like like the the the death

I finished Clair Obscur this weekend, and cried so hard tears ran down my neck. You guys… a boogery, blubbery mess. I chose Verso’s ending, which felt strange because he was basically never in my party, and I noted throughout the game how vacant the character had begun to feel, almost intentionally, like he was hollowed out. But I was compelled to make the choice, which felt intuitively correct, and the catharsis of the end had me feeling secure.

Then, always a mistake: I got online. While I found many like me, crying but content whether having chosen Maelle or Verso, I uncovered a festering argument I imagine will only bubble and spread as more people tackle this beautiful game and take to the web to discuss it. The argument: which ending is the “correct” one? Which ending do the devs think is “good” and which ending were you “supposed” to pick?

I should have known that the internet, designed to make you feel at all costs like you won (even at a game nobody else was playing) could reduce this masterful elegy to an argument. In the world of “ending explainer” videos and “what was the real meaning behind the Symbol” listicles, this type of debate was, I guess, inevitable. But it sucked to experience at a time when I hoped I’d find others who wanted to meditate on what they’d seen and felt.

And then I saw some even weirder shit, where people said the “Verso” ending was “genocide” and only the Maelle ending could be true, and that people who chose Verso were psychopaths. And I realized I too felt strongly about my choice, especially against people with such inflammatory takes. I read further, and further, for a whole day, stewing and burbling, and here’s what I have to say.

Debating if the creatures and worlds in the canvas are “real” or “not real” reduces them to a binary state - victims of our reductive thinking. Esquie IS a big, powerful protector who can fly and swim and dive and run; he IS also a stuffed animal once beloved by a small boy–a boy who has died. Neither of those states is more real - or more valuable - than the other. To young Verso, Esquire COULD flash through the sky—you can almost hear him calling it out, pumping his little legs as he tears ass across the manor grounds, holding the stuffed Esquie above his head. 

You had those moments too, you remember, young and carefree, really believing in something invented or adopted as your own. Those worlds we experienced as kids—trapped between our ears before they might be pinned down on paper or canvas in breathing ink—were very real. The adrenaline flowed and our hearts throbbed and we shed real tears. Those emotions were as consuming as any we feel now, tethered to reality. So it’s understandable to feel a sense of bereavement when Esquie (and all the others) vanish as the canvas is erased, but I began to feel uncomfortable when I saw fans using words like “murder” and “genocide” to talk about this moment.

Verso Dessandre died in a fire. It’s the core loss. The repercussions of that death are world shattering. People aren’t alright when a family member dies. They are never the same. We use the phrase “every life a universe” to talk about lives lost to real-life war, oppression, and genocide, and this is what we mean—the hopes, wishes, and futures of a life extinguished in a moment. So I bristle at seeing these words being used for such a symbolic coup de grâce, especially when we have so many real life examples to choose from. 

When a person dies, many things go with them. Their dreams, their imaginations. The special alchemy of their personal vision, breathing life into their secret worlds. And many deaths ripple out from that first death. The silly voice they use only with one other person. The in-jokes, cute references, and special memories they share with precious few. All their possible futures, never to become. Not only are these all deaths, they are all the same death. Verso didn’t just die once. He dies again and again, as these threads—these long strands of ink— begin to fade from existence.

I feel such boundless compassion for people who grasp their controllers and cry “murder” when some of us choose to erase the canvas. “Esquie and Monoco and all the people of Lumiere—they’re real!” Yes… they were. To someone who has died. What’s left of them—what you experienced for 30 or more hours while parrying your way through the continent— was a distorted reflection, a memory, the hitch in breath between the sobs. Your window into the crushing spectre of a family’s loss was barely even a fragment of it—and yet it was an ocean of possibility, the depth of everything that could be housed in one soul. All this time, the characters you loved were just facets, possible futures and hopes, of someone who wasn’t allowed to finish growing up. Your grief, your outrage, and your sense of injustice as you watch the canvas fade is the same as Aline’s, Alicia’s, Clea’s, and even Renoir’s. 

The endings of Clair Obscur seem opposing, but they’re the same tragedy, you see. Verso’s beautiful spirit has long since left both his family and, mostly, the canvas too, leaving only one final strange fragment behind to animate the increasingly frayed projection of his possible self. It’s a dream - not a man - and it suffers while the real final fragment bends over a charmed canvas, trapped in decaying reverie. All the private times with Clea and Aline inside the canvas begin to wither and contort as the memories grow dimmer and the ink stutters and skips from the brush to the page. The gestrals are reduced to dipping their heads in the sacred river, no animating spirit left to bring them back. The people of Lumiere decay—it’s impossible to free them from their countdown even when the numbers are stripped from the monolith. Is that life? Is that living? Is that real? 

“It’s better than living in a broken body!” you howl. 

Ah, now we come to it. You think a disabled body can’t house real life—so much so that you prefer children’s stories where death is impossible to reality, where disease, disfigurement, and death are as real as breathing. You think to be disabled is to be damned. You think the odds are against us, and you wonder, not so secretly, if it’s even worth it. 

Respectfully: fuck you. Alicia may want at times to drown in the ink of the canvas. What disabled or chronically ill person has not set aside our pain, fear, brain fog, insurance worries, bad test results, or grief to enjoy an imaginary world? We’re known for it. We deserve the respite, and many of us need it to survive. But while those beautiful illusions soothe us, reality breaks in. It must. There’s a body to care for, a mind to nurture, and the daily activities of living that need doing. There’s pain, there’s fear, there’s hardship. 

But there is also beauty. Victories over our suffering. Successful treatment or improvements in our condition. And we are worth more than these milestones of progress. We feel the warmth of the sun, smell a fall breeze. We abide, in our state, pain and all. We must grieve. We must exist—and no matter how broken my body is, it’s mine. I deserve all its beauty, all it has to offer me. And it deserves me—all of me, when I can spare it, removed from my attempts to escape it. Thank you, broken body, for sustaining. I am sorry about what has happened to you. 

Nothing stops the Dessendres, marred by injury and age and trauma, standing graveside crushing flower petals or holding a masked toy, from remembering those warm afternoons with Verso conjuring endless monsters and singing. They remember the child he was, the man he became, and mourn the life taken from him. The canvas isn’t necessary to keep Esquie, Monaco, and the people of Lumiere alive. The only purpose it serves is to distract a family from the harsh reality they must face to survive. That tomorrow comes, and with it death. That we continue, even when we hurt so badly that oblivion seems preferable.