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I know I’m kind of sensitive with Mike’s fandom characterization in general but I’m extra touchy with 80s Mike. For some he is genuinely way too nice and meek mannered. For some he acts like he was born in the 2000s. And then for some people he is way too fucking mean, so stereotypical of a bully that it feels like a parody. Almost comically evil. Like Tom and Jerry type shit, laying traps outside of CC’s door every day.
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I was laughing out loud writing the message in the second screenshot. This is exactly how people sound when they’re talking about WillTrophy or whatever bullshit
The fandom seems to view the start of the tragedy of Michael Afton as the bite of 83 and, whether they realize it or not, everything that happens afterwards is kind of treated like consequences for what happened that day, even though so much of it is unrelated which is honestly a pet peeve of mine. But also the thing with me is like. When I focus on angst and imagine him crying or doing and saying or contemplating bad things, a lot of the time it's when both CC and Elizabeth are alive and well, and literally no one has died yet. In fact the period that I focus on the most is literally 1982 and pre bite 1983. Like you realize even in some world where no deaths and murders ever occur he's still suffering right? I don't know. We could turn back to clock to before anything went wrong that created the story of FNAF and he's still suffering regardless. He's a tragic character without Five Nights at Freddy's. Genuinely. FNAF didn't need to happen but FNAF happening is the only reason we know his story. Otherwise life would have moved on for him, as it does. There are so many people like this but they don't become protagonists of a story and have a bunch of wild paranormal and science fiction shit happen to them. They're just that one guy you knew in school who you thought was a little peculiar and troubled but never gave it too much thought. Or the funniest person you've ever met in your life. Or a stranger you briefly chatted with then never saw again. Or, if you're me, it's your best friend and you wonder how you could have been so close and known so much about her and still had no fucking idea until years later.
Today I've been thinking about the immediate aftermath of FNAF 3. Like Mike going home and stumbling inside, dropping whatever number of things he used to survive and start the fire and collapsing onto his bed and being like "it's over." But he's not that thrilled. He thought he'd feel more satisfied with finally having achieved what he swore to do 30 years ago but he just feels like shit. He's not sad by any means, nor does he feel even the slightest shred of regret or guilt, but he feels no contentedness, no happiness, no vindication, no closure, nothing good. He honestly didn't view that as murder for the sake of revenge. It was more like putting an animal down. Maybe the way he feels comes from the miserable state of all of it. How pitiful it is that things had to come down to that. What a pathetic existence that man's was. And then after some time with all of those feelings a new one starts to surmount all of it, one that's disconcerting: "What now?" The sole sense of purpose he'd felt for so many years is gone now. He thinks he's finished what he was meant to do with his life from the very beginning. So now he's just here.
And there's nowhere else to go from here. So what now? He's in his 50s. He's probably got another 30 years until he dies, if he can die. And he's thinking about continuing to being alive for that long in his situation with no actual goal and thinking no, no, no. He actually could not stand that. So maybe it's time to give killing himself a try again? Thing is, in retrospect he'd actually been glad he hadn't died that day in Sister Location. That would've been so shameful. A self righteous decision he made while telling himself it was for the greater good when he actually just wanted to be put out of his misery. If he'd died that day that would have been his pathetic existence. If he were to willingly die now he wouldn't find that troubling because it's just the end of the road of this long journey and he can move on to wherever the other side is. But it isn't exactly all that dignified. Not a clean fulfilling end to all of this. But maybe that's fitting. So he thinks about it but weeks started to pass and he doesn't try anything, because there's something inside of him telling him he may need to stick around a bit longer. He doesn't know what that feeling is, but it won't be very long at all before he finds out.
On the drive home from seeing Obsession I was talking about how I had (correctly) anticipated a moment where a character was going to throw up and closed my eyes and covered my ears, as I tend to do when watching movies. I found out later it was done into a trashcan and nothing was shown, but I never know for certain if something is off screen, so I don't take any chances. I started discussing this phobia that has plagued my life for so many years with my parents. I explained how in fiction it's not just scenes where characters throw up that can be upsetting or triggering. I hate it when characters cough/throw up blood from an injury or illness. I hate in The Fly where he throws up the white fly juice. I know this isn't vomit and I don't care, I still hate it. I hate it when things come up people's throat, like that one gif of Superman pulling the mechanical wires out of his throat that you've seen at least three hit tweets of when someone captions it "Michael Afton."
And this led me to bringing up the Fazbear Frights story Pizza Kit. I read this one in 2021 and was so horrified by it. I forgot about it for years and then last summer when I got back into FNAF it suddenly came back to me and I had to go into the living room where it was cooler and lay on the couch because I was getting uneasy/nauseous. I explained to them the plot of the book and that there was only one scene where she actually threw up and it was probably the least upsetting. The upsetting part was the extremely detailed description of her sickness. The feeling of something uneasy and heavy and sick in your stomach. The feeling that it doesn't just need to come back up, but that it's TRYING to. Trying to induce that. Actual nightmare fuel for someone with emetophobia.
This led me to talking about how wild the Fazbear Frights stories are. That led me to talking about how FNAF has always had lots of younger kids interested in it. This led me to talking about all the things I learned from Mat Pat's theory videos when I was a kid, which include minimum wage, sequel vs prequel, lobotomies... And my mom was like wait, lobotomies? So I went to explain it, but in order to do that I had to give the entire background of FNAF 4 as a game, theories about the game, and the huge Dream Theory debate. It was probably getting close to 10 minutes before I was like "so if you're missing or have damage to the frontal lobe" and my mom went "oh so that's the lobotomy part of it. I knew you must have been going somewhere with all of this."
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I don't hate movie Michael as a person. I hate this decision and its consequences, but that's not his fault lmao. I understand his situation and that he is not actually evil, but the problem with that is that the movie doesn't take him seriously enough for that not to be the impression. But like, I don't want anything bad to happen to him. In fact if he's gonna be in the movies then he'd better have a happy ending because honestly I'd be kind of pissed off if they killed him off lmfao.
I see an inevitable redemption arc for him in the third movie where I feel like he will be of more importance and have more depth. Which got me thinking. What am I gonna do if the third movie comes out and handles him so well that I start liking him. I'm thinking about myself, thinking about how weak I am. Anything said between him and William is going to have my thoughts racing. If he's being tossed around and berated by Springtrap I am going to be crying. If he's the one that sets the haunted house on fire I am going to jumping up from my seat and cheering. That last part would mean that by the time the third movie ends he's regained this part of his character they've taken from him up until that point in his life. And I feel like that'll change some of the game Michael villainization problems we're having.
It still bugs me that they decided to have him start off as a villain at all. Certainly pisses me off that they had the gall to throw in a line like "I am here to continue his legacy." It also is just something that really did not need to happen and kind of doesn't make much sense. But at the very least if the mess is cleaned up by the third movie I may be alright in the long run. I am not changing my view of game Michael. I do not believe game Michael helped William in any way and I believe his actions during Sister Location were Elizabeth centric. I will always believe that. But if this whole "he was always evil anyways" thing stops I might be able to make peace with it.
That being said. If this does happen it's gonna be pretty fucking embarrassing with all the shit I've been talking.
It bothers me when people say Elizabeth's character in the novels was bad and that it ruined her character in the games. I acknowledge the differences. She has an agency in the books that she doesn't in the games. Circus Baby seems more like Elizabeth herself in the novels rather than a separate personality. In the games Elizabeth views William as good and her first instincts are to go to him. In the novels she knows that he is evil and works with him anyways because she can't let go of her love. But the reason I don't think that ruins her is because her life circumstances differed in the novels. I think a huge part of this has to do with her being an only child. Also the fact that Circus Baby is also the fourth Charlie who is angry from Henry.
Then I realized, does that make me look like a hypocrite for hating movie Michael's character so much? It's the same thing right? Differing life circumstances lead to a difference in motivation and worldview. Okay, but here's the thing. Elizabeth was taken seriously in the novels. She had a purpose. Her thoughts were explored. Even as a villain she was complex, being portrayed as a victim. None of this is true with movie Michael. He has not been taken seriously at all, not explored, nothing. I won't say that if he had been taken seriously I'd be a-okay with it, because the massive shift of who he is for such a huge movie meant to represent the franchise would still not sit right with me, but I admit it wouldn't be nearly as bothersome, because at least they cared enough to not treat him like a joke. Maybe they're gonna do something in the third movie, but that just begs the question, why would they even put him in the second movie if they weren't going to anything meaningful?
Also, I feel like the differences between game Elizabeth and novel Elizabeth aren't nearly as drastic as game Michael and movie Michael. I think the core of Elizabeth's character remains the same. Like I said, even though she knows William is a horrible and evil person, she still loves him and works for him, and gets extremely angry and defensive when he is insulted. In the games, post Sister Location, she has the same role of loyalty to him. She is the willingly loyal child either way. That's her role in the story.
You could argue that Circus Baby specifically is the problem, because Circus Baby clearly does not care for William in Sister Location seeing as she killed who she thought was him without a second thought. And I do see people complain that the way she acts in FNAF 6 ruined her character from Sister Location, so maybe they're consistent with that complaint and the novels at least, but there was a reason for that shift in behavior in the games. Michael is responsible for it. He gave that control back to her. But again, Circus Baby in the novels feels like she is Elizabeth herself. And the reason for that difference is largely because the two of them come from entirely different origins. The circumstances of their creation were drastically different.
Might I add that there are some pretty stark differences between game Henry and novel Henry too. You can say the same thing: different universe. Different life. But just like Elizabeth, his role in the story has not changed. He's the co-creater of Freddy's. William's business partner. The creative mind behind the restaurant franchise and animations that meant so much to many people. A quiet and reclusive person who struggled to be present in his daughter's life but nonetheless loved her, so much that her death completely destroyed him. The biggest differences are how they viewed themselves when it comes to accountability in what happened, and how they coped with Charlotte's death. Interesting differences but it does not change Henry's place in the narrative. And novel Henry's character is the most explored any version of Henry has ever gotten. He's a compelling character.
Elizabeth being an only child in the novels is crazy. The reason she isn't as naive as she is in the games is because Mike wasn't there doing everything he could to absorb as much cruelty for her as possible. She had no one else to depend on or turn to. Seriously though. Where are her brothers. Why isn't she a sister. Where the hell is Mike.
