conversations asking if the painted people have a right to live are really interesting to me, because in my mind whether they have a right to live and whether they have a right to exist are two different questions.
i think they have the right to live. they’re sentient, autonomous people. i also think having the right to live means nothing without the right to die. the thing is, after act 2, they are dead. maelle cannot stop them from being erased, she can only attempt to repaint her version of them. the narrative tells us over and over that we cannot bring back the dead, we can only approximate likeness. if they have the right to live is irrelevant at this point: they have lived, and they have died. so now comes the real question,
do they have the right to exist?
