Resonating with Bugsnax

I have recently beaten Bugsnax, and as is typical when I beat a game I really enjoyed and related to, I just can't stop thinking about it. This feeling of wanting to think about a subject gets in the way of me starting new games, and the feeling usually only subsides given time, if I ramble about it a lot intermittently, or if I get it out of my system in a structured method.  

While it'd no doubt be fun to ramble about it intermittently (or it would not be, as I get into later), I'd rather do the latter. Usually these game-specific blogs are very much review-esque affairs, but this time I had several moments of striking personal resonance with themes in Bugsnax, so I instead want to talk and reflect on that. So this blog gets much more personal than usual. Maybe that makes it less easy reading fare, but then it probably also makes it actually worth reading for once (another thing I'll get into later).

This blog does contain spoilers, keep that in mind.

But what is Bugsnax?

I feel I should at least give a quick summary of what the game is about so the rest of the blog at least makes some sense. Bugsnax is a pretty weird hybrid of several game elements, so it's not easy to pin down exactly. 

The general gameplay is mostly about using one's puzzle-solving skills, quick thinking and dexterity to catch the game's eponymous Bugsnax, strange hybrids of bugs and food items. These Bugsnax are needed to be captured to progress through the game's main plot and sidequests, though there's also a collect-them-all aspect to the game. There's no combat system of any kind, it's more of an interactive safari than Pokémon battles. 

More importantly to the blog here, there's also a townbuilding aspect to the game. The game's set in an expedition to a miraculous island filled with the eponymous Bugsnax, and for most of the game the protagonist is trying to gather all the expedition members back into the central hub town. The personal problems and interpersonal relations of the expedition members is the heart and core of the game's plot, and it's where the personal resonance happened for me. Characters discuss their wants, needs and fears as the game draws ever more closely to its conclusion.

Ok, but what ARE Bugsnax?

Ok, so it turns out the cute and lovable Bugsnax are actually addictive parasites that feed on people's personal weaknesses. They foster dependence and push characters to give in to their personal problems, and if the player messes up badly enough, the Bugsnax will wholly overcome the characters and kill them off, turning them into more Bugsnax. It's honestly downright brutal, and the game's excellent voice acting makes those scenes really effective gutpunches for me. Characters ramble desperately as they literally fall to pieces, their limbs falling off and their bodies dissolving into dust, with their surviving loved ones to react to it and reflect about it. Those reactions and reflections have the most harrowing voice lines attached to them.

Shelda explains it all

There's several readings of how to interpret this, clearly the Bugsnax are meant to be read in a metaphorical sense, the most obvious ones being addiction and drugs, though I believe it's also still possible to interpret this in additional ways, though for the purposes of this blog I'll try to keep more to the bits that personally resonated with me.

Shelda: Masked Obscurity

The last character to be recruited is Shelda, an old woman who has a habit of speaking only in vagaries and riddles. She earnestly wishes best for others and she turns out to be right with much of what she says, but her problem is that she consistently masks herself as a Respectable Wise Leader. Rather than outright say what she means directly, she props up all she says in metaphor in an attempt to seem more interesting and actually worth listening to. My understanding is that she did not act this manner before coming to the expedition, but that it is instead a mask she wears only for members of the expedition. She says herself she felt she needed to be Shelda rather than be herself for people to listen to her.

This behavior obviously causes friction. While there's some people who are enamored with her persona, there's many who find her mannerisms annoying and fraudulent. The protagonist is quick to point out how ridiculous she seems, and she's one of the most unpopular characters of the game. Throughout the quest more and more people get sick of her fake persona, and she herself gets disdainful about the situation and gets ever-quicker to drop the act with the protagonist. Her reflections should she survive are that her persona only created a barrier between her and other people, while if she dies she does it ranting at the top of her lungs in her persona that she is above Bugsnax while crumbling to bits.

I've seen people relate to this through the lens of religion, though for me the masked obscurity made me think more of how I regularly converse and act in the Discord server I'm most active in. I feel as the years have gone by, I've been isolating myself more and more in layers of irony, defining myself through the media I consume and 'quirky interests' I play up for 'comedic effect'. Acting like a ridiculous idiot, to whose amusement? I feel like the more time goes by, the less interesting and earnest conversations I have, the need to 'be Mania' exceeding the need to be myself and blocking off potentially interesting conversations.

Honestly, I don't know what to do about this. I worry I am creating a rift between myself and others, one that makes me less and less of a desirable person to actually talk with. Who wants to talk with the guy who'll make everything about Yu-Gi-Oh, or says pointless lewd stuff, or spams reaction images? Are any of these bits actually amusing, do they enrich anything? Are these just crutches to make myself 'more interesting'? How little do I ever actually talk about personal thoughts, scared that I'd just be met with a joking reply as I've done to others in the past, and as people might think I'm hoping to get in turn myself? 

I'd like to think this blog is at least a way to drop that mask a bit, I suppose. To talk about my insecurities, rather than just acting like a buffoon as usual as though nothing was going on. And speaking of insecurities...

Wiggle: Necessitated Audience 

Recruited in the early-middle part of the game, Wiggle is a one-hit wonder banjo-playing singer. She's come on the expedition hoping to get the inspiration needed to craft a new song that finally puts her in the spotlights again. Her only success has been a complete fluke in a trashy pop hit she wrote in a hungover stupor, and all her attempts since to appeal to the audience or to write from the heart were met with indifference. It's made clear that her motivation is not driven by need for fame or money, as she has both, but by the need to have an audience for the creations she feels truly represent her.

Ultimately her attempts to get inspired using Bugsnax all amount to nothing, she writes no new hit singles. The only solace she finds in the island is her budding relationship with Gramble, a relationship that gets questioned for its sincerity. Is Wiggle just using Gramble for his Bugsnax, he's the best at collecting them aside from the protagonist, or is her love sincere? In the ending where she lives and reflects, her feelings for Gramble are reaffirmed and she chooses to write from her heart and dedicate her song to Gramble. If she instead gives in to Bugsnax she chooses the Bugsnax over Gramble instead, giving her swan song to the uncaring Bugsnax instead as she unravels and turns to dust. 

There's a lot of ways one can read this, seeing it myself I thought of Tobias's relation with MARDEK, a past project one feels overshadowed by while new projects made from what currently drives and inspires them are overlooked and met with cold reception instead.

But a set of lines that really struck me was when Wiggle discusses her failure with Gramble and he points out that Wiggle doesn't need her creations to make money or garner fame, to which Wiggle replies that none of that matters if there's no audience. That if she writes for herself, nobody cares.

When I do creative works, I never do it wanting or expecting fame and money, but as a creator I've never been able to make something solely for myself, I've always needed the validation of having an audience that genuinely cares.

I won't mince words, I've been a needy child about the whole Alora Fane: Creation thing. Whenever I sink my teeth into AF:C, I feel like I'm putting so much of myself into my creations, and this creates a burden on myself where I need to see others notice this and validate me for it. I need people to laugh at the jokes, I need people to feel the feelings I'm trying to evoke and I compulsively want to monitor this by supervising their reactions through a stream. I push people to do this, and get so frustrated when it doesn't happen.

The reason I took a long break from making quests before the collaborative quest was my increasing feelings of irritation as people didn't play them, or didn't play them as I wanted them to, while they instead talk about whatever other topics constantly, topics I have never cared for. It was unhealthy, it was creating a schism between myself and others, and I never even told them about it, because there's nothing that could be done about it. To this day I feel like the server I am in has largely quarantined itself into a Mania-free zone, where I don't bother people with my persona or pester them about my creations. I'm fully aware of how utterly irrational all of this is, and this whole thing about quarantine zones has just become yet another stupid gimmick I've latched on to as a joke, making it into more of a deal than it should have ever been. 

And I cannot say I've been much better with my collaborative quest either, in some ways I've only been worse. I'm lucky that my contributions each have all had a sufficient positive reception from at least one person, but I've already had my overzealous nature regarding my creative process as well as my excessive persona drive a wedge between myself and someone else. While I do truly feel thrilled to put my ideas to paper after mulling over them in my head, to see my vision realized, I also still feel that pressing need for an audience when I finally put it out there. Only validation or time can cause this need to subside. I question whether it was a good idea to even begin this project in the first place, despite the highs I've enjoyed of creating and playing other people's creations. 

Honestly, even as I write this blog I am doing it hoping and expecting it to be read. It's never just about getting something out of my system with these blogs, even in this blog that's explicitly about that. I always want these blogs to be jumping-off points for people to approach me and tell me they appreciate my blog, or want to talk to me about one of the topics of the blog. It makes it so discouraging when that doesn't happen. I feel like that last blog I wrote, the 4-months recap one, was dropped into an uncaring void. It makes me scared to even post this blog, knowing I might be perpetuating the problem I'm talking about here. 

And yet this is again something that I know I cannot burden others with. One just cannot put effort into something and be owed interest from others in turn, it's entitlement to think one does, yet these feelings are still there, lingering and souring my mood.

Basically, I don't really have a Gramble to share all my creative stuff with, knowing his reaction will be enough to make me happy. And I'm not going to get one unless I go out there and find one myself. 

Chandlo & Snorpy: Wholesome Gays

Ok, these last two bits have been very negative. This next one will be positive instead, and indeed be the main motivator for why I even am writing this blog, or why I even got this game in the first place.

Bugsnax has been out since 2020, but it only recently got ported to more consoles/storefronts and it got a free content update as well. I might've heard about the game before, but when someone I followed on Twitter posted a video in a tweet that caught my attention:

https://twitter.com/VoidBurger/status/1524257142643077120

Honestly this is the cutest, gayest shit ever. This does everything for me, I could gush so much. The trope of the gay couple being unsure if they're dating or not pushed to ridiculous extremes, the trope of the jock and the nerd dating, the goofy but also convincing and professional voice acting, the silly visuals of the Grumpuses. This was the sort of fix that I rarely feel I get to enjoy in anything but the most obscure corners of the internet.

The tweet lingered in my mind, and spurred me to do some research on Bugsnax, and I kept coming across accounts of people about the game's excellent LGBTQ representation, and having played the game myself, I can honestly say I totally agree.

This whole idea of 'representation' is a controversial one as I am well-aware. Bugsnax itself has some negative reviews specifically because it unabashedly has a gay couple, a lesbian couple and a non-binary character.

But playing through the game myself, and meeting these characters and seeing them interact, I just had a smile on my face the whole time. Their scenes were all just so cute and wholesome. From the moment they are encountered, Chandlo is this brawny beefcake with a very gentle and positive attitude while Snorpy is this geeky, twiggy shut-in with engineering genius and a big conspiracy board linking everything that goes wrong to the 'Grumpinati'. The very first scene of the two has Chandlo literally lift their house to make Snorpy go outside, and it's such a ridiculous scene. The two have nothing but love for each other, which of course makes the 'twist' that they are dating hilarious when everybody but Snorpy already realized this while he's agonizing whether to confess his feelings or not. 

Pictured: Someone who figured this out already on day 1.

Of course there's still an arc for these characters, Chandlo's is about relying on Bugsnax to get strong enough to keep Snorpy safe, while Snorpy's is about foiling the 'Grumpinati-planted Bugsnax' while keeping Chandlo in the dark to keep him safe. Their arcs both center around each other, and the happy ending where they both live and reflect has them both realize how much they can do together and how much they underestimate the other, while the death endings have them sacrifice themselves to the Bugsnax under the deluded impression it's required to keep the other safe while the other falls deep into a doubtlessly misguided thirst for revenge.

Of all the bad endings, their is the one that made me the most glad I got the happy one instead. Their usual silly and cheerful dialogue gets downright miserable and vengeful instead. The vocal performances are really great. 

But the main point here to me is that despite there being some friction between them and the possibility of a bad ending, the game does everything it can to push the player to get the good ending instead, and just about everything else with these two is just so delightful. Every scene they were in just had me cooing, and I just about lost it when I got to the confession scene myself. It was all I could hope for, and more. 

This all made me once more realize how much I want to see these sorts of narratives, and also how infrequently I get to. While media is taking great strides in having more stories featuring LGBT characters and relationships, it still often feels like they are explicitly written for a non-LGBT audience primarily, with the show going out of its way to put in explainers and signifiers to the audience to make sure they 'understand' what is going on. Or these kinds of relations are pushed to the side, or are used as the anchor for a story about prejudice, or they are only referred to offhandedly. Rarely do I just get wholesome, cute gays who feel like real people who still go through a character arc without centering it around a cruel and prejudiced world. 

But Bugsnax has that, and it decides to have two of them as well. Two other members of the exploration team, the first ones the player gets to see in a videotape invitation sent to the protagonist, are Elizabert and Eggabel, who get adorably flirty in their introduction. Once again we still get to see these characters have frictions in their relationship, with Elizabert overburdening herself and going on dangerous adventures and Eggabel feeling like she's always being left behind. And what's more they also get their personal problems too, Elizabert feeling guilt over roping everybody else into the whole Bugsnax situation and not realizing soon enough their horrific true nature, and Eggabel dealing with what's all but said to be depressive episodes. But none of that takes away from them also just getting cute scenes together, and them reconciling in the final scene and averting what seemed like the set-up for Buying One's Gays and surviving their ordeals like as a lesbian power couple. Good for them!

Bugsnax is kinda out there.

Rounding things off there's also Floofty the Gastroentomologist, Snorpy's sibling. The game never states this outright, but from their pronouns consistently being they/them and Snorpy always referring to them as "sibling" it's pretty clear they're meant to be non-binary. And this never really comes up! Floofty still gets to be a sardonic mad scientist whose brilliance is matched only by their ego and lack of ethical standards. They still get to be an amusing character who gets their own arc of coming to understand that their desire to contribute to Grumpuskind with scientific advancements is hindered by their stubborn unwillingness to connect with and understand Grumpuses on a personal level.

While I may not personally relate to the experience of being non-binary, I can easily see how someone would gush about the ease with which the game implements Floofy without fanfare. The game doesn't sit the player down for a lecture about gender, nor does anyone need to correct themselves or someone else when they misgender them, they exist unchallenged and unquestioned by the narrative, in the same way all the characters do. 

While I played through the game and saw these things, it reminded me of my teenage years and the periods in which I questioned these aspects of myself. My attractions, my sexuality, these sorts of identity-related questions. Back then, long before I figured these things out for myself, I'd always latch on to LGBTQ themes in media I'd consume, I'd ravenously look this sort of thing up on sites like TVTropes. And I feel like if back then I had a game like Bugsnax, it would have really helped me to see a narrative like this where these things I'd think about and would seek out just exist. And it makes me glad when people can say that a game like this made them feel that way, that it in some way helped them, that it made them feel seen or represented in a way they rarely get to feel. 

And honestly, the game's two straight couples are both just adorable too. Wiggle and Gramble are a relationship where the question of whether the foundation of their relationship is truly solid is met with a resounding yes in the good ending, both of them finding what they were looking for in each other. Meanwhile Wambus and Triffany are a long-wedded couple going through a marital spat following the fallout of a big fight between the exploration team, and bringing them together again results in a legitimately cute scene. In the end I wanted all these four couples to be happy, which they all get to be provided you get their good endings.

I realize that to this day whenever I make quests, a large amount of the characters just wind up being gay, likely just because I want to see these kinds of narratives more but I don't get to really see them myself as much as I want. Of course I won't pretend those quests stands up to any sort of scrutiny like Bugsnax does! I get the impression the developers for Bugsnax themselves were a diverse bunch, so I'm not surprised Bugsnax turned out to do so very well in this regard, they clearly drew from personal experience for parts of the game, and the game never stumbles over itself in this regard. I honestly just love to see it.

Lingering Thoughts

Well, these were my main takeaways from Bugsnax, or rather, the points where the game really resonated with me on a personal level beyond being a compelling piece of fiction. Not bad for a game about muppet people eating googly-eyed fusions of foodstuffs and bugs and transforming their bodies into ridiculous shapes! 

There's of course still a lot of other characters and themes that are in resonant in some way, so I'll get briefly talk about some of them as well as some plot points.

Beffica's a self-described "Information Specialist" who came to the expedition following a particularly bad social falling-out where she lost all her friends. We never learn the specifics, but the game paints a clear picture of someone who's had friendships gone sour trap her in a cycle of becoming a toxic friend who's always snooping around to find somebody's bad side, because she's convinced everybody is secretly a bad person. One bit that stuck out to me was her saying that in her job as working for a gossip tabloid she realized that no matter how pristine someone seems on the outside, anyone can have horrible skeletons in their closet. While Beffica's pendulum swung too far to the other side, there's still a kernel of truth in there that one should be careful not to put others on unassailable edifices, especially with celebrities they don't know. I see this kind of thing happen a lot, and it's happened to some content creators I've followed in the past too. 

In the Island of Bigsnax content update, there's extra content with Shelda, Floofty, Triffany and Chandlo, and the game actually addresses the whole Grumpinati conspiracy thing Snorpy has going on. The Grumpinati thing is mostly treated as a silly joke during the main campaign, it causes some friction between Snorpy and others, but it's never really lingered on a specific issue that needs addressing. Conspiracies are obviously kind of a red flag these days, and while the game puts the Grumpinati conspiracy through an unproblematic and apolitical lens it does stick out in an era where conspiracy theories are actually getting to be a serious societal problem.

In Bigsnax Chandlo finally gets to talk to some people about how he feels his boyfriend's getting lost down a rabbit hole on conspiracies and the game gives some interesting insights about it. Shelda points out that Snorpy's obsession goes well beyond the realm of mental health, that Chandlo's well-intentioned but not equipped to solve this by himself and Snorpy needs professional help. Floofty gives extra context that explains but doesn't justify Snorpy's irrational anxieties and Triffica explains that while conspiracies do exist, even a correct basis of facts can still lead to incorrect conclusions being drawn due to personal biases. Once again, Bugsnax delves into a topic and does it gracefully, plugging something that was somewhat of a hole in the original release while also giving me more scenes with the Cute Wholesome Gays. Beautiful.

Scoopy Banoopy is a Bugsnax that's a walking banana split with googly eyes. It looks sad and constantly says "Scoopy Banoopy" in an Eeyore-esque voice. Shit's hilarious. It's also a horrific parasite that will exploit your weakness and convert you into more Bugsnax. 

It's easy to forget this game's really dumb, in a good way.

Closing Thoughts

Well, this was a blog and a half. I'm surprised myself I had this much to say. I feel like this was a much more interesting blog than if I'd just written a generic review. Game narratives like Bugsnax are always at their best when they manage to strike a personal chord, even if it might not be in a way the developer intended. I hope this blog was interesting to read!

I know things got kind of pessimistic in the bits about Shelda and Wiggle, but I'd like to think of this perhaps as a jumping off point to work on these things rather than wallow in misery. Basically, I won't eat the Bugsnax, to use a metaphor. Thanks for reading!