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random-ln-stuff · 2 years

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My thoughts on the other masks, Aka: The true purpose of the Masked children and the Pretender:

I believe that the owners of the other masks were definitely ASSOCIATED with the Lady, but aren’t previous Ladies. Six isn’t the next Lady either. And I have proof.

In Little Nightmares 1, Six can wear five different masks (not counting the switch exclusive pac man mask); A Scarecrow Sack, a Teapot, a Tengu Mask, a Fox Mask and the Rascal Mask/The Lady’s mask, and a common theory is that the Masks belonged to previous incarnations of the Lady. In Very Little Nightmares we can even find jack-in-the-boxes containing these masks, connected to bodies that are presumably what the previous mask wearers would have looked like.

But I have some small problems with this theory.

First of all, we see jack-in-the-boxes of all the previous mask wearers as children…

….except the Lady, who does have their own jack-in-the-box, but is instead shown as an adult.

The Lady in the jack-in-the-box is bigger than the other mask wearers, and her arms are longer. This is the Lady as an adult instead of a child like the rest, which begs the question of why this is the case. Why is the current Lady the only one shown as an adult?

And this isn’t the only time where the Lady is shown as larger and more prominent than that other mask wearers.

There’s also this picture of the Lady and a bunch of other figures in kimonos that (presumably) represent the previous Ladies.

Just like in the jack-in-the-boxes, The Lady is shown as being much taller than the others. She’s the oldest one in the picture, which doesn’t make any sense if she replaced the previous Ladies. If that was the case, she’d be of equal height or even shorter, to show that she’s the newest Lady that replaced the older ones.

So the Lady most likely never replaced a previous lady, but instead predates the other mask wearers. She’s older than all of them.

There’s also the fact that in-game, Six cannot acquire any masks except the rascal mask. You can only use in-game them if you pay for them out-of-game. Six isn’t supposed to have these masks. She cannot acquire them herself unless YOU, an outside, non-canon force, gives them to her. She isn’t supposed to be able to acquire these masks.

There’s also the secret apartment you can find in Little Nightmares 2:

This apartment contains (among other things); a statue of the (current, geisha masked) Lady, a paper covered in Japanese symbols, a Glitching Remain, and a picture of the (current, geisha masked) Lady.

If the Lady was a child like Six, who entered the Maw and killed the previous Lady, becoming the new one in the process, How is this apartment here? It shows the Lady as an adult, mask and all, and it’s miles from the Maw. It even contains stuff that can only be found on the Maw (the statue). The Lady would never willingly go to the Pale City (they view the Pale City and the mainland in general as “chaos”) and they definitely wouldn’t bring stuff like that statue with them if they did. This apartment implies that the Lady came to the Maw not only as an adult, but as they currently are, mask and powers included.

This apartment single handily throws a massive wrench into the entire “The Maw has a constant cycle of Ladies” theory because it implies that this cycle started with the current Lady, who came to the Maw as an adult with their powers and mask already available to them, completely invalidating the existence of the “previous four Ladies”.

So who are the previous mask wearers?

Well. Tell me. Where we find these jack-in-the-boxes that show the full bodies of the mask wearers?

That’s right, The Nest.

And guess which child lives there. A child that the jack-in-the-boxes were most likely made for…

That’s right, The Pretender. Who we already know is the Lady’s daughter.

The other mask wearers are children that have a strong connection to the Lady, and can be found in the exact place where her daughter lives. The other mask wearers were most likely children of the Lady. The other mask wearers were Pretenders.

But there’s more evidence that previous mask wearers were directly related to the Lady. There’s also the pictures of the Lady’s daughter. (A different one).

(I know that the model used in the picture is the same model used for the flashlight girl, but I think that’s a red herring. They share models for the same reasons as the Lady’s true face being the same as the Granny’s. They only use the same model because of Tarsier Studios themselves having time/budget constraints and using already available material. You aren’t supposed to get close enough to the flashlight girl to see her properly. You aren’t supposed to get close enough to the Granny to see her face. Etc.)

We already know that the girl in these pictures isn’t Six or Rcg, but instead a completely different character with their own story. They were the Lady’s daughter, the original owner of Six’s raincoat before even Rcg found it, and died long before the events of the games, quite possibly to her mother’s own hands.

Now, if all the previous mask wearers were the Lady’s own children, it would make sense for her to be one as well, but where’s her mask and jack-in-the-box?

Starting with her mask, the most obvious answer is that the Pretenders are given masks at a certain age, and she just happened to die before she got one. This would explain why the Pretender doesn’t wear a mask either.

There’s also the possibility that the switch exclusive pakku mask was her mask, but I’m still hesitant to call it canon given how it’s switch exclusive, unlocked via an amiibo and also a reference to Pac Man.

But the best answer here is that we’ve been seeing that mask the entire time. It’s her raincoat. More specifically the raincoat’s hood.

Whenever Six and Rcg are wearing the raincoat, the raincoat’s hood is shown to do a pretty good job of covering their faces, and I’d compare it to something like the Scarecrow Hood. All Six and Rcg need to do is wear it a bit differently and their faces would be completely covered.

As for the jack-in-the-box, we can find it in Very Little Nightmares just like the others:

And it’s right here.

Now you may be saying, “That’s obviously Shadow Six!” but the thing is, that can’t be Shadow Six because Shadow Six doesn’t exist at this point in the timeline. Shadow Six is created when Six gets captured by the Thin Man, which judging by the marks on the wall in Six’s room in the Hunter’s cabin, happens more than a month after the events of Very Little Nightmares.

It can’t be depicting Shadow Six because they don’t exist yet.

It can’t be depicting Six in general because they don’t have their raincoat yet.

It can’t be depicting Rcg because this is their first time in the Nest and they have no connection to the Lady.

This is a jack-in-the-box of the Girl in the Pictures. Shown wearing her raincoat, which she used as a mask. The Girl in the Pictures was a Pretender just like the other mask wearers.

There’s also the area that we find the jack-in-the-box of the Scarecrow child.

[I can’t show the picture because the picture limit on tumblr sucks and I need to only show the essentials, so here’s a link that shows the picture instead.]

Anyways, right behind the jack-in-the-box you can see a picture of the Pretender with her head missing, the area where it should be instead being ripped away until you can only make out their chin. It seems strange for a picture of the Pretender to be here, especially in this damaged condition, but what if I told you that that isn’t a picture of the Pretender, but instead the Scarecrow Child herself? And she’s wearing the exact same dress as the Pretender, drawing an obvious connection between the two of them.

The picture is in this back room because the Scarecrow child is long dead, and pictures of the current Pretender have been set up in their place. It’s damaged for possibly the same reasons. It’s been here in a back room for ages, and age has taken its toll on the picture.

There’s also a chance that it was damaged because of who the picture contained. With no (completely canonical) depictions of previous pretenders besides the jack-in-the-boxes, it’s clear that someone is covering up their existences after their deaths. The destruction of this picture is proof of that. If a pretender that came after the Scarecrow child found this picture in its damaged condition, they’d see a damaged picture of themselves. After all, all they can see in that picture is their dress, and they can’t see the face enough to realize that that isn’t them in the picture.

If this damaged picture is a picture of a previous pretender and not the current one, it explains some things about how this all works. One, the pretenders start off all wearing the same (or at least an identical) dress, and two, given how both the Scarecrow child in the picture and the current Pretender wear this green dress but no mask, while all the masked pretenders wear a face covering but no green dress, instead all wearing unique clothing, there’s a point where they trade in the dress for a mask (and clothing) of their choosing.

But what about Six being able to wear the rascal mask? Simple. That mask isn’t meant to resemble the Lady’s mask, it’s meant to resemble a Shadow Kid.

Shadow Kids have masks that resemble the Lady’s mask (which also gives us more evidence that the Lady predates the other mask wearers since Shadow Kids are only ever seen with geisha masks). The rascal mask is also the perfect size for a Shadow Kid, since they’re Six sized and need a Six sized mask.

Plus think about how you get the rascal mask. You smash ten of these statues of the Lady.

When smashing these statues (which once again are shown to only resemble the current, geisha masked Lady) , a small cloud of black smoke is produced, which resembles the same smoky-shadow-stuff that Shadow Kids are made of. It’s possible that by smashing these statues, you’re releasing something that becomes a Shadow Kid. Every time Six smashes a statue, she unknowingly creates a Shadow Kid, and upon smashing all of them she receives the mask of a Shadow Kid as a reward, possibly from the Shadow Kids that she’s released.

As some proof of this, we can go back to the Lady’s apartment in the Pale City. A statue that’s completely identical to the ones found in the Maw can be found there, but this one has one major difference; no black smoke is created when you smash it. However, a Glitching Remain can be found directly in front of the statue, and judging by how similar Glitching Remains and Shadow Kids are (just compare Shadow Six (who is a Glitching Remain) and an actual Shadow Kid), it’s possible that this Glitching Remain in front of the statue is (or at least WAS) a Shadow Kid, which formed when the statue cracked in some way before Mono found it, which released the stuff inside and created a Shadow Kid, which then got “caught” by the transmission, losing its free will and ability to move around and gaining the glitchy appearance of a Glitching Remain in the process. By the time Mono finds it, it’s completely indistinguishable from a Glitching Remain.

So just to recap things:

Six’s geisha mask is the mask of a Shadow Kid, not the Lady’s mask like we all thought.

The “Previous Ladies” were all actually the current (and only) Lady’s children, Pretenders. There’s only ever been one Lady, who came to the Maw as an adult with their geisha mask and shadow powers and took it over.

The Lady has had six children in the past; The Scarecrow Hooded child, the Teacup Wearing child, the Tengu Masked child, the Fox Masked child, the Raincoat Wearing child (not Six or Rcg) and the Pretender.

The Raincoat Wearing child is unique in some way. They’re the only one depicted in the Lady’s quarters and strangely enough, have their eyes crossed out in one of the pictures, implying that they did something that resulted in the Lady despising them and quite possibly killing them herself. Something that resulted in Rcg eventually finding their raincoat on the mainland, far away from the Maw and the Nest.

Judging by the fate of the Pretender’s father (he’s confirmed by a bunch of pictures in the Nest to be the Hanging Man found in the Maw), the Lady uses a man to have a child, and then kills him once the child is born and he’s no longer useful (the Hanging Man is a faked suicide, as the chair isn’t kicked away, yet he’s high above the ground). This means that all of the Pretenders are stepsisters.

All of the Lady’s children start out wearing the same green dress, and at some point they ditch the dress and choose a face covering of some sort, along with clothing that isn’t a dress.

Based on how we only see these pretenders as children and never as adults, they all somehow die before adulthood, only for the Lady to cover up their existence and have another child. And they always seem to die AFTER receiving their masks, with the current Pretender being an outlier.

But two big questions remain now.

How is the Raincoat Wearing child different and what did they do?

WHY!? What is the purpose of all of this? Why does the Lady keep having children and giving them Masks, only for them to die? What does she get out of it? Why is it HER children specifically when she has an entire building AND an entire submarine FULL of children?

Answering the second question first, I’ve come to a horrifying conclusion.

The Lady is the one killing her own children. And she’s using them to stay young.

What if the reason the Lady is so distressed about her own appearance in Secrets of the Maw is because she HAD a way to keep her face looking young with the rest of her body, but because of recent events, ie the Pretender’s death in VLN and whatever the Raincoat Wearing child did, she’s lost the ability to use it twice in a row now, and without her way of keeping herself young, the effects of her age are finally showing up because she’s been cut off from her ability to restore herself.

[tumblr image limit sucks, here’s a link to a picture of the Lady’s real face, courtesy of the Little Nightmares Wiki]

As for why she’s using her own children instead of any other child in the Maw, the current Pretender may have the answer. The Pretender is shown to be capable of vaporizing anything she touches, and I’ve brought up in other posts that she may actually be turning them into nomes instead of vaporizing them, but you can’t tell because of the limitations of the VLN art style. Point is, she has powers similar to the Lady, and most likely inherited them her mother. So what if in order for the Lady to make her face younger, she needs to kill/consume/absorb a child with similar powers as her.

And since the only other way we see for children to gain the Lady’s powers is by killing and consuming her, which the Lady definitely wants to avoid, she instead has a child, knowing that they’ll inherit her powers and waits for them to grow to a certain age, before giving them a mask and consuming them, making herself appear younger in the process. Then she has another child and does it again.

Moving on to the first question, I think the Raincoat Wearing child somehow figured that out and tried to escape.

Just a small list of we know about the Raincoat Wearing child and what sets them apart from the others:

They seem to have been raised in the Maw instead of the Nest.

The Lady doesn’t really try to cover up their existence after their death, unlike her other children.

They did something that resulted in the Lady despising them, possibly leading to the Lady killing them.

However they died, it may have prevented the Lady from consuming them or otherwise using them to appear younger.

Other children in the Maw know about them, and they don’t exactly have the best opinion of them. Six was originally turned away at the campfire by the other children, with them saying that she “doesn’t belong here”, until one of them got a good look at her and presumably realized that she wasn’t the Raincoat Wearing child, but rather a completely different child wearing the same raincoat.

So it is my theory that the Raincoat Wearing child was a pretender that was raised in the Maw instead of the Nest for some reason that I can’t quite nail down. While they were there, they somehow learned about the Lady’s plan for them and attempted to escape the Maw, encountering other children and becoming infamous among them in the process. But in the end, in didn’t matter. They failed to escape the Maw and the Lady killed them, but not in the correct way for the Lady to consume them and rejuvenate herself. Maybe she was too young, maybe she needed to die in a certain way (possibly involving the obsidian mirror that Six uses to kill the Lady), maybe it was a mix of both, but the Lady couldn’t use the Raincoat Wearing child in her ritual. Upon her death, her raincoat fell into the ocean and was lost.

The Lady never covered up the existence of the Raincoat Wearing child like the rest of her children because they were raised in the Maw, where no other pretenders have or were ever going to be raised. There was simply no point in doing so.

But that’s not the end of the Lady’s problems. Her downfall starts with the Raincoat Wearing child’s death, because her raincoat comes back. It’s eventually found on the mainland by Rcg, who ends up being responsible for the next Pretender’s death, meaning that the Lady has lost her chance to rejuvenate herself a second time now. And after that the raincoat ends up back aboard the Maw, now being worn by Six, who manages to kill and consume the Lady just like she had done to all her children.

[The Little Nightmares franchise is a story about a raincoat, which originally belonged to a child who got murdered, and eventually ended up being worn by the person that ended up killing its original owner’s murderer.]

#little nightmares #analysis and theories #the Lady #the pretender #the lady’s daughter #THERE IS NO CYCLE OF LADIES #THERE IS NO LADY SIX #AND THERE IS NO QUEEN OF ENGLAND #I slowly lost my mind as I made this #because stuff just started clicking together and #I had to get my ideas out #anyways the Pretender is a glorified anti aging skin cream for the Lady #I was slowly drawing more parallels between Belos and the Lady as I made this #turns out she fits as Belos in my Owl House AU more than I originally thought #This started as a post where I tried to disprove Six becoming the Lady #just thought I’d give you all that bonus fact #the Raincoat is the true protagonist of all the games

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