you know, its creepy enough that when michael woke up, his face wasnt his own, but it must have been downright horrifying for him to meet the actual guy whom he was fashioned after, like a genuine heart-dropping, blood-chilling moment to realize that that old, dying millionaire guy (who youve slowly been discovering has left behind quite a mess for you and your friends thanks to all the weird dark secrets he took to his grave) didnt just steal your life from you and give you a random different face for identity fraud purposesโhe specifically modeled you after his estranged son, a man who is your total polar opposite, someone with barely any personal morality or convictions beyond gaining as much money and power and control over others as possible, and purposefully did not tell you this information, maybe thinking that somehow you two would never ever cross paths, that you could just seamlessly replace his son in every single way without ever knowing it, that garthe could just wither away and die in prison alone as if he had never existed in the first place. and of course, garthe, the man who you were intended to replace, the man who has just come back from an extended vacation in a brutal prison to find that his father is dead and he has given his entire inheritance to his newer, better, custom-made "son", absolutely wants to throttle you. He NEEDS to throttle you. because you are the epitome of his deepest, most poignant inner fear, the one thing that torments him endlessly: the fact that his father had never truly loved him, had always wanted him gone, had always wished that he had been someone else, and had now well and truly replaced him with someone he could actually love as a son. and michael never wanted that in the first place, he never asked to be the surrogate, but here he is looking in the mirror feeling his skin crawl with disgust because hes not just someone different after all, he is someone else. Someone who is still alive, and who had looked back at him with the same stricken horror, now turned to blinding, agonous rage. what an insane weight to carry! just when he begins to get used to this face, just when he finally thinks that maybe he could really fit himself into this new identity, his whole world is turned upside down again!
