for the meta meme... michael's zombieisms/the Decay from physically dying from the scooper, how he looks and functions and lives with it, etc
send me a topic to write a meta about my muse on.
so this ended up being a. huge fucking post. and i haven't even covered everything. thank you to @rubensmuse for helping me break this down into digestible chunks, this wouldn't have gotten done without her. i hesitate to call this the zombie bible so let's call it. the zombie. pentateuch. with more to come, someday. beware of extreme gore below, but such is zombiefication.
part one: physical appearance.
initial wounds.
michael received two wounds from the scooper -- one in his skull ( the one we see in the cutscene, where the arm snaps at the camera and the screen goes read; this split the front of his head open ), and one in his torso ( to more efficiently empty him out ). his tongue survived, but his eyes were initially forced out of their sockets and then popped back in ( in terms of layering, you have michael's actual eyes, and then a layer of remnant behind them, and then ennard's eyes ). once space had been cleared in his torso and head, which involved shoving a lot of his brain out, they removed whatever muscles in his arms and legs prevented them from stretching out and puppeting his body. if a bone shattered, they tossed it; if it just broke in one or two places, they held it together and used it as an anchoring point to pilot him, filling in any leftover places with cables. you can imagine he kind of walks like a mess. their exit did a tone of damage to his throat, too, which is part of why his speech is so fucked ( he's just also permanently dry, since he doesn't produce saliva anymore ).
additional wounds.
as his skin began to dry and shrivel, he got a lot of tears, which he either sews or staples back together as needed. his cartilage is gone, so he's molded on a nose to help fill out his face ( more on that below ). his teeth can be very loose in his gums, especially after ennard launched out of his throat; he gorilla glues them back into place. getting the hard glue out of his gum holes when his teeth inevitably get knocked out again is sort of a nightmare. his hair and nails no longer grow, so he's very careful with them, because he doesn't want to replace them. he could and may wear a wig eventually, i haven't decided.
public appearance.
michael takes steps to conceal that he is a zombie. he wears rather heavy makeup, and will often layer on a medical mask, hat, scarf, bulky headphones, or any combination of the above. anything he can do to conceal his discoloration. applying this makeup can be difficult due to the quality of his skin; he actually purchases some mortuary-grade supplies to augment his kit, and did some research into how after life care was performed in funeral homes. i'd imagine that, once he got into the 2010s, youtube and tiktok were boons for him. not only did it teach him to do 'natural' makeup, a skill that he did not have from his punk phase as a teenager, but it helped him learn how to treat his skin in such a way that it wouldn't tear further, or accrue water damage from layers of wet product. guy who learned the term 'desairology' and started glowing. a couple of things he's picked up from mortuary vloggers are a semi-permanent false nose and a foundation/concealer airbrush. the first decade or so was rough for him, though, because he couldn't really walk into a funeral home and ask for help. back then, it was a lot of slathering on dollar store concealer and the most basic of contouring and using lipstick as single-tone blush and praying. ( extremely rare tiktok w? )
part two: physiological and mental impact.
social degradation.
we see in the sister location end cutscene that people are rightfully wary of michael when he's zero-makeup. when he starts doing his face, though, reactions can range between 'that man has a really bad skin condition, we shouldn't stare' and 'he's serving uncanny valley and i'm getting extremely uncomfortable'. i think, again, as we move towards some of the wackier looks of the modern day, he gets fewer stares. he occasionally will tell people who ask that he's had facial reconstruction surgery due to an accident, which usually smooths over the suspicion with sympathy ( though it does nothing for the discomfort, but that's part of life ). he tries to avoid spinning stories if at all possible, but he'll sometimes get frustrated with someone's reaction -- especially if it's over-the-top -- and start churning out a sob story about how he stepped on a landmine to serve his country, which will normally shut the average hurricane citizen up.
nevertheless, he is afraid to go outside. his whole 'living in the shadows' thing is in part due to extreme paranoia about being attacked for his appearance. it's a sharp contrast with how he was as a teenager, when he very much embraced an alternative aesthetic and welcomed the judgment of his community ( there are layers to that but now isn't the time ). once it's out of his control, and moreover tied to the end of his life, he stops embracing 'being different' and starts desperately trying to blend in. to that end, he doesn't go out often, especially in the summer when the smell starts to kick in and it's harder to bundle up. catch him out and about in winter!
confidence and sexuality.
being dead has really fucked with michael's self-confidence. setting aside his feelings about how he was murdered to focus solely on his post-mortem experience, his predominant feelings are shame and frustration. he's ashamed of his smell, he's ashamed of his discoloration, he's ashamed of how uncanny and misshapen he looks once his body starts to really break down and he loses that muscle he was so proud of. he's frustrated, because when he had literally nothing else, he had his body -- and this ties into his sex drive.
michael was and is hypersexual; for someone with very little autonomy, due to his family situation, his inability to hold a job, and his poor reputation in town, his sexuality was a means of expressing himself, and, more importantly, of feeling both desirable and in control. it was the one way in which he could use people's negative opinions of him to his advantage, by being 'forbidden' and therefore tempting. this is why it's important to me that mike be conventionally attractive before his death, because his body rotting is a loss in just about every way for him. his good looks, his bargaining chip in a shallow community that only otherwise wanted him for his mechanical skills, meant everything to him. in a household that offered very little by way of affection, sex was affirming for him. it fulfilled a basic human need to be touched and to be admired.
now, luckily, there are some freaks -- especially in the rp sphere -- who would fuck a zombie, and good for them! michael doesn't really have that before the pizzeria burns, but he has it now! everybody clap.
physiological degradation.
michael's physical processing has sharply declined. i try to have him teeter between supernatural and firmly scientific, and sort of judge based on the scene and the emotional stakes. i think, as a revenant, michael's emotions override everything else -- hence why he can snap and attack someone with force and speed that should be impossible. him having a frightening aspect to his zombiehood is important to me. in a lot of ways, he's serving as a vessel for justice on behalf of dead children; that, in my opinion, grants him certain rights in the cool superpowers department. however, to keep him grounded, if he doesn't hit that point of blinding rage, then he's fighting against a body that isn't really… designed to move anymore. he can have delayed reactions, he can fumble things, and it takes him time to do complex engineering that it wouldn't have in the past, because his fine motor skills are a crapshoot. he shambles. he loses his balance. he can still run pretty fast, but it's a downgrade from just how beast he was when he was human.
mental degradation.
his mind is being hit on two fronts: nerve damage, and mental/emotional damage. with so many dead or damaged nerves, his thoughts can be slow and disjointed. couple this with pre-existing psychotic episodes and you have someone who's not all there the majority of the time. in fact, the only time when he's really sharp anymore is when he's on shift as the night guard. everything clicks, then. that doesn't stop him from having intrusive hallucinations or delusions, but it helps. it gets him close to a 'flow state' where he can function without too much trouble.
emotionally, being one mind out of six total ( maybe more! ) did a number on him. he was smothered into silence in his own head for so long that sometimes he forgets that he can think. it almost feels like he has too much space, now. everything echoes, ideas feel far away, and the background noise that he became accustomed to is gone. compare this with him eating electronics to feel 'full' again. he was put under enormous physical and mental pressure, and then that pressure released suddenly, and he's not coping well.
that's it for this post. there's stuff here that i've gone into more detail with elsewhere, such as the mental impact of living with ennard. mike also has a totally different physiology in my post-sb au that's far more indulgent when it comes to my favorite zombie archetypes / themes; but in terms of game canon, this is basically what we're dealing with.
