4 out of 5 stars – Review Will Contain Spoilers
First published on December 27th, 2022, Submechanophobia is the fourth volume of the latest Five Nights at Freddy’s novella series, Tales from the Pizzaplex, written by series creator Scott Cawthon with series regulars Kelly Parra and Andrea Waggener.
Once again, we are thrown into three short stories from within the world of FNAF, with a fourth story tucked away just at the end continuing a separate narrative being weaved throughout each volume.
Submechanophobia
The titular story.
Whilst I would argue that this tale had the most intriguing descriptions and visuals of all of the stories in this book, overall, I would rank it second best.
For a good while, I thought that Submechanophobia would be just like some of the previous stories – the FNAF novellas have been falling into an awful pattern of telling stories about nice characters who are trying their best to do something to improve their lives have something fatal or life-altering happen to them BECAUSE they are trying to improve their lives. When stories have morals, which on the odd occasion these seem to be trying to do, it’s usually against a bad character doing something morally wrong. But these books have been going in the opposite direction.
Thankfully, this was not one of those stories. Though, as I said, for the longest time, it really felt as though it would turn out awfully.
Caden was a nice character to follow, and I say that in the blandest of ways because unfortunately, that’s all we did really get. I’d say that this would be one of the stories I would like to see as it’s own novel. Rather than pumping out so many of these short stories to fill as many volumes as humanly possible, focus on the good stories, the lore stories, the extended universe stories. Stories like this one. Caden was nice, he had an interesting back story and an unconventional home life. I would have loved to have learnt more about his childhood, his relationship with his grandmother, and his struggles as a teenager having to work so hard to keep a roof over his head because his primary caregiver fell ill. We get little snippets of that throughout the story, but he’s one of those kinds of characters that I was rooting for without really knowing much more about him than the basics. Imagine the kind of reaction this character could get if he were fleshed out, if audiences were allowed to get to know him and care for him?
I feel like this only didn’t get a higher rating from me because the final story set up so much mystery with it’s plot and cliff-hanger, whilst Submechanophobia got a relatively decent conclusion.
The thing is, as I said, this story could have been it’s own novel if it had been allowed, because the mystery element of this story was incredibly strong. I am a sucker for a good murder mystery, and that was what was presented in this tale. The premise is already strong: a young man desperate for work shoves his fears aside to take on a job as one of the maintenance men at a local Freddy’s Pizzeria themed as a water park. There’s always been something eerie about the water tank in the middle of the park, with it’s animatronic mermaid, diver and sea dragon, but now Caden has to go into the tank to do maintenance more often than usual he starts to discover the animatronics might be trying to tell him something.
I loved it. The discovery of clues before he even knew that a child had disappeared years ago was unsettling. Combined with the classic story elements of the franchise, there’s an implication that the animatronics are a) going after Caden when he’s in the tank because he looks like the murder, and b) the ghost of the missing child is manipulating things to help solve his own murder.
This story was too big for a simple novella.
Animatronic Apocalypse
Honestly? This was just bizarre.
AA was the worst of these stories, purely because of the ending. And the rest. The whole novella was just classic FNAF, breadcrumbs but nothing substantial.
The basic premise of this novella: a child named Robbie is part of the Fazbear Fan Club at his school, and after the elections for a new Club President, the school principal starts to get ever more involved with the club. Plus the new President starts making changes that don’t line up with the clubs original storytelling and role play origins. One by one, Robbie’s clubmates start to distance themselves from him and do dangerous things. But just as Robbie starts to suspect things, the entire school gets involved in preparing for the Animatronic Apocalypse. Robbie needs to be careful, but finding out what the principal is doing to the members of the club and how they’re then affecting the rest of the school leads Robbie to some horrific truths.
I feel like I made it sound more interesting that it was.
The school principal isn’t what he seems, the club members all end up burying themselves alive at one point, and the ending is so nonsensical that I genuinely had no clue what to believe at any given point.
This novella annoyed me, because for the most part, I felt really bad for Robbie. It seemed as though, for the majority of the story, he was being gaslit by everyone around him. Then it turned out I was being gaslit the entire time and I still don’t know what the truth was.
The Bobbiedots
What happens when you give Alexa too much sentience?
The best story overall and the first with a proper cliff-hanger.
Once more, the premise: a secretly homeless man, Abe, working at the Mega Pizzaplex earns a promotion that means he gets accommodation at the local apartment complex built by Fazbear Entertainment. When he goes to apply for his apartment, he’s told that only one is left available but, for reasons undisclosed, the apartment is off limits until further notice. A tech-whiz, Abe tricks the receptionist to step away from her desk and green-lights his key card to be able to get in. Inside, he discovers the apartment’s holographic assistance, the Bobbiedots, and whilst things start out great, Abe soon starts to discover why the apartment was off-limits, that something bad may have happened to the previous occupant, and somehow, the Bobbiedots are involved.
God damn, was I invested in this story. I still am! The only thing keeping me from immediately jumping into the continuation in volume 5 is my commitment to other books! Again, take this with a grain of slat because I am massively into mysteries, and this story, yet again, provides an excellent mystery. Potentially, a murder mystery.
You see, the Bobbiedots, for the most part are intriguing characters to explore because there are two versions of them that we meet and do not meet. First, are the Gen 2s. There are three Gen 2 holograms that pop up around the apartment that are each responsible for different aspects of Abe’s living situation so as not to overload the system. The fact that they are fully interactable holograms that can hold full on conversations with Abe is a technical feat that I am willing to gloss over for the sake of Science Fiction, because that’s what this is. It’s Sci-Fi Horror. All the people out there trying to work out how any of these things could possibly function are overlooking the one basic thing – it’s a story. It’s fictional. Just suspend your reality for a minute and submerge yourself in the weird and those elements will just wash right over you. (Maybe not the Fazzgoo but everything else!)
But for there to be Gen 2s, means there were Gen 1s. And they are the source of the problems, it seems. Because, as with every technological advancement, those advancements only happened because of mistakes and errors discovered along the way. The Gen 1s were a part of the process. They were animatronics, puppeteered throughout the apartments like marionettes (possible wink-wink moment, Security Puppet, anyone?) however, because they weren’t quite as advanced as they needed to be things went wrong and they were decommissioned, though never properly uninstalled from the apartment.
You go through the motions with Abe as he tries to get along with secretly living in this apartment, and his realisation that he is completely on his own and at the mercy of forces he can’t even begin to understand. He’s another character that I would love to learn more about because he has little things about him that really make his character interesting. A loaded question, yes, because it is a very real situation that a lot of people find themselves in, but worth asking: why is he homeless? What led to his situation? What is his relationship like with his mother? He’s always emailing her updates about his life, fabricating some of it so that he doesn’t worry her, so what’s the situation there?
This franchise needs to actually start fleshing out their characters and stories properly, and stop relying on the fandom to do the heavy lifting for them. Sure, theorising is fun and having all the answer laid out neatly can take away from that fun, but there comes a point when some things need to be settled. This story is a very good example of that.
The Epilogue
My good god.
I came away from the epilogue with a hell of a lot more questions than when I went in, and none of my questions from the previous instalment answered at all. No surprise there.
Are these teenagers stuck inside the old Pizzeria the missing persons on the newspaper during the bad ending of Security Breach?
Why are there so many dead bodies? Are they the bodies of the construction workers from an earlier epilogue? How much money is being put into this build for it to actually get completed after people have gone so obviously missing on site?
Is the animatronic killing people Burntrap? How is he alive already if he wakes up in the tube during the true ending of Security Breach? Burntrap clearly has a body already so how has he ended up this way and in what way does this connect to the decommission of Glamrock Bonnie?
Also, whoever currently runs Fazbear Entertainment in this universe, seeing as both Henry and William are supposed to have ‘died’ at this point, must be living some sort of life of luxury if they’ve made a whole dang apartment tower just dedicated to the Fazbear higher-ups.
Final Thoughts
Here’s the thing… Am I going to keep reading these novellas and participating in the franchise, despite my complaints?
Yes. Yes, I am. Because I am a sucker for a good story, a good mystery, and I love it when little details connect or mirror. Star Wars is a good example of this – George Lucas said that his storytelling process for that franchise was everything rhymes. And I can see that happening with this series in some ways too. Elements repeat themselves in different scenarios, and history repeats itself, seemingly throughout multiple decades all because of the arrogance of one man.
But because there hasn’t been time taken to sit down and say “this element is important, it’s just a throwaway funny story that we thought would fit well with something else” or “yes, that thing there, keep an eye on it, look into it, we’re not saying why it’s important yet but you’ll figure it out” the franchise as a whole is becoming an impossibly huge, almost inaccessible, mess. A blob, if you will, with too many moving parts and not enough linear control.
It’s okay to follow a basic story structure every once in a while. The Hero’s Journey has worked so well for a reason. Not every character has to be canon fodder or meat for the grinder. We can have some that stick around.
Jake, from Fazbear Frights, for example, was a great example of that. The whole Stitchwraith narrative with the detective was great. The epilogues of this series? I don’t really care about those characters, I’ve not been given a chance to get to know them in anyway. Plus interesting characters from previous stories have just disappeared. Whatever happened to Jessica, the hospital cleaner who left behind metal residue?
Yes, there are plenty of red threads crossing over on the theory board, but there are also too many loose threads that’s just making people annoyed at this point.
Clare's Bookshelf 