#Forget the Noodler incident I want to know about the headlock incident

[shwoo]

Okay here's my thoughts about Chandlo Bugsnax and Floofty Bugsnax's relationship.

...That's their surnames now. Everyone is Bugsnax.

Anyway, Floofty and Chandlo don't have much interaction in the base game, despite being practically in-laws. Floofty calls him "that green meathead" while trying to argue that Snorpy is refusing to help them out of cowardice, so they seem pretty dismissive of him.

When you ask Chandlo to help with Floofty's experiments, he doesn't mention Snorpy at all, just says he doesn't want to help because of "what they put Eggabell through." And I could write another 700 words overanalysing that line, but that's more about Eggabell and Floofty's relationship, and what their experiments together actually entailed, so I'll skip over that. The point is that Chandlo seems annoyed with Floofty, but only over something that happened with Eggabell, not whatever Snorpy's problem with Floofty is.

The closest thing Chandlo and Floofty have to a conversation is in the sequence after the big party, where Floofty tells Eggabell not to risk her life looking for someone who's probably dead, and Chandlo responds "Dawg, Lizbert is alive! And we're not gonna leave her behind." Which is barely an interaction.

So that was all there was to go on originally. But then the DLC came out! And they went on the (Snorpy trailer line voice)miniature expedition(/Snorpy trailer line voice) together, and had actual interactions. It's also mentioned that Snorpy doesn't want Floofty to talk to Chandlo, and has sent Floofty "a pile of threatening letters" telling them to stay away from him. It's not clear if Snorpy started doing that before or after he came to the conclusion that Floofty was a Grumpinati agent.

I don't think Snorpy is actively preventing Chandlo from talking to Floofty or anything, but Chandlo knows it upsets him, and seems to have made it his life's mission to keep Snorpy from getting too stressed out. He also tells Floofty kind of reluctantly that Snorpy doesn't like him talking to them, like he doesn't really want to say it. Maybe he thought Floofty would get upset.

But once Snorpy is out of range, Chandlo starts acting really friendly towards Floofty. Maybe he wants the opportunity to get to know them better. Since he's been close to Floofty's brother for a long time, he'd know better than most people that Floofty wants to help people, not eat them. I feel like he probably wouldn't think Floofty was evil even if he wasn't already acquainted with them, though.

But Floofty just responds by patronisingly ordering him around or threatening him. I don't know if they don't like nicknames in general, don't like being nicknamed by Chandlo in particular, or don't like that it's so close to what he calls Snorpy, but they're really hostile while telling him not to call them that.

They also threaten Chandlo offscreen with "an excoriating worth of [his] fatuity", (a chewing out worthy of his stupidity) apparently because Chandlo tried to help them with their lab. They really seem to have something against Chandlo, like they had something against the Journalist.

In the Journalist's case, it's their profession, but for Chandlo… I think the answer is the bit where Chandlo gives his hypothesis ("If this island can make big Bunger, can it make big Chandlo?"), and Floofty gets upset and angrily asks him what their brother sees in him.

And maybe they're just asking how Snorpy can stand to be around someone so stupid, but I prefer to think that they specifically believe that he's too stupid to date their genius brother. They're just being protective! In a very patronising and misinformed way.

Floofty's opinion of Chandlo improves a lot after their campfire talk. I guess they realised their impression of Chandlo was wrong? Part of Floofty's plot in Bigsnax is realising that people they wrote off as stupid actually do have something to contribute if they actually talked to them. Maybe it's because Chandlo listened and engaged intelligently with their description of what happened, instead of putting Floofty in a headlock like they apparently expected.

Also, I love that bit because Chandlo's response implies that he did put Floofty in a headlock at least once, but they're cool now. I would like to know more about this.

And then they start getting along, with Floofty asking Chandlo to build… probably a giant hamster ball? And Chandlo apparently convincing Floofty not to call it the Engorged Strabbiform Orbacular Encasement like they wanted.

And then they're outright working together before the boss fight, injecting Sprout with a mystery substance, and encouraging the Journalist to mess around with the ancient technology they just found.

They're friends now. :) Reckless, reckless friends. :)