Name: Michael Langdon
Door: DOOR PASS - Submissive

Canon: American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Canon Point: 8x05 - Boy Wonder

Age: developmentally and physically 16.
Appearance: one | two

History: american horror story wiki ( + murder house and apocalypse entries) || Michael Langdon

Content warnings both for these links and for the app below; there'll be mentions of violence against both people and animals, rape, suicide and murder.

Personality:
Michael Langdon is, and always has been, destined for great things.

Conceived when his father, the dead Tate Langdon, had non-consensual sex with his mother, the living Vivien Harmon, Michael Langdon is the Antichrist; the bringer of the end of days foretold in the Book of Revelations and the host to an unimaginable evil. Even before his birth, he was an unnatural, sinister existence with a need to consume - he fed off of his twin half-brother in the womb, starving him of the nutrients he needed to survive, and he demanded raw animal flesh and organs from his mother to sustain himself, growing stronger from blood. Essentially, he's Rosemary's Baby.

Raised by his grandmother who weathered countless tragedies that would - in her belief - make her strong enough to withstand the difficulties of raising a boy like him, Michael was a violent child. He was a killer, through and through, shearing the wings off of flies as an infant before he grew older and turned his sights onto rodents, birds, cats and dogs. These acts of violence would lead to him taking the life of his babysitter when he was still a child, and once older, the life of a priest, whose latin and attempts at exorcism burned his ears - but no drop of blood Michael shed was ever taken without reason.

Michael, until he reached adulthood, was full of love, and every animal corpse he nailed to his grandmother's door or hung from the ceiling of her kitchen was intended as a present to prove to her how much he loved her. Constance described his love as overflowing, and that even while she tried to convince him to express himself through other avenues - something he never seemed capable of doing - there was a part of her that loved to bask in the glow of a child so devoted to showing her he cared, regardless of how grizzly it might be. Michael is incredibly, incredibly charismatic, and always has been.

Michael was always a sunny and innocent child, despite it all. He was always smiling, always kind, and he craved affection and acknowledgment in a way that combated his very nature as someone so intimately connected to the devil himself. When he was only five or six years old, Michael aged ten years overnight, and he started committing violent acts he wasn't seemingly consciously aware of doing. He tried to strangle Constance in her sleep, crying when he snapped back to consciousness and realized what he was doing, and it was this stress and this guilt and this inability to deal with her grandson's violence and outbursts that ultimately led to Constance's death.

To avoid the fate of one day being murdered by Michael, Constance took her life in the Murder House, a building that trapped and bound the spirits of those who died there, housing them as ghosts. Michael showed genuine remorse and grief over Constance's death, seemingly proving Constance was wrong to fear him, which marked the moment when Michael changed from an innocent, naive boy to one self-aware of the fact that there was something wrong with him. Consciously, he still just wanted love and affection and didn't understand why he did the bad things he did, but deep down, he was still violent and wrathful to such a degree that nothing could stop the surge of evil that constantly threatened to overtake him.

One of the ghosts in Murder House, Ben Harmon, saw Michael as the son he should have had, given the complicated circumstances of his conception and his ultimate abduction by Constance; Ben was a therapist in life, and took pity on Michael as he cried over his grandmother, vowing to help him become a better man and to heal the inner wrongness he felt. Through his sessions with Ben, Michael was discovered as someone who desperately, desperately wanted to be good, and who needed someone to help him get there. It was also discovered that Michael is in possession of intelligence that soared off the charts. Ben was his doctor as well as his father figure, and for a time, Michael seemed to become less violent, less evil, enjoying all the little joys of life he hadn't had until now. Life was good... until Michael found out that Tate was his father.

Michael's innate darkness and evil was always encroaching him, despite the human side of him struggling against the devil hidden away inside of him, and when other spirits whispered to Michael and told him that Tate was his father, he became curious to learn more about him. Searching through Tate's things, he found the mask to the Rubberman suit, and, when confronted, knew he had done something wrong. Tate yelled at him for touching his things, and while Ben defended Michael's childish curiousity and natural need for exploration, traits that seem to be a part of him even as he ages, Michael admitted that he wanted to be like his dad, despite - presumably - knowing at least some of the horrible things Tate had done. Tate rejected him, calling him a monster, calling him evil, and telling him to stay away from him. Shaped by that rejection, a lot of Michael's contradictory kindness, empathy and soft, human affection seemed to wilt.

He gave up on trying to get better in his sessions with Ben, and instead willingly embraced the darker sides of himself he'd spent so long fearing. In what almost seemed like an extension of his curiosity, Michael imitated at least one other ghost in the house as if trying to search for internal meaning or an understanding of who he was - because who was he, if he was neither good enough to stop being evil or evil enough to stop being good? Recreating the Black Dahlia's death while dressed in the surgical gear of another house ghost, Michael gave her a glasgow smile, acting wholesome and unashamed when he was caught. Things steadily got worse as Michael's remaining naivete, need for affection and inability to fully understand who he was continued to battle against each other and this hungry, amoral lust for blood in a quest for self-discovery.

Two women bought the Murder House and moved in, and, while childishly believing that they didn't belong in his home, Michael slit one of their throats and stabbed the other through the skull. Ben, upset, told Michael that they were good people who deserved a chance, and that because of what he did, they would be stuck in the Murder House forever - and with no regard to the gravity of his actions, Michael tried to solve that problem by burning their spirits into ash with hellfire he controlled, completely and totally wiping them from existence. Ben told Michael he never could have helped him and that he was foolish to try, and even after committing the atrocities he committed, Michael cried at the rejection. Through all of this, Michael wore his father's Rubberman suit.

All of this is to say that it's hard to determine whether or not Michael is inherently, naturally evil, or if he's a good kid merely possessed by evil. Up until this point in his life, Michael had shown an intense need to be good and to be loved and to love in return, and, most importantly, to not be the monster he fears that he is - all while being rejected by the people who could be by his side because the evil inside of him bared teeth too big and too sharp to go ignored. He takes after both his mother and his father, in that his mood swings and his incapability of dealing with rejection are inherited from Tate, while the purity, dedication and strength of character he longs for were all visible traits in Vivien.

After being rejected by Ben, Michael became isolated within Murder House. He retreated in on himself, and at this point in his life, his ties to hell became more blatantly apparent - a murder of crows would circle the house every day, the weather would become blisteringly, swelteringly hot, and, finally, he would be approached by three strangers: Anton LaVey, Black Pope of the Church of Satan, and his two cardinals, all of them seeking an audience with him.

Anton and his cardinals instantly gave Michael everything he wanted. They praised him as a God, saying they found him by following a dark star that led them to his doorstep, and openly and affectionately titled him their Lord. They made him feel accepted and gave him purpose in life, rewarding him for his evil with love and with guidance instead of shame or rejection. Michael found direction and succumbed to the evil within him, largely obliterating his humanity and his conscience and allowing him to fully and completely become accepting of - but not yet consumed by - his evil. He acknowledges Satan as his father and finds validation in him.

Michael moved in with Miss Mead, one of Anton's cardinals, living exclusively with her and referring to her as the only person who never betrayed him. He retains his innocence, up to a point, though he violently kills someone who speaks to her in a way he doesn't approve of and then kills again when he's cornered and scared, because he's ultimately very protective of the people he loves. He draws the attention of a powerful Warlock who uses him in a scheme to usurp and shame his rivals, inadvertently giving Michael another avenue for validation while helping him amass power he secretly stockpiles for the sake of ending the world under Miss Mead and Satan's guidance - which, as is his destiny, is a goal that Michael eventually succeeds in - and as he becomes more powerful and finds more praise and validation in his actions, Michael largely only cares about being the best evil he can be. He matures into a man enthralled by people's reactions to his powers, becoming cocky and competitive and proud. He plays with death and pain and misery like they mean nothing to him, because as long as he's happy and doing everything Anton and Miss Mead told him to do, he feels fulfilled.

Years pass, and as an adult, Michael is charismatic, secure in himself, manipulative and pointedly attractive. He's been shaped by the family he found amongst the Satanists and the devil himself as well as in the pride he has in pursuing his destiny, and he believes, after deploying bombs that destroy civilization and most of humanity, that he's fully risen to the role of the biblical force of destruction he was born to play. After ending the world, Michael languidly toys with the remaining remnants of humanity who survived his thermonuclear apocalypse by tempting survivors wiled away in bunkers with whichever of the seven deadly sins they feel the most drawn to. Through playing mind games and offering temptations and promises of freedom, Michael coerces survivors into killing each other while he watches from a distance, never getting his hands dirty.

But there's a spiteful, vengeful lust for revenge in Michael, hidden away under the very powerful and very terrifying figure he becomes by the end of his canon. Miss Mead, the woman who raised him, the woman who never betrayed him like his mother, his father, his grandmother and his therapist, is ultimately killed by the enemy witch the warlocks at Hawthorne were trying to dethrone. This is ultimately what leads Michael to ending the world; he feels lost and alone without her, he doubts himself and lacks purpose, but Michael does everything he can to see her again and willingly kills seven billion people almost entirely to spite Miss Mead's murderer. At the height of his power, Michael lacks empathy, and believes fully, completely and deeply, after a lifetime of rejection and blood and brimstone, that people are evil motherfuckers who deserve nothing from him but pain.

Essentially, Michael is a conflicted figure. Though born evil, he spends his life seeking love, approval and affection, overwhelmed with so much of his own to give in ways he struggles to express. For the majority of his youth, he longs to be good and to stop being - again, in his own words - a monster, desperately torn apart by his hope for a happier life and his inability to stop hurting the things he cares about. He succumbs to the darkness inside of him, though the show purposefully avoided clarifying whether he was always inherently going to become the evil he was supposedly destined for, or if there was a chance, however slim, that he could overcome it. He's a story of nature versus nurture; could the son of the Devil himself be saved by patient, guiding love, or was he always going to be a monster, despite the pain that so concretely shaped him into becoming one?

Michael's four major traits are as follows:

Negative
-- amoral
Even from a young age, Michael doesn't ever fully comprehend the gravity of what he does. He's willing to kill to solve his problems, and he's willing to hurt to express how he feels; he's unconcerned with the morality of his actions or how those actions might affect other people and far more concerned with how they might reflect on him. He's indiscriminate in the horrible things he does, so long as those horrible things have purpose - be it to further his goals as the Antichrist or to try and find love with whatever familial environment he's desperate to hold onto.

A large part of Michael's backstory is the time he spends doubting Satan and the church. Seeing weak sin and a lack of evil fills him with grief and disappointment, and his worshipper's focus on self-satisfaction and carnal pleasure fills him with despair. Michael finds joy and purpose in cruelty and sin, and he revitalizes his church through encouraging acts of brutality and evil. After accepting the fact that he's a monster who could only ever be loved by other monsters, Michael becomes a man who thrives in seeing people suffer.

-- wrathful
Michael is violent. Growing up, he kills living things indiscriminately, ranging from the animals his grandmother would solemnly bury in their back yard time and time again, or the adult men who either stood in his way or made for a decent sacrifice to express his powers. He kills as a punishment and with intense cruelty, flinging knives at the man who insulted Miss Mead and horrifically and excessively destroying another man's body to defend himself against a violent interrogation. He kills, at least in part, as an expression if Satan's will.

It takes a few years before he truly grows into his wrath; his antagonistic relationship with Cordelia is based on spite, resentment and genuine, honest hate, and she bears the brunt of his anger. He kills billions of people to spite her, and he revels in the victory of making her suffer through sadistically toying with the remnants of humanity. Through time, Michael believes himself, in part, to be the weapon of Satan's wrath, and even before he reaches that point, he wants to become the best avatar of his Father he can be.

-- manipulative
Michael is manipulative. After ending the world, Michael travels from safehouse to safehouse, bunker to bunker, dismantling each surviving pocket of humanity through mindgames, coercion and violence. With his ultimate goal being to wipe out humanity and his thorough conviction that, deep down, all humans are truly, truly evil, he takes a sadistic pleasure in using psychoanalysis, sinful temptation and finely honed seduction to tear relationships apart and make groups of people shed each other's blood.

Even as a teenager, Michael was manipulative. He's not a liar, exactly, and he'll always tell the truth if he has the option to do so, but he's more than willing to smile or charm his way through false assumptions, letting people believe what they need to believe about him in order for him to get what he wants. He's selfish and he's cunning. He's a snake.

Positive
-- loving
Whether or not Michael's ascension to evil was unavoidable or not, there was a time in his life where he just wanted love. He was overwhelming with the intensity of his affection, and that never really changed with time. After Constance kicked him out due to his inability to change his ways, Michael struggled to become the person she wanted to be with Ben, and when Tate called him evil and refused to acknowledge that he's his dad, Michael imitated him, tried to be like him, and longed to reconnect with him, even if emulating Tate meant doing horrible, evil things.

Largely, much of his character revolves around his love for Miss Mead and his grief in losing her. He's desperate for affection and attention, and none of the pain he's seen or inflicted in life compares to the pain he feels from losing the salvation he finally found in her. When Michael feels loved, and when Michael can give that love back without burning or scaring whoever receives it with its intensity, then they become the center of his world and the single point he fixates on. Michael needs love.

Powers and Abilities:
As the Antichrist, Michael has a pretty huge set of abilities inherited from his father and his connection to hell. These are (very brief!) explanations of those powers, some of which use the naming convention used by the warlocks at Hawthorne, who falsely believe his magic comes from being a warlock rather than the Devil's son. It's a little complicated and he's got a lot of skills on deck, so if you need any particular power clarified in any way, let me know!

I'd also like to say that given the fact that he has so many powers, and given the fact that they're kind of OP in canon, I'd like to make a blanket statement that I'm willing to nerf his powers and anything big (like descensum or vitalum vitalis) won't be used without me reaching out to a mod first to check if it's okay.

Signs of Hell - There are times, beyond Michael's control, where he'll slowly become surrounded by ill omens aesthetically tied to hell. The inside of whatever building he's staying in will slowly warm up until it feels as if it's the middle of summer, crows will circle overhead and gather where he lives, and the sky might seem red if you look at it from where he's standing. All of these effects will be incredibly confined and only impact where he lives or where he's staying, totally unnoticeable to the game as a whole.

Illusory Magic - Michael can create and project illusions so powerfully strong that those who see or interact with them will believe that they're truly there. His most notable use of this was when he conjured a manifestation of a man in his father's Rubber Man suit to have sex with Mister Gallant after Mister Gallant tried to seduce him, allowing him to fully feel and experience the act while actually committing a murder. While the show hasn't been clear on if it's his true face or just something he can affect, Michael is also feared as the White-Faced Demon, and is seen at multiple times with black eyes and a hidden white face beneath his own.

Clairvoyance - The ability to read a person's thoughts or feelings. Michael is shown to be able to see into the minds of the people he toys with in the bunkers as an adult, revealing their secrets in a one on one interview and bringing to the surface their immediate thoughts as well as their deepest wants and fears.

Blood Prayer - Michael can evoke sudden epiphanies and ideas within himself through praying to Satan and asking for his wisdom. After painting a pentagram within a circle of candles, Michael's blood will boil, and from it, snakes will emerge. He can't obtain knowledge he doesn't already have through doing this; it's a kickstart to his brain to make him think a little clearer. Like washing your face in the morning, but demonic, and also with snakes.

Concilium - The ability to place a person under the user's control. Through concentration, Michael is capable of influencing the decisions and will of another person using his thoughts alone. The person Michael is trying to control can resist this if they have a strong will, but Michael can increase internal pain inside their skull until they give in, which can lead to hemorrhaging and even death due to intracranial pressure.

Pyrokinesis - The ability to control, create and extinguish fire. Michael's fire is from hell itself, and as such, can be used to eradicate the souls of the dead.

Divination - The ability to sense an awareness of an object or person's location, as well as the ability to scry for messages or visions. Michael used this ability to both find and retrieve a book hidden by the warlocks during training for his test of the Seven Wonders, as well as to find the location of the Hotel Cortez by sensing an image of the building and drawing it on a piece of paper.

Vitalum Vitalis - The ability to tip the scales between life and death. Vitalum Vitalis refers to both the ability to resurrect the dead and the ability to take life from the living. While for witches and warlocks, this would involve giving or taking from the caster's own life force, Michael in canon suffers no such restrictions. He can use magic to revive and kill at will.

Transmutation - Also referred to as salire per spatium by the Warlocks, Transmutation refers to teleportation, or the ability to instantly transport from one location to another. While he's probably capable of going further, this is only seen in short distances, so Michael will only be capable of doing this within the same room he's standing in.

Telekinesis - Arguably Michael's strongest power, Telekinesis refers to the ability to move or manipulate objects with one's mind. Michael has been seen unbinding chains, projecting knives at incredible speeds, breaking bones, slamming people against ceilings and walls, and shattering a man's skull with nothing but his thoughts.

Stiricidium - Stiricidium refers to the ability to control the weather and was one of the tests Michael had to pass to show his talents to the Warlock council. By manipulating water molecules in the air, Michael is capable of conjuring rain or snow.

Descensum - The ability to descend into Hell. In AHS, each person has their own personal Hell, where they're stuck living through their worst possible torture, psychologically speaking, for all of eternity; Michael has the ability to descend into other people's personal Hells, as well as the ability to manipulate them how he sees fit.

Inventory: Just his clothes.

Samples: TDM + network sample below

[ michael's been lost, since his arrival to the city. without miss mead, without the warlocks - hell, without the witches - he's lacked purpose. he doesn't understand why his Father is putting him through a trial like this, and try as he might to accept it and adjust his behaviour accordingly, he feels trapped. disgraced, in some ways. he needs to find a path to follow.

he hits the network, completely anonymous. if he could just know the kind of person duplicity chooses for the liers program - if he just found the thread that ties this population together - then maybe he'll know if he's supposed to be duplicity's salvation or its destroyer. maybe these people need guidance. maybe he can offer them that. ]

of all the things you've ever done in your life,
what would be the worst?
i don't mean... parking in a handicap spot or lying to your mother about where you were past curfew -
what have you done that's truly, truly sinful? bone-chilling. stomach-turning.
what have you done to deserve to be here?