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Oct. 16th, 2018 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
huisclosName: Maxwell
DW username: N/A
E-Mail: ilya.illustration@gmail.com
Discord: IsoscelesMonster#1943
Plurk: necromancatrix
Other Characters: N/A
Character Name: Michael
Series: The Good Place
Timeline: End of season two/beginning of season three. The point where he first steps through the door to Earth.
Canon Resource Link: http://thegoodplace.wikia.com/wiki/Michael
Character History:
One might not expect a history spanning from the beginning of time itself to be best characterized as ‘largely uneventful’ and yet: Michael. A being as old as the known universe who had only recently broken into the ranks of middle management.
To start from the beginning, Michael is an eternal being. More specifically, if less strictly accurately: a demon.
Little to nothing is known about his creation or early life, although his ‘childhood’ pet was a ten-headed dog-spider named Korzoff.
At some point or, perhaps, from the very beginning, a system was established in which eternal beings reward or punish deceased humans based on their actions in life. In a surprisingly simplistic approach, every action is awarded positive or negative points; humans with enough positive points go to the good place and the rest are doomed to the bad one.
Michael was an entity working for the Bad Place, and as such his entire purpose was to punish those humans deemed worthy of eternal damnation.
Eventually he began to move up the ranks, becoming an apprentice Architect--the beings who design sections of the afterlife known as neighborhoods. All employees in the Bad Place Bureau of Human Affairs were also assigned human bodies, to better get a feel for how to torture them.
After a few hundred years of this, he was offered the chance to design his own neighbourhood. He was incredibly excited about the promotion and, by this point, he had a lot of opinions to share. Bored with the same old approaches to torment and frankly fascinated with humans, he was frustrated both with the similarity between neighborhoods and the fact the Architects never got to visit and experience them.
During a conversation about this with a coworker, he suddenly came up with a bold new idea for his first project. Scrapping whatever plan he originally had, he came up with the idea to take a select few human souls and convince them they were actually in the Good Place. The caveat being that (in a move reminiscent of Sartre’s play No Exit) the humans would be chosen specifically to make each other miserable.
For his experiment, he chose only four deceased human subjects: A selfish telemarketer named Eleanor Shellstrop, an indecisive ethics professor named Chidi Anagonye, a self-centered philanthropist with sibling envy named Tahani Al-Jamil, and Jason Mendoza, an amateur DJ and even more amateur criminal. To make it appear fully populated, all other residents of the “Good Place” would be played by demons, who would also work to manipulate the human residents into situations where they would torment each other.
While working on this plan he ran into a snag--all neighborhoods in both the Good and Bad places use anthropomorphic interfaces called “Janets” in their creation and maintenance. “Bad” Janets are aggressive and unhelpful, while good Janets are cheerful and serve to assist humans who have actually made it into the Good Place. Bad Janets proved incapable of pretending to be good even for the sake of tricking people, which lead to Michael stealing a good Janet from the warehouse in which they were stored.
Michael then pitched this plan to his boss, Shawn, making the grand claim that he could get the four humans in his experimental neighborhood to torture each other for 1,000 years. His idea did not go over extraordinarily well, but he was given the chance to test it.
He built his neighborhood, assigned over three hundred demons their roles, and soon the fake Good Place was open for business.
To start the humans interacting with each other, he told Eleanor and Chidi they were each other’s soulmates, and did the same with Jason and Tahani.
At the same time he convinced Eleanor and Jason that they were only in the Good Place by mistake, having been mixed up with better people, a fact they would then have to ‘hide’ from him and each other on fear of being sent to the Bad Place.
To add stress, Michael made it look like Eleanor's presence was causing disasters and malfunctions in the neighborhood.
Eleanor decided that, rather than reveal her true identity, she should try to stop the disasters and earn her place by becoming a better person, asking her ‘soulmate’ Chidi, an ethics and moral philosophy professor, to teach her how. Soon she found out that her neighbor Tahani's soulmate, supposedly a Buddhist monk named Jianyu, was Jason, the other human hiding his identity to stay in the Good Place. The three began working together, with Chidi attempting to teach both of them ethics.
Michael continued to create scenarios to stress all four humans. Among other things, he began asking for help finding what was causing the problems in the neighborhood and faking a nervous breakdown over his inability to figure it out. During this time he named Eleanor his assistant. She tried befriend and cheer him up while still hiding her identity, and the two started to bond.
Eventually, to make the humans feel guiltier, he announced that he’d realised he himself was the problem, and that he would have to leave the neighborhood and be “Retired”, an extreme form of punishment and the closest thing to death for eternal beings.
The humans, still afraid of the consequences of confessing, began looking for another way to keep Michael from leaving. They found out the only way in and out of the neighborhood was a train controlled by Janet, who could be temporarily shut down and rebooted.
They ultimately rebooted Janet by accident and Michael was prevented from leaving the neighborhood. Janet’s “Murder” also gave him an excuse to stay, calling it proof the problem was one of the residents after all.
It was soon after this things began to go off the rails. Michael had planned for a lot of possibilities, but not the one where Eleanor confessed. She came forward with the fact she wasn’t the person who was supposed to be in the Good Place, and Michael found himself scrambling to come up with a scenario in response.
He acted shocked, and pretended to try to determine whether or not Eleanor should be sent to the Bad Place, while Chidi argued that she’d become a better person since dying and deserved to stay. Eventually Michael called in a team of demons to take Eleanor away, who brought with them the ‘real’ Eleanor, supposedly the person who had accidentally been sent to the Bad Place in her stead.
At the least minute, Michael claimed to have second thoughts about the trade, saying he’d decided Eleanor deserved to stay in the Good Place, and making a show of negotiating with the demons to keep her until the situation could be fully sorted out.
Next, Michael brought in his boss, Shawn, to impersonate a neutral judge of disputes between the afterlives. He asked Chidi for help in preparing his case to defend Eleanor, using the opportunity to torture Chidi by putting him under pressure and telling him to make decisions. He further pushed Chidi to make a choice between the women expressing interest in him--Eleanor, Tahani, and the “real” Eleanor.
After this, Michael agreed to a plan proposed by Tahani, in which Eleanor would attempt to earn enough points for good actions that she would officially deserve the Good Place.
While Eleanor and Tahani attempted this, Michael discovered another event he didn’t plan for. When Janet was rebooted, she took a while to come back to full functionality, during which time Jason was kind to her. She bonded to him in a way that was new for her, and previously thought impossible for a Janet. The two got married, a fact they didn’t manage to hid from Michael for long.
This lead to Michael feigning shock at the fact that Jason was another human who wasn’t meant to be in the Good Place. Michael acted out another nervous breakdown, over the amount of secrets kept from him.
Michael then decided to reboot Janet in attempt to fix her erratic behavior. Janet was afraid this would change her feelings for Jason and responded by running away with him. The two ran into Eleanor, who had chosen to voluntarily go to the Bad Place after realising her actions in attempt to stay were ultimately selfish, and the three formed a plan to escape to a “neutral zone”.
Michael’s boss, Shawn, arrived just in time to have his train stolen by Janet, Jason and Eleanor. This once again wasn’t part of Michael’s plan, and their escape to the neutral zone was a genuine if temporary success. Michael was left scrambling and promising to get the humans back, while all the while keeping up appearances in front of Chidi and Tahani that he was still pleading Eleanor’s case to the judge.
Shawn came up with his own plan, and used Janet to contact the humans in the neutral zone with an ultimatum: If they didn’t return, Chidi and Tahani would be sent to the Bad Place in their stead.
This successfully convinced Eleanor to insist all three of them turn themselves in, however Shawn and Michael told the humans they returned too late. Shawn then ruled that the Bad Place was owed two people, and put the decision in the hands of the humans themselves.
The humans began to argue amongst themselves about who should go and who would stay, ultimately making themselves so miserable that Eleanor realised they’d been in the Bad Place all along.
Michael’s response was wicked laughter and he was quick to admit that she’d figured out the truth. Once his surprise passed, however, it was replaced with anger: Eleanor figuring out what he’d been up to ruined his experiment.
After some denial, the humans realised why they had each been sent to the Bad Place, and how all of Michael’s actions had been intended to torment them. While Michael began to sulk and complain about his wasted effort, Eleanor made the mistake of pointing out what he’d gotten wrong.
While he’d successfully gotten the humans to make each other unhappy, his scenarios had also resulted in the four forming a close bond, something he hadn’t expected or known how to account for.
Once it was pointed out, Michael decided to make some changes to the second version of his experiment, explaining to the humans that he planned to simply wipe their memories and start over. He convinced Shawn to give him one more chance, but it was made clear his job was on the line.
---
Michael started his Neighborhood over again from the top, once again telling the four humans they had made it into the Good place, but setting them up with different soulmates and slightly different circumstances.
Shawn kept in touch to voice his negative opinions, and Michael continued to insist that this version of the experiment would go better.
It didn’t take long for Michael to realise he’d been lying. The humans began to behave in unexpected ways, causing his plans to spin wildly out of control. It took less than a day for the four of them to find each other and for Eleanor to figure out that they weren’t in the Good Place.
Michael was furious until Eleanor revealed that she had left a note for herself before he wiped her memory of the first timeline, and that the note had been the key to figuring out something was wrong. Relieved, Michael resolved to make sure she couldn’t pull the same trick a second time, and rebooted the Neighborhood once more.
Michael lied to Shawn, telling him the second try was going perfectly, and to his employees, telling them Shawn knew about the reboot.
The third attempt lasted 128 days before Eleanor once again realised the truth.
Michael tried again.
And again.
And again and again and again.
He tried changing small details. He tried changing large details. He tried drinking.
Sooner or later, the humans always figured it out. Finally, on attempt #802, the employees had had enough of this. Lead by Vicky, the demon who had played the “real” Eleanor, they came with up with a list of demands for Michael. Vicky blackmailed him with the threat of telling Shawn about his repeated failures if he didn’t let her take over the neighborhood.
Michael agreed--while looking for a way to double cross her. Instead of wiping the human’s memories again, he went to them with a proposal. If they pretended to lose their memories, and then pretended the latest reboot was working out, he would work with them in secret to find a way to get them into the real Good Place. If not, the next time they publicly realised the truth, Vicky would end the project and the humans would be sent to the traditional--and far worse--Bad Place.
Eleanor was the most hesitant, but finally agreed on the condition that Michael would join their secret ethics lessons taught by Chidi, and work to become a better person himself. Michael reluctantly agreed, despite insisting he saw the humans as roughly akin to cockroaches.
Michael soon grew frustrated with the lessons. Chidi, trying to find ways to get him to understand the human condition, managed to get him to contemplate the possibility of his mortality. This lead to an existential crisis, and eventually a slightly better understanding of humans.
When Chidi tried to explain the classic “Trolley Problem” to the class, Michael complained it was too theoretical. He began creating realistic simulations of it, forcing Chidi to choose who to save in several variations, and forcing Chidi to witness the graphic “deaths” of whoever he chose to let die.
Eleanor realised Michael was simply torturing Chidi, and called him out on his behavior. Michael tried to laugh it off as old habits dying hard, or a minor practical joke, but the humans were fed up. They kicked him out of the class.
Michael tried to bribe his way back in with gifts, but they weren’t having it. Eventually he admitted that because he didn’t understand human ethics, he felt insecure and lost, and this made him lash out. He apologized, and was given another chance.
Shortly after this, Janet told him that she’d begun to malfunction, putting the Neighborhood in grave danger. When they were unable to figure out the cause, Janet suggested that Michael would have to use her self destruct feature. He refused, realising--and admitting-- that she was his friend and he cared about her too much to kill her. He sought Eleanor’s advice, and she ultimately figured out that Janet’s problems were caused by emotions which she helped her to work through.
Michael continued to grow closer to the humans, eventually asking Eleanor’s advice on how to be ethical. She talked to him about her own experiences with learning to follow her conscience, and how she thought he was learning to be human.
That night, Shawn arrived with what he thought of as good news: Because of the success of the project, Michael was getting a promotion. He would be put in charge of overseeing new, similar neighborhoods, and the humans from the experiment would be sent to the traditional Bad Place.
Michael had to act fast. With Shawn watching, he made a show of revealing to the humans that they’d been in the Bad Place, before publicly roasting them. Among the insults, Michael hid clues to a plan. Following his coded instructions, the humans faked an escape causing Shawn to chase after a train they weren’t on.
Once Shawn was out of sight, Michael burst into tears, admitting how worried he had been about his friends and hugging Eleanor.
With Shawn only temporarily distracted, Michael soon had to admit that he… didn’t actually have a plan to get them into the Good Place. He’d lied that he did when pitching the team-up, and then hoped he’d come up with something, while taking lessons that made him realise why lying about it had been wrong.
Sure that they were out of chances and soon to be caught, the group decided to simply get drunk together and wait. The humans thanked Michael for doing his best, and named him an Honorary Human, before presenting him with a “human starter kit” full of things like band-aids, car keys, and a stress ball. He found the gesture very touching.
Later that night, the humans asked if there was really a judge they could plead their case to, and Michael commented on all the reasons this was unfeasible, including the fact that they’d have to go through the actual Bad Place to get there.
Eleanor suggested they try it anyway, and Michael agreed. After all, he’d only really wanted to find out what it was like to be human, so they might as well do the most human thing of all: attempt something futile with a ton of unearned confidence and fail spectacularly.
The next day they set off for the Bad Place, with the humans disguised as demons and Janet disguised as a Bad Janet. Michael dropped the humans off in a museum about the history of torture, assuming they’d be unlikely to run into anyone, and went to talk to Shawn.
He asked permission to lead a team to look for the humans, using this as an excuse to ask for the management pins needed to go through the portal to the Judge’s realm. Unfortunately, Shawn had other ideas, forcing Michael to improvise. He stole as many pins as he could and snuck back to find the humans before Shawn realised what he was up to.
Meanwhile, the museum proved the worst idea he could have had: an exhibit of his neighborhood was being unveiled, and the humans were recognised. The five of them were forced to flee to the portal, only narrowly escaping Shawn.
While they made it to the portal in time, there was a problem. Michael only had four pins for five people. Out of time, Michael told Eleanor he’d finally solved the trolley problem. Instead of choosing which people to let die… sacrifice yourself.
Giving Eleanor his travel pin, he sent the humans on ahead and remained to face Shawn.
Fortunately, rather than Michael being “retired”, Shawn chose to imprison him. At the last moment he was rescued by Janet, who had faked her own death to impersonate Shawn’s Bad Janet.
The two finally made it to the Judge’s realm, only to find out that the humans had talked their way into a test to make it into the Good Place--and they hadn’t passed. Michael, still desperate to save them, came up with a new last ditch idea: He convinced the Judge to allow him one last experiment. If he went to Earth and saved them from their original deaths, they had a second chance to become better people without having proof of an afterlife.
This is where we find him--stepping through a door to Earth.
Abilities/Special Powers: Honestly, it’s a bit unclear. As an eternal being, he’s immortal and very hard if not impossible to kill. The closest thing to death mentioned in canon is “the eternal shriek” which is torture rather than complete destruction. He can also see in nine dimensions, and drink antimatter.
He true form is inhuman and presumably monstrous, but hasn’t been described or shown.
He’s been shown to create completely realistic simulations and illusions, but it’s unclear if he can do so outside the neighborhood he controlled.
He’s also implied to have some measure of control over his human appearance, but once again this is pretty vague.
When on Earth he has “no powers”, but still seems unsure if another demon could actually die there.
(Basically I’m happy to work things out however. Having the illusion stuff would be cool to work with, but I’d also be happy to nerf things considering how vague they are.)
Third-Person Sample:
Michael was so excited. “Excited” didn’t even cut it. What was the one past excited? Humans had so many names for so many unnecessary emotions but he was starting to understand why. Elated? Nauseous? Maybe he’d finally cracked the mystery of ‘hyped’.
He’d wanted to go to Earth for so long and now, finally, he’d gotten his chance to walk through the door. Oh, and saving his friends was a bonus of course. The whole point of the visit even! Yes, the whole point. But if he got to, say, hail a taxi or eat a questionable hot dog or make small talk about the news or see a movie or get in a pointless argument with a stranger--well, he wouldn’t complain. Maybe he could even sneak a native paperclip back if he was really lucky.
His mind was racing with so many thoughts that he barely noticed the trip taking somewhat longer than he’d been told it would. Maybe he shouldn’t have joked about that.
Michael found himself blinking, unsure quite where he was or what had just happened, before things snapped back into focus. This must be Earth! He wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been so many trees. Was this what Eleanor’s neighborhood looked like? That seemed off.
“Janet?” As soon as he asked, he remembered that no--he had to do this on his own. But that was fine. Everything was fine. He’d just… pick a direction and walk in it. With his feet. until he figured out where to go from here.
First-Person Sample:
Yes, hello, is this thing on? Sorry--always wanted to say that. But really, is it? Oh, there we go.
I don’t suppose anyone could tell me where I am? If you could just, direct me to a bus. Or a train? Maybe an ‘uber’.
Something that goes to-- [And here there’s some rustling, like the owner of the voice might be looking through notes.]--”Phoenix, Arizona.”
DW username: N/A
E-Mail: ilya.illustration@gmail.com
Discord: IsoscelesMonster#1943
Plurk: necromancatrix
Other Characters: N/A
Character Name: Michael
Series: The Good Place
Timeline: End of season two/beginning of season three. The point where he first steps through the door to Earth.
Canon Resource Link: http://thegoodplace.wikia.com/wiki/Michael
Character History:
One might not expect a history spanning from the beginning of time itself to be best characterized as ‘largely uneventful’ and yet: Michael. A being as old as the known universe who had only recently broken into the ranks of middle management.
To start from the beginning, Michael is an eternal being. More specifically, if less strictly accurately: a demon.
Little to nothing is known about his creation or early life, although his ‘childhood’ pet was a ten-headed dog-spider named Korzoff.
At some point or, perhaps, from the very beginning, a system was established in which eternal beings reward or punish deceased humans based on their actions in life. In a surprisingly simplistic approach, every action is awarded positive or negative points; humans with enough positive points go to the good place and the rest are doomed to the bad one.
Michael was an entity working for the Bad Place, and as such his entire purpose was to punish those humans deemed worthy of eternal damnation.
Eventually he began to move up the ranks, becoming an apprentice Architect--the beings who design sections of the afterlife known as neighborhoods. All employees in the Bad Place Bureau of Human Affairs were also assigned human bodies, to better get a feel for how to torture them.
After a few hundred years of this, he was offered the chance to design his own neighbourhood. He was incredibly excited about the promotion and, by this point, he had a lot of opinions to share. Bored with the same old approaches to torment and frankly fascinated with humans, he was frustrated both with the similarity between neighborhoods and the fact the Architects never got to visit and experience them.
During a conversation about this with a coworker, he suddenly came up with a bold new idea for his first project. Scrapping whatever plan he originally had, he came up with the idea to take a select few human souls and convince them they were actually in the Good Place. The caveat being that (in a move reminiscent of Sartre’s play No Exit) the humans would be chosen specifically to make each other miserable.
For his experiment, he chose only four deceased human subjects: A selfish telemarketer named Eleanor Shellstrop, an indecisive ethics professor named Chidi Anagonye, a self-centered philanthropist with sibling envy named Tahani Al-Jamil, and Jason Mendoza, an amateur DJ and even more amateur criminal. To make it appear fully populated, all other residents of the “Good Place” would be played by demons, who would also work to manipulate the human residents into situations where they would torment each other.
While working on this plan he ran into a snag--all neighborhoods in both the Good and Bad places use anthropomorphic interfaces called “Janets” in their creation and maintenance. “Bad” Janets are aggressive and unhelpful, while good Janets are cheerful and serve to assist humans who have actually made it into the Good Place. Bad Janets proved incapable of pretending to be good even for the sake of tricking people, which lead to Michael stealing a good Janet from the warehouse in which they were stored.
Michael then pitched this plan to his boss, Shawn, making the grand claim that he could get the four humans in his experimental neighborhood to torture each other for 1,000 years. His idea did not go over extraordinarily well, but he was given the chance to test it.
He built his neighborhood, assigned over three hundred demons their roles, and soon the fake Good Place was open for business.
To start the humans interacting with each other, he told Eleanor and Chidi they were each other’s soulmates, and did the same with Jason and Tahani.
At the same time he convinced Eleanor and Jason that they were only in the Good Place by mistake, having been mixed up with better people, a fact they would then have to ‘hide’ from him and each other on fear of being sent to the Bad Place.
To add stress, Michael made it look like Eleanor's presence was causing disasters and malfunctions in the neighborhood.
Eleanor decided that, rather than reveal her true identity, she should try to stop the disasters and earn her place by becoming a better person, asking her ‘soulmate’ Chidi, an ethics and moral philosophy professor, to teach her how. Soon she found out that her neighbor Tahani's soulmate, supposedly a Buddhist monk named Jianyu, was Jason, the other human hiding his identity to stay in the Good Place. The three began working together, with Chidi attempting to teach both of them ethics.
Michael continued to create scenarios to stress all four humans. Among other things, he began asking for help finding what was causing the problems in the neighborhood and faking a nervous breakdown over his inability to figure it out. During this time he named Eleanor his assistant. She tried befriend and cheer him up while still hiding her identity, and the two started to bond.
Eventually, to make the humans feel guiltier, he announced that he’d realised he himself was the problem, and that he would have to leave the neighborhood and be “Retired”, an extreme form of punishment and the closest thing to death for eternal beings.
The humans, still afraid of the consequences of confessing, began looking for another way to keep Michael from leaving. They found out the only way in and out of the neighborhood was a train controlled by Janet, who could be temporarily shut down and rebooted.
They ultimately rebooted Janet by accident and Michael was prevented from leaving the neighborhood. Janet’s “Murder” also gave him an excuse to stay, calling it proof the problem was one of the residents after all.
It was soon after this things began to go off the rails. Michael had planned for a lot of possibilities, but not the one where Eleanor confessed. She came forward with the fact she wasn’t the person who was supposed to be in the Good Place, and Michael found himself scrambling to come up with a scenario in response.
He acted shocked, and pretended to try to determine whether or not Eleanor should be sent to the Bad Place, while Chidi argued that she’d become a better person since dying and deserved to stay. Eventually Michael called in a team of demons to take Eleanor away, who brought with them the ‘real’ Eleanor, supposedly the person who had accidentally been sent to the Bad Place in her stead.
At the least minute, Michael claimed to have second thoughts about the trade, saying he’d decided Eleanor deserved to stay in the Good Place, and making a show of negotiating with the demons to keep her until the situation could be fully sorted out.
Next, Michael brought in his boss, Shawn, to impersonate a neutral judge of disputes between the afterlives. He asked Chidi for help in preparing his case to defend Eleanor, using the opportunity to torture Chidi by putting him under pressure and telling him to make decisions. He further pushed Chidi to make a choice between the women expressing interest in him--Eleanor, Tahani, and the “real” Eleanor.
After this, Michael agreed to a plan proposed by Tahani, in which Eleanor would attempt to earn enough points for good actions that she would officially deserve the Good Place.
While Eleanor and Tahani attempted this, Michael discovered another event he didn’t plan for. When Janet was rebooted, she took a while to come back to full functionality, during which time Jason was kind to her. She bonded to him in a way that was new for her, and previously thought impossible for a Janet. The two got married, a fact they didn’t manage to hid from Michael for long.
This lead to Michael feigning shock at the fact that Jason was another human who wasn’t meant to be in the Good Place. Michael acted out another nervous breakdown, over the amount of secrets kept from him.
Michael then decided to reboot Janet in attempt to fix her erratic behavior. Janet was afraid this would change her feelings for Jason and responded by running away with him. The two ran into Eleanor, who had chosen to voluntarily go to the Bad Place after realising her actions in attempt to stay were ultimately selfish, and the three formed a plan to escape to a “neutral zone”.
Michael’s boss, Shawn, arrived just in time to have his train stolen by Janet, Jason and Eleanor. This once again wasn’t part of Michael’s plan, and their escape to the neutral zone was a genuine if temporary success. Michael was left scrambling and promising to get the humans back, while all the while keeping up appearances in front of Chidi and Tahani that he was still pleading Eleanor’s case to the judge.
Shawn came up with his own plan, and used Janet to contact the humans in the neutral zone with an ultimatum: If they didn’t return, Chidi and Tahani would be sent to the Bad Place in their stead.
This successfully convinced Eleanor to insist all three of them turn themselves in, however Shawn and Michael told the humans they returned too late. Shawn then ruled that the Bad Place was owed two people, and put the decision in the hands of the humans themselves.
The humans began to argue amongst themselves about who should go and who would stay, ultimately making themselves so miserable that Eleanor realised they’d been in the Bad Place all along.
Michael’s response was wicked laughter and he was quick to admit that she’d figured out the truth. Once his surprise passed, however, it was replaced with anger: Eleanor figuring out what he’d been up to ruined his experiment.
After some denial, the humans realised why they had each been sent to the Bad Place, and how all of Michael’s actions had been intended to torment them. While Michael began to sulk and complain about his wasted effort, Eleanor made the mistake of pointing out what he’d gotten wrong.
While he’d successfully gotten the humans to make each other unhappy, his scenarios had also resulted in the four forming a close bond, something he hadn’t expected or known how to account for.
Once it was pointed out, Michael decided to make some changes to the second version of his experiment, explaining to the humans that he planned to simply wipe their memories and start over. He convinced Shawn to give him one more chance, but it was made clear his job was on the line.
---
Michael started his Neighborhood over again from the top, once again telling the four humans they had made it into the Good place, but setting them up with different soulmates and slightly different circumstances.
Shawn kept in touch to voice his negative opinions, and Michael continued to insist that this version of the experiment would go better.
It didn’t take long for Michael to realise he’d been lying. The humans began to behave in unexpected ways, causing his plans to spin wildly out of control. It took less than a day for the four of them to find each other and for Eleanor to figure out that they weren’t in the Good Place.
Michael was furious until Eleanor revealed that she had left a note for herself before he wiped her memory of the first timeline, and that the note had been the key to figuring out something was wrong. Relieved, Michael resolved to make sure she couldn’t pull the same trick a second time, and rebooted the Neighborhood once more.
Michael lied to Shawn, telling him the second try was going perfectly, and to his employees, telling them Shawn knew about the reboot.
The third attempt lasted 128 days before Eleanor once again realised the truth.
Michael tried again.
And again.
And again and again and again.
He tried changing small details. He tried changing large details. He tried drinking.
Sooner or later, the humans always figured it out. Finally, on attempt #802, the employees had had enough of this. Lead by Vicky, the demon who had played the “real” Eleanor, they came with up with a list of demands for Michael. Vicky blackmailed him with the threat of telling Shawn about his repeated failures if he didn’t let her take over the neighborhood.
Michael agreed--while looking for a way to double cross her. Instead of wiping the human’s memories again, he went to them with a proposal. If they pretended to lose their memories, and then pretended the latest reboot was working out, he would work with them in secret to find a way to get them into the real Good Place. If not, the next time they publicly realised the truth, Vicky would end the project and the humans would be sent to the traditional--and far worse--Bad Place.
Eleanor was the most hesitant, but finally agreed on the condition that Michael would join their secret ethics lessons taught by Chidi, and work to become a better person himself. Michael reluctantly agreed, despite insisting he saw the humans as roughly akin to cockroaches.
Michael soon grew frustrated with the lessons. Chidi, trying to find ways to get him to understand the human condition, managed to get him to contemplate the possibility of his mortality. This lead to an existential crisis, and eventually a slightly better understanding of humans.
When Chidi tried to explain the classic “Trolley Problem” to the class, Michael complained it was too theoretical. He began creating realistic simulations of it, forcing Chidi to choose who to save in several variations, and forcing Chidi to witness the graphic “deaths” of whoever he chose to let die.
Eleanor realised Michael was simply torturing Chidi, and called him out on his behavior. Michael tried to laugh it off as old habits dying hard, or a minor practical joke, but the humans were fed up. They kicked him out of the class.
Michael tried to bribe his way back in with gifts, but they weren’t having it. Eventually he admitted that because he didn’t understand human ethics, he felt insecure and lost, and this made him lash out. He apologized, and was given another chance.
Shortly after this, Janet told him that she’d begun to malfunction, putting the Neighborhood in grave danger. When they were unable to figure out the cause, Janet suggested that Michael would have to use her self destruct feature. He refused, realising--and admitting-- that she was his friend and he cared about her too much to kill her. He sought Eleanor’s advice, and she ultimately figured out that Janet’s problems were caused by emotions which she helped her to work through.
Michael continued to grow closer to the humans, eventually asking Eleanor’s advice on how to be ethical. She talked to him about her own experiences with learning to follow her conscience, and how she thought he was learning to be human.
That night, Shawn arrived with what he thought of as good news: Because of the success of the project, Michael was getting a promotion. He would be put in charge of overseeing new, similar neighborhoods, and the humans from the experiment would be sent to the traditional Bad Place.
Michael had to act fast. With Shawn watching, he made a show of revealing to the humans that they’d been in the Bad Place, before publicly roasting them. Among the insults, Michael hid clues to a plan. Following his coded instructions, the humans faked an escape causing Shawn to chase after a train they weren’t on.
Once Shawn was out of sight, Michael burst into tears, admitting how worried he had been about his friends and hugging Eleanor.
With Shawn only temporarily distracted, Michael soon had to admit that he… didn’t actually have a plan to get them into the Good Place. He’d lied that he did when pitching the team-up, and then hoped he’d come up with something, while taking lessons that made him realise why lying about it had been wrong.
Sure that they were out of chances and soon to be caught, the group decided to simply get drunk together and wait. The humans thanked Michael for doing his best, and named him an Honorary Human, before presenting him with a “human starter kit” full of things like band-aids, car keys, and a stress ball. He found the gesture very touching.
Later that night, the humans asked if there was really a judge they could plead their case to, and Michael commented on all the reasons this was unfeasible, including the fact that they’d have to go through the actual Bad Place to get there.
Eleanor suggested they try it anyway, and Michael agreed. After all, he’d only really wanted to find out what it was like to be human, so they might as well do the most human thing of all: attempt something futile with a ton of unearned confidence and fail spectacularly.
The next day they set off for the Bad Place, with the humans disguised as demons and Janet disguised as a Bad Janet. Michael dropped the humans off in a museum about the history of torture, assuming they’d be unlikely to run into anyone, and went to talk to Shawn.
He asked permission to lead a team to look for the humans, using this as an excuse to ask for the management pins needed to go through the portal to the Judge’s realm. Unfortunately, Shawn had other ideas, forcing Michael to improvise. He stole as many pins as he could and snuck back to find the humans before Shawn realised what he was up to.
Meanwhile, the museum proved the worst idea he could have had: an exhibit of his neighborhood was being unveiled, and the humans were recognised. The five of them were forced to flee to the portal, only narrowly escaping Shawn.
While they made it to the portal in time, there was a problem. Michael only had four pins for five people. Out of time, Michael told Eleanor he’d finally solved the trolley problem. Instead of choosing which people to let die… sacrifice yourself.
Giving Eleanor his travel pin, he sent the humans on ahead and remained to face Shawn.
Fortunately, rather than Michael being “retired”, Shawn chose to imprison him. At the last moment he was rescued by Janet, who had faked her own death to impersonate Shawn’s Bad Janet.
The two finally made it to the Judge’s realm, only to find out that the humans had talked their way into a test to make it into the Good Place--and they hadn’t passed. Michael, still desperate to save them, came up with a new last ditch idea: He convinced the Judge to allow him one last experiment. If he went to Earth and saved them from their original deaths, they had a second chance to become better people without having proof of an afterlife.
This is where we find him--stepping through a door to Earth.
Abilities/Special Powers: Honestly, it’s a bit unclear. As an eternal being, he’s immortal and very hard if not impossible to kill. The closest thing to death mentioned in canon is “the eternal shriek” which is torture rather than complete destruction. He can also see in nine dimensions, and drink antimatter.
He true form is inhuman and presumably monstrous, but hasn’t been described or shown.
He’s been shown to create completely realistic simulations and illusions, but it’s unclear if he can do so outside the neighborhood he controlled.
He’s also implied to have some measure of control over his human appearance, but once again this is pretty vague.
When on Earth he has “no powers”, but still seems unsure if another demon could actually die there.
(Basically I’m happy to work things out however. Having the illusion stuff would be cool to work with, but I’d also be happy to nerf things considering how vague they are.)
Third-Person Sample:
Michael was so excited. “Excited” didn’t even cut it. What was the one past excited? Humans had so many names for so many unnecessary emotions but he was starting to understand why. Elated? Nauseous? Maybe he’d finally cracked the mystery of ‘hyped’.
He’d wanted to go to Earth for so long and now, finally, he’d gotten his chance to walk through the door. Oh, and saving his friends was a bonus of course. The whole point of the visit even! Yes, the whole point. But if he got to, say, hail a taxi or eat a questionable hot dog or make small talk about the news or see a movie or get in a pointless argument with a stranger--well, he wouldn’t complain. Maybe he could even sneak a native paperclip back if he was really lucky.
His mind was racing with so many thoughts that he barely noticed the trip taking somewhat longer than he’d been told it would. Maybe he shouldn’t have joked about that.
Michael found himself blinking, unsure quite where he was or what had just happened, before things snapped back into focus. This must be Earth! He wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been so many trees. Was this what Eleanor’s neighborhood looked like? That seemed off.
“Janet?” As soon as he asked, he remembered that no--he had to do this on his own. But that was fine. Everything was fine. He’d just… pick a direction and walk in it. With his feet. until he figured out where to go from here.
First-Person Sample:
Yes, hello, is this thing on? Sorry--always wanted to say that. But really, is it? Oh, there we go.
I don’t suppose anyone could tell me where I am? If you could just, direct me to a bus. Or a train? Maybe an ‘uber’.
Something that goes to-- [And here there’s some rustling, like the owner of the voice might be looking through notes.]--”Phoenix, Arizona.”
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