chloe... is feeling just fine today

- taking your ally's weapon out of their scabard to use yourself

- using someone else's shoulder as a rifle stand

- nudging someone's chin up with the tip of your weapon

- Using your rival’s habits or techniques in a fight.

[makes post about how people are transphobic and try to erase trans characters or ignore transphobic writing]

like okay, toby fox has said as much that the allusions to mother 3 are not an accident, and I don't think its at all a stretch to point out the similarities between claus/the masked man and dess/the knight (and asriel/flowey as well). siblings to the main character taken away years ago and presumed dead, turned into villains and set against their loved ones. this is the obvious analogy I think. its so obvious to me that I feel like the story is expecting some portion of the audience to immediately clock that this is what's going on, sitting on chapter 4 for a year and change.

claus's story obviously does not end on a happy note, lucas doesn't get the brother he grew up with back, when all is said and done, and the mask is broken, and claus gets control of himself again, lucas just gets to watch his brother kill himself in front of him. while obviously the literal content and subject matter and to an extent tone of mother 3's ending is different than that of undertale, its overall shape isn't all that far off. the dreemurrs don't get their perfect child back. asriel is never coming back, not as he was. there is only flowey.

the analogy between the masked man and the knight, I feel, is even more apparent than the already blunt analogy between the masked man and flowey. they are both sword-wielding antagonists specializing in magic with their faces obscured, whose identity is similarly entirely obscured from the characters while not being hard to deduce as a player. their true identities are those of the siblings of the main characters, whose struggle is tied up in forces much larger than themselves. the knight's actions of plunging a sword, with dark smoke billowing from the whole left behind, is both narratively similar and visually the inverse of the masked man pulling a needle from the ground and being bathed in sharp white light coming out of the hole where once the needle sat. it just. all lines up too well.

like okay, toby fox has said as much that the allusions to mother 3 are not an accident, and I don't think its at all a stretch to point out the similarities between claus/the masked man and dess/the knight (and asriel/flowey as well). siblings to the main character taken away years ago and presumed dead, turned into villains and set against their loved ones. this is the obvious analogy I think. its so obvious to me that I feel like the story is expecting some portion of the audience to immediately clock that this is what's going on, sitting on chapter 4 for a year and change.

claus's story obviously does not end on a happy note, lucas doesn't get the brother he grew up with back, when all is said and done, and the mask is broken, and claus gets control of himself again, lucas just gets to watch his brother kill himself in front of him. while obviously the literal content and subject matter and to an extent tone of mother 3's ending is different than that of undertale, its overall shape isn't all that far off. the dreemurrs don't get their perfect child back. asriel is never coming back, not as he was. there is only flowey.

the analogy between the masked man and the knight, I feel, is even more apparent than the already blunt analogy between the masked man and flowey. they are both sword-wielding antagonists specializing in magic with their faces obscured, whose identity is similarly entirely obscured from the characters while not being hard to deduce as a player. their true identities are those of the siblings of the main characters, whose struggle is tied up in forces much larger than themselves. the knight's actions of plunging a sword, with dark smoke billowing from the whole left behind, is both narratively similar and visually the inverse of the masked man pulling a needle from the ground and being bathed in sharp white light coming out of the hole where once the needle sat. it just. all lines up too well.