#tld mathis

[milocholy]

I would kill a man(mathis) to have a lengthy discussion with someone about the long dark. Like is there a discord for the 7 tld fans on this app? Specifically wintermute fans

[pumkinoats]

i loove the long dark tumblr. yall are so funny thank you for feeding me

[donner-mathis-official]

I was looking at the long dark wiki page for Mathis (I wanted to find his in game description to talk about how the game is inconsistent in its portrayal of the convicts) and uhhhh

who did this

[milocholy]

Old draft but I still agree with this all so much

Finally playing through the story mode of the Long Dark (based on the achievement numbers, I'm not one of the only ones who primarily plays the survival mode)

Good shit first - I'm AM for sure enjoying myself. Seeing the old locations in a new light is fun. Having characters to interact with is fun. And the final shot of ep 3 actually made me pause and pay attention.

I made it to ep 4, and I'm starting to see some cracks. I was pretty thoroughly annoyed with the cave-in/sparkplug mechanic when getting through the mines, and then the opening to ep 4 was very... I can see what they were going for, but why let the player start playing again just to have the foregone conclusion of Mackenzie getting captured again? They could have streamlined it much better.

And not to sound like a big ol lefty commie or anything but you can have the Blackrock warden say all the spooky shit you like about Donner and Mathis, I'm still gonna take it with a grain of salt.

Like, you've got a prison warden saying someone in solitary is pure evil. Uh huh. Sure. I know Mathis clocked me a couple times, but like. These are not natives to the island. They're incarcerated. Even before the Collapse, they were getting the shit end of the stick. And going by real-world catastrophes, people in prison systems are among the first to be abandoned. They've been here, scrounging for who knows how long. Of course they're desperate to get off the island.

[mathisphobe]

mathis in my tomolife is genuinely. So worrying. Like he should not be acting like this Ever?

[cronchcake]

the way I started episode 4 and immediately understood exactly why Mathis is a fan favourite after less than 10 seconds of him on the screen. incredible.

[tabrisfam]

guard wanted to take a picture idk

[milocholy]

omg pick up the phone 🥺

if wintermute was popular this would be 80% of the mathkenzie fanart posted ever I'm so serious

[totus-ardeo]

pinnacle humor

[milocholy]

I like to think that Mathis actually gives a fuck about Donner. Like he was probably a shit parent when he was growing up, but he did go through the effort of breaking him out of prison. I like to think that counts for something.

[tldsurvival]

How Mackenzie thought Mathis wouldn’t spot him sticking his head through the window there is beyond me. How Mathis actually didn’t spot him is even beyonder me

[donner-mathis-official]

I would add Methuselah to episode 4. love that old guy, where is he at?

If you could add one thing to The Long Dark what would it be?

the convicts to be a genuine threat towards Mackenzie, Jace and the population of Great Bear as a whole... and also just more convict lore...!

the convicts, but mostly Mathis function as a more of a mild inconvenience than a genuine threat... Mathis isn't nearly as threatening as he could be, and I mean that through the games mechanics.

Mackenzie can disappear for in-game weeks at a time doing fuckall despite Mathis' whiny warnings of not loafing around the region... and when he returns several millennia later? Mathis doesn't even mention it, neither does Vachon whilst he idles around the fire barrel. Kind of pisses me off.

Sure, maybe having a mechanic wherein he might dispatch some of his dogs after Mackenzie if he's stayed outside for too long (~4-5 days) would be great, though it would likely piss the three players that do the cache side quests off --- which would maybe lead to a secondary mechanic of being able to bribe Vachon or Heller for more days to complete tasks, like a reworked predux trust bar that would also allow us to converse with them about their life or - even better - know what the fuck Donner Jr Mathis did to be locked in a supermax prisons SHU? like tf he do?

abuse warning below...btw....smiles and klicks my heels together... but its just me going more in depth with some penalties for dawdling

... and with the "getting dragged by the scruff of your neck back to the prison" if you take too long to get back, I feel like there should be a penalty for it, since Mathis just squinting at Will funny for having botched the steam tunnels to be a bit strange for his established character?

maybe I'm a bit too kerdoinked in the head but maybe Mackenzie getting a few fingers broken or torn off to further emphasize Mathis' point not to disobey him or keep him waiting? this would of course severely impact his ability to shoot, throw, scavenge and harvest carcasses. what about having the convicts restrict Mackenzie's access to food and water, making it so when he gets thrown out into the great outdoors his hunger and thirst meter will be in critical condition? maybe even having some convicts come out of the prison to stalk him through the region (and also spooking passive wildlife away) if Mathis' trust with Mackenzie is too low? Alternative to that since the convicts are often too scared to go outside, having them shoot at Mackenzie if he returns to the prison too early, or simply just to scare him? there's a lot of groundwork laid down for the convicts to genuinely be some forces of fucking nature in the game that ep4 misses by miles but. thats all i can say without sounding. deranged. because ive pondered this exact orb for centuries..........!!!!!!!

[donner-mathis-official]

Thinking about Blackrock and the way the narrative portrays the convicts as one dimensional bad guys who are just bad for no reason… except for when it doesn’t. You’ll have to excuse me for the length of this, I’m on mobile and don’t know if I can do a read more. Also it might be scattered I’m not the best at writing stuff like this.

So I’ve been replaying episode 4 and paying more attention to the prison and convicts than I have in the past, and I got a loading screen saying the following: “Doctor Childs has been medical director at the Blackrock for decades. It’s rumored that due to his experiments on penitentiary inmates he cannot get another job on the Mainland” (this may not be exact, the loading screen ended before I could copy it all down). There is also a note in the guardhouse saying “we’re going to need some volunteers to dig into a few of these rations that got dropped on us. We’ll be in the barracks tonight with the cook to open them up. If they’re any good, we might just keep them for ourselves.” These inmates are already being kept incarcerated in a remote location, in a concrete/stone building with no obvious insulation or heating in spite of temperatures in the area reaching down to negative fifty degrees. The exercise yards are in no shape to actually be used, with ripped and broken fences and walls, so it’s likely that even in the summer, inmates are not given the opportunity to exercise. They don’t get the food they’re supposed to, they don’t get exercise, they’re kept in inhumanely cold conditions. And on top of that, the medical officer may or may not experiment on them.

In addition, Mathis isn’t at Blackrock for the killing of the prison guards. He was on the bus on the night of the first flare, his name can be seen on the manifest. While Franklin does insinuate that Mathis has been here the whole time, or at least some amount of time prior to Mackenzie waking up in his cell, a lot of what he says just doesn’t add up with literally anything else. Between him thinking Mackenzie is one of Mathis’s cronies while Mackenzie is patching him up, in spite of being told explicitly that Mackenzie was in the cell next to him, and him talking about the generators staying up and the prison remaining in some semblance of order for a few days after the first flare (which is directly refuted by Jace’s presence), I think it’s pretty safe to say that he is not a reliable source. He’s either too concussed to understand what’s happening, he doesn’t trust Mackenzie and is lying on purpose, or there’s something else going on.

Jace says that the people the convicts were killing innocent civilians, but that just doesn’t make sense. The Blackrock area has only one other building that people visibly live in: that trailer that you find the dead power station worker in. Foreman’s Clearcut does not count, nor does Bricklayers Retreat, as neither of those has a proper bed. Foreman’s Clearcut is likely used as a logging centre in the warmer months, and the bedding at Bricklayer’s retreat seems to be insinuated to be the convict who lost his mind in that prepped cache you find in the memo side mission. This brings up the question of what civilians Jace is even referring to. There were only a few hours between the first flare junking her car and her reaching the prison, so even if the convicts were rounding up people from the area to shoot (which I find highly unlikely, because why would they), the only ones they would have had time to get were power plant workers, who were complicit in their captivity. More likely, Jace saw prison workers who were not currently on duty and thus in civilian clothes. Considering she only saw the bodies, she would have had no way to tell the difference, so it’s definitely not unlikely.

Let’s move on to Mathis specifically. Aside from general personality unpleasantness (because let’s face it. No matter how you slice it, this dude is an asshole), what does he actually do wrong? 1] burn down the Milton schoolhouse. Uncertain whether or not the convicts did this. Geomagnetically induced currents have been known to cause fires (which also occurs in canon, as power lines can be seen lighting on fire in the opening credits), so it’s also very possible that the people inside there just got unlucky. It’s also very possible that even if the convicts did do it, Mathis specifically was uninvolved. Too uncertain to give him points. 2] try to attack Grey Mother and Astrid. Neither of the convicts who did this were part of the main crew (they are also now dead), and while Mathis does seem to be a leader, we have no reason to think he ordered these things. Hobbs’s smug demeanor would suggest the opposite actually. Possibly Mathis’s fault, but unlikely. 3] kill the woman in the dam. While seems unlikely that the woman was Molly, considering Mathis described the woman as screaming, which does not seem like Molly’s reaction upon spotting him, it’s also very possible that Mathis was just straight up lying about that. Regardless, at least two of his guys (Hobbs and Leclerc) have been murdered since the bus crash. At this point, the convicts are likely running on the assumption that anyone they come across is a threat and should be dealt with accordingly. Which leads us into 4] knocking out Mackenzie. Potential threat. Enough said. Though the fact that he killed the woman and knocked out Mackenzie suggests, to me, that there’s something more there than just her being annoying, because at the point of Mackenzie being knocked out, Mathis doesn’t know that he could be useful. 5] kidnapping Mackenzie. Mathis has just had a very convenient escape from the island fall right into his lap, holding a very alluring and shiny mystery box. Not right, but understandable. 6] beat up and kill Franklin. Franklin says they have history, that he was warden at a prison Mathis was in on the Mainland. In addition, Franklin’s description says that, “no one is more aware of the notorious prison’s dark history than its Warden.” He believes all of this to be reasonable punishment, as in his mind, “the worst of the worst end up with him at Blackrock”. He has at the very least turned a blind eye towards, if not actively facilitated all of the previously mentioned torture done to inmates at Blackrock. And Mathis believes Franklin is standing between him and his son. Probably the most justified thing he does. 7] misogyny towards Jace. His son just got blown up and he’s enraged at the people he believes are at fault. Still, unequivocally his fault and bad. 8] attacking Mackenzie with a hatchet and vowing to destroy everything he loves. See 7.

Let’s compare this to another morally complex character we have: Molly. She also kills (minimum) two people; one who we have pretty solid textual evidence was a piece of shit (husband), and one who we know very little about (Leclerc). She keeps our player character locked up but releases them when she needs help, much like Mathis. They’re not exactly the same, ofc, because Molly saves Astrid’s life and Mathis, you know, actively endangers Mackenzie’s. But if Mackenzie had been in that same situation, it’s pretty clear that Molly would have left him to die (see: her not even checking that dude in the car in the opening cutscene, and her “I hope to never meet him” after Astrid says Mackenzie is a good man). They’re not on even ground, morally speaking, but they’re not too far off.

So why does the story portray them so differently? It’s pretty clear to me that we’re supposed to sympathize with Molly. And I absolutely do. I think she was absolutely right to let her husband get eaten by wolves. But what separates that from Mathis beating Franklin to death for facilitating the abuse of his son and the dozens of other inmates at Blackrock? Is it the fact that he actually did it instead of just letting it happen? Is it the fact that the player character knew Franklin, even a little bit? Is it the fact that he’s a convict? Mathis’s description quite literally calls him, “an evil bastard”. Which I’m not necessarily even denying. Morality is a spectrum and evil is an arbitrary and subjective line on that spectrum. But it still sits strangely with me. Molly’s describes her as a simple farmer who likes tea. Franklin’s describes him as an administrator who “got caught up in Mathis’s deadly schemes”.

At first glance, these descriptions, the music stings, and the general vibes the game has seem incongruous with the information we’re given about these characters, but as I look further into it, it feels intentional. Because the main difference that we the player get between Mathis and Molly is their treatment of our character. The characters with in game descriptions that make them out to be evil and bad and that’s it are the ones we get a bad first impression of: Hobbs and Mathis. We get a good first impression of Molly, Methuselah, and Father Thomas, whose descriptions all have a more positive tone. Jeremiah and Franklin’s are pretty neutral, which makes sense, considering they’re rude and dismissive but technically helpful. I’m probably kinda dumb for not recognizing this, but the music swells at key moments (such as when Franklin is wheeled out on the stretcher), these descriptions, everything we get that isn’t canon as being within the world… they’re extensions of Astrid and Mackenzie. Of how they see the world. Molly is given depth because Astrid is looking for it. Mathis isn’t because Mackenzie isn’t looking for it. Which is pretty neat.

I am definitely still miffed about how “convict” ends up being synonymous with “evil” tho. Please episode 5 have one of them switch sides and be my buddy I know this won’t happen but plz. I think Mackenzie should be buddies with Vachon.

[bowlofmeat]

[morballs]

um. okay.

[donner-mathis-official]

Jump cut to Molly spiking a volleyball at Mathis’s head so hard he dies.

so episode 5 is gonna be the beach episode right