How Much of Reality is Really Reality?

Hello Humans! Today, one of my favorite games of all time finally was listed at a price that I could afford, so I went ahead and bought it, and started my own play-through of it. The game, is Fran Bow.

I was immediately captured by this games art-style and the beautiful imagery of realities beginning to collide. The game takes place in 1944 and starts off the storyline with a happy family. Fran Bow, her mom and dad, and her cat Mr. Midnight. That night, Fran hears something, and goes to her parents bedroom, and she sees her parents cut up into pieces, blood everywhere. The scared Fran runs off into the forest with Mr. Midnight and falls down, later getting found by some people who take her to Oswald Asylum. That is where we start the game-play. As we wander Oswald Asylum, we learn that Fran has been suffering from an unknown mental illness since she arrived, and has been taking a pill called "Duotine" to try to help her hallucinations be put to rest. These magical red pills actually do exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to do. Every time you take a red pill from her supply of Duotine, you see into her mind's reality. This reality is really dark, with black shadow creatures, dead animals, and weird creatures haunting Fran. One game mechanic that I always thought was really weird, is that from the second you start using the Duotine, you must get objects from Fran's reality, and use them in, what I will call, the "normal" reality. This seemed really weird, because shouldn't those objects, like keys, be a figment of Fran's imagination? Well, apparently not. In this first section of the game, you also figure out your main objective: To find Mr. Midnight. Another strange thing to point out: All of the Dr's and Nurses in the game that interact with Fran, tell her that her cat is dead.

Once you escape Oswald Asylum, you run through a maze, chasing a robot Mr. Midnight, who was put in the Asylum by a skeleton in a suit and a top-hat. We'll talk more about that later. At the end of the maze comes a sewer pipe, which you gladly go through to catch you cat. You then arrive in a forest, where a giant Ant and his pet Beetlepig reside. These things are both in the normal reality, not Fran's reality. Through many puzzles, you must kill the Beetlepig to get a living Narcissistic rat out of it's stomach to help you find your cat. The rat leads you to a section of the forest, where there is literally nothing there. He then tells you that Mr. Midnight was caught by someone, and then they came to that spot an disappeared. So, it's back into the pill world, where there is a well. Except this well is sealed off on top, so you can't enter it. Through more puzzles, you must obtain items to make a door to enter into the well. You fall down, and enter the next part of the game.

You end up in a secluded house on an Island, but when you enter the pill world, you're back in the well. As you explore the house, you come to the attic, where you find the real and living Mr. Midnight locked in a gold cage. You then must collect a variety of items to preform a ritual on conjoined twins to help them banish "Itward," the thing that made them into conjoined twins. You end up meeting a frog after a skeleton, the same one from the Asylum, opens a window. This frog tells you not to trust the conjoined twins, and gives you an alternate ritual to preform. This banishes the twins instead of Itward. Once preforming this ritual, you are able to get the key from the girl's remains and unlock Mr. Midnight. Then, by riding on the frog's back and playing a quick game of frogger, you make back into the forest. You then proceed through over a bridge, in which breaks, and Fran and Mr. Midnight fall down to what seems to be, their deaths. The last screen you see is Fran letting go of a root she's hanging onto, and then Mr. Midnight jumping after her.

When you think the game is over, Fran wakes up as a log. As you soon learn, you feel into the world of Ithersta where roots, trees, and vegetables live. While Fran loves the world of Ithersta, and her new friend Palontrus, the Doctor of Realities, she wants to go home. However, in Ithersta, Fran doesn't have her magical pills. Instead, you have to use a machine that changes the seasons. By using the season clock and more puzzles, you unlock the way home. One puzzle involves a Fibonacci number sequence, in which a jack-in-the-box of the same skeleton that has been present in every level of the game appears with a book in his hand. Once finished with all of the puzzles, Fran unlocks the gateway back to her reality. The world of Ithersta is the weirdest and most bizarre part of the game, which is saying a lot. Most people have interpreted it as Fran's brain during, and waking up from a coma from the tremendous fall she experienced.

Once through the gateway to Fran's reality, she sees a jar of her pills, and immediately goes after them. But, it turns out, the pills are on a string, and pulled back. They continue to be pulled through a couple of screens, and then finally you meet him. The great Itward. He is a skeleton in, yes, you guessed it, a suit and a top-hat. He explains that he is the protector and friend of children. He's every child's friend, because he's every child's "imaginary" friend. Although he says that he's not really imaginary anymore, because he's become real to the children. Fran and Itward then fix Itward's Flying Machine and they go through a flight in the sky, in order to get Fran home. After a few more puzzles, a birthday party, a chemistry experiment, and finally some black shadows ruining the ship, the Flying Machine starts failing, and starts to fall down to the ground.

The most beautiful part of the game happens at this moment, when the mostly-cheery and optimistic Fran starts to break down as she cries "it's not fair," as she realizes all the wrongs in her short life-span so far. Itward takes Fran in his arms, and says, "I will always take care of you, My Dear." And the Flying Machine crashes.

Fran next wakes up next to a crashed bicycle, which was part of Itward's Flying Machine. Some say that the whole sequence with Itward took place in Fran's head as she rode a bicycle with Mr. Midnight through the forest, and then proceeded to crash. But we really will never know exactly what happened. Fran then walks out of the forest, and is on her street, Haze Street. They walk to her house, where Mr. Midnight goes in an upstairs window to unlock the front door. While Mr. Midnight is inside, Fran's doctor, Dr. Deern, from the Asylum finds her, and takes her to the graveyard. He figured out that the Asylum had "kidnapped" her, and disguised this as her death. So, they go to the graveyard to dig up Fran's coffin, and her parent's coffins, because why not? In Fran's parent's coffins, she finds them, as expected. But in her own coffin, is the remains of a cat, that looks an awful lot like Mr. Midnight. She and Dr. Deern are then mysteriously transported by one of the black shadows that have been following her the whole time back to some version of her House.

Fran wakes up, chained to her own bed. She then remembers something she learned in Ithersta, "Time is just a layered reality," and goes back in time to a younger version of herself. The young Fran then unlocks the chains, and Fran goes back to her time, and proceeds through the level. As she goes through "The House of Madness," Fran has to find many hidden objects to make a special alarm clock for Mother Mabuka, the mother of Darkness. While you click on many things scattered throughout the multiple-reality house, you find many objects that she says reminds her of other places throughout the game. For example, a paper pinwheel from Ithersta, a picture from the Asylum, a doll-house that resembles the house in the Well, and even a story about a young girl with an Imaginary Friend who saves her. Once you make it through a few more puzzles after waking Mother Mabuka, you are then back in the original Doctor's Office from the Asylum.

Long-story-short, Fran gets shot by the Evil Dr. Oswald, head of Oswald Asylum, and then healed by Palontrus, and taken away by Itward with Mr. Midnight into the day sky. Weirdest ending to a game ever. I'll let you decide what you think the game really was about, because that's what the developers have stated that they want.

I bring up Fran Bow, because as the game progresses, you see the two or three realities (the Pill World, the Normal Reality, and Ithersta) start to merge into one. Things from one reality come into another, something that was supposed to be imaginary becomes real. In the past couple of weeks here at BYU-H, I have had three of my realities come together into one. Science, Religion, and the "Normal" Reality. It's been a weird and wacky ride, much like Fran Bow's experience, but it's been a good one. You see as Fran Bow progresses throughout the game, that the weird and dark things she sees at the beginning seem normal to her by the end. For me, looking at Atoms seemed to be in an entirely different world of their own, a separate reality. But now, I can "see" the molecules working in the world, my body, and the air. I see the Laws of Physics in the Scriptures, and Evolution fitting into the Creation. Many of the things I talk about used to be separated into one of the three categories, but now, they've blended together. I talk about all three in sync with each other, and it actually makes the most sense to me. I'm going to call this "The Real Reality," because it is the reality that I now live in, and it's the one I'd like to invite you all to experience.

"I've seen a world unlike any you've seen, full of creatures who've been in my dreams. I know a pain like you wouldn't believe, one that rips me apart at the seems. Take your pills Fran, just lie still Fran, is that dead girl me? 'Fran Bow, Fran Bow, none of this is real,' so they tell me. Shall we see what these reveal? I hear Itward's whispers echo in my mind. It's a perfect time to die, finding Mr. Midnight. I've seen the end of a number of lives, and I wonder if I've caused a few. Am I a ghost, is my heart made of wood, is that blood on my hands from me or from you? I hear voices, all these noises, are my choices good? Fran Bow, Fran Bow, puppet on a string. You can taunt me, haunt me, it won't change a thing. Because Itward's whipsers echo in my mind. It's a perfect time to die, finding Mr. Midnight. Every memory is a mystery alive. Tears well from the blood in my eyes. Fran Bow, Fran Bow, how'd your parents die? You won't trust me, just beware the shadows lie. He'll surround you, drown you, burry you alive. But you'll shake him, break him, each time you survive. So let Itward's whispers echo in your mind. It's a perfect time to die, finding Mr. Midnight."

This game, along with my own reality change, led me to the question, "What really is reality?" I mean, we have so many things that shape what we perceive as "reality," but it's not really the real reality. Wow, that was an alliteration. Things like the media, friends, family, teachers, religion, and pretty much anything and everything we interact with. But guess what? Science is true, the Gospel is true, and I'm as true to myself as I can be, so by combining these three things, hopefully I will be able to find the Real Reality. I've been seeing it form for a few months, and can't wait to see where it will go. My mind is being blown-up, expanded, and re-built literally everyday as my brain makes more connections and synapses. It all just makes sense, as I keep going deeper and deeper into thought about the Universe and Atoms. One way that I use to know if something I am being taught "isn't true," is that I will get a head-ache while trying to think deeply about it. It hasn't been happening as I've been finding the Real Reality the past few months. I can't wait to take you all along for the ride into the Real Reality, as I drag you down into the House of Madness, which is the House of Science. Stay wild, flower child.