Happy 2025! (Or, well, maybe not so happy if you read the news.) Originally I intended to get this up for January, but suffice it to say that I found this story very frustrating. This might be the longest review I’ve done yet.
This is the second story in Fazbear Frights #2 and is preceded by “Fetch.” As always, knowledge of FNAF canon is optional to follow along here.
“Lonely Freddy”
This one opens with multiple pages of background information on the protagonist and his little sister before the plot even starts, so I guess I’ll just summarize that. Meet Alec and Hazel. Alec is fifteen, Hazel is ten, and there’s a pretty huge disparity in how these two are treated by their parents. Hazel is the golden child; she’s a cute, well-mannered little girl with blonde ringlets, and their parents dote on her. Alec, on the other hand, is vaguely considered to be some sort of troubled child who doesn’t get along well with his peers or react properly to adult discipline. To be clear, none of Alec’s behavior is actually egregious — we’re given a few anecdotes and they’re all about stupid pranks he played as a younger kid or various times he picked on Hazel, all completely in the realm of normal older sibling bullshit. Alec, however, seems to have taken it to heart that he’s “bad” in the eyes of his family (and possibly the world in general) and so he prefers to engage with them as little as possible. He and Hazel have never been close, as Alec resents her for getting the lion’s share of their parents’ love and attention.
Onto the actual plot. Alec is eavesdropping on his parents, as he often does, and he overhears them talking about some parenting book they’re reading, The Plan Planner. Alec’s parents are constantly reading parenting books and trying out different parenting methods on Alec in an attempt to, I guess, get him to be “perfect” like Hazel. The methods the books advise are always stupid nonsense and Alec always finds a way to behave counter to the expected results of the parenting method being tested on him, but he’s operating at a disadvantage since he’s never been able to find where his parents keep the books and thus can’t read ahead himself. Just eavesdropping isn’t enough to determine what his parents are planning this time — they keep referencing a specific chapter in the book and stressing to each other the importance of sorting out Alec’s behavior before Hazel’s upcoming birthday party, but no actual details.
Alec has a brief conversation with Hazel in their shared bathroom and two things become immediately clear here. First, Hazel genuinely cares about her brother and is bothered by their parents picking on him. Second, Alec thinks Hazel is some sort of master manipulator who’s only pretending to be sympathetic as part of her “perfect child” act. He’s dismissive towards her and quickly ends the conversation, retreating to his bedroom. Some time after, Hazel enters — this is played rather dramatically, as Hazel has never been allowed in Alec’s bedroom and enters very hesitantly all while Alec internally goes crazy trying to figure out what sort of 5D chess move she’s pulling — and leaves something at the foot of his bed before running off. It’s The Plan Planner.
Naturally, given Alec’s longstanding distrust of his sister, this really throws him off. Is Hazel trying to trick him into thinking they’re now allies? Alec ruminates on all the previous times Hazel has done something nice for him, and for a moment he seems to be considering the possibility that she’s genuine, but then he dismisses the notion. He’s sure that Hazel is up to something, he just isn’t sure what, and so he decides he’s going to play along and wait for her to reveal her hand.
The scene cuts to the next day as Alec and Hazel are discussing The Plan Planner. Turns out the chapter their parents kept referencing talks about how if you want a well-behaved child, you need to treat your child as though they’re behaving poorly — this sounds like what Alec’s parents have already been doing and also sounds like child abuse but we can talk more about all that later. Alec thinks this is stupid and so suggests to Hazel that he can defy The Plan Planner by simply acting worse; however, Alec isn’t making that suggestion seriously as he knows that too is a stupid idea, he’s just trying to bait Hazel into suggesting an alternate plan. Hazel does, eventually, suggest an alternate plan. Her idea is that Alec should be on his best behavior while she acts up, in order to throw their parents off. This plan shocks Alec; he wouldn’t have expected that Hazel would be willing to compromise her position as the golden child, and again for a moment he entertains the idea that this might be a genuine desire of hers. Perhaps Hazel’s role as golden child is restrictive to her in the same way that Alec’s status as the black sheep is restrictive to him. Maybe Hazel just wants to be a normal kid. And then, again, Alec dismisses this idea and decides that this new side of Hazel that he’s seeing is further proof that she’s duplicitous and not to be trusted.
The two agree to put Hazel’s plan into action right away, and so Alec smiles and nods as their parents scold him over minor offenses (or none at all) while Hazel “accidentally” drops their dad’s shirts in the mud, empties the recycling into the garbage can, and backtalks their mom. After a couple days of this, it’s clearly beginning to get to their parents; Alec and Hazel eavesdrop on their mom and dad having a tense conversation about Hazel’s bad behavior that spirals into a minor argument (Alec’s improved behavior isn’t noted at all by either parent). Both Alec and Hazel are amused by this, and it’s clearly getting harder for Alec to keep viewing his sister as his enemy when she’s acting as his co-conspirator. He eventually convinces himself again that Hazel has ulterior motives and is trying to manipulate him too.
Next day, Alec, Hazel, their (very frazzled) mom, and their aunt Gigi (mom’s sister, childfree but often dispenses questionable parenting advice, she’s snarky so Alec thinks she’s cool) are meeting with a “Party Prepper” to make all the necessary arrangements for Hazel’s birthday party that weekend, which of course will be held at Freddy Fazbear’s. I bet you were wondering when this was going to turn into a Freddy story. While their mom frets over whether or not she ought to pay for an extra platter of Fazbear Funwiches, Alec and Hazel wander around the pizzeria (which is empty, it’s before business hours) and talk. Alec’s trying to goad Hazel into revealing her master plan, and, since he assumes it has something to do with her party, he asks her what the big deal is with this place anyway (Hazel’s had four previous birthday parties here). Hazel doesn’t take the bait and counters by asking Alec, “Why don’t you tell me?” Turns out Alec has longed to be able to have his own birthday parties at Fazbear’s, but he’s never gotten to have a big party like Hazel because he doesn’t have enough friends; his birthday parties have all been held at home, with the guests being Hazel’s friends to make up for Alec’s lack of any. Also, Alec is a big fan of Foxy, specifically “Yarg Foxy,” a Foxy variant invented for this story (described as wearing a pirate hat and coat, similar to how original Foxy looked before getting discontinued). When Hazel brings up his love of the character Alec tries to downplay it as a thing of the past, but from the narration it’s pretty clear he still thinks Foxy is cool.
The conversation shifts to be about their parents. Alec comments that their parents make an effort with Hazel but not with him, and Hazel basically tells him that that’s not true, that their parents worry over Alec constantly — in fact, her perspective is that their parents only dote on Hazel because they feel guilty for spending so much of their time on Alec. This throws Alec off because it’s at least true that their parents spend a lot of time trying to manage his behavior, though this is because they act like he’s a bomb that might detonate if improperly handled. Hazel continues and says that the only reason the family moved houses in the past was for Alec’s sake, that their parents moved to live close to Aunt Gigi because they (correctly) think Alec likes her more than them. She then attempts to guilt-trip Alec about this by pointing out that Alec’s preference for Aunt Gigi must have hurt their parents’ feelings. Alec is thoroughly confused during this conversation, as he doesn’t understand what Hazel’s angle is, and on top of that he’s distracted. The two of them happen to be having this conversation right in front of an animatronic Alec isn’t familiar with; it looks like a two-foot-tall version of Freddy Fazbear and is stood by itself on a little raised platform with a sign above its head identifying it as “Lonely Freddy.” Alec already thinks the inert animatronic characters are a little creepy to be around but this one feels like it’s watching him, and having this back-and-forth with Hazel in its presence makes Alec feel as though the bear is eavesdropping.
Before the dialogue between Alec and Hazel can progress any further, their mom calls Hazel over to ask her if she wants to use the “Wind Tunnel” during her party. If this is a real-life thing, I’m not familiar, but basically you stand inside an enclosure and have to snatch as many prize tickets as you can out of the air as they’re swirled around you by a powerful fan. Hazel tries to act nonchalant, as though she doesn’t really care about the Wind Tunnel, but she has a bad poker face and neither Alec nor their mom are fooled. Their mom asks Hazel if she’s sure, doesn’t she want to win the Yarg Foxy plush? It’s the grand prize, worth 10,000 tickets or one lucky ticket from the Wind Tunnel. Alec, as a longtime Yarg Foxy enthusiast, secretly wants one. He assumes straightaway that Hazel wants to win it in order to rub her win in Alec’s face, and in fact considers this the ultimate betrayal even though he’s been expecting Hazel to stab him in the back this whole time. Hazel flushes bright red and shoots a glance at Alec when their mom asks this, which to Alec is enough to confirm her guilt.
The conversation gets derailed when Aunt Gigi asks what’s up with the Lonely Freddy animatronic. The Party Prepper (a clearly miserable employee who spends this entire scene unenthusiastically reciting from a script) explains that the purpose of a Lonely Freddy — it appears this location has several of them — is to provide companionship to children who otherwise wouldn’t have someone to experience “the wonder and delight of Freddy Fazbear’s” with. Basically they are for kids with no friends. They’re programmed to follow the child they’re paired with around and ask getting-to-know-you type of questions in an attempt at simulating friendship. Alec mentally acknowledges that if he had ever been invited to a birthday party here as a younger child, they’d definitely have tried foisting him off on a Lonely Freddy.
When the adults circle back to talking about the Wind Tunnel, Alec decides to make his move. Hazel clearly wants to win the Yarg Foxy plush even if she won’t admit it, and so Alec is beginning to form a plan to make sure she doesn’t win it, but that plan of course requires her to try. He speaks up and encourages Hazel to do the Wind Tunnel, and so it’s decided upon.
Hazel and Alec continue with their plan for the rest of the week, and it continues to drive their parents crazy. Alec eavesdrops on a conversation between his mom and Aunt Gigi, and although Aunt Gigi’s parenting advice is generally a bit dubious (think “have you tried switching them to organic milk?”), she really comes across like the voice of reason in this scene. Aunt Gigi points out that Hazel’s acting out in ways that are normal for her age and also tries to gently suggest to her sister that Hazel and Alec are the way that they are because they’re being treated as “the easy one” and “the hard one” respectively. Alec and Hazel’s mom isn’t receptive to that suggestion and shuts down the conversation. She tells Gigi that she just wants her family to “be an actual family” and Gigi dryly responds “Congratulations, you are one.”
Finally it’s Saturday, the day of the party. Hazel enters Alec’s room in the morning and they have a brief conversation. Alec points out that their parents will probably forgive Hazel for all her bad behavior this week if she goes back to normal, to which she agrees; Alec also thinks that he won’t receive any credit for having been good the past several days, but he keeps that thought to himself. He’s starting to feel like the mind games stuff with Hazel and his parents is more exhausting than entertaining and he’s looking forward to it being over, and he’s also starting to think that maybe hanging out with Hazel isn’t that bad. He wishes his sister a happy birthday, and it comes out sounding surprisingly genuine. Even more surprising, when Hazel smiles back at him, Alec thinks that she’s being genuine too.
The party itself is as chaotic as you’d expect a group of ten-year-olds at a pizzeria/arcade to be. Hazel is back to being her usual polite and gracious self in front of her friends, and Alec thankfully is being ignored by their parents rather than pressured to join in the festivities. While no one was looking, Alec managed to sift through the tickets used for the Wind Tunnel and locate the single Yarg Foxy ticket, which he pocketed. He’s sure that when Hazel tries, and fails, to win the plush toy, she’ll have a public meltdown that’ll expose her as the spoiled brat Alec believes her to be. However, the party’s beginning to wind down with only an hour left to go and Hazel has been putting the Wind Tunnel off, saying she’s not sure if she still wants to do it. This to Alec is unacceptable — he’s spent the past week trying to outscheme his sister and now all of that might go to waste. He pulls Hazel aside and asks her what gives, why isn’t she still trying to win that stupid stuffed animal? Hazel says maybe she doesn’t need it anymore but Alec insists that she does. He’s frustrated and angry and so the “nice big brother” act he’s been putting on slips — Alec tells Hazel that she isn’t going to get everything she wants forever and questions who’s going to like her once she grows out of being a cute little kid. Hazel, holding back tears (and it’s noted that she rarely cries) tells Alec, “Fine,” and beelines for the Wind Tunnel.
As the device sends tickets swirling through the air around Hazel, she makes halfhearted attempts to grab at them. Their mom cheers Hazel on, encouraging her to grab the Yarg Foxy ticket, and Alec, knowing there’s no way Hazel can get the winning ticket, cheers too. When the machine stops, Hazel’s tickets are counted up; she’s won a handful of minor prizes like free fountain drinks and free plays at the arcade games, but no Yarg Foxy. Before it can even be determined whether or not Hazel’s disappointed by this, though, one of her friends spots a ticket in Hazel’s hair. It’s a Yarg Foxy ticket! There’s only supposed to be one in the machine at a time, but somehow there must have been an extra. Alec immediately notes Hazel’s look of relief upon realizing she won.
Hazel is presented with her prize, but she still seems a little off; their parents worry that maybe she’s lost interest in winning the fox and/or got nauseous from the Wind Tunnel, but then Hazel pulls their mom aside and whispers something. Right away their mom calls over Alec (and she’s being uncharacteristically nice to him, even calling him “hon” when she’s done nothing but lecture him the entire story) and prompts Hazel to tell Alec what she just said to her. Hazel acts embarrassed and their mom backs off slightly, so they’re able to have a quiet conversation without being heard. She tells Alec she doesn’t want to keep “being bad,” it was all just to get him to like her, and then she thrusts the plush fox at him. As was probably obvious to most readers, Hazel only wanted to win the fox so she could give it to Alec, out of a genuine desire to be friends with her big brother. She started to have second thoughts about the plan when it seemed like Alec might have grown to like her anyway.
Alec isn’t able to process this reveal in the moment. He’s completely blindsided by this turn of events. Things weren’t supposed to work out like this at all; he wanted Hazel to lose out on the fox, have a tantrum over not getting her way and destroy her “golden child” reputation in the process, and then hopefully their parents would leave Alec alone instead of constantly comparing him to his perfect little sister. Instead, Alec’s the one who ends up having the tantrum. He rages about how Hazel is a phony, grabs the plush from her so hard its arm rips, and rants about how their parents must have expected him to ruin the party anyway. Hazel starts crying for real during this, which only enrages Alec further; in the moment, he’s sure that she’s performing for an audience, only crying in order to play the victim. Alec yells about how he can’t take it anymore and runs off. He doesn’t slow down until he’s pushed through several doors and wound up in the staff-only area of the building. When he finally stops to catch his breath, he realizes that he’s sobbing.
The guilt begins to hit. Alec thinks about how he’s ruined Hazel’s birthday and even goes so far as to blame himself for “believing everyone was out to get him” his whole life (we’ll unpack this later). While in the middle of this meltdown, Alec slams his back and shoulders into the wall behind him, over and over, until he finally tires himself out and realizes it’s not a wall — it’s a door, and there’s a loud thumping noise coming from the other side. Curious, Alec steps inside to investigate. The room is large and cluttered, filled with shelves and shelves of back stock and discontinued arcade cabinets. The source of the noise isn’t immediately apparent.
Alec sits down to try and pull himself together but gets distracted when he realizes he’s still holding the Foxy toy. By this point his anger has totally dissipated and he’s able to view the situation more clearly, and finally Alec realizes that Hazel’s intentions towards him were genuine all along. There was no ulterior motive, all she wanted was to be friends with her big brother. In a moment of overwhelming guilt, Alec throws the toy and then immediately regrets it. He can’t see where it landed amidst all the clutter, and he thinks his only hope of making things right with Hazel will be ruined if he can’t find the plush she won for him. As he’s searching, the thumping noise, which had ceased when Alec entered the room, starts up again. Alec realizes it’s coming from a dumpster in the corner and approaches to investigate, but it’s padlocked shut. Since nothing scary has happened yet, Alec doesn’t know he’s in a horror story and so he assumes that the noises he’s hearing are from rats.
From his current position, sitting wedged into the corner next to the dumpster, Alec spots another of the Lonely Freddy bears. He talks to it and asks it if it’s being punished or something. In response, the bear’s eyes fix on Alec and it replies, calling him “friend” and telling him it’s been waiting for him. It then begins to ask Alec questions. This isn’t immediately alarming — after all, it’s what the bear is supposedly programmed to do, and the questions are innocuous stuff like favorite color and favorite food, but Alec finds himself compelled to answer and unable to stand up or to look away. As the questioning continues, Alec begins to lose his sense of time and begins to lose sensation in his body. Eventually the questions turn more personal and the bear asks Alec who he admires most (his aunt Gigi), what he fears most (the dark), and, finally, his biggest regret. Alec doesn’t want to answer this last question but feels as though the answer is being squeezed out of him with increasing force. Finally, he tells the bear that his greatest regret is hurting Hazel.
The questions are over, the pressure on Alec releases, but Alec feels as though something has been fundamentally altered. His body feels different. He still can’t move. Alec tries to ask the bear what’s happening but finds he’s no longer able to speak; his mouth won’t open at all.
Alec hears voices approaching. It’s his mom and Hazel. He tries calling out to them for help, but can’t. They enter the room, look around, but they’re not looking for Alec — they’re looking for the Yarg Foxy plush, which Hazel quickly spots. It’s not far from where Alec is sitting, but they don’t seem to notice him at all. Hazel’s clearly upset that Alec threw away the toy she won for him, and in a small voice says that Alec must hate her. Their mom reassures her and says that that’s not true, Alec loves Hazel in his own way, just like they love him. Alec, hearing this, longs desperately to apologize but is still unable to speak or move. He may have hated Hazel in the past but Alec realizes that not only does he not hate her anymore, he never hated her nearly as much as he hates himself.
Hazel and their mom leave to go back to the party, oblivious to Alec’s silent, motionless pleas for help. After they’re gone, Alec concentrates with all his might and eventually begins to regain control of his body. At first all he’s able to do is close and open his eyes — once he opens them again, he sees that the Lonely Freddy has disappeared but that’s not really his main concern right now. With great effort Alec manages to move his limbs and get back on his feet, but something is still wrong. He still can’t talk or even move his mouth, and his surroundings feel wrong, like the whole room has gotten bigger. When he makes it to the door he finds that he has to stretch on tiptoe to reach the handle.
Alec makes it back to the main room where the party is taking place, still confused as to why everything seems so large. He’s barely set foot in the room when he’s set upon by what, from his perspective, appear to be enormous children who grab him and begin to roughhouse with him. Alec is tossed through the air and used for tug-of-war before another pizza arrives and the kids drop him. Alec still doesn’t realize what has happened, and he’s determined to find his family and apologize to them. He painstakingly makes his way across the huge room to where his family is seated. They all seem happy, smiling and laughing, especially Hazel who looks practically radiant with joy — and Alec realizes with horror that he’s the reason. Alec sees himself, sitting with his family, smiling and laughing right along with them. The realization dawns on him slowly over the next page or so but I’ll just cut to the chase: in case you didn’t get it, Alec has swapped places with the Lonely Freddy, who is now impersonating him based on what it learned about him earlier. Its portrayal of Alec seems to be a lot happier and friendlier, but Alec realizes that this won’t be seen as suspicious given he’s spent the past week “acting good.” People will just think that his parents’ attempts at correcting his behavior finally worked.
One of Hazel’s friends, who can’t eat chocolate without getting sick but apparently ate some anyway, vomits all over Alec. Staff is called to clean up the mess, and Alec is tossed into a bucket and wheeled back into the storage room. The employee unlocks the dumpster Alec heard thumping noises coming from earlier, and Alec sees that it’s full of discarded Lonely Freddies. He’s thrown into the pile and the dumpster’s lid is once again padlocked shut. In the dark, Alec tries to scream for help and finally manages to make a noise, but all he can do is squeak pathetically. The other bears also begin to cry out in their tiny voices, and the story ends on the realization that all of them must also be former “lonely” children stuck in animatronic bodies. Well, that’s familiar territory for this series, at least.
Bonus Round:
The word “dumpster” is capitalized as though it’s a proper noun in this story. Technically the word did originate as a brand name, but it’s become such a genericized term in North American English that seeing it capitalized is bizarre. I’ve never seen somebody write “Dumpster” before. To make things weirder, this only applies to the dumpster Alec is locked into at the end and not to the “household garbage dumpster” (why do they need an entire dumpster?) Alec’s family is referenced as having earlier in the story.
Unsure whether this belongs here or under Lore Implications, but you may be wondering what a Fazbear Funwich is. I mentioned them earlier in the summary. Well, it’s “a delicious crescent roll stuffed with your choice of fried macaroni, tater tots, or chocolate marshmallow.” Now you know.
Alec and Hazel’s dad is conspicuously out of focus in this story; we’re meant to believe he’s a present and active parent, but almost all his dialogue is reserved for the scenes where the kids overhear their parents talking. It’s like he only exists in the story to give the mom someone to talk to. He speaks a total of one sentence to Alec in this story. Now, you might remember that the dad character in “Fetch” was also conspicuously absent and only spoke a single line to his son in the entire tale, but this story isn’t written by the same author (“Fetch” is by Carly Anne West, “Lonely Freddy” is by Andrea Waggener), so this isn’t some sort of weird author quirk. I don’t know.
One of Hazel’s pranks during the part of the story where she’s purposefully misbehaving is “secretly” having double anchovies added to a pizza the family orders. I’m saying this as an anchovy lover: you cannot secretly add anchovies to a pizza. It’s not possible. Anchovies are notoriously stinky. No one with a functioning nose could possibly be fooled into thinking a pizza with double anchovies has no anchovies, regardless of them being hidden “under the cheese.” No way.
Lore Implications:
I don’t have a ton to say about Yarg Foxy (and no, I don’t have an explanation for the name, but I guess “Yarg!” is meant to be a sound a pirate would make?) but I do want to clarify something I said earlier about OG Foxy’s character design. For those who aren’t aware, in the first FNAF game Foxy is a decomissioned animatronic in a state of visible disrepair. DLC in a later game revealed that Foxy was originally known as “Captain Foxy” and wore a pirate hat and coat, the same way “Yarg Foxy” is described in this story. I don’t know what distinction, if any, we’re drawing between the two. The wiki describes Yarg Foxy as having a more simplified design than Captain Foxy, but they’re specifically talking about the plush toy version, not the full-size animatronic version that we’re told also exists. Don’t know why these books keep inventing new versions of the same characters that aren’t meaningfully distinct from the original versions, but it sure does keep happening, huh? (And no, it’s not the same as all the different animatronic variants in the games — at least those have distinct character designs!)
As for Lonely Freddy, I don’t have much to say. The concept of an animatronic body-snatcher who targets isolated children is fine and perfectly serviceable for kid horror, but animatronics with the souls of children trapped inside are FNAF’s bread and butter, so I don’t think this really adds anything new for us to discuss. And in terms of the “taking over a child’s life and body” aspect, Eleanor from “To Be Beautiful” did it better.
Closing Thoughts:
I’m not sure how much it actually comes across, but I do endeavor to be fair to these stories when I review them. I’m not just here to dunk on these books. When I write the plot summaries, I try to recount the events of the plot in a (mostly) unbiased fashion without embellishing anything or leaving out anything important. This time, though, I feel like I’ve been too kind to this story by summarizing it in a way that implies it has narrative coherence. It really feels as though the story has two contradictory ideas about how it wants to frame itself, but ultimately I think the read most supported by the text is both a) not readily apparent from my summary above and b) kind of awful. But in order to try and explain what I mean, first let me back up and relate to you exactly how this story opens.
The first thing we’re told about Alec is an anecdote about his first day at preschool. Alec happened to be big for his age and realized that being bigger than his peers made them more inclined to defer to him, and so he took minor advantage of this by cutting in line and dictating what games they should play. Eventually a teacher pulled Alec aside and told him he was being a bully, and Alec, not knowing what she meant but assuming it was a compliment, smiled at her. His teacher recoiled in horror, and that’s how Alec first learned that he was “bad.” I’m not saying this opening is well-written or effective — it isn’t — but I thought I understood what it was trying to do. This scene, in which an adult authority figure treats Alec like he’s a twisted fucking cycle path merely for lacking social skills when he’s literally a preschooler, is Alec’s establishing character moment. Right after this we go into how Hazel has been favored since her birth and gets treated totally differently than Alec does, and then we learn about Alec’s parents constantly trying out new parenting methods on Alec and how all the methods are bad and stupid. We're told that Alec has internalized the idea that he’s “bad” because he keeps being treated like he is, but this is at odds with his actual behavior. Alec doesn’t do anything really “bad” in this story up until his tantrum at Hazel’s party, which the narration tells us is the worst thing he’s ever done in his life. We’re given a few other anecdotes about times Alec has misbehaved in the past and it’s all very mild stuff. Here, have a complete list of every bad thing we’re told Alec has done:
Alec’s parents tried planting a garden with him, following the advice in one of their parenting books. Alec “planted” his mom’s wedding ring to see if it would grow more diamonds. We’re not told how old he was at the time, but the phrasing suggests he was young enough to genuinely think that this might work.
Another parenting book suggested letting your child pick a new name for themself. Alec renamed himself “Captain Thunder Pants” and spent the next week making fart noises.
On a camping trip, a mosquito flew up Hazel’s nose and Alec convinced her it was going to lay eggs up there. (The narration calls this “a sort of Lord of the Flies situation.” I don’t think this author knows what happened in Lord of the Flies, but I’ll give her a hint: it was considerably worse than this.)
So, like, given all of this I thought I understood the general thrust of the narrative: this is a story about a kid who thinks he’s “bad” because his parents treat him like he is, and because they treat his sister like the sun shines out of her ass, he resents her and thinks she’s manipulating them on purpose even though she’s also a victim of bad parenting. Standard scapegoat vs. golden child stuff. Alec and Hazel are both just normal kids who would probably have a better sibling relationship if their parents weren’t constantly punishing one of them while rewarding the other.
There’s plenty of textual support for this interpretation, and I made sure to include those moments when summarizing. It’s directly brought up that Hazel might have her own motivations for antagonizing their parents, that maybe she wants to be treated as normal rather than being put on a pedestal. There’s the scene where Aunt Gigi says that maybe Alec and Hazel only play into “bad kid” and “good kid” roles because of their parents treating them that way. There’s the fact that when Alec and Hazel start behaving differently, Hazel’s bad behavior is noted (with their parents making excuses for her, fretting over the change, and assuming it must be stress related to her upcoming party) but never punished, whereas Alec spends the whole week being scolded over nothing and his improved behavior is all but completely ignored (it’s mentioned once, a throwaway line about how “it’s like they’ve swapped places”). All that context aside, though, on an even more basic level I’m on Alec’s side here because he is a child with limited autonomy in this situation. Even if his behavior were actually concerningly naughty, it would be the job of his parents to correct that behavior and we’re both told and shown that they’re doing a terrible job of it.
Interpreting the story in this manner works during the leadup to Hazel’s party, when Alec and Hazel are conspiring to get back at their parents by reversing their “bad kid”/“good kid” roles. Reading it this way, these scenes even feel fun and nuanced if you squint. Alec has distrusted his sister for so long that he’s sure she’s got some evil scheme planned and that he just needs to stay one step ahead of her, even though obviously there is no evil scheme. Hazel finally has the chance to try and connect with her brother and to prove that they’re not so different from each other, but seeing this other, less “perfect” side of her just proves to Alec that she’s a duplicitous manipulator. I skimmed past most of this in my summary because the details aren’t important, but we do get a lot of little anecdotes about Hazel causing problems on purpose and on a basic level it’s satisfying to read about kids getting back at shitty adults. The cracks begin to show as the story continues, especially when Alec becomes convinced for some reason that Hazel wanting to win the Yarg Foxy plush proves that she’s out to get him; this doesn’t really make any sense, but whatever, he’s a teenager and thinking irrationally. In the same scene Hazel gets frustrated with Alec and claims that their parents only dote on her because they’re worried about him, drops the reveal that they only moved to be closer to Aunt Gigi for Alec’s sake, and implies that all of this is somehow Alec’s fault; this also doesn’t make sense, but I can believe that Hazel might feel that way about it, so I chalked it up to just being her perspective at first. But then we get to the climactic moment where Hazel tries to give Alec the Yarg Foxy plush, and everything collapses as it becomes clear that we were not meant to be viewing Alec with sympathy.
If somebody were to pick up the book and begin reading at the birthday party scene, and then read through to the end without going back and reading the beginning, I think the tail end of this story would make much more sense to them than it did to me. Without the context of the first two-thirds of the story, this reads like the “cautionary tale” type of kid horror, where the child protagonist is harshly punished for their bad behavior via supernatural means. Don’t be mean to your little siblings like Alec was, or Lonely Freddy’ll get you! But, while Alec was undeniably cruel to Hazel, by the time that scene happens we have enough context to know that Alec has legitimate grievances with his family — he’s lashing out at the wrong target, but his anger seems justified, and given that he immediately regrets his behavior and has a crying breakdown in the back rooms of Freddy Fazbear’s it still feels as though Alec is having a very normal teenager reaction to the circumstances he’s in. I’m not trying to downplay how shitty it is to make a ten-year-old cry at her birthday party in front of all her friends, but at the same time we know Alec isn’t just being an asshole for no reason. To me it still seems clear that the parents are at fault for creating this rift between their children. Except that the narration then proceeds to directly tell us how Alec is at fault for emotionally withdrawing from his family?? Here, have a direct quote:
It seemed impossible that he’d gotten it all so wrong: the attention his parents lavished on her and spared for him; the bad seed label he’d given himself that he was so certain the family had given him; the days and months and years he’d spent lamenting his outsider-ness. What if they’d all actually wanted him inside with the rest of them?
This paragraph makes me feel insane. What do you mean, Alec gave himself the bad seed label? We’re directly told at the very beginning of the story that Alec thinks of himself as bad because adults keep telling him that he is! What do you mean, I was supposed to believe that this fifteen-year-old was in the wrong for not wanting closer relationships with his parents when we’ve been told outright that they’re always trying stupid parenting techniques on him and berating him for being alive? Am I really supposed to think it’s fucked up that a teenager would be moody and socially reclusive and struggle to get along with his significantly younger sibling?
And then I look back at the earlier parts of the story and it all comes apart. I thought we were supposed to infer that Hazel had her own reasons for wanting to act out, like not wanting to be viewed as the golden child anymore, but when she drops the act at her party she tells Alec she doesn’t want to be bad and just wanted him to like her. She doesn’t actually have any beef with their parents. When she scolds Alec prior to the party about how their parents worry about him so much and even moved houses for his sake, we’re not being shown how from Hazel’s perspective it looks like their parents are obsessed with Alec and not her, we’re being told directly about how Alec is an ungrateful child who doesn’t appreciate the sacrifices his family makes for him. Aunt Gigi’s parenting advice is usually dubious and unsolicited and the scene where she delivers some uncharacteristically astute observations about how Alec and Hazel are the way that they are because of the way they’ve been raised isn’t meant to seem uncharacteristically astute, it’s meant as another example of her running her mouth and offering advice when it’s not helpful or wanted — the narration says that “to her credit, Aunt Gigi was silent” when Alec’s mom responds by snapping at her. When the story told us about how bad Alec is I guess we were just meant to accept that on its face. This goes beyond regular “show, don’t tell” issues — I don’t even feel like we were properly told, and the end result is a narrative that feels like it’s victim-blaming a fifteen-year-old for having shitty parents. It sucks. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I did not like this one.