i’ve seen some people say that they don’t like helen because her specific brand of spiral is too evil and i just wanna say. i love that side of helen so much. i love that she’s a lying liar who lies in a condescending and manipulative way. i love that she’s a genuine villain, but only ever has friendly conversations with jon and martin.
michael’s brand of spiral was very overt. all about confusion and madness and fractals and shapes.
helen is a lot more subtle. a lot more “you know it’s fake, but you have to play along” or “you don’t know what’s going on, but you feel lied to” that girl is playing MIND GAMES she’s playing 4d chess with jmart’s emotions and i love her for that.
and you know. i also love that she can get mean. she can get angry. she can get desperate. she can get scared.
it’s implied a few times that the distortion is less of an avatar and more of a direct manifestation/monster, but helen acts like an avatar would. i think michael really did become just a mask the distortion wore, but helen seemed like she really grew into the distortion. she sort of became an avatar of her own volition. she enjoyed it, and she didn’t deny herself that enjoyment at any point. she thought…well, if i’m gonna have to be a monster, i’m at least gonna have fun with it and not worry about the morality of it all. and that was iconic of her.
helen was the distortion so much more than michael ever was. michael was a mask and a vessel and a sacrifice. helen was a victim that became an avatar. i think, in a way, she was lying to herself the entire time. telling herself that this was just her nature now, that she wasn’t evil, she was just doing what she had to. that she wasn’t evil for enjoying it. that’s what she told jon too, and in a way, she had a point. jon beating himself up about being an avatar never actually stopped him from hurting others. an avatar cannot exist without harming others. at least helen was having fun with it.
i think that difference between victim (michael) and avatar (helen) is a really interesting thing. for example, you could make a case for martin being a victim of the lonely rather than an avatar of it. he doesn’t enjoy it, he uses it as an unhealthy coping mechanism of sorts, whereas peter genuinely enjoys the lonely and wants more people to experience it.
but also, there’s something to the idea that a victim can become an avatar. the distortion took helen without her consent, marked her, it made her cry and drove her to the brink of insanity before consuming her fully. but she still became an avatar of it.
it’s interesting to think that there was just something about helen richardson that there wasn’t about michael shelley. some kind of inherent trait, some kind of quality, something that made her take to distortionhood in a way he never did.