i get that americans love their cultural imperialism, but it really does piss me off that june is “international” pride month just because something happened in the united states.
in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.
But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.
our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.
anyway, happy pride, americans. i’m truly sorry that most of you don’t see the negative impact your nation’s culture has on the rest of the world. and to the rest of the world reading this, try searching for your own country and culture’s queer history, don’t accept the american narratives as your own. we deserve our own histories divorced from the cultural hegemony of the USA.
My Michael is a broken man. he desperately wanted his father’s approval and was willing to do things for him to get that. It was mostly out of guilt for killing his brother and William was gaslighting him, giving him hollow promises and giving him this inclination that a debt was to be paid for what happened. So Michael did what he needed to do, he went to Freddy’s locations, stole endoskeletons and overtime— the guilt just kept building up, along with the resentment towards himself and what he was doing. Eventually it got too much, eventually he wanted it to stop.
So when he stood before the scooper— he didn’t move, not an inch. He viewed it as his release. However, the world wasn’t done with him, not yet. The scooper was a remnant injector, it kept him alive. He felt every bit of pain as Ennard crawled in, breaking bones and stretching out his skin like it was a glove that was too small. On top of that, the remnant he was injected with was the remnant with the children. He started having hallucinations, dreams that felt like weren’t his. He learned of their stories, close and personal and he relived some of his through the eyes of brother. For however long his body was not of his control— he was in this strange limbo, trapped in a room that vaguely reminded him of a place he once saw before, forced to fight nightmarish apparitions of the animatronics he evaded in his past as the images of pills, flowers and IV stands appear as silent reminders of what he did. Reminders that would haunt him long after. What felt like hours, felt like days, weeks. It was agony but at the end of it, when they finally ejected from his decomposed corpse; there was a mutual understanding and perhaps a little bit of forgiveness. They gave him a gift, the gift of a second chance. Life.
After he came back, a new purpose drove him. His father’s strings and lies didn’t hold him anymore, and like his father’s victims before him he felt anger, he wanted answers, he wanted revenge.
30 years later, he got that wish. He failed at it but it felt good, standing up to a figure that oppressed you your entire life. He eventually started working for Henry, not really having the faintest clue on what his plan was but when it was all revealed. Michael accepted it. He was finally at peace.
NOW FOR FOR THE FUN STUFF
• He’s the biggest nerd known to man, likely owns a lot of Immortal and The Restless memorabilia.
• His top 3 bubblegum flavors have to be Watermelon, Tropical and Cherry (he likes fruity gum flavors)
• He had a cardio routine
• Michael was hired to work at Fazbear’s fright because he “looked creepy” and “on theme”
• In FNAF 1, he actually failed to get the endoskeletons for his father due to them being too aggressive (which in turn caused William to go dismantle them himself)
• Michael (professionally and in informal settings) always went by Mike but with his father, it’s Michael.
• The FNAF 4 nightmares started for Michael when he was stuck being controlled by the ennard amalgamation. This was caused due to the exposure and sudden injection of remnant into his body. This lingered even after Ennard left.
• Due to the remnants miraculous and supernatural healing abilities, Michael’s body (over the span of 30 years) have mostly repaired itself. He still looks like he’s been dead for like a couple days and still smells like rancid rotting flesh
• Despite how he spent his checks on immortal and the restless merch, when Michael was given the chance to run Freddy’s. He did it surprisingly competently. and yes he did buy the jar of pickles. He thought it was funny.
Mike looking so much like William is SO important, actually, because it adds so much to the quiet horror of it all.
Young Mike taking pride in looking like his dad, because it's the only thing that William seems to love him for. Elizabeth is his favourite, the golden child. Evan is either ignored or coddled when he cries. Mike learns from a young age that his father only cares for him when he sees that he can get something out of it; if William looks at his son and sees a reflection of himself, maybe, just maybe, he'll start to love him more.
Then after the bite, Mike starts to hide his face. Because his father no longer loves him for being his mirror image. He resents him for it - because despite the fact the bite never would have happened if William hadn't pitted his children against one another, he blames Mike wholeheartedly for taking away something he perceived as his.
Mike looking like him is no longer endearing. He's no longer a potential successor. He's a rival. He's a threat, because William looks him in the eye and fears seeing his own evil looking back.
After William disappears, after he's accused of the murders, Mike stops wearing his mask. But he can't look in the mirror. Not anymore. He spends years carefully avoiding his reflection. Because he's afraid that if he does, he'll see his father grinning back at him, and the one thing he fears more than anything is turning out like him.
Being scooped is harrowing. It's the worst experience of his life. But in some ways, at a certain angle, in some quiet, hidden part of himself tucked away in a part of his mind Michael doesn't dare to unpack, he's grateful - because at least now, no one will ever mistake him for William again.
I kinda love this take but I would kind of extend that to having him feel like that overtime as he does these things for his father. Don’t get me wrong, I do still think he felt ashamed to look like his father but I think the reason why changed as he grew as a person. How he reacts to it is also sort of different too.
Like for instance, I don’t think Michael hid his face, in fact— I think it’s mostly the same but I think he would’ve been less enthusiastic about or feel not so proud because he knows the shame that he himself brings to his father because like Michael didn’t really turn on his father immediately— up until sister location, he was likely still loyal to him because otherwise; why do something that your father wanted you to do if you’re not still loyal to him?
Not to mention that the original VA mentioned that he was seeking approval from his father.
So here’s how I view it. I think ultimately, regardless of how he felt about his dad. After the bite; Michael fully viewed himself as irredeemable, at least in his own eyes. What he did damaged him psychologically, and William likely used that to get him to do whatever needed to be done, likely hanging affection and forgiveness as his tools to gaslight him or perhaps made Michael feel like he owed him something. Who knows. The point is Michael still loved his father despite the things he’s being put through.
So what I’m suggesting is that the love for his father (as he goes through this gauntlet of animatronic horror) slowly is turning into animosity as he’s starting to realize that he doesn’t matter and at the same time I do think, that guilt over his brother and helping his dad (who was accused of murder, mind you) started to build up overtime along with it. To the point where, it likely got too much. To the point where when he was standing in front of a giant machine, ready to scoop out his insides— he didn’t move, because to him that was his release, his only way out of years of abuse and neglect, of the horrors he witnessed.
Unfortunately even that didn’t grant him the peace he wanted. He was injected with remnant for however long Ennard was in his body, his own remnant was likely intermingling with that remnant, and at that point I think that’s when Michael finally got the full picture and has finally fell defected to go against him.
Because you see, remnant has a lot of “weird” effects that it’s displayed in the books. It has healing properties, it can make something come to life, make illusions but another effect it has when you’re injected with it is that it can essentially put you into contact with those it belongs to. Like for instance; Carlton in The Fourth Closet was injected with remnant and the effects of that was that he able to talk to the missing kids. So imagine if that was happening with Michael when he was stuck in this sort of limbo, not being in control? What if he started learning of first hand accounts of what really happened and started feeling what they feel? Because ultimately remnant is feelings, an intangible concept turned tangible.
Anyways I’m getting off topic. That’s another theory for another time.
After getting his body back and ejecting Ennard from his system, I think Michael entered sort of a quiet state of melancholy and growing anger. At that point, the hatred for his dad was at its peak. How he felt about looking nothing like his dad anymore was probably relieving to say the least
But sadly for Michael, nothing works out for him. Like I said— remnant has miraculous abilities including that of being able to heal so it’s possible he wouldn’t be able to enjoy not looking like his father for very long. However, I don’t think he’d react the way most people would expect him to react to it. I think his reaction would be very similar to how he said “they thought I was you” in his monologue.
He’d laugh it off like it was some sick joke because as evident in his logbook, that’s how he is. He looks at the absurdity of Freddy’s, it’s horrors and being how damaged he is— he looks at it and makes fun of it. Not because he thinks it’s funny but because he thinks it’s crazy, so crazy and cruel that it might as well be some twisted cosmic joke, and I think that behavior reflects him mostly throughout his life.
I feel like Ticket to Fun being released a few months before the movie can’t be a coincidence. I’m starting to think that it was Scott’s attempt at clearing up any confusion regarding the game timeline that the movie might cause by making Mike Schmidt and Michael Afton two separate people. I mean think about it. This book hard confirms that Michael and Mike are the same person.
On the cover you’ve got a security guard wearing purple.
There’s someone who writes in the book who identifies as Mike Schmidt.
In their writings they try to provide information and warnings to whoever gets it next. The writing style is extremely similar to Michael’s writing the logbook. They also draw pictures like Michael.
And in regards to the “Michael is evil” stuff that would inexplicably spawn from the movie, you have this drawing of the children that I think really shows that he’s someone with good intentions.
But this book just… flew under the radar? Like no one gave a fuck which is so weird. I only saw a handful of people talking about it.
the "that was easier than i thought it would be" line implies that william knows mike is good at surviving the fnaf nightshift scenario. he possibly learned this in fnaf3, sure, but i like the idea of him knowing mike blazed through those maxmode nights (twice! on first try!) better.
and this is made even more fun by afton probably sucking at surviving the nightshifts and being a pissbaby who is scared of the monsters he's created, considering how he demanded to be switched to the dayshift the second the animatronics started moving around at night in fnaf2. and how he never worked the nightshift ever again and chose to work as a technician in the fnaf1 location instead (if he's dave from maintenance, that is)
Goddamn it. Why must you drag me back in. (I never left, I just never talk about it anymore lol)
Anyways. This post has to do with a specific character from the FNAF 2 movie. If you have not seen the film at this point— why are you here? Go watch it. It gives the vibe of being a newcomer being explained the FNAF lore. If you have or unfortunately got subjected by some other idiot spoiling it for you, welcome!
SO…..
Michael Afton. let’s talk about him.
If you don’t know me, you can call me commodore
formerly I was known as a “mikehead”— someone who talked about the character of Michael Afton from FNAF way too much. To the point where it nearly would redefine insanity. A long time ago, I used to have a blog and an old account that had really in depth explorations on the characters of the franchise. This was started back in high school and further on was continued when I was 18-19 years old. I used to write essays, and I mean essays. I had full on thoughts about Michael’s character development, his personality, his mannerisms. It was still kind of lazy but it was fun while it lasted.
Anywho! This post has a lot to talk about Michael Afton’s debut in the film’s space as this evil fella played by Freddy Carter. Personal thoughts? I liked it. Perfect casting. I always had the personal belief that Michael looked creepy af so the actor was an A+ in my book. His characterization— I didn’t really mind either, it is an alternate take and I was off put by it a bit but generally it went well. It fits the really broken narrative we had going on. My gripe is primarily with how people took it. Particularly using it as evidence that Michael was evil and I mean EVIL evil, not like the evil I’m thinking where he’s just desperate for love from his father and is just doing shady shit by doing it, not the “I’m gonna continue my dad’s legacy” evil, where he doesn’t regret killing his brother. THAT kinda evil, the evil I don’t think translates to Michael in the games very well. I happen to know because I might as well have been a professor in Michael-ology when I was in the peak of this fandom. It just doesn’t fit. Not entirely.
Please note, the movies are a separate timeline, in the same way that “the silver eyes” trilogy was. While yes, it may add some context, it is not an accurate telling to the story from the games, it is an alternate take.
Anyways here’s my look at things, from my perspective as someone who looked at this character for years.
I kind of have the belief that Michael in the films is actually a Michael that wasn’t affected by a bite of 83’ because (and to put it quite bluntly) there probably wasn’t a bite of 83’. Hence why he isn’t in the distinct category of being morally grey like in the games due to having not having that very important moment.
An important moment like that, however did happen in the film but it wasn’t Michael AFTON that experienced it, it was Michael SCHMIDT who experienced his brother getting ripped away from him and would go onto blame himself for that tragedy. In turn, having nightmares about it. Without that development, Michael Afton was likely kept under William’s sphere of influence and neither would question it. I still do believe he was likely abused and is doing it out of obligation (as seen in carter’s acting) so it isn’t entirely out of willingness.
Michael in the games, from my understanding of the material we know about him seemingly is more to be more in the dark than his film counterpart. Of course, he still worked for his father but his mentioned kinship to Clara from Immortal & Restless from the logbook (as well as doodles he so beautifully left); it implies that he not only sees these things and thinks it’s crazy but he doesn’t really like Fazbear Entertainment as a company.
You see, when I heard him in the film say that he’s continuing the legacy of William Afton, I already noticed that is a huge difference. You see, William Afton’s Legacy isn’t just killing kids, William Afton’s Legacy is Fazbear Entertainment as well. This is not very discussed about, but William, in multiple iterations— genuinely, in his own sick demented way; loves Freddy Fazbear’s. He finds it as a sentimental piece to him. However, as mentioned before, in the logbook; Michael does not share that sentiment.
Throughout the logbook, you not only see him write snarky responses to the company questions, you also see drawings of a figure (likely supposed to represent Michael) locking Freddy away in a jail or destroying Freddy with superpowers. It essentially hits you multiple times in the face that Michael does not share that same love for the company, he genuinely doesn’t like or care about the company— he literally makes fun of it.
(Oh and before anyone asks about the freddy bite response, saying it’s proof he’s evil. No, it’s not. Like I said, time and time again before, he does NOT take the questions seriously. At the very least, the general questions. Not to mention there are parts of the book that imply he has a dark sense of humor, he literally drew a grave under a question about his future. Realistically, it’s a coping mechanism. At most, he was being insensitive but it still could be seen as a way to grieve in his position.)
So that makes me feel like Michael in the games, not only is a unknowing participant in William’s research (at least to an extent because I DO think he’s aware his father is looking into this but doesn’t know the nature of it) but is different enough that he isn’t an exact copy of his father. Like I said, he genuinely thinks Freddy Fazbear’s is a joke unlike William who has been depicted to love it like a second family or a second home.
In conclusion; I don’t think Michael in the movie fully depicts Michael in the games, only one piece to his character— his wanting to be approved by his father and the sense of obligation to do tasks for him to get it. The other parts, likely were split into characters such as Schmidt and Vanessa. My argument behind this— is that Scott isn’t really a great writer.
NO offense to Scott but every book and any FNAF lore that was completely written, that included Scott, also included a secondary writer like Kira Breed Wrisley or Seth Cuddeback for the first movie.
So, My theory is that he didn’t know how to write Michael, someone who is so morally complex and with this really over the top backstory— that he thought it was easier for him and the other people he worked with; to make the choice to split Michael into three characters; all of them representing a piece of his story. It is as simple as that.
Mike Schmidt represents his guilt over his brother, being haunted by that very single day
the Man he shares the name with, Michael represents his desire to be loved by his father and the obligation to do his work
While, Vanessa represents his moral dilemma, his conflict and the inevitable turn against his father
Hey there! If you find this post by accident or you’re the whopping the two whopping followers I have— don’t mind the therapy ahh post I’m about to write cause I feel like I need somewhere to like write my feelings out.
(Thank you for listening if you do stick around :])
It’s been a lot more quiet these past couple months, been more boring in my life and it’s kind of been pulling at me. Not that long ago, I went to this island for a work thing and I don’t know how to feel. It’s neat, I like it, pays a little more and I’m only here for the summer, so it’s a neat little experience I guess.
but I feel like ever since this island— everything else seemingly turned upside down for me, I lost family not that long ago and I’ve been finding it a little bit more difficult to get out of bed. I know that’s ironic cause I usually sleep in but I suppose this feels a bit different.
Life goes on. Things change. It’s fine. I’m still here and everything’ll be okay. Sure, it sucks now, but the pain will go away eventually. I’ll be less sad, I’ll be less alone, I’ll be less hopeless. But with everything happening? It proves quite the challenge.
I’m trying, so hard, not to be depressing because that was most of my life in high school but right now, I need to let off some steam and I can’t really think straight if I don’t so— here I am.
I’m trying. Deep down I don’t want to but I’m trying.
I want to cry but I don’t have the tears or the heart to even go through such effort l. Because to tell you the truth? I feel empty. I used to be more energetic but I just feel tired, more than usual. I don’t wanna deal with the world. I wanna fight for it, a part of me does but the other half just wants to lay down and watch it crumble.
But I’m trying. The world lives on, life goes on and I will still be here, no matter the tribulations.
Laughing my ass off because all the people who gooned over ultimate black cat and wanted to Peter to cheat on his wife are gonna be real quiet now because Black cat was revealed to be 16 in the latest sneak peek for issue 14.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO GET COMPLETELY WIPED FROM EXISTANCE????
I HAVE NO CLUE, I think I either got hacked or there was a bug. Other than that, I don’t really see what I did wrong. I decided to take email staff directly to see what’s up.
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