u/Deep-Lifeguard4479

Based on what Clea implies during our dialogue with her in the Endless Tower (that Alicia was a very shy girl and that when she was younger she didn’t have any friends to play with), my belief was that the Writers she met were the only friends she had, being the only people with whom she could share her true passion and feel appreciated. I connect this to the theory about Alicia’s 16th birthday: since she finally had friends to celebrate her birthday with, she decided to invite them to her party. There, they gave her a gift (I always imagined it being a book) which later caused the fire we all know about.

If this is true, Alicia’s story would become even more tragic, since on top of everything else we add the fact that she felt betrayed and lost everything because of people she thought cared about her and in whom she placed her trust. I also speculated that, if my belief ends up being true, her friends never actually intended to hurt her — that the gift they were going to give her was secretly tampered with by one or more Writers from the guild who found out about this friendship and decided to use the opportunity to attack the Dessendres.

What do you all think?

When entering White Sands, Maelle says there is something else related to the mansion there. It's been a year since the game came out, we've had many updates (including a free DLC), and the mystery of the White Sands mansion still hasn't been answered. Do you think we'll ever learn more about this area?

I’m talking about Maelle. If we choose her ending, she decides to stay inside the Canvas until she dies, but how many years do you think she could have endured in there? She’s the weakest painter in the family and she’s already been inside the Canvas for 16 years. On top of that, Renoir (during his first conversation with Maelle at the beginning of Act 3) implies that she stayed inside longer than she should have, and finally, in the epilogue, we can see the change in color on her face, almost as if the game is hinting that her health is starting to deteriorate. Considering those three points, it doesn’t seem like she had much time left to live, but I can’t really come up with an estimate of how many years she had left. What do you all think?