Matsuro Palette

Very fun, love the story even if I can't see color very well.

[h1][i]Dear Matsuro Palette,[/i][/h1] I don't really know how to say goodbye to you. I finished your story and simply sat there, staring at the screen. I expected horror. I didn't expect an elegy. I didn't expect grief. [b]You feel less like a game I played and more like something I was entrusted with.[/b] Something fragile. Something beautiful. Something I now have to leave behind. 🌹 Your beauty isn't despite the horror. It's [i]within[/i] it. Blood against colour. Faded memories. Flowers beside graves. A lonely soul. [b]Even madness can contain wonder.[/b] Even suffering can contain inspiration. Even something seemingly inhuman can still contain humanity. [hr] [h2]🌹 Mono no Aware[/h2] I kept thinking about [i]mono no aware[/i]: The bittersweet awareness that beauty is temporary. [b]The flower falls. The seasons change. The candle burns down. People leave.[/b] And somehow, that doesn't make beauty worthless. [b]It makes it precious.[/b] [b]Maybe fleetingness is part of beauty itself.[/b] Death isn't necessarily the opposite of life. [b]Grief is what love leaves behind when someone is gone.[/b] Through death and grief, [b]we remember that we are alive.[/b] [hr] There is something deeply [i]Dorian Gray[/i] about this game. Beauty. Decay. Mortality. Permanence. We paint because we know things disappear. We tell stories because we're afraid of forgetting. And as Nick Cave sang: [b]“All beauty must die.”[/b] 🌹 [b]Perhaps that's why this game hurts.[/b] Because beautiful things cannot stay. [b]And perhaps that's exactly why they're beautiful.[/b] [hr] [h2]🩸 A Philosophical Wake[/h2] I imagine characters from [i]Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines[/i] discussing it. [b]JEANETTE:[/b] “Everyone keeps looking for the monster. But what happens when there's still someone inside?” “Isn't that much more frightening?” “And much more beautiful?” [b]BECKETT:[/b] “Humans preserve names, paint portraits, build monuments, tell stories and imagine reincarnation because they cannot bear the idea that anything simply ceases to exist.” “Perhaps the desire to preserve something is itself an admission that we know we cannot.” [b]NINES:[/b] “Look at the people. That's what makes this ♥♥♥♥ hurt.” “Somebody had to lose somebody.” “And somebody had to keep remembering.” “That's the part I respect.” [b]LACROIX:[/b] “Each minor problem like a grain of sand, each night I inherit the desert.” “One small failure. One terrible decision. One unintended consequence.” “Until the accumulated weight becomes impossible to escape.” [hr] [h2]🌹 Velvet Velour & Dorian Gray[/h2] [b]VELVET:[/b] “Beauty can be wounded.” “It can bleed.” “It can become distorted by grief and still remain beautiful.” “Every face changes. Every body ages. Every flower falls.” “So we make paintings.” “We write songs.” “We tell stories.” “Not because they'll last forever.” “But because they won't.” [b]That's what makes them precious.[/b] [b]DORIAN:[/b] “Beauty has always been rather cruel.” “We worship it because it promises what it cannot give us.” “Permanence.” “A flower withers. A painting cracks. A memory becomes uncertain.” [b]“We call things beautiful because they leave us.”[/b] “Perhaps art isn't an attempt to defeat death.” “Perhaps it is simply an attempt to leave something behind that can still make another soul feel.” [b]VELVET:[/b] “Now you're getting it.” [b]DORIAN:[/b] “I always understood beauty.” [b]VELVET:[/b] “No, darling. You understood beauty. Now you're beginning to understand loss.” [hr] [b]KIKUNOJO:[/b] “Snow is beautiful because it does not remain.” “A life is precious because it is finite.” “To mourn is to honour what was beautiful.” [b]JINBE:[/b] “Those we lose remain part of the people we become.” “Remembering them is not weakness. It is responsibility.” [b]ROBIN:[/b] “A name written down. A story passed on. A painting preserved.” “These things are fragile. But sometimes fragile things survive for centuries.” [b]BROOK:[/b] “A song is beautiful because it ends.” “Sometimes the silence afterward is part of the music.” 🎻 [b]SANJI:[/b] “You don't throw away a life just because the story ended badly.” “If somebody's life meant something, somebody ought to remember it.” [b]VASH:[/b] “Compassion doesn't erase consequences.” “It simply means we don't surrender our humanity while facing them.” [b]LUCY:[/b] “Some memories hurt because they're the only place someone still exists.” “Maybe moving forward means carrying them with you.” [b]DAVID:[/b] “People disappear.” “All you can do is remember what they meant to you.” “Maybe that's why dreams matter, even if you can't keep them.” [b]MAINE:[/b] “Life's cruel.” “But you keep going.” “You remember the people you lost.” “You make sure they weren't here for nothing.” [b]REBECCA:[/b] “Okay, this game is officially banned from being emotionally devastating.” “...I hate it.” A pause. “It's beautiful.” “I hate that it's beautiful.” “That's cheating!” [b]SAI:[/b] “Art allows a feeling to survive its creator.” And Lara Croft quietly adds: [b]LARA CROFT:[/b] “I've spent my life uncovering what people leave behind.” “Ruins. Graves. Relics. Stories.” “Every civilisation eventually becomes archaeology.” “But what we leave behind isn't proof that we defeated death.” “It's proof that we were here.” [b]“Perhaps that's the closest humanity ever comes to permanence.”[/b] Then come Jinx, Maya, Gaige and Zane. [b]JINX:[/b] “Okay... that's actually really sad.” “But kinda beautiful too.” “Guess even broken things can leave pretty explosions behind.” “...Don't tell anyone I said that.” 💙 [b]MAYA:[/b] “Understanding someone's pain isn't the same as excusing what it causes.” “Stories like this let us look into places we'd rather turn away from.” “And maybe come out a little more human.” [b]GAIGE:[/b] “This is the kind of story that makes your brain go, ‘Cool! Horror!’” “Then your heart goes, ‘Actually, we're going to be emotionally destroyed now.’” “Ten outta ten thematic integration.” “Would absolutely cry again.” 🤖 [b]ZANE:[/b] “Beauty, blood, ghosts, bad decisions and enough existential dread to fill a pub.” “Bloody miserable, though.” “Five stars.” [hr] And then they fall silent. Because beneath all those voices is the same truth: [b]Matsuro Palette isn't really about monsters.[/b] It's about people. Suffering. Memory. Grief. Mortality. Madness. Beauty. The soul. It's about finding humanity within inhumanity. Wonder within madness. [b]The things that hurt because they were worth loving.[/b] 🥀🎨🕯️🩸❄️🌳🐈‍⬛ Death is everywhere here, yet somehow I came away appreciating life more. [b]Grief isn't the opposite of love.[/b] We hurt because we cared. Maybe souls continue. Maybe reincarnation is real. Maybe death is a doorway. Maybe it is simply the end. I don't know. And I don't think the game needs to tell me. [hr] The flowers surrender to the frost. 🌹 Old memories remain after footsteps disappear. The canvas survives its creator. The final note disappears into silence. 🎻 And somewhere beneath all that sorrow, [b]love refuses to die.[/b] Maybe that is its own kind of permanence. [b]Not an answer to death, but a reason to look more closely at life.[/b] Perhaps that is what art ultimately gives us: [b]the chance to say, “I saw you. You mattered.”[/b] [i]If everything beautiful must eventually disappear, are we trying to defeat impermanence through art, memory and love... or simply trying to make sure that, before something disappears, we were awake enough to truly see it?[/i] [b][i]Goodbye, sweet angels. Rest beneath the wild roses. May your sorrow finally end. May your souls wander gently into whatever comes next. Rest peacefully, knowing your story was seen, loved, and will never be forgotten. When the last strokes of color fade away into silence, the love left behind remains forever untamed.[/i][/b]🕯️🌹🖤