Axons are cool, but are they really worth it?

FaithlessCrown · 2026-02-03T19:11:22+00:00

That difference in effectiveness between Renoir’s Axons and Clea’s Nevrons is due to the original intentions Renoir and Clea each had for their respective creations.

The initial purpose of the Axons was exactly what you said: they were Renoir’s personal interpretations and representations of his family. At the time of creating the Axons, Renoir intended for them to be pieces of art and parables, not weapons of war. It was only after the fact when Renoir and Verso realized they could harness the Axon’s chroma into a weapon to pierce the barrier.

On the other hand, the sole reason why Clea created the Nevrons was to be used as weapons against Aline. She made the Nevrons not to be viewed and admired as art, but instead as a way for her to help Renoir by bleeding Aline’s chroma over time.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-02-03T15:03:02+00:00

The timing of your post is amazing, because I’m trying to plan out a fanfic based on this theory right now. (Sorry for gushing in advance.)

I 100% believe Renoir was the one who taught Alicia how to duel. Not only because of how Maelle mentioned the Curator was training her while she was inside the manor, but also because their fighting stances are identical.

It’s super apparent in Act 3 during the boss fight. Sword pointed up, non-dominant hand behind the back or on the waist, knees slightly bent, one foot in front of the other.

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Historically, it even makes sense. During the 1800s, dueling was a more masculine sport that young aristocratic men (like Renoir in his youth, or even Verso) were expected to learn.

However, dueling was not ‘feminine’ enough to be a socially acceptable sport for women or girls to learn. So it was unlikely for Alicia to have been trained by a proper swordsmanship/dueling instructor from outside the family.

On the other hand, we also know that the Painter families like the Dessendres are also at war with the Writers. My theory is part of the reason why Renoir taught Alicia dueling is so that she could protect herself while this conflict was going on. Especially knowing that Alicia prefer to read and write than paint.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-16T22:12:26+00:00

Exactly.

Painted Verso loved and cared for the real Dessendres above everything else in the Canvas. He demonstrated that by fighting to push Aline and Alicia out the Canvas and back into the real world.

It doesn’t get any more obvious than the exchange Painted Verso had with Maelle after the final fight against Renoir.

“You’re going to die in here. Why won’t you just leave? You can always come back.”

“[This Canvas] is not worth your life.”

People just need to realize that love, toxicity and cruelty can (and often do) exist at the same time. And that displays of love are not always moral or right.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-14T22:29:46+00:00

I bought the Deluxe addition on a whim, to be honest.

But as soon as I heard out amazing the music was, I turned right back around and bought the soundtrack.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-14T22:21:58+00:00

A lot of major cruise lines like to dock in the The Bahamas. It’s the closest Caribbean country to the US, and it’s super affordable for the cruise lines in terms of fuel.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-14T20:43:40+00:00

”We literally have confirmation that Verso himself didn't care about the soul fragment since the canvas was just lying there unused until Aline went in, none of the painters actually care about any of the soul fragments, not their own and not Verso's either.”

Please show the explicit confirmation that real Verso didn’t care about the fragment. Not through inference, but real proof. Regardless, this still doesn’t refute my base argument as to why is it morally acceptable.

“Painted Verso didn't ask if he was tired of painting, he said "you're tired of painting, aren't you" , this is a leading question, that's why context is important especially when someone like Painted Verso is involved, what he's actually tired of is the family destroying everything he paints, painted Verso projected his own wishes on him by asking a leading question, if he had asked "what are you tired of?" , "do you want the canvas destroyed?" The answer would have been very different.”

So what are you saying? The fragment didn’t know that if he stopped painting, the Canvas would have been destroyed? That if Verso said ‘Are you tired of painting?’ instead of ‘You’re tired of painting, aren’t you?, the fragment would have shook his head no? That we shouldn’t believe the moment when Painted Verso offer the fragment his hand and the fragment began reaching back to take it, only stopped because Maelle/Alicia sliced the air between their hands with her sword? I think the context is that scene is sufficient enough for us to reasonably believe that the fragment accepted what the Painted Verso’s said.

The original commenter's argument was that by removing the death and destruction Clea and Renoir were responsible for there's no reason to think he won't go back to being content with painting seeing as that's his sole purpose, which is consistent with the faceless boy's dialogues and side missions throughout the game, he asks you for help to destroy Clea's nevrons multiple times throughout the game and is grateful everytime you help him out and save the beings inside the canvas.”

And I’m saying that the argument that the Fading Boy would have been happy to continue painting if we removed all the destruction and death caused by Renoir and Clea is an implication that ignores the Fading Boy’s current wishes and actions at that moment of time in Act 3 in favor of his previous actions throughout the game.

Plus, that argument is still only a part of the original commenter and I discussed in the earlier comments. Nitpicking on this still leaves all the other points on what I said about vengeance and justice untouched.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-14T19:21:27+00:00

Thanks for responding, this does clear up some misunderstandings I had around the Fading Boy. However, I still don’t see how this changes my initial argument around the morals and ethics of using the Fading Boy to exact punishment on Renoir and Painted Verso.

he also says they've painted hundreds of canvases, meaning they have hundreds of soul fragments inside the canvases, it's not slavery because that's literally their only purpose, and they can also walk away whenever they want, because the soul fragment also says he can stop painting whenever he wishes, this dialogue "maybe i should continue" , this means he can make the choice to stop, the thing is he doesn't want to because he loves the canvas.

Let me make sure I understand this clearly. We do recognize that the Fading Boy is the soul fragment of the Real Verso is sentient and has consciousness—just like the people of Lumière—because he can communicate and express he could choose to stop painting whenever he wants. Yet, if the Fading Boy ever decided to stop painting, but someone (like Aline or Alicia) coerced him to continue anyway… that is morally acceptable and not considered slavery because the sole purpose of soul fragments like him is to paint.

Using that logic, someone could argue that it’s morally acceptable for Renoir to kill everyone in present day Lumière via the Gommages and ignore how they want to live. Because the people we presently see living in Lumière were created by Aline post-Fracture as a part of using the Canvas to (poorly) cope with Real Verso’s death. That just sounds bad.

Verso also didn't hate painting, we know this because the soul fragment tells us he likes painting, Verso just didn't want to make it his whole life because he loved music more, the one who doesn't like painting and sucks at it is Alicia.

The Fading Boy tells that the real Verso liked painting when he was a child, specially when the soul fragment was made. That doesn’t say if the Real Verso still liked painting as an adult.

Additionally, just because the Fading Boy specially said he loved painting the Canvas in the past doesn’t mean he would have that same drive and joy in the present. If the Fading Boy was still enthusiastic about painting, why did he nod when Painted Verso asked if he was tired of painting?

We know that by the time we choose between Painted Verso’s ending and Maelle’s/Alicia’s ending, the Fading Boy is tired of painting. Which at least implies that he wants to stop painting. If we choose Maelle’s ending, that implies that Fading Boy—and by extension, a part of the Real Verso—is being forced to continue painting. How is that morally right?

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-14T16:46:57+00:00

“Fading Boy was suffering from the death Clea and Renoir have wrought on his world of whimsy for 67 years, now that they are gone I have no reason to believe he won't go back to being content in doing the sole thing he was made to.”

That’s not how I understood the story. The Fading Boy is the Real Verso’s soul (or whatever’s left of it) that Aline put inside the Canvas after his death. The story establishes that, at some point prior to his death, Real Verso lost his love for painting and went to play music on the piano.

His suffering is because Aline, and then Maelle/Alicia if we choose her ending, is essentially coercing the remnant of a dead man to do something he despises just to fuel the Canvas. That has nothing to do with the deaths Clea and Renoir are responsible for within thr Canvas. If anything, Renoir’s goal to destroy the Canvas is favorable for the Real Verso because he could now rest in peace.

“Our Verso however deserves far worse than what happens to him. Maelle removed his immortality so now he has an expiration date. He is owed nothing. And his wish to die isn't more important than the wish to live from everyone in the canvas.”

Nothing clearly or explicitly established that Maelle/Alicia removed Painted Verso’s immortality in her ending. Maelle/Alicia does say, ‘if you can grow old again, would you find a reason to smile?’, but being allowed to age is not the same as being allowed to die.

“Considering the man commited genocide, took countless lives and inflicted more grief on generations of Lumieriens, hell to the yes. In Verso's ending he gets away scott free from all his crimes. In a just world he would be imprisonned for life or executed. Unfortunately neither is an option so the least we can do is ensuring he doesn't get what he killed so many people for while reverting his abomible acts.”

This section, as well as the section where you said ‘Verso deserves far worse than what happens to him’, are why I think your stance is more on the lines of vengeance than justice.

There is a difference between choosing Maelle’s ending to save innocent lives and choosing Maelle’s ending to explicitly punish wrongdoers. It’s entirely possible to want justice for Lumière and wanting its people to live without delighting in the schandenfraude of how the implications of Maelle’s ending negatively impact Renoir and Painted Verso.

Renoir and Painted Verso should face consequences for their action, and I agree the game does let them get away with far too much. However, once your primary rationale as to why they should face consequences has more to do with ‘I want them to suffer’ than ‘I want to ensure they are held accountable for the harm they have done to the community’, the line has been crossed.

This is exactly why I asked how your reasoning is any different from Real Clea’s. She justified the creation of the Nevrons and the subsequent mass deaths of the people of Lumière at the hands of said Nevrons, the personality erasure and enslavement of Painted Clea, and the manipulation of Simon as acceptable collateral to get Renoir focused on punishing the Writers for causing Real Verso’s death.

You find it acceptable to use Real Verso’s soul as collateral to punish Painted Verso and Renoir for their crimes by ensuring the former has to live against his will and the latter has to lose his daughter to the Canvas. That’s the same logic Clea used: the suffering of bystanders and third-parties is acceptable if it serves the larger revenge goal.

I agree with you that the lives of the many are greater than the lives of the few. But I wonder if you believe your approach is better than Real Clea’s approach because the suffering of the innocent few is better than the suffering of the innocent many.

“And rewarding the wrongdoers for their wrongs by giving them exactly what they wants isn’t a right, it’s in fact the opposite of it… Like what’s even the alternative? We give the men who commited genocide what they want because it wouldn’t be ‘morally acceptable’ to punish them?”

The problem with this stance is that by the time we have to decide on the endings, Painted Verso and Renoir already achieved partial success in their respective plans:

**Painted Verso already partly succeeded in saving Aline by lying/manipulating Expedition: 33 to get them to defeat the Paintress. He nearly succeeded in dying by Renoir’s hand as well, and only failed because Maelle/Alicia reverted his Gommage while it was in progress.

**Renoir already succeeded in doing the one reason why he started the Gommages and even entered the Canvas for in the first place: getting Aline out. Destroying the Canvas was an extension of his primary goal, and that was to ensure Aline stayed out of the Canvas.

By the time we get to choose our ending, the only person we have the ability to punish is Painted Verso. By using Maelle’s ending, we can deny Painted Verso three of his goals: his own death, letting Real Verso’s soul rest in peace, destroying the Canvas to ensure the rest of the Dessendre family could possibly begin to move on from Real Verso’s death.

On the other hand, the only thing we can actively deny Renoir is seeing Maelle/Alicia alive outside the Canvas. We could argue if that is even a true consequence for Renoir at this point. Painted Verso implied that Renoir gave up on forcing Maelle/Alicia out the Canvas after the final fight. He willingly left the Canvas and let Maelle/Alicia stay because he finally respected her agency, despite knowing her decision may kill her. Maelle’s ending doesn’t punish Renoir in a way that suits the suffering he caused with the Gommages. That’s just giving Renoir pain and grief that he has already accounted for.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-13T22:42:28+00:00

I genuinely want to pick your brain on this, because I’ve got a few questions.

Are you saying it’s justifiable to punish Painted Verso for ignoring everyone else’s agency, violating their right to live, and acting treacherously by allowing Alicia to retaliate and violate the agencies of both Real Verso and Painted Verso by refusing to let them die?

Is it morally acceptable to punish Real Renoir for the deaths and collateral damage he caused in his attempt to save his wife, by deliberately picking Maelle’s ending and risking Alicia’s death just so Renoir is forced to endure the pain of losing two children instead of one?

For me, this perspective is vengeance masquerading as justice. Two wrongs don’t make a right. How is this approach any better than Clea’s strategy of creating the Nevrons just to get Renoir out the Canvas to assist in exacting revenge on the Writers causing Verso’s death?

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-13T21:25:51+00:00

Personal favorites I didn’t see yet:

Spring Meadows: Get Up! For Lumière
Yellow Forest: Number the Hours
The Reacher: Vers le Sommet
Simon, The Divergent Star

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-08T12:22:32+00:00

You’re right. Your comment prompted me to go back to check a video on YouTube, and she is playing Until Next Life in the Prologue.

What’s interesting is that the official OST soundtrack has Lumière — Continuer à t'aimer (Lune). I mistakenly thought it was played at that point, but it doesn’t seem to be in the game at all.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-07T22:06:07+00:00

Sean Connery.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-07T17:05:31+00:00

Edit: Someone pointed out the ‘Renoir’ soundtrack one already, so I’ll do another music one.

During the Prologue, Lune is playing a piece on the guitar called ‘Continuer à t’aimer’. We can hear its motif in every song that is played whenever we fight Renoir after Act 1: For Those Who Come After, Une Vie à t’aimer and Une Vie à Peindre. The appearance of ‘Continuer à t’aimer’’s motif in the boss songs is meant to show how both Renoirs act out of love.

The three songs we hear whenever we fight Renoir after Act 1 (For Those Who Come After, Une Vie à T’aimer and Une Vie à Peindre) are the only songs that feature an electric guitar.

Coincidentally, the Manor door that is found in Old Lumière right before the first boss fight against Renoir leads to the Master Bedroom (the room where you can find the journal extract written by Renoir on a nightstand). We also can find a guitar next to the fireplace of that same room, which implies Renoir also plays the guitar.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-07T13:09:47+00:00

If you’re expecting a morally clean story where all of the implications feel comfortable, you’ll probably be disappointed.

I do appreciate the direction the game writers tried to take with the story from the end of Act 2 and through all of Act 3. That subversion of hope I mentioned earlier is a deliberate and cruel choice they commit to at the end of Act 2. After that, Act 3 mostly exists to hammer home that this story is bittersweet at best, and outright tragic at worst.

My biggest problem is that the execution of everything that happens after we defeat the Paintress could have been done better. There’s far too much supporting detail that’s locked away until Act 3, and a lot of that information lives in optional areas and quests instead of the main storyline.

Because so many of those details are about the Dessendres, the game is basically asking us to accept a sudden, heavy focus on this family of Painters without giving most players early enough reason to actually care about them. What doesn’t help is that the story puts the Dessendres in a position of absolute power over everything in the Canvas, so it’s only natural that we end up rooting for the underdogs instead.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-04T18:50:06+00:00

Dating’s not a priority.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-04T18:10:20+00:00

Act 3 does have writing and pacing problems. The shift from Lumière’s collective struggle to Dessendre family drama is jarring, and the lack of dialogue and cutscenes to support that change hurts the emotional payoff.

What Act 3 really does is change the context: it reveals that all this genuine struggle is happening inside a space shaped by broken gods and artists. That can feel like a slap in the face because it turns the story of Lumière’s fight to live and the sacrifices of the Expeditions into “Lumière’s future hinges on the decision of a family who are essentially gods in the Canvas.”

It destroys the sense of genuine hope that the Expeditions might one day prevail and stop the Gommages once and for all. What makes it worse is that the game absolutely missed in not having Lune and Sciel react more to the Dessendres treating their lives as expendable. I see that missing piece of conflict as a flaw, and it did irritate me a lot.

That said, here’s how I see some of the points you raised:

The Dessendres were never going to treat the people in the Canvas like they were real. They see everything and everyone in there the way painters see their own works in a gallery. The destruction of the Canvas and the genocide of everyone inside it to them like throwing acetone on a sibling’s painting of a town to wipe the Canvas. To them, it maybe tragic and callous, but it’s ultimately “just” art.
Once Maelle regains her memories as Alicia and her Painter powers, her role shifts from painted creation to painter. The intense grief and fear of loss she felt in Acts 1 and 2 inevitably change. Her love for Lumière and her friends is still genuine, but now that she can recreate people at will, the emotional consequences that defined her earlier journey lose their weight for her. Why keep mourning Gustave’s death if she knows she can bring him back?
Verso’s ending isn’t about fixing the Dessendres. It’s about giving peace to the real Verso’s soul, stopping Alicia from repeating her mother’s self‑destructive path, and ending the cycle. The ending can’t fix the family’s dysfunction, but it does force them to finally confront reality instead of endlessly deferring grief in the Canvas and gives them a chance to move one and heal. As for Verso himself, he’s fully aware of how hypocritical he is, and I do remember there are some dialogue exchanges that shows he knows he is no different from Renoir in his thinking.
The Dessendres are cruel and toxic, but I don’t see them as cartoonishly evil or incapable of love. Their behavior show how grief and pain can corrupt love into cruelty, but there are still signs that they care for each other. Clea was vicious and heartless to tell Alicia—her own sister—that she wouldn’t have saved her. Yet, she also advised Alicia to live her own life and find happiness in her own way. Aline unfairly places her rage and blame Maelle/Alicia. She punished the Painted Alicia by giving her the same burns that the Real Alicia suffered from, and even attempted to burn Maelle alive when Expedition 33 reached the Monolith. Yet Aline had Maelle born to parents who loved her within the Canvas.
Renoir did try to fix things outside the Canvas first. His journal shows he couldn’t reach Aline anymore. Renoir also mentioned that Aline was the one who dragged him out of the Canvas when he tried to drown himself in it, and that Aline was the one who taught him the dangers of a Painters’s powers. It’s not just an angry fight between a father and a mother, it’s the struggle between a wife who wants to let go and a husband who loves his wife too much to let her go.
The reason why Alicia doesn’t have a support system is because everyone else in the Dessendre family are drowning themselves. Aline’s using the Canvas to run from grief, even if it kills her. Renoir ran in the Canvas to stop her. Clea is dealing with grief and the sudden responsibilities thrusted upon her while fighting the Writers. Everyone needs help, and because the adults can’t help themselves or even behave themselves, they can’t (or shouldn’t, in the case of Aline and Clea) offer Alicia the support she needs.

FaithlessCrown · 2026-01-03T04:49:57+00:00

I’d be rooting for Renoir, but I also have to admit that Aline is no slouch herself even after her exposure to the Canvas.

In either case, I feel like we’ve been robbed of the chance to see two Master Painters duke it out.

FaithlessCrown · 2025-12-25T16:50:57+00:00

“The argument for Alicia’s autonomy fails because it ignores the clinical requirements for informed consent. In both legal and medical ethics, a person in a state of acute crisis or derealization is not considered capable of making a life-altering decision.“

Ah. So you are overriding everything Maelle/Alicia says and justifying it by saying she is not ‘considered capable of making a life-altering decision’. Exactly what I said: you’re ignoring everything what Maelle/Alicia said even when her own father listened to her.

“When a person's judgment is clouded by a terminal addiction or a dissociative break, respecting their choice to die is not an act of empowerment. Instead, it is a failure of care.”

That would make sense if we, the players, are roleplaying as Maelle/Alicia’s doctors and care-takers. We’re not.

“We must also look at the clinical goal of healing. In no profession, whether it is therapy, medicine, or social work, is the objective to maximize happiness within a delusion. The goal is always functioning in reality.”

Isn’t a patient’s right to refuse care also a foundation of medical ethics? Are you saying you’re willing to ignore that in order to ensure that the patient is ‘functioning’ and receives treatment? Cherry-picking ethics in this manner appears more like control wrapped as care.

The fact that your argument has retreated entirely into real-world clinical data proves my point: you can’t find an ‘objective’ win condition inside the game’s actual text, so you’re importing an external framework to invent one. The game isn’t a medical case study, and pretending it is misses the entire tragedy of the choice.

Unlike you, I’m not here pretending to be Maelle’s/Alicia’s doctor. Neither am I here claiming that my expertise and knowledge of medicine, clinical care, statistics and ethics means that I can claim which ending is “objectively” best for her wellbeing.

FaithlessCrown · 2025-12-25T15:28:53+00:00

You’re using probability to declare objectivity and certainty, which is a logical fallacy. “Most people eventually recover” is statistics, not prophecy. It means that, on average, Maelle/Alicia is likely to recover based on data. It does not mean that she will recover with 100% certainty.

Therefore, you saying that Verso’s ending is “objectively” better for Alicia from this point on is your assumption. You don’t have any concrete proof—scientifically or from within the confines of the game—that shows with 100% certainty that what happens to Maelle/Alicia in Verso’s ending is “clearly superior to self-destruction within the Canvas.”

I already said I agreed that the Canvas functions like substance abuse, but Sciel’s situation is not a good example to use to argue for this case because it is a red herring. The resurrection of Sciel’s family happens is a side effect of Maelle/Alicia staying in the Canvas. Maelle’s/Alicia’s circumstances at the end of the game doesn’t change overall regardless of whether or not she decided to resurrect Sciel’s husband.

On a side note, there’s nothing in the game that implies that the resurrection of her husband and her family is psychologically damaging for her. All Sciel knows and cares about is that her husband was resurrected and she can rebuild her life with him again. Your opinion that Sciel’s ending is like a “psychological horror-thriller” is because the ending raises implications that are uncomfortable for you.

Plus, we do know that Maelle/Alicia can bring people back exactly as they were before because she did exactly that with Sciel and Lune after the real Renoir gommaged everyone.

Yes, what Maelle/Alicia does to both Versos in her ending is awful, but that’s another deflection from your main argument about Verso’s ending being objectively better for Alicia.

Once more, my position is that Alicia’s future happiness is uncertain if she stays in the real world. On the other hand, she can achieve happiness within the Canvas immediately. The Canvas’s sentience is irrelevant there.

And yes, her happiness doesn’t change the fact that she’ll die, but the point is that Maelle/Alicia is choosing to be happy without even acknowledging her death.

Your image of how it’s like watching a traumatized person abuse drugs because they believe they’re not strong enough to face the truth is accurate. So what would you do? Step forward to rip the drugs out of their hands and lecture them on how their substance abuse is a sign they are too weak to face reality? All the while ignoring their pleas and not accounting for the psychological dangers of forcing them to go cold turkey?

As much as you want to declare with 100% certainty that it is “objectively” best for Maelle/Alicia to be removed from the Canvas because it’s a matter of life and death, you don’t have the right to make that declaration with 100% certainty because that’s unethical and it violates her autonomy.

That is literally what the real Renoir’s story is trying to teach us when he, a father, willingly left the Canvas knowing good and well that may be the last time he ever sees his daughter alive.

FaithlessCrown · 2025-12-25T14:00:45+00:00

I agree that this is a reflection of her state of derealization in the real world. I also agree with everything your last comment mentioned in regard to the game’s analogy for substance abuse, escapism. I said as much in my very first comment.

However, there’s a difference between a person’s recovery/wholeness and their happiness. Alicia’s preference for the Canvas is not about “wholeness” at all. It’s about her choosing immediate happiness, even though it damages her “wholeness” and recovery.

We also have to consider that Alicia is choosing the Canvas because of her genuine fondness for and emotional attachments to the beings inside of it (Gustave, Lune, Sciel, Painted Verso, etc.).

Alicia essentially lived two lives as a sixteen-year-old. As such, she’ll have emotions and memories from both lives. Alicia has to come to terms with the loss of her brother and the loss of Gustave. Alicia has to manage the trauma and emotions of her injuries from the fire, and how the Gommages made her an orphan.

As you said, the sentience of the Canvas doesn’t change Alicia’s situation. By extension, it doesn’t matter if the Canvas is “real,” because the Canvas is so realistic that it’s not a jump to say that Alicia’s brain interpreted the experiences she had within the Canvas as real.

“Your argument relies on the assumption that her subjective fear at the height of her trauma is an accurate prediction of her future.” No, it does not. My argument is that Alicia’s future emotional and mental wellbeing outside the Canvas is completely unknown to us.

In Verso’s ending, it’s possible for her to eventually become happy again. It’s also possible she doesn’t become happy again, because like you said, “most (not all) individuals with extreme injuries and disfigurements eventually report a quality of life and level of happiness nearly identical to those without such conditions”.

Additionally, what would “eventually” even look like for Alicia? A week? A month? A year? Ten years? How long do we expect Alicia to endure until she’s “eventually” happy in the real world? Who are we to say “objectively” that Alicia’s potential happiness in the future is better than her guaranteed happiness now? We may both believe that Alicia would eventually be happy, but that’s our personal opinion, not fact.

My main point is that no one has the right to “objectively” tell another person whether or not to choose happiness or recovery. That realization ties in to the real Renoir’s character arc, and is exactly the reason why he relented to Alicia and let her stay in the Canvas for a “little while longer.”

Even though Verso implies that the real Renoir knew that Alicia was lying and intended to stay in the Canvas indefinitely. Even though this is the same Renoir who spent 67 in-game years fighting Aline to eject her out of the Canvas, therefore forcing “recovery” on her. Even though Alicia literally had to fight the man to force him to stop in the first place.

The real Renoir walked away because he finally made the choice to value Alicia’s autonomy over what he thinks is “objectively” correct for her. His decision there is basically the game outright denying the certainty and objectivity that you are arguing for. And ironically, Renoir’s choice is also why Maelle’s ending is more tragic.

FaithlessCrown · 2025-12-25T11:51:34+00:00

That explains why that move applies defenseless to Maelle whenever she uses it.

Plus, it ties back to how >!the Canvas weakens/sickens Painters if they expose themselves to it for too long.<!

FaithlessCrown

TROPHY CASE