Character Info

Character's Name: Michael Mell
Character's Canon: Be More Chill (the musical)
Character's Age: 16
Canon Point: Between Acts 1 + 2, about a week post-"Upgrade" (the Act 1 finale song).
Background/History: Here is wikipedia's summary of the musical's plot; it's not very clear on what Michael is up to while everything is going down though so please find the 500-word outline below!

Michael is introduced as protagonist Jeremy Heere's fellow loser, his best (and only!) friend of 12 years. The day the story begins, Jeremy tells Michael a rumour he's heard about a SQUIP - a nano-supercomputer in the form of a grey oblong pill that implants in the user's brain and tells them what to do to improve their social standing. Michael is skeptical, convinced that Jeremy's being scammed. At Jeremy's insistence, he reluctantly tags along to the backroom in the local Payless to see if the story checks out.

It does - they walk out with a SQUIP and the instruction to take it with Mountain Dew. After Jeremy swallows the SQUIP with seemingly no effect, Michael parts ways with him for 5 minutes to pick up some discontinued 90s soft drinks for his collection. When Michael returns, Jeremy is nowhere to be found.

At school the next day, Michael is hurt to find Jeremy acting like he doesn't even exist. Turns out the SQUIP did work, and it's blocking Michael from Jeremy's field of vision, deeming him too uncool for its goal to make Jeremy "be more chill". After briefly becoming able to see Michael again at the end of the school day, Jeremy rejects Michael by voluntarily reactivating the optic nerve blocking, shutting Michael out of his life for the next 2 months.

Realising that the SQUIP worked and is bad news, Michael throws himself into trying to find out anything he can about SQUIPs. What he eventually finds involves insanity and death, and so Michael attempts to warn Jeremy by sneaking uninvited into that fall's big Halloween party. Result? Disaster - still convinced that the SQUIP is the only thing that can help him, Jeremy doesn't want to hear it, and leaves Michael to have a panic attack in the bathroom by himself.

Later that week, thinking Jeremy is now completely out of his reach, Michael sets about cutting his losses and starts burning all his mementos of their friendship. He's interrupted by the arrival of Jeremy's dad, who's disturbed by the changes in his son and begs Michael to help Jeremy before it's too late.

Won over by Mr. Heere, Michael books it to the school play with a bottle of Mountain Dew Red, the only thing capable of turning Jeremy's SQUIP off. Once there, Michael discovers the SQUIP is completely taking over his friend's body to enact its plan of "improving" Jeremy's life via SQUIP-ing the entire school. Michael struggles with both the other SQUIP-ed students and Jeremy's own hijacked body as the two boys attempt to force even a mouthful of decades-old soda down Jeremy's throat.

Eventually, Jeremy is able to outsmart his SQUIP by giving one of the other SQUIPed classmates the last drops, setting off a chain reaction that short-circuits every active SQUIP. Michael ends the musical having rekindled his friendship with Jeremy, and it's implied he may come to befriend the rest of the SQUIP-ed squad in the future.


Strengths:

♪ SELF-CONFIDENT: Michael knows exactly who he is and what he's about, and he's more comfortable in his own skin than most grown adults, let alone most 16-year olds. In contrast to his best friend, he doesn't let the trials and tribulations of being a high school loser bother him, handling his social status with an easy sort of grace. He lets most things roll right off of him with a relaxed, unselfconscious attitude, and he makes a point of owning the loser label with pride (after all, "there's never been a better time in history to be a loser!"). His attitude is very much that if somebody has an issue with who you are, that's their problem, not yours, and he's not afraid to cheerfully march to the beat of his own drum. This confidence in himself allows him to be a solid, supportive presence for others, although since he only really hangs out with one person most people don't get to feel the benefit of this.

♪ PASSIONATE: Michael is fairly bubbling over with enthusiasm for his various interests, no matter how weird they might seem to anybody else. He can talk forever about a topic when someone or something gets him going, and once he warms to his theme it's difficult to get him to stop. It's not just his interests that this applies to, either; Michael is a naturally warm personality who cares a lot, even if that's not readily apparent at first due to his laid-back nature and general avoidance of people who aren't named Jeremy Heere. It's this passion and capacity for caring which lends itself to his ability to pull out a helluva lot of dedication and staying power once he makes up his mind to do something, making him a valuable person to have around if there's a mystery that needs solving or a friend that needs saving.

♪ GENUINE: If there's one thing you can always count on with Michael, it's that there's no artifice to him whatsoever. Michael is a believer in being true to yourself and in the importance of heartfelt gestures, and doesn't see the point in trying to play popularity games or water himself down to fit in; what you see is exactly what you get. He can engage in friendly mockery or be a sarcastic asshole with the best of them, but he's not two-faced. Even his sarcasm is never anything less than overt and obvious, never designed to trip people up or to wound underhandedly. There's no second-guessing with Michael, no being unsure of where you stand; when he's being supportive of your failed attempts to work up the courage to confess/talk to your crush or saying dorky things like "you're cooler than a vintage cassette", he means it with complete sincerity, and when you ask for his opinion about something, you can be sure that the opinion you get will be an honest one.


Weaknesses:

♪ COMPLACENCY/RESIGNATION: For all his enthusiasm and confidence, Michael falls all too easily into a complacent, resigned mindset. Michael doesn't see the point in trying to change things that can't be changed. When pushed, he admits that he cares more about not being popular than he wants to let on; he's just made a conscious decision to not care about it, because he "just knows that it's never gonna happen". Michael is content to bide his time and ride out what life throws at him until he finally reaches the other side, trusting that when he does, it'll be all uphill from there. A protective measure that serves him well, but it means that he can tend towards stagnancy, being unwilling to push himself unless he's first given a push by someone or something else. It also means that, when Michael reaches that point of deciding that something can't be changed, he gives up entirely, even when that something is really important to him; at his lowest point, Michael is 100% ready to give up on Jeremy and their 12-year friendship and resign himself to having lost him to the SQUIP, until Jeremy's dad convinces him otherwise and gives Michael his heroic second wind.

♪ DISMISSIVE: One of Michael's biggest flaws is how readily he brushes things off, even when he's trying to help. Throughout the musical, Michael fails to understand that things that he has accepted and learned to deal with are a much bigger deal for someone like Jeremy; though Michael's trying his best in his own way to reassure him when he says to just hang on two years until the high school bullshit doesn't matter anymore, there's no denying that it comes off a little condescending and insensitive to how much the whole deal really bothers his best friend. His dismissive tendencies crop up again when Michael tries to warn Jeremy about the true dangers of the SQUIP, and it backfires on him massively; by scoffing a comment like "You really think its primary function is to get you laid?", Michael demonstrates a fundamental inability to understand why Jeremy dropped $400 on a pill to change himself, only succeeding in pushing him further away.

♪ UNCOMPROMISING: The flip-side of his admirable spadefuls of confidence and commitment to being his authentic self is this: Michael Mell is not good at compromises. Laid-back he may be, but once he digs his heels in about something, he can be incredibly stubborn, bull-headed and even petty, often at the most inopportune moments. Case in point: he thinks a brilliant time to demand an apology from Jeremy for blowing him off for months is while Jeremy's body is being hijacked by the SQUIP and his classmates are being systematically assimilated into the shiny happy hivemind. Michael is also bad at sugarcoating things; he makes blunt statements and observations that, while they're not intended to be hurtful or malicious, can certainly be read that way if you don't know him.


Powers/Abilities: Nada! Michael is a boring baseline human teen with no special abilities to speak of.

Other Noteworthy Traits:
♪ He can drive! Not that it will do him much good in a town with no cars, but it is, nonetheless, a skill he possesses.
♪ He doesn't exactly flaunt it, but Michael is extremely good at research when he puts his mind to it, even when it seems like there's literally nothing out there on normal channels about whatever topic needs researching. This kid is nothing if not thorough if there's something he wants to find out or get ahold of.
♪ If there is such a thing as listening to way too much music, then Michael Mell listens to way too much music. The script describes him as "music-obsessed" and he's almost never seen without his headphones, meaning he probably knows a RIDICULOUS amount of songs by heart up in that noggin of his.
♪ Michael is canonically a habitual stoner - I'm totally happy to downplay this to accommodate other players' comfort levels/game etiquette, but as it comes up several times during the musical I thought I had better note it on his app!

Weapons & Other Special Inventory:
On his person:
♪ Clothes: jeans, oversized hightops, t-shirt, red hoodie
♪ (1) set of headphones
♪ (1) mp3 player
♪ (1) aux cord
♪ (1) cell phone
♪ (1) lighter
♪ (1) backpack, containing: his car+house keys, a couple of schoolbooks, a notepad, and a few loose pens and pencils.

Color: Red! Michael is heavily associated with red in the musical; it's the colour of his signature hoodie, and he manages to independently uncover that Mountain Dew Red is the only way to depower the SQUIP for good, as well as somehow actually get ahold of enough of this 20-year-old discontinued soft drink to halt the impending SQUIPocalypse. It also fits nicely with his warm, confident personality. I'm thinking something like #a5001b, if it hasn't been taken yet!

Sample: here!

[ OPTIONAL ] World Aspect: N/A!