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oh boy the original answer is 4 years old?!?

update time. this is a theory soup. Vanessa A./Gregory Afton/Michael Afton nonsense.

anyway. timeline thoughts, in no particular order:

- vanessa/michael marriage before Sister Location. both very young, probably around 18/19. basically teen marriage immediately followed by industrial clown basement tragedy

- by FNaF 1 etc as we know michael is already a walking corpse. hence logbook stuff. he draws the grave with the flowers and then hearts on the page with ‘who do you want to see at the end of the day’ and ‘who would you recommend for this job’ and ‘where do you see yourself in five years?’ dead. hes dead. he cant go back.

- if we are considering or want to entangle gregory being also afton into this, then michael and vanessa have gregory before SL. michael is in gregory’s life for maybe about a month before Sister Location fully eats him. which is.. at least he held him

* there is probably a cursed little window where Michael is being worn by Ennard while baby Gregory exists in the house. Vanessa does not realize because shifts/day-night schedules/whatever. this makes possible Ennard and Gregory interaction, which is emotionally taxing for me. Nighty-night!

- i like to think they are living in the old Afton house. everyone else is dead, gone, missing, haunting something, or william. gregory’s nursery being in Evan’s FNaF 4 room

- after the “gas leak”/Sister Location situation, michael calls vanessa. officially he is supposed to be dead. unofficially he is having the time of his unlife

- he tells her not to come looking for him. to stay away from Freddy’s. he knows he can’t come home.

-vanessa reacts to this information/instruction in the way you probably expect

- then he calls william and does the famous “I’m going to come find you” speech

- vanessa is left with no body. Neither if the two dead technicians who were found in SL were in fact, not michael. police/corporate/legal nonsense makes her bury an empty grave. hence why the AR “flowers for your grave” email still makes me CHEW DRYWALL

Yes, I am aware vanny/william searches how to induce compliance in human subjects before this. However, Vanessa canonically does not eat candy because calories. Its weird to me she would buy such an exotic thing for herself to eat. i also do not get where william/mimic would feel the need to pretend to a boyfriend.

- michael keeps doing night guard fuckery. under false names, which makes tracking him basically impossible. vanessa is trying to follow a dead man through fake employee records, burned restaurants, Fazbear coverups, and whatever the hell “Eggs Benedict” ended up being logged as legally. baby girl i am so sorry

- after michael disappears, vanessa cannot keep up financially or mentally. she is young, grieving, alone. she loses gregory to the foster system.

- she does try to keep some legal connection to gregory, but bureaucracy does what bureaucracy does best. fucks up. so over the years, Gregory runs away from foster homes, gets involved in street survival/crime, and eventually the system loses track of him.

- this is where Patient 46/Vanessa’s therapy-file nonsense becomes much more interesting bcs why do this random problem child and Vanessa have overlapping company-mandated therapists?

HW already confirms hey are trying to clean up their act from the murders.

answer: because Fazbear Entertainment is not a pizzeria company. Fazbear Entertainment is canonically a mega-corporation with billion OSHA violations and a risk-management office.

If Gregory is an Afton, he is not just “some kid.” he is a legal problem. a bloodline problem. a possible inheritance of/stock ownership/estate-rights problem. a walking loose end with William Afton’s surname.

we know Fazbear wants to clean up its past. (AR/HW1,2.SB). that means tracking old Afton/Fazbear-linked records, family lines, liability trails, estate issues, custody files, and anyone who might accidentally have rights to something the company would really prefer stayed buried under a mall.

so!!! Gregory getting the same therapist as Vanessa is not coincidence. it is corporate containment wearing a therapy badge.

remember to smile, ur the face of FE; also pls sign this NDA about your grandfather’s murder company :).

if you listen to the CDs again, its obviously Glitchtrap linked. But; FE has no reason to know they both are affected specifically by him/the same person, hence it doesnt make sense for as to why they have the same therapists which keep getting killed off (presumably by Vanny/vannessa under william influence) at the same time.

Gregory (or GGY), even if hes causing the company trouble at the pizzaplex way before SB, has no reason to share the same therapists with vanessa.

The therapists are giving patient 46 leading questions to get him to admit pizzaplex stuff, unlike with vanessa. They function more as investigators/interogators rather then therapists. All of them, which means FE gave them something to hunt for.

With Vanessa they ask about the conversations, with gregory they keep prying about the hacker stuff. but they do the same tests. ink blots etc. asking about their legal past. asking about family.

- Glitchtrap’s obsession with Vanessa also works better if she is Vanessa Afton by marriage. she is not just a random employee. she is Michael’s widow, Gregory’s mother, William’s daughter-in-law, and someone already emotionally tangled in the Afton/Fazbear disaster. Glitchtrap sees that surname and goes “oh, leverage.”

All the other people he tries to possess give him reluctance. and he kills them off for it immidieately (sawing their face off etc.). Vanessa gives reluctants and he DESPERATELY tries her to get to cooparate. In my mind hes trying to erase the in-law adjacent stuff, essentially erasing michael/purpose driving her forward and getting her fully under control. like a true predator. i like to think he told her that he knows where michael is.

- Security Breach then becomes extra insane if GlamMike is true

- after SB Vanessa eventually finds out Gregory is her son through documents/custody records/Fazbear files/Patient 46 connections/whatever corporate nightmare finally coughs up the truth. im saying finds out because you truly do not remember the face of a month old baby whos now fourteen (yes we are retconning the 30 year gap fnaf 3 established but im like pretty sure that was retconned before) this is devastating because she did not only lose Michael. she also lost Gregory, and then found him again while under the shadow of the thing that tried to make her kill him

- “I found myself there. I AM NOT ME” is the body-under-the-Pizzaplex part. Vanessa looking for Michael for years, eventually finding his remains/corpse as Vanny under the Pizzaplex/in the FFPS office. its probably what makes her finally snap and lose control over her body completely.

and glitchtrap is now free (“let me out”) to possess her or do Vanny stuff fully. congratulations, you found your husband. he is a dead body under the mall and also maybe the severed bear head in your living room which you brought with you after the pizzaplex burns and your son saved you (canon route/princess quest)

* post-SB Vanessa, Gregory, and Glamrock Freddy/Michael are therefore not “normal family reunited.” as usual in fnaf. they are mom who was possessed, son who survived her, british father who came back as an animatronic bear, and the worst shared family history document folder known to man. oh boy the aftons are fun.

also expanding on your original question ‘did michael and vanessa have a good marriage/relationship?’

yes.

that. is the point!!

i dont really enjoy/focus on romance. but. the tragedy works because there was something real there first.

they were funny. fond. domestic. annoying. young. in love. probably constantly bickering. michael was probably funnier with vanessa than with anyone else because with her he was safe enough to play, not just deflect. vanessa was softer with him, but still sharp enough to make him regret opening his mouth.

she keeps looking because he was home.

he stays gone because he thinks staying gone is the last useful thing he can do for her.