Out Of Touch

Out of Touch

The Chosen Four

Earthbound has had a quite big impact on my art journey. When I was a young teen, I would visit Starmen.net regularly to check amazing fan art EB fans would make and learn from them. It was nostalgic to draw some EB fan art again.

Happy (belated) 30th Anniversary to MOTHER マザー, a game that means so so much to me. Thank you Mr. Itoi for 30 amazing years!

[x]

(cw: canonical mention of child abuse)

People will see that moment in Tanetane Island where the Flint hallucination threatens Lucas to beat him, and interpret it as Flint literally being a physically abusive father, but to me there's always been something a bit more subtle to it.

Because nowhere in the game has Flint ever actually been shown to be the type to be violent towards his children. At the start he's characterized as a stoic but reliable father, later on he's desperate and absent, but never violent towards his family. The only point in the story where we know Lucas has actually witnessed his father's violent side, the only time he would have seen him as an actual threat, is the campfire scene way back in chapter 1, where Flint completely loses control and starts blindly attacking people. A villager even comments on this, trying to reason with Flint (and failing) by reminding him his children are watching him.

Something like that can be terrifying for a child to witness, especially for a sensitive kid like Lucas, especially right after the loss of his mother. The one who's supposed to guide and protect him in that moment of need has not only completely lost control, but looks like a genuine threat to him.

That scene imo, like others in tanetane Island, isn't really meant to be taken at face value, but it's simply the representation of something that haunts Lucas. It's the mix of the survivors guilt that's all over Lucas' tanetane events, and the memory of his father at his most terrifying, the reminder of one of the moments that marked the end of his safe and happy childhood.

happy 16th anniversary!!