#THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CC

[melancholykiwi]

Since both pride month and technos birthday are here, let me just say that c!techno is aroace and I don’t take criticism

[mioakem]

it’s so easy to forget how disgraceful it was to ship dsmp characters back in the day. like even mention the possibility of cbeeduo being /rom and ur crucified. if u suggested that ctntduo had romantic and sexual tension then u were CANCELLED and deemed a WEIRDO. cpuffychu was just girls being besties and they totally don’t kiss eachother on the lips and ✂️. EVERYONE IS JUST PLATONIC NO GAY ROMANCE HERE

[varpusvaras]

Seventeen really doesn't know what to think about Fox's new spouses.

They are...alright. That's the best word he can come up with, for now. They seem nice. Caring. Smart. Fox had mentioned them before, and always described them with good terms (which perhaps should've glued Seventeen in to the fact they were a thing. Fox had never been someone who would go out of his way to mention anyone just because), and the more Seventeen heard about them, the more he did appreciate them.

It just all felt fake, in a way. Not them, no. Seventeen had met enough nat-borns by now to recognise when they were being dishonest and smarmy. Not these two. Absolutely not. They were probably two of the most honest and open people Seventeen had ever met, which was also most likely one of the reasons Fox liked them. Fox had always liked it when things were said as they were. But just watching them, happy as they were, in their own little world where everything was fine and nothing else mattered, Seventeen couldn't shake the feeling of waiting for something, anything, to go wrong.

They weren't made for happy endings. Sooner or later something would happen, and ruin it all. They weren't made for soft things like this. They weren't made for things like love, not like this. Love for them meant training them, teaching them, pushing them forward and over their limits, so they wouldn't die.

That's what Seventeen had done.

It wasn't fair, some part of him screams. It wasn't fair that his love had been made to be bruises and broken bones and tears and anger, only for someone else to then come after all of it and claim that love was actually anything and everything else than that.

It wasn't fair.

[kazumahashimoto]

i've grown up since! (i DJ now)

[horse-head-farms]

okay hear me out guys: trans girl Hypno

i have no explanation for this other than 1) i think it is fun 2) it gives the boob window a purpose (future investment for when boobs happen)

[simgerale]

me after attempting to get back into sims and realizing i had a lot more to do than play the game

[demonic-shadowlucifer]

If there's one thing the internet has taught me this week, it's that it's apparently perfectly okay to trash talk an athlete underneath news posts of them suffering a season ending injury... but god FUCKING forbid that someone criticizes their favorite celebrity who can do no wrong 🥺🥺🥺🥺

[nyatbinary-81]

okay. @evil-eyedlurker lets try this again since tumblr ate my last draft.

Part 1: Setting the Stage.

Before we begin, I'd like to recommend reading the book for yourself. There's a free copy here on archive.org. I'd also like to point to my previous post for some context if anyone reading this post is new here. You may also want to watch Dual Process Theory's take, as I agree with pretty much all of their arguments.

You have the appropriate context for this? Good.

Now then.

Within the logbook, there are three known writers: Red Pen, aka Michael Afton; Faded Text, aka Charlie Emily; and Altered Text, aka CC/Cassidy Afton.

There are also, however, three identifiable names: Mike, Cassidy, and Dave. Popular fanon will tell you that "Cassidy" is Faded, as well as being the Vengeful Spirit and the second Golden Freddy spirit. It will now also tell you that CC's name is Dave, previously mstaken to be Evan.

I am here to tell you that popular fanon is, as popular fanon tends to be, wildly off the mark.

As per my last post, I dismissed Cassidy as a little girl for two reasons: firstly, that she has no narrative significance before whenever the logbook takes place, and secondly, because Faded asks too many specific questions to be a stranger. The logbook came out after Pizzeria Sim, and introducing Cassidy as such an important character this late in the story is nonsensical.

But...my theory leaves out Dave. Who is Dave?

Put a pin in that for now. We'll get there. For now, let's talk about Michael Afton.

Part 2: Why?

In my last theory post, linked above, I asked a question that I found to be forgotten: why? Why does faded ask such specific questions? Why is there so much puppet symbolism? Why would CC know the name Cassidy? Why are there so many tidbits that never get mentioned?

I have some new ones today: Why is Mike here? Why are Charlie and Cassidy in his book? Why is the name Dave important?

For simplicity's sake, we'll start with why Charlie and CC are talking. Based on the imagery of the Puppet and birthdays on pages 31 and 98, as well as "The party was for you" (103), it's most likely to set up the Happiest Day, placing this before...whenever that happens. Before Pizzeria Sim, at least.

(Fig. 1: The Puppet/Happiest Day symbolism.)

So...if that's the goal, why is Mike important? Sure, he helps spell Cassidy's name, but only the last couple letters. And of all the available grids, "Dave" is spelt in the Foxy grid. The one animatronic that is associated with Mike.

(Fig. 2: Available grids.)

To me, this implies the name Dave is important for Michael to remember. But why?

...Why would Michael need to remember anything? Surely he remembers, right? I mean, he references the Nightmares and casual bongos and exotic butters and the Bite. Surely, surely that means he remembers!

(Fig. 3: Michael's references.)

Reread all his answers again, all throughout the book, knowing this takes place after Sister Location, during the time he's hunting down his father. Tell me what's missing. (Or you can trust me to tell you, I suppose.)

Mentions of his family, right?

In fact, he's not even the one to bring up the Bite. The logbook brings it up for him; he just responds to it.

Throughout the book, Mike is unresponsive and noncommittal. His doodles exist in the corners and margins, he rarely responds to either the book or Faded's questions directly, he even crosses out his own name. The only thing he repeatedly emphasizes throughtout the book is SURVIVAL. In all caps, SURVIVAL. CERTAIN DEATH.

(Fig. 4: Michael's scribblings as per the previous paragraph.)

Interestingly, he commonly writes about leaving leaving. Such as running away, locking up the animatronics, going on vacation, or dying. This directly contrasts his established desire to find his father, which implies he hasn't gotten that motivation yet.

Michael has been scooped by the time the Logbook happens. Michael, like most spirits, forgot. Forgot less than Cassidy and perhaps the MCI, for whatever reason, but forgot nonetheless.

And Charlie is here to help him remember, the same way she's helping Cassidy remember.

Specifically, she wants him to remember the name Dave, spelled out via the coordinates of the answered questions. The first one of which is answered by Michael, long before Cassidy says "I'm scared" as a potential alternate answer.

Part Three: Fandom Really Needs to Learn to Re-examine Fundamentals.

Take that pin out of "Who's Dave" and "Why is Dave important" from earlier, because it's time to answer those questions.

Okay. So, we've established a few things.

Dave is not one of the spirits in the logbook.

Charlie is pushing for Michael to remember the name Dave.

Michael has lost his memory, and has yet to gain the motive of finding his father.

If all of this is true, "Dave" must be connected to Michael's motivation: finding his father.

But we already know his name! William Afton, as established in...in......uh.........which game was it again? Sorry, hold on, let me just check my sources...*shuffling papers*...oh! Here we go! William Afton's name was established in the novels...and...and for the entirety of The Silver Eyes, he's referred to almost exclusively by his alias, Dave. To my knowledge, his first name is never confirmed in the games.

...What if we've been wrong in accepting that his name is William Afton? What if he is Dave, and it's not just an alias?

Allow me, once more, to set the scene.

Part Four: FNaF is a story. Let's treat it as such.

The date is [REDACTED], just after Michael's scooping. His corpse gets up without him, shambling around with metal for bones and vague remnants of children's souls for a pilot.

Michael himself is stuck in a security logbook; a paltry little thing given to him by his employers, like a twisted joke. He writes and crosses out his own name, and doodles in the margins for a bit.

Charlie, ever the attentive soul, joins him, bringing the Crying Child with her. Two brothers, one memory, or something like that. She begins gauging what he remembers: Does he know who he is? How he died?

Michael doesn't respond. He doesn't need to. It's not hard for Charlie to piece together what happened, especially given his shambling corpse ranting and raving about their revenge.

So, she begins to push Michael to remember his killer. She starts with the nightmares (do you have dreams), the first thing he did. She follows up with his resemblance to his father (what do you see), but Michael goes unresponsive, possibly catching on to her game. Ever the stubborn one, that. Instead, CC responds. So she switches gears, roping CC into helping her spell out both names by directing her questions to him, until Michael finally helps spell Cassidy.

Next to the wordsearch where Cassidy remembers is a mirror; one to reflect EVAD (spelled in CC answer order) into DAVE. Two brothers, one memory, as the saying doesn't go.

Michael's corpse lies cold and empty on the ground, Ennard having escaped into a gutter. He can't move on, not yet. There's only one option left for him now.

Michael looks into the mirror.

And his eyes open purple.

.

also it would be really funny if davetrap had an alias in the games timeline and it was william/will miller THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT!

[bugflies00]

dream stans stop tagging cc dream fanart as #dream smp challenge im trying to reblog art about the characters not the piece of shit from real life

[holocene-sims]

cc wip? well,,, technically it's NOT a wip because i started and finished this dress recolor two years ago lmao, but i'm thinking of finally sharing this on here!!

[socialbunny]

what skip broke should be dripped out in

[brightwoods]

Does anyone else feel like almost all of the conflicts that had to do with the various character dynamics in Chain of Thorns didn’t actually get resolved, they just unexplainably ceased to exist after two books of building them up because CC didn’t feel like writing them anymore and she didn’t know how to resolve it naturally after how she’d built the issues up so much?

Like how none of the characters but Cordelia and Thomas had any clue about the Alastair and Charles situation and then suddenly in CoT it was like who doesn’t know? Of course Matthew knew and didn’t say anything before and then randomly brought it up to Cordelia in Paris while assuming she knew too

Or how Alastair and Thomas went from how things were at the end of CoI with Alastair thinking it could never work because Thomas’s friends hate him to oh look everyone suddenly is friends with Alastair with no grudge with no development of that in this book at all, just an abrupt shift

Especially the Alastair and Matthew dynamic where Matthew hated Alastair and wanted him to have nothing to do with any of their friends and he spent CoI ranting about him to Cordelia. And then suddenly in CoT it’s like of course Matthew is supportive of Thomas and Alastair and oh look Matthew and Alastair are suddenly not just tolerating each other for Thomas’s sake but friends despite barely interacting and no development actually showing and never getting any mention of the other in their own POVs, just having Cordelia be like Alastair stop being dumb, you’re literally friends with him now

Or like everyone other than Christopher and Grace where it was like oh we don’t like her for how she’s treated us and her friends straight to anyway she’s one of us. Like yes Grace was useful and yes Tatiana manipulated her whole life, but none of that was why anyone changed their minds or opinions? It was just suddenly the flip of a switch when it was convenient for CC

Or Anna and Ariadne where it didn’t so much develop as Anna just acted mean to Ariadne on and off throughout the series and at the end of CoI she wanted nothing to do with a relationship and then in CoT she was just suddenly like sure I guess I do. Also, slightly different note, but I did not like that Anna barely interacted with anyone else for the entire book and she was just off in the corner being an irrelevant romantic subplot for almost all of the book except when she showed up to barely even be shown in the background being sad about her brother being dead

(Although Anna still got more of a reaction than everyone else and his death was poorly executed all around in the sense of how did you write this so predictably and poorly that no one even knows when he died and it’s so background and 99% of the characters don’t care at all and we don’t see his parents finding out or much of Thomas’s reaction or anything and it’s just as if he wasn’t a character anymore 2 seconds later which is a different genre of issue with CoT but similar problem in the sense that both issues made the book feel a lot more emotionless to read)

And how the issues of Thomas and Alastair being together as two men and Anna and Ariadne being together as two women in this time and the issues of what would happen if the fact that Charles and Alastair were gay got out to the entire Clave just disappeared and never got addressed at all. We know how the ClVe reacted to Alec Lightwood YEARS later. We know society was homophobic at the time TLH is set and that it seems like shadowhunter society was a lot less open-minded than mundanes a century later

I understand that Charles being blackmailed and making shitty decisions was annoying but it was like suddenly everyone finding out wouldn’t have consequences and all the other queer men characters were like how could you possibly be worried about this :/ as if they haven’t spent the whole series knowing they have to be careful about who they tell. And then suddenly it was just of course it’s totally fine and safe to have everyone find out and why wouldn’t you be fine with that. And it was really written in a way that had other queer characters like oh Charles is such a coward for not being ready to publicly tell a bunch of homophobic people his sexuality and it just wasn’t it??? And super weird after Thomas was terrified of telling even Anna and Matthew for years. And also, I did not care for the fact that when Charles did go risk getting outed to finally do the right thing, we didn’t even get to see it through any character’s perspective or how that important meeting went, we just got one line of dialogue from somebody else saying that it happened with no details at all. And I can’t think of other examples right now but there were quite a few moments like that where we got one line saying that something had happened that was important to the plot and to characters’ development that seemed like it would have been more interesting than some of what we did get to see where it was just totally breezed over and way too easy and totally background to less important stuff

And then there was the whole no one reacting to Ariadne and Anna dancing together publicly thing was like yeah that’s nice I guess but not realistic and it doesn’t go with the way things have been presented up to that point, it also just feels like a situation where CC was like well this would be easier for me so there just won’t be consequences and then they can easily end up happily together

And then there was the whole Thomas and Alastair thinking they couldn’t realistically be together thing and knowing they couldn’t get married or be known to be together by anyone they’re not close to and then at the end it’s still not really addressed how they’re going to be together? Like there was the laziest write off of the family tree being wrong and then we still are just left to assume that eventually they move in together and suddenly it’s not a problem and everyone’s fine with it? And then I also feel like we don’t actually know if everyone found out about Alastair and Charles’ sexualities after the blackmail or if people are going to assume about Thomas and Alastair or if that’ll cause issues or if no one knows outside of who they’ve told and they have to be careful or what. Which like wouldn’t necessarily need to be addressed if it wasn’t for the logistics of being together as two men in that time being part of the obstacle that they were struggling with being in their way and then it felt like it was totally forgotten to even be one at the end by CC

Idk like I’d love to think they just lived in a world where homophobia didn’t exist but it felt like homophobia was a plot point when CC wanted it to be an inconvenience and then suddenly disappeared just to make her writing easier the moment she didn’t want it there anymore instead of actually addressing the plots she raised with it if that makes sense?

And sorry, I really did not mean to go on a rant this long. And maybe everyone else had a very different reading experience than I did and other people don’t agree with some or all of this. I personally am just very confused about how the book was almost 800 pages long and it felt like so much of the development in it was us abruptly being told that development had happened rather than actually getting to see it and how so many of the issues were abruptly solved in an I don’t want to write this issue anymore kind of way rather than anything actually needing to be worked at outside of the Belial situation

Edit: You know what, I mentioned it in my tags but I feel like it’s annoying enough to put in the body of the post and make it even longer. What the fuck was with everyone outing or potentially outing everyone else just so that characters could openly talk about the queer characters and tell them to do what they want them to? Why did Matthew out his brother multiple times? Like yes, the people he said it to coincidentally already knew, but he didn’t know that. And why was Thomas outing Alastair? The straights got to keep their secrets as long as they wanted and fix their problems more naturally. Why did I have to sit through queer characters constantly having their sexualities and romantic histories to everyone else when they clearly had not okayed it? Why were the queer characters doing so much of the outing? Why were people who cared about them and knew what it felt like to be afraid of the wrong person finding out just broadcasting their sexualities to make it easier for CC to breeze past development to have their things get resolved fast? Why did no character have an issue with it at all?

[beeduoo]

would u try

[helenofblackthorns]

James' powers are the biggest wasted potential in the last hours. why didn't he use them more?? like i know in the series they're mostly just used to send him to Belphegor's realm but in the short stories he just turned into a shadow sometimes & had some control over it? like idk I just do not like how his powers were written in tlh.

like he's the first ever half warlock!! he puts the shadow in shadowhunter!! I think it would have been cool to see him use his abilities in battle, like how do you fight what isn't really there yknow? I think he should appear sometimes and leave other characters guessing whether he just walked in silently (something many shadowhunters can do) or if he really just materialised out of thin air. because he's James Herondale!! a living enigma, a possible impossibility!! he becomes his own shadow!! which is especially interesting if you compare it to Tessa's abilities, because she becomes other people, can listen to their thoughts and feel their emotions; but James is only ever himself!! also like “He did not know until later how right he was. It was warlock magic." that's his magic!! give them back to him CC right now and let him use them God damn it!!

[aqqleshiqqing-archive]

good afternoon guys today I decided to choose violence and talk about GOLD AGAIN

y'know i realized I don't think I ever talked about my favorite duo with gold

and that's actually red (but like. not MY red, this red is SO different, in a good way. the one that TALKS red)

when gold finally met red after having to go deal with a villain character (and a group sigh of relief that they all won) he immediately grabs red and asks him to train with him to make him stronger

he really just called his ma to inform her that he'll be out for a while and that he's "with the league champion" (red). red is flabbergasted over this sudden idea but he rolled with it eventually and I find that hilarious - but then again, that's red, he's very flexible.

this is also the time where the popular "red and gold/ethan meets in mt silver" thing comes into play, except they're both in this together and as friends, not strangers ITS JUST SO SWEET MAN I LOVE THAT FOR THEM I LOVE IT WHEN THEY TAKE AN IDEA AND TWIST IT A BIT

then after a few arcs later THEY BASICALLY RECALLED WHAT THEY DID TOGETHER BACK THEN I LOVE CONTINUITY

they basically became homies after that - but gold still respectfully calls him "senior red" (because role wise, kanto trio are the first gen dexholders and johto trio are the second gen dexholders and so on). ALSO GOLD HAS A PICHU AND RED HAS A PIKACHU I FEEL LIKE IM SEEING A DAD AND SON BOND EXCEPT THEY'RE BOTH YOUNG AHHEKSKSJAJSJW anyways red and gold time

THEY'RE SUCH AN UNDERRATED DUO BUT GGGRRRR MAN I LOVE IT WHEN TWO GENERATIONS INTERACT FJFKDLDJDJKD

[rat-rosemary]

.