Life Is Strange: checking if the hand is feeding you poison before deciding whether to bite it

[mc776]

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.

La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi piú svariati.
[The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.]

Le vieux monde se meurt, le nouveau monde tarde à apparaître et dans ce clair-obscur surgissent les monstres.
[The old world is dying, the new world tardy to appear and in this chiaroscuro surge monsters.]

The exact nature of Max's power is ambiguous. On the one hand, the ability to go back and undo/unsay things seems exactly like the sort of scary manipulative bargains with the Devil that corrupts someone after prolonged use; on the other, the way it is opposed in the game consistently rhymes with suicidal ideations and at best survivor's guilt, filled with accusations and unworthiness and temptations towards destroying ties of love in the name of a "greater good" that rhymes with some of the worst totalitarian degradations of human freedom from the last century.


fate
Against the charge that Chloe is somehow fated to die, consider the behaviour (both hers and Max's) that causes her 8 ingame deaths: 3 are direct results of Max's actions and are avoidable without time powers (ricochet, overdose and Bay Ending); 1 might not be a death at all (facing storm alone on beach); 2 are basically the same one (shot by Jefferson).

This leaves 2 deaths caused by (1) aggressively pushing and failing to provide a face-saving exit for an unstable individual who turned out to have a concealed firearm; and (2) absentmindedly jamming her boot into the gap of a railroad switch. Both are fairly unusual but certainly not unheard of.

Contrast the numerous coincidences allowing Max to save Chloe: everyone's presence in the bathroom (to say nothing of the power manifesting itself right then, as though specifically for this purpose); Jefferson throwing the journal open at exactly the right page; Max recovering from the tornado flashback just in time to save Chloe from the train; Warren just happening to take that selfie with Max at the critical decision point (and the cell towers just happening to remain operational just long enough for Max to call him to retrieve it); David arriving at the Dark Room literal seconds before Jefferson would have killed Max; the winds and waters (and potentially instantly lethal flying debris) of the storm all but literally parting for the passage of Jefferson's car as Max heads to the diner.

A better view is that Chloe is fated to live - or, even more strongly, fated to be saved by Max using her powers - and the tornado is considered by the forces directing that fate to be an acceptable side effect. Or a desirable one.

Note how every vision Max has of the tornado is followed by an important foundational interaction with Chloe:

1. Classroom: contributes to Max going to the bathroom.
   
2. Lighthouse: forces Max to tell Chloe everything.
   
3. Junkyard:* forces them to stay in the junkyard longer, which gives Max a better perspective of Chloe's view of this place as her refuge, but makes them both stay put long enough for Frank to show up, which gets Max entangled in her debt issues. (This also moves the player to the side of the junkyard with the doe, and allows exploring the junkyard without Max's inner voice nagging the player about finding bottles.)
   
4. Train tracks:* interrupts Max's photography and ends just in time for her to respond to Chloe's calls for help - but probably not soon enough to save her without a rewind if the player does not go in already knowing what to do
   
5. Gallery:* reminds Max to check on Chloe
   

* begins or ends with (real, imagined, prophesied or hallucinated) Chloe yelling "Max!"

No tornado vision while Max can see the tornado itself, but it's clearly not a temporal thing since she will get the tornado vision while it's going on. Meanwhile, there is no tornado vision during her nightmare.


cause of storm
Forget everything about chaos theory. If anything, this storm is so persistently consistent in its particular form and timing, despite numerous changes to starting conditions, that it actively refutes any hypothesis that it is the natural result of disturbing a chaotic mechanism.

There is no naturalistic explanation connecting the storm to the material circumstances of Max first saving Chloe. It manifests much too fast, and its first physical warning (the snow) appears within hours of this initiating event rather than weeks or months. But, accordingly, there is no naturalistic explanation for the storm not happening either, as a result of Chloe being shot.

Contrast every other time Max has used her time power, in which almost all material consequences appear clearly to flow from some naturalistic consequence down the line. (Even Chloe's car accident follows this pattern, in terms of risk and probability: consider the kind of person she is when she gets the car from William, and the kind of person she is when she fixes the truck in BtS, and which of them is more likely to recover from an unexpected hazard on the road.)

The only way this makes any sense is to posit that either:

1. someone or something with power over the storm understands Max's de-intervention to be a sign to back off; or
   
2. the specific chain of events triggered by Chloe getting shot provided that someone or something with a reassurance that the storm was no longer needed.

Given the way things work out in the actual Bay Ending, I am inclined to believe the latter.


effect of storm
The following things are canon:

• LiS2: the town is completely wiped off the map. Gone.
  
• LiS ending sequence: literally every building has suffered severe damage: while enough of many structures appear to be standing enough that at least some people taking refuge there should have survived, nothing is left normatively fit for human habitation. The roads out, however, appear to be substantially undamaged, along with most trees.
  
• LiS gameplay: an inexperienced teenage driver who had just undergone severe psychological trauma can drive an unfamiliar luxury sedan right up to the storm, maybe 300m away from the comically large visible funnel, past wreckage of already-destroyed buildings, without problem, and take refuge in a building which exterior looks no worse than what was shown in the aftermath.

Something else happened, after and beyond the immediate damage caused by the storm itself, that drove everyone out.

One possibility is that, once all surface infrastructure was made useless, everyone was stuck in a no-X-no-Y-no-Y-no-X downward spiral and there was no hope of redevelopment. This leaves it entirely possible that a large developer may later buy everyone out, resulting in something even worse than Pan Estates, though such a development might not see a single shovel for years; this might be considered to be a tolerable alternative or it might be a case of "we'll cross (or burn) that bridge when we get there".

For what it's worth, I believe that an unstormed Arcadia Bay, in its already weakened state, would still be vulnerable to such subsequent gentrification. All we see in LiS2 in this scenario is some lights in the distance (lighthouse and cars) and a promotional sign in place of the memorial one. The promotional sign is identical in size and shape to the memorial and, curiously enough, does not look noticeably older (in contrast to, say, the map by the lighthouse in LiS). The town may be increasing its efforts to promote tourism at this point - which would also, if successful, accelerate the gentrification process.

Another possibility, not inconsistent with the above, is that the ending sequence is showing some of the least damaged areas of the town - the places where the first responders could most easily access and clear the roads. Looking at the map we see both the Prescott Estate and the Dark Room to the southeast of where we see the funnel. Ingame we're led to believe that the storm is heading more or less straight towards the Two Whales, when it might well have passed it by after the initial onslaught; this would explain why we don't see significantly more damage in the aftermath (the sign is either knocked down or taken down; there's one more dead body by the newsstand; some furniture has been thrown out onto the street, some of which are wider than the windows) than when Max goes there in the doomed timeline.

This, however, contradicts the "rich fucks" section of the map we see in BtS, which is to the northeast of the lighthouse. Of course, if the BtS map is accurate we must surmise that the storm took a long, winding, deliberately infrastructure-targeting path, just to avoid the lighthouse which is now in the middle rather than the north end of the town.


purpose of storm
The storm is not meant to kill Chloe: if the powers behind it wanted that, they could easily have just directed it towards the lighthouse after falsely telling Max to have them find refuge there. Instead, the promise of Max's vision comes true and even without her guidance Chloe brings them both to safety - again, fated to live.

The storm can't be there to kill Max either, for the same reasons and more. (Consider, for example, that virtually nothing in the storm is even capable of harming her until Alyssa is in a position to repay her debt with usurious amounts of interest.)

Whatever supernatural force is trying to kill Chloe seems terribly weakened by the story's end, limited to influencing Max in her nightmare, telling her substantially similar things about Chloe that Eliot tells Chloe about Rachel in BtS.

We don't know who that "DIE" on the diner sign was meant for. It's out in public and any number of people could have seen it before or after the storm - and Chloe herself could only see it after. Could be the people of Arcadia Bay collectively, or the town of Arcadia Bay as an institution, or someone or something that the humans can't even see.

As a morality play about messing with fate it is meaningless: at most you have two people learning anything, neither of whom seemed in any more particular need to learn than anyone else in that town.

The various rewind situations seem to all point towards a simple rule: either Chloe is shot by Nathan in the Blackwell bathroom on Monday morning while trying to blackmail him over his drug dealing and drugging women, or we get the storm. No other death for Chloe is acceptable. Therefore, whatever the storm is for must be intended to make up for something that this particular event would otherwise have caused.

The most likely theory in my view, given all this, is that the powers responsible for the storm originally had a delicate setup with Chloe placed into a position where her death would trigger a sequence of events that would be the minimum intervention necessary to dismantle some terrible evil, and the storm was a contingency in case that plan fell apart. I imagine a conversation between the fates disputing this: the James Ambers that are willing to sweep things under the carpet for the greater good, just smooth out the kinks, get rid of just this one little inconvenient person over here no one will miss... and those who would rather let the world burn than assent to such injustice.

So what is this terrible evil? The defilement, displacement, gentrification, commodification and deathly disorder masquerading as renewal of the sort represented by Pan Estates happens regularly everywhere (They substituted a living, very sophisticated, rich and subtle order, with something that was visually flashy and comprehensible, but that was outside of time and therefore dead); perhaps the Prescotts have just happened to have come to the wrong neighbourhood, but there's really nothing preventing Pan Estates (which presumably still remains likely to be profitable) from continuing under receivership after Sean Prescott is removed from the picture. Either we're expecting another tornado in a few years, or the spirits of the bay are ~leaving for the true West~ and its glory is already fading away, or there was something that the Prescotts specifically were up to that warranted such a different response.

After Max uses her classroom selfie to warn David, Nathan is arrested with Jefferson - on Tuesday. The paper on the plane reads: "Even Sean Prescott... is under investigation for his role as owner of the farmhouse", while Wells comments that Prescott is under investigation "for all his years of corruption" but "the irony is that for once Sean Prescott had no clue" about Jefferson's activities. We are never told just what Sean Prescott is busted for in the Bay Ending, but the inclusion of this comment (which is not provided with any other distracting or demonstrably true alternatives) does not seem like the sort of red herring we get from Warren or the railroad axe: it is there in contrast to what is implied in the Bay Ending.

So here's my attempt to reconstruct what happens at the pivotal moment of the Bay Ending. After Chloe is shot, Nathan is immediately apprehended. Still in shock from the death he had just witnessed and caused, and not able to contact Jefferson or his father to corroborate anything, he is not mentally fit to go on the defensive to cover for either of them or anyone else, and reveals everything to the police or even actively tries to blame Sean. (Jefferson would be actively blamed in any event.) It's possible that he may have divulged sufficient information anyway had David apprehended him with the gun before Chloe actually took any bullet; similarly, it's possible that simply seeing someone shot would be enough; however, both such hypotheticals would be missing that crushing austerity of death of the sort that Nathan seems to habitually wallow in, combined with the dead person being both his last Jeffersonesque victim and the person who not only then but for months (cf. posters) had been hounding him with reminders of his crimes.


what the storm was there to stop
What we know of the Jefferson/Prescott relationship:

1. Jefferson has taken Nathan under his wing, however insincerely, as a kind of protégé in his dark arts.
   
2. Nathan is not formally in Jefferon's class.

What we know of Jefferson's Dark Room project:

1. The express statement by the artist: to capture the moment when innocence turns into corruption.
   (I have no doubts as to Jefferson's sincerity. This is literally the "tie up the hero and explain your entire nefarious plot to them before you kill them" trope played straight. He clearly loves hearing himself talk and even if he couldn't kill Max for whatever reason the drugs would have made sure she wouldn't remember the conversation anyway.)
   
2. The rate of victims is irregular (Rachel - April 2013; Kate, Victoria/Max - October 2013; Kelly - ????, but we never see anyone mentioned anywhere else with this name so she must have been a student from last year or earlier - not on Frank's client list either; Megan - ????, not even that likely to be the same Megan Chloe knew from the alternate timeline), but we don't know how much of the more recent irregularity is because of Nathan's bungling. (Chloe is not counted in the above list as she is clearly targeted by Nathan alone.)
   
3. There is a lot of drinking and musical entertainment that goes along with all this.

We never find out what "normally" happens to Jefferson's victims. Rachel is killed in an accidental overdose; Kate is sexually assaulted and the act recorded for public broadcast by other parties before she could be taken away, and almost all of her subsequent torment ingame appears to be a result of that rather than what happened in the DR itself; Victoria is either murdered or rescued; Max has her personal belongings destroyed and her best friend murdered in front of her, is set up to be killed, then finally left with perfectly sober, clear memories of things that the drugs should have erased from all conscious recall. None of the previous victims shows up on a missing persons notice or a school memorial, nor does anyone mention them; based on Jefferson's known modus operandi they should have been returned alive, but they just seem to conveniently fade away after. Based on Jefferson's handling of Kate, there seems to be a system of "after-'care'" wherein he manipulates his victims further to ensure their silence; once that is secured, he does not seem to have anything to do with what might become of them afterwards.

Jefferson needs to be sober to do his work properly - cover up evidence, measure dosages, take the actual photos he wants, say the right things to his victims. Was all of that beer and whiskey just meant for himself (and Nathan)? Or were they expecting to invite other people to enjoy the show - or eventually worse? I initially imagine a very banal sort of heterosexual misogynistic rape; beyond (but including) that, this potential guest list could include curious people who can be trusted to stay silent, people with a similar artistic vision to Jefferson's or Nathan's, people who have a grudge against a particular selected victim and are willing to help, or even other past or future victims as a way to initiate or groom them into obedience - whether for Jefferson's hobby or something bigger.


What we know of Sean Prescott's agenda:

• Close down the harbour.
  
• Kill the fishery.
  
• Drive out most of Arcadia Bay's working class.
  
• Open up a luxury residential development deep in the woods.
  
• Push Nathan into becoming a more suitable heir for the Prescott name.
  
• Pursuant to the above, push Nathan harder and harder into his aggression and love of violence, ostensibly to help him become a more dominant person.
  
• Stop Nathan from mentioning him or contacting him in public.

We don't know how exactly they're killing the fish themselves. No particular pollutant or polluting activity is ever alluded to in the game. (Is something else being made to consume them?)

Whatever the exact means, all but the last item seem to point towards Prescott trying to reform all of Arcadia Bay into his own image: moneyed, luxurious, elevated, isolated, powerful, merciless.

But why is he so insistent that his own son, who everyone knows is his son, limit his public connections to him or refrain from boasting about the family name? He could simply be ashamed of him, but I do not recall any language suggesting that this directive is conditional on Nathan becoming more of the man Sean wants him to be; it also would not explain the need for burner phones.


What we know of Sean Prescott's contributions to the Dark Room:

• $1.35M total renovation into the infrastructure that we see now.
  
• ~$5,000 additional quote for very fancy-sounding surveillance equipment.
  
• Letter to Nathan: I've given you everything you've ever wanted, including Blackwell Academy among other things we shall not mention, but nothing is ever enough for you. / You're still my son and I want us to fulfill our destiny. ... (emphasis added)

It is unclear when these happened; however, it's recent enough that the $1.35M bill is still lying around the DR and the paper generally unmarred by normal wear and tear, and based on Max's comment the surveillance upgrade is still in the works.
There is no reason to think that Prescott would do all this for Jefferson - or even Nathan - without expecting something in return. The DR's infrastructure - remote, fortified, secretly recorded for evidence for the user's own private data collection - is a perfect setup for all sorts of initiation/grooming rituals and blackmail for keeping certain kinds of people in line. If Sean Prescott needed to isolate someone to bring them in line with shows of domination and the usual displays of wealth and power didn't work, the DR would serve as an excellent fallback.

In the Zeitgeist timeline Wells reports that Sean Prescott knew nothing about the Dark Room activities; the newspaper indicates only that he was being investigated as the owner. In Sacrifice Chloe timeline, Nathan is immediately arrested and interrogated, with the strong implication that he reveals information that his father had the opportunity to cover up in Zeitgeist - and that this difference is what ultimately prevents the storm.

When they discover the DR, Chloe remarks, "What's with the Prescotts and creepy art?" It's a bit of a throwaway line but she may be on to something: the image of a singular, sterile, hideous room where captives are made to see things and be exposed in ways that break down their personalities has its precedents elsewhere - Room 101, the Objective Room, any number of real life interrogation and torture rooms throughout the past two centuries. The Objective Room in particular was notable in using intentionally perverted imagery to "initiate" its victims into something not at all unlike the moment of corruption Jefferson wishes to capture. Not only could similar imagery have been used for some victims, the photos Jefferson takes themselves could be used by him for his own "edification" - or that of others.

As far as narrative tropes we the audience are expected to catch are concerned, the Prescotts are obviously coded to be a Lovecraftian degenerate old-money family with a long pedigree of horrific monstrous occult secrets. (Even the simian implications of "Pan" Estates is a callback to this.) The only fair reading is to assume there is something to be expected along those lines.

Let us consider the implications of the foregoing, if it were to pan out as planned:

• Prescott will have substantial control over the infrastructure of an isolated community of socially insulated homeowners who will have too much to lose to escape easily if things went bad.
  
• Jefferson will have a highly secure base of operations to continue his hobby of psychologically raping a small but notable portion of the town's elite youth with long-term consequences he has no ability or desire to ameliorate or track.
  
• Jefferson and Prescott will have a highly secure secret base of operations for doing all sorts of unspeakable things to people on the sly.
  
• All of this will be in the hands of a father, a son and a most profane sort of free-spirit all of whose instincts are all primed towards hurting, corrupting and eventually killing people.

We do not have any information about exactly what sorts of acts were planned - whether by Prescott himself or whatever unseen powers he is dealing with, answering to or influenced by. We only know that this setup was something that certain typically-unseen powers, which for centuries prior had decided to leave well enough alone, were willing to liquidate an entire thousands-strong human community to prevent.

It's not clear why the storm happened when it did. Part of me is tempted to suggest that what happened to Kate was a last straw, like what is sometimes said of the girl they murdered for helping a beggar in Sodom. More likely, however, is that whatever setup resulted in Chloe being killed and the fallout that would end up delivering the Prescotts to secular justice had to fail before the storm was considered necessary.


why time travel powers?
Either the storm or Chloe's death on Monday is sufficient to stop the evil. Giving someone superpowers does not further this. So why go through all this time travel rigamarole?

Suppose the powers that did not want Chloe killed did something more subtle, Nathan forgot to turn the safety off and Max received nothing:

1. Monday: Chloe and Max meet up after the fight in the parking lot. Chloe gets even more upset that Max was in the bathroom with her and failed to do anything. Eventually they part ways with at most a "maybe we should hang out this weekend".
   
   
2. Tuesday: Kate kills herself. Chloe is probably alone in the junkyard and may or may not get into her own unpleasant encounter with Frank. She might get stabbed.
   
   
3. Wednesday: Max deals with the clusterfuck at Blackwell alone with no leads about what really happened, and is probably manipulated by Jefferson to stop trying. Chloe might try to fuck around with Nathan again. She might get shot.
   
   
4. Thursday: Jefferson talks Max into going to the party. Chloe starts more drama with David, preventing him from doing anything with his own investigation.
   
   
5. Friday: Chloe, if she's even alive at this point, is killed in the storm. Max is killed in the Dark Room.

To prevent this worst-case scenario the spirits working on this alternative might work constantly throughout the week to create little coincidences that keep the worst at bay. But this would presuppose that the forces that wanted to keep Chloe alive were free to do this, instead of being intercepted or abandoned at every turn by the majority who would no doubt be angry about years of careful planning being undone by a single moment's interference. Surely they would not allow something like that to happen again.

Which would mean that that very first major interference must be able to be self-sustaining, at least to the point of not needing constant, complex, proactive maintenance work.

Of course, there are numerous highly improbable coincidences that continue to even allow Max to use her power to save Chloe, most notably:

1. Max being in the bathroom at the right time.
   
2. Max's tornado vision ending just in time to rescue Chloe from the tracks.
   
3. Max's time freeze lasting exactly long enough to reach the roof, then causing her to grunt in pain at exactly the right time to distract Kate.
   
4. Warren showing up to take a picture.
   
5. Jefferson tossing the journal to Max at exactly the right page.
   
6. David showing up in the Dark Room seconds before Max would have been killed.

Of these, only 1, 4 and 5 were not caused in part by Max gaining or using her time travel powers. (2 and 3 were both the supernatural powers themselves timing their own actions; as for 6, David would not have been able to find the DR without the information she gathered and compiled with Chloe using her powers.) All three of these are things each actor was inclined to do anyway: go to bathroom to escape noise; meet up with Max and take a real photo of them together; taunt Max about her in-class selfie. More radical things like "believe in God's fundamental goodness again" or "forgive Max" (or, for that matter, "believe again in something other than your own capacity for psychological violence") should be outside of this sort of influence - otherwise why not just tell Jefferson to value consent or Prescott to value kindness? In any event, these influences are a whole different level from the spirits talking Kate down from the roof themselves.

With all these concerns at play, it seems the save-Chloe faction decided to forcibly raid a large chunk of their collective power-and-responsibility and delegate it to Max.


why Max?
Let's get one thing out of the way first: this whole thing makes no sense as a lesson for Max about her hubris. We get literally nothing in her journal or her interactions in Episode 1 that suggest a person who really craves the thought of being able to undo past mistakes or experiment with people to get them to do exactly what she wants. Instead we see lots of situations where doing exactly that would obviously help, and she just... suffers, without really blaming anyone or getting lost in wishing about how things might be different.

If this is some kind of moral demonstration, it might be more fitting to suppose it were Satan accusing Job, but with opportunity instead of loss. Which still becomes odd, when the triggering motive is mercy for someone the subject believes at the time to be a total stranger.

The imputed punishment of arbitrary killing people makes no sense, when the real obvious danger to a human soul is the isolation and egomania that such a comprehensive capacity for manipulating people and erasing one's embarrassing mistakes can cause in someone who abuses it, as well as the fear of normal risks that great power confers. That danger is never really explored in the game, outside of some passing mentions in the journal; the doppelganger's accusation is more directed at one specific aspect of Max's motives than the nature of the manipulation itself.

If Max chooses Bay, only she and no one else will have "learned" this "lesson" not to go against the fates or the gods or whatever - something that she would not even have done but for the initial entrapment. A nihilistic submission to "fate" would, however, be exactly the mindset that a demon seeking to tempt a person into despair would want to break them into. But even there, either ending clearly reflects Max's radical freedom to accept or reject what is on offer - and, for better and worse, own that decision in ways unimaginable to the old pagan tragic hero passively buffeted about by the fates.

The choice of giving Max this power makes no sense if you view it as a morality play. So how about a strategic decision within an existing conflict? Three factors immediately come to mind:

1. Chloe herself could not be trusted with this power.
   This is made as explicit as possible in the scenes that follow once she is convinced that the power even exists.
   
2. Reuniting Chloe and Max may have been a specific objective.
   For all we know, saving Chloe from getting shot might itself be merely a means towards this.
   
3. Max just happened to be there at the right time anyway.
   This may be circular if we are to surmise that she was influenced to go in there. But then, if our options for "people who would or could eventually be convinced to lay down their life for Chloe" consist of her, David (not going into girls' bathroom) and Joyce (nowhere near Blackwell), Max is by far the most convenient person to use.
   

Max is also being specifically targeted by one of the central loci of evil, making her far more convenient to lure the enemy into the battleground.

Again, this must have been a one-time heist with a limited window of opportunity. Once the target is selected there is no going back - you can't even ask them to do any particular thing, just drop extremely cryptic hints that can easily be taken the wrong way. If this alternate plan involves saving Chloe, then obviously it must be someone who is already inclined to do so.

The only alternative physically at Blackwell at that critical time is David, who:

1. would not be in the girls' bathroom outside of an already-obvious life-and-death situation;
   
2. being conservative and with at least a nominally Protestant background may distrust the power to the point of failing to use it when needed (or even failing to play with it enough to know how to use it when needed);
   
3. being (also, or even more) accustomed to viewing things in terms of violence, authority and power, once he overcame the initial misgivings would almost certainly abuse the power even worse than Chloe.
   

Contrast what I've said about Max earlier, against the idea that this is a morality lesson: even adjusting for her words in Episode 2 being necessary to temper Chloe's expectations, it's clear that she does not show any sign of being tempted in the same way that Chloe, David or I would be. Max and Joyce may be the only two living named characters in the game who it might even be reasonable to risk offering such a power to.


conclusion
Obviously this is all highly speculative. If LiS turned out to implicitly follow the pattern established in The Butterfly Effect and Max was born with the time power, much of this will have to be thrown out or reconsidered.

However, B.E. is not the only work LiS derives from, nor does LiS take things without significantly recontextualizing, reinterpreting or adding or removing thematic elements and connections. Max is not trying to undo an entire traumatic childhood; the storm is the first thing established in the story rather than a deus ex machina that arbitrarily appears at the end; the way Rachel's life rhymes with Laura Palmer's is only in the loosest sketches thereof; in lieu of the journal being the medium of time travel, we get an entirely new system of framed, captured pieces of time as windows through eternity. In light of this, there is no compelling reason to believe that LiS necessarily or even probably follows the hereditary pattern of B.E. especially given the almost total disconnect between the time travel story arc and Max's biological family.

In any event, we do know the following:

• Chloe's death in the bathroom would set off a chain of events that would bring Jefferson and Prescott to justice in the institutional human world.
  
• That chain of events leads to the only known scenario in which the storm does not materialize.
  
• The first tornado vision pushes Max onto a path that intercepts Chloe as she's about to die in this fashion.
  
• The tornado and the power are both accompanied by visions of spirits that are in turn connected by symbolism and proximity to Max, Rachel and Chloe.
  
• The tornado vision is always accompanied by something involving Chloe.
  
• The narration explicitly sets numerous observations in antagonism with our modern scientistic biases about an easily explained, easily quantified, mechanistic natural world - to the point where a game about time travel has no clock imagery tied to the time travel power itself, only portals, spirals, broken images and blood.

The implication here is that, when seeking reasons and causes connecting the supernatural events in this game, we're not primarily supposed to be working with rules of mechanistic if-then-else, but those of symbolic connections and organic relationships. Based on this, I do not believe that presupposing intent and personality, even if not necessarily on a fully human level, is at all unwarranted; once that approach is assumed, the implied conflicts and agendas naturally fall into place.

Comments

[mc776]

It just occurred to me: those 3 versions of the quote || the 3 bullets on Chloe's necklace.

"Žižek"
Old world - Arcadia Bay or the Prescotts
New world - Prescotts or Chloe
Monsters - Nathan, gun, Max, power, tornado

Gramsci
Old - the dying Arcadia Bay
New - renewed Arcadia Bay, or Prescotts, or Chloe
Morbid - the place where the works of man go to die is "my home away from hell"

Massiah
Old - the dying Arcadia Bay
New - the chaos apocalypse of whatever happens next
Chiaroscuro - Jefferson

[mc776]

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/life-is-strange-2-devs-want-new-story-for-third-ga/1100-6472281/

I think we always imagine the supernatural element as linked to the main character as a metaphor of his trigger. You know, for example, in the first Life is Strange, Max was a shy girl who was a bit afraid to grow up. So that's why the power of rewinding time and changing her decision was directly linked to a flaw, you know, to a weakness. ... ...and we were trying to create big choices in a way that would surprise the player. So Max would rewind and try a lot of different consequences, and it would resonate with this theme of her having a really hard time to settle in her life and to make a decision.

The rewind combined with having to deal with someone like Chloe were actively helping her with this. So basically we've now got a statement of authorial intent that this was the opposite of the hamartia-plus-temptation that I rejected in the above post...

[mc776]

I've been reminded earlier this past week that the "Max fixes everything" photo sequence shows the police discovering the DR and Rachel's body, but "Max lets Chloe die" only shows Nathan being arrested and questioned and Jefferson being arrested, all on Monday only, with everything else dedicated to Joyce, David and Max grieving Chloe.

This leaves it completely open that Nathan didn't say anything about either of them. If Jefferson is arrested only in connection to Chloe's death, it will be very quickly apparent he had nothing to do with it.

Meanwhile, Nathan drugging Chloe, Chloe blackmailing Nathan and Nathan shooting her is a self-contained story - once it is resolved there's nothing left to connect it to Rachel.

This can still end with Nathan taken out of the picture to the satisfaction of the Bay's spirits, but leaves Sean and MJ to continue doing even worse.

[mc776]

Gonna just drop these here until I've read them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_and_Whale
https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeisstrange/comments/8380e1/s1_e5_max_and_the_thunderbird/
https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeisstrange/comments/7aty2f/all_theory_of_the_never_shown_battle/

https://www.pnsn.org/outreach/native-american-stories/thunderbird-and-whale/thunderbird-and-whale-stories/tales-from-the-hoh-and-quileute
https://pnsn.org/outreach/native-american-stories/thunderbird-and-whale/thunderbird-and-whale-stories/the-thunder-bird-a-tillamook-legend

relatedly: the waterspout reference is in Psalm 42(Masoretic) not 42(LXX).