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gothamite-rambler · 1 month ago

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Jason has not washed his jacket in a few months due to his hectic schedule… Roy wears a trucker hat.

Roy: I’m not getting in the car until he burns that jacket.

Jason (shrugging): I won’t wear the jacket if you don’t wear your hat.

Harley and Artemis groaned, Artemis visibly aggravated that this argument was happening again.

Roy (raising an eyebrow): What? What’s wrong with my hat?

Jason: You say my jacket stinks, so I argue that your hat stinks and makes you look like a trucker from the South.

Roy (incensed): It does not!

Jason (smugly): Correction, an inbred trucker from the South.

Jason turned away, crossing his arms.

Artemis (rubbing her forehead in frustration): Just take off the stupid hat so we don't have to drive with the windows open again.

Roy: My hat doesn’t make me look like an inbred trucker! It's not my fault he hasn't washed his awful jacket in months!

Jason (scratching his head): It's not my fault you idolize Ashton Kutcher.

Roy (enraged): Take that back, you son of a bitch!

Harley stepped in, pushing a red-faced Roy back.

Harley: Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t sling those types of insults around.

Jason: I’ll stop as soon as he tosses his hat in the trunk of my car. Until then, Florida Man and I will be staying right here.

Roy (insulted, raising his voice): FLORIDA MAN!

Harley: Roy, he doesn't mean that as an insult… right, Jason?

Jason looked at his phone, refusing to leave or admit defeat.

Roy: My hat doesn't make me look inbred, like Ashton Kutcher or Florida Man! You look like a… prostitute boy!

Jason's jaw clenched at the strange but surprisingly hurtful insult, while Harley nervously nibbled her fingernail. Artemis simply nodded at Harley, silently confirming that yes, the argument over a hat and a coat had happened before.

Artemis (whispering as she shook her head): This argument started because Jason can't go to the cleaners.

Harley stepped in front of an enraged Jason.

Harley: All right, all right, nothin' said here is true. We've all had a tough day; let’s just—

Jason shoved Harley out of the way and stepped closer to Roy.

Jason: Stinky hat!

Roy: It doesn’t smell like someone sprayed air freshener and cheap body spray on it! So take the jacket off and toss it in the trunk!

Jason: Oh yeah? Your stupid hat smells like cheap hairspray and gel. Stinky hat!

Roy: A bodysuit and a worn, awful-smelling jacket don’t make you look tough!

Jason: Oh yeah? Well, a stinky, stupid hat doesn't help you shoot arrows well! It actually hinders it!

Roy (loudly): Your jacket had maggots in it once!

Jason (even louder): Your hat stinks!

Roy: Brown, cheap leather jackets stopped being cool in the 2000s!

Jason: Your hat is still stupid, and it was never popular.

Artemis let out an exhausted sigh, placing her hands on her hips.

Artemis: Oh my gods.

Jason: I’m not taking off my jacket until he admits the hat has always looked dumb.

Roy: Your jacket looks like you stole it from a homeless man!

Jason: Stupid hat!

Roy: Your coat smells like a dead man!

Jason: Oh yeah? Well, you have a stupid hat!

Jason and Roy continued to argue, while Artemis and Harley glanced back and forth between the two, watching them shout over one another. Finally, Harley jumped in between them.

Harley: Stop it! The both of ya's! Six feet away from each other!

Jason and Roy begrudgingly moved apart. Jason lay back on the ground, gazing up at the sun while Roy sat down on the dirt, a short distance away.

Artemis (checking the time on her phone): Oh my Zeus, we have to leave! We’ve been here for ten minutes, and Bizarro is already in the car!

Harley (mumbling): I’m starting to get why he went to the car now.

Meanwhile, Bizarro sat in the car, listening to opera and observing the scene unfold through the closed window.

Bizarro: They are not arguing about the coat versus the hat again? Geniuses.

Artemis: We’re never going to get to the forest! Just put both items in the trunk, and we’ll wash them later.

Jason: Not until he admits that trucker hats are dumb and fell out of style after Ashton Kutcher left Punk’d!

Roy: Screw you, jerk!

Artemis (sarcastically): Right, glad you guys are acting like adults about this. Harley, do you have any suggestions?

Harley: Well, clearly, this requires a mediator. Which is me. I’ll be right back with something that can fix this.

She strode off, determined to put an end to the absurd standoff.

Twenty minutes later, Artemis drove Jason's car down the road while Roy and Jason rested their heads on each other’s shoulders, fast asleep after Harley had done the meditative deed and knocked them unconscious, tossing the items that had sparked the fight into the trunk. Bizarro sat in the back with them, chuckling at the sight of the two men, finally at peace instead of arguing, before turning his gaze back to the window.

Harley (sheepishly): They won't be mad at me for knocking them out, will they?

Artemis (chuckling): No, we've all had to do it to each other. That just makes you an official outlaw.

Harley nodded with a smile.

Bizarro: Starfire said they were easier to handle; we just got unlucky.

Harley: Right, opposite talk! We did, Biz.

Artemis (genuinely): Harley, I think you're going to make a valuable asset to our team.

Harley: Thanks, girl.

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linklethehistorian · 2 months ago

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Linkle’s Fazbear Frights & Lore Insights #3: Count the Ways

[Read the general disclaimer and important notes for this series of articles here.]

[View the Masterlist of all completed articles here.]

Some Count the Ways specific notes:

I may be briefly talking about one of the mini-games in the game version of Into the Pit which revolves around Count the Ways, and in general, discussions about the book version and my thoughts on it in my previous article, as well as my thoughts on To Be Beautiful, may come up at certain points, so if you want to completely avoid Into the Pit and To Be Beautiful spoilers, maybe hold off on this one for now.

Again, my takes on William as a father, in regards to the games, may ruffle more than a few feathers of people who still insist on holding onto some of the old fanon stuff/do not believe in Frights Fiction. If you don’t like it and won’t go into it with an open mind, please just don’t read it; I’m not really in the mental state to go through a thousand comments trying to convince me of a notion that I simply don’t personally feel has any logical evidence behind it.

Now that that’s been said, let’s jump below the cut and get right to it! This is your last spoiler warning for Count the Ways, so if you want to turn back, do so now.

Overall Impressions

The Book:

I have to say, in terms of story, this one honestly just might be my favorite of the book. Don’t get me wrong; Into the Pit and To Be Beautiful are both great stories that I enjoyed listening to quite a lot, but the constant looming sense of danger and dread that this story oozes throughout every page and the way that it’s so expertly written so as to make all of the flashbacks feel natural through Millie’s reminiscence at the end of her life is something that simply can’t be outdone.

There is something especially, absolutely terrifying about the helplessness with which this tale is framed from beginning to end, knowing that Millie is trapped and there is absolutely nothing she can do but look back and reflect on every little thing that led her to where she is now, and the soon-to-be tragic end of her life that is — despite all her best efforts — inescapable.

Funtime Freddy’s horrifyingly menacing personality, too, with his cheerfully cold outlook, has to be one of my favorite things in the Frights series thus far; it’s such a fun, believable, and yet deeply unsettling characterization for such a relatively innocent-and-friendly-looking animatronic, and it frankly makes me hope that we will eventually get to see him again.

Millie and her grandpa, too, are quite unique, well-rounded, likeable and interesting characters for the length of the story we are given, and I have to say that I’m quite glad that Millie’s crush, Dylan, isn’t framed as a bad person for not being in love with Millie and having chosen someone else — which I feared the book might do, when I found out he was with the cheerleader of the school.

I’m glad that Millie is admonished by Dylan for the hypocrisy of her judgement of others based on their looks and interests, as I think that Millie being a genuinely flawed character makes her much more interesting than if she were treated as a complete victim and her judgment of Dylan’s girlfriend was proven to be correct.

As for the general theme I believe the book was trying to explore outside of the context of FNAF lore — how, often, when we say we want to die, what we actually mean is just that we want life to be different and better, and how, in those scenarios, the concept of dying is a form of escapism rather than a serious desire — I think that it was gotten across quite well, and in a very thought-provoking manner.

There is a lot more that I could say on the depth of this subject and hard-hitting themes that it tackles so beautifully, but I don’t want to spend too long in this section, as I know that the lore is what most people want to hear about, and I fear that I couldn’t do it the justice I desire, anyway, so for now, let us move on.

Normally, I would be cutting to a section where I talk about another version of the story that exist, but at the time of writing this, there is no graphic novel of Count the Ways, and I don’t really have much to say about the Count the Ways mini-game in the video game adaptation of Into the Pit, other than…it’s confusing, and I don’t really understand what it’s getting at half the time in relation to the story it’s supposed to be based on.

Lore Relevancy

Honestly, despite how much I loved this story, this is probably going to be one of the shortest posts I’ll make in regards to the lore relevancy section, since it’s really…pretty straightforward in its points of interest and, at least as far as I could tell each time I went through it, there isn’t all that much to speculate on, either.

The Lies and Half-truths

Well, calling Funtime Freddy pink was certainly one of the choices ever — I’ll start by saying that. In Sister Location, he’s very clearly a purple and white bear and not a pink one, but it’s extremely clear that that’s who they’re meaning to be the bear in the story — especially with Into the Pit’s game version properly confirming it in the mini-game based on this take — so, yeah, no idea what’s going on with that, exactly… Maybe I just have a different idea of what qualifies as pink. At best, I could see arguing he’s a particularly vibrant shade of mauve, but even then —

…Ah well, it doesn’t matter.

I think it goes without saying that, unless it comes up again in a story that sheds doubt on this, Millie probably isn’t a real person in the FNAF universe, or at least didn’t have all of these things happen to her or die, but that’s pretty much something we can say about nearly every person in the Fazbear Frights books.

That being said, the way that Millie died is quite similar to how one very important character — namely, Elizabeth — does die in the mainline canon, so at least that much isn’t a lie; it’s just that it didn’t happen exactly the same way as it did to Millie, nor did it ever happen to Millie herself, as far as we know (if Millicent Fitzsimmons even exists, which is doubtful).

The Truths and the Likely-Truths

The things I KNOW are True

So, now that we’ve moved past the lies and have gotten to talking about the truth, what are the things that I’m 100% confident Count the Ways is trying to tell us about the FNAF mainline canon lore?

Honestly? Not a lot. Whereas in most of the previous and soon-to-be-upcoming stories, there was a pretty long list of things I felt would be certainly or almost certainly relevant to the canon, in this one I actually think the two main points being discussed here are not only very simple, but also explored in very simple and obvious ways.

As I mentioned in the previous section, Millie’s death while being trapped in Funtime Freddy’s stomach is very clearly a parallel of Elizabeth and her death in Circus Baby, so I don’t think it requires a ton of proof or a long discussion of any kind before I can state that the story quite simply exists, first and foremost, to show off what the main two children-snatching, artificially intelligent Funtime Animatronics can do, and give us an example of some of the way Elizabeth could’ve died and why no one around Baby was likely to hear her over the general noise of the restaurant and customers.

Here is list some of the major possible function we learned Funtime Freddy (and possibly, by extension, Circus Baby) possess:

A just about soundproof design to prevent their captives from truly making enough noise to be noticed by those who might otherwise be able to find them.

The ability to keep children inside of them long enough for them to die of dehydration, or even provide them with water so that they could potentially die a longer death starvation, instead. Which stems from the fact that…

They can flood their belly chambers with water, allowing them to possibly drown their victims, or at least boil them alive by heating their internal temperature exponentially.

The ability to freeze their victims is also evidently within their capacity, as is the ability to electrocute them by sending bolts of electricity through their body cavity.

The power to send blades and metal rods through their stomach cavity in order to impale, decapitate, or bisect their captives quickly, making for a faster and more efficient kill.

I think, to that end, the story also exists to show off the fact that those animatronics are clearly programmed with their primary objective being to kill or to help each other kill, and that that is why most of their personalities in particular tend to feel so…either sadistic or utterly disarming at times in their dialogue of the games. They were made to be children snatching and killing machines.

And then, obviously, you have the return to the on-going theme of the Power of Wills and Wishes™️, this time presenting itself in Millie constantly saying and writing and thinking that she wishes for death, and her ‘coincidental’ encounter with Funtime Freddy then having him comment on and decide to grant her that (even though she realizes, just like Oswald and Sarah before her, that she should have been careful about what she wished for, as getting it didn’t ultimately turn out to be what she thought it would be at all).

The things I FEEL are True

Well, if that’s all I can state with absolutely certainty, are there at least some more, less objectively obvious things that I’m fairly confident in?

Not a great many, I’m afraid.

Even as I’m writing up this last section, I’m listening to the book yet a fourth time, analyzing every line as though I’m trying to crack some sort of hidden code and still coming up empty on the smoking gun that I’m seeking.

There are definitely things that I feel strongly are intentional — messages that I think are wanting to be conveyed — but not in the same way as I have with every story before this, and quite a few that I’ve read which come after it.

For example, I can see and I feel quite certain that there’s some manner of attempt to bring to the reader’s mind the story of Pizzeria Simulator, considering not only that Funtime Freddy was found by Millie’s grandfather in a Salvage yard in this story and there’s a lot of talk of her grandpa liking collect junk and putter around in his workshop salvaging and repairing things, but also that in the former book, To Be Beautiful, the obvious stand-in for Circus/Scrap Baby was found in a scrapyard and had to be ‘salvaged’ by Sarah; however, I’m not sure why this is the case.

It’s definitely there, but I still don’t know what relevance it actually has, in terms of telling us something about Pizzeria Simulator; the only theory I’ve yet been able to come up with is, admittedly, a bit too seemingly contradictory to what’s implied in canon for even me to fully believe, and that’s that, like Millie, Michael’s apparent willingness to die and/or casual acceptance towards the idea of doing so — as we’ve seen in the Security Logbook and had implied in Pizzeria Simulator — wasn’t actually a serious wish he had, and, despite having apparently in some way also given Henry the impression that he wanted it, he truly ended up regretting it once it was much too late, and the opportunity to die had been granted to him by said man.

While it’s not impossible that this is the reality, I’ve never been particularly convinced of the “Henry killed Michael against Michael’s will, wrongly assuming he wants death as much as Henry did” narrative, as I feel that it makes more sense for Michael’s character if he does genuinely not want to live in a world in which his entire family is gone — especially given the fact that he’s saddled with so much clear guilt for what happened to Garret at his own hands, and the domino effect of countless deaths that occurred thereafter.

Nevertheless, I do think it’s an interesting idea to note and contemplate, so I will put it out there.

As for whether or not I think Millie is meant to be a stand-in for Michael beyond that — despite what you’re probably expecting me to say by now, after two articles of insisting that this entire Fazbear Frights volume is trying to get across some sort of message about him — not…precisely.

The thing about Millie, as opposed to Oswald and Sarah in the two stories prior, is that while she does share some similarities with Michael that I think are at least partly intentional, and she also is clearly taking the place of Elizabeth in terms of how she dies, she’s also still distinct enough in both personality and plight that I don’t think she’s particularly meant to be anyone we already know in particular — just a unique character through which to convey various small tidbits of information about different people and events.

Believe me, I’ve sat here comparing her to every important character in the main canon for much longer than I’d care to admit, trying to see if there’s something or someone I could be overlooking that her individual circumstances could be solely relevant to, but at least at the time of writing this, I just haven’t found enough evidence to come firmly to such a conclusion.

I jotted down in the early notes for this article how it seems that the story of Millie and Hannah is a direct parallel to Abby and Sarah, respectively, just told from the opposite perspective, and I’ve asked myself in doing so (as per my previous article’s conclusions) whether or not this means that Millie is meant to be a stand-in for Elizabeth beyond just the circumstances of her death, but there is just absolutely nothing else that they have in common, so that idea had to be promptly abandoned.

At least if we said she’s Michael, there are some things that could be used to support that claim:

Her last name, Fitzsimmons, is phonetically reminiscent of one of Michael’s chosen aliases later in life: Fritz Smith.

She is called “Dracula’s Daughter” by many people in her school after being obsessed with the book, Dracula, and in Sister Location, Michael is obsessed with a soap opera style TV show called The Immortal and the Restless, which is about a vampire named Vlad — who is clearly meant to be a metaphor for Michael’s father, William. This technically makes Michael “Dracula’s Son”.

Funtime Freddy refers to Millie as an “ice cold goth”, and in general, throughout the book, she is shown and described to be an angsty teen who is distant with her family, which, minus the goth part as far as we know, does seem to be at least decently accurate to Michael’s character pre-Bite of ‘83.

Nevertheless, I’m not particularly convinced that this is exactly the case, either; certainly, I do think that Millie is supposed to have some traits that may harken back to the vague concept of Michael, so that readers might continue to keep him in mind, but I don’t think that she is Michael.

She does share Michael’s desire for death — whether or not Michael himself later felt regret at the end of his life, as speculated earlier as a possibility — and she also ultimately has that same secondary overarching theme of main characters feeling unlovable, unwanted, utterly invisible in any possible positive context, and like life is meaningless in its current state, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re one and the same. There just isn’t enough overwhelming proof or connection for me to personally come to that conclusion.

I know — that might come as a shock to people who have read my previous articles, with how strongly I’ve been asserting that I believe this entire volume of Fazbear Frights is trying to tell us something about Michael, but it’s true; while I do still think the story is trying to tell us something about him and about the nature of the Funtime animatronics, I don’t think that Millie is particularly meant to be any one character from canon. I think she shares things in common with at least two of them and is supposed to remind us of them for different reasons each, but other than that, she is very much and very clearly her own character with her own unique traits.

Michael doesn’t have a canonically mentioned equivalent to Dylan. Michael’s parents aren’t flighty, impractical people who squander their money and jump from project to project, and country to country. Michael’s grandfather — or anyone that we know he knew, for that matter — wasn’t canonically stated to have been a retired teacher of some form. Michael wasn’t known to be goth. There are certainly things we could read into certain details like these and more, if we really wanted to reach for things, but without any solid amount of undeniable proof, it’s all just rampant speculation.

No, it’s far easier to just say that Millie is her own character created for the purpose of the Fazbear Frights story, who borrows traits and elements of her life story from others who actually existed in the in-universe real FNAF world.

As for other things that I think are worth mentioning, I can really only think of the fact Funtime Freddy is described as pink in this story; I’m not sure what significance this actually has, but my immediate thought process was that he was described this way so as to bring to mind Funtime Foxy, since every other Sister Location animatronic had been represented in some way in this book already (Ballora and Baby through Eleanor, and Funtime Freddy through himself). I don’t know if this is true, and I don’t even know if it matters, but it is something I wanted to throw out there. That or…it was a mistake in the writing, or the author just defines colors differently than I do. Who knows?

Whatever the case, I could be missing something here, but I think that’s pretty much everything I wanted to talk about with this book. I hope you enjoyed, and I’ll see you all in the next one!

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