#tazmily villagers

[cloudwing-court-galaxy]

Tazmily's happiest farmer couple!

[nanaten]

if you hate nana mother 3 you will die and go to hell

[shewaslikeasunflower]

ok i tried to remake the twins house as accurate as i could ngl

[beinfriends]

Although Tazmily has fully recovered their memories and have had one to two full years (depending on when each villager in particular recovered their memories) to work through it, I think it's still really hard for a lot of them. The villagers are doing much better than they were at the initial point of remembering. Whether they allowed the memories to recover naturally or opted to recover them all in one sitting with the Egg of Light, it was extremely hard for people to cope with this rush of memories and all the trauma that came with it.

Even beyond escaping the end of the world and knowing that their families and friends are all dead, the world before Nowhere was a deeply broken one. A lot of Tazmilians probably had experienced some form of trauma even prior to the war breaking out and everything going to hell in a handbasket, and that was trauma they never got to process, let alone the fresher trauma of, again, losing everyone they knew and loved, save for if they made it with you to Nowhere-- and quite a few made it to the White Ship, but then perished there due to illness or injuries, leaving behind single family members to pick up the pieces upon reaching Nowhere.

The one solace the town generally had was knowing that everyone else was dealing with the same thing to some degree. They'd all faced similar traumas and losses, but there was a lot of shame attached to people, which made it harder for many to cope with. Tazmily isn't good at dealing with negative emotions, never was, though a lot of villagers have gotten better about it. But they came from a world that did not value human life at all, let alone someone as an individual, their thoughts, feelings, and desires; people didn't have the tools to process emotions all that well unless they were lucky enough to have a good family or good friends. Even then, it was hard.

So, returning to their horrible memories, ones they were never allowed to process-- or never allowed themselves to process-- was extremely hard. People could at least typically turn to their loved ones, usually spouses, but it wasn't easy to discuss. It still isn't for many of them. The only person people felt comfortable fully venting to most of the time was Leder. Leder was the one who remembered it all for them, and had promised to guide them through this process of recovering their memories. And he did, he kept his promise. Leder is someone who is so easy to talk to, and many turned to him for advice when they didn't know how to process the losses that were now fresh in their minds.

Leder kept a lot of people sane during that hard year. Eventually, the depression, rage, anxiety, guilt, and everything else started to fade. They returned to a more normal life as they finally were allowed to address what was there, to whatever degree that may be. But I think the trauma is going to be hard for them to deal with forever-- understandably so. That shit doesn't leave, especially because it's arguable that most, if not essentially everyone who came to Nowhere on the White Ship likely has some form of PTSD.

People have gotten back to normal, but have they fully processed? Can they think about people in their past without crying or having a meltdown about it? Is every memory not tinged with sadness and pain? I'm not so sure about that. Tazmily's trauma is a work in progress to this day. People try to live in the moment, they've accepted the horrible and strange way they all came together, but it won't ever be the same again. I think they're ultimately better off having learned, however. That is why Leder revealed the truth to them-- because he knew that it was necessary for Tazmily to grow and to learn from their past mistakes more fully.

It wouldn't solve things, but I feel like Tazmily needs one good day where they all allow themselves to speak openly what happened to them, to cry together, to commiserate and understand what connects them all. Tazmily, as Leder said, is the town many of them wished they could've grown up in. Many of them were born into some form of the cycle of abuse, and Tazmily was their ticket out, their one shot at removing that cycle.

A lot of people are uncomfortable reckoning with the sort of people they became during the Pigmask occupation. A lot of them came to cruelty easily, returning to the cycle of cruelty and hatred for the Other that Eagleland and other nations had. That same cruelty many of them had been the victims of. Tazmilians overwhelmingly worked hard to move past that and do better after the cataclysm, and those efforts genuinely paid off. People really, really tried to be better, and Tazmily became kinder again. But I can't imagine, having worked on yourself in that way, suddenly being reminded of the world you came from that acted just like you did, albeit on a much, much larger and harsher scale.

But it must hurt so much, knowing that you senselessly perpetuated the persecution that poisoned the world before. I don't know how many of the villagers have actually thought about that, but if some have-- I could see people like maybe Ollie, Abbot and Abbey, Paul and Lin, so on realizing that-- and being crushed. Even if they themselves had not directly been harsh, even if they only had allowed it to slide, it still hurts.

Recovering the memories of the past has reinvigorated people's need to break the cycles of cruelty, abuse, and hatred, though. I think all of these things can turn into something good, ultimately. Humanity is not inherently evil. The Tazmily villagers are not inherently bad, or cruel, nor are they doomed to be that way forever. They've already proven themselves to be people who can learn, and these hard lessons, the ones of the White Ship and the ones of the Pigmasks, will stay with them. But, God, it'll never be fully solved if people can't allow themselves to be vulnerable and to fully unpack everything they've gone through.

Tazmily is trying so, so hard. And that counts for a lot. They've done a lot of work already, but I don't think most of them have ever felt fully comfortable being vulnerable or open about everything they went through. There's so much potential love and understanding in Tazmily, if only they'd allow themselves to have that. One can only hope they can continue processing and reckoning with the aftermath of all that's happened, and for the better. I think that's deserved.

[beinfriends-a]

( tell me why i’m thinking about coming back to this blog. tell me why. )

[zekkopunks]

lucas mother 3 the commentary youtuber

what is up with long mother 3 videos using this type of thumbnail lol

[dabruzzy]

I was thinking about this line from Jackie and it got me thinking.

3 years earlier, when Lighter and Fuel lost their house in a fire, they stayed over at the Yado Inn. Two villagers were homeless, but they weren't left to fend for themselves. The other villagers helped them, because they were a community.

Now, 3 years later, Lighter and Fuel are at risk of homelessness again because they oppose Porky's regime and refuse to buy a Happy Box. Their house has a huge hole in the roof. But if they were to ask Jackie if they could book a room at his hotel, he'd probably tell them the same thing he told Lucas. Not necessarily because he has anything against them personally, but because their presence there is bad for business, and now that capitalism has been introduced to Tazmily, he needs money. The villagers don't help each other without expecting anything in return anymore. I think this is a subtler way that the game shows how capitalism promotes a hyper-individualistic mentality.

[mother-duster]

in the villaged tazmily. straight up "stapling it". and by "it", haha, well. let's just say. My wal

[vital-information]

“The queerness of Mother 3 is a complicated thing. It’s ever present but just how much is supposed to be played for jokes and just how much is to be taken sincerely remains unclear. At the center of this is our protagonist, Lucas. Lucas is an absolute softy, a total mama’s boy. He is not fast, strong, or brave. All of those qualities are held by his adventurous twin brother, Claus. When their mother, Hinawa, dies, Claus swears revenge and embarks on a journey, but Lucas just cries. He visits his mother’s grave daily. He’s not looking for adventure or vengeance, he’s just sad.

It’s through these early sections of grief that Lucas’s queerness begins to appear. He’s incredibly close with his mother. His father, Flint, is generally absent and when he is present seems more concerned with finding Claus than raising Lucas. Lucas is sensitive to a fault and in opposition with the world around him, one where boys play outside trying to tackle dinosaurs all day. As his village, Tazmily, leaves behind its early idealism in favor of a more commercial existence, its citizens become darker, more sinister. They’re meaner, harder, and also apathetic to the changes around them. The more they change the more it highlights how different Lucas is. He stays soft, he cares so much, he just wants to help.

…

Lucas’s greatest strength is his softness, his kindness. …In the final battle of the game we see him, alone, fighting a brainwashed Claus with the fate of the world hanging in the balance. Claus launches attack after attack, but Lucas will not hit him back no matter what the player does. Instead Lucas can guard, he can heal himself, and he can believe in his brother. He can even cry a little.”

— Dave Tomaine, “Mother Is Mothering: Grief, Queerness, and Softness in Mother 3”

[voidf34thers]

oh well, who the hell cares

let’s just add more tags here and see if that works

Anyone want a height chart for all of the human villagers + more I made because I was bored? No? Okay

…

Kidding. You get it whether you want it or not.

[twothpaste]

m3 post-canon worldbuilding thoughts

🌏🐉🌞👷👇

🐲 the dark dragon is a real flesh and blood island-sized beast, but also a symbolic embodiment of the earth's love. she cherishes all living things, including humanity. she wept in her sleep when humans destroyed the world. once awakened, she circles the globe, slowly bleeding love and life and magic back into the soil.

🌱 the dark dragon's powers were overstated. though the message of sheer hope saving the earth works beautifully in the context of a video game ending - if we're breakin into post-canon fanworks, "magic will instantly solve the climate crisis & systemic political rot & grant us a clean slate" doesn't cut it for me. though the dragon grants them a second chance, humanity's still gotta spend the next several generations helping her restore the world. planting seeds, rebuilding from the wreckage of old cities, inventing sustainable tech and systems of self-governance, the whole nine yards.

🌊 when she came outta the ground, the dragon broke nowhere into pieces. it's now a sprawling archipelago of at least 100 islands. a lot of familiar locations remain mostly intact, but some places close to the needles (like osohe castle and the chimera lab) have been submerged and destroyed. much of the first few years postgame are spent mapping out the new landscape, and discovering new ways to navigate it. (kinda like how coming out of a traumatic living situation & grappling with ptsd involves re-contextualizing old memories & spaces, learning to navigate the world all over again, etc 🥲)

🏠 tazmily's got a big cliffside carved down the middle of town square, and a few broken chunks severed off, with steep ocean drops between 'em. the community comes together to restore their town with a web of stairways and bridges. though it looks like a shabby disaster zone at first, it takes on a charming and well-loved vibe over the years. maybe one day i'll find the time to sketch some scenes.

🚣‍♀️ the best way to get around the new nowhere is by boat. kayaks, canoes, and sailboats become quite popular. incidentally, most tazmilians had experience with ship-building & seafaring (that's naturally how they made it to nowhere on a big white ship). they'd locked this knowledge away with their memories, fearing what'd happen if they took to the sea again and discovered their dark history. as they gradually regain their traumatic memories, they also regain their capacity to engage with the present world.

🫠 without porky's influence, the folks he brought to nowhere are also slowly regaining memories & coming to their senses. these people find themselves stranded in a distant future, utterly misled, with no hope of returning home. most of 'em settle initially into tazmily, helping the villagers rebuild the only settlement left on planet fucking earth, whether out of the goodness of their hearts or sheer need to survive. it's an awkward adjustment. most everyone understands the state of mutual dependence they're all stuck in, and some folks (perhaps inspired by lucas) offer tremendous kindness to strangers. but others are reluctant to trust ex-pigmasks, and vice versa. others still lash out or self-isolate in vain frustration at the hopelessness of their situation, separated irrevocably from their homes and families. it takes several years for the last humans alive to really come to terms, and truly come together.

🐽 there's a splinter branch of ex-pigmasks who fuck off to the ruined highway islets where thunder tower used to be, declaring their ongoing loyalty to porky. they build a new settlement called "the pigpen." their poorly-organized isolationist stint lasts less than a decade, caving to a lack of supplies & the utmost generosity from tazmilians offering aid. the pigpen ultimately becomes a wholly benign settlement. some folks even move there for a change of pace. the vibe of the place starts leanin' toward punk culture, with post-apocalyptic garage rock bands and outcasts helpin' each other get by. (i think kuma & her wife live here. it's probably dcmc's home base too.)

🌫️ porky himself resides in the crumbled wreckage of new pork city, slowly sinking into the ocean over the course of 20 years. sometimes tazmilians come to salvage technology & supplies, but they learn to steer clear of the king's capsule. he's got nothing worthwhile left to offer humanity, and vice versa… (i've written 2 fics set here. i'm very normal and not at all sick in the head about the symbolic weight of this concept.)

🌲 lucas & isaac start a "ranger service" organization that preserves natural wildlife and manages chimeras. much of their work involves relocating troublesome chimeras to more suitable environments, dismantling their excessive weaponry, providing veterinary care & mechanical repairs. after some initial debate, it's accepted as a law of the land that all things have a right to live - even the most inconvenient of porky's lab experiments.

☀️ dr andonuts leads the charge in developing new sustainable technology, starting with a foundation of green energy tech that exists today. tazmily's powered by wind & solar farms (built mostly by ex-pigmasks, as an earnest show of repentance and solidarity). i think there's some carbon capture tech going on, tryin to reverse the lingering effects of climate change. i have a crystal clear image in my head of these funny clunky solar powered trucks they use for moving equipment, and i swear one of these days i'm gonna draw claus with one, trucker hat n' all, lookin' peak redneck in the driver's seat.

🚢 a few years postgame, a "world ship" is constructed - a vessel that can carry brave travelers to the old world's abandoned continents. they find no survivors out there. just lifeless ruins, and swaths of parched wilderness. lucas & pals take annual trips to salvage for precious scraps of history, survey the state of natural environemnts across the world, and help restore said environments through ecological work. i've written little snippets of this in a few fics… would love to write somethin wholly set within one of these expeditions one day, if i can come up with a solid story premise.

🏝️ another settlement crops up on the japanese island of kyushu (the nearest major landmass to nowhere). it's plainly dubbed "kyushu-two." much of the island's been submerged due to rising sea levels, but nowhere-folk are by this point used to a waterlogged seafaring lifestyle. a lotta non-tazmilians eagerly move here, itching to be "anywhere but nowhere." it develops a laidback and kinda artsy culture.

🤝 with only a few hundred people left on earth, a necessity to share resources, and a damning lesson learned from traditional systems of government, tazmily & other settlements become more or less anarcho-communist. though there are leadership roles, no one person is in charge of anything, and major decisions are made collectively by community members. i don't think they keep using currency, at least not for long. unlearning systems of hierarchy & authority is a challenge for many - even including some tazmilians, once they've regained their memories. call it a utopian fantasy, but they make the effort willingly, humbled by all that's transpired.

✨ new psychics are born at a higher rate than usual on postgame nowhere. (whatever "usual" is. i assume it's always been pretty exceptionally rare.) kumatora takes up the mantle of teachin' 'em how to use their powers, and passing down history the magifolk taught her. her worldly expeditions often involve seeking evidence of PSI in ancient societies - she's bringin' back stuff like PSI teleport and lore from dalaam & scaraba. she sees it as her duty to keep this knowledge alive, cuz she's the only one who can. (and to ensure future psychics don't have to feel lost & alone like lucas did, or like she did when her family disappeared 🥲)

🥼 claus has their eco-lab in the mothafuckin' arizona desert wasteland, developing new chimeras to repair ecosystems, y'all know the deal. it's kinda sad to think they probably won't live to see the full impact of their efforts - but then again, no one else will in this world, it's all a multi-generational effort. sweet to imagine in the long run there'll be lotsa silly & wonderful new organisms out there making the earth a greener, livelier place. i think they might even do some projects to revive species that went extinct when the world was destroyed. or at least, creating chimeras that can fulfill their likenesses and ecological niches.

🏃 a bunch of the characters travel around constantly i think. like lucas' home is tazmily, but he probably spends like 75% of his time elsewhere - expeditions, visiting loved ones, ranger work & odd jobs, etc. likewise for claus, kuma, duster, nana probably. dcmc tours on a big sailboat. flint might be one of the only major characters who mostly stays put. he gets sad if he leaves hinawa by her lonesome for too long.....

[eegasleega-will-change-this-l8r]

Rambling About New Pork City

This is just a long series of ideas for how I envision New Pork City's layout (mostly from planning for my Minecraft build)

My vision differs a lot from the layout in the game, since that's only a 2D representation of the city, and there's probably a lot we don't see So I want my version of it to fit in a 3D environment, while also having some extra worldbuilding for flavour ^^

So something I've seen debated a few times is where exactly NPC actually is! In the game, we only reach it through a flying limousine, so we don't get any sense of where we've actually gone. It's not marked on the map, and there's not really any strong clues in the city itself to suggest where it's located. (early in development, it was actually gonna be New Pork Island, which is interesting) Personally, I recently started liking the idea that it's actually located in the Death Desert! It's mysteriously blocked off after the timeskip, the only area in the game we can't return to Plus, it's situated right over the 7th Needle, which Fassad presumably lived nearby (like the other Magi), while his floor in the Empire Porky Building is decorated to look like a desert. There's obviously nothing concrete, but that's where I place it in my mind!

So let's start at the earliest point in the timeline of NPC's development: Porky first arrives in the Nowhere Islands, around the vicinity of Locria's house. They meet, exchange ideas, etc, Porky sways him to his side. Soon after, he starts pulling in his armies and all the people who will form his empire. At the site of his arrival, the Pigmasks begin construction of some very basic buildings. Simple things like barracks, armories, the very first labs, etc. Really just a small compound built around Fassad's house while the empire starts.

Over time, more and more buildings were added to this spot, expanding upwards and forming a chaotic, mountainous "city," the Pigmask's capital. This is still at the beginning of the Pigmasks' expansion into the Islands, so everything is very shoddy and crude, purely functional and with none of the sophistication of their later structures. (Fassad's house is airlifted out and temporarily relocated elsewhere).

During the 3 years following the third chapter of the game, as the Pigmasks solidly establish their presence across the Islands, the King deems the old city to be unfit for the grandeur of his empire. As such, the entire city is buried under a mountain of dirt and concrete, to serve as the foundation for the brand new capital of the Nowhere Islands. A shaft is dug from the base of the mountain to its summit, and an elevator is installed to allow for quick travel to the future city.

3 years after the Pigmasks' arrival in Tazmily Village, New Pork City is finally completed (mostly). It sits on top of the buried husk of the old city, which can still be accessed through several points (the sewers and the MT Apartments are both parts of the old city). A section of the highway leads to the main elevator (now incorporated into the Empire Porky Building, and later into the caves underneath the desert), where newcomers from Tazmily can enter the city. The city itself also contains a landing pad for Porky's private limousine, but this is reserved just for him and his special guest.

The city is arranged so that all the most interesting sights are oriented towards the landing pad, providing the King's guests with the best possible first impression of his empire's capital. Though it's largely a monument to himself, it was also Porky's express desire that New Pork City be the perfect utopia for his special guest, with everything he could possibly dream of.

The entrance to the Empire Porky Building sits at the top of the city, but parts of the building actually extend downwards into the ground, connecting it to the main elevator shaft, which the building sits centered directly on top of. The rest of the city spirals down from the building's entrance, built into and around the mountain's summit. Most of the city is just wooden cutouts of course (including the seemingly-larger city in the background), and as said above, they're all pointed to face towards the limousine pad. As such, the city's entire facade falls apart once one starts to make their way upwards to the top level and passes behind all of the false buildings on their way. Most of these are also placed to cover up the uglier parts of the city, dumpsters and grimy service doors, etc.

Few random things to finish up: There's speakers all over the city constantly blaring music (Porky can also take control of these if he wishes). Heck, they probably have things pumping smells into the streets like Disneyland. Pretty constant rains of confetti, too. Porky snatched a bunch of old-world things from all over the place and scattered them around the city to fill up empty space, hence why there's so many random objects placed everywhere (like the greek pillars, the masks, etc. did that christmas tree belong to someone). He told the Pigmasks to go uproot the coolest tree they could find so he could incorporate it into the city and finally have the world's coolest treehouse. Honestly idk what he was thinking with the Rollercoaster that Just Kills You

So yeah, that's all the stuff I have in my head about New Pork City, minus all the stuff specific to my interpretation of Porky's characterization (which'll be it's own post... some day...) :D And this sort of shows how I wanna go about designing it in Minecraft... still going slow, but it's going! I've figured out a style i think works, and I've figured out a rough idea of how I wanna scale it ^^

[shewaslikeasunflower]

FLOWER LUCAS AU IM DOING 🫡🌻

This AU takes place in post-game, and Claus and Hinawa are dead in this AU. (may might a version of him while he’s in game though..for the funsies!!)

After pulling the final needle, the old Tazmily Village is back, and everyone is happy. Or at least, they should be.

Basically, sunflowers and vines grow out of Lucas's body, which are actually coming from his heart. Depending on positive or negative feelings, they’ll either bloom and grow, or wilt and shrivel. But they mainly thrive and grow purely off of his love!! Whatever he loves, the vines will grow more and reach out to the “source” of love that makes him feel that way, wrapping around it as well as also wrapping around Lucas himself as well.

If Lucas is sad, the flowers will wilt and die. But if he's defensive, upset/angry or stressed, he begins to get cactus aspects, which can result in this:

Vines/thorns can be cut off, but they’ll always grow back since they continuously grow from Lucas's heart. He feels as though it’s a curse, but he has to learn to live with it while accepting and moving on from the fact that Claus and Hinawa are dead. Also, if he is too emotional, flowers grow over his eye(s) and pretty much cover his sight and he can’t see :”D

thanks for listen to my yap sesh!!! i love him but im also hurting him haha

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

So I replayed Mother 3 very recently. Had a good time with it. Beyond everything else, I think that Mother 3 is actually a pretty good game, and one of Nintendo's better games in its line-up. Despite a lot of what I am going to say about it down below, coming from a perspective that has learned a lot since I originally played the game, this remains a very distinctive title for Nintendo. It is both intensely political and has some of the most prominent queer characters in their library, and in many ways, it is the type of game I want Nintendo to be making. It is a game that is actually saying something.

But, I think that I've found myself more critical of what exactly it's saying now than I have in the past.

The Politics of Mother 3

This is an interesting point to start off with, because Mother 3 is pretty transparently a very anti-capitalist work. It directly associates the introduction of money and capitalism to Tazmily Village by Porky and the Pigmask Army with the illness in society that takes root afterwards. This does immediately though beg the question of what exactly is the solution to the issue? If not a capitalist society, what is the best way for society to be ordered?

In strict accordance with its canon, the answer is an unknown. The climax of the game involves pulling the seventh and final needle, and causing the rebirth of the world. However, we the player are not given any indication as to what this rebirth of the world actually entails, merely being told during the fake-out end screen that everything is going to be okay. Lucas, the boy with the good and pure heart, pulled the final needle, so everything is going to be okay. Of course, we are only told this. Lucas, as a silent protagonist, is given no real motivations of his own, merely acting as a vessel for the other characters with moral statements: Alec, Wess, Kumatora, and the Ma[*******]. Lucas can really be argued to not be much different than Claus is. Lucas is given no real motivation to pull out the needles, and as a result, the end result of the world is similarly empty. You, the Player, Lucas's Porky Minch, are asked to imagine what a world that might look like.

Except. That's not really the whole story, is it?

After you beat the game, you get the title you see at the beginning of the post, replacing this one in the end card. On some level, this is obviously intended to be a callback to the titles of both Mother 1 and Mother 2, in particular with the image of the Earth acting as the O. But one must contrast it with the original title and there's an obvious message. By the end of the game, your rebirth has healed the world, removing its metallic pieces and allowing the natural world to flourish again.

Mother 3 is anti-capitalist, but it is also pastoralist, and I would even argue flirts with primitivism quite often. The replacement of the metal in the logo with wood here is not accidental, and it resonates with the themes and ideas that the game has been telling you for quite some time. While the fate of the world is ambiguous in the narrative, thematically speaking, Mother 3 has an idea of what the world should look like.

Life in Tazmily Village is quite simply by the time that Fassad and the Pigmask Army show up. There's very little in the ways of modern technology, and there's also no sense of money or a market. The items that you find in Thomas's Bazaar are all free of charge, and can be taken freely. This is deliberate, as is revealed very late into the story, as the village is full of survivors of an apocalyptic scenario and blamed their current lifestyles for causing it. They choose then to take on the role of a small, quiet village, the kind of lives they all wanted. While it is not clear whether that society was capitalist to the same extent as what would come afterwards, the message is pretty clear. The pastoral lifestyle that Tazmily exists in is considered the ideal, it is what several characters, including Lucas, fight for.

This, by itself, puts a bit of a conservative spin on the work as a whole. Mother 3 is not anti-capitalist in the same way that a communist or a socialist would be. It is not concerned with the plight of the workers, or even generally for society's well-being. You perform no meaningful anti-capitalist action in the entire game. You cannot improve the lives of the elderly that were placed in Old Man's Paradise, a decrepit and falling down nursing home. You cannot stand up for the exploitation of the workers of Tazmily Village. You engage with the capitalist system of shops and labor with no real alarm.

But where this gets really interesting is in the social messaging. A conversation that initially struck me as quite odd replaying this game was the conversation in Chapter 4 involving Mike in the nursing home.

Mike: I can't keep burdening Lisa forever, but I do have a Happy Box and nice-bodied girls like Nan and Linda here to keep me company, so I'm pretty happy in my own way. Linda: I'm sorry, Mike, but that's called sexual harassment these days. Mike: This is a hard world we live in now. How disappointing.

This scene is obviously meant as a joke at Mike's expense here. You're not really supposed to take his side here, but let's break this down a bit more here given the context of the entire game.

Mother 3 gives literally nothing to the Pigmask Army what so ever. The game never, ever, tries to play anything they do as a positive. The encroaching of capitalism and suburbanization is not presented as a net zero, it is presented as entirely negative. Nothing good came out of it, the world is worse off for it. Wildlife is mutilated for sport, people become engrossed in their pursuit of happiness (another point we'll get into shortly), and the people of Tazmily drift away from each other, becoming more rude and more curt to each other, especially towards those deemed "undesirable".

But the scene reads strangely in this context. The constant here is Mike's inappropriate comments about women's bodies, not their nonacceptance. It is explicitly marked as a change to the world that the concept of sexual harassment even exists, and there's no other source for it than the Pigmasks. The Pigmasks introduced feminism to Tazmily, and in the overarching narrative of the story, that's a bad thing. The game makes no concessions towards any good result happening, so every impact must be bad. While in a vacuum, the butt of the joke is Mike, the narrative actually vindicates him.

To give another example of the game's conservative bent, let's look at family structures that are present in the game. One might expect that family structures would be much more loose in the pastoral Tazmily Village than in the suburbanized Tazmily Village. After all, the nuclear family as it exists today is entirely an invention of capitalism, and specifically, came about because of cultural shifts after WWII in response to the growing Cold War.

But if you paid attention, the family dynamics don't actually shift at all. Families in Tazmily remain nuclear the entire time. This makes sense given the canonical explanation, that Tazmily was a rush job and these people were probably coming from a culture that had nuclear family dynamics, but it grates roughly with the idea that Tazmily Village is an ideal. What goes unstated is that the nuclear family is inherently a part of that. Sure, the gender roles become more clear past Chapter 4, where men go off to work and the women stay home, but in truth, it really wasn't that much different in the past.

Then there is the Happy Boxes. In the narrative of the story, the Happy Boxes are dubiously brainwashing devices. They emit odd lights and noises, and at least a couple of characters are enraptured with them to the exclusion of all else. They are the devices planted in Tazmily to begin its metamorphosis into a suburban town. But, there is actual brainwashing later on in the game, so I'm hesitant to merely take them at that. Rather, what do the Happy Boxes represent thematically? I believe the answer to that is propaganda.

Visually, the Happy Boxes resemble CRT screens, either TVs or computer monitors, and this is pretty consistent with their placement in homes as well, often being central to living areas. The introduction of television revolutionized the ability to disseminate propaganda to people, as now the same message could be sent to millions of people worldwide with basically no downside. in addition, there's no direct changes as a result of the Happy Boxes existing. People are more rude, more dismissive, and a bit meaner than they were previously, but they maintain their dominant personalities. Some people, such as Abbot and Abbey, are remarkably similar. The message in the Happy Boxes is a more subtextual one. The Happy Boxes are supposed to bring happiness to you, so the act of getting one is the desire for happiness.

This, to Mother 3, is a key poison. It is Fassad who sells the Happy Boxes to the people of Tazmily on the idea that we want to be happy, and there's nothing wrong with wanting happiness. This of course being Fassad, we are inclined to as the viewers see their words as deceptive in nature. Since the core part of Mother 3's politics is pastoralism and anti-capitalism, it makes pursuing happiness a moral ill. This is probably why there's no real sympathy given to any of the workers in the story. They were the ones who chose to pursue happiness, chose to get a Happy Box, and chose to listen to Fassad's words. They should have remained resolute in not getting a Happy Box. Working in the system is being part of it. It's being complicit.

(In a way that is, of course, separate from the ways in which the main party are also working in and complicit in the system.)

This isn't to say to end this that Mother 3's politics are wholly bad. It provides, for example, the important connotation that suburbanization comes at a cost. The happy, suburban lifestyle comes at the mistreatment of the elderly, the outsiders, and of queer people.

Oh yeah we haven't talked about that hu-

QUEERNESS AND MOTHER 3

So we're going to have to talk about the Magypsies. For the remainder of this post I am not going to call them that, because their name just straight out includes a slur used against the Roma, and given that they play into the mysticism tropes of them in media. This post isn't about that, but it is worth bringing up here and it's why I censored their name earlier.

(As an aside, there's an entire post to be made talking about specifically Fassad, and the ways in which he is coded quite bizarrely as Islamic, from Fassad's dress and name, to his focus on bananas, and his proper introductory chapter taking place in a desert and being in charge of a pair of monkeys. In addition, the fact that Fassad is associated with the introduction of money and being a propaganda mouthpiece is...concerning. This isn't strictly the point of this section but it would feel remiss to not include this in some place, and this felt like the best.)

What specifically the Ma[*******] are in the narrative is never defined. They are left somewhat gender ambiguous, although undeniably queer.

This, to me however, is limiting to an understanding of them, and honestly I think we should just say it here.

They're meant to be a facsimile of trans women.

Now, whether or not specifically they are trans women or are meant to merely be in drag is up in the air, and I don't think either option is actually good. Any claims of gender ambiguity go out the window given that they are all effeminate looking men, refer to each other as women, and face either general ambivalence or outright derision by other characters in the story. "Is it a he or a she?" is not really meant kindly. They are also in a whirlpool of homoerotic innuendo, and when discussing them being facsimiles, whether or not they are actually trans women or men in drag is pointless. Those are the same things when presented this way.

Mother 3 also doesn't really know what to do with them or how it even really feels about them. They are both intended to be comedic and also magical protectors of the land. They are part of the protagonist faction but are entirely passive, figures that merely guide and help awaken powers in the actual protagonists before being pre-determinately fridged as the story progresses. There is one exception.

Locria, or really, Fassad, the con-artist formerly known as Locria. The game reveals very, very late into the story through a floor in the Porky Tower and in Miracle Fassad's use of PK Starstorm that Fassad is very likely Locria, a traitor to her other friends and assistant of the Porky Empire. At no point ever is Fassad's gender or sex ever in question. He is referred to entirely with male pronouns, is discussed as a guy, and even once his identity is revealed as Locria, the mouse that he lived with still refers to him with male pronouns. This to me is kind of critical to my distinction of them as facsimiles of trans women, because there would be no reason to make Fassad explicitly always male. Fassad betrayed the others, and assimilated into what the capitalist army needed of him.

Or, well, that's a nice way of thinking about it. The Ma[*******] existed on the Nowhere Islands for much longer than the people of Tazmily Village. In Mother 3, there is basically no other meaningful signifier of queerness to be seen in the entire game. There are no gay men, there are no gay women, and there is no other gender ambiguity. Even Kumatora, who was raised by Ionia, is basically a tomboy in her appearance.

The people of Tazmily Village are seemingly completely unaware of their presence until later in the game, as it seems to be that they are completely unaware of queerness. The message the game tells here is that queerness essentially exists outside both the pastoral idealism and the capitalist dystopia that exist as the two main points of reference. They willingly self-sacrifice to see the world change, but while they are invested in the world not being destroyed, the time will come no matter what. They aren't shown to be reborn in the new world either, as none of the textboxes can be attributed to them.

Is it positive? Is it negative!? Who knows! I don't think I have come to particularly like their depiction in this game as a trans woman, they aren't really uniquely hated or loved by the game's narrative. If anything, the game just seems to regard them as existing, and pretty okay people, if not very weird in their queerness.

Conclusions I guess, I don't know, I wasn't intended for this post to essentially become an ess-

While I have a lot to say about how Mother 3 gives its messaging and what messaging that is, it is still a good game from the fundamentals. The characters are well written, the game has a good sense of tension and delivery, etc. I think the game makes missteps, and I do want to be clear here, I think this is a game with good intentions but limited by writers who are probably somewhat conservative and couldn't imagine what a better world would be. But it still takes a pretty massive risk by talking about what it does. In a gaming climate where Nintendo games often try to talk about as little as possible, in order to be consumable vessels for entertainment, I think Mother 3 stands out in a good way. This post isn't even going into the ideas of grief, loss, and motherhood that are central to the story as well. I just wanted to talk politics lmao.

[f4ncyheartdelusion]

I was replaying the game normally getting stuff before going to the next needle and checking the NPCs dialogue to see if anything changed, and then when I entered here, it dawned on me, most of the kids in Tazmily had someone in their family disappear or die, I'm not sure what took me so long to realize it other than me being stupid, down below is me analyzing the facts and trying to make sense of the situation

-Fuel doesn't have a mother in the final game but from what we know via EB64, Lighter did indeed have a wife, she was named Tobacco and supposedly disappeared in the sea (a.k.a died)

-Angie doesn't have a father and such individual is never mentioned or implied to exist, but due to her being clearly younger than Kumatora she had to be born on Tazmily, so whoever Caroline's husband was, something likely happened to him.

-Alle has her grandpa die during the timeskip and it clearly affects her as she stopped listening to Fassad right after the Pigmasks harmed Wess, she even makes a comment about how they don't respect the elderly.

And then there's Nana... which the details from Earthbound 64 make her situation worse, in EB64 Nana only had a father (named Papa), so something happened to her mom by default and then her father disappears the same way Fuel's mother did, resulting in the loss of both her parents, in the final game her parents are never mentioned and most people consider this a plothole but EB64 paints a clear image of what the devs intended.

It's a neat juxtaposition of how Tazmily is supposed to be a happy beautiful utopia but the kids in there already went through some of the worst things that can happen in that age.

Worth noting is that the village does not pay much attention to these events, no one cared about Scamp dying in the GBA version outside of his family and in EB64 it's implied that the deaths of Fuel's mom and Nana's father were handwaved and didn't get much attention, it shines a light on how the death of Hinawa was a edge case, her death was too brutal and Hinawa herself was the literal most beloved person in Tazmily for the impact of what happened to her be diminished or pushed aside.

(I had a paragraph analyzing that maybe the reason the kids are all so nice to Lucas is cause of their similar experiences but then I remembered that Richie and Nichol have normal families and they both still are friendly and nice to Lucas and actively like the guy, whoops).

[obscure-earthbound-facts-media]

Sand vs Grass

Two screenshots of EarthBound 64 during Space World 1999 are of two different builds of the game. One in which Tazmily Village's Wellside Square is sandy and the other showing it being grassy instead.