Ep 110: Final Fantasy 6 (Part 5) - The Mama Terra Story

In the midst of my nearly 20 interviews for this Final Fantasy 6 series, one conversation stood out as unique. And sometimes, those chats need to exist on their own. On this episode of A Gamer Looks at 40, we meet Mama Terra, an FF6 cosplayer whose story is so deeply interwoven with that of the game's green haired protagonist, the connection is undeniable and irreversible. Join us!

STARRING: Mama Terra (.mama.terra on TikTok)

SONG COVERS

Terra's Theme Classical Guitar Cover | FFVI | Ottawa Guitar Trio by Ottawa Guitar Trio - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTQuEzxE8GM

Terra's Theme (Final Fantasy VI Piano Collections)(Nobuo Uematsu) by Kara Comparetto - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o25_6i4jS2k

FINAL FANTASY VI: 'Terra's Theme' | Classical Guitar | John Oeth by John Oeth Guitar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY7mJvYNLYE

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Transcript

0:33

when people think deeply about games. I've said it time and time again on this podcast. Fandoms can get dicey, obsessions get toxic, but the people that make up the communities are genuinely awesome. Why? Because there's always a story on the other side of that love. Last week on the Kefka episode I chatted with Cosplayer Yurik about the evil Clown Prince and I said I was looking for cosplayers to talk about Final Fantasy 6 because of those deep connections. I met him through this week's guest, the cosplayer known as Mama Terra. From making connections at school to building her impressive media literacy to reaching people literally around the world, her story is so deeply intertwined with Final Fantasy 6's green haired protagonist, it deserved to be told uninterrupted. So let's do it! Time to go on a personal journey with one of the internet's foremost Terra cosplayers and learn exactly how deep her connection goes on episode 110, Final Fantasy VI, part 5, the Mama Terra story. So, yeah, let's first just kind of talk a bit about your history with Final Fantasy six. When was the first time you played it, experienced it, kind of those first impressions? Because it's a big game with lots of big first impressions. And then we'll just roll from there. Yeah. OK, so my experience with FF6 is basically the experience my experience with the beginning of gaming. I was 10 years old. It was 1997 and my brother had borrowed his friend's PlayStation. And I walk in one day and here's Final Fantasy seven on the screen. I've never seen anything like it. Now, my my brother and my dad, they'd always played games. He my brother was eight years older than me. And I'm stunned. I'm dancing in the kitchen to the Cosmo has Canyon music. I'm having fun and he won't let me touch it because it's not his. And I'm his annoying little sister, which is the biggest part. And we had really just gotten the Internet in the house. So I get mad and my thought is well final fantasy seven is new and the internet must be brand new and so I run into the computer and I go online and I look for final fantasy seven Which really really made my mom mad because we weren't allowed to have games. She's still crazy. Sorry But I found four five six in chrono trigger and the nation was born I actually Thanks. Before my brother died, I actually got to tell him that my entire cosplay focus and all of that was his fault. And he was just like, what the hell is wrong with you? It was very funny. But so I attached to four, five and six. But I had still like been chasing seven. And then I finally got to play it. You you're you idealize it for a little while and then somewhere along the way it goes away. And. My first impression now, here's the crazy part. I did not have sound the first few times I played the game. I was using the ZNES emulator and either we didn't have a sound card or the emulator wouldn't work. I actually ended up changing emulators like a year or two later and all of a sudden I had sound. But I was playing four, five, six concurrently. And when I got to six, like three or four days into starting to play. I started six and the game opens and you see the advance on Narsheh Where you have the bigs wedge and Tara marching towards it and my mind is blown now I'm from a science fiction household, you know Star Wars woke us up on Christmas morning that kind of thing Yeah, but here are these three armors and my brother was a battle tech and warhammer player So here I am. my god, I get to have battle tech, Yes. And then they get there and there's this girl in in the driver's seat. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, we had Cecil and Bart's. I thought it I thought everything had to be about boys. I thought all the boys were going to be heroes and the girls were the love interest. And here she comes in and she has a massive, massive list of skills while they only have four. And I was just blown away. was absolutely blown away. And I didn't I didn't know quite how quite how to handle it because I hadn't really attached to anything yet. Pokemon was kind of new. All of that. And here I am 10 years old. What's my personality? Star Trek, the next generation, Sequest DSV and whatever else. My parents, Zina and Hercules, were still on TV. I didn't get into the Power Rangers. I still don't like the Power Rangers. Right. Right. Right. And so I finally had my own thing and I didn't. I just I didn't know what to do how to handle this so I run to school and I'm talking to my friends I'm in elementary school and they're like, what are you talking about? There are Final Fantasies before seven my brother's playing seven and of course they ran off to play Power Rangers or we were talking about something else I Mean, it's elementary school. What are you gonna do? So nobody really Nobody really was kind of understanding of what I was talking about. I got to middle And I knew this guy, Chris, miss him, can't find him anywhere on social media. I was talking to him about it and I said, yeah, I've played Final Fantasy three and he goes, wait, do you mean three or six? And this really, really nice oboe player explained to me the differences in the numbers. And I was like, There's a whole lot more that I have to play. I was wondering when five five was slightly lower quality than three. that's funny. But yeah. And he just kind of he was a he was a retro gamer. His parents kind of did the same thing that my dad did. And so they had a I lived at the base of the bridal path in Simi Valley, California. So they were up in the bridal path. You could imagine the the monetary distance between our two houses. Sure. So they only had games and stuff. And He was the only one I knew in middle school that could talk to me about it. And this problem followed me and I would just keep talking about Tara and Final Fantasy six. And, you know, for some reason in 2002, I'm a sophomore in high school and everybody's still obsessed with seven when ten has just come out. nobody gets it. Nobody gets it except for one guy at the table. West, who was a longtime gamer. and knew the games and I could talk to him. He actually bought me the Chrono Trigger soundtrack for Christmas one year. So I've had very few people in my life who could understand games, especially Six. I've known people that didn't understand that there were Final Fantasy games before Seven. And I'm like, why do you think it was called Seven? And they never think about it. Right, right. It's not something they would compute. It sounds like you found this game early on and you were searching for connections. You're always looking for someone to share this thing with. It's so interesting. You finally at the end of the road, you were able to find that one person at the lunch table who got, yeah, totally. Six is fantastic. Let's talk about Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 4. I find that really interesting. So what about the game? You alluded to it a little bit when we were first talking how you identified with the female and the Lee and the magic tech armor and she has this incredible list of abilities. Her two cronies kind of just have the basic What else about Tara connected with you on that level? There's a lot and it is dark. Some of it I won't share a lot of detail I won't share but that's fine. I am from a very difficult home. My mother, I have generational trauma. My mother was severely abused by her mother who was unwanted by her alcoholic father. And I just my mother carried that into her children and she has an unmedicated disorder that both of her children had. And then my father had ADHD. So she had two children with multiple disorders when she herself was unregulated and wouldn't go to therapy no matter how much everybody begged her to do. We knew she could have been better. So everyone in the household was to blame. She has denial issues, lots of problems. And because of this disorder, she has rapid outbursts of anger and reacts to everything with anger. And along with this denial is the belief that you can do no wrong and that kind of thing. And so everyone in the household was evil and bad and not her. And we were ruining her life. She had a tendency to talk about me like I wasn't there and makeup lies in front of me. And you kind of disassociate. And let her do whatever she wants because there is no winning. No one is ever going to listen to you ever because that's your mom. Of course, she's telling the truth. And it was it was like living in a minefield. It really was. You didn't know what was going to piss her off, but you knew you knew there was going to be an explosion. Something. And. I saw Tara. And the first thing that happens is they say, that thing on her head, she won't even breathe unless we tell her to, which I'm going to come back to that. She can't, she can't talk. She can't think. All she can do is be programmed to fight. She's fully and completely disassociated. I looked at that and I saw, my God, that's just an extreme version of me. It's what my mother wants from me is to be silent and obedient the knowledge in the back of my head that even if I do, I won't win. I'll end up doing something terrible or or she's going to explode at me at some in some way. And here comes the welk with the lightning shell and and Viggs and Wedge. And it's just your father and your brother. They can't win either. It's it really hit me immediately. And in the next scene, after after a try talk or Valigar Manda, however you want to refer to Sends bigs and wedge away and and she wakes up in Arvis's house and they remove the slave crown There was so there was a an issue that I kept dealing with in it as a kid that I didn't know That there were words for or that it was even a thing Trauma blackout your brain will turn off and you will run on autopilot You'll still have your personality, but you won't have as much conscious thought And you'll just not be remembering that kinds of thing. And I have a lot of memories of just waking up in the middle of a school day, like, my God, I've been plugged back into the matrix, you know, and all of a sudden you're looking around and trying to figure out what's going on. And why is it March? It was just February and that kind of thing. And here she comes. But she can remember her name, but nothing else. And I. attached to that concept very, very hard because I, you know, I got it to some degree. And to make matters worse, I was addicted to educational television. My father worked with the space program, Boeing. Take your kid to work day was awesome. That sounds so fun. The X, I think it's X1 -99 engine. I was I was a kid while they were developing that and dad was coming home and talking about it. He has I think he did some work for the ISS, which is amazing. But. You know, you watch all these educational shows, you watch the History Channel with my dad, who I have old parents. My mom was born in 1946. She was literally, you know, born right after the war, eight months after grandpa came home, nine months. Well, whatever. But. So I'm watching this and I go, it's the slave crown and it took all her thought. And then we see Kefka and they're in that little room. And you can tell looking at it, this is a medical room. Something's going on in here. And I went, it's plugged right into her spine and she's on some kind of drug. my God, no wonder she can't remember. I have ADHD and have been medicated since I was very young. I don't have a lot of my memories because at the, the early nineties, they were using amphetamines. to control kids, they still do, it's Adderall. it took so much, it destroyed my body. Never put a child on something like that. They don't grow up right, they can't, it's an amphetamine. If it can put people in the gutter, what is it gonna do to a little kid who's growing? And I was watching this and just seeing and thinking about everything that would go into that. And that basically started... my deep dive into my first playthrough of the game, connecting Final Fantasy six to everything that I did now. And it just progressively got more and more horrifying in ways and concepts that most people, adult or child, don't don't see. They don't get it's realizing, you know, sitting in class and realizing, am I the only one that understands why the curtains are blue in this in this made up scenario in our literature class? You know, we're the one where the teacher asks you, Okay, but why is it important the curtains were blue? I'm like, it's reading comprehension. It sets the scene. And everybody missed that. And I feel like the odd one out and they have to over explain. And then people look at me. They're like, they're just blue. No, they're not. Sorry. There's a reason they're there. It's temperature gauge. It's a temperature gauge. Visual context clue, but you're reading the visual context. Like he's in the kitchen. His mother just died. Why is it important the curtains are blue? Because it reflects how cold he feels. Right. Scene setting. And that's remarkable that you were able to do that at that point. That's cool. I did not read kids books when I was young. My mom, she had an eight year old. She wasn't expecting to have a baby come along. There weren't a lot of kids books in the house. So she was handing me Andre Norton. Even my even my basis in science fiction is separate from everybody else. I was I was in middle school going, why are you reading Harry Potter? This sucks. Go play Final Fantasy. Why won't he cast Bolt? What's wrong with you? Nobody got it. It was fine. So I developed this skill because I just I was forced to kind of. Yeah. And they say the the former gifted kid can't relate. mean, I'm not gifted in the way people wanted me to be, but I can I can explain things pretty well when it comes to a scene. And because Final Fantasy six is full of visual cues and context clues. mean, they packed that cartridge so much, they were deleting names off of statements just to make sure they got the entire story in there. So a lot of it is told through visual context clue. Yep, absolutely. And so many people, you know, they take what they see on the screen and see what's in the dialogue and move from there. They don't look any deeper and we shouldn't have to. That's something that, you know, people should choose to do. when people, you know, they ask me, all right, what's wrong with this scene? Why don't you agree with how everybody else views Selis? And I can point it that and go, why are you okay with her giving Locke the silent treatment? Why do you want to marry her when you can't stand it when your girlfriend does it? don't see it. And I'm very blessed now with my Discord because of TikTok. A lot of people have come to me willing to hear these things. They're as you know, as an adult, as adults were more focused on, OK, but did you get the message of the story? And yes, loud and clear. that if I were to keep going and we can get there, a deep dive into to Terra and some of the things that I've seen and where I connected. Really find that very interesting that you were able to connect with the game on so many different levels. It wasn't just an emotional level. It wasn't just a fun game, but you were you were exploring your own intellect. that game as well. were stretching your mind. You were you were finding those context clues, those hidden things. When I'm playing the game as a 14 year old, I'm like, this is fun. Ultima. That's a cool spell. None of this is hitting me at a young age. It's the deeper themes of Final Fantasy six, of which there are numerous, are hitting you in a very special way. And I think that's really rare and very cool. And I'm sorry you had to go through some of those situations on your end, but Sounds like you really had that those those those moments. And she, Tara, kept following me. She really did. She. The understanding, you know, you're watching the scene set up when she turns into a monster and it hits you. Boom. That's why she has green hair. Boom. That's why she has magic. She is not fully human. And then you you see the scene where the emperor kidnaps the baby and kills Madeline. Madonna I prefer I prefer the original names. I'm sorry But like even when you break down Tara's name anyway See he stabs her and he takes her and you fear. we're we're making magitek We've infused cellist with magical power. We drove kefka crazy with it and the realization of my god, Tara's a science experiment She yeah, they they who full of needles, blood draws, blood transfusion, using her DNA to break the code. And then we get to, let's imagine one thing. If anybody has kids, if they have a little girl, we all know that little girls have periods. And I don't know about you, but if the little girl turns into a monster and starts throwing fire and we're talking two times attack, two times magic, and she's throwing orderlies around, we're scooping her up, throwing her in a fireproof box and walking away for seven days. And it's so many people come to me and they're like, well, she first turned into an Esper when she was 18. Why would we believe that? What led you to believe that she probably came out of her mother furry and screaming? Yeah. And yeah, it's so hard to find people that that think like that. Birth is traumatic for mother and child. Of course, she's a monster. She's afraid. That doesn't mean she's fight or flight afraid. So why would she turn into a monster? It goes a lot into psychology. You you mentioned, hey, Tara, Tara was likely dehumanized by the entire military. It's why Kefka did what he did. Celis, you know, came out perfect. No, she didn't. Celis was horrifically neglected. People get so confused when I say we don't save Sid in this house. Look at it. Celis was severely neglected. That's her entire problem. Yeah. Granddad, we! Granddad because she was obedient. Do you think lying in a bed for a year, nobody attacked her in the worst possible way? How many people do you think Sid pulled off of a comatose woman? Do you think Sid was kind to her? No, it's the end of the world. I'm 10, 15, I keep playing it and putting more and more together. And in the middle of all of it, you know, I'm in school. learning about ancient, ancient history. There's there's like a revival of World War Two historical documentation and on that used to be about History Channel. And I'm watching all of that and learning about the worst figures from history. And then all of a sudden it clicks Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The devs of the Final Fantasy team were the children of people that lived. through Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, all of the references to the evil empire are going to be the 1940s in Germany and the Axis powers. And people just look at you. They're like, why are you talking about that when you're talking about a video game? Do you not see the salute? It's right there. It's right there. Right there. why do you need to believe that cellists and terror were raped? I don't need to believe it. They're in the military and they're two beautiful young women. And then like, respect the military, but I'm just going to gesture at the news of what's happening constantly. I mean, yeah, it's a very fair assessment. And I love when people think deeply about this sort of thing. I truly do because it's so easy not to. especially in my Final Fantasy 6 and other games too, but since I'm in the Final Fantasy world right now. There is so much richness there that people can miss. And I think those ideas and thoughts that you brought up are really fascinating. you to know the scariest thing about the game? Go for it. There are two lines said in the game that everybody misses. Everybody misses them. Sid says, plants wither when Sallis wakes up. And Lola, when you're beginning Cyan's quest in the world of Ruin, says the flowers won't grow anymore, so he makes me silk ones. My specialty when before I had to accept that I'm disabled, I'm not going to make it through college. My specialty was seismology and volcanology. And in the scene after the low orbit asteroid, and we know it's low orbit because we could see the continents underneath it, it smashes into the planet. It opens up something called a volcanic trap. And you know how when you're watching old dinosaur movies, they have that massive lake of lava and you're thinking, that's cool, but that can't be real. It's real. oceans of lava, the Declan Traps and the Siberian Traps specifically, and watching the tectonic plates move and I go, no, it's not a nuclear apocalypse, it's a volcanic one. And what people forget is the flower is the breeding part of the plant. The flower has to be open to attract the bumblebee to take the pollen. If there are no flowers, there are no crops. If there are no crops, there are no livestock. We have had a full extinction event and are in a slowed down decline. And when you go to Mobleze in the second half of the game and you see Tara for the first time, every single context clue from the long time it takes to get out there to the burned out buildings, the wild dogs that are partially tame as they would be. says, you know, Funbaba is outside and they still say she gave When they go find her, she's emaciated. She's starving to death. No wonder she can't pick up her sword. And in that situation, it's not giving up to choose survival. There are seven child sprites and two teenagers in there. She is probably one of the very few. If Dwayne is lucky and can hunt, but it's a frontier town separated from the rest of the belt. He's more than likely either a trapper or a farm hand. Catherine can probably midwife, but that's about it. She's the hunter. And if she's so tired, she can't hunt. Of course she can't pick up her sword. And here comes Celis atrophied and finally getting better after a year in a coma. And they see each other and I can't imagine the way Celis started sobbing or Tara started sobbing because here you are and I can't have you back. So everybody just looked at that and they're like, well, she gave up. Did Did she? What would you have done? Have you ever heard the cry of a starving child? It's gut wrenching, even if you hate kids and seeing that and seeing that she put her sword down and the the fact that she didn't give up, she redirected her strength and what she could do. That was that was my teenage years. I redirected and did what I could and took care of what I could. Because when I was a teenager, my first boyfriend in high school, Not a good man. Not a good man. He had his heart broken and decided he was going to abuse as many women as he could. And you know how on the internet we hear the buzzword, the buzzwords, gaslight manipulation and all these things going around. And you're sitting there going, were you gaslit or were you just lied to? And in a lot of situations, it was just a bad relationship. I did unfortunately experience the clinical term up to 15 people and you know, the world. being changed around me and things just weren't true. And it took starting my college classes and going, wait a minute, I'm not a monster. Everybody's just, they're being lied to what's going on. And I was able to, again, and all of this, you you go back later and you realize where the connections are in your life. And well, Tara's not a monster either, is she? She's just what she is. She doesn't hurt people if she doesn't want to. Even when she goes screaming across the sky and destroys Koehling and a young girl and a woman say, it had kind eyes. It had kind eyes. And in the aftermath, you know, why did I detach from Final Fantasy 7? Things around 7 and involving my ex -husband and horrors beyond what we want to think about happening to our daughters. And it just kept going back. Oddly, again, Terra was part of the reason I disconnected because Dissidia had come out and I was over the moon and he had played Squall and Cloud, which are all he really cared about. And I took it and I said, you are going to let me play Terra now. You have no idea. The day they announced her, I was screaming. I was so happy. And he looks at me and he goes, why do you care so much about her? She's annoying. And when I tell you, I almost put a man in the hospital. Like it's a stupid reason but a reason's a reason, you know Time once again to thank my wonderful patrons! Starting with Terry Canare, Games with Coffee, BT Gobbles, Julian of the Stage Select Podcast, Seth Sergel of the All In Podcast, Tim Knowles formerly of the Littest, The Let's Play Princess, Greg Seward of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, Philip Becker, and the one and only Debonair and always well groomed, Pete Harney. If you would like to join these wonderful human beings and their philanthropy of this show then by all means go to patreon .com forward slash a gamer looks at forty four zero check out the tiers and if anything strikes your fancy by all means sign up today and if not tell a friend or a rating review always helps the algorithm find this show thank you so much for listening let's get back to the I did end up leaving him hilariously. I made a friend online. And again, when you're when the problem when the abuser can't get to the to the other people, the people that show you what's going on. I met him online, oddly on a text plays role play site. can't even I can't even date properly. I was still still married to my ex. And I'm talking to this weird guy. About D &D and magic and all kinds of stuff that we're talking about. And he starts talking about Paladins. And he says, and it's on the tip of my tongue, you know, it's coming. I'm about to say, hey, have you played Final Fantasy four? And he goes, do you know who Cecil Harvey is? And I'm like, I'm marrying this man. He's out there. We were just Cecil and Rosa to meet Erie Lowensohn last week or a couple of weeks ago. And I actually I did leave my ex and I married Mr. Perfect out there. And we. He jumped on board with the retro gaming cosplay and all of that. We made it our whole thing. I'm actually the reason he played Final Fantasy six and the coolest thing, the coolest thing is something that most people don't do with this game, especially since the Pixelware Masters came out. You know, we want to share it with our loved ones. They'll sit there and they'll tell them what to do for Salas's story to spare them the jump. And it's I want to note it's in 16 bit. she survives. If I understand the tears, I was emotional because at 10 years old, I had already had suicidal ideology for five years. I know five year old should understand that bare understanding of death. And here we are. And I watched sellish jump. And it hit a lot of us differently. And for me, it was hope. It was you couldn't even kill yourself. And here you are waking up at the bottom and you chose to go. You live. And that was so powerful to me. But you have people controlling it so they don't have to live through it or their loved one can't live through it. So they miss an important part, which is imagine the conversations you could have if you did it differently. And he did. I was completely non -present while he was playing six years and years ago when it released on the original Wii. And he saved Sid because he thought fast fish. They're the healthy ones. So we have this great ability to have conversations from being able to see these characters differently. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't trade that for the world. And to have you with me on this cosplay journey is incredible. I love it. I think it's so cool. My wife and I have always said we want to try our hand at cosplay at some point, do something. We've always said it, but you know, kids and everything else that gets in the way sometimes. My wife was a fashion designer. She went to FIT and she said She can make... So cool. She's amazing. She can make anything. She's sitting right next to me. She can make anything. Hi, wife! And we've always said we want to give it a shot, know? It's one of those like, with time and kids and all the rest of it. But so I think it's so cool that you bonded with somebody. And I love hearing stories of people connecting through games, through the medium and through fandoms, because I think those are very special connections and those are things people don't talk You know, you don't see those articles on Kotaku, right? So yeah, it's a very beautiful story. I'm glad to share that with you. glad it's I'm glad you think it's beautiful because I don't think I honestly think it's a dumpster fire train wreck. But here we go. I mean, and connecting with people, tick tock. Everybody thinks of it as the, you know, the silly dance platform. But here it is a political power. It's we're communicating, reforming communities. We're learning about other countries. It's a great educational resource. And in 2020, had filmed that they had canceled our con and I was really mad. So I had decided to film. Do you know what the bottle flick meme is from like 2016? I do not know that. OK, it's a video meme. And this was like on Vine before we ever got to TikTok. They the character you're cosplaying would pick up their phone, see something that's obviously stressful, drop the phone, pick up a bottle, flick the cap off and chug. I had wanted to do that for a very long time and I was like, you know what? I need to wear my cosplay. I'm going to do this. And we set it up the whole table. I had the whole regalia on and I'm sitting next to the window and I'm holding a map that is the inner sphere from BattleTech. And so I'm trying to try to hide that. And my husband is filming and I double take out the window and I edited in the angel Kefka coming down and I sigh, drop the map, pick up the bottle, flick it, it flies across the room. You hear it like ping off of something. And then I get up, all of the coin belt is going, jingle jingle, grab my husband's cutlass, and I just walk out the door. And it took a couple tries. And this was like the middle of the day and it was sweet wine. And I didn't even think maybe don't sip it. So by the end of this, I'm like a little gone. But I put that on TikTok and it got a good response. And what actually happened was day one, a Kafka cosplayer found me when I got started. There were three cosplay videos or cosplay character videos for Final Fantasy six. That wonderful Kafka, who is still a friend, a lady who did a closet cosplay of opera cellists, but is has such a large community that she doesn't she doesn't do cells anymore. She didn't talk to anybody. And then a lady who had just had her hair done, a beautiful Jade Green. And she was like, kind of have something I can wear for Tara. Yeah, I'll throw this on. So I hit the scene and it was empty, essentially, except for my French arrow. And I was like, No, no, no. I'm gonna be I'm gonna be petty. The remake is coming out of seven. Whereas whereas six. So I just kept filming. And I kept going and making the dumbest stuff. One of my favorite comedy bits that I continue is the chaos girls, Sallis and Tara. They're they're serial killers. We're absolutely certain. But I just, I kept going and I kept gaining traction and periodically more and more people would find me. And I actually just got another one before the interview starts messages of you have no idea what you've done for me. I got it back. I got my memories back. I'd forgotten. I have to show my son. I showed you the 30th anniversary video, two weeks, eight costumes. TikTok got me to build more than I've ever built in my life. It solidified my retro gaming. You know, repertoire. was originally Tara and Shala. I would wear Tara to every every con rebuilt her nine times still going. She's my comfort therapy cosplay. So when I have to do something hard, I go to Tara because she's gotten me through so much. It's the same struggle. And it all boils down to if Tara could do it, so could I. And you hang on to it. And the hard part to get people to understand is that you're you have a different personality than the character. You are not her. Sure. And. People just sometimes they don't they don't see that and that's that's hard to navigate and it just Tick -tock has been a wonderful resource for not only accepting Tara's role in my life, but in the lives of others I had a friend a now friend of mine talking about connections of one lives only two hours from me We had no idea and he was the the cloud who was on all my decity a nonsense and family friend now consider him family another one up in Canada finds my finds a video that I did that had gone slightly viral. And, you know, my name gets passed around a little bit. And the retro gaming cosplay community and retro gaming in general mama Tara never intended that to happen. Why? Why? Why people I'm just insane. But like, why are my name is said in other countries? And I don't know how to handle it. But I mean, it is what it is. That's wild. That's cool. God, finding out that they know me in Japan was terrifying. That's actually really cool. God. It's... I'm expected in Germany and Edinburgh, Scotland at one point. Wow. That's really interesting. Yeah, there's my world travel desires. there was this young man in Canada, young man, he's my age, who finds me and he goes, this is amazing. You know, I haven't thought about Final Fantasy 6 for years. And I said, well, I hope that this gave you some good memories because I don't know if my Kefka cosplay still fits. And I Did you say Kafka cosplay? Excuse me. And I said, well, if you choose to try it on, I hope it does. And if it doesn't, I hope you get some good memories out of it. And those are the words that basically sealed my fate and helped me understand who I am because I get this video that comes back that is a severely green screen effects, amazing for TikTok, you know, not Hollywood, but video of a duet. to the cosplay video that I did, and I can find it and send it to you if you like, Yeah, let's see it. He built his Kefka off of the FMVs from the PlayStation release with his grandmother, and it was the last thing they made together before she passed away. So in telling him that, he went to the box, pulled out Kefka and his grandmother, essentially all of those memories, and it did fit. And this is my friend. who I have no idea if we're ever gonna meet, but those are the connections that you make. I get told regularly, I can't see the sprite of Terra anymore without seeing you and that seven foot long cape and just all of the details and extravagance that you can see. I call myself extra. Everything I do has to be big and crazy. Then, you people that I'm playing the game for the first time and I hear your voice and I'm seeing her going, I'm a second soprano. This character has always been represented with the tiniest doll -like girl voice. And they go, no, I can't hear her without the strength in your voice. And it's mind boggling what you do for people just by existing in a cosplay. you go to cons and cons stories, yay. Yes. I actually chose the name Mamatera because of TikTok and not realizing that Mamatera was probably the most fitting name I could have plucked from the game itself because we came back, we moved back to the city to this city when my husband got his degree and went back to Khan and people recognized us and they came up to us and go, you have no idea how weird it was being at Khan without you two because we're the longest relationship many of them have ever seen. And that's so comforting to a lot of people. And then here we are in matching cosplays. Everybody wants a cosplay partner to cosplay with them. It's so rare. standing in a room, one of my favorites, is I'm in the library. They had a free con and we're going towards the cosplay contest and all that. And from across the room, I hear, Screamed top of their lungs. Echoing off the rafters. This is a very big library and I turn around and get my arms open in time to catch five foot two inches of woman Like starting to cry. my god. my god. I've never seen a tower of cosplay. This is the coolest thing I've ever seen. my god my god, and I'm hanging on to her and it helps that I'm okay with hugging It made her whole day Being able to find other terrors and go, excuse me, will you take a picture with me? Because twinsies are the best thing. Like, my God, this is another person who loves the thing that I love. That's it just groundbreaking to you as a person when that happens. But the best one, the single best cosplay interaction that I have ever had was last year. There was Classic Game Fest in Austin, Texas. Amazing, amazing selling show. Love it. I walk in, it was the first time we'd been there and I was in Terra. Full Terra. I made a new cape. I was wearing the summer cape. I have three capes. It's not a problem. One's covered in flowers. One is two layers of chiffon and then there's the seven footer with a layer of organza and then anyway, we call it the regalia for a reason. So I walk in and right inside we get towards the door and this woman about my age looks at me, goes. my God. And she's got a Final Fantasy six t -shirt on and she is starting to get emotional. We're having a great conversation and people are coming in. We haven't even gotten in the doors yet. And this family comes towards me. It's a dad and his two little two sons and they are sub age five and the five year old is there and his younger brother is maybe at best three. Toddling along slowly. And I feel I'm talking and I feel tiny little hand on my leg. And I look down and the toddler is looking up at me mesmerized. Big brown eyes, floofy blonde hair, just staring. And I instantly, there is a part of your brain that clicks and it's instant princess mode when you're in costume. And I crouch and I have severe spinal issues. I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky to have my vision. this is something that I don't really tell my stream, but I have had two brain surgeries, last year in the span of a month. I walked away with some neurological issues and this was before those surgeries. So I was careening towards a stroke or catastrophic seizure. when they opened my pressures, my brain cavity was at 14. It is supposed to be between two and four. And I'm, I'm alive. And I that goes back to Tara too. But I crouched down. I have almost no balance most of the time. Spine can't handle anything. And my feet were destroyed by my ADHD medication. So wearing heels. But we got to be extra. We do it. We do it because we love it, not because it's comfortable. And I'm crouching down in my crazy boots and just perch right and people are freaking out because, my God, it's Tara with a kid. And I must have like, some universal deity must have looked down and gone, you are going to have perfect balance. While I'm with this child who's, he's touching all of my cosplay. He's touching my lace. My leggings at the time were covered in gems. So he's touching the gems and my shoes and my sword, which was a gift from a friend has beads and a feather. hanging from it. So it's really dramatic looking and he's touching the feather and he's playing with it and his brother is coming over and touching the sword and I never let anybody touch the swords. It's it's PLA 3D printing. It's surprisingly delicate. And he's they're just mesmerized people are snapping pictures. And they were so focused on me. And I was just so zoomed into them. There was nothing but those children. And I immediately, I don't know what happened, turned into Tara and it was Tara in the world of ruin with her children. And they were so, it was the best thing. It's the absolute best. And when you do this, there's a lot of negativity in the community, in the retro community. And sometimes those good moments can drown out years of that in an instant. And it does. And being a face in the retro community on TikTok. Everybody knows Mama Terra on there in the retro scene and you get the worst of it. You'd really do. But when the good comes. It's so big and so good and it keeps you going. Once again thank you so much to Mamatera for taking time out of her busy schedule to chat with me about Final Fantasy VI. It's one of those conversations where I got a little misty eyed a few times and I just really thank her for her vulnerability and her honesty and for showing us exactly why she does what she does and I think it's actually a truly beautiful story about connection and I hope you've thought the same. Please please please give her a follow on TikTok at dot mama dot Tara. There's a link tree in her bio that'll give you access to all of her everything including her discord, Twitch, Instagram, and so much more. Thanks as always to Kev from the discord and Mr. P Harney for all the work they do helping me with these episodes. Thank you again to my patrons for their unwavering patronage and thank you for listening to this edition. Thanks again for listening and until next time be kind to yourselves and each other.