Life Is Strange: misc. notes on reading Max and Chloe as an allegory for Christ and His Church

[mc776]

For indeed, when we came to Macedonia, our bodies had no rest, but we were troubled on every side. Outside were conflicts, inside were fears.

Nevertheless God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the consolation with which he was comforted in you, when he told us of your earnest desire, your mourning, your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more.

I know I've made comments like this (not all of them on this blog) about a few games already, so to deal with that:

1. the Mass Effect series was far, far more explicit with this. I kinda feel it's almost less effective for it, though it still remains a baseline for me as a videogame that can be read as an allegory for Christ.
   
2. what I'm seeing in LiS completely blows what I've seen in Doom out of the water.
   
3. there are zillions of games out there that go "descend into underworld, defeat its ruler, save the world, emerge victorious" and that without a lot of other Christ-pointing imagery is generally not really worth spending a huge amount of energy over.

For contrast, here are a few games where I don't read this kind of allegory, which I enjoy or could reasonably be expected to enjoy:

• Anything in the Quake series
  
• Half-Life
  
• Diablo, to the point of actively refuting any such reading
  
• Jill of the Jungle, Crystal Caves, classic Duke Nukem, really any of the old golden-age shareware platformers
  
• Cave Story
  
• Final Fantasy 6
  
• LiS: Before The Storm, if I were to understand it as a work on its own independent of LiS, focussing only on Chloe and Rachel's relationship and Max as just a background character
  
• Freedoom
  
• Doom or Freedoom with Hideous Destructor (in retrospect I'm a bit surprised how I'd decided to specifically reject this reading by making a perverted version of it part of the big bad's villain speech)
  
• Any of the new Doom games from 2016 onwards (there is still some to the extent they resemble the original Doom 1 and 2, but all the other stuff tends to water it down greatly)
  
• The Baldur's Gate series (which may have distinctly Christian or post-Christian themes of redemption and sacrifice, but no allegorical reading easily presents itself)
  
• Tell Me Why, at least what little I've seen of it. The twins are too equal and symmetrical in their relationship in a way Max and Chloe are not.

A great deal of "but what about", "but she doesn't", "Harold, they're lesbians" can be answered fairly simply that I'm not even beginning to aim for a perfect 1:1 here.

Disclosure of bias: I only started playing this game after watching multiple playthroughs on Youtube. I still have this wonderfully useful guide in a background tab. I "won" my first playthrough: Kate is saved, Frank is convinced to come onside, Alyssa does not die faithless and alone, David is not a broken murderer, Joyce forgives David. By the time I heard it again based on these events and not a much less successful Youtube playthrough, Max's self-accusation that she had nothing to show for her works but a trail of death and destruction rang hollow, a mere moment of weakness in the face of the tornado consuming her entire attention. Had my first playthrough actually left a trail of corpses in a Shakespearean tragedy, and the accusation truly stung possibly even to the point of sacrificing Chloe just to undo the horrors that happened even without the storm, I may never have given this allegorical reading.

And, of course, between the Grandview-esque urban scenery, the sudden falling in with like-minded geeky types, repurposed punk imagery, and just the overall timing of the game (setting: my last year with my ex before we broke up and I began my conversion in earnest, based on seeds planted in my mind during the last months of our relationship; release: same year as my baptism and my own father's death, of which this year also happens to be mark the 5th anniversary) I guess I've been a bit primed to see this.

And now, the list.

~

Let me get one of the more spurious-sounding ones out of the way right now: Max's hair is exactly that range of brown to dark brown (and is occasionally subject to the same sort of lighting issues that gave us blonde Jesus). Meanwhile, our parish's nave icon of the Theotokos has a sky-blue fringe underneath peeking out from a dark head covering.

Relatedly, while watching a livestream of the service: the back of the priest's head as he faces the wall covered in icons, illumined by small warm lights.

The entire game's primary aesthetic is geared towards the sort of thing I instinctively imagine with the phrase "bright sadness".

Max returns to her hometown and is without honour there.

Max's presence proves to be highly disruptive to the existing orders of dominance and threat of death and debt: to the orderly running of Blackwell (as Principal Wells explicitly calls her on if she conceals the truth after the Nathan encounter); to Frank's attempt to collect from Chloe; to Victoria's career advancement with Jefferson and the contest; (if you play it this way, and without a great deal of ulterior motives and reassurances I cannot bear to do otherwise) to David's dominance as the patriarch of Chloe's household; to each of Nathan and Jefferson and all their works (and in Jefferson's case, even his vision of Max herself after he discovers the destroyed photo); to that perfectly engineered chain reaction by which the death of one is preferred (in a subjectively strictly Caiaphan calculus) over the destruction of the Arcadian people. Not peace, but a sword.

Jefferson is a tempter (has promise of fame and prestige; is physically attractive), a slanderer (per his comments to Kate and about Rachel and Chloe and Nathan, and any number of other lies he must have told to manipulate people over the years), an accuser (Kate, Nathan, Max) and, as the story's main plot twist, a murderer from the beginning. See also: suit, stylish glasses, goatee.

What do we even make of the storm? They say the devil is the lord of the air, but the storm is very, very wet and clearly connected to the chaos of the primordial sea. In any event, a brief "whirlwind" tour of Scripture generally does not associate such storms with the devil but with the other Guy.

Deer, water, tornadoes and hills: As the hart panteth for the water brooks... Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me...

The lighthouse is not utterly destroyed, but merely has its top head section cut off. I keep wanting to read this as a metaphorical circumcision.

Shortly before the death and the resurrection by which everything begins, the king is mocked.

The hidden saviour in the midst of one's lowest moment of abandonment.

The one outside of time raises the dead.

For it has been declared to me of you, my brothers, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you.

The very first entry in the concordance: Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Keep in mind the grammar: kingdom is like merchant. Not to confuse who's paying what for whom here.

• The second, of course, is of a woman sacrificing a bottle of perfume of great price for the sake of only one person, and those who do not understand berating her for such waste of a thing that could have helped so many.

Receiving the good news that the one you had despised, and the one you thought had abandoned you, was your saviour.

Chloe as Rahab: she hides the one in her home from those who are defending the place that is to be destroyed, who is going to cause that place's destruction, then allows that person and her partner to escape through the window in the wall.

• She subsequently lets in two spies to find out more about the place.
  
• Of course, she is herself one of the two spies in both of these.
  
• A further mitigation is that her subsequent pleas to spare her and her family are generally believed to only ever be imperfectly fulfilled.
  

Chloe gazes out upon the vast expanse of the shining sea, beholding the light of evening as it mingles that still smooth surface with fire. In her frustration and grief she exclaims how she would like to take a bomb and turn the entire place into glass. This sets off another vision from Max, which results in the first revelation to Chloe.

• ...while the music from the apocalyptic ending starts playing. (Which, of course, starts with the strumming of a stringed instrument.)
  
  
• The same view of the sunset in the Bay Ending ends with the line "So God damn this boiling space" - and "leave the horror here" as Max is walking away.

Golden hour lighting. Perelandran sky. The gold background frequently seen in icons.

The junkyard is an Edenic image, seemingly raw and wild but ultimately made for humanity. This isn't too blatant in LiS itself until in BtS you see Chloe alone setting up the shack - an image of the first hero bringing order to the place of primordial chaos. In this she becomes an Adam to Rachel's Eve, introducing her to it that the two of them may dwell within as its benevolent rulers.

• Here, of course, the Christ allegory fails as Max is never able to bring Rachel herself back; however, it does set up an interesting other parallel in which Chloe becomes a "new Eve" as being to Max what Rachel was to Chloe - the one who brought Max out of her isolation (it is not good for her to be alone) and whom Max is now desperately trying to save.
  
  
• Of course, once Max falls into a deep sleep after a splitting headache and awakens to see her beloved by her side, the player is given one more chance, in case they missed it the first time, to explore that half of the junkyard where the primal garden imagery is much more literal.
  
  
• This notion of the primordial garden is reinforced on subsequent playthroughs when we know Rachel is buried there: et in Arcadia, ego.
  
  
  • So until now (2020-09-04) I've tended to give Rachel a fairly cursory treatment in this list. This is because after seeing what her room looks like in BtS, with the heavy emphasis on astrology and not-quite-science and the whole scene framed around the despair of a misunderstanding of a much less pessimistic reality, the easiest and most natural way I see her fitting into this allegory is as the false gods that the people turned to before the revelation of the True God of Israel. Which works (and even turns the above described failure into a most resounding success), except... I like Rachel too much as a character, and have seen far too much shrill Pricefield-fanatic demonizing of her, to want to go this most obvious route. Perhaps I'll just drop some passing mention here about mankind's natural affinity for the Tao and seeking with our conscience and our yearning that which we were created for that Lewis articulated so well - cf. the conversation in Chloe's room in Episode 1, and the different ways in which Max and Rachel saved Chloe's life.
    
    I've tried to consider any parallels to John the Forerunner. All I've come up with is that she's got a very Old Testament name, went out of her way to say the right thing to different people, was involved in a major conflict involving an accusation of adultery, and when she died they hid her in an unclean place. It feels a bit forced compared to the other reading, though not completely absent.
    
    
    • That said: "He definitely panicked a bit when he saw her, maybe he thought she was back from the dead?" "This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead, and therefore these powers are at work in him."

All my comments about Chloe being fated to die versus being fated to be saved by Max apply.

• Relatedly, every Bay-Ending argument that Chloe is hopelessly, chronically self-destructive brings me back to the image of the long-suffering servant and the unrepentant Israel.

Kate is tempted to throw herself off of the roof of that very public building. The imagery is there, but it's no direct connection since it's Kate doing this not Max and she's actually trying to kill herself. But the power that would forcibly prevent her from ever hitting the ground is never tested in that capacity, instead bowing out and leaving the outcome to Max's care and Kate's willingness to accept help.

Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. - Kate is standing in a position where her salvation literally involves coming to the person saying these words; to move away from said person is movement towards death, and in particular into a sort of movement that can no longer be reversed by one's God-given will.

• And speaking of final chances given to free will, it's also interesting how Max's power has specifically run out for this encounter, cf. Aslan and the dwarfs in heaven: I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot, do.

Kate as Lazarus. Max arrives to find a crowd. Once she's done, a crowd cheers her as their hero and champion. (I have not played how this turns out if Kate dies.)

• Except, of course, that Christ openly asks the Father to raise Lazarus and explicitly states how the Father had always given Him everything he wanted. This is subverted here: indeed the power overcomes the logistically impossible part of saving Kate, but once that initial challenge is overcome the power abandons Max.
  
  And yet even that becomes an act of salvific union: it leaves her abandoned, alone, and thus equal with Kate, before she is able to say a single thing to try to convince her.

Appearing behind locked doors.

...as thou didst receive the sinful woman, the thief, the publican and the prodigal son. Three intense high-stakes dialogues happen, each with one unusual limitation that adds to the stakes, each one about forgiving, reconciling and accepting in the name of something greater than shame and ego, each corresponding with one of these but not quite:

• Kate is actually innocent, even if shamed in every way as though she were not.
  
• Whatever you can say about him being a mercenary for an evil invading empire that has enslaved the people, Frank is at least on the surface selling real goods and services for the money he is receiving.
  
• Chloe only squandered her inheritance after her father actually died, and of course she didn't actually go anywhere.

And to complete the set, in between our "sinful woman" and our "publican" we see Chloe again...

After the first playthrough the player has no practical reason not to let Chloe steal the accessibility fund: if you go Bae, Arcadia Bay is destroyed and that $5k would do nothing rotting under a pile of damp rubble instead of giving Chloe and Max (and maybe Frank? there's no saying if he survives) some much-needed bug-out cash; if you go Bay, it will never have happened. All that's left is an utterly naked notion of bourgeois sanctity of property as a good-in-itself to which every reader, whether they agree or not, can only imagine Chloe responding with contempt. Max knows this response will happen; Chloe knows it; each knows the other knows they know it; even if Chloe would certainly obey her, to extract that obedience merely on such morality would create a rift between them. Max's answer? Have faith in me. It completely transforms this refusal into a thing of grace, rather than merely law and death.

I cannot read the pool scene as a baptismal image - it really is just two teenagers pulling a prank and having fun. But this scene - and especially Max's commentary in both the dialogue and her diary - is important in particular for establishing that Max really is a part of this, united with Chloe and not simply passively going with whatever she suggests or pretending to humour her antics while secretly despising her.

• Incidentally, this entire break-in arc has almost as many shots of them walking together side by side in sync as the rest of the game combined.
  
  
• But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. And, of course, the verses following this combine this unexpected arrival with the arrive-ee drinking.
  
  
• Not-quite-baptism-despite-all-the-water aside, the image of the powers of this world persecuting them while condoning the world's much worse offences in the same place does rhyme with the Church history and the fate of the old prophets.

It is through Max's image that we are able to step outside of time - a greater reality revealed through the icon.

The only time Max is ever given something to wear on her head, we see her clad in a purple outer garment - during a cruel mockery of her power to save from death.

Because of her knowledge that extends outside of time, Max marvels and delights in Chloe's existence in ways Chloe herself cannot understand.

Consider: "Prescott" means "house of the priest." Nathan was explicitly being prepared by his father for an important part of the family legacy: it's never quite defined, but it clearly involves foregoing ordinary happiness in service of some greater powerful thing. There's some implication that the Prescotts have some foreknowledge of the coming destruction. Despite all this, however, it's only Max, who was a native to Arcadia Bay but had nothing to do with the Prescotts, who actually faces it directly, receives the fulness of the vision, and ultimately has the final power over its existence. Now read this commentary on the Levitical priesthood versus the priesthood of Melchizedek.

• After Judah, after the lion. Max is a Virgo, born right after the Leo birthdays.
  
• The earliest named Prescott in the game is Harry Aaron.

When Max is trying to break open the hatch, Chloe references the Lord's Prayer literally in response to a command from above. This is completely optional - the player can have Max attach this hook herself before ascending - which makes the free gift of Chloe's participation in breaking open the gates of this hell even more significant.

Max learns what happens to the other girls and feels for their pain; she is captured by treachery in the middle of the night, in the garden (junkyard); she in turn is afflicted by the devil (Jefferson) in the same manner in which he victimized them, taking on their suffering to herself before emerging triumphant over him afterwards.

At the time of Max's capture Chloe becomes both Peter and Mary, as guns take the place of swords in this story and our secularized scientistic minds assume the brain to be the seat of the soul.

Max spends most of her time in the Dark Room with her hands and feet fastened to wood, and is pierced from the side.

When Max attempts to flee the Dark Room, but also pursues her worldly ambition and changes everything so she gets the worldly life coming to her that "should" have been, she is ambushed with a horrific vision of the salvation that she worked for being utterly destroyed, whereupon she very slowly moves away, invokes the Power and finds herself once again in the judgment seat where she is to be executed. This is a movie reference; link near the end of this list.

And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.

There are at least 2 viable options for Max's last request of Jefferson. The one that gets the best result? I thirst.

• The other, of course, is to voluntarily submit to being used by Jefferson - but it is only a ruse to set up his own destruction.

Max is ultimately brought out of the Dark Room by the primary father figure we see in the story. Who, of course, happens to have the name of him that Jesus is described in his initial ministry as being a son of. This father figure is unknowable to Chloe except through Max's intercession.

• With this in mind, it's hard for me to go back to Max looking at David looking at the wall photos and not hear that "He's exactly the same as me" in a whole new light.

Once the father figure has arrived, the execution chair becomes a judgment seat from which Max spells out Jefferson's doom. This strong man is eventually bound and David and Max are free to go through his stuff.

After this, to actually save Chloe, Max is descending to a place of darkness, death and flames, rescuing everyone she finds who is able, willing and needing to be saved.

Towards the end of this harrowing we find the single clearest baptismal imagery in the game. The fisherman(!) is lying in some water in shock and will not listen to anything you tell him; he is trapped inside a room and the only way in and out is in flames. The only thing that will destroy those flames is an electrical circuit that will (a) turn on the sprinklers and (b) electrocute the fisherman, so you can go in, reverse the whole process, move the fisherman out of the circuit and reconnect the circuit from inside the room to re-extinguish the flames so you can both get out. To save the man from his torment in the flames, you must kill him in the waters and raise him up from them, whereupon he will follow you to his way to freedom.

The wide broad road leads to death. The narrow path leads to salvation. Chloe literally bears Max on her walk along that path.

There are six photographs in total that Max will use in every playthrough to travel back in time. The sixth one she uses is created in her image (as is, granted, all the others), but also male and female and taken with the man's direct participation in the process.

• It was mutually understood that it was not good for him to be alone.
  
  
• This does not help justify a Sacrifice Chloe ending under this allegorical reading, however, since it would also undo the very existence of this photograph.

Once Max does save Chloe, it is through strict instructions as follows: remain at home, on alert, while the angel of death is out and about. This angel has already killed the pharaoh's firstborn son.

• And again, as previously with David, Chloe's father cannot be known except as revealed through Max.

Max then stands on top of a mountain, in a place to behold the entirety of this town that is our microcosm of the world. She is not tempted by gain, but threatened with loss, though the mechanism remains: give in to the World, and all this can (still) be hers.

• Once Max makes the decision Chloe either ends up standing behind her, as that which Max came to save, or departs, as that which had been tempting her.

The original falling away that leaves Chloe unable to be restored to communion with those around her, having set her on an unbreakable cycle of self-destructive behaviour that only the chaos and disruption of Max's presence can undo.

• Our problem is not our morality: it is ontological, rooted in our alienation from being, truth, and beauty – from God Himself. Broken communion leads to death. Immorality, in all its forms, is but a symptom.
  
  
• The hell- and death-themed self-identification before she meets Max - and the explicit repentance of it that we see in the tattoo cover in LiS2.
  
  
• That self-destructive pattern continues on the clifftop. It is still a sign of her brokenness and her recommendation (understood rationally based on what is known at that moment) cannot be trusted as sound, actionable advice, but nonetheless it has been transformed - no longer misdirected anger from a heart blind and frozen in grief, but willing to give up everything in the name of mercy. But that transformation, however it is to be fulfilled, cannot be fulfilled by her alone.
  
  
• ...you did nothing but show me your love and friendship... No matter what you choose, I know you'll make the right decision. It can be read as (and may in part truly be) Chloe trying to guilt-trip Max into not taking that nuclear option with the entire week, but there is an underlying logic to the literal meaning: it is because of the mercy she has demonstrated that Chloe is willing to commend into Max's hands her spirit.

Sacrifice Chloe becomes completely unjustifiable if you play with this allegorical reading in mind. It ends with a somewhat pagan symbol of Chloe's departing soul, at the conclusion of several close-up shots of a vast coffin dominating the entire scene - a monument to death in all its victory. Our only consolation (besides some ultimately purely speculative interpretations of the consequences of that butterfly's final appearance) is that the world as we know it is spared and may continue - however long it may. The promise has been broken and the free gift rejected; she was going to be the new friendship; now there's no more Chloe.

• There is a case to be made for interpreting this as Chloe's Christ-like sacrifice. This is valid and grounded in at least some of the observed facts (we can argue how much of this is true repentance and how much is depressio-talk, but there's clearly both) with respect to Chloe's character, and we can only trust that a good God of whom time and probability are mere creatures would in such an event hold that selfless sacrifice to account in the final judgment - especially necessary when the action at stake is precisely to erase that transformation from all time-bound reality; however, as far as the allegory goes this is dead in the water: no resurrection, and Max quickly becomes a Gnostic Judas who knowingly sends Christ to his death and is doomed to keep the secret knowledge alone.
  
  
• The only Biblical parallel I can think of for the decision is the binding of Isaac. We know how well that turned out: quite well, for all except the ram. There is no ram here; sacrificing Chloe is the end.
  
  But turn this around, and put Chloe in Abraham's position: she offers up what was to be a symbol of this new covenant, to destroy that into which she had put her hope. But here the servants are already pulling the very large ram out of the thicket...
  
  
• Fine, let's turn this around once more, just to give it a fair shake: Max is Abraham, Arcadia Bay is Isaac and Chloe is the ram. This works surprisingly well chronologically: Max is first told about the storm, then Chloe comes in, then the opportunity to sacrifice her in lieu of the otherwise doomed town. But what is the promise? To whom is there any covenant? Look back to why Max came here to begin with: Jefferson had been the promise; the Prescott-owned school was the covenant. Neither will deliver her salvation.
  
  
• One final nail in the coffin as to Chloe being Abraham's ram rather than Isaac is the only analysis of that story in the epistle to the Hebrews:

  But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.
  By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,
  Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called:
  Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

  
  
• The first Biblical parallel I can think of with respect to the aftermath of sacrificing Chloe is the Levite's concubine at Gibeah: there is an evil in the land; a woman is killed from it; her death is made public and the powers of this world step in to destroy the perpetrators.
  
  This, of course, had resulted in great amounts of bloodshed and rape, all done in the name of worldly justice - and, of course, preserving the existence of a beleaguered community whose members had caused the problems in the first place. It is generally believed to be an account of the strife and misery of the pre-royal period written by royalists to legitimize the king's rule.
  
  I don't even want to think on this too hard, but the imagery works: Chloe lies dead at the door, killed by the man who had taken her away and abused her, to be discovered by the man who is not in the familial role he should have been in (father for one, husband for the other - and the harshness of the Levite and of David are an instant match), having been destroyed while the one who should have been her mate and protector sits hidden away and does nothing hoping to avoid what their society has told them is much worse than the mere abuse and destruction of a disposable woman.
  
  I had not started writing this bullet point expecting it to end up with a disapproval nearly as strongly worded as this, but better writers than myself have described this story as the antithesis of everything good that God had given His people.
  
  
• Spirit, water and blood would all be present in either ending. The blood is communion; the water is baptism and entering into death; the Spirit is, of course, the Spirit.
  
  
  • On the one hand, we have a set in Sacrifice Arcadia Bay that does a fairly good job of "agreeing as one" inasmuch as they bear any obvious relationship with one another: tornado, stormwater, storm casualties.
    
    
  • On the other, the set is vastly more obvious in Sacrifice Chloe: butterfly, water in bathroom pipes, Chloe's blood on the floor.
    
    
  • That said, if we actually tried to apply the meanings of the symbols: Chloe gets shot, and her blood spills out, after Max enters into the place of the water, whereupon she is infused with the power of the spirit. That's not the Sacrifice Chloe ending, but the very first rewind. It is in the beginning of the story, and not the ending, in which we see these elements "agreeing as one": a setup that gives Max her powers.
    
    
  • In contrast, in Sacrifice Chloe the blood just lies there dead, crying out for justice like Abel's; the spirit comes and goes but does not step in to do anything; the water does nothing at all.
  
  
• Imagine if Mary just saw a dove preening on the stone blocking the tomb, seal intact, while the guards silently stood by and did not let her in. There would be no Christians today.
  
  
• I suppose there's also Jephthah's daughter, but that seems more fitting to a parallel of sacrificing Arcadia Bay, Max being similarly bound by her unqualified word to Chloe.
  
  
• Since we're broadening our search anyway: let's for a moment reject everything I said about that theory and go with an oddly popular notion (which Max seems at least at one point to believe as well, per Chloe's text in the nightmare) that, each time Max uses a photo, she physically disappears from that universe and enters into another one, ultimately emerging into a parallel universe - and that the Bay Ending is, therefore, really Max departing from the timeline in which Chloe lives and creating one in which Chloe dies so that there is a timeline where the town lives. The only cost then is (ignoring that we've also created a new Chloe who is now dead, etc.) that each of them is now stuck in a different timeline.
  
  The image here, from the surviving Chloe's point of view, is that her dear, superpowered friend has just been taken up by the whirlwind.
  
  If it weren't for all the cosmological and narrative holes in the underlying theory I would have liked to explore this further.
  
  
• If we run with the disappear-into-parallel-universe thing there might also be a case to be made that this can be read as an Ascension image, but that doesn't work given their permanent separation: the most obvious image of applying the allegory like this - Max in the golden sun seeing only the grave forever between her and Chloe in the darkness within; Chloe alone in darkness and ruin, having been finally deprived of everyone she ever loved - is that Chloe is somehow, despite her repentance (and even more absurdly because of her repentance!) and Max's love for her, nonetheless damned in the final judgment. Because fate, or something. No one can psychologically survive that kind of corrosive doctrine.
  
  I suppose we've got this, but that's obviously stated as a hypothetical and not ultimately realized.
  
  
• There's one more option for the Bay Ending that lets it work as this kind of allegory: Chloe is the Hebrew people, the Jews, who are condemned at the end as part of God's plan to save everyone.
  
  Let's for a brief moment ignore how this endorses a line of thinking that has actually killed a lot of people in real life already (which is why I've omitted it until now, 2020-09-07). It just doesn't work, because Chloe was not the one who sent Max into the Dark Room. Inasmuch as she might have caused it with her zeal to destroy Nathan, she was doing what she could within the parameters of that mission to protect Max and was under no delusion that she was the enemy somehow.
  
  Without that motive to destroy her, this just becomes an arbitrarily selected destruction of one to save the rest. The only way to reconcile this with a Christ allegory is to adopt, once again, the diabolical doctrine of predestined damnation.
  
  
• Being together this week... it was the best farewell gift I could have hoped for. On many levels she's right anyway about those moments between them being real, but (absent fuzzy-ontology parallel universe theory or explicit afterlife revelation) I cannot bring myself to adopt any "certain point of view" from which to say that this gift is something she gets to keep.
  
  Which, of course, combined especially with the whole [fat-man-]trolley-problem setup, reminds me of a different bit of Scripture:

  You are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, and it will not be taken away from her.

Sacrifice Arcadia Bay is a colossal mess, confusing and ambiguous except in its final message of hope and moving forward to the salvation that lies beyond. It is not given to us to know who is saved; we can only trust in the mercy of Divine providence that all things will work towards the good.

• I've read many comments along the lines of people being surprised that this was even presented as an option, or assuming that this originally was not intended to be an option, in contrast to the Bay Ending as a default trope for similar time-travel movies. That this option thereby breaks a dreary, pessimistic mold set up by a prevailing established, hopeless, man-made form only strengthens my resolve in Bae being the true and proper ending.
  
  
• Like Christ's death on the cross at the end of Last Temptation, this ending is much shorter than the alternative and leaves to the audience's imagination the part afterwards that actually gives us closure about any of this.
  
  
• Consider which ending best corresponds to each option available to the shepherd:
  
  
  1. Leaving the 1 to ensure the safety of the 99
     
  2. Feeding the 1 to a wolf to ensure the safety of the 99
     
  3. Doing nothing while you see the 1 run off and get eaten by a wolf, to honour your duty to keep watch over the 99
     
  4. Staying with the 99 to ensure they are watched, even if it means ignoring the 1
     
  5. Leaving the 99 to retrieve the 1, even if it means ignoring the wolves
  
  
• The whole thing with accepting fate and destiny ties better to Episode 1 if you consider Chloe's salvation and reunion to be that destiny. It reads even better if you understand the time power to be secondary to that destiny, which the folks at Dontnod seem to imply when they say that the central story point is the characters' relationship rather than the particulars of the supernatural events.
  
  
• The deer skull is obviously intended to be a synthesis of Max and Chloe. The red could be read as two things: first, the bold fulfilment of what was once pale and faded when the story started; second, a price of sacrifical blood. This mirrors Chloe's bloody skull undershirt in the other ending: Max has taken that and put it on herself.
  
  Note how the camera only shows both shirt designs unobstructed after Max destroys the photo.
  
  
• I can make little of Chloe's ouroboros, beyond the most generic of statements about death and rebirth. However, I do note that the way the camera pans has it sinking down to the bottom of the screen, with bullets pointing into it. This conquered dying-rebirth-serpent replaces the "et in Arcadia ego" skull.
  
  The Thunderbird And Whale is a myth about a figure associated with storms, whirlwinds and lightning defeating a consuming beast in the depths.
  
  
• One "mistake" the directors admit to is that it is actually extremely difficult to tear up an instant film, but Max easily splits these portals and screens and symbols clean down the middle whenever needed. I mention it here and not much earlier in the list (say, after the king being mocked) because the mere symbol, given as an exchange and a sign of the covenant, is being discarded in favour of the direct knowledge of the real thing.
  
  
• They're standing on the shore, pursued by an evil fate with no apparent way out. Chloe believes she is doomed, and they were brought out here for nought. Then Max parts the one photo that more than any of the others used for time travel symbolizes water.
  
  
  • Someone mentioned on the Steam forums that the damage of the storm and implied casualty count make it seem much more like a hurricane than a tornado. A very sudden storm surge in addition to the direct damage of the tornado would fit the Noah/Moses imagery of destruction by water even better.
  
  
  • This, of course, combines with the dead whales and the notion of entering the depths and destroying the creature which lurks within.
  
  
• There are three photographs that Max must destroy to save Chloe in the end. The third is of a spirit; the first is the direct work of, and the means of reaching, an unseen father; the second is of, and represents... Max.
  
  
  • One may reasonably object that she is destroying these images; however, if she fails to destroy the last one then the set is not complete and there is no parallel: this is the only way these three photos are specially set aside - and sacrificed, broken for the remission of sins.
  
  
  • The father and spirit are, of course, each referred to directly in those terms at least once in the game... and so is, despite all diegetic reason, the son: "Don't talk about our mom that way!"
  
  
• There are seven photographs in total that Max uses or can use in the game for a focus jump. She must labour through the first six, the last of which is the image of the man and the woman which completes her work in saving Chloe.
  
  The seventh - she does no work with it.

~

While compiling this list someone on Facebook shared a meme attributing to C.S. Lewis: Love is unselfishly choosing for another's highest good. Anyone who's read how Lewis uses the word "unselfish" in The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters is on alert at this point, especially upon considering the prospect of knowing someone else's highest good.

This is inspiring for me as I write this, but not likely in the way the meme-maker intended. Instead I'm just reminded of all the unselfishness described in those books and why the evil organization in the last Space Trilogy book is called "NICE" and what I wrote here:

The photo is the Ring. That, and not Max's time travel power on its own, is the Ring's true temptation: to make things right again, for everyone, for the world. Even if it means betraying your best friend and consigning her to a miserable death, angry and alone - and worse: turning everything that would have redeemed her soul into something not demonstrably better than "it was all a dream". All to maintain the power structures of the status quo, albeit bringing a few of its chaotic aspects to "justice".

The irony is, of course, that I myself was never able to accept the Christian faith until I gave myself permission to be a little selfish about my own salvation, whereupon everything began to make sense.

I've made snide remarks in the past about what I've described as the worst rationale for sacrificing Arcadia Bay: the insistence that all of my work, what I did as the player, have meaning. I still think it's a bad rationale, and best to downplay in light of so much better; and yet there's the echo of salvation even in that.