#the reasons being she would murder

[trauma-bot]

sin eater

[sonata-stigmata]

people coming out of alien romulus with the opinion that it didn't make sense that the characters would act so stupid is so funny to me. don't make me point at the sign.

[froggychair05]

Day Three of @deadbeatbug’s MCSM-tober: Pumpkinhead

I think we should talk more about how Lukas was framed for murder.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[moeblob]

idk if it's a fun fact or not but! Right's favorite color is green. He never wears green but it's his favorite color. then I've been working on silly emotes for my OCs and they're "disappointeddad" and "tryme".

(Also there is an AU where these two are knights along with Paul and Evelyn while Brent/Caspian/Atticus are princes. Chris is basically Caspian's personal guard while Right just runs around trying to do everything to stay busy even when not on duty which stresses Chris out. But since he's kinda busy with the crown prince it defaults to Paul having to babysit Right.)

[hanzajesthanza]

god we need to bring crackfic back. or just short and idiotic ideas that wouldn’t happen but would be funny to read

[reneesbooks]

9 lines 9 people

ok confession these games scare me bc tagging people still intimidates me but i'm being brave today here's some lines i wrote a while back from the dragons of kiltide. just fabin having a little teenage angst. also this is 9 (11 but shh the context!!) paragraphs bc i still don't know how to shut the fuck up. thank you @space-writes for the tag <3

the raedoran cycle

[Fabin] tilts his head, pressing his forehead to the window frame. “What are dreams like?” he asks quietly.

Emilia sits across from him, watching how his eyes stare through the window but see nothing. She thought he'd left that behind in the weeks and months after their parents were killed, thought the long silences were finally over. She tucks her arms against her sides. “They're...like memories. Only more vivid.”

His fingers close around the hilt of his sword. “What do you dream about?”

She rolls her shoulders. “Places I've never been. Things I've never seen.”

One of his hands presses against the glass. “Do you ever dream of...of humans?”

She studies him with a worried frown. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

He recoils, his expression twisting with anger before it closes off. “No. I'm fine. I don't have dreams.” He turns away from her. “Never mind.”

Emilia sighs. “I talked Muiris down. He doesn't want to kill you anymore.”

“Good for him.”

“You should apologize for breaking his foot.”

Fabin turns to face her again, his eyes wide. “I actually broke it?”

tagging @oh-no-another-idea @zmwrites @akindofmagictoo @writinglyra @k--havok @lyssa-ink @aether-wasteland-s @ink-flavored @avrablake to share 9 (or more or less or however many you feel like!) lines of writing <3

[trappedinafantasy37]

You are backed into a corner, there is nowhere for you to go, except forward. Unfortunately, in front of you is a man who is intent on shoving his knife between your ribs and stealing everything from your corpse. What are you going to do? Are you going to stand there and ask yourself, "Would I be a bad person if I fought this man, maybe kill him?" or are you going to pull your own knife and fight back? Cause, I will tell you what is more than likely going to happen. Your fight-or-flight sense is going to try to override your asinine desire to have a philosophical debate with yourself, and try to get you out of the situation alive. You will instinctively and without thinking, either pull your knife and try to fight back, or you will try to run away from this man, hell, you might actually try to just hand over your wallet if it meant securing your life.

Does this scenario make sense? Does the outcome make sense? Is it reasonable, in this moment, to forego morality for your own survival? Because if it does, then try to expand this idea to understand the TWO HUNDRED YEARS of bullshit Minthara has lived through in Menzoberranzan. Every single day of her life was a nonstop survival scenario, her fight-or-flight sense was always active, and she always defaulted to fight because that was what she was good at. Her conversation about someone always trying to kill her isn't her having an over inflated sense of self-importance. She was important. Many people actually did want to kill her, and many people actually did try. For fuck's sake, she was almost assassinated when she was just a baby!

And she prevailed above it all because she didn't waste a single second of her time asking herself, "would I be a bad person for trying to survive?" No, she picked up her maces and did what she had to and guaranteed her survival and she didn't spend a single second stewing in regret. Because what good does that do her when there are still threats out there?

This is why you will never be able to make her less "evil" because she doesn't see "evil", nor does she see "good". She does not subscribe to the concept of morality. If anything, she's amoral. She sees things in terms of you either kill or you get killed. And Minthara would rather kill. A majority of the decisions that she makes is about her own survival and increasing her chances of survival. She does not waste a moment of her time thinking on the morality of her choices. This may be a little bit charged when I say this, but the consideration of morality in ones choices takes an incredible amount of privilege and safety. And, in spite the abundance of privilege Minthara had as a Baenre, concerns of morality was not one of them because she was never safe. And she has never felt safe.

When she does something that guarantees her survival, only you see it as "evil" because you haven't been conditioned for 200+ years to view survival in the same way she does and you do subscribe to morality. She does not see it as an atrocity, nor as a bad thing and you won't be able to change her mind because the two of you lived in the end, and that is what is important to her. This is also why she will stand by you when you make what you perceive to be "good" choices. She doesn't see the action as "good", but more of "this action helps us survive." She does not care about being "good", she cares about being alive.

For example, Minthara does approve of you protecting Isobel and warning her of Marcus' intentions. She approves you making a seemingly "good" decision, but not because it is morally good. Isobel is providing you and the entire gang a safe place to eat and sleep in the Shadow Lands, as well as providing you with a blessing that allows you to walk around freely within it. Protecting Isobel is practical as it guarantees your survival. She does not care that it's morally good to help Isobel, she cares that protecting Isobel means you get to keep a safe place to sleep. Not to mention, it interrupts whatever plans the Absolute may have had for Isobel and Minthara certainly does want to fuck over the Absolute.

It's also the same exact reason as to why she doesn't give a shit if you kill Isobel while playing Durge. But it does depend on why you killed her. If you tell Minthara that you killed Isobel for the thrill of it, she will be quite peeved because not only did you lose a safe place to sleep, but you introduced threats to your lives that could have been avoided all for your entertainment. Your dumb actions jeopardized your survival for no reason, and that's a big no-no for her. But, if you tell her that Isobel would have seen you as a threat eventually, then Minthara would approve of it as she perceives killing Isobel in that moment as necessary for your survival. She's only mad because you didn't tell her before hand and she wasn't prepared.

And there are plenty of other situations in which she actually does approve of you doing "good" things, as well as disapproving of you doing "evil" things. In the end, she does not nor has ever cared about the morality of your decisions. She cares on whether or not you act with your survival in mind. But if you tell her that you did something because it was the "right thing to do" she will laugh in your face because doing the "right thing" often means going out of your way and endangering yourself, risking your survival and with nothing to gain in return.

This does not mean Minthara does not change, nor cannot change. She is not a stagnant person and she is constantly adjusting herself to the situation she finds herself in. But these adjustments have nothing to do with morality, but more reorganizing her priorities and desires. There is a reason why I keep circling back to the romance in the Karlach origin because it does demonstrate that Minthara is indeed capable of changing. In this particular ending, she demonstrates that she is capable of prioritizing the life of someone else over her own desire for power. She doesn't magically become "less evil" or "more good", her priorities have merely changed and you perceive that as a change in morality because you are trying to shove her into a box that she doesn't fit in.

She chooses to make changes within herself because she is inspired by you and your actions. But she will never change to appease you or make you feel better about her lack of morality. She changes because change is necessary for survival. If you do not like her, then that is your problem, one she will not fix for you. You either learn to like her, or you can leave her alone. But she will remain as herself and she will not compromise on who she is just because you want her to. She wants you to accept her as she is, because she accepts you as you are. She will never ask you to compromise yourself for her sake, and she expects the same in return.

Minthara is one of those characters that is meant to challenge your perception of what is and isn't evil. Would I say that you are wrong for seeing her actions as evil? No, I wouldn't because I do understand why some people see her as evil. But it is wrong to say that she is evil because she wants to be or that is just who she is. Minthara just wants to live and she will do whatever she has to do to live, and she is constantly readjusting herself to fit whatever environment she is in. If that means resorting to actions that you perceive as "evil" then so be it. But she is also capable of doing actions that you may perceive as "good" because sometimes, "good" actions can be beneficial to one's survival. Minthara heavily weighs the pros and cons and each decision made available to you and she tends to go with the choice with the highest chances of survival, which more often than not are "evil" choices. This is also why it seems like Minthara has a tendency to play both sides of things and that is because she can see the survival benefit of both "good" and "evil" choices simultaneously.

[reneeub]

Grace is such a lovely girl she just wants to help everyone :c

In Abstinence Camp she's worried that Steph might be pregnant and gets her send to Abstinence Camp for her own good

In Nerdy Prudes Must Die she's worried about Hatchetfield youth and wants to save them from co-ed dances and wants to help nerds stop getting bullied by Max

It's not her fault that all of her good intentions end with murder :C

[outeremissary]

The Hierophant, Strength and the Hanged Man for Carmen?

Thanks for the ask! For once, there is something resembling brevity to my answers.

(also reordered to obscure some aeon spoilers for anyone for whom those are a concern)

[tarot asks]

Strength: On what issue is your character persistent?

The abomination thing. It’s the abomination thing. It’s most certainly that, the abomination thing. Carmen has developed a fringe theory of the cosmos in which the pristine world of Golarion has been corrupted by the unnatural incursions of creatures and forces not meant to exist on it. History is full of hubristic supernatural overreaches, evil wizard tyrants, and wicked gods and demons sowing destruction. Fey tricksters run rampant in the wilds, the self-righteous so-called good gods leave doctrines of discord for their followers while turning their backs on disaster, the unquiet dead have so infested the earth that a whole disgusting nation of them has taken root. People turn to religion for salvation and the gods feed on their fears and their hopes and all their beautiful, rich lives like parasites. And hardly anyone can see the connection, that there’s not good and bad types of abomination, but that it’s rotten all the way down. That you need to purge it all: the angels and the demons and everything else. The Worldwound is but one corner of a far greater crusade, one that mortals fight endlessly every day just to survive. She’s absolutely miserable to discuss religion with.

(From a meta perspective, this was an adaptation of her impractical and logic resistant tabletop philosophy that every arcane magic user ever born was, deep down, evil, because magic is inherently evil and corrupts everything it touches.)

The Hanged Man: When has your character needed to step back and look at things from a different perspective?

Honestly, just being appointed Knight Commander was a major moment for this. Carmen has never thought of herself as a leader. She knows she doesn’t have a lot of social savvy or patience for trying to parse issues outside of her skillset. Her skills in compromise are generally poor. She doesn’t like delegating tasks. She’s most comfortable receiving orders, not giving them. And grand strategy? She’s a soldier, she doesn’t know what it is that generals do. It’s hard to understand what she’s being asked when Galfrey makes her intentions clear, and it took some processing to come to terms with and accept. Trying to push outside of her usual narrow view of the present and to consider Galfrey’s reasoning, Galfrey’s character, and the state of the crusade did help. As much as the symbolic reasons or the reason of blessings she knew she hadn’t received and disliked being associated with didn’t resonate with her, she could see logic to the crusade needing new blood and fresh morale. The disaster of Kenabres made that much clear. And some morally superior part of her could also be swayed by the logic that she was the right choice for being more upright, for being more clear-headed, for being willing to do what others wouldn’t, just like when she purged the Wardstone.

I suppose in the end it would up less the empathetic understanding of others and more a roundabout way of reaching her own warped perspective there though. Common Carmen L. She does respect Galfrey though, mostly. She has very complicated feelings about Galfrey. All part of the toxic yuri love triangle.

AEON SPOILER ZONE

The Hierophant: Who has served as a mentor to your character?

Carmen has had effectively zero people in her life in the recent past she would consider mentors, especially in the crusade. To “mentor” her would require demonstration of shared values, valuable skills superior to her own, and a temperament she finds agreeable and worthy of respect. Let me just say that there are no characters in the game who meet these standards. She respects some, like Greybor or Galfrey, as equals or near equals. But there’s no one who can put her in a position where she feels that she is a student. The closest that you could probably come is the aeon in the mirror (it’s always that damn aeon in the mirror), and that’s because to her, it is very much not a separate being. It’s just her. She’s just spending time clearing her head and thinking- that’s normal, everyone does that! And she easily internalizes insights she picks up from there. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.

Would love to see a dynamic of mentor and penitent disciple between her and Hal if she ever halfway shaped up her act though, that would be fun. I thought about that periodically in 2021.

[shadowinthetreesbutcooler]

red team are FULLY going feral im so here for it, cellbit vouching for cannibalism and getting excited, baghera wanting to build a dirt shack and everyone wanting to crawl into a cave and chase people through the woods

[phoenixcatch7]

Security breach's story (including ruin) was super weird, right? Left a lot unexplained, introduced a lot of confusing elements, cleared nothing up, and made it worse with the ending of ruin. Very frustrating.

But.

I have a bold claim - in this essay I'm going to tell you that I think I've found the unifying theory of security breach, INCLUDING ruin. And no, it's nothing that's mentioned in the actual game.

It's 'Remnant'.

Now presumably matpat or some other theorist has made more detailed connections and I just haven't been able to find it, and I'm a casual fan at best lol. But I'm quite chuffed, so. I'm sharing.

Remnant is basically glowing soul juice produced by high emotions - children, trauma, excitement, suffering, death. Ectoplasm, essentially. It gets into physical objects and stores that emotion, like how a stuffed teddy is full of love or a torture device is full of pain. Yay!

Afton, during his killing spree, harvested this remnant from kids to fuel his plan for immortality (or something). He discovered along the way that if it was infused into a material like metal, then it could be shaped and, when combined with any form of intelligence ('even ai', he says!) it acts as a source of independent power 'that translates into movement, which is why things may appear haunted'. Ergo, animatronics. His perfect army of golems and test subjects.

The first round was, of course, fnaf 1, with the children literally stuffed into the suits to power them, which, yikes, horrible, and in a food establishment? Later he figured out how to skip the rotting corpse step and directly infuse metal, which made it temperature volatile and apparently hard to store. Anything is better than the first round. This resulted in sister location with the scooper, which could (as best I figure?) take the remnant out directly and store it for later use. It could also recycle animatronics, to scrap them without wasting all that precious soul juice that could theoretically power something forever.

Anyway, decades later, the same company is still running, and their precious 'animatronics' are now full on artificially intelligent robots with an army of drone cleaners and a dozen well covered up missing children.

You see where I'm going with this?

I think the glam rock animatronics are crafted out of the newest, highest grade remnant metal to bring them to life (maybe a little too much)... and to aid in the gathering of remnant to power Trap/afton, in his little recharge pod under the earth, at vannys direction. (And presumably all that after hour neon lighting, let's be real.)

The animatronics are all secretly equipped with track and destroy technology - roxy with her sensitive ears and x-ray eyes, chica with her stunlock voice box, monty with his metal rending claws and pouncing ability... Freddy with his chest cavity big enough to fit a small child. Like old times!

I swear the daycare attendant has infrared vision and very possibly direct access to the cctv, but anyway. (I also swear freddy collapsing on stage and triggering the safety protocol after hours was the only thing keeping him from joining, even leading the pack of machines to comb the place and take Gregory down to the scooper by trick or by stick, and Gregory almost made a fatal decision when he hid in the chest cavity. No freddy has ever been nice after hours, and there's no reason given why this one is.)

Back to the DA, it gives the implications of their old power core (freddys original upgrade and heavily theorised to have previously belonged to the only 'tronic out during the hourly recharge) a whole new meaning. Perhaps the setting of the daycare and all that happy sugar high children energy making happy memories was a perfect environment for a low level (experimental? Inefficient?) sort of... Emotional photosynthesis? It would explain why one half is the daycare and the other is the security patrol. Food for thought. Obviously freddy isn't able to receive all those benefits for a number of reasons.

(And it might explain the poor treatment of the DA, too, if the core was removed for some reason, and why sun is struggling so hard to keep his hopes up if it can no longer absorb and process literal happiness vibes for the best haunting ever. Poor guy always gets the short end of the stick. Maybe it also explains why the DA is the only animatronic to glow... because of the remnant metal? The extra juice they were supposed to have?)

Yeah, but what about ruin? How does it fit into this?

Well, for one, the new scooper. It's the literal gathering tool and storage place for all this remnant, so it's presumably pretty vital. Afton is parked directly above it in a recharge pod, sucking up all that sweet sweet juice. He's literally drinking children's tears, the monster.

And the mimic. Because there's a second part to remnant that only becomes relevant now. It's the worst and strongest emotion that can only be created through immense pain and suffering. 'Agony'. A black sludge of distilled horrors. And the thing is, it's highly infectious. But agony is useless. Unless it's combined with remnant in a specific way, and the resulting reaction is extremely powerful and dangerous.

The mimic is infected with agony. And it's found itself probably the biggest source of remnant in the world. The battery of (potentially) the whole pizza plex, and every animatronic inside it. (Moon may well have been the first infected... If the patrol animatronic encountered the mimic on its arrival. Ooh, now there's a thought. It's more likely it saw and tried to stop vanny from some unethical activity (it's a purely robot job!) And she... Prevented it from becoming a recurring issue with the glitch code. Ah, but there's no proof.)

Either all that remnant is now corrupted, or converted. My money is not on converted because the mimic is not spreading a plague of suffering across the land, and is instead trying to lure kids in again to replenish the remnant. And the poor animatronics are still clinging to blackened, crippled life.

It certainly would explain why the company just dropped the entire location without either bulldozing it to the ground or trying to scavenge and repair. With the animatronics infected with agony, it's far too dangerous to do either, and of course officials absolutely cannot find out.

TLDR: I think the missing puzzle piece is 'Remnant' to explain aftons presence, the strangely alive animatronics, the point of all those child disappearances Gregory was supposed to be investigating, the scooper, the mimic, vannys actual job as head enabler for afton, the animatronic's violent upgrades, the true goal of the pizza plex and why it was built over the sinkhole, but most importantly... how they're footing that electricity bill.

But hey ;D! That's just a theory!

[lovesickeros]

thought abt focalors + tsaritsa sagau fic bc it'd be funny as hell to throw them in a room together but now its actually got me thinking a little too much.......similar but only in the barest sense and complete opposites..one of them fearing celestia and the other trying to bring celestia down.

[mortalscience]

Law and Order Criminal Intent - 1x05 - Jones Deakins: You can kick it over to the 1-5. Eames: Why? We got time for this. Deakins: Chief of detectives… needs a couple of bodies for the Mayor's Drug Task Force. Okay, I should know better. But it's a good opportunity. Eames: (waves Deakins off) Deakins: Suit yourself. (he leaves) Eames: (to Bobby) You like this case, too. Goren: Yeah, I like Angie. The captain's right, the task force is a good way for you to get noticed. Eames: I didn't take this job to get noticed.

[satsuha]

summerrr........ its not over in my heart...... (says this every year)

[box-dwelling]

As someone who went to Germany and spent like 70% of the time in churches, Von karma sibling growing up Christian head canons is so fucking personal to me