The title came specifically from my love of William Afton's story.

William Afton, the main antagonist of the FNAF series as a whole, has become somewhat of a "videogame villain icon" due to the difference in his nature to other game characters in general. It was revolutionary at the time.

This was definitely my favorite part to write out of the two books. His story hadn't been told in much detail, so it gave me a way to make William Afton my own character. I had a chance to create emotion, backstory, motivation, and have not only the audience, but also myself feel bad for a serial killer. That came at a price though.

In mid-2020, I began to come down with a serious case of depression. I haven't necessarily recovered from it yet, but William became somewhat of a safe place for me. I could write about someone who was motivated negatively by a positive outcome. Being in the mind of a serial killer was taxing, so I struggled writing the more grisly parts of the story. But that's the point right?

Anyway, FNAF: Insanity was about 25 chapters long in my head and only truly made it up to 16 plus the prologue and epilogue. I personally think that's fine because I tend to overstate things often. By the end of the book, I felt relieved because I finally finished a chapter of my life, not just a chapter of a book.

FNAF: Insanity ends after the events of FNAF 4. I chose to split it this way because I had a solid splitting point for William and his son, Michael. Then I could also create the story as I wanted to, moving backward.

Most people presuppose that Afton is like a super tall, thin, "hot", creepy serial killer guy but that's not relatable or realistic at all. So it makes more sense to start with a human being and end with a creepy serial killer.

Does this look relatable to you guys? Not to me. (No diss to the artist, the art is actually amazing)

So I made him a human being with human feelings and human reactions. Even up to the abusive father arc.

It's a pretty lame card to pull, I know. But it explains a lot about how William was so easily abusive to his children and other peoples' children. Couple that with losing your wife, daughter, and youngest son in a matter of a few years. Pretty bad huh?

I also enjoyed giving Henry Emily(yes his last name is Emily I am not making this up) a personality, since most people just make him "the depressed dad" or the "hopeless inventor". Where's the character? So I made him a classic 1970's American dad. Which was very fun to write.

William and Henry's chemistry was a bit tricky because they were two very different people, but that made their relationship unique. Speaking of relationships, let's talk about Eleanor Afton.

Eleanor, William's wife, was given her name by me. The fanbase calls her 'Clara' due to the "The Immortal and The Restless" wife being implied to be William, but that just didn't make sense to me. The vampire in those short films is named Vlad. So although Scott may have used it for symbolism, it made no sense to use the name "Clara". So I used something that I found a bit more "British". She's in reality a throwaway character because she doesn't show up later in the series, but I thought maybe she was a good motivation point for William. 

Many people think that she's inside of Ballora as a spirit and though this might make some sense, it doesn't fit the narrative I was trying to tell. Why would William murder the love of his life? He cares about his family at least a little bit, right?

You probably also heard me say British. Obviously, they're British due to their in-game accents, but many people think that certain locations that they may have interacted with were in the US but I just didn't think that made much sense from a geography standpoint. In the end, it turned out okay.

I think I had the hardest time writing Michael Afton in this book. He's not a very 3D character in the games up until the events of FNAF 2, so it was hard to find something to go off of. But eventually, I led it into the situations that the games without much trouble.

Even when I go on to write more books, this book will definitely be in my memory for a long long time.

I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

Wait wait wait I forgot something.

Remember when I was talking about TheGameTheorists? Well, they gave me a shoutout months ago on FNAF: Insanity.

I posted my story on the GameTheorist subreddit, and somehow it got filtered into their live stream meme review list.

I don't know if it was a blessing from God or something, but the number of people that turned up because of that was great. Sadly I hadn't finished the book at the time, so many people didn't stay long. Also more sadly, the channel's owner, MatPat, offered to read it, which he never did. It was a high hope in me assuming that he'd keep his promise, but the notion was nice.

I guess that's it for FNAF: Insanity. Stay tuned for more sections later!