I don't like Henry Emily as a person. But as a character? I also don't like him.

#extradirty
Cosmic Funnies
wallacepolsom
Peter Solarz

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

JVL
styofa doing anything

shark vs the universe

PR's Tumblrdome

@theartofmadeline
Three Goblin Art
Not today Justin
occasionally subtle

Origami Around

oozey mess
Xuebing Du

if i look back, i am lost
Show & Tell

roma★

★
seen from Türkiye

seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from Türkiye
seen from Türkiye
seen from Germany
seen from Germany
seen from Italy

seen from United States
seen from Malaysia

seen from Türkiye
seen from Indonesia

seen from Singapore
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Türkiye

seen from United States
@lamb-slaughterer
I don't like Henry Emily as a person. But as a character? I also don't like him.
Are you truly a fnaf fan if you don't have a better version of fnaf's story in your head?
Man I would've LOVED to see a cutscene of Michael setting his dad on fire. Fnaf 3 only implies that it happens because it happens off-screen and we're left to imagine it ourselves, which is disappointing and less satisfying than actually seeing it. Even if he didn't kill his dad during the fnaf 3 fire, he would've at least made him suffer. It would've been so cool and good for his arc and provide closure by actually showing him successfully doing something and getting revenge against William. But alas
Michael's depression in his adulthood manifested differently before getting scooped vs after getting scooped. As the sister location custom night cutscenes show us, Michael was well liked by his neighbors. Which is astounding since he lives in a small town in Utah in the 80s/90s and publicly got his brother horrifically killed and is the son of a highly suspected serial killer responsible for the deaths of 5+ children.
But I imagine Michael's really good at masking his depression and trauma and mental illness, that's why his neighbors like him so much and he's so popular. After his brother's death, he does want to be a better person, so he does genuinely try to be nicer. But he's still severely depressed and ridden with PTSD and trauma and hates himself and is miserable, so over time he learns to mask and hide his issues and trauma to appear "normal" to others, which is especially important in a small conservative town in Utah in the 80s/90s.
Everyone in Hurricane sees him as a charming, friendly, funny, charismatic young man and he gets along well with others and is liked by everyone, but his relationship with all his neighbors is (quite literally) skin deep and doesn't go any deeper than friendly acquaintances. Nobody really KNOWS him as a person. He doesn't have any TRULY close friendships. Partially because he believes he doesn't deserve to have friends or just good things in general because of his guilt over killing his brother. So he pushes away people who DO try to get genuinely closer to him and keeps people at arms reach out of fear and self-loathing.
He can smile and laugh and charm his friends and other people living in Hurricane in public and then he goes home and stare at the ceiling feeling empty for hours or mindlessly stares at the TV to drown out his thoughts with any other noise and he hasn't showered or brushed his teeth in over a week. Underneath he is suffering immensely inside and no one in Hurricane knows or sees it. Some "But you don't look depressed!" type shit.
But post-scoop he gets SO much worse. Michael's depression post-scoop manifests as him being constantly clearly and visibly miserable, since he no longer has it hide it from others and appear "normal." He just lies around at home feeling awful and doing whatever to avoid being alone with his thoughts and avoid having another mental breakdown. It doesn't help that he has MUCH more trauma on his plate than he already has after SL.
Since he has to isolate himself from society and "live in the shadows" after becoming a literal zombie, he doesn't have to try to pull himself together for the rest of the world anymore. He doesn't have to pretend he's ok and hide everything wrong with him to anyone. He doesn't have any sense of normalcy to somewhat anchor him. He no longer has to at least try to be ok since he's alone with no one to judge him. He can just spiral and get lost in his own self-hatred and trauma and distorted view of reality with nothing to ground or stop him. He can wallow in his misery and truly let it consume him.
I think the only reason Michael didn't turn to drugs or alcohol or smoking, even after getting scooped when he had nothing left, is because he saw what addiction did to his dad, his mom, and Henry and didn't want to end up like them.
Things I think about a lot. So true tvtropes entry for Michael Afton
Thinking about how the crying child being forgotten and neglected and overlooked is what indirectly caused his death since it allowed his brother to harass him without anyone ever intervening, then after fnaf 4 he is never mentioned again in the main story. He is ignored and forgotten about by the narrative itself after his death the same way he was ignored and forgotten about in life. He is a victim of his own narrative the same way he was a victim in life.
I feel like that to Michael his brother eventually becomes more like a concept than a person to him. Michael hasn't actually SEEN his brother in decades besides one or two instances. And he barely knew him when he was still alive because he died so young. They have little to no good memories of them bonding together because Mike was an asshole to him when he was still alive and their family was dysfunctional and full of resentment and abuse. He doesn't have an actual bond with his brother.
Michael does not KNOW his brother, the way that say Cassidy, Charlie, and the other ghost children know him, because they have actually spent a long time regularly and meaningfully interacting with CC and have gotten to know him as an individual with his own thoughts and full personality. CC and the ghost children actually get along, unlike his family. They might not be perfect and they're all still traumatized from being dead and all, but they all support and see each other.
Michael however can only associate his brother with grief. In his mind, he's a symbol of guilt and grief and regret. He can't associate his brother with positive feelings, only negative ones. When he thinks about his brother, there are no happy memories for him to look back on, there's only feelings of sadness, guilt, self-hatred, trauma, regret, and grief. Michael has kinda forgotten to see CC as an individual person through this objectification. And I don't think Michael is self-aware about this. Michael doesn't love his siblings, only grieves them, which he fully mistakes for love in his mind.
While Michael is definitely suicidal, but he should've been allowed to kill HIMSELF, not just have other people kill him and him just being cool with it. At least give him the dignity and agency of being in complete control of his own death when he barely had control in life.
I don't like mikeaccomplice theory because under mikeaccomplice it is entirely possibly to interpret that Michael doesn't actually care about Elizabeth and doesn't give a shit about her as a person and only tried to rescue her in SL because his dad told him to and he was either afraid of his dad or he blindedly wanted daddy's approval, not out of actual love for her. If you believe mikeaccomplice, there's nothing we're shown directly contradicting this.
The absolute dogshit incompetent writing of fnaf is making me appreciate good, well written stories that go far above the bare minimum and don't make me want to bang my head against the wall so much more.
Michael was the happiest he's been in decades as the Pizza Place manager. As a person filled with self-hatred and self-loathing and depression who believes he's inherently destructive and broken and useless and can only hurt people, he finds comfort in bringing people joy and making people happy, especially children. He finds peace in knowing he made someone's life just a little better.
I think Michael's really good with kids. He pays attention and takes the time to truly listens to them and is very gentle and warm with them. He's also just very charming and whimsical with his bear mask and dumb colorful suits and his cool fancy drawings.
Because Michael still remembers after all these years what it's like to be a small, scared, unwanted, hurt child, and he wants no child to ever suffer the way he has. He knows how awful and lonely that is. So he tries to be the adult he never had/wishes he had growing up. Because if he can be at least one adult in a kid's life who cares about them and makes them feel loved, that'll make him happy.
It disproves this notion Michael has that he's a horrible irredeemable person who can only hurt those close to him. He thought that the only way he was capable of positively impacting the world was taking out the bad, because if he destroys everything he touches, then at least he can focus on destroying other bad things like him. But by running the restaurant himself, Michael felt that he really could be something more. He wasn't just taking the bad out of the world, but creating something good.
Also, these kids who go to the restaurant don't know his past. They don't know that he's a monster related to a cursed bloodline who's broken and hopeless and doomed, they just see a kind, silly, caring adult. They don't have the same baggage he has with the rest of his family. Everyone he has loved in the past has hurt him, but they haven't. They just treat him like a regular person.
As an adult in a setting where he's the one in control, he just wants to make kids feel happy and safe and make sure they never get hurt and see them smile. Working with kids is what truly heals him and his scared, damaged, lonely inner child. Ironically, working at the Pizza Place was the one time in Michael's life that Freddy's did not feel like a prison to him.
Did Michael heal from ANY of his trauma? Or did he just get worse the entire time then died? Did he overcome any of his fear and abuse and guilt and self-hatred? Did he ever improve himself and develop beyond "I don't want to hurt people anymore" and "I want to help people"? That's not healing yourself, that's preventing yourself from doing any more harm to other people, YOU are still hurting. He's still the same traumatized, fearful, depressed, lonely, suicidal, guilt-ridden person at the end of the story that he was at the start. Did Michael ever find personal peace?
I'm pretty sure if you gave Michael even just one (1) friend who actually cares about and supports him and who doesn't hurt or traumatizes him and just treats him as a person he would be like 50 times more normal and more emotionally and mentally stable
I think it's kinda anticlimactic but extremely funny that Michael spent decades tirelessly looking for his father, dedicating his existence towards hunting him down in order to enact bloody revenge, spending every waking moment searching, only for him to be sitting, unmoving, in a random backroom literally the whole entire time.
Michael is the only manager in the history of Fazbear Entertainment to pay his employees more than minimum wage. Because, unlike William and Henry, Michael KNOWS what it's like to work minimum wage.
It fucks me up that Michael died without a voice. I've been thinking about the fnaf 6 ending a lot and I think that's why his ending seems so tragic to me. He doesn't get any dialog. At all. We never actually hear Michael's thoughts or opinions or what he's thinking during fnaf 6. At best we're told last minute what he's presumably thinking by Henry, which to me isn't convincing. And what we are told is just that he's totally ok with dying, don't ask questions just take our word for it. The only time he's mentioned is just to quickly tie up a loose end and wrap things up. Even in Midnight Motorist, which is possibly about Michael, we don't play as him, we play as his father. He doesn't even physically show up or gets named. The one minigame Michael's in is centered on his abuser, not him. No one in life cared about him as a person, just like how the narrative doesn't care about him as a person. He really didn't matter to anyone, huh? Again, Michael died without a voice for himself.
Exactly, like, I get thinking he’d want to die. But we’re just supposed to trust the word of the man who, for all we know, hasn’t been in his life for decades?
Right, there's a different between a character admitting themself that they want to die vs a different character saying that for them, even if they're correct and they do want to die.