#bugsnax reference if you will

[camenxi]

Batman & Cass :3

[katiekatdragon27]

Hello Bugsnax pookies have you missed me?

@rainbow-wolf120 recently rebought Bugsnax (bc it got taken off of Gampass which I HATE) and has been playing it almost every night. This has also resurrected an interest in both our journalist ocs, who are now queer-platonic married besties on a quest to write the most ridiculous articles the papers have ever seen (at least for Criss. Skunk is just dragged along and would much rather do more kind photography, like wedding photos or smth).

Criss is the chaos and the spunk, Skunk is the rock and the bait. Perfect hunters of bugsnax if you ask me.

We also changed some of the design choices too. Skunk now has spots on their body (hidden under fur but seen on their paws and nose) and Criss actually has bugsnax limbs b/c unlike Skunk, he can eat bugsnax but makes the conscious decision not to. Cuz they're gross. Except for chippies. Chippies are the exception.

Progress pieces below cut:

Have a good one dudes, and remember you are what you eat!

[avoidmint]

How dare you imply he share his wolf. That's his wolf. He worked hard for that wolf.

[orb-the-watchman]

Me using forbidden magic to connect a keyboard w/ pause break to my iPad so I can access debug mode and terrorize Snaxburg with 15 Mama Mewons on the go

[anonymouspuzzler]

oh baby it's Foofy Fiday (note: i have absolutely no idea what day this will queue up.) more thanks to @incorrectbugsnaxquotes for many of these prompts as well!

(alt text/image IDs below the cut!)

[Image 1 ID: Doodle page with various drawings of Floofty, including: - A three-panel comic with first, Floofty handing a wax-sealed envelope to Shelda. Second panel is Shelda, looking confused, opening the letter, and third, a POV of the letter reading simply, "bitch. Respectfully, -- Floofty F. Fizzlebean". - A very simplified drawing of Floofty smirking and sitting on the ground, legs out, with an arrow pointing to them reading "la creatura". - A sketch of a silhouetted Floofty, goggles glowing, walking along the beach with their pegleg and a severed leg clearly in one hand. - Floofty gesturing to a closed chemical cabinet with a sign reading "GENDER. CAUTION! HIGHLY TOXIC" - A meme recreation of Floofty holding up a flask with text reading "FINALLY. GENDER FLUID" - Floofty, grimacing and gesturing with one hand, saying, "I've come to make an announcement. Snorpington's a punk-*ss b*tch," - The X-Files "I WANT TO BELIEVE" poster, but the UFO has been replaced with a drawing of a T-posing Floofty floating at a slight angle into the sky.]

[Image 2 ID: A 4-panel comic of Filbo and Floofty. In the first panel, Floofty is sitting at a bar sipping from a cup, looking annoyed as a dancing Filbo backs into them with a smile. Filbo says, "Hey! Can I have a sip of your water?" and Floofty replies, "It isn't water." In the second panel, Filbo has turned around to wink and do finger guns at Floofty, saying, "Snax juice!! I like your style!" Floofty, glaring, responds, "It's vinegar." In the third panel, Filbo, still frozen in finger-guns position, looks on in horror and Floofty, still glaring, takes a slow sip from the cup. In the fourth panel, Filbo, horrified, says "...what?" and Floofty replies simply, "It's vinegar, plebian."]

[Image 3 ID: A 3-panel comic of Triffany and Floofty. In the first, Triffany, grinning and holding a stack of papers with one arm, extends the other to Floofty while saying, "Good job, Floofty!" Floofty, taking the item with one hand, says, "You're giving me a sticker?" In the second panel, Triffany, still grinning and gesturing with one pointer finger, says, "Not just a sticker! It has a kitten saying 'Me-WOW!'" Floofty, staring down at the sticker looking nonplussed, replies, "I'm not a kindergartener." In the third, Triffany, looking disappointed, leans down and reaches out saying, "Okay, I'll take it back." Floofty, glaring and holding the sticker in both hands, whirls away while saying, "I earned this, back off."]

[Image 4 ID: A two-panel comic of Floofty and Shelda. Shelda, sitting on a log, eyes closed and hands clutched over her heart, says, "I never considered you an enemy." Floofty, sitting on a separate log with a book in one hand and leaning their head on the other, doesn't even look up as they respond "I never considered you at all." In the second panel, Floofty continues reading and not acknowledging Shelda, who has placed both hands on her knees and says in disbelief, "Now that's just hurtful".]

[Image 5 ID: A drawing of Floofty recreating a scene from It's Always Sunny. They are grinning wildly, one hand pumping a fist and the other holding a whiteboard marker, moving so quickly they're motion-blurred. Behind them a whiteboard reads in all caps "MURDER".]

[apollolovescheesecak]

two comic in one day real???

[cyberaxolotl]

drawing a yassified old man was not on my 2023 bingo. why are th robots in my brain i drawed them

snaxcurity breach by @/orb-the-watchman do i tag you. hi moot you will prolly end up seeing this anyways

[heatarooni]

back when i was first playing Bugsnax™ (btw go play bugsnax) and was immediately falling in love with chandlo's whole vibe i felt the need to capture this memory for me to remember my first encounter with him

only recently did i remember i took this screenshot and ive never been more disappointed

[the-acid-pear]

today's prompts are spiders and self insert so i've been thinking of drawing nembone and a uh, bunger. but Im still thinking around the uh. ? i cant remember the word HELP the fucking COMPOSITION there.

[buggymakesart]

Hello everyone, I have returned with reference art of my grumpsona, Ranpi Frogdance (grumpus head sticker base from @ponshroom)

[bracketsoffear]

Corruption: Bugsnax (Bugsnax) "The game starts with you finding out about the existence of Bugsnax: fascinating, mysterious and wonderful creatures of legend with big googly eyes that are shaped like food! They taste like the meals you imagine they do, but far better than it had ever been, satisfying you easily with a single one but still leaving you wanting more. As you progress, the inhabitants of the island where they're found ask you to find more and more of them to give them; they're enjoying them, and for each of them, these bugsnax signify something deeper than what it seems at first glance. It isn't just food: for some, they're like family; for others, they're mysterious creatures they grow obsessed to research about; and for others they're the sources of stability in their otherwise intensely unstable lives. One way or another, eating or just being near bugsnax can easily get a hold of you and make you completely dependent on them, making you believe they're the solution to all of your life's problems. The fact that by eating a single one it affects your body structure and turns your limbs one by one into food shaped skin also adds to the horrors that everyone seem to be too blind to, too focused on their own dependence as it builds and builds until, eventually, you're fully food shaped and then your body structure weakens, destroying you and turning you into another of the island's victims, and so become a meal of the meal you had been eating all along. At the end of the day, you find out what they really are: parasites, made in cute shapes with adorable or funny sounds for the sole purpose of convincing you to having them nearby, eat them, and so slowly build up to eating you from the inside out. You are what you eat, and all life is Bugsnax."

Spiral: The House on Ashtree Lane (House of Leaves) "The strange nature of the House on Ash Tree Lane was first recorded by acclaimed photojournalist Will Navidson when he moved in with his family. The film was subsequently criticized in a manuscript written by Zampanò, and upon his death the work was recovered, annotated, and organized by Johnny Truant. Possibly. No record of Navidson, the film he created, or many of the references utilized by Zampanò can be found, either because Zampanò made them up entirely or they were somehow erased.1 It is possible that this means that the house itself, whose notable properties include being 1/4" larger on the inside and an infinitely-expanding pitch-black system of corridors that drive explorers to madness, simply does not exist.2 Whether or not the house itself exists physically or merely as a memetic hazard spread through various iterations upon Navidson's original film, its effects seem to manifest as an anxiety pertaining to doors, hallways, and what lies beyond them, as well as a creature of uncertain nature5 that seemingly stalks those who annotate the account with their own thoughts and reactions.4

Possibly by a means similar to case #0120606, "Lost and Found".

Though by no means does simple nonexistence equate to harmlessness, as in case 376-U, "Upon the Stair".

It may be worth investigating the similarities between this Minotaur and the Distortion.

Whether or not readers who do not annotate the text suffer similar experiences is, naturally, unrecorded.

where the labyrinth spreads the Minotaur follows 3"

[shwoo]

My parents and brother got a cat earlier this year, and my mum ended up naming him Snorpington Fizzlebean. She's never played Bugsnax, and I'm not completely sure how this happened.

My mum posted in a group chat about naming him, and I was too tired to respond, but my sister suggested Snorpington Fizzlebean, saying that she stole that from my favourite game. The cat's dark grey, so if I hadn't been tired, I would've suggested Alegander Jamfoot instead, which is also a great cat name.

Later, in person, my mum called the cat Snorpington once while talking about him, so I later texted her the following:

Because you referred to this cat as Snorpington Fizzlebean The Third today, he is now Snorpy to me, in my head. The covenant is sealed. It cannot be unsealed.

She replied with "🧐🤨", and then his name was just Snorpy forever. I didn't even meet him until like a month later, and he spent most of the time inside his cat tree.

I think if you post about a pet, you're supposed to include a picture, so here:

...Okay, fine. I'm housesitting for my family at the moment because they're going to the coast for a few days, and didn't want to put Snorpy in a pet boarding place, so here's a slightly better picture I took just now.

When my mum was asking my sister and I to housesit, she phrased it as "But we've got Snorpy to think about." That's a... very coincidental way to put it.

[orb-the-watchman]

I have to ask how Wambus's dating period with Triffany went while in the organization? Did he have to get permission or justify being in a relationship with her would be beneficial?

Good question!

A major life outside of The Triplicate is uncommon, so Wambus is an outlier. In theory the organization don’t mind, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the Triplicate’s agenda. However, Emlene definitely grants a lot of leniency to Wambus.

[katapotato55]

How to write a good metaphor

yall seemed to like my post on "how to write good horror" so i figured i should make another one of these.

1- do. not. explain. the. metaphor.

don't.

"oh but how will the audience know my deep and meaningful message- "

SOME PEOPLE WONT GET IT. if you explain what you mean then suddenly the metaphor won't be deep anymore. it becomes a generic forced message.

i know you are tempted to make a character infodump about everything, fucking don't.

followup on this:

2- a good metaphor should potentially have multiple interpretations.

"but i don't want people to get the wrong impression of the story!"

then you either need to make damn sure its an elegantly written metaphor, or none at all. the death of the author is the idea that everyone has their own vision of a story they read, rearguards of authors intent. you need to come to terms with this or else you won't improve your writing skills.

you need to trust that your audience is intelligent enough to understand the metaphor on their own without bashing them over the head with it. sometimes people misunderstand meaning, it is a fact of life.

The game little inferno was thought of as a metaphor about pollution, in which later the creators went out to say it was actually about capitalism and wasting your life with things like exploitative mobile games. you just need make it SUBTLE and hope for the best.

3- The story/gameplay/etc should inform the metaphor(and sometimes reference real life examples)

To mention little inferno again, the "you must wait x amount of time for in-game item to be given to you" is a mirror of mobile games in the real world that use timers to leach money from you.

another example: analogue horror.

broken old technology is scary on its own, but many good analogue horror artists tend to use this to the advantage.

analogue horror can be used as a metaphor for dying trends and technology, like how in the 30's through 70's we used asbestos in the walls. Analogue horror makes a great parralel to this idea (see Blue_channel by gooseworx for a good example.) . the audience questions WHY this is on an old CRT tv and not just a smartphone, perhaps to imply this was an event that happened years ago.

undertale is another example, where most RPG's encourage you to fight and to level up, undertale uses this as a simple metaphor about obsessive control and being cruel to get an arbitrary achievement (i recommend the escapist's video on "why i didn't review undertale" on youtube for way better examples)

tldr: a metaphor is stronger if you lightly reference real life occurances and implement your metaphor in the medium presented.

4- the curtains are blue because they are blue.

not everyone is going to understand your metaphor

and not everyone is going to notice every single little metaphor you add to your story.

remember those teachers that would constantly stretch to imply something in a story is a metaphor and that the curtains are blue because of some deep metaphor for death and sadness and shit?

those teachers are full of it. ignore them.

metaphors are allowed to be simple. not every metaphor needs to be a hyper deep depth defying world changing thing. I could even argue a bunch of small metaphors connected to each other can be better than one big metaphor depending on your story.

relax. don't think too much about it because your average audience member won't.

5- study movies, tv, books, games, etc and understand why their metaphors work.

don't fall into that "the curtains are blue because of a deep message" English teacher mindset mind you.

"but how do i tell what is and isn't a metaphor?" you may ask

simple. trust your gut. you won't understand everything you come across but the human brain has a way of telling what is and isn't a metaphor in stories.

(spoiler about bugsnax)

I could argue Bugsnax is a metaphor about drug abuse and addiction. The characters have personality traits commonly associated with people vulnerable to drug addiction. An athlete, a hippy, a married couple going through a rough spot in their marriage with the threat of divorce, a mentally ill person with trauma and paranoia, etc.

It isn't obvious, many people may disagree with me, but you can't deny that there are signs i may be right.

(end of spoiler) the point i am trying to make: don't stretch to find a metaphor when you don't see one. if you are curious google other people's theories and make your own opinion. metaphors are hard and you will learn over time. and finally 6- do not ever do "it was all just a dream" or "the character is secretly in a coma" etc this applies to writing in general but it is still related to metaphors. the only time i have seen this done well is driver san francisco, but what it did right was A- make it so the players can guess ahead of time the mystery, such as the radio saying voices of your character in the hospital, or if you zoomed out you could hear a heart monitor. and B- it didn't completely un-do the entire story. that is my core issue with this trope. it either wastes your time un-doing the entire story readers worked hard to finish, or it is just nonsensical and terrible. "dora the explorer is actually in purgatory!" "spongebob is a metaphor for the 7 deadly sins!" "ash is in a coma and that is why he never ages! " ooooor it is a cartoon and you are forcing meaning that doesn't exist in something that doesn't even imply it. the world being a bit weird is not enough to be a metaphor for anything. If you want to make a good metaphor: do more effort than just slapping a lazy "it was all a coma" thing at the end. Like horror, stuff like this needs to be built up properly. also consider authors intent. I understand death of the author and all of that, but do you really think a retired marine biologist made spongebob to be a complex metaphor about sinners in hell ? (rip Stephen Hillenburg btw. we didn't deserve him.) thank you for reading, hope this helps. and please, learn to understand the tropes of metaphors before you attempt to make the story of a generation. edit- adding a couple more things i forgot 7- "the darkness is going to destroy the land or whatever!" i see this used all the time. spooky wookey dark shadowy bits going to destroy a land and is the hero's generic bad thing to fight. stop it. it is not a deep and complex metaphor about depression or whatever the hell you are on about. its lazy and stupid. 8- a story should stand up on its own regardless if audience members understand the metaphor or not I don't like Gris. it is a very pretty game with lovely visuals But also the entire story is just the main character moping about artistically and shit and go on about how artistically sad and dramatic this all is. if i don't understand the story without understanding the metaphor, then your story and your metaphor sucks. an example of a metaphor done well: spiritfairer without the metaphor, it is a simple game about running a traveling boat. even if you didn't care too much about the deeper meaning it is a cute story and the gameplay is fun (spoiler) if you look deeper, it can also be taken as a metaphor about greif and learning to accept your loved ones will one day die. things like the boat being filled with empty houses you can't remove is a good example of this. (end of spoiler) your story needs to stand up on its own to be good. don't use a metaphor as a crutch.

[dragonlordazuroth]

So in Bugsnax, Floofty says that they've eaten a grumpus before, and it's easy to assume that they are referring to their leg that they severed. However, if you look in their hut, there is a preserved grumpus leg on their shelf, and when scanned, it is described as Floofty's leg. Which means they didn't eat it. So, what was the deal with the grumpus that they DID eat?

Also here's a screenshot as proof.