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cardhamine · 1 year

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*Sighs and unpacks my entire write-up for William Afton in this AU*

WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING THE WAFERS

See Read More for Will's entire history prior to the fic, essentially. <3

TWs - FNAF-relevant child abuse/murder, Antisocial Personality Disorder discussed, cursing (but really that's it except uhhh trans Henry ig but I'd say that's not a trigger as much as just something that some people hate the idea of)

- William was born in 1947 as the only child of two products of Old Money from England. They were not in love and viewed their marriage as a business transaction, but they were amicable otherwise. Their marriage was open as long as no one found out. Business troubles required that they move to America when William was a teenager.

- William is a 3rd. His father William II (did go by Bill) was a difficult man who also treated his son as a branch of his business.

- William's mother's name was Juliet. She was a stay-at-home mother, but she was not affectionate. She kept up with most of the family's finances.

-The family business was originally from his mother's side. They were semi-famous toy makers. Father's side were investors. Both families worth a million or more. (Not as impressive in 2023 money but a big deal then).

- William's family emphasized the importance of LEGACY. If you don't leave something memorable behind, you may as well have not existed. You will rot in the dirt and be forgotten. Your life will have meant nothing. (Plus you were supposed to continue the legacy of your forefathers, so now you've fucked that up, loser)

- That gets in Will's head but manifests into a drive for work and fear of death that develops into a phobia before he's even reached college age.

- The Aftons were angry at William for wanting to go into things like puppetry/robotics/engineering instead of just taking the business, but he spun the idea as a continuation/evolution of the family toy making business and they chilled somewhat.

- (He didn't actually care much about the family business but he did genuinely enjoy circuitry and engineering.)

- Will meets Henry in university when he was pre-transition (still being referred to as Henrietta or, preferably, Henri). Henri is brilliant with design and Will with the technological aspects (building, engineering, etc).

- They date (not SUPER seriously bc William is aware his family wouldn't approve) for a couple years. Henri meets a nice woman named Marysol (Mary) in classes, and they end up getting married after a 3 year courtship.

- William stays close friends with Henry (post-transition after wedding, at least socially if not surgically/chemically). Mary is perfectly fine with this, although she can tell there's something off about William.

- (There is something similarly off about Mary. Henry really knows how to pick 'em. Or maybe he has a type. Either way, both William and Mary lie on the antisocial personality disorder spectrum.)

- In regards to their APD symptoms, the two share a lot of the same traits: impaired capacity for empathy (both had better cognitive empathy than affective empathy), lack of respect for social norms/expectations, deceptive behaviors. On the other hand, Mary had some features William lacked, such as violent urges/tendencies and a complete lack of guilt/remorse. (She may have been involved in some violent crime, but she was never found out.) However, she very badly wanted a family and had a larger capacity for affective empathy than William which displayed in her care for Henry and, eventually, Charlie. However, her capacity for AE was VERY person-specific.

- William had a far diminished capacity for affective empathy comparatively (if the average person has 70% capacity to empathize with others, Mary had 35% and Will had 20%). However, that didn't mean he wanted other people to suffer. He preferred for others to be successful, so long as their success didn't inhibit his own. Partially because when people were successful, they were happy, and when they were happy, they didn't trouble him with their problems; partially because he did have that smidgen of empathy. He also experienced guilt, though that often made him more irritable than apologetic.

- William goes through a semi-arranged marriage to a very sweet woman named Violet who is also the child of an old money family but who wanted to be married to someone she loved. She did end up loving William, and he was fond of her.

- William and Mary are aware of their similarities immediately. They eventually have a meeting about it. Mary insists that they agree to never bring one another's families into any of their activities. At the time, Will has literally never done or even considered doing anything she's implying. But he agrees. She emphasizes that she will ruin his family if he ruins hers. He says, "Ditto."

- Fredbear’s Family Diner is opened by William and Henry around 1971.

- Michael William Afton was born a couple years after the two married. He looked a lot like William and like Bill, and that was something that made it difficult for Will to be overly fond of him. He also represented the family legacy that Will felt was thrust upon him his entire life. On top of that, he was a rebellious child who caused Will a lot of irritation, and Will was not very forgiving of that. Overall, they had a miserable relationship.

- They had two more children after Michael because Violet wanted them, even though the Afton side of the family viewed it a waste of resources, given they already had a male heir. William felt real affection for the first time at the birth of Elizabeth "Lizzie" Viola Afton. She looked like Violet but was precocious and intelligent like William.

- Shortly thereafter, the Emilys adopted Charlie, and the two girls eventually became inseparable.

- Evan was born 2 years later. He was a quiet, nervous child. Michael's irritation at being unloved by his father was mostly taken out on Evan, because 1. Lizzie was very protected by her father but also 2. Michael also loved his little sister too much to hurt her.

- Evan Cecil "Cece" Afton was Violet's "favorite" (though she loved all of her children too much to make that obvious.) She doted on him a lot, since he was the baby.

- William develops the Talking Fredbear plush with an internal radio so that the children can communicate with him without barging into his workshop and bothering him. (Cece uses it the most.)

- William and Henry open the first of the Freddy's establishments around this time.

- Things go smoothly until Cece's accident in 1983 (as in, "The Bite of"). He was 8. Though Michael was only teasing his brother, an electrical short caused Fredbear's jaws to clamp down, leading Cece to sustain a critical injury to his frontal lobe. The family is devastated. He is kept in a medically-induced coma for several months. William did adapt the Talking Fredbear plush so the family and he could record messages which would play every once in a while for Cece when they were not at the hospital.

- Unfortunately, he does not recover and eventually passes away from hospital-acquired pneumonia.

- Violet does not take the incident well and must be hospitalized for stress-induced psychopathy shortly thereafter. She passes away for unclear reasons while hospitalized.

- William's phobia of death engulfs his life. He throws himself into his work and spends every waking moment either keeping his business afloat or trying to "solve the death problem". His ideas become more and more psychotic. He learns about the theory of Remnant and begins making plans. He reminds himself to eat and sleep just so he can keep appearances up for Elizabeth. This goes on for a year or so until he develops his theory to use remnant to transmute the soul to a sturdier body that won't die. He just needs test subjects.

- Mary can tell that Will is becoming worse. She reminds him of their agreement: they’re to keep both their families out of any of their bad behavior. William agrees and intends to keep the promise.

- (1985) The Missing Children Incident occurs. Charlie sees William tossing his bloodied uniform in the dumpster next door and returning to the building that night after police have already done primary investigation (questioned him/searched the place and found nothing). He cares at least a small bit for Charlie and is somewhat aggrieved about what he "has to do." He makes it quick and painless.

- The Emilys are devastated, and Mary knows immediately what happened. She doesn't say anything, just plans.

- William DID develop the sister location (Circus Baby's Pizza World) to collect subjects to continue his experiments. His children are NOT allowed to set foot on the premises, and he impresses upon Michael that he should do what he can to make sure Elizabeth never does. He emphasizes that Michael has the responsibility to make up for what “Michael did” to Cece and his mother.

- Not a month later, Mary got her revenge on William by "bringing Lizzie to see Daddy at work as a surprise". William did not know Elizabeth was there, and Mary directed her to Circus Baby when no one else was in the room.

- William goes absolutely bonkers after this.

- (Henry never has any clue William or Mary were involved in their children's deaths - until a decade or more later when he accepts William's involvement in the other children's disappearances/murders. He never realizes Mary killed Lizzie and forever blames her death on William.)

- (Michael essentially goes to live with Uncle Henry and Aunt Mary until he leaves for college, and it helps the three heal a lot. Henry likely lives through these events due to having Michael to watch after/set an example for.)

- (1987) The details Will described to Vanny when defending his murderous behavior were accurate. The DCI did occur at a birthday party for children from the hospice wing of the local children's hospital. William intended to transmute their souls to the animatronics. They were 100% a science experiment, and that was a very disgusting thing to do. He had convinced himself that the ends justified the means. He said the "curing death for everyone" bit as an excuse/manipulation for Vanny's sake, though, as he at no point ever cared how his research might improve the lives of others. He was only obsessed with escaping death personally and would do almost anything to make that happen

- The deaths are thoroughly investigated but inevitably it was impossible to prove William was to blame, despite him being brought to trial. He did step down as co-CEO of the company at this time.

- Sometime after this, while attempting to harvest remnant from the suits he stuffed the DCI victims in, he's Springlocked.

- By the end of his life, William had directly killed 12 children (including Charlie) and indirectly (via the Funtime Animatronics) killed an unclear number more.

- His methods of murder were generally quick and painless. These methods are also easiest to clean up and hide. He had no reason to be overly cruel, as he was not studying Agony and had not discovered it before his death.

- Springtrap is a whole other ballgame. William's soul and remnant did inhabit the Spring Bonnie suit for decades, but his consciousness was not as clear due to the Agony created during his violent, torturous death also impacting that form's feelings and behaviors. This is one reason Springtrap is so often recklessly violent/homocidal.

- Glitchtrap is a much purer form of his consciousness not as manipulated by Agony, so he's more like his original personality.

- Overall, William (in Breached) is a deeply troubled man suffering from APD but who also allowed himself to excuse some of the worst possible human behaviors. He tried to excuse himself by blaming his evil actions on his personal fears. Then, he tried justifying them through half-baked promises of breakthroughs in science/healthcare which were entirely fabricated (i.e. they were not preconceived on his part, just an afterthought). He would have committed all his atrocities even if the outcome would have only benefited him, regardless of what he said to gaslight Vanny into feeling guilty for questioning his actions.

- Harming anyone, especially children, in any way is horrible, and taking away another person’s agency via emotional abuse/torture is also horrible. My William is definitely an abusive, miserable, evil person. However, I’m leaving out much of the additions from the books, including this Wafer Debacle. This is because I think he is a much more interesting and compelling villain if we are able to see the steps he took to get where he got. Being someone with personal struggles who gives in to desperate, selfish desires to protect themselves from their greatest fears is something more relatable and therefore more insidious, perhaps even more disconcerting to read than someone who makes fear gas for kids because they’re wicked (IMO). Being cartoonishly rotten isn’t my vision for him in this AU. On the other hand, there are real life villains who have perpetrated similar (perhaps not with the sci-fi, fear gas aspects) violence against their own children (See “A Child Called It” book if you want to be nauseated forever until you die but also TW TW TW TW!!!), so it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable to claim a horror game/novel villain would go to such lengths. Just. I’m not going that direction with my William in particular.

- (Malhare was being honest about "not carving up the kids", i.e torturing them like she does her adult victims. Her theory on getting good remnant samples involves torture (leads to her independent ‘breakthrough’ about Agony, before she looks into previous research on the subject by P. Taggart). William’s theory involves the victims being young (remnant is newer/easier to manipulate). From a scientific research perspective, including 2 or more uncontrolled variables in the research would mess with results and make it difficult and possibly impossible to decipher which variable was actually effective. So.)

- Just a fun fact, he did really feel real fondness for Vanny initially. He saw a lot of Lizzie's precocious nature in her, and he loved the ego boost from her gushing over how wonderful his company/designs were. He thought she was capable and had promise in robotics/engineering. He's just a very selfish person who uses people as pawns, whether he likes them or not. And if they start getting in his way, he isn't afraid to let them burn.

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