#inmyears

(if anyone I know irl notices that two of the outfits he is wearing in the ref sheet are outfits that I own and have worn before, shush no you didn't)

Okay!! so! The basics.

This au was originally created because I wanted to create a post-distortion au with equal focus on both the mental and physical side effects of Turning Into A Terrifying Body Horror Monster (and subsequently getting ripped from it). I figured that since the Distortion—while tied to Michael's body—most certainly did a bunch of interesting things regarding its limbs and their length, then post-distortion Michael would have quite a few issues because of that, right?

The main and most obvious physical change is the skin, of course. In this au, after the Distortion rips itself from his body, the remains of its physical form are thrown into a random storage area in the archives (with the goal of freaking out some poor institute employee). And even though in that state he is the human(?) equivalent of a crumpled tissue, what little connection he still has to the Spiral allows him to shift his messed up body enough to be able to survive, and eventually to sort together all the bones and muscles and skin to be able to walk and take on a form that could be considered pretty close to your average human! Yay! Except of course, the huge winding corkscrews of skin far too stretched out for its own good, raveled back up onto way too small and way too human of a body. But that's probably fine.

A lot about his physical wellbeing relies on his choices throughout the story (I do plan to write a fic at some point, I'm just Scared). The only reason that Michael is even alive is due to his connection to the Spiral, but because the connection is barely there (it's basically just residue left behind from the Distortion's very quick and unexpected exit) it requires a lot of maintenance to keep up (maintenance meaning feeding on people's fear. Which, understandably, Michael really doesn't wanna do).

If he refuses to feed on people's fear, at first he feels great. With the Spiral's connection dissapating, some of the mental issues that come with being In Any Way Related to The Spiral start to go away! The mind fog is gone, that ever present disconnect from his body and his reality starts to fade, there are less hallucinations, less paranoia, mentally it feels wonderful. Physically? It sucks. Because the Spiral is what was allowing him to shift his body around in ways that don't make sense, once reality starts to fully set in he starts to fall apart a bit. His skin is too thin for its own good, he gets injuries and scrapes much more often, and walking too long and doing anything physically demanding hurts like hell. And, most noticeably, his skin starts to fall apart again. It's less painful than you'd think, but is still definitely not a pleasant sensation. He won't die, but if he wants an existence that could ever be considered enjoyable (and if he values his ability to move without fear of his skin going everywhere) this is definitely not it.

Alternatively, if he goes too far, feeding the Spiral but neglecting his humanity, bad things also happen! Physically, it feels great. He can move however he wants, shift his body however he needs to exist in this form. The scars are barely there at all (unless he wants them to be), nothing hurts to move, he can barely feel anything if he doesn't want to! However, mentally? Terrifying. Going all in to your Spiral connection, especially when you aren't even a full avatar, does bad things to your mental state. More hallucinations, incredibly bad dissociation and disconnect from reality, mood swings and emotional instability through the roof, not very fun to deal with for long periods of time. Also, even though the Spiral allows him to move his body however he wants, his body is still human. He needs food. If he doesn't get actual human being food then no matter how many people he feeds on he will still suffer the unavoidable issues that come with malnutrition. Lots of cons, barely any pros, but this extreme is by far the hardest to come back from considering the disconnect from reality aspect.

Ideally he keeps a healthy balance! Feeding the Spiral when he has to, but still getting a good amount of meals per day! Is this gonna happen the entire time though? No way. I need my daily dose of angst thank you

Some other info :]

The general story is basically him trying to get his life back to normal, while also figuring out what even happened to him. Because, of course, he still doesn't know what the fears are, and he's determined to figure that out (as this is just past 101, the main cast doesn't even know either). He still works for the institute (I love when fics pull the "you technically didn't resign ??" thing it's so funny like yes please have this incredibly traumatised and unwell man immeditely go back to working his job) so getting info isn't too hard, it just requires a bit of snooping.

In public he always wears very covering clothes. People are always very horrified at seeing his winding marks, and he tries to avoid the stares (though when people are afraid it does feel weirdly fufilling and good. And of course he doesn't understand why. Again, no idea what the fears are). This makes summer a Nightmare though.

Other minor physical changes include his eyes. For one thing, astigmatism be upon yeeeeee (if everything is stretched real bad why not his eyes too huh). I also gave him visual snow (or at least symptoms very similar to it), though I have yet to decide whether that's because of the Spiral making his vision slightly wrong, or if it's due to the overall brain issues left behind by an Entity Being In There. However, he can seem to somewhat "see" things connected to the fears in some way. Is it a trick of the light, and merely a coincidence that everyone in the institute has that same visual effect about them? Is it him slowly going insane but for real this time? No idea. It's probably normal and fine though

In his more spirally form AND his nice healthy in-between form I add a bit of chromatic aberration (of course more is added to the Spiral form). If his connection to the Spiral is in any way there he looks a little bit not right. A bit blurry around the edges, colors a little off, anatomy just a tiny bit wrong, just enough that it's noticable but can be denied and rationalised as a trick of the light. :] Also if he is in any way connected to the Spiral I draw his hair a little Spirally rather than actually what his hair would look like, but that is just an artistic choice that would look so out of place in real life. There's definitely gotta be something up with his hair though

Okay! SO.

While Michael may have come back from the Distortion, he most definitely did not come back unchanged.

Perhaps the most noticeable change is his skin. It looks as if it were stretched much farther than it should've been, and in an attempt to appear like a regular person again, the skin was scrunched back together by winding it up real tight. This leaves large twisting creases up his arms, legs, and neck. This also causes increased sensitivity and risk of injury due to his skin being a bit thinner than it should be.

> He attempts to cover his markings up, meaning he is almost always wearing scarves and/or turtlenecks, long pants, long sleeves, and even gloves! weep for him in the summertime.

Another big difference is his eyes. His pupils may look only a bit odd from afar, though upon closer inspection you can see they take the form of a fractal. Irises are somewhat blurry, blending into the eyewhites and shifting colors. Everyone who sees him will see his eyes as a different shade, though it's usually a light cool tone.

> Along with his eyes changing, so have his glasses. That means that, at least for now, the lenses he wore in the Distortion are the only ones that will work for him. Shame that one lens is broken.... at least his prescription isn't too high! He can see somewhat well without his glasses, but on top of the normal blurriness the glasses were originally for, now his sight on it's own is just distorted and wrong enough to be a bit disorienting, like watching a 3d movie without the fancy 3d glasses on. It's less headache inducing just to wear the previous glasses, even if they're cracked.

> Through the lenses of his glasses he can see more than is normal. Not to a great extent, and it may just be instincts and feelings of his and not his actual sight at all. But it feels like sight. He can literally see through lies (as in he can detect that someone is lying, not see the actual truth), sense paranoia and mental instability around a person, and can generally see connections to the Spiral as an aura around the person or thing. He can also see things' connections to other Fears, though less well and less reliably. He can see if something is connected to a different Fear if the connection is extremely strong, like a very powerful avatar or an old building/location, but if the connection isn't extremely strong it can be much more difficult to see, and it is always hard to tell exactly which Fear something connects to if it is not the Spiral. Though, even if the connection is very strong, his sight can still be unreliable, as he may not realise the aura around the thing is a connection to a Fear and may assume it to simply be a bad feeling or paranoia. He can almost perfectly detect the Spiral's presence however. Human(?) lie detector! Kinda. This may give him a connection to the Eye as well (he was probably a bit connected before, as he worked for the institute, and I plan for him to still work for or at least be connected to the institute in this au), though it is not meant to be an Eye-aligned ability.

His hair, skin, eyes, and the clothing he wore in the Distortion is now a much more vibrant color. He rarely wears his old clothes, so really only the hair and skin is noticeable. His hair is blonde, yes, but in a way that almost looks yellow, so you may assume it to be dyed. Over time it grows out to be a more natural color, but it never really goes back to normal. All this combined gives him a somewhat fake appearance, as if he isn't real.

> There is also a slight fuzziness to him, making him look even less real. A kind of fogginess around the edges, though this doesn't happen often and is only noticeable sometimes.

Now this doesn't have to do with post-distortion specifically, but a headcanon of mine is that after Michael was fed to the Distortion, not only was his body and mind altered, but so was everyone's ideas and memories of him. Everyone who knew him has the same idea of what he looks like, fairly tall, skinny, with long blonde curly hair, but was his hair a very light blonde or more dirty blonde? How tall was he, exactly? Someone who is 6'0 may remember him as a bit taller than them, while someone 5'11 may remember him as shorter than them, which one is right? Were his eyes a solid light blue, or more green tinted? Or even gray? What color were his glasses? Did he even wear glasses? What shape was his face? Every little bit of information is wobbly and shifting and distorted, so that someone who knew him before the Distortion may not even recognise him now, especially with the other changes the Distortion made. This is also my explanation for the conflicting information in the canon timeline if you couldn't tell.

There are also MANY mental effects that have happened as a result to the Distortion. Of course, I will never pass up a chance to project my give a character horrible dissociation and horrible identity issues! Yay! He has also became very very wary of trusting people, which is both due to constantly questioning his reality in the Distortion, but also due to Gertrude's betrayal. I will touch on more mental issues specifically later !!!