#they say shit like 'she's controlling and domineering' or 'she should've gone with them'

[everysongineverykey]

some guy commented on my narrator + toriel fic saying "well the narrator's done some questionable stuff once or twice but he's not the one who let SIX children DIE just to SPITE her ex-husband" lmaoooo bro did you even play undertale? you can just say you have no reading comprehension it's okay

[dalekofchaos]

We should've learned more about Max's parents

One of the things that annoys me about Life Is Strange is we never get any substance about Max's relationship with her parents.

She never answers her mom, but has no problem replying to her dad. Despite her dad dragging Max away from a grieving Chloe.

There's really no evidence to support Vanessa Caulfield is a bad mother or was harmful towards Max in any way shape or form. For all I know she could be a controlling mom over her neurodivergent child(I should know, my former friend is in that situation)

You could paint it as Vanessa is more outwardly abusive(control freak, domineering over Max's life), but Max’s dad Ryan is a pushover like Enid's dad from Wednesday and does whatever she tells him to (like, for example, “Time to go from William’s funeral, grab Max and make sure she comes along”) but she encourages Max's dreams. But since he doesn’t seem as bad as Vanessa on the surface, Max thinks of him as the one she can trust more (which is something she’d need to unpack in therapy at some point, cause in this scenario they’re both awful parents/people).

Maybe in a proper rewrite or a sequel that doesn't do a fucking 10 year timeskip, we could see some insight into Max's family life and why Max cut her mom out of her life.

You could add this during episode 3 or 4. Ryan and Vanessa return to Arcadia Bay after hearing all the crazy shit that's going on. A kid trying to commit suicide, freaky weather, a girl gone missing and their daughter caught up in the middle of all this. Ryan at first nicely asks Max to come home. Max insists that she's needed at Blackwell and she can't leave Chloe again. Vanessa then puts her foot down. She demands that Max come home and refuse to give Max a say in the matter. Chloe and Warren are defending Max from her mother. Vanessa tells Chloe "I don't know what the hell happened to you Chloe, but you will not drag my daughter down to your level, unlike you she actually has a future" then depending on who you choose between Chloe and Warren. With Chloe "Max I didn't sacrifice everything so you can go out and claim to be gay" with Warren "I don't know who you think you are, but you are nowhere near good enough for my daughter" and then Joyce shuts Vanessa down and defends Chloe and stands up for Max. If you sided with Chloe in episode 3, then Max gets the courage to finally stand up to Vanessa. "NO! I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE WITH YOU! You don't get it, do you mom? I didn't just come back to Arcadia Bay for Blackwell and Chloe, I came back to Arcadia to get away from you. You suffocate me. I was practically dragged from my grieving childhood best friend at her father's funeral when she needed me most. I know well enough to know pop wouldn't have done that without your say so. And maybe I never contacted Chloe for 5 years, because I was scared how you would react. You kept telling me "don't bother worrying about Chloe, you'll make new friends" meanwhile Chloe was going through hell, did you even bother to reach out to Joyce after William died, because it sure seems like you were in such a hurry to leave them behind and didn't care how it would affect Chloe or me. I was grieving too, William was like a second father to me and I needed the support, me and Chloe needed each other and you took her from me. God, I am sick of your need to control EVERY aspect of my life. My best friend tried to kill herself, Chloe's girlfriend is missing and there's a serial killer and a practical end of the world storm coming and I need to help stop what's coming. So please leave me be and just maybe, I will come home when all this is done and we can talk. But until then, just trust me and learn to respect my boundaries and me as a person mom. Vanessa laments and apologizes to Chloe, Warren, Joyce and most of all Max. Ryan smiles and wishes his daughter good luck and wishes Max happiness with Chloe or Warren. If you sided with David, David surprisingly stands up for Max and order Vanessa to leave their house or he would call the police.

but there is no evidence to support that as all her texts seem to be a supportive and worried mother. Max does give vague responses as the episodes go on, but leaving a parent in the dark like that but giving more to her dad more just makes you wonder...

Max and her mother sewed a cushion together, and thinking of the day they did that makes Max smile. She brings the cushion with her to Arcadia Bay and it is on her bed in her room. Max's mother sends Max a $200 dollar gift certificate and a box of chocolate coconut bites for her birthday. She and Max's father also send Max a birthday message. and Max mentions Vanessa is into true crime. So it might not be as bad as I made her out to be, but the complete lack of context and Max's lack of response to her mother just makes more to be desired.

I always thought this was because Max was just distracted with the investigation and finding out she has powers but she has the time to text other people. So it's weird.

And there doesn't seem to be a hint that we will get more answers about Max's family in Double Exposure. She ignores Vanessa like nothing ever happened and there is very little to suggest we'd ever see them.

I mean if we could actually see Chloe's family, house, William and her deteriorating relationship with her mom and her hatred of David. Hell, we get insight into Victoria's parents as she's pressured by her gallery owning parents. We know the horror story of the Prescott family and we see Kate having a doting father, but a domineering religious mother and a zealout of an aunt. We actually know nothing about Warren, but I chalk that up to DONTNOD being lazy and I know SE has no plans to revisit his character. But I choose to see Warren as the male Matilda. He had neglectful parents, so he found comfort in science, sci-fi and a lot of obscure but retro stuff. They were neglectful when he's young, but learning to be harsh/strict as he's shown his potential as a genius. But of course anything of substance for Warren's character is asking too much..

We should have seen Max's home life and even her childhood home in Arcadia Bay. We should have seen Max's dynamic with her parents whether it's a fucked up dynamic or not. we really should have gotten more of that explored in game.

[fishcemetery]

Very interested in your takes on Dominic Newlow. Would you like to elaborate on what do you think should have happened after the PSP finale? Do you think the other characters (involved in his wrongdoings / mind control) should have had some lines in regards to the stuff he did? Or anything else?

*anon makes me start thinking at 6.20 am*

As a preamble, it feels a bit awkward to muse about “they should've done this, they shoudn't've done that” long after the game was developed, published, played through and nearly forgotten. I lean more towards the approach of “what’s done is done, even if it’s disappointing in certain aspects; take your observations and make them into a decent AU material”.

That aside, I like your suggestion just because of how simple, yet satisfying it is. The devs could've at least made the characters properly acknowledge Doctor's disappearance and the impact he'd had on them. Oscar was mind-controlled and lost his entire workplace, yet his reaction is basically “Yeah, he’s gone, cool, great car by the way”. The Beakers definitely should've made some angry remarks. Hell, all major characters should've made some angry remarks. Sure, Strangetown is a strange town indeed, shit transpires here all the time and everyone’s used to it. But throughout the entire game we’re steadily prepared for the final battle against the villain, the plot’s peak point, and the fact that people barely give a damn afterwards straight up ruins the importance of everything we’ve done. It’s genuinely anticlimactic. So, I take it that Newlow wasn't of that much importance after all?

And now to the metalevel crap that I love so much. I’ve come to perceive this game as “Doctor desperately struggles against you, the Player”.

He rages against you. He says explicitly that you’ve traumatized him. Everything he does in the course of the game, his entire “evil plan” is, in fact, an attempt to avenge himself and, quite possibly, others. He actually makes it clear that he wants to save your character by pulling them from under your control.

(now that I think of it, it would’ve been amazing if this entire “Doctor Dominion” thing was a deliberate charade to make the Player think they’re doing some cliché heroics against a standard power-hungry evil guy, and get the character to where Doctor needs them without alerting the Player too soon. i’ll mark this as a decent AU material)

And in this light, when Doctor inevitably fails, it just seems natural and reasonable to let the Player have a bigger role in deciding his fate. Dangle the Plumbob over his head, break the crumbling fourth wall for good, have a face-to-face talk while your character is lying unconscious. Doctor’s accusing you of being a careless and selfish dictator – well then, let’s do something about it. Why don’t you prove him right? “Oh, I certainly am. And you certainly know what happens to a failed opposition under a dictatorship :33”. Whoosh – Doctor is gone, the helmet is hanging in the air, the character wakes up, the rest goes as scripted (of course, Circe still should get to call Newlow various censored words). On the other hand, why don’t you prove him wrong? “Am I, though? I was actually intending to make up for the wrongdoings that you consider to be mine and let you walk out of this situation. Here, I’ll get rid of this helmet, pick up this protagonist and Roberta’s head, we’ll go home, and you’ll go deal with your potential felonies. How you’re going to do it without mind control is up to your own free will :33”.

There’s a range of further developments I can think of. First of all, it feels odd that you never get to complete your initial goal – get your vehicle and leave this place. What’s the problem with having Oscar fix your masterpiece of a car, signing the Estate over to Emily (I mean, she’s literally attached to it) and going, like, home home? Whatever happens to Strangetown (and Newlow, if he lives) from that point on is really none of your business. End credits.

Or we can assume that the protagonist starts to like it in Strangetown and decides to stay here for an undetermined while. I don’t think there’s much of a necessity to differentiate between Doctor vanishes / Doctor lives outcomes if we want to keep things fairly simple and within the game framework. Leave Penelope Kline to housesit for Doctor, but give her some lines about him possibly being away “for a re-a-a-ally long time, ‘cause I think he’s facing jail or something.”

So, yeah, it all comes down to adding a little bit of extra dialogue. The denouement just seems rushed.

The outcome that I personally would like to explore the most is Doctor ending up under the protagonist’s supervision and having to personally face people he’s hurt, fix his mistakes and come to terms with himself, his scripted past, the Player, the Developers (hi, Isaac Rossum) and so on. However, this not only creates a brand new plotline and exceeds the game limits in general, but is also fueled by my very subjective interest in the character, that's why I’m marking it as another decent AU material and keep on making fan art.

Hope this was elaborate enough (･ω･)

(it’s interesting how just last night I was committing alcohol consumption on the city’s main embankment and monologuing on the exact same topic to my friend, who'd been blissfully unaware of TS2 PSP a mere hour before that)