mc776 | LiS commentary: R and F (Reply)

Trying to make sense of a disturbing implication in a disturbingly ambiguous relationship.

The game's story leaves it open that Frank was grooming Rachel, if not actually sexually active with her, before she turned 18.

(I'll say "game" singular as shorthand but I'll be referencing BtS as well. I consider both to be canon with any actual on-screen events in BtS having priority over things people describe in off-the-cuff statements years later in LiS.)

In terms of authorial intent I have no doubt whatsoever that the intended implication is that Rachel only began an intimate relationship with Frank after she turned 18 - for the same ratings reasons that all of Jefferson's victims (at least as far as they are conclusively shown ingame [2021-02-12 edit: devs' out-of-game identification of Megan notwithstanding]) are also 18+ and no nude shots are ever taken.

That said, we also know that LiS is based on media from generations that made a much smaller deal about adult/minor sex and sexuality being depicted in media. (Laura Palmer died at age 17; Max positively references a photographer named Hamilton who we can only guess was David Hamilton.) Frank was born in 1981, putting him in that generational cohort (including myself) that was among the last to have grown up with media where the protagonist getting laid with the (well, his) teacher is just considered a funny harmless punchline. (A lot of what Chloe does seems really anachronistic for a millennial born as late as 1994 and I tend to attribute a great deal of this to (Watson) her hanging out with Frank and (Doyle) a projection on part of the writers who I assume are closer to my age or older. ("I went to school with John Romero" (Romero was born in '67, old end of Gen X (I am so glad I'm typing this on something that highlights parentheses))))

My goal here is to figure out whether there's evidence that this relationship can be said to have been something Frank had been manipulating Rachel into as far back as before July 22, 2012.

None of Rachel's letters, whether to Frank or to Chloe (unsent), are dated.
Nothing about the Frank letters draws an inference that they are particularly new or particularly old. They're kept fairly well and they could plausibly go back 3 years.
They are, however, kept with his most current account book marked 2013.
The junkyard bucket is not directly exposed to rain but is exposed to outside air and moisture. The ink looks neither faded nor smeared.
Pompidou is clearly full size in all the photos, but is a tiny puppy in BtS. If a puppy can reach full size in 6-8 months, this is not in any way exonerating.
BtS makes Rachel noticeably more babyfaced than the pictures we see of her in LiS. In contrast, she looks more or less the same in her photos with Frank as on Chloe's missing person poster.

CONCLUSION: I believe the appearance of the various items is not conclusive, though they do hint at relative recency simply because they don't show any positive change in appearance or aging of material.

I am reminded that Rachel has issues with boundaries and consent. Someone like this is very easy to ply into doing what you want and thinking it was their idea, especially if you're into the long game.
But then she did, in fact, leave him, even if it was intended to be temporary.
The same scene that we see Chloe blaming Rachel entirely for this relationship, we see her blaming all sorts of people for things they obviously have no control over. It's best to completely ignore her comments (neither accept as true nor accept their negation to be true) as far as they are an accurate assessment of the dynamic between them.
What we do know from this is that Chloe is surprised, but already suspected it was going on. She does not make any comment suggesting this meant that Rachel had been lying to her for a very long time, but at this point she would have no more idea of how long this lasted than Max or the player.

CONCLUSION: I believe based on everyone's observed behaviour that Rachel had subjectively honestly believed that she had agency over beginning, continuing and suspending her relationship with Frank.

Chloe's $3000 truck bill is dated October 17, 2013. This is either a due date before interest, or an appointment with a quote.
The truck is running fine for the entire game and Chloe clearly does not have the money on her at any point that Max is with her. The only rational inference is that the truck is fixed and the money spent.
Chloe's credit rating is probably already shit and she was hoping to skip town anyway. Why take her chances with the armed drug dealer instead of the mechanic? Most likely the mechanic was holding on to the truck until Chloe paid.
Deadline for a mechanic's lien in Oregon is 75 days. October 17, count back 75 days, earliest possible repair date August 3, 2013.
It's unlikely Chloe would have spent 2 months carless trying to scrounge up $3000, so she would have borrowed from Frank early in the process.
Meanwhile, Rachel never said anything about the loan and neither Frank nor Chloe says anything even remotely suggesting she was a party to that agreement in any way. (Or even a beneficiary of it - that's just my addition in Angel of Babylon, though I still think it's the only rational explanation as to why Frank would even be willing to do this.)
If Rachel had been aware of the loan she must have involved herself in it in some way that Chloe and Frank would remember, for better or worse.

CONCLUSION: The best chronology therefore is that Rachel broke things off with Frank, then she (was) disappeared, then around August Chloe borrowed the money.

Chloe never notices Frank having Rachel's bracelet until October 8.
Rachel must have given Frank the bracelet on or before April 22, 2013.
I make the following assumption: Chloe was in regular contact with Frank until she borrowed the money.
It's entirely possible that Chloe could meet up with Frank once every two weeks for a few months without ever noticing the bracelet.
Alternatively, Frank could have only started wearing the bracelet only after Rachel's disappearance. This seems unlikely as Rachel would have demanded it back rather than leaving it out of sight in who-knows-where.
That aside, even if Chloe never notices the bracelet being on Frank's wrist, she would certainly notice it not being on Rachel's.
When we first deal with the bracelet in Episode 2 Chloe accuses Frank of having stolen the bracelet, implying that he did something to Rachel and took it.
However, this is not necessarily the case: Chloe only accuses Frank of stealing the bracelet, but not stealing it from Rachel. She may well have told Chloe she'd given the bracelet to someone else, and Chloe was accusing Frank of having stolen it from that other person.
One possibility is that Rachel gave Frank the bracelet, then lied to Chloe saying she'd given it to someone else, along with other things to get Chloe off of Frank's trail.
This allows the possibility that Frank had the bracelet for quite some time. But it's not terribly likely: when the bracelet is being discussed, Chloe is completely silent about where she thought the bracelet was supposed to be. The obvious implication is that there was nothing marked about where she would expect to find it - i.e., Rachel should have been wearing it. Therefore, if she saw Rachel without the bracelet and Rachel lied about it, the lie would likely have involved something temporary - the string broke and had to be replaced, etc. - and Chloe must have inferred Rachel must have resolved the issue and taken the bracelet back before leaving.
Another possibility is that Rachel broke things off with Frank quite shortly before she disappeared, but they both understood this was just a time-out, and only then did she give Frank her bracelet as a symbol that they were still together. In this scenario Chloe might not be told anything at all, since she might not even have caught her without it.
However, in the photos we find in the RV Rachel is clearly not wearing that bracelet, so there definitely was a significant period where Frank had it and they were still together.

CONCLUSION: I do not believe the game is implying that Rachel had given Frank her bracelet any more than about a month before she disappeared, but not much less.

Frank is a drug dealer whose clientele includes many high schoolers.
Men who sexually abuse young people are typically repeat offenders.
Somehow I just can't imagine Frank being the sort who would be willing to waive debts or provide drugs in exchange for sexual favours. If anything, he's consistently shown to be more professional than people think he is, and what people think he is seems best encapsulated by Chloe's "cash, stash and mangy dog" comment.
Chloe does not discover anything resembling child pornography on Frank's computer.
At no point do either Chloe or Max discover a secret stash of pictures Frank has taken of any other Blackwell students, or otherwise received from them.
Both Rachel's letter and Frank's comments to Max can perfectly validly be read as ways of rationalizing predatory behaviour on Frank's part. But it can with equal validity be read as their own independent thoughts.
Between the Prescott connections and many implied others, and the dirt he has respecting Sera, and the favour James Amber still owes him for getting rid of Damon Merrick, Frank has no need to try to seduce Rachel to get an "in" with local law enforcement. A person as careful and socially withdrawn as Frank would not be sinking excessive resources into forming a web of manipulations to keep Rachel for his own sexual gratification without some other benefit. No such benefit exists that could not be better maintained by simply maintaining friendly relations with both Rachel and Chloe.
Frank is in a business where he can easily go to jail. Think for half a fucking second about what they do to kiddie diddlers there.

CONCLUSION: Frank has an overwhelming incentive not to be grooming an underage girl for sex, and has not demonstrated any inclination to do so distinguishable from mere criminality.

Dave was following Rachel some time before she disappeared.
This came about in relation to Rachel being caught with drugs.
Neither Dave's notes nor the police report are dated, but the police report indicates she was 18.
In his notes he mentions she was skipping class for a whole week, during which(?) he saw her together with Frank interacting in intimate-partner distance from each other.
Dave's notes about Rachel are found together with his notes on Kate and Max.
While both of them are Arcadia Bay natives, neither of them were ordinarily resident there recently until they came to Blackwell in August-September 2013. (I'll skip over why I think Kate would not have attended Blackwell for her junior year.)
However, at all times the game makes it clear to us that it's not showing us every single document that Max discovers. In any event the Rachel/Frank photo and incident must have been at least 4-5 months before Dave even has a file on Kate or Max, so their in-game proximity means very little.
What we are left with, however, is the implication that Rachel had been skipping class for a whole week just to be with Frank.
Ordinarily, Rachel is an overachieving student who has connections with all sorts of people and many different secret lives playing against each other.
The implication of all this is that Rachel had to go out of her way to make things happen with Frank, while she already had a full schedule. If Frank had been subtly grooming her for years would she not be used to having time reserved for him in the first place?

CONCLUSION: The best explanation therefore is that this was an unplanned fling for both of them.

Rachel's letter names only a single incident of Frank's violent outbursts.
She explicitly says that she has never seen him act like this before, and tells him that she has no tolerance for such things.
Frank goes off on these outbursts almost every time you meet him in the game.
There is obviously no prospect of any long-term union between them.
However, Rachel's (apparently earlier) apology letter talks about them driving out of AB together. The way everyone seems to think it likely Rachel had just left AB when she disappeared, she must have been talking like this with everybody around that time, making it more likely that this letter would be from spring 2013.

CONCLUSION: Given Rachel's noncommitment and Frank's irrational, almost randomly triggered violent outbursts, it's extremely unlikely they stuck together for more than a few months, and that's only if they were seriously trying. It does not appear that they were.

The above has me extrapolate the following timeline:

Late March to first half of April: Rachel gives bracelet to Frank, then leaves him
Around first half of April: Rachel starts following Jefferson?
April 22: Rachel is taken by Jefferson and killed
April-August: Chloe's and Frank's relationship gradually deteriorates over Rachel's disappearance
Early August: Chloe has the truck fixed and borrows $3000 from Frank
August-October: Chloe's and Frank's relationship rapidly deteriorates over the money combined with Rachel's disappearance

Spring Break 2013 is around middle of March, so Dave's observations about Rachel skipping class would make no sense if this had been confined to that period. This puts the period of their relationship most likely around February(?) through March 2013; alternatively (and it seems to me more likely - how many days does the BtS plot cover again? How many felonies does Chloe end up committing for her in that time?), they only started during Spring Break and this was a very short fling.

I should stress that none of this is intended to justify, endorse or excuse Frank's actions or role in all this. It is, however, intended to demonstrate that those actions and roles do not include certain predatory behaviour that would place him beyond a certain narrative moral event horizon as a character in a story that has otherwise dealt quite maturely with matters of abuse, gendered violence and sexual assault, which has as a central theme a coming-of-age story about a teenager who has just become a legal adult.