My Son Can Think of Nothing But Five Nights at Freddy's and It Is, Honestly, a Little Much

Considering my life and career it should not be surprising that my nine year old son Declan is a man of many obsessions. He’ll become absolutely enraptured with a movie or TV show or idea. It will be his entire world for a couple of weeks and then he’ll move on to his next big obsession. 

Part of that is attributable to his ADHD and the hyper focus it engenders. Part of that is attributable to being an excitable nine year old boy with all of the energy in the world. I also suspect that Declan is a creature of obsessions because I am also a creature of obsessions. We fixate intensely on different things. For me, that’s often a matter of hyper focusing on whatever book I’m working on, to the occasional detriment of the other facets of my career.  For Declan, that means making his whole life about the subject of his fixation before moving on.

Sometimes Declan burns through obsessions quickly. He was, for example, very briefly intensely interested in Lilo & Stitch but that did not last for long. 

The Nightmare Before Christmas remains Declan’s primary obsession but he has recently become invested in the world of Five Nights at Freddy’s in ways that border on pathological. 

What fascinates me about Declan and Five Nights at Freddy’s is that he’s never actually played the video games or seen the movie. Declan loves scary stuff but he is also scared of scary stuff and is keen to avoid anything that might give him nightmares.

As I’ve written earlier, Declan is fascinated by the idea of Five Nights at Freddy’s. As an idea, Five Nights at Freddy’s has all the potential in the world. I will be the first to concede that an elaborate fictional world built upon an evil version of Chuck E. Cheese has a lot of promise. 

When it comes to movies at least, Five Nights at Freddy’s realizes very little of that promise. Declan doesn’t believe me when I tell him that Five Nights at Freddy’s is not a good movie and he’s not quite old enough to experience the disappointment himself. 

Declan has never been fascinated by anything as much as he has been fascinated by Five Nights at Freddy’s. At the moment I have MULTIPLE Five Nights at Freddy’s novelty songs going through my head. 

Did you know that there are a LOT of Five Nights at Freddy’s songs? There are. I should know. I have listened to a lot of them. And some of them are pretty damn catchy. 

My favorites are “Join Us for a Bite” and “Stay Calm”, both of which have a throwback synth feel appropriate for a franchise rooted in the kitsch and camp of the 1980s. 

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that Declan has not been able to talk about anything other than Five Night’s at Freddy’s for a solid month. I’ll come home and he’ll excitedly ask me, “Do you know what the deal with Withered Bonnie is?” and I will wearily concede that I do not know what the deal with Withered Bonnie is but would love to find out. 

Here’s the thing: I could not be less interested in the Five Nights at Freddy’s franchise. I thought the movie was terrible and have only a vague desire to play the games. But I could not be more interested in Declan and what he finds interesting and worthwhile. 

For a distressingly large period of time what Declan has found interesting and worthwhile is Five Nights at Freddy’s. 

So I’ve been dipping a toe into this world for a while because I want to bond with my son and I also want to see what it is about this mythology that he finds so irresistible. 

It’s not that unusual for children to be utterly fascinated with things adults find aggressively uninteresting. That’s why there’s a generation gap. What works spectacularly for one generation might leave another generation cold. 

I want to connect with Declan on this fixation. When I write Five Nights at Freddy’s, something I do an awful lot these days, I sometimes write Five Nights at Freddy Got Fingered instead. 

That made me chuckle and then I thought, “Wait, is that an actual idea? Could I actually write an entire book or graphic novel juxtaposing the worlds of Five Nights at Freddy’s and Freddy Got Fingered?” 

God help me, I gave myself a professional reason to be interested in Five Nights at Freddy’s beyond a desire to connect with my son. 

So now when I listen to FNAF songs or skim through Five Nights at Freddy’s encyclopedias I can tell myself that I am researching my own project as well as bonding with my boy. 

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