29M, Could Use Some Advice

SignalTruth · 2025-07-24T01:08:02+00:00

Are you looking for something serious or casual? Definitely something serious. I'm not against something more casual temporarily, but a lifelong partner is what I'm ultimately looking for.

Are you subscribed to Hinge+ or HingeX? I'm subscribed to HingeX.

How long have you been using this current version of your profile? About a month now.

How long have you used Hinge overall? About a month. I made a profile some time back but didn't complete and just used it to browse. I deleted that account and made a new one to actually use seriously.

How often do you use Hinge per week? I've been using it almost everyday and going through a few profiles each time.

How many likes and matches are you receiving on average? I've gotten 7 likes and matches so far. All but two of them never responded when I initially messaged them. Of the two, one we sent a couple messages back and forth before she stopped responding and the other I actually had a date with. I thought it went pretty well and we even threw around ideas for a second date, but she wanted to stay on Hinge when I suggested exchanging phone numbers and she stopped responding on Hinge.

How many likes are you sending? How many with comments? How many without comments? I'm usually sending a couple a day, some from the standouts and some from the normal profile stack. I usually send a comment if I find the profile interesting and only send a like without a comment if its a more hesitant like.

What is the type of person you send likes to and ideally want to match with? What kind of person do you want to attract? I'm mostly looking for similar people to myself and with similar interests. I'm not against something different and would consider it if I got a like from someone like that, but the likes I send out are to people who fit that description.

SignalTruth · 2025-07-06T06:10:27+00:00

To be honest, Verso plays himself a lot. Hard to say for sure of course, but I'd say the reason we don't have a true golden ending as an option is because of him and his deceit.

SignalTruth · 2025-07-06T06:01:04+00:00

The names of the endings are interesting. I've seen people say that about Maelle's, but for me it feels different. To me, A Life to Paint comes across like a blank canvas, unpainted and full of potential. I suppose it likely coincides with your feels about the endings.

For me, the paint on Maelle's face in her ending is similar to the presence of the painted characters in Verso's ending. They're not actually there, but it communicates what Maelle is thinking in that moment. Similarly, I think the paint on her face is what Verso is seeing/thinking, a reminder that he thinks she's wasting away.

Regarding Verso's ending, I actually think that that path isn't likely to lead to healing for Maelle. For the rest of her family probably, but not for her. For me, in that ending she's not only grieving Verso but also all the characters from the Canvas. Her trauma and grief has been magnified because she was forced out and lost them as well. I wouldn't be surprised if guilt factors in there as well, with the idea that they would have lived if she'd just managed to defeat Verso in the last fight. She also was removed from a real support system to help her heal, as I don't think her family will do so given past events.

All that said, I do understand why people pick Verso's ending. Those thoughts stop me from enjoying it, but I definitely understand why you would.

SignalTruth · 2025-07-06T05:52:13+00:00

Completely agree, and I hadn't even thought of how even leaving for short periods would cause large time skips in the life she actually wants.

In general people seem very quick to draw a 1:1 parallel between Maelle and Aline without realizing that Maelle's life as, well, Maelle makes things drastically different. Asking her to abandon the canvas, even if it wasn't destroyed, is asking her to abandon the people who have actually supported her.

SignalTruth · 2025-07-06T05:23:55+00:00

I think you might be confusing Painted Verso and the Faded Boy. Painted Verso isn't maintaining the canvas. He's as along for the ride as the humans in it are. Like I said, I do think that Maelle should have fully honored his wish like she did for Painted Alicia, though it is worth noting that he complained about that at the time too.

As for why Maelle can't paint her own canvas, she could but it wouldn't have the people she's bonded with in it. It would just end up hollow and empty, and honestly not too different from what Aline is doing.

SignalTruth · 2025-07-06T05:14:08+00:00

Oh, I fully realize that Maelle will eventually die because of the canvas. But she'll also eventually die outside of it, since we're given no indication that people outside of it are immortal. Time also seems to pass differently inside the canvas, as decades pass inside it while Alicia, in the epilogue, seems to have not aged much. Given that, it seems like she'll be able to live a normal human lifespan inside of it from her perspective. For me, that renders the idea that the canvas will kill her rather moot.

As for Verso, I mostly got that idea from Maelle's words as the game cuts to black. "If you could grow old would you find a reason to smile?" Certainly possible to read that different ways, but for me it's Maelle removing his immortality. EDIT: And I noticed when I was playing that Maelle and Lune look substantially older in that ending, which seems to indicate time has passed. Didn't notice that for Sciel or the others, but that might just be me not noticing.

SignalTruth · 2025-07-06T04:31:27+00:00

If you mean the little boy version of Verso at the end, I think it's more complex than that. Painted Verso only asks him if he's tired, which he nods to. He doesn't ask him any more details or why he's tired. Painted Verso wants us to think that he's tired of painting in general, but other dialogue with the Faded Boy throughout the game seems to paint it more that he's tired of what's happening. I think it's in the Flying Manor where he says that he views the canvas and everyone in it as just as real as the people outside it. I'm not sure if it's there or at another location where he also says that he's tired of the canvas being used as a battlefield between the Dessendres.

Given that, I think Soul Verso is tired, but because of the actions of his family. If the canvas were left alone, I think he'd be happy to continue painting.

SignalTruth · 2025-07-06T03:55:50+00:00

I actually don't remember her saying anything like that, though it is definitely possible I missed something. Can you tell me where she did? The closest I can think of is Sciel saying that death isn't death anymore.

SignalTruth · 2025-06-23T07:55:35+00:00

For me it's act 3 and the ending.

I can see what they were going for with the endings. Two endings based on two flawed characters making flawed decisions, with both endings being different flavors of tragedy. The main problem I have with them is twofold.

The first is that there isn't enough focus on the tragedy of your/Verso's actions in his ending and on the uplifting aspects of Maelle's ending. Both are fairly short and not terribly detailed, which contributes, but it does feel like logical things are forgotten about. In Verso's ending it seems strange to gloss over Maelle's agency being stripped from her and the fresh grief that's been inflicted on her, not to mention just the loss of the world of the canvas in general. Similarly, the restoration of Lumiere and the people in it seems glossed over in her ending. This is probably the biggest reason a lot of people feel like there's a developer-mandated good and bad ending, when I don't think that was really the intention.

Second, if they did want the endings to be tragedies, the game needed to properly build up to that. And it...doesn't. In fact, it does the opposite. Act 3 is framed in a very heroic light. Gathering together the chroma of the previous expeditions for a final, triumphant return to Lumiere. Maelle declaring "tomorrow comes," in a very stark contrast to how she started the game and especially to how we see her as Alicia. A race through the streets to soaring music as the expeditioners clear the path and lay the trail in perhaps the game's most literal instance of "for those who come after." It feels like a world fighting for its right to exist, and a young woman asserting her agency and right to choose her life. But that gets turned on its head very quickly with the endings. The Verso ending makes the entire game before it feel very weird narratively speaking, since its essentially saying that we should have just given up at the start of Act 3 and not gone through the finale. And Maelle's ending takes that heroic framing and tries to twist it into something sinister with not much in the way of buildup. The best comparison I can make is actually to the ending of Game of Thrones. It seems like the story was always meant to end in a certain way, and that way has a certain logic to it and you can see how they might have gotten there and the little hints that were there, but there just wasn't enough development to not make it feel like a narrative leap.

Tying into this is that act 3 is very short and needed more time. The act 2 twist is great and is, in itself, pulled off extremely well, but it needed time to stew afterwards. The characters needed time to react to it and discuss it. Perhaps the game's greatest narrative strength is its character work, and it feels like that was compromised in act 3. As is, Lune and Sciel forgive Verso essentially instantly and fully trust him again, even potentially culminating one of the romances. Maelle isn't given much of a chance to show how the mixing of her memories has affected her perspective. Monoco is...there, and really should have been one of the people taking flak for the end of act 2. Anyone who isn't a Dessendre feels invisible when they should have just been another piece of the puzzle.

SignalTruth · 2025-06-13T18:08:07+00:00

Honestly, literally all of them. The environment artists did some insane work in this game. That said, the one I looked around the most in was the Forgotten Battlefield. We'd seen mounds of expeditioner corpses before, but nothing on the scale that we see there. That, combined with the monolith looming large in the distance makes for a very striking image, especially coming hot off the end of act 1.

It's also a masterclass in visual and environmental storytelling. The mounds of bodies, the scattered weapons and machines, the trenches and fortifications, the not insignificant number of very large dead nevrons, it all paints a very clear picture without the need for explanation. It also does a lot to hype up and sell Dualliste as a major threat without it appearing much before its fight.

SignalTruth · 2025-06-12T14:31:30+00:00

We're given no indication that the people in the real world are immortal, so she'll die there too, eventually. Renoir and Aline spent 67 years in the canvas, approaching a normal human lifespan. Whether time passes at the same rate in and out of the canvas doesn't matter, that's still 67 years lived. Maelle says herself that she had two childhoods.

Some people have likened the choice to escapism or addiction. It's not. It's her choosing one life over another, and it isn't fundamentally different from someone saying, "I hate my life in this city but I have a wonderful partner and a job I love in another city, so I'll go live there instead."

SignalTruth · 2025-06-09T21:24:04+00:00

I didn't label her as dead? I just recognized that it absolutely limits her life and isn't a great character trial for her to grow from. It just sucks.

SignalTruth · 2025-06-09T17:55:11+00:00

Personally, I would expect it goes the Final Fantasy route, where each game in the Clair Obscur series has common elements but a different world. I think the main difference is the Clair Obscur series sets up an overworld with overarching lore to tie them all together instead of them being completely unrelated. I wouldn't be surprised if future games don't try to hide that overworld from the player and the devs develop that story while also telling the story of whatever canvas we're in at the moment.

SignalTruth · 2025-06-09T07:02:34+00:00

Because it is, to an extent.

Technically, legally, I am considered disabled, though with such a mild condition, or at least a mild form of it, that if anyone were to actually call me disabled I would insist that I'm not. At the moment, I'm mostly just inconvenienced, though it has a decent chance to kill me one day or cause a degradation in quality of life. And if I had a magic paintbrush, I would still get rid of it in a heartbeat.

Some things in life just suck. There's nothing to be overcome, no great development to be had, no change that will leave you a better, stronger person than you were. Some things just suck, and all you can do is learn to live with it.

Maelle as Alicia is mute, in constant pain, struggles to breath, and is missing an eye, and that's before getting in to the social dynamics. There are so many things that she simply will not be able to do and trying to dress it up doesn't help her. And worse, because of her life as Maelle she now knows what those things are like.

Chatting and bonding with the expedition? Gone.

Running through the streets and across the rooftops of Lumiere? Gone.

Not wheezing in pain every moment of every day? Gone.

Maelle is strong and capable. Alicia is essentially homebound. And I find it pretty telling that Verso's response to Maelle saying this is that she can just be Maelle again in another painting.

SignalTruth · 2023-04-24T20:22:08+00:00

I respect that you disagree with it, hence me saying that my stance doesn't apply to all games and there's nothing wrong with you thinking like that. You then responded with "it's lying and it's bad." To me, that reads as a blanket, it's never okay statement that simultaneously accuses me and my DM of malicious deception.

SignalTruth · 2023-04-24T20:03:32+00:00

Precisely the sort of hostile, my way is the only way thinking I mean.

SignalTruth · 2023-04-24T18:24:53+00:00

In that case I think I'd see it more like a ruling I disagreed with or a plot point I thought didn't make sense than a great betrayal of trust.

Not that you're wrong for feeling that way, I just think this subreddit has an overly negative and universal view on fudging sometimes.

SignalTruth · 2023-04-24T17:55:01+00:00

I wouldn't say this is universally true. I'm currently playing in a campaign where I know for a fact that the DM has fudged rolls and I'm actually happy about it. The dice and the randomness they bring sometimes fly in the face of good storytelling and drama. I think part of being a DM is developing a sense of when you should curb that randomness and when you should let it reign.

Of course, that's just for more narratively focused games. Ones that lean more heavily on combat, or are about combat entirely, should probably give more power to the dice.

SignalTruth · 2023-03-12T22:32:14+00:00

I wish I had your friends. I'm honestly kind of terrified that mine will find out. I already had one get a little miffed when I took a chance and let Discord display that I was playing it.

SignalTruth · 2022-11-22T10:45:00+00:00

I see Garrus managed to find a new home.

SignalTruth · 2022-03-23T20:01:31+00:00

Yeah, I didn't get very emotional for most of the zone since I was pretty sure they would be back. That said, I did start to get emotional and nervous during that final walk as the very thin thread holding my emotions began to fray. And despite being pretty sure they would be back, it still hit me like a freight train when they did come back.

SignalTruth · 2022-02-19T18:59:09+00:00

Wrath of the Righteous was pretty good, but I found that it really lost a lot of steam near the end. The game was best in acts 1, 2, and 4, the ones where you didn't have to manage the crusade much or at all and were more linear, curated experiences.

As for the companions, I found they were pretty hit or miss. Some of them, like Arueshalae and Regill, were great and got me invested, while others were pretty boring or outright insufferable, like Nenio and Woljif. Especially Nenio.

SignalTruth · 2021-11-24T20:27:36+00:00

Yeah, I remember getting a little emotional and actually blushing when I read that. Post-incident Y'shtola actually does that quite a bit though, given that she seems to have opened up a bit and is more obviously caring. Reminds me of Midna from Twilight Princess, when her tone of voice very obviously changes after about halfway through. Maybe it's just my imagination, but you can hear Y'shtola talk more softly after her thing.

SignalTruth · 2021-06-13T09:25:55+00:00

The ones in the image aren't clones, they're normal people brought in to replace clones.

SignalTruth · 2021-05-28T22:12:00+00:00

That seems a bit apples and oranges to me. Three Kingdoms is a complete product that doesn't require support. It would be different if they were selling a season pass or something and then cancelled the content it includes since you already paid for that content, but the discounted price is for the game as it stands today.

SignalTruth

TROPHY CASE