Jonathan Sims (The Magnus Archives)

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Character
Name: Jonathan Sims
Occupation: Head Archivist of Magnus Institute
Relationships: Martin Blackwood (partner)
Fandom: The Magnus Archives
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Spoiler Warning: This article or section may contain spoilers. If this bothers you, proceed with caution.

Jonathan Sims is the protagonist of the podcast The Magnus Archives.

Canon

At the beginning of the series, Jon accepts a promotion to become the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, after the death of Gertrude Robinson, the previous Head Archivist. In the first season, Jon is quite rude and standoffish to his assistants, especially Martin Blackwood, and denies most of the statements. However around the halfway point, when Jane Prentiss, a woman infested with worms, begins stalking the Magnus Institute, he starts to show his fear on tape and to his assistants. In the penultimate episode of season 1, while hiding from Jane Prentiss' worms with Martin, he reveals that he was denying the existence of the supernatural because he was afraid, both of the statements and the feeling of being watched he got when he recorded the statements.

In season 2, after being attacked and scarred by Jane Prentiss' worms, and the revelation that Gertrude Robinson was murdered, Jon becomes increasingly paranoid and begins to suspect his assistants of murder. He later rationalises this as his reaction to one of his assistants, Sasha James, being replaced by the Not!Them, a creature that replaces someone and all the memories of them to all but one person. During season 2, he takes a statement live from Helen Richardson, but The Distortion, a creature calling itself Michael Shelley that the real Sasha James encountered in season 1, takes Helen and stabs Jon.

Near the end of the season, he takes a statement from Melanie King, a ghost hunter and statement giver from season 1. She is revealed to be the single person who remembers the real Sasha James, and this encourages Jon to do some research and figure out that Sasha James has been replaced by the Not!Them. He tries to kill the Not!Them, but ends up accidentally releasing her, and has to run from her through the tunnels beneath the institute, where Gertrude's body was recovered, and where he had previously tried to escape from Jane Prentiss. Just before he's about to be killed, Jurgen Leitner, the owner of a library containing supernatural books, appears and traps the Not!Them using one of those books. Jurgen Leitner explains to Jon that there are entities who cause supernatural things to happen, and that Jon is a supernatural creature, as he belongs to one of these entities: The Eye. Jon leaves for a cigarette, but while he's gone, Jonah Magnus, known as Elias Bouchard, Jon's boss and the main antagonist, kills Jurgen Leitner with brutal pipe murder, causing Jon to have to go on the run.

In season 3, Jon starts to live with his ex-girlfriend, Georgina "Georgie" Barker, as he is on the run for Leitner's murder. He reveals in the first episode of season 2 that he had a childhood encounter with one of Leitner's books when he was eight years old, a picture book that would make the reader knock on the door and get eaten by a giant spider. However, his childhood bully stole the book from him, and Jon watched him get eaten. Jonah Magnus continues to send Jon statements while he's living with Georgie, and this leads him to get his hand burned by Jude Perry, and sent into freefall by Michael "Mike" Crew. After his encounter with Mike Crew, Alice "Daisy" Tonner, the cop who is looking for Jon, kidnaps both Mike and Jon. She kills Mike, and is about to kill Mike, before Basira Hussain stops her. Basira and Jon became friends in season 2, as Basira was helping him with his investigation into Gertrude's murder before she quit the force. This is when Jon's ability to "compel" people, forcing them to answer his questions and even give statements, is revealed. Daisy believes Jon is a monster, but Basira says that he can help them get information out of Elias.

They bring him back to the Magnus Institute, where Melanie has been hired to be an Archival Assistant. Elias voluntarily says that he killed Gertrude Robinson and Jurgen Leitner, then blackmails Basira into accepting a job at the Magnus Institute. He also reveals that the Archive staff cannot quit, and that if they kill him then they will all die. He then speaks to Jon alone, where Jon asks him if he's becoming a monster, and Elias gives him a non-answer and tells him to investigate the Unknowing, a ritual that will transform the world to the whims of The Stranger, another entity. Jon continues to live with Georgie, and does some investigation into the Unknowing, at which time he is absent from the archives. He then gets kidnapped by Nikola Orsinov, a supernatural clown who wants to use his skin for the Unknowing, for a month.

Michael, The Distortion, comes to the wax museum where Jon is being kept, tells him his statement, then tries to kill him. He is unable to, as he is replaced by Helen Richardson, the statement giver he took in season 2, and she becomes The Distortion. Helen sends him back to the Magnus Institute, where he prevents Melanie from attempting to kill Elias, and discovers, through reading statements and supernaturally blackmailing a statement giver's brother, that he needs to go to China and then America to discover how Gertrude Robinson and Gerard "Gerry" Keay, Gertrude's unofficial assistant, planned to stop the Unknowing. He discovers that Gerry is a ghost bound by a book, kept by statement givers from season 1 who kidnap Jon. Gerry tells him of plastic explosives Gertrude kept, more about the entities, and asks Jon to kill him, which Jon does in episode 117.

In episode 118 and 119, the plan to stop the Unknowing by blowing up the wax museum where the ritual will take place went into action. It didn't go to plan, and Jon was tormented by the puppeted skins of Gertrude Robinson and Jurgen Leitner, before helping Timothy "Tim" Stoker, one of his original assistants, blow up the ritual, killing both him and Jon. Jon didn't entirely die, however, and was kept alive because of his role as an avatar of The Eye, leaving him "all but brain dead." In episode 120, Elias gave a statement of Jon's dreams during Jon's pseudo-coma, revealing that Jon and all the live statement givers were sharing dreams of the statement giver's statements.

In season 4, statement giver and avatar of The End, Oliver Banks comes to Jon's hospital bed and tells Jon Oliver's statement, encouraging Jon to make his choice and either wake up and become an avatar, or die as a human. Jon decides to wake up, and when he does, Georgie Barker decides to cut off their relationship, he find out Tim died in the Unknowing, he almost gets stabbed by Melanie who is under the influence of The Slaughter, he finds out Martin is avoiding him, and he takes the statement of a supermarket cleaner. He soon finds out that Melanie is becoming a Slaughter avatar because she was shot by a ghost, and he and Basira work together to do surgery on Melanie to remove the bullet. They remove the bullet successfully, but Melanie stabs Jon when she wakes up. Afterwards, he takes the statement of a woman who wakes up in a grave every year on her birthday.

Soon after, Breekon, one half of a pair of supernatural deliverymen, the other half which died trying to bring about the Unknowing, comes to the archives, delivers a coffin leading to The Buried, and reveals that Daisy was stuck in the coffin. Jon decides to rescue Daisy, and after doing some research, comes to the conclusion that he needs to put a piece of himself outside the coffin to lead him back. At first he tries to cut off his finger, but heals immediately after taking the knife out. He then decides to go to Jared Hopworth and get him to remove one of his ribs. He goes into the coffin and saves Daisy, however it is not his rib that saves him, it's Martin leaving out tapes for him. This is frequently interpreted as Jon and Martin's love for each other acting as Jon's anchor. After escaping from the coffin, he takes the statement of a man who was rejected by everyone and searched ever darker places for love. After Jon took his statement, he started crying maggots. Jon and Daisy began to become friends after this.

Some unknown time afterwards, Jon took Jess Tirrel's[1] statement. Either before or after this, Basira was told by Jonah Magnus to bring Jon to Ny-Ålesund, where there was reportedly a ritual of The Dark they needed to stop. Along the way, Jon took the statement of Floyd Matharu. They discovered, when they got to Ny-Ålesund, that The Dark ritual failed, and only Manuela Dominguez was left behind. Jon decides to destroy the Dark Sun, the focus of The Dark's ritual, anyways. He manages this, but it makes him weak for a while afterwards.

Meanwhile Jess Tirrel made a statement to Martin, talking about how Jon forced her to tell him her story and now haunts his dreams. He leaves the tape of this with Basira, Daisy, and Melanie, who have an intervention with Jon shortly after he and Basira return from Ny-Ålesund. Jon reveals to both them and the audience that he has been taking statements, but that he doesn't know if he's in control. This leads them to go to 105 Hill Top Road, a location connected to The Web which appears in many statements. Annabelle Cane, an avatar of The Web, left a statement for Jon, telling him about her life, and saying that his choice to take statements from people was just that, his choice.

Jon stops taking statements, in part as his choice, and in part because Basira threatened to kill him if he did not. After a little while he finds out a way to quit the institute, blinding oneself, and goes to Martin to ask him if he wants to gouge his eyes out with him, a gesture interpretated as romantic by both many fans and Jonny Sims — the writer, creator, and Jon's voice actor — himself. Martin declines, and says that Jon only asked him because he knows Martin can't. Martin is working with Peter Lukas, the main antagonist of season 4, supposedly to stop the rise of a new fear entity, The Extinction. Martin, however, was only working with Peter to keep Jon safe. When Peter's plan begins to come to a close and Martin disappears, Jon asks for help from Georgie and Melanie, but as Melanie ended up quitting and Georgie didn't want anything to do with the Magnus Institute and Jon, they didn't help him. He then asked for help from Helen, who he'd been becoming closer with — although their relationship was quite hostile — over the course of the season. Helen didn't help, and when Jon tried to compel her, she threatened to kill him if he tried again.

Shortly thereafter, the Institute was invaded by Not!Sasha, and the hunters: Julia Montauk and Trevor Herbert. Daisy sacrificed herself to give Jon time to get to Martin. Martin had chosen not to follow through on Peter's plan and was sent to The Lonely, where Jon followed him in, killed Peter Lukas, and saved Martin. They then fled to Daisy's safehouse in Scotland, and lived there for about three weeks before they received statements they thought were from Basira. These statements were actually from Jonah Magnus, and were intended for Jon to read, so he could end the world.

Earlier in the season, it was revealed that Jon physically could not stop reading statements once he started. Jonah Magnus knew this, and exploited this to get Jon to monologue how Jonah Magnus arranged marks, traumatising encounters with fear entities, for Jon. Once Jon had marks from all fourteen fear entities, he would be able to end the world with Jonah Magnus' ritual. Magnus' ritual doesn't officially have a name. Many fans believe it to be called The Watcher's Crown, however this is Jonah's first attempt at a ritual, back in the 1800s. When asked in a QnA, Jonny suggested that this ritual could have been called The Magnus Archives, as Jonah Magnus revealed in this statement that Jon is in fact the Archive.

Season 5 takes place after the world ended, and begins with Jon listening to tapes Jonah Magnus sent, specifically: one featuring his birthday from during or before season 1, a tape from Gertrude explaining Magnus' ritual, and one featuring Gerry and Gertrude talking about the end of the world. In episode 162, Jon is compelled to make a statement about the cabin they're living in, and then decides they need to leave the cabin and confront Jonah Magnus.

Most of season 5 is spent with Jon and Martin travelling across various domains in the changed United Kingdom, in what the fandom dubs the Eyepocalypse. In episode 165, Jon kills Not!Sasha after she taunts him by calling Sasha pathetic. Martin and Helen — who occasionally turns up — encourage Jon to keep killing. He ends up killing Jude Perry and Jared Hopworth, but rethinks and doesn't kill Simon Fairchild. They then met up with Basira, who needed to fulfil her promise to kill Daisy, as Daisy asked her before she sacrificed herself in episode 158. Jon reveals while they are tracking Daisy that his encounter with Daisy in episode 91 was the most terrified and powerless he had ever felt. After Basira kills Daisy, they part ways, and Martin and Jon find themselves in Upton House, protected by the Eyepocalypse by a supernatural camera. There they meet Mikale Salesa, who was presumed to be dead, as well as Annabelle Cane.

Once they leave Upton House, Jon forgets everything that happened there, making both him and Martin fear for what will happen if they manage to remove the fears from the world. Shortly after leaving Upton House, while Martin is literally talking to himself in his domain, Jon realises and reveals that Helen was never trying to be a good friend, and that she was too dangerous to live while they were trying to save the world, so he kills her.

The next episode, Jon and Martin arrive in London, and meet up with Georgie and Melanie, who help them enter the Panopticon tower. There they find out that Jonah Magnus is overwhelmed by all he is seeing and that The Eye wants Jon to take his place. Jon and Martin get into an argument about what to do, and Martin leaves with Annabelle Cane to go to 105 Hill Top road.

Jon follows them and meet Basira along the way. Once they get there, Annabelle reveals that The Web had marked Jon to end the world and spread the entities to other worlds through a multiverse rift at 105 Hill Top road since before his first encounter with the supernatural at eight years old. She then tells Jon, Martin, and Basira that to save the world, they needed to send the entities to other dimensions by destroying the archives and "cutting out" the pupil of The Eye, a position occupied by Jonah Magnus.

Back in the tunnels, they had a discussion about what was to be done. Basira was initially on Jon's side, but by the end of their discussion, only Jon didn't want to spread the fears. Jon lied to the others and said he would follow their plans, however he decided to kill Jonah Magnus alone, become the pupil, and kill the whole world, as to burn out the fears. Martin foresaw this, however, and as Jon had accidentally given the web lighter that was to be used to destroy it to Georgie. This lead to the Panopticon tower being destroyed while Martin and Jon were still up there. Jon decided to back out at the last minute, for he didn't want to watch Martin die and he would not be himself after the Panopticon was destroyed, and told Martin to kill him. Martin did so, the fears were spread, and the world went back to normal. Jon and Martin's bodies were never found, leaving it ambiguous as to if they survived and ended up "somewhere else" or if they died.

Jon was revealed to be asexual in a QnA, and as he has been in a relationship with Georgie Barker — a woman — and Martin Blackwood — a man — he is commonly headcanoned to be biromantic, although his romantic orientation was never revealed.

Name

The character is named after his voice actor, and one of the creators of The Magnus Archives. There is sometimes confusion about whether one is referring to the character or real person, however many have taken to referring to the character as Jon or the Jarchivist, and the creator as Jonny Sims.

In official transcripts Jonathan's name is shortened to John while the fandom predominantly leans towards Jon. Both are considered correct spellings by the creators.

Fandom

Jon is often headcanoned as autistic, due to his awkward interactions with his co-workers and his diligence in his job as Archivist; additionally he is sometimes headcanoned as having ADHD. He is also often headcanoned to be a trans man or nonbinary. Many fans headcanon him as nonwhite, often with some degree of Indian background.

As the source material is audio, Jon has no canonical appearance, although is described as being scrawny and looking like a mess. He is most often depicted as a skinny, short, brown-skinned man. The length of his hair often varies by season; Jons from season 1 have short, professional-style hair; Jons from season 2 have hair growing a little longer and messier, to reflect his paranoia and shirking of responsibility; Jons from season 3 can either have longer hair, or hair shorn completely short; Jons from season 4 tend to have very long hair, often in a bun or ponytail, and Jons from season 5 also often have long hair.

Regardless of the season, Jon is often depicted with a green colour scheme, due to the logo of the series being green. He also can have eyes floating around him, especially in art depicting the latter half of the series. Both fanfiction and fanart often portray Jon with nonhuman characteristics in later seasons, with particularly common motifs including extra eyes, tape recorder-based elements, and moth imagery.

In fanfiction, Jon is often the target of whump and hurt/comfort, in no small part due to how often he is injured in canon. Many time-travel fics and fix-it fics also prominently feature Jon. Additionally, he is often centered in role swap fics, usually as a servant of an entity besides the Eye or an archival assistant working under a different head archivist.

Shipping

Jon is shipped with many characters from the show, with some of these ships leaning more towards (though not always portrayed as) darkfic, such as Jonelias which is the ship between Jon and Elias Bouchard, who is the series antagonist as well as Jon's boss.

The most popular ship is Jonmartin which is the ship of him and Martin Blackwood who was introduced as an archival assistant. While this started as a crackship in the earlier seasons, affectionately referred to as 'the dingy' due to its small following and how little it was based on, with the main character Jon at the time often remarking on his dislike of Martin. In the later seasons, as the characters grew closer, fans began to take the ship more seriously, particularly after the reveal that Martin felt affection he viewed as unrequited towards Jon at the end of season 3. Season 4 saw Jon and Martin separated after Martin distanced himself from everyone in an attempt to keep them safe by securing the help of Peter Lukas. However, it was revealed that while Jon was in a coma after season 3 Martin had stayed at his bedside up until the point when he was convinced that Jon 'wouldn't' wake up. During season 4, Jon regularly attempts to contact Martin; on one occasion he asks Martin to run away with him after discovering a way to sever them from the archives. At the end of season 4, Martin is trapped inside The Lonely and Jon rescues him from it, they then flee to a safehouse in Scotland which many shippers interpret as a period of 'domestic bliss'. By season 5 the pair are canonically a couple with Jon calling Martin his 'boyfriend'.

After Jonmartin, Jonelias is probably the most popular pairing. He is also frequently paired with his friend and coworker Timothy "Tim" Stoker, and with Gerry Keay, a former archival assistant who Jon meets as a ghost. Jon is also involved in a wide range of rarepairs.

Example Fanworks

Fanfiction

Fanart

Fanvids

Cosplay

Meta

Archives & Fannish Links

References

  1. ^ https://rustyquillcom.sharepoint.com/Shared%20Documents/Rusty%20Quill%20Public%20Access/Transcripts/The%20Magnus%20Archives/MAG%20PDF/Season%204/MAG146%20-%20Threshold%20Transcript.pdf
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