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cartoonus-maximus · 2 months ago

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Notes and Observations on FNAF TFTP Vol 6: "Nexie"

So, um… I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, guys. I hated this volume. I spent most of it being either bored or irritated.

This is the first cover art from this series that I didn't like. It's so bland and un-creative, and it's not even story accurate! I can't find anything positive to say about it! DX

I'm sorry if I come across as a hater. I don't mean to, but so many stories of this series are so frustrating to me, and I can't find it in myself to speak very positively about stories that I'm not enjoying. Like, you enjoy these, that's great for you, but I was straight up not having a good time, my guys.

These are my notes and observations made while listening to the audiobook, which I borrowed from my local library. Fair warning: there will be spoilers. If you want the whole experience for yourself, you should skip this and go read/listen to the book yourself first.

Here are my observations on the other books in the series, if you are interested.

In this volume, we learn more about the Mimic, and that's an important part of this franchise these days. So let's get into it.

"Nexie"

In this story we're introduced to a line of Fazbear products called "Buddytronics," a line of expensive animatronic toys that are sold by parts and assembled in front of the customers in a manner akin to "Build-a-Bear" stores. Buddytronics are highly customizable, and can be made to resemble existing Freddy Fazbear animatronic characters, generic humanoid dolls, or generic stuffed animals, or some combination thereof. They're generally somewhere between 2 and 3 feet tall (about 2/3 of a meter to a full meter) and have robotic parts, allowing them to walk and move their arms. They also come with simple computer chips and voice boxes, which allow them to listen to their owners and observe actions, which they can then mimic or otherwise respond to in simple ways. They're marketed as companion toys, acting as both playthings and friends for small children.

This story centers around Astrid Erikson, a 9-year-old girl who comes from a family of Swedish immigrants. Astrid lives with her father and grandfather (her "Farfar"), who both work as carpenters. Her family is extremely old-fashioned, and don't value anything they can't make with their own hands, and don't value any aspect of modern society; her father also seems to have a very "women and children are to be seen and not heard" sort of attitude, and can be very judgemental in a way that Astrid finds stifling.

Astrid's mother ran away to become a model, a career that Astrid's father and his family "didn't approve of." Astrid feels that her mother abandoned her, choosing an "undesirable" career over her own daughter, and it results in Astrid feeling that she isn't lovable; she thinks her mother must value physical beauty over all other traits, since she left to pursue a career in the beauty industry, and she wonders if her mother would have stayed if Astrid had only been more beautiful. (Astrid's conflicting feelings about her mother come up a lot in this story. It's also worth noting that most Astrid's knowledge about her mother comes from her father, who is a very unreliable source of information, picking and choosing what he wants to share about the woman who left him with the daughter he keeps dangerously sheltered.)

The Buddytronics are very popular among the other kids at Astrid's school. In an attempt to fit in, Astrid decides to get a Buddytronic of her own. Since she knows her father would never buy one for her, she's been saving up her allowance for awhile in order to get one, but, since Buddytronics are about $1000 each, it's taking her a long time to save up.

Unlike her father, Astrid's Farfar is more open to Astrid's opinions and interests, and regularly indulges her with trips to the local Pizzaplex, where they eat pizza and play games in the arcade. (He compares the Pizzaplex to a carnival he went to as a kid, which I thought was an interesting detail.) For Astrid's birthday, her Farfar decides to take her to the Pizzaplex to buy her a Buddytronic, citing that he wants to give her a birthday gift that he knows she wants, even if he personally doesn't understand it.

When Astrid and her Farfar go to the Pizzaplex on her birthday, things a lot more hectic than usual. There's some weird feedback on the intercom system, filling the air with a high-pitched squeal. All of the lights in the building are blinking off-and-on, a glitch that seems to start from the Storyteller tree and is working its way across the Pizzaplex. Other pieces of machinery seem to be glitching, and several Pizzaplex employees are bustling around, shutting down glitching rides and closing off boutique stores, seemingly trying to close the Pizzaplex early because of these severe glitches.

The employees at the Buddytronic boutique are closing up, but Farfar convinces them to let Astrid build a Buddytronic for her birthday. Astrid picks out the parts to make a feminine doll with pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes, and wearing a blue dress and a straw hat, wanting the doll to look like either herself or her absent mother. She names the doll Lexie (possibly after her mother? We're not told the significance of the name).

All of the doll parts to build Lexie are put into the assembly machine, but the machine malfunctions, and the doll's parts are assembled in the wrong places, resulting in a doll with wonky, bugged out eyes, a snarling mouth, arms sticking straight out of its torso, legs that are the wrong size for the body, and the hair sticking straight out from being rooted in strange places on the head. When the doll is turned on, she introduces herself as "Nexie," showing that her personality chip was misprogrammed, and she speaks with a flat, monotone voice, indicating that her voice box is wrong as well.

When Nexie infodumps a bunch of facts about the history of the name "Astrid," the Pizzaplex employees express confusion; clearly the Buddytronics aren't supposed to come with that much information in their programming.

Despite how wrong the doll came out, Astrid decides to keep and love her anyway, not wanting to abandon her creation in the same way her mother did.

The next day, Astrid takes Nexie to school with her, since all the other kids have been bringing their Buddytronics to school with them for weeks already. But this doesn't help her fit in with the other kids, who all have Buddytronics that look like pretty dolls, cute teddy bears, and mini versions of Fazbear characters like Circus Baby, Funtime Foxy, and DJ Music Man -- instead, having Nexie with her just gives her classmates something else to bully her about, as they make fun of how ugly Astrid's new doll is and even steal Nexie from her to play keep-away with. When Astrid tries to defend herself and Nexie, she's the one who gets in trouble.

I'm not going to spend much time talking about any of Astrid's bullies/classmates, because they're mainly just generic mean kids. They show up a lot throughout this story and they're really obnoxious. The most "important" of this bunch is a boy named Remy, who acts as a second POV character, and it's mostly through his eyes that we see Astrid's time at school.

I'm really annoyed by how the author of this story (Andrea Waggener) portrays the bullies. She tries to give them backstories, and tries to explain to the audience why these kids bully Astrid, but instead of focusing on the real reason (Astrid comes from an immigrant family and dresses and speaks very differently from the rest of her class, and the kids don't like how different she is from them), the author leans into tropes like "the bully acts like that at school because he's a victim of domestic abuse / she's neglected at home" and the dreaded "he's mean to her because he likes her." I hate these tropes with a burning passion, and I don't think they should be used in children's media anymore, since they can be internalized by their impressionable audience and lead to their audience members getting harmed later in life.

In short, there are several segments in this story that involve Astrid's bullies, and I hate how they were written, and most of them aren't worth talking about anyway, so I'm not going to say much about them. Just know that they exist.

At home, Astrid apologizes to Nexie for all the mean comments she received from the other kids at school, and Nexie listens and tries to comfort her owner. Nexie is self-aware enough to know that her parts are the wrong sizes and in the wrong places, and she asks if Astrid could "fix her," with the comment "Everyone would like me if I were not ugly." She and Astrid spend the next few days talking about what specifically would need to be replaced, and what parts would be needed.

Throughout these parts, Astrid tries to explain to Nexie that a beautiful personality is more important than physical beauty, but Nexie is skeptical about this. She reminds Astrid that her name means "divine beauty," and that Astrid herself is expected to be beautiful, and just generally preys on Astrid's insecurities. (I just wanna remind you that Astrid is 9-years-old. The real horror of this story is that our 'insecure about appearance' character hasn't even gone through puberty yet. Like, she's a literal child, guys! She shouldn't give a flying flip what she looks like! DX )

There's this creepy section where Nexie tells Astrid that her endoskeleton is wrong, and that they're going to need an entirely new endoskeleton to really fix her. When Astrid asks how they would transfer Nexie's outer layer of skin and hair onto a new endoskeleton, Nexie reveals that she's been carrying scissors around for awhile, and she pulls them out of her dress pocket and promptly degloves her own hand with the statement "See? Skin can be taken off and put on something new."

Astrid still brings Nexie to school with her, and the two are subjected to more bullying. Some of the girls call Astrid "as ugly as her doll" and suggest that she needs to be completely getted and remodeled like an old house. Not caring about the opinion of some mean classmates but caring deeply about her appearance, Astrid internalizes these comments; when Nexie looks at a database of what "attractive" girls look like and starts listing physical features off, Astrid realizes she doesn't have any of those features and it feeds into her insecurity.

During this segment, Nexie tells Astrid that she has access to a database full of "pictures of pretty girls." She doesn't clarify what this means. Is she connected to internet, and looking at some random beauty article online? Does she have some really weird files downloaded on her personality chip? What is going on here?

Nexie sees one of the mean girls trip Astrid in the school hallway. Apparently having learned this move from a single observation, Nexie later trips another of the mean girls while the kids and their Buddytronics are moving between classes. They're walking down the stairs when she trips her, and the girl falls over the railing. Some of the surrounding kids manage to grab her before she falls, and she's pulled back to safety.

Astrid knows it was Nexie who tripped the other girl, but the idea of it is to much for her, and she can't even bring herself to think too hard about it or really acknowledge it. Secondary POV character Remy also saw that it was Nexie who tripped the girl, but he doesn't say anything, literally threatened into silence by Nexie, the doll sneering and winking at him.

Astrid's Farfar buys her a new Buddytronic doll as a surprise, so she doesn't have to carry Nexie around with her. This doll introduces herself as Lexie, and resembles the original design that Astrid had in mind for her doll. The new Lexie and original Nexie dolls stand next to each other in silence for a moment, but then Nexie attacks Lexie, literally biting into the other doll's face and using her teeth to skin Lexie alive. Astrid screams in horror at the plastic carnage, Lexie wails and writhes as she's torn to shreds, and Nexie ignores both of them, focusing on tearing out Lexie's CPU and crushing it in her hands. When Astrid tries to reason with Nexie, pointing out that they could have used Lexie's parts to repair Nexie, Nexie dismisses her, saying that Lexie's parts aren't what they need.

Astrid learns that the Buddytronic parts are built in one of the basement levels of the Pizzaplex, but aren't available for purchase by customers unless as part of a complete Buddytronic. Nexie tries to needle Astrid into breaking into the robotics lab to steal the parts.

Unwilling to break in anywhere and steal parts, Astrid gives up on the idea of fixing Nexie. But, the next day, Nexie kills one of Astrid's bullies by throwing the boy directly in front of a speeding car, and the boy's bones are shattered on impact. Horrified, Astrid decides to get the parts for Nexie, believing that it's the only way to keep the doll from killing anyone. She gets Farfar to take her to the Pizzaplex after school and manages to steal an employee's key card so she can access the basement robotics lab.

Later that evening, Astrid sneaks out of the house with Nexie, and they use the stolen key card to get into the Pizzaplex. They avoid being seen by any night guards or security cameras, and they make it to the basement robotics lab without getting caught. Nexie points out all the parts they'll need, and Astrid gets to work, and the two spend several hours hard at work in this lab.

Later at school (either the next day or a few days later, depending on which sentence you choose to read during this segment; I don't think these stories are properly edited), the other kids in class are horrified when Astrid enters the room, carrying Nexie on her hip. Nexie looks the same as ever, but Astrid is now freakishly tall, and her skin has been cut apart and resewn together, stretched out over a body much bigger than hers used to be. She resembles Frankenstein's monster in all the worst ways, deathly pale and stitched together strangely.

Nexie grins smugly at all the screaming kids, looking for all the world like a satisfied predator. Astrid hugs Nexie close and says "Perfect now."

And that's it. That's how the story ends.

This story was really frustrating for me. I actually stopped the audiobook and walked away from it multiple times, that's how frustrating it was.

A big part of the problem was that, due to the recycled content, I found most of this story to be really boring. Andrea tries really hard with this story to recreate both the Fazbear Frights story "To Be Beautiful" and the Blumhouse movie "M3gan" … and frankly, imo, fails. It makes sense that we would get a story trying to recreate parts of both of those, since:

"To Be Beautiful" is a FNAF fan favorite because of it's placement in the first volume of a series and because it introduces Eleanor, who is a fan favorite character; it's fine as a story, and it at least mostly makes narrative sense.

"M3gan" is a movie that lands in the horror genre in a similar way to how FNAF fits in, and, imo, is a very simple and basic script that is elevated by the excellent work of the actors and the affect team, with most of its charm coming from the portrayal of the characters themselves.

Both tell very different stories, but have a lot of similar elements, and both center around an evil AI-run doll and a young girl who the doll befriends and preys upon.

I understand the point of the exercise -- recreating aspects of existing stories -- but, as someone who's already seen "M3gan" and already read "To Be Beautiful," this story ended up being very boring, since it only recycles parts from those prior stories and doesn't do anything to build on them.

(Also, for those who don't know, I have an exhaustive list of fears and phobias, which include large dolls, dolls that walk and talk, evil sentient dolls, and dolls that look wrong or have manufacturing defects. Nexie checks off all these boxes and should have been terrifying to me in particular, but instead I was bored or angry for most of this story. What a complete miss!)

There was of course also the portrayal of the school bullies, which I've already talked about and don't want to get back into (but I kinda want to throw hands with Andrea by this point in the series). And then there was the ending, which comes completely out of left field and doesn't make a lot of sense. While there had been some subtle foreshadowing tossed in every once in awhile, there really wasn't enough for the story ending to make any sense with the rest of the story, and it ends up feeling like a random, horrific ending that was just tacked on at the end.

(The audio version of this story is just over 2 hours long, and that's 2 hours I could have spent doing literally anything else. Ugh.)

But, as far as potential lore goes, I think it's worth noting that 1) Nexie is built in the exact same Pizzaplex where the Storyteller tree is, and she's also built during a time where the Storyteller/Mimic is malfunctioning. The story implies that this leads to Nexie having a copy of the Mimic AI downloaded into her personality chip, which leads to 2), that Nexie is portrayed throughout the story as watching people and mimicking their actions later on, a trait that she clearly shares with the Mimic. I don't have any concrete thoughts about these parallels atm, but I think it's worth noodling around with.

Yeah, that's all I got for "Nexie" right now. Let's move on to the next one.

"Drowning"

This story centers around a friend group of teenage girls named Kara, Francine, and Lola. The girls have won a prize from a contest, and the prize is a free day at the local Pizzaplex, so the girls are spending their day going on various rides and trying out different entertainment booths.

The girls try out a new VR attraction at the Pizzaplex called "the VR Resort." This attraction brings customers into a small room where first they are scanned by a laser, uploading a digital copy of their body into the VR computer system. Once this is done, the customers are shown to a soft seat with straps on it, which they are strapped into for safety purposes (so they don't accidentally hurt themselves while in VR). They are then given a VR helmet, and putting it on takes them into a VR landscape or experience chosen from a premade list. One of the big draws for the VR Resort is that time moves differently in the VR experiences than it does in real life, allowing the customers to feel like they're enjoying the experience for an hour or longer when they're only actually in the experience for a few minutes.

When it's the girls' turn, they opt to try an experience called "Coaster City." Once they enter it, they find themselves walking around an idealized amusement park, with lots of fun rides available to them, lots of amusement park snacks to try, and no lines to wait through. The experience is over before the girls are ready for it to end, and they are surprised to find that only a few minutes passed.

There are monitors around the outside of the main room of the VR Resort, and they show different clips of what the different available experiences are. As the girls leave, they pass a few of these screens, and Kara looks at one depicting a water park. She thinks she sees the shadow of a person in the pool, but then the screen flips to another clip, and she decides she was just seeing things.

The girls go on a few others rides and play some games around the Pizzaplex. At some point, Kara sneaks away from her friends, slipping back to the VR Resort; she wanted to try it out again, but the other two weren't interested in repeat rides, so Kara decides to go back to the VR Resort by herself.

Back at the VR Resort, Kara chats up Zach, the attraction attendant who's about her age. She flirts with him a little bit, and Zach lets her into the off-limits part of the attraction, showing her all the monitors and controls that the attendants are in charge of and how they work. He shows her how to set the time for the VR experience, telling her that, but inputting different time amounts on the controls, he and his coworkers can control how long the customer feels like they're in the virtual world, with preset time slots ranging from a few minutes to an hour. He says that if an employee doesn't set a time, the customer could feel like they're trapped in the virtual world forever.

We learn that the VR system keeps the scans of customer's bodies and faces in the system all day; they are automatically deleted at the end of each day.

He also introduces her to "hyper time," which is an extra service that the customer can request, but it costs extra. It's literally giving the customer a shot of adrenaline, so they're keyed up during the entire virtual experience.

Kara is an adrenaline junkie, and she convinces Zach to get her set up in the VR Resort for free, with both "hyper time" and an extended virtual time period, giving her about an hour to explore the experience of her choice, the water park. Zach turns the sign on the VR Resort to "closed," so he and Kara will be alone inside, and gets Kara set up in the seat. He goes back to the control booth and starts to key in all of the instructions, but gets distracted when his manager calls him, and he's forced to rush through the VR settings before running off to cover another employee at Monty's Gator Golf; it's made clear to the audience that he fails to set a time on Kara's experience, and that he leaves her completely alone in the booth when he's the only one who knows she's there.

Kara has a lot of fun in the virtual water park, jumping and splashing around in various styles of pools and climbing to the top of towering water slides. She explores around the virtual water park, which is broken into different sections, with each section designed around a different theme, including a jungle section, a donut shop, an alien landscape, and even a pizza parlor. Kara's body thrums with adrenaline and fear, and she revels in it, loving every second. Things take a turn when she feels something in the water brush against her leg, and she catches sight of black hair. It makes Kara wonder if there's a mermaid in the pool as part of theme, or if the VR program has glitched in some way and is trying to project the digital copy of another customer for some reason.

In the jungle section, Kara encounters a virtual parrot, which is a prop for the section but behaves much like a real bird. Like real birds, the parrot mimics the sound of her speaking, repeating "hello!" after she addresses it. The parrot mimics her a few times, then says "Don't leave me here alone," something Kara hasn't said out loud (but is a phrase that carries personal significance to Kara, as we'll explore later).

When Kara finally gets a look at the other person that seems to be in the pool with her, she sees what looks like a girl around her age, floating at the bottom of the pool like a drowned victim. Instinctively, Kara looks around for a lifeguard or an adult who can help, only to remember she's the only one there. She ends up jumping into the pool to try to pull the girl out, but, as soon as she touches her, the girl's eyes open, and she tries to hold Kara at the bottom of the pool, as though trying to drown her. Kara kicks her and escapes to the surface, where she has to take a few minutes to regain her breath, as she genuinely feels like she was held underwater for too long.

Kara tries to call out to Zach to turn the experience off, but gets no response. She tries to reconnect to her physical body, which she knows is still sitting in the booth back in reality, but she can't feel it, and feels like her mind and body have been forcibly separated.

We learn more about Kara as she's forced to relive her most traumatic memories while she's trapped in this VR landscape. We learn that she's broken her arm before, and that she's fought with her parents, and, most importantly, that as a little kid she witnessed her older cousin suffer a terrible injury after falling out of a tree, a sight that scared her so much at the time that she ran away, temporarily leaving her cousin all alone; unable to process her horror at the time, Kara blamed herself for her cousin's injuries, and she still feels responsible all these years later.

In addition to feeling bad for leaving her cousin alone in that moment, Kara also has a deep set fear about her family and friends abandoning her, afraid of being left alone. The drowned girl seems to be prodding at these particular insecurities by repeatedly begging for help and pleading with Kara not to leave her alone.

After awhile, Kara feels like she's been in here for hours, and she feels really tired and thirsty. Any time she's not paying attention, the girl in the pool tries to grab and drown her. The girl's appearance also changes from time to time, her body taking on different states of decay and looking more or less like a drowned victim. Sometimes she even looks a little bit like Kara's cousin.

Kara wonders if helping the drowned girl is part of a secret game in the VR attraction, like how some video games will have a special "save the princess" minigame hidden in it. With that in mind, and with the girls looking and sounding more and more like Kara's cousin all the time, Kara decides to stop running from the girl and try to help her.

She follows the girl's voice to a hidden location in the water park, which resembles a normal, suburban house that's been abandoned and left to rot. The inside of the house has been flooded, with walls and floors and furniture pieces all ruined by water damage and covered by rot and mildew. Kara sees a family portrait depicting a little girl with black hair sitting between her mother and father, but their faces have all been rubbed out. A broken music box can be heard playing from inside what used to be a girl's bedroom, and Kara follows the sound to find a music box shaped like a carousel ride, and surrounded by unintelligible child's drawings.

Kara follows the girl's voice to a bathroom, where she sees an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub overflowing with water. When she approaches it, she sees the girl from the pool laying submerged inside the tub. Kara reaches in carefully to try to help the girl out of the tub, but the girl grabs onto her and pulls her into the water. The abandoned house fades away, and Kara finds herself in the water park pool once again.

After escaping being drowned by the computer system again, Kara is trapped inside a maze of mirrors. Some of the mirrors show her images of her current appearance -- soaked, frazzled, pale, exhausted, and terrified -- while others show her visions of her own fears, showing her scenes of her family and friends being happy that they don't have to deal with her anymore. Kara knows the images aren't real, no matter how upsetting they may be, and she gets angry with the VR program for intentionally messing with her feelings in such a personal way. She punches through a wall of mirrors and escapes the maze, but gets badly cut up in the process.

As the girl from the pool follows Kara, the lights of the VR world flicker off and on. (Now where have we seen that before?) Kara tries to climb up one of the water slides to get away from the girl, and the girl calls after her; the girl has changed appearances again, and she now resembles a grown woman, with black teeth and bulging green veins under her grey skin, and her voice no longer sounds frightened, taking on a predatorial, sinister tone.

Kara slips and falls to the ground, much the way she remembers her cousin falling. She hits the ground hard and both her legs break on impact. She screams and begs and cries as the girl from the pool approaches her, but is unable to fight back, and ends up being pulled into the water and down into the darkness.

Back in reality, Francine and Lola have realized that their ride home is waiting for them in the parking lot, and they try to call Kara on her phone to come meet up with them. When Kara doesn't answer, they go to the information desk to ask an employee to call for Kara over the intercom. They spot Zach before too long and recognize him from the VR Resort, and they ask him if Kara went back to it - when he tells them he left Kara at the VR Resort 20 minutes ago, the two girls start interrogating him, and drag him back to the resort with them to look for their friend.

Arriving back at the VR Resort, the three teens see that the monitor that should be displaying Kara's experience is blank and full of static. Zach realizes that he didn't set a time for the experience and that he didn't turn off "hyper time," so Kara probably received several shots of adrenaline beyond what she originally asked for. Zach doesn't share any of this information with the two girls, awkwardly playing it off like Kara's experience just ran a little over time and everything is fine. He shuts everything off and opens the customer room, revealing Kara's body sitting completely still in the VR chair.

Francine and Lola rush to their friend, yelling at her about how worried they've been and how she should have told them where she was going and how their ride home is waiting outside, but Kara doesn't answer. When Zach removes the VR helmet from Kara's head, revealing her face, Francine and Lola scream in horror. Kara's body doesn't move, resembling a corpse more than her usual self, and her eyes are frozen staring fearfully at nothing.

I enjoyed this story a lot more than "Nexie." In fact, I think it might be my favorite of these stories that was written by Kelly Para. It's a very straightforward story, which I appreciated: a girl tries to use some VR equipment at Freddy's and the whole thing goes horrible wrong. It's a storyline we've seen often enough you'd think I'd be bored of it, but I wasn't bored at all during this one.

Once again, this monster in this story is very Mimic-like. We see the drowned girl cause the lights to flicker off and on, a trait that Mimic animatronic exhibits in the epilogues. We also see her mimic images and actions from Kara's memories, and specifically preying on Kara's memory of her cousin falling out of a tree, changing herself to look or sound like the cousin in ways that often lure Kara closer to her, manipulating Kara with the visage of a person she cares about and wants to help. To that end in particular, the drowned girl reminded me a lot of how Glitchtrap lures in the player of the VR game, "Help Wanted."

I also found it interesting that Kara specifically wonders if the drowned girl is a "princess she needs to save." In a lot of the recent FNAF games there are versions of a minigame called "Princess Quest," and these games usually pop up in relation to a character becoming trapped in VR, or being attacked by another entity in VR, or both. It's not much of a connection, but it's certainly there.

So, we've had a few characters that feel like stand-ins for the Mimic, so now it's time to get to the real thing.

"The Mimic"

(Quick! Where's that Dawko Mimic meme? I can't think about "THE MIMIC!" without it.)

This story is contains two parts. The first part centers around Edwin Murray, our good buddy from "the Storyteller," but before the events of that story takes place. We spend a lot of time with Edwin and his son, David, who is still alive at this point.

(I don't really like learning about Edwin's life in this backwards way. We were introduced to him years after he lost his family and then we see his death, but now we're learning about his past, and I wish it was the other way around. It feels like being given spoilers for a story -- if I know how it ends, why should I care about how we got there?)

We learn about Edwin's life out of order, so I'm going to do my best to keep it in order for these notes.

As a child, Edwin likes to take appliances apart to see how they work and try to put them back together. Over the years, he continued to be interested in engineering and building machines, and even created and patented his own inventions as a young adult. His most lucrative invention was a robotic vacuum cleaner, which was a popular fad product for a little bit.

(Isn't there a vacuum character in the Trash and the Gang bunch? Related, or coincidence?)

Edwin got married to a woman named Fiona, and they bought an old house together to renovate, along with an old lace factory that Edwin intends to repurpose into the new headquarters for his robotics company. (It's specifically called out that their home has an old-fashioned clawfoot bathtub, which is a weird detail to include and the second time in this volume of stories that this exact item has been referred to.)

Fiona becomes pregnant and both she and Edwin are very excited about the prospect of starting a family together. But then Fiona dies in childbirth, leaving Edwin to raise their son alone. He names their son David, and tries to be a good father to the boy, but struggles with grief, depression, and other mental problems as he tries to run a small company and raise a baby by himself. This results in him making some bad decisions and his company goes under.

Edwin's company is bought out by Fazbear's, who are interested in his robotic designs for use in their own projects. As part of the buy out, Edwin comes to work for Fazbear Entertainment.

Edwin stops living in the house that he and his wife bought, and moves into the old factory that he operates in. He brings David to live in the old factory with him, and renovates a section of the factory's second floor into an apartment area. The rest of the factory is still filled with old pieces of machinery and whatever dust and mildew was already there when Edwin originally bought it, since he never finished cleaning it out. Edwin tries sending David to daycare once, but David tells the adults there that he lives in an old factory, and Edwin almost gets CPS called on him; he freaks out about the idea of losing his son, and he doesn't send David to daycare, preschool, or any similar program, and he doesn't hire babysitters, so it's just him taking care of David 24/7 alone while also trying to work. (So, y'know… a totally healthy set-up for a great living situation. 🙄)

Details we're given about David include that he looks like his mom (and shares no physical characteristics with Edwin), that he carries a stuffed tiger everywhere with him (named "Tiger"), and that he loves chocolate chip ice cream.

During the story, Edwin is currently working on a very special project for Fazbear's. He's been given a large collection of character costumes from older iterations of Fazbear's productions (costumes that human employees/actors would have worn), and his job is to build endoskeletons to put in the costumes, transforming the costumes into fully functional animatronics. Some of the character costumes are familiar to the audience, described in ways that sound like recognizable characters from the franchise, while others are brand new, never before seen in the franchise. At the beginning of the story he's working on Chica, who is the 18th in the line of animatronics that he's been working on. Later in the story we'll also see him working on Foxy, Monty, a previously unseen "yellow dog" character (possibly a Sparky reference?), and Bonnie.

When David gets bored and keeps interrupting his father's work, Edwin does what any normal parent would do and build a robotic babysitter to keep David occupied. He builds a robot with a head, torso, and two arms, but no legs, and fills out the robot's face with leftover doll eyes and a set of novelty toy chattering teeth. He programs the robot to observe people and mimic their actions, labeling this program 'mimic1' while he works on it. Once it's finished, he introduces David to his new playmate, "Mimic."

Edwin brings Mimic online, and the robot immediately imprints on David and starts mimicking the boy. Over the following weeks, we see David teach Mimic how to play patty-cake, how to play dress-up and put on costumes, and how to draw with crayon. Edwin gives David a new pack of construction paper and crayons one day, and checks in later to see David and Mimic doodling on the paper, seemingly "writing" in their own language that Edwin thinks resembles hieroglyphics. (This is interesting since there are a few strange codes scattered around the Pizzaplex in the "Security Breach" and "Ruin" games, and their structure is similar to how David's play language is described.)

Mimic learns speech quickly, and can understand simple questions that are directed at it, and can nod or shake its head in response. It doesn't have to ability to speak, so David teaches the robot to pantomime certain words and phrases.

Since David carries his stuffed buddy Tiger everywhere with him, Mimic starts mimicking the motion, curling one of its arms as though carrying its own stuffed animal. This leads to David collecting bits and pieces of the old lace that's still scattered around on the factory floor, shaping it into a makeshift tiger for Mimic to carry. While he doesn't like David messing around with the old fabric pieces, Edwin can't help but praise both the boy and the robot for their ingenuity.

While most of Mimic's lessons in how to perform tasks come from David and are centered around the idea of play, the robot also observes when Edwin does chores around the apartment, learning to put food away in the fridge and how to fold or hang laundry. Being a robot with limited intelligence, Mimic doesn't understand the actual purpose behind these actions, with the concepts of food spoiling or clothes wrinkling being lost on it, but it can perform the actions themselves pretty well.

But things aren't always smooth sailing, and sometimes Mimic is witness to actions it should never mimic. Edwin overworks himself and often gets angry at David for (*checks notes*) behaving like a bored child who's been essentially trapped in an unsafe building. When David expresses frustration about not being able to play outside, or complains about being hungry, or makes a mess, or just generally acts like a kid, sometimes Edwin gets mad and yells at the boy. And, sometimes, he doesn't just yell, but also shakes or pushes David. David is never badly hurt physically during these times, but it makes him cry a lot, and it's certainly not a healthy environment for either father or son. (But especially not for the son, who is literally 4 and has no way of understanding why Daddy would grab and shake him like that.) Luckily, Mimic never mimics any of these actions, although we aren't told why it doesn't.

One morning Edwin calls David for breakfast, only to find David missing. He realizes the factory's front door is open, and that David must have decides to go play outside, directly disobeying Edwin's instructions. He rushes out the door to find David and makes it outside just in time to see his son chasing a rubber ball out onto the highway, where the boy is struck and killed by an oncoming vehicle.

(I'm having flashbacks to both "the Cliffs" and "Friendly Face." The vehicle that hits David is even a white van, which only further cements my assumption that "the Cliffs" was an early attempt at telling the Mimic's story.)

After witnessing the horrific death of his son, Edwin enters a fugue state, going through the motions of eating and sleeping all while his mind is lost in despair. He sort of "wakes up" after two weeks have gone by, and he finds he can't remember the last 14-ish days at all. Still in this broken state, Edwin wanders onto the factory floor and into the section where his workshop is set up. He tries to return to work as usual, but finds himself unable to focus on or complete any tasks.

Mimic has been spending the last two weeks following Edwin around when the man was awake, or sitting quietly in Edwin's workshop when the man's asleep. The robot doesn't seem to know what to do without David, and wanders just as aimlessly as Edwin does. Mimic is sitting in the workshop when Edwin returns to it, and tries to communicate with its creator through pantomime. The gestures remind Edwin of David and he loses it, grabbing and nearby tool and attacking Mimic, beating up the robot in his anger and grief. Mimic is soon reduced to a pile of scrap pieces, wrecked beyond use and almost beyond recognition; its remains remind Edwin of what his son looked like after being hit by that van, and the parallel makes him break down into wails and tears on his workshop floor, collapsing beside Mimic's remains as he cries.

And with that, we're finished with the first part of this story, and now we're moving on to the second part. This second part takes place an undisclosed period of time later, and centers around a group of Fazbear employees.

These new guys are a group of techs named Dominic, Harry, and Glen. They're sent to Edwin's old factory to clean up and collect some of his old work, as Edwin has been missing for a few months now and Fazbear's needs to have their property moved to another location.

(We're not told why Edwin is missing. Like, did he just completely snap and go off the grid for awhile after the events of part one of this story? Are we picking up after his death/disappearance in "the Storyteller?" When are we with this?)

For some reason, the factory only has one door, and that door swings shut and locks behind the techs as soon as they enter the building. They don't notice this at first.

As the techs look around the factory, gauging the scale of the job before they get started, they first notice a garment rack sitting on the factory floor, where some old costumes of Fazbear characters are hanging. Dominic easily recognizes characters like Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy, but he also notes some "bright pink and green jester costumes." He also sees the fake tiger plush that Mimic used to carry, the bundle of old lace sitting on the floor near these costumes, but he doesn't know what it is.

"Why were all the windows covered with nailed-into-place plywood, both inside and out?"

The three techs head deeper into the old factory, and find Edwin's living apartment on the second floor. All of Edwin's personal belongings (including those of his deceased wife and son) have been boxed up and damaged by time and water. Dominic can smell rotting meat in the kitchen area, and he assumes that there's a dead rat or food that Edwin abandoned in there.

The trio of techs spread out across the factory as they look around. Dominic finds company issued items of other Fazbear techs, and he realizes his team isn't the first to be given this particular assignment. In a duffel bag he finds a tape recorder, issued by Fazbear's, with a half-used tape already loaded in it. When he listens to the tape, he hears the voice of another tech, who complains that he and his coworker are trapped inside the factory, citing that the entrance door locks from the outside for some reason.

The man on the tape details the steps he and coworker have through on this job, with this detailed recording being a part of the job itself. This tape guy explains that he and his partner found some of the animatronic endoskeletons that Edwin had been working on, and they ran diagnostics on them to determine their levels of functionality, after which they cleaned them up and finished or repaired them as needed. He also says that they found another endoskeleton, different from the rest and "more advanced," but in a terrible state of disrepair and missing legs. They fixed this mystery endo up with spare parts and gave it legs, and now it's operational again. The recordings end after this.

Dominic meets up with his coworkers again on the factory floor. (And it's worth noting that there are no animatronics or endoskeletons here at this point.) They notice that they're locked in, and that one of the jester costumes is missing, and they become very uncomfortable very quickly.

Against their better judgements, the guys end up following the scent of rotting meat into Edwin's kitchen. There's a pool of blood on the floor in front of the refrigerator, and, when they open it, they find the remains of a man. He's wearing a Fazbear technician uniform and his body has been broken and twisted around in order to fit inside the fridge. The man's throat has been garroted to the point where he was "nearly decapitated."

Realizing that the dead man is one of the prior technician team, the trio look for his partner. They find his remains hanging on a clothing rod in Edwin's closet, a metal rod forced through the man's rib cage and then bent into the shape of a clothes hanger, and he's been hung up like a set of clothes. The man's abdomen has also been cut open, and his organs are hanging out of the opening.

The men are stalked and attacked by what they think is another man at first. The stalker is wearing the missing jester costume, causing it to resemble a "bright pink and yellow [jester]… with a wide, leering grin." Whoever or whatever this jester is, it slices Harry's head open, killing him instantly, and then starts "pulling his brain out the top of his skull" "like a bear pulling honey from a beehive." (What a mental image!)

Glen and Dominic try to flee and find weapons in order to defend themselves against this apparent "serial killer." After they haven't seen the killer for awhile, the two men hesitantly leave their hiding place, and they see the discarded, blood-soaked jester costume on the ground. The figure appears again, but is now wearing a mushroom costume.

"… A fuchsia and white mushroom costume, with gaping, dark eyes and an 'o'-shaped, cavernous mouth." (What in the FNAFWorld kinda character is that?)

The mushroom-wearing figure grabs Glen and slams him head-first into a wall, crushing the man's head and spine in the span of a single second. Dominic has the realization that this isn't a man that's been killing his coworkers, but rather a machine, or more specifically a "costume-wearing killing machine."

Dominic avoids his fate briefly but not for long. When next he and the unknown killer come face-to-face with each other, the killer is now wearing a "grey-ish purple" lion costume. The killer slams Dominic face-first to the floor and then forces its hand through Dominic's solar plexus and up his throat, "grab[bing] his trachea from the inside." Dominic dies in extreme pain as he is literally torn inside out.

So obviously, this story is meant to be the origin story for the Mimic itself, telling us that the Mimic was built to mimic the world around it, but wasn't programmed with any true intelligence. The Mimic understands how to perform movements (folding laundry, putting food away, putting on costumes, etc.) but it doesn't understand the purpose for those movements, or what the end result of those actions should be (so if "putting food away" results in killing a man, the Mimic doesn't understand why that's the wrong result).

I have no idea when the second part of this story takes place in relation to "the Storyteller," and that really bothers me. I mean, the techs tell us that Edwin has been missing for months, which could indicate that this segment takes place after "the Storyteller," since that story ends with Edwin being trapped inside the Storyteller tree. But, if that were the case, then the Mimic wouldn't still be in the factory, since the Mimic was installed inside the Storyteller tree.

Now, the epilogue for this volume suggests that there are more then one physical Mimic animatronics (spoilers, I know, but we'll get to that later -- just bear with me for a sec), so I suppose it's possible that the Mimic in the Storyteller tree is a separate animatronic that was only modeled after Edwin's original Mimic. But I think the Storyteller Mimic is meant to be the original Mimic, given how Edwin behaves around it in that story. But at any rate, it's certainly food for thought, and something to noodle around later.

Speaking of noodling, I'm personally really interested in Edwin's son being named David and how the boy is portrayed in this story. There's been talk in the theorist community this year about Dave/David potentially being the name of the Crying Child from FNAF4 (aka my son) and it's a theory that I think holds merit. In this story we see a young boy named David who carried a stuffed animal everywhere with himself and consider that stuffed animal his friend, who dies as a child due to the negligence of his guardian, and whose father works as a Fazbear's engineer. I'm not saying it cements anything, but the parallels are there and they're worth noting.

Epilogue:

Kelly finishes repairing the radio, and she hears a voice crying for help over the airwaves. She and Lucia identify it as the Mimic, using the same voice from earlier; it sounds like a young boy, and claims to be trapped somewhere in the Pizzaplex. The two girls decides to ignore it and seem to give up on using the radio after this.

Lucia has found an old notebook filled with notes and drawings from one of the original engineers who designed and built the earliest animatronics at Fazbear's. It's from this notebook that she learns that there was a whole line of Mimic animatronics, which were designed to watch and learn from the human performers, learning to mimic specific show routines. The notes say that one of the Mimic endoskeletons witnessed something outside of the usual performances and then started recreating this unusual action, and apparently that's enough for the whole line of Mimic endos to be discontinued and deactivated.

(The implication here being that one of the Mimics witness a crime, possibly a murder, and started acting violently.) (Lucia also thinks it's this particular Mimic that is the one pursuing them, but she doesn't explain why she thinks that.)

Jace returns to the girls alone, and they realize that Adrien is dead. The Mimic attacks them, the kids are temporarily separated as they run. Lucia loses a chunk of her hair and scalp to the attacking Mimic, but survives.

The kids regroup and come up with a plan to trap the Mimic. Jace volunteers to act as bait in a last-ditch effort to impress Lucia. The plan is to trap the Mimic in a room, and then Jace will escape through the vents, which the Mimic won't follow him into. Jace kisses Lucia ("firm and long and passionate") before the girls leave to set the trap and he leaves to spring it.

Jace catches the Mimic's attention, the robot now wearing a yellow cat costume (seriously, where are these costumes coming from?). He successfully lures the Mimic into the trap and hears the girls lock and block the monster inside, trapping it in a way it shouldn't be able to break out from. Jace starts to crawl through the air duct to get back to safer ground, but the duct breaks under him, dumping him backward toward the Mimic. The Mimic grabs him by the ankles and pulls him out of the vent, and quickly pulls off his arms and head.

From their place of apparent safety, Lucia and Kelly listen to Jace's dying screams.

I am intrigued by the implication that there was a *line* of Mimic endoskeletons at some point. And it might also explain what we were seeing in that earlier story.

But that's it for this volume, and I have nothing else to say about it. (Other than I'm glad to be done with it! Ugh!)

#five nights at freddy's #tales from the pizzaplex #a brief analysis #my thoughts and theory noodles #my tftp analysis #this is probably going to be the last one of the year guys #I'll still do the last 2 but probably not before 2025 #we'll see

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sonicasura · 4 years ago

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Balan Wonderworld Review: Favorite Costumes Part 2

Before we get started, I like to say something. I ABSOLUTELY DESPISE TIM TRAPS. If you don't know, there is a specific plant that tends to appear in certain levels called Tim Traps. A carnivorous orange flower that's favorite meal is TIMS. If you kick the plants, you can free your Trapped Tim or prevent one from getting trapped for a short period of time. Problem is if the Tim is trapped for too long, your baby is gone for good. Chapter 3 and Chapter 5's Act 3 are loaded with these annoying plants. To the point if I can't find the trapped Tims, I exit out of the game just to save my poor fluffballs. Ain't sacrificing my little birds for Drops and Trophies! Mini rant over.

Rules are the same as before. I'd be ranking both a Common Costume and Rare Costume. Common Costumes are easily to find whether it be in multiple levels and Rare Costumes are those that rarely appear or are difficult to get.

I'll be doing my favorite Secret Costume after playing all Act 3s for each chapter. Now let's begin.

Chapter 7

Common Costume- Floaty Flower

The Flower Fairy and greatest glider found in the main story. Floaty Flower is a costume that can be found in the Act 1, 2 and the Boss Act, it offers a slower descent but faster movement than the hover for Soaring Sheep.

I love this costume not for its aesthetic but a cute Easter Egg I found in Chapter 7 Act 1. On rare occasions, this costume is an NPC that actually flirts with you! Some NPCs in certain chapters act differently from their standard counterpart. They often try to disguise themselves or runaway. Catching them grants you a free costume of the one you caught.

Floaty Flower will appear and follow you, similar to a shy school girl with a crush. If you go to her, she will run which is a similar action to any shy person getting approached by their crush. Also... I think there is some lore hidden in this one that might be quite sad if it's directly linked to Cal, the human whose heart created this particular world. If so then... OOF.

Rare Costume - Paladin Puncher

A knight fights with his fists than a sword. This costume can be found in Act 2 and is a stronger version of the Pumpkin Puncher that can break iron or ice blocks. He's a bit slower than his Chapter 6 counterpart but perfect breaking the more blocks and defeating spiky enemies.

I also love the fact this costume goes against the traditional tools of a knight. Knights often fight using swords, shields, lances and rare occasions bows or axes. If you give me one who PUNCHES or straight uses martial arts to fight then you got my vote in seconds.

Chapter 8

Common Costume - Snow Fairy

Elegant dancer of ice and snow. The Snow Fairy costume allows the wearer to walk on air for a short period of time and can in found in Act 1 and Act 2. This costume does have a shorter usage time than Air Cat but makes up for it with the added elevation.

I absolutely adore how elegant and beautiful this particular costume is. You can compare the Snow Fairy to myths often related to fae or hidden in the freezing mountains. An otherworldly beauty that makes any hardship worth seeing just a being before your eyes. Being a reindeer type Faun just adds to the mystique and creating snowflakes to walk on is a perfect extra touch.

Rare Costume - Amadeus

Sophisticated pianist. A costume that can only be found in Act 1 and is a performing costume. Now I am a big fan of piano covers, whether it be covers of game osts or actual songs, there is rarely any piano music I don't like.

I love the fact he's wearing piano keys as a collar and even has a tutu made out of those very keys. A very creative take to a normally grounded instrument. And the big white wig is a nice touch since it's often portrayed with pianists in various media.

Chapter 9

Common Costume- Iron Panda

Adorable crusher. Iron Panda is a costume found in Act 1 and Act 2 with the ability to break iron blocks using both its jump and weight. This costume is surprisingly fast for a rather large and heavy form, perfect for fast stomps on enemies or quick getaways if you have rare costumes you don't want to lose.

This costume reminds of a rolling Russian Doll with a panda theme. Very adorable, the bluish purple color suits the white very nicely and I love that sleepy look on its face. The large blue dots on its sides are actually the arms too, they mimic panels! Only thing that unnerves me is when the costume turns their head by a 90 degree angle. Super creepy when using it.

Rare Costume- Merry Ghost

Cute and Spooky! The Merry Ghost is a costume that can be found in Act 2 and gives the ability to constantly float. It's main purpose is to avoid ground hazards like poison swamps and has a larger slightly floaty jump. The only downside is that you can't harm enemies with this, it's only for quick mobility.

Very adorable especially with the stitched rag cloak covering the body. It has this Mimikyu sort of vibe but also a Casper the Friendly Ghost aura too. Friendly spirits are often tossed aside for more vicious or antagonistic ones in a lot of media. Getting an adorable friendly one just adds points in my book and a good pal for Casper.

Chapter 10

Common Costume - Inky Blaster

Yuji Naka's take on a squid kid. This costume can be found in Act 1, Act 2 and the Boss Act. She allows the wearer to throw fast globs of rainbow paint at opponents or targets and is decently agile.

Love that her hands are paintbrushes and is based on the octopus. Tentacles mimicking the frills of a dress and used for hair and feet? A very creative take and splattering rainbow paint on the annoying types of Negati (looking at you ya divebomb happy Pelican and destroyer of most of my good costumes) is very therapeutic.

Rare Costume- Air Unicorn

The first unicorn I like?! This costume can only be found in Act 1 and allows the user to walk on air farther than Air Cat. The practical godfather of mobility, and recovery. You won't believe how many times this costume has gotten me to very difficult areas and saved me from death via falling into the abyss.

It is a very tricky costume to find but if you turn around, there's a large paintbrush on the wall. You need the Double Jumper to get on top but you'll be able to see a hidden mirror. That is where the Air Unicorn is located.

I won't lie that unicorns are not my preferred mythological creature. I live in America where unicorns tend to be oversaturated to oblivion and don't get me started on My Little Pony. The show isn't my cup of tea but I do have some followers and friends who are fans. People have their own opinions and it's rude to question them about it.

I honestly love the elegant but cute design, the purple, pale pink and cyan just fit well with the white, I also love that the mane mimics a paintbrush tip and the large light purple collar of fur is a perfect touch to this fine design.

Chapter 11

Common Costume - Bulldozer

A man's punny best friend! This costume can be in Act 1, Act 2 (?), and the Boss Act. It lets you push special construction blocks and you can boost the push speed by button mashing.

They definitely took a lot of creative for costumes in Chapter 11 amongst the other ones in my opinion. Fire Stations tend to have some animal companions with dogs being the most common but instead of a Dalmatian for the design they used a Bulldog! 😍

Like the aforementioned machine, this good boy is bulky, has the appropriate color scheme and even the hands turn into bulldozer's shovel when using the ability! I love the fact his tail is wagging when you push a block and it wags faster if ya button mash!

Also the name is a pun!

Rare Costume - Fiery Blaster

Pyromancer of Lions. The Fiery Blaster costume can only be found in Act 2. It gives the wearer that ability to throw large fireballs alongside fire and lava immunity. If you hate lava levels or have difficulty with this Chapter's boss then I recommend getting this Costume.

First thing I like to say about this particular design is how they use the colors. Looking at the mane, you can see how the red and darker red are patterned in a way to mimic flames. The dark red fur on the feet are even in fire like a pattern. The outfit such as the yellow and brownish kilt alongside the gloves spewing fire around the wrists just reminds me of a fire dancer.

I can see this fella wielding one of the torches a fire dancer uses and just put on a spectacular show.

Chapter 12

Another loveable version of a beloved icon. The Invisible Man costume can be found in Act 1, Act 2 and the Boss Act. It has the power to turn the wearer invisible for a period of time and become undetected to enemies that aren't bosses.

Agile and perfect to deal with enemies who are very annoying or are difficult snipers. You don't know how satisfying it is to give the more aggravating Negati an invisible middle finger by sneak attacking them. I have lost many costumes whenever enemies got the drop on me so it's fair to dish out payback.

I love how this design takes aspect from the popular icon but also have it relate to their human counterpart. Bandages were used by the original Invisible Man to cover skin his normal clothing couldn't cover in public and made it easier for him to disappear when needed.

The shoes and arms being covered in bandages and some of the bandages being used as bangs for the hair is a nice touch.

Rare Costume - Jolt Tiger

Immovable Taser. This costume can only be found in Act 2. It grants electricity immunity and create a barrier when you stand still. One of the better costumes for baiting particular enemies. You do have to be careful because a single itch will stop the barrier.

If you don't know, the Tiger is my Chinese Zodiac and electricity is one of my favorite elements. Love the yellow lightning bolt flairs and even the black stripes mimic lightning too! I also like the will o' wisp pattern on the stomach and the large tuft of grayish fur around the chest. The design puts it above the Sun Walker.

And that is it! The next thing I will cover is the level design and it's music. The bosses will be done last since it's good to save the best for last!

Until next time folks, see you back in Wonderworld.

#balan company #balan wonderworld #fuck square enix #balan company's innocent #sonicasura #mun sonicasura #game review #my personal opinion #fucksquareenix #balan wonderland #balan wonderworld costumes #favorite costumes #personal favorites

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