Hello tumblr dot com it's me again with another borderline essay about TFF
So I've already touched briefly upon my own personal theories/headcanons of Bryan's relationship with the portal and subsequently how he was treated by Glitchtrap when he was in Steve's head but I wanted to delve into that a lot more here. Mainly because I have quite a few ideas + I was speaking to a friend on tiktok who encouraged this mass rambling soo.. @spookbooo you are to blame for this.
So it's an established belief of mine that Bryan was chosen either consciously or unconsciously by the portal to be a living vessel for it's power, something it could mould into being strong enough to carry it, to take from when it needed to, someone who had already been exposed to it enough that they'd be too weak to resist it's will. Enter Bryan.
This kind of results in what I refer to as a sort of glorified hypnosis. The connection formed between Bryan and the portal leaves him completely at the mercy of it's wants for him--when it calls for him, he has to answer, there is nothing he can do about it. He basically loses all of his own autonomy to it's incessant noises and whirring sounds, and finds a sense of sick comfort in it that he's been conditioned to feel almost. Basically believing that the portal is his salvation, something that can make his pain go away. Either that, or on days where he's a little more aware of it's dangers, it drags him kicking and screaming.
He's unable to ignore it's call because of the sheer amount of it's matter that is in his blood/DNA, and because of the amount of times he's already been through it. {see to the episodes scattered around where they talk about the portal matter being infused with his blood/DNA} The portal basically has some semblance of control over both his mind and body-- like when Bryan was sleepwalking in s2 and even though he was slightly aware of what he was doing, he couldn't really bring himself to stop. He also fully believed what the voice was telling him--even though he knew deep down that Molten wasn't around and his animatronics were fine, which shows just how deep of an influence the portal has on the way he thinks.
Because it's pulled Bryan through so may times, the portal has managed to work itself into Bryan's genetic makeup, basically rewriting what and who he was before and turning him into something useful for it's purposes. Whatever those may be. So he is physically unable to resist it, the portal is a part of him now, he needs it whether he likes it or not. This also explains why he gets so defensive whenever anyone spoke about turning it off--it's not just that he was obsessed with it, but his body and mind had literally been rewired to need it to survive.
To me, I believe this results in kind of trance-like episodes where the pull of the portal becomes too strong and Bryan basically abandons whatever he's doing or loses sight of whoever is around him and only retains the ability to think about the portal, his body and mind effectively forcing him towards it no matter where he is, and he's usually unable to stop it on his own. His only goal is to get to the portal as soon as possible, no matter what he has to do to achieve it. His very being practically screaming at him to do so and drowning out anything else. The noise that the portal makes also practically ingrains itself into Bryan's head at times and it can be really loud and overwhelming, often distracting him from conversations and directing his attention back to the place his body thinks it's supposed to be. Putting him in kind of a state of dissociation where he feels disconnected from himself and his surroundings.
So yeah, basically some kind of "magical" hypnosis, considering he seems to enter some kind of trance whenever he's too close to it. Often only having the ability to acknowledge the swirling colours in front of him and the noise it makes, and effectively shutting out anyone or anything else around him. He often seems to lose his train of thought and lose sight of what he's doing when he's too close to it too. {e.g how he acts in the episode "A Twisted Nightmare" in s2 where the portal calls to him in his sleep, how he loses awareness of his surroundings when he's too close, that one episode in s3 "My Portal Powers" where the portal basically ko's him and drags him in against his will + you hear his voice get all airy and far-off ish at the end etc etc}
This ties into the way I believe he was treated by Glitchtrap when they were in Steve's head too, and why Bryan was so easy to find at the end of it all. As well as developing some of the ideas on how Bryan and Glitchtrap's dynamic works.
Glitchtrap itself is heavily connected to the portal, having come from within it originally and being able to use it to pull things out for its own benefit, it's clear it too has some kind of connection to it/simply just an innate understanding that other characters lack. It was also shown to have some mind/body controlling powers in s2 where they took over the twisteds from time to time, and whatever it did to Helpy in s4. In canon FNAF, Glitchtrap does seem to have some kind of hypnotic-adjacent ability, so I thought that it should have something similar here.
Similar in the sense that their abilities work in an almost identical way to the pull/allure of the portal, which is why I think it would have such a strong affect on Bryan. I think that because they are both connected to the portal in a sense, and were inhabiting Steve's head together at the same time, they have a sort of connection to eachother that nobody around them would really be able to recognise. Bryan almost feels the same kind of pull towards Glitchtrap as he does to the portal, but he doesn't really realise that's what it is, because it's slightly more painful and unnatural in a sense, differing just enough to be unrecognisable at first glance. It almost feels like a kind of fixation, something he can't shake.
This kind of results in the same set of problems the portal gives Bryan like you'd assume, except it really only has an affect on him in close proximity, unlike how the portal reaches him from anywhere. Which is in part because of the duration of time it was just them within Steve's head, and because the portal itself holds more power when Bryan is within reaching distance, so I imagine Glitchtrap only ever has a sort of hold on Bryan when they are close to him.
Bryan often finds himself distracted or unfocused the more he's around Glitchtrap, his head ending up feeling fuzzy and forgetting what it is specifically he's supposed to be focusing on. If Bryan finds himself around Glitchtrap for an extended period of time, he ends up with the same sort of consequences as being too close to the portal--entering that sort of trance like state where he seems to fixate entirely on it's actions and what it's saying, losing awareness on other things happening around him. Glitchtrap itself finds that it can get into Bryan's head quite easily, persuading him to think about things a little differently and altering his perception, almost drowning out any other thought he has for a period of time. And if this "pull" so to speak that Bryan feels is so similar to the portal's, then the more he is exposed to Glitchtrap the more vulnerable he becomes towards it's persuasion and influence + the more unaware he becomes of the things going on around him.
In regards to how Bryan was treated while he was in Steve's head, I think Glitchtrap experimented with this certain set of abilities quite a bit.
I believe their interest in Bryan in season 2 wasn't just because of the information he possessed, but also because they knew Bryan had some sort of link to the portal, though it didn't know what exactly at the time. {Which could also link to it's reaction when Moon tells them about Bryan's portal powers in s3, when it says something along the lines of "I never thought I'd see the day" and then immediately starts scheming on Bryan's possible usefulness.}
So, when they found themselves with an awful lot of time to kill and an unwilling victim who had nowhere to go, Glitchtrap decided to test if Bryan's connection to the portal made him vulnerable to it's own abilities, resulting in an extended period of a form of torture for Bryan. Glitchtrap would often attempt to alter Bryan's memories and experiences, using his ability to persuade and control to convince him that he was well and truly alone, that nobody was coming to find him etc etc. Basically just extensive gaslighting and manipulation with nobody around to prove them wrong, so Bryan only had his own memory to attempt to convince himself Glitchtrap was lying. But when you're being told so many conflicting things one after the other, who's to know what's actually true? And with Glitchtrap's "pull" inciting a kind of haze in Bryan's mind, I imagine he found it extremely difficult to differentiate between what was real and a lie.
{Glitchtrap probably also had a field day tormenting Bryan when Molten gave up on trying to bring him back, but that's not as important}
Considering the fact that Bryan also did not exactly have what you'd call a physical form, it is also a possibility that Glitchtrap tested the extent of the harm it could do physically, since Bryan couldn't exactly "die" while within Steve so to speak. There were far less consequences to Glitchtrap's actions inside of that mindspace, so they probably felt free to test the limits of their abilities--or what it had left of them, considering they were most probably also weakened from the events of the s2 finale. This could also explain why Bryan was incapable of contacting Steve or taking over the suit.
To me, the possibility of Bryan being tortured makes the most sense, because the radio silence that Steve faced from him upon Glitchtrap's return always felt too coincidental, and with Bryan's character, it's fairly obvious to assume he'd have attempted to speak to Steve if he had the ability. In s3, Bryan's also depicted as being in pain quite a lot whilst in the suit, which, while it could be from a multitude of different things, I think this seemingly endless stream of torment would definitely contribute.
This also ties into why I think it was so easy for Steve to free Bryan from that loop of his first pizzeria. He clearly can't have been in it the entire time, otherwise it would have taken a lot more effort on Steve's end. I believe Glitchtrap simply put him there in a last ditch effort to get him out of the way and attempt to break him down enough for it to be more of an ordeal for Steve to save him. Obviously though, he can't have been stuck there for long enough. I think by this point Glitchtrap had probably also used up a lot of the power it had left over from the events of s2, and had to focus majority of it of getting themselves out of Steve's head, so keeping Bryan away was kind of put on the back burner. After all, it had found out all they needed to know, who cared if Bryan managed to come back.
Suffice to say, this would also make sense of Bryan's immediate changes upon his revival. The differences in how he acted towards others as well as his change of appearance could most definitely be seen as an attempt to take back a kind of control that he'd lacked for so long, an attempt to feel safe and protected. He probably wanted nothing to do with the version of himself that was tormented for so long, who was helpless to do anything about it. But unfortunately for him, the whole ordeal made him a whole lot more susceptible to both the portal {which we see in canon with the development of his portal powers and the issues they cause} and Glitchtrap.
So yeah, thanks for coming to my ted talk, I hope at least some of this makes sense and it wasn't too much of an ordeal to get through bc I'm very passionate about this and think about it a lot so. I also hope that it kind of smooths out a couple of things that maybe didn't make sense upon his return, because that was a thing I wanted to focus on too. I also just wanted to develop Bryan and Glitchtrap's dynamic because for someone who's supposed to be the main villain they have painfully few interactions together.
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