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cartoonus-maximus · 3 months ago

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Notes and Observations on FNAF TFTP Vol 5: "The Bobbiedots Conclusion"

(Was that always the title of this volume? I swear it used to be something else.)

I didn't enjoy this volume as much as "Submechanophobia," but I think it's about on par with "Somniphobia" -- parts of it were really good, while other parts just didn't grab me like that. Overall I found it a very middle-of-the-road volume.

But I absolutely love the cover art for this one! It looks so cool. (And it depicts a character that we'll meet in "Bobbiedots, Pt 2," a choice that I find interesting for reasons I'll get to later.)

As always, these are just some of 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 from this series if you’re interested.

I have nothing else to say about this volume as a whole, so let's dive right in!

"GGY"

The protag for this story is Tony Becker, a 12-year-old boy with aspirations of becoming an investigative journalist. As a small child, Tony was interested in newspapers and reporting on events, and he wrote his own "newspaper" about his neighbors.

Tony lives with his mother and grandmother. His father is currently in jail, having been accused and found guilty of embezzling money from the company he worked for, and he will be in prison for the next 20 years. His mother has struggled with going back to work after spending years as a stay-at-home parent, and Tony often performs odd jobs for his neighbors, feeling that he needs to help his family out financially in some way.

Tony's dad was found guilty and is in jail, but he insists he's innocent. Tony had to promise his dad he wouldn't investigate who actually stole the money from his company. (I feel like this implies that his father is really innocent, but knows who the real culprit is and would literally rather take the jail time than rat them out. At least, that's how it came across to me.)

The story opens with Tony sitting in a class at school. It's a writing class, where the students are supposed to be learning about different styles of writing, both fiction and nonfiction, but the teacher has a preference for fiction stories so that's what they mostly focus on. Tony is frustrated with his teacher's choices, because he wants to learn how to write nonfiction books and news articles.

There's this throwaway moment at the opening of the story. Tony is staring out the window instead of paying attention to the lesson, and he thinks he's sees something drop to the ground. For a moment, he thinks it was a person who jumped from the roof, but he ultimately dismisses the idea when he doesn't hear the sound of a body hitting the ground below, and decides he must have just seen a tree branch swaying in the wind. (This scene is never touched on again, or similar situations even alluded to; if it's foreshadowing, it's really badly done.) (If this were a "Fazbear Frights" book, I would assume that shape moving was Eleanor or the Stitchwraith.)

The students are assigned a group writing project, and Tony teams up with his best friend, who is called "Boots" for now, and their new friend, "Rabb." The three of them have been doing group projects together and hanging out after school for several weeks now, and have started calling themselves "the Three Amigos."

The three boys like to use pseudonyms during their writing assignments, and they make up new ones for themselves every week. This week, "Boots" has derived his name from the story "Puss in Boots" (which makes me think this kid has watched one or more of the "Shrek" movies no less than a dozen times!), while "Rabb" is short for "Dr. Rabbit," the pseudonym he's chosen for the week; Rabb doesn't explain to the others what "Dr. Rabbit" means or is in reference to, and Tony decides it's just a random word and a random title. Tony himself decides to go by "Tarbell," after Ida Tarbell.

Tony and "Boots" (whose real name is Ellis) have been best friends for years. However, in the past year, Tony has started to notice that the two of them are maturing at different speeds and developing different interests, and he feels himself pulling away from Ellis. It doesn't help that since "Rabb" joined their friend group, Ellis has been spending more time with him than with Tony.

Rabb is fairly new to their school, having only transferred in a few months ago. He's one of the smallest boys in their grade, and he has large brown eyes and choppy hair, which he admits he cuts himself. Despite that particular admission, Tony perceives both Boots and Rabb as coming from "well off" families, and he believes that the two of them aren't familiar with the cruelty of the world the way he is. He also thinks Rabb is a little mysterious, and has a "feeling that Rabb had layers that Boots would probably never have." (Which is… such a thing to say about your fellow 12-year-olds.)

Instead of getting started on their writing project right away, Boots and Rabb want to go to the Pizzaplex to play in the arcade, and they drag Tony along with them.

The Three Amigos have been to the Pizzaplex several times together. They've ridden the roller coaster, explored the climbing tubes, played Monty's Gator Golf, played Bonnie Bowl, raced Roxy Raceway, and they have most of the animatronic stage shows memorized. Today they're heading for the Faz-cade, Boots and Rabb's favorite part of the Pizzaplex -- this is the giant arcade, filled with games and home of DJ Music Man. There's even a karaoke section, apparently.

Tony goes with his friends, but he's not much of a gamer, so while Boots and Rabb play games he wanders off to people-watch, hoping to get an idea for their writing assignment. While walking around the arcade and watching various gamers play various games, he starts looking at the high scores on the machines, and notices the repeated initials "GGY" as the highest scorer on several arcade machines.

He talks to a few gamers around the arcade, but none of them know who "GGY" is. Some of the other kids he talks to also have high scores on different games, pointing their own initials out to him. A couple of them say that GGY's scores are "too high," suggesting that GGY's scores are impossible to win fairly, and that GGY is hacking the arcade games in order to achieve such numbers. Tony wonders who this "arcade phenom" could be (I hate that word with a passion now, btw) and decides to dig deeper, thinking he could write a story about this mystery gamer.

During this segment, we're also introduced to a pattern of the initials left on the high score list -- there are always three letters, and they're always the initials of the gamer's full name. For example, Tony sees the initials of a top scorer "ABC," which ends up being a high schooler named Axel Brandon Campbell. This established pattern means that every set of initials Tony sees throughout this story are meant to be read as the initials of the player's legal name, with the first letter being the first letter of their first name, the second letter being the first letter of their middle name, and the third letter being the first letter of their surname. By this logic, GGY's full name should be G___ G. Y____.

Tony spends the next week trying to figure out who GGY is, but every turn only gets him more questions and makes him more confused.

Tony runs into and ends up chatting with a Pizzaplex employee named Finbar, who works as an arcade attendant and has a very laid-back personality, addressing everyone as some variation of "dude." When Tony asks what he knows about GGY, Finbar confirms that GGY is a mystery player, and that their scores are all much higher than what should be possible. He and the other arcade attendants and technicians have run diagnostics on the arcade games GGY has played, making sure that the games weren't somehow hacked; their searches came up with nothing.

Finbar suggests that GGY could be another employee, since they would have access to the arcade after hours and would have more time to play the games and get better at them. He also suggests that it could be someone who has stolen or otherwise come into ownership of an employee key card, and is simply using it to play the games after hours.

As Tony asks around about GGY, he gets the feeling he's being watched. When he looks around, he only sees Glamrock Freddy looking in his direction; Tony waves a greeting to the normally friendly animatronic, but Freddy just continues to silently stare at him "like he was sizing Tony up." It creeps Tony out, and he leaves the arcade, aware of Freddy's watching him the entire time.

Later, Tony thinks over this encounter with Glamrock Freddy, and just thinking about it gives him goosebumps. He decides he just experienced an uncanny valley moment from meeting the gaze of a pseudo-sentient robot, and decides not to think any more about it.

At home, Tony tries asking around on internet forums dedicated to arcades, the Fazbear brand, the Pizzaplex. (Who let this 12-year-old make a Reddit account? Get him off there! DX) He ends up having multiple cryptic conversations with someone called "Morrigan99" about the mystery player GGY. "Morrigan99" turns out to be Crystal, a high schooler who lives in town and who Tony met at the arcade earlier in the week, and the two meet up again later to talk. (We'll get back to their conversation later; they talk to each a few times throughout the week, but Crystal doesn't say anything interesting until they meet in person a few days later.)

Thinking about Finbar's theory about GGY having a key card, Tony decides that his next step of investigation is to steal a key card from a Pizzaplex employee. He's read up on pickpockets, and he's sure it can't be that hard. He pretends to fall and injure himself near a Pizzaplex employee, and then steals her key card when she checks to make sure he's alright.

He uses this card to get into an employee computer kiosk, where he accesses the building's computer system. He searches the system for the play pass that GGY would have to use to play all those arcade games, and finds that GGY's play pass has been modified, and it doubles as a security pass.

A 'play pass' in this case is a card that can be won or purchased for use in the Faz-cade or on any other arcade machines on the Pizzaplex property. Using it allows the player to bypass use of physical game tokens, tickets, or money on each game (as the card carries a certain amount of digital currency on it) and allows the more serious gamers to play arcade games without spending time counting out tokens or quarters.

GGY's play pass also acts as a security pass, like the Pizzaplex security guards use, which means that GGY can go anywhere in the Pizzaplex building at almost any time. Tony comes to the conclusion that GGY is good at hacking technology, since they've obviously gotten their hands on either a security pass or a play pass and successfully altered the card in such a way that the computer system recognizes it as both.

While there's no user name attached to this play pass/security pass combo card, there's some information about the card's use. Obviously, the card is used to play several arcade games, after which the player inputs the initials "GGY" into the game when they get a high enough score. But there are also three other names attached to the card as people of interest; it sounds like GGY's card was used to enter locations in the Pizzaplex, but the security cameras only picked up footage of a second person that GGY brought with them after hours, and these other visitors have been identified by Pizzaplex employees at a later date. Tony only sees parts of the names, making out "Mary," "Rae," and "Tree."

While Tony is in the employee kiosk, he sees something move out of the corner of his eye, and looks up to see that Glamrock Freddy is nearby, keeping a careful watch on the kiosk. He manages to slip away from the robot's watchful gaze, and leaves the Pizzaplex.

"Were the animatronics programmed for security as well as for entertainment?" (Y'know, that's a good question. And I think the answer is 'yes, but actually no.')

The evening after this mini adventure, Tony meets up with Crystal. Crystal tells him that she thinks looking for GGY is dangerous, and that he may get hurt or something if he digs too deep. She explains that she hacks into computers as a hobby, and that she likes to poke around the computer systems of various locations and businesses just to see how they're set up and how they work. (Strangely, this isn't the weirdest hobby a teen can have, in my opinion.) She says that she's seen GGY's trail around the Pizzaplex computer systems, and specifically in the programming for the animatronics; she's looked at their code before, just to see what it looked like and how it functioned, but the last time she looked at it, it was different, and now there's new pieces of coding attached to Glamrock Freddy, Chica, Roxy, and Monty's programming. She doesn't know enough to know what the code does, or what sort of commands the animatronics are receiving, but there are a lot of repeating 'G's and 'Y's in the filler spaces of these new lines of code, leading her to believe it may be GGY's doing.

Crystal thinks GGY may be trying to take direct control of the animatronics. Between that and GGY being in possession of a hacked card that looks like both a play pass and a security pass to the computer system, she's come to the conclusion that GGY is dangerous, and she warns Tony against pursuing them, whoever they are.

At first, Tony takes Crystal's advice, and decides to stop actively looking into the mystery of GGY. He doesn't stop thinking about it though, and, when his partners Boots and Rabb show no interest in working on their shared writing assignment, Tony gets to work writing the whole thing himself, and he decides to write from the point of view of the version of GGY he's built up in his mind. In his story, GGY is a clever, shadowy figure who is quietly taking over the Pizzaplex from the inside out, and commands an army of animatronics.

While Tony is working on his homework, his grandmother is watching the news in the next room. On the TV, Tony hears a follow-up report about Mary Schneider, a woman who went missing a few months ago. She worked as the school counselor at Tony's school, and he remembers how worked up everyone was when she first went missing, so he stops to listen to the news report; they haven't found her or her body, and her family are still looking for her.

Later, Tony wonders if the missing school counselor could be the Mary that GGY was presumably seen with. Given the possibility that GGY is one of the kids who frequents the Faz-cade, it's possible that they go to the same school as Tony, and would have at least known about Ms. Schneider. And if that's the case, it's possible that GGY was the last person to see her at all. He decides to investigate into Mary Schneider, wondering to learn if A) GGY is a kid at his school who knew her and B) if they wanted to get rid of her for some reason.

Tony finishes writing the story for the assignment, and shows it to his unhelpful partners the next day at school. Boots skims it and decides it's boring, and Rabb doesn't even read it. (Wow, guys. Really pulling your weight on this group project, aren't ya?) (I kid, but I've definitely been paired up with these kids before in my life. So glad I'm not in grade school anymore.) Both boys decides to rewrite the story together after school, even though Tony already wrote it and it's due tomorrow. Inwardly, Tony thinks real hard about asking the teacher for different partners.

Tony, Boots, and Rabb are aware of a loose window that leads to the school's basement, which they found months ago and is easy enough for them to slip in through from the outside. (Tony doesn't think this is important, and only passively thinks about it as inspiration for another story, but it's important to note that it's a way for someone to slip into the school building without anyone knowing about it, since that's also what GGY is doing at the Pizzaplex.)

In order to investigate his missing school counselor, Tony breaks into the school after hours through this loose window. He makes sure to avoid any of the security cameras around the school, and he heads straight to the computer of the school's secretary. The school's secretary is an elderly woman who asks students to help her with errands sometimes and often types very slowly, so Tony has literally watched her type in the computer password before, so he knows how to log onto the computer.

Tony logs onto this computer and tries to find information about the missing counselor and any students she had sessions with, thinking a troubled student might be his best bet for locating GGY. He finds a list of the counselors that have worked with the school in the past few years: Mary Schneider was the school counselor for a few years, and when she went missing, she was replaced by Raelin Lawrence, who went missing a few weeks later, and then by Treena Welch, who also went missing within a few weeks. Their current school counselor, Georgia Lowe, has only been with the school for a month.

Tony recognizes the names as the names listed beside GGY's card pass. He notes that, while Mary Schneider going missing made the local news, the disappearances of Raelin Lawrence and Treena Welch has been kept pretty quiet; this is the first he's heard of it.

After thinking about it, Tony comes to the conclusion that if GGY is up to something bad in the Pizzaplex, but is also a student at his school, it's possible that the adults have recognized them as a troubled kid and sent them to the counselors office; somehow, the counselors piece together whatever it is GGY is up to, and GGY ends up bringing the counselors to the Pizzaplex to potentially kill them off. (Which is a lot of leaps, but it does fill in some gaps in the information we've already been given.) Tony scrolls through the list of students enrolled in the school, hoping to see someone with the initials "GGY." He doesn't find any.

Tony hears some weird noises around the school, and he gets spooked and runs out.

The next day, Tony goes to school, and has a lot of thoughts in his head about the whole GGY and reprogrammed animatronics and missing school counselors, and he wants to share some of his thoughts with his oldest friend, Boots. But Boots ignores him, and instead shows Tony how he and Dr. Rabbit "improved" Tony's story for their assignment. Apparently, Rabb butchered Tony's story, removing every reference to hacking, technology, arcade games, or the Pizzaplex, and instead turning it into a story about magical wizards doing battle with tentacle monsters.

Understandably, Tony is hurt and angry about his hard work being trashed by his supposed friends. He gets so upset, he stops thinking of them as "Boots" and "Rabb," and instead starts using their real names, Ellis and Greg.

During the school day, Tony gets called to the principal's office, where he is informed that he was caught on the school's security cameras when he broke in and accessed the secretary's computer. Tony knows this is a lie, since there are no security cameras in the locations he went in the school, and he gets the idea that someone was watching him and tattled on him.

Tony tells the principal that he broke in and accessed the computer on a date, and since it's the first time he's gotten in trouble at school, the principal lets Tony off lightly -- Tony has detention, and he also has to help the school secretary as her errand boy for a week.

The secretary, Mrs. Hawkins, isn't bothered by the fact that a student got onto her work computer without her permission. She's comically unbothered about the whole thing, and instead encourages Tony in searching for whatever information he needs in whatever way he needs to. (I just found her character really funny. She's so invested in living vicariously through this boy's misadventures, lol.)

Greg approaches Tony after school, apologizing for changing his story so suddenly. He watches Tony strangely for a few minutes, but then smiles and invites Tony to come with him and Ellis to the Pizzaplex.

Wow. What an abrupt and anticlimactic ending to this story.

This entire story was basically just: a kid notices some weird things happening, comes to an extreme conclusion and creates a whole story in his head about the weird happenings, but there's never any real answers or explanations. (So, y'know, just normal FNAF theorizing stuff.)

So in total, here's everything we actually know about the mysterious "GGY":

"GGY" plays a lot of the arcade games at the Pizzaplex, and achieves incredibly high scores.

The arcade games show no sign of being bugged or hacked, so "GGY" is very likely not cheating, and is actually just that good at the games.

"GGY" has a play pass (something that is generally assigned to customers) that's been modified so that it also acts as a security pass (like what the security guards of the building carry with them), so "GGY" would be able to use this card to enter 'employee's only' sections of the building, and would likely be able to get into the building after hours.

While they haven't hacked the arcade games, "GGY" has hacked into another parts of the Pizzaplex's building-wide computer system. The only thing they've done is embed commands into the code of the free-roaming Glamrock animatronics, but we don't know what those commands are (but we know Glamrock Freddy perks up and goes on the defensive whenever he hears someone talk about "GGY").

"GGY" doesn't have a customer profile or an employee profile attached to their play pass/security pass access card. There also doesn't seem to be any security camera footage of "GGY." (It's possible that "GGY" has hacked into the camera system to remove video evidence of themself, or it's possible that "GGY" simply looks like any other customer in the building and blends in with the crowd.)

Although "GGY" doesn't have their own customer or employee profile, there's a list of people that have been seen on the security cameras in restricted areas after GGY's card was activated. These people include three adult women, who previously worked as counselors at the same school and have all gone missing; this suggests that GGY, whoever they are, was the last person to see these missing women.

"GGY" is implied to be a set of initials (First name, Middle name, Surname).

Now, these facts, while interesting, don't really tell us much. If anything, they only raise up more questions. Questions that this story isn't interested in actually answering.

Put it's pretty clear that "GGY" is supposed to be the equally mysterious character "Patient #46" from the secret audio CDs in the "Security Breach" game. On those tapes, we hear a series of therapists talking to two patients, one of whom is the security guard Vanessa and the other is unnamed, and just has a case number attached to them; this unnamed patient is never heard speaking to the therapists (seemingly communicating with hand gestures and body language and other visual forms of communication that don't translate to the audio recordings), but we learn a few things about them from what the therapists say, including that the patient is young, is good with technology, likes the Pizzaplex, and is capable of hacking into computer systems. It's also implied through these tapes that the unnamed patient kills off any of the therapists who learn too much about them.

(Also, a thought I had about the whole "GGY has coded secret commands into the Glamrocks, but we don't know what it does" thing. The story implies that this code causes the animatronics to act as GGY's protectors or attack dogs, as they're actively seen responding in a defensive manner when Tony tries to learn about GGY. But, in the "Security Breach" game, we're also told that the Glamrocks have been given the order to go to the basement at night and dig through the rubble, searching for something. Could Patient 46 be the one responsible for that, and sending the animatronics to look for something down there?)

So okay, we have a parallel for "Patient #46." A hacker and a gamer who keeps disappearing therapists. But who are they really, why are they important to the greater FNAF universe (and to the audience), and what is their goal? Those, we don't know.

Except that this story tries to imply that Tony's classmate "Dr. Rabbit" (aka Greg) is "GGY." So, let's look at what we know about Tony's classmate, Greg:

Chooses to go by "Dr. Rabbit" as a fake name. Doesn't explain why.

Loves playing at the Pizzaplex arcade, and is constantly shown either dragging his friends there with him or going there by himself.

Actively tries to dissuade Tony from investigating "GGY," and even rewrites Tony's entire story in which Tony had portrayed GGY as a hacker who wants to take over the Pizzaplex and lead an army of animatronics.

Knows how to get into the school after hours without getting caught.

Is implied to be the one who catches Tony sneaking around the school after hours; to do so, he would have had to be sneaking around the school after hours as well, and would have to have admitted this to the principal when he reported Tony… which may be why Tony sees Greg in the detention hall later, assuming that the other boy got detention as well.

Greg's first name starts with 'G,' like "GGY's" name probably does, but the rest of his name doesn't follow the pattern of initials. When Tony checks the list of students, none of them have the initials G-G-Y, so we know Greg's name doesn't follow the pattern. (Although obviously, Greg could be short for "Gregory," a name that contains two 'g's and a 'y.' But every other set of three letters are people's initials in this story, and it would be strange for GGY to not follow that pattern.)

The story ends with Greg asking Tony to come to the Pizzaplex with him.

Greg asking Tony to come to the Pizzaplex with him isn't weird. It's already well established that Greg likes spending time at the Pizzaplex, and frequently asks Tony and Ellis to join him. However, if we're assuming that Greg is GGY, and if we assume GGY took people who knew too much about him to the Pizzaplex to get rid of them, then the invitation becomes sinister. This involves a lot of assumptions on our part, but it also seems to be what the story is telling us.

So then, if Greg is GGY, and he's trying to accomplish something at the Pizzaplex (which we don't know what his goal is), and he doesn't want anyone to know what he's up to, but people keep noticing him and looking too closely…. then the implied ending of this story is really "Tony prods at something he shouldn't be prodding at, and as a result he's led to the Pizzaplex by someone he thought was his friend, and is then likely killed off in some manner. He's possibly killed by the Glamrock animatronics (mostly likely Freddy), since GGY has control over them." Is that what happened to the counselors? Were they lured to the Pizzaplex somehow and killed by the animatronics? And if so, where are their bodies? They weren't reported dead, they're missing.

… I feel like this story is trying to make the case that Gregory, the player character in "Security Breach," is/was "Patient #46." The Patient 46 parallel character in this story is, presumably, a 12-year-old boy named Greg (potentially short for Gregory) who likes the Pizzaplex and is actively protected by Glamrock Freddy. But given that this Greg/Rabb kid doesn't read as "Gregory stand-in" to me, I'm going to table that for now.

(Although, to some extent, Greg reads almost like a Vanessa stand-in. Has a rabbit persona? Has security clearance of the Pizzaplex, which he uses to lure victims in and probably kills them and hides their bodies? Seems to be leading a double life? I dunno, man, he reads more as a Vanessa parallel than a Gregory parallel to me.)

Also, just a short note: This story seems to take place sometime around 2014-2015. I say this because the high school girl Crystal uses "Morrigan99" as her internet handle, and generally when someone has two numbers in their handle it's representative of their birth year. If Crystal was born in 1999, and we're assuming she's about 15 or 16 years old, that would put our story in the mid 2010s.

And that's all I have to say about "GGY." Onto the next one.

(photo by Pedro Szekely on flickr: link)

"The Storyteller"

This story opens on a board meeting that's happening in an office room on one of the upper floors of the Pizzaplex. We're specifically introduced to two members of the board -- Burrows and Edwin -- who will serve as the protagonists of this story, the first time in this series we've seen a story POV shared between characters.

Burrows is the chairman of the board of the Pizzaplex, despite only being in his 20s. He was some sort of child prodigy who started taking college courses at age 13. He's kind of an obnoxious tech bro in my opinion, and we later learn that his original dream was to become a video game developer, but he ended up in business and his new goal is just to make a name for himself. He's very narcissistic and proud, to the point where he won't even let anyone know his first name so they can't call him by it, forcing everyone to think of him only as "Mr. Burrows."

Edwin Murray is 64-years-old, making him the oldest member of the board and he's often treated by the other board members like a decrepit old man with dementia because they're all so much younger than him. Edwin used to own his own company, and he used to be a highly-respected robotics engineer, but his company ended up going under and getting bought out by Fazbear's. Part of the buy-out deal was that Edwin would become a board member at the Pizzaplex and that he can't quit or be fired; this feels like a punishment of some kind, since Edwin hates interacting with the other board members.

Apparently Edwin has a collection of old vintage posters and signs of Fazbear's characters, despite not having a lot of positive feelings about the company. He seems to keep them partially out of nostalgia and partially out of guilt, but we're not told what the guilt is from yet. We're also later told that Edwin used to have a wife and son, but both died, his wife dying in childbirth and his son dying in a tragic accident we aren't told about in this story; Edwin also keeps an undisclosed memento in his bedroom that makes him feel guilty about his son's death. (I think we'll learn more about that in a later story.)

We're also passively introduced to the rest of the Fazbear board of directors, which consists entirely of relatively young (most of them are in their 30s and 40s), good looking, wealthy people. They're also talking about technology and its functions during this meeting, and none of these non-main-character board members know anything about tech work, so they all just say whatever they thinks Burrows wants to hear.

One of the company's accountants predicts that, based on how the Pizzaplex is currently operating, they aren't actually going to be making any money -- the company will break even with their costs of running the Pizzaplex, but won't actually make a profit. Obviously, this isn't the company's goal, and Burrows needs to come up with ideas for how to make a profit margin.

"I refuse to be trapped in a box!"

The Pizzaplex has a creative team, which is a group of employees who create characters and write stories for those characters to enact. So these are the people who decide what sort of characteristics the animatronics should have and how they should behave, for example. Burrows' plan is to fire all of the people on the creative team and replacing them by an AI program that he'll program himself. Edwin argues that a computer program can't create good characters or tell good stories the way humans can, but Burrows ignores him. (Hitting this man with a stick in my head.)

Burrows decides to call this AI program "the Storyteller," since its job will be generating stories for the Fazbear characters to act out. He describes the AI's role as being "the Pizzaplex's ringmaster." Having to listen to this plan makes Edwin antsy, and he soothes himself by "envisioning himself setting the building on fire." (Yeah, Fazbear's seems to have that effect on people.)

The Storyteller needs to be in a console inside the Pizzaplex, and the console that they finally decide on is one that looks like a fake baobab tree. It's built in the middle of the Pizzaplex's front atrium, and it's very big, the "roots" in the floor and the branches running along the ceiling both concealing wires that lead all across the Pizzaplex, connecting to things all over the building. (I think this tree console is roughly in the same spot where the big golden Glamrock Freddy statue is in the "Security Breach" game.)

You can tell this story was at least partially inspired by the tree character at the Rainforest Cafe, which is a decorative tree with an animatronic face and tells short stories to children that hang out near it.

Burrows says that the baobab tree should be colored in reds, yellows, and blues, instead of using any colors that would naturally occur on the tree. I actually love that idea, because I think that makes for a fun visage that kids would enjoy looking at and planning on, but Burrows wants this color palette specifically because "Green is such an uninspiring color!" which is… such an incredibly moronic thing to say. Green is literally considered a happy color across a lot of cultures in our world, because it's associated with growing, healthy plants and bountiful food, but it's also been observed as inspiring people and boosting creativity. He also says that the tree should be red, yellow, and blue, describing them as "the colors of the rainbow." Like… does he know that's only a fraction of the rainbow? Does he know green is part of the rainbow? Does he know??? Can I hit him with a stick???

So far the most unrealistic part of this story is the 64-year-old man having positive feelings about the younger person with piercings and tattoos on her face.

The inner workings of the Storyteller are designed and programmed somewhere else, and it has to be transported into the Pizzaplex once it's finished. When Edwin asks specific questions about it, Burrows is evasive toward him; it sounds like Burrows found an old animatronic in Fazbear's storage that had a really robust AI, and he's done some work of stripping it of its old personality and reprogrammed it to generate stories.

Being forcefully kept out of the loop, Edwin spies on the Fazbear employees who are relocating the Storyteller while they're bringing it into the Pizzaplex to install inside the tree. To Edwin's surprise, it's not only not a conventional computer like he thought it would be, it's an animatronic, and one that he instantly recognizes. It's an animatronic from Edwin's old company, one that he designed and built himself, and seeing it again makes him have a panic attack.

This animatronic has a tiger head, and it has four arms on its torso. When it's installed inside the tree, it's connected in place by the arms being spread out and secured to the inside of the tree in a way that's clearly meant to suggest that its a captive or a prisoner. (But I'm weird, and my first thought when I heard this description was "oh, like Da Vinci's 'Vitruvian Man!'")

Since Edwin built that particular animatronic, he knows why it was scrapped, and he knows that it's going to cause problems once it's wired into the entire Pizzaplex. And of course, this is exactly what happens: within the first week of the Storyteller being plugged into the Pizzaplex computer system and brought online, things start to go sideways around the building. The electrical system (which is hooked into the computer system) goes haywire, with lights coming on and turning off at random times. Doors with electric locks start glitching out, locking and unlocking without prompting. It's nothing dangerous, but it's enough to cause more work for the Pizzaplex employees.

"[Edwin] had to get inside the Storyteller's tree." (I, uh… I got a sneakin' suspitchin about what's going to happen next.)

Despite having been on the committee for designing the console for the Storyteller, Edwin isn't actually allowed to see inside the thing, and he isn't supposed to touch any part of the Storyteller's programming (mostly because he and Burrows don't personally like or trust each other). The main door for entering the Storyteller's tree for programming work is not only well hidden in the grooves of the fake bark, but it's locked to everyone except Burrows and two other unnamed programmers. Edwin does some digging, and learns that there's a hidden maintenance hatch near the top of the tree, and he uses that to get inside, sneaking in during the night when no one else is around.

Once inside the tree, Edwin comes face-to-face with his old tiger animatronic. A computer screen next to the animatronic shows a read-out of the code the AI is running, and Edwin is horrified to see that it's still running his old "Mimic 1" program.

(This isn't out first time hearing about Mimic 1, but it's our first time actually seeing what it is in the stories. Mimic 2 is the animatronic that's been chasing the kids around in the epilogue story, but Mimic 1 is a completely separate AI program. Both were created by Edwin.)

After this, Edwin continues sneaking into the tree every night for the next five nights. We aren't told what he does while he's in there. (… Five Nights at Storyteller's.)

Throughout the first week, the Storyteller begins to have a very negative affect on the animatronics, and the Glamrocks in particular start to display some new emotional behaviors that they didn't have before:

🐺💅 Roxanne Wolf was designed as a sassy character with a narcissistic streak, who exudes confidence and cares about her appearance. After the Storyteller comes online, she turns into a bully, saying mean things to customers and laughing about it. 🐥🧁 Glamrock Chica was designed to be sweet and fun-loving, as well as a lover of food. She also has a sidekick character, Mr. Cupcake, who she's supposed to have playful banter with. After the Storyteller comes online, she becomes really rude and snarky, ignoring food entirely and only interacting with Mr. Cupcake to pick verbal fights with him. 🐊🎸 Montgomery Gator was designed to act like a wild rock star with a bad boy streak, who breaks his guitars for show but is also charming and gentle with the kids. After the Storyteller comes online, he's started lashing out violently against everyone and everything. When he's not throwing temper tantrums, he's in some sort of depressive episode, and it gets so bad that little kids cry from just being near him. 🐻🎙️ Glamrock Freddy was designed to be kind and reliable, and friendly with the young customers. After the Storyteller comes online, he becomes a self-centered brute, who tries to steal toys from children and breaks down into tears when he's told off for his bad behavior.

(During this segment, Chica is also described as being yellow and wearing a bib. While these characteristics are common design choices for Chica across the franchise, it's not what she look like at the Pizzaplex; the Pizzaplex design for Chica is usually white and wears a leotard. So either the author of this story simply got confused between the different versions of Chica, or we're dealing with a different version of Glamrock Chica than the one we see in the "Security Breach" game/s.)

Burrows knows that Edwin has been sneaking into the Storyteller's tree during the night, but he didn't know what the other man was doing, so he chose not to do anything about it. After he witnesses Glamrock Freddy get into a fight with a little girl over a plush Freddy toy, Burrows grows concerned about the changes the Storyteller has made to the animatronics' personalities, worried that the robots may end up hurting someone. Since Edwin was so vocally against the Storyteller every step of the way, Burrows comes to the conclusion that Edwin is sabotaging the program.

Burrows has a remote locking mechanism installed on the maintenance hatch of the Storyteller's tree, which he can activate and lock remotely from another location. On the sixth night, from the comfort of his own home, Burrows watches the feed from a security camera as Edwin climbs into the tree. He locks the hatch once Edwin is inside.

At this point, Burrows genuinely thinks Edwin is trying to sabotage both the AI program (and by extension the computer systems of the entire Pizzaplex) and the Fazbear's company as a whole. He knows how dangerous that could be (since the Storyteller is connected to literally everything else in the Pizzaplex building, a serious malfunction could be fatal to both the employees and the customers). With this in mind, Burrows decides to imprison Edwin inside the tree, at least for awhile. He knows there's only a limited amount of air inside the tree, but, even if Edwin dies, Burrows thinks he's doing the company and the customers a favor.

He leaves Edwin in the tree for the next week. Throughout this week, Burrows thinks a lot about the man he trapped, and he thinks in circles to himself about whether or not he really did the right thing.

No one notices that Edwin is missing. And no one notices that there's a person inside the tree. When no one else says anything about it, Burrows (for some reason) comes to the conclusion that, since no has noticed a man trying to escape from inside the Storyteller tree, Edwin must have found another exit. (Or he, y'know… ran out of air and died?? You incredible moron???)

After the week has passed, Burrows decides to look in the tree himself. When he enters, he's surprised to find it filled with construction paper, each sheet covered in crayon drawings of squiggles, basic shapes, strange symbols, stick figures, and the repeated words "I'm sorry." Amidst the pile is Edwin's corpse, clutching a crayon in his hand; it looks like he was halfway through writing another "I'm sorry."

Burrows is suddenly beset with panic, and a sense of needing to be anywhere else. He tries to leave, but is unable to, having locked himself inside by mistake. He tries to access the Storyteller's control panel, but his passwords are denied. He ends up attacking the physical body of the Storyteller, tearing off parts of the tiger animatronic. He beats at the insides of the tree, yelling and trying to make enough noise to attract someone's attention outside. No one can hear him, and he realizes that the tree is soundproof just as he blacks out, running out of air.

… And that's it. That's where we end off!

So mainly this story introduces us to the Mimic AI, a related but entirely different beast from the Mimic Animatronic. The Mimic animatronic is the endoskeleton that's been chasing and killing the kids in the epilogue stories, and at this point it's not clear if that animatronic has any sort of intelligence, artificial or otherwise; it mostly just seems to follow a very simple set of protocols, and doesn't seem to have anything like a creative thought process. The Mimic AI, conversely, is literally just a computer program with rudimentary problem solving and creative capabilities; while it has an animatronic body, it doesn't have any motor skills in that body, and it can't move or anything.

Mimic 2 is an animatronic that, right now, is behaving like a mindless monster.

Mimic 1 is an AI system that is in control over the entire Pizzaplex, but has no functional physical body at the moment.

(Makes me wonder if the animatronic and the AI used to be a single Mimic entity, and they've been separated for some reason.)

Also I think this story tells us a little bit about the infamous Post-It Note Room. The story ends with Burrows finding Edwin with the Mimic 1, surrounded by scraps of colorful paper that (presumably) Edwin has drawn and written on. The notes and drawings on these paper pieces don't mean anything to Burrows, but, since we know Edwin and Mimic 1 have a connection with each other, the drawings and notes are probably meaningful to them. And, given the sheer volume of these paper pieces that are in the tree, I wonder if Edwin was bringing packs of construction paper and crayons with him into the tree each night for the first week, and has been sitting inside the tree drawing and writing these things as a way of communicating with the Mimic 1.

In the "Security Breach" game, there's a section known to many fans as "the Post-It Note Room," or similar names. It's a room filled with broken Staff 'bot heads and lots and lots of sticky notes; the note papers have lots of drawings and coded messages on them, which are very interesting to look at and try to decipher. (And another big part of this room is that it conceals a closet where a makeshift "family" of broken Staff 'bots are sitting around a table, seemingly arranged as though having dinner together.)

So obviously there's a connection here. Someone in the Pizzaplex has a connection to the Mimic AI (presented in the games as both Glitchtrap and Helpi), and has been using the Post-It Room to interact with it. But who this is, we don't know. Maybe Edwin exists in the games? Or maybe there's another character in the games that is a parallel to Edwin? It could potentially be Vanessa or Tape Girl, two game characters who we know have some sort of interaction with the AI. Or it could be someone else entirely. We're missing this very big, very important puzzle piece. But the connection is there, and it's definitely something we should make note of.

I can't really explain why, but Edwin and Burrows read to me as character parallels to Henry and Afton. I don't have clear evidence for why, but that's the vibe I got -- it may just be me looking for something that isn't there. (But I will say that rabbits and foxes live in burrows, and of course those are the animals associated with the Aftons and with the animatronics that are conspicuously missing from the Pizzaplex.)

"Bobbiedots, Pt 2"

(Here's a link to where I talked about "Part 1" if you need a refresher course!)

In this story, we pick back up where we left off with our boy, Abe. Abe thinks over some of his injuries and even near-death experiences he's had in this apartment, and how the Bobbiedot AIs blame their robotic predecessors. Since Abe still hasn't actually seen any of the Gen 1 Bobbiedots, he realizes he doesn't know anything about them. He doesn't even know if they're real, or if his little AI friends have been lying to him. He decides to look deeper into it.

Since Abe works as a technician at the Pizzaplex, he has access to all the company's information about their animatronics, other robotic creations, and computer programs. He searches through the files for specs about the Bobbiedots' prior incarnation as cleaning robots, but he only finds information about the designs and installation of the current Bobbiedots, the virtual assistants.

Abe's thought process informs the reader that it's not unusual for Fazbear to simply delete or otherwise hide files related to any robot that's malfunctioned to the point that they had to be recalled; he believes that, if the Gen 1 Bobbiedots really exist, this is likely what happened.

Not finding any computer files about the Gen 1 Bobbiedots and not having access to the archived paperwork, Abe decides to go look around the storage facilities in the Pizzaplex basement. The Pizzaplex has multiple underground levels, only accessible by employees and robotic assistants, and Abe thinks of them as the dungeon below the building. The highest of these underground levels is a storage warehouse, where machinery, animatronic pieces, and large decorative items are kept when not in use; this level also contains the Pizzaplex's main utility maintenance section. We're also told that there are several Pizzaplex employees who work specifically on this level.

In the utility section of this level there's an opening that leads to "the sewer system." Abe's thoughts tell us that this isn't a true sewer system, but rather just a space where water flows through and trash builds up (it's not connected to the city's sewers or anything). A lot of discarded robots tend to up here; since many of the robotics can't really be shut off, they tend to just wander around in this trash-filled space, almost like metal zombies. Abe thinks this whole space is a waste, and he doesn't understand why it's here.

Abe enters the "sewer," thinking that, if the Gen 1 Bobbiedots existed, there might be some old models or parts that got lost in here. When he enters and turns on his flashlight, the first thing he sees is a severely damaged Glamrock Chica, sprawled out on the ground and blinking up at him. Her face is broken and her beak is missing, leaving the lower part of her face a "gaping maw." (So, Chica after Gregory literally trashes her in "Security Breach?")

While he's down here, Abe sees a broken, eyeless Mr. Hippo animatronic. The sight makes him sad, since Mr. Hippo was always one of his favorite characters of the Fazbear cast. Beside the animatronic, he sees a Mr. Hippo magnet on the ground, and he decides to take it as a souvinir. We're told that the magnets were made too strong, and they often shorted out electrical items they were stuck on, so they had to be recalled.

Abe finds many discarded endoskeletons and other robots and robotic parts, but no Bobbiedots.

A day later, Abe goes to bed early, which causes the Bobbiedots to enter sleep mode for the night. He gets up during the night, trying to avoid waking the AI assistants. His bedroom door is locked, locked by Olive "to keep him safe during the night," but the lock is electronic and he can't manually unlocked it. He uses the Mr. Hippo magnet on it and the door opens easily. He sneaks down the hall toward the kitchen of the apartment, and he sees the ceiling trapdoor open. He doesn't see any robotic cleaners at first, but he can see the cables they're connected to leading from the trapdoor to the floor, moving about like tentacles. These tentacle-like cables move around, seemingly with a mind of their own, feeling around the area.

Abe finally sees one of the Gen 1 Bobbiedots. This robot's body is mostly silver and black, with feminine features and the black cables coming out of her head like hair. She has a pink panel on her chest, designating her as #3, the precursor to Rose. One of her eyes is missing entirely, and the other one doesn't seem to work, and feels her way around the apartment using her hands and cable-hair. When Abe makes a soft sound of surprise, she runs toward him, and he runs back to his bedroom, closing the door on the blind robot. After a moment, #3 returns to the ceiling compartment.

A few nights later, Abe decides to leave the safety of his bedroom again. He's trying to figure out what he should do about the old Bobbiedots. This time, on his trip out, he runs into the other two robots. The first one he sees has a blue panel on her chest, designating her as #1, the precursor to Gemini. She has a black and silver body like the first one did, with with the same hairlike cables on her head. She's in worse shape than #3 was, and is missing an arm and large pieces of her exoskeleton. The lower half of her face's outer shell is completely gone, exposing her endoskeleton mouth and teeth. She has blue eyes, but is also blind, and she walks right past Abe when he stands perfectly still. She seems to be trying to hum to herself, making some sort of rhythmic sound with her voice box, but her voice box is clearly damaged and the sounds she makes just sound like low-pitched gurgles. (This is the character featured in the cover art for this volume. Congrats on making the cover, girlie!)

Abe accidentally gets #1's attention, and she chases him through the apartment. He almost trips over #2, who is in even worse shape than her sisters, missing her entire exoskeleton shell and missing her legs entirely. She moves by dragging herself along the ground.

(Does the damage of these robots sound familiar? It should, because it mirrors how we see the Glamrock animatronics in parts of the "Security Breach" game and in all of the "Ruin DLC." In those games, Roxy is blinded, and the player has to avoid making noise to attract her attention; Chica loses the lower part of her face, and can no longer speak properly; Monty gets wrecked, losing the lower part of his body and most his outer shell, and he crawls after the player for most of those games.)

Abe is cornered by #1 and #2, and is saved by the Gen 2 Bobbiedots coming back online. Gemini turns on the TV full blast and plays loud music, causing the damaged robots to jerk around and writhe in panic. Abe sustains injuries from where the damaged robots try to grab at him, but flees and makes it to the safety of his bedroom, where Rose and Olive instruct him in cleaning and wrapping his injuries.

Some of his injuries are bad enough that he thinks about going to a hospital, but he ultimately chooses not to, unsure of how to explain where he received these injuries. He wraps himself in gauze and bandages. When he goes to work the next day, several of his coworkers express concern about his many bandages. Abe waves their concerns off, saying that he walked into a glass door at a friend's house.

At work, Abe repairs a broken down part in Monty's Gator Golf. One of the holes has a decorative birthday cake that's supposed to spin on a pedestal, but it's not working. When Abe first arrives at the broken machinery, he finds a small child hitting the side of the fake cake, and she tells him that that's what her daddy does with the TV when it's not working right. (Which I thought was comical, but I don't think that's something you can do with modern TV sets, is it?)

Later in the day, Abe walks down one of the main walkways of the Pizzaplex, passing the animatronics' green rooms and the gallery displays that showcase parts from both old and new Fazbear animatronic designs. While here, he meets a woman named Sasha, a social worker who wants to talk to a Fazbear employee about the animatronics.

Sasha explains that she specifically works with troubled kids, and that she's checking out the Pizzaplex to see if she thinks it's a good place to bring her young clients. While she likes the place, and she knows a lot of children do as well, she expresses her concerns about the Glamrocks in particular, citing that she feels they often come across to children as self-centered and loud, and she doesn't think a child who's already dealing with other problems would have a good time around them; she actually thinks many of the children she works with would find the animatronics scary. She wants to know Abe's opinion, since he works here and knows more about the animatronics. Abe tells her that he thinks the Pizzaplex is a great place for kids, but he admits that, if he was a dad, he wouldn't bring his hypothetical child here very often, or leave them unattended, and he certainly wouldn't want them spending very much time near the animatronics.

The two really hit it off during their conversation, and Abe ends up asking Sasha out. She agrees, and the two later meet up for a dinner date, where they continue their conversation. Sasha says that she's fascinated by the history of Fazbear's, and that she's read up on all the rumors, the mysteries, and the scandals. When Abe tells her about the virtual assistants in his apartment, Sasha gets intrigued, and she says she'd like to meet them. Against his better judgement, Abe ends up inviting her to his apartment for a second date.

Back at his apartment, Abe installs a padlock on the ceiling trapdoor. The Gen 2s watch, and tell him that they don't think the Gen 1s will be able to break the lock, so they should be safely contained. With that problem out of the way, Rose, Olive, and Gemini are eager to help Abe impress his new lady friend.

The home dinner date with Sasha goes well. When she comes over, Sasha immediately hits it off with the Bobbiedots, finding them very cute, helpful, and pieces of impressive worksmanship. The Bobbiedots express their approval of Sasha, then leave so she and Abe can be alone. Abe and Sasha have a good evening together.

After a few more good dates, Abe tells Sasha about the full situation with the Bobbiedots. Sasha listens, and, to his surprise, believes what he says; she knows enough of Fazbear's and their robots to believe that some cleaner 'bots could easily go off the rails. But she compares the actions of the Gen 1s to those of some of the troubled kids she's worked with in the past, and suggests that they could be acting out like kids do, either because there's something wrong with their emotional processors or because they've been mistreated in the past. Abe realizes he doesn't know much about the apartment's previous tenant, and he decides to do some digging.

Later at work, Abe looks up the personnel files of the previous tenant, learning that he was a Pizzaplex employee named Landon Prout. According to the file, Landon was undergoing treatment for "delusional paranoid disorder," as the man apparently thought that all of the animatronics at the Pizzaplex were actively stalking him, and were going to kill him. Landon was convinced to take a leave of absence, but seemingly never returned to work at the Pizzaplex after that. When Abe tries calling the phone number on Landon's file, it's answered by a woman who bursts into tears and hangs up with Abe asks for Landon.

Abe wonders if Landon was genuinely suffering from a delusion, or if he was genuinely in danger; he's seen enough shady things around the Pizzaplex to know that Landon's fears may have been for nothing.

The Gen 1 Bobbiedots beat on the trapdoor enough that Abe's padlock is forced out of its own screws, and it falls off entirely.

Sasha wants to spend the night at Abe's apartment. Since she's trained in how recognize the actions of a troubled or otherwise unwell person, and Fazbear animatronics are programmed to experience and act on something akin to human emotions, she thinks she may be able to help understand what's going on with the Gen 1s by observing them in person. Abe is uncomfortable with the idea at first, but relends. Rose, Olive, and Gemini get excited about the idea of a sleepover.

During the night, Abe and Sasha silently observe the Gen 1s as they move throughout the apartment. When they accidentally make noise, the robots all rush Abe, circling around him and hemming him in -- they don't seem to notice Sasha at all. When Abe and Sasha make it back to Abe's bedroom, which the robots can't seem to enter for some reason, Sasha says she doesn't think the Gen 1s are trying to hurt him. When they first slipped into the room, it looked like one of them was taking down a trap of some kind, but not setting it to start with. When they all circled Abe, it looked like they were acting as bodyguards, trying to protect him. She believes that the robotic Bobbiedots are trying to help and protect Abe, but, because they're damaged, their intentions come across wrong, and they end up harming him by mistake.

When Abe asks aloud "If the Gen 1s are trying to protect me, who are they protecting me from?," Sasha glances at the screens where the Gen 2s usually project themselves. Abe and Sasha quietly get up and try to leave the apartment, only for all the doors to suddenly lock themselves. The Gen 2s' screens light up, revealing Rose, Olive, and Gemini all smiling evilly at the two humans. Chaos erupts as the evil virtual assistants turn on every piece of equipment in the apartment at once.

Abe and Sasha escape the havoc by climbing up through the trapdoor in the kitchen ceiling. The Gen 1s had already returned to their crawlspace, and they start wailing and shrieking at this intrusion. Sasha calms them down, and they respond to her like scared children seeking comfort.

#3 is the only one with a functional voice box, and she manages to speak a few broken sentences. Sasha and Abe ask her about herself and her sisters, and #3 tells them that they were supposed to take care of Landon, a task that became more and more difficult as he fell deeper into his paranoia. At one point, during his leave of absence from work, Landon had an episode and was going to burn down the apartment building, and #3 and her sisters were forced by their programming to kill their own tenant in order to protect the building and the other tenants. None of these Bobbiedots seem happy about that outcome.

#3 tells Abe that the Gen 2s in this apartment were experimental, the prototype that came before all of the other AI Bobbiedots. They have a glitch in their system, causing them to perceive all humans as parasites that need to be eliminated. (It can't be a very big glitch, since they haven't made that many attempts on Abe's life, all things considered.) She then talks Abe through the process of shutting down the AI Bobbiedots.

This conversation is interrupted by the AI Bobbiedots opening a water pipe in the ceiling, filling the space with water and causing the ceiling below them to burst open. The two humans and three robots are washed out of the space, falling down into the kitchen which is quickly becoming flooded. The Gen 1s short out in the water, due to having so much of their inner workings exposed, and they all shut down and sink to the floor. Abe and Sasha are left scrambling for high locations, trying to keep out of the electrified water.

Abe manages to get to the computer terminal and shuts down the Gen 2 Bobbiedots. The electricity in the apartment dies with them and, while the apartment is completely waterlogged, it becomes safe to walk around again. Sasha frets over the unresponsive Gen 1s.

A sensor in the apartment sends out a flooding alert, and a maintenance robot calls Abe on the phone to ask about the water. Abe says that the bathtub overflowed, and the robot tells him that a team will be sent for clean up.

After the apartment floods, Abe is forced to come clean to his superiors about his unlawful stay in the apartment. Instead of firing him, the higher-ups at Fazbear are just glad that he solved their problem of the misbehaving Bobbiedots for them, and they just give him the apartment outright. No longer having to hide, Abe starts using the building amenities and starts meeting his neighbors.

With his job and living situation secure, Abe and Sasha decide to take their relationship to the next level, and Sasha moves into the apartment with him. The renovate and redecorate the apartment together, turning it into a proper living space, and make plans to move Abe's mom in with them, so she's not isolated from her family in the care facility anymore.

Abe also starts salvaging a lot of old robotic parts from the Pizzaplex basement levels, and he and Sasha work together to repair the Gen 1 Bobbiedots. They repair both the robots' inner workings as well as their outer appearances, trying to make them look as cute and friendly as possible. Sasha has even named them, naming the three robots after European queens:

#3, the pink-coded one who was missing an eye, is Victoria

#2, the green-coded one who was missing her legs, is Isabella

#1, the blue-coded one who was missing her mouth, is Elizabeth (!!!)

Their plan is for the Bobbiedots to help take care of Abe's mom during the day while Abe and Sasha are at work. Abe thinks his mom will like having some robot girlies to talk to, and he thinks the Bobbiedots will like being able to help people again (y'know, the thing they were originally programmed to do). The Bobbiedots are still off-line and unresponsive at this point, but Abe and Sasha are both hopeful about getting them up and running again soon.

So this story is interesting to me for a lot of reasons. For one, it's the first (and only) two-part story of this set, and I think Andrea did a pretty good job with it. For another, it ends on a happy ending, one that leaves both the human and robot characters on a good note, and we don't get that very often in this series.

And I just gotta say… Elizabeth? The blue-eyed robot on the cover is named Elizabeth? In this franchise? What a choice. (To clarify, it doesn't strike me as an actual reference to Elizabeth Afton, but it definitely feels jarring to see that name used again.)

Speaking of reused concepts, there are a lot of references to "Security Breach" in this story. Abe goes to several locations from the Pizzaplex in that game. He encounters a trashed Glamrock Chica. He finds a Mr. Hippo magnet. But, despite these parallels, he's not a stand-in for any of the characters in that game. He doesn't have anything in common with Vanessa. There are several moments where he feels almost like a Gregory stand-in of some kind, but then his actions in specific situations are the opposite of what Gregory does (he reacts positively to find the Mr. Hippo magnet, for example); it feels like Abe's journey and Gregory's journey are parallel to each other, but they as characters are not.

Strangely, for being a plot device rather than a character, Landon feels a little bit like Gregory and/or Glamrock Freddy: he trashes the robots around him, believing that they're out to get him, and he tries to set the building on fire.

Sasha also reminds me of Cassie, Gregory's friend who we meet in the "Ruin" DLC. She has positive feelings about the Fazbear animatronic characters, and she expresses concern over the broken robots (and again, the Bobbiedots are directly parallel to Roxy, Chica, and Monty).

Sasha, apparently: "All robots are queens!" Rose, Olive, and Gemini: "If she cleans, she's a thot!"

And again, we are being directly told "It's not the animatronics themselves that are evil! It's the AI running the building that you need to watch out for!"

So yeah, overall this was a really fun story with plenty of "Security Breach" and "Ruin" vibes built in. I really enjoyed it in a way I haven't been enjoying most of these stories.

(I want to see Abe, Sasha, and their robot daughters again sometime. I think that would be fun.)

"Epilogue"

Unknown to them Lucia, Kelly, Adrien, and Jace are the only ones left; our cast of kids have been literally halved. The four of them have been closed up in a room, trying to operate an old, broken radio in a bid to contact someone on the outside for help.

Lucia and Kelly get the radio working briefly, and they hear a static-y voice calling for help. Thinking one of their friends is trying to contact them from somewhere else in the Pizzaplex, they ask the voice for directions that they then try to follow; following these directions leads them out of the safety of the room they're in, and also leads them directly to the Mimic.

The Mimic attacks them, and is now wearing a monkey costume. All the lights in the area go out. (I guess the Mimic's presence just always messes with the electrical systems?)

The kids escape, and find another hiding place. They realize that, if the Mimic is focusing entirely on them, that probably means Joel and Wade are dead. They also realize that the Mimic was the voice talking to them over the radio, pretending to be one of their friends or another victim.

The kids end up splitting up again. Since the girls are good with technology, they're assigned to stay in the room and work more on the radio; hopefully they can get it working well enough that they can contact someone for help. The boys take the task of leaving the room and searching for a way out.

Lucia picks up the Mimic's user manual again, studying it for any information that could help them. All she learns is that there's a power-off button on the back of the Mimic's neck, but this doesn't help then right now. She thinks about how much she had been enjoying a robotics course at school, and she thinks that, if she ever gets back to school, she'll probably drop the course; all enjoyment she had on the subject has been sucked out by the Mimic.

Kelly focuses on working on the radio. She admits that ham radios is one of her hobbies, something about herself she's never shared with any schoolmates before. Both Kelly and Lucia connect further with each other over their shared experience of having hobbies that are "too nerdy for girls."

The boys crawl through an air duct, trying to avoid the Mimic. They see the Mimic through a vent cover, and it seems to see them, but it's unable to get to them while they're inside the vent. After some searching, the boys find the room where Joel and Wade were supposed to be, and they're shocked and horrified to come face-to-face with their classmates' remains.

Adrien hears the hum of the fan above them, and, like Joel, he think they could use the fan's duct as an escape hatch. He shares his thoughts with Jace, and they begin searching for a way to turn the fan off. Unable to find any controls or switches that control the fan, the boys have to go searching around the Pizzaplex for something to jam into the fan.

During their search, they run into the Mimic again. The Mimic is now wearing the costume of a "mangled dog, with one ragged ear and a torn muzzle." The boys run, ducking into the theater stage are to hide. Eventually, the Mimic wanders off, and the boys race back to the systems room where the opening to the fan is.

Having collected an animatronic leg, Adrien plans to climb up the chute and jam the fan with the metal leg. Just as Adrien enters the chute, the boys hear the Mimic outside the room, and the lights start to flicker. Adrien gets in the chute, and Jace finds a space to hide under the control panel just as the lights go out completely. (Very "Sister Location" Night 1 of him, tbh.)

The fan's motor is too powerful, so when Adrien jams the animatronic leg up into it the fan just chops the leg up, and Adrien is sprayed with heated shards of metal. The burns make him fall down the chute, where he's caught by the Mimic. From his hiding space behind the control panel, Jace listens as Adrien is killed by the Mimic.

(… And then there were three.)

#five nights at freddy's #tales from the pizzaplex #a brief analysis #my thoughts and theory noodles #my tftp analysis

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