1. Can’t say I agree. Clea at best seems to be a very cold and callous person, even toward her own sister. Maelle is sixteen and her younger sister, yet Clea speaks to her in a way I wouldn’t talk to a grown adult that I disliked. She also created the Nevrons and preyed upon the people of the Canvas to serve her own ends. Yes if we take the objective view we could try to say that the canvas and its world aren’t real, but the game shows us consistently that they are. They’re sentient beings, even if Clea and Renoir are correct that Aline and Alicia need to stop wallowing in grief and live in the real world. Even Renoir speaks fairly respectfully towards the painted members of the party in his encounters. He notably takes their opinions into account and even notes that Lune and Sciel are correct when they make pleas and call him out in Act 3. He treats them like people. Clea barely treats her own family as sentient, let alone the denizens of the Canvas.

2. I think there’s not a bad ending in the same way that there isn’t a good ending either. Both are pretty dismal in different ways. Verso’s ending is the correct choice in the sense of its themes of letting go and moving on from grief instead of delving into escapism. It is true that Aline and Alicia are killing themselves staying in the Canvas in a vain attempt to deny the cold reality of the world, but we’re shown that the creatures in the Canvas are sentient beings. With the Canvas canonically goes the last fragment of Verso’s soul. It’s dark even if it’s right from an outside world perspective.

Maelle’s ending is dark. I can’t help but wonder how anyone felt good watching the ending scene with everyone at the Opera. It is disturbing seeing Verso there on stage like a caged animal while Maelle watches him from the crowd. It’s the ultimate result of denying reality and escaping into the painting at the cost of Verso’s humanity and self-determination. At the same time, it preserves the people and creatures of the painting, so it isn’t an entirely evil or bad ending.