(End Spoilers) Feels like there's something missing

[Ratsplat]

Yes, addict and grief and all that = people aren't rational, etc etc. But even so, it still seems a bit silly.

What is actually preventing Alicia, and even Aline, from just... exiting the canvas after say... a decade or whatever inside. There has to be more than the addiction route. Even if you say the painting is like a 'drug', I get the sense that if you treat canvases well enough, they have absolutely 0 side effects. The same cannot be said about most of the harshest drugs (If you take heroine or crack or whatever once a month, year, or even decade, you're still gonna get hit hard.)

There's only two things that make sense. Either one, the time passage within the canvas cannot be slowed down (or perhaps only Verso himself had set the time passage, and since he's dead now...), making breaks from her painted family unfeasible and/or the city within would evolve way too much. Or, secondly, the bit of soul within all canvases has a time limit, which can only be reset with whoever made it initially. It is very possible that Verso had died very very recently in real life (only weeks ago), and if the soul fragment was nearing its time limit, I too would be spending as much time possible inside. But if that was the case, Aline would just simply say "Renoir, after this week the painting is no more. After, I am all yours."

So, is it purely irrationality, obsession, addiction, and grief? Or is it something else that we just weren't told.

[goodbye_bonito]

Story as it is written preventing them. What was preventing Romeo to check that Juliette is still alive? Nothing. Author wants it to be like that and you have to accept it. It's not silly, it's just you don't want to accept it which is normal.

[muhanga]

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

I get the sense that if you treat canvases well enough, they have absolutely 0 side effects.

As right now we have no idea if this is right. Everything in the game suggest that prolonged canvas exposure == bad.
Right now we can just speculate how much "hard magic" rules is in the canvas and how it affect the painters.

Maybe main reason is that it does bad thing when you try to rewrite somebody else canvas against the canvas creator main intent. Something along the lines that you need to constantly use chroma to overwrite canvas and this eats your soul away.

Both Aline and Alicia have this problem ("it will kill you"), but looks like Renoir don't (or I miss where this is said about Renoir also).

[Namdaets]

You could add "escapism" up there with obsession, addiction, grief, etc. Perhaps the most intoxicating drug of them all. Why return to the real world when the real world is infinitely darker and sadder than real Verso's beautiful canvas world?

Don't forget, Renoir's goal was to forcibly remove Aline from the canvas world and destroy the painting. This conflict caused the Fracture (presumably a great battle between Renoir and Aline that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ the world up), Renoir lost, and gets imprisoned in the Monolith for 67 years. Renoir and Aline leaving the painting leaves the painting free to be destroyed, which Aline (and eventually Maelle) desperately want to prevent. In some ways, Renoir created the very situation he wanted to avoid. He created a standoff, basically, that lasts for decades until Expedition 33 comes along to change the world.

The whole situation is just extremely tragic all around, because Renoir is probably right to want his family to return to the real world and move on with their real lives, but he's wrong to force Aline and Maelle to do so against their will. Aline was wrong to abandon the real world and create painted clones of her family in the first place, but she's right to protect the Lumierians from Renoir's Gommage as best she can. Depending on your choice at the end, Maelle's decision to preserve the painted world despite Verso's wishes (real Verso didn't even want to be a Painter...) is selfish and feels a little gross to me, but the denizens of the painted world are just as real as you or I (imho, and certainly from Maelle's perspective) and should be saved from oblivion. But Verso's desire to erase the world to end his own suffering and free Maelle (the same thing Renoir was trying to do, force her out of the painting) ALSO feels selfish and wrong, although I absolutely sympathize with him.

Family is complicated.

[Terminal Velocity]

I dont consider it wrong to "force" them to leave the canvas. They were purposefully and knowingly killing themselves in there. Do you consider it saving people from committing suicide is "forcing" them to live? Additionally, the real Renoir was not hurting them physically. Defeating them inside the canvas caused them to exit it.

OP, the game seems quite clear in this aspect. It's not addiction. The mother knew she was going to die and still decided to go die inside the canvas alongside the fake family, due to grief of losing her only son in the accident.

The daughter decided to let herself die inside the canvas too. Out of being a 15yo kid who feels she can't cope with her injuries.

[Cuddly Ogre]

I feel like you are being very dismissive of the effects of addiction on people.

Addiction is brutal and completely strips people of their ability to think rationally. That's why you have people willing to die to get high again. You can't just partake in a little bit of something you are addicted to.

Canvas worlds might be safe when used sparingly. But when used as a crutch or escape, they are extremely addictive. Like how Vicodin can be helpful for pain after surgery, but is extremely addictive, even though the pain is still there and you still need it to help with the pain.

It is clear that being inside the canvas is addictive. If it's not the chroma that does it, it's the experience. Renoir is a recovering addict and Aline is his addict wife. Alicia is his addict daughter. They all were sucked in due to their created worlds being more pleasant than the real world.

Clea seems to have escaped that fate, seeing the canvas as a burden, preventing her from getting wrapped up in it like the others. She is actually very detached from the whole matter, and I think that's because she suspects that the Painter's world, the game's "real world", is a figment of someone's imagination (the Writers)

[Namdaets]

Originally posted by Terminal Velocity:

I dont consider it wrong to "force" them to leave the canvas. They were purposefully and knowingly killing themselves in there. Do you consider it saving people from committing suicide is "forcing" them to live? Additionally, the real Renoir was not hurting them physically. Defeating them inside the canvas caused them to exit it.

Maybe "wrong" was too absolute of a word. "Questionable" or "arguable" would have been a better choice. From Renoir's perspective, I absolutely understand why he did the things he did. I'm not really sure what else he could do? That doesn't mean Aline or Maelle will accept it, though, as is made evident by the end of the game (which I think is realistic, for characters to make choices and take stances we, the audience, might not agree with).

From Aline's perspective, her husband is being controlling and trying to erase her dead son's only canvas ("I'm saving you from yourself, because I know better" -- Renoir, probably. He's portrayed as a sort of domineering man, and their relationship was heavily strained by the death of Verso). It's clear staying in the canvas world for a really long time has some sort of negative physical and/or mental health consequences (the scene with Aline grovelling, and the spooky face paint stuff?), but I don't think it's quite as clear-cut as literally committing suicide. Even if it is literally a form of long-term, Matrix-style suicide and Aline is willfully on-board with it, this makes Renoir and Aline's conflict inevitable, perhaps in perpetuity (and therefore more tragic, which makes a good story).

From Maelle's perspective, her dad is being controlling and trying to erase not only her dead brother's only canvas, but also literally one of two worlds she grew up in (after being reborn as Maelle in Lumier) and everyone she's ever known and loved from a whole second lifetime. In fact, it's the only world where she has a future of any kind (at least from her perspective by the end of the game) -- her injuries and inability to speak in the real world almost guarantee she chooses the canvas (another tragic element to the story). I wonder if Renoir will return for Maelle one day (if you chose her ending), and the cycle of grief and conflict will continue, or maybe they can find a compromise where Renoir won't secretly destroy the painting behind her back if she leaves? This is the same problem her mother faced. Cycles. History repeating itself. Tragedy.

The tragic, multi-pronged nature of the Dessendre family's interpersonal fallout after the death of Verso is what gives the game's narrative so many layers and is why the final choice at the end of the game is so gripping to me. Lots of angles to consider and philosophies to ponder.

[Crimsomrider]

It's far more complicated than just dismissing their struggles so easily.

Aline's grief is merely a part of her actions, but not the whole part. In the beginning it was her overwhelming grief that forced her inside the Canvas for salvation because she had no alternative source of comfort. This is apparent by the fact how she so unpleasantly portrayed her Painted family (that tells how she truly feels about them);

• Renoir, a cruel dismissive brute who decides what's best for everyone (not so far from the truth).
  
• Alicia, a disfigured mute monstrosity constantly tormented by her own existence, existing as a mere shadow in the family (she blames her for Verso's death)
  
• Clea, considering what real Clea did to her, definitely wasn't a pleasant portrayal.

So naturally she is mourning, she can't stand the real Renoir, she despises real Alicia and is indifferent to real Clea. The only person she paints as humanely as possible is Verso - a charming, charismatic memory of a son she lost (her finest creation).

But once Renoir barges in and forcefully tries to erase the Canvas, at that point it's no longer just about grief, it's about protecting the last memory of their son. So Renoir is in fact the one responsible for her remaining 67 years inside the Canvas trying to protect it and she would've fought him for all eternity if necessary. Because you can't violently kick someone out of their mourning process.

And he does the same mistake again with Maelle at the beginning of ACT III, who has been incredibly composed and reasonable both in reality and in the Canvas at that point. Just to fix Lumiere, preserve the Canvas and go home. But due to how he acts so stubborn again by insisting on erasing the Canvas, he pushes Maelle into the exact same fear of losing the Canvas and forces her to defend it just like Aline did.

Also important to understand is that Maelle is not addicted and it's concerning how people dismiss her real struggle to something so base. She is a child who is rejected in reality. Her father constantly dismisses her (throughout the entire story), her mother despises her (even after 67 Monolith years which is why she instinctively burned her face at the Monolith) and her sister belittles her.

So if people would put themselves in Maelle's shoes for just a second; a tragically innocent victim who ended up disfigured and in torment, lost a brother, dismissed by the father, despised by the mother, belittled by the sister and unable to find joy whatsoever in real life after all that... maybe people wouldn't devalue her struggle by dismissing it as a mere 'addiction', when in truth she is a depressed struggling child with survivor's guilt unable to find any joy in life because her actual family treats her like trash as well on top of all her struggles.

This should be all too apparent when both Renoir and Clea refer to her as a shadow (of the worst day of their lives). Nothing to do with addiction, she's struggling to live because those in real life failed to do right by her up until that point.

[['w']]

You abandon yourself. All agency fades away. The will to live fades away. Outside of this you're nothing. And decades fly by.

[Winit]

There are two main things that could be the reason they stay. And two reason why its dangerous to stay in a canvas. How they are related is not clearly stated. But these are 2 different reasons they stay, and why its dangerous.

1. Renoir points out that if you stay in a canvas for a prolonged time, you risk ending up "losing yourself" in the canvas. That can be interpreted in several ways.
My takes would be either
a) You get addicted. Evidentily its nearly impossible to get out of strong drug addiction without help or force. Maybe its the same here.
b) You lose your mind not thinking straight.
c) You forget the real world and think the canvas world is the real world.

2. They might willingly stay in the canvas to protect it from Renoir. As far as we know, Aline stayed in the canvas to keep Renoir from destroying it. Same goes for Maelle/Alicia in the end.

3. Renoir clearly says that staying in a canvas makes you sick. Like its taking a toll on you or something. And he insinuates its dangerous. Possible lethal?

[Ratsplat]

Originally posted by Winit:

There are two main things that could be the reason they stay. And two reason why its dangerous to stay in a canvas. How they are related is not clearly stated. But these are 2 different reasons they stay, and why its dangerous.

1. Renoir points out that if you stay in a canvas for a prolonged time, you risk ending up "losing yourself" in the canvas. That can be interpreted in several ways.
My takes would be either
a) You get addicted. Evidentily its nearly impossible to get out of strong drug addiction without help or force. Maybe its the same here.
b) You lose your mind not thinking straight.
c) You forget the real world and think the canvas world is the real world.

2. They might willingly stay in the canvas to protect it from Renoir. As far as we know, Aline stayed in the canvas to keep Renoir from destroying it. Same goes for Maelle/Alicia in the end.

3. Renoir clearly says that staying in a canvas makes you sick. Like its taking a toll on you or something. And he insinuates its dangerous. Possible lethal?

Staying in to prevent destruction does make sense. But then that goes into, what was the reason for staying in for extreme lengths of time before he ever threatened to do such a thing? I'm perfectly fine with the addiction and such answers, if that's really the answer. I just like to explore as much as possible to see what else may lie out there.

[Sunchaser]

Originally posted by goodbye_bonito:

Story as it is written preventing them. What was preventing Romeo to check that Juliette is still alive? Nothing. Author wants it to be like that and you have to accept it. It's not silly, it's just you don't want to accept it which is normal.

poison juliet drink was not harmful, but make people looks like dead', that's why she was in crypt. So, it's not situation when u need just accept stupid behaviour.