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semi-web weaving of a bunch of things that in vibes or prose have stuck with me re: GTBA. which i will now ruin by talking about my opinion on the things they came from and how exactly they influenced it

1: from Good to Be Alive by They Might Be Giants.

yeah so this is where i got the series title from! i added "all things considered" because i thought it added the extra context of "despite the things that have happened" that's present in the song but not really in the excerpt. it's obviously directly thematically relevant in terms of the story being about Cassidy recovering from a massive injury, and the tone of being grateful for the parts of your body that function rather than mourning the loss of your Healthy Body is a lot of what the story is about. "i'm not a life coach or some teacher / but i think we'll all survive" is also a reference to the fact that a lot less of the cast dies. which admittedly isn't saying much since the survival rate of named characters in fnaf proper is like .08% because outside of the '87 bite victim(presumed to be Jeremy F) everyone fucking dies. GTBA brings that up to 1/3 of the canon cast! okay so maybe "all" is overselling it.

2: from the War of Vaslav Nijinsky by Frank Bidart

i actually really dislike the vast majority of this poem i think the wording is extremely stilted and the poet's insistence on alluding to his vague conception of tribal sacrifice and other things he has no particular insight on bloat most of it beyong poignancy but this exchange in particular has always stuck with me wrt to mike generally, but especially in GTBA. the conflict between wanting forgiveness from Him and the fact that even if you were given direct permission to live your life it would be so hard to take it because in actuality your guilt is also a personal feeling, and you care if you are guilty. meanwhile in cassidy's case he has to deal with being put on this weird pedestal only to find it makes his brother incapable of seeing what he's trying to say to him.

3: from Nature Poem by Chen Chen

another poem i wouldn't really recommend. it's definitely better overall than Bidart's contribution but it just doesn't hit and like a weird amount of Chen's poems it mentions brand names when they're not relevant which is a pet peeve of mine in especially US authors. that said this excerpt does make me go a little insane because it is literally what it's like. in some way all of the kids are screaming "why can't you see me" and then "why can't i stop needing you to see me?"

4: from Heel Turn 2 by The Mountain Goats

Beat the Champ generally is the album i've come to associate with GTBA but i've chosen the two most relevant tracks. HT2 is about not wanting to die in here even if it means you can't stay a face. in canon cassidy dies innocent, never having really done anything to anybody. we have some indications from his actions as golden freddy and the vengeful spirit(if you are insane enlightened enough to buy my "VS is Cassidy and TOYSNHK is Mike" theory) that at least after his death he is pissed the fuck off though. and in GTBA he lives long enough that he starts having to make hard decisions that have no morally good answer. and at the end of p1 he has to decide between letting himself be springlocked and killing his dad, and he decides that he's not gonna die in here.

5: from The Legend of Chavo Guerrero by The Mountain Goats

do you have any idea how pissed off i am that i didn't hear this BEFORE starting because oh my god. this is the most Cassidy song ever made. there are so many little things-- the mention of the language barrier, "you let me down but Chavo never once did" and then "now your ashes are scattered on the wind", and most of all the verse about hating all of Chavo's enemies and wishing for their death. despite what i said in the last section i am a believer in an always genuinely vengeful crying child. i think Cassidy has always been a hater and has always understood that what was happening to him was not fair. all of the kids have a lot of rage-- Elizabeth's is directed at Mike, Mike's is directed at first his brother and then himself, but although Cassidy's is initially directed at Mike, he is the only one who genuinely hates their father. he doesn't just accept that William has to die, he wants him to be dead. William's golden child sees him as an enemy and wishes nightly for his death. which is his fault, of course, because it's only because of William's neglect of him after the Bite that Cassidy gained the distance to see him for who he was.

6: im told this is dean winchester. idk man i looked it up and it said 12.22

this only gets to be on here because i went to the web weaving post that tricked me into reading Chen Chen and it is shockingly close to the title i thought was completely original. i'm just gonna use this opportunity to talk about how i chose that title-- so i wanted to match the cadence of p1 by having two clauses. i had already decided on "look at me" as the first line because the story is about cassidy trying desperately to get people to see him for who he actually is, a refrain echoed in canon(golden freddy/cassidy is literally screaming at the protagonist/mike LOOK AT ME. IT'S ME.) but in this he can actually talk enough to explain himself. "if you can bear it" is, firstly, a bear pun, which i think we can all agree is hilarious. but also it's about the various trauma-based and prejudice-ridden reasons that people don't look at cassidy, that they don't see him, and that they keep seeing other people and things over his face. it's painful for them to try and get past who they think he is to the actual person.

7: from A Brother Named Gethsemane by Natalie Diaz

When My Brother Was an Aztec, the collection this comes from, could be politely described as a mixed bag. a lot of the poems are almost good. this one line fucks really hard out of context though. without the rest of the poem it gains a bunch of meanings-- your brother is a plant you have to tend, your brother is a corpse you have to bury, your brother killed someone you have to bury, your brother lost something you have to dig up, your brother does or is something that you have to shovel for in order to love him. it really speaks to having a sibling who is fucked up in some way, where you have to fight through that in order to love them. are they worth the effort? are you going to do it anyway? i originally saw this in a web weaving post about michael and cassidy and i was so impressed by it that i read all of the collection it came from and was devasted by the fact that the original poem is mostly not good. selected reviews from me and my friend include "what did she call narcocorridos?" and "this could have used an editor"

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This is long overdue (I’m sorry women)

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actual custom icon! polished version of this old doodle of elizabeth having a cold one

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anyway i made a discord server. you can join it if you want

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sorry about the eternal shuffle everybody i genuinely have no idea what tumblr dot com is doing to me

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everyone's favorite canon fnaf character, rita maldonado finally gets a reference sheet! this is the uncensored version for real gamers, i had to give charlie an apron on artfight so they didnt make me slap a warning on her

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@reipastua waiter waiter! more fic please!

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Every Character Ref I've Made So Far

now freed from imgur prison. and with notes. im procrastinating

Cassidy

Cassidy comes from a byname that means 'curly-haired', which is part of why it was part of his design from p1. Cassidy being a short king was actually something I went back and forth on-- originally he was going to be 5'7" or so instead of not even cracking 165cm, but there are a couple reasons I went with it. Mostly they're to even more strongly connect him with Clara and to accentuate the frustration he feels at being infantilized. Although I had a strong mental image of his tracheostomy, I actually didn't have a very strong idea of what his scars looked like until I wrote p2ch14. I do like how they ended up looking, and the scars on his chin are designed to be easy to remember and draw the placement of. I call them his whiskers.

Mike

So my Mike really doesn't look that much like his father, especially not as much as he thinks. I get this is controversial but like 1) every canon design we've been given for the two of them is wildly different, 2) Mike's appearance changed drastically from fnaf 4 to SL, and 3) I don't even think that's what the SL line means lol I always thought it was referring to him following William's orders, not... physically looking like his dad. The animatronics have terrible facial recognition. Outside of that Mike's design has to do the most, he does have to look like his dad but also distinct enough from his dad that he felt like an outsider for a lot of his life and he has to pass for white but only if you don't look too closely ergo his is the only ref that had to be completely redone. Twice. I'm mostly happy with it now. Especially lil Mikey.

Liz

Lizard :) she's the only design I just got in one. This goes unstated, but she's actually the one who looks the most like her old man, it just doesn't really kick in until puberty. Because my Bill is blonde it naturally followed, and it matches well with the fact that although Mike is terrified of committing the same sins as his father, Elizabeth wants to be like her dad, and for most of the story has been chasing after his reputation. That said on a meta level, Bill is actually only blonde because Elizabeth is. Her blonde haired green eyed coloration would just be almost impossible unless Bill was just as light or lighter than her, hence me deciding to totally throw out his book design. Before I thought about this I just imagined him as the purple guy sprite. Lol.

Clara

Ignore the fact that this was drawn with my mouse on a completely new software. Clara is pictured here at 16, which actually makes her younger than Cassidy is in his reference! Honestly this kind of only exists because @sketchygainedyoursoul said they were gonna draw something for A Happier Day and so I was like "oh shit I guess I should actually make designs for these characters", but considering she gets a pretty detailed physical description this is mostly just a visualizer and color palette reference. She and Cassidy are meant to look very similar, although she has a much stronger nose and slightly darker coloration. I did try to reference 60s clothing... before proceeding to just make her wear three differently colored polo shirts.

River

Everyone's favorite canonical FNAF character. Vera's also 16 here-- she's actually a few months younger than Clara! She also got a physical description, but that was of her thirty-seven year old self, so this is the first time awkward cocoon stage River has been depicted. It's commented on by Clara, but River's appearance and attitude are kind of in conflict, which is mostly because her parents had very conflicting desires for her growing up. Her mother wanted her to be a good girl on the road to a good marriage, and then her dad wanted a hypercompetent survialist, which... meant she kind of had to be two entirely different people to please both of them. Obviously the whole Michael thing messed with a lot, and then her dad left and died before they ever got to reconcile, so she was dealing with some goddamn emotions at this point in her life.

Bonus: first draft william design I honestly don't like that much but I never drew his updated one

warning: scary white man

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Cassidy Medical Stuff

put under a cut for length!

Tube, pt. 1

Cassidy has an uncuffed/unfenestrated tracheostomy! This means it doesn't have a hole that allows air to escape up to the mouth, but because there's no inflated cuff, some air does travel through his mouth/nose. Uncuffed tracheostomies are the only ones given to young patients, ideally, so that it doesn't damage their trachea, and he's able to get enough air into his lungs without needing the inflated cuff. It needs to be replaced about once a month and can be done at home by pulling it out and putting the new one in. Day to day he doesn't need to have it attached to a ventilator, so he does breathe through the hole.

you can actually speak with a tracheostomy. Cassidy doesn't because he's profoundly Deaf and therefore did not bother to learn how to speak with a tracheostomy or get the attachment that lets you block airflow to vocalize more easily. he can make noise, which is why he's described as sighing or laughing, although it sounds a little scratchy.

they need to be regularly cleaned so mucus doesn't build up in the tube and block it, although the moment in chapter 14 where he has a sudden buildup from crying is probably not accurate. i started writing p1 with almost no knowledge of tracheostomies and ended p2 with slightly above no knowledge of tracheostomies. benefits of giving your protagonist a specific diagnosis with specific equipment are that you can look them up to more accurately describe what's happening, hazards are that if you read a slightly misleadingly worded thing on one website you can be wrong about it for like three months. shoutout to this video

turns out it's actually about the amount of fluids you're taking in! Cassidy's mentioned to have a humidifier in p1, so imagine that he has that blasting in his face whenever he's hiding in his room. you can drink with a tracheostomy, you just have to be careful.

the tracheostomy was actually the first thing i ever decided! in the cutscene it looks to me like Fredbear is crunching down on his throat, so i looked up "throat trauma" and when i heard that he might need a tracheostomy i decided that was a good starting point.

The Face

originally that was going to be the only thing he had, but when i read that it would make it difficult for him to speak, i thought it would be cool to have Cassidy use ASL, so i wanted him to be deaf. hence deciding to liquify his eardrums. if you ever thought that injury seemed a little contrived, that's because it was lol. i specifically placed a springlock in order to be at the right position to damage his hearing. Cassidy being "profoundly" Deaf means he can't hear shit, his hearing range is limited to, like, gunshots(for numbers heads, the threshold for profound deafness is 95dB). most d/Deaf people have a lower threshold.

otherwise his facial injuries are not especially set in stone. his jaw needed some implants, and it damaged his nose, but the scarring on his chin was chosen usen the advanced method of "drawing lines".

in his reference, i say he has a lazy eye, and i mention his face is a tiny bit lopsided because of the nerve damage. both of those are things you would notice if you were specifically looking for them, but are easy to miss in comparison to the scarring. yes, the lazy eye does mean he should have glasses. his dad didn't take him to the optometrist.

Frontal Lobe

as for the little man's TBI... i'm gonna be honest, i did not do NEARLY enough research for this. i found one study that sorted frontal lobe injuries into three types, picked one i vibed with which said that the person had very muted emotional reactions, and then called it a day. do not do this. please learn from my mistakes. i knew that he would be in physical therapy, but not what it would be for, and i had a really foggy idea of what the hell that caretaker was doing all day. there is (hopefully) a noticeable improvement in p2...? and i made some minor edits to p1 to be less obviously wrong.

for example, you may notice that almost all sources say that frontal lobe injuries impair your decision-making skills and cause mood swings(infamously, the exact thing that happened to Phineas Gage), and then Cassidy's personality flip makes him almost emotionless and has very little impact on his problem-solving abilities. uh-oh! outside of saying that he really only got a minor TBI because of the angle and waving my hand vaguely at the fact that brains are complicated, i have no excuse for this one, i just didn't know about it for long enough that it was impossible to change. congratulations to Cassidy for walking off his brain damage, some people are just built different.

less obviously, Cassidy comments that nobody with epilepsy could work at Circus Baby's, but he has epilepsy! he has chronic seizures, that's what epilepsy is. i meant photosensitive epilepsy, but i thought the non-photosensitive kind had a different name. it's actually a fairly uncommon longterm side effect of a TBI. Jeremy's having them in the immediate aftermath of his Bite, but he got lucky enough not to be stuck with them forever. he did get stuck with every other actually common frontal lobe injury symptom, though, so not that lucky.

Tube, pt. 2

Cassidy has a gastric tube, also abbreviated as G-tube. this is distinct from a nasogastric tube which goes into your nose. it's common in tracheostomy patients, although not all! since the tube's dangling, it's secured either with tape, a patch, or a belt. it needs to be replaced every few months, which can be done at home.

as mentioned a few times, he uses a syringe to eat. other options are a bag that slowly feeds using gravity, or a pump. there are specialized formulas for people with diabetes or another medical condition, but Cassidy's on the standard fluid.

if you were wondering, yes, he still needs to brush his teeth. unfortunately for him.

in conclusion:

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the thing is that this blog got termed basically immediately so. like. i would rather have the reipastua blog back

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ok damn i got this blog back????? i guess???????????????????? not the other one they also terminated for no reason. theyre attached to the same email address so idk how that works

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also here's the full picture from the character profiles. clara was still [Unnamed Cassidy Mother] at this point which is why she has a completely different face and i was still struggling to not just conceptualize william as the arcade sprite. i still automatically think of him as the arcade sprite.

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every character ref i've made so far

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it was really bugging me to have oneshots randomly sandwiched into the main gtba series now that i have more than one so they have their own subseries now.

finally, organization...

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shoutout to familyecho for letting me plug in every single member of the afton kids' family and extended family so i can keep track of elizabeth's cousins twice removed. i wish it would let you just show the entire family tree at once lol but:

Elizabeth's ended up being so big because i had to include Great Uncle Oscar and Aunt Jackie and i mentioned they had four kids so i was like. okay. what are the kids' names. what if i need to know their names. and then i mention Oscar's parents so obviously i need to know their names. also yes i named Elizabeth's grandpa Frederick, if you know name etymologies there are actually a couple easter eggs like that

absolutely no idea why familyecho decided to banish Clara's brother all the way over there, but Clara's maternal grandparents also having names is actually a remnant of a mistake i made! "Evander" is listed as a greek name on behindthename.com, which i found while searching for "names that start with evan" for my plot point, so i just assumed it was greek and made Clara's mom greek and then it turned out that it's. it's anglicized. so it wouldn't make sense. i considered having it be his name and then it got anglicized by the immigration authorities but that felt excessively complicated so instead i just made it Evander, the homographic Scottish name. now you might say "isn't this too much effort for a character who has, as of yet, not appeared in the fic at all except for literally just his name" to which i say look man im autistic this is what i do for fun

Michael's grandpa is greyed out because i included his death date so i didn't forget it which automatically marks the person as dead. i do think it's funny whenever a dead person is listed alongside parents that have one hundred percent died of old age by the time gtba actually starts. i mean his great grandfather died when Marijo was a baby but i don't have a death date for him so as far as the site's concerned he's still kicking at age, uh

...he's fine...

Bill's sister only exists because he mentions Elizabeth looking like her. Margaret was almost named Primrose because i was just like ok what is the most british lady name ever. i've actually barely thought about William's parents outside of them being pretty rich but maybe one of these days i'll make up some bull shit

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Made some fanart for an incredible fnaf fanfic series called Good to be Alive (by reipastuminen on ao3, no clue if they have tumblr) which you should go read N O W

do mind the fic's tags tho <3

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i'm mostly just gonna use this blog to dump things that i can't post to ao3(character profiles, research stuff, art) so i can ramble without needing to actually write something to shove it into the author's notes. mostly because i'm wayyy too shy to actively engage with anyone who doesn't talk to me first vampire-style. that said please talk to me about freddy fivenights