Michael Distortion - Blog Posts

i think what michael shelley wanted more than anything was to be loved or even just appreciated, but in the neurodivergent way where you think that the reason you aren't recognized is because you haven't done enough rather than because the people you want recognition from won't give it to you

the distortion reflects this by being bizarrely overt, making campaigns of terror against specific people, being the center (or at least a very hard-to-ignore presence) in the lives of its victims, rather than eating them outright or befriending them like helen does (which reflects a much more businesslike "get the job done, make some connections, and move on" attitude that likely reflects her job when she was human)

hey magnus archives fans i know yall got a lot of mikes… you may even know a mike who isn’t in magnus

consider send one in?

The Distortion would have become Helen regardless of if it had ever become Michael or not.

Think about it. Real estate is a pretty fun place to be an erronious door. Helen Richardson would probably have walked through as in canon, even without Michael to lure her in, and we know that her reaction was to make a map. So she makes a map, gets taken back after giving her Statement, (Jon never gets the “do you even know they’re lying to you” warning,) and she Becomes. Ta-da, Helen Distortion, no Michael involved at all.

A friend just called him michael delusion. How do we feel about this

i would love to hear more of your thoughts on michael shelley!!! 🌀🚪✨

you're in luck because i've sat on thoughts about him for years and i finally feel like i can articulate them. because michael shelley is such a well written case of tragic horror in the horror tragedy podcast. and, despite my criticisms of season 5, it really did do an excellent job in concluding his character arc with the gertrude backstory episode. in a podcast where a common in-universe theme is that knowledge, and the pursuit of knowledge, is dangerous, michael is a subversion in that his ignorance of the horrors of the world he lived in not only didn't save him, but was intentionally engineered to make him vulnerable to exploitation and harm (which, on a broader scope, emphasises the futility of the world of the magnus archives - regardless of whether you participate in or turn a blind eye to the systems at play, involved or uninvolved, you are not safe).

furthermore, i really appreciate the subversion of traditional tropes of the sacrifice as a typically female figure taken advantage of by a male father, brother, or lover, whose tragic and horrible death is used to motivate him (whether to greatness or self-destruction), with michael being a son sacrificed by his mother (or grandmother) figure, who never actually loved him and whose 'frail' and 'nurturing' qualities were weaponised incompetence used to gaslight and manipulate him - and who continues to operate successfully (at least in terms of what can be said to be 'success' in a world like the magnus archives) without being haunted by any apparent doubt about the decision she made, or any hesitation to use others in similar ways, following this betrayal. which makes the fact that he's sewn into the fabric of a being that represents lies in their most insidious form, used as a weapon to devour people and destroy their lives, all the more abhorrent in hindsight - he is forced to not only relive his trauma in an endless loop (or spiral, if you will), but to become the mechanism which enables it. michael is taken to the edge of something evil (at least from a human perspective), and pushed over the threshold with no hope of recourse. there's almost a reverse orphic quality to it - he descends into terrifying other world, one which exists side-by-side with but fundamentally seperate from his own, against his will, and looking back will only cause him pain as he's assaulted by memories of a life he will never be able to reach.

i think a lot of people forget to look past the surface with michael, despite there being an entire episode dedicated to doing so. which is understandable, he's a very outwardly expressive character - but this is intentional obfuscation to hide an incredibly damaged victim whose hatred of this part of himself is integral to his entire reason for being, and which the rejection of causes him to be unmade, incapable of existing as this contradictory nightmare any longer. it's a mercy killing, and yet it is violent and painful, because michael cannot and should not exist, and excising that graft used to muzzle the distortion is as agonising as latching it into place was in the first place. when michael-the-distortion says about michael shelley "he was born. he was pointless. and he should have died." there is an implicit longing there, a rage at the way he was used, his decisions made for him and used to imprison something else instead of ever being allowed to exercise any measure of free will. because michael shelley probably would have died for the archivist, given the opportunity, but he never got the choice.

What is your favorite colour outside of the visible light spectrum?

PINK! 'OH BUT I SEE PINK' NO, YOU SEE THE MIXTURE OF RED AND VIOLET WAVELENGTHS. ITS AN OUTLIER, A NOT-QUITE, AND I LOVE LOVE LOVE PINK :]))(]

I love when ficwriters portray michael distortion as like a weird eldritch cat. It fits his vibe so well. He says and does things that dont make sense and occasionally interacts with you or gives you things that you may or may not have wanted. Also sometimes threatens you. Weird eldritch cat.

One thing we don’t talk about enough is that michael distortion looks… basically normal. Like canonically.

Wiki excerpt: “Michael is a very tall man, approximately 6.5 feet, with a round face. His hair is blonde and forms ringlets that come down to his shoulders.”

He only looks like our silly horror guy with knife hands when viewed through reflections or warped glass. So technically almost all fanart done of michael is actually a reflection of a much more normal-looking drawing of a random blonde guy.

If he hadn’t been sacrificed, I feel like Michael would have been more a victim and/or avatar of The Web.

I highly doubt Michael was stupid. To be honest, he strikes me as neurodivergent of the “if I just go with what they say, they won’t hate me” variety. He trusted gertrude to not… y’know. Kill him. I feel like that’s a pretty low level of trust, all things considered. He probably knew she was planning *something*, though he grossly underestimated the scale. Consider also that Gertrude was trying to intentionally deceive pretty much everyone so that she could go around obliterating Rituals and being a general pain in the ass to Jonah. It’s not a mark against someone to have been tricked by Gertrude. Hell, he was in an echo chamber designed to keep him ignorant!

Point is, Michael wasn’t stupid. He was scared. He was scared of being hated and left behind and not being enough for others. He was scared of failing people. He’d fall into anyone’s schemes, take any number of hits, whatever it would take to have people stick around and hopefully, maybe, protect him in return.

If it hadn’t been Gertrude and her assistants specifically, if it hadn’t been Fears and supernatural entities and attempts to end the world, he would have been manipulated, rather than lied-to-and-manipulated. He could break the Great Twisting because he *had* been lied to, not because it was the core of his fear. (Ignore for now that the Twisting wouldn’t have worked anyway, if 160 is to be believed.)

And every fear has a bit of manipulation in it, Gerry’s colour analogy rant and all. But The Web relishes in manipulation, in telling you true things that will lead you to the wrong conclusions to do what it wants. Michael was told he could stop a great evil. True! Sort of!

Anyways, Web!Michael when

I think Michael and Helen would have different colour schemes. Michael is like a walking pansexual flag to me while Helen leans more polysexual flag

Daily TMA 110 - Two Paths

The fact that if Michael hadn’t become The Distortion he could have very well become The Archivist

I audibly laughed at this

What if when Michael got Distortioned he/they/it/(?) had just kept showing up to work? Imagine Gertrude comes into the archives and finds a bunch of paperwork filled out in yellow highlighter and folded into impossible shapes, and then Michael-Distortion just walks into the room door-style and sits down at his work computer so it can email Gertrude a phishing scam.

Back with more Michael angst!

The Distortion hates cold temperatures. It didn't used to, but then it became Michael. Typically, the Distortion takes whatever form it likes, though the pattern of something-that-looks-like-Michael is one of the easiest, the least complex. (It's very complex, actually, but Michael Shelley was so good at being this one specific human that, if the Distortion wants to look like something other than a door, that pattern is so close to hand.) But the instincts of Michael are interwoven into the instincts of this endless Concept, and when it's cold, the Distortion is reminded of Russia. It's reminded of a place that doesn't exist. It's reminded of a map. It's reminded of words, that he wouldn't die if he was careful. And he was careful, and he hadn't died. But what happened was worse. It remembers the last time he was betrayed before he became betrayal.

And somehow, lost in all the memories of something that both is and is not itself, the Distortion finds itself wearing a heavy coat and scarf, in muted earthy browns and greens so unlike its preferred aesthetic. Sometimes, it finds that it's crying something that could arguably pass for tears. It never quite remembers how it got to this shape.

That simply cannot do. So it avoids winters and cold temperatures and Russia. Or at the very least, it leaves the door outside, and hides inside where temperature and space mean as much as time and colour and truth.

I wonder if Michael Shelley got a grave. I don't think Gertrude would have made one; she's not sentimental enough for it. If you make graves for people you lose, you might think too hard about sacrificing them. If he had living family, they probably would have been at least a little estranged by virtue of how much time he spent at this job that, frankly, would make him sound like a lunatic to most people. I also doubt Gertrude would report his death in any official way. He would just disappear, never to be heard from again. Anyone else might not know he was gone for months.

The other assistants... they would know he was gone. Some silent acknowledgment that he wouldn't come back and shouldn't be spoken about. Maybe one of them would give him a grave, maybe. Or maybe not; after all, burials generally involve digging in the dirt, and they all knew about the Coffin by then. Who would want to tempt fate that way, and all for one dead man that cared too much?

No, his only grave is a labyrinth of doors. And even that twisted, painful testament to who he was and what he did, is taken from him when Helen usurps him.

Michael Distortion

Oh man, I had so much fun with this - but once I started I couldn’t stop. I have been enjoying these TMA requests so much and this is actually my first time drawing Michael! I love trying out all these funky colours to make him look sickly and creepy. I hope you guys enjoy!

For my Patrons - don’t forget to check out the timelapse for this one, and this will be available as a colouring page on next month’s VIP benefits! Also - this will be available as a print on my Redbubble.

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