Reblog This If Your Blog Is A Safe Space On April Fools And Won’t Have Any Jumpers, Screamers, Or Anything

So much imposter syndrome you could call me the NotThem

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.

Sometimes i worry that

The ads here are all very Stranger. I like saving them to dissect their Wrongness later. I like this cake one, though. No cursed faces, no floating limbs, no almost-words, just cakes!

This ad feels like a lure of the stranger but a very innocent and new lure. Yes. That is cakes, good job.

You know what’s weird? Having been in the chonny jash fandom for just under two weeks. Specifically because of taken for a ride and time machine reprise, and the canon song order. Some (daresay most) of yall have been here for months, tinkering with the timeline, trying to figure out how it all fit together, meanwhile I joined, went absolutely feral for about a week, was handed the storyline, and went absolutely feral for another week for a slightly different reason.

As glad as I am to finally be here, I feel like I missed some of the experience of trying to piece it all together. Mind you (obligatory “haha mind joke” here), there’s still so much left to interpretation and theorization, and I’m indulging in that grey area of canon. But it’s a different grey area than it was when I found Jash’s music the other week.

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.

So we don’t REALLY know how much of an avatar Mary was (assuming that, like Jon, there’s a transitory period where you kinda sorta feed on fear but also kinda sorta are alive and need people food and such, before you die and go full avatar) but wouldn’t it be interesting if Mary was constantly feeding on Gerry’s fear of her

I had a dream that senshi absolutely hated pickles, despised them even, because, and i quote, “they’re the same flavour all the way through. Cucumbers at least have different flavours from the skin and the meat, but they’re on thin ice. Pickles though…” and for some reason this caused anakin skywalker and i to become trapped in his nightmare, which was of a mansion filled with lamia. There was more to the dream but that just about sums it up. I also got a free fun size candy bar at one point

Anyways, a) i think canon-senshi probably loves pickles, and b) dream-senshi is wrong, pickles are amazing

Also what was anakin doing there. Everyone else in the dream was someone i know irl or a dungeon meshi character, and then there’s just anakin skywalker there for some reason

S1E1 Rose: The Stranger

This one’s easy. It’s the Stranger. Of course it’s the Stranger. It’s mannequins. If that weren’t enough, Mickey gets replaced by one and Rose doesn’t notice for a while. It’s got Stranger written all over it. Nikola never watched Doctor Who or the Unknowing would have been wayyyy more dangerous.

Starting my first “long thread of me watching a thing”

The thread?

Assigning tma fears to every doctor who episode (starting with the 9th doctor and going onward)! I plan to watch every episode basically chronologically but we’ll see how it plays out.