I've been trying to figure out the indie horror game Fran Bow, it feels like there's meaning to it but it's so deliberately obtuse that I haven't been able to decipher what it's actually saying. And the thing is, it seems like nobody else has either. There are so many "theory" and "analysis" videos on it and they are all dogshit. I'll give you an example:
This is a FIFTY-SIX minute video making the bold statement that Fran Bow is "about lobotomy" and their evidence for this is that Chapter 1 takes place in a 1940s mental asylum and that there are indeed lobotomized characters in that asylum. The game has 5 chapters, by the way, and lobotomy or any other mental health practices never come up again.
The game is full of random shit and it's really hard to tell what parts of it are obscure metaphor and what parts are just shock factor or pure vibes, so this clown doesn't even try and pretty much all he even attempts to analyze are the freaking chapter titles. (Woah dude, chapter 3 is titled "vegetative state", what if that means Fran is like, in a vegetative state) This video has nearly 800k views and all the comments are like "Wow, you're cooking" and "Great insight" when he doesn't even mention the journal.
For reference: At the very end of chapter 2, a giant toad hands you a journal from a character named León Castillo. León Castillo never appears in the game in person, is only mentioned one other time and is depicted on a hidden photo in chapter 5. The journal itself serves no gameplay purpose, it's never used to progress anything nor does it contain any information that helps you progress, it serves purely as a vehicle for exposition and... artistic expression of the writers, I suppose? To illustrate the point further, every other item you are given is used for gameplay progress at some point, there are no other books or anything like that in the game. The 40-page journal is the only exception to this, therefore I am very certain that its contents are essential to understanding what the game is actually about.
Anyway, I have watched quite a few "analysis" videos about Fran Bow now and less than half of them even acknowledge that the journal exists. Nobody has an explanation for all the obscure and weird parts of the game, so they just pretend those don't exist and only talk about the parts that they can interpret, like the chapter titles. The theories in the comments are also bad and wrong, but at least they're trying to be creative. Most videos only come up with "it was all in her head" (it wasn't).
Subscribe for more fun facts about why Fran Bow is so indecipherable and why I am Sisyphus, my boulder is the severed head of Lucia Dagenhart and my hill is a 2015 point-n-click horror game made by some Swedish tumblr couple who probably just put some monkeys at a typewriter.
This is kinda an answer to this I suppose?
I've been trying to figure out the indie horror game Fran Bow, it feels like there's meaning to it but it's so deliberately obtuse that I haven't been able to decipher what it's actually saying. And the thing is, it seems like nobody else has either. There are so many "theory" and "analysis" videos on it and they are all dogshit. I'll give you an example:
This is a FIFTY-SIX minute video making the bold statement that Fran Bow is "about lobotomy" and their evidence for this is that Chapter 1 takes place in a 1940s mental asylum and that there are indeed lobotomized characters in that asylum. The game has 5 chapters, by the way, and lobotomy or any other mental health practices never come up again.
The game is full of random shit and it's really hard to tell what parts of it are obscure metaphor and what parts are just shock factor or pure vibes, so this clown doesn't even try and pretty much all he even attempts to analyze are the freaking chapter titles. (Woah dude, chapter 3 is titled "vegetative state", what if that means Fran is like, in a vegetative state) This video has nearly 800k views and all the comments are like "Wow, you're cooking" and "Great insight" when he doesn't even mention the journal.
For reference: At the very end of chapter 2, a giant toad hands you a journal from a character named León Castillo. León Castillo never appears in the game in person, is only mentioned one other time and is depicted on a hidden photo in chapter 5. The journal itself serves no gameplay purpose, it's never used to progress anything nor does it contain any information that helps you progress, it serves purely as a vehicle for exposition and... artistic expression of the writers, I suppose? To illustrate the point further, every other item you are given is used for gameplay progress at some point, there are no other books or anything like that in the game. The 40-page journal is the only exception to this, therefore I am very certain that its contents are essential to understanding what the game is actually about.
Anyway, I have watched quite a few "analysis" videos about Fran Bow now and less than half of them even acknowledge that the journal exists. Nobody has an explanation for all the obscure and weird parts of the game, so they just pretend those don't exist and only talk about the parts that they can interpret, like the chapter titles. The theories in the comments are also bad and wrong, but at least they're trying to be creative. Most videos only come up with "it was all in her head" (it wasn't).
Subscribe for more fun facts about why Fran Bow is so indecipherable and why I am Sisyphus, my boulder is the severed head of Lucia Dagenhart and my hill is a 2015 point-n-click horror game made by some Swedish tumblr couple who probably just put some monkeys at a typewriter.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: