Absolutely Astrocious

Yeah, they only get a little over two pages. (I omitted some text in between the passages; it's just half a page of Abe worrying about his own problems, and does not pertain to the Daycare whatsoever, so I cut it for readability.)

The thing that stood out to me about this particular book, even back when I was reading it for the first time, was how it contained a lot of really game-accurate descriptions. Like, one-to-one recreations of events and lore from the game, to the point where reading it after having played the game was a little jarring.

For instance, check out this segment about DJMM (the last image is sufficient, but you don't actually have to read any of them because I'll explain it anyway, I just like providing evidence):

This is pretty much an exact recreation of his presence in the game, from his duffle bag lore to his gameplay segment (which doesn't actually make much sense to be here, since it's implied that DJ's Bouncer Mode is catalyzed by the breakers freaking out while this event here is spontaneous, but whatever).

This and other sections of the book are written with a lot of confidence, especially considering a lot of elements can't be figured out just from casual observation.

For example, here it mentions the song "Fazer Blast Jam," which is the name of the OST playing in Fazer Blast. That's not casual player knowledge, since it's never directly told in-game. Of course, it's not difficult info to find either, but it does suggest a level of care for detail.

So it makes sense that, as a ghostwriter for a book about a game that she probably hadn't played, the writer was given a list of game and lore descriptions, specifically pertaining to the major areas and bosses in gameplay. (I also think she had the wiki pulled up, but I go over that later.) This includes the Daycare and the DCA!

With the same level of confidence she writes about the DCA, you'd think their segment was also ripped directly from the game. But as it stands, this is really the only lore description that isn't backed up by definite game evidence, which seems to discredit its validity. I believe I know the reason for this, though!

By now, I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page that Moon had more content planned, right? From a ton of unused animations, to his consistent buildup over the game with no payoff, to that endo area with Moon's face plastered everywhere, to whatever "Plan B" was supposed to be, we were at least meant to see a bit more of him than we ended up with. I assume that the DCA's history was supposed to be revealed later, likely from a duffle bag near Moon's boss fight like how the others' lore is revealed, but Moon's boss fight never got added, so neither did the lore message.

(It's also interesting to note that in the book, Moon does literally nothing except say one of his canon lines. We see nothing about how he acts. Maybe his appearance in the Daycare wasn't considered as influential or as important to describe. Makes sense: Gregory doesn't actually get to defeat Moon like he does the other animatronics, which is what I presume Moon's boss fight would lead to.)

With this context in mind, the fact that their lore wasn't included in the game itself doesn't necessarily mean that the author is making it up.

Actually, the thing that cements it for me is this line:

They're directly compared to Jekyll/Hyde. This probably doesn't ring any bells for you, but I've scoured for every semi-official scrap of the DCA I could find, and Steel Wool consistently describes the DCA as Jekyll/Hyde: it's in their quintessential idea of the character. It's how the executive producer Ray McCaffrey described them in his blurb on Steel Wool's website (the page was rewritten some time ago to no longer include this text, so here's a link to the archived version).

I could have sworn there was another instance of this, but it's not in the cookbook or FNAF:SB guidebook like I thought it was; I'll have to search through the other books later. (Edit: found it! It's how they're described in the FNAF Encyclopedia! And it's also how Kellen Goff, their VA, described them in an interview.)

Keep in mind that in 2022 when this book was published, the fandom was still split over whether the DCA was two different animatronics, at least from the posts I was seeing. Jekyll and Hyde are definitively NOT two different people (I've reread that book an infinite number of times, and I actually have a lot to say about it in relation to the DCA, but that's for another time). The DCA wiki page somehow doesn't even mention Jekyll/Hyde anywhere! The author most likely wrote from a fact sheet just like other ghostwriters for the FNAF series do.

There are certainly many aspects of this book that are not at all related to the game. The entire premise of this story is Abe secretly living in a huge high-end residential complex called the FazPlex tower, which is supposedly visible from inside the Pizzaplex, and his room is run by glitching AI personalities that we never hear about in canon. These concepts are relevant to the game's themes, but certainly don't appear in and are not canon to the game or lore itself.

However, note that all the actual lore stuff happens outside the established FNAF:SB setting, like the writer didn't want to manipulate anything canon to the game. It feels like the Pizzaplex and the Faztower are two completely separate worlds, one based exactly on the gameplay of FNAF:SB and one just vaguely relevant enough to sell another spinoff FNAF story. Sure, the book has a lot of things that are definitely not canon, but none of them in regards to the Pizzaplex; in fact, I doubt the author wrote anything that intentionally strayed from Steel Wool's guide sheet or the wiki.

This could leave room for the author to interpret the fact sheet, but the text is written so plainly that I think it's pretty one-to-one with what Steel Wool told her. It's too specific and pointless to be creative liberty, and I highly doubt it was a headcanon from the author or the wiki. With all the specific details about the Plex's layout, I'm pretty sure the author had images or the wiki pulled up while writing, but this wouldn't affect the DCA's lore; again, the book was published the year after FNAF:SB released, so it had likely begun writing a few months prior, and I don't think anybody online had even considered the idea of them being a theatre bot at that point—the most I saw was someone briefly mentioning the sun/moon-shaped masks above the theater entrance. I remember how uncertain the wiki was in the DCA fandom's days of infancy, like it was scared to make a non-canon claim since there was so little to work with in-game. It actually sites her for their current claims about the DCA being related to the theater, and even then it treats the idea dubiously.

From all of this, it feels pretty certain that Steel Wool designed the "DCA was a repurposed theater bot" thing to be canon, told the writer about it, and just neglected to explain it in the game, or maybe the book was a result of them realizing they forgot to explain the lore they made and trying to clear it up after the fact. Either way, the idea is clear.

But does that mean it actually is canon?

Well, that depends. The only thing it can really confirm is the fact that SW intended it to be, just like they intended DJMM's Bouncer Mode to be canon. The difference is that, since the DCA thing wasn't explicitly explained in the game, Steel Wool theoretically could have changed their mind about it at any time. I doubt it honestly, they have no discernable reason to, but you never know! It's more plausible now that Sun/Moon got more attention in HW2 and SotM.

Another factor is whether you value SW's vision of canon. They may have intended to include it, but they didn't, so it may be more satisfying to form your own conclusions based on the info we actually see in-game. I myself do this with Monty: SW consistently refers to Monty as solely "angry" and "jealous," which to me feels disrespectful to the complex setup and potential of his character. (I may write about this in the future, because there's a lot of symbolism with Bonnie that gets ignored, especially in RUIN, but that's another post for later.) In these cases, differing interpretations just feel better even if they're not "canon" by the writers' design.