The movieverse counterparts feel so different from the their games versions. Like they're characters chopped up and shuffled around for whatever would seem entertaining for general audiences. Like I think they represent ideas and concepts more than characters. I feel a similar way with the novel characters with some wonkieness in adapting the games. While they may parallel their game counterparts in some respects their circumstances are different enough to argue that while they could be used to fill in the gaps, you could also just as well argue they're characterization is meant to be confined to that body of work. (Ie. The things book Henry is most notable for is building a robot copy of his daughter, something games Henry has no evidence of doing. The defining trait of games Henry is his FFPS plan which novel Henry doesn't.)
And like movie Vanessa is neither analogous for Elizabeth or Michael or even her game counterpart. She kinda represents the idea of a reluctant follower of William's and what that would look like. Even then, a lot of William's other characters quirks are stripped away for something a little more palatable for general audiences. I guess that's kinda why I'm not as worried.
Idk the thing about fnaf is that scott is really cagey and cryptic about the story of the original games. Even SOTM is veryyyyy much not trying to add too much additional information about William or Henry despite some knee jerk reactions from some fans might have you believe. But even if they did try to make "movie michael" into games michael...Idk. That would feel like a pretty big retcon. Like maybe you can argue it's not a retcon because so much in the games isn't directly stated but. The thing I'm trying to get at is that games Michael is still going to be games Michael regardless of any postmortem retcons. And I think your insights are very valuable regardless. The thing I like about fnaf is that there's a bunch of different interpretations out there and that they can all be valid, insightful and readings worth exploring across various different source material. While my interpretation of Michael differs from yours, your blog definitely convinced me of a few things and made me want to look deeper into him in the first place. So don't feel the need to throw away your blog over some hasty changes to canon for an adaptation that's kinda meant to be more of a popcorn movie than anything else.
Also don't lose hope, there's always a chance that this Michael may be his Fake Charlie counterpart 😔 and sorry I keep clogging your askbox 🧍
Yeah, I've been talking about this with a few people lately and I've realized what it is I'm actually scared of. It's not a different universe version of Michael in a different scenario behaving in different ways as a result of a different lived experience I'm against. And it's not what I'm scared of. It's something else.
For a long time, I have often been the one to point out differences between counterparts across the books, games, and movies, and really stress the "different universe" part. It's one reason that as of now I strongly stand behind my opinion that Mike Schmidt in the movies is supposed to be this universe's version of Michael. My logic is this: No, he's not exactly the same, of course he isn't. He has lived a different life, and our experiences, how we grow up, what we go through, all of that contributes to our personality and how we behave and interact with others. But I think most of the core aspects of Mike's character are here. He is not William's son in this universe. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. In fact I kind of like this because it gives him a chance to be separate from William. Michael Afton was followed by the shadow of William his whole life and could never even completely break the connection because their biological relation gave him a face that's almost identical. But there is more to him than just being William's son, and this movie gives all the other parts of him room to shine. A huge portion of that is a big brother navigating the grief of the death of a younger brother and a troubling family situation. I do not necessarily view them as the same character. When I watch the FNAF movie, I look at Mike and I see Mike Schmidt, not movie universe Michael Afton. But I do think they are the same person, born twice, and then branched off by circumstances. If that makes sense.
So yeah. I am very aware of how the games, movies, and books connect to each other and I have been for a long time, since I was young actually. As a huge fan of the novel trilogy, even back when I was 11, it didn't confuse me when different stuff happened in the games. Alternate universe is just a concept I've always understood and I tend to support it because it is very fun to look at different scenarios. I mean, one of my favorite video games just got a remake announced, and it's the same game, but a universe where one minor difference caused the events of the whole game to go differently. They've made it clear it is its own thing and doesn't affect the previously established canon, and I am so excited for it. I think it was the best possible choice for a new game.
But yeah, I figured out what it is I'm scared of. It's how the fandom will receive it. I had some people point a few things out to me that helped me really understand this.
Person who wrote these tags if you see this, the Henry problem did not start with SOTM. God that's another thing. Even if 99% of the fandom starts thinking a certain way, if I personally don't think it's true, I'm not going to conform. I think a very large portion of FNAF fans are wrong about Henry. Wrong in so many ways. Ways I cannot understand. And actually, I am holding onto hope that the FNAF 2 movie is going to clear a lot of those things up. So why I'm so worried... I don't know.
So I'm starting to be a little more rational. I'm also just remembering that I need to trust Scott, because pretty much everything the first movie had to juggle was handled perfectly in my opinion. And that was a big deal to him, it's why the movie took so long. Script after script after script got scrapped. One reason being because he was trying to find away to balance the horror aspect of killer animatronics and the innocence of the children. And the FNAF movie got backlash from some fans for it's portrayal of the animatronics, but me personally, I'm glad he stood his ground with that one. Even if Michael is doing more bad than good here in the movies I kind of doubt under Scott's supervision it would swing very far in the evil direction or be shown without a clear indication that there's a reason he's like this, probably William. So yeah. Maybe it's a dumb fear. I'm excited as hell for the movie either way.
Oh and I wasn't being serious about deleting the blog thing. I was just being hyperbolic and overdramatic lmao.
