The main thing I learned from E33 is that there is no block or parry for Emotional Damage…

17:00 "the inhabitants are fake" is the attitude of Clea, but NOT of Renoir. He treats them all as real and grieves for the sacrifice he must make to save his family

“Art and stories are only capable of being magical because they are made of human souls” goes so fucking hard.

10:01 that final stare from Lune really doesn't hit as hard when she's wearing sunglasses. Lol

Complicating too much is solving nothing. Question is simple: do you consider canvas ppl as real, or even better do you consider Dessandre family more "real" than canvas ppl? If you consider them illusion, ofcourse erasing illusion is obvious choice, if not, ofcourse any choice to destroy entire universe to help one family heal is never going to be ok however you frame it. The point of all thing is to make us think about existance and life, and figure out what we consider it to be. Does carbon based life form have more right to existance than paint based life form? Yes, Dessandre family gave birth to that universe, but it evolved into something of it's own, independent. They should go to some therapy sessions to find a way to proceed with their life, not destroy countless other lives. Nothing in game says that Dessandre are "real", or even similar to us. They are living in fantasy world wher it's possible to paint new universes. For what we know, they might be "written" by the writers, waging their own war against their creators for their own existance, and although it's not stated, i think that's exactly why writers were mentioned in first place, to hint us that there are more layers to this cycle. Once you solve real/fake barrier choices are really simple, and we can have conversation about what do those choices mean and how the story will proceed, but which choice is correct one is solved automaticly by answering that one question.

Playing the game, I figured each family member represented the 5 stages of Grief.

Aline - Denial
Clea - Anger
Renoir - Bargaining
Alicia - Depression
Verso - Acceptance

We see Aline being lost in the denial of losing her son, and by extension her daughter (she can no longer love her daughter without hating her that she was the reason for Verso being dead); through painting versions of them.

Clea represents the anger of grief by fixating on vengeance towards the cause of Verso’s deaths - the writers. Nothing else matters except their demise.

Renoir bargains through control, and seeing the remaining family members lose themselves in his grief causes him to demand more control. From experience (as he says in the last fight), he wants to be the help to Aline that she was to him but this is a different situation, the grief is different. So he bargains for his sanity to keep things together.

Alicia presents depression due to various things not just because of her IRL physical damage and being the cause of Verso’s death - she was not as close to Clea as Verso was, being in her room all the time while the older siblings painted in the canvas (we learn this through Clea’s story). But being the cause of her brother’s death also earns her the knowledge that her mother and sister on some level wished that the situation had Verso alive and she to be dead instead. Depression of the mind, depression of the mind, and the soul. To know that love of family can only be experienced in the painting may be short sighted.. Living as Maelle is a persona she can submerge herself in, therefore killing off her IRL self. She might not be suicidal, but a slow death by depression to feel there is no purpose to living is a kind of death nonetheless.

Lastly we have Verso as acceptance. I’ll speak of his IRL version first, that died knowing he could save his sister. His last words being “You’re ok” to Alicia was acceptance of his demise in that moment, knowing that he was not going to make it. In the representations of Verso through Renoir’s axon, he was someone who hid truth with lies. Telling Alicia she was ok even though in that moment she was burned to the point of losing an eye and her voice, trying to soften the blow of his own death to her. He accepted his end by extension of his selflessness.
Painted Verso represents acceptance through grief not of his own but the whole Dessandre family. He speaks of helplessness of being at the mercy of the Painters. He could be alive at one point, and dead the next and it would never be his choice, and in fact because of this, he accepts his own grief of never dying. At the end, he repeats Renoir “See things as they are and not as you want them to be”. And in Verso’s ending, painted Verso leads with a selfish choice - ending the canvas and accepting his death once more. Him ending the canvas himself is the only time we ever see a painted creature have control over their life. Towards the ending as well, it is interesting to note that he mentioned it was Aline’s gift that allowed him to be there - where it is supposedly dangerous for him to be. I think Aline gave him that gift to let him have that choice. The last gift of a mother to her child, a choice that no one else (painted) could have.

The interesting thing is both endings are lead with such different intentions that there is little middle ground. Alicia wants to stay, but Verso wants to leave. One wants life inside the canvas while one would do anything to leave the canvas. The Canvas could have remained as a pure piece of Verso’s art for any of the family to visit, but their grief destroyed the world in a fracture. The Canvas that they are fighting for is already altered to the point of no return.

At the end of the game, I think the Epilogue titles highlight an important point.

A Life to Paint (Maelle’s ending) - surrendering to grief by staying in the depression state. To paint this canvas is just to relive the state of the past, reviving everyone in Lumiere means never letting anyone truly die. Maelle/Alicia never learns how to grieve.

A Life to Love (Verso’s ending) - acceptance of a death that is not within your control. Verso’s death was never in the control of any of the Dessandre family, and the demise of the painting is the same. By accepting death and grief, the family’s fracture can start to heal. It will be slow, and it will be painful, but it must start somewhere.

To process grief, is to know that you have loved, and knowing what else you can do with that love.

ps. There is a lot more context to talk about with the other lives of those in Lumiere, but just talking abt the stages of grief here :>

The canvas being an allegory for the game and the decision at the end of the game being a question to the player of wishing to continue to play or not has been the only thing on my brain since I finished and I can't get the brilliance of that writing out of my thoughts.

Another Clea/Lune similitude is the burden of being the "perfect child" and their family legacy. It's something that we can only discover through the optional content of the game, but we learn that Lune grew up with the constant pressure of carrying her parents work. She was their apprentice from a very young age, she dedicated her whole life to research on Chroma, and after their death, she kept going on and joined the Expeditions exactly for that purpose. When we find the Journal from their time, we discover that even in their death, they expected her to pick up the torch and keep doing their work, and it angers her so much. Because it feels to her like it was the only thing she was for them.
Clea is the oldest daughter and was Aline's pupil. Each time we hear about her from Maelle, she is described as "perfect" and "the favorite". She is the best painter of the three children, with incredible skills. In the Manor at the start of Act 3, Alicia points out that only the "worthiest" pieces are displayed, and Clea's are the majority. When we meet her painted version, we are told that only she would have had the mastery to paint over Aline's creation. Yet, it's very obvious that Clea's passion is not painting. It's sculpting. Her rooms in the Manor are a sculpting workshop and an exhibition room with Nevron's sculptures. She has a few paintings, but most are character studies for the Nevrons, and all her areas in the Canvas are full of gigantic sculptures. She has an even bigger talent than painting, but in the Dessendre family, you can love other art forms (Music (Verso, Aline and Clea), Dance (Aline), Sculpture (Clea), Litterature and Writing (Alicia)) but you MUST be a painter over all. And now she has to carry what remains of the family. Her brother is dead and no one will avenge him if she doesn't do it, her parents locked themselves in a Painting and are too busy fighting each other and they might die if they don't get out, and as a result she is the sole provider for her little sister that is now disabled.
Renoir did paint Clea's Axon as a woman carrying a whole city on her back. Lune doesn't have an Axon, but her parents made damn sure she knows that whole of Lumière depends on her work, and that her purpose in life is to stop the Gommage from happening.

The side content canonically infuriating as f*** because it's just a metaphor for procrastination just making things needlessly difficult.

Painted Verso also carried some memories from the real one. I felt he had a right to freedom, and not remain a slave to his sister's incapacity to let him go, as we see him become in Maelle's ending.

I really felt for him all through this story. He wasn't like Lune and Sciel, but he wasn't like Renoir and Maelle either. He stood alone on the line, never truly seen, just existing to serve the Dessendre's family.

He loses his painted family, he loses everything. In the end, I felt it was the real Verso working through him that was striving for freedom, for peace. Little Verso, his soul, was tired of painting.

Finally someone accurately captures the ethical complexities of both endings. The very fact that we still lie to ourselves about picking a “correct” ending is the genius of this story. I hope more players enjoy your analysis as much as I did.

This will be one of those games that I will click a video essay of every single time. There is something so magical in the fact that the community is so divided on the endings but so together in the fact that it's one of the best games ever

I want to correct you on Renoir's stance of Canvas inhabitant realness. Renoir apologizes to painted verso, acknowledges Lune and Sciel as speaking truth, and acknowledges their friendship with Maelle as real. Even after defeat, he tells Maelle to seek strength in the bonds with her friends in the Canvas.
Renoir believes that everyone in the painting is real. And he fights to destroy it anyway, for the sake of his family. He is fully aware of the horrific nature of his actions, and does not hide from it.

This ending is so divisive because people are fixed on the idea of "good ending" and a "bad ending". There is no good ending to trauma and tragedy, there is only pain. I pray for everybody who reads this comment to never truly grasp what this story is about

The thing that still stands out to me the most is that the canvas they are in, is Verso’s. It very much is paralleled with Painted Verso’s ending, he lost autonomy the moment they stepped into the canvas and again when he was painted. It’s his main identity, he lost his identity when he was forced to paint rather than persue music. His whole life his family has made his decisions for him, and in death they would rather take his final decision, to rest, and paint over that. The only one that selfishly wants to let him make that choice is Renoir. Clea isn’t innocent in that, she chooses to escape the painting altogether so she doesn’t have to make that choice. Maelle chooses to implant herself in Aline’s position and again takes his autonomy away from him. To me, Maelle isn’t the Main Character nor does her story paint it that way. To me, Verso is the unfortunate Main Character of the game that suffers more than anyone.

As an artist with severe chronic depression, i really liked your analogy at the end. I often feel like I'm losing my talent, when i  go weeks or even months without creating any art due to my severe struggle with my mental health. I often find myself frustrated that drawing or painting certain things doesn't come as easy to me as it use to. clair obscure really was an escape for me, and as much as it inspired me it was also a bit of an unhealthy distraction.  I really didn't want it to end. I do not feel full but i do feel ready to paint again. Il never forget how to draw, even if i don't practice for a long time i can always come back.  I cant lose that ability, it will always be with me. So sincerely, thankyou. I know that wasn't exactly your message but i really needed to hear that today.

I also noticed that anytime we see the real Clea she is barefoot just like Luna so I figure she is her proxy.

Both Maelle and Verso are seeking escape. Maelle feels guilt and worthlessness in the real world, whilst Verso feels the same in the painted one. Maelle seeks relief through absorbing herself in the painting, while Verso seeks relief through death.
In addition, neither have a full understanding of what destroying the canvas would entail for them. The difference comes from this; Maelle is scared that she won't be able to live a fullfilled life outside the canvas, as where Verso thinks that he can only find relief through his own non-existance. I think the game does a good job showing us that neither of these positions are entirely true, and yet they both influence the characters' actions in the end.
Such a beautiful dichotomy, and really says a lot about how similar the two really are.

This game really made me think a lot of, surprisingly, Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin. Robin has to know deep down that, at some point, he has to leave the 100 Acre Wood and his friends behind, but he keeps visiting and tarrying with them. It always gave the stories a mysterious, melancholic undercurrent about the power and joy of imagination as well as the pain of transience, that nothing lasts, that you can’t stay somewhere forever, that you will change into something unknown.

The way the game made you FEEL the weight of the choice you made was so real. I sided with Verso because I thought he was right, but as a player, I felt the sensation of having to let go what I wanted in favor of what I thought was "needed." And you have to sit through the ramifications of that. I was hollow and filled all at the same time. Never played a game that made me feel that before. Amazing.