SecurityAngel

SPOILER WARNING! this article may contain major plot or ending details

SecurityAngel
Credits to @dovewingkinnie on Tumblr
GENERAL
Poppy Playtime
Character	Harley Sawyer
Character	The Player
Canonical?	Fanon
Status of Relationship	Enemies/Former Co-workers; the player killed Harley
IN FANDOM
Type (?)	Non-binary
Also Known As	Harley Sawyer x Player, 🩶💛, 📺🪽
Tropes	Enemies to Lovers Foe Yay Shipping

1

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Mmmm, now what's this? Do I feel something squirming its way beneath my skin? An invasive, foreign little germ? After all this time?... Ah, but I see... You. Well, little germ, let's make a game of you.

—Harley Sawyer to Player in the beginning of chapter four.

SecurityAngel is the non-binary ship between Harley Sawyer and the player from the Poppy Playtime fandom.

Canon

Pre-Chapter 4

While the full scope of their history together is unknown, the player was an employee of Playtime Co. alongside Harley, up to and including playing a part in his Bigger Bodies Initiative. Sawyer would be taken out of the Initiative and instead made one of its experiments - an A.I. program meant to guide the project - only to participate in the "Hour of Joy", a massacre of Playtime's staff the player avoided as they weren't at the factory that day. A decade later, the now ex-employee would return to the factory at the urging of a letter they received. Harley would take notice of their arrival and begin monitoring them as they made their way deeper into the facility. The player, meanwhile, would become "re-acquainted" with the Doctor through documents and video tapes they find throughout the factory's "on-site orphanage" Playcare,

Chapter 4: Safe Haven

The player would eventually find their way into Harley's territory within the facility: the prison that was used to contain the experiments. While they were onboard the train into the facility, the Doctor confronts them through a television and quickly realizes who they are. Deciding to toy with the player, Harley traps them within one of the prison wings and observes them try to escape. All the while, the Doctor tests them further first by sending a swarm of living Nightmare Critters to attack them, then by sealing them in a wing filled with the nightmare-inducing Red Smoke. The player is able to escape these and eventually finds themselves in a containment wing, where the Doctor addresses how long it's been since he's seen a human much less an employee before noting there's something different about them he can't pin down. The Doctor goes on to showcase he's been observing the player by noting the experiments they've taken down up till now and how he wants them to try something different. With that, he releases his personal "guard dog" Yarnaby and watches as the player is chased by the lion toy only to escape with some help.

That help came to the player in the form of Doey the Doughman, a friendly experiment leading the fight against Harley. After arriving in his bastion of Safe Haven, Doey tasks the player with stopping the Doctor and acquiring his Omni-Hand: a GrabPak hand that gives universal access to the facility. With a new goal, the player makes their way into the Doctor's inner sanctum with the Doctor waiting for them. As the player began trying to destroy Harley by sabotaging the various life support systems around the sanctum, the Doctor tries stopping them with traps. He also tries discouraging them by explaining his goals as well as calling into question their allies and why they're at the factory in the first place.

The Doctor eventually manages to trap the player in a room with a trapped Simon Smoke. He makes the point that they're no more moral than him by forcing them to kill the toy to leave and noting their friends would do it to complete their mission. If they comply and kill Simon, the Doctor is impressed by their willingness to do anything and invites them into his personal chambers. Alternatively, the player finds an opening in the room to let them escape without killing Simon, which the Doctor begrudgingly has to accept.

One of the Sarley Hawyers waving to the player before being dropped into a room filled with more Sarley Hawyers.

The player eventually makes it into the chamber only for one of the Doctor's robotic drones to grab them and toss them down a trap door leading into a room filled with more drones. As they try to escape the room, the Doctor gloats to them about his inability to be stopped and raging at the "injustices" that were wrought upon him. The player is eventually able to make it back to the Doctor and use a console to obtain the chip for his Omni-Hand - which also sabotages his last life-support system. With a violent pulse, the system and drones shut down as Doctor Harley Sawyer finally dies, but not before weakly telling the player they saved no one. In the aftermath, the player uses Harley's chip to make an Omni-Hand for their GrabPak before leaving and returning to Safe Haven.

Fanon

SecurityAngel is one of the most widely adored ships in the Poppy Playtime fandom. A huge part of its appeal comes from the intense, almost magnetic fixation Sawyer has on the Player, an obsession that goes far beyond simple curiosity. Fans love exploring the deeper layers of why Sawyer is so drawn to them: why the Player matters so much, what makes them stand out in a factory full of broken experiments and forgotten staff, and why Sawyer reacts to them with such a mix of protectiveness, fascination, and hunger.

The dynamic becomes even more striking when people think more deeper at the Doctor’s attempts, his desperate attempts to pull the Player to his side, manipulating, coaxing, and cornering, highlight a twisted devotion that fans interpret in a hundred different ways. These moments serve as fuel for the ship, adding to the tension and the emotional sharpness that SecurityAngel thrives.

On AO3, this ship has nearly 70 tagged entries. It's Harley Sawyer’s most written ship after HarLeith.

Fandom

FAN FICTION

The Player/Harley Sawyer tag on AO3

The Player & Harley Sawyer tag on AO3

TUMBLR

SecurityAngel posts on Tumblr

TWITTER

SecurityAngel hashtag on Twitter