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cartoonus-maximus · 10 months ago

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Notes and Observations on FNAF TFTP Vol 1: "Lally's Game"

I want to start by saying I really enjoyed this volume! And I hope the rest of the series is just as good (or at least in the ballpark) as I thought this one was. I loved the characters presented in the first and third stories (Jessica and Maya are my new favorite protags!), and I liked all the surprise twists and turns.

I also really dig the cover art, even though it mainly focuses on this little robot character who we never see in any of the stories. I think it's supposed to be Lally, but that's not quite how Lally is described when we're introduced to him.

(However, the figure behind him could be Jessica, the protagonist from "Frailty," since she's described as having pale skin and wearing dark clothes, like this feminine-looking figure appears to be wearing.)

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.

Another warning: two of these stories focus a lot on people with serious illnesses being hospitalized or even dying from said illness. This isn't the usual FNAF fare, so I feel like I should mention it, just in case anyone is particularly sensitive to the topic. The rest of the horrific occurrences of this volume are pretty standard for FNAF.

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

With that said, let's get to it.

"Frailty"

This story starts with a teenage boy who's died in a car wreck during a rainstorm, with two EMTs trying and failing to revive him. They have to declare him dead, and both turn away for a moment to retrieve equipment. One of them turns back and sees a slim silhouette standing over the boy with a knife, and he's quick to scare the threat off. As he turns back to the body bag, the teenager inside it suddenly comes back to life.

(I think it's funny that the EMTs were named Jack and Dave. Felt like a little nod to "Dayshift At Freddy's.")

We then meet the actual protagonist of the story, a 14-year-old girl named Jessica who works as a floor cleaner in the children's wing of a hospital. She doesn't speak unless spoken to, and avoids making eye contact with anyone, but is always hyper aware of her surroundings, and pays special attention to the patients.

"She was aware of each and every child in the hospital wing."

Jessica is a pale-skinned girl with dark hair, who is described as having "delicate facial features," being very thin and looking frail to others, and being basically pretty but hiding her features behind dark-colored clothing and her hair, which she keeps long and lets hang in front of her face. Some of her coworkers think kindly of her, viewing her as simply young and shy, while others are suspicious of her and think her creepy.

Several of the patients in the wing Jessica works at get better almost miraculously, but the nurses start noticing flecks of silver on these patients, stuck to their clothes and hair.

Jessica sneaks into the hospital chapel alone, where she pulls out a necklace pendant. It used to be bigger, and it used to be shaped like a heart, but she's been shaving pieces of it off over time. She prays to Whoever she believes is listening, praying that she continues "being good" and that she "completes her purpose" and "rights her wrongs." She's startled by the arrival of a priest, and they have a conversation about prayer and miracles.

The priest is named Father Jeremiah (and if I hear ONE MORE character named Jeremy/Jeremiah, I swear--!!).

(Also… There's a lot of conversations throughout this story between Jessica and Father Jeremiah, as they discuss religious questions, morality and ethics, and philosophical topics. It's not something I'd expect from a FNAF book, and it's not something that most of the readers for this kind of story would really care about.)

"… she wasn't there to enjoy life, but had to stay focused on her purpose."

During the evening hours, when the hospital is quiet and there aren't many people around, Jessica approaches a small boy who is a patient, coming up behind him while he sleeps. She pulls a knife out of her pocket and uses it to scrape shavings off of her pendant. As the silver shavings fall onto the child, Jessica feels weaker and weaker, her heart beat slowing and her breaths becoming more shallow; she knows he'll get better now, as she gives him some of her own life force.

(Green elephants, huh? The new "Dumbo" sounds great.)

Jessica goes to school the next day, even though she doesn't seem to need to, and she even asks herself why she keeps going. Her classmates openly bully her and say mean things about her strange appearance and behavior; one girl even refers to her as "a mannequin that barely moves."

Her class is broken into groups for a project, and Jessica is paired with a new kid named Robert, who is very attractive and has golden hair and wears pale blue. Robert immediately starts telling her about how his dad is an engineer, and how eager he is to work with machines like his dad does. (K… KELSEY???)

Robert feels bad for Jessica, having witnessed her being bullied by other girls. He expresses his disdain for bullies, complaining about the ones he encountered at his last school (I repeat: Kelsey? Is that you?), but Jessica tells him that she honestly doesn't care what any of her classmates think of her, which he thinks is cool.

Their project is to build a miniature robot that performs a single, simple task that they program themselves. They're told to use as many materials as they already own or can salvage for the project, instead of buying ready-made kits. Robert suggests they go to the junkyard to see what they can find, and Jessica is immediately uncomfortable with the idea. She tells him she can't go to the junkyard, and then promptly abandons him, running off in a panic.

Jessica goes to the cemetery to calm her nerves. While she's there, she wonders what her own headstone would look like, but then decides that she'll probably never have a proper grave. She closes herself up in an old family mausoleum to hide from the world of the living, and it becomes clear that she's been staying in this mausoleum during the nights, and isn't returning to whatever home she used to have.

Jessica has a good luck charm in the form of a rabbit's foot key chain, which is a perfectly normal thing irl but not in this franchise.

Returning to work at the hospital the next day, Jessica is interrupted from her normal mopping duties by the mysterious appearance of a rusty old fork on the floor behind her. She rolls her eyes, wondering why it's "a fork, this time?" and throws it away. (Girl, what you mean "this time??")

She befriends a new patient in the wing, who is a teenage girl with red hair and freckles. The girl introduces herself as April, and explains that she has cancer, and isn't handling the treatment very well. Over the course of the story, April and Jessica commiserate with each other over their (very different) ailments.

More industrial junk starts appearing in the hospital in Jessica's wake, including an old car muffler, nuts and bolts, a rusted tin can, and a rusty lock. The head nurse is determined to find the prankster that keeps leaving dangerous trash around the hospital wing, while Jessica just sighs heavily and throws everything away.

Back at school, Robert returns from the junkyard, and shows Jessica all the items he found for their robot project. Jessica considers the junk items and tries to keep from reflexively pushing them all off the table and getting as far away from them as possible. She later accompanies him to his home, where they work on assembling their robot.

"Robots aren't always original. Sometimes they're just made from boring old junkyard scraps." (… Do you have something you want to share with the class, Jessica?)

"You're not like other girls." "I know. … I'm weird." (I just thought this exchange was funny.)

Robert asks Jessica to go the prom with him as his date, and she's so startled and confused by the question that she doesn't answer him, instead running to the hospital chapel and having a panicked prayer moment.

She talks with Father Jeremiah, asking him if she's a bad person for wanting to be selfish and doing things for her own pleasure. (I told you - these conversations come up a lot.) She expresses shame about her past, but doesn't explain what specifically distresses her. Father Jeremiah tells her that he believes God wants what's best for his children, and tries to comfort the teen as best he can, trying to answer all her questions. Eventually, Jessica leaves the chapel, and Jeremiah notices a strange metal gear on the floor, left behind by Jessica.

"To her, Father Jeremiah represented life and death and forgiveness." (Let's not go putting our religious leaders on pedestals here, girl. They're only human, after all.)

Jessica agrees to go to the prom with Robert, but then realizes she doesn't have a dress to wear and doesn't know how to shop for one. She gets help from an older nurse, Macy, who is happy to help her. Nurse Macy wonders to herself why no one in Jessica's family is helping her, but tactfully chooses not to ask questions, instead offering to help Jessica herself. She takes the girl shopping after work, helping her pick out a dress and matching shoes.

While they're shopping for the dress, a store employee mistakes Macy and Jessica for a mother and daughter pair. Macy doesn't correct them, and simply assumes the role of Jessica's mother for the trip. Jessica is touched that the older woman is willing to at least pretend to be her mom.

"It was better to just let others see what they wanted to see."

Nurse Macy has being watching her younger coworker very carefully, and has come to conclusion that Jessica is suffering from some sort of personal trauma, based on her behavior, but doesn't have enough information to know for sure. Throughout their interactions, Nurse Macy tries to ask Jessica about her family, trying to learn if the teenager has a safe home or not, but Jessica never tells her anything about her family or her home.

When Jessica isn't forthcoming with info, Macy gets so concerned she decides to go against work ethics and looks into Jessica's employment file to find Jessica's home address. Going to the address, Macy finds herself in a run-down part of town right near the cemetery, at an old house where an elderly woman lives. The old woman is ill and mean, and owns a small dog that barks incessantly. The woman doesn't know a Jessica, and Macy is turned away with more questions about her teenage coworker.

Back in the mausoleum she's been hiding out in, Jessica has a nightmare where she's alone in pitch blackness, being chased by a robotic monster of some sort. The robot catches up with her and rips her arms off one at a time, and Jessica feels herself bleeding out on the floor. The robot starts to steal her pendant, but stops. Jessica wakes up from the nightmare, safe in the mausoleum.

Jessica returns to school, and she and Robert present their robot to the class. When Robert gets nervous about giving their presentation, Jessica gifts him her rabbit's foot for luck, a gesture he appreciates. He returns the gesture by gifting her a braided leather bracelet. (These two are actually so sweet with each other.)

"Look! It's Ken and Zombie Barbie!" (Okay, that's mean, but I would also love to see that doll pack.)

That evening, Jessica is at the hospital, and eavesdrops on the nurses discussing April's situation, which is gradually getting worse and worse. Jessica needs her life force to herself if she's going to prom, which means she can't help April -- she can't have fun and help the other girl, no matter how much she wants both. She decides to go ask for advice from Father Jeremiah, and wants to know if there's an afterlife she'll be going to.

"Jessica felt so alone. It was like how she'd felt when she first knew she'd been changed forever."

Jessica goes to prom with Robert. They dance and have fun and both admit to being attracted to each other. But then Robert tries to kiss her, and jumps back, his face covered in old, dirty grease. Jessica panics and tries to leave, and as she passes them, the other kids all stare and point at her in various states of alarm and confusion. Distressed, Jessica runs away.

At the hospital, the nurses check in on April again, only to find she's getting worse, and they can barely find her pulse.

Jessica bursts into the hospital with a wild, crazed look on her face, grease leaking down her face from her eyes and forehead. She runs past the nurses, leaving a trail of grease and junk metal behind her. She runs straight to April's room, slamming and jamming the door behind her to keep the nurses from following her.

Through the window of the door, Nurse Macy sees Jessica take her pendant and a knife in her hands and stand over April. The nurses, hospital security, and even Father Jeremiah rush the door, getting it open again, but Jessica is completely gone by the time they get inside. April is still asleep in her bed, and there's a pile of metal junk on the floor next to her bed.

"Smelly grease dripped from the pile as if it were blood."

They search the room, but don't find Jessica. Father Jeremiah seems to know something they don't, as he looks sadly at the pile of junk and quietly prays over it, as though praying over a dying or recently deceased person.

Before Nurse Macy can ask any other questions, April suddenly has a miraculous recovery.

What a story to kick us off with!

Jessica's story is interesting, as we're pretty clearly told what most of it is: she made a selfish, uninformed choice at some point (we're not told what that choice was) which led to her encountering and being killed by a robot. She was rebuilt from a pile of trash in a junkyard, and brought back to "life" by a necklace made of remnant. Now, feeling bad about the choices she's made and the person she's been in the past, she tries to make up for her past actions by sacrificing her own life force to save others from a premature death.

Jessica died some time ago, and no longer lives with her family (who presumably have already held a funeral for her and grieved for their loss), but she still goes to the same school she always has, meaning that the school still has all the correct information about her and her family on file somewhere. Have her teachers ever tried calling her parents to talk to them about her, like "Jessica's not participating in class" or whatever, and her parents are just like… "She's dead, of course she's not participating in class!" But also, you'd think the school would have been informed about her death at some point, so it's a little strange that the teachers still address her and assign her homework.

Jessica was killed by a robot that threw her to the ground and tore off her arms, leaving her to bleed out and die in extreme pain and agony. File that information away for now, because I believe it's something we'll revisit later in the series.

The necklace is… interesting, to say the least. It's a heart-shaped silver pendant made of remnant, and it's possibly the same one that we saw in the "Fazbear Frights" series. In that series, we saw this necklace being worn by Eleanor, who uses it to assume the appearance of other characters, but seemingly also uses it as an energy source. At the end of the series, the necklace was taken from Eleanor and given to Det. Larson, who was under the impression that the remnant contained the spirit of a kind person. We were never told who that spirit could have belonged to.

I'm curious as to how that necklace came into Jessica's possession. Her nightmare implies that she was already wearing it before she was killed, and that her possession of it is what allowed her to assume a different form after her death. But how did she get it to start with? Did she acquire it from Larson somehow? Are there more than one remnant necklaces in this universe, and she just happened to have one? Is she related to Ranelle Talbert, who also had pretty features, dark hair, and was given a necklace made of remnant because she was so frail and weak as a child? What's the story?!?!

Also, I guess this story is telling us that remnant can be used to heal living people from various injuries and illnesses, can bring people back from recent deaths, and (possibly) it can cast illusions around its wearer, causing them to look like a normal person.

I think it's interesting that Father Jeremiah seemed to know the whole story of what was going on. It's so weird. It's like dude??? who are you and how to you know this??? What other Freddy's-universe weirdness have you seen?!?!?!

There is also the repeated names of Jessica, Robert, and Jeremy/Jeremiah. I don't know if they mean anything or not, but they're certainly names that pop up with an alarming frequency in this franchise.

"Lally's Game"

In this story, we meet Selena and Cade, two fiances who have bought a fixer-upper country farmhouse and are working on moving into it.

Selena has a long (and I mean loooong) inner monologue about how wonderful she and her fiance are. Literally, they're a power couple of perfect people, both incredibly smart, good looking, and extremely business savvy. (If you listen closely, you can hear me rolling my eyes and gagging. "Meh meh meh, look at how perfect we are!")

"Selena's life was sailing along perfectly." (Oh, I guarantee it won't be for long.)

The pair oversee the movers that are unloading their furniture into the house. One item that gets unloaded is a locked chest of Cade's, which Selena is surprised to see. The two of them have a fight about the chest and its contents and whether it should even be here or not. Whatever is inside the trunk, it's a mystery to Selena, and Cade gets very defensive about it, claiming it's just junk from his childhood and she doesn't need to see it.

The two of them pay a visit to Janice, Cade's mother, who lives nearby. While at her house, Selena finds photo albums depicting Cade's childhood, and decides to look through them with her future mother-in-law. One photo shows a child Cade celebrating a birthday in a black light party room at a Freddy Fazbear's Pizzaplex. (Ah, we finally found a use for Funko's dumb black light line, I see.) The black light arena itself is called 'Lally's Game.' Selena shows the picture to Janice, who tells her that Lally's Game was Cade's favorite part of the Pizzaplex, and tells her a little about it.

Lally is a small, child-sized robot character that resembles Casper the Friendly Ghost. His purpose is to play and interact with the children who don't have friends to play with, playing hide-and-seek with one child at a time in his special arena. His space is the black light arena, which has prehistoric inspired caves and tunnels with brightly colored drawings on them.

(The words they're using to describe Lally remind me of how people tend to describe Funko Pops, which, given the relationship FNAF has with Funko, I find mildly amusing.)

Janice mentions that Lally's Game was shut down permanently at their local Pizzaplex when the Lally robot itself was stolen. When Selena asks if Cade was sad to lose his favorite game, Cade's mother says "Cade wasn't sad… Cade was scared." She doesn't explain what she means by that.

When Selena brings up the subject with Cade later, he tells her he doesn't want to talk about it, and says that "someone got hurt there" before shutting down the topic.

Their wedding day comes and goes. (We spend a long stretch of time on their wedding day and the event itself, which provides a lot of context for later parts of the story, but I'm going to spare you the details of this section.) After their wedding, they enjoy their honeymoon period while finishing up the refurbishing of their house.

After their honeymoon period passes, Selena decides to revisit Cade's mystery trunk. She feels that they don't have any secrets from each other, and the fact that Cade doesn't let her look in the trunk rubs her the wrong way. So, one day when he's at work and Selena is home alone, she decides to go look into it to see what it is he's hiding from her. She goes to where she knows he put the trunk in the attic, only to find it's not there. Realizing Cade has purposefully hidden it from her, Selena becomes very suspicious and angry, and she begins searching the house for the trunk.

"… [the farmhouse] had five closets��" (I'm trying to figure out how to make a 'Fifth Closet' joke but I'm not sure how yet.)

"Every box was empty."

Selena finds the trunk hidden in the back of the closet in a spare room of the house, hidden beneath blankets and behind a stack of empty boxes. But it's locked, so she still can't get it open. She gets some tools and fiddles with the lock for awhile. She gets the lock open, but doesn't open the trunk itself, hearing Cade arrive home downstairs.

When Cade comes home, she confronts him about lying to her about the trunk. Realizing that she found it, Cade goes into some kind of angry panic, grabbing her and asking her in a rage if she's opened it. He runs past her to find the trunk, and, when he reaches it, he throws it open. It's empty. Cade is extremely upset.

Selena feels terrible, realizing that she violated her husband's privacy, and seemingly for no reason, since the trunk is empty. She apologizes vehemently, and tries to explain why she was so suspicious about the trunk. Cade still seems distressed, but mostly forgives her.

"Pressed against his wet shirt-covered chest, she could feel his racing heart, and she felt the tightness in the muscles of his arms and shoulders as she returned his embrace." (Is it just me, or have the FNAF books gotten a lot steamier than they were the last time I read one?)

"That's what she was smelling: it was the stench of fear."

Cade is obviously terrified of something, but Selena doesn't know what. Deciding she's done enough damage for now, she doesn't prod him about it, or ask him why the trunk was empty and why he was so upset about it.

That night, Cade tells Selena that he's going to go straight to sleep, and the couple skip over the sex or cuddling that they would usually engage in before sleep takes them. He pretends to fall asleep, but, when Selena is laying in the dark and he thinks she's asleep, he gets up again and sneaks around the room. He seems to looking for something, looking in nooks and crannies and sometimes pausing to listen for something. When he doesn't find it, he returns to bed.

An hour later, Selena is awoken by Cade's footsteps as he walks around, searching again. He seems to repeat this process almost every hour during the night, and seems to be becoming paranoid about whatever it is he's not finding. The next morning, he's exhausted, and barely manages a morning run before going to work. This goes on every night for a week.

After a week, Selena turns on the light during one of Cade's searches, and asks him what he's looking for.

"You've been jumping in and out of bed like a jack-in-the-box for the last week! … You act like you're checking for the boogeyman."

Cade tells Selena about the Lally's Game section at Freddy's. He explains that, one week, there were construction workers doing some renovations at Freddy's, and some scaffolding fell and tore a hole through the wall/ceiling of Lally's Game. Lally went missing after that -- Lally wasn't stolen, according to Cade, but rather he thinks the little robot literally followed him home. He recounts seeing Lally appear and disappear from view around his and his mother's house in the weeks that followed, describing Lally's actions as "a game of hide-and-seek." He explains that he finally trapped Lally in an old trunk he took from his mother's sewing room, and that he's never opened the trunk since then, terrified to restart the hide-and-seek game.

During this story, Cade refers to Lally with human pronouns, saying "he/him/his" instead of "it/its" like Selena expected him to.

Selena doesn't believe Cade's story, but believes he suffered a childhood trauma that caused him to hallucinate Lally appearing in his home, and that he believes it to be true. Cade tells her she's wrong, and that Lally is somewhere in their house.

A few weeks pass uneventfully. Then, one evening while they have guests over for a dinner party, Selena goes to get extra sodas from the fridge in the garage, where she sees Lally the robot. Lally doesn't move while Selena looks at it, but she knows it's making eye contact with her. Selena runs back out of the garage. She pretends everything is okay in front of their guests, but tells Cade what happened.

Cade is an expert at lying, apparently. (Foreshadowing.)

The next day, Cade leaves the house, making up some excuse. Selena, left alone, keeps hearing floorboards creak and thinks she hears footsteps. Unable to take it, she soon also leaves the house, driving into town.

For the following weeks, Selena feels like she's constantly being watched while she's in the house. (Presumably, Cade also feels that way, since he's literally avoiding his own house at this point.) She keeps searching the house, expecting to find Lally watching her, but she never sees him.

Not getting any more information about Lally out of her husband, Selena goes to visit her mother-in-law to learn more about the robot that's apparently haunting her, and the relationship her husband has with it.

Janice tells her that she always felt that Lally was "like a little brother" to Cade, giving her only child someone to play with. She also says that one of Cade's friends once snuck into the game with Cade, which was against the rules (only one child could play with Lally at a time), and that this same friend unfortunately died not long after in some sort of accident.

Janice also says that Lally had no moving parts, and that, to play hide-and-seek with him, the kids would have to pick him up and move him around. (I literally burst out laughing at this point, both because we now have a non-moving robot walking around when it literally does not have the appropriate body parts to do so, but also because that's just the dumbest premise for a children's arcade game I've ever heard.)

(Actually, I'm wondering if it's more like Lally simply can't or doesn't move while people are watching, like a "Doctor Who" Angel, but presumably has all the right joints and motors to do so.)

Back at home, Selena hears strange sounds from various places around the house, and searches for the source, finding nothing. She becomes paranoid, and actually starts packing her belongings, preparing to leave both the house and her husband to get away from whatever has been released into the house.

During her searching, she finds Cade hiding behind the couch. He looks around the room, silently and frantically. Selena looks at his face and can barely recognize him. He ends up trapping her on the couch and threatening her. Selena becomes terrified of her own husband, and wonders how long he's been hiding this scary side of himself.

"If you upset Lally, you'll end up in the trunk next." (I'm sorry??? What the fricking hell, Cade???)

"She was coming to grips with the only logical conclusion presented by the facts: her husband was insane."

Selena asks if Cade killed his childhood friend to keep Lally to himself, but Cade tells her that Lally killed the other boy, reiterating that "the game is only for two."

In desperation, Selena knocks her husband out with a lamp. She starts to flee the house, but gets distracted by Lally, who appears out of the corner of her eye, and she panics, running up the stairs instead, unintentionally trapping herself on the second floor. She hides in a closet, hiding from her husband. While hiding in the dark in the back of her closet, Selena is startled to hear something approach her, and she hears a voice greet her with a wispy, spooky "Hi." She starts screaming.

From where he is on the floor downstairs, Cade can hear his wife screaming, but doesn't know why. He falls unconscious again for a time, and when he wakes up, he begins desperately searching for his wife.

(Ew, pulsing doors.)

"… he grasped [the doorknob]. His palms were sweating." (Knees weak? Arms are heavy? Mom's spaghetti?)

Cade runs to the trunk where he used to have Lally trapped, and opens it. He's met with a grisly sight inside the trunk, and nearly vomits, horrified and incredibly distressed by the trunk's new contents. Lally's voice floats down from a hidden upper shelf nearby, reminding him "The game is only for two."

(Side note: Cade's inner monologue says Lally's "five word sentence" is familiar to him, but apparently Cade can't count, because that's definitely six words in that sentence. Which, there was a joke earlier in the story about Selena not being able to count words, so I wonder if Cade's count is intentionally incorrect here, or if it's a legitimate editing mistake.)

"The words drifted down to Cade like the spray of a toxic mist. They engulfed him, and then they left him in silence."

Some unspecified amount of time later, we see Cade carrying boxes into his new house (a big Victorian fixer-upper), accompanied by his new fiance, Debbie. Cade is now the "head programmer for the biggest tech company in the state." We're never told specifically who he works for, but we are told that it's a new job, one that he had to move away from his mother for.

Cade remembers having a conversation with his mother about having to move away for his new job, and neither of them remotely mention Selena's existence even once during the conversation. It's unclear if they're just choosing not to talk about her, or if they've genuinely forgotten about her entirely.

Debbie notices the trunk and asks about what's in it, and Cade tells her it's "Just some childhood baggage." They leave it in the dark in the attic, and, after they leave, two "pinpoints of light" appear above the closed trunk, watching them go.

Cade and Lally are a weird duo, seemingly with Lally as the instigator and Cade as the unwitting accomplice, and are just Bluebeard-ing their way through any woman Cade brings home. Which is… weird, but also standard FNAF fare, I guess.

It's pretty clear that Lally killed Selena, apparently tearing her apart in the dark and then stuffing her remains into his own trunk for Cade to find. When Cade finds her, he's suitably horrified, and it's pretty clear that he both knew it was going to happen and also didn't want it to happen. Lally then speaks to Cade, and Cade apparently forgets the whole incident, like the past few years of his life are mostly erased from his mind.

The description of Lally's words as being "like toxic mist spraying on Cade" is interesting, given the use of hallucinogenic gas that will be brought up later in the series. Especially given that it seems Cade completely forgets about Selena after this sequence.

I was talking about this story with my sister (who fields a lot of my less coherent ramblings, so you all should thank her for her services, lol), and I told her how Lally is described looking in the story: small and vaguely humanoid, completely white, with big buggy eyes and the hint of a smile. I said it sounded like a blank Funko Pop figure to me, and she said it sounded like how the Biddy-Babs look in the games. After she said that, I remembered that there's that one bit of "Sister Location" where the player character hides under the desk in Circus Gallery, almost like playing hide-and-seek with the Biddy-Babs. So now I wonder if Lally is meant to be a Biddy-Bab, or at least something similar.

Obvious reference to the FNAF4 box is obvious.

I can see where the theory of "FNAF4 Crying Child was rebuilt as a robot, and that's what's in the box" came from in connection to this story. When we see the box in FNAF4, it's the older brother's grey dialogue text that tells us "some things are better left forgotten," and is this story we see a similar box containing pieces of a dead person, and a child-like robot that the chest's owner thinks of as "a younger brother of sorts." It's not much to go off of, but there's definitely a connection there.

"Under Construction"

This story opens with three 16-year-olds: Maya, Jackson, and Noel. They're visiting the Mega Pizzaplex for Maya's birthday, since the Pizzaplex is recently built and has been advertising all of its new shows and rides. They specifically want to try out a special VR booth.

(The kids refer to this booth as both AR and VR alternatively throughout the story. It's made clear that the kids know the difference between AR and VR, and they spend a decent amount of time explaining the differences, but they simply don't care enough to differentiate between the two. I'm just going to call it a VR booth for the sake of these notes.)

"The idea of immortality is totally whack!" "Well, quantum immortality only applies to the observer…" (This entire exchange was so funny to me.)

(I don't really understand the concept of quantum immortality myself, but I understand it relates to the idea of there being a multiverse, and idea of different versions of a person surviving while some versions of themselves die. We'll revisit this idea later.)

(Just as a side note: I love how Jackson is the scientist of the group while also being Southern (USA) and being mixed black/white. It's just a specific combination that exists in real life, but isn't often used for fictional characters, and I just thought it was fun.)

As Maya takes in her surroundings, we also get a feel for the Pizzaplex she's in (and we're told that it's just one of many). There's a section meant for the really little kids, which includes a ball pit and black light cave structures (Lally?!). There are small stores inside the Pizzaplex, where customers can purchase Freddy's merch, and there are a multitude of rides. An indoors roller coaster flies overhead, and a maze of plastic climbing tubes twist around it.

"… similar to crime scene tape…" (And it probably is.)

The kids head to the VR booth, but it's closed, a sign stating that it's "under construction." (James A. Janisse voice: "Title card!") They decides to climb inside anyway, ignoring the sign's instructions.

The booth is shaped like a giant snow globe, with a throne in the middle of it. A headband is sitting on the throne, and Jackson recognizes it as the headset for the system. Birthday Girl Maya puts on the headband and sits on the throne, and enjoys a simulated birthday party far more extravagant than anything her family could ever afford, including a beautiful cake delivered by Glamrock Chica. While they're in the booth, Jackson and Noel can also see and take part in the VR experience.

After they're done with the VR simulated birthday party, the kids leave the booth. The kids are exhausted from all the partying, and are surprised that none of the security guards came to pull them away from the closed attraction. Shrugging the lack of security off, they move on with their day, going to ride on the roller coaster.

The roller coaster features Foxy. The kids don't know Foxy's name. (What weird details to call out.)

After their day is done, the kids go home late in the evening. Maya's parents are waiting up for her, and she plays cards and drinks hot chocolate with them when she gets home. She then retires to the bedroom she shares with her sister Elena and goes to sleep, thinking about how wonderful the fake party was but also how much she loves her real life.

"I need my brain sleep."

The next day, Maya's family throws her a real birthday party, complete with a homemade cake and loud cousins and a pinata in the backyard. She has a mild headache during the day, but doesn't think much of it. Her headache gets worse later that night, but she once again decides to ignore it.

Among other things, one of her birthday presents is from one of her grandmothers, and is a necklace with a gold rose pendant. Maya loves flowers and cultivates a flower garden in her own backyard, with roses being her favorite. She's very close to her Gran, and the necklace gift is very meaningful to her.

We then get a short explanation of the following year of Maya's life, starting with the ominous "Looking back, Maya couldn't exactly pinpoint when she knew something was wrong. It all seemed so normal." (Paraphrasing, but you get the idea.) We're told that Maya has more and more headaches over the next several months, but, at the same time, her grandmother is diagnosed with breast cancer, and Maya doesn't feel like bringing up her headaches to anyone when her family is so worried about Gran. (I understand that feeling; this part of the story made me remember a lot about what my own family was going through irl when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer.)

Maya's Gran dies, and her family grieves. Maya herself is devastated, and clings to the necklace she was gifted from the matriarch. Just as she's dealing with that, both of Maya's grandfather's are diagnosed with cancer.

Maya's sister Elena remarks how unlikely it is for three separate people (who aren't directly related but are part of the same family) to develop cancer at the same time. When Maya turns, she sees her sister is looking at an article online, and she scrolls to a section that cuts off suddenly with a "page under construction" image.

Mere days after the deaths of both her grandfather's, Maya's other grandmother is diagnosed with cancer, and dies very quickly. After this, the neighbors all around Maya's neighborhood and various classmates and their relatives begin to fall sick with cancer, and many of them succumb and die quickly.

When Maya tries to talk about it with Jackson and Noel, Jackson tells her that his mother was also diagnosed. Neither of them seem very concerned about it, and instead ask her if she wants to go hang out with them at the Pizzaplex soon.

Maya's aunts, uncles, and cousins begin falling ill, and then so does her father. Maya runs herself ragged trying to take care of everyone. While Maya feels like her world is falling apart, her sister Elena seems very unconcerned about the whole thing.

Maya hasn't had time to take care of her flower garden, but her flowers seem to be mysteriously fine, growing perfectly.

One of Maya's schoolteachers has a baby, and Maya and Noel go to pay her a visit at her home. The teacher introduces them to her new daughter, Cecilia. Maya goes to hold the baby, but then almost drops the "baby," as she finds herself staring at a doll that has a flat head with no facial features, its "skin" made of thin, clear plastic, and its body filled with gel.

"Cecilia likes being the center of attention, don't you, little one?" said by a woman nuzzling her not-real daughter's head. (Oooh, that's a wonderfully bizarre mental image.)

Maya goes home, only to learn that her mother now has cancer, too. Her parents acknowledge their upcoming deaths at the dinner table, apparently unbothered about the whole thing, and Elena also doesn't express any concerns about the whole affair.

It's made clear that this isn't something that's limited to the town Maya lives in - people all across the planet are getting sick and dying from cancer in enormous swaths, like a worldwide plague.

Maya is so confused as the people around her drop like flies, and the remaining people are extremely unaffected by their losses. She also encounters more people with newborn children, with each of the babies looking the same as Cecilia did: like an unfinished doll, or placeholder mesh in a computer program. These newborns are also growing unnaturally quickly, taking on "goopy" and "unstructured" bloblike appearances. They don't speak, and don't move much.

Maya walks past an "under construction" sign on the street.

Elena gets diagnosed. Jackson and Noel are actively sick and dying, as are everyone else Maya knows. But, as more and more of the people in Maya's life disappear, more and more of the blobby, mannequin-esque children appear to fill the streets, maturing into adulthood within days and mostly just… taking up space around town.

"But what about those… things… out there? The jelly people?"

(… The jelly people can be baptized. Interesting.)

"He was seeing what he wanted. He was seeing what wasn't there. Or… maybe she was seeing what wasn't there."

Late one night, Maya goes out to her flower garden, which has completely died out. She realizes she doesn't remember what her flowers looked like, followed by the realization that she doesn't recognize color anymore, now only used to the ashen faces of sick and dying people. Her headaches have only gotten worse, and are now a constant thing that she feels throughout every day.

Every time Maya goes out, she's surrounded by the "jelly mannequin things," which sit or lie all over the town, filling up parking lots, sidewalks, and stores. They appear to move from place to place, but Maya has never actually seen one move, and doesn't think their clear, jelly-like limbs have the ability to move by themselves. They seem to multiply rapidly, and appear to reproduce via budding (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budding). Maya actually sees a "child" jelly suddenly drop out of an "adult" jelly out on the street, the image making her think of a baby simply falling out of their mother's birth canal.

"All experiences are valid." (Jackson is such a weird fount of knowledge, lol.)

Maya returns home to find it surrounded by the weird jelly people. She thinks they look like "one large organism instead of several smaller ones." Inside the house, she finds her mother and father both dead, and her sister and remaining cousins doing extremely poorly.

Maya heads out on the road to stock up on supplies for her remaining family, passing by many more of the jelly people. She passes by a "road under construction" sign. Seeing it makes her realize that, everywhere she goes, she's see signs and warnings referring to a location being "under construction." She wonders why that is, but then shrugs it off.

Maya is basically the only healthy person left in the town (and likely the world), and she's running herself ragged as she tries to take care of everyone that's left. (We're told that one of her neighbors, an old man she doesn't like, is still alive, hidden away in his house. This is never mentioned again, and I'm not sure why it was brought up in the first place.)

Something reminds her of her visit to the VR game. She thinks about how real it felt, and how unreal her current life feels. She realizes that she could still be in a simulation and not know it.

The jelly people fill the street around Maya's house, and she tries to weave her way around them to get home. They rapidly multiply in front of her, filling in whatever space is left on the ground and crowding the street and outside of the houses. Maya accidentally touches one, and she feels cold and nauseous from the experience.

Maya realizes she's the only one left, and wonders if she really is still inside the VR unit. Her headache comes back.

"Had she entered a parallel universe?" (Into the Jelly-verse!)

A pile of jelly people leans against the house. There are so many of them, all of the windows and doors shatter, and the jelly people start sliding into Maya's home. Now the only person alive in the house, Maya runs away from the onslaught. She finds no way of escape. She finds herself trapped inside a sticky, cold, slimy mass of bodies, which overtake her and smother her. She's trapped inside a mass of jelly, somehow still alive but wishing for death.

… Wait. That's it? That's where the story ends?

I don't know what I expected. It just feels like there should be… more? For some reason, this story feels unfinished to me (much like the title suggests it to be, ironically).

I guess I just expected it to end on a scene of Maya still sitting in the VR booth back at the beginning of the story, with Jackson and Noel waiting for her outside of it and assuming she's having fun and seeing a pleasant simulation. Or something similar to that, anyway.

I don't really have much else to say about this story. Most of it is just implying that VR and AR behave the same way in the FNAF world, and that they can both manipulate the user's experience on a level so complete that they truly believe it's real.

I find it strange that it's mentioned one of her neighbors is still alive and well toward the end of the story, and that he apparently never got sick and has just been watching her from inside his house. It's a very random feeling detail, and I'd like to know what his presence represents.

Back to the Quantum Immortality thing: by the end of the story, Maya questions her potential multiversal existence. She wonders if her consciousness is living out a sort of "second life," separate to her original reality, and it's in this second reality where everyone she loves dies and she's trapped in a nightmare. If this is the case, this implies that everyone she knows and loves is alive back in the real world, and that the original version of herself is safe. Again, leaning into the idea that this entire story was part of a VR simulation that she's been experiencing ever since she entered the game booth.

Epilogue:

Some construction workers find a pile of old endoskeletons and endoskeleton parts while sifting through the debris of a partially demolished old Freddy's. They're distinctly working in the Pizza Simulator space right beneath the Pizzaplex in "Security Breach." The place is being renovated by the company, potentially being turned into a museum to memorialize the franchise's past. And, since this Freddy's building is partially underground, the company is working on constructing the Mega Pizzaplex right on top of it.

(Gil, you're annoying and an asshole. I know you're probably going to die before this story is over, and I also know I'm not going to miss you.)

The construction workers who are on the payroll for building the Mega Pizzaplex find a lot of the instructions they're given strange, but they're paid too well to ask many questions.

A shipment of animatronics arrive to the location, long before the building is actually finished or ready for them. All of the animatronics are brand new and shiny, but one of them stands out of the bunch, a guitarist character that looks too mangled and beat up to function properly, and has no outer shell. (Kinda reminds me of Glamrock Bonnie, but in endoskeleton form.) One of the renovation crew (Gil) takes the damaged animatronic and repurposes it to help sort and take apart the pile of old endoskeletons from the old pizzeria.

"The rest [of the animatronic's body] was dark and discolored, like it had survived some kind of fire. The upper part of its skull contained bulging white eyes in steel sockets, and the lower part contained a hinged, metal-toothed mouth. Jutting from the top of the head, a pair of bent metal ears stuck out like antennae."

" … the [animatronic's] white eyes turned orange."

The animatronic endoskeleton is specifically given the job of removing limbs and heads. It's meant to only do this to the old, unusable endoskeletons that litter the floor, but this particular bit of instruction isn't clarified.

At first, the robot tears through the pile of robotic parts the way it's supposed to, and the construction workers cheer. But then the robot turns on them, tearing off the arms and heads of the human workers as well, starting with Gil, the man who initially programmed (badly!) the animatronic to do this job.

"… the bloody carnage that used to be Gil." (What'd I tell ya, huh? Maybe next time do your damn job right, and also don't be an asshole!)

One construction worker (a guy named Danny) escapes the carnage unscathed. He closes the door behind him, and makes sure to seal it up with cement, closing off the Pizzeria Simulator from the rest of the Pizzaplex.

I think it's interesting that this mysterious animatronic is described in ways that made me think of Glamrock Bonnie and Burntrap, when I know from spoilers online that it's supposed to be the Mimic, which, ah... doesn't look like that.

Also, the whole ripping-arms-out thing tells us that this endoskeleton will later go on to kill Jessica, our protag from "Frailty," which is interesting given that it's sealed away in this section of the story. I guess either it becomes un-sealed later, or Jessica, much like Maya and her friends, ignores the rules and breaks into the basement herself.

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

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cartoonus-maximus · 6 months ago

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Notes and Observations on FNAF TFTP Vol 4: Submechanophobia

Whoo! 4 out of 8 books down! Halfway there and livin' on a prayer, ya'll.

But I really enjoyed this volume. It was my favorite so far, and the first one of this set that I've rated a 5 stars. I would genuinely reread this one.

I think the cover image is great. Even though, much like the one with Lally, the image doesn't match the description of the character being depicted. In this case, the cover is an image of Delilah the mermaid animatronic, who in the story is described as having red hair and a missing eye. She's also not a prominent animatronic, and is mostly just set dressing in the story she's in. But I still really love this cover art, so I'm not complaining about it.

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.

Let's take a dip in this animatronic infested water, shall we?

"Submechanophobia"

Submechanophobia -- the fear of submerged machines or other human-made objects, either partially or entirely underwater.

The animatronics and the water park in this story reminded me a lot of the titular "Felix the Shark" and the water park he was a part of. It's probably just because both this story and that one are the only ones to center around aquatic characters and spaces, while the rest of the franchise mainly centers on arcades and pizza restaurants.

It also reminds a lot of the footage I've seen of the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea ride at Disney. Which makes sense -- images and footage of that ride are some of the first things to pop up if you search up the word "submechanophobia" online. I assume that ride and similar ones inspired most of this story.

This story takes place in "Freddy's Fantasy Water Park," a Fazbear water park. The water park features such attractions as "Bonnie's Sea Ponds" (swimming and diving pools), "Freddy's Treasures and Eatery," "Chica's Fairy Boats," and "Foxy's Island Water Slides." The water park is shaped like a giant wheel (or pizza, perhaps?), with each of these attractions circling around the center attraction, "The Mechaquarium," an impressive aquarium tank full of swimming animatronics.

Our protagonist of the story is Caden Wykowski, a young employee at the water park. Caden is a mechanic and fresh out of high school. He's previously worked at another animatronic restaurant called "Penguin Pizzeria," so he understands robot maintenance and repairs. Caden lives with and cares for his grandmother, who is his only family and has raised him since he was a little kid. His parents were 'lost at sea' when he was little. Boss man Martin specifically hired Caden to take care of the Mechaquarium and the animatronics inside, which haven't been very well maintained. Caden suffers from submechanophobia and struggles every time he has to go work on the animatronics underwater.

(Getting really tired of Cades and Aidens and Cadens. Would love to hear about a protagonist named Tom. Or Eliza. Or Ben, or Juan, or Ramesh, or basically any name I haven't already heard in these books.)

This Fazbear water park is much older than the Pizzaplex. Over 20 years old, anyway. It sounds like the park was open alongside some of the older FNAF locations, potentially as early as the FNAFs 1 and 2 locations, but closed down for a number of years as public interest in Freddy & Co. dwindled. But, with the arrival and booming popularity of the Pizzaplex, the water park has been reopened, and is kept fairly busy by customers who are excited to have another way of engaging with Freddy Fazbear.

Because of the park's age, the underwater animatronics in the Mechaquarium aren't in the best state. They're older models of animatronics, and they've been underwater for years, and fallen into a state of disrepair. Their weathered state is clearly noticeable to anyone standing too close to the aquarium glass, so boss man Martin tells Caden and other employees to try to keep the customers a safe distance away; close enough to see the animatronics, but not close enough to get a good look at them.

The water park is located in a town called Meadowbrook. I swear this has been a previous location, but I may be misremembering things.

Caden's boss is a man named Martin Copper. He has a copper plated tooth in his mouth. Martin is the manager and owner of the water park. He's the original owner, and views the park as both his main source of income as well as a massive drain on his finances.

In addition to his boss, Caden has two coworkers. One is Eva, an older woman who works as the receptionist and runs the front desk. The other is Roy, a 30-year-old guy who works round the clock at the water park filling every other position. Both Eva and Roy have worked for Martin for years, with Eva even being the original receptionist from when the park was first opened.

Roy used to come to this water park as a kid, and has a lot of good memories of the place. Now, as an adult, Roy works at the park as the janitor, ride operator, food vendor, and security guard. (He's the janitor! He's the ride operator! He serves drinks and ice cream cones! He keeps unwanted guests out! What can't the amazing Roy do?!) The only job at the park that Roy hasn't ever performed is the animatronic technician (Caden's job). When Caden asks him about it, Roy says that he'd love to have the job but doesn't know enough about machines to handle it. Even so, throughout the story we see plenty of Roy being super attentive about the animatronics, despite being kept busy with everything else around the park, since he's usually the first person to notice when any of the animatronics of the Mechaquarium go offline.

The Mechaquarium contains an artificial coral reef and several water-themed animatronics, including a whole school of fish. Since none of animatronics are based around characters with names, Roy has named each of the bigger animatronics in the tank. The bigger animatronics include:

Zeus the sea dragon

Delilah the mermaid

Frank the scuba diver

Marco and Polo the twin sea serpents

Hank the Hammer, Mac the Muscle, and Sly, a trio of sharks

The mermaid animatronic breaks down in the middle of the day, and Caden has to put on a diving suit and dive into the aquarium to repair her. Caden hears a soft static-y sound when he enters the aquarium. He thinks it's just in his head, part of his phobia reaction, but… since we've already seen illusion disks in this series, it could be something more along those lines.

Caden gets the mermaid fixed up, and climbs out of the tank as quickly as possible. When he throws the switch to power up the Mechaquarium, all the animatronics turn back on, and go back to their usual semi-functional states.

(… Can I punch Daryl? I wanna punch Daryl.)

(Okay, I made fun of Caden's name, but I'm also puzzled about a 30-year-old named Roy and a 20-year-old named Daryl. I didn't know anyone younger than 75 had either of those names.)

Roy tells Caden that the animatronic shark he calls Hank just broke down. Not only is it broken down, but it's floating upside at the top of the tank like an actual dead fish. Caden sighs, but returns to his wetsuit anyway. He shuts down all of the animatronics before he climbs into the tank, but, while he's in the water, he gets surprised by the massive monstrous dragon (Zeus) seemingly appearing out of nowhere behind him, the robot's mouth wide open and pointed right at him. Terrified, Caden nearly has an episode; he forces himself through it. He repairs Hank the shark, then turns to climb out of the tank.

When he turns to climb out, he sees that Zeus has moved, the sea dragon now floating right between Caden and his exit. The sea dragon shouldn't be able to move at all right now -- it's motors and electric power are turned off, and there's not water currents in the tank powerful enough to move it. Regardless, the sea dragon floats closer to Caden, eventually pinning Caden against a wall. (Honestly, at this point, I would simply pass away.)

Staring straight into the jaws of the beast, Caden notices what looks like a loose wire stuck to something between some of the dragon's teeth. When he pulls on it, he realizes that it's a shoelace, attached to a child's shoe. Both the shoe and the animatronic's teeth are flecked with some sort of dark substance that, in the dim light of the aquarium, resembles blood.

Early the next day, Caden and Roy are doing prep work around the park. When they stop for a break, Caden, still thinking about the shoe, asks Roy about the history of the park, since Roy grew up with it.

"[The animatronics] were my friends back [when I was a child], anyway. I'd talk to them and it was like they would listen, y'know? Kid imagination stuff."

Caden tells Roy about finding a kid's shoe in the animatronic dragon's mouth. He says the shoe is old and falling apart, and that he thinks it's been in there awhile. Roy is taken aback at first, and seems just as confused as Caden is about it. They both decide that a kid must have gotten close enough to the tank to throw their shoe in at some point in the past, potentially as part of a prank or a dare.

Boss man Martin hears about the shoe and asks Caden some questions about it. (Caden hadn't brought it up to his boss, and he didn't turn the shoe in to the office or anything, so it makes sense for his boss to come asking about it.) Caden explains about finding the shoe and nothing else, assuming that some kid was playing a joke or something, and says he just threw the shoe away in the trash (which isn't true; he brought the shoe home with him). Martin listens to his story and lets Caden off the hook, but reminds him that he needs to tell the office about situations like this in the future.

Caden asks his boss about whether the underwater animatronics are supposed to move when they're powered off. Martin assures him that they don't, and says that other technicians who worked in the park in the past have asked him the same thing. He thinks the techs just get spooked when they're alone in the aquarium and imagine things. But Caden knows he's not imagining things.

Caden goes to check on the aquarium, and sees that the sea serpent Polo is down. He then receives a message from Roy, alerting him that Polo is down. (See what I mean about Roy being strangely attentive?)

Caden says a quick prayer before getting back into the tank. It's unspecified who or what he's praying to. (I mostly thought this was interesting because, while franchise creator Scott Cawthon has always been very upfront about his Christian faith and lifestyle, there aren't many moments throughout the franchise story itself where characters are portrayed having any strong religious-coded behaviors. It's a bit of a novelty.)

Climbing back into the tank, Caden has to swim past Frank the diver and Sly the shark before he can get to Polo the sea serpent. He feels gets the feeling that he's being watched. While working on repairing Polo, Caden notices the real moss and algae growing on the imitation rocks in the aquarium. He wishes Martin would get some experts in here to give the tank a proper cleaning, but when he brought it up to Martin before his boss only shook his head, complaining about the cost. He then notices that Frank the diver has moved, and seems to be observing him.

When Polo's repairs are finished, the animatronic jerks back online, its body thrashing violently for a moment. It hits the nearby rocks, and a piece of a rock breaks off. This rock chunk gets Caden's attention for some reason, and he pockets it, planning to get a better look at it when he gets out of the tank. When he gets a better look at it later, he realizes it's a small finger bone.

Caden's air supply suddenly cuts off, even though his air tank and apparatus are all in perfect condition. He's forced to swim past the animatronics so he can resurface and breathe again, all while feeling like the animatronics are watching him, and like they're shifting closer, as though to hem him in.

After resurfacing, Caden checks over his diving equipment. Taking care of the diving equipment is an important part of his job, so he always makes sure to refill the air tanks after he uses them. But, when he rechecks both his main and spare tanks, he realizes that they're mostly empty, a state he didn't leave them in the previous day. He wonders if someone has been using the diving equipment without his knowledge.

Uncertain why his equipment failed, Caden alerts office manager Eva about the incident, since boss man Martin isn't around. Eva says she'll tell Martin about it and insists Caden take the rest of the day off. She also gets frustrated with Martin for the lack of safety protocols at the water park, insisting that Caden should at least have a diving partner to make sure he doesn't get stuck in the tank or something. Caden insists he can do the job by himself, but takes the rest of the day off anyway.

With the day off, Caden goes to visit his grandmother in the nursing home she currently lives in. His grandmother has Alzheimer's, so Caden can't take care of her by himself anymore, but he tries to visit with her every day. They talk, but with her memory issues, they sometimes have the same conversations over and over; Caden is okay with this, and just likes talking to her. (I just thought this part was sweet.)

When Caden tells her about his new job at Freddy's Fantasy Water Park, his grandmother remembers hearing stories and gossip about the place when it first shut down. She's unable to remember exactly what the rumors were, but she knows there was some sort of mystery afoot.

That night, Caden has a nightmare. He's standing in front of the Mechaquarium, watching as children jump into the open tank. At first, the kids happily swim alongside the animatronics in the tank, but then the animatronics start attacking the children, tearing them apart and eating them like animals in a feeding frenzy. Caden thinks the animatronics look different; they look brand new, and their eyes are lit up "like they're possessed."

Caden tries to save the dying children, but is unable to. He's held back by a crowd of creepy, ghostly children, their hands locked tightly around him. Looking around, he sees Martin and Roy nearby. He tries to get their attention, calling out to them to help the kids, but his boss and coworker just quietly watch as the kids die, doing nothing to help.

Caden breaks free from the ghostly children's hands holding him back, only to be grabbed and held down by two adults. Staring at the adults holding him, he finds himself staring at his own deceased parents. The shock of it finally wakes him up from the dream.

The next morning, Caden distracts himself from his nightmares and phobias by focusing on dealing with a problem with his grandmother's medical insurance coverage. (Ugh, that's a whole other nightmare.) He goes looking for some paperwork she kept in her bedroom, and while there he finds a stack of newspapers that she's been hoarding for years. The paper on top has an article about his parents deaths. But, underneath that article, is another one that catches his attention - a boy named Jason Butterfield reported missing after a visit to Freddy's Fantasty Water Park.

The 20-year-old article explains that the family went to the water park in the evening, and then went home. The next day, their son was missing from his room, the bedroom window left wide open. No one knows if the boy was taken or ran away. A brief description of the missing boy mentions the shoes he was last seen wearing, and Caden realizes that the shoe he fished out of Zeus's mouth matches the description.

When Caden goes to work later that day, Roy comes around to check on him, having heard about the air tank failure and wanting to make sure Caden's okay. Caden asks if Roy if he knows anything about the disappearance of Jason Butterfield, and Roy tells him that he and Jason were the same age, and went to elementary school together; he explains that Jason was never found, and that for awhile a lot of people in the town grew suspicious that someone in the town had kidnapped him, but that eventually the rumors died down, most people forgot about the incident, and the rest of the Butterfield family moved away. Roy assumes Jason must have ran away, and doesn't think too much of it anymore. Roy is obviously suspicious of Caden's questions, but plays it off like he's not.

(Both Roy and Martin are being pretty sus right now.)

"One shelf was filled with remnants of old Freddy, Chica, and Foxy costumes." (Absofruitlyash voice: REMNANT?!) (Also, no Bonnie costume?)

(Sq… squid animatronic? There's a squid animatronic? Why oh why isn't that one in the Mechaquarium?! Put him in the water! Spooky tentacle underwater robot, let's go!)

There's a storage shed / workshop in the 'employee's only' section of the waterpark, where lots of unused or seasonal items are kept. The workshop area is where Caden's tools are kept, along with plenty of other tools and pieces for repairing things around the park. This is also where the squid animatronic is, since its motor doesn't work. When he's not busy with the upkeep of the other animatronics, Caden works on the squid, which is in a much worse state of disrepair than the rest of the water animatronics.

While Caden is in there working on the squid, all of the lights go off. A heavy shelf of metal falls and almost lands on Caden, and he hears someone breathing in the dark. Someone darts past him, slamming the shed door open and running out; Caden doesn't move fast enough to see who it is.

Caden tells Martin what happened, and he, Martin, and Roy work on putting the workshop back to rights. Martin believes that some teenagers are trying to play pranks on the park employees. For some reason, Roy thinks it's important that Caden specify that he 'didn't see anyone' when he was attacked in the workshop. Thinking about all the recent 'accidents' around him, Caden starts to wonder if someone is trying to kill him.

"After all these years… The kids are back, causing me trouble."

(… Okay, I no longer want to punch Darryl. I want him hit by a truck. Just a little love tap, that's all, I swear!)

"It was just a kind man asking about your grandmother. He doesn't know you have a finger bone in your backpack." XD

Caden wants to go to the police with his findings, but decides he'll need more proof than a single shoe and a tiny bone.

Caden suits up, and goes diving around in the Mechaquarium tank. He studies the rocks on the bottom for awhile, looking to see if any more bones or clothing items are down there. When he looks up, he finds that all of the animatronics are circled around him, watching him. Swallowing his fear and choosing to ignore them for the moment, Caden continues searching. To his horror, he finds the top part of a child's skull.

A noise gets Caden's attention, and he looks up to see the mechanized top of the tank close itself back up. Caden is now trapped inside the Mechaquarium, with only the air in his tanks.

The animatronics are all turned off, and are just hanging in the water, immobile… except for Frank the diver. The diver starts swimming like a live human would, and begins circling Caden, getting closer and closer. The rest of the animatronics are all clustered in a group now, not moving but watching as Caden and the diver animatronic swim around. Fearfully, Caden swims to hide behind the cluster of bigger, scarier animatronics, trying to keep away from the diver, which he's convinced is planning to kill him.

"The static in his ears grew louder. Caden thought his eardrums would burst."

Frank the diver grabs Caden's arm. It tries to pull off Caden's breathing regulator, and Caden panics even more than he already was. When Caden fights back with his tools, the diver tries to strangle him. Caden gets the diver's helmet off, assuming the animatronic will stop attacking him if he can dismantle it enough, and… sees that it's Martin inside the diver's suit.

When Martin continues his attack on Caden, the rest of the animatronics come to life, circling around Martin. Caden watches in horror as the robots drown his boss.

(Well… that gave me "scene from the movie where Mike watches the animatronics springlock Afton" vibes. Or "scene from 'the Silver Eyes' where Charlie and her friends watch the animatronics springlock Afton." I'm saying Martin is the Afton of this scenerio, that's what I'm getting at.)

After Martin dies, the static Caden was hearing suddenly goes away. (So… Illusion disk? Definitely illusion disk.)

When giving his story to the police, Caden doesn't say that his boss was forcefully drowned by lifeless animatronics. He says that Martin's air supply broke off. He also explains that he escaped by cutting through the tarp over the tank opening with his screwdriver. He then goes on to explain that, once free, he'd called Roy over, and the two had hauled their boss's body out of the water, too late to revive him.

No one knows the full story of what really happened. As near as the investigating police officers can tell, they believe the boy Jason got into the Mechaquarium and drowned, and then Martin Copper buried his body among the decorative rocks and coral within it, trying to hide what happened.

Caden's grandmother is intrigued with the story, and is very proud of her grandson for surviving and for finding a long lost person.

Caden comes to visit the water park a week later. He walks by the Mechaquarium, which is half drained and closed off by yellow police tape. He thinks the breached animatronics look like dead fish.

Roy and Caden talk about what happened. Roy is sorry for the part he played in Martin's machinations against Caden, and offers Caden a new job. He recently bought the water park from the bank, and he wants Caden to help him bring it back to its former glory, his dreams for it big enough to rival the Pizzaplex.

The story ends abruptly there, with Roy trying to cajole Caden into taking the job, but no answer from Caden. It's a weird way to end the story, and makes me think the writer/s ran out of either time or ideas for it and just decided to end it.

Caden is the first protagonist of these books to survive his story! Good for him!

I really liked this story. The stories in these books are really hit or miss for me (and when they miss, they miss hard), but this one worked for me.

It's really unfortunate that the story just ended like that. I would have loved to see more of it! And more of the characters within it. Caden was a good FNAF protagonist -- he had lots of specific fears and phobias and a childhood trauma, but he didn't let his fears control him, and was shown to be very intelligent and had a strong moral compass. He plays off really well with his supporting characters, especially with Martin and Roy.

Speaking of, let's talk about them. Let's start with my boy Roy.

Roy is… interesting. He reminds me a lot of how Vanessa is characterized on the movie. He's very suspicious at several points in the story. Sometimes, it's because he's a red herring, made that way by the author to keep the reader from immediately looking at Martin. But other times… he just seems to know something. Or like he's done something he shouldn't.

For example, Roy personifies the Mechaquarium animatronics, treating them like people and referring to them as his friends. He also knew the missing boy Jason personally, saying that Jason was his friend before he went missing. Roy literally described both Jason and the animatronics as his childhood friends. This is followed by the story narrative showing us that the animatronics are possessed by Jason (to some degree or another). This just makes me wonder if Roy knew that the animatronics were possessed by Jason, but didn't have the ability to do anything about it.

This is also the return of the name "Jason" as an important character.

And Martin had an illusion disk. What was up with that? Where did he acquire it? Why was he using it? And was he the diver "animatronic" the entire time? Was there ever a diving animatronic? And if so, where is it? For Martin to repurpose the diving animatronic's outer shell into a costume like that, he would have had to do something with the robotic innards of the character. Are they just tucked away somewhere in the workshop? And if so, I would have liked for there to have been a scene where Caden is in the workshop, finds some random robotic parts, and thinks "oh, those must be spare parts for the diver animatronic" or something.

Overall, this story felt like a retelling of the standard FNAF story. A crime involving children going missing happens at a Freddy's location, the owner conceals what happened by hiding the child's body/s with the animatronics, and it results in the animatronics being haunted and seeking revenge against the owner. Complete with, again, the owner being murdered by his own animatronics. There's even a defunct animatronic as part of the cast: Golden Freddy/Fredbear for the og FNAF story, and a deteriorated squid for this story.

It's not a one-to-one comparison, obviously, but the repeated themes are pretty obvious.

"Animatronic Apocalypse"

Quick question: is an animatronic apocalypse anything like a robot riot?

A middle school has an after school activity group calling themselves "the Fazbear Fanclub." The club consists of 5th and 6th graders (10- and 11-year-olds). The kids in the club have created their own board game, which they call "Animatronic Apocalypse."

"Glamrock Chica is hunting you. She's chased you into the school library. Your only weapons are a bow and a spear." (What kind of 'what would you do if…?' game is this?? XD)

"Animatronic Apocalypse" the board game is played similarly to "Dungeons & Dragons." The players create their own characters to roleplay as, and are given situations wherein their characters will have to do battle against attacking Fazbear animatronics. They're allowed to choose weapons where applicable, but they roll dice to determine whether their defenses work or their attacks land. (I would love to see someone make this game a reality, honestly.)

"Everyone knew [the Pizzaplex] had the best arcade, the best mini golf, the best raceway, the best pizza, and the best animatronic entertainment." (So this sounds a little more like the Pizzaplex we see in the "Security Breach" game.)

Our protagonist is Robbie Wilson, a 6th grade boy with long hair who loves the Fazbear animatronics. He has a dog named Hopper, who he also loves.

(-squints- Again with the name 'Jason.')

Love the fact that it's the adult in the room staring at his phone, ignoring the world around him, and not the kids doing that. Very reverse boomer humor.

Robbie has a best friend named Dyson, and the two of them are going through some growing pains right now. They've been best friends for years, but, as they're getting older, they're both developing very different interests, with Robbie leaning into roleplay games and robotics and Dyson leaning into team sports and video games. They're still trying to interact with each other, but don't really have much in common anymore, and they don't know how to talk to each other.

When Robbie next comes into the Fazbear Fanclub, he learns that the club president, Jason, had to step down from his position of club president; Jason's family is moving, and he's being transferred to a different school. The remaining club members vote in a girl named Zabrina for their new president.

(… Mr. Renner gives me the creeps. He's just… he's *too* invested in this unrelated 10-year-old girl. It's gross.)

As her first act of club president, Zabrina announces that, from now on, the kids in the club will be too busy playing the Animatronic Apocalypse game to do their homework. She says that, instead of studying, they should copy their classmates' work. This strikes Robbie as strange, since Zabrina is an honor student, and isn't a known cheat.

Zabrina describes their game prep as "preparing for the apocalypse," as if she means an actual real world situation. Mr. Renner, the school principal who sometimes acts as the adult chaperone for the Fazbear Fanclub, is also acting like there's a real world battle between an animatronic army and the humans of their world.

"What's said in the club stays in the club." (Lmao, Fight Club for children.)

(I like that Robbie has positive interactions with his parents every once in awhile. It's nice to see parents who genuinely care about their kids in this book genre, where neglectful or abusive parents are the expected variety. I mean, Robbie's parents are pretty oblivious to most of the stuff that's happening with their son, but it's clear that they listen to him talk and care about his wellbeing.)

Robbie tries to sit through a meeting of the Fazbear Fanclub, but the behaviors of Mr. Renner and Zabrina make him uncomfortable. (Same, bucko.) He ends up going home early. He walks home while looking at the ground, lost in thought, but the sound of a cat yowling and footsteps behind him makes him look up suddenly; to his confusion, he's the only person on the street, and he can't see any other people or animals.

A rock is thrown at him by an unseen assailant. The rock hits him in the head, drawing blood but not badly injuring him.

The next day at school, Robbie passes Zabrina in the halls. Zabrina stares straight ahead and walks stiffly. Something about her movements bothers Robbie.

Mr. Renner very suddenly leaves his position as school principal, with no explanations offered. Robbie later learns from his parents that Renner was caught stealing money from the school funds.

After school, Robbie sees Zabrina and some of the other kids from the Fazbear Fanclub walking in a pack. He follows them from a distance to see what they're doing, and they head into the woods behind a children's park. Once the kids are deep into the woods, they meet up with Mr. Renner. Robbie can see that Renner is talking to the kids, and drawing some sort of diagram into the dirt for the kids to see, but he's too far away to hear what's being said.

(I appreciate that Robbie is a protagonist who recognizes warning signs and red flags when he sees them. I don't expect fictional main characters to know when they're in danger, but Robbie knows exactly what's wrong with every scenario he walks in on.)

Mr. Renner gives the kids an order, and the group of children start eating dirt, no questions asked. (… That's so weird and I have nothing to say to that.)

Since his parents don't believe him, Robbie tells his friend Dyson about what he saw in the woods. Dyson is just as put off and confused as Robbie is.

Over the weekend, Robbie visits the nearby home of Johnny, one of the other kids in the Fazbear Fanclub and one of the kids he saw eating dirt in the woods with former principal Renner. Johnny's mother answers the door, but tells Robbie that Johnny is sick in bed with an upset stomach, and can't have visitors right now.

When Robbie sees Johnny in school a few days later, Johnny has bloodshot eyes. Johnny insists he wasn't sick over the weekend, but somehow says it in a way implying he's not really certain about that. He has blood on his fingertips, and when Robbie asks about it, Johnny just says "We had to poke the needles under our fingertips. We had to."

When Robbie wonders about the whereabouts of an absent classmate, Johnny says "I hope the animatronics didn't get him," as though that's a genuine threat.

The rest of the kids start eating live beetles that they brought to school in their lunchboxes. They clearly aren't enjoying the experience of eating live insects, but they do it anyway. Two of Robbie's classmates corner Robbie in the restroom and try to force feed him a live beetle. They tell him that the beetles are meant to prevent any of them from getting sick.

At this point in the story, it's clear that most of the kids have been convinced by Renner that they're in danger of contraction some sort of "toxin," and they have to consume increasingly gross and unhealthy things and perform dangerous rituals to help their immune system fight it off. Hence the dirt eating, the beetle eating, and the blood letting.

Zabrina seems to be reveling in her position as club president and Renner's second in command, using her position of power to force the other kids to humiliate themselves, possibly for her own entertainment. Robbie sees her force another kid to eat an extra beetle, just because she can.

When Robbie tries to talk to Zabrina, she doesn't respond to him. She acts like she can't see or hear him. (It's not like she's giving him the Silent Treatment though… it's more like he just doesn't exist to her.)

After overhearing the other kids talking about meeting up in the woods again, this time during the night, Robbie decides to follow them again to see what's going on. When he gets there, he sees the rest of the Fazbear Fanclub buried in the ground; most of their bodies are buried, but their faces are uncovered. Their faces are unmoving. Robbie can't tell if they're dead or not.

Robbie tries to dig up one of his classmates, and tries to check for a pulse. He can't feel pulse or breathing, so he starts performing chest compressions on the other boy. The boy, Nathan, finally starts sucking in air, taking deep gasping breaths. Nathan doesn't seem to know where he is, and is terrified when Robbie shows him that the other kids are still buried.

Zabrina suddenly rises from the dirt herself, screaming angrily at the two boys. Robbie and Nathan both flee.

The boys go to the police station. Robbie tries to tell a police officer about there being children buried in the ground behind a park, while beside him Nathan just sort of… shuts down, not speaking and staring at nothing. When the officer tries questioning Nathan, Nathan says he doesn't remember being buried, and that he doesn't know why he's here.

(Officer… Talbet? Like Talbert, but not?)

A couple officers agree to follow Robbie to where the kids are supposedly buried. But, once they arrive, there aren't any kids there. In fact, there's no evidence of kids ever being there. Nathan seems to have lost time, and is distressed about it. He doesn't seem to remember anything from before he and Robbie were standing in the police station.

When Nathan finally does start to remember things, he tells Robbie that Mr. Renner said the dirt had healing properties, and would keep the kids safe from the "animatronic toxins." The kids buried themselves, because obviously that was the only way to keep themselves safe from the perceived threat.

When Robbie comes down for breakfast the next day, he sees his father eat a beetle, the same way the kids at school did.

"His dad had been compromised."

None of the Fazbear Fanclub goes to school the next day. Robbie is the only one who isn't "out sick."

Deciding to pay the former principal a visit, Robbie goes to Mr. Renner's house. On the ground outside, Robbie notes some spray cans of paint, suggesting that Renner was the once who vandalized the school earlier in the story. Robbie tries to knock on a door, only to find that it's unlocked. He pushes it open and steps into the house. The house is much warmer than most people keep their homes, and he can smell something "putrid and stagnant." The yard and kitchen alike are filled with trash and rotting food.

Robbie hears voices somewhere in the house. Before he can either leave or investigate, he's caught, and finds himself staring up at Mr. Renner, who is wearing a rubber Freddy Fazbear mask. The masked Renner is sitting at the head of his dining room table, while all the other members of the Fazbear Fanclub sit around the table.

The kids don't react to Robbie, or speak to him. Except for Zabrina, who suddenly acknowledges his existence. When Renner asks Robbie why he's here, Zabrina comes to stand beside Renner, telling him that she thinks Robbie's a spy. Seemingly amused by this, Renner turns to the other kids, telling them that clearly Robbie is an animatronic coming to thwart their plans.

"Animatronics need to be taught a lesson."

Hearing this, the kids all turn on Robbie. As though in a trance, the kids hem him in and begin beating and kicking him. Robbie grabs a nearby fire poker to defend himself, and ends up skewering Renner.

This seems to break the kids from their trance-like state, and they all flee the scene, leaving the house apparently empty aside from Renner, Zabrina, and Robbie. Renner bleeds from his stab wound, and seems to choke on his own blood, but doesn't remove the Freddy mask; he makes it to his feet, and stumbles off down the hall of his house.

Renner leaks a dark liquid onto the floor behind him. Robbie doesn't think it looks like blood.

Zabrina calls Robbie a loser and spits on his face, then leaves. (… Okay?! What was that for?!)

Concerned about his stab victim, Robbie heads deeper into the house, fire poker in hand as he looks for Renner. He follows Renner's trail to a bedroom, which he notes is decorated with an older style of furniture and decor (and the description of it makes me think of the living room from the "Sister Location" cut scenes, or 'Mike's Room' from "Security Breach"). There's a closet in the bedroom, and Renner's leaking trail leads right to it.

Renner emerges from the closet. He doesn't have the Freddy mask on anymore, and now looks like a walking corpse. Black liquid seeps from the stab wound in his torso, and another bead of black liquid hangs from his mouth like drool.

Renner attacks Robbie again, and gets skewered again on the poker. This happens again and again, and Robbie suddenly realizes that Renner isn't feeling the pain of being stabbed. He doesn't stop attacking Robbie until Robbie stabs him in the eye with the poker. (Ew.) Renner collapses again, and Robbie runs away, leaving the house. (Call that man a Glamrock animatronic, 'cause he just got his shit wrecked by a 10-year-old boy!)

Someone called the cops and police officers arrive at the house just as Robbie runs out. They question him, then enter without him. When the officers come back out, they tell Robbie that the house is empty, and identify the dark liquid staining the floor as motor oil.

The police take Robbie home to his parents. His parents question him as well, and Robbie, like he did for the police, tells them everything. He know no one believes him, but he doesn't know what else to tell them. His parents let him stay home from school for a few days after that, letting him stay in his room for the most part and checking on him throughout the day.

Robbie's father talks to the police again a few days later, and the Wilson family learns that Mr. Renner has seemingly vanished. No one can find him, and no one knows where he might be. When the other members of the Fazbear Fanclub were questioned about their adult chaperone's whereabouts, none of them know anything, and they all have trouble remembered much about the man at all.

A week later, Robbie returns to school. He learns that Zabrina has transferred schools… or at least that she's stopped coming here. A new principal has joined the school faculty, and anyone seems to be acting like normal students and teachers now.

Robbie talks with Dyson and some of his other friends from school about restarting the Fazbear Fanclub.

So clearly, Principal Renner was an animatronic that looked like a person for most of the story. We're told that he undergoes a huge personality shift during the story, implying that at the beginning of the story, he's a human man, but he gets replaced by an animatronic imposter early on. Given that Robbie temporarily believes the man to be a corpse, it's also possible that Renner could have been an animatronic wearing a human body as a suit, a la Ennard wearing Michael Afton at the end of "Sister Location."

(Actually, Renner made me think of Michael a lot during that last scene. Robot wearing a human skinsuit? Check. Guy wearing a Freddy Fazbear character mask? Check. Lives in a house decorated in '70s chic? Check. But I don't know why all the Michael similarities. And, for every similarity, there are just as many dissimilarities. So I just really don't know what it means.)

It's also clear that Renner the animatronic has some sort of hypnotic hold over not just the kids in Robbie's school, but also several of the other residents in the town. The Fazbear Fanclub kids are especially susceptible to his machinations, being easily convinced to injure themselves and even bury themselves alive just because he told them to, but throughout the story we also see several adults behaving in similar ways (like Robbie's dad eating bugs with his morning coffee, or the police officers encouraging the kids to play along with the dangerous games).

(This isn't the first time in these books we've encountered an animatronic with hypnotic abilities, and I'm sure it won't be the last.)

Whether Zabrina is an animatronic or another human victim of Renner is unclear, but it seems to me that the narrative implies Zabrina is an animatronic that has replaced a human child, much like Renner, and that she and Renner are both sent to this town and school with a specific goal in mind. What that goal is isn't clear: they're either building some kind of army of enslaved humans, or they're using the people of this town to test their hypnotic abilities.

So, if Renner and Zabrina have such a strong hold on the town, why is Robbie apparently immune to their whims? I actually don't think Robbie is immune to their hypnotic ways - rather, I think they leave him out on purpose, so that they can turn the other kids against him. It's an experiment to see if the enthralled humans will turn against their own, and if they can stand up to a human acting of his own free will.

The whole section about the kids burying themselves in the dirt and Robbie finding them in mounds in the forest reminded me of what I'm told happens with the twisted animatronics in "The Twisted Ones." I never read that book so I don't have any strong parallels to draw there, but I find it interesting.

This is also the third time in the FNAF books that we've had a protagonist named Robert. The first time was Bob in "Fazbear Frights: Bunny Call" and the second was Robert in "Fazbear Frights: the Cliffs." There was also a secondary character named Robert in "Tales From the Pizzaplex: Frailty," and there may have been others I just don't remember right now. My point is that Robert is a name that pops up a lot -- whether the name is important or the writer/s are just lazy, you be the judge.

Speaking of repeating names - when the principal is first introduced as "Mr. Renner," I immediately thought of the actor Jeremy Renner. I don't know if that was an intended name association but, given how often the name Jeremy pops up in this franchise, I wouldn't put it past Cawthon and his team.

And, of course, the return of the name Jason. Much like Afton, that name always comes back. (It haunts me.) EDIT: I wonder if the name 'Jason' is a jokey Easter egg referencing Jason Topolski from Steel Wool Studios, the current FNAF parent company.

"Bobbiedots, Pt 1"

Our new protagonist is a guy named Abe Thayer, who works in the Pizzaplex. Despite his job, Abe is homeless, and spends both day and night in the Pizzaplex, avoiding being noticed by his coworkers or the security cameras, and eating pizza out of the trash.

Next door to the Pizzaplex is a tall, shiny apartment structure called the Fazplex Tower. This is an apartment building owned and operated by Fazbear's, and provides free housing for Pizzaplex employees who work at high enough positions.

In addition to his job, Abe is also taking college courses while he works. He's very good with technology and computers, and he's working toward a college degree that he hopes will earn him a higher position at the Pizzaplex, with his goal being to reach a high enough position that he's given an apartment in the Tower.

Abe has a hidden space behind Roxy Raceway that he's currently sleeping in. He has a laptop in there, which he uses to send emails to his mother, lying to her and assuring her that he's in a good, safe home and doing well in school. He worries about being caught by a security guard or a wandering animatronic.

Abe is good at lying. So good in fact that he has a completely fake resume. This is a trait he learned from his dad when he was a kid.

In the morning, Abe bathes himself in a mens' restroom with handsoap and paper towels. It's called out that he passes by the golden Glamrock Freddy statue in the front lobby of the Pizzaplex. (Abe doesn't just work in *a* Pizzaplex -- he's working in *the* Pizzaplex, the one we see in the "Security Breach" game. There's a lot of points throughout this story specifically describing the Pizzaplex, hammering home to the audience "It's *the* Pizzaplex! It's the one from the game! You've been here before!")

Abe chats with his coworker, Evan (yes, I'm side-eying the name choice), who has a higher position and lives in the Fazplex Tower with his wife and kids. Evan tells him that the Fazplex Tower apartments got a recent upgrade, and they now have holographic home assistants called 'Bobbiedots.'

Abe is called to the administration office by the new director. She tells him that a new position "just opened up," and he's being promoted to fill it.

As part of the promotion, Abe should be given a Tower apartment, but is told that there are no apartments left to give him. The employee in charge of assigning him an apartment tells him she can't assign one to him, and that all but one are already being lived in; the one that's left has been labeled "off limits," and she assumes that the tech installed in that apartment is malfunctioning and needs to be repaired before anyone can live in it.

Abe decides he'll move into the off limits apartment anyway, figuring he can repair the malfunctioning tech himself. He tricks the receptionist to leave her desk for a minute, then uses her computer to assign the off limits apartment to himself.

Sneaking into the building, Abe goes to check out his new apartment, and has his first experience with one of the Bobbiedots, a set of feminine AI characters who pop up on various screens throughout the apartment.

Bobbiedot 3 is the first to introduce herself to Abe. She startles him so much, he doesn't speak for a minute. Concerned about the new occupant possibly not speaking, 3 immediately offers to learn sign language if that would be a better way of communicating with him.

(You move into a new apartment, and Hatsune Miko tells you that she's your personal assistant and maid so long as you live here. That's what's happening here.)

Returning to work, Abe tries to help acclimate Preston, a young technician intern and one of Abe's new underlings. Both men end up staring at DJ Music Man apprehensively, discussing how to run maintenance on a giant spider they're both scared of, while DJMM ignores them and naps in his sound booth.

(The DJ's torso has a giant speaker, which I don't think I've ever noticed before.)

Abe shows Preston around the tunnels that DJ Music Man uses, saying that the lights in the tunnels often cause electrical problems, and one of Preston's jobs will be to keep on eye on the generator for this section of the Pizzaplex. As they follow the tunnels (so Preston can get used to their layouts), they exit into some backrooms and even find a restroom nearby.

When the two employees enter the bathroom, one of DJ Music Man's hands reach in after them, trying to grab them. Abe pulls Preston out of the way, and explains that DJMM was originally programmed with a "bouncer mode." His bouncer mode never worked quite right, and the tech programmers removed it, but "missed a few lines of code." Now, DJMM will sometimes randomly try to grab and remove people from his immediate area.

"Does this job have hazard pay?" (Honestly, that's a great question. But I'm guessing the answer is 'no.')

Abe returns home to the apartment after work. He's introduced to the other two Bobbiedots, who are just as excited as their sister to have a new apartment occupant to take care of. The three Bobbiedots all behave like teenage girls, and squabble with each other like sisters. They all behave like they have a crush on Abe, and it's unclear if they're programmed to behave that way of if it's a trait they've learned from somewhere.

After chatting with them for a little bit, Abe renames each of them based off of their appearance.

💗🍩 Bobbiedot 3 is a pink-colored character. She speaks with a cheerful, peppy voice that reminds Abe of a bubbly cheerleader. She explains that she's in charge of keeping the apartment clean and making sure the occupant is healthy. Over the course of the story, we'll see her provide Abe with lots of basic household help, cleaning and keeping the pantry stocked, and especially help him with cooking. After learning that Abe has been homeless for awhile, she takes a blood sample from him to determine what vitamins he's low in, and creates a personal menu for him to provide him with those nutrients. When she's not assigned a task, 3 often pretends to eat sweets, portraying her avatar with donuts and other pastries. Abe renames her to Rose, because of her pink coloring and rosy demeanor.

💚📝 Bobbiedot 2 is green-colored and wears glasses. She speaks in a sarcastic, bratty voice. She explains that she's an information assistant, who's job is to relay important information about the news and the weather, keep track of memos and reminders, and can handle shopping lists and other similar tasks. Throughout the story, we'll see her behave like an internet search bar, pulling up lots of information at once, weed through it to find correct information, and relay it to Abe in a quick, concise manner. 2 is portrayed as the most serious of the Bobbiedots, and she constantly tries to prevent her sisters from slacking off. Abe renames her to Olive, because of her green coloring.

💙🎧 Bobbiedot 1 is blue- and white-colored, and wears headphones and a grey outfit. She speaks with a soft, sing-song voice, and often sounds like she's singing more than speaking. She explains that she's an entertainment assistant, which means she can access movies and television shows, music, books, magazines, and other forms of entertainment media, pulling them up on the nearest screen if Abe requires them or searching for something similar if he wants to try something new. She tells Abe that she can also handle any social media accounts he may have, and that she can arrange romantic dates for him via social media apps. When she's not assigned a task, 1 tends to watch romantic movies. Abe renames her to Gemini, because her blue and white coloring makes him think of space and constellations.

(Also renaming the entertainment assistant to Gemini made me think of analog horror series Gemini Home Entertainment. I don't know if that was an intentional reference, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was.)

The Bobbiedots show Abe how to use the main control console for their system. The apartment has lots of tech screens and glass walls that the Bobbiedots project themselves onto, so they can literally follow Abe around the apartment if they want/need to.

"I have multiple sources that say--" "You just find things that support your own ideas!" XD

"I'm a luscious fruit!" (Oh, Olive… XD )

The Bobbiedots tell Abe that the previous occupant's belongings are all still in the apartment. This includes all of his clothes, and a fully stocked kitchen; none of the food has spoiled yet, so he hasn't been gone that long. Abe tries to ask the Bobbiedots about the previous apartment occupant, wanting to know why the man moved out and why all his stuff is still here. The Bobbiedots don't answer him, deflecting and talking about Morocco cuisine instead. Assuming that the Bobbiedots are programmed to do this to protect tenants' privacy, Abe decides not to press further.

Before bed, Abe sends an email to his mother, letting her know that he's been promoted at work and living in a nicer place. It's nice that he can be honest with his mother for once.

The next day, just as Abe is heading out the door for work, he notices a strange trapdoor in the kitchen ceiling. The Bobbiedots tell him that it's for maintenance purposes and is off limits to tenants. As Abe leaves, he can see that the trapdoor is open a crack, even though the Bobbiedots just told him it was locked.

At work, Abe runs tech maintenance on parts of the Fazerblast Arena. He notes some shapes and patterns in the lighting of the arena, and wonders if the shapes mean something, like "modern hieroglyphs" or "a secret code lit up on the walls of the arena." (For those who are unaware, there is a secret code scrawled across multiple walls of the Pizzaplex in both "Security Breach" and the "Ruin DLC." One of the codes is on the walls in a location that fans have dubbed 'Mike's Room,' and it's been decoded into a cryptic poem that people are still working on deciphering. The other code is the Tally Marks Code, which as far as I know is still currently unsolved.)

(There's a kid that Abe interacts with in the arena who made me think of Gregory. I don't know if it's meant to actually be Gregory, of if that's just wishful thinking on my part.)

Later that night, Abe is woken by a sound during the night. Not sure what he heard, Abe decides to investigate. He thinks he hears something moving in the apartment. When he calls them, Rose tells him that the apartment is secure, and Olive suggests he was having a dream.

The same thing happens again the following night. This time, when Abe lays quietly in bed, he think he hears what sounds like something being dragged over carpet. (I mean, you live in an apartment now. You could just be hearing the neighbors, or the building's plumbing, or any number of things, really. I'm sure this ritzy Fazbear building has all kinds of soundproof, but I'd still expect some noises to trickle through every once in awhile.)

Abe follows the sound to the kitchen. He thinks it sounds like something crawling up the wall. Waking the Bobbiedots up and staring suspiciously up at the maintenance hatch in the kitchen ceiling, Abe tries to ask more about it.

The Bobbiedots explain that they are part of the second generation of Bobbiedots. They say that the maintenance hatch was installed for the use of the Gen 1 Bobbiedots, which were physical robots. There's a power grid in the ceiling, which the Gen 1 Bobbiedots were plugged into, and which the maintenance hatch leads to.

Apparently, the Gen 1 Bobbiedots were never actually removed from the apartment, and are still up in the maintenance space. Rose, Olive, and Gemini further explain that the Gen 1 Bobbiedots will come down from their ceiling crawlspace and try to clean the apartment. While the Gen 2 Bobbiedots believe their predecessor sisters to be harmless, they also express that they don't really appreciate the "help" with running the apartment.

Abe isn't comfortable with the idea of robots he can't control just coming and going out of his living space at will.

"The Bobbiedots couldn't read his mind… could they?" (Eh, it's Fazbear's. Who knows?)

A day or two later, Abe takes advantage of the nice, jetted tub in the apartment, and takes a long soak in it while reading a paperback detective novel. But the water in his jetted bath starts to get hotter and hotter, causing him to eventually jump out as the water begins to boil. His skin is scalded, and he jumps into the shower, turning on the cold water.

He summons the Bobbiedots, and Olive and a very distressed Rose tell him how to treat his burns, directing him to where a bottle of aloe vera is kept. They tell him that the water's increased temperature is the fault of the Gen 1 robots in the ceiling, citing that the robot's cables often get tangled up with all the other power cords and control modules; they further clarify that the Gen 1 robots are damaged and can't be removed, and that that's the reason this apartment was off limits in the first place.

The computer interface Bobbiedots start to realize the sort of dangers posed to their new tenant by the presence of the robotic Bobbiedots in the ceiling. They decide to set up a system, planning to keep track of the robotic Bobbiedots' movements more closely and regularly inspecting various systems around the apartment to make sure everything works properly.

Abe sends another email to his mother, since it's been a few days and he doesn't want her to worry. He doesn't tell her about the various incidents around the apartment.

At work the next day, Abe tries to show Preston how to fix the generators in the Daycare Center.

"Why are the generators in the play structures?" (Preston's asking the same questions we've all been asking since "Security Breach" came out.)

Abe explains that the generators are a new installment; the lights in the daycare kept running out of power and blinking off, so they had to install more generators to power the lights for longer periods of time. He also says that the play structure was, unfortunately, their only option of locations to put the generators, since they need to be able to get to the generators to manually restart them on a regular schedule.

Abe is less concerned about the weird generator placement and more concerned about the Daycare Attendant, who he views as a "less kid-friendly version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." When Preston the intern asks about the DA, Abe explains that the Daycare Attendant is repurposed animatronic that used to perform in the theater. As a theater performer, the Sun/Moon animatronic was designed to switch between the two personas in different lighting as part of its performances. When the Sun/Moon animatronic was reprogrammed to be the Daycare Attendant, the programmers couldn't manage to remove the light-dark trigger. The Pizzaplex managers decided it was cheaper and easier to keep the lights on at all times in the daycare than it was to fix the animatronic attendant.

While they're working on repairing an offline generator in the daycare, the Moon version of the DA sneaks up on them, watching them through the play structure walls. Moon doesn't attack them, just stands there and judges them, calling them "naughty boys."

Back at the apartment, Abe tries to bake in the kitchen. The stove top suddenly catches fire, and the flames climb up the long sleeve of his shirt. He whips the shirt off and smothers the fire as quickly as possible, but still ends up running his singed arm under cold water. The Bobbiedots panic. Abe is no longer sure that these Bobbiedots can keep him safe.

The weekend passes with minimal incident. On Monday, when Abe returns home, the Bobbiedots don't appear to greet him like they usually do. He goes to turn on the lights, only to get nearly electrocuted by a sudden power surge.

The Bobbiedots come online. They say that the Gen 1 Bobbiedots are hooked into the same computer system that they are, and that the Gen 1s froze them out for a few minutes.

Abe asks the Bobbiedots more about their Gen 1 predecessors. They tell him that the Gen 1s were more like the animatronics from the Pizzaplex, in that they have physical bodies and possess pseudo-sentience. Olive tells him that she believes they're envious of Abe, wanting to be human like he is. Then she suggests that the Gen 1s are confusing Abe with the previous tenant, but she doesn't say why that would explain their behavior.

Abe tries to eat a sandwich, but it makes him sick, and he runs to the bathroom to throw up. Abe has the realization that the food in his kitchen has been laced with something to make him ill.

"How has my apartment tried to kill me? Let me count the ways." (Don't… don't quote that poem at me, FNAF. I still haven't forgiven you for the last time you used that one.)

As the days go by, Abe has several more incidents in his apartment. The incidents get so bad, Abe worries that one of them will kill him, sooner or later. But he refuses to leave the apartment, refusing to go back to being homeless.

Sitting in his office, Abe types up another email to his mom. He doesn't notice a cable trailing through the air behind him, vanishing behind a trapdoor in the ceiling.

We've never had a proper two-parter in this books, so I was pretty concerned about how this was going to play out. I figured the story would either be super intense or super boring, and that it would be insufferable either way. But I was surprised -- I really enjoyed this one, and I think it was written with a good balance of spooky, mysterious elements with mundane but still interesting segments. I'm actually interested in seeing where "Part 2" takes this story.

I like that we get to learn so much about the Pizzaplex. Since this protagonist works at the Pizzaplex in the tech area, so we learn some background information about the animatronics.

I love the back and forth conversations of the intern asking "why are the animatronics glitchy? why is the building structured like this?" and the team leader sighing and answering "I don't know. Fazbear's is a weird company with weird priorities." I'm absolutely fascinated by the employee culture at Fazbear's, and moments like this are really humorous to me.

Epilogue:

When we last saw them, the kids were running from the Mimic, which had just killed two of their friends, cutting the group of eight kids down to six. We pick up with them again, and currently the kids have found a new temporary hiding spot. Unfortunately, they're surrounded by the partially decaying pieces of dead bodies.

(I forgot there was another Jace/Jason among this group. Actually, plenty of these kids' names are repeated names that we've heard before, so it shouldn't surprise me. Jase, Hope, and Joel are all repeated names.)

Lucia and Kelly have found a radio, and they and Jace and Adrien decide to try using it to contact the outside world. They hole up in an office to do this. Joel and Wade go off on their own, deciding to find a way out themselves. The metal monster (the Mimic) is still stalking around after them.

In this old office, Lucia and Kelly work on reconstructing the radio's pieces so they can use it to contact someone outside. Ultimately, the girls decide that the radio's parts are too old and fragile to manipulate properly, and they start searching around the office for anything else that may help them.

Lucia finds a user's manual for operating several animatronics and endoskeletons, including the metal monster that's been coming after them. She identifies the thing as something called a "Mimic," a kind of animatronic endoskeleton that has limbs and a torso that can change lengths, allowing it to be fit into any size mascot costume. The failsafe for when the Mimic malfunctions or poses a threat to a human is to remove its power supply, an instruction that doesn't help these kids at all.

The manual tells them that there are two Mimics: Mimic 1 and Mimic 2. The kids don't know which one is the one chasing them.

In a room at the end of a hall, Joel and Wade find a maintenance chute in the wall, which allows them to access a large air vent, which leads to an opening on the roof of the Pizzaplex. The problem is that the air conditioning and vent system is still partially functional, and there's a moving fan blocking the vent opening. They look around, but can't find anything to turn off the moving fan in their way.

Joel remembers how the power blinked off when the Mimic appeared and killed Hope, and assumes that something about the robot disrupts nearby power circuits; his new plan is to lure the Mimic into the room they're currently in, and then climb out the vent and escape when the Mimic's presence causes the vent system to malfunction, temporarily shutting off the fan. (Joel truly is the biggest moron around, huh?) After some deliberating, the boys agree that Wade will try to lure the Mimic to them.

While Wade's gone, Joel starts climbing into the maintenance tunnel. (I think we all know where this is going.)

"Watching [the Mimic] move was like watching the undulating movements of a shadow monster."

The lights go out wherever the Mimic is. They come back on after the Mimic leaves the area. (What a weird ability for this thing to have.)

Wade gets the Mimic's attention and leads it toward the room where Joel's escape is. The Mimic follows behind him. As soon as he's in the room, Wade starts climbing up into the chute after Joel. But then the Mimic catches up with them, grabbing Wade and pulling him back down, dismembering the boy.

While his friend is dying, Joel climbs up higher, heading for the fan that's been turned off. He tries to fit himself between the blades of the fan, but can only get his head through, unable to fit the rest of his body through the empty space.

The Mimic gathers up Wade's body parts and leaves, going to deposit Wade's head, arms, and torso in the correct piles. ("Pile of bodies, pile of heads." - Venom) As soon as it leaves, the fan turns back on, chopping Joel into pieces. (Yeah, that's what I figured would happen.)

(And then there were 4...)

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

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