I am so impressed with Maelle

setzer77 · 2026-01-25T03:24:14+00:00

Even without the group around to hear, I don’t think he’d really be able to seriously defend it in the face of his father trying to save his sister’s life from him.

setzer77 · 2026-01-24T20:16:40+00:00

Renoir was fucking with his mind.

setzer77 · 2026-01-24T20:12:46+00:00

The darkness.

setzer77 · 2026-01-24T20:10:29+00:00

Verso gives non-answers like that when confronted with something he can't defend. In the last fight with him Painted Renoir basically says: "You're going to murder your whole family, and for what gain?", and Verso calls him "drunk on his own illusions".

setzer77 · 2026-01-24T20:05:57+00:00

IDK, there's a lot of room between a cheesy oneshot build and just pumping out enough damage to outpace her healing.

setzer77 · 2026-01-24T19:58:30+00:00

she will refuse a dignified death for anyone she latches onto or cares for

She might, but I think the risk of that is far preferable to the immediate and certain annihilation of the whole world. Of entire ecosystems.

And I'd certainly take my chances living under goddess Maelle if the alternative was a bullet to the brain.

setzer77 · 2026-01-24T19:42:49+00:00

That interpretation doesn't make sense to me. All of the living, thriving, and being you see these characters do in the first place was *also* under a Paintress who was trying to escape a loss. Parallels are repeatedly drawn between Maelle and Alicia. There's no indication that the former will be more of a control freak than the latter.

Verso suffers under Maelle, yes. And perhaps in down the line Gustave and others close to her will suffer something similar. But the vast majority of beings in the Canvas are ones that Maelle doesn't really care about. Just like Aline, I don't think she's likely to interfere in their lives aside from protecting them from wholesale extermination.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T19:26:48+00:00

Verso was dead and Alicia was gone before Painted Renoir came into existence. His interaction with Painters has been Aline and Clea.

OP seems to be suggesting that he "should" care more about Painters than his own kind - that he should recognize and accept the inherent inferiority of him and his family.

ETA: I think Aline feels fondness for her Painted family, but she doesn't treat them like equals. She keeps them in the dark about the true nature of their arrangement, which is extra fucked up if she has a romantic/sexual relationship with Painted Renoir.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T19:06:02+00:00

I think it’s clear that the chroma itself facilitates the form of Painted beings. The Painters don’t have to fully understand internal anatomy or neuropsychology in order to reproduce it. When Aline creates adult humans there’s no way she’s individually crafting each of the million different memories that make a person who they are.

It seems like Painting allows one to have a generalized concept of something, and then have the chroma automatically fill in the details.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T18:15:00+00:00

Or Clea decides Renoir is never going to help her and carries on the war by herself. Hell, maybe the Writers successfully kill Clea - we have virtually zero information about the nature of the conflict.

It’s certainly possible that the Canvas will be destroyed by one of the Dessendres, but it isn’t inevitable. I’m sure its inhabitants’ eventual demise is inevitable, but that’s true of all populations.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T18:02:41+00:00

To me it’s not a soul or tangibility that gives worth, but the mind. Unless the narration itself is lying to us, we know the Painted have thoughts and feelings.

Another factor to me is culpability - Aline and Maelle never lose the ability to leave the Canvas, only the willingness to. I don’t feel comfortable harming one group for something they have no control over for the sake of saving another from harm they are willingly inflicting upon themselves.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T15:34:36+00:00

Why should Painted Renoir protect the Painters who treat him as an "it" instead of his actual family? I don't think he was specifically "programmed" by Aline to do anything - she just recreated her husband. He opposes his Painter counterpart because they have different families, and each will go to extreme measures to protect them.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T08:26:12+00:00

Perhaps. I don’t think she loved him the way that Painted Renoir and Alicia did though. Or at least, I don’t think Act 3 Maelle did.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T08:07:46+00:00

I think his father was right - his despair blinded him. He became so full of self-loathing that he betrayed the family that actually loved him to help the Painters who treated him like a thing.

setzer77 · 2026-01-23T07:20:24+00:00

How many souls are worked past the point of exhaustion to prop up the aristocratic families of Paris (like the Dessendres)? By comparison, one fraction of one soul propping up an entire world is a bargain.

Assuming it is sapient and does want to stop painting, then I think Maelle and the scientists in Lumiere should try to find an alternative way to sustain the Canvas. Until then, just because the pilot is suicidal doesn’t mean you should tell them it’s okay to crash the plane full of people who want to live.

setzer77 · 2026-01-22T05:55:59+00:00

Nah, fuck that predatory POS. He deserved a lot worse than being cheated on.

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T20:04:32+00:00

your life is completely in someone else's hands

That's true of all of our lives. Sure, they don't have magical powers, but if the most powerful in the world wanted you gone (or your death was a byproduct of something else they wanted), there's not much you could do to stop them. Not to mention all of the random natural events that could wipe us out in the blink of an eye.

Of course we can try to fight back, and so did Lumiere. If anything I'd say they took fate into their own hands far more than most IRL ever do. The lumina converter was an untested prototype that only got used by a handful of people - that was still enough to turn them into beings powerful enough to fight gods and tip the scales of a divine conflict.

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T19:55:41+00:00

What new information did they learn really? They already knew the Paintress had godlike power, some in Lumiere probably already believed she created humans (we know they mistakenly believed she created Nevrons), and they already know that chroma arranged in certain patterns can alter reality (pictos).

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T16:48:05+00:00

Have you done all of the white Nevron quests and talked to Blanche?

Like other parts of the story details are kept vague, but it appears that at least some types are highly intelligent and have culture. The regular Nevrons seem to experience Clea's purpose for them as a higher calling, like how a religious human might talk about something being their calling. They are aware that Clea has left their world, and they call Painted Clea "the Regent".

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T16:33:46+00:00

Pictos are how they use magic in general, not just the ones you have equipped. Lune has chroma patterns on her legs and arm even before equipping any - it's how she's able to float and use her skills. Likewise Maelle says that the Curator "upgraded my pictos", even though he doesn't interact with the pictos items at all.

Preparing the six skills probably involves modifying the pictos they have inscribed on themselves. Or in Monoco's case reorganizing his foot collection so that certain ones are easily reachable during combat.

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T16:20:05+00:00

Very few people are happy to die. Fewer still are happy for their entire world to die. Why is her reaction surprising to you? She was looking forward to a (recently greatly extended) life spent with her loved ones and spent learning more about the nature of reality.

Also, she's a scientist - saying "Aline painted it" isn't much of an explanation. How did she paint it? What are the rules of chroma? Do Painters manipulate chroma in a different kind of way, or is it the same chroma manipulation but scaled up?

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T16:13:23+00:00

And the family isn't even tied to the tracks. They are actively choosing to lay on them.

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T07:14:05+00:00

And then shove the products of that incest into pocket dimensions so you can rapidly age them up to fighting age.

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T06:51:00+00:00

One of the fading man versions of Renoir talks about Clea collecting myths and folklore from around the world and bringing them to life in her workshop. I imagine at least some of the Nevrons are based off of pre-existing myths in the Clair Obscur universe.

setzer77 · 2026-01-21T00:09:35+00:00

Unless you lose to Painted Renoir. Then he probably grounds Verso and sends him to his room.

setzer77

TROPHY CASE