#i am being sooo normal about the concept of death tonight

[cosmicoryx]

There's something very sad to me about how the 'win' conditions for the 'good endings' of marble nest both involve utterly surrendering Daniil in one way or another. Like first you've got the standard acceptance of death ending which plays out in character.

He's exhausted, forced to examine the futility of his philosophies about death, and ultimately come to the conclusion that the only way to know the truth about death is to experience it. And this is presented as a win! Like yes you as an individual will be annihilated in every conceivable way but maybe there will be some formless residue still capable of feeling something afterwards ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I guess there is something to be said for the fact that the concept of death as a change in state here seems to imply the potential truth of a lot of those odd Thanatica theories about human consciousness but its not like there's anything left of him to get any satisfaction out of that!!!

And then you've got the much more meta heart ending. I forgot that in this ending there is actually a blatant fourth-wall break instead of the usual vague puppet metaphors.

This is thematically similar to the framing of patho classic in that it makes you evaluate why you care about something that's just a game. There's an extra layer here though because you have to be the one to break the illusion. There's no room for denial or to say 'It mattered to me' because the player must be the one to state that none of it matters. That there will be no death, that Daniil can't die because he isn't real. The game gives you a little pat on the back for this but then just leaves you with the dread-inducing reminder that someday you will have to confront the reality of your own death for realsies without the comfort of knowing that its just a video game which didn't exactly leave me feeling like I had won!

Idk it just sits weirdly for me that marble nest pushes this narrative about accepting death to conquer it, but I don't think any of these endings actually represent a triumph over death. It's smoke and mirrors. Death isn't defeated, it's just redefined into something that can be defied.