#this is NOT character hate it's a character STUDY - if anything this is a lovepost for the character that's been butchered

[gerrydelano]

i’m SO glad this is being talked about, actually!

the distortion is terrifying and has done so much damage and that needs to be accepted/portrayed honestly just as much as the humour and the uncomfortable monster tenderness (which may be potentially genuine, which makes it even scarier.) the sheer number of different facets to this Being are precisely what make it so scary! there are Multiple Angles to approach the distortion with, just like ordinary people. which is the point of the podcast.

TW: abuse, gaslighting (please don’t jump the gun, it’s the spiral.)

yeah it’s gonna sound “too much” to make this allegory/statement but at this point i don’t care, i post for privileged readers™ who know what i’m talking about.

the spiral IS associated with gaslighting for a reason. and a lot of what makes abuse so scary and confusing in real life IS the presence of occasional (or even frequent) expressions of love, tenderness, care, concern, and laughter. actual abusers aren’t just full-time supervillains 24/7 like... they will eat dinner with you and ask about your day and take you somewhere nice and you will have genuine fun with them, you will be thankful for things they do and enjoy their company and want their approval and want to spend time with them.

and that is the stuff that makes YOU wonder if the bad things they’ve done to you matter. if they’re even real at all because you have those good associations and memories, so clearly, oh, no. it couldn’t be this other way. could it?

i know that it must be Super weird and jarring for me to just throw out something to the effect of like comparing michael dis door shun to Abusers™ but ... the spiral as a whole does play off of those things (narratively speaking to highlight the actual terror in gaslighting and manipulation like it’s to SAY “hey this is HORRIFIC!” because it IS! gestures LOUDLY to MAG 177!) 

and what the FUCK do you think its decades long campaigns of stalking/hunting/torturing people is? it’s not fun and games it’s the actual brutal pursuit of someone’s mental breaking point and that is one of the cruelest things that can be done to a person! it makes you unsafe in the ONE place that you should be safest: your own fucking mind.

even helen — also part of the distortion — doesn’t do that! actively expresses distaste for the tactic. it’s a fucked up extra mile!

and NO before ANYONE says it, this is not me popping out of nowhere to say ooh waaaah michael is problematic and if you like him you’re a bad person aaargrgrgrh roaaar.

SOMEONE should point out the Actual Canon Deeds done by this character and the Purposeful Themes woven into the Fear Entity that it serves as an agent of (Which All Represent Real World Topical Issues). this is a show where if you have a favourite character, 9 times out of 10 they’ve pulled some SHIT, just because that’s the kind of show it is. 

but you have to at least Acknowledge the shit that whatever character you like has done, when the lowest anyone can be on the morality scale is like a 5. it’s not that you can only like characters who are “morally pure,” you just have to acknowledge All of them.

TMA isn’t just a fun little escapism fantasyland podcast and never has been. it’s LOADED with and founded on deliberate commentary and Directly pointing out that some things that people do to each other are outrageously cruel. this is one of those things and it SHOULD NOT be completely defanged.

or made sexy. but that’s none of My business. i think plenty of people have talked about fanon michael’s blond twink disorder so i don’t have to do that here. it just bothers me that so many people took a seriously good, rich, complex character and blunted him This Badly almost purely because he’s canonly blond. like. really? really. 

long story short i’m a Canon Michael Truther as in fanon michael get OUT of my HOUSE. 

and on a personal note, no one’s ready for what i’m about to do with him in the next chapter of PBR alone, like. what ren said in their response is very relevant and there’s going to be a lot more going on here than just oh ha ha he’s like a bratty housecat that knocks things off the table but we love him anyway<3 like no, Literally No.

i wrote the very end of TSP featuring an attempted act of genuine tenderness from michael and gerry talking about the blurred line between the Horror of the entities and the small little things you have to scrounge to find beauty and joy in when you look at the world knowing it’s burning. you have to try to do that, yes, and they DO exist, but no, they do NOT diminish the abject horror that is still going on in the background. you have to focus on the good things to survive that, sometimes.

for example, he agrees that the fact that he can find genuine beauty in the vast is exactly what makes it so terrifying. there’s a similar vibe going on for the spiral! and ANY of them, really. being able to sink into it and accept it IS the horror. being able to let yourself become amenable to the things these forces are capable of and privy towards IS the horror.

michael shelley might’ve been a fantastic dude and some of that ABSOLUTELY shines through in some of michael distortion’s gestures and inclinations, and nowhere in what i said above is there a statement that THAT GUY was An Abuser, Rarrrrgh! i’m not insulting your fave, or insulting you.

that’s not what this says when i bring up the fact that the Creature that he became when his OWN HISTORY WITH BEING GASLIT TO HELL AND BACK, FOR YEARS UPON YEARS, and his presumed betrayal and anger about having to live with that, was mixed in with a Being that FEEDS ON that Exact form of suffering, created a unique sort of monster.

(and no this does not equate to me saying “abuse victims become abusers” do NOT try that with me. i am a survivor of more than i need to share here to justify this conversation, and i’m the first person to dispute that shitty stereotype.)

the distortion before michael shelley was poured into it had to have represented these things already. his history and his pain and his trauma just gave it some fresh ideas.

michael is different from AVATARS who made CHOICES because michael shelley was forced into this and twisted by it and by the people who DID ALL OF THESE THINGS TO HIM.

but just because michael shelley was fused with it and we feel for HIM, doesn’t mean that the damage caused by the distortion is somehow softened or acceptable or anything less than just as fucking nauseating as what was done to him by ordinary people.

he was MADE into this. and now he’s inseparable from it, and THAT is tragic.

and it’s a little bit like system responsibility. if one alter in a system does something bad, you can’t just say “oh my alter did it, it wasn’t me so it’s fine” because it’s STILL a part of the Whole. at the end of the day, the whole is accountable for what its pieces do. the same goes for just being a dick because of your trauma/mental illness in general! you cannot just blame those things and shirk the responsibility, you still have to work to be better and people are STILL allowed to form their own feelings based on your actions.

you’re allowed to feel for him, and you should! you should also feel for everyone that has been hurt through what he became a part of, and Does have a hand in, regardless of whether he would have done any of it before he became. he’s still a huge influence on the tactics that get used when it hunts.

the entire nature of the distortion IS conflicting coexistence! that’s the whole point of it and exactly why one of its trademarks is endlessness. you can never stop walking, you can never reach the end of the hall, you will never be able to sleep again, you will never stop hearing that sound.

TL;DR - don’t declaw the distortion or the spiral as a whole just because you feel bad for michael shelley.