#I HOLD HER IN MY HAND LOVINGLY LIKE A LIDDOL CRETHEC | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

queen0fm0nsterz · 2 years

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For some unexplainable reason I want to hear you tell us about the pretender

MASTERPOST

HUUHUHUHUUUU I SEE MY HYPNOSIS WORKED /lh

Thank you for this ask anon dear, we're getting straight into it. There is so many interesting things about the Pretender that I simply can't understand how she's so underrated. We're talking Lady & Six levels of character depth, people!

First off, I want to quote two asks I recently got about her that perfectly encapsulate the two sides of the Pretender as a character.

@gennethapang and @harmonia-n-gropius, thank you both so much for these. Both of you completely nailed it.

There is this duality in her.

On one end, she's a rich, spoiled kid. She gets upset when one of her dolls in not perfectly placed and has no problem throwing trantrums, or hands, over things others would consider as minimal. She is most definetely tied to the Eye, see as it's referenced in literally every single room and surroundings of the Nest, but most importantly, she has adults ready to listen to her every whim. Instead of being chased after or attacked by the monsters, the Butler patiently follows her every order, while the Craftsman works day and night to make sure she is costantly provided with beautiful, perfect dolls.

She has a stable roof over her head. She has toys, food, a safe bed, a home. She doesn't need to worry about survival and fighting for her life every day. What's more, she's wealthy: her family is rich enough for her to be living in a gigantic mansion.

When compared to the other children, she is privileged. But, she remains a child, and children can never have a good life in the Little Nightmares world.

The Pretender doesn't have any real friends. Other children don't interact with her out of fear, most likely because of her powers and appearence. Her parents are divorced; what's worse, her father hanged himself - and she knows of this, we can tell by the painting of the man hanging. Her mother isn't around, either. She left her behind. This kid has been abandoned by literally everyone. The Butler and the Craftsman are there, but they are employees, not friends and definetely not family. They provide for her material needs, but not so much for her emotional ones.

I don't blame her for wanting someone to genuinely love and care her. It's understandable, honestly. However, we are also shown that she doesn't have any idea how to form an healthy friendship; the statue is most definitive proof of it. She wants to be worshipped, maybe because that's the only way she knows.

Which... is odd. Because where would she learn such a thing? From her parents I presume, which makes me think.

Mh.

MH.

And this is where I would digress normally, but I have to say that the Pretender has a lot in common with both the Lady and the Thin Man.

It's almost like she's a fusion of the two, really. The Lady's vanity, and the Thin Man's loneliness, smacked into one single depressed child with evident parent issues. Even her powers almost seem like a fusion of theirs: the Thin Man takes away the body, leaving glitching remains behind, and the Lady absorbs the soul, with only the body left. When put together, you get both, thus leaving nothing behind, which is exactly what the Pretender does.

(Also, the effect she had on RCG when she let out that scream was very similar to the one Mono has on Six when he yelled in the tower.)

And look. I know what you're thinking. I don't want to go there.

The theory stating the Lady & the Thin Man are her parents is an interesting one and completely valid, but I don't exactly agree with it.

It's mostly the "Thin Man is the father" bit that throws me off, because in order for him to have a daughter he should be able to leave the Tower, which I think goes against the entire ending of LN 2. The thing is that he can't leave, nor grow. He's bound to stay the same, always and ever, in the same dark room until he's outlived his usefulness and replaced.

There is a way, tecnically, but if I talked about it to y'all you would think I've finally lost my mind

BUT. I will admit both of their presences are strong in the Nest. However, it's also true the Lady's is infintely more evident than the Thin Man's. The Ladies are in their little jack-in-the-boxes, all with their different rooms and stories. Plus, the Pretender's hairstyle... it does vaguely resemble the Lady's. It's as if she tried to imitate her, with the little ponytail on top and all that make up. Be a grown up, you know? Another thing they have in common would be the dolls, which they use to live out their forms of escapism in the safety of their own quarters.

When RCG has to sneak past the Pretender, it sort of resembles the Runaway sneaking past the Lady. The final scenes of the two games are also very similar; the two main characters accidentally surprise them in a moment of vulnerability while leaving the location, the antagonists let out an ear-piercing shriek that affects their surroundings in some way (RCG is frozen from shock/pain for a couple of seconds and the lights explode, leaving RK cold and in the complete darkness), then the main characters get chased until they finally die at the hands of their respective tormentor.

Finally, one last thing before we go on: going back to the Lady and her dolls. The one she was stroking was the only one with eyes so clear.

...Like the Pretender's.

And before anyone comes to me and says, "But they look nothing alike!": the Pretender is albino. Of course she's not gonna look like the Lady - infact, if she is her daughter, she ended up looking the exact opposite.

TLDR for this whole section: I'm willing to believe the Lady could be the Pretender's mother, however I'm hesitant on the whole "Thin Dad" aspect.

About her character design... she's a green coded character. While that is interesting in it of itself, I noticed it's a specific shade of green I've touched on before.

Voilà.

...Ladies Agenda aside, as I said before, the fact the Pretender is a green coded character is pretty interesting.

You see, green as a color is oftenly associated with kindness, generosity and compassion - but also envy, jealousy and greed. People with "green personalities" have a tendency of caring for others and, because they dislike conflict, more often than not they become people pleasers. They're intelligent and have a great need to love and be loved in return.

... That doesn't sound a lot like the Pretender, though, which is why I thought it was interesting. Who knows, maybe the green she wears rappresents the person she wants to be percieved as? Or maybe, the person she could have been had her life been different? Who knows. As usual, food for thought!

Thank you all for asking about the Pretender! I had tons of fun writing this <3

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