#I’m so bad at fussing over small insignificant details too

[ravenbronze]

Christmas in the Undercroft

Trying something a bit different! And thought I’d get festive with it since it’s December 🎄

[mar64ds]

Finding Paradise is the piece of media that I’ve connected to the most in all of my life

Hi I probably should have wrote this when I replayed the game a few months ago and there is a very probable chance that Impostor Factory might not even come out this year, but I am still thinking about this franchise right now and I’m preparing myself for the next game, even if I have to wait a little bit longer, so I wanted to write this now

It’s very long and I’m not really the best at expressing myself sometimes, but I hope if you want to read it you enjoy it!

The To The Moon franchise is really really good and, as we all know, very emotional. A lot of people have at least seen or played the first game, To The Moon, while way less people have seen, played or even heard of the second (third if you count A Bird Story) one, Finding Paradise. Everyone who does know about this game seem to still prefer To the Moon, and that’s okay! It’s a really beautiful and iconic game, and I know a lot of people connected with it, I completely understand why the majority of people prefer it over Finding Paradise. However, in my case, as you can see from the title of this post, the second one impacted me way more.

I will not go into details about the plot of this game, I will mostly talk about the themes of it, especially the ending. If you have not played the game and you don’t want spoilers, you should stop reading now, it’s a really beautiful story I don’t want to ruin. If you haven’t played the game but you don’t mind about spoilers and want to see what all the fuss I always make about this game is about then continue reading! And well I hope that if you have played the game you want to see why it impacted me so much!

 So the main points of this game are loneliness, imagination and life fulfillment. Colin, the protagonist, has always been a really lonely person and clearly suffers from anxiety, which makes him feel like every mistake he has ever done it’s absolutely horrible to the point where it affects all of his life experiences. Not only that, but when he’s old he thinks that maybe he could have done more with his life. He focuses too much on what he could have done than what he has done, always feeling like everything he does is never enough, that he could have done stuff better, that he’s always making mistakes and wishes they could have never happened, which is something that a lot of people with anxiety think, myself included.

When we see Colin’s memories and see all of those horrible mistakes and regrets he has they are all… really insignificant. Maybe one time he spilled a drink on an important date, maybe another time he made a small mistake at his job, nothing too bad nothing too big, but to Colin is absolutely horrible and it actually kind of ruins his happy memories. While never stated in the game, Colin definitely suffers from anxiety, and this is not the only part of him that I really relate to

Colin is also someone that has never fit in, he has been really lonely ever since he was a kid. He was really quiet and didn’t know how make friends. He only mentions once that he used to at least kind of get along with River (character from To The Moon), but once she started hanging out with John (the other character from To The Moon), he started to be completely alone again. While that dialogue was a nice callback to the first game, it’s something that I can relate a lot too. There have been times where I only talked to people when I sit next to them in class, and it made me feel less lonely but, when given the opportunity, they always had someone else they’d rather hang out with than me, which it’s completely understandable! But I do get that lonely feeling Colin had to live with

The first friend Colin ever made was an animal, a bird, and the important thing about that is that it wasn’t just an animal friend he made for a while and then continue on with this life: this bird meant the world to him and impacted him for the rest of his life, but I’ll talk about that more later on

 Before I talk about the events of Finding Paradise, I think it’s important to notice how the world in A Bird Story (a short game that talks about Colin’s childhood before Finding Paradise) is. It’s rather abstract, and there are definitely a lot of magical events that there is no way they could have actually happened, since this franchise is very grounded to reality. With this, adding what we know about him in Finding Paradise, we can see that Colin has a really really strong imagination, he doesn’t just think about fantastical adventures, he lives them. This might be another reason why it’s hard for him to make friends, people that live a lot in their own little world have a hard time connecting with others since it takes a lot for them to talk and have conversations. I think it’s obvious to say that this is something I really relate to as well

 Now, let’s go back to Finding Paradise once again. After the bird left, Colin had no one else to hang around with, no friends and his parents were barely home, so he created an ‘imaginary friend’: Faye. But Faye is way more than just an ordinary imaginary friend a kid creates just to have fun and play games, Faye is pretty much a comfort zone for Colin, an actual comfort character he created. He knows she’s not real, but that doesn’t make her less real or important to him. In the game, Eva and Neil (the characters we play as) didn’t even know Faye was imaginary, because Colin’s memories interpret her as someone real that was there, instead of showing the exterior vision of him writing in a book the conversations he has with her.

 Faye was with Colin for more than just his childhood, he was there with him until his late teens-young adulthood. Colin started wanting to make decisions in his life, but his anxiety made it difficult for him to do so, so ‘Faye’ was the one to push him to take those decisions and be happier, I’ll talk about this more later. Colin life started becoming fuller, he met more people and he felt less alone, he started having responsibilities, and he started feeling like he couldn’t keep himself hidden in his little inside world anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this game but I know it has flaws, I don’t think you should completely abandon your comfort characters or your inside world just cause your exterior life is richer now. But don’t worry, this isn’t a story about ‘actually your imaginary world is not important you should only focus on whats real’. Like I said, it’s a bit flawed, but it is still good and it still resonated with me.

 Before she leaves, Faye does say a bunch of important stuff, and it is since this conversation until the end of the game where I can’t stop crying, which is like 40 minutes, and if you know me you should know that it’s not very easy for me to cry with a piece of media, and if I cry it’s only for two minutes. So… yeah this game broke me and I’m going to get really personal from here on out.

But anyway, Faye talks about how it wasn’t really her who made Colin take chances in his life, she never did anything he wouldn’t want to do. Colin’s anxiety makes it difficult for him to take chances, he only needed someone to be there for him, and Faye was there for him, when no one else was. Look, I can’t even describe how much this resonated with me. I suffer from a lot of anxiety and it’s very difficult for me to make any kind of choice or action, cause I constantly worry about messing up, and there have been a million of times that my only support has been fictional characters. It may sound really silly, but ever since I was a kid, if I was really nervous, I just started thinking about a fictional character I liked to feel less scared, sometimes even thought about ‘what would this character do in this situation?’ and put myself in their shoes to feel more confident. Like Faye said, it wasn’t the fictional characters what made me better, the only thing they did for me was make me feel less lonely, the rest was my own skills, the only thing I needed was confidence. And I really don’t care how corny this is, I’ve never heard any other story talk about this and I thought I was the only person that did this, it ironically made me feel less alone

 And before I talk about something else she says, I need to point out that at the end of this scene, Faye is revealed to be a personification of the bird Colin had. Colin’s first and only friend for years, he created a comfort character based on an animal that was there for him when no one else was, that he felt comfortable hanging out with. I think it’s obvious to see that Colin is definitely neurodivergent, and a lot of neurodivergent people can feel a really strong connection with animals, inanimate objects and fictional characters. It was also implied that River from To the Moon was autistic even if it was never stated, I think it’s a similar case with Colin

 Going back to the conversation, Faye also talks about her existence is related to Colin’s obsession of what the world couldn’t be, and how he should focus on what it is and could be. That he doesn’t have to hide away and it would be good for him to appreciate what’s around him.

And that’s true and that conversation helps him, but at the end of his life, when he’s given the chance of changing his memories, he starts thinking again of how the events of his life could have been different instead of being content with what he had. And Colin wants a last wish, but he doesn’t know what it is, he doesn’t feel satisfied and content with his life and he wants to be, but he doesn’t know what he wants.

And at the end of all of things, what does he need? A last conversation with Faye

 He talks to her and he finally realizes that he’s happy with the life he had and he wouldn’t change anything. But I need to talk about how shocking and important this whole scene was for me. As you know, I’m someone that cares a lot of fictional media. I think about it all the time, I care deeply about it, knowing that even if it’s all fictional, it’s important to me and it makes me happy. But there’s always a thought of my mind that makes me think I’m wasting my time. Maybe at the end of all things, none of this is important, it’s not real, and yet I’m wasting so much time of my life with it. So, for this game to show that the last conversation this man has with anyone is with his fictional comfort character, treating the whole scene completely serious and respectful, kind of meant the whole world to me. At the end of all things, Colin wants to say goodbye to Faye and tell her how grateful he was for her. He never forgot her, she never meant less for him just cause she wasn’t real, she was real and important to him just like anyone else in his life, even more, even if he was aware she was fictional.

At the end of all things, all that time you spent caring about fictional stories weren’t wasted, they meant something, they impacted your life, they made you less lonely, they might have even changed who you are, they were real for you.

 After that conversation, before dying, Colin kisses his wife. His imaginary world and his real world were equally as important to him and they both made him who he was until the end. He embraces those two worlds at the end, not making either of them more important than the other, holding them both dear until his last heartbeat.

And that’s it, that’s the end of his life. That’s the end of the game.

…And I cried writing this lol I hope you liked reading this really long boring essay