grabs you and squishes you like a squeaky toy. idk much about michael take this as a gushpass hiii
*SQUEAKS*
edit: hi, future sol here adding a foreword to this post bc whta the fuck this ended up being paragraphs long and isn't even really a gush post ummm enjoy...??? pfbtbtb if u want a peek into my mind and how i think abt self shipping this is??? about that i guess
i'm gonna be honest, despite making a ton of posts about him i don't know why i like this guy so much. the last time an f/o had this kinda grip on me that wasn't someone i've already had around for a year or so was haida. which is funny despite being into aggretsuko since at least s2 haida counts as a newcomer, unlike asgore whom i've kinda always had a crush on, because i didn't really consider haida like that until i watched s4
ik this is supposed to be about michael but bare with me i promise this will connect — so i remember listening to ben diskin describing haida in some podcast back in late 2019 and for a VERY BRIEF moment i stopped to think, "wow haida does sound like my type. but i don't know, he's kind of boring to me". and then i dropped the thought and nothing ever came out of it lmao
what's SUPER FUNNY is that technically the same thing happened with michael. the s1 finale sparked like a brief interest in me — and i didn't drop that interest, but at the time i was watching lycoreco while it was airing and i had more of an interest in mika than i did with michael. and i kinda bring this up weirdly often but it's just cz it's so funny to me — when i did the blorbo tournament, michael didn't make the cut because i replaced him with asgore cz i thought asgore vs mika was more thematically potent and then forgot to add michael back in. (chidi made it into the tournament cz he was the first tgp crush i had. Predictably.) and so in the second round i got super sad that none of the lycoreco cast i put in won during the first round that i made up a bonus round of michael vs mika. i said i'd gushpost about the winner. BUT i was actually secretly hoping mika would win because i was kind of still pushing back against crushing on michael (taiga mode activated for some reason) AND because again i was super into lycoreco and i was just more interested in posting about mika than i was in posting about michael. so when michael won i just kinda forgot to do the gushpost — partially but not wholly on purpose because of my dismissiveness towards him AND also because i got upset that mika lost for the second time JAHSKJSSISH
TL DR both haida and michael kind of started out with me being dismissive of them so it's funny how in a way they were both how 2022 started and ended for me. haida was the first f/o who actually managed to stick that wasn't g&s or my genshin f/os, and i f/o'd him in january. michael is kind of a perfect complementary bookend to that
i get so many new crushes or characters that aren't crushes but i get briefly marginally interested in that don't ever make it to f/o status because for me to get REALLY invested i have to be make a self insert that has or is a part of a story. like... an equivalent to playing dolls where my self insert/ship has to interact with the source material, cz that's how i have fun. the world and story of lycoreco just feels too big for me so making a s/i just feels overwhelming, which is why mika never made it to official f/o status even tho i love him sm... the opposite, something where the setting is too modern and slice of life also usually doesn't get me super invested in a potential f/o, which is why haida is surprising.
haida is a very weird very special case tbh. i appreciate his simplicity and him being Just Some Guy living a regular life because it keeps me grounded and sometimes that's something i need. and also for some reason i never feel compelled to develop my self ship/insert beyond like... the very basics. which is a breath of fresh air? cz again, this is usually not how i would have fun and not something that would retain my interest. but with haida he's very much retained my interest even if most of my self ship thoughts with him are just "i want to kiss this guy so bad". so. kudos to him
ANYWAY MICHAEL. um. honestly he's kind of similar to haida, in that tgp's story and setting is very simple and easy to write into, but tgp at the same time is a VERY VERY substantial show with a lot of stuff you can explore. so michael has this mix of, oh if i wanted to write more of Story there's plenty of stuff from tgp that i can work with, but if i wanted to just turn my brain off and just think abt how much i wanna kiss this guy that also works cz i don't need to put in a lot of effort for my s/i to feel believable in the setting.
i guess that's another sinilarity between haida and michael. bc when i self ship, i actually tend to develop ocs more than self inserts — which is why i never really consider maya and myself as interchangeable, as is the case with a lot of my genshin oc x canon stuff. it's cz i like Themes and Narratives and so i like formulating my ocs in ways that would complement my f/os. me having an actual self ship is pretty... rare?? or at least, me focusing on an actual self ship is pretty rare, because of this. as in, having a self ship where it's just me in a cool hat with little to no extra stuff sprinkled in. so it's kinda fun to get to have that right now. with haida and michael i can kinda just be myself? and it doesn't feel boring. which is nice. because with my oc ships, there's always some sort of distinguishing divide between us, like i would imagine myself with my f/os but also it's an entirely separate uninterchangeable thing from my oc with my f/os. and i spend most of my focus thinking about my oc with my f/o and developing that, bc again, that's what's more fun for me usually. so. yeah. to not have that distinguishing factor is pretty nice?
i don't have a conclusion to this post and i'm so sorry this isn't even a gush really. i don't even know WHAT this post is about but. it's about. Something. it's so long and probably oversharing i can't really tell but uhhhh i hope it's. interesting to read???? KAHSKSHS
