#but also eugh ever since i learned that stranger danger doesn't work bc it's rarely a stranger that's the danger?

[therealnotta]

Yeah you know what? Y'all get this speech too, William Afton is scarier when he's humanized than when he's a yellow bunny joker man, entire deal under the cut bc it's fnaf, there's child murder galore so beware

Like, I remember back when we first realized he had a family, and I remember how mad people got when I said that he clearly didn't want his kids to get hurt. Saying he loved them would be extrapolating, but he actively took actions to prevent them from getting injured. We definitively see this with him insisting that Elizabeth stay away from the animatronics, and if you think plushbear is a nanny cam then he seemed to be trying to help Evan, too.

And like, yeah, you could argue any number of motivations. Maybe he was telling Elizabeth all that because he was trying for reverse psychology. Maybe, even if it is a nanny cam, he was just trying to manipulate his son. But he still did things that could feasibly protect his kids, and he could've killed them easily. They lived with him. His targets were kids where he worked, it's not like he couldn't have just brought his kids with him and said that they went missing, too. And they wouldn't even have to be lured; they'd just follow their dad. So I'd argue that he cared enough about them not to use them for his evil experiments.

And if he doesn't start killing until after 83, then you could argue that he started killing because he was trying to find a way to resurrect his own son. If Plushbear is a nanny cam, then that's William at the end, vowing to "put you back together," more likely than not.

And that's scarier to me. Someone murdering kids for fun? As a villain, it's cartoonishly evil. I don't care about this villain, his purpose is exclusively to be The Bad Guy, I don't have to think at all. A parent trying to bring their kid back to life, losing everything in the process? Losing their sense of morality, losing their other kids, their friends, their job, their very name, and in the end their dead kid hates them? Heck, he keeps his dead kid's favorite stuffed animal on his desk, that's even harder to explain as being just another evil thing. It seems to me like he's a grieving parent who completely snapped. Now it's a tragedy, but not necessarily scarier.

What makes it scarier is the way he's described in the books that, presumably, is something that carries over to the games. He's charismatic, he's "like Santa." Everyone loves him. All the children love him. He's great with kids. In the games, the one time we see him alive is when he's selling killer robots to a company. They realize that it's killer robots, and he convinces them to buy anyway. He's clearly still charismatic.

He's not scary because he's killing innocents, he's scary because these kids would've known him. Charlie didn't run when he pulled up beside her, out in the rain, because he was a family friend. He's scary because that's exactly what happens in real life. I don't have to worry about the Joker running over and blowing up a hospital, but I do have to worry about William Afton, your dad's old college buddy that everyone loves, deciding that what he wants is more important than your life. The family friend whose word everyone would believe over yours is a much scarier villain than the creepy dude in the woods, because it's a real threat.