วีดีโอ

🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱

The academic vocab and structure bounced me off a bit, but I pushed through and holy shit this video is amazing! You articulate so many of my feelings about Chloe (and the fandom's reaction to her) really well.

Bts is dooky

Thank you so much for this analysis 💗

great video

Will you play life is strange double exposure in the future?

im still very split on which choice i personally agree with between sacrificing chloe and sacrificing arcadia bay. if you put it at its simplest, save one vs save thousands, the "obvious" option would be to save thousands. (i personally think looking at the choice this way is stupid and redundant) if you look at it thematically, you're choosing between rebellion and rejection of the systems that have constantly had harmful effects on chloe and the rest of the characters (which was very intentionally shown) and embrace of the human, the artistic, and the emotional vs choosing the systems that we have seen the effects of and have been fighting for the entirety of the game, and choosing the answer that these systems have taught us is "right". but who's to say that it means that the thousands of people in arcadia bay, who you could argue are also just victims of these systems, should die? isn't that just an example of these systems' philosophy that human lives are disposable? i choose humanity > systems, but ironically, that causes more human losses than choosing the systems. but if you look at it through the lens of disability, choosing to save chloe is a symbol of hope for disabled people living in a society and within systems that don't value them or treat them how they deserve. to choose to save chloe is to choose to reject that notion that disabled people's lives are worth less than anyone else's, that they're "problems" or undeserving of compassion or care, that they're not allowed to take up space and don't deserve to exist. i don't think there is a universal right option here - there's a reason why the statistics for this decision are 50/50 - but depending on which way you look at the decision, there's a right answer for each individual playing the game.

i related to mae back then. she was too much, too energetic / impulsive, too violent, too Out-Of-The-Loop, too inaproppiate. Mostly here to have fun, who cares about work etc. Stealing for fun rather than necessity, messing around. But rediscovering this game, I could cry. Shes like me. Shes like me. Im like her. Being jobless and seeing others work, go to school, be Adults, going places. Yet here we are, both "adults", both neurodivergent and stuck. Once youre in her shoes, it hits so much harder. Seeing capitalism break everyone around you, and not "contributing", you dont want to but most importantly you couldnt... idk. im rambling but wow this game hits so hard. i cherish it and i thank you for making this video on it.

34:19 lmao yes!

I rarely like watching people play video games with no commentary, so these videos were really thoughtful and nice to watch! thank you

This is the best video I've seen in a long time. Really, really good work. Personally, I feel so understood being neurodivergent myself. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for this video.

My biggest disappointment when I played this is that you don’t unlock anything by setting the high score on the miner-themed arcade game.

The Voice acting work in the junkyard is so good, because Ashly Burch the VA for Chloe, 2 weeks before doing this scene lost a close friend to a overdose, this was done in one take and Hannah, Max's also lost a close loved one around the same time, the tears the two shed in this are genuine. They were asked if it was better if they rescheduled and they said no, they were also in the same room when shooting the emotional scenes. this scene was actually done in a single take, not a second one was done because it was perfect. as it captured the genuine emotion the two were still processing from their own grief. And my theory on the deer, the first time you actually see it, it leads you to where Rachels body is and stands over it you just don't know the meaning of it by that point. My Theory is that Deer was Rachel's spirit animal and Max shares the same spirit animal so that's why she could see it, it was Rachel trying to lead them to her body, and it lowers it's head as if it's sad before it disappears, seeing Chloe breaking down.

I actually disagree with people that think Chloe is meant to die. Instead, the point of the game is that you can't save everyone. Sometimes saving just one person is all you can do. Let us consider the storm and Max's powers. While the common opinion is that Max caused the storm, Max first saw the Storm before seeing Chloe die and before her powers manifested. Further, in the timelines in which Chloe is killed outside of the bathroom, the Storm still hits. This is suggestive then that the Storm is going to hit Arcadia Bay no matter what. When Max won the Everyday Hero contest, the Storm hits Arcadia Bay nine days after it hit in other timelines. While some might like to claim that the Storm hits because Max used her time travel abilities, the fact is this: Max uses her time travel abilities in the Sacrifice Chloe ending. She remembers fully what happened. She went through a picture and then emerges on the other side to a sunny funeral... and full memory of what happened. But since she traveled through time, if her powers caused the Storm Arcadia Bay will still be destroyed... and Chloe will be dead as well. It's why I don't buy Max's power causing the storm. I actually believe the Storm causes Max's powers. Correlation is now the same thing as causation. Max is having flash-forwards of the Storm. She is not causing it however. Indeed, for all we know, the Storm may be causing Max's abilities. She may think it's because of Chloe as was said in Chapter Five but recall: the Storm was seen in her first vision before Chloe appeared. And the people who claim Max caused the Storm (either Max herself or Warren) are not scientists. They are high school students and are working off of time travel tropes from science fiction. They are making assumptions that cannot be verified. As for Chloe herself... Chloe suffers from self-destructive behaviors and may be borderline suicidal. Her offer to die for Arcadia Bay is born of guilt. She does not want her mother to die. She has had an adversarial relationship with her mother and her stepfather and this Storm is going to make it so she cannot make amends. So if she dies? She doesn't suffer that guilt. Her offer to die is ultimately selfish, it's also selfless at the same time she is wiling to die to save everyone else, it's both Selfish and Selfless not something that can normally correlate with each other. Now, consider Max herself. The further into the series we go, the more we see Max doubling down on her decision: Chloe must live. Even as Chloe argues on letting her die, Max is saying Chloe is her number one priority. So would Max save a town of people she barely knows? There's two people in Arcadia Bay that she has a connection with: Chloe, and Joyce. The rest of the students? Are people who has known for slightly over one month... and will likely not see again after she graduates from high school. Literally this is "would you sacrifice your best friend for a town of strangers?" If you are an 18-year-old girl who is growing increasingly traumatized after being abused and all-but-molested and who has one person she can confide in, one person she can trust, one person she may even be in love with? No. You don't let your friend's guilt keep you from ripping up that photograph. You let that town die and you feel horrible guilt over it... but I think Max finally realized the truth: you can't save everyone. So save the ones you can and accept you're not a superhero. Accept you're ordinary. I personally couldn't let her die. Just imagine, she thinks her father abandoned her, then you abandoned her since she will never know about the entire week, then rachel abandoned her. I couldn't let her die thinking that she was completely alone and had no reason to really live. Second, Max did really love her and wrote in her diary at some point that she wouldn't be able live without Chloe. If you lost Chloe, what next? You couldn't ever talk to anyone about it, you couldn't ever mention it without people thinking you're crazy. You'd have to completely hold it in and know it was your decision to let her die. Also with people saying think of Joyce and David, any parent would give life and limb to save their child no matter the cost. Imagine Joyce having to live with burying William AND Chloe. We saw David break down after telling him Chloe was dead. I don't think I would be able to do that to anyone. Many of the character developments that happened throughout the game changed people for the better, and those changes would mean nothing if you went back in time. That is why Chloe lives. Also think about the PTSD Max would experience after this without Chloe she'd have no one to confide in to cope, LIS1 already tackles some mental health stuff with Nathan and the medication he uses suggests some stuff, so it's not out of norm for the game. She would still of experienced the dark room everything in the week the loss of so many people. the stuff in the other timeline's she'd have no one to actually talk to it about because, they'd think she is crazy.

Rachel's mom and dad seem to reflect Chloe and Elliot. A dark what if.

"Elamon's died like a million times at this point" so basically Chloe?

honestly I love the hc of Steph having powers and not even realizing it, especially since Gabe just mentioned a female relative and she pegged it as his sister (of course he could have mentioned it in another conversation, but still).

Unpopular opinion, I hate the Fosseball why they have to include it in the first place I mean, I love being able to romance Steph , but the fact that you have to play foosball in order to romance her to the highest level makes me mad. Love your content. Keep up the good work.😊

THIS VIDEO IS SO IMPORTANT. Loved it.

1:10:24 right oooon. fuck.

The Child Sorcerer thing reminds of low morality Daniel a little bit.

I'm surprised unreasonable snow doesn't give Steph flashbacks to Arcadia Bay considering that was one of the first indicators of The Storm.

The dnd story about the children disappearing made me think of Rachel...also the city that's perfect a price thing, too.

AND YES you are so right about all the parallels between Blood Brothers and Sacrifice Arcadia Bay, the way they drive each together each time, and Sean comforting Daniel like Chloe comforts Max because Sean's been Daniel's anchor same way Chloe's been Max's, is soooo good to me, god. My beautiful homicidal queer babies.

Thank you so much for this wonderful playthrough, your insights are so amazing and on point in every video!!! Are you gonna drop stream videos for the other games too?

I'm always astonished when people say lis1 is less political than lis2 or that the political aspects of lis2 came out of left field when the maze sequences exists.

honestly if I were Chloe the fact that Max not only drastically rewrote my reality in multiple ways, but didn't tell me about it for ages I would have blown all the way up.

Hi, by any chance, are you going to be uploading your play through of LIS2 on TH-cam I am able to go to the twitch website but it is easier for me to just watch a video so I’m just asking your take on this so far😊

I decided to download the game after watching this, and it was like an ADHD life simulator. I played for 6 hours last night, four of which were playing the Demontower game within a game on Mae’s computer. I’m stuck on Level 7, because, even when I manage to beat the boss, the damage-inflicting snail trail he leaves behind blocks my exit. A sadist must have designed that boss fight. I’ll keep at it; not moving on with the story until I’ve beaten every level.

I always felt it was BS that Max had to sacrifice her art and success in order to be with Chloe. I guess some unstoppable force of destiny preventing Max from “having it all,” so to speak, was more narratively compelling than a fully happy ending. I agree that the decision to save Chloe was the obvious and more consistent one. Max loves Chloe, and it wasn’t her responsibility to entertain some twisted version of the trolley problem. She chose to save Chloe; she didn’t choose to sacrifice the rest of the townspeople.

thank you so much for this video. actually seeing chloe as a neurodivergent, hurt and barely coping girl in a world full of inescapable ableism & misogyny... helps a lot. i feel i understand her better, and other teens who lash out, hate authority. i hate authority too and only recently stopped to appease and fit into this Socially Acceptable Mold. it helps to see her story to accept mine, to comfort my inner angry teen that feels the world is endlessly unfair. because it is. it helps to reflect on how i treat other nd, insane or stressed folks. thank you again.

Never played this game ever, wasn't even much of a gamer growing up but I found your channel through one of your LIS playthroughs and let me just say I love listening to all of your insights and video essays and discourse, I swear you live inside my own brain or something lol

Gods, I remember seeing Mae’s whole explanation on why she almost killed that kid for the first time. It really made me step back and appreciate how wonderfully written this game is. That little bit of dialogue really impacted me as a neurodivergent person, and I still cherish this game so, _so_ much. It will never cease to be in my top five.

I always find it fascinating when games that look at first glance like something light can be the ones that pack the biggest punch. The beautiful visuals and the humour of this game ease people into the deeper and darker themes and plot points in a way that makes them more powerful when they arise. No matter how cute Mae looks, she faces real problems, as do her friends, and none of them are made easier by the profoundly exploitative capitalist society we live in. But despite all that, Mae and her friends persist, and it is a journey the player is glad to take with them.

well i just watched throughout this entire video and my gosh this was just so so good. i havent necessarily played night in the woods but hearing about it from this angle had me nodding a bunch of a bajillion times. im subscribing immediately.

i am absolutely ecstatic to watch this video. as a disabled person, nitw has been my favourite game for YEARS and this is in the cards to be one of my favourite videos ever.

What you said about accessibility sort of has me thinking about how this whole series is about accessibility, or lack thereof, to art spaces, just not in a purely disability-based sense. like lis1 takes place in these traditionally "artsy" spaces such as art schools and galleries, where Max has an opportunity to build her art career, while all the other protags (Chloe, Sean, Alex) don't have access to those spaces or opportunities despite being as talented and committed to their art as she is, due to various societal barriers fueling the fucked-up shit in their lives. so all those games are about the art and life you create outside those "traditional spaces" that shut you out. and you see an example of that here, Max choosing to leave the gallery, and her success, to help Chloe, (a fellow artist) who doesn't have access to the safety in San Francisco, which Max gives up to save her.

re the statues, they're funny how extremely...leg-focused? Especially considering what both you and Game Assist mentioned re the space being physically inaccessible. Like it's not exactly a taunt, but in a way it could be if you got weird enough about it. Although honestly the "walkers viewed from the side" arrangement reminds me very distantly of the lis2 poster, so maybe they were being clever there.

21:42 More angel references, lol. Which is funny because the end of this game is all about Max deciding to either be the angel who saves Arcadia Bay by killing Chloe or the avenging angel who damns it by saving her. Or maybe it's about deciding whether to be Chloe's angel over everyone else...

I love your ted talks so much! Your stream of the lis games are my favorite because you're clearly thinking about so many things while you're playing and I love it--there's so much I never really recognized in lis1 until you started talking about. And because I keep bringing up lis2 in these comments, I will admit I'm really interested in how your ideas about art and representation reflect on Sean's sketches--obviously he isn't like Jefferson, and he isn't really like Max, but I do think the way decisions he makes about the way he portrays himself and Daniel in his art reflects a lot of that game's themes about the decisions marginalized communities make about how they represent themselves in art, the choice between optimistic, cheerful portrayals and grimmer, angrier ones, among other things. And then there's the same thoroughline of Daniel deliberately posing/being observed that Max has with Chloe, with the added caveat that Sean doesn't just replicate Daniel's image, but actively shapes how Daniel views himself and his environment.

27:20 definitely get why you didn't pick the "Warren?" option here but tbh I do love it so much because it ends with Kate saying "Even angels need angels, Max" which I always go feral about because a) the callback to Chloe calling Rachel her angel b) the continued placing of Max on a pedestal that you've been discussing through the playthrough c) the series's first dialogue reference to a connection between powered characters and Christian iconography that lis2 leans HARD into (the Daniel Is Blessed By God theory, etc). strangeverse superpowers as an element of violent divinity my beloved.

What is interesting to me is that everybody thinks that Samuel is so creepy and Jefferson is the villain and I keep having to remember that they are played by the same person so I get why people think that Samuel would’ve played a bigger role because his interest in spiritual stuff comes across as creepy but really he was a warning to us, Jefferson, who happens to be played by the same actor and of being the villain all alone I’m sorry for I’m saying is not making sense but this was just something that I felt like I had to get out

Technically, it’s not possible to be disabled in the womb, because disability refers to society being unable or unwilling to fully accommodate or support us. A fetus can’t experience that kind of disadvantage sitting around in amniotic fluid, hidden away from the world. If you’re speculating about being AuDHD in the womb, I don’t think researchers are anywhere close to determining at what point the development of an AuDHD brain diverges from that of other types of brains. LOL, now I’m thinking of that Threshold Kids bit from Control where Uncle Mr. Bones is explaining the different types of brains to Meg.

It's so funny how Victoria is constantly trying to be cool and sophisticated, but also...infantilizes herself at the first sign of trouble? Like depending on how you play the conversation with her, she can go "I'm a teenager at an art school" like that's supposed to excuse what she did to Kate (something that comes up again later in the dark room, her hammering in how young she is after contributing to someone just that young being put through a similarly experience), not to mention how she makes it seem like forces out of her control are causing her to be mean to Max, bringing up her parents' art gallery for whatever fucking reason, the general complete refusal to take responsibility for her actions like she's a little girl instead of a legal adult. It's something she's able to do as a wealthy white woman who's automatically seen as purer and more vulnerable by everyone around her, and she takes advantage of it pretty shamelessly. Then the fandom sort of feeds into it by, instead of embracing Victoria's complexities, presenting her as "too young to know any better" and somehow too much of a naive widdle baby to realize that her endlessly tormenting Kate, refusing to take the rape video down, etc., is...bad for Kate's mental health, lol. Also it's a level of grace that rarely gets presented to ACTUAL child characters who are genuinely too young to know better--*cough* Daniel *cough,* which of course has noooothing to do with racism or classism, lol.

I remember somebody saying the owl represents Jefferson, but honestly he's way too cute for that.

Hearing you're gonna do Blood Brothers is a relief tbh.

Also I love you talking about the parallels between listc and lis2, I feel that people have a habit of automatically lumping tc and lis1 together because of Girls Kissing and Small Town Mystery, which I get, but listc and lis2 have a lot of themes in common too--racism, systemic violence, sibling dynamics, parental death/parental abandonment, the creation of fantasy worlds as a coping mechanism, the way Alex and Daniel's powers are linked a lot more closer to their emotions than Max's are, etc. Sorry I just think the way these games fit together is so good and I love you talking about it sm.

YOU ARE SO FUCKING RIGHT ABOUT THE MAX DAVID THING OH MY GOD, like that instinct to surveil and lie that makes Max understand him because of the way they inadvertently mirror each other. It's a thing that carries over into the other games, too--Alex's instinct to just casually read the thoughts of everyone around her, Sean lying to Daniel and Daniel (potentially) going behind his back for the heist--all the messy decisions they make for each other on instinct.

Hi, I love your content. I discovered you through this playthrough and I’m just curious what is your opinion on the new Life Is Strange double exposure announcement?

Maybe the Blade Runner thing has something to do with the whole part of replicants hiding among humans and being hunted for it--characters who are "different" in this intrinsic ways, like Max with her powers or Chloe and Max with their queerness and various disabilities.