#I thought that i didnt matter

[dracyab]

When I first heard about the new game in September last year, I was excited, and the photos I saw of the new setting looked really cool! but then as soon as the game was announced and I heard it was a new game with Max, I was excited, until I watched the trailer and saw how everything was changing. This wasn't them creating a game with Max Caulfield because they wanted to continue her story, this was DeckNine creating a game with a popular main character because they knew they could make money and bring back old fans, even if we knew they were going to taint her legacy. Because what does digging up a grave matter if there's gold housed inside?

It was always a cash grab and never about the story. Like said in the posts above, it was always about using Pricefield as a tool and then to break them up as a plot device to drive their versions of the characters into the situations they wanted them in, so that they could create this story about yearning for a new partner when the love of your life has broken up with you for whatever reason they give (idk I haven't played the game).

DeckNine doesn't care about its characters, they care about money, and they care about making stories that passably fit into the life is strange universe. But Life is Strange is a series that is about its characters and how they feel othered from the world around them. Life is Strange, as said above, is completely and totally about the queer experience of not feeling like you belong in the world around you. They're games about then coming to terms with the people who do care about you and whom you care about, and finding a way to make the future work with them even if you have to let everything crash down around you.

Because you matter, and the people you love matter even when the world tells you that you don't.

"but it's realistic that they would breakup"

Not the point.

"But they had a lot of trauma the re-"

Also not the point.

"But at least she's a-"

Absolutely not the point.

Y'all trying to justify a narrative choice from within the narrative constraints.

That's a mistake.

Just like how many people never understood why so many would pick Bae ending, so many people just don't seem to get what the pairing meant overall.

Y'all realise what this pairing meant to people when it came out?

Despite the issues with the ending, the adoration and love the pairing has to this day has been earned by the game - it's inseparable from the franchise and it's reception.

It wasn't just another pairing. It wasn't just something that existed as bait or something within fanon or something developers never committed to.

Through the years plenty of ships get baited disingenuously while throwing the audience nothing but breadcrumbs - for example the disaster of Sherlock fandom, the mess with Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Voltron and so on. Or the way Blake/Yang in RWBY were the most blatant baiting that got no on-screen development(despite all the setup that show ignored for years) till the moment the show literally was getting axed and they wanted to milk LGBTQ+ community for money one last chance.

And some shows would stumble into something important but fail to realise it and thus end up squashing it - ask Buffy fans about Tara and Willow or The 100 fans about clexa.

There were LGBTQ+ pairings in video games too but rarely they would be so front and center and very often would be playersexual.

This wasn't what Life is Strange ended up being.

Life Is Strange, at the very core is about queer experience - about fitting in, about making connections in the world that rejects you, about finding beauty in the life that hates and hurts you - Max and Chloe's relationship is the key to the entire game.

For some that meant letting go but for others? It gave the chance to fight a trope no matter what and to get an ending, albeit flawed, where a WLW pairing they liked can be happy and face the future together.

People lived through those two characters and their experiences finding something genuine to relate to.

Max and Chloe were that generation's Korra/Asami, Willow/Tara, etc.

Even DONTNOD recognised that in the end and treated it with respect.

Double Exposure might not pull a BYG outright but it sure does everything to kill the happy memories a fandom made about the pairing - to go back through every single ray of sunshine one ending got and subvert it, taint it, reject it.

Picking the Bae choice when playing Double Exposure is the Narrative constantly telling you how wrong you were to expect happiness when you picked the ending where the pairing is intact and how acshually it isn't intact!

It doesn't kill the characters but it sure goes an extra mile to kill what those characters MEAN to the audience.

Realism, plausibility and so on come after - it's what a writer does when they decide on a path. A writer doesn't just do something because it makes sense and is out of their control - they decide to do it and then make it make sense. Whether they succeed or not depends on how good a writer is.

Double Exposure isn't the story about a breakup. It isn't the story about two women dealing with their trauma.

Double Exposure treats an iconic pairing people cared about as a backstory element - nothing more.

Deck Nine expects the audience to accept what happened and move on to shiny new cast and possible new LIs.

The writers of Double Exposure are telling you - "look, this doesn't matter. Now here's a new mystery you can solve and new cast and look Max is back and you liked using her powers right? Use powers to do stuff."

To this developer team the core element of what made the franchise so important to its audience is nothing more than a leftover plot thread to "write around".

Because to these writers queer experience apparently starts and stops with searching for a relationship - someone being in a relationship that's not part of the story or someone being comfortable NOT being in a relationship at all just don't exist.

What Deck Nine writers seem to be doing is treating it as disposable or interchangeable/replaceable, while also inadvertently tainting whatever comes after with fandom rage.

The worst thing that can happen to a new character is being "the next love interest" - because people channel their frustrations towards the character (or in some worst cases, please don't do this, the actor).

Where there was an iconic part of the franchise Double Exposure, intentionally or not, sets up a toxic battle ground.

That's the point - treating LGBTQ+ audience as sales numbers, manipulating us, treating something that has been a formative experience to so many lives as disposable, or worse yet - malleable.

(And yes there's also a wider issue with Deck Nine and the working conditions there, misogyny, the nazi imagery and the rest but I don't think this is that disconnected from that? How they treat their audience and subject matter is a reflection of culture inside.)

[pinkfey]

i saw a video where a woman’s husband said hello to her best friend (they touched cheeks with a short mwah) and so many people felt that this would be a personal boundary violation for them, so i’m curious what the consensus is!!

keeping it simple, no nuance + if u think ur ethnicity or culture has to do w your answer i would love to know!! 🫂😚💕��

[gomzdrawfr]

content warning: blood

Loyal to a fault

bonus + other versions:

Bonus:

Alt:

the words on Ghost's body reads:

LOVE (level of violence)

it takes a monster to destroy a monster (poorly cropped i apologize)

Loyal Dog

Vēnor (Latin verb for hunt, chase)

this is something very different to what I usually do I hope yall don't mind....also this was me when I was sharing this with my friends...because priceghost/ghostprice dynamic really gets a grip on me

[ocelhirapilled]

okay so im very excited for DBDs next 2v8

[padfootastic]

i just remembered that canonically, sirius got to godrics hollow after hagrid.

which means that after he had his godson taken away from him (bc lbr that’s exactly what hagrid and dumbledore’s orders basically did) then he went into the house and saw james and lily’s dead bodies alone. no buffer in the form of harry crying out for his parents or even the godfatherly instinct of making sure his kid is alright.

he was there, with his brother and friend’s cooking body, all alone. stewing in grief and pain and rage and guilt. ALONE.

do we even know how long he was there? for all we know, he could’ve been catatonic right there besides james all day.

[soriastrider]

this has almost certainly been done before, but i think it's funny so i did it anyway

original:

[arovalentines]

all you ever need is to be nice and friendly

[claitea]

i've had these scenarios written down since volo's debut in pokemon masters and i just really wanted to scribble them down and finally release them

[critter-wizard]

ep 43 had me tearing up in a fucking shopping centre ‼️‼️

b+w alt version that I truly couldn't decide if I liked it more . Also I included a lot of thoughts in the tags but they're somewhat incoherent<3

[thechy-fychannel]

y'all ever think abt how it was julie having the affair and it is even said multiple times that she was the one who left him, yet wilson was still the one who left their home and moved in with house. like. he couldn't bear to stay in their home alone. he immediately ran to house and stayed on his couch for weeks. suffered through his pranks and his laziness and his manipulation. telling him he wants him gone while sabotaging his attempts to leave. and he only left once he got a girlfriend again.

[elftwink]

going to say something about writing that is not a complaint and i know it sounds exactly like someone complaining but the conclusion i have drawn is that this rules. preface over am currently "working on" (in the most generous, nebulous sense possible) an original fantasy story & i just keep finding more stuff about the world i need to decide because it feels extremely formative to me even though it will barely appear on the page, if at all

but like... just the sheer volume of communication irl that happens symbolically that you never question becomes so apparent when you try to create a world that doesn't have those things or doesn't have the conditions for such a thing to be created. writing a character wearing a wedding ring and then going wait a minute— would these people communicate marital status via ring placement? why do we do that irl? when did we start? surely thats not the only way people ever communicate marriage— what does everyone else do? and really, come to think of it, what does it mean to be 'married' in this fictional world i'm creating? is there a legal component or just a social one? should it have all the same connotations/obligations as the real world (e.g. monogamy, having children, romantic love, impact on finances, etc)?

you can do this with literally Everything In The World. what language is everyone speaking? is it the same one? how many languages are there in the region i'm writing about? is the language we're speaking anyone's second language? when did they learn? is bilingualism common? and where does everyone here live? speaking of living, is that a permanent dwelling situation or are people nomadic? what's the climate like? are all the characters here used to the climate or is someone used to ten degrees cooler and kind of short tempered because of it? the clothes are probably impacted by the weather, what's everyone wearing? what's it made out of? what would be around here that could be used for dye? help me i have a case of worldbuilders disease and its incurable. these motherfuckers are never going to finish this journey because i cant even get them on the page long enough to pack a cart. also would they use carts? when did we start having cart and carriages pulled on roads irl? if there's roads, who's maintaining them— or is it just the path from years of people travelling that way? does the terrain allow for wheeled vehicles or would some other way be better?

anyway. you may call all this a waste of time and "not technically writing" since i "havent written any prose". i think im just slow cooking this novel. oooooh im thinking about it so much. you just wait when im like 56 im going to knock your socks right off with my intricate detailed world where i thought about everything except whatever element of society you understand most deeply. that part i fucked up and clearly didn't know anything about. sorry

[ria-starstruck]

and also "putting everyone in a simulation will make it all ok 👍" and also "let's park next to this random system's sun" and also "we can't live on our own planet because of our own folly" and so on

[a-caterpillars-world]

The Chariot and his entourage

[I] [II] [III] [IV] [V] [VI] [VII]

[oifaaa]

…what did the british do now?

What haven't the British done recently but specifically my grievance today is that someone at dc choose to give Jason and Alfred the same birthday which means I cant enjoy looking at cute Jason todd art without the old bastard eventually showing up oh woe is me

[estrangedandwayward]

Okay but like do you think the flight home after driftmark was fun? Like yeah aemond just lost an eye and they're all in huge trouble but once their up in the air, all three of them on dragon back together for the first time, would that even matter? I bet they were doing tricks and seeing who could fly the fastest, yelling things at eachother and laughing. They're kids, and we know that they all love their dragons, and I just can't imagine they weren't thrilled to finally be able to fly together

[jackass-jones]

Thinking of vlr Akane is so conflicting cuz on one hand I’m so upset that she doesn’t ever get a moment to just rest and enjoy being alive again I’m upset that she just gets deeper and deeper into this role she’s built for herself and she loses her humanity and will never ever be that girl who died in the incinerator. But on the other hand, I need her to get so, so much worse I need her to be so obsessed with perfection she has this unique ability to change the course of history and she will burn everything and everyone to the ground in the blink of an eye if it means she can "reset" and get a perfect timeline and I desperately need her to never be satisfied with anything because really, is there anything that’s worth all the damage she’s caused?