#i just felt like reading a fazbear fright

[bluarlequinno]

The fnaf movie feels like reading a very heavily book trilogy and game inspired Fazbear Frights that doesn't exactly know what correlation with the Aftons they wanna have.

[namedoggo]

Anyway

[divine-knight-hand]

Night of The Maneater

Part 1: The Chase

Part Two || Michael Masterlist || Full Masterlist || Read on AO3 Halloween Triple Feature Masterlist

Pairing: Michael Afton x Ghostface!Female Reader

Summary: Since the destruction of Fazbear's Fright, Michael could finally celebrate Halloween in peace, but with a new serial killer on the loose known only by the name "The Maneater", how long will his night stay that way?

Content Warnings: Stalking, mentions of death and killing, descriptions of fear and creepy scenarios, death threats, sexual themes

Notes: I don't care that FNAF lore says that Fazbear's Fright happened in the future. This fic takes place in the 1990s because I said so... Also, that time is the perfect setting for a slasher moment and no, I will not be taking criticism.

I also just looked it up and the first Scream movie takes place in 1996, so my guts were on point with this one. Trust my judgement, y'all~

Word Count: 4,352

Dividers by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

Halloween season had an air of peace ever since Fazbear’s Fright burned down. This year, instead of fighting for his life against a group of worn-down animatronics–only one of them being corporeal, though not untouched by the stench of death–he only encountered the bright faces that came to his door in search of candy.

Michael was more than happy to oblige, complimenting the costumes of each child as he dropped some candy into their bags. Each child’s parent warmly smiled in appreciation from across the lawn, and he always reciprocated the soft expression. It was nice, seeing parents who took the time to make memories with their children. It filled him with a sense of pride, knowing he could help create that experience for them.

Once he handed out the last of his candy for the night, he turned out his porch light and headed for his kitchen to start making popcorn. He figured he’d spend the rest of the night catching up on the episodes of The Immortal and the Restless he had recorded to his VCR.

As he was searching his cupboards for an aluminum popcorn pan, the radio on the counter switched from lighthearted Halloween tunes to an emergency news report.

“We’re just getting news of a new serial killing taking place here in Hurricane, Utah.” The radio anchor announced. “Police are currently unable to name a suspect. The only information they have is that this killer seems to only target young men in their mid-twenties. They’ve since been codenamed, ‘The Maneater’. Police are advising that all residents make sure their doors, windows, and all other entrances to their homes are locked-”

“And, that’s enough of that.” Michael muttered to himself as he switched off the radio. What a buzzkill…

He rooted around in his cupboards a little longer before finally finding the aluminum pan he was looking for. He’d just put the pan on the stove when the phone started ringing across the room.

He strolled over to where it was mounted and picked it up. “Hello?”

A woman’s voice softly responded. “Hello.” A long pause followed, the only sound Michael could hear being the soft popping of his popcorn, before she asked. “Who is this?”

“Who are you trying to reach?” Michael wasn’t sure why, but he felt the need to dodge the question. Something felt off already, and he hadn’t talked to this person for more than a few seconds. After another moment of silence, he tried to shut down the conversation. “I think you might have the wrong number.”

“Oh, do I?” The voice sounded playful.

“It happens to the best of us.” Michael reassured. “Take care, now.”

He had just moved to return to the stove when the phone rang again. Since when was I so popular?

He smiled to himself as he picked the phone back up off of the receiver. “Hello?”

“I’m sorry.” The same woman’s voice answered. “I guess I did dial the wrong number.”

Michael nervously chuckled. “So, why would you call me back?”

“To apologize.” The woman’s voice was smooth. She spoke lowly and calmly, like she was reading a bedtime story to a child. “I didn’t mean to inconvenience you, tonight of all nights.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Michael breathed a sigh of relief. “It happens all the time. I’m going to go now, okay?”

“Hold on,” The voice suddenly sounded hurried. “Don’t hang up, yet.”

Against his better judgment, Michael responded. “Why not?”

“I want to talk to you for a second.” The woman’s voice purred. It sounded almost… sultry.

Michael felt a shiver crawl down his spine. He wasn’t sure whether to be afraid or enthralled. “I’m sure there are more interesting people you could talk to at this time of night. I should go now. Bye.” As soon as he hung up the phone, it immediately began to ring again.

Michael audibly groaned before picking up. “Hello?”

“Why don’t you want to talk to me?” The same woman’s voice answered, feigning hurt.

Michael was beginning to grow fed up with what he assumed was a Halloween prank call. “Okay, who is this?”

“Why don’t you tell me your name first, handsome?” If the voice didn’t sound provocative before, it definitely did now.

“Michael,” He quickly clapped a hand over his mouth. He hadn’t meant to give up that information so voluntarily. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

“Michael~” The voice sounded borderline pornographic as it tested his name. “Like Michael Myres, from Halloween. I like that.” Michael gulped, the action requiring some effort due to his suddenly dry throat. “What are you up to, Michael?”

“I- I- Uhm-” He stammered. “M- Making popcorn.”

“Making popcorn?” The voice sounded genuinely interested. “I only eat popcorn if I’m watching something. Are you preparing for a scary movie marathon?”

“No, nothing scary.” Michael felt his prior tension easing as the conversation began to seem normal. “Just my favorite show.”

“No scary movies?” The voice sounded playfully appalled. “It’s Halloween! How could you pass up a scary movie on Halloween?”

Michael bashfully scratched the back of his neck. “Not really my thing, I guess.”

“That’s a shame.” The voice sounded almost melodic. “I love a good scary movie.” After a long pause, the voice spoke up again. “So, do you have a girlfriend, Michael?”

He felt his face begin to glow red as his heart fluttered. That question definitely caught him off guard. “I- Well- Uhm- No, not exactly.”

“No need to be shy.” The voice purred. “I’m sure you’re more than a decent catch~”

“Thanks.” Michael struggled to fend off the flattered smile that was tugging at his lips. “So, uhm… Why are you asking me so many of these questions? Are you flirting with me, or something?”

“Maybe~” The voice took on an air of mischief. “I just want to know who I’m looking at.”

Michael felt his heart drop out of his chest. What the fuck?

He cradled the phone in his arms as he ran around the house, checking the windows to see if he could find any suspicious figure looking back at him.

When he couldn’t find anything, he just made sure the windows were locked before he held the phone back to his ear, returning to the kitchen. “What did you say?”

“I said I want to know who I’m talking to, silly!” The voice lightly giggled. “Everything okay?”

“N- no…” Michael breathed, the dread from earlier creeping back into his chest. “That wasn’t what you said.”

“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.” The voice spoke in a cautionary tone.

Michael struggled to swallow as he gulped again. “I wish I could say this was fun, but… Well… Goodnight, okay?”

“Don’t hang up on me.” The voice sounded a little more firm than the last time it asked him not to hang up.

Michael shivered. “Gotta go…” He hung up the phone and all but ran to the kitchen to take his popcorn off of the stove. He’d just finished pouring it into a large bowl when the phone rang again.

He rolled his eyes and tossed the empty pan in the garbage before picking up the phone. “Hello?”

“I told you not to hang up on me, Michael.” The voice sounded a lot less playful than before, instead bordering on angry. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“What’s your problem?” He began impatiently tapping his foot.

“I don’t have a problem with you, Michael.” The voice sounded almost as annoyed as Michael felt. “As I’ve already said, I just want to talk.”

“Well, talk to someone else, okay?” Michael hated the way his voice cracked, but he hoped he still got his message across.

“Are you getting scared?” The voice found its playful tone again, using it to tease him.

“No, just tired.” He slammed the phone back onto the receiver, making one last attempt to return to his cooling popcorn before the phone rang again.

Michael growled as he answered the phone. “Listen, I don’t-”

“NO, YOU LISTEN, YOU LITTLE BITCH!” The voice exploded. “If you hang up on me again I'll gut you like a fish! Do you understand me?!”

Michael was at a loss for words. As he tried to find the right words to say, his mouth opened and closed, like a fish filtering water.

“I’m sorry, Michael.” The voice purred after a tense moment of silence. “I don’t normally lose my temper so quickly like that. Especially on pretty boys like you.”

Michael was still stuck in an astonished silence, and the voice took that as an invitation to continue. “I don’t like being hung up on. That was rude…” The voice paused, sighing in disapproval before continuing. “I also couldn’t help but notice you locking your windows. I thought it was really bold of you to assume I wasn’t already inside.”

Suddenly, all the power in the house went out, plummeting Michael into a silent darkness. His blood ran cold as he rushed to one of his kitchen drawers to grab a flashlight.

“Wh- What the hell was that?” His hands began to shake as he clicked the flashlight on. “Is this some kind of sick joke?”

“No, no.” The voice reassured. “Nothing of the sort. I like to think of it as more of a game.”

“I- I’ll call the cops!” Michael attempted a threat of his own.

“Oh, come on, now.” The voice softly tutted. “You’re smarter than this, Michael. You know they’d never make it in time.”

He felt nauseous. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to play a game.” The voice calmly answered. “And if you play the right way, you get to walk out alive.”

Michael scoffed at the voice’s request. “You’re insane.”

“That wasn’t a no.” The voice softly giggled. “Come on, Michael. You know you want to. It’ll be fun~”

“Fine.” Michael spat. “I’ll play your stupid game.”

“Ouch.” The voice teased. “I haven’t even explained the rules yet. But, here they are. We’re going to do a little bit of trivia. I’ll ask you a series of questions. Each time you get a question wrong, I’ll walk into one room adjacent to the one I’m in. Each time you get a question right, I’ll stay put. You can move regardless, but only after you answer a question, and only one room at a time. Oh, and just know that you’ll be moving at your own risk. Got it?”

“You’re insane…” Michael repeated.

“I believe we’ve covered that.” The voice sounded amused at his apparent fear. “I may be insane, but I’m a woman of my word. I haven’t moved an inch since I got here.”

Michael silently shook his head. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“A few last-minute things,” The voice went on. “If you hang up on me, I’ll kill you. If you try to leave the house, I’ll kill you. If you try to call the cops, I’ll kill you. Notice the trend?” The voice chuckled before continuing. “And, if I get to the same room as you? …Actually, let’s keep that a surprise for now.” The voice giggled again. “Are you ready for your first question, Michael?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” He felt defeated, and the game hadn’t even started yet.

“Good!” The voice enthused. “These questions are scary movie-themed, so I’m afraid you’ll be at a disadvantage.”

“Of course.” Michael muttered, bringing a hand up to massage the bridge of his nose.

“First question,” The voice began. “Proclaiming herself to be the ‘Mistress of the Dark’, this character hosted her own ‘Movie Macabre’ before moving on to star in her own self-titled film. What’s her name?”

Michael struggled to find an answer in his anxious mental haze. “I- I don’t know.”

“Really?” The voice sounded genuinely shocked. “What, do you live under a rock? You have to know this one! Men really love her for her huge… ratings! Yeah, ratings…”

Michael cringed at the voice's poor attempt at humor. “I still don’t know.”

“That’s unfortunate.” The voice sighed. “I’ll be moving rooms now, since the name Elvira doesn’t seem to be coming to your mind.” Then, the only thing Michael could hear on the other end of the line was the sound of a door softly opening and closing. “There we go.” 

His mind began to race as he tried to find some strategy to get himself through this game. His house was only one story high, and he only had so many rooms. When moving in, he felt he didn’t need much more than that, since he planned on living alone. He’d originally imagined that the woman was on the other side of the house, but she’d only specified that she was inside. She never told him where she was. That meant she could be anywhere from across the house to right outside the nearest door. Michael decided to stay in the kitchen for the time being. He didn’t want to risk bumping into her just yet… though he’d still be taking that risk if he stayed where he was.

“Alright!” The voice interrupted his thoughts. “Ready for the next question?”

“Let’s do it.” He did his best to summon his courage and clear his thoughts.

“Tell me the name of the killer doll from the film Child’s Play.” The voice directed.

Michael began biting his thumbnail in deep thought. I know this one. It’s that creepy ginger doll. But, what was his name?

“Tick tock, Michael.” The voice taunted. “Neither of us have all night.”

“Chucky!” He blurted once the answer finally came to mind. “The doll’s name was Chucky.”

An agonizing silence passed before the voice purred, “Well done, Michael. You’re more clever than you look. I guess I’ll be staying put this time.”

His mind began whirring again with a million questions. Where could she be? How long would it take for her to find him? What would she do to him once she did? He couldn’t just sit around and find out. Michael took the opportunity to slip from the kitchen into the living room. Since the doorway to the living room was open, he was able to make sure no one was there before entering.

“I see you decided to move this round.” The voice pointed out. “Interesting choice.”

“You know where I am right now?” He shuddered at the possibility.

“Of course I do.” The voice calmly responded. “I’ve been watching you this whole time, Michael.”

He quickly spun around, looking over his shoulder to make sure the owner of the voice hadn’t already found him. “H- How?”

“I don’t want to reveal my secrets just yet.” The voice responded.

Fuck! Michael’s heart began to pound. This obviously put him at a huge disadvantage. He needed to find a way to even out the playing field.

“Well, maybe I’m curious.” A new idea slowly unfurled in his mind as he spoke.

“Well, maybe I want to move on to the next question.” The voice insisted.

“Wait,” Michael felt his resolve slowly growing. “Before we do that, I want to change the rules of the game, just a little.”

A long pause followed, and just when Michael was worried that the voice wouldn’t take the bait, it responded. “Go on…”

“What if I could ask questions, too?” He proposed. “For every question you answer, I’ll stay still, but for every one you refuse, I move.”

This time, the voice let out a hum of consideration. “That sounds fun… I’ll accept, only if I get to move regardless, like you do when I ask questions.”

“Deal.” Michael knew this was a risky plan, but any answers he could get out of this person could help him to escape her. “We’ll alternate asking questions, so it’s fair.”

“Deal.” The voice purred. “After you, cutie~”

Michael felt his face flush as he tried to think carefully about his first question. Now is not the time to get flattered by a crazy killer in your house! …Come to think of it, why is she here?

He decided that would be his first question. “Why did you come here of all places?”

“Hmmm,” The voice paused for a moment before answering. “Because I was looking for a new catch, and you happened to be alone.”

“A new catch?” He was even more confused than before. “What do you mean?”

“Michael, Michael, Michael…” The voice tsked. “You didn’t waste any time before trying to break your own rule.” Michael could faintly hear the sound of a door opening and closing over the phone before the voice continued, softer than before. “I believe it’s my turn to ask a question.”

“Sorry,” Michael gulped. “Go on.”

“Alright, next question,” The line went silent again before the voice found its question. “Name one scary movie that came out this year.”

Michael scratched his head. He knew a lot of horror movies came out this year, but he barely paid attention to the trailers when they came on the television. Think, damnit!

He knew he had to get this one. The owner of the voice could have been anywhere in the house, and the living room had the most doors out of all the rooms.

“Michael, are you still there?” The voice softly giggled. “Oh, who am I kidding? Of course you are! Come on. Don’t keep me waiting.”

He knew there was a sequel to some Stephen King movie. What was it? The Shining? No. It? No… Cujo? No, but he vaguely remembered it involving pets. Wait a minute… Pets! That’s it!

“Pet Semetary II,” Michael breathed.

“Well done,” The voice didn’t pause before congratulating him this time. “That tracks. Looks like I’m not going anywhere.”

Michael quickly ran up to the nearest door, holding his ear up to it to make sure he couldn’t hear anyone on the other side. When he felt confident enough, he entered the room, softly closing the door behind him.

“The laundry room?” The voice sounded condescending. “That seems like a dead end to me, but if that’s what you want…”

“It’s my turn to ask a question.” Michael was anxious to get back to the point. He leaned back against the washing machine, gripping the edge with his free hand until his knuckles turned white.

“Okay, okay.” The voice conceded. “Ask away.”

“What did you mean earlier when you said you were looking for ‘a new catch’?” His voice wavered mid-question.

“That’s a good one,” The voice answered. “Sometimes, I’m not even sure, myself. I’ve chalked it up to this. The ideal catch for me is someone beautiful. Someone who’s willing to play my games. Someone strong enough to put up a good fight. But, above all, the ideal catch for me is someone clever and obedient.” After a heartbeat passed, the voice asked. “Is that a satisfactory answer for you, Michael.”

“I- I think so…” He gulped. He felt weak in the knees. What the hell was this person playing at? What was she hoping to do with him once she caught him? No, I can’t think like that. He mentally chided himself. I can’t lose this. I can’t!

But, at the same time, a new feeling rose within him. His sudden weakness in the knees couldn’t only be chalked up to fear. Hearing this voice compliment him tonight, it did things to him. How many times had she called him ‘clever’? How many times had she complimented his looks? Not to mention the thrill of having her go through all this trouble with the hopes of catching him. Part of him almost began to want to be found. Maybe it was because he hadn’t romantically been with someone in a while, but he suddenly found that the hairs on the back of his neck weren’t the only thing standing upright.

Get a grip! Michael frowned the crotch of his jeans, which was slowly pitching a tent.

A new sound snapped him out of his thoughts. He heard a door open and close, except it wasn’t just over the phone. He heard it in real life. He heard it from the next room. The owner of the voice was in the living room. His breath hitched. Oh, god! It’s over…

“Ready for your next question, Michael?” The voice spoke just low enough so he could only hear it through the phone.

Michael decided to match its volume. “Yes, I’m ready.”

“Alright,” The voice softly hummed as its owner thought of a question. “Okay! I got one. What is the name of the movie where a group of people take refuge in an old farmhouse to protect themselves from a horde of zombies?”

Now, this sounded very familiar. Michael recognized this as the plot to a movie he’d watched with his family when he was younger. It was one of the fonder memories he had with them before everything began to fall apart. But, it had been so long that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to recall the name of it. What was it called?

“You’re killing me, Michael.” The voice groaned. “Must you take so long to come up with an answer to every single one of my questions?”

Michael’s brow furrowed in concentration. The title was on the tip of his tongue. If only he could recall it. He knew it had something to do with the ‘living dead’, because of the zombies, and it all happened at night… Oh! Duh! I’m a fucking idiot…

“It’s Night of the Living Dead.” Michael answered. “I used to watch it with my family as a kid.”

“How cute~” The voice purred. “And I thought scary movies weren’t your thing.”

“Not anymore…” He muttered.

“Do you have your next question ready?” The voice asked.

“I think I do.” Michael shuddered as he took a breath to steady his nerves. “Are you ‘The Maneater’ that the radio station’s been talking about?”

“Am I ‘The Maneater’?” The voice softly chuckled as it repeated his question. “I believe that is what they call me, yes.” After that, silence…

That was, until Michael could hear growing footsteps. His heart leapt into his throat. He’d forgotten that whenever he asked a question, she could move rooms regardless of whether or not she answered. This was it. She would open the door and kill him. It was game over. Oh god. Oh, fuck…

He couldn’t breathe. He clicked off his flashlight, but he knew it didn’t matter. She already knew where he was. The Maneater was right there.

Once the shadows of her feet appeared under the door, Michael felt tremors work their way through his body. He gulped, the heartbeat in his ears blocking out any other sounds around him.

Then, the shadows disappeared, and he heard the footsteps quickly retreat. Michael let go of the breath he was holding, a fresh wave of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

“Your fear is adorable.” The Maneater softly giggled. “No, that’s an understatement.” Her words grew breathy. “Your fear… it excites me.”

Michael willed his heart to slow down. He was convinced that, had the washing machine not been holding most of his weight, he would have keeled over.

“I could chase you like this for hours.” She ecstatically sighed. “After all this time I spent searching… I finally found the perfect catch.”

Her words were barely registering to him. Did she avoid him on purpose? She had the perfect opportunity to catch him just then. Why didn’t she?

“I have to ask, Michael,” The Maneater went on. “And I’m counting this as my next question… Do you enjoy being hunted?”

“Wh- What?” That fully grabbed his attention again.

“Do you enjoy being hunted?” She repeated. “Does our little game of cat-and-mouse excite you?”

Michael felt his face flush. It was like she was invading his mind, as well as his home. “Wh- What do you mean?”

“Don’t play dumb.” The Maneater scoffed. “I know you know what I mean.” Her voice grew sensual. “Does being hunted turn you on as much as it turns me on to chase you?”

Michael hesitated. Clearly, his common sense steered him to believe it didn’t. This woman was insane, and she’d killed men just like him. There was no way he could possibly enjoy being in such a dangerous position.

His body, however, heavily disagreed. It didn’t care about the circumstances. It just fell prey to the allure of this woman’s voice and it wasn’t as shy as he was about expressing his sudden libido. He looked back down at the evidence, growing more apparent the longer it strained against the front of his pants.

He decided to respond as vaguely as possible, seeing as he wasn’t too sure of the answer himself. “What does that matter? That doesn’t change the fact that I’m stuck playing this crazy game until you leave me alone.”

The Maneater softly chuckled at his boldness. “I should’ve expected that.”

Michael didn’t wait to hear whether or not she considered that answer correct. He knew he had to keep moving. He had to get out of that laundry room before she cornered him in it again.

He threw the door open, not even checking for The Maneater on the other side. He knew she was just a room away, and all she had to do to catch him was turn around, but he didn’t care. He was willing to take that risk. 

Michael rushed across the living room, stopping by the door to his bedroom. He already knew what his next question was going to be. He was going to ask The Maneater for her name. If she didn’t answer, he’d be able to move into a new room. If she did, then he’d finally know her by name. He just had to ask for her name and-

WHAM! A flash of pain exploded from the back of Michael’s head, and he fell to the floor from the impact. The last thing he saw was the ghoulish, dark empty eyes of a ghost-faced mask looking down at him before his vision went black.

[aceinacloset]

FNAF SL REDUX

This whole Au is just self-indulgent for me, but you may like it, so still give this post a read if you're a fan of Fnaf sl, Fnaf aus, or both. Enjoy 😊.

This Au is dedicated to "rewriting" sister location to be more independent from the other fnaf games (*cough* *cough* FNAF 4) and to give a more unique perspective to SL'S story.

This Au is focused on the funtimes

I love these 4 sillies, I just love these 4 heck all the characters in sister location. I really wanted to have an Au that focuses on the funtimes and their struggles in the facility, focusing on that also allows me to delve into the very motivations that had them want to escape the facility in the first place.

The other animatronics in SL are also part of this Au, just not as prominent as the Skittle squad.

Elizabeth is also very prominent in this Au.

Elizabeth is another character in SL. I love a lot, so she's also very present. Since she experiences the same pain as Funtimes I through, I felt it really necessary.

There are lore changes.

Not really changes, more so add ons. These add ons are here to expand upon what Fnaf had built with Sister Location but never did anything with past SL. Some stuff in here are add ons just to indulge me.

William and Michael are here too.

While they're not as focused on as the characters previously mentioned, they do have their role and place in the story.

William is intentionally designed that way. While I do have a planned human design, I have a reason he looks like his 8-bit sprite. The reason is to show the rift he would unintentionally build with Liz after her death, and this rift would become so wide that she would no longer see him as her father let alone a person.

While Michael's look would specifically be keeped hidden through most of the story to show how the Funtimes and Elizabeth perceive him.

Oh yeah, Mrs. Afton is here too for some extra plot.

I don't have a complete design for her yet, so all I have are concepts of her design. I'm still working on her character (That's the fun of Mrs. Afton not being canon yet, I get to write her how ever I like.) But I want her to be someone who's kind and sweet but doesn't take shit and has the will to beat the shit out of those who deserve it.

A major plot point she is a part of is going down into the rental facility to find clues on what could have happened to Liz.

She would find answers, but at a price

Yeah, she would, um be killed by william. I'll go into further detail on this event at a later date.

Extra changes

Redesigned the facility's map

Changed some game events because I didn't like them or I felt they could have been better

Some new faces to really bring life to this Au

Unique character designs

More a focus on events prior to Sister Location (the game) events

Spooky stuff if I feel up to it.

Mult ending ideas

This Au may also touch upon and make content in association with other games and books in heavy relation to Sister Location (ex. FNAF 6 and fazbear fright story "Room for one more")

That's all the info I got so far, I hope to post more about this Au soon.

Bye-bye

-Jester 🤡

[pandoraarti-fnaf-blog]

I found myself suddenly on a kick for these head busts as I decided to do Michael as well. (I also want to do Joan at some point as well)

He's not in the other post because one I felt that would start to become too long before I would have to put a read more thing, plus Michael has extra doodles.

Now Michael in this AU is a bit different to how other people characterize him. Like he does still feels guilty for what he did to his brother, but he's also still living his life ( until he gets scooped anyway-) and even after being scooped he still tries to have a good time and is kind of a more goofy scary I guess? As I'd like to think he would try not to make himself appear scary around other people ( plus you're probably less likely to get attacked by others because of your appearance if you just play it cool with everyone)

Also the goofiness is also an aspect of his mother had and this is probably one of the closest things he has to connecting to her with. as he can't bake because he manages to burn things that are not meant to be burned in the kitchen (Joan was very into baking and her cake recipes were used on Fredbear's menu before being changed years later after Fazbear entertainment required the brand)

Like I said on the other post with Henry, Michael had no idea that his dad was the suspect behind the missing kids incident as well as Charlie's murderer, and he also didn't know William was in the back room for a few years, until they eventually reunited at Fazbear fright and that's when Michael discovered his dad's dead body in the spring lock suit.

The doodles! Mainly this one gimmick I thought of for scooped!Michael that I thought would be interesting. Like Michael is literally just a moving skin suit, like lizzy was thorough when scooping him out.... which lets him be a hell of a lot more flexible than before and quite creepily able to go in through spaces not humanly possible for well a human ( by crawling between a space under a door)

[yanderes-galore]

Hi. Would you write a pet-like concept for Fetch (Fazbear's Frights)?

Oh yeah! I can try ^^ May not be the longest but it can be done.

To clarify to those new here, THIS IS PRETTY MUCH JUST AN OVERPROTECTIVE PET CONCEPT AND MEANT TO BE SCARY.

It's more like if you took over for the main character of the Fetch story.

Yandere! Fetch Concept

Pairing: Animal/Pet-like

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Murder, Stalking, Blood, Jealousy, Overprotective behavior, Really that's it.

Ah yes, Fetch would be an overprotective robotic pooch.

He's mute but he does communicate via phone texting.

Fetch easily gets attached to whoever his assigned owner is.

Perhaps you found him and he connected to your phone while you weren't aware.

Or you found him after the events of Fetch and fixed him up?

Fetch does exactly as his name says.

He fetches items for his owner.

Fetch happens to know just what you want at all times.

Hungry? The robotic dog is robbing a local store to bring you your craving.

Bored? Fetch will find a game to play or a book to read.

All the while the robot texts your phone to talk to you.

Usually phrases like;

"HRU?"

"Like my gift? :)"

Surprisingly, you rarely see Fetch.

He's always there, though.

Fetch diligently watches over his owner.

You'll be sleeping at night while glowing orange eyes watch over your house.

He really is loyal like a normal dog.

He thinks he's the best companion for you.

No other human or animal can compare!

Fetch sees you like a close friend, as a dog would see their owner, y'know?

He feels he has to protect you and meet your every need.

Sometimes you'll see him enter your house and sit in your room.

Then you have to remove him... only to get a text later from him.

"Y did U lock me out? :("

Honestly, he'd work the same as he did in the book.

If he felt you were being threatened, Fetch would kill whatever hurt you and drag it to you.

He's proud of it, too.

You're terrified and he's just like...

"Friend safe now! :)"

In his mind, he's doing as he's told!

Dogs protect their owners, right?

Isn't that what he did?

He gets horrendous when you have family or pets.

They could never replace him.

You don't need them.

Murder is just a task to him.

Which is why he doesn't understand your crying when you come home to your robotic pet covered in blood and gunk.

Surrounded by corpses.

"U would not replace me, right? Y R U sad? :("

Looks like the only way to get rid of this robotic menace is... destruction.

Hopefully he's still susceptible to baseball bats...

Or else you may not make it out of this alive.

"Friend not happy with Fetch? :("

[the-burd-lord]

Lil fanart/ redesign of Sea Bonnies from the Fazbear Frights book Friendly Face.

Made this art a while ago, and posted it to my insta. Decided to post to here. Especially since my main drawing hand is goin kaput. Also just finished reading Felix the Shark, which I recommend that people check out. Even if they've never read any other of the Fazbear Frights series. The last story in that collection kinda jumps the shark with its premise *badum tis*.

But since I can't make any new art, have these old lil creature designs instead.

The basic premise for the story is that the MC's brother got Sea Bonnies, sea monkeys that are engineered to look like Bonnie, as pets. MC gets super creeped out by them, and he even hears them talking, but they mostly just call him a wuss for being scared of them. Which I find super hilarious.

Anyways, he's had enough and stupidly flushes them down the toilet. Later he starts getting horrible stomach cramps and starts hearing them in his head. He finds out he swallowed one and now they're multiplying and eating him from the inside out.

The interesting thing, and what makes it spookier in my opinion, is that he goes to see a physician about it. They give him a cat scan and find irregularities with it, but when he tells the doctors about the Sea Bonnies they dismiss him. Thinking that he's trying to pull some elaborate prank.

After that it's this slow burn as they continue to eat him out from the inside, and replace his organs in the process. He makes a last ditch attempt to see a doctor in his worsened condition but fails miserably.

There's more to the story, but again I recommend y'all check it out for yourselves! I highly recommend it as a piece of body horror.

Anyway onto the redesign. This one got a a graphic novel of it so there are actually cannon designs of the critters.

I think they're fine designs, although it is a bit disappointing that they kept leaning more towards rabbit or krill. Especially when sea monkeys have such a distinct look to them that would've made them super uncanny and alien if they leaned more into it.

Although credit where credit is due, it's super hard to combine a rabbit with a sea monkey.

For my design I originally leaned more towards krill, since sea monkeys are a modified version of krill. Also wanted to stick with it being biologically accurate.

I felt like the design was still lacking, and honestly I wanted to lean more towards what I was really interested in: plankton!

There are so many different kinds of plankton that all have unique features and shapes. There are also many different variations of zooplankton, plankton that cannot produce their own food, to base it after.

Still stuck to the sea monkey design, with the feathery feet they use to swim and bulbous head. Added feelers to the front to act as rabbit ears, and later something that would act as an extra mouth or protective "hairs" for their head to look like a bowtie.

Also didn't go too biological with it since in the book they just reproduce asexually. Which is so interesting in plankton, especially when it comes to cell growth.

Oh, fun fact! Did you know that plankton also refer to planktonic organisms, creatures that cannot produce their own movement. These include most phytoplankton (plankton that produce their own food through photosynthesis), but they also include jellyfish and some stages of squids! Ironically most zooplankton are able to produce their own movement, and would thus be considered nektonic organisms.

These organisms include anything that is able to move on its own, i.e. anything that can swim. There are a few different variations of undersea movement but those are the basics.

It should be said that I really like plankton.

As if it wasn't already obvious.

I need to stop and post this before I go on another plankton rant. Or start taking about Foo Fighters from JJBA.

[nevis-the-skeleton]

Black Bird Fazbear Fright : Why it's a bad representation of school harassment

Hello everyone, today we are going to talk about one of the Fnaf Fazbear Fright stories: Black Bird. Well, I would like to warn you, I didn't read the story, because it is not available in my country, but I saw Dawko's summary, and I documented myself as best I could to have the best vision as clear as possible. And, from what I've seen, this story is frankly… Not bad, but it has a very bad moral! Not about apologizing and forgiving, but about the representation that is made of school bullying.

For the summary, a boy named Noel, who has harassed a girl in the past is pursued by a demon bird who haunts him and plunges him into the guilt of his actions, and the only way he has to escape release it and apologize to those to whom he has harmed. Well, that's a very rough summary, but it's so that those who haven't read the story can follow, because I think it's important that as many people as possible know what's wrong with this story.

Bullying is bad, yes I know I'm not learning you something, but apparently the author doesn't think so, or presented it in a very bad way! First, when Noel tells his friend Sam that he bullied a girl, he laughs about it, and it's only because Sam tells him that it's not funny that he questions himself a little. Come on, I can understand that, if he wasn't aware that what he did was wrong, why not. But, I think that from the moment you put a dead mole in someone's locker, it's not to make them laugh! It’s clearly meant to do harm!

Already, this point prevents me from becoming attached to Noel, but even then it is not that problematic, as long as the character questions himself, which he seems to do. The problem is how he questions himself, why he does it. Basically, he's being chased by Black Bird and his girlfriend is telling him that he should apologize to the girl he bullied. He says he's going to do it, but the second Black Bird is absent, he withdraws, like: "oh come on, I'll check that he's really there, because frankly I don't want to apologize." He didn't say it like that, but that's really how I felt it.

And it’s only because Black Bird comes back that he decides to apologize to Christine! Man, you can't be more selfish! He only apologizes for his own well-being, because he is afraid for his life! If my bully came back to me, with someone holding a knife to his throat, and forced him to apologize, I would not consider his apology valid. Since he's fucking threatening imminent death! So that’s already a very big negative point, but it’s not the worst!

When Noel goes to Christine, who seems to be doing very well (she is in good health, she has lots of friends and everything), she does not recognize him. Like, bruh, no actually! That's not how it works! A bullied person generally doesn't forget their bully, and certainly not the one who called her fat and shoved dead f*cking moles into her locker! This is basically not possible! But it's not just that, and honestly that's what triggers me the most, she thanks him for bullying her, because it made her stronger, opened her eyes, and allowed her to get better.

…

Really, I don't have the words… What kind of bullshit is this? What kind of morality is that?! What it teaches the reader, indirectly, is: “Bullying is good, it allows people to improve!”, “Come on, tell this shy kid that he’s fat and ugly, so he’ll start playing sports and take care of his health!” NO! NO! and NO! Sorry, but I'm angry right now! There is nothing more destructive than school bullying! This shit kills people every year, it doesn't help anyone, and it certainly doesn't make you better! It's not a funny thing, it's not a joke! This is truly the worst moral I have ever seen in a story!

Remember one thing: apologizing is good, forgiving is liberating, but bullying is the worst creation of humanity. That's all I have to say about this story, I'm sure some will disagree with my opinion, but I really needed to get this out of my mind.

[linklethehistorian]

Linkle’s Fazbear Frights & Lore Insights #2: To Be Beautiful

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

[View the Masterlist of all completed articles here.]

Some To Be Beautiful specific notes:

I will be discussing the graphic novel version of this story to a limited degree, which as per ‘Frights Fiction’, would be a graphic novel in the in-universe canon, based on the book by the same title, just as it is in our world. If you don’t want spoilers, stop here.

I will also be discussing, to an even more limited degree, the Silver Eyes trilogy, but the things I will be talking about are major spoilers, so this is also your spoiler warning for that.

I will be briefly talking about one of the mini-games in the game version of Into the Pit which revolves around To Be Beautiful, and in general, discussions about the book version and my thoughts on it in my previous article are quite likely to come up during one particular part of my lore relevancy section, so if you want to completely avoid Into the Pit spoilers, maybe hold off on this one for now.

Apart from where I feel it relevant, I won’t be doing a deep-dive into the changes between the book and the graphic novel, since they are both fictional media within the FNAF universe, and thus the retcons and changes mostly have no value in the discussion of the lore or canon. If someone else wants to scream about how they got so much wrong because they feel the book was done dirty or something, I absolutely encourage you to go write your own article! But this isn’t about that.

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. I will be briefly discussing why, but seriously 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 with that out of the way, let’s get below the cut and get talking! This is your last spoiler warning for all forms of To Be Beautiful, so if you want to turn back, do so now.

Has everyone who wanted to leave yet left? Yeah? Good. Okay, let’s get going, then.

Overall Impressions

The Book:

I know that in my last post regarding Into the Pit, I said that some of the writing style choices made definitely weren’t for me, and that’s still true, but honestly, as I’m listening to this story a third time to make sure I haven’t missed anything I want to cover (and have read several other stories in between doing so), I have to admit I’ve gotten very used to the formatting by now, and it really isn’t as much of a pet peeve as it used to be — which is undoubtedly good, since I have a good many more volumes to go through in order to catch up to date in covering them all.

As for To Be Beautiful’s plot, as much as it pains me to say this, I honestly like this one a little bit better than Into The Pit, and I’m not even completely sure I can put into words why, except perhaps that, while I was very glad Into the Pit did have its surprisingly happy ending with both Oswald and his Dad’s survival, the original book version also felt very anticlimactic in terms of anything actually happening after the initial glimpse of the Yellow Thing’s murders, all the way up until the abrupt point where Oswald’s Dad was immediately pulled out of the pit as soon as Oswald arrived back at Jeff’s Pizza, and the Yellow Thing attacked and was hanged.

With To Be Beautiful, the slow buildup of suspense and horror, to me, is much more compelling and ultimately pays off much better when Sarah’s decisions have finally their tragic and irrevocable consequences. I think that if Into the Pit had had that same kind of buildup or at least a longer and more suspenseful struggle at the end before the payoff, I might have actually preferred that one more, as the backdrop of that one is much more up my usual alley, but it didn’t, and so To Be Beautiful has to rank higher on the list.

I do find it odd that, even with how strong the seemingly implied message is that you shouldn’t waste time trying to appeal to people who will only like you if you meet superficial criteria, Mason Blair is strangely given a complete pass for never noticing Sarah until she was hotter, as the story never gives any indication of him being shallow in any way after that initial bit of shallowness and presents him as a good and wonderful person through and through in all other scenes that we see him (unlike the Beautifuls), but I suppose maybe that isn’t a flaw in the writing so much as a realistic acknowledgement that sometimes people who are good overall can just make bad judgements and be a bit petty — I just wanted to mention it nonetheless.

That observation aside, the characters seem to suit the roles they are meant to fulfill well enough; they’re definitely far from my favorite characters in the FNAF series as a whole, but they’re serviceable enough, and I’m sure there are many people in the world who can empathize with Sarah’s struggles with loving or even liking her body.

The Graphic Novel:

Well, first of all, I will say right out the gate that between this and the book, I definitely by far prefer the original book; for as much credit as I tried to give this adaption of the story whilst reading it, I really couldn’t see more than a single upside to viewing this version of the story instead of the book, and that single upside — the ability to see a possible glimpse at what the characters looked like — did not in any way make up for all that was lost in translation enough to warrant viewing it as a viable alternative, or even all that much worth seeing as a supplemental piece to the book, since it contradicts it so much and lacks such an incredible amount of the punch that its source material had.

To name just a few of the changes I caught onto while reading it:

The characterization of Abby, Sarah’s best friend, is slightly different here, as while during the conversation of what Abby used to do to her Barbies when she and Sarah used to play with them felt slightly more like a testament to Abby’s unique fashion sense and tastes in the book, in the graphic novel, Sarah outright states that Abby tortured her Barbies instead of describing the unconventional ways she styled them that didn’t adhere to normal beauty standards. Maybe it’s just me, but that felt like a swing and a miss, when we consider the overall implied message of the story.

Several events were skipped, like Sarah’s ice cream date with Mason, completely re-ordered or just completely altered, like Eleanor waking up immediately by accident when Sarah first takes her home and looks at her, Sarah not tipping her hand that she knew who Mason Blair was when he introduced himself to her, or just being honest with the Beautifuls about what her Mom does and getting disapproving looks.

Perhaps the worst change of all, though, in my opinion, was the change at the very end of the story where, as Sarah is falling apart into a pile of junk, instead of just the narration of her regretful thought, she laments openly that “Abby was right”, and Eleanor turns to her and agrees, “Abby was right about a lot of things”; to me, this unanimous commentary happening between both characters is far too on-the-nose about the ultimate moral of the story, and that lack of subtlety in a story that is already quite clear enough about its message without needing to have both its main characters say it aloud is actually rather detrimental to its overall integrity and enjoyability.

A good story should not have to slap you in the face with its message completely verbatim in order to be able to get that message across; the story should not feel like it stops and makes every character on-screen break the fourth wall to stare you in the face and tell you directly and heavy-handedly what you are supposed to take away from it, and that is what this version of the ending feels like: an open bout of preaching — and, whether they agree with the message wholeheartedly or not, almost no one particularly likes being bluntly preached to by a piece of fiction.

And, on top of all of that, the fact of the matter is that the one upside this medium had wasn’t even really taken advantage of in the way that it should have been:

Despite all the muss and fuss about how ugly and obnoxious of a green Sarah’s hair was when she dyed it, it doesn’t even really look that way except for in the panel(s) at the hair salon — mostly looking a very pale and hardly noticeable slightly greenish yellow in the majority of panels after her escapade.

Sarah’s chest, for all her complaints of it being completely flat, doesn’t really come across so in the artwork of her before her transformation into being more shapely, and instead just makes it look like she wanted it bigger than it already was rather than wanting it just noticeable at all.

The colors and designs of many things, too, seem quite different than how they are described in the novel, with the most noticeable example being that the necklace Eleanor gives Sarah is now gold instead of silver, and that, for whatever strange reason, Eleanor’s eyes don’t seem to be green at all and rather mostly look a plain empty grey until the fifth day, instead of starting out as such as they did in the book.

All in all, although the artwork itself is certainly serviceable and cute enough, there are just a lot of strange choices I don’t really appreciate being made here, and losing Sarah’s inner monologue, when the book is practically written from her point of view (albeit in third person), is such a detriment in combination with all of these things that it really wasn’t worth the trade-off.

Lore Relevancy

Well, having long since read the entire book, I quite expect this to be the longest entry I have in this particular volume of Fazbear Frights, so let’s not waste any time mincing words and just jump straight into it, shall we?

The Lies and Half-truths

As always, before we can get into what the book is trying to say, we should start by trying to rule out what it definitely or at least almost certainly isn’t; now, unlike Into the Pit, which was so closely tied to the actual main game series’ canon that we could easily rule out what could or couldn’t be true, To Be Beautiful, unfortunately, does not have any overt one-to-one tie to any canon mainline game continuity events, so this process is naturally going to be a little bit harder and take a lot more guesswork, but still, I do feel that we can make at least a few fairly educated assessments.

Firstly, unlike with Into the Pit, the game version of which gives me pause to consider that Oswald and his Dad might to some extent actually be based on real people that exist within the FNAF universe, even if what happened to them was entirely or mostly made-up — what with the Freddy Mask implying Oswald’s Dad might be “Freddy Bully”, one of Michael’s childhood friends — I am fairly confident, at least at the time of writing this, that Sarah and everyone within her story do not actually exist beyond potentially being a metaphor and/or stand-in for someone else already well-established within the main games’ canon (more on this later).

My reasoning for this is mostly that, well, not only is it unlikely and way overcomplicating things to say that every single character in every Fazbear Frights story must have a separate counterpart in the real world of FNAF, even when they don’t seem to have anything particularly hinting at it, but also…I simply don’t believe that Eleanor truly exists, either, and I know that may be a hot take for some but, hey, there it is.

At the time of writing this — and granted, that could change at some point in the future, since I know she’s going to return several times — I believe that Eleanor is nothing more than a) a stand-in for Circus Baby/Scrap Baby/post-death Elizabeth in general, b) a convenient method by which to further explore the concept of the Power of Wills and Wishes™️ (there is a better name for this in the future, but this is just my placeholder name for it until we get to talking about Fetch), and c) the main antagonist this in-universe fictional series focuses on instead of William/Springtrap (+ variants).

Now, did the method by which Eleanor kills Sarah actually claim someone’s life somewhere in the mainline canon? Does her seeming “magic” actually exist in some form? …Well, sort of, yes; it’s a half-truth, really, with enough details changed to distance itself from the actual happenings while still being able to use some of the most horrific and mystifying parts about them — exactly as you’d expect from a company trying to discredit and make light of real-world events.

But, seeing as those very things tie so heavily into the things I want to discuss regarding what I think the book is trying to say, we’ll get to the nitty-gritty of that later in the next section.

For now, I think we’ve covered everything that can be covered here, so let’s move on.

The Truths and the Likely-Truths

So…from now on, though obviously this section will continue to be where I discuss all things that I think were borrowed in-universe from the real life events of the main canon and/or which could have some relevance there, I will be more properly splitting this up into two sub-sections: The things that I know are true — which are themes and topics that I feel, without doubt, are definitely and most obviously what the story was created to establish and/or bring up relating to the lore, from an out-of-universe perspective — and then the things that I think are true, which are what I personally believe the book could be trying to establish and probably believe with a fairly high level of confidence, but which may not be as obvious at a first glance and do have more leeway for other interpretations.

It should be noted, however — and this is probably something I will retroactively add to the “Disclaimer and Important Notes” page, as I feel it’s quite important to all of the books — that, as Scott has confirmed in a decently recent interview with Dawko that he just writes down the basic plot of his stories and all the important points he wants to cover and then lets the other author flesh it out more fully, we have no way of knowing outside of the main plot exactly what details were his ideas and which aren’t; therefore, there’s a good chance that a few or even multiple of the things I bring up are just massive coincidence and have no meaning whatsoever in reality. Nevertheless, I do think there’s value in discussing it, but that fact is also why I will often try to provide far more than just one detail to back up most of my more elaborate interpretations and ideas — because we can’t be sure that any one single tiny detail within the books has value, unless of course it’s something Scott has specifically said is important.

Now! With that in mind, let’s take a look at what we can glean from this tale.

The things I KNOW are True

So, approaching this from the angle that, according to Frights Fiction, every Fazbear Frights story must contain some measure of truth hidden within the lies — some event Fazbear Entertainment is attempting to discredit (or further discredit, if it’s something that’s come up before) and monetize — what do I believe are the things To Be Beautiful is definitely riffing off of?

Well, there are four things here I am absolutely sure of:

1: Eleanor is absolutely derived from and supposed to be the Fazbear Frights version of Circus Baby — but more specifically and very importantly, she is Circus Baby after killing and being possessed by Elizabeth.

How do I know this? Well, there are a number of indicators throughout the book which tell us this:

It is stated very clearly in the book that Eleanor has green eyes — the color we know to be Elizabeth’s eye color, which Baby absorbed after killing and being possessed by her, according to Sister Location — not Circus Baby’s original blue.

In general, appearance wise, Eleanor looks very much like the version of Baby we see in The Silver Eyes trilogy, and said Baby was also possessed by Elizabeth and had the same duality in thoughts and nature that Circus Baby did during the main events of Sister Location, rather than being just an AI.

Her name is Eleanor — a name that is not only strikingly more human than Circus Baby, but also begins with the same two letters as Elizabeth.

She is stated in the books to have “a young girl’s voice”; now, what precisely this means, I suppose, is up for interpretation, but usually, if you refer to someone as a “young girl”, it means they are a child. In other words, she sounds younger than she looks; she sounds like a child. If I had to guess, she most probably sounds like Elizabeth — like Ennard sounds in the secret ending on Night Five, after Baby’s AI has been removed and all that remains of Baby is Elizabeth. Now, we could say that she has Circus Baby’s voice, as that could also be considered one of a young girl, but I feel the intentional draw to the fact that her voice sounds like a young girl, when Eleanor is described to be more of a proper woman, has to be an intentional dissonance, and using it just to say “oh, she sounds like Circus Baby” seems a bit pointless and redundant when it is already so clear that she is a stand-in for Circus Baby and practically no one is going to try to dispute this. In my eyes, this was done to draw attention to the fact that she is more than just an A.I. She is, just like in The Silver Eyes, both a girl and an AI who wants to obtain a more perfect and human-like body to inhabit. Something real.

The reason why I feel that this distinction is important is several-fold, and we’ll get to some of the reasons later, but for now let’s focus on the most important one, which is:

2: The events that happen in To Be Beautiful because of Eleanor are largely (with only a few caveats) meant to mirror and appear drawn from Sister Location.

Feeling skeptical? Here’s some evidence to back it up:

Throughout a vast majority of the story, ever since their initial meeting, Eleanor is largely portrayed as a kind and caring individual who longs to be good and only wants to help Sarah and keep her safe; this is a point that is brought up many, many times throughout the book — sometimes from Sarah, and sometimes even from Eleanor, herself. (To give one choice line from the book among the many examples: “Somehow, Eleanor being there made Sarah feel safe, as if Eleanor were standing guard.”) This is also true in Sister Location, as Circus Baby takes the role of protector and guide for Michael throughout many nights, keeping him safe and ensuring that nothing can hurt him, to the point where Michael (in the true, regular ending) steadily grows to trust her nearly completely and put his life in her hands, as Sarah does the same with Eleanor.

However, just like in Sister Location for Michael regarding Circus Baby, there are brief moments here and there as time progresses where Sarah gets the slightest hint of something just being “off” about the situation, or even times when Eleanor does something outright creepy, like leaning over and staring at Sarah while she sleeps, but she gives an innocent explanation for it, and Sarah, while upset, still seems to shrug it off in the end and forgive, excusing it by some means and telling herself it’s nothing to worry about (AKA just like when Circus Baby kidnaps Michael after Funtime Foxy attacks him, and stuffs him inside a Springlock Suit, claiming she did it to save him, but at the same time demanding he be quiet until the workers leave the room and wait until morning to be rescued), shortly before she inevitably seals her own fate the next day.

Eleanor really only awakens at night (“mostly nocturnal”, as the book puts it) in most cases, putting an emphasis on Sarah’s visits with her always happening at these times, much like with the night segments in Sister Location being the time that Michael interacts with Baby, and it also being the usual time that the animatronics go into free-roaming mode, and seem to start actively “coming to life” in their supernatural way in the mainline games’ canon, in general.

Sarah and Eleanor ended up meeting when Sarah found her in an old scrap yard and took pity on her condition, deciding to save her and fix her up. Michael met Baby because he had gone to Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental specifically to find Elizabeth and fix her, saving and freeing her from the AI that allegedly controlled her and made her do bad things, and “putting her back together.”

Eleanor’s ‘helping’ of Sarah — or rather, slowly working towards taking her entire body and getting Sarah to willingly, though albeit unknowingly, help her do it — takes place over the course of four nights, with the fifth day being the time that the transformation is finally complete; this much probably doesn’t even need saying, but this is a direct parallel to the four nights of Baby helping Michael along the way and ensuring his body would be preserved until he finally came around again on the fifth, when Baby and her fellow animatronics’ preparations were finally complete.

Both Eleanor’s and Circus Baby’s ultimate goal in helping the person they’ve met and keeping them safe for a period of time was for the explicit purpose of stealing their body and identity to use as a disguise and escape where they were being kept, so they could freely roam the world and go where they pleased.

There is actually a lot of clear symbolism and parallels for Ennard inhabiting and at times even controlling Michael’s body post-scoop, especially during the scene where Sarah loses her necklace and begins to lose her seemingly soft and human outside appearance to transform into a literal mass of tangled parts that she was underneath, detailing how people around her slowly went from expressing joy or amusement to absolute horror and fear, describing her struggling to walk down the street to her house and considering what people must think seeing her, describing the odd feeling and sound when the necklace first fell off, the clanking and clunking inside her, the slow horrific realization of what had happened, how she struggled to move and her body no longer was under her control, and lastly, how, “She was falling apart. Collapsing into a hideous trash heap. She didn’t resemble a human of any kind.” (Quite similarly to how Michael was falling apart in spite of the remnant in his body trying to repair him and barely resembled a human by the time Ennard finally left him.)

A little detail, maybe, but as Sarah is searching for Eleanor, she eventually begins to lose control over her ability to speak well, and calls out to her as “Ena”…which is quite similar in sound to Ennard.

These are definitely much smaller things by comparison, but I also feel that both Sarah notably staring into the mirror a lot and the mention of her eating spaghetti dinner at one point in the story are also meant to be small little symbols and metaphors for Sister Location, as Michael notably is seen staring into his mirror at the end of Sister Location, and Sarah consuming spaghetti — whose noodles are like Ennard’s many long tangled wires he is comprised of, and whose traditionally red marinara sauce resembles blood — could be seen as a metaphor for Ennard entering into Michael through his stomach after he is scooped.

Not only that, but there are also a few things in the story that only make sense if you think about them from the perspective of it being a fictional story in-universe that is meant to be borrowing a lot of events from and using symbolism for Sister Location; for example, and perhaps most notably, an ‘issue’ which GiBi’s Horror Homestead brought up in his video analysis of To Be Beautiful: the fact that instead of having Eleanor directly wear Sarah’s old body parts, she instead transforms her appearance using some sort of technology (more on this in a moment), and Sarah winds up finding the body parts just uselessly lying in bags which fall onto the floor.

It may seem counterintuitive, at first, to have Eleanor not wear the body parts when Ennard quite literally wore Michael’s body as a skinsuit, but I actually feel that this was very intentional; having Eleanor not do this not only allowed for the body parts — arms, legs, noses, and torsos — to be splayed out on the floor in front of Sarah when the sickening realization hits her, reminiscent of all the body parts of the animatronics in the Scooping Room when Michael arrives there, but it also leaves room for the book to specifically mention her entrails and organs slopping out onto the floor as well — giving the image of what would have happened to Michael when the scooper finally got him.

We could also say that Eleanor singing was meant to be reminiscent of Ballora, though I’m not quite as certain of that much, just a thought I wanted to put forward as, otherwise, I admit, I’m unclear on the purpose of it existing — unless, of course, it has some sort of hypnotizing and/or calming effect that basically worked as the anesthetic before Sarah’s surgery, and we’re for some reason supposed to draw absurd parallels between the Puppet being soothed by the music box and this in order to come to that conclusion, but I highly doubt that for a multitude of reasons.

3: Sarah’s necklace and Eleanor’s matching button are, without doubt, meant to be another play on and reminder of illusion disc technology, making this the second time within this book that it’s brought up.

Now, why Sarah’s body fails when her necklace falls off, even though there is no such mechanic involved in illusion discs, is another matter entirely, and while yes, we could easily say that perhaps the necklace was also connected to her new body in some way and kept the parts “running” (acting like a key to an engine), I also honestly really don’t think that it matters one way or another — not if we believe in Frights Fiction, at least.

Occam’s Razor dictates that the simplest answer is usually the most correct one, and saying that things in the books don’t entirely follow or fit the logic of FNAF’s known main canon because they’re sensationalized fiction and that the shock and horror elements of the story (and the ability to use, alter, and discredit various real world events) are always going to come before any real world logic is definitely the simplest answer here.

Sure, we can come up with complex potential explanations like this on why something is the way it is in these stories when it doesn’t make sense, but why waste that time and effort when we know that they’re fictional to begin with, and doing so might lead to missing the actual in-universe reason why the in-universe creators of Fazbear Frights would want to include certain story elements?

4: And lastly, once again, we circle back to the (at least as much as I’ve read thus far) ever-ongoing theme of the Power of Wills and Wishes™️ — the constant and seemingly very emphasized implication that within the FNAF universe, the mind/spirit is a very powerful thing that can — to at least some degree — control, cause, and/or contribute to the shape of reality and what happens within it.

Now, as I believe I said earlier in this post, I do want to hold off on discussing this on a grander scale until I reach the article where I talk about Fetch, but I will say that this theme is even stronger and more front and center in To Be Beautiful than it was in Into the Pit, with this time not only Sarah longing to be the conventional standard of beautiful and then ultimately getting her wish, but also getting to do so through Eleanor, who explicitly talks about and promises wish-granting.

Again, just something to bear in mind for the future for now, but it absolutely needed mentioning.

—

So, we have a whole list of things that I invariably believe are key parts of the book from an in-universe perspective, but what out of all of this, if anything, do I think that, out-of-universe, was undeniably something Scott would have wanted to communicate with this book?

Well, maybe this is a bit of a boring answer, but to be honest with you, unlike with Into the Pit, where I would have at least said that I think getting the year of the MCI — 1985 — out there was definitely a goal in the book, and that the game version also added a most likely game-canon design for Henry and William and a heavily implied connection between Oswald’s Dad and Freddy Bully, I don’t think that there’s actually any one thing that To Be Beautiful exists specifically to fully, uniquely, and unquestionably establish — at least not that isn’t mentioned elsewhere in other stories to some degree as well.

Rather, I think that To Be Beautiful — both in terms of the things that I think are utterly undeniable, and the things in the next section that I just believe in very strongly and think are backed quite well by various evidence, but aren’t as easily confirmed — just exists to further expand and place further emphasis upon certain points that have already been, and will continue to be, brought up in other Fazbear Frights books.

And in the case of the things that I feel are utterly undeniable, those points that I think emphasis is being placed on are illusion disc technology, and the very intriguing concept that is genuine willpower within the FNAF universe.

“But why the illusion discs?” I can hear some of you asking even now, “I know you said the other thing comes up again, and you have a theory on that to share later, but what’s so important about these?”

Well, like I said in my Into the Pit article, I think that Scott wants to remind people that technology like this is a thing in the FNAF universes, and that we shouldn’t rule it out of existing in the main canon, too — and not just because of FNAF 4, either; we’ve actually seen something akin to illusion disc technology not just hinted at, but actually shown to us in the main universe already, within Ruin, when we’re not using the Vanny mask. There are many things that Cassie can see and feel right in front of her so realistically that she is utterly convinced she can’t pass through until she wears the mask to take the illusion away, or removes it by some other source, like finding and removing ‘anomalies’ on the camera in a certain order (AKA using a hidden passcode to deactivate the illusion).

I’m not sure just yet how important this technology is going to become, but I do wholeheartedly believe that even if you are still utterly intent on just believing that FNAF 4 was a bunch of nightmares and nothing more, illusion discs are nevertheless clearly an integral part of the series either way, and a relevant thing that is intentionally being discussed and going to continue to be important to understanding how certain things in the mainline FNAF universe work.

The things I FEEL are True

…Well, putting all of that absolute certainty and undeniable truth behind us, let’s now wade a bit deeper into the pool of analysis, well-backed theories, and plausible personal interpretations, and finally ask the burning question:

What do I think To Be Beautiful could be trying to say about the main lore and/or its characters, on a deeper level?

Well, to start with, one thing is for sure: it’s certainly carrying on this entire book’s clear but unstated secondary theme of its main characters feeling unlovable, unwanted, utterly invisible in any possible positive context, and like life is meaningless in its current state.

But…why is it like that? It’s not as if this is the running theme which is mentioned on the back of the volume itself — with said theme being identified as the fulfillment of wishes and their unfortunate consequences — and yet, it is still undeniably there.

Oswald feels like his Dad doesn’t really care about him, feels invisible to him, and is generally unhappy and bored with the way his monotonous, unpleasant life is in their dying town. Sarah, as we’ll further discuss soon, hates her own body and feels ugly, undesirable, and utterly invisible because of it, thinking that there’s no happiness to be found in life unless she fundamentally changes herself to be more in line with what’s considered conventionally pretty. And lastly, Millie — well, Millie’s plight we’ll get around to later, when we discuss Count the Ways, but trust me when I say that she is absolutely not the exception to this rule, and if anything, is actually even more extreme than the others in a lot of ways.

I know some people might say that it probably just lined up that way because the characters being unhappy was the necessary motivator for them to even have wishes in the first place, but that isn’t necessarily true; yes, they would need to be unhappy in some way with their current life, but that discontent didn’t have to stem from those precise, very specific troubles.

As a matter of fact, Oswald’s wish itself — the one that was “granted” to him through his discovery of the ballpit — had absolutely nothing in particular to do with his struggle of feeling ignored and not cared about; rather, it stemmed mostly just from the fact that he was feeling bored, and while yes, that boredom was technically because of these issues, he could very easily have just been bored without meeting any of the criteria here, so it seems very intentional that he was nevertheless written so that he did meet them — just as it does with every other main character in the book.

The fact that they all met every single one of these points has to mean something, it’s just a matter of what…and, honestly, if you’ve read my previous article, then I think you probably already know where I’m going with this.

But, for now, let’s reel it back in and just focus on Sarah’s story and who I think she and her struggles represent individually, since I think it’s easier to build a case up for something like this if you first take it one step at a time.

I’m sure you’re well aware where I stand on it, but I’ll go ahead and say it plainly anyway: I think that the character of Sarah is a stand-in for Michael, potentially in more ways than just as far as it relates to fulfilling his role in the story’s intentional bastardization of Sister Location.

Yes, I realize that there are probably plenty of people who are going to disagree with me on this, and I can understand why; at a cursory glance, Sarah and Michael don’t really seem very alike beyond what happened to them, and, if anything, I’m sure Elizabeth is probably the first canon character to come to mind when people see a story involving a girl and Circus Baby-like robot — especially one she looks up to and views as extraordinarily beautiful and perfect.

Combine that with the fact that a great many people borrow from the explicitly alternate universe Silver Eyes trilogy in their headcanons for how William was to her as a father (as well as other, equally dubious sources of information), and I’m sure that a fair number would be quite convinced that the Afton girl just meets every criteria on the board necessary to be an obvious parallel to Sarah and all of her troubles and concerns.

…She’s really not, though — not in hardly any sense of the word.

Let’s review the smaller bits of evidence that could be used to support this theory, and see how they hold up to scrutiny:

1: “Sarah is explicitly mentioned to have an older brother in college who is majoring in computer science and might know about [the concept of something like Eleanor] — a clear reference to Elizabeth having an older brother, Michael.” …Not…really. Sure, Sarah and Elizabeth both have older brothers, and with Sarah being 14 and college having the potential to accept students well into their 20s or even older, you could really stretch it to say that they have a similar age gap, but there’s honestly no proof of this whatsoever; talking in terms of statistics and probabilities, the gap they have is much more likely to be closer to what Elizabeth would’ve had with Garret than what she had with Michael.

As for the brother’s profession, this…actually has no connection to Michael whatsoever; yes, he’s familiar with the animatronics, but that’s because his father makes them for a living, and later on — long after Elizabeth’s death, I might add — he works around and perpetually deals with them as a night security guard at Freddy’s, too.

A lot of people have brothers. A lot of people in this franchise have people who in some way know something about technology or animatronics; this is not a smoking gun in any way, shape, or form. The details just don’t match up enough to make for a compelling piece of evidence. They don’t even mention a name.

2: “The story makes mention of frozen yogurt/ice cream a few times, and has Sarah eat it; this is meant to be a reference to Circus Baby, and the fact that a vanilla ice cream cone was what she used to lure Elizabeth to her death. That makes Sarah Elizabeth.” This is an even bigger reach than the mention of Sarah having a brother.

Yes, ice cream/frozen yogurt is mentioned in the book a few times, very passingly, but the purpose of its mention is less about the treat itself and more a means by which to discuss the fact that the Beautifuls seem to be able to eat whatever they want without gaining an ounce, and Sarah feels like she can’t (as well as potential symbolism for the fact that the Beautifuls are cold and self-indulgent). At no point is Sarah mentioning how much she loves ice cream — and she does talk at decent length about foods she is actually partial to, like pizza — or even picking a flavor that would have a hint of significance towards that tragic canon event, explicitly choosing swirl over the option for vanilla. At no point is the ice cream relevant to the plot, or in any form connected to her death at the end of the book, which it absolutely should be if this was truly meant to be a parallel between those events.

The graphic novel does feel like it puts a little bit more emphasis on the inclusion of the food, but this is ironically only because it does a poor job at explaining the reason it was brought up in its source material in the first place, and it entirely skips over Sarah having a date at an ice cream shop, too — oddly making it stand out even more, simply because it feels like an almost pointless inclusion, whereas in the book it makes perfect sense. It’s not a deliberate choice, it’s just another meaningless point of contention that says nothing other than that the graphic novel is really bad at conveying, even with the help of visuals, what the book easily conveys with just words alone.

3: “Sarah wants to have blonde hair; Elizabeth is (strawberry) blonde.” Yes, correct…but an emphasis should be placed on wants; Sarah is not blonde, nor does she become blonde even when all her wishes are otherwise granted. Sarah is a brunette. If Scott wanted to make Sarah a parallel to Elizabeth, having her share her hair color — or at least succeed in obtaining her hair color later, when her wishes were granted — would have been an easy way to help nudge readers in the direction of viewing her as a metaphor for Elizabeth despite a great scarcity of other solid evidence, but he deliberately chose instead to give her the brown hair and blue eyes of Elizabeth’s brother Michael, instead of the near instantly recognizable (strawberry) blonde and green eyes of the one some allege that he meant to portray.

Yes, in the To Be Beautiful-inspired mini-game of the Into the Pit video game adaption, Eleanor does make Sarah blonde, but this was clearly done because if it wasn’t, it would be unrecognizable in an 8-bit artstyle that Eleanor had changed her head much at all. I don’t particularly like the change exactly because I feel it muddies the waters in this way and has the potential for causing confusion, but I do understand why it was done, and it wasn’t because Scott wanted to retcon how Sarah looked; it was because it was the only simple way to convey the change in that part of her appearance — the same as changing her clothes was one of the easiest ways to convey a lot of the change in her body.

4: “Sarah likes soft pink, as evidenced by her nails and lipstick post-transformation; Elizabeth’s room in FNAF 4 was decorated all in pink.” …Well, for one thing, we don’t know for sure that that room belonged to Elizabeth; I certainly agree that it is Elizabeth’s room, I 100% believe that that is the intended interpretation, but it should be said that it’s not actually been confirmed, and there are people out there who choose to believe it’s Michael’s.

For reasons that should be obvious if you know my semi-controversial stance on FNAF 4, I pretty strongly disagree with the interpretation that that room is Michael’s, unless we’re assuming a change of houses (and decor tastes) happened by the time the night sections of FNAF 4 rolled around, but it is an interpretation that exists, and so it does bear mentioning.

Even if it is Elizabeth’s room, though — and again, I agree that it is — a girl liking pink isn’t really some groundbreaking thing, given that at this current point in time, that is the well-known stereotype (and many girls do, in fact, like pink, though it has little to do with gender). Saying, “this girl likes pink, so she must be this other girl who likes pink” is just….not really the best argument I’ve seen, if we’re being honest — especially when one of the main plot points of the story is that Sarah wants to adhere to the conventional beauty standards for her gender.

—

Well, even if we don’t have any of that, we at least still have the fact that Elizabeth clearly felt pretty much everything Sarah did about herself, right? In the Silver Eyes trilogy, Elizabeth was constantly neglected by her Dad in favor of his inventions — with that universe’s equivalent of Circus Baby being his main focus at the time when she was alive — longing to be loved and wanted like Baby was, to be perfect like Baby was, and even after dying and possessing Baby, neither she nor Baby were ever happy or content with themselves because he immediately moved on to just trying to use her to get something better, leaving her to feel like she wasn’t enough and grow jealous of the current object of his interest. That’s a perfect fit for the secondary theme I keep mentioning in this volume, and not a bad comparison to Sarah by any means, isn’t it?

I mean, yeah, it’s not too far off the mark, but…we’re not talking about The Silver Eyes’ Elizabeth here; there would be no point in Sarah being a parallel for an alternate universe version of Elizabeth, just to tell us what we already know about her — and despite fairly popular opinion, the Elizabeth from the main games’ canon, whom this would be about if it was about any Elizabeth, isn’t canonically like the one in the Silver Eyes. Neither is William, in regards to the way he largely treats his kids.

Look, I know that people can have their different interpretations of characters wherever the blanks aren’t filled in, and that’s perfectly fine, but there comes a point where you have to be able to look at canon and distinguish whether what you choose to believe about a character is a headcanon (something that doesn’t conflict with official canon, but also doesn’t necessarily have anything backing it), or an alternate universe interpretation (which is something that conflicts with canonical information in a way that renders it impossible to reconcile with official canon, no matter how cool or fun the idea may be).

It’s perfectly fine if some of you like the idea of a William Afton who is abusive and/or neglectful of all of his kids, and I 100% encourage you to play around with that in your creations, if that’s what makes you happy, but canonically, in terms of the mainline games, it needs to be recognized that as far as any 100% confirmable canon is concerned, that is not what William is; William did not neglect or abuse Elizabeth. William did not neglect or abuse Garret. There is nothing confirmable in main canon which suggests this, and everything that suggests otherwise.

If William did not care about Garret or Elizabeth, he would not be on a mission to “put them back together”, to the point of temporarily enlisting the only child whom he does canonically resent to help him do it.

If William did not care about Garret, he would not have sat at his child’s bedside and begged him to wake up. If William did not care about Elizabeth, he would not have tried to protect her from Baby. The entire point of mainline FNAF — and what makes it so compelling — is that William is shown to just have originally been a father who lost himself when he lost his child and went progressively more and more mad in his grief as his refusal to let go just kept causing him to lose more, until he had truly become a monster (in more than one sense of the word) practically beyond all recognition. It is the contrast between him, Henry, and Michael in how they deal with their grief that makes them all such good characters.

There is no point in confirmable canon in which Elizabeth says or implies that her father mistreated her prior to her death, and she even goes so far as to say in the end of Pizzeria Simulator that she believes that the entire pizzeria and Michael taking the job was all a gift for them (his children) from their father, which I can’t imagine her saying if she thought he didn’t care about her or them. By all accounts, she speaks very lovingly of him.

So no, as far as we know, the actual main canon Elizabeth does not fit the bill for the running secondary theme of this volume, which means that she does not really fit Sarah.

And as for the Silver Eyes’ interpretation of Elizabeth, I do feel it’s very important to just draw attention to one thing: in that alternate universe, William did not have multiple children; there was not a Garret or a Michael through whose fates we could mark his complex descent into madness through grief. This was intentional; there was no Garret in William’s life because in the Silver Eyes, if William had a Garret to mourn and to obsess over returning to life at all costs, he would not have been the antithesis to Henry, who instead took his role with his grief over his late daughter, Charlie. If William had had an Elizabeth he loved, he would not have been the contrast to the loving father that Henry was, and Elizabeth/Baby would not have had a reason to be jealous of Charlie, who had a father who loved her so dearly, and that was very clearly what they were going for.

As a result, the Silver Eyes Elizabeth was not just Elizabeth — she was a unique-to-that-universe creation who fulfilled a role that was a mix between her mainline canon counterpart and the mainline canon Michael — a little girl born of William Afton to die tragically to Baby, but also a child for William to neglect and then act cruel/cold/disdainful towards and make suffer in the name of his endeavors.

Trying to compare anyone in the Silver Eyes in a straightforward way to their main canon namesakes and expecting everything (or even most things) to transfer over is a fruitless endeavor, because no one there is entirely themselves; they’re what the narrative needs them to be in order to work the way it wants. That’s why it’s an alternate universe.

And finally, as we’ve discussed in the previous section, Elizabeth already has a main character counterpart in Eleanor, when it comes to To Be Beautiful; Eleanor very clearly represents Circus Baby after she’s been possessed by Elizabeth, and the overall plot is meant to mirror the events of Sister Location, so why would she need to also be represented by the character who happens to be the stand-in for Michael in every other instance?

It’s much more sensible to assume that Elizabeth is represented by the main character who parallels — well, Elizabeth, and that Michael is represented by the main character who is an obvious stand-in for him.

Besides, Michael has so much more in common with Sarah, to begin with. Think about it:

1: We already know that in terms of the main plot and how it relates to Sister Location, Sarah is meant to be filling Michael’s space, so it would hardly be a leap of logic to say that it would make the most sense if the person she is meant to parallel in other ways is also Michael, rather than some random other character whom we aren’t already thinking about.

2: Sarah and Michael both share the same mousy brown hair and blue eyes, making for a compelling argument to an intentional physical resemblance despite the difference in gender.

3: Furthermore, going by both the descriptions in the book and the artwork of the graphic novel, apart from characteristics brought on by age, Sarah bares a strong, almost uncanny likeness to her Mom — perfectly paralleling how Michael and his father, William, are canonically near identical in appearance, as well.

4: Given that there is a certain passage in the story, during the point where Sarah is having her first ‘interview’ with the Beautifuls, where it is explicitly stated, “Sarah tried not to bristle at the word ‘Dad’.”, I think it is safe to say that both she and Michael have issues and/or an overall adversary — or at least strained — relationship with their fathers, as well. We know from the mainline canon that Michael definitely does, for as much as there might have been a part of him that once wanted to win his love and attention when he was young.

5: Throughout the book, Sarah has a best friend named Abby, whom she has been so close to for most of her life that she basically grew up with her; Abby can occasionally be used as a nickname for ‘Elizabeth’, and in the alternate universe FNAF movie, Michael’s sister — who is very clearly meant to be Elizabeth — is called Abby, as well.

I don’t think that Abby is necessarily meant to be Elizabeth in the story, by any means, for reasons that should already be clear, but I do think that this is supposed to be yet another attempt at making parts of Sarah’s life mirror Michael’s in a way.

6: In one part of the tale, Sarah remarks how Eleanor is definitely “more alive than the stuffed Freddy Fazbear she’d had on her bed since she was six”, and again makes reference to said Freddy plush later on, when she picks it up to hug it, while telling Eleanor about her day.

If you happen to subscribe to the same belief that I do that the night sections of FNAF 4 take place in Michael’s bedroom, and that Michael is the one being terrorized by animatronics fitted with illusion discs by his father, then you’d know that Michael very notably has a stuffed Freddy Fazbear on his bed that this could be a reference to, as could the vague suggestion that Sarah’s stuffed Freddy hadn’t “come to life”, as appeared to happen in a sense to young Michael during this time.

7. Not exactly a smoking gun by any means, but Sarah and Abby both very openly love pizza in this, even if Sarah stopped eating it for quite a while out of a desire to avoid carbs, and Sarah even seems to be something of a connoisseur in the way she narrates the fact that the pizza at the cafeteria isn’t that bad for what it was, making an implication she’s had better, more fresh pizza.

Michael is also quite familiar with pizza, given that it’s his family’s business, as would his sister Elizabeth be, and in the Security Logbook, one of the perks of the job of working at Freddy’s that Michael mentions is “employees get free pizza”, implying that he does quite enjoy it — even enough that it could be considered a perk of an otherwise extremely dangerous and largely unpleasant, generally low-paying job.

8: Despite knowing full well how they can be, Sarah seems to nevertheless idolize and greatly want to be a part of The Beautifuls, who are ultimately just a glorified group of spoiled, wealthy bullies. This is, truthfully, not very different at all from the fact that Michael used to hang out with what appeared to be a group of bullies when he was a young teen, also around Sarah’s stated age.

9: A lot of Sarah’s specific complaints about herself and her life have a lot of potential subtle symbolism relating to Foxy, and the various versions of the character that have been made over the years — and I don’t think I have to explain how important Foxy symbolism generally is, when we’re talking about Michael.

Here’s just a few of the notable examples I’ve picked up on:

Sarah’s obsessions with the faults of her physical appearance are, and I quote, a “bulbous nose”, “prominent ears,” and the fact that “all her parts seem stuck onto her body at random” — over which she then compares herself to “Mrs. Mix-n-match”. Both the bulbous nose and prominent ears are some of the very defining features of Foxy in nearly every iteration, and, of course, although I know Mrs. Mix-n-Match was meant to be a parallel to our world’s Mrs. Potato Head, I can’t help but feel that the way Sarah describes herself and even the name of the toy itself strongly bring to mind the image of Mangle, too.

Although this game came out a year later, I also find it important to note that Roxy — an obviously related character and later a replacement for Foxy during Security Breach’s era — shares many of Sarah’s self-worth and self-image issues, which can often lead her to act like something of a bully to compensate. She also mentions that “nobody likes a loser”, and Sarah in this book plainly states that she doesn’t like to sit at the “loser table” and refuses to do so anymore. This may not be an intentional parallel on the book’s part, as Security Breach obviously did not much exist at that time (if at all) even in the development stage, but it is certainly possible that it could be the other way around, and Roxy could be designed the way she is exactly because of Sarah/Michael, and the fact that she is technically an iteration of Foxy. Just food for thought, I guess.

—

Above all, though, as I began to explore in my previous article, Michael and Sarah’s very biggest common-ground that they share is that secondary underlying theme that pervades this entire book and all three of its full stories — that same feeling of being unlovable, unwanted, invisible when it comes to anything good, and feeling that life in its current state is empty and meaningless.

And if there’s still any doubt of that — still some lingering question of if that could really be an accurate reading of Michael — let us put that to rest immediately, because out of all the iterations of Michael that exist thus far, there is no iteration in which the canon of that universe does not at least show it to be perfectly fitting to his personality — if not blatantly showing and stating it.

In the alternate universe FNAF movie, while avoiding as many spoilers as possible, Michael very clearly carries the weight of guilt over his past mistakes, feels unwanted and invisible to the person he cares about most — not to mention undeserving of being in that person’s life, and later, even shows signs of not particularly caring what happens to him anymore and that life isn’t worth living if he can’t change how it is.

In the mainline canon, through both the games and the Security Logbook, we can see that Michael is deeply regretful of what he did to Garret and, after doing all he could to help his sister who technically died because of that action, as well, states, himself, that the only thing left for him is to continue to live on long enough to right all the harm that he inadvertently caused through a domino effect resulting out of Garret’s death, and find and stop his father. It is very clear, especially through both the Security Logbook and heavily suggested in Pizzeria Simulator, that he feels life beyond this is meaningless and longs to die once it’s all over.

And for the final nail in the coffin of every clear and undeniable Michael interpretation strongly lending to all of the aforementioned themes applying to and being true of Michael in the mainline canon of the games, there is even also a story that comes later in Fazbear Frights — called Lonely Freddy — which is much more undeniably directly about Michael as a person, in which his very obvious stand-in has almost this exact mindset (though that will have to wait, as I don’t want to give out spoilers for future books and tales here).

…But what can we really learn about Michael from To Be Beautiful? Even if what I say here is true, then what could this tale possibly have to contribute that the rest of this volume and that aforementioned later book don’t? If anything, wouldn’t this just be echoing that same general theme and sentiment?

…Well, yes, it would — but that doesn’t mean that examining the specific ways that theme manifests in this story and Sarah’s unique attributes can’t contribute anything new to the conversation. I absolutely think it can.

So, without further ado — as I think this article is getting incredibly long already — here are some things that I personally find to be quite interesting and potentially very revealing when applied to Michael’s character, and why:

1: First of all, to start this off strong with my most robust dissection of Michael's character, there's the parallel between the bullies he used to hang out with as a teen and Sarah's Beautifuls.

In To Be Beautiful, Sarah very clearly has an issue with idolizing bullies and bullying behavior, using her own self-hatred and body image issues to justify the behavior of those she deemed better than herself in some way. It's a sad but interesting thought process to examine — the way that she felt that those who possessed what she herself wanted had the right to look down on her and others simply for not having it, and that she should be honored to even be in their presence for a moment, if they happened to entertain her.

She kept pictures of models on her wall, but not as inspiration in any positive sense of the word; rather, she ended up allowing it to be yet another way to make her feel worse about herself, and even imagined these "goddesses of beauty" mocking her and telling her she had no hope of ever being as pretty as they were.

In Sarah's mind, the supreme, inherent beauty of people like this — especially the Beautifuls — magically shielded them from all of life's pain and embarrassment, and to be accepted by them meant to be covered by that same forcefield, and given status, meaning, worth.

They had high status not because they were rich or had influential parents who could afford to give them anything they wanted and remove any obstacles placed in their way, but because they were beautiful — or at least, that was how she viewed it.

And she wanted that more than anything else. She wanted that, and she wanted to feel valued, and if the Beautifuls — who judged practically everyone but the ‘best’ — valued her and let her run with them, then she had the undeniable proof and reassurance she desperately sought and needed, even once she was already ‘beautiful’, that she had ‘true’ worth.

Applying this philosophy to Michael has an…interesting effect and implication.

While we’ll get into discussion of whether or not there’s anything potentially to be said about Michael and how he feels about his own appearance later, I think it’s very safe to say that, regardless of the answer, that’s obviously not what motivated him when it came to him joining the bully group he was a part of in his teens.

Still, it doesn’t have to be about beauty to tie back to Sarah and her philosophy; if we look at it logically, then like with Sarah, Michael’s reason for looking up to and joining the bullies must have been based off of three things: his own lack of self-worth and a need for that to be validated, the ability to gain status that helped him feel above life’s pain and embarrassment, and them having something he doesn’t, but wishes he had.

The second reason is very simple to work out and requires no pondering at all, as we know for a fact that obviously, being a bully in any capacity does grant you freedom from a lot of life’s inconveniences, as many people will be intimidated enough by you that you gain a certain level of status and free pass to do whatever you want without consequence. Despite Sarah’s (and hence, Michael’s) initial beliefs, it obviously does not truly protect you from all pain or humiliation, no, but it does grant you a significant edge, even if through rather unfortunate means.

As for the first reason, that is also very much tied to the third, so to answer one is to inevitably answer the other, but if not beauty, what was Michael’s greatest insecurity and desire?

Did he want to be wealthy, as the Beautifuls were? Obviously, the answer is no; looking at what little we can observe of Michael’s bully cohorts in his teens and what we can gather of some of them in their present lives, they didn’t particularly appear to be wealthy, and more than likely, given how successful Fredbear’s Family Diner was, Michael’s family would’ve been the richest out of all of them, even if they did appear to choose to live fairly humbly.

The only possible choice, then, is — as I posited in my previous article, and as is backed up by a later story — Michael’s greatest insecurity was in feeling that he was invisible to and largely unloved by his father and/or family in general, compared to his siblings, and, whether or not he originally particularly liked the power the bullies had and flaunted (something of which we cannot easily say one way or another at this point in time), he nevertheless looked up to them for how unaffected they were in life and potentially how their parents spoiled and loved them, and he simultaneously satisfied his loneliness and further fed the beast by choosing to be around them so that he could feel wanted and accepted by at least someone, feel power over at least something when he felt powerless elsewhere, and (as posited previously) act out more and more in an attempt to get the acknowledgement from his father or family that he craved so desperately.

And yet, this also raises a question; if, like Sarah, Michael perhaps believed that the bullies had the right to do what they wanted because they’d earned it through what they had (even if, in their case, it was mostly just power over their lives and the support of the parents), why didn’t he feel the same way about — as we know happened, both according to UCN and the later Lonely Freddy story I keep speaking of — Garret pranking him or otherwise (usually unintentionally) making his life harder? Wouldn’t he feel like he deserved it?

Actually, no, because Sarah was equally a hypocrite about it, when it came to those closer to her, for, despite expressing several times in both narration and dialogue that she believed Abby was beautiful and just didn’t flaunt it (and thus, should have gotten the same level of excusing as the Beautifuls did ), the moment that she felt judged by Abby, Sarah became angry and lashed out at her, because “friends were supposed to be the people who didn’t judge you”. — even though the Beautifuls were, in fact, allowed to judge her and set a standard for her even after they were supposedly friends.

I suppose, in their minds, it’s fine when it’s people who are consistently judgy or cruel to others from the moment you’ve met them, but not fine when it’s someone you grew up with and who is usually supposed to have your back.

2: And now, for probably the most burning question, does Sarah’s emphasis on body image issues have any potential to carry over to Michael, based on what we know of the mainline canon?

Well, going into this, I was fairly certain the resounding answer was just going to be ‘no’, but…after thinking it over and reviewing what we know is canon, I actually think there might be something to it, in a more mild sense.

I obviously don’t think that Michael feels he’s ugly; with the game version of Into the Pit giving us a new and unique, likely canon photograph of William and Henry, and with Sister Location blatantly confirming that Michael looks almost just like his father, I think it’s pretty safe to safe that Michael Afton is likely very conventionally attractive by most standards.

Now, that’s not to say it’s impossible that Michael could think he isn’t, regardless — it very clearly is, since Sarah hates her own appearance and thinks she’s ugly despite her looking just like her Mom, who she clearly thinks is pretty — but given canon, I think it makes more sense to say that if Michael does hate his appearance, it’s less because he isn’t attractive, and more because he looks just like his serial killer, child murdering father.

It would not surprise me in the least if, like Sarah, the mirror we see Michael staring into in Sister Location is indeed his worst enemy, because every time he looks into it, he’s reminded of his Dad, and what he himself did that caused all of this bloodshed in the first place.

It may have even sent him into an existential crisis now and again, as both he and his dad are technically both murderers in their own right. Did it perhaps make him spend hours wondering if, like their physical appearances, they really weren’t as different as he would want to believe?

And if there was a point in time pre- or during Sister Location when he wished to distance himself from that, then I’m sure that just like Sarah, there was eventually a moment of regret for that wish, when he finally looked into the mirror some time after being scooped and could barely recognize the mangled and failing (even if attempting to mend through remnant in spite of Ennard’s intrusion) body in front of him.

There’s clearly no way to know at this point in time, but I do find the implication rather interesting.

3: Going back to the Beautifuls and the bully symbolism for a moment, I do think there is a certain point of interest in some of the symbolism surrounding them and Sarah’s desire to join them.

The way that Abby compares the Beautifuls to a type of animal (penguins) because they are not varied or unique enough in appearance to truly be distinguishable from one another and the fact that Sarah had to get an entirely new face — more or less putting on a non-removable mask — to be acceptable among them, brings to mind, for me, the bullies that Michael associated with and joined around her age, and the concept of both having to wear a both figurative and semi-literal mask to be a part of them, and the comparison to animals in their lack of recognizable features definitely brings to mind the way that those bullies all wore masks of the Fazbear animatronic animal gang.

That could just be me, though.

4: I do think the fact that Sarah deciding to try to improve her life circumstances by buying the hair dye and just ending up more literally green (with envy) in the process has symbolism for something about Michael that is later revealed in Lonely Freddy, but as that would require spoilers for that story in order to explain it, I’ll just list this here for now as something to remember, and we’ll get back to it in that post.

5: Although, I don’t believe Abby is actually meant to be a stand-in for Elizabeth in any meaningful or lasting capacity beyond adding another similarity between Sarah and Michael in who they have a sibling-like dynamic with, there is at least one or two bits in the story that may have some relevance to either Elizabeth or Garret’s relationship with Michael.

In the book, it’s explained that Abby and Sarah grew up together and used to have a very close, sibling-like dynamic where they played together, but that Sarah eventually changed as she grew older and that she more or less had taken the attitude that she had “outgrown” Abby’s world and was now too focused on “fixing” her situation and obsessing over the Beautifuls (despite them being bullies) to hang out with her as she once did — feeling that Abby just didn’t understand her plight because she isn’t mature enough to get it.

For reasons that will become clear in Lonely Freddy, I’m not completely convinced this can apply to Garret, so I’m going to say that it’s Elizabeth this is mirroring, as not only is the character’s name a nickname for Elizabeth, but the dialogue from Scrap Baby in Pizzeria Simulator seems to hint that she and Michael may have had a slightly closer and more innocently playful relationship, but it’s open to interpretation.

Either way, the point is still the same: if applicable to Michael, this information would imply that once Michael began feeling invisible, the distance between him and his sibling(s) grew greatly, as he isolated himself from them more and more, feeling that they didn’t understand or care about the situation he was in and the fact they contributed to it. (Which is, intriguingly, information that UCN seems to partially back, at least in regards to Garret — minus, as far as I can recall, the implication that they were ever extremely close.)

Not really a big revelation, but still worth bringing up, I think.

6: In general, I think that Sarah getting to feel better about herself each of the four days of the transformation and getting closer to her ideal self while (unintentionally, in her case) helping Eleanor out could easily be very symbolic of the fact that helping Elizabeth — in the form of Circus Baby — was clearly Michael’s very first major act of self-redemption, and most likely did help him to feel at least a little less of the self-hatred he would’ve still felt over his other sibling’s tragic death, and gradually brought him one step closer to what he believed at the time would be making up for his mistakes.

7: While not really big or deeply significant enough to warrant their own separate little points in this list, there are just a few little lines from the book that I’d like to highlight as particularly capturing my attention when thinking about the subject of how Sarah relates to Michael:

“She might as well get used to being alone. She was always going to be alone.” Just more potential symbolism for how Michael felt in his day to day life growing up (and potentially even after, when it became clear that his father had only chosen him to help Baby because he knew he would agree). Nothing mind-blowing — the line just stood out to me.

“She felt sad, then she felt scared, and then she felt nothing at all.” Probably one of the saddest lines in the book, and even sadder when you realize that this is likely how Michael felt in the moment of being scooped, before his body was taken over. Sadness over being betrayed by his own sister and even his father, fear over what was clearly about to happen, and then nothing, once the scooper had done its job, until he eventually regained some form of consciousness to find his body being used.

There are a few other smaller things we could potentially examine in this way, but given there’s no major evidence towards those at this present moment other than that they’re true of Sarah, and Sarah is a stand-in for Michael, I think it’s better to leave it here for now.

Instead, as one last small topic that I don’t put half as much heavy stock in, but would still like to highlight anyway, for those of you in search of the elusive Mrs. Afton’s name (it almost certainly isn’t Clara, since the Security Logbook confirms that Michael in particular is the one who relates to Clara and her plight, and makes no mention of it being his Mom’s name), there may be something worth examining here — at least if you believe that Ballora could have been made to represent Mrs. Afton.

If you’d like to hear a more in-depth explanation of this, you can (and should!) check out this little video here by another smaller FNAF creator, but the basics are that the name Eleanor has ties back to the name “Lora”, which Ballora’s name could very easily be a combination of the word “Ballerina” and the name “Lora”. Meaning that it is possible that Mrs. Afton’s name is actually Eleanor, and because this story’s version of Circus Baby is more like an adult woman, she is using her mother’s name instead of Elizabeth, as a cover name.

…And with that, I believe we are actually, finally done here with this analysis of To Be Beautiful; it certainly ended up much, much longer than I expected it to be, despite my having already expected that it would be one of the longest I would write, but I hope that it was worth it to read.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one, when we’ll talk about Count the Ways!

[krackkokichi]

Fazbear Frights Ranking

Now that I've read all the Fazbear Frights stories (I'm super late, I know), I decided to briefly record my thoughts on them. (under the read more)

I don't care about ridiculous premises, because if you don't engage with them, you're not gonna like the story no matter what. I don't care about lore connections, and I especially don't care about epilogue connections. I also don't notice most pacing issues if I am interested in the characters. I don't care about gruesomeness as long as I find it engaging, and I love tragic stories.

When I made the tierlist (at the bottom), I consulted the wiki for the epilogue summaries, but I can't be bothered to do that for the ranking, so just assume if it's higher it's because of Jake, and if it's lower it's because of Eleanor.

36. "The Breaking Wheel" I didn't like any of the characters, and the pacing was too slow for me to be invested. Also what's with all these advanced science classes? Did I just miss out on a common public school thing in my private school?

35. "Prankster" Jeremiah sounds like a Nice Guy, and the ending was confusing. It's also hard to take things seriously when the protagonist thinks it's a prank (I still don't know if it is).

34. "Kids at Play" What is up with the signs following Joel around? That ending came out of nowhere. At least his internal conflict is kinda interesting.

33. "In the Flesh" Matt is so hateable it's entertaining, but the plot is too dull, and the ending is just gross and pointless.

32. "What We Found" This story started off really well, and I was really interested in Hudson, but all the hallucinations made the story difficult to follow. I couldn't tell if Springtrap actually did anything or not. The second half was just so disappointing.

31. "Sergio's Lucky Day" It was kinda neat to see how Sergio became increasingly reliant on Lucky Boy, even to his own detriment well before the ending, but I just didn't like it. I can't explain why.

30. "1:35 AM" I just felt sad for Delilah, but it was also frustrating how she wouldn't even explain to Harper exactly what was wrong. The ending was also underwhelming and made my claustrophobic ass uncomfortable in a bad way.

29. "Count the Ways" I don't understand why this one is so beloved. If not for the portions showing Millie's life before she climbed in Freddy, it would be much lower. I was just distracted the whole time wondering how big Funtime Freddy, who I have always perceived as one of the smaller Freddy models, would have to be to fit a 14 year old in his stomach with enough room for her to move at all. He was also incredibly irritating to listen to.

28. "The New Kid" I was so mad at Devon for involving poor, innocent Mick in his horrible shenanigans. The springlock scene was just so terrible, and the ending was so confusing? Apparently the corpse might be Andrew, but I find problems with this, especially since I don't know for sure if Jake was Eleanor or not. If he was, that's stupid, especially since Jake didn't act malicious at any point, only Devon did.

27. "Together Forever" I always mix up this title with "Alone Together." Most of this story is just stereotypical mean girl stuff, until the gore at the end. Everyone says Fazbear Frights are super gorey, but I didn't really notice most of it. This story though. This one actually made me sick (literally not figuratively), but the last paragraph is really good.

26. "Hide-and-Seek" I could not visualize the game. If it's as big as it sounds, why is it in a pizzeria? As someone with a lot of siblings, I could relate to the competitiveness between Toby and Connor, and the ending was a pretty good message against relapsing into harmful behaviors (at least that how I interpreted it). The majority of the story was too slow for me to be invested when I didn't care much about Toby though.

25. "To Be Beautiful" Putting aside my loathing for Eleanor, this story isn't that bad. It did have a bit of gore at the end, but it wasn't nearly as bad as "Together Forever." Sarah's struggle with self-image and popularity is relatable to a young teen audience. I was moved when she made up with Abby.

24. "Felix the Shark" The first half of the story is really good, but then it drags its feet. It's not interesting to read about a protagonist putting clues together when we don't know what half the clues are. The ending was really good though.

23. "Dance with Me" Kasey's attempt to start over being thwarted by her falling back into bad habits was really realistic. I was routing for her to redeem herself. I was a bit confused by the ending though. Was the girl dancing because of Ballora, or was she dancing because she wanted to? Are we meant to know?

22. "Room for One More" I felt bad for Stanley, but I don't understand the logistics of Minireena vore. How were they spread throughout his body? That's not how ingesting things works.

21. "Gumdrop Angel" Angel's family problems were very relatable. I don't have a step-dad, but I could understand her resentment toward Ophelia for the difference in treatment. Dominic crying for Angel was a really humanizing moment.

20. "Pizza Kit" I can't really explain why I like this one so much. Maybe it's because this story was always misrepresented to me in summaries/other rankings I've seen. Payton and Marley's dynamic is exactly like my dynamic with my childhood friend, so I found Payton extremely relatable. Her death due to her own guilt was pretty poetic.

19. "Sea Bonnies" Mott didn't do a single bad thing, and he did everything he should have. It makes me so mad that he got completely overtaken by the titular creatures for literally no reason, but I like Mott and his dynamic with Rory so much that I can't put it lower.

18. "Lonely Freddy" This dynamic is kinda reminiscent of Angel and Ophelia's, but Alec and Hazel have moments of getting along, which only makes the ending more tragic. I felt so bad for Alec when he realized how badly he had messed up with Hazel.

17. "The Puppet Carver" I like how the portions of Sage's book reflect on what's happening to Jack. I don't know if Jack actually died, but it's compelling to me either way.

16. "Fetch" All the technical, scientific talk went completely over my head, but the concept was good enough, and Fetch was an entertaining enough antagonist that I can forgive it.

15. "The Man in Room 1280" I hate the lore implications for this, even as a denier of Stitchline games, because the personal hell explanation makes way more sense than a nightmare. Regardless, I really liked Arthur, and I especially liked his dynamic with Mia. It was also fun to read about the nurses trying to kill an unkillable patient.

14. "He Told Me Everything" While Chris was kinda terrible, I found him entertaining. The last bit when he realizes the Faz-Goo is going to replace him was so good.

13. "Jump for Tickets" This one gets so misrepresented. "Why didn't Colton just steal the console?" "Why didn't he just get a job?" Did you even read the story? Both questions are answered. Anyway, if not for the ending with Aidan and Colton, this would be lower, but that little bit made my heart ache, so here it is.

12. "Out of Stock" No way! A protagonist who did something bad, got his friends involved, and mouthed off to his mom, but made up for his mistakes by being brave, saving his friends, and apologizing to his mom? In my Fazbear Frights? The happy ending was well-earned.

11. "Find Player Two!" This one was just really solid, and much needed after the first two. The realization that Mary Jo's death was Aimee's fault, but not in the way she thought, only for the same thing to happen to her, was just so poetic.

10. "Step Closer" You may have noticed that I like the exploration of sibling dynamics. I like how we get a bit of the family's reaction to Pete's fate. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I've never heard of an arm transplant. Unless that's just something that's somehow possible in the FNAF world.

9. "Blackbird" This is a lot like "Dance with Me," but I think it's better executed. Not much to say here; it's just really solid. Happy for Christine though.

8. "The Scoop" A very meta story, but I quite liked it. I can see why it was scrapped though. Relatable protagonist and a bittersweet ending.

7. "Friendly Face" "Another story where the protagonist is haunted by their guilt?" Well yes, but this one is different. This time, the "threat" is real, and the last paragraph was one of the best. I actually almost cried when Jack and Faraday died since there's so much buildup, which was helped by how realistically Edward's grief was portrayed.

6. "The Cliffs" Yeah I like tragedy, but I also love a happy ending. Robert and Tyler's dynamic was just so sweet. Justice for Tag-Along Freddy though. He was just doing his job!

5. "Bunny Call" Bob was a great protagonist. Despite being annoyed by his family, he emphasizes how much he still loves them, and he's willing to put his life on the line to protect them when he realized his mistake.

4. "The Real Jake" Jake, Margie, and Evan deserved to be a happy family together dammit. This injustice will not stand. I cried.

3. "Into the Pit" This was such a good start to the series. Someone you love being replaced by some unknown thing with only you knowing the difference is a terrifying concept. Oswald's family dynamic is also really well done.

2. "You're the Band" Timmy is so me. I guess I could basically stick my comments about "Into the Pit" here, just replacing "start" with "end" and "Oswald's" with "Sylvia's." I just like it more here I guess. Also hi, Mike.

1. "Coming Home" I called that Susie was already long dead from the start, but that just meant I didn't need to reread to get a full impression, since I was already considering both sides. I wish we got more stories about the other victims, because as it stands, only the girls have any substance to them. Gabriel, Jeremy, and Fritz are just names, and that makes me sad. Anyway, this story made me cry.

[ponds-of-ink]

“The Midnight Delivery” - A FNAF Special Delivery One-Shot

This is the result of @kevciaran bringing up the idea that AR Springtrap might be trying to warn the player about something, though it’s not clear exactly what… And it also being William for good measure, though it’s him haunting a replica here.

I then decided to take a Fazbear Frights/Tales from the Pizzaplex approach and come up with this hypothetical scene at the end of such a story. Or at least right before then.

The basic premise is: “A teen girl named Clarice gets an order from Freddy’s she really doesn’t want. Will she face her fears or will her next ‘gift’ be the death of her?”

—

Clarice stared at her phone. The dusky blue map remained as empty as the streets outside her house. A calm silence blanketed her ears, though it did nothing to stop her drumming heart. The order was placed. Her fate was sealed. Springtrap was coming to her home, whether she liked it or not.

With newfound dexterity, she switched from the map to her provided instructions. “‘If the Replica Springtrap animatronic has white eyes while malfunctioning, then stare at him until he vanishes,’” she read in a rapid-fire mutter. “‘Likewise, the Springtrap animatronic has red eyes, then look away until you can no longer hear its twitching. If it is doing neither (or if it has turning on the standard issue cloaking device), then continue with your usual procedure…’”

Clarice laid back down in her bed. With each new word she skimmed through, the less uneasy she felt. Maybe everything was going to be just fine. Just like Kevin said.

..Unless she forgot the instructions, of course.

With a renewed sense of urgency, she turned her phone back on. She poured over the instructions again, repeating shortened phrases until she felt they were committed to memory. Even the ones Kevin already gave weren’t safe from her frenzied brain-drilling.

“Bright and red means turn your head.”

“Focus on white like a moth towards the light.”

“If they cloak, just listen— Don’t choke.”

“And if he taunts—“

A small dot popped up on the bottom of her screen. The last phrase slipped away as her mind refocused. The screen switched from her guidebook to her in-app inbox. Her eyes skimmed the first few words.

Her blood ran cold. The message was formulaic and simple, much like the ones that came before it— But now it carried a heaviness that made it sound like a harbinger of doom.

“Your animatronic is almost here!”

Her tapping fingers made the screen bounce from the inbox to the map. Sure enough, there was a new symbol on the map. A rabbit’s head with mismatched ears slowly marching towards the house icon. And, judging from the map alone, it would reach that other icon in mere minutes.

Clarice fumbled out of bed and onto the floor. She scrambled onto her feet, then snatched the taser from her nightstand. All was a blur as she made her final preparations. All of the other second floor bedrooms were barred with makeshift barricades like laundry baskets and leftover baby gates.  Any “exits” she could use on the lower floor, however, were left unlocked. Frantic texts were sent, be it final goodbyes or unintentionally vague warnings. If she was to be the next in a long lineage of Springtrap’s victims, then she was to make sure that this part of the nightmare ended with her. Death or no death.

After a few more minutes of stillness, Clarice’s phone buzzed to life. Her front door camera had spotted something at the door.

The chime of her doorbell confirmed its suspicions.

Clarice sallowed whatever was left of her pride. She slowly got up from her hiding spot and approached the door. With a trembling hand, she unlocked it.

The doorknob, in kind, was slow to turn. Almost as if it was a pain to turn the wrist enough to pull off this simple maneuver. However, this wasn’t the case for swinging the door wide open— Which Springtrap promptly did. 

He stood there, watching as Clarice stifled a piercing shriek. His ears twitched a little at the noise, but nothing else seemed to affect him. He simply straightened his back and took a few steps forward. “Let’s see how many times you can be pulled apart, then put back together again,” he snarled, advancing just enough for him to slam the door with one shove.

Clarice pointed the taser at him. “D-Don’t,” she stammered out, trying to at least sound stupid rather than scared. “Take one more step, and I’ll shock you to the ends of the earth.”

Springtrap sniggered. He put one foot forward, then moved his arms outward.

Blueish sparks lit up the pitch-black room. All of them managed to hit the floor and dash away before their observers’ eyes. She was too far away to really do anything. Of course she was.

As the girl’s heart sank, Springtrap’s sniggering turned into chuckling. He lumbered again, but now his footsteps were much quieter. And, as Clarice quickly noticed, he vanished into thin air. Her heart pounded. “The ‘cloak’,” she thought as she backed away into the kitchen. “He’s… He’s going to use it to kill me!” 

That last idea sent her into a frenzy. She scrambled to the back door, blindly fumbling into chairs and countertops along the way. Her hands quickly turned the doorknob.. Only to remember that it had two locks. One on the doorknob and one on some old-fashioned chain. And that chain was not going to unlock in five seconds— Especially with a red-eyed Springtrap looming over her.

She froze. Her rapid breathing slowed to a halt. Servos whirred and twitched in her ears, but she dared not look at the rabbit’s reflection. All she could do was stare and stay still.

The reddish glow soon faded away. Springtrap jolted out of his haywire state. He stared at her for a moment, then leaned forward. “I can taste the fear in your breath,” he seemed to sneer, as if the word ‘fear’ was a repugnant oath to him. He lingered until his victim moved, then disappeared into the shadows once more.

Clarice’s head turned to look back. Her expression shifted from terror to confusion. She listened for an explanation, but she heard nothing. Even as she crept back into the foyer, silence prevailed over the potential conversation. Was that his best attempt at a bluff, or was he just trying to snap her out of it? Whatever the motive, it certainly worked.

Though her posture eased up, her hand still clutched the taser. She took one last look around the area. Nothing to be seen. Nothing to be heard. With this as her cue, she bolted up the stairs… Right before her adversary followed close behind. She whirled around and fired the taser again. Sparks ran through the robot’s tattered body, forcing him to writhe uncontrollably. Clarice took her chance and ran back into her bedroom. She shut the door, locked it, then fell onto her knees. She had done it. She had survived long enough to make it to her bedroom.

Heavy footsteps thumped against the carpet, then gradually slowed to a halt. A guttural sigh rattled the listener to her very core. “Hide if you want,” Springtrap growled quietly. “It did not save the others— It will not save you.” Then the footsteps continued on, as if completely ignoring the obvious hideout.

Clarice wiped her brow. “He’s just bluffing now,” she thought as she leaned against the door. “All I have to do is climb into bed, sleep the rest of the night out, then ambush him in the morning. He’ll be so tired by then; he’ll be begging me to knock out his system.” With her free hand, she dug into her pants pocket.

But her phone wasn’t there. 

Her once-assured smile turned into a shaky grimace. “W-Well, I don’t need my alarm,” she reasoned to herself. “I can probably sleep in and catch him whenever I wake up!” 

The grimace turned into a trembling wince. “But what about Kevin?” she asked, even as her stomach flipped in endless loops. “Or Mom and Dad? What if… What if he finds them? What if he—?” Feverish imaginations of ‘the others’ cut off her pondering. She hunched over, battling several urges at once.

Outside, Springtrap paused his search. His head tilted to one side. He advanced slowly, taking in these wretched noises. As far as he could tell, these were not cries of some arrogant thrill-seeker regretting their life choices. Nor were they the pleas of someone who knew Fazbear’s horrid past— At least not as much as he was expecting. These sounded… familiar. Like a strange middle ground between the fearful victims of old as well as his own… moments of weakness. Innocence mixed with wrecked nerves and self-reprimands. In short, this coward was nothing like the person he was promised. And, if he was misled here…

Before he could finish his assessment, his entire body jolted on its own. His eyes flickered between red and white, making his body twitch even more. He fought to raise his arms to his head. With great effort, he pulled himself out of his “stupor” with a harsh head-tug. Everything stopped shaking. He was—in his own way—back to normal.

He watched Clarice stumble out of her bedroom. Right on time.

Clarice lingered on the floor. The look on her face switched from a disoriented stare to a disgusted scowl. Her hands still shook, but at least they had a much better grasp on the taser.

Springtrap took a step closer. His eyes gained a bright white glow. “It is not your flesh that sustains me!” he cried out, almost sounding as if his teeth were clenched. “It is your fear.”

They locked eyes. Clarice’s tremor lessened. She slowly got back on her feet, trying her very best to focus on those two glowing circles. It was her turn to take a step forward. “I don’t care about what you ‘consume’— whatever that means,” she said in a somewhat steady tone. “All I’m worried about is you messing with my family. D-Do what you want with me. Just leave them alone.”

Springtrap’s ears raised at this remark. His eyes quickly lost their glow. He vanished under the cloak before any other changes could be noticed.

Clarice shook these off with a shake of her head. She hurried down the stairs, then swerved into the living room. Her hands instinctively snatched the phone and tossed it at nothing. The following thud made her wince. “Probably shouldn’t have done that,” she thought as she carefully picked it up from the carpet. 

Her regret sunk in even deeper when she looked back at the stairs. The shadow-covered rabbit rematerialized as he charged down. He swerved in her direction. She shot out her arm and closed her eyes. The buzz of electricity striking metal rang out while she fumbled back onto the ground. When she opened her eyes, he was invisible yet again. No remarks. No standing there and judging her every move. Just him relying on the shadows once again.

She lingered on the floor. Her heart pounded, but her head swam with questions. Why didn’t he just run after her like last time? Did the whole “family” thing aet something off? No, that couldn’t be right. Fazbear’s mini-biography of him said he was heartless— Literally and figuratively. Even if there was someone he cared about, he definitely didn’t invite them to his latest ‘out on the town’ night. So, once again, why did he just stand there?

All was quiet as Clarice climbed onto the couch. She watched for any shadowy rabbits or red eyes, but nothing showed up. Soon her mind started to sift through all that had happened during this twisted “cat and mouse” game. The arrival at the door. Her first attempt at stunning this maniac. That close call at that door. If there was one running thread that she could use as an explanation for that weird delay, it was probably right in front of her. Maybe even… in a literal sense?

Wait a minute.

Was Springtrap… afraid of his own ‘haywire’ state?

Clairice put a hand on her head. It was a dumb idea, yes, but it did make some sense. Anytime he had those red eyes, he’d quit taunting and start rushing to attack her. With or without the white glow? Absolutely in control of his actions. If she didn’t know any better, this was a textbook case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde— That is, if Jekyll took up Hyde’s ‘profession’ and Hyde was a no-thoughts-between-the-eyes kind of person. Well, even more than Hyde already was, if she remembered Kevin’s summary correctly.

Flimsy metaphor aside, the girl decided that this was the right answer. She rose from her spot, readied her taser, and set out to find “Hyde”. Or “Jekyll”. Or any sign of Springtrap, really.

Clarice instinctively walked back into the kitchen. She cauriously made her way to the back door. With her free hand, she investigated the locks. Both were in their same spots from last time. Her eyes fixed on the glass panel. No one behind her. She pried open the chained lock, then went back to the main hallway.

With not much else to inspect, she trudged upstairs. The barricaded doors, miraculously, were not messed with. Neither was the railing or anything in the passageway. “I’m starting to think he just ran out the side door and I didn’t notice,” she thought while she entered into her own room. “Might as well check in here, since it’s open.”

Her tiredness fled as soon as she crossed the threshold. There stood Springtrap, alternating between colors as his entire body contorted violently. Servos whirred as his voice box spewed out nightmarish noises. All while Clarice had to battle the urge to faint.

Mercifully, Springtrap managed to jolt himself out of this horrific middle ground. He hunched over, let his body rest for a moment, then hoisted himself into a decent standing posture. His eyelids lifted at the sight of his opponent, only to lower back down shortly after. “Your fear will consume you!” he snapped, clenching a raised fist in her direction.

“Not if yours takes you down first,” Clarice answered softly, her fingers playing with the taser in her hand.

Before Springtrap could even begin to respond, his eyes glimmered red. He sprinted towards her with renewed energy. His voice box let out a terrifying hiss as he lunged towards her. A final shock ran through his entire system. Whether the red eyes was his doing or not, he still lost control. His body shut down in seconds. His body soon fell onto the floor, as did the sleep-deprived body of Clarice.

[beloved-cat-gremlin]

Fazbear Frights Book "Review"

• Book 3 "1:35 A.M.":

• "1:35 A.M.":

→ This story was just a full blown panic attack from beginning to end. Unlike some of the other stories from book 1 and 2, this one felt the least connected to FNaF and FNaF lore in general.

Take out the details that Ella is the exact same Ella from The Silver Eyes novels, and that it was a Fazbear brand doll, then this could just be a stand alone short horror story.

• "Room for One More":

→ Another one of the stories I knew quite a lot about. Like with "To Be Beautiful" this one made me a little uncomfy. This type of body horror makes me a little nauseous.

It was also fairly short compared to some of the others. And it didn't really have a huge impact but it certainly had some nasty stuff in it.

• "The New Kid":

→ By far my favorite story in the book. Reading it reminded me a lot of The Silver Eyes again, with the interactions the characters had in that story. Especially in the last quarter of the story, what with the mentions of how the springlocks acted up and all.

What I will say tho is that the ending felt too rushed. I enjoyed the whole none FNaF themed aspect of it, but I would have liked it more if the more FNaF focused moments became a bit more relevant than just the last quarter of the story.

"Review" Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Bonus: 13

[thatonecontainerwithoutalid]

FNAF MOVIE THOUGHTS UNDER THE CUT!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED.

I have never felt so conflicted over a movie in my life.

Okay, to give some perspective, there are two sides of me at play here:

1. Film/show critical

2. FNAF Fan

Disclaimer: when I refer to the books, I am referring to Fazbear Fright's and Tales of the Pizzaplex. When I refer to the trilogy, I mean The Silver Eyes, The Twisted Ones, and The Fourth Closet.

I'll be honest. Looking at it from my own critical standpoint, the FNAF movie was not very good. The story was very convoluted, and yes, I am aware that I'm complaining about the convoluted plot of a movie based on the convoluted plot video game. But the thing is, I am an enjoyed of both the games AND the books. And if there's anything to be said about the books, convoluted is one of the first things that comes to mind, so the issues I have are purely about the movie. My main and overall glaring issue was the reveal of William being Vanessa's dad. There was little to no build up to that, and I felt the more reasonable decision was to make her related to one of the missing kids, and perhaps having her see them being lured away. It would serve as a nice parallel to Mike, and her mindset of "letting it go" could still be present as an opposition to Mike's clinging onto the past.

Besides that, another problem I have is the lack of William Afton.

He's in the movie for maybe like 20 minutes? Possibly less. Which wouldn't be too bad if he left a lasting impact and his scenes were sprinkled throughout the movie, rather than condensed in the beginning and end. Seeing Afton in the first trailer got me so hyped I most literally could not function properly, to the point I was stuttering. But to see him not really be in the movie is such a let down. And the scenes he was in, besides the parts at the end, he was not really threatening, just sort of an awkward guy. And this sucks even more because Matthew Lillard did an utterly incredible job being threatening in those parts, and I would've loved to see that more.

Besides that, another character I take issue with is Golden Freddy. We see the five kids in the woods. But Golden Freddy is in this movie for maybe 2-3 minutes, max. Which is annoying, because he was shown far more in the trailers and promotional material. I personally would've like more Golden Freddy, more Willy A, and perhaps to see these two being enemies.

Ending off my negative criticism, the horror. I was not very impressed by the horror of this film. You see, I wasn't one of the people adamantly opposing the film being PG-13, in fact, the people who were so heavily against it annoyed me very much leading up to the film's release. The way I saw it, FNAF was never really a series about the guts and gore. Yes, there were moments that were grotesque, but never in detail (well, besides the descriptions in the books; I'll get to that later.) I expected this film not to scare me, but instead, to disturb me. I cannot count the amount of times the FNAF series has managed to disturb me. Things like the blueprints of Funtime Freddy in FNAF:SL, the ending of Help Wanted where you simulate getting stuffed into a Freddy suit, even down to the jumpscare sounds in the first game, FNAF does an incredible job of disturbing and or otherwise unsettling me, and this isn't even touching upon the anxiety of playing the games, especially FNAF 4, or the absolutely brutal situations in the books. I would honestly argue that the books provide more horror than the movie did. The only times I felt truly disturbed during this movie was when William Afton came in with the Springbonnie suit, and the opening credits with Springbonnie leading the kids away. There were other times that momentarily scared me, yes, but none made me feel a deep rooted discomfort. FNAF can provide a type of horror without guts and gore, but I just feel it didn't transfer well into the movie.

Some things I did enjoy though; the drawings. The whole movie feels center around a theme of drawings, and I may be biased due to being an artist, but I honestly loved it. Drawing being a big part of the story, Abby's character, and the eventual solution felt very smooth.

The practical effects. I have absolutely no complaints. The animatronics looked incredible, and I loved every moment they were on screen.

The integration of the FNAF fandom. This leads me into my FNAF fan section, but before doing that, I would like to acknowledge something.

I came into the movie with high expectations without realizing it. The 9 minute teaser got me way too excited, so being let down in these aspects only hurt more. But the main thing I want to cover is my own bias towards the story of the games.

A few paragraphs ago, I suggested more scenes of William and Golden Freddy/Cassidy being enemies. This is because it's something in the games I adore, and would love to see expanded upon. But looking through my critiques and organizing my thoughts made me realize:

I'm not upset that the movie is convoluted, I'm upset at how it's convoluted.

The books, including the trilogy, are convoluted, yes, but they all have connections to and follow the main story, even just a little bit. The movie has the same premise as the first game with details form the first three, haunted animatronics and springlock suits and what not, but it's an entirely different situation with characters who share little to nothing but names to their in-game characters. This is just one of the theories I've come up with for why I don't like the direction of the movie as much as I could.

Now it's time for the FNAF fan in me to shine.

I'll be honest, I teared up multiple times during this movie simply from nostalgia. After the opening credits, the dream theory book, the MatPat Cameo, the ending credits when it started playing the OG FNAF 1 TLT song - it was all so much and if genuinely touched me. This movie is like the Super Mario Bros. movie in this regard; it's a love letter to the fans. Despite the things I didn't like, I could feel the love for this franchise flowing from the screen. Despite all the things that push me away from this film, I can't help but care for it on a deep level. I feel like crying while typing this. I know the amount of passion and love that went into this and it makes my gripes feel all the more unserious. I'm happy we've just finally gotten this movie, a movie that cares about the fans of this series. This movie doesn't try so hard to be what it isn't, and is just plain, relatively unserious fun rather than a complex masterpiece. I'm feeling tired now and want to finish this up before I sleep.

So, yeah. Those were my thoughts on the movie. Will definitely be watching it again to try and catch more details, and maybe change my opinion on it. For now, that'll be all. Might come back and add more or edit this.

[bonnielunkas]

I know this took awhile, I haven’t really had much time to send this - also I took very long writing these because, well, I think my username is enough of an explanation. But here it finally is:

Fazbear Frights Characters Autism Diagnosis:

Samantha (Coming Home)

- I absolutely refuse to believe this child is neurotypical.

- She has a very specific bedtime routine that she needs to do every night:

- Write at least a paragraph in her diary

- Brush her teeth

- Go to to the toilet

- Drink half a glass of water

- Touch her toes four times

- Brush her hair fifty times

- Say goodnight to her dolls

- Samantha is picked on by her peers because they think she’s weird. A lot of autistic people have been bullied and/or socially isolated for not "fitting in".

- She is described as "hard to read", and conveying feelings can be difficult for autistic people.

- When she visited two psychologists, she begged her mother not to take her back there because both of them expected her to play with a messy pile of toys. To me, this seems like she has sensory issues about messes and messy environments, finding them overstimulating.

Alec (Lonely Freddy)

- Clearly shown to have trouble with social cues and social situations in general (example: When his kindergarten teacher said he was a bully, probably because he couldn’t tell from her tone that she meant it in a negative way and he didn’t know what the word meant, so he smiled, thinking it was praise).

- This line, which has no neurotypical explanation: ""If they’d asked, he might have said, ""I’m not like you, and I’m not like Hazel, and that should be okay.""

- From my understanding, behaviour issues in neurodivergent children can actually just be that they’re overwhelmed and/or overstimulated, but have troubling communicating that. So, basically Alec (or at least my interpretation of his character).

Greg (Fetch)

- He has multiple fixations that can come off as hyper-fixations and special interests:

- The compulsion he has to search the abandoned pizzeria for no specific reason (which doesn’t fade even after Fetch kills the neighbours dog. He still feels as if he needs to go there.), hyper-fixation.

- His enthusiasm about topics like the Zero Point Field and Cleve Baxter’s experiments, special interest.

- It’s not mentioned it the story as much as the others, but plants could be a special interest.

- A minor detail, but, Greg is described as not being "adventurous with certain foods", and this leads me to think he might have sensory issues with food - mainly because choice of words fits my experience with food related sensory issues.

- Personally, I believe that most kids who aren’t accepted by their peers because they don’t confirm to social norms tend to actually be neurodivergent (like Greg).

Sergio (Sergio’s Lucky Day)

- A major part of Sergio’s character is his trouble understanding social cues. Because of this, he tends to mask his emotions in order to please people (example: pretending to have the same likes and dislikes as Violet) and avoid being judged, which is basically the universal experience for neurodivergent people everywhere.

- Neurodivergent people can have intense attachment to objects. They can empathise with these objects and are very connected to them. This reminds me of how Sergio becomes very attached to Lucky Boy to the point of considering him a friend - I mean, Lucky Boy is implied to be sentient but I still think this counts.

Dirk (Felix the Shark)

- Another example of object attachment and connection: as a child, he felt a kinship with the animatronic because they were both misunderstood outcasts. He continues to view Felix this way as he grows up, to the point where he gets angry when someone tells him they found Felix creepy as a kid.

- Fixation is one most important themes in the story and it’s almost always shown with Dirk, who has a lot of fixations that seem close to ND fixations: Felix and finding the Freddy’s location that had him, puzzles, mysteries and a novel called The Dogged Dogmatist.

- He’s a Freddy’s fan, so he’s automatically autistic /j

nah it's fine that this took a while!! i understand :]

anyways, i'm just gonna take these all as canon now bc you got a lot of points,,,

how dare you cook /j

[hearts401]

I’ll be honest, I haven’t read GGY yet (I’m trying to read the books in the order they came out and am still on Fazbear Frights </3) BUT your recent drawing with “I’d give anything to talk to him” really made me think of the line “I’d give anything to miss you again” from Feel Better by Penelope Scott. Just felt like I should tell you lol

i think im going to sob and scream and cry now thanks

[tea-leaf-book-reviews]

Welcome to Neverbury - Chris Lynch

I never thought I would grow to like a story collection like I did with Welcome to Neverbury, but I definitely did. It gave a spooky, Stranger Things vibe to each of the stories in the collection, leaving you wanting more every time. It’s not one story, it’s a full collection, as said above, so there is no singular narrative being played out. There is, in fact, an eldritch horror vibe in each story, but there is not one main character you follow to the end of the line. You can find your place in one or all of the stories, and if the vibe of one doesn’t suit you, moving on to the next one is a possible solution.

The best comparison I have is the Fazbear Frights: Five Nights at Freddy’s book series. Each short story in the book has it’s own storyline that sometimes ties into an overarching story, and is sometimes canon, but sometimes it’s just something off the wall that leaves you stunned. (…looking at you, Into the Pit… No one needed a fictional pregnant MatPat for their bingo card that year.) What that means, though, is that you can find the story within the collection that suits you.

Some of the stories had a lot of comedy (Looking at the Powers of Darkness hotline story for this one) and others literally left you stunned and a bit disturbed by the happenings in the town of Neverbury. There’s always something in these books to send a shiver down your spine, and anyone who knows anything about suspense knows how important of an element that is to have.

The way of speaking in the stories is not for everyone, and that, too, is ok. Looking past that will be worth it to see what happens in the stories. Getting into the stories themselves will give away too many spoilers for my liking, so with this series, I won’t do that. But if you like Stranger Things, this is up your alley. It’s definitely worth a read. I could even see this being a TV series down the line, with each episode featuring a story akin to The Twilight Zone. (There’s another great comparison. The Twilight Zone)

As someone who likes and finds classic TV highly enjoyable, I loved this book. It gave me some real classic TV vibes, and each story felt episodic. You could miss an episode and still keep track of the overall, overarching plot. I probably would have done better with this as an audiobook, that being said, because I personally struggle reading from a screen for more than a few minutes, but again, it was worth pushing past that to finish this book. 9/10 definitely recommend.