#she mirrors him so well

[inact-ice]

Do not even get me started on graces daddy issues dude. Her father is the most evil man in the world and she is his wretched twin daughter

[egophiliac]

I got a really tough question.

What’s your favorite Twst event of ALL TIME?

I like Harveston

this truly is the hardest question. :( but after much consideration, I think Endless Halloween Night wins out for me, because it's nonstop Characters Being Silly the whole way through. the whole thing is just lots of these little dorks having the most ridiculous interactions, which is always my favorite! and of course the big twist is SO delightfully stupid and doubles down SO hard that it becomes AMAZING and I 100% unironically adore it. AND it's Halloween! everyone is in their cute little costumes and having a spooky adventure! it's great!

however, I am ALSO a big fan of the Harveston event! how can I not be! everyone is wearing comfy winter outfits and getting along really weirdly well with Epel's grandma and he's getting a little worried about that! my terrible loud son sews a plush squirrel and then gives it a silly little nickname and refuses to leave it behind when it breaks! the ending shot with the sled! I LOVE IT.

obviously we need the best of both worlds now

[thegreenthepeacetheorange]

feeling emotional

about this

[starry-bi-sky]

finally giving fem danyal her own au and fulfilling my 'danny is an animal whisperer' agenda at the same time: mother of monsters danyal 2.0

i say "2.0" because TECHNICALLY 'mother of monsters danyal' is an au I made back in June for Dark fem!Danyal (who I promptly named Layal). However, I haven't posted much for her yet, and I like the "mother of monsters" premise too much to leave it only to Layal. Plus Danyal in that au was going to become the mother of monsters anyway, just with significantly less world domination and mass extinction.

'Animal whisperer' Danny has been something I've been thinking about since my latest DP 'wolfpack au' post and it's! So fun to think about, and who no better to assign the idea to than Danyal Al Ghul? Who comes from a family infamously known for their love of animals and nature?

Fem Danyal is just purely self-indulgent. *gestures wildly at her* i just lomvb,,, her,,,, I've only really mentioned her in context of the 'Things in Threes' au/my first Danyal al Ghul au with the facial scar, but she's!!! I love her. She deserves her own au <33

So kill three birds with one stone! Make a post about it.

Anyways, Danny has a large lair. Similar to cult leader danyal, her lair is a giant mountain region resembling nanda parbat with a big temple/palace-like area built into the mountain. It's large, it's overflowing with natural flora, with its own mini-floating islands hovering over some areas, and it's also completely empty.

Danny takes one look at her lair upon first meeting, -- noting that it looked relatively smaller from the outside -- and promptly, with the elegance of an Al Ghul, goes "What the hell??" Because yes, while she does enjoy her own solitude and privacy, this is a bit ridiculous.

For heaven's sake, there's even a massive lake in there! What's she going to do with all this space? Can she make it any smaller? Why is it so big in the first place? This looks borderline like one of the mega-islands!

She finds out later that apparently, the amount of ectoplasm a ghost has can have an effect on the size of their lair. And since she has such a large core, her lair reflects that. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, it's bigger on the inside so it doesn't take up "too much space" on the outside. Don't worry about it too much.

Danyal isn't totally opposed to having such a large lair, she's just... a bit baffled by it. It feels like so much wasted space is all. All this flora and no fauna to enjoy it with. It's practically eerie.

She decorates her temple-palace area, transforming rooms to match her needs as she sees fit. In the center of the inner gardens is a massive tree that she likes to climb, with twisting, winding branches. Sam and Tucker have honorary rooms, even if they can't safely leave the specter speeder for long periods of time, even with proper safety equipment. So does Jazz. Ali (Dani) has one too, but he can actually use that one, and Danny brought him to her lair so he could decorate it himself.

She has a personal garden, but for the most part she lets the flora exist as it is. Too much space to cultivate it en masse anyways.

Skip to a few weeks later, on her next visit to Clockwork. She developed a habit of going to see him semi-regularly just because. She enjoys his wisdom, and he has a lot of stories to tell, and when he's not being the cryptic and esoteric timekeeper, he's a bit goofy.

(pushing my dadwork agenda here,,, i think Danny deserves to go 'hey, Lord Clockwork, do you want me to buy you something' while she's at walmart, only to receive a singular glowing sticky note that says 'cucumber gatorade'.)

(She insists on referring to him with his proper titles even for the most mundane of things because it's proper, but Clockwork sees a future where she eventually calls him "Cee" and by all things in existence is he determined to get there. Anyways,,,)

On her next visit to Clockwork, just as she is about to leave, Clockwork stops her and goes; "Ah, I have something for you. Hold out your hands."

Danny does as such, and Clockwork doesn't give out things often, so her curiosity has spiked to the highest levels. He turns away from her for a moment, using his staff to summon whatever it is he needs, and when he turns around.

He drops a fish into her hands. Granted, a fish in a small glass tank. But a fish nonetheless. A small one, roughly about the size of her finger, with a blue-black, eel-shaped body and four sets of glowing eyes. She can see thin, almost translucent, but spiny fins down its back and the start of bioluminescent markings. It's swimming around in circles in its small container.

"Lord Clockwork." Danyal says all too calmly.

"Yes, Danyal?"

"What is this?"

"That is an adolescent leviathan, Danyal." She’s transfixed onto the tank, but she doesn’t need to see Clockwork’s face to hear the smile he’s stifling.

The myriad of emotions that runs through her all at once threatens to overwhelm her, and she can’t tell if the feelings are negative or positive. So she carefully closes her eyes to breathe in through her nose.

“Clockwork.”

“Ah, I see you’ve dropped formalities.”

She ignores that.

“Why have you given me an adolescent leviathan?”

She's expecting the trickster to look amused when she opens her eyes. Instead, he just looks endeared. "I know you're fond of animals," he says, "and you always look amazed when you come across an animal of the realms. So I thought you might enjoy taking care of the young beast, it's mother is dead so it has no one to care for it."

Oh.

"But, if you don't like it," Clockwork's hands reach out for the tank, "I can simply take it back--"

Danyal shifts the tank out from his reach and hugs it possessively. "I never said that. How do I care for it?"

And so clockwork gives her a list, and when Danyal returns to her lair, she sets up a large tank in her room for the leviathan to swim in -- it's much too small for the lake right now, she thinks. She'll feel better if it's somewhere she can find it. She names him Suhā.

Suhā grows quickly, and by the end of the mortal month she transforms one of the rooms into a large pond for him to swim around in. He's a very loyal beast, recognizing her as it's mother of some kind. Danyal takes great care ensuring that her beastie gets quality care, and Suhā swims to the surface to see her when he senses her in the room.

It spirals from there. Somehow, Pandora catches wind that Clockwork gave her a leviathan, and so the next time Danyal visits the Greater Athens, she gives her a baby chimera. It's eyes are still sealed shut, Danyal can't bring herself to say no. She names the little beastie Firas.

Frostbite hears about it too, and not to be outdone, gives her an animal she's never even heard of. Infinite-realms born, apparently. A fox-like creature with two small horns like an impala, four eyes, and tall legs. The name isn't something she's quite sure how to write down, and she's positive that her friends won't be able to comprehend it. She names her Eira.

Getting the three of them used to each other was... interesting. Suhā tried to eat Firas when Danyal first introduced the two, and they've hated each other ever since. Firas and Eira are seemingly getting along. Her island already feels full enough with the three of them on it.

Of course, that's not the end of it. With her luck, she begins stumbling across other monsters. Realms-borne or otherwise. An injured hydra in the Grecian islands that, through lots of trial and error, Danyal is able to rehabilitate and heal. It routinely comes to visit her afterwards.

A griffin with a broken wing that she moves permanently to the island that likes to keep to itself, but tends to come down when she's near. It gets along best with Firas.

A panther-like monster from the Shades Woods that had six legs and three tails, with ends that reminded her of a venus flytrap. It stuck around the heavy foliage and she can only make out where it was when she saw its golden eyes reflect.

She befriends a young indrik with its leg injured, and much like the hydra it follows her back to her island, and stays there in the mountains. It comes out when she's alone, much like her other beasts.

She receives two more leviathan -- one from clockwork, and one she finds herself while exploring the deeper and darker recesses of the Ghost Zone. It was huddled against the carcass of its mother, and she managed to befriend and get close enough to it to bring it back to her island. Suhā is fully grown by then, with a head bigger than Danyal herself and he still likes to stick her head out of the water for nuzzles when she's near.

He's not very happy with his new siblings, but he's not trying to eat them when she's not looking. So she calls it a win in her book.

And it's not just large beasts either; smaller animals begin popping up when she's not looking. Bird-like creatures and small mammals, and she swears she saw a doe (or something resembling a doe) grazing in the forest while she was walking by.

She takes back with her a lone snake egg once, and it grows so big it wraps around her island and sleeps with its massive head on the mountain beside the temple, like some smaller breed of Jörmungandr.

And on and on it goes. Some of the beasts she comes across never step foot onto her island, some of them follow her back, while others she has to carry back. Not all of the ones that follow her stay, and Danny rehabilitates the injured and releases them when they're fully healed.

It's hectic, and busy, and frankly she loves it. Some of her rehabilitated beasts return to visit her, or to have their children somewhere on the island, or whatever it is they need to do.

She becomes a bit infamous for it. She goes to visit Dorathea once, and as she's walking through the streets she can hear some of the denizens whispering while she walks past.

"Is that her?"

"Her highness' friend? Yes--"

"--that's the one--"

"--Mother of monsters--"

Danny's not sure how to feel about that.

Although, she can't say she's opposed.

Danyal Al Ghul, Mother of monsters, raiser of beasts. It has a nice ring to it.

[thebeigelunatics]

no i'm sorry but what the fuck was this? her chin tilting up to him, her eyelashes fluttering, him leaning into it? who the fuck blocks a scene like this and expects me NOT to long for them to be together? i just want to understand what the thinking was here. they are supposed to be DIVORCED. they BROKE UP at a petrol station. we all saw it! and YET! HERE WE ARE. we're two seconds into the scene and lamb is ready to RISK IT ALL. like what are we doing, slow horses?! 😤

[localceilingdevil]

ancients!!!! chasm and fronds :] been really enjoying thinking about ancient lore recently!!!

this is chasm. he's addicted to mushrooms and karma flowers and was the first ancient to get contacted by the Voidworm. kickstarted the whole void revolution [artfight]

and this is fronds! she was approached by the other ancients who wanted to build an iterator capable of mass-producing masks. she was entrusted with hope's construction as she is a monk and takes her religion very seriously :p [artfight]

[bearimba]

Cooldown doodle featuring the beloved :)

edited bc I decided I didn't actually like the other drawing

[butchjess]

Well. hrm. the way they all connect to each other. like it’s all starting to look like a circle of some sort. jess as rory’s mirror/reflection/narrative foil but also jess as he pertains to luke and jess as he pertains to lorelai. luke breaking the church bells luke who says he was troubled but they gave him a chance and just bc a kid has issues doesnt mean they don’t deserve that. luke who is a figure placed against the rest of the town, just in the sense that he is not like them, he does not hold their values, he doesn’t even sound like them. which is of course a result of scott patterson’s new york accent, but adds to this theme anyway. and they use jess to build this picture, because they walk the same and talk the same and they’re stubborn—independent to a near self-endangering degree—and emotionally repressed in the same way and luke himself admits that he spent more time working at his dad’s shop than he did at school, which jess also does. but jess and luke are also. very very different when you get past these similar values that are maybe ingrained into them through different circumstances and same genetic makeup. and in their differences you get a lot of jess and lorelai’s similarities. when it comes to their family dynamics and how it’s affected them in particular. it’s made them independent yes, but it’s also made them hypervigilant, almost paranoid in the way they are allergic to accepting help and especially accepting help from the people who hurt them. jess only goes to his mother’s wedding because luke asks him to, lorelai only asks her parents for money because rory needs it for school. and they, and this is where they differ from luke, don’t know how to trust people and so they don’t know how to talk to people. where luke’s particular brand of emotional constipation comes from a general cluelessness as to how to do it—which is why the tapes helped him so much—lorelai and jess’ come from emotional responses to the situations they grew up in. while it was different—lorelai growing up rich, jess growing up poor—the effect it had on them still resulted in something similar. lorelai with her overbearing manipulative mother and (emotionally) absent father, and jess with his neglecting manipulative mother and (in all senses of the word) absent father. the ways that, despite their effort to distance themselves, they still end up with similar mannerisms to the parent they have the most conflict with (lorelai and her controlling nature + that scene where they have the same nighttime routine, jess and his love for books + tendency to run away). and of course, their romanticism. their big confessions and period drama-esque speeches and, yeah, i do think in a way jess was asking rory to marry him in 4x21. come with me. let’s get married. luke and rory both being the most important people in their lives. literati+javajunkie where they are all melding into each other, and luke is rory and lorelai is jess but on the surface level dynamic luke is jess and lorelai is rory and they are all each other. on accident. by sheer nature of making jess as a character for the sole purpose of interfering with luke and lorelai’s relationship (which means he is important narratively to them both) and by making him rory’s love interest/foil (because ASP casted him before she even had the idea for the character) you have now made an accidental blending of them all together. he is like a skeleton key of a character. Okay. okay.

[cent-scratchnsniff]

that day when she opened her eyes for the first time. i remember you were just staring through the laboratory's glass not setting a single foot inside.

[archersartcorner]

Totally understand this isn’t everyone’s thing, but unfortunately for y’all I love fucked up family dynamics, SO

[ohtendril]

two of you. always in sync

[once-in-a-half-life]

my friend and I have developed a sort of "tradition" or something where we doodle a little G-Man on each other's mirrors whenever we visit each other lol

the first three are mine, the rest is hers (featuring Gordon Freeman in his hev suit that she drew from memory haha)

[coconut530]

DIVORCE ARC START

[clockworkreapers]

Is helstm your troll or someone elses hes just such a cute little fish *is such a violet blood apologest*

Yes he is my troll, the main 6 ones in the comic are all my bbs. Helstm, Majell, Cybele, Cyrusk, Falmea and Sauron all belong to me I made them over a decade ago when I was in middle school and they have slowly evolved from there!

That’s why I’m kinda the only one who constantly draws them all lol

[applescabs]

happy birthday to me i celebrated by looking at my favourite sequence of images in the world and crying over it at half past midnight.

[nyatbinary-81]

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

Part 1: Setting the Stage.

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

You have the appropriate context for this? Good.

Now then.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part 2: Why?

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

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

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

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

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

(Fig. 2: Available grids.)

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

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

(Fig. 3: Michael's references.)

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

Mentions of his family, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave is not one of the spirits in the logbook.

Charlie is pushing for Michael to remember the name Dave.

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

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

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

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

Allow me, once more, to set the scene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Michael looks into the mirror.

And his eyes open purple.

.

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