@dire-kumori (this is, uh. This is gonna be a long one 😬)
It's completely fine if you're not up to date on the fnaf books, especially considering I haven't read any of them myself, lmao. I only know the things that the silly fnaf youtubers tell me is important in their theory videos, so. I don't know very much, and what I do know is probably very biased through their theory-crafting lenses.
But I enjoy me a good Evan and Gregory story, so I'd love to rant a little but more about them. I like the idea that Evan is hiding away somewhere in the Night Terrors recreation of his room, too terrified to leave it. He hides away somewhere that only a little kid would think to go/be able to reach, which is exactly why Gregory (who isn't THAT afraid while playing the game, but is a little menace who likes breaking the game's boundaries and trying to see where he can and can't go rather than playing the game normally) is able to find him.
Maybe Evan is terrified of Gregory at first-- after all, the details are hazy, but he clearly remembers how much the Stranger hurt him for so long, and who says this stranger will be any better? But Evan is terrified and alone and he just wants comfort. He thinks about the weird pictures on the wall of the family with blurry faces, how happy and safe they all look, and after a while of Evan being scared and Gregory trying to calm him, Evan can't help but notice that Gregory looks a LOT like one of the small blurry figures he sees in the family photos (ig technically Gregory should be nothing more than a pair of transparent floating arms if they're in a VR game, but I'll do what I want with no regard to the cruel constraints of logic). And Evan wants the happiness and safety he sees in those photos, so wouldn't it make sense to go with Gregory? (though, Gregory insists the kid in those photos isn't him)
Evan is so broken at this point that he doesn't remember his personality or his name. He can't answer any of the questions Gregory asks him about what things he likes or what he does for fun (though, the difference in technology thanks to them being born so far apart may play into that, too). Gregory has to help give Evan a name (Evan shudders for reasons he can't remember when Gregory suggests the name Freddy).
The last thing I'll say about the Gregory ending (such an original name, ik) is I'd like to think the two of them get out of the game eventually. Despite Gregory’s kindness, Evan still thinks he's too broken and the world is too big and scary for him to continue existing... and then the sun rises. At this point, Evan has spent what accounts to years/billions of nights desperate to survive long enough to see the sunrise but always being brutally murdered before he can. And then! Then Evan feels the light and warmth ghosting against his skin for the first time in god knows how long, he sees the brilliant pinks and oranges and reds of the rising sun, and he falls onto his knees with tears in his eyes. "I made it," he whispers. "I finally, really made it."
The happiness is almost enough to make his soul move on right then and there. But... it also fills him with hope that maybe this world and the people in it are worth surviving for after all.
Okay, moving on!
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Oh gosh,, the idea of "Michael" trying to take control of the game in order to turn it into a safe haven for Evan!! It's such a painfully sweet idea... except, I can't help but wonder if Michael would even know what a 'safe haven' for Evan would look like-- let alone if the Fragment would know, since the Fragment has lost everything that makes Michael, Michael and is just the remnant of an instinct to keep Evan safe. I feel like the "safe haven" that the Fragment would make for Evan would end up being empty and hollow, devoid of any real meaning or happiness. It's nothing but an empty paradise filled with false promises of what the Fragment thinks a little kid SHOULD want but is devoid of the love and affection that Evan NEEDS. I'm having trouble coming up with any examples, though. Maybe it's like the Other World in Coraline, but instead of a greedy, hungry monster being in control of an empty world of lies, it's a monster that WANTS to help Evan but doesn't understand how.
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And the idea of Glitchtrap using Evan against the Fragment is positively delicious :3
I'm going to make William and Mike a bit more sentient than you originally intended for a sec, though. I like the idea of a manipulative, silver-tongued William turning Evan against his brother. Maybe William even takes advantage of the fact that Evan (and probably Mike) never found out or knew why he got trapped in the Nightmare in the first place; maybe William frames the whole thing as Michael coming up with another way to torture Ev for fun. I wonder how Evan would respond. Would he listen to his father (whether or not Evan even recognizes this person as his father) telling him Mikey deserves this, take out his frustration on Mikey and hope that he can rest once Mike is gone? Or does Evan break, because as much as Mikey has hurt him, he doesn't want his brother dead?
And wouldn't it be interesting to see how Mike/the Fragment responds to Evan attacking him/it? The Fragment wants nothing more than Evan to be happy, so it must glitch the hell out of it when Evan tries destroying the Fragment. It's just like what you wrote about Mike being torn when Ev begs Mike to stop trying to save him in the Nightmare; the Fragment's entire existence is to keep Evan safe and happy, and it needs to be present so it can do that, but if Evan wants it gone... how is it meant to fulfill both objectives at once?
Though, I'm also curious about how this au could tie back into Security Breach. Maybe the Fragment does end up winning control of the game from Glitchtrap, so Glitchtrap runs to the only place he can: Vanessa. And maybe he drags Evan with him, or perhaps Evan goes *willingly* if it means escaping from the Fragment/Stranger that tortured him for so long. Security Breach still happens, but this time, Glitchtrap has Vanessa AND Evan under his control. Maybe he even uses Evan’s ghost to try tricking and manipulating Gregory as well. And all the while, Michael has to try to figure out how to get out of the VR game and back to protecting the ghost spirit whose name he no longer recalls.
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AND THE FRAGMENT BEING A YOUNGER MIKE IS SO COOL! Maybe it could be the reverse of what I described with Evan and Gregory, where Evan sees another lost and scared kid his age hiding away, just like him, and decides "i am not leaving you to face your horrors alone." Neither Evan nor Mike have any memory of who either of them are, but they're both lost and alone and terrified and cling to each other. They're the only thing that either of them has, and vow to get through this together, sort of the antithesis to how isolated they were in the Nightmare. Very depressing that it takes both of them completely losing all of their memories and will to live for them to trust and rely on each other without constantly hurting each other, but...
Maybe the two of them spend eternity forever without their memories. Or maybe like you said, they slowly find each other's memories in the game's coding, and they have to reconcile the horrible truths they learn about themselves and their pasts with the fact that they're *friends* now and don't want to lose each other
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i was talking about stan and his OCD the other day but i didn't really talk about how the other losers would act about it. so!
please remember that OCD is a varied condition and not everyone with it is like what is depicted in this post!
bill
at first stan keeps his obsessions to himself, he's pretty aware of what is a "typical" thought process and what is his brain being kinda weird
but eventually bill finds him having a panic attack over something seemingly mundane. young stan to me had obsessions that focused on the supernatural and "curses", so something like opening an umbrella indoors throws him into hysterics
and as soon as he realizes what he's doing he's humiliated, because like who the fuck cares? everyone knows that's just a stupid superstition, and he's so worried bill's going to think he's a weirdo or a coward
but bill is like. extremely reasonable about it, i think he's used to georgie getting upset over seemingly nonsensical things (the way kids do), so he's just used to treating things he doesn't understand with severity.
maybe there's nothing scary to him about opening an umbrella indoors, but its clearly upset stan and that's what matters here. he calmly asks him what he's upset about and reassures him that if it upsets him then its important
he gets stan to talk through it, bill brings up how richie always opens his umbrella indoors but nothing bad has ever happened to him because of it, which doesn't help a ton because OCD isn't typically very reasonable, but it helps a bit, and stan calms down enough that bill bringing up richie prompts him to go off on a rant about something stupid richie did at school while bill was gone
eddie
despite not having OCD eddie gets it, especially after he finds out that he isn't actually sick
eddie is the first person stan chooses to tell about the weird circles his brain runs in, because he knows eddie still carries around his fake inhaler
eddie isn't scared of the same things stan is, but he can understand being afraid of something he logically knows can't hurt him. they're pretty good at working each other out of panic attacks because of this
richie
(the things richie says to stan here are things you should never ever say to someone with OCD unless you have their express permission, stan finds it funny and helpful, and as someone with OCD so do i, but many will not, and talking like this could make their mental state worse and is just generally an asshole thing to do!)
on paper richie is an asshole to stan about his OCD, he calls him unreasonable, tells him he makes no sense, he's worrying over nothing, etc.
he frequently makes fun of stan's obsessions, if stan says something he thought because of his OCD richie will repeat it back to him in a Voice
but by some miracle this does wonders for stan
if anyone else was saying this stuff it would make him feel like shit, but because it's richie it's hilarious (not that he shows it)
richie assigning characters to his obsessions has managed to completely discredit some of them, and stan is straight up Not Bothered by some of them anymore because as soon as the thought pops up so does richie's voice and he can't take it seriously
there's the scandalized mother who thinks stan is a horrible person for not appreciating his meals properly or something
there's the conspiracy theorist trying to convince stan curses are real
and there's the high school coach who acts like stan is a one man army and they're going to lose the entire war if stan doesn't fold his sheets properly
stan doesn't want to give richie credit for his improved mental state because the way he did it is ridiculous, but yeah, richie and his voices have definitely helped
beverly
bev is great at Not Talking About It and Being Normal About It
stan will say something extremely concerning (use your imagination, i don't want to provide an example lol), and bev is like "yeah thats fucked up." and then they move on
he never gets the feeling she's brushing him off or anything, she'd definitely Actually Talk About It if he asked, but sometimes he just needs to get the thought out there and then immediately move on
sometimes it is exhausting to actually talk about feelings, sometimes stan just needs to express that he's feeling something, be acknowledged, then move on
"i just thought [insert concerning compulsion he doesn't want to do]" "or we could skip class and build a snowfort before all these other assholes ruin the fresh snow at lunch"
stan never feels judged in the slightest when he's with bev, and it helps free him of some of the judgment in his own mind :)
ben
ben is so so so good at listening, not only is he just the only nice 13 year old stan has ever met, he has one of those faces yknow?
he finds himself telling ben things it took him nearly a decade of friendship to tell bill
ben is clearly confused and concerned, but he never makes stan feel like he's unreasonable
stan usually only tells his friends about his specific obsessions when they've bottled up and are about to explode, or when he's in the midst of a panic attack
but with ben he feels like he can talk about the other stuff that comes with it, the impact his thought processes have had on his life
ben offers suggestions from time to time, not all of them stick, but the ones that do really help stan out
mike
mike finds a way to keep stan from worrying about anything at all
stan could spend all day worrying about something, and then mike shows up and explains some new topic to stan and it's like stan wasn't even stressed in the first place
stan can't even count the number of times mike has gone through an explanation of the history of derry, or what various states are known for, or the tasks mike does at the farm, or the history of some obscure scientific/cultural phenomenon
stan genuinely loves hearing about anything mike wants to talk about, but he also just finds mike to be a really engaging speaker to the point he stops thinking about whatever was bothering him
it is very much a win/win situation
sometimes mike will manage to pull him out of whatever was worrying him and get him to talk about birds and the boy scouts and they always end up having a ton of fun :)
the losers love stan and he loves them <3
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