GIVE ME YOUR MICHAELMARTIN PROPAGANDA NOW!!!
YES I so will!!!
Okay my first piece of propaganda is literally just this specific fic, which I discovered during a free period during sophomore year of high school when my friend and I (the same friend who made that mermichael commission actually!) entertained ourselves by coming up with random pairings of TMA characters and seeing how much fic of them there was on AO3, and we happened upon Michael/Martin (since they were already two of my faves). I read all of it that was published at the time and it gave me a disease. I think within like a month or two of me reading it I was drafting out my first (of many) michaelmartin fic lol, it really permanently altered my brain chemistry
I think some of the additional reasons I've been obsessed with them continuously for like three whole years is 1. there's something wrong with me and 2. I think there's some really genuinely interesting parallels between them as archival assistants who start out as actively trying to impress their respective archivists!!! While I think a lot of that paralleling is done to show the differences between Jon and Gertrude specifically, it's also really interesting to compare Martin and what we know of Michael Shelley in what seems like devotion. Particularly, Martin's pretty often revealed to be way more resourceful and cunning (and genuinely manipulative <3) and generally able to take care of himself, while obviously that was not the case for Shelley, or at least not enough to save him--and I think that makes for a REALLY interesting dynamic between Martin and Michael Distortion, who's by nature much more jaded and distrustful but also may see something of themself (or like, a stain Michael Shelley left behind on what they are now) in Martin. To this day I still think one of my most fun fic ideas would be one where Michael sees Martin's lil crush and is like no <3 quit that :^}. and bothers Martin about it a whole bunch, which is inherently very silly but I love it.
I also just think Martin deserves to kiss big monsters, and that the combination of "guy who appears very sweet and accommodating and a bit incapable but is absolutely doing it on purpose and is also, deep down a bit of a bitch (honorific)" and " 'guy' whose thin, person-shaped facade hides a big weird freak playing games with everyone around it all the time and also encouraging the first guy to be even more of a bitch (and also would kill for him. with pleasure.)" is an EXTREMELY specific but delightful dynamic. I think that like they both DO make each other better a little bit in my mind through Martin's staunch choice to care about others and try and hope for the best despite the lonely's influence on him (one of my favorite traits of his) and through Michael being just a little bit of an enabler (and also just resolutely understanding Martin and just casually loving him with all of their complex and tangled monster self like it's second nature)<-I'm normal about them.
Overall I just think that there's a lot of genuine similarities between them that can be really interesting and lead to fascinating character studies when brought together, but also at the same time they can potentially be SO silly together!!!! It's absolutely a rarepair that makes no sense in canon but I know in my heart of hearts that they kiss.
ALSO they're t4t
