hard-times-paramore

[hard-times-paramore]

Clair Obscur got so close to being a perfect story to me, I wish it didn't have the flaws it had. I wish I didn't have to be angry at this chipped piece of paint in the narrative's representation right now.

[hard-times-paramore]

Thanks for this post, I've been trying to grapple with these feelings and I think you fully spoke them out for me. During the entire game, Maelle was the most well written character, but when she goes back to being Alicia, it's like we lost the plot. The characterization. And we are, we ARE are given every reason for the Maelle ending, both because the Canvas is a real live world with real live beings, and because Alicia spends the entire third act wanting to have her own agency, which her parents keep denying her. Only for her to, in the last minute of the game, end up being portrayed as a puppeteering goddess who doesn't respect anyone else's agency - despite how contradictory that is considering she LIVED her own lack and dismissal of agency?

And like, yeah, I can see why this happened in the themes and in the way she was raised - outside of the Canvas everyone acts like the Canvas isn't real. I can see why this had to happen at the end of the game with the way every character was constructed.

But god, that's only because the devs fucking wrote themselves into a hole and they didn't even bother to stop digging. I'm sure we could've had a bittersweet ending where you both win and lose WITHOUT it being ableist like that.

It's so fucking tone deaf in a game where YOUR FIRST PLAYER CHARACTER IS DISABLED TOO.

e33 spoilers i'm just full on ranting at this point

i just think its so fucking unfair that verso is allowed by the internet and the writers of the game to 'not want his life' but a disabled person isn't allowed to have complex feelings about being disabled and having the chance to live a life where she is abled, idfc that that's not "progressive" or whatever, disabled people are allowed to want to be abled. and before anyone comes for me i am disabled. but the bulk of the problem is that the narrative and the devs so blatantly favor the "real" dessendres over the canvas in act 3 it generates ableism in discussing the endings of the game. people who act like the canvas is equivalent to a VR world (or something like it) and that lune and sciel and gustave and monoco and all of them aren't as "real" as the dessendres are are genuinely starting to annoy the hell out of me. because if you really think that then why did you play 30+ hours of the damn game

you fight so hard with the people in the canvas for them to live in their fight against the paintress, you get sad when sophie gommages in the prologue, you even cry when gustave dies and you watch everyone grieve him, and what--the two options at the end of the game are to just erase the entire world you spent the whole game believing in or to let maelle just take over and become god and stick everyone in a world where they're essentially puppets for her???? if y'all (the devs) wanted this to be about the dessendres so bad you should have just made it about the dessendres instead of making me give a damn about sophie and gustave and lune and sciel and then say "actually it's 100% bad for them to exist no matter what, sorry".

chalking maelle's motivations up in her ending to "continuing the cycle of grief"--as is so trendy to do in media right now--that aline started sucks and boils her character down to nothing imo. a lot of this is the devs' fault. the maelle ending makes me ridiculously sad because i think it's very uncharitable not only to the only disabled character to make her a controlling god who the devs write off as having the exact same motivations as her (kind of shit) mother, but also to the characters of the canvas.

like i already said in another post genuinely i like the verso ending because it makes sense for verso and his brand of self-flagellation but i do not see how the maelle ending make sense for maelle. but it's obvious the devs had 0 interest in treating her as a nuanced character by the time act 3 comes around because they just wanted the game to be about cycles and grief and they weaponized disability in doing that. give me a break.

we are expressly shown the dessendres kind of dont gaf about alicia or catering to her needs even LONG before the fire and she's forced into the canvas by clea and gets a chance to have, what we are told and led to believe by the devs, is a REAL LIFE. by which i mean a real life doesn't mean that she's able bodied, what i mean is that she is actually surrounded by 1) supporting and loving people like gustave who aren't callous to her and 2) disabled people, once again citing gustave, who actually can live fulfilling and happy lives.

but no. she's just expected to give up the love she had and has in the canvas for the sake of helping a family that offers her zero support move on. and if she doesn't want to do that it's not "good for her". and if she stays behind in the canvas the devs doom her to being a horror villain who is also just throwing her "real" life away. the maelle ending is so goddamn MEAN to her and so unfair when contrasted with verso. it is so unfair.

PLUS we spend 2 whole acts learning about verso and his whole array of problems and we get 1 tiny little fake epilogue learning about alicia in the "real" world and the rest of everything we know about her is filtered through painted-alicia talking to her or through fading boy's recollections so naturally people favor verso over alicia. just like alicia is treated in-game the devs just don't seem to give a damn about her or exploring her motivations beyond having characters usually tell her what she wants (which btw is ableist in of itself) and her either saying "no!" or "you're right!" like come ONN.

and as a result of all this blase treatment from the devs clearly favoring the dessendres over the canvas in act 3's script, everyone online gets to justify their decisions about which ending they pick behind ableist rhetoric about (if they pick the maelle ending) "her life is basically over in real life anyways now that she's horribly disfigured" which i cant even begin to elaborate about how this is the most offensive take in the world or (if they pick the verso ending) "it's not ok to have a disabled person live in VR and it's basically approving euthanasia" as if the canvas isnt a real world and its pissing me off.

i'm just mad as hell at sandfall for failing to think about this inevitable outcome of ableist rhetoric getting thrown around online when they wrote the fire and when they wrote the endings, especially with how obvious it is that they favor the dessendres to the entire world of the game. sandfall when i fucking get you for making me, a disabled person, have to see people use ableism to justify A CHOICE IN A VIDEO GAME. they should not have done that. they just shouldn't.

[hard-times-paramore]

On that note, I think my biggest criticism of the game is that the cast of characters you play as is white. This is pretty much the one thing that cut the game short from perfect to me.

Sciel is tan, I suppose we have that, but I think we could've done better. At the start of the game in Lumière we get to see people of various races, so why is everyone we end up playing as a white person? It'd have been cool to have some variety - maybe if the Dessendre family was, for example, black, we'd have seen the similarities to Maelle sooner, as an extra hint.

Maybe Gustave could've been the token white person since he dies first.

My one major criticism of Clair Obscur: it's so heteronormative it hurts.

Why is this random artist going on and on about love and insisting on painting the ex-couple we as players have only just been introduced to? What do you mean you can make the two main female characters sleep with the random suspicious male character they just met, but not each other? What do you mean you can only sleep with one and not both even though these people are literally on a death countdown, why would they care about monogamy? What do you mean the hint of M/M that is portrayed is a macho bromance that is played as a joke? What do you mean the alternate version of this side character who exists as the sheer embodiment of independence was in love with this random expeditoner we have never heard of?

[hard-times-paramore]

all that matters remains

[hard-times-paramore]

this is your reminder that Monoco and Verso canonically do each others hair, sing together, and snuggle.

[hard-times-paramore]

[hard-times-paramore]

[hard-times-paramore]

sluttiest thing a man can do is pass out from pain

[hard-times-paramore]

that'z My Horse™️

[hard-times-paramore]

Something I don't see folks talk about with exp 33. It does bring to light something we all do when we miss someone. We assume "This is what they would do".

Example: Lune saying "Gustave would understand" when she brings up the protocol and Maelle wants to bury him.

Even us the fans are guilty of that. Like assuming what he'd do if he didn't die and found out the truth of their world.

And no I don't mean the game is mocking folks that do that. Its just showing it in action. Or all the times the question of "How well do we truly know someone?" is brought up. One of my fav lil bits from Renoir is him asking "Would art even exist if that were the case?" if you say "Everybody knows themselves".

I just think its rad the game shows a bunch of stuff that humans go through with grief. Warts and all. It reminds me of Silent Hill 2 but far more hopeful. Honest sure, but hopeful.

[hard-times-paramore]

*thinks about The Character too hard and starts taking poison damage*

[hard-times-paramore]

You're ok.

[hard-times-paramore]

i’m curious what arbitrary and specific flavors people dislike are. rb and tag a Taste you simply don’t fuck with. for flavor reasons not texture reasons. for me? i do not like elderflower or caraway for whatever reason

[hard-times-paramore]

when the perfect moment comes with the perfect sountrack and you know your life was just permanently altered

[hard-times-paramore]

It fucks me up so bad that Painted!Verso had his own life. It is heavily implied that he was in love with Julie of Expedition 0. Simon was a seemingly close friend of his. He had his own life that the real Dessendre Family grief upended and destroyed.

There is no reference to Julie or Simon in Maelle's ending. Granted, they are both hidden/secrets that you find or fight, but the idea that Maelle brought back everyone she cared about, but not those Verso did, is fucking me up. Everyone you see in Maelle's epilogue is someone that she cares about/has come to care about. Esquie and Monoco are there, but even they are linked to the real Verso Dessandre—they are her brother's creations, her brother's friends. Painted!Verso and the real Verso overlap here, but these were not truly Painted!Verso's loved ones, just another set of castoffs from the real thing.

Because he is first and foremost Maelle's brother stand-in, and that is his purpose in the Canvas, as Maelle wills it to be. He is forced to live a life he does not want, without people he loves (not his family, not his friends, not his lover), to fulfill Maelle's fantasy.

[hard-times-paramore]

Maybe this year I'll figure out how to make AMVs just so I can make a coe33 one with this song. No promises, but man it would be nice.

Speaking of music, idk if you're into emo rock, but Welcome to the Black Parade is very Expedition 33-coded.

oh oh my god. i’m shaking. you don’t know if i’m into emo rock, but reality is a have a gerard way tattoo on my thumb. i went to see them in arlington this past saturday. thank you for sending this.

and —

now that you’ve brought it up —

Yeah. ywah yeah yeah yeah yeah. can’t do anything but wholeheartedly agree

[hard-times-paramore]

Hits ya good don't it

I know you're more focused on Painted Verso but holy fuck holy shit did you know? Did you know you can hear the real one's screams of agony from his ACTUAL death on a flashback? That IS verso whump if I ever saw it.

Hi um. wow so. ok. ok i’m gonna need to hear this immediately do you have a link. haha. hahahaha. hahahahahahaha, even 😮‍💨