Into the Pit

First things first: this isn't a book I'd have picked for myself, nor did I even know it existed until I decided to let my library app choose a book for me. I outright hate FNAF as a game, but I enjoy the energy Markiplier brings to playing it and I have a friend who's basically obsessed with MatPat's theories on the lore, so I'm still familiar with it. Not enough to pick a book based on this world, but hey I decided to stick with what the library app chose, so here we are - and I'm one book closer to my 2020 reading goal, so that's a win regardless.

This book, however, is not a win itself. It's average at best, but frankly a bit less due to having a very Knockoff Goosebumps feel to the juvenile writing style... and the disproportionately cruel way the female characters with very common real life problems were treated compared to the male character who had similarly realistic issues yet was a complete brat about them. That just doesn't settle well with me.

Into the Pit - ???????????????

Holy crap, did I ever hate the main character!

The story begins with a sympathetic take on Oswald: he's sad and lonely and miserable now that his family is facing financial hardship and his best friend has moved away. His mother is trying very hard to help him and his father has taken a low-paying job - the only thing available - to make ends meet. Oz being sad makes sense. Even being upset does, because everything is falling apart around him, but by the second third-to-quarter of the story this kid loses all sympathy by turning into an ungrateful, little monster.

Oh, his parents try to give him movie nights and have fun with him even though they can't afford to go out? Horrible! His friend has vacations at beaches and he should, too! Oh, his parents still let him have a daily slice of takeout pizza? How dare they not give him a dollar more so he can have a different flavour! Oh, his dad wastes fuel and time to drop Oz off at the library and pick him up all the time? Clearly that means his dad is ‘throwing him away' every day and expending zero effort! Time to hide in a ball pit and force Dad to come find him to teach that terrible parent a lesson!

It's disgusting and infuriating. The kid's parents are genuinely trying and he doesn't care because he can't have every single thing he wants anymore. So he finds a way out, seemingly magically rewarded for his behaviour... until things go very, very wrong.

And let me tell you: seeing things go wrong for Oswald piqued my interest, even though the events were as crazy and nonsensical as reading a Goosebumps book. Seeing this ingrate learn a valuable lesson the hard way was completely worth the middlegrade level writing and complete absurdity of a magical, giant bunny everyone (except Oz) thinks is a real human. But, y'know. There was still a magical, giant, evil bunny which may very well be Zipper the Bunny Day mascot from Animal Crossing: New Horizons turned evil by the backlash from villagers all around the globe. Actually, that would have been horrifying. This... wasn't.

I did like the time travel element and the general concept of Oz coming to terms with life being unfair while learning to appreciate what he already has, which made this entertaining enough to classify as average. But honestly that's about all I find worth saying about this one.

To Be Beautiful - ???????????????

Sarah is a pudgy girl with plain hair and a flat chest who dreams of attaining supermodel beauty. Like most average girls her age, she hates her body and feels ugly. And, like many unfortunate girls who are ridiculed for not being supermodels, she starves herself on a ‘low carb diet' in hopes of losing weight.

She isn't an ingrate. She isn't a bad person, though of course she's human enough to make bad choices and say things that aren't perfectly nice when she's upset. She's just a sad, young girl who - like many of us did at her age - wants to meet her own goal of ideal beauty and wants to feel good in her own skin. Her best friend berates and judges her for this, and the narrative seems to think her friend is correct - which is made explicitly clear during the horrific outcome of Sarah's tale.

Oz in the previous story was a worse person and he got a happy ending. Sarah did not; she got an ending filled with unfathomable betrayal. As a woman who was once just like Sarah and still suffers self-image issues, I'm disgusted by the ending of this story. I'm infuriated by how the author chose to handle Sarah's tale. And honestly, I also felt a little uncomfortable with some of the wording for Sarah's thoughts about herself.

Also? No, you don't have to bleach hair before using platinum hair “dye” - the whole point is that a platinum kit bleaches and tones it for you. And, no, the smell from hair lightening products doesn't magically become overwhelming only after rinsed, especially in a small, closed space like a bathroom. And, no, you don't follow a botched bleach-and-dye job with a colour removal and more dye the same day, unless you want your hair to fall out by the handfuls. And for good measure? No, it's not okay to call green hair dye ugly and Martian-like, especially when your target audience is very likely to include young girls who want to experiment with hair dye just like the character being shamed and punished for seeking a change of hair.

I just have a lot of grouchy emotions about how this tale seems to have a very vicious moral aimed at teens with self-image issues, eating disorders, and depression. While reading it, I thought perhaps the message would be a positive one about shallow people not being worthwhile and true friends accepting the real you, but nope. Seems to be more about how anyone who tries to change to make themselves feel more attractive is actually a worthless pile of trash who doesn't deserve to live. I sincerely hope that's just my ability to relate to Sarah making me feel disrespected and not the actual moral of this story.

Oh, and to add insult to injury, the magic element makes absolutely zero sense. Even less than a giant, yellow bunny everyone ignores. I'm not surprised, given these are FNAF stories, but I'm still annoyed.

Count the Ways - ???????????????

Hoo boy, this tale is something else. From the very beginning, it launches into berating a teenage girl for having a goth aesthetic and dark interests. And I don't mean subtly, either. I mean Freddy Freakin' Fazbear is given a human voice, with which he taunts and belittles the girl, Millie, in a cruel and condescending manner, insisting that because she was always so obsessed with death now she must die to “have her dream date with Death.”

It's brutal. “Goth girl taunted and forced to choose her own method of being murdered while being gaslighted about how it's what she always wanted when she's clearly saying she wants to live” level brutal. What is this, Saw installment one thousand?! I know FNAF can be brutal itself, but it feels a lot different in this context than in a silly game with subpar graphics.

I felt physically ill reading this one. It made me uneasy. The way the bear spoke to Millie felt very much like real life bullies who abuse teens or tell depressed and suicidal victims to just go ahead and kill themselves etc. All this, and her only “crime” is being a melodramatic teenager who's a little creepy and unhappy with her lot in life. Ouch. Why so cruel to the female characters?!

Anyway, Millie isn't the nicest of kids, but she has reasons when she acts out. Her parents went to a completely different country for the sake of ‘adventure' and she was left behind with her grandfather. He's a loving and accepting person who is a magnificent gem, but that doesn't stop Millie from feeling unhappy. She has her heart broken, so she acts mean toward the other girl incolved. Her fascination with death and the goth aesthetic is a bit intense, but... well, who can't relate to the goth phase, really? I know I had one that spanned from late elementary school into sophomore year of high school.

There isn't much more to this one, either. It just shows flashbacks to explain how Millie came to be in the animatronic bear's clutches and the problems which led to her emotional low, interspersed with the ‘present time' wherein she's being forced to choose a method of death. I think it's trying to be profound, but it very much isn't.

In fact, the voice taunting Millie sounds more like a deranged, adult man than... well, a sentiment animatronic bear. He has the kind of knowledge only a human should and taunts her in a very human-sounding way. Maybe I'm just missing something from the lore and it's a demon or other humanoid spirit, but I can't imagine if I were watching Markiplier sit there while one of the game characters gave long-winded monologues about how the player character deserved to die. It would not be fun to watch, just as this was not fun to read.

If the obnoxious demon-bear Jigsaw stand-in were removed and this were a story about a teenage girl coming to terms with life and realizing she wanted to live and treat others better, I'd have enjoyed it. Grandpa is a delight and Dylan is a great character. Millie, while flawed, feels realistic and likable due to the empathy she inspires. But nope, gotta have the awkward FNAF angle...

... and an infuriatingly open-ended conclusion.

Untitled Epilogue - ???????????????

A brief, overly dense, and boring foray into what appears to be setting up the next book. It details a detective being handed what amounts to an X-File case over the strange demise of Sarah from story two. Also, his family life sucks, apparently.

Nothing more to say about this one.

Overall ???????????????

These stories feel very much like middlegrade writing, as I've already mentioned, but I cannot fathom handing this book to a child between 11 and 14 years of age - especially if they're a girl. It's uncomfortable that I can relate to having been like both of the female characters in this collection and they both get brutally murdered as twisted punishment for being like me. How will actual kids who read this feel, especially when they see themselves in Sarah or Millie?

I'm not saying that horror which makes readers uncomfortable is inherently bad. I'm just saying: the implied target audience based on the writing style is too young for this content. But, hey, if a kid is already into FNAF, perhaps they're used to stuff like this. Who knows?

While glad this was a quick read, I also am very glad to be through with it. I highly doubt I'll read any more of the books in this series.

Goosebump-esque short stories. 

Into the Pit was fun, I loved the idea of time traveling and the pizza parlor setting. This one I think I liked the best. 

To be Beautiful had a fun concept that I loved, a wish granted with a Megan twist. I liked this second best 

Count the Ways I liked the least. Could not get over how dramatic the main character was as an emo girl. It was darker than I thought a children's book would be with intense themes of death and methods of dying.