#i know this isn’t fnaf related but it’s his brand ok

[coffinwoodx]

i was just about to fall asleep when i very suddenly and very clearly heard matthew patrick game theory exclaim, “PLATE OF NACHOS!” in the “A ~GAME~ THEORY” voice and it jolted me awake to experience sleep paralysis for the very first time in my life.

[anartistwhowrites]

Why the Fazbear Frights Books Don’t Work (To Me, At Least)

  Well, this may come as a surprise to no one - I don’t like the Fazbear Frights books. This isn’t to say that I’ve never read them. I did and I really did try my best to like them like everyone else was. But after Fetch came out, I started to realize what these books actually were: discarded Goosebumps scripts that have been re-skinned to fit the FNaF universe in order to sell for more than they’re actually worth.

  And boy howdy, I sure do enjoy having to spend big money on a tie-in book featuring characters I’ve never heard of before in order to find out basic plot points that the series itself never bothered to explain.

  I understand Scott’s urge to make FNAF-related Goosebumps ripoffs, I really do. If I had an overnight successful horror franchise that was popular with kids/preteens, I, too, would make a bunch of Goosebumps ripoffs. I just wish that he could’ve, used the books to talk about actually established characters from the franchise. He could’ve also just, like, published Goosebumps-esc books that had nothing to do with FNaF but that’s a discussion for another day.

  Like, instead of these random kids being the leads, why not have the stories be about the missing kids from FNaF 1, or the crying child and his brother, or other characters from the games? Why not have short horror stories that give more depth to an established Freddy’s location from the games instead of trying to get us interested in a FNaF location that we barely care about? I want a story from the point of view of Michael as his body slowly rots and he can't do anything about us because Ennard is controlling his body. I want a story from the perspective of one of the animatronics showing us what its like for them! I want interesting stories like that, not the ones that we got.

  Scott didn’t even bother to tell us which stories were canon and which weren’t so it’s hard to even use them to solve the lore of the old games. If the books were more about the minor lore plot points, like the minigames for example, then I’d be ok with them. But Scott’s Reddit post makes it seem like it’s for major plot points like the Bite of ‘83 or The Missing Children’s Incident. But they are not.

  Now, don’t get me wrong, I want canon Fazbear’s Frights stories but I want good canon Fazbear Frights stories. And having to pay for the books in order to learn more about basic plot points is pretty crappy. And, regardless of how you feel about the plots, the Fazbear’s Frights stories are just not well written or narrated at all. They’re the last place that I want to read important lore stuff or about things that I actually care about.

  The Fazbear Frights really should have been about already existing characters and plot points. For example, Room for One More could have been about Michael getting scooped in Sister Location, and Step Closer could have been about the older brother being haunted by Fredbear from FNaF 4. Count the Ways could have been a great opportunity about Elizabeth getting killed by Circus Baby, since it does seem to line up pretty well. And that’s what frustrates me about these books the most. It’s just missed opportunities for Scott to flesh out the world of FNaF.

  Honestly the books don’t even feel like their part of the FNaF universe at all. They feel like short horror stories plots from a story idea generator site with FNaF names thrown into them. Like, sometimes you get a genuinely moving tale about two sisters and a robot chicken and other times you get a fanfic story about a guy getting pregnant and giving birth to a Springtrap baby? Scott, horror has sub-genres. You can’t just throw whatever random stuff into your story that you want and expect it to actually fit the narrative and themes. It has to make sense.

 Because the Fazbear Frights lean more into cosmic horror than the games, it doesn't feel like Scott's brand of horror that we’ve come to know and recognize. And that’s really the point of all of this. My main problem with the Fazbear Frights stories is that they have some concepts that would work well as a normal horror story but once you add FNaF into the mix, the story then becomes either stupidly funny or stupidly horrible.

  While I don’t mind some new FNaF stories, the ones we’ve gotten just aren’t that interesting. A lot of them aren’t canon and the ones that might be don’t really affect anything at all. Considering one of FNaF’s biggest flaws, aside from competent storytelling and consistency, is its lack of character development, this would’ve been a great way to flesh out some of the game characters and maybe some events in the lore. Now if we can stop introducing 50+ new characters every time new content comes out and instead focusing on preexisting characters and emotion-driven plots with interesting narratives, then we’ll be golden. But honestly does anyone even know what qualifies as canon characterization in FNAF at this point?

  It’s funny, because character driven stories are kinda what FNaF desperately needs and I'm glad the Fazbear Frights are, hopefully, starting to realize that. It wasn't the gore in Springtrap that made him iconic, it was the man behind the gore. It wasn't the Scooper people liked, it was the man who got scooped. It wasn't the fire that made the scene, it was Henry. What makes FNaF’s story so interesting and intriguing is the people behind the animatronic monsters and the victims of them but the books instead glance over this in favor of demographic appeal.

  Like, what if Fazbear Frights were instead about animatronics that don’t get enough exploration about their lore or maybe just about different animatronics instead of focusing on just the human characters. The books could've offered so many interesting characters and possible world building ideas, and they do absolutely nothing like that! I just want something about how Mike dealt with being a living corpse, or how Foxy feels when he took out Phone Guy, or what it's like for Mangle to be repeatedly pulled apart, or something. But nope, Scott decided to go for time-travel ballpits, Minireena vore, and whatever is going on with Candy Angel's cover.

  To be fair and completely honest, I actually kinda like some of the stories in Fazbear Frights, (and by some I mean one or two) and the some of the stories I actually do like are what I like to call “decent”. and I also like the stuff with the Stitchwraith because that plot line has an interesting story line and characters that I semi care about or am at least mildly interested with. But its so upsetting how close some of it is to FNaF game lore, even though we don’t have much in terms of official lore for it to be close to. I wish Scott would have chosen between making the books either separate au’s or just being about the canon and only the canon. Like, the TSE series had stuff related to the ‘canon’, sure, but it was at least fairly direct with it instead of just using confusing and muddled "symbolism".

   Let me make it clear that I don’t hate you for liking these books. If you like them, ok. If you don’t like them, ok. I’m not telling you that you can’t or that you need to hate them because I said so. This is just me finally getting my mixed feelings about the books onto paper. The series overall is a 5/10. Not completely awful but not very good either. I really don’t recommend them at all but I also don’t overtly discourage you from checking them out if you are that curious.