#atvpp

[feralreason]

The Dehumanisation of Dave Miller

So, I was RPing as Henry Miller and had an internal dialogue comment of Henry musing about how William Afton was not a person. My RP partner, @plushmenace , had put in the tags of their reply basically asking "what is Henry's definition of a person"?

So! I'm finally here to explain my reasoning behind writing him that way. :') And as a bonus, this’ll also explain why I write Dave with abysmal self esteem and body image too wahoo. :’)))

Talk of abuse and trauma + DSAF spoilers under the cut.

First off, Henry literally says so before the ending fight.

Now, you have been kind of lead to accept and probably think "Well in this series, William Afton *is* a literal Purple Guy so of course he's not a human."

But... Henry isn’t either? For the sake of this essay, I'll refer to the "brightly hued people with black scleras and white glowing irises and pitch black maws" as "Amazing Technicolour Void Produce People™" or ATVPPs.

Henry acts like William is this huge freak while basically being the same as him, just pink instead of purple.

But here's the thing: like with most of what Henry says and does, what if this is on purpose?

First off, William may be self conscious about his appearance:

For starters, William blames the fact that he's an ourple ATVPP for why he was never adopted.

Which is possible for sure. However, from what we see in the series? Nobody seems to really care or mind William's appearance.

Except for Henry (who hates William and is an abusive POS towards him), and depending on player choice, Jack (who is just Henry 2: the Sequel also depending on player choice).

Further backing up that this is a sore spot for him, he gets pretty upset when Jack reminds him of it (despite commenting and joking about it often himself).

Example 1:

Example 2:

Secondly, from how he acts, Henry probably used this as part of his abuse towards William:

I find the first reaction pretty telling tbh. Usually when picking an antagonistic dialogue option, Dave’s response will be anger and telling you to fuck off (closer to the second example). Yet in the first one? He tears up and just meekly points out with a stutter that he’s hurt.

( Also important to note too: from the second conversation, we can see that in this universe, “human” refers to “fully sentient, emotionally and intelligently complex beings with free will” (or however you want to word or spin it). Which would def include ATVPPs. Certainly makes what Henry says above even worse lol.)

Next up, something I’ve referenced before because bo y I think it’s one of the most well written parts of the series tbh -- meeting Davetrap in the third game.

Considering it’s been established that Davetrap is the “feral” half of Dave’s soul; the part that is bitter, angry, and can’t let go of things, I think his dialogue can be very insightful into his character.

Anyway, you can have this exchange:

He is clearly hurt by that term, pleading with Jack not to say it and taking on a cowering stance– turned away with his hands up defensively— and then reinstating that he’s “still a person”.

And guess who else refers to him as a monster?

This lines up with how passive we see him around Henry (the fight at the end of DSAF 3, the flashbacks in DSAF 2), so I think it’s easy to put two and two together and say Henry belittled him for his appearance, and that bringing it up makes him regress to how he was around him.

And again, in DSAF? This is apparently not anything that weird. I could be also be looking too much into it (but hey, death of the author bby), yeah, but the fact that nobody knows that Dave = William Afton kind of means being a purple ATVPP isn’t *that* unique in this world.

One thing I find interesting on that point is this exchange. Dave claims "kids loved drawing him because they were fascinated with him". Jack challenges that...

And then Dave basically shifts the conversation to, "Well they like me because I'm not scary and weird like you lol!" Even though he's joking, he does switch from making it about "what's inside".

I definitely think he may be making light of things to cope considering that he makes this quip in DSAF 2 which is definitely meant to be a joke and... yeeeaaah...

Anyway, some more examples of how Henry talks about William in a dehumanising way:

Furthermore, Henry has every reason to do this. From what we can see in the short story and some of William's dialogue, he seems to often belittle William to create co-dependency.

Ex: "Everyone is trying to hurt you, and you're weak, so you need to stay with me and do what I say so I can 'protect' you."

However, since the dialogue in the Void is him speaking his mind honestly, and combined with the tapes,... I'd argue it's completely possible he really may have literally not seen William as person. My guess is because of William being, you know, a weird form of undead. Maybe he started out demeaning him to easily control William, and began to sincerely believe it over time. Henry could also just suck like that.

And finally, William... kind of admits it himself in the bad ending, just like how Henry does in the good.

As I've pointed out before, he says Jack was the only person– he excludes Henry despite, in this route, still adoring the man.

... At least that's what I think! Wahoo!

#not me writing another literal essay #𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓. — meta : ❝ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴋɪʟʟ ꜰᴏʀ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴏᴠᴇ . ❞