ugh. one second. an analysis just occurred to me that’s fucking me up
intensely unapologetic fnaf: security breach glazing, you have been warned
when i think about it, security breach really is one of the mascot horror games that sticks with me and i think fnaf fans the most regardless of love/hate, good or bad. i’ve mentioned it before but it’s such a good game about what it feels like being a kid. it’s being lost in a department store. it’s pseudo-severance. it’s alice in wonderland.
you play as gregory. you’re young but not too young to not be disillusioned and you’re too young to be respected, believed, or trusted by adults.
you are small and you look weak and you are being carefully hunted by something so much bigger than you that takes the form of what look like fairy-tale monsters, giant talking animals emblazoned with bright neon colors (don’t touch!). you are told through the game’s environment that these monsters are the most appealing thing to children like you, that a kid could want nothing more than to be here with them in this place.
never mind that you know there’s something else to this place. you don’t want this. you want to have a home, you want to be safe, and you want to be loved. you want to LEAVE. you guess you could want this place and everybody tells you you do, but you really don’t.
you’re protected by freddy. freddy, who looks so much like the other monsters, who is one of them. freddy behaves like a grown-up. he supervises you, he questions you, he even distrusts you at times. he worries and fusses over you. he’s literally blind to the peril you’re actually in. when his friends bare teeth and claws at you, he tells you that they are his friends and would never. but you have to be unsure whether or not they would, and even if they are really his friends. does freddy even think that these things are his friends? you don’t know. he doesn’t know. if he thinks about it too long he loses his mind.
every bad guy is an adult. every good guy is not. you run from vanessa, a trusted adult, because you know that’s an oxymoron. you instinctively hide from chica the first time you see her, because robot or not, she is one of them. every adult is trying to do what they think is best for you. every adult promises that they want to help you. that they have your best interest in mind and at heart. you can’t believe any of them even if you want it badly to be true. you take freddy with you because he’s like you.
all of this place wants you to stay where you are not welcome and there are bad sounds and smells and lights. this place reeks of bad things that happened to kids like you, and the adults who wanted it to happen. it doesn’t matter that only some of them wanted it, all of them let it happen. whether this is really about you anymore, you don’t know, but you stay anyway in case you are wanted. you want to be wanted.
you want to leave. it’s not time to go yet. everything you do happens carefully on a schedule. you are counting down the hours. you are finally almost there. you are there. when you get there, to the end and to the exit, dragging your adult with you, you have no choice but to stay longer, because an adult says you have to.
when you break their control over your actions you are punished for your agency. each time you smash, break, wreck the pretty things, you must fight your way out of hell. places that would be a sanctuary to a fun-loving kid like you turn into a cage, jungle gyms turn into prison bars, a laser-tag arena turns into a labyrinth complete with minotaur. you dropped your ball of yarn.
then you finally manage to get out, under the thumb of nothing and nobody. you free the princess. she’s a little girl too, but she looked like an adult. did she ever live for herself either? you don’t think she ever got the chance.
you want to make sure you get the chance.
you play as gregory. you are young, not too young and not too old, and you are small.