Poppy Playtime Meta - Tumblr Posts
So on the back of my headcanon about the Prototype more or less raising CatNap, I've been watching someone play Project Playtime for the first time, and I'm fucking yelling
If you play as the monster, the Prototype literally teaches you (as Huggy Wuggy) how to hunt. He's the one giving the tutorial instructions.
And honestly? The vibe I got from that "interaction" is that Prototype likes children. More than that: Prototype is good with children.
Project Playtime takes place in the intervening decade between the Hour of Joy massacre and the start of the main game. Based on the fact that Huggy needs the Prototype's guidance, it's probably fairly early in that period - he's not used to hunting for himself yet. So Huggy here is a monster with limited intelligence - he's the most 'animal' experiment we've seen, though he is still able to write - and the soul of a child.
And the Prototype tailors his lessons appropriately. Like, I trained to work with kids, and he uses essentially the same approach I would to teach a young or special needs child a new skill.
Simple Instructions: what Prototype is teaching Huggy here is, at its core, strategy and tactical thinking, and that's a subject he seems to understand well and know a lot about. A more intelligent experiment - like, say, young CatNap - might ask a lot of questions, and Prototype could probably give them long, in-depth explanations of why doing X thing prompts Y response or why Z tactic is useful. But Huggy isn't on that level, so Prototype keeps his instructions and explanations short, concise and easy to understand.
No Guesswork: Huggy, described as having only "sufficient" intelligence post-transformation, likely has limited capacity for complex thought. Where CatNap might be encouraged to think ahead for himself and suggest problems that could arise, Huggy would struggle. So Prototype gives him all the information he needs: here are the ways the humans will try to avoid or harm or mislead you, and here are the ways you can fight back. He even points out little tips that might seem obvious, like listening for the breathing of a hiding worker, because he knows that might not occur independently to Huggy.
Positive Reinforcement: When Huggy successfully incapacitates a human player, Prototype laughs and praises him, treating a potentially upsetting conflict like a fun game. Once Huggy has gotten rid of all the human players and won the match, Prototype tells him he did a good job and that he can rest now.
The Bad News Sandwich: One technique I was taught for dealing with young children is that when you have to give them upsetting or disappointing news, sandwiching it between two good things limits the distress it will cause. And Prototype does this twice with Huggy:
[Praises Huggy for catching a player and putting him in the food chute] [warns Huggy that the other players could try to rescue their friend] [offers a way to stop them doing that]
[Praises Huggy for clearing out the factory] [tells Huggy that more humans will return] [reassures Huggy that for now, he can rest and relax]
Anyway. Prototype taught at least one child-aged experiment to fend for itself and defend the factory: confirmed. And so, scenarios I'm now picturing with Prototype and little CatNap: this
I'm also 👀👀👀 at the fact that like. While it's directly stated that while his main motive for having the experiments attack the Project Playtime workers is to stop them making more creatures, he's got a secondary motive in that he's using the Bigger Bodies mascots *to gather food for the smaller toys*. The larger toys may have become hostile towards the smaller, weaker, "prey" toys, but the Prototype seems to be at least trying to provide for them, albeit in the only fucked-up way available to him.
Anyway I just think that's really interesting considering he's been implied to be the game's ultimate Big Bad. I think there's more to him than we've been told