clair obscur blog

act 1 and act 2 presents us someone easygoing yet mature, playful yet empathic, a fighter who is gentle because she has endured so much grief. five years later and it's clear that she's still slowly moving towards the acceptance of pierre's and their child's deaths. she's so quick to reach out and comfort someone in any magnitude of distress and sadness because she has—and still is—in her own despair. grief is part of her most authentic self, and she comes to realize this in visages island. succeeding or failing this impossible mission matters little to her. she's in this expedition because she's got nothing else to lose, and the outcome of her journey ending in life or death will be beneficial one way or another for her.

you would think that her relationship arc would tell us that she has to move on from pierre (that could mean romantically with verso, or simply in general really). how she has to start taking steps towards living for herself. she doesn't Have to be ready for death when she's surrounded by people who love her. she should return to lumiere because she should LIVE for the loved ones she still has and especially for the loved ones she's lost. they certainly would want her to embrace what little time she has left in this cruel world that takes lives too soon.

most of the expeditioner relationship quests tackle grief in their own ways, but they're geared towards moving forward from it. monoco brings back only a version of noco, and he will have to accept that his family member will never be the same person again. lune defies her dead parents upon the journal they wrote in, even with the grief of finding out how they met their end.

then there's sciel. act 3 completely changes the direction of her sail and makes it abundantly clear that her purpose for fighting is reinvigorated, maybe with a much stronger resolve than when she first agreed to be a part of the expedition. she does this not because she's a hero, not because death can no longer harm her, not even is she in it to help maelle necessarily. more than any of those, it's to bring her husband back.

i dont think it's really been discussed how tragic her immediate shift to this priority is. such an earth-shattering revelation of the canvas is taken in such a hasty stride. she fixates onto the idea that maelle is able to repaint the people of lumiere, and immediately her gears shift to reviving her husband (and frankly, who wouldn't bring back the love of their life if they could also choose the same?). any desire she may have had to reciprocate verso's attraction is thrown out the window, when any loving partner and husband would want his wife to move on from his death, especially with the short lives they live in the context of e33. bringing back lumiere is mostly a convenient goal she can also accomplish alongside her priority to bring back pierre. her desire to fight the canvas is hinged on a man who has been long gone. whose death would guide her to be a teacher and take care of children—becoming a motherly figure for orphaned youth.

i'm not saying that she doesn't care for lumiere. death—gommaged or not—has cut short the time she should have spent with her loved ones. but i wouldve assumed that this character and the way she was presented to us would've been the first to guide maelle how emotions—most importantly, the grief of loss—can "work with her" as she had first explained during their combat lesson. that what they're condemning verso to is cruel. sciel even comes to realize that she would not want anyone to be cursed with immortality with how close she's grown to verso.