very in character. It is in character because Michael just generally is weirder about Jon than other avatars/monsters usually are. The Archivist fascinates him, in all his pitiful humanity and his pathetic existence. This goes way back, past the Great Twisting, and into the life of Michael Shelley, who also had a submissive, blind, and ignorant loyalty to Gertrude Robinson, Jonathan's predecessor. (We'll get to this!!!)

Basically, remember everything I said about how by giving the Archivist any sympathy at all Michael is effectively shooting himself in the foot? And then remember when I said that compelling is inherantly kinda kinky? Put that into perspective along with the fact that Michael is willingly letting it happen ("ask your questions" "what?" "ask me"). That's weird!!!

Am I saying that Michael Shelley had an Archivist kink and it passed over into Michael? ... noooooo 👀

4. It's all Michael Shelley's fault.

What I AM saying is that we have seen Michael Shelley affecting Michael's actions before (in Michael's first appearance, he was buying flowers at a florists (huh? Why? There is no reason for this to Not Be just a lasting habit of Michael Shelley), and when the Distortion stops being neutral ("I'm normally neutral, yes") it is because Michael Shelley tries to get revenge ("and of course there's revenge"). Let's briefly bypass the fact that this vengeance kills him*, replacing him with Helen (who IS completely neutral throughout her whole existence, change my mind), and instead focus on the fact that this means that Michael Shelley definitely can make or at the very least affect decisions made by the Distortion. Michael Shelley's story is a short but winding one, and, when it is regaled to Jon, Michael spends most of it emphasising just how smitten Michael Shelley was with his Archivist, how he wanted to protect the "fragile, old woman he believed her to be". Michael Shelley wants to protect the Archivist, he trusted and loved her, and Jonathan is now the Archivist.

If Michael Shelley's anger and terror remained, why can't his obsession with white-knighting the Archivist also remain? Riddle me that...

Confused? — you kill feed two birds with one stone handful of seed when you involve Michael Shelley's people pleasing nature.

A. Michael gives Jonathan a chance (see argument 1).

B. Michael just IS WEIRD about Jonathan in general (see argument 2).

*(I have a whole other essay that needs writing about how Michael Shelley killed the Distortion, but that can wait, along with one about how the Distortion is consistently misgendered and misunderstood and is generally tragic).

4.5 If it is due to past relationships — what does this mean in relation to Helen?

Only a couple things! A question I thought of thanks to my lovely wife who provoked some extra thought.

Helen knew Jon before she Became, delivered her statement, got eaten etc. The difference between Helen Richardson and Michael Shelley is that Helen was a purposed being. She had a job where she could climb ranks, she was willing to lie to customers, she was literally in real estate, nobody not-evil ever goes into real estate. Michael Shelley was born, pointless, died. Sorry Michael lovers! But this means that the difference between Michael and Helen is that Helen is better at being the Distortion than Michael is. (Ask @theclownfromdowntown for their full essay on this because it's WILD!!)

To put it simply, Helen was truly neutral, only ever frightened Jon, never maimed him, and was born to play a role where she had to lie and manipulate and rise. This is unrelated to Jonmichael, it just explains why Jonhelen compels me less — Helen is so much more normal about Jon, because while the Distortion loves to play with victims, Michael Shelley was literally obsessed with pleasing the Archivist. So is Michael.

5. A smaller one — Jon is equally as crazy??

No other monster or avatar takes up quite as much rent-free space in Jonathan's mind as Michael does, to the point where when another character mentions something related, Jonathan's immediate reaction is to bring the conversation back to Michael. My favourite example is Jude Perry mentioning Mike Crew, where Jonathan goes "corridors? Weird limbs? Laughs like a headache?"... there is more than one man named Michael in the world.

6. My last tidbit is a little more real — bear with me!

He does this multiple times. When interrogating Elias he takes the time to say "WHO'S MICHAEL" like that's important. To which Elias replies with "an irritant" because he's not important. He's a piece of sand in Elias's pristine mother-of-pearl shell, and he probably had to work with Michael Shelley for a bit so I imagine that comment was only moderately bitter...

(This isn't even including that Elias/Jonah says "you are marked very deeply by the spiral". WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!!!)

To top it all off, long after Michael's death, in season 5 where Jon randomly hallucinates, regurgitating statements and then pondering them for a while, Jonathan promises not to forget Michael Shelley like the rest of history will. This can be taken with as many pinches of salt as you'd like, because Jonathan Sims is a NICE PERSON. He burns Gerry's page to free him from eternal life even though it almost costs him his own, and for a good portion of the podcast he really believes that in every situation he is trying to do the Right Thing. So!! Maybe he just doesn't like the idea of being cruel towards or dismissive of someone who was almost his coworker, but in compilation with everything else, it just seems a bit wistful.

The Magnus Archives is a beautiful story, incredibly well-planned, a million loose ends all being threaded into a tapestry that points to another universe by the end of it. There are characters that literally are mentioned only a couple times that have fully fledged arcs by the time season 5 occurs, and the BIGGEST plot twist of the CENTURY happens in the LAST FEW EPISODES, even though it was being foreshadowed so so subtly throughout the entire story (cough, cough, the spiderweb lighter, cough).

Every character is meticulously planned, and all their purposes revolve around bringing Jonathan Sims closer to a satisfying conclusion. It is just one of those goddamn mysteries.

That being said.

JONNY SIMS (WRITER) IS TOO CLEVER NOT TO HAVE COME UP WITH EVERYTHING I JUST SAID YEARS BEFORE I DID.

Take like ten seconds to get that into your head.

Okay.

Even if he didn't think of every tiny detail that I mentioned, surely the more obvious ones (like the words said to each other during their final interaction) would have been clocked and obliterated if Jonny even so much has had an inkling that people were going to take the relationship between Jon and Michael to the extreme?

Like, not everyone spots everything in their works, good or bad, and not everyone means everything (sometimes curtains are just blue), but with all this in mind. Go listen to MAG101 again????? And understand that it is more erotic than it should have been????? Some of the things said, and even the smaller implications of Michael Shelley's existence bleeding through the cracks of the fracturing Distortion, are just too glaringly GAY to be skipped.

Listen to me closely...