Not to get meta on main, but I was thinking about tboi Repentance's endings- both of them, but mainly the polaroid one.
This isn't what I'm working with for MY blog's canon- but it's I thought I had for the actual potential Isaac canon.
Needless to say, SPOILERS FOR REPENTANCE. ALSO, LONG RAMBLE AHEAD.
I'm assuming everyone who clicked on the read more, knows the ending. You go back down, fight Dogma, internalize Dogma (very subtle Edmund (but actually such cool visuals, thank you Edmund)) and then fight the Beast.
The ending has this bright light cracking from the sky, the beast is vanquished, Isaac floats up and goes back through his memories and dies. Pretty explicit. Except then his dad asks him if he REALLY wants his story to end like this.
Now, I've seen people say "that's it, Isaac is dead and in heaven, be satisfied".
But I'm a bit of a dreamer and I like to be optimistic. Plus, I have seen a theory going around- namely that the "crack in the sky" is the chest opening, bright light shining on the poor Isaac, who gets picked up in his delirious state, remembering it all. His dad was the one to find him and vanquish the beast (holy father vs the beast, who's model wears the clothes of Isaac's mom)
Can't take credit, but it's a good theory!
Working with it all being just a story, that has made me think- what if Isaac's dad got the story the same way we did?
Think about it.
The expansions.
Layers of trauma
Isaac first told a very simplified version of the story in the vanilla game. Pretty easy-
Only six characters! The final boss was ONLY mom. Isaac opened up about his mother being scary to him- to be expected. His dad let him tell his story, over and over again- already pulling the first few layers of trauma back.
"I find a wooden spoon."
"What does the wooden spoon do, Isaac...?"
"It makes me run faster."
Cut forward. Wrath of the Lamb. Isaac has both grown more confident in his creative abilities, as well as in the safe space of the story time.
More items, with more implication. Naturally- not all of them were deliberately trauma related, some Isaac just put in because he thought they'd look cool or do something fun! But, some where.
New floors. Shoel and Cathedral.
"There's evil. I must defeat it. I'm just not sure if it's in me (cathedral) or out of me (sheol). There's anger (Samson) in me, I'm not sure who to aim it at."
I think it's a fair call to assume Isaac has TROUBLE expressing anger, seeing it as destructive- but not outright evil, just like Samson wasn't evil. Which is a good thing!
Rebirth
Azazel. So Isaac IS afraid of the anger in him. Afraid of being evil. Strength, but at what cost?
But there's Lazarus and Eden. Hope to be remade? Rebirth in general feels optimistic!
Isaac is starting to reflect on his time and the very, VERY painful process of thinking back and trying to sort something. The good times and the bad times. It's easy for abused kids to think "my mom was SOMETIMES nice, so she must have loved me and I was the problem". It's fucking TOUGH. But Isaac is allowed to go down both routes of thinking without punishment or being lead.
Polaroid, the ending of "it was all my fault, my family was good, I did something wrong", going up and meeting his maker, thinking about the suffocation and wishing for it all to have been different, HIM having been different.
Negative, the ending of "my family was the problem". Meeting the lamb (wolf in sheep's clothing? Perhaps another visage for his mother, or him condemning the facade, or maybe condemning having been a lamb to the slaughter). This fantasy ends with him imagining about disappearing, but from the outside, wishing that it leads to sadness and pain and that her troubles be many.
Also, Lost being his sense of powerlessness- and honestly, the way the lost was discovered? Couldn't be more perfect for this theory.
The lost is this vulnerable creature, fragile, needing help, needing luck, not even helped by things that are usually good!
Like perhaps a kid would feel when therapy (that they're told will help them) does nothing for them and makes them uncomfortable...
And then the Lost being MINED for? FORCED out? MADE to appear?
Huge step back. Canon or not, the way Isaac's Lost appeared was harmful to Isaac, leaving him even more vulnerable.
>I'm don't want this to be too long, so I'm just going to touch up on the later parts, PLEASE feel free to add to this with more in depths
analysis, reblog or just in the notes. I'd gladly elaborate myself to any questions about this
Afterbirth(+)
But yeah, with time, Lost got the D4 and a Holy Mantle. Which is good, despite the way it did happen, Isaac regained a bit more confidence, even at his lowest.
And now we finally come however to Isaac REALLY making it out, REALLY facing things. Though- I do argue- it also shows Isaac off to have more FUN with the game! Greed mode is VERY video-gamey. Lilith is VERY gimmicky. He made them, enjoyed them, the thought about them.
Greed being so prominent- and so closely associated with Isaac via an ARG- just shows the next breakthrow. Isaac learned to access his fear of himself as a sinner. An actually vile creature, a mangled corpse full of spiders.
Not gonna go too in-depth, like I said, but sometimes abused kids can feel "greedy" for wanting better from their parents. Wanting more. Feeling need.
Isaac tells his father that he really sees himself not only as a sinner and demon (like Azazel), but as an outright MONSTER. A mindless creature. A mob.
Hush here would suppression. Being silenced. The part of him still buried beneath. It scares him, there's so much still buried that wants OUT, wants to SCREAM, wants to UNLEASH. Meeting your own suppressed memories is terrifying.
But it leads to Delirium- that is where Isaac puts the pieces together. First mangled, but he's putting it together. Finally. All these different places and thoughts, and feelings, a whole. A jumbled whole, but whole nonetheless.
Which then leads to:
Repentance
Okay, just to wrap it up nicely, I'll address only the bosses.
Mother - I don't think Mother was ever supposed to depict mom in the way Edmund implemented it. But what Isaac created was a coping attempt- gone horribly wrong
His mother saw his way of coping and punished him, like she punished him for coping with Bumbo.
Maybe not malicious. Maybe she was just scared. She wasn't the best mother, but I think she loved him and fear+helplessness made her do terrible, terrible things. Regardless: she punished him for copying, for pulling parallels, causing the repression in the first place.
But now he's safe. Allowed to cope. The memory gives him strength about how different things now are.
And then the Beast- which I think is actually Isaac coming to peace with what his mother did. The good and bad.
He extends empathy towards his mother WHILE being angry with her. Like her, he allows Dogma to consume him, fear of this giant horrid creature to show up, a creature he knows nothing else than to destroy, even if he knows he probably cannot (without help). And yet, the beast is also his mother, the edges of her dress, a vile creature chasing him, so overwhelming and scary and so self-destructive, that you almost want to feel bad for it, if it didn't totally deserve this.
And then- the end. And it's an end he doesn't have to write alone. That he can retry. That he can fall asleep to. His dad helping to tell the story.
It's hard to hate someone you love.
Especially if it's your mom. Especially if you're a child. Especially if she's your whole world and stayed with you when your dad left. It's hard to hate someone you've seen good in. That you've seen unfair suffering afflicted to. That you still want to be around and help.
It's painful to let yourself be consumed by hatred. By fear. It's painful to try and destroy all the good memories you made. It's agonizing to try to denounce all you used to admire and what used to help you.
You don't need to.
Isaac, in the end, didn't need to.
There was a bit of both in him.
Understanding. Perhaps forgiveness. Righteous anger. And fear.
He explained it to his dad
He explained it to himself
He learned about what it's like to be bad. To be good. To be fickle. He came to his own conclusion, because his father was patient and let him tell the same stories, over and over and over- until Isaac felt good enough to tell something new. I really wish that is how the story goes. Healing takes long. Ten years. Or perhaps longer. For the full story to be told.
>Well, in Isaac's case certainly less, seeing how young he sounds- but my point stands.
Layers... patience and allowing someone to tell THEIR story at THEIR pace, without interjecting.
Sometimes that is all we need.
