#The sorta energy i love channeling for dunmesh chil family angst pieces <3 Trolls that thump feels very similar to Bonbon actually

[fumifooms]

Bonbon is fucking me up

Fancy alt title: On coping, safety in the inanimate and helplessness against the animalistic

I don’t care about the storybook symbolism I’m here to talk about the experience of it all and how it’s so viscerally relatable. Watched the new Jacob Geller vid and I am in shambles (< how to say something that immediately ages your draft pfft…) I appreciate this game I appreciate it a lot

I recommend if you’re here but don’t know a thing about Bonbon you just go watch it, here’s a gameplay, it’s short. Or the Jacob Geller video segment at least 🙏 It does an amazing job at covering it.

Official game description:

Bonbon is a thirty-minute long, first-person domestic horror narrative about childhood events you are too young to understand. Playing as a young toddler, walking and carrying objects will be difficult. You will drop things, and you will fall over. Since your parents aren't there to pick you up, you'll be spending time with a large, overbearing and ambiguous visitor... a monstrous, hungry rat named Bonbon.

Official CW: Steam : The player character is a young child who is being traumatised by a giant humanoid rat who appears in the house one day. The traumatic events are symbolic and related to domestic issues. Physical violence is extremely mild, but some players might find the threatening atmosphere to be uncomfortable. // itch.io : Bonbon deals with grown-up themes and suggestions of child-abuse. There is no literal violence or onscreen abuse, it is entirely in the subtext.

If you play through it without knowing anything about it, you’ll have to piece things together to grasp the theme of domestic abuse, but the second you step into official descriptions, it is very straightforwardly about that. I mention this because the game also makes the rat monster, well, a literal rat— a pet rat that is shown in-game to be feral & average in the end credits and to have been adopted into the family from a newspaper rehoming ad. I’ve seen people argue without the extra context that the story has no "fancy" analogy and metaphor for the monster, that it’s pretty literal and is just about a kid’s fear of his own pet rat exaggerated. And, well………. 🧍

So warning for this specific post, we’ll be talking about domestic abuse and trauma, not any acts perse but moreso the feelings it makes you go through- what I think this game is interested in representing.

So I only looked at other non-youtube-comment reviews after writing most of this, but now that I have I do have many nifty little links and snippets to share as cherry on top. If you look on the game’s itch.io page you can find links to some other interesting reviews/analyses. In particular, this short quote by Adam Smith about the game represents well something that people keep bringing up about Bonbon, childhood anxiety :

"the confusion between what is real and what isn’t, and what is threatening and what is malign, rings true."

This reddit thread is another interesting analysis, particularly with the angle of sexual abuse but also goes into the meta mechanics & experience. Only setback is you must have a reddit account to read it. (I won’t be taking the same angle at all but it isn’t incompatible with my reading either, either way it’s very compelling and supported by concrete analysis so give it a look if that interests you.)

And yet even still with all these I wanted to make my own thematic analysis bc I need it and I have other & new things to say. Like how personal experiences have shaped others’ reviews, mine will have a specific angle influenced by my own as well. I don’t consider I was abused- but I was traumatized by a parent, so I do relate to the feelings evoked. Alcoholism, absentness and mild anger issues with an occasional threat of corporal punishment makes for a very fitting cocktail for Bonbon, I feel, but we’ll be getting into that.

The suspense, the fear lingering at the back of your mind that you’re trying to suppress because this is your daily. Domestic horror feels like a quite accurate term. Critiques of the game often agree on a central theme being agency and the lack thereof and that’s particularly interesting, but I want to give a look at the coping angle of the narrative specifically, moreso than the suffering & enduring reactive and active side of it that has been extensively covered.

No the rat man never stops feeling disturbing next question

Before truly getting into it I want to lay out the game’s plot and structure. It has 5 scenes. In the first scene you, the kid, are playing outside when your mom calls you inside, and you have to put away your toys. In scene 2, you play inside and your mom calls you to dinner, and you have to put away your toys. Scene 3, it’s your birthday and you eat cake. In scene 4 a radio with dad’s voice soothingly reads you a morbid tragic bedtime story. In scene 5, it’s night and you can’t sleep, you wander a bit before going back to bed. In scene 3 and 5 the parents are arguing as background noise (albeit very deliberate and purposeful one you’re meant to notice and pay attention to). Bonbon is in all of these scenes, and the aggression he shows/discomfort he causes escalates, until the game abruptly ends when he jumpscares you.

Mild fear, no alarm

Scene 1 and 2 especially are great at establishing normalcy. It feels like routine. The acts are mundane. This is your normal. There is nothing that feels special about today and seemingly nothing is out of place, even a giant rat man suddenly coming crashing in through the fence. No one comments on him, but you interact with him and talk to him. You already know his name, the way you know the name of all your toys, Bonbon.

A significant part of the gameplay is spent with toys, holding them up, manipulating them, playing with them and putting them away. Even in scene 5, toys are used in eerie ways to lure and scare.

Toys are obviously important to the child. They’re the only thing besides the environment and parents that they interact with at all, and the only thing they talk to besides Bonbon. They talk to the toys, saying "hello [toy name]!" almost like a ritual, compulsively, every time to every toy if you the player takes the time to. You certainly have the prompt to do so, and no reason to do or not do it. This ingrained habit shows that they humanize the toys to some degree, and supports that the child has an active imagination.

So, you’re putting your toys away when suddenly Bonbon appears, like I said crashing through the fence noisily. There is no more sudden movement or noise from him, and nothing indicates that this is strange or unusual. Eventually, you’ll have found all the toys you can in the backyard, but that doesn’t mean you found all the toys you need to put away. With nothing else to do, you wordlessly approach Bonbon, and only then does he do anything at all. He watches you, and he drops the last ball you need, it rolling closer to you. You have to approach and bend down to grab it. You do not know why or how Bonbon had the toy in the first place.

There are two levels with this as with any game, the character’s experience and the player’s experience. We have very little insight on the kid’s emotions through all of this, but player wise it’s clear and unanimouse- It’s disturbing. This scene is very powerful in showing how something as simple as help from someone you feel uncomfortable about— someone you’re not sure about— can be very, very intimidating. Uncanny, even. Both during and after, you’re unsure wether the help is genuine or if, like an animal it’ll turn around at the flip of a dime and rip you to shreds if you make one step out of line.

But no, (for now,) the rat helps, and this makes you tentatively decide it’s not all bad. You still feel a little uncomfortable. Bonbon is holding a toy, something that is safe and joyful, helping and giving it, after all. Still, the association between Bonbon and "safe" can’t be made, despite the signs pointing to him not being nefarious we always instinctively hang onto nitpicks of "so far" and "for now". You feel the wrongness, the distrust. Even though by the time the second scene rolls around, the association between Bonbon and "toy" has definitely been made.

You move on to the next scene still wondering if any consequence will come of the encounter. And scene 2 is very similar, almost a repeat in only a different setting. This time Bonbon enters the house and stands in the doorway to the room, almost fully filling it with his size. When he gives you the toy you’re looking for, it’s smaller than a ball and it doesn’t roll toward you. You have to pick it up, bending down right next to his feet, almost touching.

He didn’t hurt you last time, but (in the player at least) there’s something that screams at you to be careful, that that’s no reason it won’t hurt you this time. Still, you need its help, and still, it offers it.

The uncertainty. The threat of danger— though you constantly second guess yourself, should you be scared at all? Is there a threat, or only a possibility? Does that distinction matter? Is it your fault for being scared? And you don’t know, you don’t know if you truly should, there’s no way to know until it happens and that’s precisely the thing you’re stressed over and working so hard trying to avoid.

Has it not happened yet only because you tiptoed and walked on eggshells, or would it not have happened either way? The game in this case answers this in its last second of the last scene- and I argue that’s why that’s the end. That answer was given- the game is about this longheld feeling of anxiety and dread and discomfort, that you’re unsure of when the elastic will have been pulled too far causing it to snap. Then it answers this, and it ends just like that.  There’s no proper closure, about what happens afterwards to the kid or anyone else in the family, or even about the meaning of all the imagery and metaphors, but there is closure in one thing: you hadn’t imagined the threat. You were right to be scared all along.

This is the core of what the game was building up with the first two scenes : tension. A balloon swelling until it pops, more and more and more and you keep asking when will it pop.

It’s a never ending suspense, a jumpscare music starts but the jumpscare never happens, rationalizing everything and gaslighting yourself. A child, though, of course, thinks of these things much less clearly, all of this is much more subconscious. Feels things instead of understand them- which is why I think the game was so well thought and made, you’re a child and you don’t really know what’s going on —and you don’t have the tools to either—, everything feels vague and more importantly vaguely wrong. You can only feel. You have no proof and you understand nothing you can only feel. There are instincts but they’ve been dulled by normalization and habit.

Obviously, toys are the opposite of this anxiety. They’re predictable and safe because you know them and what they are and what they do, there is little to no hidden factor and they have no will or intent. The communication there is to be had with them at all is in very predictable standard sentences and onesided, "Hello, [name]!". There is no body language to analyze or keep track of and their faces if any are drawn and designed for a child’s, smiling and bright or teaching emotions through cartoonish exaggeration. A pet rat, or parents, by comparison, have subtle and complex body language, hard to read expressions- You never see your parents’ appearances at all, much less their faces, but what can you read in Bonbon’s face? You can’t read anything, it’s morbidly neutral, it’s not human in a way you can intuitively understand and that makes it feel more unpredictable and scarier. The inanimate is safe. Toys are humanized to some degree to make them warmer more fun company, but other living things are inversely objectified to attempt to make you more comfortable with them. Let’s move on and I’ll get back to this in scene 4.

Deep fear, mild alarm

Scene 3. It gets revealed it’s your birthday! There’s nothing that cements it for sure, but there’s no reason to disbelieve that all 5 scenes of the game are set in the same day. In which case, the mother’s unremarkable mundane behavior can speak even more interestingly about the theme of neglect.

You’ve been called to the table and mom lit up the candles on the cake and sings you happy birthday! You two are interrupted when the phone rings and mom steps away to answer it, breaking the happy mood. You hear a chair scraping on the floor and when the screen shows things again Bonbon is sitting next to you, huge and insistent on getting cake. You cut a slice, for yourself presumably but he asks for it and you give it. Asking for a slice, then another, then another until he pushes you over to eat all your cake and you still haven’t had any. And of course this happens during while you can hear fight on the phone between mom and dad. Mom seemingly blames the mess on you and sends you off to take a bath fondly.

This was the part that made me wonder what line the metaphor was toeing. The dad is busy on the phone, so Bonbon can’t just be dad when he’s physically there. My first impression was that the child brings their rat to the dining table to have company sometimes. Someone to share a cake with even perhaps. But not something they can hold back or make behave, so when they give it some cake it gets out of hand… We’ll come back on this but I think loneliness is an important and supported theme. Is it only the child’s trauma given form, that causes them to lash out and smash the cake or such? Is it the memories, that ruins the cake for them? The official description of the game makes it sound like Bonbon’s presence is only allowed because of the parents’ neglect, some visitor that appears when they’re not watching... This is all interesting to ponder, but ultimately this is the point where the line gets truly blurred, what makes me think that it’s nuanced and situational rather than a black or white answer.

The mom never comments on Bonbon, and Bonbon joins the table quickly only after mom goes away on the phone to talk to dad- Bonbon has inserted himself in the scene both figuratively because he called by phone and it’s distracting from the moment, from the birthday cake and from the child’s birthday, and literally (through Bonbon, perhaps just a personification of trauma) by seating himself at the table.

In this scene the child talks to Bonbon for the first and only time. "Hello, Bonbon!" they say, and after this they get the prompt to either give Bonbon a slice of cake each time they ask or say "No, Bonbon!", but even if you do he’ll only insist and ultimately push you out of the way. The theme of agency is of course central here, the sheer helplessness of it all. To add insult to injury mom comes back and makes light of the situation, dismissing it entirely.

Extra stuff you could read into is how sweets are unhealthy and potentially poisonous to rats. Bonbon in french means candy btw, if that’s anything at all. I also had in my notes written that there was smoke in the scene, interesting because it’s unecessary, helps atmosphere even though it’s illogical or such? Idiom reference, or reminds smoke detectors bc of kitchen for a metaphor? But was it puffs of breathing? The thing is that I physically cannot rewatch the cake scene so, sorry you only have my memory after five months from watching it lol.

Comfort

This is an interlude of sorts. The only thing that happens in this scene is you have to listen to a bedtime story while tucked in bed, one told by a radio at your bedside speaking with dad’s voice.

In meta, this has an effect on you, it slows the pace and the game’s story down. Maybe there’s lingering tension in you and you can’t relax all throughout it, because of what’s happened so far, but personally, I found myself getting sleepy, almost comfortable, soothed. Both are very interesting experiences. The story and scene lasts long minutes where you can’t move or do anything but listen, so it’ll have an effect on you in any case, even if it’s simply breaking tension through boredom, which could feasibly be an emotion experienced by the child as well. A tradition done out of routine, so the story can bore you to sleep lol. The former shows just how much the child’s home life puts one in a constant state of stress and tension, meanwhile the latter shows a potential reprieve from the tension and more importantly where the child would find it in.

I’ll be going forward with the latter. You, the player, get to be soothed with a bedtime story to the voice of daddy. The scene tells a story that can explain the symbolism and is ripe grounds for analysis, but it itself shows you another side to things. Daddy here, through the inanimate object that physically cannot be unpredictable, a recording of sometime nice, is soothing, a bedtime story, it’s a presence that lulls you to sleep with a kind soft voice.

By this point, it’s been cemented that the father is the unstable destabilizing element in the household/family dynamic. This was the scene I was most onterested in analyzing, because I think this goes back to the child’s liking of toys. Dare I say, their coping through toys. The radio shows distance, which both has positives and negatives. This reinforces to me the theme of neglect and loneliness— Daddy reads you a story but it’s through a radio, which supports the dad might be an absent father. Mechanically, you can never give an appearance to either mom or dad like I mentioned, they’re always offscreen or in black screen cutscenes. In this house it’s only you, Bonbon and the toys. The radio is there because dad couldn’t or wouldn’t be physically present to read it to the child, or because… The radio as mentioned is an object, something safe. The recording of daddy’s voice is unchanging and it stays soothing, predictably slow and soft. It could be argued that the radio isn’t even literal and it’s a way for the kid to pretend that the dad has no physical presence. Perhaps because like the end shows, physical consequences can and do happen. With scene 5 it’s arguably, but as of scene 4 with scene 3 we’ve only ever heard dad’s voice through an electronic. There is an association being made between dad and phones and radios, a faraway voice.

The mechanic of the kid saying "hello, [name]!" is very associated with toys, and then we say that to Bonbon in scene 3… Daddy is the radio, the mother never gets any metaphorical or warped form like that, and then there’s Bonbon. This in good part is what makes me think that Bonbon is somewhat considered like a toy too by the child, but unlike inanimate objects they have a will of their own. I think this mechanic is also meant to portray loneliness like I mentioned, that the kid always talks to the toys, always plays with toys, etc. It’s not "stop playing with your friends and come home", it’s the kid sitting on the floor with toys and playing away, and then Bonbon. The kid had the rat to stave through the loneliness I think, and visually/behaviorally it disturbed them even though it got categorized as a toy and then it also grew an association with father.

We’re building a dichotomy here. There is helpfulness and aggression. There is object = predictably safe and Bonbon the pet rat = unpredictably unsafe. And we’re coming closer to me saying it plainly, but I think Bonbon the humanoid rat monster is at once both the child’s literal pet rat, fused with the father, a way to visualize him that puts distance between him and the child, or the child and their parental trauma. I think the father’s bad is being absorbed by the child’s boogeyman vision of Bonbon, and I think the good and comfortable is associated with the radio, is relegated to that visual representation again. The good ol’ coping mechanism of compartmentalization. How to reconcile scene 3 with scene 4, if both Bonbon and the radio are the father? Which part of him is more important, which vision of dad should you go with? The one that’s scary or the one that’s soothing?

Bonbon is great I feel at showcasing what it feels like to be traumatized by the threat of danger but not it being fulfilled perse. Or yes it being fulfilled but- it’s about being scared in your daily life by someone. That suspense I spoke of. Bonbon is a coping mechanism, but in the pet rat becoming associated with the thing it’s helping the kid cope with, it becomes a source of dread also. If Bonbon is dad when he’s mean, then dad’s nice voice on the radio— dad when he’s not physically present- can be comforting instead of scary, because that wasn’t dad it was Bonbon. Personally of course this effect, the need to compartmentalize and dehumanize, reminds me of alcoholism, because when drunk it can truly feel like they become an animal- unpredictable, with baser instincts, more impulsive and primal and messy. Their patterns of behavior are all thrown off so in turn you recognize them less and that’s viscerally scary. If you can’t predict them and you can’t recognize them then it makes them something unknown that’s in your range and could do anything to you- if your brain is to be believed.

To summarize the story that gets told roughly, our poor protagonist gets tricked into doing a bunch of things by a rat guy he thinks is his ally to the rat’s benefit and the trickery is only revealed at the end, upon which the rat villain wins and the protagonist loses. The story reflects well the outline of the game, the first scenes compared to the ending, Bonbon revealing himself to not be as much of an ally as we’d like to think. It also reinforces this sense of helplessness, being at the mercy of others, and the theme of trust.

There are a lot of associations in the game, rat and dad, rat and distrust— which is perhaps why these three got tangled together in the first place. The story’s scenes evoke routine, so presumably this isn’t the first time they hear this storybook, so then just how formative was the story for them? Do they listen to it every night And then, my main argument, other associations: Toys and bonbon, toys and safety— If Bonbon, a pet, is a toy but he’s also a rat, then what is he? Safe or untrustworthy? Again the confusion from these contradictory associations could have been what kickstarted this analogical hot pot.

Bonbon as a pet being halfway between toy and unpredictable animal. Pets as more property than separate living being. Something that is not allowed to hurt you, but can sometimes surprise you with shows of agency and aggression if you neglect its warnings. Because pets are infamously easy to neglect and commonly mistreated, they’re often seen as possessions. Or yes, just toys for their kids, fish and small rodents especially. How many afternoons has the child spent inside, in the room of the end credits, with Bonbon in its cage as their only company… If the parents tend to neglect the child, who’s taking care of Bonbon? Bonbon might be our protagonist’s only friend-adjacent being. Like with toys conversations are also onesided with animals, and there’s also how a pet is a bit like the responsibilities of having a child, sometimes a violent one especially when starved or mistreated. There’s lot of things pulling them in different directions with Bonbon. So then we’re left with a mix of contradictory concepts and feelings, somethings that triggers your fight or flight but is too confusing to settle on anything, instead just leaving you restless yet used to it.

Associations like that a subconscious thing, human pattern recognition is a strong and instinctive thing. That his dad taught him that rats are to be distrusted and that he then visualizes him as a rat… I don’t think it was a conscious thing —and in many ways it’s a coincidence that both the pet they got and the story character were rats— but it could have become a subconscious way to rationalize both the fear the child feels (because they were taught rats are to be mistrusted so they’re validated in disliking and fearing it, not the way kids’ fear of their parents often get socially invalidated), to deflect and to warn themselves. They’re trying to rationalize and normalize it, has done so, but a part of their brain keeps begging them to be careful, to not trust it, to keep a distance and keep safe from it.

Deep fear, no alarm

So, final scene. You wake up in the middle of the night and hear your parents arguing, leaving the bed to take an eerie trip through darkned halls where supernatural things happen.

And something that interests me about the game is how the child never speaks up about their experiences with Bonbon right. Their mom cares, why not try to tell her, or get her help if they’re scared? But, why would you seek out help from mom or anyone in the first place? It’s scary, but it’s your normal. It’s normal so it’s nothing you can or should get help for. It’s just a natural part of life to endure, just a silly fear you’re unsure if you should have. What would asking for help or crying about it help, change, at all?

So after this then you get back to bed, still wondering, when will it snap? When will it snap? You hear an argument that you can’t tell the words of, but it’s dad and he’s arguing. The argument stops and now the silence is complete. But the angry one hasn’t stopped existing, he had to either go silent or go somewhere. Which is it, where is he? There’s a fear as you face away from the door. If you turn over, will that fear be confirmed or undermined?

The game abruptly ends on a jumpscare that occurs when the player character is in bed. Bed, the place that should be your safest, in your room. The same bed in which daddy radio nicely reads you a story, the same bed where Bonbon will get you. The framing feels like where a game would cut off and say "game over", what regardless of game over animation is usually synonymous with ‘death’. You as a player have to push a button to roll over, that triggers the jumpscare and thus progresses through the game. But this scene removes the artifice of agency that was present in previous scenes and Bonbon directly attacks the child player character at their most vulnerable moment, no matter how soon or late you push that button. Placed in the narrative’s broader context, it reads as an escalation of the abuse and as confirmation that the player character was always already powerless—the exchanges and negotiations of prior scenes were facades, and the abuser was never going to let the child assert themselves in any meaningful way. On a meta level, the game being a linear narrative (as opposed to offering the player meaningful choices that might affect the game’s outcome) reinforces this lack of agency communicated by the story and gameplay mechanics.  I was really intrigued by how well the interactive aspects of the gameplay contributed to tensions surrounding power and autonomy. I can’t not see it as being about the visceral experience of child abuse from a child’s perspective and logic, and I think it evokes those feelings so well without ever becoming so literal as to be triggering (for me), which was very welcome.

Making my research on this game’s reception like a scholar by reading Manlybadasshero’s comment section I saw many different theories and appreciative or unappreciative comments, and I have to say I think going "it strictly symbolizes the father or this specific trouble" or inversely "there’s nothing deeper to it" misses the purpose of ambiguity. In ambiguity there is the possibility of letting every individual in the audience come up with their own most satisfying conclusion yes- hence me being able to relate so much despite having never had a pet rat— but there is also an implicit nuance to be had, that things aren’t clear cut, and coping mechanisms or trauma or discomfort is something we can feel and visualize in big or subtle ways. The game is great at capturing a feeling, and I think that above piecing the lore is what’s important to experience with it. Of course, the game works to convey the experience of child abuse in general, and the game’s mechanics here articulate a vulnerability and sense of entrapment well regardless of whether they evoke that specific concept for a particular player.

Someone said that it should’ve been a short story instead of a game and, disagree. I think having it as a game instead of a short written story is good, because one the sound design is great, two the visuals are disturbing and the atmosphere– everything greatly enhances the whole thing. And most of all, as always, agency is the crux of games. Again it enhances the powerlessness here ironically, that you can do nothing, and it isn’t unrealistic, not when you’re a child in a home situation like that. And even as you the player are the one choosing when to roll over in that bed sealing your fate, you know it had only ever been a question of time.

Conclusion

The scenes can be referred to by time of day (afternoon, dinnertime, evening, nighttime) but also by room (backyard, living room, dining room, bedroom). By being a domestic horror slice of life story with a sense of routine we can assume these are snippets that embody the rooms for the child, the kitchen is for tense meals shared, the bedroom is for comfort and terror alike. I think it’s an interesting angle to ponder it from that I won’t go over more extensively since this is already so so long.

My thesis in the grand scheme of this is that Bonbon, the rat monster and not just the feral pet tat, is for the child that middleground between toy (predictable, safe) and animal (unpredictable, unsafe). It uses that complex ~harder to deal with and wrap your head around~ dynamic between material possession that’s also a living thing to show a child trying to cope with a relationship they don’t know how to understand or process. An attempt to make it more digestible, but mostly more stomachable I think. An attempt that fails, but an attempt nonetheless.

The unknown is scary, because then you don’t know wether you are safe or unsafe, and that uncertainty and confusion can be even more unsettling than knowing for certain that the enemy is hostile or aggressive. A nice video on the topic. This in good part is what can make us more afraid of animals, or people we can’t read well, etc etc.

I said that my own experience growing up was that I was under the occasional threat of corporal punishment, but the truth of the matter is— once you teach your child to be scared of you physically hurting them, the threat doesn’t feel occasional, it feels constantly lingering. On an edge, teetering, just waiting to be pushed and then you’re in danger again.

And there’s a lot of compelling things you could assume about the father. The game gave me the impression that he was an absent one, because his presence was through a phone and a radio, plus he misses your birthday, parents are heard arguing in scene 5 at night but it could be argued that there’s no proof the dad was ever even around or in the house during the game. If he was home in scene 5, was it because he got home from work or whatever he was doing or was it because he wanted to come even if say, they were divorced and he had a restraining order on him? How closely is the rat meant to be dad being physically present? Because I can also see the narrative where it’s the latter, where Bonbon coming crashing through the fence is a way for a dad to steal little moments with the kid it was discouraged to see again. The coaxing undertone to the first scenes can also recall grooming specifically. In the first two scenes, the dad is cautiously on his best behavior to gain your trust and approval, in the third one where he argues with mom on the phone he loses his temper, perhaps because he wasn’t welcome to the birthday party he’s invading as Bonbon, in scene 4 you try to calm yourself with memories of a better moment but in scene 5 he’s home and bad things happen. It’s notable that he never talks to us, either because he never asks to like in scene 3 on the phone and the child’s just that unimportant to him in the grand scheme of arguing with mom, or mom won’t let him. Mom talks to us but dad never does, closest is a radio telling us a story, again through a filter, through the object, a step removed, through distance. You could also say that there’s a contrast between mom and dad-bonbon, mom giving you directives and orders in a way that feels very warm and fond, and dad talking very little to you at all, instead coaxing and leveraging gestures in a way that feels disturbing and wrong.

someone brought up "if you give a mouse a cookie", the story where a mouse just asks for a cookie but if your provide it then it asks for milk then if you provide it it asks for a straw etc etc, and I think that’s an interesting link to make with the theme of ceding ground to an abuser with trust or complacency. It’ll always take more and more. Most explicitly represented in the cake scene.

I went with inconsistency as my core analysis theme but there is an argument to be made for the level of Bonbon’s intentionality in its actions, wether its gestures are purposeful to gain trust before abusing it, or wether it is truly acting on impulse and whims at all times, wether it was truly well-meaning in helping you with your tasks in the moment and angrily hungry the next. Ultimately, it matters little, because your cake still got ruined and you still got… Well. There is a lot of elements that give the game a somewhat dreamlike atmosphere, the hazy lighting being one, your garbling voice when speaking to the toys, and so much more. In the end all we can do is theorize for the sake of theorizing, and try to cope with the reality of things as the game showed us.