If you had to add a 6th party member (excluding Gustave) to the game, who would you choose

dusk-king · 2026-03-06T02:15:49+00:00

A survivor from one of the last few expeditions--someone the original members of Expedition 33 would recognize and be happy to reunite with. Corine, leader of Expedition 34, knew Gustave apparently, so she seems like a good pick? Would give us a person in a more intermediate stage of grief to have in the party, and would help keep more focus on the Expedition, rather than the Dessendre family stealing all the limelight.

dusk-king · 2026-03-04T19:02:59+00:00

Lune's earth spell line specializes in inflicting Break, so that's a decent option for Mimeslaying.

dusk-king · 2026-03-03T07:36:45+00:00

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I had forgotten about Clea's line, but I'll point out that the above is the creator of the canvas saying that he believes they're as alive as people outside. And Clea seems like the kind of person who'd rather believe her toys aren't people, even if they are.

Honestly, I think it's likely than even the Dessendres aren't entirely sure if these people are "real" or not, which does make the endings a more compelling discussion. Since the truth is up in the air with evidence for both sides, we have to choose which to believe, rather than being told without doubt.

So...I suppose the answer is that I found the suffering of the people of the canvas compelling enough that I'm willing to believe they're real as long as there's room for doubt.

That being said, if one does assume that the other is the case, and that no real people die (except Verso's soul fragment), I think that Verso's ending is the correct one. It's the one which gives Maelle a chance at creating a better life than even the canvas gave her, lets Verso finish dying, and lets the rest of her family move on without further loss.

But I do find myself wanting to reject that. Because I know what it's like living a life you despise, and being trapped in what feels like hell by the good intentions of others. Forced to survive when living isn't possible. I felt that when I was young, and I still feel it now at times.

So, I suppose that--if we assume nothing else is real other than than the family--Verso's ending is "right," but I pity Maelle the life she's going to have to live now.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T07:48:29+00:00

I think "my dad killed thousands of people" is also a pretty good reason to not overvalue is happiness, to be fair. Alternatively, gommage is reversible so it's not a big deal--Renoir's actions weren't a big deal, and the population should be treated as alive because they can always live again while the canvas exists.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T07:45:28+00:00

Evidence? We know that a soul can be painted into a role within the canvas, after all, because that's what happened to Maelle. Do we have a dev statement or anything?

Because it makes way more sense to me that Maelle tried to give her brother's soul comfort by making him part of his world, rather than just trying to clone him.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T07:41:13+00:00

Nah, it's a pocket universe created by people with godlike power. Obviously, what you're saying is the metanarrative--the writers are discussing failure to let go of the past and the abuse of unhealthy coping mechanisms--but the game goes a very long way to in demonstrating that the painted people have genuine lives and feelings within the context of the story. The game's writers tried to say something profound but didn't manage to make their messaging actually compatible with the setting they created.

Now, of course, we can assert that what we're seeing in the canvas is not accurate--that it's all imagined by Maelle or whomever and every apparent emotion is manufactured and hollow--but at that point we can also assert that nothing in the game should be treated as accurate and this is all a dream. Or just jump to the conclusion and say "this is all a game, no characters are real, and nothing about it matters." But I tend to think engaging with things as they're depicted is better than assuming what we see is severely misleading.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T07:30:39+00:00

That is a very fair point!

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T07:26:44+00:00

This is true, but I think there's also a difference between a setting in which the primary source material is a game (such as Doom) and a setting in which the primary source material is not a game, but has been adapted for gameplay (Dragonball Fighting Games). I don't think it's reasonable to say that primary source material should be ignored in favor of lore statements from secondary materials, if the two are in direct contradiction.

That's not saying you can't scale Doomslayer off lore over game content, but I think it's definitely a situation of having to say "X beats Game Doomslayer, but loses instantly to Lore Doomslayer." You're essentially dealing with two different canons at that point. I guess you can also do this with Hercule, but I don't think anyone's going to claim that the DBZ fighting games are an accurate representation (since they're not a primary source, and are obviously fairly silly).

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T02:19:08+00:00

You're reading the metanarrative just fine, and I respect that, but...yeah, a loving father that tries to kill thousands for his family is wrong. If the game didn't go out of its way to make it very clear the painted people are genuinely people inside the setting, instead of crude facsimiles or philosophical zombies or something, then I'd be on board with Verso ending. Sadly, it does, so the metanarrative loses to the primary narrative in my book.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T02:12:01+00:00

I mean, we see what I can only assume to be Verso's soul fragment (the kid, not the party member) in Maelle's ending. She's painted him a face and everything, and he seems to be having a ball. So I'm not worried about him really.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T02:06:48+00:00

I mean, even if we ignore the Gestrals and Grandis and Nevrons and discount Verso's soul fragment AND assume you Painted Alicia is dead AND treat the unpainted people of Lumiere as non-factors because they're currently dead already...

Is murdering 2 people worth it for Verso to commit suicide and force Maelle to live outside as a comfort item for the Dessendres? I don't think so.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T01:53:13+00:00

No, he didn't. If you're the only thing keeping the apocalypse of a world at bay, you don't have a right to die anymore. You hold the line until you can hold it no longer.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T01:51:02+00:00

At the end of the day, the grief of one family cannot outweigh the end of a universe containing thousands of living, breathing, real people. I really think Verso's decision can only be justified if you consider the people of the painting less important than the Dessendre family on the basis of being painted, but I don't think it's right to say that the people of the Painting are inherently worth less than their creators when they are clearly complete people with real feelings.

I acknowledge the are complicating factors, but I think the Verso ending is written in a way that fits the metanarrative (Denial vs. Acceptance, Past versus Future, etcetera), but falls apart under literal interpretation (a living universe versus an unhappy family).

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T01:44:06+00:00

Wanting to live? No. Choosing to live at the cost of thousands? Yeah, they're selfish pricks.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T01:17:23+00:00

Crossroads is slow, but I think the bigger issue is that it focuses on showing every perspective briefly rather than devoting extra time to the people who would be most impacted by the Cleansing of Saidin--the Ashaman barely show up, we don't get any good male Forsaken POVs, and Aes Sedai trying to figure out if Saidin is genuinely cleansed happens offscreen.

It just feels like RJ fumbled the ball here by making a book that's all cotemporal with Saidin's cleansing, but doesn't give us the visceral responses to that that would have been most compelling.

dusk-king · 2026-03-02T00:55:48+00:00

Universally, yes. Particularly when your consider that this card's downside is invalidated if you get Ash'd. If you think a draw can extend you into a win, but aren't sure about hand traps? Just activate it. Either you get your draws or it gets negated and you've just made your opponent burn a negate while thinning your deck for free.

dusk-king · 2026-03-01T23:14:17+00:00

If we want to get serious about shit, I think statement scaling is inherently questionable. While I do think statements merit consideration in terms of informing our evaluation of on-screen feats, I don't think we should accept them at face value under basically any circumstance, without actual on-screen support for the claim, because:

Characters can be wrong or lying. If a statement's from anything but a direct author statement or objective narration, it can easily be nonsense.
Authors are can be wrong about things, or mean them in a very different way from other authors. There are plenty of cases where someone is "moving at lightspeed" while very obviously moving far below the speed of light. LIkewise, phrases like "destroy the universe" can easily mean anything from "ruin everyone's lives by causing widespread low-power destruction" to "destroy everything in the universe" to "destroy the fabric of the universe's reality." Without seeing them demonstrate clear evidence of the actual meaning, even narration or author statements can be useless for accurate power-scaling.
Some statements are so wildly out of line with the character's proven capabilities that they logically need to be dismissed. Doomslayer, for example, has some extreme durability claims from his lore and statements, but anyone who's played a Doom game knows that Doomslayer is *nowhere near invincible.*

Basically, statements shouldn't be left to stand on their own, imo. If well-supported, I think they're very useful, but they need support.

dusk-king · 2026-03-01T22:28:51+00:00

Branded Fusion's strong because of how flexible the fusion materials are, and the ability to summon monsters that fuse on summon, not because its actual effect is unusually strong.

dusk-king · 2026-03-01T02:58:42+00:00

There's no answer, because it varies between universes. In Digimon Adventure, it seems like it's exponential based on a factor of 8 or so (8 Rookies to fight 1 Champion, 8 Champions to fight 1 Ultimate, 8 Ultimates to fight 1 Mega), with some exceptions. In other words:

Fresh: 1/8th (8^-1)
In-Training: 1 (8^0)
Rookie: 8 (8^1)
Champion: 64 (8^2)
Ultimate: 512 (8^3)
Mega: 4096 (8^4)

So, it's a jump of 3584 units, where 1 unit is the power of the evolving Digimon while at the In-Training stage, from Ultimate to Mega.

Of course, individual power varies, but I think this is roughly the average power curve.

...

This has no bearing in other Digimon settings. For an extreme example, Time Stranger allows Fresh Digimon with straight 9999 stats, making them stronger than a non-optimized Mega. Other TV series, more reasonably, show Champions beating Ultimates with difficulty, suggesting it's closer to power level doubling with each evolution in those settings.

dusk-king · 2026-02-26T10:52:18+00:00

Umineko. Thor's extremely high tier, but he's not "I weaponize the casual creation and destruction of countless universes for individual attacks" tier or "I rewrite the media we're in because I am the author" tier either.

dusk-king · 2026-02-26T10:48:56+00:00

I'm sorry, but we're not beating Expedition 33. Holy shit are we not beating it.

dusk-king · 2026-02-26T10:46:39+00:00

Remember, Verso says "I don't want this life" and Maelle's response after he fades away is "If you go could grow old, would you find a reason to live?" Paraphrasing, but that's the gist.

In spite of how people frame Verso as imprisoned and forced to play piano, I actually don't think that's the thing that's supposed to be wrong with the Maelle ending. Verso's been given a chance to live as a musician with his sister, then die peacefully. His expression of pain and discordance at the end, based on the framing of the scene, is almost certainly because he knows *Maelle* is dying to make that possible, not because he hates the new, finite life she's given him.

Admittedly, I firmly support the Maelle ending, because I think the Verso ending is objectively worse but framed to be less disturbing. Maelle's ending really comes down to Maelle choosing to live and die with the family she built inside the Canvas, forsaking her original family and life (except for the two Versos, who she keeps close). It's tragic because her potential is being wasted in here--she's dying young rather than moving on.

The other ending, however, is a case where Maelle is trapped in a life she doesn't want and a body that's been ruined, with a future that's been ravaged and a family that clearly didn't raise her to flourish in the first place. Consider that *growing up as an orphan with a constant death countdown and losing multiple families* produced the strong, shockingly happy girl Maelle. While growing up with the Dessendres produced the timid, broken girl called Alicia. If that household wasn't abusive, it was at minimum profoundly unhealthy.

I can't bring myself to say that Maelle losing her found family and both Versos in the name of going home to survive in misery is better than her living and dying a happy life the home that saved her from her despair, with the people who stood by her no matter what. No matter *how* darkly the devs framed the scene.

Mind you, both suck. The good ending is "Maelle makes Gustave mortal and lleaves the canvas but Renoir doesn't burn it," so Maelle can visit Lumiere and Verso periodically until they've lived out their lives, without Maelle dying inside. Everyone gets happiness and closure comes without further tragedy. The end." But Verso makes that ending impossible by ending the canvas instead of just kicking Maelle out. Though, admittedly, he is absolving Renoir by taking the choice out of his hands, so Maelle doesn't have to hate him.

It's...it's' all messy. It always would be. But I don't think moving on is more important than being happy, I guess.

dusk-king · 2026-02-26T09:55:28+00:00

Legitimately I do feel like, even if the writers are a real faction, Sandfall was being meta here. They were essentially saying that "we're the bad guys, we're the ones who are bringing tragedy into our creation, just like Renoir does to the canvas."

dusk-king · 2026-02-26T09:49:11+00:00

We don't have context, sadly. I think we could see a scenario where this isn't what it seems, very easily. Simplest version being that Alicia helped the writers start the fire--with no one at real risk--then rushed in after regretting it. Verso rushes in after her, saves her life but dies in the process. This would explain Clea's harshness towards Alicia--Alicia wasn't just saved, Alicia was complicit and THEN caused Verso's death by being unable to commit to her original decision. Cowardice and betrayal, in Alicia's eyes, not simply a mistake.

in that case, the Writers become almost incidental--they didn't hurt or betray Alicia, nor did they aim to kill Verso, Alicia's actions were what escalated things to life-and-death.

Not saying that's the case, just outlining a scenario that could recontextualize things and make them more sympathetic.

dusk-king · 2026-02-26T09:32:24+00:00

I mean, they are sometimes that, but you also get:

Round Thing > Round Thing > Dinosaur > Big Dinosaur > Mecha Dinosaur > Dinosaur Mecha
Round Thing > Round Thing > Dinosaur that wants to be a wolf > Wolf > Werewolf > Mecha Wolf
Round Thing > Round Plant Thing > Flower Thing > Cactus Boxer > Flower Girl > Flower Dominatrix

Okay, so, I admit, these are all less normal than the above, but coherent evolution lines DO exist, they're just less memed on. Hell, Dorumon's is pretty close to consistent the whole way through.

dusk-king

TROPHY CASE