Yeah probably, except edith died in child labor and number two she was 17 of course she was reckless and stupid I'm 18 and I could most definitely say I'd easily make the same mistake edith did, Especially if I was completely alone with no family or anyone to stop me. I'm not saying she's not accountable for her actions but what 17 year old would be a responsible mother Especially when she is completely alone with nothing but her bizarre childhood home and unstable life to give to the child
Felt like it was a much needed pause from the general feeling of "WTF" and unease from Molly's story. Especially with it being the first POV you go through. It gives you a quick chuckle to ease the tension but following that it wasnt hard to get back into the story.
Walter's line "Even a monster on the other side of the door starts to feel normal" is revealing because Walter is separated from the train by a wall, but he is separated from Edie by a door.
@@melonhead8760 It's possible, but I think they were implying the monster on the other side of the door was Edie; That Edie is the monstrous one. Walter was willing to bust through a wall, but not go through the door
The worst part to me is that Edith Sr. put the plaque for Gregory on the door of the bathroom, where he would have died, and not his room. It would have been a constant reminder.
Except Gregory's room is shared with his siblings and since we don't see the actual outside of that specifically the door we don't know if Edie didn't put a plaque to both Gregory and Gus on that door since we never se a plaque for Gus.
@@BladeTheDarkWarrior considering that she made his son sleep in the same room where his brother decided to fly, not sure if the other siblings were of her concern.
I actually have a theory on that which also explains why Edith Sr and Lewis's room were sealed off and had the peep holes with the plaque. The entire game, we play as Edith Jr but it's her journey as interpreted by her son. Even if Dawn was determined to keep her other children from the stories, sealing up those rooms would've made no sense because they were still being used, especially the bathroom. Even within the context of the story it makes no sense because in order to get to Edie's room, she and anyone else would have to go thru Molly's room and out the window. Edith says she'd never been in Molly's room before, but there's a picture of her with Edie and Dawn that was taken inside Edie's room. The more likely scenario is those rooms were not sealed, but because Edith wrote about all the rooms being sealed with the peep holes . . . Actually I don't remember Edith saying Edie put up the plaques. I guess what I'm saying is this is how Edith's son imagines the house because odds are he's never been inside. This trip to visit Edith's grave might be his first trip to the house. He's told that the rooms of dead relatives are sealed and have peep holes, except for Walter's room which is the only room Edith specifies wasn't sealed. Since Edie seems obsessed with honoring the dead, something like plaques would make sense even if they weren't there in reality. Think back to the end with Edith's room has power even though at the beginning of the story we're told the power had been cut off before she and Dawn left.
If you never got stuck then that precious moment would have gone too fast. I never stopped laughing and getting stuck made it even funnier as then you got to awkwardly jerk around your land shark
you know what scares me most about that story..... i was a baby left alone in a bath and i was legally dead for a period of time before my father revived me (luckily he was military and had CPR training) .... that thought scares the hell out of me anytime i see any drowning scene. part of me thinks that might have been the straw the broke the camels back and finally lead to my father divorcing his then wife.
@@nunyabisness1979 I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm so glad you're still with us today. I can't imagine the anxiety you must have been feeling during that scene.
@@shatteredXmirror don't worry too much about it, it might cause me discomfort but I've learned to deal with it, contrary to popular belief you can be afraid forever but you can't let it control you forever
That section was the only one that actually upset me. I have a nephew that age. My ma taught us when we were still kids that you never leave a baby (or toddler) alone in the bath. Phone rings? You ignore it or you pick the baby up and take him with you. Doorbell rings? You ignore it or you pick the baby up and take him with you. You need to step out for like 10 seconds just to grab something you forgot and you'll be right back, no big deal? Take. The. Baby. With. You
A) Walter was in his 20s when he went to go live in the basement. B) Walter's calendar read 2005 in the end when the original one was in 1975 or so. This means that Edie was repeatedly giving Walter new calendars to make him understand he'd been wasting his life. She offered no support. Or love. He was only a moleman to her C) When you enter Barbara's room, the first thing you see is a replica of Barbara's body with a severed head This story is so haunting
I feel the worse for Walter because he was the most cut off from his family. He would probably have still been alive if had proper support from his family but he was literally shut off
I wondered about the updates on the calendar. I hoped this was always some supportive member of the family trying to help him, but I know how silly it is to hope that.
@@andreariverapizarro Crawling to enter Barbara's room you see a dress thrown into the tunnel and there is a drawing by Milton of a "head" as if it fell out of the dress
Just a little detail, but Edith mentions how Lewis was quite proud of being Indian, and the architecture of the palace, the sitar, the Eastern styled soldiers and the turban wearing prince are a nod to this :)
yet another reason why I fucking love this game. No character is stereotyped or fallen into classic tropes, even with Lewis being the classic idea of a mentally unwell stoner, his personality still shines through. The characters all feel so real
@@greysonholtz I never thought of it, but the family seems to be deeply creative. I guess on a stoner, that could cause that type of world to take over even harder.
@@OhNoTheFace given how the section played out and his computers up in the room, I assumed that what he was creative with was probably games and that, had he survived, he probably would've made a video game that mirrors the world he made in his head.
I also like the subtle way that they establish Lewis is bisexual by giving the player the choice between a prince or princess, basically saying that the two are equally likely to be part of his daydream and fantasy
One more chilling detail: "Last time I was in Edith Sr. Room was when I was 10 and she was painting my portrait." Edith says this when looking through Edie's peephole. This could mean Edie was already trying to memorialize Edith.
"Unless you want another tetanus shot..." I can only imagine how Dawn would have reacted to finding Edith in Edie's room, Dawn's grandmother painting her daughter's portrait, illustrating that she believed Edith's death to be coming so soon... wow.
There’s a huge hint in Edie’s room about her pride in enshrining the dead in the form of binders. Three, thick as hell binders labeled “shrine sketches” “Barbara sketches” “Molly sketches” Even her pet birds have their own tiny shrines, with portraits of them inside their cage next to the window you come in. I remember thinking “how insane do you have to be to literally fill up a binder of sketches for your dead children’s gravestones?”
WH-WHAT?! HOW?! I ONLY WATCHED YOUR LIE IN APRIL THIS SUNDAY! IT'S A RELATIVELY OBSCURE SHOW! AND YET, AFTER PLAYING A RANDOM GAME I GOT A LONG TIME AGO AND GOING ON A RANDOM VIDEO ABOUT IT, I FIND A PERSON WITH KAORI PROFILE PIC!
@@yourlocalpunkposer8107 I said relatively obscure. It's a dtama anime from 2016, if I remember correctly, about a very specific topic. I wouldn't have known about it if I didn't discover its first opening in a Top 100 anime openings list.
@@SmileytheSmile any anime could be considered relatively obscure as far as TV goes but your lie in april is reasonably popular among people who watch anime
I love that Dawn, for all her contentious relationship with her mother, still named her daughter Edith after her. Really adds to the game showing how hard generational trauma is to escape even if you recognize it.
in my opinion i think it could represent a new start. like how edies was brought across the sea to escape such curse. dawn wanted the curse to end aswell. idk i think i just like thinking of it like that!!
I know I'm super late to the party but there is one thing I noticed just recently about the house, it's that the garden and the forest have foxglove everywhere Foxglove is a highly poisonous flower, so having them on your property when there are children around is just waiting for an accident to happen I really like this detail, this idea that this family is just poisoning itself out of negligence, and that it is their own inaction and carelessness that kills them. They believe so much in their curse that they make it happen, they tempt fate all the time because they think it's all set in stone anyways. It's subtle and almost meaningless in the grand scheme of the story but it's so telling and I love it
Oh yeah, when I was watching a playthrough of this game the first thing I noticed when the youtuber was commenting on all the pretty flowers was that they were foxgloves. Definitely pretty. Absolutely lethal.
Pretty sure the fact that the foxglove was everywhere which like u said is highly poisonous and nobody in the finch family cared or noticed is developer metaphor for how the curse Is just ignorance and carelessness
I search what foxgloves mean and it said: a gift of foxgloves would carry the symbolic meaning of “I am ambitious for you, rather than for myself.” It’s a small detail that I think somehow fits into the story.
It's kind of horrifying how the entire Finch family is borderline suicidal. Like a soldier who seeks a glorious death, they take their death as some sort of badge of honor.
Regarding Edie's death and her door, I assumed she intentionally killed herself rather than leave the house, and that she spent that last night drilling the peephole, putting her name on the door, and sealing it up so her room would match all the others. It would make complete sense for someone like Edie to already have her own fancy door decorations ready for her own death.
That actually also explains the fact that she has a monument on her tombstone like everyone else. Otherwise it makes no sense to have one because Dawn never would've according to this theory.
@@lizziemarie7877 yea, she probably did what is classic for elderly dying people in cartoons, locked herself in the room until she died. Only thought is, the door is still sealed- so how did they remove her body? She possibly sealed the door from the outside and then died elsewhere in the house, which would makes a lot of sense
Did you notice all the wine bottles and beer cans in the crawlspaces and passageways? I think Edie spent her last night revisiting the memorials, getting ready to join them.
Edie’s shrines are definitely to the family members’ deaths, not them themselves and their lives. Like, Barbara is immortalized forever with her crutch, inspiring Edith to add it to her own drawing of her in the journal, and it’s what Walter keeps to remember her by in the bunker; through the glorification of her death, it’s turned into this iconic item. But that wasn’t her crutch! It was her boyfriend’s! She only held it once that we know of when she was defending herself from whoever her attacker was in reality. It wasn’t important to her at all in life, but it was part of her death. So it’s one of the key things that represents her.
The attackers were most definitely a gang of home invaders mentioned in the radio earlier. They were even described as wearing masks. Whether they were actually from the convention or not is another thing, but I don't believe Rick had anything to do with it. The police blamed it on Rick because they found one of his crutches, but the other was with Barbara, so how did he escape with a broken leg? I think it also goes in line with the pattern of the romantic partners of the Finches falling to the same curse. Gotta say though, that comic came out just one year after her death. That's pretty fucked up.
@@RichArchillesI thought the radio was only to set up the fictional monster attack just for the tabloids. I had always thought the most probable death was Barbara being murdered by her boyfriend.
@@millerblaylockI think it's intentionally ambiguous - one of those crimes that you will unfortunately never know the real answer to. IMO there's even a couple of clues to suggest that her father was the one who killed her - the hook hand right after Sven hurt his hand, AND her ear ends up in the music box that he made for her. I'm not saying that's what happened, just that the whole story plays out the way many true crime stories do where there's a plethora of possibilities and no real answer.
I personally believe that Edie made Barbaras comic based off how the comic artist knows about the interior of the house, even down to the key in the music box. I don't think that Barbaras death was never truely found out, which is why it ended in such a bizzare way. Edie can infer that Barbara used the key to unlock the basement and maybe kick someone off the patio onto the chandelier, but what actually killed her is a mystery
i love the way the devs portrayed dawn as kind of a bitch, even someone childish with sealing the rooms while edie was the supportive grandmother as you're first going through the game. Then as you progress you realize that dawn has extremely good reasons for acting that way, and maybe edie is a bit more nefarious than just the kindly grandmother.
It’s like when you see someone being an ahole at that current moment and judge then and then you actually get the story why they were acting that way and it’s understandable.
Dawn is relatable, but wrong. The entire point there is insulating her kids from the stories of death WON'T protect them from it. Eddie is living proof of that. She is the most immersed in stories of death and most given to the idea of the curse, yet she is also the longest-live Finch. I feel like this video takes the position of "Dawn was right" when the reality of what happens in the game shows that she actually wasn't.
@Justin-og9gu I think it's actually in the middle. Grandma Edie is obsessed with the deaths of her family and glamorizing the so- called curse, to the detriment of her living family. Dawn, meanwhile, is acting out of trauma and trying to suppress this information completely, clashing with Edie's glorification. This suppression only made it easier for Edie's stories to get to Milton and Lewis and led to their deaths (implied, in Milton's case). Neither are right, and the issue is the family "curse" and generational trauma manifesting in different unhealthy ways. Edie came from a traumatic background and initially made sense of it by turning it into a story that slowly got bigger and more out of hand, twisting the entire family into a tragic mindset of obsession and the glorification of death. Dawn is pushing back against it, but only feeds it as a result, losing her children in the end.
@@Justin-og9gu I don't agree. In my opinion, Edie has lived so long because she didn't didn't believe in the Death Curse. The Death Curse that has caused a lot of weird, and traumatic twisted thoughts in the family, that has caused them to ignore some pretty intense situations. Because they'll die by the death curse, so, who cares? That attitude is bad, a lot of these people wouldn't have died if they were more cautious. Lewis, in this interpretation, is a victim of being obsessed with death and the stories in a completely twisted way. Seeing them grander than his life, in a time where he was suffering a great depression, caused him to do what he did.
I like to think that Milton figured the truth about the "curse" and ran away, leaving behind that flipbook as an explanation for his disappearance that he thought his family wasn't mentally well enough to see through.
I never thought of that. I know there’s a comment about the unfinished swan but I’m still with you on this. I hope he recognized what was really going on and ran away. Very brilliant.
@@binarybus11000 In the Reddit AMA, the developers basically confirm that Milton's story wasn't over even by the time of WROEF. He's probably still out there.
Lewis's death scares me the most is the fact that the blade was meant to cut *fish*, I doubt that blade was made to be sharp or strong enough to cut through all the bones and flesh of a human neck. I could be wrong about all of this but the thought that the blade was not enough to kill him and that he bled out slowly rather than died instantly is _horrifying_
I'd imagine given the force needed to cut a fish head, and depending the way he was laid down, assuming it was down like a guillotine. It would've severed his brain stem so he'd have felt nothing and likely died instantly over bleeding out. Also, industrial strength equipment is known to generally be stronger and use more force than would be required to *just* do it as to make sure there's a clean chop every time. Another thing being that the scene instantly cuts back, so it's presented like he instantly died.
@@Get2thecart Even people being decapitated by actual guillotines where reported to still live for a little while. The last and most believable account is in 1905 France. Dr. Gabriel Beaurieux did an experiment with the person being decapitated. After the decapitation he said his name the head looked up at him. This lasted for about 15 seconds. And even though the brain stem is severed and he cant feel his body anymore he CAN still feel his neck since that is still connected to his brain... Think about that.
For Barbara's story: another clue that the boyfriend killed her is from the narrator. The narrator refers to Barbara's BF as her "biggest fan". He also then refers to the 'monsters' that kill her as "fans" that came to celebrate her. I think it's implying that the BF's sick obsession with Barbara (as a character, not a person) overcame him that night, and he hurt/killed her in anger to hear her scream. Probably after the failed scare, like you mentioned. So the BF was the monster after all.
@@thornels holy shit youre right tho. Why would they mention that her bf is specifically "her biggest fan"? she probably also wasnt practising her scream
@@Lady_lulyS2 most premeditative murderers tend to make an excuse, he could have been faking it. Like that one murderer who faked a disability to initially mooch off his family and gf but later used to excuse his murder.
@@atemephii i don't think he was faking but, in another video i saw a coment that suports the theory that he killed her: "Rick was trying to get a scream from barbara. I think Walter saw Rick dressed up as the Hooked Man from the rádio and hid underneath his bed. Barbara, with the crutch, investigated upstairs, and Rick scarred her. She slid on the rollerskate and fell over the banister, breaking it. She fell to her death. Rick, in Panic, grabbed her body and ran for it. Dumped it somewhere and dissapeared. Walter witnessed it all" ( said by @Libertasparty) If Rick killed her, i don't think he did it intentionally. He was her biggest fan remember? And he was presumably trying to get her to get back into acting after she moved on from it (as can be seen by her room, wich shows evidence that, what she wanted to attend that Halloween was a prom not a convention for movie fans) and the dead can't act. I mean, yes he was a douchebag but he wasn't a murderer. He just cared more about Barbara the actress, than about Barbara, the person.
Another thing pointing to Edie being responsible for Molly's death in particular is that Molly as the cat and bird highlights that she's chasing and eating a "mummy bird" then just a "rabbit" and THEN a "mummy rabbit". I think this demonstrates that Molly had picked up on a lack of care from Edie, and maybe felt like she was being a burden to her family in some way. Her being a "monster" - through behaving badly like young kids do - leads to her upsetting her mother and getting locked in her room, leading to her own death. Molly doesn't blame the curse in her dying writings, she blames herself :( A great game, thanks for the 2nd suggestion to stop and play it, I really loved playing through it 😀
In that time period, sending a child to bed without dinner was a common, and even encouraged, practice. The fact that this little girl just *accepted* her punishment, and instead of pleading with her mother (who brushed her off like she has heard all the whining before), she almost immediately takes stock of what she can eat means that this was not the first time, either. The carrot, or even the Holly, could have had mold growing in it, or a reaction to any kind of preservative with the fluoride in the toothpaste, or...the holly might not have even been real berries. Every one of the stories, especially the younger children, was absolutely heartbreaking, but so very well written.
I think we forget how Dawn’s method was just as harmful as Edie’s. She kept her kids in the dark, did the exact opposite of Edie, and her kids still suffered. Like the video said, they’re brilliant people, they NEED a creative outlet, and Dawn took that away. That’s why Lewis died, that’s why Edith came back (and possibly caused her premature death), and that’s why Milton ran away. Edie let the illness fester, and Dawn tried to push it away entirely. Both women were wrong.
@@mp6471 she certainly didn't help Lewis. If he was already depressed going to something as monotonous as a cannery was a death sentence. Heck even the rooms as morbid as they are could have helped. Lewis interest in music could have been explored with the help of great Aunt Barbara's guitar.
Fun Fact: I have always been afraid of going all the way round on a swing no idea why, so actually having to make a character do it was way to intense.
that scene was awful for me because *besidesseeingachilddie* ive had multiple dreams as a child where i would get violently launched into the air and i always hated the feeling of the g force and the impending doom of smashing into the ground
I think what is especially ironic about Sam's death, is that he is a Vietnam vet. He survived what was some of the most traumatic and deadly events for many people, but what did him in in the end was a peaceful hunting trip.
@@dream6562 Every single one of these deaths by the Finches was caused by neglect and was completely preventable. The idea that some supernatural curse is the reason the children should die or gain mental illness is disgusting, personally. It's just a way for the parents to avoid blaming themselves, almost justifying their actions as if they couldn't have made better decisions. People are so eager to find closure through curses just because it sounds better.
Not "ironic" at all. He was a soulless murderous invader trying to enforce a fascist dictatorship abroad for the interests of US corporations. It's completely unsurprising that he'd due from killing animals from leisure, and doing it with no attention towards whether the animal actually died (so, no care to reduce its suffering) and no attention towards his own daughter's worries and shock.
When my sister died at the age of seven (she was in a car accident with my paternal grandmother. Both passed). My mom hired a family therapist and my Dad didn’t want us to touch her room. It lay untouched for a year. Her toys were right where she left them, bed undone, and her homework still on the desk. Then the therapist slowly brought up the option of quietly cleaning it and eventually spending time in it. I now know she did this because the concept of keeping things as is can be more harmful then good. That not moving on can cause things like the fall of a family or ideas of “curses”. Which is why this game really got under my skin. I’ve had a “shrine” in my home and luckily my Dad finally let us make little changes. It took him over ten years to finally fully begin to move on. It was easier for me because I was three when she passed and she’s more of an idea. A voice I only hear in home movies. It’s been over twenty years and our family is still going and curse free. We visit her on Christmas and birthdays. My parents didn’t divorce and my remaining siblings do not speak of her like a saint. She stole things from our older sister, and pulled pranks like all kids. She was also a sweet girl and I’m sure she would’ve grown up to be a chef. We live with a strange trauma, but we’re okay. I can’t say the same for Edie Finch.
Reminds me of the scene from the Lovely Bones where Susie’s mother finally goes into her room, cleans it, and makes the bed at the very end of the movie. I’m so sorry for your loss.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve also lost my brother due to suicide, he also was addicted to weed which got under my skin. Seeing my family cope with grief, I realised how easy it is to give death some sort of meaning or to glorify it because it temporarily makes it easier for everyone - just like the people in the game did. But the game showed me how dangerous this could get. We now talk about my brother just as he was - the good sides and the bad sides. We keep it realistic
It's a normal reaction when suddenly losing someone. Leaving their room as a shrine and/or tomb. As you experienced, moving on is when you can approach it. I am happy you guys got help during it. That helps!
My thought was always that the shaking in Walter's story is meant to represent the trains. The trains never *actually* stopped coming, rather it's part of a larger metaphor with Walter's line "if you wait long enough, you get used to anything". Eventually, after 30 years of hearing the trains come & go at the same time every day, it subconsciously became routine for Walter. The trains were still coming, but by then he was so used to hearing them that he stopped noticing the effects altogether - so he thought perhaps it was safe to go out into the real world.
Kaitie M I think he was a PTSD victim. He depended on a schedule. The train was late one day, because of a malfunction, a late conductor whatever. He noticed the train, but was too shocked to move.
My theory is that the train tracks could've been under repairs/construction for the week, and Walter was just unlucky enough to get there the day they finished.
The mistake about Edie and Lewis' rooms being sealed can be explained as Edie spending her last few moments turning both of their rooms into shrines, just like the other rooms.
yep, ingame they said that she was already gone when they tried to get her into a nursing home the next morning, but it never stated that she simply went to bed. I also think that she used the remaining time to create another time capsule for herself by sealing the door and adding another peep hole. Seeing how many times she already did that, she's probably really fast and efficient in it.
@@popatoeman5739 No but Edie would want it to all be uniform, so she sealed the doors, and drilled the peepholes to match the other rooms, completing the shrine to her dead family.
For the last 2 rooms... Lewis's and Edies rooms - those are the only 2 that dawn might not have done well maybe she did do her son Lewis's one. And then Edie did her own room out of spite because Dawn stopped her daughter from reading Edies story.
I also find the name “dawn” really interesting. Every other character in the story has a common historical name, but dawn, the only one who understood what was going on, has a modern name meaning “new beginning”
Eh not truly since she also had old world ways of doing things like repression which is a beloved old school practice. You can't deal with problems if you repress anything. She may have understood the stories were an issue but how she handled things wasn't exactly modern...
She didn't understand what was going on, her method of dealing with loss was just as unhealthy as Edie's. In a way, she also believed in the old stories just as much. Edie wanted to preserve the moment of death, like it would keep the person or pet around. She had fully accepted the idea of a curse and didn't even seem to fear it that much. Dawn thought she could "escape the curse" by never talking about what happened to the family. When Milton disappeared, she sealed the rooms. Airtight. Why, when it wasn't even clear that Milton had gone missing in the house? They were surrounded by steep cliffs and a forest full of toxic plants. When Lewis died, she wanted to leave. Lewis wasn't killed by the stories, though. He felt guilty for not being able to protect his brother. He was highly creative, but forced to work in the most monotonous, grim environment possible. He felt like a failure. He could have been saved by leaving the factory, not the house. But Dawn blames everything on Edie and her stories when, in a way, her own actions make the curse seem way more real. Both Dawn and Edie had harmful ways of coping with death, just like everyone in the Finch family. Edith was the one who tried to deal with it in a more healthy way.
@AWEtistic I don't think either of them were healthy in their coping methods. Edie was obsessed with the idea of a deadly curse, and Dawn buried herself in denial of it. Also, after Sanjay's death, she probably thought that the "curse" followed her and tried to erase it before it claimed her children. I can't really blame either of them for Lewis's death (since their family has a long history of ignoring obvious problems, including mental health issues) since both of them have some sort of ptsd due to their upbringing. However, I do like Dawn a bit better just because she moved away from that damn house. If only she explained things to her daughter; but then again, we wouldn't have this game if she had.
I mostly came to the same conclusions. It first hit me when I realized how insane it would be to keep raising a child within the same room he grew up with his twin, not changing a thing, and even keeping the chalk marks while adding on to the surviving child. Imagine being Sam, growing up with a constant reminder of your dead twin, right in front of you, when you go to sleep, when you wake up, when you hang out to do your homework or whatever. Edie is batshit crazy. Also, something that suddenly occurred to me - how did Dawn ever got found and rescued after her dad fell to his death? This is a fantastic game.
Yeah Edie is really batshit crazy. And for the thing with Dawn, im really sure they had phones back then and that she called for help (just propeply on a flip phone)
I could only imagine that it's probably her way to cope after losing Molly in the first place. On top of already losing her father and husband. It's still insane but, she can't help but cling whatever left of her children at that point.
@@Tamaki742 I agree. I think it's just her way of grieving, and memorializing them in such symbolic, poetic and intricate ways is her way of finding closure.
@@jettstorm2253 Yeah, but at the same time I really can't deny how it's horrible that she couldn't even think about how her children are dealing with it. In her mind, she's trying to leave this grandiose legacy that her family would be remembered by, because one day the Finches would probably be no more. But the fact that it extends to neglect and profiteering from your children's deaths? Edith obviously needs help. Help which she refused.
I’m incredibly late to the party here, but another interesting thing to note would be the extensive pet cemetery. I feel like pet deaths are often notoriously attributed to neglect or mistreatment, which would go along quite nicely with the theory that the Finches are just careless by nature. Absolute quality video, btw!
I think that Edie just thought thought the curse existed. You know how some people neglect pets the older they get, because they know they will die soon, or they put them down. I think that’s how Edie felt she started to neglect them even though they were fine causing them to die and her delusion of the curse to furthermore continue.
@@yaggy3818 Just because they become careless, not because they know they are going to die soon. Everything becomes too much trouble as you get older, so they start to neglect all kinds of things -- hygiene, combing their hair, wearing clean clothes, washing dishes properly, cleaning out the spider webs ... anything ... just almost all of it. Doesn't happen with every old person, but the older you get, the more likely it is, and some people just die before they get to that state rather than of old age completely. This fits in with the risk-taking/carelessness theme just fine, though.
The thing about Edie keeping death reminders of the family and things that were even disrespectful to the dead is one of the most clear signs of her obssession to me. If I keep my dead dog's collar, her toys, pictures of her, it's clearly just a way to keep a part of her with me. To keep her alive in the smallest, ordinary details. But if I mummify my dog's dead body and keep her posed somewhere in my house for me to look at her corpse every day, it's clearly sickening and agonizing. Keeping a reminder of the dead is not keeping a reminder of their death. It is keeping a memory of when they were living.
It would be like putting up your dog's picture and then leaving a toy car next to it to memorialize that the dog got hit by a car. She's only interested in how they died, not how they lived.
This also explains why there's so much taxidermy throughout the house. Aside from family photos, framed collections of dead bugs are the most common item on the walls. Edie really took your mummification idea seriously 💀.
@@whatteamwildcats4033 the same with Lewis as well. Lewis suffers from that extreme daydreaming pretending to be a great 'king' of sort, to the point that it took his world and even his life. And you wants us to remember him by putting a freaking crown on top of his grave? The symbol of something that took his life?? Gtfo
I’m surprised no one talks about the insane amount of wine and liquor bottles in the house. May not be abuse related but certainly neglect at a minimum (of the children). Outside swinging on the swing set , unsupervised while parent(s) are inside plowing through wine.
@@TokuijinIt was even pointed out in the video that the fence there, even if back in the day it wasn't broken yet, was basically an array of short wooden stakes right in front of a swing. That choice was just as intentional as putting the swing by a sheer cliff.
The exact moment I decided I loved the game. So creative and artistic, would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the team was mapping that sequence out.
I saw a 52 minute video, and thought to myself: “I’m not gonna watch this whole thing.” I watched the whole thing. Take my sub, you hypnotizing bastard.
Don’t know if anyone has already said this but something that occurred to me was that it actually makes total sense that Molly would envision death/the family curse coming for her as a sea monster since probably the first story she had heard of the curse was when Odin Finch went down at sea with the old house. To a little girl, it’s probably like a sea monster had swallowed him whole, and I wouldn’t put it past Edith Sr. to make it sound that way when she described it to Molly.
Walter's death always hits me the hardest. I think it's because he got so close to experiencing freedom and real happiness and it was violently ripped away from him at the last second. The last line of his letter will never fail to make me tear up, it's absolutely heartbreaking.
it’s such a quick thing too. he literally stated that he didn’t care if all he had was a week left and ended up dying the minute he stepped out. it’s so heartbreaking i almost cried.
I remember seeing a theory about how historically many “family curses” were actually mental illness being passed down, i think thats what this was about, many of them died because delusion or how they see the world
Honestly makes sense My family is "cursed" This game hit way too close to home for me for several reasons But a lot of the people in my family suffer from serious mental health issues At first glance, it just seems like a bunch of misfortunes But if you really look, everyone who died, died from either directly or indirectly from someone's mental health destructive choices
It could be mental illness, but I don’t think it has to be. It can just be that the Finches have been conditioned for generations to subscribe to a form of magical thinking, that they’ve effectively been disarmed of their common sense self preservation instinct by the idea that the family is “cursed” and there’s nothing they can do about it. It makes them bold and daring people, to be sure, but it also leads them to take a lot of unnecessary risk and do foolish things. Dawn saw her father put himself in an insanely dangerous position and get himself thrown off a cliff for it. I think that may have been a moment of clarity for her, when she realized that there was no curse. She tried to keep her kids safe from it, but in the end they couldn’t handle being cut off from that family legacy. It didn’t matter if the curse wasn’t real, because real or not, it was all they thought they had.
As the father of a 1-year-old at the time of playing this game and also someone who has struggled with ADHD, Gregory's death was painful to get through as the thought of losing a child through a sudden lapse of attention is without a doubt my single worst fear. It was the first time I wished a game had come with a trigger warning.
Man, I feel you so much. I probably have ADHD, and I can barely take care of myself. I have two dogs and I keep them alive, but a baby needs so much more supervision and care, there is so much more that can go wrong. I'm definitely not ready. I wish you and your kid all the best.
I felt the same way. I was utterly horrified as the scene started and felt physically nauseated. I also have young children and suddenly all the times I've given them baths as babies came flashing before my eyes- the what if there was a lapse of attention that caused immeasurable pain. Absolutely horrific.
Yeah I agree about the trigger warning - should've been given for both Gregory and Lewis. I had to skip through Gregory's scenes and every time the video cut back to them I started to cry. (I'm crying right now writing this comment.) Suicide is so intensely personal to so many people and I think should've been given advance warning as well,,, but such a visceral depiction of a baby drowning?? That's above and beyond disturbing to me. If I had advance warning I could've skipped it or braced myself but coming across that section unprepared made me wish I hadn't watched this video at all, even though it was fantastic :/// I really appreciate when creators a) warn viewers in advance about potentially upsetting topics and then b) provide time stamps for us to safely skip through the content. Anyway, I hope that everyone who watched this video and was upset by Gregory's story is feeling safe and loved :')
I’m one to agree that the very nature of the Finch household is a hazard in of itself. While you did say that the swing being very close to a poorly built fence and on a cliff, I’d also like to mention that the whole house is built in such a way that it looks like it’s only being held together by magic. I’m really surprised none of the Finches died by misstepping near the edge of the balconies.
It is deadly, it’s a beautiful plant but it will literally stop your heart. People used to brew it in tea by accident mistaking it as other plants. It’s also used in modern day heart medication!
I know other deaths are more ambiguous, but the one that's really bothering me for some reason is Walter's. I don't think he was hit by a train. I'm not convinced there really were trains running out there. I think the train motif came from them having built the house over some old train tracks, and him having taken up an interest in trains when he was young. After watching Barbara die, in a way to cope, he fixated on something familiar -- trains. They were harmless, they were *normal*. They have nothing to do with his sister, or some fantastical curses. You see the train toy models in the bunker. He could lock himself away with them and they weren't gonna hurt him. But he was traumatized, and it preyed on a thing that he loved. I believe the shaking of the bunker by "trains" was a manifestation of anxiety or panic attacks. He worked through them with repetition and focus, opening those peaches over and over. They weren't scary anymore, they were routine. S/o to the line about the monster becoming a friend. Friends are just people you get comfy having around -- that's what his mental illnesses became. Think about what living 30 years underground eating only peaches would do to your body. I know the pantry had other food, but look how full it was -- he probably was really only eating peaches, because they were the focal point of coping with aggressive anxiety. I'm sure the "house shook" several times a day. He was severely malnourished, probably approaching death as it was. But routine was holding him together.... until it wasn't. One day, he didn't have a panic attack. It was jarring. The one thing he knew was gone. It spurred him to do something different. He got up, knocked a hole into the wall, and completely exhausted himself doing it. He likely hadn't had any form of real exercise in 30 years, on top of being malnourished. It was a moment of adrenaline and of uncertainty. He burst through the wall, saw the light and the fresh air, and then... his heart gave out. It's sad but it fits. He was living in a state of mental turmoil for decades but, for him, that was holding it together. Then, experiencing the very first sign of improvement to his mental health was when, for him, it all fell apart.
When Edith goes through the hole, you get to see the broken tracks. I wonder if he was so dazzled by the light/view that he just walked off the rails...
I don't think he was only eating peaches. If I remember correctly, when you are playing as him, you eat a can of peas (or pea soup?) at the sound of an alarm clock. Also, there is a pit just beyond the room that has a mountain of trash in it, of all types of food.
Its almost as if the circumstances of their deaths outweigh their lives in Edith's point of view. The romanticization of their tragic falls are shown to be so important from a young age that they internalize their own demise before they ever have a chance to find their own identity. Their identity is their death.
Yup. Barbara's crutch was noteworthy enough to Edie that it's in Barbara's death portrait... except it's not even her crutch. It's just the thing she had on hand to use to try, and ultimately fail, to drive off the person or people that killed her. Molly had a rabbit and a fish, but what animal is she loosely portrayed as on her portrait? A cat, the first creature she "became" while hallucinating before her death. Plus the newspaper clippings and literal photograph of her husband dying. And you know the rest. They're not memorials made to celebrate life, they glorify snapshots of her family members in the moments of their deaths.
@@sleepythemisanother thing that shows how edie glorifies their death not their lives is with her husband sven, the guy was a creative and talented builder he built the whole house along with its secret passages and made a music box for Barbara and probably built the cemetery yet what is he most remembered by ? The dragon shaped slide that he died while making And like you said molly had and was interested in different kinds of animals including birds and bugs yet she is only remembered as a cat Lewis Also has a crown on hes grave even though he had more to his he was proud of being an India yet this part of him isn't immorilized but the fantasy he was daydreaming about that it not being real caused him to hate himself and eventually commit suicide
It was also mentioned by Edith that she saw Edie bringing food and supplies in Walter's supply part of his bunker where she thought she was "hiding presents". Edie didn't just allow Walter to live under the house like a moleman instead of bringing him to therapy, she also encouraged his behavior by bringing him supplies and restocking his food so that he won't ever need to leave his bunker ever again. That woman is seriously messed up...
I'm sorry, as someone with Maladaptive Daydream Disorder, Lewis's bit with the daydream was waaaaay too realistic. It stuck a bit too close to home and when I played it, I cried a little bit, not gonna lie. Yes, it does take over your life. Yes, I'm only really able to pay attention to about a quarter of my life. Yes, I do feel like I'm missing out on all the good stuff in life due to my brain trying to block out the bad stuff. Yes, it's fun. Yes, I blame my dad for not letting me take medication for my ADHD, Depression, or Anxiety, all of which can cause MaDD. Yes, I too was suicidal in the past. All I can say to other people who feel like this and are underaged like me is it does get better. It might not seem like it, but it will, I promise. Go talk to someone you trust, go get ice cream, go sit in the park for a few minutes. Do what you can to help yourself.
Hmm i think its a bit different. At the beginning of the story told by his psychiatrist she mentions it all started when he got treatment for his substance abuse and he finally realized the monotony in his job , when he got sober he realized how much his life sucked and he tried to cope with it by daydreaming which grew in complexity everyday ...when he wakes up from his dream and your back at the cannery he realized the only way he could escape his own life he hated was to commit suicide . He shouldvd just kept smoking weed though lol
@@owningkoning he was using illegal substances to cope the same way that maladaptive day dreaming is used to cope. Doing drugs, no matter if it’s “just weed dude” 🙄 is maladaptive. I say this as someone who’s lived decades with ptsd and day dreamed cope. Drugs, alcohol, day dreaming, none of it changes the serious issues. Get help, therapy and medication that actually solves the problems and life becomes much more bearable Edit to add: I say this as someone who eats edibles for nerve pain and appetite issues, and who also drinks and eats edibles for recreation
Im so sorry Warning: dumb rant i did that makez noz enze Im not diagnosed but i suffer w a similar problem of daydreaming and feeling like i cant control it Id daydream while walking, on thr swing, class, drawing, trying to do anything Ill pace around for hours in my dreamx and itz just Fuckkkk man Itz gotten a bit better since im in a better place now/hv medication but itz ztill a problem Im ao sorr u hv to deal w that man,,,
what if theres none to talk with? what if there's nothing i can do cause i haven't money or health to go beyond my room? sometimes i think i already crazy
@Natalie im so sorry, no oen deservez to go through that,, Thingz will get better, okay? Not tomorrow since thatz impozzible but at some point,, trust me
16:00 I only realized this now but it makes sense for the boy to be this scared of going out. Because he actually IS hiding from a "monster". He wasn't just traumatized from seeing his sister get killed. He also saw who did it. He probably felt like he might get killed next.
I like to think that Edie's door is sealed shut because we're seeing Edith's son's interpretation of the story he's reading. He may have read that the doors were sealed with peepholes early on and imagined that all of them were sealed in that way, even when it wouldn't make sense for them to be. I see it as another reminder of the unreliable narrator.
@@Generic8864 I think Dawn had to shut Edie's door too, her room is perhaps the most dangerous for her children out of all of them. If she left it open for Edie to use, she'd just get Dawn's kids in her room, without any possibility of Dawn stopping her. She knows all of those stories, because she is obssesed with the family curse, so she doesn't always need to take her grand-grand-children to those other rooms. And perhaps before Dawn locked her room out,, she got out all of her neccessities, but as Dawn and Edith were leaving that day, she chose to die (also because she didn't want to leave the house alive), and left her a one last story, also because Dawn told her, they are leaving a day after Lewis's funeral. And as we know, Dawn only shut those doors, not secret entrances, that's how Edith was able to get to the journal, and move around the house years later
Oh I see; Molly ate poisonous berries and other rotting/inedible stuff, which caused her belly to start rumbling (which she interprets as hunger in her dream) and her to choke (like she does on the rabbit). She desperately needs air and water, like the shark on land, and as that wave of sickness passes she begins to dream of a monster choking people to death. I'm thinking that maybe she got up to vomit (hence the monster coming up through the bathroom) and wrote the entry as she went back to bed and the sickness caused her to panic and hallucinate. She then goes to sleep and chokes on her vomit, or something similar. I doubt the berries and moldy food were enough to kill her outright, but choking would certainly do the trick.
I think those are not really poisonous berries. Her death takes place in December, close to christmas. My thought was that those could have been christmas decorations. Made of rubber or, more fitting for the time period, ceramic. She chewed and swallowed a set of ceramic balls which, in turn pierced her stomach and intestines, and that's how she died.
@@arturofernandez4058 Well I mean chances are she would've tasted if it wasn't a berry, or at least described it as not a berry when eating it. I do consider the fact that the fluoride in toothpaste being toxic, and the fact that she ate an entire tube of it to be very likely her cause of death.
It's Holly berries, a common Christmas decoration, and it is poisonous. A lot of people thinks that Molly was probably hallucinating because of the poisoning from the berries and all the other inedible stuff she ate.
If the berries are holly, they are quite poisonous, and ingesting more than twenty berries can kill a child. We only see her eat three, but I'm guessing that the developers didn't do enough research.
It's truly sick that they named the bathroom that Greg died in "Greg's room". It's like they think he's haunting it or something, imagine the pain his mother must have felt from witnessing or hearing about the "shrine" Edie made to "honor" the death of an one year old by his mom. Fucking disgusting.
@@logannowak5265 absolutely not the same thing. a literal shrine dedicated to not the actual person but how they died instead?? not even close to a grave.
I guess you could chose to see it as a constant reminder. Don’t let babies out of your sight when they’re in the bath- especially not in THIS family. Obviously,it’s still terrible but there could at least be a somewhat decent or good hearted reason? Probably not,knowing who Edith SR is
@@logannowak5265it's chosen bc he died in that room because of the bathtub tho. if it wasn't he wouldn't have had the plaque there. it would've been on the actual door to his room like everything elsem
It’s been a few years but I i’d like to point out that molly actually ate holly berries, not mistletoe. Correct me if i’m wrong. I might be mistaken on this. The common christmas holly can be easily mistaken for mistletoe and holly can have some not so nice effects on children when compared to mistletoe. Vomiting and diarrhea are much more severe when it’s happening to a child who’s stomach is empty. I might just be overthinking it but the moment after she ate the holly is the moment that the story and perspective broke away from reality. She also talks a lot about how hungry she is, that’s basically what the whole story is about, it comes to the end with her hunger consuming her and she dies of starvation or dehydration. That’s what I concluded.
It was a mistake that surprised me because the shape of holly leaves is so distinctive! Also, hanging mistletoe isn't part of the Christmas tradition here, but aren't the berries usually white?
@@hairymcnipples - Yes they actually are white, but holly has been used to take the place of mistletoe because mistletoe can be invasive and dangerous to grow if you’re not looking to kill all your other plants and trees. Mistletoe berries are usually white but it’s a common misconception that they are instead red (some stores may even paint mistletoe berries red) and the berries on holly can be much more “pretty” compared to the tiny cluttered patches of berries on a mistletoe branch. Sorry for the long paragraph. I just really think it’s an interesting detail and it explains a lot about Molly’s story of her death.
There's a theory that the berries were fake since there is a crunch sound when Molly bites them, so maybe not as bad, but in the 40s pretty much everything was toxic
@@gemmacadd2252 Holly berries are actually hard at that time of year (fall/winter). They also taste really bad at this time. They only become soft after several frosts, and better tasting. The attention to detail is insane in this game - we know it's around Christmastime here, so Holly berries would be hard at this point. The crunch is a nod to that. Another point is that, with them tasting so bad, Molly would have to be truly hungry to even consider not spitting them out immediately, much less actually swallow.
There’s another element to Lewis’s story that I think people miss. Based on the decisions he had to make on the voyage segment, he may have struggled with sexual orientation. If I remember correctly, he was on his way to a place where he heard of a “handsome queen” or “beautiful prince.” His struggle with this along with his history of substance abuse could’ve contributed to his suicide.
Sadae Sparda Idk about this video, as I haven’t watched it yet, but I assume most people just assume it’s there solely for token representation points. Like “oh ofc they need to make a gay option, or everyone will riot”. When in reality, sometimes, even in fiction, people are just bi, or gay... Nobody bothers to even consider the in-universe implications because “of course” it’s solely for the sake of representation. Which, it might be, but still.
I'm not a native English speaker, but isn't handsome relatively common for describing women in older English? I remember Pride and Prejudice being full of ladies being called handsome, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't attempting to imply genderqueerness.
nihil est enim In modern english it’s not used like that though, at least not in America. We generally call men handsome, and women beautiful. From what I’ve seen using them in the opposite way generally implies genderqueerness, nowadays.
I think the death of Molly was key here. An important detail you missed, Molly states in her diary she would not be around much longer - she was already sick with something serious (at the time in children) probably Scarlet Fever that can cause the rash you visibly see on her arms & hands. She then ate the toothpaste/holly berries which exacerbated her weak condition. She died in her sleep after writing in the journal, her imagination fuelled by the toys & pictures in her room. The references to choking & hunger sadly reflecting what she was feeling as she wrote. I don’t think Edie had anything sinister or particularly morbid in mind at this point. Holly is a natural decoration for Christmas when the event takes place. The danger of eating the berries was probably just overlooked or unknown to Edie. Molly had been naughty and locking children in isn’t that unusual if they won’t go to bed and just keep coming out (especially at the time -1940’s). Here’s where you made a very important point. Edie was probably overcome with guilt here and the old family curse story became the perfect outlet for her to cope. She became absolutely obsessed to the level of psychosis (Lewis later reflects the same mental illness, it seems to be a trait in the family, taken to varying levels from their various obsessions). Anyway, Molly’s story and this game as a whole is simply a masterpiece of storytelling. Amazing amounts of small, scattered details that link & relate beautifully to one another. So much that is very easy to miss but make you gasp when you eventually see them. This is an extremely talented studio.
I don't think that's what she meant when she said she wouldn't be around much longer. She had already turned into all the animals and reverted back to herself (in her mind) before she wrote the diary you find in the game; she thought at the time the tentacle monster was under her bed and was about to eat her.
Your theory is a good one and I do like it but there’s one detail that you missed. Molly’s door was lock from the outside. (Although is may just be that she didn’t want Scarlett fever but I think that’s too much of a stretch. It would also mean that lock was intentionally built on the outside.
@@typeterson2421 I don't see how that's a missed detail. It's a door that can be locked from both sides, and as Cuba Blue says "Molly had been naughty and locking children in isn’t that unusual if they won’t go to bed and just keep coming out". It's not Molly locking herself in because she's naughty, it's Edie locking Molly in because she's naughty
Honestly as depressing Gregory's and Lewis' deaths were, I can't help but think that Walter's death might've been the most cruel one He lived for 3 whole decades in a basement because the death of his older sister traumatized him so much. Three decades. Having every day be a carbon copy of the last. And the moment he ventured out, the moment he found a chance to live again, he dies When I was first playing the game and at his part, I first tried out to go back up the basement, but a small object on the ground didn't allow me to do so. I thought at first that it was just a gameplay thing, and I might've been, but I think it also tells that he had no other way. That his mind was so damaged that he couldn't have taken the normal way, back to the floor where his sister was killed
Also, when he menntions 'the monster on the other side of the door became normal', I think he was talking about Edie. She literally glorified his older sisters death with some trashy comic, he was probably afraid of her. I know I'm late, but I just finished the game :)
U guys realize it can't physically be edie right and that I have to agree with the main commenter on this one being the fact that Walters was not just the most complex but also one of the most sad ones though for me what caught my attention is the complexity of it and now you can't really figure out this story and lore without figuring out Barbara's which is equally as complex and heart dissolve being the fact that I don't think edie or Barbara's boyfriend murder I honestly do think it might have been a murder some kind of monster mask or maybe a group being the fact that even if this is wrong which most likely is it has to be something like this being the fact that it has to be something so traumatizing and made water go in that bunker for 30 years and I've been searching for a long time for that answer through tons of UA-cam videos and still haven't found one so whoever sees this response please if you know tell me so I can get this damn question out of my head
@@ghost14224 slow down and take your time. The lack of grammar and punctuation makes you seem extremely scatter brained. Take it easy big man, no need to rush.
It's kinda chilling and tragic that despite Dawn having realized what was actually going on, she still failed to protect her children from the family curse. She tried too hard to protect Lewis, trapping him in a normal job and a mundane life, which only made him long for the kind of fantastical lives the rest of his family lived, leading him to commit suicide. Milton straight up ran away. And by the time she tried to get her remaining family away from the house (something which she should've done a long time ago) it was too late. The curse had already taken hold of her daughter. Edith Sr's stories had already planted a seed in Edith Jr's mind, which is why she comes back to the house despite being 22 -months- weeks pregnant. And because of the book/journal Edith Jr wrote, the curse has probably taken a hold of her son too. That's why he also comes to explore the house.
I think that Edith Jr. broke the curse just by essentially writing everything about what happened. She told the entire truth without really presenting it as fantastical like Edie did. By just writing the entire truth down and showing it to her son it prevents anyone from really having to actually go into the house again.
@@berry2254, that's so cool. The boy can finally break the curse and actually live a normal life. No fantasies, no glory, no romantization of death, just straight up truth and understanding of reality where fiction takes place.
I think the point is that Edith's journey breaks the curse. Neither Edie nor Dawn had a healthy coping mechanism and it's hard to blame them after they all they have been through. Edie tries to preserve the past by essentially freezing time the moment someone dies. She accepts the curse as part of the family identity. Dawn tries to bury the past, doesn't talk about any of her trauma and tries to run away from the curse. But she still believes in it. Milton disappears. Dawn seals the rooms. Lewis kills himself. Dawn blames Edie's stories and thinks running away in a hurry is the only way to escape the curse. So for both Edie and Dawn, the curse is real, they just have polar opposite ways to deal with it. Edie gets to understand both women while discovering her family story through exploring the house. She finds a middle ground and leaves it behind for her son. That's what remains of her - her legacy. Now it's up to her son to find his own way to deal with the generational trauma. Maybe he can return and see the house for what it is. Not a cursed place, just a house.
@@awetistic5295While I’d agree,I will say that the fact her son already has a broken arm is concerning. It could be nothing but it could also imply he’s reckless or,worse,self destructive. Keep in mind,that was before he read the diary his mother left him.
@@birdmcturd1626 I think the detail about so many children/characters being hurt and in casts is meant to represent they're hurt on a mental level. They're not meant to be physical injuries, but emotional hurt made manifest. We don't know what kind of life Edith's son lived, but we do know he was orphaned at birth (unless his father took him in, unlikely considering Edith was a teen and the father probably would have been too). Having that in mind, we can infer he's likely not had the easiest life. I think that scene was meant to represent that you can be hurt, but still pick yourself up and keep going, confront your past, accept it, then leave it behind. The flowers were a nice nod to this - unlike Edie who memorialised everyone through stone and paint - things meant to last a long time - he left cut flowers that wouldn't last more than a week or so.
I know this video’s 3 years old already but since it wasn’t very obvious, and no one has seemed to figure it out yet, the true cause of death of Gus was that the giant totem pole crushed him. You see in the flashback that when the wind and his kite picks up the tent, it hits the totem pole causing it to rock, and then the camera goes out of frame as Gus stumbles to the ground. When as Edith on the beach we see the totem pole knocked over on the beach right where Gus was standing in the flashback.
This is so important! It's because totem poles symbolize hierarchy or "marking a family's lineage and validating the powerful rights and privileges of the family". It shows how the neglect of the parents, in every generation of the Finches, doomed their children. Making the curse "real".
One thing that I dont see anybody pointing out is that Lewis is recovering for marihuanna adicction, at the same time he's working a mundane job and visiting a psychiatrist. Not only he was affected by Eddie stories, but also the withdrawal effects and the fact he was now living a boring life which probably lead to his suicidal thoughts. I would say that its also Dawns fault too, because it was her idea to make him work in a conveyor belt as a solution to forget the stories and fit as a normal citizen. Lewis should have been in house with the support of his family, or in an hospital until he feels recovered. But giving the family negligence towards others safety and health its no surprise.
This is how I felt. Dawn and Edie’s perspectives are at odds, and both hurt the family. Edie’s desire to escape her feelings of guilt and responsibility through memorial and fantasy have their places, as using creative pursuits to deal with personal strife is important and helpful, but she is too sick herself and winds up hurting her family as a result of her fantasy. Dawn’s desire for everything to just be normal, on the other hand, is just soul crushing and destructive, as bottled up creativity that is trapped by a monotonous life becomes all-encompassing and destructive. Dawn represents not being able to look at, consider, and learn from past failures, and Edie represents the memorializing of those failures as a destructive and trapping force.
When I played through the game I considered that his use of weed might have activated or exacerbated his genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, since studies and medical cases have shown that this can happen to some unlucky people. He was from a family with generational mental health problems and about the right age for schizophrenia to take hold, plus he was tragically in the perfect family for nobody except his psychiatrist to understand the gravity of his situation. In a normal family someone might have noticed he was on the edge of a psychotic break on that day but he lives in a family where the matriarch says her husband was killed by a dragon and lets her son become a moleman. After reading through this comment section I'm not so convinced anymore, maybe it could have been maladaptive daydreaming instead, but seeing your comment made me want to just put this out there.
@@jebbait1669 not physically, but anything can be addictive emotionally and mentally. he was using it as escapism and fantasy. when he no longer had that, he sought it out desperately to the point where he basically became catatonic. he wasnt addicted to the weed, but the feeling it gave him. then he became addicted to maladaptive daydreaming
This is so mind-blowing to me because I have never thought that Edie could be the problem and I actually felt bad when Dawn took Edith and just left her like that. And it further makes me realize how easily I got carried away by the storytelling and felt obsessed about the family curse and death, maybe just like many of the family members.
I think the most distressing thing about Edie's son isn't his broken arm, but the fact that he's alone. He's a young boy who is reckless enough to pursue this on his own or neglected enough to be allowed to.
For chrissake, he piloted an effing boat on his own to a treacherous island with dangerous landscape, he’s definitely reckless and/or neglected to have the time to do so!
@@Blkpants Because someone had to give the book to him in the first place, tell him the address, give him money or means of travel to even get there. And he definitely isn't the one steering the boat, because he is sitting on a side bench while the boat keeps going.
@@acebee46 yeah! maybe I’m reading too far into things, but when the music crescendos to a stop and Lewis sees that last bit of reality right before he dies, it sounds like you can hear the sounds of other factory workers screaming for someone to stop him
As someone who actually hasn’t played the game and only found out about this game through this video essay, damn. I think it makes Lewis’s suicide worse as this implies he killed himself via the fish cutter, maybe putting his neck under it, mirroring the his dream world’s decapitation. Which uh, is certainly a method of death. I do wonder why he chose that method instead of the more common methods. It could’ve been impulsive. He’d been haunted by all these suicidal thoughts but one day during work, he was like “fuck it, I’m done with this world” and impulsively killed himself using the only dangerous thing around. And a thought I had, people who have attempted suicide but survive often feel sudden regret and wanting to live. Maybe Lewis felt that too as the fish cutting blade fell.
@@Exhausted905he 100% killed himself with the fish cutter. The sound of u cutting the fish is in the background through his whole story and it almost fades away completely at the end before the music stops and all you hear is that sound after he puts his head in the guillotine
this might be a niche take, but Encanto feels like a more wholesome or uplifting take on What Remains of Edith Finch, right down to the grandmother’s abusive behavior being a trauma response (similar to Edie) but instead of becoming reckless and hurting her children, she tried too hard to protect them
I really really appreciate that the story doesn't pin down the "curse" to any one thing- many family members have significant signs of mental illnesses (mostly Bipolar and Scizophrenia) but not all, many family members die from outright neglect but some from fully natural causes, and Edith's son is shown to have a bit of the Finch carelessness despite knowing nothing of his family prior to this. It's somehow realistic and supernatural that way.
The shrine that stood out most to me while watching a playthrough of the game was Gregory's. A baby drowns and Edie decides to put rubber ducks and a bottle of bath bubbles in a cradle? Sounds pretty disrespectful to me.
I think it's really interesting how Edie's memorials cast more of a shrine to the person's death than their lives. It's like she cared more about the curse and the attention their deaths garnered than she cared about them as they lived.
Plus she literally made a comic book about Barbara’s death and fed Walter’s delusions just so she could have that attention… a wtf doesn’t even begin to cover it all
I'm prone to magical thinking. I think magical thinking is interconnected with inherited family trauma. It took me playing this game twice to realise that the fantastical elements of these stories were due to unreliable narrators, and not that supernatural things had actually happened. I'm surprised about how easily I bought into the story I was served, and that kind of low-key scares me.
Reeeeally late to the party but I think Milton ran away after realizing the situation at the house. As soon as he moved in and got the castle, he recognized how "the curse" made grandma obsessed. Remember the missing poster, right next to the broken fence? Right at the beginning of the game? I think that broken fence was how he ran away. And I mean- the flipbook he makes implies that he is leaving voluntarily. The house "swallowed" him- it was swallowing him up emotionally, and staying there felt like he was being consumed by a past his grandma didn't want to let go of.
I know I'm a bit late, but yes, that is the case. The game devs made another game before this, The Unfinished Swan. And in that game, Milton is confirmed to be the character of the Lonely King.
At the end of the story, Edith says that she never saw Edie again, when the nursing home van came the next day, Edie was "already gone". I took this to mean that they didn't find her body dead from mixing alcohol and medication, but that she was actually gone from the house. It seemed to me that Edie walked out to her childhood home in the ocean, and died reaching it.
That would make the whole peephole thing make sense since she could have been the one to do it. Personally I think it means she died since they didn't say she was gone from the house but just.... Gone. Since that is synonymous with death in english language at this point it makes sense. Not to mention Dawn was the only adult left so I always assumed that she was the one to plan the funeral and out of completion of the house, she sealed the door. Knowing Edie, her death was probably planned so she more than likely made the peephole for her door to be put on. Since Edith was young, she didn't know most of the details and I'm assuming that that's why its left ambiguous.
@@cockmaster314 foor to be put on. I didn't understand from there. English is my second language. I am proud of how much I understand. It doesn't mean I am stupid. It means you are rude
29:09 When Lewis bends down to face the ground, you can hear panicked voices around him. It’s better if you have headphones. The only one I can make out is: “Oy!” “Stop him!” It’s very very faint.
@@yeethan7352 All the stories are very dramatized for artistic purposes. While it's not impossible he was literally alone, the scene of him standing by himself could also signify how alone he felt
@@yeethan7352 Just want to be clear I don't think your interpretation is wrong! Just that this game allows interpretation with the stories, and I interpreted it differently :)
Shit, that must have been terrifying for the other workers. Just imagine you’re working with someone else in the same factory, you maybe hadn’t talked to them all too much, but you know them well enough to know their name, and the “curse” behind it. Maybe you kept a bit of an eye on them, held them a little close to your heart since you were a little speculative on when that “curse” would catch up. You think that he may sadly die in a grand accident, maybe even saving someone in a factory accident, after all, the rest of his family had interesting stories behind all their deaths. And then, suddenly, you see him lower his head towards the fish cutter. You’re worried, you were wondering when, but you never encouraged it. While curious, you still valued his life and his friendship to you. You cry out “Stop him!” “Oy!” Hoping he’ll hear you, but it’s too late. You see his head and his now dead body, and you’re devastated. A good man took his own life, and sadly, you’re only idea as to why was: “That curse finally got him”
This makes a lot of sense with the details that really disturbed me while playing this game. Barbara's death was actually the one that disturbed me the most. I thought "what a terrible thing for the artist of this comic book to do after the death of this poor girl" and "how does the artist know so many details regarding Barbara's death." Edith always speaks in so much reverence when speaking about Edie I didn't even stop to think about Edie must have been involved in the tacky memorialization of Barbara's death.
i know this is an old comment, but it makes me think of how we handle "true crime" content now. be in podcasts, docuseries, movies/serialized dramas today.
I know this video has been around awhile but i think this needs to be said. The stories killed Edith as well. She went back to her family house, jumped and crawled through the house to read all these stories, putting extraneous activity on her body… while she was pregnant. That had to have had extremely negative effects, possibly leading to her death in childbirth. She died to “the curse”
I mean, possibly? Her death always confused me a little. All the other can be attributed to neglect or mental illness. But hers? It's entirely possible for a woman 22 weeks pregnant to do those kinds of things without issue. I guess it could just be bad luck?
I buy the argument that jumping and climbing around the house was an unwise and reckless act, but saying “it was too taxing” shows you don’t know much about how pregnancy and childbirth works. 17 is “too young” because of cultural values, not because a 17 year old’s body can’t handle it. And death in childbirth is typically due to complications: pelvis too small, blood loss, septic conditions leading to infection, etc. Most things that used to cause death in childbirth are prevented now, like if the pelvis is too small they do a C-section, modern hygiene usually prevents sepsis, etc. We don’t know what caused Edith to die giving birth, or if she died from something else that just happened right after she gave birth. Whatever it was, it wasn’t caused by the climbing and stuff.
@@wisemoon40 Ugh thank you. Literally what I've told other people. My mom was skiing downhill and hiding from tornados pregnant. Pregnant people are fully capable of doing these things!
about Calvin's death: on most swings, especially ones for children, you can't swing all the way around like that. there's a point where the swing stops you from doing that. so that means that whoever made the swing did a horrible job and it was dangerous for a child to be on it in the first place
"We believed in a curse so much... we made it real." That's such a cool line, jeez. Also, anyone else notice how cute it was that when they were eating Chinese food at the table, Edith held a chopstick in each hand, Dawn used a plastic fork, and Edith Sr. used chopsticks normally? Just a quirk.
I like to think that it's a reference to how Edie believes in the curse (chopsticks), Dawn refuses its existance (using the opposite of chopsticks, a fork) and Edith being influenced but not believing fully (knowing parts of the curse but not all of them, so she uses chopsticks but not correctly) That's my interpretation to this random detail hahah
One of my favorite not-so-subtle details about this game is that the title could refer to either the character you play as or the great-grandmother. That is, it could be about what remains of Edith Finch as a young girl passing on the stories and her interpretations to her unborn son, or it could be about what remains of an old woman whose neglect and inability to process tragedy led to harmful aggrandizement of the death that surrounded her and inevitably led to more trajedy. It's also worth noting that Dawn and young Edith were the only ones in the family to die of irrefutable natural causes.
I was once playing this game and then after the Calvin section, my mom had a theory that Calvin jumped off and killed himself, hence why the paper is called: “how I WANT to remember my brother.” Seeing how Sam is a child and maybe doesn’t want to remember how his brother actually died. Hope you like the theroy
That raises a lot more questions than it answers such as why an 11 year old with a twin would want to die. I think it comes down to childhood stubbornness. And there is nothing coming close to indicating 11 year old Calvin was suicidal. Reckless yes but not suicidal. No actual proof
well the paper is written in an uplifting way, trying to frame his reckless behavior as ambitious and dreamy, thats i think the point. it would be bitter and painful to say “my brother stupidly swung as hard as he could until he flew off the swing and plummeted off a cliff” so this poor kid tried to look at it as it being what his brother wanted, that at least he accomplished something and had fun in the end. it actually eerily mirrors Sams letter to Kay about Gregory in the bath, a detail im only now realizing… both of Sams recounts of deaths show his way of coping: believing the victim was at least happy in their last moments and it was something they wanted, not something they realized was fatal. And its a common way to cope, ive lost many pets and tried to comfort myself believing they at least were fulfilled in life and were not in pain at the end, it only makes sense Sam would hope the same, watching two young boys die truly from neglect if nothing else.
"What remains of Edith Finch" doesn't refer to the Edith Finch we control in this game. It refers to "the curse", her morbid mania, passed from Edith Jr. to her son. He goes to a house he didn't grow up in because of the story Edith Jr. wrote because Edith Finch Sr. told her to. Edie Finch remains.
That is exactly what I thought. The Edith Finch in the title is Sr., not Jr., and what remains of her is her story, her magical thinking, which killed all of the Finches but it's still living within Edith Jr's son
I hope not. That’s a very dark take: that the game is just about inevitable cycle of abuse, with no escape. I think the game is a little more sympathetic to Edie’s decision to turn her family legacy into stories than this video implies: it’s through these stories that Edith’s son has a connection to his past. It makes him less alone.
Nice detail: Lewis dreaming of visiting the distant kingdom isn't a random choice either. In the map he goes to Calcutta, the same place his father, Sanjay was from, obviously because of the Orientalist stories Edie had told him about the place.
Also Edith mentions how they moved back in when their dad died, and their dad died in India (newspaper article in the classroom). It's likely Lewis lived in India until their dad died so it's him coming home.
Something I always found interesting about how this story is told is just how vague the story become after dawn’s death, and how Edith jr. has almost nothing revealed about herself. It’s strange to be thinking about this, but the recklessness of the family goes a layer deeply when you think about how Edith is 17 years old and is pregnant, and how that, despite being addressed, is never explained or developed. the question of who the father of the child may be is never even do considered, being a teenage parent it’s possible Edith wouldn’t know who the father is, or didn’t care, or maybe we’re shown the boys perspective during the whole game with his father just cleverly hidden out of frame. But I feel that now I’m the one digging too deep into answers that don’t need questions
It seems like the recklessness has continued though. The fact that Edith was at this dangerous house in the middle of nowhere, alone, while 22 weeks pregnant, probably means that either the father of her child is not in the picture, or she didn’t tell him where she was going, so when she presumably dies in childbirth, that leaves her son either without family, or with an overly trusting/neglectful father. That’s why he goes to the house on a boat alone with a broken arm. He’s reckless like the other Finches, not because of Edie specifically, but because of neglect, which she was definitely also guilty of.
Well, Edith says they moved around a lot, so she probably never told him she was pregnant, though Christopher (Edith's son) gets something of a pass because he's a kid, though he seems to be staying with someone.
The final page of Edith's story to her son is the real horror ending. She specifically says she's leaving him with these stories, and good luck. It means she fell into the 'curse' as well. The astute player will have picked up on the conclusion Joseph drew here, it's a 'curse' of their own making and down to reckless behaviour, but the ending shows that _Edith_ never reached that conclusion. If at best she doesn't _believe_ the curse, she didn't realize that it was all the stories that pushed Lewis to suicide and Milton to 'something', and she passed them on to her son, leading him straight back to the family home to 'investigate' the curse himself. What remains of Edith Finch continued unbroken to the latest generation of Finch's, Edith Jr didn't break the cycle at all.
Like Joseph says Edith probably realises the stories were too dangerous. She probably wrote her journal half for her child and half to help her rationalise her tormented past and lineage. At the end she states she never wants her child to read this; she wants to keep living and shelter them from the “curse”. The sad reality is that she never makes it, whether it was an accident during childbirth or the seemingly undeniable fact that once you learn about the Finch history it comes to get you. Maybe she felt she had to leave her child something or make sure the stories got passed on (I guess the other curse of the Finch family was their inability to let the history die out).
In my mind, it's a self fulfilling prophesy of sorts, as if Edith jr is the last Finch to die tragically then she would be heralded as the breaker of the Finch's curse, thus elevating her to a mythological level in the family. The book being "all that remains of Edith Finch" would become the story of how the curse was broken and they would end up in the same trap as before but feeling protected from fate rather than resigned to it.
but you’re forgetting the impact of NOT knowing these stories, and what it did to them. Lewis killed himself because he never had a creative outlet, or any fantastic stories to keep in his brain, so he fell into his own. Edith went back to the house WHILE PREGNANT because she was so desperate to know the truth. Not knowing is just as bad as knowing, Edith is actually giving her son the best option, know the stories but don’t be involved in the toxic environment. It’s the best outcome.
@@hopoffmydick9574 Lewis died because he was told all those stories but was unable to live one, with his monotonous job and all. It wasn't through a lack of creative outlet/recklessness as much as it was depression. Edith was given half of a story and was determined to find out the truth because of it after being encouraged to by her mother. I don't know if Edith was giving her son the best option, and she didn't know either. Her gravestone is in the family's cemetary after all, so I guess it just depends on him if he also wants to chase those stories.
I interpreted walter's story as paranoid delusion. His sister's death traumatized him badly, but on top of that his other sister was supposedly killed by a "monster" and his mother was obsessed with a curse that was coming to get them all. In his mind, the rattle of the train passing by was a monster at his door. The shaking WAS the monster. He conflated his fear with the tremors until the two were the same. The monster comes for him at 12 every day. One day, the monster doesn't show up-- the train is running late. He decides to make his escape. But the train makes its late appearance, and Walter is killed by the monster anyway. That's how I interpreted it in my playthrough, at least. It makes sense to me, because I think most/all of the Finches have an underlying predisposition to mental illness. It would make sense that Walter's trauma could intensify delusions and cause them to become paranoid and debilitating.
@@Hanagigi maybe there was some maintenance, a broken track, or something like that. And it was just unlucky (or a curse, if you would) that the moment he stepped out is the day the train starts again.
I think it’s worth noting how Kay acts in Gregory’s death, she clearly already doesn’t have a nice relationship with her husband. In Gus’s poem, Dawn says the line “Our father didn’t hit us as kids, at least not very hard” (something along those lines) which insinuates that Sam was, at best, spanking the children (which imo is still not great to do to children) or at worst, abusing them, Dawn saying “At least not very hard” as a sort of way to justify it to herself. I think that Kay was very upset with this from Sam, hence the strained relationship and hence why she took so much priority in his calls that she neglected the baby in the tub. I guess it could also be assumed that then Kay could had also been a victim to abuse, but there’s not much evidence on that one besides a possible connection. Either way I find that detail very interesting
Spanking children is fine. Also even if he did hit his kids it doesnt mean he would do the same to his wife. Physical punisment is not "abuse", its a form of discipline
@@_stillborn Absolutely not, spanking children is not fine. There’s countless resources showing how spanking children leads to issues later in life. It is abuse
I've been reading this book ("I dont want to talk about it" by Terrence Real) for one of my classes and it talks a lot about how it takes three generations for the effects of family traumas to really start to fade and I was thinking about that a lot watching the second half of this video essay... we discussed in class how maybe part of this could be because generally only three generations of a family will be alive at the same time, and the eldest generation's influence is only direct so long as they are present... It prompts the idea for me that maybe, now that Edie has died, Edith's son might be able to heal and the curse could start to dissipate now that the only direct connection he has to the Finch family (outside of blood ties) is the book Edith left him. This essay was wonderful and very thought provoking!!! I definitely agree with the observations of negligence, and I hadn't really considered the game in the light of Edie's enjoyment of the attention the curse garnered, but now that I can see it, I don't think I can view the game through any other lens.
I think that Edith's son’s bandage at the beginning might represent the inevitability of the ‘curse’, as he was already growing into the reckless nature that the Finches were famed for, and died from.
@@CGFillertext Well I don't know if that is true. In this video at 41:23, the recklessness that leads to all of the family's death is exhibited with Calvin's broken leg. We only see the death scenes hence only their major injuries. But there are probably countless times where they got hurt and survived that weren't in the game. The fact that the developers decided to show Edith's son with a cast on his arm and venturing to a place alone, where he has never been and "killed" all of his family members, at a seemingly young age, shows that the curse lives on.
The way I see it, it's a smart way to make you forget/not realized that the person on the boat reading the book, is not the same person navigating the house. At a glance, the cast and the long sleeve that Edith wore can fool you into thinking they're the same person if you don't really pay attention to it. If one of them doesn't have anything over their arm it would be more obvious and the reveal at the end would be less strong. At least that's how I experienced it, or maybe I wasn't observant enough to notice that was indeed a cast.
The thesis of the video is there is no “curse”, there’s just a familiar tendency to neglect their children and behave recklessly, because they’ve self-mythologised death.
The two details that are the most unsettling to me are young Sam's bedroom and Dawn's bedroom. Young Sam shared a room with his dead brother's completely untouched room, and Dawn eventually wound up sleeping in a tiny alcove with a view of the memorials to her two dead brothers. It's just such a grim picture, seeing Dawn's comfy little living space full of books and decorations and turning to the right to see Gregory's cradle.
Watching this video, I noticed that in the photos from Sam’s death there’s a photo of waking up Dawn while it’s still dark. Looking at the background it looks like she’s in a small bed and the bars of Gregory’s infant bed are behind her. So it looks like Dawn eventually moved to a loft but for a while she was sleeping between the memorials of her dead brothers.
when u said just the janitor my mind jumped to the janitor from the game Control...go play the game or watch a playthrough of it if u didnt one of the best thrilling stories in games
Those shrines make me feel like Edie valued her loved ones more when they were dead. If she had shown the same amount of devotion and care to their well-being when they were alive, would they still have died?
50:57 Since the peep hole was done I think it implies that Edie must have been the one to seal the room. Maybe she wanted to finish the story of a house full of sealed rooms so everything matched. Her death, while never given a cause, suggests she died with intention so she wouldn’t go to the nursing home. Therefore she wouldn’t need her bedroom anymore
edith also says that when the van arrived edie was “already gone”. ambiguous. it could mean that she vanished, or that she was found dead by the people in the van.
I think she went into the water to get to the sunken house. Definitely suicide to prevent from being taken into the nursery home. The Finch house was family to her.
I love how each death is shown more poetically or in a metaphorical way, where you can still gather what happened each time. 1. Molly was poisoned from eating the toothpaste and holly - her imagination of the monster eating shows the pain and delusion she was feeling before her death. 2. Calvin fell to his death, but in an Icarus-like way the sequence shows how he was able to 'fly'. He was left alone on top of a huge cliff, and no one thought it was worth it to keep an eye on him? 3. Barbara was either killed by a home intruder or by her boyfriend. Walter saw the entire thing and it traumatized him to the point where he refuses to leave the house. 4. Walter might have died from a heart attack or shock, or malnutrition as another comment pointed out. His body might have been so overwhelmed and weak that he couldn't take being outside. The train hitting him was more a metaphor for how sudden it was. 5. Sam's death is probably closer to what is shown, but the camera makes it all the more interesting. It's also the most similar in form to his twin's death, which is eerie but has been known to happen in real life, where strange coincidences happen around twins. 6. Gregory's death really emphasizes how much these children suffered and eventually died from neglect, at least the ones who died really young. There is no excuse for leaving a baby alone in a bathtub. They have no idea what they're doing and there is so much potential danger. You always wash a baby in a sink tub if you can, it's just safer. I'm not having kids and even I know that. 7. I think Gus was swept away by the storm, not necessarily electrocuted. The kite was less a real kite and more representative of how fragile Gus was in that environment. And again, what we was doing out there alone in a huge storm...that's entirely the parents' fault. I don't think they had any real knowledge of how to watch over their kids, at least not from experience, since Edie and to a less extent Sven were the same way. EDIT: It's also been brought to my attention that he could have just as easily been crushed by debris, so that too is a possibility. 8. Milton 'disappearing' into his world may have been a metaphor for an intense obsession, something which led him to have a complete disconnect from reality. "Missing" could be missing, as in wandered off and couldn't be found, or it could have been a metaphor for losing his mind and becoming unable to live in reality, aka a psychotic break. He was very young, so it had to have been very strong. Or possibly both. If he had mental issues, I'm pretty sure that the family wouldn't have known how to deal with them properly anyhow based on their track record. 9. Lewis's death was the most symbolic and the hardest hit. The mechanics are designed to make you have half your focus in the real world and half in your mind/fantasy. By design and default, however, you can't juggle both. Lewis is a recovering addict and in trying to find some meaning in a monotonous, sober life and failing, he falls back into his old patterns, neglecting reality in favor of what his mind is telling him is real. It's very tragic because for him, no matter how hard he tries to manage, it feels inevitable and inescapable that he succumbs and meets his demise. 10. I feel like there was a purpose to showing Edith's vision of going to the wreck before it's revealed that she died after her son's birth. I don't believe she necessarily died in childbirth, but she did shortly after. Based off the entire theme of exploration of death and family trauma, she may have been experiencing exacerbated mental issues or postpartum depression after giving birth. That plus a weak physical state due to complications during childbirth may have led her to both mental and physically 'cross over', like it's shown for every other POV character who has died. The wreck was Edith's way of crossing over, just like the monster was Molly's or swimming with the toys in the bath was Gregory's. This metaphoric storytelling works especially with the line "We believed so much in a family curse, we made it real" - by Edie not seeking help for mental issues of her own, it led to her negligence of her children, resulting in most of their deaths at an early age. Her surviving children and grandchildren inherited depression, obsessiveness, and some delusions, all because the family wasn't willing to seek outside help for their problems (The ones I feel worst for are the children because they were innocent, and Lewis because he definitely did try to get help). There is a thing called generational trauma, where one generation not dealing with their issues can pass those same issues on to the next generation. It's very common in families of all sorts, and the whole game seems to be about that to me.
How Edie describes Sven's death fits this theme too. She always told Edith he died fighting a dragon when in reality he died in a construction accident.
No, I would argue Walter defenitely got hit by the train, you can see the memorial by the tracks near where he died and the hole he made with the hammer trying to break through.
@@billjefferson9216 no way in hell they would run a train through there with a house looking like it's a ps2 fucking dungeon at risk of collapsing at any second and several broken tracks
@@anab5248 The trains were probably running when he was killed and the train that killed him probably ran late. Sometime after his death the train track eventually went out of commission. And then collapsing into the water.
It was suggested on another vid that Milton died within the walls of the house, either being trapped when things were sealed up (not sure how the timeline works with that one) or just getting into an accident in one of it's many secret, sometimes unfinished passageways. His drawings are all over the secret passages, so he used them frequently. In his flipbook, he is shown creating his own passage and disapearing into it forever. There's the line "Whatever Milton found in the house, mom didn't want it to get out", so it's not like he disappeared into the wilderness. In Wilson's room, Edith says "none of us make it very far" and earlier she says that she felt like the house had 'swallowed' him whole.
it’s an interesting theory, but I’ve heard that Giant Sparrow confirmed that Milton is the protagonist of The Unfinished Swan, another game from the same creator.
@@justanotherladevotee9829 I have never played the unfinished swan nor have I seen someone play it, but given that Milton doesn't show any signs of existence after he disappears, I'm going to guess that he doesn't return to the real world at the end of the game. if this is true I would say that the game could be an imagined world, a last little spark of life before he dies in the house. I know the "he was dreaming/dead all along" theory is overused in fiction but I feel like it's the best answer to what happened to Milton without adding any supernatural elements to the story
A good mother wouldn’t let her son be immobilized by fear to the point of hiding away in a bunker, they would have the bunker only be used for true emergencies.
Having just replayed through this game recently, paying very close attention to every detail I knew to expect and in particular looking for answers to any holes and found at least one answer to an issue you pointed out towards the end. Regarding Lewis and Edie's rooms being sealed/drilled - Edith explains that Dawn didn't take her out of the house until one week after Lewis' funeral; Dawn only told her to begin packing the night of, and they moved a week later. This leaves a full week for Dawn to seal the two rooms and for Edie to drill the peep holes (Lewis' in particular, as Dawn would obviously be traumatized by her son's death and want to add his room to those she sealed). How this relates to Edie's own room, given that Edie is still using it during that week, is also answered in a very sly, blink-and-you'll-miss-it way. At the very end, when you access the library, most will head straight for the book and end the gameplay segments of the game. However, if you explore the library a bit more thoroughly, going past even the book and into the shadows between bookshelves, you'll find a cot set up at a height perfectly easy for a lady in a wheelchair to access. And who was it who left a key for young Edith to access that library in the exact same sequence? Edie.
I'm currently watching through this and got to the part about Gregory's death, and having read through a load of the comments prior (alongside having played it myself), I noticed that nobody seems to have pointed out something you got wrong - his arms don't change colour because he's drowning. Your perspective as the player changes, and you become the frog toy that you'd been controlling prior (hence the specific swimming animation and the green, lumpy arms). In my opinion, this is symbolic of him dying while distancing us from the actual physical act of the infant drowning. Instead, we become the toy that Gregory had been "seeing" do some tricks and proceed to go down the drain; representing the death of the child's imagination (his potential/imagination went "down the drain", a clever play on words).
C B I think what he meant was that in the game his arms turned green not because of turning into the frog (even though we know that’s what happened) but because when you are suffocating, your skin turns a different color say, green?
Zander-notch77 that’s not really how it works though.. your lips tend to turn blue due to lack of oxygen (called cyanosis because of the characteristic blue color) and to a lesser extent, your face can, but I’ve never heard of someone’s arms changing color. Plus his arms didn’t just change color, they took on a froglike appearance (his fingers look webbed and his skin becomes shiny and bumpy), so I think they just meant to represent him becoming the frog in his mind.
One of the things I have only now pieced together after watching this, was one of the reactions I kept having while I was playing. There are books, EVERYWHERE. As someone who is a self-proclaimed book worm, I kept thinking to myself while playing that there were so many books. Now, looking back, I realized that it might have been a clue from the developers that STORIES are the danger. The house is engulfed in a story of this curse, and so Edie probably surrounded herself with books. Its common for someone suffering form serious paranoia/mental illness, to rely on escapism. This could be that tie.
Yes, and in contrast to a myriad of folktales and other stories, as well as Odin's "The Mysteries of Death and Thereafter" and "Joining the Great Majority" (I believe there were more death-related ones); on Dawn's table we can find a few books about critical thinking, and she even wrote a book on rational teaching. Strange that nobody pointed it out yet, but for me it was a clear example of antithesis. Dawn did use religion as a way to cope with her sons passing away, but she was ashamed of it, and she didn't get in the fatalistic loop of the "curse", because she still had a child to take care of. She did what Edie couldn't do when Molly died.
Or any addict. Self-medication is to make life more tolerable even more than to make it more fun, as people keep up addictions far longer than they can still feel the fun factor.
@@Smiley_Face_Killer Almost everything in life is a coping mechanism for something. Even for just being alive. You get a pet because you feel the absence of one, or because you're lonely or bored. You overeat because you are hungry or you are trying to build a wall of flesh around you because you were molested and don't want anyone coming near. You isolate because you fear people and/or the world at large. You marry because you would be unacceptable in society or to your family if you didn't, because you're lonely, any number of possible reasons besides love even if you are doing it for love. You buy toys to stave off boredom or having to spend time alone with your thoughts and think deeply about life and your destiny and the part you play in it. You compete to get richer at all costs no matter how rich you are because you are trying to fill some sort of hole in your soul that needs to be fed. You become homophobic because your own sexuality frightens you. Of course you are using all kinds of coping mechanisms, whether for something specific or just from the essential loneliness and uncertainty and fear that comes from being alive ... and even from contemplating that soon enough, you won't be!
"My children are dead because of your stories!" it's so fucking chilling. - And I know this won't make much sense if you don't get it - but even by musical theatre standards
I don't blame her. Edie is so twisted and delusional that it's honestly surprising anybody would believe a single thing she says despite being more mature and experienced about handling loss than she is. Her family believed in the curse, they were reckless and neglectful, and even the ones who weren't suffered because they developed hallucinations or were immortalized as fantasy rather than real tragedy. Dawn clearly has a point in insisting her mother is responsible for their family's demises, even if it's not the full truth.
@@user-lt6ve9ns4d, they all died because of delusions of grandeur or even neglect, whether for their own wellbeing or that of others. Edie is at fault because whether intentionally or not, her 'stories' encouraged them to neglect themselves or to deny reality. She's a killer for all its worth..
The trains were a metaphor. When you go outside the train tracks are broken, and it had only been about 12 years.. even when Walter is walking among the tracks, they are overgrown and forgotten.. Walter jumped off the cliff
no, many trains are decommissioned after deaths, especially if the death occurred next to someone's home or estate, where they are very liable for wrongful death suits. Also, the damage to the foundation that Walter's bunker caused could definitely have a railroad decommissioned to avoid cave-ins destroying the tunnel and the train, causing death to employees/passengers, and avoid violating safety regulations. It takes less than 12 years to set up new tracks, and it may have even been requested by the state or the Finches themselves. Moreover, Railroad tracks tend to have some mild growth, and it didnt seem so extreme in the flashback. I think it's literal, as Walter also had not been giving signals towards suicide (something commonly done in suicide notes) and rather seemed hopeful.
@@mrpitman2428 I think both is possible, but also, the world the Finches live in should not be taken too literally. This family is living their live in a lot of delusions, and the tracks basically lead nowhere particular. The house is pretty secluded and the tracks right next to it would make little sense from a practical standpoint, when there is so much space around the house that they wouldn't need to build the tracks right next to the house. I agree with Shelby Young, I think it's a metaphor. I also think that a lot of the stuff that is around the house is redacted by Edie. For example, look at the 'Man killed by Dragon' article she has, when there were probably other headlines. She could have removed the stuff that hinted at a suicide, or, maybe, Walter did in fact kill himself out of impulse or in a delusional state.
@@AlexisHiemis Yeah but this train thing is off the rails - pun unintended - with how much people want to read into it: the island where they lived was big AND contained an actual honest to god Natural Park in the name of the Finches; is it a stretch that the train was allowed by the Finches to be built so close to the bunker in order to simply connect various sides of the island and that we just CAN'T see where the train tracks lead because there was a landslide that caused part of the tracks to simply collapse under the lack of upkeep due to dismission? The train seemed to also come from deeper within the island, hinting that the train might have likely been a connection between the mainland to various spots where the Finches probably bought their own groceries from; it also might have stopped nearby, a place we cannot see, and was used to draw people into the natural reserve, a reserve where HUNTING was also allowed and hunting brings a bunch of people around. If Walter wanted to kill himself, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have written an entire spiel about wanting to go out and be hopeful even for just another day and took his pains of destroying part of a wall to simply 'get out' - not when no one in the family knew he lived DOWN THERE but Dawn and Edie herself and there was almost no guarantee anyone would have STOPPED him from going out and throwing himself off the cliff. The man was living hidden by a fridge entrance, it's very plausible he could've waltzed out and nobody would've noticed until it was too late, making his death much less pliable. His true passion also, as evidenced by his ORIGINAL room upstairs, was the deep sea - not trains. Why fabricate the entire story of him being killed by a train when there's no real metaphor to it but "sudden death" which... again, makes sense because he was HOPEFUL about a new beginning but was HIT by something he couldn't stop. The fear he had was that the shaky (and let's remind us that most of the place didn't seem OSHA safety proven, even in the past) motion of the train passing by EVERYDAY woud've killed him just like it did his father: by crushing him under the rubble of his own makeshift cage, a fear that he had seen first hand, a fear instilled by his own mother by how they were all cursed, just like his two sisters and brother. It's extremely likely the train ran by to give access to the Finches' National Park during the hunting season (we see it in Sam's memoirs when he is hunting with Dawn) and that when Walter stopped hearing it run by it might have been for concerns due to the newest addon of the house (the castle and additional guest houses that Edie had bult for Dawn's family in 2003-ish) or for upkeep on the train line. It then started running again, albeit later than usual, and he did not realize he was wlking on tracks, blinded by the sun he had not seen in 30 years at that point. There's no reason to be in denial of committing suicide and simply "walking off the cliff", just as you' be able to see and gauge there's a cliff right in front of you even if blinded by the sunlight, after writing a two pages long beautiful and hopeful message about how you'd like to live again and experience hope outside, moreso when Edie had most likely stopped coming as he didn't know his brother Sam had died.
Every Finch's death was linked to their passion and talent, so Walter's death by train makes a lot of sense to me. I also think the train was decommissioned after his death. The daily rumble was probably caused by the train.
As someone else pointed out, Edith’s death was likely also due the carelessness. I find it interesting/important that Edith is 22 weeks pregnant and not less, though narratively it wouldn’t matter. 23 weeks is the youngest an infant can be delivered and still survive. It’s likely that the overexertion may have caused preterm labor.
the mother's mental health can also play a pretty major role in childbirth. she has to be healthy and strong to make it through something that takes such a massive toll on her body like childbirth and i can imagine, whimsical though it is, finding out in such detail what happened to everyone in her family must have been detrimental to her mental health
No, it isn't. Just because an infant survived being delivered at 23 weeks does not mean that all infants delivered at that time viable. Looking at the viability charts makes 23 weeks shows that it is less than 50%. Source: www.healthline.com/health/baby/premature-baby-survival-rate#24-weeks. Also looking at the calendar shows that Edie dies in January and she expects the house in October. That means that her son was carried to full term.
I just thought of something, Sam is the only character who writes twice about other members of the family, Calvin and Gregory, the way he talks about both of their death tells you a lot about how this romantisation of the curse affected him mentally. He tells us in his letter for Calvin that he finally managed to fly, in the way a child would to comprehend death but the way Edie justificies it all in the curse, and not on the fact that her own son plunged to his death because of neglect, prevents Sam from comprehending death as anything but glorious and mystical. So when he son dies he doesn't tells it for what it is, the horrific death of drowning baby, but as something beautiful to some degree, he tells his wife that Gregory was happy after all. I feel like it's a given but I don't think anyone would rationalize it that way, anyone but someone that has always understood death as being the accomplishment of their family legacy essentially.
Thanks, this helped. That letter was the most disturbing part to me and made me hate the character for the callousness of that assertion, and also made me concerned for the message the creators were trying to send with it. This makes it tie into the weird Finch fatalism much more clearly to me.
Also, Sam is later characterised as being the member of the family who (excluding edie) gave the greatest importance to the "fate of the finch", the curse, always looking for a "glorious death" as a soldier and then a hunter
I feel like Sam is actually one of the more tragic characters, because in his letters he does show the bit of self-blame and humility that his mother lacked, when he questions what could've prevented those deaths, including his own actions. But its obviously too much for a child, so he had to believe that his brother wanted it in some way. And the scars from that moment come back to him having to believe that his own child was happy in his last moments.
Even Dawn had written a poem for her brother Gus’ death, probably under the instructions of Edie and Sam, since she was still very young at that time. I’m in awe that she eventually grew to be very different from her upbringing and decided to end this family tradition of death-romanticising.
I now think Edith senior killed herself on the night they left. She was most likely was sleeping in the library since there was a bed in it and Dawn was not aware of the hidden path until that night, so she could have already sealed up her door, It is possible that the night they left she finished the peepholes and then her pills. She didn't leave for a forest fire or when she was the only one (besides Walter) to be living in the home, so she could have killed herself instead of being taken to a retirement home.
There’s no spray foam around Edie’s door, it wasn’t sealed. The peep hole was probably just Edie being Edie. The fact that she already had Lewis’s memorial in the works she probably drilled the hole the day he died. Also in Edie’s room and Edie’s room only there are several books about the Finches, and a couple of the VHS are interviews and documentaries about the finches. Further proof that she secretly loved the infamy.
Also Edie had a tombstone so there may have been some weird family lawyer who was in charge of things like that or dawn paid someone to do it out of respect to Edie who raised her and who she was really close to (she called her every week when she was in India)
And the hero they deserved was child protective services.
b r u h
Yes
4 likes. I’ll take it
Yeah probably, except edith died in child labor and number two she was 17 of course she was reckless and stupid I'm 18 and I could most definitely say I'd easily make the same mistake edith did, Especially if I was completely alone with no family or anyone to stop me. I'm not saying she's not accountable for her actions but what 17 year old would be a responsible mother Especially when she is completely alone with nothing but her bizarre childhood home and unstable life to give to the child
@@tazymomo9394 I never mentioned Edith.
Excuse me, that shark falling down the hill is an artistic masterpiece.
That was so unintentionally hilarious and slapstick lol
@@tattycakes2k2 I don't know how unintentional that was, like, come one, there ain't no world where that shark ain't funny af
Felt like it was a much needed pause from the general feeling of "WTF" and unease from Molly's story. Especially with it being the first POV you go through. It gives you a quick chuckle to ease the tension but following that it wasnt hard to get back into the story.
Walter's line "Even a monster on the other side of the door starts to feel normal" is revealing because Walter is separated from the train by a wall, but he is separated from Edie by a door.
Like she thought he was monstrous?
@@melonhead8760 It's possible, but I think they were implying the monster on the other side of the door was Edie; That Edie is the monstrous one. Walter was willing to bust through a wall, but not go through the door
@@TwofoldEthics ah, I understand!
@@TwofoldEthics i took as though the curse was outside his door
@@thumtak_ Maybe it's both.
The worst part to me is that Edith Sr. put the plaque for Gregory on the door of the bathroom, where he would have died, and not his room. It would have been a constant reminder.
Except Gregory's room is shared with his siblings and since we don't see the actual outside of that specifically the door we don't know if Edie didn't put a plaque to both Gregory and Gus on that door since we never se a plaque for Gus.
@@BladeTheDarkWarrior considering that she made his son sleep in the same room where his brother decided to fly, not sure if the other siblings were of her concern.
I actually have a theory on that which also explains why Edith Sr and Lewis's room were sealed off and had the peep holes with the plaque.
The entire game, we play as Edith Jr but it's her journey as interpreted by her son. Even if Dawn was determined to keep her other children from the stories, sealing up those rooms would've made no sense because they were still being used, especially the bathroom. Even within the context of the story it makes no sense because in order to get to Edie's room, she and anyone else would have to go thru Molly's room and out the window. Edith says she'd never been in Molly's room before, but there's a picture of her with Edie and Dawn that was taken inside Edie's room.
The more likely scenario is those rooms were not sealed, but because Edith wrote about all the rooms being sealed with the peep holes . . . Actually I don't remember Edith saying Edie put up the plaques. I guess what I'm saying is this is how Edith's son imagines the house because odds are he's never been inside. This trip to visit Edith's grave might be his first trip to the house. He's told that the rooms of dead relatives are sealed and have peep holes, except for Walter's room which is the only room Edith specifies wasn't sealed. Since Edie seems obsessed with honoring the dead, something like plaques would make sense even if they weren't there in reality. Think back to the end with Edith's room has power even though at the beginning of the story we're told the power had been cut off before she and Dawn left.
The shark is the best thing in all of gaming. You may say it looks crap but I love that shark with every fiber of my being
You like it until it gets stuck on the motherfucking trees!!! It happened to me two times, still pissed about it
If you never got stuck then that precious moment would have gone too fast. I never stopped laughing and getting stuck made it even funnier as then you got to awkwardly jerk around your land shark
With this shark and Sharkle from Night in the Woods 2017 has been a really good year for sharks in videogames.
I mean get literally stuck, couldn't wiggle my way out.
I got to that part of the video and I said "The shark is your only complaint? That was by far the best part of that sequence."
Finally someone said it! "You don't leave a baby alone in the bath!" The whole time during this scene I was yelling at the mom.
you know what scares me most about that story..... i was a baby left alone in a bath and i was legally dead for a period of time before my father revived me (luckily he was military and had CPR training) .... that thought scares the hell out of me anytime i see any drowning scene. part of me thinks that might have been the straw the broke the camels back and finally lead to my father divorcing his then wife.
@@nunyabisness1979 I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm so glad you're still with us today. I can't imagine the anxiety you must have been feeling during that scene.
@@shatteredXmirror don't worry too much about it, it might cause me discomfort but I've learned to deal with it, contrary to popular belief you can be afraid forever but you can't let it control you forever
Nunya Bisness oh god just hearing your story scares the hell out of me. I’m glad you’re alive.
That section was the only one that actually upset me. I have a nephew that age.
My ma taught us when we were still kids that you never leave a baby (or toddler) alone in the bath. Phone rings? You ignore it or you pick the baby up and take him with you. Doorbell rings? You ignore it or you pick the baby up and take him with you. You need to step out for like 10 seconds just to grab something you forgot and you'll be right back, no big deal? Take. The. Baby. With. You
A) Walter was in his 20s when he went to go live in the basement.
B) Walter's calendar read 2005 in the end when the original one was in 1975 or so. This means that Edie was repeatedly giving Walter new calendars to make him understand he'd been wasting his life. She offered no support. Or love. He was only a moleman to her
C) When you enter Barbara's room, the first thing you see is a replica of Barbara's body with a severed head
This story is so haunting
I feel the worse for Walter because he was the most cut off from his family. He would probably have still been alive if had proper support from his family but he was literally shut off
Where is the replica body though? The closest thing to I’ve seen is a mannequin next to her comic memorial
@@andreariverapizarroI think that's what they mean
I wondered about the updates on the calendar. I hoped this was always some supportive member of the family trying to help him, but I know how silly it is to hope that.
@@andreariverapizarro Crawling to enter Barbara's room you see a dress thrown into the tunnel and there is a drawing by Milton of a "head" as if it fell out of the dress
Just a little detail, but Edith mentions how Lewis was quite proud of being Indian, and the architecture of the palace, the sitar, the Eastern styled soldiers and the turban wearing prince are a nod to this :)
That’s so sweet 😢
yet another reason why I fucking love this game. No character is stereotyped or fallen into classic tropes, even with Lewis being the classic idea of a mentally unwell stoner, his personality still shines through. The characters all feel so real
@@greysonholtz I never thought of it, but the family seems to be deeply creative. I guess on a stoner, that could cause that type of world to take over even harder.
@@OhNoTheFace given how the section played out and his computers up in the room, I assumed that what he was creative with was probably games and that, had he survived, he probably would've made a video game that mirrors the world he made in his head.
I also like the subtle way that they establish Lewis is bisexual by giving the player the choice between a prince or princess, basically saying that the two are equally likely to be part of his daydream and fantasy
One more chilling detail: "Last time I was in Edith Sr. Room was when I was 10 and she was painting my portrait." Edith says this when looking through Edie's peephole. This could mean Edie was already trying to memorialize Edith.
Oh my God... Thanks so much for this
"Unless you want another tetanus shot..." I can only imagine how Dawn would have reacted to finding Edith in Edie's room, Dawn's grandmother painting her daughter's portrait, illustrating that she believed Edith's death to be coming so soon... wow.
Jeez thats dark
Maybe expecting death like they all seem to?
That’s so sick (in the bad way)..
There’s a huge hint in Edie’s room about her pride in enshrining the dead in the form of binders. Three, thick as hell binders labeled “shrine sketches” “Barbara sketches” “Molly sketches”
Even her pet birds have their own tiny shrines, with portraits of them inside their cage next to the window you come in. I remember thinking “how insane do you have to be to literally fill up a binder of sketches for your dead children’s gravestones?”
WH-WHAT?! HOW?!
I ONLY WATCHED YOUR LIE IN APRIL THIS SUNDAY! IT'S A RELATIVELY OBSCURE SHOW! AND YET, AFTER PLAYING A RANDOM GAME I GOT A LONG TIME AGO AND GOING ON A RANDOM VIDEO ABOUT IT, I FIND A PERSON WITH KAORI PROFILE PIC!
@@SmileytheSmile If it's on Netflix, it isn't obscure
@@yourlocalpunkposer8107
I said relatively obscure. It's a dtama anime from 2016, if I remember correctly, about a very specific topic. I wouldn't have known about it if I didn't discover its first opening in a Top 100 anime openings list.
@@SmileytheSmile any anime could be considered relatively obscure as far as TV goes but your lie in april is reasonably popular among people who watch anime
she was insane...
I love that Dawn, for all her contentious relationship with her mother, still named her daughter Edith after her. Really adds to the game showing how hard generational trauma is to escape even if you recognize it.
Damn I hadn't even thought about that
I think Edie was her grandmother instead of mother lol
@@wolfganggrimmerdoesnotdese6822 ye, kay's dawn's mother
@@wolfganggrimmerdoesnotdese6822 ah, well, point still stands - the name is still passed down despite the family history
in my opinion i think it could represent a new start. like how edies was brought across the sea to escape such curse. dawn wanted the curse to end aswell. idk i think i just like thinking of it like that!!
I know I'm super late to the party but there is one thing I noticed just recently about the house, it's that the garden and the forest have foxglove everywhere
Foxglove is a highly poisonous flower, so having them on your property when there are children around is just waiting for an accident to happen
I really like this detail, this idea that this family is just poisoning itself out of negligence, and that it is their own inaction and carelessness that kills them. They believe so much in their curse that they make it happen, they tempt fate all the time because they think it's all set in stone anyways.
It's subtle and almost meaningless in the grand scheme of the story but it's so telling and I love it
Oh yeah, when I was watching a playthrough of this game the first thing I noticed when the youtuber was commenting on all the pretty flowers was that they were foxgloves. Definitely pretty. Absolutely lethal.
Pretty sure the fact that the foxglove was everywhere which like u said is highly poisonous and nobody in the finch family cared or noticed is developer metaphor for how the curse Is just ignorance and carelessness
Foxglove is also symbolism for lies and dishonesty, like how all the stories get glorified and fantasticated
Just don’t eat them. It’s maybe dangerous for very young children, but 4 and up should know not to to eat dangerous flowers.
I search what foxgloves mean and it said: a gift of foxgloves would carry the symbolic meaning of “I am ambitious for you, rather than for myself.” It’s a small detail that I think somehow fits into the story.
It's kind of horrifying how the entire Finch family is borderline suicidal. Like a soldier who seeks a glorious death, they take their death as some sort of badge of honor.
Except for lewis he defiantly was not borderline.
Despacito 2 of course he was depressed, he had a gaming PC and smoked weed lmao
Hahaha nothing bad ever happens to the Finchs aaaaaa!
@Conor MCFADDEN who would win
a daemon
One shovel boy
it‘s like orcs in TES. common belief among the orc families is that a warrior should not grow old and frail.
Regarding Edie's death and her door, I assumed she intentionally killed herself rather than leave the house, and that she spent that last night drilling the peephole, putting her name on the door, and sealing it up so her room would match all the others. It would make complete sense for someone like Edie to already have her own fancy door decorations ready for her own death.
That actually also explains the fact that she has a monument on her tombstone like everyone else. Otherwise it makes no sense to have one because Dawn never would've according to this theory.
Yeah she had her pills with alcohol so maybe that caused her death?
@@lizziemarie7877 yea, she probably did what is classic for elderly dying people in cartoons, locked herself in the room until she died. Only thought is, the door is still sealed- so how did they remove her body? She possibly sealed the door from the outside and then died elsewhere in the house, which would makes a lot of sense
Did you notice all the wine bottles and beer cans in the crawlspaces and passageways? I think Edie spent her last night revisiting the memorials, getting ready to join them.
@@NafNav32
Did Dawn lock everything again then?
Edie’s shrines are definitely to the family members’ deaths, not them themselves and their lives. Like, Barbara is immortalized forever with her crutch, inspiring Edith to add it to her own drawing of her in the journal, and it’s what Walter keeps to remember her by in the bunker; through the glorification of her death, it’s turned into this iconic item. But that wasn’t her crutch! It was her boyfriend’s! She only held it once that we know of when she was defending herself from whoever her attacker was in reality. It wasn’t important to her at all in life, but it was part of her death. So it’s one of the key things that represents her.
The attackers were most definitely a gang of home invaders mentioned in the radio earlier. They were even described as wearing masks. Whether they were actually from the convention or not is another thing, but I don't believe Rick had anything to do with it. The police blamed it on Rick because they found one of his crutches, but the other was with Barbara, so how did he escape with a broken leg? I think it also goes in line with the pattern of the romantic partners of the Finches falling to the same curse. Gotta say though, that comic came out just one year after her death. That's pretty fucked up.
@@RichArchillesI thought the radio was only to set up the fictional monster attack just for the tabloids. I had always thought the most probable death was Barbara being murdered by her boyfriend.
@@millerblaylockI think it's intentionally ambiguous - one of those crimes that you will unfortunately never know the real answer to. IMO there's even a couple of clues to suggest that her father was the one who killed her - the hook hand right after Sven hurt his hand, AND her ear ends up in the music box that he made for her. I'm not saying that's what happened, just that the whole story plays out the way many true crime stories do where there's a plethora of possibilities and no real answer.
I personally believe that Edie made Barbaras comic based off how the comic artist knows about the interior of the house, even down to the key in the music box. I don't think that Barbaras death was never truely found out, which is why it ended in such a bizzare way.
Edie can infer that Barbara used the key to unlock the basement and maybe kick someone off the patio onto the chandelier, but what actually killed her is a mystery
@@millerblaylock Her boyfriend is 100% dead too, how would he escape a manhunt without his crutches while barely able to walk?
i love the way the devs portrayed dawn as kind of a bitch, even someone childish with sealing the rooms while edie was the supportive grandmother as you're first going through the game. Then as you progress you realize that dawn has extremely good reasons for acting that way, and maybe edie is a bit more nefarious than just the kindly grandmother.
I have to admit, I was hoodwinked.
It’s like when you see someone being an ahole at that current moment and judge then and then you actually get the story why they were acting that way and it’s understandable.
Dawn is relatable, but wrong.
The entire point there is insulating her kids from the stories of death WON'T protect them from it.
Eddie is living proof of that. She is the most immersed in stories of death and most given to the idea of the curse, yet she is also the longest-live Finch.
I feel like this video takes the position of "Dawn was right" when the reality of what happens in the game shows that she actually wasn't.
@Justin-og9gu I think it's actually in the middle. Grandma Edie is obsessed with the deaths of her family and glamorizing the so- called curse, to the detriment of her living family. Dawn, meanwhile, is acting out of trauma and trying to suppress this information completely, clashing with Edie's glorification. This suppression only made it easier for Edie's stories to get to Milton and Lewis and led to their deaths (implied, in Milton's case). Neither are right, and the issue is the family "curse" and generational trauma manifesting in different unhealthy ways. Edie came from a traumatic background and initially made sense of it by turning it into a story that slowly got bigger and more out of hand, twisting the entire family into a tragic mindset of obsession and the glorification of death. Dawn is pushing back against it, but only feeds it as a result, losing her children in the end.
@@Justin-og9gu I don't agree.
In my opinion, Edie has lived so long because she didn't didn't believe in the Death Curse. The Death Curse that has caused a lot of weird, and traumatic twisted thoughts in the family, that has caused them to ignore some pretty intense situations. Because they'll die by the death curse, so, who cares? That attitude is bad, a lot of these people wouldn't have died if they were more cautious.
Lewis, in this interpretation, is a victim of being obsessed with death and the stories in a completely twisted way. Seeing them grander than his life, in a time where he was suffering a great depression, caused him to do what he did.
I like to think that Milton figured the truth about the "curse" and ran away, leaving behind that flipbook as an explanation for his disappearance that he thought his family wasn't mentally well enough to see through.
so Milton left the house. Wow smart.
I never thought of that. I know there’s a comment about the unfinished swan but I’m still with you on this. I hope he recognized what was really going on and ran away. Very brilliant.
@@andrewSPgaynor honestly i would have prefered if it remained a reference but milton actualy ran away from the curse
@@binarybus11000 In the Reddit AMA, the developers basically confirm that Milton's story wasn't over even by the time of WROEF. He's probably still out there.
Logan Blackwell Interesting. I look forward to seeing what lies ahead for him.
Lewis's death scares me the most is the fact that the blade was meant to cut *fish*, I doubt that blade was made to be sharp or strong enough to cut through all the bones and flesh of a human neck. I could be wrong about all of this but the thought that the blade was not enough to kill him and that he bled out slowly rather than died instantly is _horrifying_
I'd imagine given the force needed to cut a fish head, and depending the way he was laid down, assuming it was down like a guillotine. It would've severed his brain stem so he'd have felt nothing and likely died instantly over bleeding out. Also, industrial strength equipment is known to generally be stronger and use more force than would be required to *just* do it as to make sure there's a clean chop every time. Another thing being that the scene instantly cuts back, so it's presented like he instantly died.
@@Get2thecart that's actually insanely smart! Great analysis
Get2thecart you make a good point. But god almighty, imagine what it must’ve been like for the poor bastard who found his beheaded corpse!
@@Get2thecart Even people being decapitated by actual guillotines where reported to still live for a little while. The last and most believable account is in 1905 France. Dr. Gabriel Beaurieux did an experiment with the person being decapitated. After the decapitation he said his name the head looked up at him. This lasted for about 15 seconds. And even though the brain stem is severed and he cant feel his body anymore he CAN still feel his neck since that is still connected to his brain... Think about that.
I, too, was confused about the fish guillotine that killed Lewis
For Barbara's story: another clue that the boyfriend killed her is from the narrator. The narrator refers to Barbara's BF as her "biggest fan". He also then refers to the 'monsters' that kill her as "fans" that came to celebrate her. I think it's implying that the BF's sick obsession with Barbara (as a character, not a person) overcame him that night, and he hurt/killed her in anger to hear her scream. Probably after the failed scare, like you mentioned. So the BF was the monster after all.
Funny, BF can stand for Biggest Fan as well as BoyFriend. Not saying that's intentional, just fun coincidence
@@thornels holy shit youre right tho. Why would they mention that her bf is specifically "her biggest fan"? she probably also wasnt practising her scream
Ok but.... If he killed her, how did he escape? He couldn't walk thanks to Barbara not giving him his crutch back
@@Lady_lulyS2 most premeditative murderers tend to make an excuse, he could have been faking it. Like that one murderer who faked a disability to initially mooch off his family and gf but later used to excuse his murder.
@@atemephii i don't think he was faking but, in another video i saw a coment that suports the theory that he killed her:
"Rick was trying to get a scream from barbara. I think Walter saw Rick dressed up as the Hooked Man from the rádio and hid underneath his bed. Barbara, with the crutch, investigated upstairs, and Rick scarred her. She slid on the rollerskate and fell over the banister, breaking it. She fell to her death. Rick, in Panic, grabbed her body and ran for it. Dumped it somewhere and dissapeared. Walter witnessed it all" ( said by @Libertasparty)
If Rick killed her, i don't think he did it intentionally. He was her biggest fan remember? And he was presumably trying to get her to get back into acting after she moved on from it (as can be seen by her room, wich shows evidence that, what she wanted to attend that Halloween was a prom not a convention for movie fans) and the dead can't act.
I mean, yes he was a douchebag but he wasn't a murderer. He just cared more about Barbara the actress, than about Barbara, the person.
Another thing pointing to Edie being responsible for Molly's death in particular is that Molly as the cat and bird highlights that she's chasing and eating a "mummy bird" then just a "rabbit" and THEN a "mummy rabbit". I think this demonstrates that Molly had picked up on a lack of care from Edie, and maybe felt like she was being a burden to her family in some way. Her being a "monster" - through behaving badly like young kids do - leads to her upsetting her mother and getting locked in her room, leading to her own death. Molly doesn't blame the curse in her dying writings, she blames herself :(
A great game, thanks for the 2nd suggestion to stop and play it, I really loved playing through it 😀
Also, I doubt a kid would be THAT hungry after missing one meal
In that time period, sending a child to bed without dinner was a common, and even encouraged, practice. The fact that this little girl just *accepted* her punishment, and instead of pleading with her mother (who brushed her off like she has heard all the whining before), she almost immediately takes stock of what she can eat means that this was not the first time, either. The carrot, or even the Holly, could have had mold growing in it, or a reaction to any kind of preservative with the fluoride in the toothpaste, or...the holly might not have even been real berries.
Every one of the stories, especially the younger children, was absolutely heartbreaking, but so very well written.
@@dicklessvonloser4916 food poisoning can do that sometimes
@@dicklessvonloser4916 food poisoning feels like a deep hunger at first
@@dicklessvonloser4916 you’d be wrong 💀
I think we forget how Dawn’s method was just as harmful as Edie’s. She kept her kids in the dark, did the exact opposite of Edie, and her kids still suffered. Like the video said, they’re brilliant people, they NEED a creative outlet, and Dawn took that away. That’s why Lewis died, that’s why Edith came back (and possibly caused her premature death), and that’s why Milton ran away. Edie let the illness fester, and Dawn tried to push it away entirely. Both women were wrong.
Woah.... Not realising that Dawn herself is causing harm to her own children even if she is trying to prevent it from Edie.
this should be top comment
Dawn isn't even 10% as harmful as Edie.
@@mp6471 she certainly didn't help Lewis. If he was already depressed going to something as monotonous as a cannery was a death sentence. Heck even the rooms as morbid as they are could have helped. Lewis interest in music could have been explored with the help of great Aunt Barbara's guitar.
Nice take
Fun Fact: I have always been afraid of going all the way round on a swing no idea why, so actually having to make a character do it was way to intense.
Good because it actually isn't possible without special swing
I know.My fear of heights didnt help when I started doing loops and shot off into the sea.
Being afraid of heights definitely helps (not)
that scene was awful for me because *besidesseeingachilddie* ive had multiple dreams as a child where i would get violently launched into the air and i always hated the feeling of the g force and the impending doom of smashing into the ground
Oh crap this got a lot of likes
I think what is especially ironic about Sam's death, is that he is a Vietnam vet. He survived what was some of the most traumatic and deadly events for many people, but what did him in in the end was a peaceful hunting trip.
I like to think the curse was real, that has a better ring to this story for me
@@dream6562 Every single one of these deaths by the Finches was caused by neglect and was completely preventable. The idea that some supernatural curse is the reason the children should die or gain mental illness is disgusting, personally. It's just a way for the parents to avoid blaming themselves, almost justifying their actions as if they couldn't have made better decisions. People are so eager to find closure through curses just because it sounds better.
@@dream6562this comment has
A. Nothing to do with the original comment
B. The most “missed the point” argument ever
Not "ironic" at all. He was a soulless murderous invader trying to enforce a fascist dictatorship abroad for the interests of US corporations. It's completely unsurprising that he'd due from killing animals from leisure, and doing it with no attention towards whether the animal actually died (so, no care to reduce its suffering) and no attention towards his own daughter's worries and shock.
@@bacicinvatteneaca woah dude ok calm down
When my sister died at the age of seven (she was in a car accident with my paternal grandmother. Both passed). My mom hired a family therapist and my Dad didn’t want us to touch her room. It lay untouched for a year. Her toys were right where she left them, bed undone, and her homework still on the desk. Then the therapist slowly brought up the option of quietly cleaning it and eventually spending time in it. I now know she did this because the concept of keeping things as is can be more harmful then good. That not moving on can cause things like the fall of a family or ideas of “curses”. Which is why this game really got under my skin. I’ve had a “shrine” in my home and luckily my Dad finally let us make little changes. It took him over ten years to finally fully begin to move on. It was easier for me because I was three when she passed and she’s more of an idea. A voice I only hear in home movies. It’s been over twenty years and our family is still going and curse free. We visit her on Christmas and birthdays. My parents didn’t divorce and my remaining siblings do not speak of her like a saint. She stole things from our older sister, and pulled pranks like all kids. She was also a sweet girl and I’m sure she would’ve grown up to be a chef. We live with a strange trauma, but we’re okay. I can’t say the same for Edie Finch.
Reminds me of the scene from the Lovely Bones where Susie’s mother finally goes into her room, cleans it, and makes the bed at the very end of the movie.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ve also lost my brother due to suicide, he also was addicted to weed which got under my skin. Seeing my family cope with grief, I realised how easy it is to give death some sort of meaning or to glorify it because it temporarily makes it easier for everyone - just like the people in the game did. But the game showed me how dangerous this could get. We now talk about my brother just as he was - the good sides and the bad sides. We keep it realistic
It's a normal reaction when suddenly losing someone. Leaving their room as a shrine and/or tomb. As you experienced, moving on is when you can approach it. I am happy you guys got help during it. That helps!
edie probably had mental issues and was too stubborn/couldnt find a therapist
This comment is beautiful
The line "Every Finch is buried somewhere in the library" is now more creepy
You have one of the best usernames I have ever seen.
@@emmanuel6157
agreed
@@emmanuel6157 could you explain that to me? I don't understand what's so funny about it
@@abzu2358 Try yodeling to his name
@@farazriyaz9078lmao thanks that's a good one
My thought was always that the shaking in Walter's story is meant to represent the trains. The trains never *actually* stopped coming, rather it's part of a larger metaphor with Walter's line "if you wait long enough, you get used to anything". Eventually, after 30 years of hearing the trains come & go at the same time every day, it subconsciously became routine for Walter. The trains were still coming, but by then he was so used to hearing them that he stopped noticing the effects altogether - so he thought perhaps it was safe to go out into the real world.
Kaitie M I think he was a PTSD victim. He depended on a schedule. The train was late one day, because of a malfunction, a late conductor whatever. He noticed the train, but was too shocked to move.
I took it as something a long the lines of undiagnosed Parkinson's that he just.... got used to
My theory is that the train tracks could've been under repairs/construction for the week, and Walter was just unlucky enough to get there the day they finished.
The trains start coming and they don't stop coming, nice reference
@@zoeleene Still leaves the shaking and the broken tracks unexplained.
The mistake about Edie and Lewis' rooms being sealed can be explained as Edie spending her last few moments turning both of their rooms into shrines, just like the other rooms.
yep, ingame they said that she was already gone when they tried to get her into a nursing home the next morning, but it never stated that she simply went to bed. I also think that she used the remaining time to create another time capsule for herself by sealing the door and adding another peep hole. Seeing how many times she already did that, she's probably really fast and efficient in it.
Dawn was the one who sealed the doors, Edie was against that
@@popatoeman5739 No but Edie would want it to all be uniform, so she sealed the doors, and drilled the peepholes to match the other rooms, completing the shrine to her dead family.
@@popatoeman5739 Dawn sealed the doors and Edie drilled the holes.
For the last 2 rooms... Lewis's and Edies rooms - those are the only 2 that dawn might not have done well maybe she did do her son Lewis's one. And then Edie did her own room out of spite because Dawn stopped her daughter from reading Edies story.
I also find the name “dawn” really interesting. Every other character in the story has a common historical name, but dawn, the only one who understood what was going on, has a modern name meaning “new beginning”
Eh not truly since she also had old world ways of doing things like repression which is a beloved old school practice. You can't deal with problems if you repress anything. She may have understood the stories were an issue but how she handled things wasn't exactly modern...
@@bigbay1159 but I still think her name marks a turning point.
Dawn is a very old name, it was very common in the 50s and 60s
She didn't understand what was going on, her method of dealing with loss was just as unhealthy as Edie's. In a way, she also believed in the old stories just as much. Edie wanted to preserve the moment of death, like it would keep the person or pet around. She had fully accepted the idea of a curse and didn't even seem to fear it that much. Dawn thought she could "escape the curse" by never talking about what happened to the family. When Milton disappeared, she sealed the rooms. Airtight. Why, when it wasn't even clear that Milton had gone missing in the house? They were surrounded by steep cliffs and a forest full of toxic plants. When Lewis died, she wanted to leave. Lewis wasn't killed by the stories, though. He felt guilty for not being able to protect his brother. He was highly creative, but forced to work in the most monotonous, grim environment possible. He felt like a failure. He could have been saved by leaving the factory, not the house. But Dawn blames everything on Edie and her stories when, in a way, her own actions make the curse seem way more real. Both Dawn and Edie had harmful ways of coping with death, just like everyone in the Finch family. Edith was the one who tried to deal with it in a more healthy way.
@AWEtistic I don't think either of them were healthy in their coping methods. Edie was obsessed with the idea of a deadly curse, and Dawn buried herself in denial of it. Also, after Sanjay's death, she probably thought that the "curse" followed her and tried to erase it before it claimed her children. I can't really blame either of them for Lewis's death (since their family has a long history of ignoring obvious problems, including mental health issues) since both of them have some sort of ptsd due to their upbringing. However, I do like Dawn a bit better just because she moved away from that damn house. If only she explained things to her daughter; but then again, we wouldn't have this game if she had.
I mostly came to the same conclusions. It first hit me when I realized how insane it would be to keep raising a child within the same room he grew up with his twin, not changing a thing, and even keeping the chalk marks while adding on to the surviving child. Imagine being Sam, growing up with a constant reminder of your dead twin, right in front of you, when you go to sleep, when you wake up, when you hang out to do your homework or whatever. Edie is batshit crazy.
Also, something that suddenly occurred to me - how did Dawn ever got found and rescued after her dad fell to his death?
This is a fantastic game.
Yeah Edie is really batshit crazy.
And for the thing with Dawn, im really sure they had phones back then and that she called for help (just propeply on a flip phone)
I could only imagine that it's probably her way to cope after losing Molly in the first place. On top of already losing her father and husband. It's still insane but, she can't help but cling whatever left of her children at that point.
@@Tamaki742 I agree. I think it's just her way of grieving, and memorializing them in such symbolic, poetic and intricate ways is her way of finding closure.
@@jettstorm2253 Yeah, but at the same time I really can't deny how it's horrible that she couldn't even think about how her children are dealing with it. In her mind, she's trying to leave this grandiose legacy that her family would be remembered by, because one day the Finches would probably be no more. But the fact that it extends to neglect and profiteering from your children's deaths? Edith obviously needs help. Help which she refused.
Dawn was a teenager so I think she had enough knowledge to find her way back to the house and after all it was Sam who taught her to be tough
I’m incredibly late to the party here, but another interesting thing to note would be the extensive pet cemetery. I feel like pet deaths are often notoriously attributed to neglect or mistreatment, which would go along quite nicely with the theory that the Finches are just careless by nature. Absolute quality video, btw!
Also Edith herself admits that two of her three gerbils died because of her.
Dunmeri Secret she wasn’t even the worst at keeping pets, most of the names were nearly the exact same; stuff like durpy, slurpy, flurpy, etc.
I think that Edie just thought thought the curse existed. You know how some people neglect pets the older they get, because they know they will die soon, or they put them down. I think that’s how Edie felt she started to neglect them even though they were fine causing them to die and her delusion of the curse to furthermore continue.
That definitely goes with Molly’s story. Why did her gerbil have rotten food in its cage like that?
@@yaggy3818 Just because they become careless, not because they know they are going to die soon. Everything becomes too much trouble as you get older, so they start to neglect all kinds of things -- hygiene, combing their hair, wearing clean clothes, washing dishes properly, cleaning out the spider webs ... anything ... just almost all of it. Doesn't happen with every old person, but the older you get, the more likely it is, and some people just die before they get to that state rather than of old age completely. This fits in with the risk-taking/carelessness theme just fine, though.
The thing about Edie keeping death reminders of the family and things that were even disrespectful to the dead is one of the most clear signs of her obssession to me.
If I keep my dead dog's collar, her toys, pictures of her, it's clearly just a way to keep a part of her with me. To keep her alive in the smallest, ordinary details.
But if I mummify my dog's dead body and keep her posed somewhere in my house for me to look at her corpse every day, it's clearly sickening and agonizing.
Keeping a reminder of the dead is not keeping a reminder of their death. It is keeping a memory of when they were living.
It would be like putting up your dog's picture and then leaving a toy car next to it to memorialize that the dog got hit by a car. She's only interested in how they died, not how they lived.
@@Grant-dx3qt That last sentence is excellent quote-material
This also explains why there's so much taxidermy throughout the house. Aside from family photos, framed collections of dead bugs are the most common item on the walls. Edie really took your mummification idea seriously 💀.
the same thing with keeping the already insensitive comic about Barbra, instead of any other one
@@whatteamwildcats4033 the same with Lewis as well. Lewis suffers from that extreme daydreaming pretending to be a great 'king' of sort, to the point that it took his world and even his life.
And you wants us to remember him by putting a freaking crown on top of his grave? The symbol of something that took his life?? Gtfo
I’m surprised no one talks about the insane amount of wine and liquor bottles in the house. May not be abuse related but certainly neglect at a minimum (of the children). Outside swinging on the swing set , unsupervised while parent(s) are inside plowing through wine.
Yeah, I think the video misses this and the implied mental illness in the family.
The wine may be a big problem, but kids playing in their yard outdoors should be fine.
@@AlexBobalexRavenclaw, not when you live in the edge of a cliff
@@TokuijinIt was even pointed out in the video that the fence there, even if back in the day it wasn't broken yet, was basically an array of short wooden stakes right in front of a swing. That choice was just as intentional as putting the swing by a sheer cliff.
after exploring the rooms of molly, barbara, and calvin, you come back to the house through a glass case of wine
The Lewis section of the game is actually phenomenal.
And fucking sad.
Arguably one of the best ones (tied with Walter and Gregory IMO) Plus, great music
TrEs-2b or not to be walters was the saddest
LeadFaun I don't know about lower end rigs but it ran perfectly and smoothly on mine. No fps drops throughout it.
The exact moment I decided I loved the game. So creative and artistic, would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the team was mapping that sequence out.
I saw a 52 minute video, and thought to myself: “I’m not gonna watch this whole thing.” I watched the whole thing. Take my sub, you hypnotizing bastard.
Now he’s making 5 hour long videos on the Witcher lol
@@glctcthnkr8059 Only 5 hours? You sure about that?
I did the same thing
Just did the exact same
Drown de babi
Don’t know if anyone has already said this but something that occurred to me was that it actually makes total sense that Molly would envision death/the family curse coming for her as a sea monster since probably the first story she had heard of the curse was when Odin Finch went down at sea with the old house. To a little girl, it’s probably like a sea monster had swallowed him whole, and I wouldn’t put it past Edith Sr. to make it sound that way when she described it to Molly.
This makes so much sense! Especially with her painting of a sea monster in her room
Walter's death always hits me the hardest. I think it's because he got so close to experiencing freedom and real happiness and it was violently ripped away from him at the last second. The last line of his letter will never fail to make me tear up, it's absolutely heartbreaking.
Same his death got me in such a chokehold. I was broken-hearted when I watched it the first time
it’s such a quick thing too. he literally stated that he didn’t care if all he had was a week left and ended up dying the minute he stepped out. it’s so heartbreaking i almost cried.
I remember seeing a theory about how historically many “family curses” were actually mental illness being passed down, i think thats what this was about, many of them died because delusion or how they see the world
Honestly makes sense
My family is "cursed"
This game hit way too close to home for me for several reasons
But a lot of the people in my family suffer from serious mental health issues
At first glance, it just seems like a bunch of misfortunes
But if you really look, everyone who died, died from either directly or indirectly from someone's mental health destructive choices
it's strange how a disease can be passed down through genetics
It could be mental illness, but I don’t think it has to be. It can just be that the Finches have been conditioned for generations to subscribe to a form of magical thinking, that they’ve effectively been disarmed of their common sense self preservation instinct by the idea that the family is “cursed” and there’s nothing they can do about it. It makes them bold and daring people, to be sure, but it also leads them to take a lot of unnecessary risk and do foolish things.
Dawn saw her father put himself in an insanely dangerous position and get himself thrown off a cliff for it. I think that may have been a moment of clarity for her, when she realized that there was no curse. She tried to keep her kids safe from it, but in the end they couldn’t handle being cut off from that family legacy. It didn’t matter if the curse wasn’t real, because real or not, it was all they thought they had.
I actually just found a video that covers this idea in more detail ua-cam.com/video/ApKv60YFaDY/v-deo.html
i always thought family curses were ones who had nothing but bad luck and other misfortunes or dying in freak accidents.
From my experience, food poisoning often feels like a deep hunger at first, so Molly's dream makes sense to me.
That's a good one. Dev really do a good job I still find new things after all this time
there's also the theory that she has pica
@@roomtemperature7096 that’s what a good game does.
I mean, she did eat poisonous berries
You know, everyone’s congratulating the devs and stuff, meanwhile I’m just wondering how the heck you experienced food poisoning.
As the father of a 1-year-old at the time of playing this game and also someone who has struggled with ADHD, Gregory's death was painful to get through as the thought of losing a child through a sudden lapse of attention is without a doubt my single worst fear. It was the first time I wished a game had come with a trigger warning.
Man, I feel you so much. I probably have ADHD, and I can barely take care of myself. I have two dogs and I keep them alive, but a baby needs so much more supervision and care, there is so much more that can go wrong. I'm definitely not ready.
I wish you and your kid all the best.
@@cawareyoudoin7379 They won’t be babies forever and time flies fast. It’s just a few years we have to be super attentive! Think about it like that
@@jimin6813 Hah, yeah. Thanks for the encouraging words
I felt the same way. I was utterly horrified as the scene started and felt physically nauseated. I also have young children and suddenly all the times I've given them baths as babies came flashing before my eyes- the what if there was a lapse of attention that caused immeasurable pain. Absolutely horrific.
Yeah I agree about the trigger warning - should've been given for both Gregory and Lewis. I had to skip through Gregory's scenes and every time the video cut back to them I started to cry. (I'm crying right now writing this comment.) Suicide is so intensely personal to so many people and I think should've been given advance warning as well,,, but such a visceral depiction of a baby drowning?? That's above and beyond disturbing to me. If I had advance warning I could've skipped it or braced myself but coming across that section unprepared made me wish I hadn't watched this video at all, even though it was fantastic :/// I really appreciate when creators a) warn viewers in advance about potentially upsetting topics and then b) provide time stamps for us to safely skip through the content. Anyway, I hope that everyone who watched this video and was upset by Gregory's story is feeling safe and loved :')
I’m one to agree that the very nature of the Finch household is a hazard in of itself. While you did say that the swing being very close to a poorly built fence and on a cliff, I’d also like to mention that the whole house is built in such a way that it looks like it’s only being held together by magic. I’m really surprised none of the Finches died by misstepping near the edge of the balconies.
I think it's a neat visual storytelling element to show that this family has always tempted fate.
yeah I was playing today and was surprised how Edith didn't fall down the higher she got, considering how she crawled through windows and stuff.
The foxglove (a poisonous, sometimes deadly plant) surrounding the house is such a nice touch that I didn't notice till later on
It is deadly, it’s a beautiful plant but it will literally stop your heart. People used to brew it in tea by accident mistaking it as other plants. It’s also used in modern day heart medication!
@@josszarnick2393 yeesh that kinda defeats the point of taking the medication
@@Deg40000 its used to hopefully fix irregular heart palpations or irregular heart beats
@@fuynnywhaka101 well that makes more sense now.
@@Deg40000 The dose makes the poison & the cure :)
I know other deaths are more ambiguous, but the one that's really bothering me for some reason is Walter's. I don't think he was hit by a train. I'm not convinced there really were trains running out there. I think the train motif came from them having built the house over some old train tracks, and him having taken up an interest in trains when he was young. After watching Barbara die, in a way to cope, he fixated on something familiar -- trains. They were harmless, they were *normal*. They have nothing to do with his sister, or some fantastical curses. You see the train toy models in the bunker. He could lock himself away with them and they weren't gonna hurt him.
But he was traumatized, and it preyed on a thing that he loved. I believe the shaking of the bunker by "trains" was a manifestation of anxiety or panic attacks. He worked through them with repetition and focus, opening those peaches over and over. They weren't scary anymore, they were routine. S/o to the line about the monster becoming a friend. Friends are just people you get comfy having around -- that's what his mental illnesses became.
Think about what living 30 years underground eating only peaches would do to your body. I know the pantry had other food, but look how full it was -- he probably was really only eating peaches, because they were the focal point of coping with aggressive anxiety. I'm sure the "house shook" several times a day. He was severely malnourished, probably approaching death as it was. But routine was holding him together.... until it wasn't. One day, he didn't have a panic attack. It was jarring. The one thing he knew was gone. It spurred him to do something different. He got up, knocked a hole into the wall, and completely exhausted himself doing it. He likely hadn't had any form of real exercise in 30 years, on top of being malnourished. It was a moment of adrenaline and of uncertainty. He burst through the wall, saw the light and the fresh air, and then... his heart gave out.
It's sad but it fits. He was living in a state of mental turmoil for decades but, for him, that was holding it together. Then, experiencing the very first sign of improvement to his mental health was when, for him, it all fell apart.
When Edith goes through the hole, you get to see the broken tracks. I wonder if he was so dazzled by the light/view that he just walked off the rails...
@@NafNav32 True!!! Very valid point, I think I like your ultimate conclusion better lol
I don't think he was only eating peaches. If I remember correctly, when you are playing as him, you eat a can of peas (or pea soup?) at the sound of an alarm clock. Also, there is a pit just beyond the room that has a mountain of trash in it, of all types of food.
im literally breathless thats such a perfectly horrifying thought
Yeah... Looking at the landscape, I don’t think there ever was a train that passed by the house.
Its almost as if the circumstances of their deaths outweigh their lives in Edith's point of view. The romanticization of their tragic falls are shown to be so important from a young age that they internalize their own demise before they ever have a chance to find their own identity. Their identity is their death.
Yup. Barbara's crutch was noteworthy enough to Edie that it's in Barbara's death portrait... except it's not even her crutch. It's just the thing she had on hand to use to try, and ultimately fail, to drive off the person or people that killed her.
Molly had a rabbit and a fish, but what animal is she loosely portrayed as on her portrait? A cat, the first creature she "became" while hallucinating before her death.
Plus the newspaper clippings and literal photograph of her husband dying.
And you know the rest. They're not memorials made to celebrate life, they glorify snapshots of her family members in the moments of their deaths.
@@sleepythemisanother thing that shows how edie glorifies their death not their lives is with her husband sven, the guy was a creative and talented builder he built the whole house along with its secret passages and made a music box for Barbara and probably built the cemetery yet what is he most remembered by ? The dragon shaped slide that he died while making
And like you said molly had and was interested in different kinds of animals including birds and bugs yet she is only remembered as a cat
Lewis Also has a crown on hes grave even though he had more to his he was proud of being an India yet this part of him isn't immorilized but the fantasy he was daydreaming about that it not being real caused him to hate himself and eventually commit suicide
It was also mentioned by Edith that she saw Edie bringing food and supplies in Walter's supply part of his bunker where she thought she was "hiding presents". Edie didn't just allow Walter to live under the house like a moleman instead of bringing him to therapy, she also encouraged his behavior by bringing him supplies and restocking his food so that he won't ever need to leave his bunker ever again.
That woman is seriously messed up...
Gregory always gets me. He was the only Finch who was completely and utterly helpless to his fate.
not so true. dawn was sick
@@toribaker5860 also Molly was helpless as she was starving and her only options poisoned her.
I actually cried when I played his story in the game
And top it off, the game makes you (as the player) be the ones to initiate turning the water on; I was like Darth Vader in "...Episode III...".
@Gregory Steedley better be careful of taking a bath now
This was a spooky game
Dolan Dark Change your Profil pic to sully from Monster Inc you hack.
It really was
Indubitably
you have no pp dolan dark
Holy shi-
I'm sorry, as someone with Maladaptive Daydream Disorder, Lewis's bit with the daydream was waaaaay too realistic. It stuck a bit too close to home and when I played it, I cried a little bit, not gonna lie.
Yes, it does take over your life. Yes, I'm only really able to pay attention to about a quarter of my life. Yes, I do feel like I'm missing out on all the good stuff in life due to my brain trying to block out the bad stuff. Yes, it's fun. Yes, I blame my dad for not letting me take medication for my ADHD, Depression, or Anxiety, all of which can cause MaDD. Yes, I too was suicidal in the past.
All I can say to other people who feel like this and are underaged like me is it does get better. It might not seem like it, but it will, I promise. Go talk to someone you trust, go get ice cream, go sit in the park for a few minutes. Do what you can to help yourself.
Hmm i think its a bit different.
At the beginning of the story told by his psychiatrist she mentions it all started when he got treatment for his substance abuse and he finally realized the monotony in his job , when he got sober he realized how much his life sucked and he tried to cope with it by daydreaming which grew in complexity everyday ...when he wakes up from his dream and your back at the cannery he realized the only way he could escape his own life he hated was to commit suicide .
He shouldvd just kept smoking weed though lol
@@owningkoning he was using illegal substances to cope the same way that maladaptive day dreaming is used to cope. Doing drugs, no matter if it’s “just weed dude” 🙄 is maladaptive. I say this as someone who’s lived decades with ptsd and day dreamed cope. Drugs, alcohol, day dreaming, none of it changes the serious issues. Get help, therapy and medication that actually solves the problems and life becomes much more bearable
Edit to add: I say this as someone who eats edibles for nerve pain and appetite issues, and who also drinks and eats edibles for recreation
Im so sorry
Warning: dumb rant i did that makez noz enze
Im not diagnosed but i suffer w a similar problem of daydreaming and feeling like i cant control it
Id daydream while walking, on thr swing, class, drawing, trying to do anything
Ill pace around for hours in my dreamx and itz just
Fuckkkk man
Itz gotten a bit better since im in a better place now/hv medication but itz ztill a problem
Im ao sorr u hv to deal w that man,,,
what if theres none to talk with? what if there's nothing i can do cause i haven't money or health to go beyond my room? sometimes i think i already crazy
@Natalie im so sorry, no oen deservez to go through that,,
Thingz will get better, okay? Not tomorrow since thatz impozzible but at some point,, trust me
16:00
I only realized this now but it makes sense for the boy to be this scared of going out. Because he actually IS hiding from a "monster".
He wasn't just traumatized from seeing his sister get killed. He also saw who did it. He probably felt like he might get killed next.
Oh wow.
I dont think edie killed her daughter. The boyfriend did.
It's a line with many layers to it
Its worse when you realize, its not really mentioned if they caught the boyfriend or not.
I also assumed that the boyfriend probably killed himself. He might have had a broken leg but the Finches' house is situated on a cliff.
I like to think that Edie's door is sealed shut because we're seeing Edith's son's interpretation of the story he's reading. He may have read that the doors were sealed with peepholes early on and imagined that all of them were sealed in that way, even when it wouldn't make sense for them to be. I see it as another reminder of the unreliable narrator.
That's.... Actually quite fitting. Just like how Edie Sr book had the other page blank when it got ripped in two.
Wasn't one thing Edie said was "all the doors were locked and had peepholes"? So anything said could become literal because of the viewpoint
Lydia M - This is very smart! I’m so glad you thought of this! It does make a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
@@Generic8864 I think Dawn had to shut Edie's door too, her room is perhaps the most dangerous for her children out of all of them.
If she left it open for Edie to use, she'd just get Dawn's kids in her room, without any possibility of Dawn stopping her.
She knows all of those stories, because she is obssesed with the family curse, so she doesn't always need to take her grand-grand-children to those other rooms.
And perhaps before Dawn locked her room out,, she got out all of her neccessities, but as Dawn and Edith were leaving that day, she chose to die (also because she didn't want to leave the house alive), and left her a one last story, also because Dawn told her, they are leaving a day after Lewis's funeral.
And as we know, Dawn only shut those doors, not secret entrances, that's how Edith was able to get to the journal, and move around the house years later
this almost works until you remember that edith couldnt just go through lewis's door, she had to go around and enter through another way
Oh I see; Molly ate poisonous berries and other rotting/inedible stuff, which caused her belly to start rumbling (which she interprets as hunger in her dream) and her to choke (like she does on the rabbit). She desperately needs air and water, like the shark on land, and as that wave of sickness passes she begins to dream of a monster choking people to death. I'm thinking that maybe she got up to vomit (hence the monster coming up through the bathroom) and wrote the entry as she went back to bed and the sickness caused her to panic and hallucinate. She then goes to sleep and chokes on her vomit, or something similar. I doubt the berries and moldy food were enough to kill her outright, but choking would certainly do the trick.
Toothpaste is also really toxic if you eat a whole tube of it.
I think those are not really poisonous berries. Her death takes place in December, close to christmas. My thought was that those could have been christmas decorations. Made of rubber or, more fitting for the time period, ceramic. She chewed and swallowed a set of ceramic balls which, in turn pierced her stomach and intestines, and that's how she died.
@@arturofernandez4058 Well I mean chances are she would've tasted if it wasn't a berry, or at least described it as not a berry when eating it. I do consider the fact that the fluoride in toothpaste being toxic, and the fact that she ate an entire tube of it to be very likely her cause of death.
It's Holly berries, a common Christmas decoration, and it is poisonous. A lot of people thinks that Molly was probably hallucinating because of the poisoning from the berries and all the other inedible stuff she ate.
If the berries are holly, they are quite poisonous, and ingesting more than twenty berries can kill a child. We only see her eat three, but I'm guessing that the developers didn't do enough research.
It's truly sick that they named the bathroom that Greg died in "Greg's room". It's like they think he's haunting it or something, imagine the pain his mother must have felt from witnessing or hearing about the "shrine" Edie made to "honor" the death of an one year old by his mom. Fucking disgusting.
Literally that's what graves are. Is everyone who honors the dead disgusting now?
@@logannowak5265 absolutely not the same thing. a literal shrine dedicated to not the actual person but how they died instead?? not even close to a grave.
I guess you could chose to see it as a constant reminder. Don’t let babies out of your sight when they’re in the bath- especially not in THIS family. Obviously,it’s still terrible but there could at least be a somewhat decent or good hearted reason? Probably not,knowing who Edith SR is
@@logannowak5265You don't put the graves in the rooms where they died and glorify their deaths with a whole shrine, do you?
@@logannowak5265it's chosen bc he died in that room because of the bathtub tho. if it wasn't he wouldn't have had the plaque there. it would've been on the actual door to his room like everything elsem
It’s been a few years but I i’d like to point out that molly actually ate holly berries, not mistletoe. Correct me if i’m wrong. I might be mistaken on this.
The common christmas holly can be easily mistaken for mistletoe and holly can have some not so nice effects on children when compared to mistletoe.
Vomiting and diarrhea are much more severe when it’s happening to a child who’s stomach is empty. I might just be overthinking it but the moment after she ate the holly is the moment that the story and perspective broke away from reality. She also talks a lot about how hungry she is, that’s basically what the whole story is about, it comes to the end with her hunger consuming her and she dies of starvation or dehydration. That’s what I concluded.
It was a mistake that surprised me because the shape of holly leaves is so distinctive! Also, hanging mistletoe isn't part of the Christmas tradition here, but aren't the berries usually white?
@@hairymcnipples - Yes they actually are white, but holly has been used to take the place of mistletoe because mistletoe can be invasive and dangerous to grow if you’re not looking to kill all your other plants and trees.
Mistletoe berries are usually white but it’s a common misconception that they are instead red (some stores may even paint mistletoe berries red) and the berries on holly can be much more “pretty” compared to the tiny cluttered patches of berries on a mistletoe branch. Sorry for the long paragraph. I just really think it’s an interesting detail and it explains a lot about Molly’s story of her death.
Not to mention toothpaste in the 40’s was not safe to digest and was pretty toxic
There's a theory that the berries were fake since there is a crunch sound when Molly bites them, so maybe not as bad, but in the 40s pretty much everything was toxic
@@gemmacadd2252 Holly berries are actually hard at that time of year (fall/winter). They also taste really bad at this time. They only become soft after several frosts, and better tasting.
The attention to detail is insane in this game - we know it's around Christmastime here, so Holly berries would be hard at this point. The crunch is a nod to that. Another point is that, with them tasting so bad, Molly would have to be truly hungry to even consider not spitting them out immediately, much less actually swallow.
There’s another element to Lewis’s story that I think people miss. Based on the decisions he had to make on the voyage segment, he may have struggled with sexual orientation. If I remember correctly, he was on his way to a place where he heard of a “handsome queen” or “beautiful prince.” His struggle with this along with his history of substance abuse could’ve contributed to his suicide.
I can't believe it's constantly overlooked when looking into his death.
Sadae Sparda Idk about this video, as I haven’t watched it yet, but I assume most people just assume it’s there solely for token representation points. Like “oh ofc they need to make a gay option, or everyone will riot”.
When in reality, sometimes, even in fiction, people are just bi, or gay... Nobody bothers to even consider the in-universe implications because “of course” it’s solely for the sake of representation. Which, it might be, but still.
There's also the "rainbow" river route. It's a packed game, I wouldn't be surprised if they added something like this
I'm not a native English speaker, but isn't handsome relatively common for describing women in older English? I remember Pride and Prejudice being full of ladies being called handsome, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't attempting to imply genderqueerness.
nihil est enim In modern english it’s not used like that though, at least not in America. We generally call men handsome, and women beautiful. From what I’ve seen using them in the opposite way generally implies genderqueerness, nowadays.
I think the death of Molly was key here. An important detail you missed, Molly states in her diary she would not be around much longer - she was already sick with something serious (at the time in children) probably Scarlet Fever that can cause the rash you visibly see on her arms & hands. She then ate the toothpaste/holly berries which exacerbated her weak condition. She died in her sleep after writing in the journal, her imagination fuelled by the toys & pictures in her room. The references to choking & hunger sadly reflecting what she was feeling as she wrote.
I don’t think Edie had anything sinister or particularly morbid in mind at this point. Holly is a natural decoration for Christmas when the event takes place. The danger of eating the berries was probably just overlooked or unknown to Edie. Molly had been naughty and locking children in isn’t that unusual if they won’t go to bed and just keep coming out (especially at the time -1940’s).
Here’s where you made a very important point. Edie was probably overcome with guilt here and the old family curse story became the perfect outlet for her to cope. She became absolutely obsessed to the level of psychosis (Lewis later reflects the same mental illness, it seems to be a trait in the family, taken to varying levels from their various obsessions).
Anyway, Molly’s story and this game as a whole is simply a masterpiece of storytelling. Amazing amounts of small, scattered details that link & relate beautifully to one another. So much that is very easy to miss but make you gasp when you eventually see them. This is an extremely talented studio.
I don't think that's what she meant when she said she wouldn't be around much longer. She had already turned into all the animals and reverted back to herself (in her mind) before she wrote the diary you find in the game; she thought at the time the tentacle monster was under her bed and was about to eat her.
Your theory is a good one and I do like it but there’s one detail that you missed. Molly’s door was lock from the outside.
(Although is may just be that she didn’t want Scarlett fever but I think that’s too much of a stretch. It would also mean that lock was intentionally built on the outside.
@@opsun31 I thought she had cancer of some form, slowly eating her away. Of course I'm probably biased from personal experience.
I think the spots on Molly's arms are just freckles. Walter has the same spots on his arms
@@typeterson2421 I don't see how that's a missed detail. It's a door that can be locked from both sides, and as Cuba Blue says "Molly had been naughty and locking children in isn’t that unusual if they won’t go to bed and just keep coming out". It's not Molly locking herself in because she's naughty, it's Edie locking Molly in because she's naughty
Honestly as depressing Gregory's and Lewis' deaths were, I can't help but think that Walter's death might've been the most cruel one
He lived for 3 whole decades in a basement because the death of his older sister traumatized him so much. Three decades. Having every day be a carbon copy of the last. And the moment he ventured out, the moment he found a chance to live again, he dies
When I was first playing the game and at his part, I first tried out to go back up the basement, but a small object on the ground didn't allow me to do so. I thought at first that it was just a gameplay thing, and I might've been, but I think it also tells that he had no other way. That his mind was so damaged that he couldn't have taken the normal way, back to the floor where his sister was killed
Also, when he menntions 'the monster on the other side of the door became normal', I think he was talking about Edie. She literally glorified his older sisters death with some trashy comic, he was probably afraid of her.
I know I'm late, but I just finished the game :)
Walter was around 50 when he died, meaning that Walter had lived multiple years outside the basement, causing him to live in fear for years
U guys realize it can't physically be edie right and that I have to agree with the main commenter on this one being the fact that Walters was not just the most complex but also one of the most sad ones though for me what caught my attention is the complexity of it and now you can't really figure out this story and lore without figuring out Barbara's which is equally as complex and heart dissolve being the fact that I don't think edie or Barbara's boyfriend murder I honestly do think it might have been a murder some kind of monster mask or maybe a group being the fact that even if this is wrong which most likely is it has to be something like this being the fact that it has to be something so traumatizing and made water go in that bunker for 30 years and I've been searching for a long time for that answer through tons of UA-cam videos and still haven't found one so whoever sees this response please if you know tell me so I can get this damn question out of my head
@@ghost14224 slow down and take your time.
The lack of grammar and punctuation makes you seem extremely scatter brained.
Take it easy big man, no need to rush.
@@mymusicmen13 thanks still would like the answer to that question though
It's kinda chilling and tragic that despite Dawn having realized what was actually going on, she still failed to protect her children from the family curse.
She tried too hard to protect Lewis, trapping him in a normal job and a mundane life, which only made him long for the kind of fantastical lives the rest of his family lived, leading him to commit suicide.
Milton straight up ran away.
And by the time she tried to get her remaining family away from the house (something which she should've done a long time ago) it was too late. The curse had already taken hold of her daughter. Edith Sr's stories had already planted a seed in Edith Jr's mind, which is why she comes back to the house despite being 22 -months- weeks pregnant.
And because of the book/journal Edith Jr wrote, the curse has probably taken a hold of her son too. That's why he also comes to explore the house.
I think that Edith Jr. broke the curse just by essentially writing everything about what happened. She told the entire truth without really presenting it as fantastical like Edie did. By just writing the entire truth down and showing it to her son it prevents anyone from really having to actually go into the house again.
@@berry2254, that's so cool. The boy can finally break the curse and actually live a normal life. No fantasies, no glory, no romantization of death, just straight up truth and understanding of reality where fiction takes place.
I think the point is that Edith's journey breaks the curse. Neither Edie nor Dawn had a healthy coping mechanism and it's hard to blame them after they all they have been through. Edie tries to preserve the past by essentially freezing time the moment someone dies. She accepts the curse as part of the family identity. Dawn tries to bury the past, doesn't talk about any of her trauma and tries to run away from the curse. But she still believes in it.
Milton disappears. Dawn seals the rooms. Lewis kills himself. Dawn blames Edie's stories and thinks running away in a hurry is the only way to escape the curse. So for both Edie and Dawn, the curse is real, they just have polar opposite ways to deal with it.
Edie gets to understand both women while discovering her family story through exploring the house. She finds a middle ground and leaves it behind for her son. That's what remains of her - her legacy. Now it's up to her son to find his own way to deal with the generational trauma. Maybe he can return and see the house for what it is. Not a cursed place, just a house.
@@awetistic5295While I’d agree,I will say that the fact her son already has a broken arm is concerning. It could be nothing but it could also imply he’s reckless or,worse,self destructive. Keep in mind,that was before he read the diary his mother left him.
@@birdmcturd1626 I think the detail about so many children/characters being hurt and in casts is meant to represent they're hurt on a mental level. They're not meant to be physical injuries, but emotional hurt made manifest.
We don't know what kind of life Edith's son lived, but we do know he was orphaned at birth (unless his father took him in, unlikely considering Edith was a teen and the father probably would have been too). Having that in mind, we can infer he's likely not had the easiest life.
I think that scene was meant to represent that you can be hurt, but still pick yourself up and keep going, confront your past, accept it, then leave it behind.
The flowers were a nice nod to this - unlike Edie who memorialised everyone through stone and paint - things meant to last a long time - he left cut flowers that wouldn't last more than a week or so.
I know this video’s 3 years old already but since it wasn’t very obvious, and no one has seemed to figure it out yet, the true cause of death of Gus was that the giant totem pole crushed him. You see in the flashback that when the wind and his kite picks up the tent, it hits the totem pole causing it to rock, and then the camera goes out of frame as Gus stumbles to the ground. When as Edith on the beach we see the totem pole knocked over on the beach right where Gus was standing in the flashback.
omg that is so smart! I remember looking at the totem pole while playing as Gus and thinking it was strange how it was directly behind him
This is so important! It's because totem poles symbolize hierarchy or "marking a family's lineage and validating the powerful rights and privileges of the family". It shows how the neglect of the parents, in every generation of the Finches, doomed their children. Making the curse "real".
@@cookiesyruplover that's so scary!!!!
I never even noticed that. Woah.
YEESS. I remember watching the trees and wondering why there were plastic chairs on top of them, now it all makes sense
Ediths death was presumably due to carelessness too. The over exertion likely caused a premature birth.
damn never thought about that
And she's 17 at the time of the pregnancy which could be a result of the reckless decision to have s*x
@@TheDuckGenie having sex isnt reckless, but without protection, certainly - if thats in fact what she did
@@TheDuckGenie your assuming she had the choice
Those tend to put the child in danger more than the mother
One thing that I dont see anybody pointing out is that Lewis is recovering for marihuanna adicction, at the same time he's working a mundane job and visiting a psychiatrist. Not only he was affected by Eddie stories, but also the withdrawal effects and the fact he was now living a boring life which probably lead to his suicidal thoughts. I would say that its also Dawns fault too, because it was her idea to make him work in a conveyor belt as a solution to forget the stories and fit as a normal citizen. Lewis should have been in house with the support of his family, or in an hospital until he feels recovered. But giving the family negligence towards others safety and health its no surprise.
This is how I felt. Dawn and Edie’s perspectives are at odds, and both hurt the family. Edie’s desire to escape her feelings of guilt and responsibility through memorial and fantasy have their places, as using creative pursuits to deal with personal strife is important and helpful, but she is too sick herself and winds up hurting her family as a result of her fantasy. Dawn’s desire for everything to just be normal, on the other hand, is just soul crushing and destructive, as bottled up creativity that is trapped by a monotonous life becomes all-encompassing and destructive. Dawn represents not being able to look at, consider, and learn from past failures, and Edie represents the memorializing of those failures as a destructive and trapping force.
@@jebbait1669 how?
@@jebbait1669 It can.
When I played through the game I considered that his use of weed might have activated or exacerbated his genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, since studies and medical cases have shown that this can happen to some unlucky people. He was from a family with generational mental health problems and about the right age for schizophrenia to take hold, plus he was tragically in the perfect family for nobody except his psychiatrist to understand the gravity of his situation. In a normal family someone might have noticed he was on the edge of a psychotic break on that day but he lives in a family where the matriarch says her husband was killed by a dragon and lets her son become a moleman.
After reading through this comment section I'm not so convinced anymore, maybe it could have been maladaptive daydreaming instead, but seeing your comment made me want to just put this out there.
@@jebbait1669 not physically, but anything can be addictive emotionally and mentally. he was using it as escapism and fantasy. when he no longer had that, he sought it out desperately to the point where he basically became catatonic. he wasnt addicted to the weed, but the feeling it gave him. then he became addicted to maladaptive daydreaming
This is so mind-blowing to me because I have never thought that Edie could be the problem and I actually felt bad when Dawn took Edith and just left her like that. And it further makes me realize how easily I got carried away by the storytelling and felt obsessed about the family curse and death, maybe just like many of the family members.
Damn, that comment hit me… I felt exactly the same.
I think the most distressing thing about Edie's son isn't his broken arm, but the fact that he's alone. He's a young boy who is reckless enough to pursue this on his own or neglected enough to be allowed to.
For chrissake, he piloted an effing boat on his own to a treacherous island with dangerous landscape, he’s definitely reckless and/or neglected to have the time to do so!
He probably has a father or guardian with him just letting him read the book and pay his respects
@@kuro-kuromi32 I'm pretty sure someone else is driving the boat. It seems like it's a ferry.
@@mrdeadinside9462 why would you think that? Every character is always alone except in photographs
@@Blkpants Because someone had to give the book to him in the first place, tell him the address, give him money or means of travel to even get there.
And he definitely isn't the one steering the boat, because he is sitting on a side bench while the boat keeps going.
the fact that you can hear people crying out in fear and panic as Lewis bows his head down… holy _shit_
Wait really omfg
@@acebee46 yeah! maybe I’m reading too far into things, but when the music crescendos to a stop and Lewis sees that last bit of reality right before he dies, it sounds like you can hear the sounds of other factory workers screaming for someone to stop him
@@mikey_m114 Yeah, that part scared me so bad I put my monitor to sleep thinking there was going to be a jumpscare 😆
As someone who actually hasn’t played the game and only found out about this game through this video essay, damn. I think it makes Lewis’s suicide worse as this implies he killed himself via the fish cutter, maybe putting his neck under it, mirroring the his dream world’s decapitation. Which uh, is certainly a method of death. I do wonder why he chose that method instead of the more common methods. It could’ve been impulsive. He’d been haunted by all these suicidal thoughts but one day during work, he was like “fuck it, I’m done with this world” and impulsively killed himself using the only dangerous thing around. And a thought I had, people who have attempted suicide but survive often feel sudden regret and wanting to live. Maybe Lewis felt that too as the fish cutting blade fell.
@@Exhausted905he 100% killed himself with the fish cutter. The sound of u cutting the fish is in the background through his whole story and it almost fades away completely at the end before the music stops and all you hear is that sound after he puts his head in the guillotine
this might be a niche take, but Encanto feels like a more wholesome or uplifting take on What Remains of Edith Finch, right down to the grandmother’s abusive behavior being a trauma response (similar to Edie) but instead of becoming reckless and hurting her children, she tried too hard to protect them
I was thinking the same thing!
aww i really like this. reminds me that it’s never too late to fix things.
Oh boy do I have the video for you: ua-cam.com/video/w74r9utAcWw/v-deo.html
HOLY SHIT-??? I never thought about this but it actually makes a lot of sense..
What remains of Encanto?
I really really appreciate that the story doesn't pin down the "curse" to any one thing- many family members have significant signs of mental illnesses (mostly Bipolar and Scizophrenia) but not all, many family members die from outright neglect but some from fully natural causes, and Edith's son is shown to have a bit of the Finch carelessness despite knowing nothing of his family prior to this. It's somehow realistic and supernatural that way.
you can hear the narrator's voice crack when talking about the baby's death. I feel like it really hit him home with that one
Neringa Mecelyte I know this comment is kind of old but maybe it’s because Edith doesn’t want the same fate for her baby
@@coolattas6309 I think he's referring to the narrator of this video, instead of the narrator of this game Edith finch
Thanks for the info I skipped that part cause I couldn't relive the nightmare.
Yeah that one hit me hard I was balling....
i’m pretty sure he has a son, so i’m sure this hit really hard.
The shrine that stood out most to me while watching a playthrough of the game was Gregory's. A baby drowns and Edie decides to put rubber ducks and a bottle of bath bubbles in a cradle? Sounds pretty disrespectful to me.
honestly this video and the comments are making me realise how awful Edie Finch is
I think it's really interesting how Edie's memorials cast more of a shrine to the person's death than their lives. It's like she cared more about the curse and the attention their deaths garnered than she cared about them as they lived.
The disrespect is watching a play through instead of playing it yourself lmao
@@Mark-sd5jk why u gatekeeping bro lol
Plus she literally made a comic book about Barbara’s death and fed Walter’s delusions just so she could have that attention… a wtf doesn’t even begin to cover it all
I'm prone to magical thinking. I think magical thinking is interconnected with inherited family trauma. It took me playing this game twice to realise that the fantastical elements of these stories were due to unreliable narrators, and not that supernatural things had actually happened.
I'm surprised about how easily I bought into the story I was served, and that kind of low-key scares me.
Reeeeally late to the party but I think Milton ran away after realizing the situation at the house. As soon as he moved in and got the castle, he recognized how "the curse" made grandma obsessed. Remember the missing poster, right next to the broken fence? Right at the beginning of the game? I think that broken fence was how he ran away. And I mean- the flipbook he makes implies that he is leaving voluntarily. The house "swallowed" him- it was swallowing him up emotionally, and staying there felt like he was being consumed by a past his grandma didn't want to let go of.
I know I'm a bit late, but yes, that is the case. The game devs made another game before this, The Unfinished Swan. And in that game, Milton is confirmed to be the character of the Lonely King.
@@notherapy4u Not really confirmed, just heavily implied. Like a lot of the game's material.
@@dominickeijzer5844 No, it was confirmed in a AMA with Giant Sparrow.
At the end of the story, Edith says that she never saw Edie again, when the nursing home van came the next day, Edie was "already gone". I took this to mean that they didn't find her body dead from mixing alcohol and medication, but that she was actually gone from the house. It seemed to me that Edie walked out to her childhood home in the ocean, and died reaching it.
That would make the whole peephole thing make sense since she could have been the one to do it. Personally I think it means she died since they didn't say she was gone from the house but just.... Gone. Since that is synonymous with death in english language at this point it makes sense. Not to mention Dawn was the only adult left so I always assumed that she was the one to plan the funeral and out of completion of the house, she sealed the door. Knowing Edie, her death was probably planned so she more than likely made the peephole for her door to be put on. Since Edith was young, she didn't know most of the details and I'm assuming that that's why its left ambiguous.
@@ManiacalBlueberry I didn't understand could you write that again
@@windums560 dou yu ar hav stuped,/?
@@cockmaster314 foor to be put on. I didn't understand from there. English is my second language. I am proud of how much I understand. It doesn't mean I am stupid. It means you are rude
The alcohol with her medication could still contribute-maybe it put her in a severely altered state of mind.
29:09
When Lewis bends down to face the ground, you can hear panicked voices around him. It’s better if you have headphones. The only one I can make out is:
“Oy!”
“Stop him!”
It’s very very faint.
Wasn't he working alone though?
@@yeethan7352 All the stories are very dramatized for artistic purposes. While it's not impossible he was literally alone, the scene of him standing by himself could also signify how alone he felt
@@yeethan7352 Just want to be clear I don't think your interpretation is wrong! Just that this game allows interpretation with the stories, and I interpreted it differently :)
Shit, that must have been terrifying for the other workers.
Just imagine you’re working with someone else in the same factory, you maybe hadn’t talked to them all too much, but you know them well enough to know their name, and the “curse” behind it. Maybe you kept a bit of an eye on them, held them a little close to your heart since you were a little speculative on when that “curse” would catch up.
You think that he may sadly die in a grand accident, maybe even saving someone in a factory accident, after all, the rest of his family had interesting stories behind all their deaths.
And then, suddenly, you see him lower his head towards the fish cutter. You’re worried, you were wondering when, but you never encouraged it. While curious, you still valued his life and his friendship to you. You cry out “Stop him!” “Oy!” Hoping he’ll hear you, but it’s too late. You see his head and his now dead body, and you’re devastated.
A good man took his own life, and sadly, you’re only idea as to why was:
“That curse finally got him”
Oh shit you're right.
This makes a lot of sense with the details that really disturbed me while playing this game. Barbara's death was actually the one that disturbed me the most. I thought "what a terrible thing for the artist of this comic book to do after the death of this poor girl" and "how does the artist know so many details regarding Barbara's death." Edith always speaks in so much reverence when speaking about Edie I didn't even stop to think about Edie must have been involved in the tacky memorialization of Barbara's death.
i know this is an old comment, but it makes me think of how we handle "true crime" content now. be in podcasts, docuseries, movies/serialized dramas today.
I know this video has been around awhile but i think this needs to be said. The stories killed Edith as well. She went back to her family house, jumped and crawled through the house to read all these stories, putting extraneous activity on her body… while she was pregnant. That had to have had extremely negative effects, possibly leading to her death in childbirth. She died to “the curse”
I mean, possibly? Her death always confused me a little. All the other can be attributed to neglect or mental illness. But hers? It's entirely possible for a woman 22 weeks pregnant to do those kinds of things without issue. I guess it could just be bad luck?
@@sunnisideupplz3920 Yes, but she's also 17- she probably hasn't even stopped growing yet, though shes close. It was probably all very taxing for her
I buy the argument that jumping and climbing around the house was an unwise and reckless act, but saying “it was too taxing” shows you don’t know much about how pregnancy and childbirth works. 17 is “too young” because of cultural values, not because a 17 year old’s body can’t handle it. And death in childbirth is typically due to complications: pelvis too small, blood loss, septic conditions leading to infection, etc. Most things that used to cause death in childbirth are prevented now, like if the pelvis is too small they do a C-section, modern hygiene usually prevents sepsis, etc. We don’t know what caused Edith to die giving birth, or if she died from something else that just happened right after she gave birth. Whatever it was, it wasn’t caused by the climbing and stuff.
@@wisemoon40 Ugh thank you. Literally what I've told other people. My mom was skiing downhill and hiding from tornados pregnant. Pregnant people are fully capable of doing these things!
Does she die in childbirth at the house or? Because if so how'd her kid make it?
about Calvin's death: on most swings, especially ones for children, you can't swing all the way around like that. there's a point where the swing stops you from doing that. so that means that whoever made the swing did a horrible job and it was dangerous for a child to be on it in the first place
I'm telling you. The Finch family should be renamed the Darwin family.
I mean why is there a swing set parked facing a sheer cliff in the first place, eh?
Parental negligence.
This isn't the first time , Molly's death is a result of parental negligence. Same with Gregory
Not sure about that, almost all the swings in parks and the like when I was growing up could swing all the way around.
@@lawrencesmeaton6930 woah what-
Where did you live? That is so unsafe
"We believed in a curse so much... we made it real."
That's such a cool line, jeez.
Also, anyone else notice how cute it was that when they were eating Chinese food at the table, Edith held a chopstick in each hand, Dawn used a plastic fork, and Edith Sr. used chopsticks normally? Just a quirk.
nice observation
I like to think that it's a reference to how Edie believes in the curse (chopsticks), Dawn refuses its existance (using the opposite of chopsticks, a fork) and Edith being influenced but not believing fully (knowing parts of the curse but not all of them, so she uses chopsticks but not correctly)
That's my interpretation to this random detail hahah
White-Van Helsing Sporks. Those are the true godly legends. Everyone needs golden sporks encrusted with rubies.
@@TheMurrmursonbottle Real Americans eat their food off pistols and rifles, am I right?
Yugoslavia/Soviet Union/Third Reich/Khmer Rouge Yes we do, always gobbling down our overly sized mcdonald’s dinners using our AR-15s as cutlery
One of my favorite not-so-subtle details about this game is that the title could refer to either the character you play as or the great-grandmother. That is, it could be about what remains of Edith Finch as a young girl passing on the stories and her interpretations to her unborn son, or it could be about what remains of an old woman whose neglect and inability to process tragedy led to harmful aggrandizement of the death that surrounded her and inevitably led to more trajedy. It's also worth noting that Dawn and young Edith were the only ones in the family to die of irrefutable natural causes.
I was once playing this game and then after the Calvin section, my mom had a theory that Calvin jumped off and killed himself, hence why the paper is called: “how I WANT to remember my brother.” Seeing how Sam is a child and maybe doesn’t want to remember how his brother actually died. Hope you like the theroy
That raises a lot more questions than it answers such as why an 11 year old with a twin would want to die. I think it comes down to childhood stubbornness. And there is nothing coming close to indicating 11 year old Calvin was suicidal. Reckless yes but not suicidal. No actual proof
Nah, I think how he wants to remember his brother stems more to the family "curse" and how he chooses to cope
Interesting plot twist idea, but it doesn't add up properly for me.
Sorry, but this is just more of a random thought than a theory
well the paper is written in an uplifting way, trying to frame his reckless behavior as ambitious and dreamy, thats i think the point. it would be bitter and painful to say “my brother stupidly swung as hard as he could until he flew off the swing and plummeted off a cliff” so this poor kid tried to look at it as it being what his brother wanted, that at least he accomplished something and had fun in the end. it actually eerily mirrors Sams letter to Kay about Gregory in the bath, a detail im only now realizing… both of Sams recounts of deaths show his way of coping: believing the victim was at least happy in their last moments and it was something they wanted, not something they realized was fatal. And its a common way to cope, ive lost many pets and tried to comfort myself believing they at least were fulfilled in life and were not in pain at the end, it only makes sense Sam would hope the same, watching two young boys die truly from neglect if nothing else.
"What remains of Edith Finch" doesn't refer to the Edith Finch we control in this game. It refers to "the curse", her morbid mania, passed from Edith Jr. to her son. He goes to a house he didn't grow up in because of the story Edith Jr. wrote because Edith Finch Sr. told her to. Edie Finch remains.
Ooh, that’s interesting.
Technically, the topmost layer you play, Edith's son, is also "What Remains" of her. Multiple meanings, just like everything else in the game.
That is exactly what I thought. The Edith Finch in the title is Sr., not Jr., and what remains of her is her story, her magical thinking, which killed all of the Finches but it's still living within Edith Jr's son
I hope not. That’s a very dark take: that the game is just about inevitable cycle of abuse, with no escape. I think the game is a little more sympathetic to Edie’s decision to turn her family legacy into stories than this video implies: it’s through these stories that Edith’s son has a connection to his past. It makes him less alone.
Nice detail: Lewis dreaming of visiting the distant kingdom isn't a random choice either. In the map he goes to Calcutta, the same place his father, Sanjay was from, obviously because of the Orientalist stories Edie had told him about the place.
Also Edith mentions how they moved back in when their dad died, and their dad died in India (newspaper article in the classroom). It's likely Lewis lived in India until their dad died so it's him coming home.
theres also the connection with his brother going missing who had a literal castle built for him & wanting desperately to see him again
Lewis always has an Indian flag hung up in his room so he clearly at the very least identifies himself with Indian culture.
@@den2335 yes, there's even a dialogue when Edith look upwards the flag where she says that Lewis was very proud of his India heritage.
Also there were Hindi characters all over the coasts of the river that he was sailing on
Something I always found interesting about how this story is told is just how vague the story become after dawn’s death, and how Edith jr. has almost nothing revealed about herself.
It’s strange to be thinking about this, but the recklessness of the family goes a layer deeply when you think about how Edith is 17 years old and is pregnant, and how that, despite being addressed, is never explained or developed. the question of who the father of the child may be is never even do considered, being a teenage parent it’s possible Edith wouldn’t know who the father is, or didn’t care, or maybe we’re shown the boys perspective during the whole game with his father just cleverly hidden out of frame.
But I feel that now I’m the one digging too deep into answers that don’t need questions
It seems like the recklessness has continued though. The fact that Edith was at this dangerous house in the middle of nowhere, alone, while 22 weeks pregnant, probably means that either the father of her child is not in the picture, or she didn’t tell him where she was going, so when she presumably dies in childbirth, that leaves her son either without family, or with an overly trusting/neglectful father. That’s why he goes to the house on a boat alone with a broken arm. He’s reckless like the other Finches, not because of Edie specifically, but because of neglect, which she was definitely also guilty of.
also teen pregnancy. talk about being reckless
Well, Edith says they moved around a lot, so she probably never told him she was pregnant, though Christopher (Edith's son) gets something of a pass because he's a kid, though he seems to be staying with someone.
The final page of Edith's story to her son is the real horror ending. She specifically says she's leaving him with these stories, and good luck.
It means she fell into the 'curse' as well. The astute player will have picked up on the conclusion Joseph drew here, it's a 'curse' of their own making and down to reckless behaviour, but the ending shows that _Edith_ never reached that conclusion. If at best she doesn't _believe_ the curse, she didn't realize that it was all the stories that pushed Lewis to suicide and Milton to 'something', and she passed them on to her son, leading him straight back to the family home to 'investigate' the curse himself.
What remains of Edith Finch continued unbroken to the latest generation of Finch's, Edith Jr didn't break the cycle at all.
Edith Finch....
Jr. is the real villain 😎
Like Joseph says Edith probably realises the stories were too dangerous. She probably wrote her journal half for her child and half to help her rationalise her tormented past and lineage. At the end she states she never wants her child to read this; she wants to keep living and shelter them from the “curse”. The sad reality is that she never makes it, whether it was an accident during childbirth or the seemingly undeniable fact that once you learn about the Finch history it comes to get you. Maybe she felt she had to leave her child something or make sure the stories got passed on (I guess the other curse of the Finch family was their inability to let the history die out).
In my mind, it's a self fulfilling prophesy of sorts, as if Edith jr is the last Finch to die tragically then she would be heralded as the breaker of the Finch's curse, thus elevating her to a mythological level in the family. The book being "all that remains of Edith Finch" would become the story of how the curse was broken and they would end up in the same trap as before but feeling protected from fate rather than resigned to it.
but you’re forgetting the impact of NOT knowing these stories, and what it did to them. Lewis killed himself because he never had a creative outlet, or any fantastic stories to keep in his brain, so he fell into his own. Edith went back to the house WHILE PREGNANT because she was so desperate to know the truth. Not knowing is just as bad as knowing, Edith is actually giving her son the best option, know the stories but don’t be involved in the toxic environment. It’s the best outcome.
@@hopoffmydick9574 Lewis died because he was told all those stories but was unable to live one, with his monotonous job and all. It wasn't through a lack of creative outlet/recklessness as much as it was depression. Edith was given half of a story and was determined to find out the truth because of it after being encouraged to by her mother. I don't know if Edith was giving her son the best option, and she didn't know either. Her gravestone is in the family's cemetary after all, so I guess it just depends on him if he also wants to chase those stories.
I interpreted walter's story as paranoid delusion. His sister's death traumatized him badly, but on top of that his other sister was supposedly killed by a "monster" and his mother was obsessed with a curse that was coming to get them all. In his mind, the rattle of the train passing by was a monster at his door. The shaking WAS the monster. He conflated his fear with the tremors until the two were the same. The monster comes for him at 12 every day. One day, the monster doesn't show up-- the train is running late. He decides to make his escape. But the train makes its late appearance, and Walter is killed by the monster anyway.
That's how I interpreted it in my playthrough, at least. It makes sense to me, because I think most/all of the Finches have an underlying predisposition to mental illness. It would make sense that Walter's trauma could intensify delusions and cause them to become paranoid and debilitating.
oo yesz,,
It sounds like hereditary psychosis. Each of the family members deal with some sort of delusion, obsession, or hallucination.
why were there train tracks on an island? everyone else arrives there by boat...
He says that the train did not come for a week though. I think that he was delusional. But the game seems intentionally vague on these details.
@@Hanagigi maybe there was some maintenance, a broken track, or something like that. And it was just unlucky (or a curse, if you would) that the moment he stepped out is the day the train starts again.
I think it’s worth noting how Kay acts in Gregory’s death, she clearly already doesn’t have a nice relationship with her husband. In Gus’s poem, Dawn says the line “Our father didn’t hit us as kids, at least not very hard” (something along those lines) which insinuates that Sam was, at best, spanking the children (which imo is still not great to do to children) or at worst, abusing them, Dawn saying “At least not very hard” as a sort of way to justify it to herself. I think that Kay was very upset with this from Sam, hence the strained relationship and hence why she took so much priority in his calls that she neglected the baby in the tub. I guess it could also be assumed that then Kay could had also been a victim to abuse, but there’s not much evidence on that one besides a possible connection. Either way I find that detail very interesting
Side note, I like your pfp
Spanking children is fine. Also even if he did hit his kids it doesnt mean he would do the same to his wife. Physical punisment is not "abuse", its a form of discipline
@@_stillborn Absolutely not, spanking children is not fine. There’s countless resources showing how spanking children leads to issues later in life. It is abuse
@@_stillbornif you think hitting kids is ok, you didn't turn out fine. You were traumatized
@@veronicawilson7594 Nope, its just that my parents, unlike yours, didn't raise a pussy.
I've been reading this book ("I dont want to talk about it" by Terrence Real) for one of my classes and it talks a lot about how it takes three generations for the effects of family traumas to really start to fade and I was thinking about that a lot watching the second half of this video essay... we discussed in class how maybe part of this could be because generally only three generations of a family will be alive at the same time, and the eldest generation's influence is only direct so long as they are present... It prompts the idea for me that maybe, now that Edie has died, Edith's son might be able to heal and the curse could start to dissipate now that the only direct connection he has to the Finch family (outside of blood ties) is the book Edith left him. This essay was wonderful and very thought provoking!!! I definitely agree with the observations of negligence, and I hadn't really considered the game in the light of Edie's enjoyment of the attention the curse garnered, but now that I can see it, I don't think I can view the game through any other lens.
I think that Edith's son’s bandage at the beginning might represent the inevitability of the ‘curse’, as he was already growing into the reckless nature that the Finches were famed for, and died from.
Or it could be a sign that the curse is breaking. the son has a broken arm but unlike the other Finches that suffered a major injury, he’s still alive
@@CGFillertext Well I don't know if that is true. In this video at 41:23, the recklessness that leads to all of the family's death is exhibited with Calvin's broken leg. We only see the death scenes hence only their major injuries. But there are probably countless times where they got hurt and survived that weren't in the game. The fact that the developers decided to show Edith's son with a cast on his arm and venturing to a place alone, where he has never been and "killed" all of his family members, at a seemingly young age, shows that the curse lives on.
The way I see it, it's a smart way to make you forget/not realized that the person on the boat reading the book, is not the same person navigating the house. At a glance, the cast and the long sleeve that Edith wore can fool you into thinking they're the same person if you don't really pay attention to it. If one of them doesn't have anything over their arm it would be more obvious and the reveal at the end would be less strong. At least that's how I experienced it, or maybe I wasn't observant enough to notice that was indeed a cast.
Edith also pregnant at only 17 years old .
The thesis of the video is there is no “curse”, there’s just a familiar tendency to neglect their children and behave recklessly, because they’ve self-mythologised death.
The two details that are the most unsettling to me are young Sam's bedroom and Dawn's bedroom. Young Sam shared a room with his dead brother's completely untouched room, and Dawn eventually wound up sleeping in a tiny alcove with a view of the memorials to her two dead brothers. It's just such a grim picture, seeing Dawn's comfy little living space full of books and decorations and turning to the right to see Gregory's cradle.
Watching this video, I noticed that in the photos from Sam’s death there’s a photo of waking up Dawn while it’s still dark. Looking at the background it looks like she’s in a small bed and the bars of Gregory’s infant bed are behind her. So it looks like Dawn eventually moved to a loft but for a while she was sleeping between the memorials of her dead brothers.
Holy shit go outside and touch some grass
@@Imperium83 you don't understand what touching grass means.
when u said just the janitor my mind jumped to the janitor from the game Control...go play the game or watch a playthrough of it if u didnt one of the best thrilling stories in games
@@Imperium83 uhh why is this comment even here?
Those shrines make me feel like Edie valued her loved ones more when they were dead. If she had shown the same amount of devotion and care to their well-being when they were alive, would they still have died?
50:57 Since the peep hole was done I think it implies that Edie must have been the one to seal the room. Maybe she wanted to finish the story of a house full of sealed rooms so everything matched.
Her death, while never given a cause, suggests she died with intention so she wouldn’t go to the nursing home. Therefore she wouldn’t need her bedroom anymore
edith also says that when the van arrived edie was “already gone”. ambiguous. it could mean that she vanished, or that she was found dead by the people in the van.
I think she went into the water to get to the sunken house. Definitely suicide to prevent from being taken into the nursery home. The Finch house was family to her.
I'm pretty sure she died from mixing alcohol with her medication like Dawn was chastising her for the previous night.
I love how each death is shown more poetically or in a metaphorical way, where you can still gather what happened each time.
1. Molly was poisoned from eating the toothpaste and holly - her imagination of the monster eating shows the pain and delusion she was feeling before her death.
2. Calvin fell to his death, but in an Icarus-like way the sequence shows how he was able to 'fly'. He was left alone on top of a huge cliff, and no one thought it was worth it to keep an eye on him?
3. Barbara was either killed by a home intruder or by her boyfriend. Walter saw the entire thing and it traumatized him to the point where he refuses to leave the house.
4. Walter might have died from a heart attack or shock, or malnutrition as another comment pointed out. His body might have been so overwhelmed and weak that he couldn't take being outside. The train hitting him was more a metaphor for how sudden it was.
5. Sam's death is probably closer to what is shown, but the camera makes it all the more interesting. It's also the most similar in form to his twin's death, which is eerie but has been known to happen in real life, where strange coincidences happen around twins.
6. Gregory's death really emphasizes how much these children suffered and eventually died from neglect, at least the ones who died really young. There is no excuse for leaving a baby alone in a bathtub. They have no idea what they're doing and there is so much potential danger. You always wash a baby in a sink tub if you can, it's just safer. I'm not having kids and even I know that.
7. I think Gus was swept away by the storm, not necessarily electrocuted. The kite was less a real kite and more representative of how fragile Gus was in that environment. And again, what we was doing out there alone in a huge storm...that's entirely the parents' fault. I don't think they had any real knowledge of how to watch over their kids, at least not from experience, since Edie and to a less extent Sven were the same way. EDIT: It's also been brought to my attention that he could have just as easily been crushed by debris, so that too is a possibility.
8. Milton 'disappearing' into his world may have been a metaphor for an intense obsession, something which led him to have a complete disconnect from reality. "Missing" could be missing, as in wandered off and couldn't be found, or it could have been a metaphor for losing his mind and becoming unable to live in reality, aka a psychotic break. He was very young, so it had to have been very strong. Or possibly both. If he had mental issues, I'm pretty sure that the family wouldn't have known how to deal with them properly anyhow based on their track record.
9. Lewis's death was the most symbolic and the hardest hit. The mechanics are designed to make you have half your focus in the real world and half in your mind/fantasy. By design and default, however, you can't juggle both. Lewis is a recovering addict and in trying to find some meaning in a monotonous, sober life and failing, he falls back into his old patterns, neglecting reality in favor of what his mind is telling him is real. It's very tragic because for him, no matter how hard he tries to manage, it feels inevitable and inescapable that he succumbs and meets his demise.
10. I feel like there was a purpose to showing Edith's vision of going to the wreck before it's revealed that she died after her son's birth. I don't believe she necessarily died in childbirth, but she did shortly after. Based off the entire theme of exploration of death and family trauma, she may have been experiencing exacerbated mental issues or postpartum depression after giving birth. That plus a weak physical state due to complications during childbirth may have led her to both mental and physically 'cross over', like it's shown for every other POV character who has died. The wreck was Edith's way of crossing over, just like the monster was Molly's or swimming with the toys in the bath was Gregory's.
This metaphoric storytelling works especially with the line "We believed so much in a family curse, we made it real" - by Edie not seeking help for mental issues of her own, it led to her negligence of her children, resulting in most of their deaths at an early age. Her surviving children and grandchildren inherited depression, obsessiveness, and some delusions, all because the family wasn't willing to seek outside help for their problems (The ones I feel worst for are the children because they were innocent, and Lewis because he definitely did try to get help).
There is a thing called generational trauma, where one generation not dealing with their issues can pass those same issues on to the next generation. It's very common in families of all sorts, and the whole game seems to be about that to me.
How Edie describes Sven's death fits this theme too. She always told Edith he died fighting a dragon when in reality he died in a construction accident.
No, I would argue Walter defenitely got hit by the train, you can see the memorial by the tracks near where he died and the hole he made with the hammer trying to break through.
@@billjefferson9216 no way in hell they would run a train through there with a house looking like it's a ps2 fucking dungeon at risk of collapsing at any second and several broken tracks
@@thatsalotofdamage8568 even more because the tracks lead the train directly to the water (???)
@@anab5248 The trains were probably running when he was killed and the train that killed him probably ran late. Sometime after his death the train track eventually went out of commission. And then collapsing into the water.
It was suggested on another vid that Milton died within the walls of the house, either being trapped when things were sealed up (not sure how the timeline works with that one) or just getting into an accident in one of it's many secret, sometimes unfinished passageways. His drawings are all over the secret passages, so he used them frequently. In his flipbook, he is shown creating his own passage and disapearing into it forever. There's the line "Whatever Milton found in the house, mom didn't want it to get out", so it's not like he disappeared into the wilderness. In Wilson's room, Edith says "none of us make it very far" and earlier she says that she felt like the house had 'swallowed' him whole.
it’s an interesting theory, but I’ve heard that Giant Sparrow confirmed that Milton is the protagonist of The Unfinished Swan, another game from the same creator.
@@justanotherladevotee9829 I have never played the unfinished swan nor have I seen someone play it, but given that Milton doesn't show any signs of existence after he disappears, I'm going to guess that he doesn't return to the real world at the end of the game. if this is true I would say that the game could be an imagined world, a last little spark of life before he dies in the house. I know the "he was dreaming/dead all along" theory is overused in fiction but I feel like it's the best answer to what happened to Milton without adding any supernatural elements to the story
If he died in the walls he wouldve been found. The smell alone would give it away.
@@KotoCrash what if it was somewhere they wouldn't smell. The basement would work or Maybe in an airtight space
@@graceygal2664 Nope, youre underestimating just how much a decomposing body reeks. The whole house would stink
A good mother wouldn’t let her son be immobilized by fear to the point of hiding away in a bunker, they would have the bunker only be used for true emergencies.
Obviously youre not a mother.
@@MonBerry obviously they’d be a better mother than you or edie.
@@pixystixwhore, good comeback there, girl. 👏
Having just replayed through this game recently, paying very close attention to every detail I knew to expect and in particular looking for answers to any holes and found at least one answer to an issue you pointed out towards the end.
Regarding Lewis and Edie's rooms being sealed/drilled - Edith explains that Dawn didn't take her out of the house until one week after Lewis' funeral; Dawn only told her to begin packing the night of, and they moved a week later. This leaves a full week for Dawn to seal the two rooms and for Edie to drill the peep holes (Lewis' in particular, as Dawn would obviously be traumatized by her son's death and want to add his room to those she sealed).
How this relates to Edie's own room, given that Edie is still using it during that week, is also answered in a very sly, blink-and-you'll-miss-it way. At the very end, when you access the library, most will head straight for the book and end the gameplay segments of the game. However, if you explore the library a bit more thoroughly, going past even the book and into the shadows between bookshelves, you'll find a cot set up at a height perfectly easy for a lady in a wheelchair to access.
And who was it who left a key for young Edith to access that library in the exact same sequence?
Edie.
I'm currently watching through this and got to the part about Gregory's death, and having read through a load of the comments prior (alongside having played it myself), I noticed that nobody seems to have pointed out something you got wrong - his arms don't change colour because he's drowning. Your perspective as the player changes, and you become the frog toy that you'd been controlling prior (hence the specific swimming animation and the green, lumpy arms). In my opinion, this is symbolic of him dying while distancing us from the actual physical act of the infant drowning. Instead, we become the toy that Gregory had been "seeing" do some tricks and proceed to go down the drain; representing the death of the child's imagination (his potential/imagination went "down the drain", a clever play on words).
The old house is the bad guy. Not Edie. She was farmed
@@13orrax Why did you respond to this person...?
C B I think what he meant was that in the game his arms turned green not because of turning into the frog (even though we know that’s what happened) but because when you are suffocating, your skin turns a different color say, green?
Zander-notch77 that’s not really how it works though.. your lips tend to turn blue due to lack of oxygen (called cyanosis because of the characteristic blue color) and to a lesser extent, your face can, but I’ve never heard of someone’s arms changing color. Plus his arms didn’t just change color, they took on a froglike appearance (his fingers look webbed and his skin becomes shiny and bumpy), so I think they just meant to represent him becoming the frog in his mind.
tety yeah or it could be a metaphor or something
One of the things I have only now pieced together after watching this, was one of the reactions I kept having while I was playing. There are books, EVERYWHERE. As someone who is a self-proclaimed book worm, I kept thinking to myself while playing that there were so many books. Now, looking back, I realized that it might have been a clue from the developers that STORIES are the danger. The house is engulfed in a story of this curse, and so Edie probably surrounded herself with books. Its common for someone suffering form serious paranoia/mental illness, to rely on escapism. This could be that tie.
Yes, and in contrast to a myriad of folktales and other stories, as well as Odin's "The Mysteries of Death and Thereafter" and "Joining the Great Majority" (I believe there were more death-related ones); on Dawn's table we can find a few books about critical thinking, and she even wrote a book on rational teaching. Strange that nobody pointed it out yet, but for me it was a clear example of antithesis. Dawn did use religion as a way to cope with her sons passing away, but she was ashamed of it, and she didn't get in the fatalistic loop of the "curse", because she still had a child to take care of. She did what Edie couldn't do when Molly died.
Makes me wonder if I'm using books as a coping mechanism for something. Huh.
Or any addict. Self-medication is to make life more tolerable even more than to make it more fun, as people keep up addictions far longer than they can still feel the fun factor.
@@Smiley_Face_Killer Almost everything in life is a coping mechanism for something. Even for just being alive. You get a pet because you feel the absence of one, or because you're lonely or bored. You overeat because you are hungry or you are trying to build a wall of flesh around you because you were molested and don't want anyone coming near. You isolate because you fear people and/or the world at large. You marry because you would be unacceptable in society or to your family if you didn't, because you're lonely, any number of possible reasons besides love even if you are doing it for love. You buy toys to stave off boredom or having to spend time alone with your thoughts and think deeply about life and your destiny and the part you play in it. You compete to get richer at all costs no matter how rich you are because you are trying to fill some sort of hole in your soul that needs to be fed. You become homophobic because your own sexuality frightens you. Of course you are using all kinds of coping mechanisms, whether for something specific or just from the essential loneliness and uncertainty and fear that comes from being alive ... and even from contemplating that soon enough, you won't be!
@@iCrabcore and she could have maybe been ashamed to admit that religion was helping due to the Bible technically being another story.
"My children are dead because of your stories!" it's so fucking chilling. - And I know this won't make much sense if you don't get it - but even by musical theatre standards
I don't blame her. Edie is so twisted and delusional that it's honestly surprising anybody would believe a single thing she says despite being more mature and experienced about handling loss than she is. Her family believed in the curse, they were reckless and neglectful, and even the ones who weren't suffered because they developed hallucinations or were immortalized as fantasy rather than real tragedy. Dawn clearly has a point in insisting her mother is responsible for their family's demises, even if it's not the full truth.
Nothing makes sense if don't get it.
@@user-lt6ve9ns4d, they all died because of delusions of grandeur or even neglect, whether for their own wellbeing or that of others. Edie is at fault because whether intentionally or not, her 'stories' encouraged them to neglect themselves or to deny reality. She's a killer for all its worth..
The trains were a metaphor. When you go outside the train tracks are broken, and it had only been about 12 years.. even when Walter is walking among the tracks, they are overgrown and forgotten.. Walter jumped off the cliff
that is so disturbing.
no, many trains are decommissioned after deaths, especially if the death occurred next to someone's home or estate, where they are very liable for wrongful death suits. Also, the damage to the foundation that Walter's bunker caused could definitely have a railroad decommissioned to avoid cave-ins destroying the tunnel and the train, causing death to employees/passengers, and avoid violating safety regulations. It takes less than 12 years to set up new tracks, and it may have even been requested by the state or the Finches themselves. Moreover, Railroad tracks tend to have some mild growth, and it didnt seem so extreme in the flashback. I think it's literal, as Walter also had not been giving signals towards suicide (something commonly done in suicide notes) and rather seemed hopeful.
@@mrpitman2428 I think both is possible, but also, the world the Finches live in should not be taken too literally. This family is living their live in a lot of delusions, and the tracks basically lead nowhere particular. The house is pretty secluded and the tracks right next to it would make little sense from a practical standpoint, when there is so much space around the house that they wouldn't need to build the tracks right next to the house. I agree with Shelby Young, I think it's a metaphor.
I also think that a lot of the stuff that is around the house is redacted by Edie. For example, look at the 'Man killed by Dragon' article she has, when there were probably other headlines. She could have removed the stuff that hinted at a suicide, or, maybe, Walter did in fact kill himself out of impulse or in a delusional state.
@@AlexisHiemis Yeah but this train thing is off the rails - pun unintended - with how much people want to read into it: the island where they lived was big AND contained an actual honest to god Natural Park in the name of the Finches; is it a stretch that the train was allowed by the Finches to be built so close to the bunker in order to simply connect various sides of the island and that we just CAN'T see where the train tracks lead because there was a landslide that caused part of the tracks to simply collapse under the lack of upkeep due to dismission?
The train seemed to also come from deeper within the island, hinting that the train might have likely been a connection between the mainland to various spots where the Finches probably bought their own groceries from; it also might have stopped nearby, a place we cannot see, and was used to draw people into the natural reserve, a reserve where HUNTING was also allowed and hunting brings a bunch of people around.
If Walter wanted to kill himself, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have written an entire spiel about wanting to go out and be hopeful even for just another day and took his pains of destroying part of a wall to simply 'get out' - not when no one in the family knew he lived DOWN THERE but Dawn and Edie herself and there was almost no guarantee anyone would have STOPPED him from going out and throwing himself off the cliff.
The man was living hidden by a fridge entrance, it's very plausible he could've waltzed out and nobody would've noticed until it was too late, making his death much less pliable. His true passion also, as evidenced by his ORIGINAL room upstairs, was the deep sea - not trains. Why fabricate the entire story of him being killed by a train when there's no real metaphor to it but "sudden death" which... again, makes sense because he was HOPEFUL about a new beginning but was HIT by something he couldn't stop.
The fear he had was that the shaky (and let's remind us that most of the place didn't seem OSHA safety proven, even in the past) motion of the train passing by EVERYDAY woud've killed him just like it did his father: by crushing him under the rubble of his own makeshift cage, a fear that he had seen first hand, a fear instilled by his own mother by how they were all cursed, just like his two sisters and brother.
It's extremely likely the train ran by to give access to the Finches' National Park during the hunting season (we see it in Sam's memoirs when he is hunting with Dawn) and that when Walter stopped hearing it run by it might have been for concerns due to the newest addon of the house (the castle and additional guest houses that Edie had bult for Dawn's family in 2003-ish) or for upkeep on the train line. It then started running again, albeit later than usual, and he did not realize he was wlking on tracks, blinded by the sun he had not seen in 30 years at that point.
There's no reason to be in denial of committing suicide and simply "walking off the cliff", just as you' be able to see and gauge there's a cliff right in front of you even if blinded by the sunlight, after writing a two pages long beautiful and hopeful message about how you'd like to live again and experience hope outside, moreso when Edie had most likely stopped coming as he didn't know his brother Sam had died.
Every Finch's death was linked to their passion and talent, so Walter's death by train makes a lot of sense to me. I also think the train was decommissioned after his death. The daily rumble was probably caused by the train.
As someone else pointed out, Edith’s death was likely also due the carelessness. I find it interesting/important that Edith is 22 weeks pregnant and not less, though narratively it wouldn’t matter. 23 weeks is the youngest an infant can be delivered and still survive. It’s likely that the overexertion may have caused preterm labor.
But she went to go examine the house in October, right? And she dies in January, so it's not preterm, she carried him all the way through.
Almost the youngest, IIRC.
And pregnant at age 17
the mother's mental health can also play a pretty major role in childbirth. she has to be healthy and strong to make it through something that takes such a massive toll on her body like childbirth and i can imagine, whimsical though it is, finding out in such detail what happened to everyone in her family must have been detrimental to her mental health
No, it isn't. Just because an infant survived being delivered at 23 weeks does not mean that all infants delivered at that time viable. Looking at the viability charts makes 23 weeks shows that it is less than 50%. Source: www.healthline.com/health/baby/premature-baby-survival-rate#24-weeks.
Also looking at the calendar shows that Edie dies in January and she expects the house in October. That means that her son was carried to full term.
I just thought of something, Sam is the only character who writes twice about other members of the family, Calvin and Gregory, the way he talks about both of their death tells you a lot about how this romantisation of the curse affected him mentally. He tells us in his letter for Calvin that he finally managed to fly, in the way a child would to comprehend death but the way Edie justificies it all in the curse, and not on the fact that her own son plunged to his death because of neglect, prevents Sam from comprehending death as anything but glorious and mystical. So when he son dies he doesn't tells it for what it is, the horrific death of drowning baby, but as something beautiful to some degree, he tells his wife that Gregory was happy after all. I feel like it's a given but I don't think anyone would rationalize it that way, anyone but someone that has always understood death as being the accomplishment of their family legacy essentially.
Thanks, this helped. That letter was the most disturbing part to me and made me hate the character for the callousness of that assertion, and also made me concerned for the message the creators were trying to send with it. This makes it tie into the weird Finch fatalism much more clearly to me.
Also, Sam is later characterised as being the member of the family who (excluding edie) gave the greatest importance to the "fate of the finch", the curse, always looking for a "glorious death" as a soldier and then a hunter
This whole story is so dark, how 1 crazy person can influence an entire families life and even death.
I feel like Sam is actually one of the more tragic characters, because in his letters he does show the bit of self-blame and humility that his mother lacked, when he questions what could've prevented those deaths, including his own actions.
But its obviously too much for a child, so he had to believe that his brother wanted it in some way. And the scars from that moment come back to him having to believe that his own child was happy in his last moments.
Even Dawn had written a poem for her brother Gus’ death, probably under the instructions of Edie and Sam, since she was still very young at that time. I’m in awe that she eventually grew to be very different from her upbringing and decided to end this family tradition of death-romanticising.
I now think Edith senior killed herself on the night they left. She was most likely was sleeping in the library since there was a bed in it and Dawn was not aware of the hidden path until that night, so she could have already sealed up her door, It is possible that the night they left she finished the peepholes and then her pills. She didn't leave for a forest fire or when she was the only one (besides Walter) to be living in the home, so she could have killed herself instead of being taken to a retirement home.
There’s no spray foam around Edie’s door, it wasn’t sealed. The peep hole was probably just Edie being Edie. The fact that she already had Lewis’s memorial in the works she probably drilled the hole the day he died. Also in Edie’s room and Edie’s room only there are several books about the Finches, and a couple of the VHS are interviews and documentaries about the finches. Further proof that she secretly loved the infamy.
Also Edie had a tombstone so there may have been some weird family lawyer who was in charge of things like that or dawn paid someone to do it out of respect to Edie who raised her and who she was really close to (she called her every week when she was in India)