#michaelpost

[windkonig]

when people say "ok but x bug has no benefit to nature" I bet they can't even name 5 facts about the bug they're shitting on. so how could they Possibly know what its function is in the environment and if it's "useless" or not

wasps being the perfect example, I still get people saying "oh bees are cute and pollinate :) yay. but WASPS ARE EVIL and they don't contribute ANYTHING!!!" and it's like buddy. wasps pollinate too. they also control spider populations. they do a lot of great valuable things. but even if they didn't, they're still worthy of being here. I see SO much hatred toward wasps and I wish people would try to learn a little more about them.

I'm mainly talking about paper wasps here because these are common ones we run into in daily life and most commonly deemed "aggressive". but wasps have body language. and if you learn to read this language and learn how to properly act around them, things will go a lot better for you! wasps can be curious creatures and they may come up to observe you, especially if you're wearing something brightly colored. this can be startling for sure, but my best advice is to just be still, DO NOT SWAT or wave your arms. try to just back away or sidestep so it loses interest and leaves. swatting is just gonna make them feel as if they are being attacked and increase your chances of being stung.

many stings happen due to unfortunate but accidental circumstances. unknowingly getting too close to a nest, stepping on a wasp on accident, one getting stuck in clothing, etc. I got stung once while gardening, went to pull a weed and the wasp was on it, so I grabbed her without knowing and she stung me because she was scared. this doesn't mean "oh wasps are AGGRESSIVE and EVIL" it means you stumbled into an unfortunate situation where the wasps felt threatened and defensive. instead of being like "FUCK all wasps" go forward trying to learn about common nesting areas, be wary of holes in the ground, wear gloves while gardening, and if you do have to be around a nest, try not to make a lot of noise. if the nest absolutely needs removed, call a professional.

[highmichaelmell]

I'm unanoning myself lol. what have you been playing?

ayyyy nice!

ok ok ok SO: there's this new rhythm game i've been really into l;ately called hi-fi RUSH! well. rhythm-action i guess?

anyway, it's got a KILLER soundtrack first of all so you KNOW i'm about that shit (with both original music AND licensed songs!). and imo it's got this like, old-school feel to it that i dunno how to really describe? it just feelslike it belongs on the ps2 or something.

despite that vibe though it's not like the graphics are lowpoly or something, it's got AMAZING hq visuals. and the half-tone, cell-shaded look is just sooo sexy, i wish more games were like this

honestly, the squad's been hearing me go off about it for months now, i'm in deep lol. i even bought it FOR jake so he could stream it

[computerpeople]

make neocities page that archives each beanie baby and where i got it from

[shadow-the-crow]

I'm really glad they had Michael stab Jon.

Like, it was one of the most random things to happen in the entire podcast (so far). There was no buildup to it. I actually have no idea why he did it. He just came to the archive, picked up his victim, said some cryptic stuff and stabbed Jon.

But i love it. No chaotic neutral character is complete if he doesn't do a bit of stabbing.

[happy-little-doorbell]

she who on my what til i— oh my god whh at t he ff u ck ist that th i n g

[wildandmoody]

was rewatching some of Oslo '92 n had to clip this real quick cause even with the camera angle this might be the lowest lean I've ever seen him hit. insane. meanwhile dude in the back couldn't hit that shit at all 😭

[artgletic]

so theres this embodiment of deception...

[ascendingconures]

I WISH I had my own Michael to speak to me, I'm so jealous.

He's all yours anon.

Just a little note- These are Pre-Distortion Michael. I couldn't get usable results training on Michael Distortion due to the, well, distortion in the sample audio. So if you want Mikey D, you'll have to put the result audio in the something like audacity and distort the output audio from the model (aka add some echo, high pitched noise/static and mess around with high/lowpass filtering) Michael 1.0 is a model trained from the raw data of his lines from MAG 99. It has a lot of noise and a bit of speech slurring due to the cassette tape SFX. it has VERY good magnus-y results, but isnt good for something like singing. Michael 2.0 was trained using audio I heavily edited + the one blooper where his VA speaks without the cassette filter over it. it has the low end of his voice restored that the lowpass filter of the tape recorder destroyed. it makes him sound very different. it was also trained with feature extraction which sort of reconstructs his voice from scratched based on the "features" of it if that makes sense. its more likely to retain an accent when you feed it non accent data (though its super rare due to the nature of speech2speech). I still have mixed opinions on how this model turned out and it has more unstable results than 1.0

But yeah, TLDR, just download RVC, select input audio, select the model, and you can run this locally. its very lightweight and can run on a laptop from like 2014!

[ceaseless-watched]

do you think. do you think the distortion knows about slenderman

.do you think anyone has ever been like “WHAT THE FUCK SLENDERMAN” and confused the shit out of michael

…

do you think he googled it

do you think michael distortion googled slenderman

does he know

[vieramars]

Michael distortion.... save me

Michael

Save me Michael distortion

[tawny-feathers]

It’s kind of funny to me, the journey I’ve been on with Michael.  When I was Christian, I had no interest in angels, I felt no connection to them outside of liking their aesthetics and finding them useful themes or plot devices for writing.  They were servants of God and I didn’t feel a connection to God, so I felt nothing for them.  When I left Christianity and embraced pantheism and paganism, that’s when the interest sparked.  That’s when angels suddenly meant something to me, because I started to see them as their own entities, as beings with will and emotions and depth.  It felt… weird to want to be connected to Michael, at first.  It felt weird to want a relationship with a being that, up to that point, I saw as only being part of the religion I was trying to reject and unlearn.  I wanted nothing to do with Christianity and anything that prominently featured in it… so why did I want an angel in my life?  Not only that why, of all the angels, was it Michael I felt drawn to?

It was 2009 when I first felt the desire to know Michael, to work with him.  I hung pictures of him on my altar, I thought about him often.  I wrote characters inspired by how I saw him, and I loved them fiercely, so much so I would cry when I wrote their scenes.  It seems so obvious now, looking back on stuff like this, that I was falling in love with Michael, but I refused to see it for what it was.  I felt unworthy of divine love—any love, really.  And I didn’t know him.  Despite my desire to work with him, Michael never answered my calls.  I don’t know why, I don’t care to know why anymore.  I don’t even know why I developed feelings for him in the first place, but something was drawing me to him and my heart longed for him.

Several months after deciding I wanted to work with him, I bought Michael a chunk of sugilite as an invitation to come into my life, but he didn’t respond.  I fell into painful times and had to pack away all my things, and I thought I’d lost the sugilite.  8 years later, I found it tucked into a bunch of my stuff that had ended up at my parents’ house.  It came back to me.  It felt like a sign.  I had never turned my back on Michael in those 8 years, but I had stopped reaching out.  I figured if he was meant to be in my life, he would come to me eventually on his own.  Loki and I were close by this point and I was focusing on our (familial) relationship and working on myself.

Mind you, in all that time, I still cried over the Michael-inspired characters I wrote, still thought of him fondly, still felt drawn to any representation of him in media.  My friends began associating him with me.

Finding that sugilite ignited something in me.  I opened myself more to the idea of him coming into my life again, but I went about it differently.  I didn’t try to seek him, I didn’t plea, I just made space for him.  I bought him a new stone, gave him a place on my altar, and waited.  In March of this year he finally came to me, settled down in my presence, and told me that I was ready and he was here now.  Not only was he here, but from that point forward he was so present.  I would feel him around often, and close.  He loved to linger close to me, and I felt so peaceful in his presence.  He made me happy.

Something that I probably should’ve noticed sooner was how readily Loki accepted Michael coming into my life and settling in.  Loki is like my older brother, and for many years he was very protective of who got to enter my sphere and stick around.  He eventually got over this, and that’s when Dionysus came to me.  Loki was a little prickly about letting Dionysus in, but he settled down and the two became friendly and would hang out with me at the same time.  When Michael came, Loki was pretty open to him immediately.  Michael just became one of the Boys.

September 19th was six months since the day he showed up.  It was also when I realized this attachment, these feelings I’ve harbored for so many years, were a crush.  Again, it seems so obvious writing it out like this, but I was none the wiser for years.

Upon realizing this, I spoke with some friends and was encouraged to talk with Michael about it.  Later that night I did, I laid everything bare– even though I was sure he knew it all already– and I asked him if he would be open to seeing where this could go.  He was so responsive to the idea, so kind and willing to try this out with me.  He was so… happy.  I asked Loki and Dionysus what they thought, because I always end up asking all three of them for their opinions when it comes to big spiritual things– and this was definitely a big spiritual thing to me– and they both supported the idea. They both told me it would be good for me.

Michael seemed so eager to take that step with me, and I was already so lovesick. I'd longed for his presence, for a connection to him. We barely knew each other on an informal level, but I loved him. On September 29th (Michaelmas) I made him dragonbread and formally asked to be his partner. He said yes.

My love for him grows each passing week. It's only been three months, but it feels like so much longer, and I think that's a good sign for our future. I waited so long for him and to feel his presence embrace me, to know he loves me… it's blissful.

I look forward to our future together.

[windkonig]

society has ingrained in all of us that bugs are bad and evil and scary and they Bite You for no reason and Sting You For Fun and I would like to challenge every single person that reads this to try to step back and challenge those thoughts. CHALLENGE that knee-jerk reaction to kill every bug you see. REALIZE that killing it doesn't have to be the answer. it's fine to not want bugs in your home. but I see so many people whose FIRST choice is to kill it, even though it'd be easy to just cup it and toss it outside. why?

one of the greatest things that got me over my extremely intense arachnophobia was knowledge. learning more about the thing I was afraid of made me realize, "oh, they're just little guys trying to get by too" and I stopped killing every spider I saw.

and it's like. no, that wasp didn't sting you for fun. it stung you because it felt scared or defensive. no, the spider in your shower isn't trying to kill you. spiders need water to live too.

you don't deem a scared dog/cat evil for biting you, do you? then why are we demonizing insects and spiders for feeling scared? they are so, so small and we are so large. they don't know anything about us, they're just trying to live life. they didn't know they built their web in a bad spot. they didn't know they built their nest next to your door. please, show some kindness to these tiny creatures. I understand you can't let infestations happen or wasps build in your walls, but whenever possible, try to put bugs in a cup and take them outside. yes, even wasps. even black widows. if you want tips for safely capturing bugs, I'm always around to ask.

also, to those who say things like, "x bug eats other pest bug, so they're okay" why? why does something have to benefit you to deserve to live? shouldn't all creatures have a chance at life, even if they're ugly, even if they don't benefit you, even if they do something you don't like? what gives you the right to decide to take the life of any animal just because ahhh it looked scary? please. all I ask is you try to be kinder. it's okay to be scared, it's not okay to pointlessly kill things.

[highmichaelmell]

hows it going

pretty good! just passed jere and i's anniversary a fwe days ago so i'm feelin Quite Gay tbh

he finished school for the semester (so proud) and i'm plannin on visiting him in the summer some time with rich n jake! which, speaking of, we gotta start planning that... i'll text em later

[computerpeople]

[shadow-the-crow]

Michael never really fit in anywhere. Maybe that's part of why i like him so much. Or maybe i'm just projecting lol – but hear me out.

Michael Shelley maybe really didn't have a purpose in life. Maybe doing research on his trauma was all he had. He was too good, too pure for his human life - a life that probably just wasn't great in general.

Now other people without other purpose in life than supernatural trauma reasearch become happy fulfilled avatars, like Mike Crew. But Mike Crew chose to serve his entity. Michael, on the other hand, was sacrificed to an entity that didn't fit him, that was the opposite of him. He was naive and kind and would never lie to anyone, and the Spiral is the incarnation of gaslighting and lies. Which means the Spiral wasn't good for him, but he also couldn't become a good Spiral avatar vessel. Helen seems to be able to coordinate humanity and inhumanity. Michael wasn't, because Michael Shelley wasn't made for becoming this.

In general - i'm still thinking about how Gertrude stopped the ritual by making Michael the Distortion. Maybe it was just because it disturbed the ritual and it needed to get used to its new identity. Or maybe it was because Michael just wasn't a good distortion. He wasn't strong or talented or spirally enough to complete the ritual. God, i made him tragic.

I gotta say: This seems to contradict what i’ve said before, but i’m only talking about Michael and Michael Shelley as one person to simplify this. What i really mean is the Distortion could never be good at being itself while having Michael’s mind.

Can you imagine? Not only being tied to the embodiment of your failure, but still being your failure. Thinking with a mind that represents the opposite of what you are, that contradicts your very essence. That stops you from living up to your full potential, that stops you from being good at being you.

[tangerine-dream5]

he caught one for the landlady too