Tiny Bunny

 

Thoughts and temporary analysis.

When I say temporary it is of course because there is only 3 chapters out, and if it's true what the devs say, that the final game is around 10 hours long, that would mean what, 5 chapters more maybe? so a lot can happen, and what I think is going on right now, might be totally off. 

I did manage to find the short story, but sadly it's not translated and I can't read Russian, I hate that so few Russian horror stories are translated, cause they have a long history of scary stories, and the translated stories I can find, are awesome! please man, we need Russian horror story fan scanlations, like yesterday! 

Anyways.. so what I gather in general from the 3 chapters of the visual novel, which is what I have. 

We have a unreliable narrator, since we hear everything from Anton, and I don't think he is always telling the truth, and I think he has a hard time telling fantasy from reality. And I am quite sure we have the real story, and we have Anton's story running simultanious.

But what we have for a fact is that he and his family relocated to Sibiria, why is a little up in the air, cause I feel we are told several reasons, like crime, or poverty. But I have a feeling we can't be sure of either, since children have a habit of filling in the blanks, and I am positive that Anton does this often, with a lot of things. 

Why is he taking the pills? in the prologue the mother makes it sound like it's something mental, as in he is imagining weird things again, it's time for your pills. But technically we don't know, or at least I have not noticed any mention of it. It's hard to tell yet, what is just him being a lonely child, and what is perhaps a mental illness - It could be something akin to schizofrenia since he for instance imagined the blood on the glove. He also seems to project things unto others, like the police man, and Polina. This is of course pure speculation, since we need to know more about him, to make a decent analysis.

I also noticed that no neighbors came over and welcomed them, I am pretty sure that even in Sibiria that is customs, and I think that it might be the mothers childhood home, cause I absolutely deduct that she knows the place, and this used to be the grandmothers house. The grandmother who warned Anton about the forest, or did she? was that in fact a different place? We don't know, but for arguments sake, lets assume that it's this house, and that forest. Then could that have something to do with the mothers aversion to blood?

Honestly she looks more like she has a seizure, but why? and why does Olga tell us that their father laughed at it, and then cried? I think she might got something wrong there, and why does Anton conclude that the forests madness got to them. Because as we know this is not the first time it happened, and at that time, they didn't live in a forest, but in the city. I would like to know what is wrong with the mother, is it PTSD related seizures? or is it Epilepsy? 

Polina, what is it about her? I read somewhere that she has blue eyes, but I can't seem to find anything anywhere that tells me her eyes are blue. Could be some dialogue I missed, I don't know, I haven't scrutinized it that much. But I do know why that person has that theory, even if I think it is too "easy" - it is because of this one moment, where we can see the Fox he dubbed Alysa as blue eyes.

Is Alysa the same person as Polina? Because that is what I think that theory points to, but I don't think so, mainly because that would just be too easy. But I can't completely dismiss it either, cause it's a good a theory as any. But who are these kids then? I think lots of people including myself will sit there and look at the kids at school and other children characers and think about who could be the owl, for instance. 

I think that is a very deliberate trick from the authors side, and I think it's a wild goose, it's what I would do too, lul the reader into a world where things make sense, and of course it's a draft, not a ghost. 

What we know about these kids are that Alysa went to school, the others doesn't seem to have attended school, and they clearly hate it (like all children), if their song are anything to go by. So if we return to what I said in the beginning, we only see the world through Anton's eyes, and he flips back and forth between it being masks, and not. And at the end of chapter 3 they can jump higher than the forest, that is sort of magical. But is that in his head? Or are these magic creatures?

Is it the spirits of dead children perhaps? Again we have to know more to make a theory, but I do lean towards that it's all in his head, and Anton is in fact completely off his rocks. Maybe it's even his fault they moved, what if it's something he did? We don't know. Cause we don't know much about his life before this.

Anton asks the children who killed Vova and that pimply dude, and they react with fearfullnes, clearly they don't like talking about it, and like everyone else - they speak in riddles. But what do they say? they tell Anton that the killer is adult, because it's easy to get lost in the world of the grown ups (very peter pan huh?) And they tell him that he wears a skin face, does that mean he doesn't wear a mask anymore? Or does it mean he wears someone elses face? They also tell him that he cuts them to bits, but that is it, no actual useful information. 

Who stuck that mask in his backpack, was it himself? was it Olga? or was it dad? We are told that dad often stuck strange things in his backpack before. And as an author myself, I hardly think that it's for no reason the story spends time making us aware that dad puts random stuff in his backpack. When he first finds it, it's  because the bullies empties out his schoolbag, and he feels different when wearing it, untill they laugh at him and kick his ass. The second time he gets it, Alysa gives it to him, and tells him it's his, and that they have been looking for him for a long time. Something akin to "it is your destiny Luke". So is it? 

If we go with the theory that these children are indeed what they look like, shapeshifters, and that we go with the notion that this is where Anton's mother is from, it could be genetic, it could be some specific peoples family tree that can wear a specific mask? It might not be too far off, cause everyone, even the schoolteacher mentions several times that Anton is an outsider, not one of them. But is that just what Anton hears, cause that is how he feels - the Anton-filter.

In his nightmares his classmates are all faceless and distorted, and in reality we never see their faces, unless they are one of the actual characters.That tells me he is disconnected.

I did however go look online to see if something could help me come to some sort of conclusion, and it sort of did. Cause the tag line is "THOSE WHO HAVE HEARD THE VOICE OF THE FOREST, ARE BEYOND HELP", and we can easily agree that it is exactly what Anton did in the end of the third chapter. So he is beyond help? What does that mean exactly?

See I think - cause I noted that the start screen changed with each chapter, and I think we all think Jackalope, and if you look at the game FAQ, we do find a link about Jackalopes - not that it tells us anything we don't know, that they are called a Frankenstein rabbit. If you dig a little deeper you find the devs patreon, and lo and behold 

There we have the tiny bunny, the viscious bunny, and the devil bunny - does that or does that not look like a Jackalope? 

And then I noticed something, remember the wolf that jumps at you in the prologue?

I thought, just as most other people thought that it was the wolf, right?, but look at it.

It looks very different, and also it has human hands, it's very clear that the fur is a jacket, and if you look at it with the other children, it's also very obvious it's wearing a mask. So - we know the wolf on the stairs there is the child wolf. Then who is that other one?

We have this, the Forest master - who is he? and I hear you say, doesn't he look a little more like a goat, or Krampus? And yes he does - in this image. But look at his hands! If you look closely when the children all are talking in the forest, you can see him lurking as a fluffy shadow, and I think the flute might be him, so Pan? (and we're back to the Peter Pan stuff, that I also refuse to believe is in there for no reason). But what I noticed was the name of the image below.

It's bunny and Forest master, and he doesn't exactly look like a goat there, does he? So is this a posession thing? Hmm.. You want to know what I think? Of course you do, or you wouldn't have read this far in this rant. I think they are both Anton, I think his good self, the bunny - the scared helpless boy - is being eaten up by the Forest Master, his dark psychosis. The reason I think that is because it was the first thing I thought when I saw this image, and thought of the Jackalope. And I can tell you that I was married to a man suffering from schizofrenia, and he always painted his psychosis as a tiger who ate the world, he was an artist, and He made an entire sort of mythos sorrounding this psychotic tiger, it had friends like a Giraffe, and a submarine. I know, I know... but the thing is that the more I look into the artwork and analyse that, the more I am seeing the forest eating the boy, which would also play into that tagline. 

But what about Olga then? I don't know.But if you look at the homepage for the game, then under characters, it tells us that the mother changed drastically after the move, so much so that we are asked to wonder if she was kidnapped and replaced with someone else. 

So conclusion for now, is that Anton is bat shit crazy, and really dangerous because he believes in his psychotic world of make believe, and as these 3 chapters progressed he has become more and more unhinged. I think he kills Olga, that would be my bet. 

If you like me poke around Steam guides armed with a translator, you find stuff like this. 

They come from a guide on how to get some specific nightmare, these are all from a nightmare sequence I think, not that I actually figured out how to get it, a translator tool only gets you that far, as far as I understood then to get that nightmare you have to chose between Polina and Alysa, and send Semyon (pimpled bully) to the forest. Yeah... I have no clue, it's not an option in the game I played, but maybe it was, had I done something different.