#unfortunately i didnt have the money at the time to also buy flint but i am making a cosplay of him so i can still make firesetter real

[dailyloweffortpace]

Day 29: HES ON HIS WAY!!!!!!!!

[naknaknakadile]

So I was getting to thinking about Mother 3 and its characterization and a few different topics so this post is probably going to get really convoluted really fast.

##warnings for Abuse, abuse, and more abuse mentions, but also for hallucination and death

First i was thinking about tanetane like always, since that was a huge way to look inside the characters' minds since you get a load of everybody's deepest insecurities.

Theres so much to unpack there!

This is the big place where we see that Kumatora is fully aware that her title of princess is based on absolutely nothing, and that in the end she feels very isolated from everyone else. The magypsies, her only family, are flighty and seemingly immortal and look at humans as silly frivolous creatures who barely start to live by the time death comes to collect them. She's isolated from the rest of Tazmily by being raised by them, and due to her title of princess, and even that title gives her nothing due the rundown, ghost-filled nature of the castle she calls her home.

Duster unfortunately doesnt get much depth added here besides the obvious fear of his abusive father, though I think it's important to take into account how the themes of isolation, loneliness, and abuse are so prevalent in this game. Duster is highly coded as suffering from depression (sleeping all day, hardly showering, seeming to have trouble interacting with others, etc) and its hard to say whether that came into effect naturally or due to the physical and mental abuse his father inflicted on him (causing him to even become disabled with a permanent limp). Unfortunately, even before the colonization of Tazmily by the Pigmask army, he's treated like an outcast by the rest of the village. Whether its because of his father or his awkward manner, hes never taken seriously and everyone appears to laugh off his abuse or believe it was warranted because hes just some awkward, stinky guy who likes cheese and oversleeps.

And then Lucas, which is the most blatantly obvious. The hallucinations he faces are the most jarring and iconic of the game, due to the chord of his family's tragedy being plucked time and time again. However, it still manages to be a complex tragedy, and the way the lines are handled hint at more than meets the eye.

Before we start with sifting through his experience on Tanetane though, I'd like to start with his experiences.... outside of Tanetane.

Lucas grew up in Tazmily, a town of less than a hundred people, who were so tightly knit a person could walk into anothers house at just about any time and theyd be offered company and food and any need that needed to be met would be offered by the community. There was no money, because love was the biggest commodity. Compassion, humanitarianism, genuine kindness. If something bad happens, its felt by everyone. If a person cant provide for themself, then others would provide for them.

However, once the community began being invaded by capitalism and tourists, Tazmily become a much less welcoming place. The sympathy for Lucas's loss turned sour, and he became a burden and even someone to gawk at. He and his father are the ones who wont change, theyre too stuck in the past. Theyre so silly, not assimilating like everyone else. Why cant they just get over it and buy a tv or something. Lucas and Flint didnt just lose their family, but their very roots in the community.

This all ties in to one of the most iconic and offputting lines in the game.

"Everyones waiting for you. Everyone's waiting to throw rocks at you, spit on you, and make your life hell. Who's "everyone"...? Everyone you love."

Its the community, everyone Lucas has ever known have drifted apart from him, leaving him isolated, abandoned, and outright fucking terrified.

Speaking of drifting away! Another one of Lucas's hallucinations involve his father, Flint, who's spent the last 3 years hunting the mountains for his son that everyone knew was dead. Now, its hard to say if Flint actually believed Claus was dead all along, or if he was just too stubborn to come to terms with it, or if there was an alternative reason he was constantly in the mountains.

I personally believe it was for a few different things, but this is simply my interpretation:

1 I believe it helped him personally to clear his head by being alone

2 Isolating himself kept him from having to deal with the thoughts and feelings of the other villagers

3 Well, let me get into the second quote from Tanetane....

"I'm gonna beat you. I'm gonna beat you, boy. Daddy's gonna beat you."

Now, this line can be taken more than one way. One can presume Flint grew physically abusive after the death of his family, or that Lucas was deathly afraid that he was /going to/. I personally prefer the second interpretation because I feel it makes more narrative sense that Flint came close. That something in their relationship sprung lose and Flint snapped at Lucas, probably over the tension of sadness, and it almost became physical. And that is another reason I personally believe he isolated himself to the mountains for so long- to stop himself from ever hurting his only remaining family member. But I feel the memory of that encounter stuck in Lucas's mind as an egging fear that one day Flint would come home and would not stop himself, and that this fear became embodied in his time on Tanetane.

Now that just leaves one other emotion that we havent discussed, but its one that plays a huge and obvious part in Lucas's character. This feeling is guilt, which is shown a thousand times on Tanetane. Pretty much every time Claus appears, he makes comment marring the line between himself and Lucas.

"Let's switch places. Let's switch places. Lucas. Lucas. Let's switch places. You're more... You're more..."

Lucas throughout text appears to be terrified of dying yet feels overwhelmingly that Claus's death was his fault and that he should have been the one to die instead, mostly illustrated in the above quote in which Claus suggests they ''switch places" so that he could be alive again.

Besides this, Lucas also seems to have a loose grasp of his own identity (eg. Looking at himself through the mailbox and looking through the post cards), which may just be chalked up to mushrooms if youre uncreative and dont want to read into things. Really all of this could be chalked up to bad mushrooms for the most part, but its nearly one in the morning and I said what I said. And theres your sign.

Play Mother 3.