The Mimic is genuinely such an interesting fnaf antagonist to me bc it’s a learning, thinking, autonomous being in a way that most of the other animatronic adversaries aren’t with it being entirely devoid of any remains of a human soul, its existence dictated by an algorithm and simple instructing program which it proceeds to carry out with horrifyingly deadly precision, nothing more than a rogue antique endo-turned-murderbot responsible for multiple bloody gore-fests in the tales from the pizzaplex stories and epilogues and yet, AND YET. it’s simultaneously the child it learned it’s mannerisms and ideas that originally shaped its view of the world from, given “life” not by another’s soul but simply the anguish of a father’s grief over the loss of that same child that it doesn’t understand, now learning and adapting as per its programming to the anger and pain and fear it sees in everyone that so much as looks at it, the same hands and arms that used to gently hold a homemade stuffed tiger it now uses to break and rend and maim, and in a way its (later) brutalizing murder-sprees can be seen as little more than an innocent, literal, almost childlike interpretation of its instructions. it is lifeless and robotic and emotionless and capable of learning and emulating and born from pain and loss and anger and adapted to fear and suffering and it is absolutely everything to me