Sara here - I'd really appreciate it if folks read and consider this pinned comment before engaging in the comments section of this video. A lot of folks in their responses to this video take issue with our political position on euthanasia. This is a position which is informed by our own lived experiences and evolving politics as Disabled people, which is shared by many Disabled people and Disabled peoples' organisations, most notably Not Dead Yet, whose website we really, really recommend thoroughly checking out here. notdeadyet.org A Disability politics informed stance against euthanasia is informed by the historic normalisation and political use of euthanasia as part of a project of eugenics against Disabled people. This is an indisputable material, historical fact and reality. You can read more about this in many places, but a strong example to start with is the article "Useless Eaters: Disability as a Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany", by Mark P. Mostert, which you can read here. courses.washington.edu/intro2ds/Readings/Mostert%20Useless%20Eaters.pdf This being said, disability and Disabled people are not a monolith and you are welcome to disagree with us in the comments, but please do so respectfully. Some of our comments in the final version of this video, at the time it was made, were made with emotion coming from a place of our own personal trauma and experience as Disabled people. We hope that you can approach this with empathy and understanding. As with any creation, years later we are able to look back on this video and see it as a product of our experience and opinions at the time it was made. For example, I personally no longer identify with the BPD self-diagnosis, and occupy a much more critical approach of diagnostic categories and psychiatry in general. I have also had some personal experience with euthanasia of a loved one in the years since this video would made, and while I still maintain my political position on it, I deeply empathise with the emotions of many of you in the comments, who disagree with my stance. While I understand the emotions you must be feeling, and why this video might generate an emotional response, I ask that you don't dismiss our position, but consider it and research it further. I think we could have made it clearer, in retrospect, that we didn't intend to make a moral or ethical judgement about euthanasia in whatever someone's individual circumstances might be. If I was making this video today, I would aim to avoid us coming across as judgemental here, but I would not change my point of view on this particular issue. This is because the political point still very much does stand. Why do people campaign for "the right to die" but not for universal housing or allowance for Disabled people? It's unavoidable that the promotion of euthanasia has dire material consequences, which, plainly, is the eugenics of Disabled people, which reached a most lethal height in Nazi Germany, as the article linked above shows. This is not an individual moral or ethical judgement, as each case is different, but it is a political and systematic reality, and culture is not detached from that reality. Culture informs material reality, and material reality informs culture. The normalisation of euthanasia in culture is part of why we don't ask the right questions, why instead of campaigning for liveable conditions for Disabled people and the abolition of a disablist capitalist system, so many people are campaigning for the "right" of Disabled people to die. With this in mind, the decision whether or not to euthenise Chloe in Life is Strange must be made with these political, material considerations in mind. Our hope is that your consideration of this decision in the game will lead you to deeper considerations about this issue in real life, where Disabled lives are very much on the line. As with any dilemma, the choice whether or not to kill Chloe is not abstractly philosophical, but exists within a material and political context, just as I argue regarding the trolley problem. And the right questions must be asked: can we really know if Chloe would want to die if she had access to school, social life, independence and autonomy, regardless of her physical condition? With love and with solidarity, Sara
If I could, I'd make every other narrative designer watch this video. It's incredible. As a disabled narrative designer - autistic, bpd, fibromyalgia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, c-ptsd, raynauds syndrome, excessive fatigue and very likely EDS - this hit me right in my heart, all through. I've been bedbound for the last five years or so, the last two where I was actually allowed to rest. There were many times when I thought about the choice to kill Chloe that Life is Strange offers in that alternate timeline. It was one of the reasons I stopped watching a let's play of it, that and the sexual assault, and it is not an exaggeration to say that watching players treat that choice as a legitimate debate contributed to my own suicidality. I have asked my best friend to kill me so many times that it's now a call and response in our household that makes us laugh - "Kill me." "No. I don't want too. It'd be hard and I'm tired." There have been so many times when people have congratulated me for existing. Told me how brave I am. Said they couldn't do it. And it's so dehumanizing, every time, because there's always that undercurrent like they want to ask me how I manage, if they don't do so outright. That makes my existence a moral choice. This analysis is superb. It is clear, accessible to people who are unfamiliar with the international disability community, an incredible piece of game analysis and critique, and it made me cry, a lot. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that the writers on this game thought about all of this, when they made it an option to kill Chloe in that alternate timeline, but I don't know if I'm ready to forgive them yet for the wave of ableist fan content presenting it like they did unleashed.
i loved your video essay on life is strange 2 and was excited to see what insight you may offer for it’s predecessor. that is to say, the video is good, of course, but i find myself disagreeing with a good bit of it-namely, chloe’s deaths. but these are just my thoughts, and i think it’s important to offer both sides of a dilemma to see the full picture-so here are my counter arguments: on my initial play through, i did not kill chloe in episode 4. i felt it was wrong. now, i am approaching this as someone who suffers from a chronic autoimmune disorder. i am nowhere near as disabled as chloe, and honestly don’t consider myself disabled in the first place, but i can still empathize with chloe’s situation to a greater extent than someone without my condition. i first played life is strange when i was 13 and at the height of my condition. because of this, i was unable to see how killing chloe was okay. when i replayed it at a later age and was no longer suffering as terribly, however, i was able to view the situation with an unbiased lens. hence, removing ourselves and our experiences from a situation can offer a completely different perspective. after this, i was able to see something i completely ignored at first: you aren’t deciding whether chloe lives or dies. you are deciding HOW she dies. she will die regardless of max’s decision, and soon. this is stated explicitly in the game, but is elaborated on even greater upon further exploration of the price’s house. like you said, chloe is given no agency in this timeline and her offer to max is the final way she can alas decide her own fate. she can die alone, slowly, and painfully or with her best friend at her side. still, i rather not give chloe the overdose; it just feels wrong. but you can’t argue that someone is a bad person for choosing to allow chloe to die. it’s not black or white; morality is life is strange is so subjective and is the reason the franchise is one of my favorites. now for the big one… i chose to sacrifice chloe. and it was an easy decision. not one i particularly enjoyed, but i knew that according to my moral beliefs, that was the lesser of two evils. there are two reasons i chose this ending and stay by it today: personal and thematic. personal: this is going to sound like i’m making this up but i can assure you this, ironically, is something that happened. so my entire home town got destroyed by hurricane laura in 2020. i did not evacuate. i experienced the storm in real time, in all its destructive glory. it was traumatizing. for a month, i did not have electricity of any kind, but luckily i came prepared: i downloaded the mobile version of life is strange on my phone. now how the hell am i gonna play that game and choose the sacrifice arcadia bay ending after everything i just experienced? it’s so ironic it’s actually hilarious i’m not gonna lie. deadly hurricanes aside, let’s talk morality. i love very deeply, and would do anything for the people i love. but there is not a person in this world that would warrant the killing of thousands. full stop. to sacrifice arcadia bay is to allow the slaughtering of human lives-both innocent and not. whereas people like jefferson certainly deserved to die, people like joyce and kate and npc #47 did not. personally, i cannot imagine living with myself if i knew i had allowed that to happen. i could, however, live with myself if i allowed one person-who willingly volunteered-to die. some may argue that human lives have no numerical value; one person’s life may be worth hundreds to someone. but not to me. it just feels…selfish. yes, that one person may be worth hundreds of lives to me, but what do those hundreds of lives mean to other people? everyone loves. no human life is worth more than another. thematic: listen, i’m a writer at heart. i love themes i love foreshadowing i love symbolism i love it all. and chloe’s death is just sooo beautiful. morbidly beautiful. hear me out… chloe’s death caused the onset of max’s powers which in return caused the storm. during max’s nightmare, we see just how fucked up her power made everything. briefly, we are shown via test message the aftermath of her decision regarding chloe’s mortality in episode 4, both ending poorly (if max refuses, chloe hates her; if max accepts joyce says she found video footage of her overdosing chloe). then, of course, it’s revealed that every time max rewinds, another reality is created. there, characters have to live with the dire consequences of max’s poor decisions and the max we controlled is allowed to cherry pick the best reality. everything is fucked. and the only way to fix it is to remove the cause. i don’t know how canonical this is, but it makes the most sense to assume that by sacrificing chloe, max is sacrificing her power. she developed her power to save chloe, and without doing so, there is no reason for her power to ever exist. nothing is fucked. life is strange is about many things, but one of the commonly explored themes is of fate. this is noticeably symbolized by chloe’s necklace (each bullet representing a time she is shot) and chloe’s ouroboros shirt she wears in episode 5 (representing never ending cycles). believe what you will, but i feel this statement cannot be argued: chloe was meant to die. now, if chloe was meant to die, and max’s power was created to save chloe, what does max’s power represent? grief. Denial: Instead of accepting Chloe’s death, Max instinctively rewinds time, denying the reality of the situation and attempting to prevent the tragedy from occurring. Anger: Max's frustration and anger manifest when she repeatedly tries to save Chloe from danger, only to face increasingly dire consequences. Bargaining: Max's attempts to negotiate with fate and alter events to save Chloe become more desperate as the game progresses, such as her preventing Williams’s death. Depression: As Max witnesses the devastating effects of her actions and realizes the toll her powers are taking on herself and those around her, she experiences moments of profound hopelessness, particularly evident in the alternate reality where Chloe is paralyzed. Acceptance: By choosing to sacrifice Chloe, Max acknowledges the inevitability of loss and the importance of letting go, ultimately accepting the natural order of things and embracing her role in shaping the future. and just like that, life is strange is a beautiful story about love and loss. also, the sacrifice chloe ending is the most emotionally impactful ending i have ever experienced-for sure out of any game and possibly out of any media i’ve ever consumed. i cried so much my first play through. and my second. and my third. hell, i lost count, but i replayed it recently and i cried-no, sobbed-even then. it’s just…beautiful. so miserable, so sad, so bittersweet, so morbid, so impactful, and so incredibly beautiful. that is to say, i’m not right. i’m also not wrong. and neither are you or any other player. that’s the beauty of interactive mediums-you dictate the path these characters take. it just so happens we have become very passionate on which path is the “right” one, and it’s clear after this long ass comment that i am very passionate. but a game stirring these debates is the mark of a great story. but at the end of the day, it is just a video game-right? **sorry, i’m a yapper**
Even as someone who saved Chloe, this reading totally makes sense. I think that it's a testament to the character writing that, despite all the good arguments you and others have made and (by the quality/length of epilogue) the choice DontNod expected to be more popular, the decision was still so evenly split
I was with you right up until "if you helped Chloe by assisting in her suicide it's because you consider her life less worthwhile and disposable because she's disabled." No, I did it because SHE ASKED ME TO AND SHE'S AN ADULT PERSON CAPABLE OF MAKING HER OWN DECISIONS. The game makes it clear that she is aware of the intricacies of her own condition that her parents think they've kept from her. Her parents have TAKEN THE DECISION AWAY FROM HER not only by keeping her medication in a place inaccessible to her but also by not telling her salient information about her own condition that she only knows by pretending to be asleep when they talk to the doctors. I see helping her with this as RESPECTING HER AS AN ADULT PERSON CAPABLE OF MAKING HER OWN DECISIONS. "This choice isn't yours to make." No, it's not. It's CHLOE'S and asking you to help her IS THE CHOICE SHE MADE. *Not respecting that choice is not respecting her ability to make it and treating her as incapable of making informed choices about her own healthcare and her life.* And, by the definition you put forth in this video, I am a disabled person dealing with more than one mental health condition. Please stop talking as though you speak for all disabled people because you don't.
i agree. im disabled and have chronic pain. i’ve been in hospitals for extended amounts of time due to my illness at times. thankfully manageable now, but have to deal with extremely high costing drugs that my parents help me pay for. which in is why this part of the story affected me so much, and why this was the hardest decision for me in this game. personally, i couldn’t help her. as much as i wanted to, and respected her wish to make her own decision i couldn’t do that to my parents (if it was me asking someone) or to anyone if they requested that of me. i also don’t think what she requested was wrong, but personally couldn’t do it. i don’t condemn anyone that was able to help her.
Did you forget BOTH version of Chloe asked for it? It really is the same question. And it is ok to acknowledge and point out the issue of subconscious ableism, from both disabled and abled group, there is no gain in gatekeeping it
@@rebeccasheng620 see, I don't see it as an issue of ableism, I see it as an issue of the right to voluntary euthanasia. The right of adult human beings suffering from terminal conditions to decide the time and the manner of their passing to avoid more pain. We make that decision for animals who are suffering and not expected to survive, but many places don't allow adult human beings to make that decision for themselves. Respecting an informed adult's decision isn't ableism. Forcing disabled people who are in pain and suffering to continue to do so *because they're disabled* isn't the righteous flex you think it is.
@@rebeccasheng620 I think there is a difference between those scenes. In the alternative reality, when Chloe asks Max to give her an overdose, She asks her because she wants to end her life for herself. Sure, she mentiones that her parents struggle, but the reason why she doesn't want to keep on living is more internal (the physical pain, the lost ability to be active and socialize...). In short, the whole conversation is about her, her feelings, and her needs. On the other hand, at the end of the game, Chloe's reason to sacrifice herself is external. It's not like she does not want to live anymore; she feels like people and the world would be better off without her. Ultimately, Chloe thinks about her worth to society and what would be better for others than what she truly wants, unlike the alternative timeline.
I LEARNED SO MUCH FROM THIS VIDEO. THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH. This is how i felt, and for once it feels so amazing and surreal to know my "ugly" struggles are REAL and are recognized. I have been waiting to hear these words expressed all my life, so succinctly and full of understanding, on youtube at that. I'm at a very low point, similar to chloe, my best friend abandoned me and my family is similarly tearing apart because of my chronic fear and withdrawals from an extremely conversative society that constantly inflict pain on me for all the way that i'm not "enough. I have been stuck here for a long time, and you know what, im so so sick of hating myself, comparing myself and dilluding myself into thinking i can become like them if i rip my soul apart even harder, this video gave me the language to continue, i deserve to be happy this one life i have. Thank you for making this video
@@kosmicx an IEP is an acronym for "Individualized Educational Plan." its given to students in need of support and accomodations for disabilities like ADHD, anxiety, BPD, and autism.
According to the definition used in the video, I am a neurodivergent queer woman. During my play through of LiS I let Chloe die in chapter 4. Unlike the point pushed forth in the video however, this isn't because I viewed alternate timeline Chloe as lesser. I'm going to get a little personal in this comment, so TW for discussion of cancer, cancer treatment, and death. Back in 2020 my nana was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was terrifying having someone I love be diagnosed with a disease whose treatment has a severe effect on the immune system in the middle of a pandemic, she survived, had a mastectomy, and things were looking up for her. Last year, 2023, it came back. She had a tumor in her chest and two in her brain, they were terminal this time and she had a month left to live. She passed away two weeks after the diagnosis, and the last time I ever saw her alive she was in so much pain and on so many dangerous drugs we were instructed not to touch any residue her patches left behind because of how potent they were. She passed the next morning, 15 minutes before my mother and I arrived at her home. I explain this not to gain pity points, but so people reading have an understanding of what it's like being with someone who was terminally ill in their final moments. My nana wanted to live as long as she possibly could, and every single one of us respected that wish. But if she had asked us to let her die early, to overdose, my choice would have been the same. I would have assisted her with suicide if able to. Because like you guys said, it's **not** our choice. It's theirs, it is their life and they both knew their times were almost up. It's not mine or anybody else's right to take that choice from them, ESPECIALLY in a situation like Chloe, where her parents stripped her of all her agency and attempted to hide her own medical information from her. I killed Chloe in the alternate timeline, not because she was disabled, but because she knew she was going to die and the longer she lived the more strain her medical bills would put on her parents(through no fault of her own). Chloe was an adult, and based on how she acted in the game I have no reason to assume she was not in her right mind, she knew her situation, she evaluated her choices, and as a result she wanted to make one last choice for herself, because her parents likely wouldn't have let her with how they act in the alt timeline. That being said, I understand why people would choose to let her live, and I don't necessarily disagree with it. But portraying everyone that listens to Chloe's request as being morally bankrupt and not valuing someone's life because of disability is disingenuous at best. It wasn't a choice of "kill her now so she doesn't have to keep living like this forever" it was a choice of "die now, peacefully, with her best friend at her side and her family closeby. Or die alone, likely in pain, with even fewer loved ones nearby."
Very well put, nice! I had a very similar experience to yours, my grandpa was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2021, he had surgery, almost died afterwards and lost his voice, he recovered and did pretty well but then it came back, he refused more surgery and so he had some time left, we didn't know how much. Around the time I started playing lis for the first time, aka October 2024, his health deteriorated tremeandously, and it showed... Personal little story but I was building myself a PC and I went to show him and my grandma the expensive GPU I got, my grandma knows nothing about pcs but he liked techonology, but as he looked at me I recognised in his eyes that he didnt understand anything I was telling him, not registering it at all, I knew in that moment that he'll die soon. And anyway, as I got the the fourth episode and that choice and I thought of my grandpa I chose to let Chloe die, it was her choice and I wouldn't want her to suffer those awful 2 months my grandpa suffered before he died in December 2024.
This video is outstanding! It really pinpoints the political aspect of the "Arcadia Bay destroyed" ending which was always my favorite. Thank you for making quality content like this on youtube. We definitely need more videos like this!
Thank you so much! I always felt very strongly about 'Sacrifice Arcadia Bay' being my canon ending and it's taken a lot of time and education to really understand why. I'm glad that my journey and sharing these thoughts can be of any use! -Sara
It's been 3 years since this video came out but I've only recently played LiS and found this video, great video overall but one thing I'd like to mention about the 2 Chloe's fates and the comparison. The presence of the terminal respiratory issue makes a difference in my opinion as it's no longer comparing a disabled queer working-class woman with another, but it's all that with a terminal illness, since she was already on her way and her request I think is a fair one to consider. If main Chloe also had a terminal illness I'd consider it too in the same way I'd hope others do for me in that case. This I'm saying as a neuro-divergent working-class queer trans girl, I'm lucky enough to not live in the US but the problem is sadly not limited to just that hellhole
I've only known of the games through let's plays and video essays that were kind of repeating the same talking points. But your essays which fortunately popped up first on the search bar when I went looking for LiS2 analyses last night, have made me reconsider the societal implications, and especially the meaning behind the penultimate choices in each game. What I realized is by choosing a "good" ending as popularly termed in walkthroughs or other analyses (sacrificing chloe, forgiving Jed or even the "redemption" ending in LiS), although it seems satisfying narratively (in very broad strokes), ultimately they conform to the status quo, while really leaning into the powers and/or fantasy elements of the story and choosing to be selfish almost gives a sense of righteousness as the condemned protagonist and karma for the society that stigmatized them. i didn't expect that from these games, they're almost radical in a sense? I'm honestly shocked at how these games were written so cleverly. there's no really good or bad in these games, just different perspectives. Thanks for helping me realize that :)
Honestly these games are (clearly) so endlessly interesting to us for that reason! They're so nuanced and raise so many different issues in such complex ways. For our purposes (wanting to discuss politics & liberation in games) we'll probably never stop talking about LIS 😩 It even came up in at least one of our other video essays so far, the one on settler colonialism. If you like LIS we'd definitely recommend checking out Tell Me Why as well if you haven't already! We've got a video essay on it too
Wonderful video. I'm surprised you guys don't have more views (yet). The way each part was divided was very enlightening too, and it's nice to be able to check out your references in the description, I'm definitely looking into them. Congrats and thank you, I'm subscribing immediately :)
Thanks so much for your kind words! If you're looking for more LiS content, Daz and Sara are currently Let's Playing it because Daz hasn't played or watched it before!
well hecc, by the end, this gave me a lot more to think about than expected very much questioning some deep set ideas right now, this will take a while to process thanks so much for making this, its deeply important and i wish a lot more more people get to see these videos
We're so glad to hear it! We talk about these things a lot more on our Discord community for patrons, and on Twitter. We know that unlearning things is difficult, and a journey we're all on! Thank you for taking the time to watch and process
Just found your channel after scrawling through TH-cam, trying to find people talk about the LiS games and I'm blown away. This video and the one on the sequel are so eloquently spoken. The politics you cover are done so in a mature and focused way and I just adore that. That and the editing is fantastic, using the quotes directly from the source.. love it.
Oh my gosh thank you so much, that is so kind of you! 💜 We've actually got a video on LIS: True Colors premiering on Monday if you're interested in that too!
@@GameAssist Actually, your channel reminded me that I have yet to start True Colors so I need to do that first but once I finish that, I will definitely check out your analysis vid on it!!
10:55. If you ever stumble upon Chloe’s date of birth you would know she’s a Pisces. Pisces themselves struggle from multiple personality disorder due to being empathic and feeling the intensity of other’s emotions which they could confuse it for themselves. Many may not take astrology into consideration let alone believe in it but here’s my comment.
all respect, but genuine q? how does our birth month affect our personality? isnt it just pseudoscience? its like basically confiration bias and same philosphy as religion. its impossible to disprove cause its founded on like a non negotiable assumption
Also real talk for one second, I never expected Eliot Hampden to be an abuser, I thought he was a nice guy that Chloe could get along with like Warren but many people see his actions as a caring person for Chloe but what he did was abusive. He tries to show his infraction towards her in a more abusive way and doesn’t respect the fact that she isn’t into him. He doesn’t care about Chloe. 26:20
31:58 As an artist and autistic person. I really appreciate max. I see much of myself in her. Her presence is small but can take a lot of room when she gets to. She knows almost everything about Cameras and loves old pictures/artists even quite a lot of movies and artists. Even describe “the golden hour” technique like the artists she likes. And anxiety is prevalent in autism because we have a hard time with social interaction. Something I also see in max. So I do see her as autistic and some of the greatest rep I’ve seen in ages.
I've already watched this video four times but I just want to say how much I love this analysis of the game. It's incredibly well done. I particularly relate to the points about how mental illness is treated in men and women and how anger is vilified in women, and some nonbinary individuals as well who are perceived as women. Speaking from personal experience I notice the difference a lot. I don't have bpd but I am autistic and I have adhd. A lot of the emotional dysregulation is similar, and you can see the differences in how men and women are treated and perceived like night and day. The intersection of ableism and misogyny is really importent to talk about. You also made me re-consider a lot of things I had originally thought about physical disability. Anyways. Great video!
What a lovely comment, thank you so much for taking the time to leave it! I’m so glad that you enjoyed this video so much and that it meant so much to you, putting it together meant a lot to me too. And I totally agree that the intersection of disablism and misogyny is so important to talk about. Look out for more content on that from us in then future, it’s definitely something I want to explore in a couple of other games! -Sara
Look, I appreciate a lot of the viewpoints y'all bring to this video, but fuck off with that "if you agree to help Chloe die you don't think her life is worth living" conclusion. "outside of chloe's request, what makes YOU think you have the right to take her life?" - Nothing. That IS the reason. She is dying no matter what, and I/Max have no right to decide how she should face her death. I don't know what I would have chosen if she said she was just sick of being 'a burden' - actually, I'm pretty damn sure I would have said no. But she is dying. It's not a choice over whether her disabled life is worth saving- it's a question of her agency over HOW she dies. If I kill her, she dies the way she wants- in her sleep, painlessly, watching a movie with her best friend. If I preserve my own ~moral purity~ by refusing to kill her, I force MY desires for how she should die onto her. Refusing to kill her isn't doing her any favors - she will still die, and now she dies alone, because her supposed best friend (like her parents) leveraged her immobility against her to control her decisions. I don't have the right to control whether she lives or dies- she does. For me, refusing was an act of moral cowardice- prioritizing MY desires (I want her to live, I don't want to see a dead body, I don't want blood on my hands) over hers. Refusing to kill her changes nothing about her situation- it just means I get to look away. BTW fuck the narrative for framing things that way in the first place. While I stand by my stance that, within story, honoring her decision is the right thing to do, on a meta-narrative level they didn't have to set things up that way. They didn't have to give you a whole list of reasons why her life now is so miserable. They didn't have to have Max go on and on about how horrific this is, from the moment we see Chloe in the wheelchair. The game argues that Chloe's life is miserable like this, and encourages you to reject a disabled existence as something unthinkable. It would have been a stronger episode if the timeline where she's 'trapped' in a wheelchair is framed as *the happier version of her life*, except for the part where she's dying. She's part of a disabled community. You and her family watch movies together. She's in pain, but she's not alone. So when you're given the 'terminal illness/assisted suicide' choice, it is clear that her disabled life is not the tragedy. The tragedy would be that it was a good life, and the universe just couldn't fucking let her have that. I DID choose both 'Kill Chloe' options in my first playthrough, though. At the time my thinking was that, if I feel horrified at the idea of losing Chloe, well there's no way I'm the only person in Arcadia Bay who loves someone else THAT much. Do I matter more than them? Does my love matter more than theirs? If letting Chloe die is the only way to stop the tornado, then I have no right to prioritize Chloe (and Max's) lives over everyone else's. But in retrospect the whole idea that CHLOE caused the tornado seems more and more like mental illness brain pulling an 'it's all my fault", so fuck that noise.
I honestly wasn't sure while playing the game if the game just handles mental illness and therefore disability poorly or if the surrounding characters treat them poorly and tbh i'm still not totally sure I think it's kinda both? But this essay is really well done there's so much thought but into it I honestly loved this and your lis2 essay!!
I can't speak for Sara, but I agree, it's a mix of the mishandling of disability in the game, as well as the characters, both of which are deeply intertwined. Definitely with the Alternate timeline, but that's coming from a place where BPD isn't something I have as much knowledge of as Sara. Physical disability and chronic illness, though? That's something I do know well. We plan on talking more about how the gaming industry lacks understanding of disability and disabled people in the future, so stay posted. We're super glad you enjoyed, and I know Sara will appreciate the support of their work on Everything Is Political, too! - Errol
I think that the game's depiction of disability, both physical and including mental illness, gives us a lot to unpack. I think in some ways it's done well, definitely in that it offers some very realistic situations of misogynistic and ableist violence, both interpersonally and institutionally, for us to read and engage with as we will. In some ways it could probably be better- the idea of the butterfly effect and the idea that 'your actions will have consequences' is quite amorphous and purports to be moral or philosophical rather than political. While the developers talk about there being no right or wrong decisions, there are inevitably times when the narrative seems to be passing moral judgement on certain decisions or actions. And in that sense, I think it's important to say that there actually ARE right and wrong decisions sometimes. It's less explicitly or self-consciously political than LIS2, which I think is a big part of the trouble. As opposed to LIS2, the audience of LIS1 doesn't often seem to think of this as a political game, which is a huge problem in our culture. I think that has a lot to do with racism but I digress. In any case I think this game is hugely significant in that it's encouraged games to tell these kind of stories and paved the way for games to portray these issues, and it's had a huge influence in that regard. As we talk about in the video a bit, personally I actually find player and community reactions to the text and representations of disability in the text particularly interesting, not just the text itself. They're really indicative of misogynistic and ableist trends that are normalised in our culture and our thought. Choice based narratives like this offer a really interesting insight into how people justify their actions and what kinds of thought are normalised in our world. -Sara
Sorry for my English in advance (I'm French). I haven't watched the whole video yet but Chloe's analysis is brilliant. I have autism and always thought Max was too, I don't think you mention it. Hannah Telle (VA of Max) in an interview said she sees max on the autism spectrum. What do you think ?
No need to apologise! We're delighted that people from different backgrounds are watching our videos and engaging with them 💜 We didn't discuss seeing Max as autistic in this video, we just discussed her as having anxiety, but thank you for sharing that with us! It's interesting because since making this video, while there is still some usefulness in using BPD or anxiety as frameworks to analyse Chloe and Max, we've become more critical of diagnostic categories and psychiatry in general. We discuss this more in our videos on Tell Me Why and Life is Strange: True Colors! At the moment we would say that we find 'Disability' and 'psychiatric abolition' more useful political frameworks, and engage less with diagnostic categories, if that makes sense. Campaign for Psychiatric Abolition has some great resources that can get you started on reading more about this if you're interested: twitter.com/cpabolition?s=21&t=Na0F2Littj5EyH6Vf8jP4g
Thank you for this really good video ! It is so interesting and it makes us think. That's true that I primarly thought that accepting Chloe's request in the seconde timeline because I considered that we had to respect her "choice". But It's true that this "choice" is guided by the ableism around her. I've just discovered your channel and I really love it ❤
I highly disagree with the points made about the Sacrifice Chloe ending, I get that she did not deserve it, no one does, maybe just Jefferson, but by saving the town I'm not saving it for the corrupt people in it, I'm saving it for the good hearted people there, I remember someone on Reddit saying, that sacrificing Chloe is Max's hardest choice, harder than sacrificing the town, because she chooses to give the other people happiness by having their loved ones with them, while she'll be alone. It's not a selfish choice in any way, or a wrong one, neither is saving Chloe, this attitude of saying that one is bad and good is detrimental to understanding all the themes of the game. Also wanted to add that justice is served in both endings, Mark Jefferson is locked up with no mention of him having been released, there is a mention of Nathan being possibly released which I hope never happens either, at least not soon. Both endings are supposed to be taken as a new beginning from which Max can heal, shown through the fact that she smiles in both endings.
Huh, looking through the lens of disability and colonialism might be the only time I've considered the "bae" ending to be the better choice. Unfortunately with the way the narrative is structured, I consider the bay ending to be the one that makes the most sense
If you look very closely at the game there isn't just one narrative, there are multiple ones and they clash with each other. They lead to different outcomes as to what's the "right" choice in the end and all of them have some plot holes
I understanded better the game story through your video. Your voice is great to listen. Plus I have a mental health problem 2 and a half years now. I can understand you, I'm from 🇬🇷 Greece.
fascinated by all of this, particularly the discussion of the politically charged nature of the bae vs bay choice, which I never really noticed before--how it has that same confrontation with unchangeably violent power structures as the lis2 ending. lis2 just made it all so much more explicit, like you said (and probably got a lot of flack for it in the process). also the revolution there is more "televised" in that in Blood Brothers, the closest save Chloe parallel, you actually see Daniel's power--a pretty good "storm" example--in use, with at once a lower body count and much more graphic violence)
Ah that's such an interesting analysis! I love comparing Daniel's power to the storm, and looking at these revolutionary metaphors. Charlotte and I (Sara) play through LIS2 on the channel and discuss the question of "political violence" a lot in that playthrough, especially in terms of what it means to teach your brother to conform or to resist, as well as the difference between the necessity of revolutionary violence and violence for violence's sake. I do think some of these questions are very present in the first game, but something about white girls and brown boys and their experiences which invokes really different audience reactions, huh...
This was SO good. I love this game so much, and there things I missed that you went over in this analysis. Before this video, I was passively "Sacrifice Chloe". I am now VERY MUCH ACTIVELY YEAH FUCK THAT TOWN SO BAD.
Incredible video essay. I didn't necessarily agree with every point you made, but I will be thinking about this video and chewing it over for weeks. Chloe is one of my comfort characters, and I've never been able to put into words why it hurts when a fictional character I like is interpreted as this nasty, selfish person. I also headcanon both her and Max as autistic and ADHD and Kate as ADHD as well 💜
yo, interested in why you think Max is autistic and ADHD? cause i hard related to her character as an 11 year old guy when the games came out, and now, after being a smiliar age to them, am incredibly sad cause i feel i am even more represented by her? sorry for the ramble
Love this! And your reason for bae over bay summed up in ways i previously couldn't express so eloquently why i too chose Chloe without hesitation . The world was against us for nothing, and why would I choose to sacrifice her when nothing was her fault. Never did anything say for certain that Chloe was the reason the tornado came.
Love the video so far, although I disagree with most of it. So a couple of notes/questions from me: - 7:22 "mental health issues are often codes as feminine" can i get some kind of source for this? It's not something I think I ever encountered. - your definition of disability is worded poorly. "these effects may or may not include..." is completely useless in a definition as it neither widens nor narrows the definition, you could include eye color in that list and it wouldn't change the definition. - your definition of disability seems a bit too wide. as an example, "being an asshole" can be interpreted as a neurological and/or developmental conditions without official medical documentation that will affect someone long term, primarily through discrimination and exclusion by society. - the different treatment Chloe and Nathan get at Blackwall is in my opinion less gender-related and more class-related (a bit of marxism shining through here). As an example, we would expect the difference to shrink if Chloe was male (that's the gender-based part) but we suspect it would almost vanish if the Prices were as rich as the Prescots. - restricting your teenage daughter's access to morphine which you work two jobs for to even afford is ableism? I mean, I see the issues with the power dynamic there, but the notion that the inverse would be the more ethical action is ignoring a whole array of factors at play here. - 30:40 really? you realize you're looking at a fictional photo within a ficitional game. there is no picture, there is no dog, there is no photographer and there is no disabled dog owner... this is just grasping at straws to badly support a point that's been weak to begin with. - 32:55 you allow it? I can hardly imagine a worse expression to use when talking about personal agency - then how would a school like Blackwall pay hommage to the native american history of the area it's built in, if they don't have a couple of native american kids to sprikle across the campus? Basically, the ability to be sincere with the native american imagery is dependent on the racial profile of the students? - Finn and Cassidy are based on real people, so are DONTNOD the assholes here or the real people they were based on? Also, racial segregation of hairstyles is not something I can agree with and I'm certainly not going to shave off my mohawk over it... - how do you bring race and gender into the trolley problem when it is as neutral as it can be? The trolley problem is exactly the same for every person in the world - certainly, degrading hundreds of people to "metaphors" makes killing them easier, but I find that line of reasoning very concerning. It's something I'd expect in the manifesto of some kind of domestic terrorist and certainly not something you use as an argument in this discussion without investigating the deeper implications of what such an argument entails. - 46:10 so you suggest not giving her agency over her own fate? Because she's disabled, we can chose what happens to her, she can't. That was a lot. Great video, thanks
You know I finished LIS1 the same year I finished Flash Season 1 as well as coming off from reading Flashpoint. So my decision was heavily influenced by Barry Allen. Haha... Soooo Bay over Bae.
I know this video is nearly 4 years old at this point, but it was absolutely phenomenal, but I do take umbrage with the final section to a degree, and maybe it's just because I take it so personally as someone who was the healthcare proxy to my terminally ill mother and had to make that very real decision just a few days after doing it in game. My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, she battled back and forth for years with it. Eventually is spread, first to her spine, fracturing it permanently and causing her never ending pain, and then up her spine to her brain. She was given 4 months to live sometime in late August/September 2015. She was put onto hospice care and allowed to return home to live out her remaining days. I was still living with my mother at the time, having dropped out of college and having to help support her I was privy to all her health concerns, medications and all that. As a result she made me her healthcare proxy, and gave all the legal stuff to my sister who knew more about that stuff and had moved out over a decade before. On February 25th, 2016 I started playing Episode 4. I remember when I got to that part in the alternate timeline I paused the game, laid down and cried. I sat there for an hour if not 2 deliberating what to do, and ultimately I chose to assist in her overdosing to morphine as she was dying a slow and painful death to lung failure. Who was I to deny the dying request of someone I loved? On February 29th, 2016 (I will forever remember leap years, yay /s) my mother became unresponsive and struggling to breathe. I immediately called 911 in a panic, the paramedics took her to the ER, and I got dressed in non pajamas, gathered up her hospice binder, and drove to the hospital. When I got to the hospital I gave them the binder and they asked me, right then and there, "Do you want us to start resuscitation or not?" at that moment time seemed like it froze, she had it that she did not want to be resuscitated, but ultimately it was my call to make... After a moment of panicking and debating I told them not to resuscitate... after all, who was I to deny the dying request of someone I loved? Even before cancer my mother had a life long struggle with health issues, and we talked about death a lot growing up. Even as a kid she told me "I want American Pie by Don McLean played at my funeral, I want to be cremated, if you want a headstone somewhere to remember me that's fine, but I want to be cremated, and if I ever get to the point where I cannot enjoy life, I want to die" She even raised us in a way that we could take care of ourselves in case she ever passed away, had us learn to prepare non cooked foods by 10, how to cook by 13 or so, how to do laundry and all that kind of stuff. It still haunts me by the way. "What if I discovered her sooner?" "What if I chose to resuscitate her?" "Did she know what was happening?" "Did I kill my mother?" on top of that this was late at night, around 10pm, and by the time I was able to call my sister and get a hold of her it was nearly 3am. My sister finally convinced me around 6am to go home and get some sleep, her bf drove me home...she passed away a few hours later, so I'm also haunted by not being there when she died...and the way they let her die? Morphine. They just gave her morphine to kill the pain and let her pass away. And when I played episode 5 on February 27th and I was faced once again with the possibility of Chloe dying again, I again paused, and cried, and this time I chose to keep her alive. Not because I enjoyed the less quirky and more physically disabled Chloe more, but because she wasn't already dying a slow and painful death. You could argue with all the times she almost dies (or does die and you rewind) that it's no different, but there is a key difference. You have the choice to stop her from getting to those points, you don't have a choice to stop Chloe from dying from her lungs failing outside of resetting the universe. And while I may not be as physically disabled as some, I've had chronic lower back pain since I was 12, I have asthma, I've had major depression, chronic depression and anxiety since I was a kid. I have undiagnosed ADHD, possibly on the spectrum according to my autistic friends, and possibly more mental health issues from all the trauma I have, ranging from abandonment to CSA and the non stop bullying I got as a kid, including getting the shit beat out of me on several occasions by bullies. All this to say, the final section felt like a personal attack, and I disagree with it. Edit: also I related so much to Chloe to the point that when I chose to name myself after coming out as trans, I named myself after her. So its not like I viewed her as disposable or anything, I just related to her that much.
We appreciate you sharing your story, and I'm so sorry for your loss. I think we could have made it clearer, in retrospect, that we didn't intend to make a moral or ethical judgement about euthanasia in whatever someone's individual circumstances might be. Since making this video I personally have had to euthanise my cat, for a host of reasons, and I actually talked about my complicated feelings about this when streaming Telltale's The Walking Dead recently (we'll be uploading the vods to our vod channel). But the political point we are making does stand - why do people campaign for "the right to die" but not for universal housing or allowance for disabled people? It's unavoidable that the promotion of euthanasia has dire material consequences, which is plainly the eugenics of disabled people. This is not an individual moral or ethical judgement, as each case is different, but it is a political and systematic reality, and culture is not detached from that reality. The normalisation of euthanasia in culture is part of why we don't ask the right questions, why instead of campaigning for liveable conditions for disabled people and the abolition of a disablist capitalist system, so many people are campaigning for them to die. And with this in mind, the decision whether or not to euthenise Chloe must be made with these political, material considerations in mind, as any quandary is not abstractly philosophical but exists within a material and political context, just as I argue regarding the trolley problem. And the right questions must be asked: can we really know if Chloe would want to die if she had access to school, social life, independence and autonomy, regardless of her physical condition? In retrospect this point could have been made clearer, but there were strong raw feelings on our part against euthanasia from us as disabled people, which unfortunately may have come across as judgemental. To be clear we are not passing judgement on individuals, however it was our intention to challenge the underlying disablist beliefs which underpin broad political support for euthanasia, and this holds true. I myself upon having my beliefs about euthanasia before working on this video questioned realised how much I had internalised disablism, and shifted my point of view. My political view holds true because the material reality has not changed, but since having a personal deeply painful experience of having to arrange end of life care for my pet, this has also shifted me to a more empathetic place towards understanding when someone has a dependent who is terminally ill. If you and others are interested in learning more from a disabled-led group which challenges the normalisation and political use of euthenasia as part of a project of eugenics against disabled people, check out Not Dead Yet: notdeadyet.org - Sara
thank you so much for sharing your story. thank you for your strength in sharing these words because it genuinely helps others and hopefylly yourself. Thank you and i hope youre happy and helahty
Hard to watch but interesting, I havent played the game, but I already heard about the iffy handling of disability, but wow it is worse then I imagined.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! Despite the issues with disability and Native representation LIS is still one of my favourite games, I think it’s definitely worth playing and experiencing for yourself if you want to! -Sara
I love to listen to this video cause it makes it seem that life is strange is so much more than what is it. I personally see chole as very privilige white girl.
I can appreciate this video although I feel it just hightens the holes in LIS's writing. If your theories were in fact how the writing team intended for us to view Chloe then they should have written that more planly into her character. An audience shouldn't have to conjure up as much extra content as you have to understand a character. As a result we have a large rift in the fandom; regarding Chloe Price. People who can see and identify these issues with Chloe tend to like her, while those who can't don't. I'll opt to stick with what's presented in game as Chloe's character, and give her a strong no thanks.
Yeah I’m probably gonna be hated for saying this but um… Chloe is a terrible person and the writers try to make you like her. And I firmly believe that a part of the reason why this isn’t widely seen is because it’s a lesbian relationship. So people are willing to let it slide. Even though Chloe is self centric, manipulative, unwilling to hear both sides, wants to rob from the disabled, can’t even pay her drug dealer, potentially even a murderer to said dealer, etc…She has no story arc and her wanting to die in the end feels really forced. Uricksaladbar has 2 pretty good videos on how toxic and destructive Chloe and Rachel are as characters. I think your looking at this wayyyyyy too far into the story and need to dial it back a notch.
I assure you 8 out of 10 acknowledges Chloe’s personality is problematic. Everywhere you can see people pointing out the recklessness, manipulation, lack of appreciation and so on. But do remember she also has likeable traits. Almost like the writer is presenting a real flawed person just like most people irl.
![Final Doom - TNT Evilution [All Secrets / Ultra-Violence / Final Doomer Mod]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vy6w4s_qJyM/mqdefault.jpg)
Sara here - I'd really appreciate it if folks read and consider this pinned comment before engaging in the comments section of this video.
A lot of folks in their responses to this video take issue with our political position on euthanasia. This is a position which is informed by our own lived experiences and evolving politics as Disabled people, which is shared by many Disabled people and Disabled peoples' organisations, most notably Not Dead Yet, whose website we really, really recommend thoroughly checking out here. notdeadyet.org
A Disability politics informed stance against euthanasia is informed by the historic normalisation and political use of euthanasia as part of a project of eugenics against Disabled people. This is an indisputable material, historical fact and reality. You can read more about this in many places, but a strong example to start with is the article "Useless Eaters: Disability as a Genocidal Marker in Nazi Germany", by Mark P. Mostert, which you can read here. courses.washington.edu/intro2ds/Readings/Mostert%20Useless%20Eaters.pdf
This being said, disability and Disabled people are not a monolith and you are welcome to disagree with us in the comments, but please do so respectfully. Some of our comments in the final version of this video, at the time it was made, were made with emotion coming from a place of our own personal trauma and experience as Disabled people. We hope that you can approach this with empathy and understanding.
As with any creation, years later we are able to look back on this video and see it as a product of our experience and opinions at the time it was made. For example, I personally no longer identify with the BPD self-diagnosis, and occupy a much more critical approach of diagnostic categories and psychiatry in general. I have also had some personal experience with euthanasia of a loved one in the years since this video would made, and while I still maintain my political position on it, I deeply empathise with the emotions of many of you in the comments, who disagree with my stance. While I understand the emotions you must be feeling, and why this video might generate an emotional response, I ask that you don't dismiss our position, but consider it and research it further.
I think we could have made it clearer, in retrospect, that we didn't intend to make a moral or ethical judgement about euthanasia in whatever someone's individual circumstances might be. If I was making this video today, I would aim to avoid us coming across as judgemental here, but I would not change my point of view on this particular issue. This is because the political point still very much does stand. Why do people campaign for "the right to die" but not for universal housing or allowance for Disabled people? It's unavoidable that the promotion of euthanasia has dire material consequences, which, plainly, is the eugenics of Disabled people, which reached a most lethal height in Nazi Germany, as the article linked above shows. This is not an individual moral or ethical judgement, as each case is different, but it is a political and systematic reality, and culture is not detached from that reality.
Culture informs material reality, and material reality informs culture. The normalisation of euthanasia in culture is part of why we don't ask the right questions, why instead of campaigning for liveable conditions for Disabled people and the abolition of a disablist capitalist system, so many people are campaigning for the "right" of Disabled people to die. With this in mind, the decision whether or not to euthenise Chloe in Life is Strange must be made with these political, material considerations in mind. Our hope is that your consideration of this decision in the game will lead you to deeper considerations about this issue in real life, where Disabled lives are very much on the line. As with any dilemma, the choice whether or not to kill Chloe is not abstractly philosophical, but exists within a material and political context, just as I argue regarding the trolley problem. And the right questions must be asked: can we really know if Chloe would want to die if she had access to school, social life, independence and autonomy, regardless of her physical condition?
With love and with solidarity,
Sara
If I could, I'd make every other narrative designer watch this video. It's incredible. As a disabled narrative designer - autistic, bpd, fibromyalgia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, c-ptsd, raynauds syndrome, excessive fatigue and very likely EDS - this hit me right in my heart, all through. I've been bedbound for the last five years or so, the last two where I was actually allowed to rest. There were many times when I thought about the choice to kill Chloe that Life is Strange offers in that alternate timeline. It was one of the reasons I stopped watching a let's play of it, that and the sexual assault, and it is not an exaggeration to say that watching players treat that choice as a legitimate debate contributed to my own suicidality. I have asked my best friend to kill me so many times that it's now a call and response in our household that makes us laugh - "Kill me." "No. I don't want too. It'd be hard and I'm tired."
There have been so many times when people have congratulated me for existing. Told me how brave I am. Said they couldn't do it. And it's so dehumanizing, every time, because there's always that undercurrent like they want to ask me how I manage, if they don't do so outright. That makes my existence a moral choice.
This analysis is superb. It is clear, accessible to people who are unfamiliar with the international disability community, an incredible piece of game analysis and critique, and it made me cry, a lot. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that the writers on this game thought about all of this, when they made it an option to kill Chloe in that alternate timeline, but I don't know if I'm ready to forgive them yet for the wave of ableist fan content presenting it like they did unleashed.
i loved your video essay on life is strange 2 and was excited to see what insight you may offer for it’s predecessor. that is to say, the video is good, of course, but i find myself disagreeing with a good bit of it-namely, chloe’s deaths. but these are just my thoughts, and i think it’s important to offer both sides of a dilemma to see the full picture-so here are my counter arguments:
on my initial play through, i did not kill chloe in episode 4. i felt it was wrong. now, i am approaching this as someone who suffers from a chronic autoimmune disorder. i am nowhere near as disabled as chloe, and honestly don’t consider myself disabled in the first place, but i can still empathize with chloe’s situation to a greater extent than someone without my condition. i first played life is strange when i was 13 and at the height of my condition. because of this, i was unable to see how killing chloe was okay. when i replayed it at a later age and was no longer suffering as terribly, however, i was able to view the situation with an unbiased lens. hence, removing ourselves and our experiences from a situation can offer a completely different perspective. after this, i was able to see something i completely ignored at first:
you aren’t deciding whether chloe lives or dies. you are deciding HOW she dies. she will die regardless of max’s decision, and soon. this is stated explicitly in the game, but is elaborated on even greater upon further exploration of the price’s house. like you said, chloe is given no agency in this timeline and her offer to max is the final way she can alas decide her own fate. she can die alone, slowly, and painfully or with her best friend at her side. still, i rather not give chloe the overdose; it just feels wrong. but you can’t argue that someone is a bad person for choosing to allow chloe to die. it’s not black or white; morality is life is strange is so subjective and is the reason the franchise is one of my favorites.
now for the big one…
i chose to sacrifice chloe. and it was an easy decision. not one i particularly enjoyed, but i knew that according to my moral beliefs, that was the lesser of two evils. there are two reasons i chose this ending and stay by it today: personal and thematic.
personal:
this is going to sound like i’m making this up but i can assure you this, ironically, is something that happened. so my entire home town got destroyed by hurricane laura in 2020. i did not evacuate. i experienced the storm in real time, in all its destructive glory. it was traumatizing. for a month, i did not have electricity of any kind, but luckily i came prepared: i downloaded the mobile version of life is strange on my phone. now how the hell am i gonna play that game and choose the sacrifice arcadia bay ending after everything i just experienced? it’s so ironic it’s actually hilarious i’m not gonna lie.
deadly hurricanes aside, let’s talk morality.
i love very deeply, and would do anything for the people i love. but there is not a person in this world that would warrant the killing of thousands. full stop. to sacrifice arcadia bay is to allow the slaughtering of human lives-both innocent and not. whereas people like jefferson certainly deserved to die, people like joyce and kate and npc #47 did not. personally, i cannot imagine living with myself if i knew i had allowed that to happen. i could, however, live with myself if i allowed one person-who willingly volunteered-to die. some may argue that human lives have no numerical value; one person’s life may be worth hundreds to someone. but not to me. it just feels…selfish. yes, that one person may be worth hundreds of lives to me, but what do those hundreds of lives mean to other people? everyone loves. no human life is worth more than another.
thematic:
listen, i’m a writer at heart. i love themes i love foreshadowing i love symbolism i love it all. and chloe’s death is just sooo beautiful. morbidly beautiful. hear me out…
chloe’s death caused the onset of max’s powers which in return caused the storm. during max’s nightmare, we see just how fucked up her power made everything. briefly, we are shown via test message the aftermath of her decision regarding chloe’s mortality in episode 4, both ending poorly (if max refuses, chloe hates her; if max accepts joyce says she found video footage of her overdosing chloe). then, of course, it’s revealed that every time max rewinds, another reality is created. there, characters have to live with the dire consequences of max’s poor decisions and the max we controlled is allowed to cherry pick the best reality. everything is fucked. and the only way to fix it is to remove the cause.
i don’t know how canonical this is, but it makes the most sense to assume that by sacrificing chloe, max is sacrificing her power. she developed her power to save chloe, and without doing so, there is no reason for her power to ever exist. nothing is fucked.
life is strange is about many things, but one of the commonly explored themes is of fate. this is noticeably symbolized by chloe’s necklace (each bullet representing a time she is shot) and chloe’s ouroboros shirt she wears in episode 5 (representing never ending cycles). believe what you will, but i feel this statement cannot be argued: chloe was meant to die.
now, if chloe was meant to die, and max’s power was created to save chloe, what does max’s power represent?
grief.
Denial: Instead of accepting Chloe’s death, Max instinctively rewinds time, denying the reality of the situation and attempting to prevent the tragedy from occurring.
Anger: Max's frustration and anger manifest when she repeatedly tries to save Chloe from danger, only to face increasingly dire consequences.
Bargaining: Max's attempts to negotiate with fate and alter events to save Chloe become more desperate as the game progresses, such as her preventing Williams’s death.
Depression: As Max witnesses the devastating effects of her actions and realizes the toll her powers are taking on herself and those around her, she experiences moments of profound hopelessness, particularly evident in the alternate reality where Chloe is paralyzed.
Acceptance: By choosing to sacrifice Chloe, Max acknowledges the inevitability of loss and the importance of letting go, ultimately accepting the natural order of things and embracing her role in shaping the future.
and just like that, life is strange is a beautiful story about love and loss.
also, the sacrifice chloe ending is the most emotionally impactful ending i have ever experienced-for sure out of any game and possibly out of any media i’ve ever consumed. i cried so much my first play through. and my second. and my third. hell, i lost count, but i replayed it recently and i cried-no, sobbed-even then. it’s just…beautiful. so miserable, so sad, so bittersweet, so morbid, so impactful, and so incredibly beautiful.
that is to say, i’m not right. i’m also not wrong. and neither are you or any other player. that’s the beauty of interactive mediums-you dictate the path these characters take. it just so happens we have become very passionate on which path is the “right” one, and it’s clear after this long ass comment that i am very passionate. but a game stirring these debates is the mark of a great story.
but at the end of the day, it is just a video game-right?
**sorry, i’m a yapper**
Never apologize for yapping, this is genuinely the best written comment i've ever read on this website!
@@thatforemankid2262 I very much enjoyed this comment, think you for yapping!
Even as someone who saved Chloe, this reading totally makes sense. I think that it's a testament to the character writing that, despite all the good arguments you and others have made and (by the quality/length of epilogue) the choice DontNod expected to be more popular, the decision was still so evenly split
I was with you right up until "if you helped Chloe by assisting in her suicide it's because you consider her life less worthwhile and disposable because she's disabled."
No, I did it because SHE ASKED ME TO AND SHE'S AN ADULT PERSON CAPABLE OF MAKING HER OWN DECISIONS. The game makes it clear that she is aware of the intricacies of her own condition that her parents think they've kept from her. Her parents have TAKEN THE DECISION AWAY FROM HER not only by keeping her medication in a place inaccessible to her but also by not telling her salient information about her own condition that she only knows by pretending to be asleep when they talk to the doctors. I see helping her with this as RESPECTING HER AS AN ADULT PERSON CAPABLE OF MAKING HER OWN DECISIONS.
"This choice isn't yours to make."
No, it's not. It's CHLOE'S and asking you to help her IS THE CHOICE SHE MADE. *Not respecting that choice is not respecting her ability to make it and treating her as incapable of making informed choices about her own healthcare and her life.*
And, by the definition you put forth in this video, I am a disabled person dealing with more than one mental health condition. Please stop talking as though you speak for all disabled people because you don't.
i agree. im disabled and have chronic pain. i’ve been in hospitals for extended amounts of time due to my illness at times. thankfully manageable now, but have to deal with extremely high costing drugs that my parents help me pay for. which in is why this part of the story affected me so much, and why this was the hardest decision for me in this game.
personally, i couldn’t help her. as much as i wanted to, and respected her wish to make her own decision i couldn’t do that to my parents (if it was me asking someone) or to anyone if they requested that of me. i also don’t think what she requested was wrong, but personally couldn’t do it. i don’t condemn anyone that was able to help her.
Did you forget BOTH version of Chloe asked for it? It really is the same question. And it is ok to acknowledge and point out the issue of subconscious ableism, from both disabled and abled group, there is no gain in gatekeeping it
@@rebeccasheng620 see, I don't see it as an issue of ableism, I see it as an issue of the right to voluntary euthanasia. The right of adult human beings suffering from terminal conditions to decide the time and the manner of their passing to avoid more pain. We make that decision for animals who are suffering and not expected to survive, but many places don't allow adult human beings to make that decision for themselves.
Respecting an informed adult's decision isn't ableism. Forcing disabled people who are in pain and suffering to continue to do so *because they're disabled* isn't the righteous flex you think it is.
@@celestinenox that is totally fine if you don’t see it as an issue. It is also fine for people who saw it an issue and talk about it.
@@rebeccasheng620 I think there is a difference between those scenes. In the alternative reality, when Chloe asks Max to give her an overdose, She asks her because she wants to end her life for herself. Sure, she mentiones that her parents struggle, but the reason why she doesn't want to keep on living is more internal (the physical pain, the lost ability to be active and socialize...). In short, the whole conversation is about her, her feelings, and her needs. On the other hand, at the end of the game, Chloe's reason to sacrifice herself is external. It's not like she does not want to live anymore; she feels like people and the world would be better off without her. Ultimately, Chloe thinks about her worth to society and what would be better for others than what she truly wants, unlike the alternative timeline.
I LEARNED SO MUCH FROM THIS VIDEO. THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH. This is how i felt, and for once it feels so amazing and surreal to know my "ugly" struggles are REAL and are recognized. I have been waiting to hear these words expressed all my life, so succinctly and full of understanding, on youtube at that. I'm at a very low point, similar to chloe, my best friend abandoned me and my family is similarly tearing apart because of my chronic fear and withdrawals from an extremely conversative society that constantly inflict pain on me for all the way that i'm not "enough. I have been stuck here for a long time, and you know what, im so so sick of hating myself, comparing myself and dilluding myself into thinking i can become like them if i rip my soul apart even harder, this video gave me the language to continue, i deserve to be happy this one life i have. Thank you for making this video
I'm so sorry for everything you've been struggling with. Sending love and solidarity to you, and glad that our video could help even a little bit 💜
To add, Max is also referenced in the game as disabled with her school file saying she has had an IEP before.
Really? Never caught that, but thanks so much for pointing it out and commenting!
sorry my English is not that good, what's an IEP?? thank youuu
@@kosmicx an IEP is an acronym for "Individualized Educational Plan." its given to students in need of support and accomodations for disabilities like ADHD, anxiety, BPD, and autism.
If I'm not mistaken, gifted students can also have an IEP. So it's not necessarily a sign that Max is disabled.
@@capysarah While that may be true, Max has a pretty low GPA, so it's more likely that she has some sort of disability.
According to the definition used in the video, I am a neurodivergent queer woman. During my play through of LiS I let Chloe die in chapter 4. Unlike the point pushed forth in the video however, this isn't because I viewed alternate timeline Chloe as lesser. I'm going to get a little personal in this comment, so TW for discussion of cancer, cancer treatment, and death.
Back in 2020 my nana was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was terrifying having someone I love be diagnosed with a disease whose treatment has a severe effect on the immune system in the middle of a pandemic, she survived, had a mastectomy, and things were looking up for her. Last year, 2023, it came back. She had a tumor in her chest and two in her brain, they were terminal this time and she had a month left to live. She passed away two weeks after the diagnosis, and the last time I ever saw her alive she was in so much pain and on so many dangerous drugs we were instructed not to touch any residue her patches left behind because of how potent they were. She passed the next morning, 15 minutes before my mother and I arrived at her home.
I explain this not to gain pity points, but so people reading have an understanding of what it's like being with someone who was terminally ill in their final moments. My nana wanted to live as long as she possibly could, and every single one of us respected that wish. But if she had asked us to let her die early, to overdose, my choice would have been the same. I would have assisted her with suicide if able to. Because like you guys said, it's **not** our choice. It's theirs, it is their life and they both knew their times were almost up. It's not mine or anybody else's right to take that choice from them, ESPECIALLY in a situation like Chloe, where her parents stripped her of all her agency and attempted to hide her own medical information from her. I killed Chloe in the alternate timeline, not because she was disabled, but because she knew she was going to die and the longer she lived the more strain her medical bills would put on her parents(through no fault of her own). Chloe was an adult, and based on how she acted in the game I have no reason to assume she was not in her right mind, she knew her situation, she evaluated her choices, and as a result she wanted to make one last choice for herself, because her parents likely wouldn't have let her with how they act in the alt timeline.
That being said, I understand why people would choose to let her live, and I don't necessarily disagree with it. But portraying everyone that listens to Chloe's request as being morally bankrupt and not valuing someone's life because of disability is disingenuous at best. It wasn't a choice of "kill her now so she doesn't have to keep living like this forever" it was a choice of "die now, peacefully, with her best friend at her side and her family closeby. Or die alone, likely in pain, with even fewer loved ones nearby."
Very well put, nice!
I had a very similar experience to yours, my grandpa was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2021, he had surgery, almost died afterwards and lost his voice, he recovered and did pretty well but then it came back, he refused more surgery and so he had some time left, we didn't know how much. Around the time I started playing lis for the first time, aka October 2024, his health deteriorated tremeandously, and it showed... Personal little story but I was building myself a PC and I went to show him and my grandma the expensive GPU I got, my grandma knows nothing about pcs but he liked techonology, but as he looked at me I recognised in his eyes that he didnt understand anything I was telling him, not registering it at all, I knew in that moment that he'll die soon.
And anyway, as I got the the fourth episode and that choice and I thought of my grandpa I chose to let Chloe die, it was her choice and I wouldn't want her to suffer those awful 2 months my grandpa suffered before he died in December 2024.
@@mstudio7970 I'm sorry for your loss, I hope things are better now and that your grandpa is remembered for the strength he possessed even at the end.
Great video. Of all the TH-camrs pointing out how obviously Chloe has flawed personality, nobody ever talked about this issue.
This video is outstanding! It really pinpoints the political aspect of the "Arcadia Bay destroyed" ending which was always my favorite. Thank you for making quality content like this on youtube. We definitely need more videos like this!
Thank you so much! I always felt very strongly about 'Sacrifice Arcadia Bay' being my canon ending and it's taken a lot of time and education to really understand why. I'm glad that my journey and sharing these thoughts can be of any use! -Sara
It's been 3 years since this video came out but I've only recently played LiS and found this video, great video overall but one thing I'd like to mention about the 2 Chloe's fates and the comparison. The presence of the terminal respiratory issue makes a difference in my opinion as it's no longer comparing a disabled queer working-class woman with another, but it's all that with a terminal illness, since she was already on her way and her request I think is a fair one to consider. If main Chloe also had a terminal illness I'd consider it too in the same way I'd hope others do for me in that case.
This I'm saying as a neuro-divergent working-class queer trans girl, I'm lucky enough to not live in the US but the problem is sadly not limited to just that hellhole
I've only known of the games through let's plays and video essays that were kind of repeating the same talking points. But your essays which fortunately popped up first on the search bar when I went looking for LiS2 analyses last night, have made me reconsider the societal implications, and especially the meaning behind the penultimate choices in each game. What I realized is by choosing a "good" ending as popularly termed in walkthroughs or other analyses (sacrificing chloe, forgiving Jed or even the "redemption" ending in LiS), although it seems satisfying narratively (in very broad strokes), ultimately they conform to the status quo, while really leaning into the powers and/or fantasy elements of the story and choosing to be selfish almost gives a sense of righteousness as the condemned protagonist and karma for the society that stigmatized them. i didn't expect that from these games, they're almost radical in a sense? I'm honestly shocked at how these games were written so cleverly. there's no really good or bad in these games, just different perspectives. Thanks for helping me realize that :)
Honestly these games are (clearly) so endlessly interesting to us for that reason! They're so nuanced and raise so many different issues in such complex ways. For our purposes (wanting to discuss politics & liberation in games) we'll probably never stop talking about LIS 😩 It even came up in at least one of our other video essays so far, the one on settler colonialism. If you like LIS we'd definitely recommend checking out Tell Me Why as well if you haven't already! We've got a video essay on it too
And thanks again for watching our videos and taking the time to leave these very thoughtful comments 😊
@@GameAssist I'm definitely watching your other essays!
Wonderful video. I'm surprised you guys don't have more views (yet). The way each part was divided was very enlightening too, and it's nice to be able to check out your references in the description, I'm definitely looking into them. Congrats and thank you, I'm subscribing immediately :)
Thanks so much for your kind words! If you're looking for more LiS content, Daz and Sara are currently Let's Playing it because Daz hasn't played or watched it before!
well hecc,
by the end, this gave me a lot more to think about than expected
very much questioning some deep set ideas right now,
this will take a while to process
thanks so much for making this, its deeply important and i wish a lot more more people get to see these videos
We're so glad to hear it! We talk about these things a lot more on our Discord community for patrons, and on Twitter. We know that unlearning things is difficult, and a journey we're all on! Thank you for taking the time to watch and process
Just found your channel after scrawling through TH-cam, trying to find people talk about the LiS games and I'm blown away. This video and the one on the sequel are so eloquently spoken. The politics you cover are done so in a mature and focused way and I just adore that. That and the editing is fantastic, using the quotes directly from the source.. love it.
Oh my gosh thank you so much, that is so kind of you! 💜 We've actually got a video on LIS: True Colors premiering on Monday if you're interested in that too!
@@GameAssist Actually, your channel reminded me that I have yet to start True Colors so I need to do that first but once I finish that, I will definitely check out your analysis vid on it!!
@@NoyahFrequencies Hope you enjoy the game and excited to hear your thoughts on it and on our video after! 💜
10:55. If you ever stumble upon Chloe’s date of birth you would know she’s a Pisces. Pisces themselves struggle from multiple personality disorder due to being empathic and feeling the intensity of other’s emotions which they could confuse it for themselves. Many may not take astrology into consideration let alone believe in it but here’s my comment.
all respect, but genuine q? how does our birth month affect our personality? isnt it just pseudoscience? its like basically confiration bias and same philosphy as religion. its impossible to disprove cause its founded on like a non negotiable assumption
Also real talk for one second, I never expected Eliot Hampden to be an abuser, I thought he was a nice guy that Chloe could get along with like Warren but many people see his actions as a caring person for Chloe but what he did was abusive. He tries to show his infraction towards her in a more abusive way and doesn’t respect the fact that she isn’t into him. He doesn’t care about Chloe. 26:20
31:58 As an artist and autistic person. I really appreciate max. I see much of myself in her. Her presence is small but can take a lot of room when she gets to. She knows almost everything about Cameras and loves old pictures/artists even quite a lot of movies and artists. Even describe “the golden hour” technique like the artists she likes. And anxiety is prevalent in autism because we have a hard time with social interaction. Something I also see in max. So I do see her as autistic and some of the greatest rep I’ve seen in ages.
I've already watched this video four times but I just want to say how much I love this analysis of the game. It's incredibly well done. I particularly relate to the points about how mental illness is treated in men and women and how anger is vilified in women, and some nonbinary individuals as well who are perceived as women. Speaking from personal experience I notice the difference a lot. I don't have bpd but I am autistic and I have adhd. A lot of the emotional dysregulation is similar, and you can see the differences in how men and women are treated and perceived like night and day. The intersection of ableism and misogyny is really importent to talk about. You also made me re-consider a lot of things I had originally thought about physical disability. Anyways. Great video!
What a lovely comment, thank you so much for taking the time to leave it! I’m so glad that you enjoyed this video so much and that it meant so much to you, putting it together meant a lot to me too. And I totally agree that the intersection of disablism and misogyny is so important to talk about. Look out for more content on that from us in then future, it’s definitely something I want to explore in a couple of other games!
-Sara
finally got to watch this after finishing LiS, and it is, of course, amazing
Look, I appreciate a lot of the viewpoints y'all bring to this video, but fuck off with that "if you agree to help Chloe die you don't think her life is worth living" conclusion.
"outside of chloe's request, what makes YOU think you have the right to take her life?" - Nothing. That IS the reason. She is dying no matter what, and I/Max have no right to decide how she should face her death.
I don't know what I would have chosen if she said she was just sick of being 'a burden' - actually, I'm pretty damn sure I would have said no. But she is dying. It's not a choice over whether her disabled life is worth saving- it's a question of her agency over HOW she dies. If I kill her, she dies the way she wants- in her sleep, painlessly, watching a movie with her best friend. If I preserve my own ~moral purity~ by refusing to kill her, I force MY desires for how she should die onto her. Refusing to kill her isn't doing her any favors - she will still die, and now she dies alone, because her supposed best friend (like her parents) leveraged her immobility against her to control her decisions. I don't have the right to control whether she lives or dies- she does. For me, refusing was an act of moral cowardice- prioritizing MY desires (I want her to live, I don't want to see a dead body, I don't want blood on my hands) over hers. Refusing to kill her changes nothing about her situation- it just means I get to look away.
BTW fuck the narrative for framing things that way in the first place. While I stand by my stance that, within story, honoring her decision is the right thing to do, on a meta-narrative level they didn't have to set things up that way. They didn't have to give you a whole list of reasons why her life now is so miserable. They didn't have to have Max go on and on about how horrific this is, from the moment we see Chloe in the wheelchair. The game argues that Chloe's life is miserable like this, and encourages you to reject a disabled existence as something unthinkable.
It would have been a stronger episode if the timeline where she's 'trapped' in a wheelchair is framed as *the happier version of her life*, except for the part where she's dying. She's part of a disabled community. You and her family watch movies together. She's in pain, but she's not alone. So when you're given the 'terminal illness/assisted suicide' choice, it is clear that her disabled life is not the tragedy. The tragedy would be that it was a good life, and the universe just couldn't fucking let her have that.
I DID choose both 'Kill Chloe' options in my first playthrough, though. At the time my thinking was that, if I feel horrified at the idea of losing Chloe, well there's no way I'm the only person in Arcadia Bay who loves someone else THAT much. Do I matter more than them? Does my love matter more than theirs? If letting Chloe die is the only way to stop the tornado, then I have no right to prioritize Chloe (and Max's) lives over everyone else's. But in retrospect the whole idea that CHLOE caused the tornado seems more and more like mental illness brain pulling an 'it's all my fault", so fuck that noise.
i love this comment-i’m glad someone else understands my thoughts on chloe’s deaths.
I honestly wasn't sure while playing the game if the game just handles mental illness and therefore disability poorly or if the surrounding characters treat them poorly and tbh i'm still not totally sure
I think it's kinda both?
But this essay is really well done there's so much thought but into it
I honestly loved this and your lis2 essay!!
I can't speak for Sara, but I agree, it's a mix of the mishandling of disability in the game, as well as the characters, both of which are deeply intertwined. Definitely with the Alternate timeline, but that's coming from a place where BPD isn't something I have as much knowledge of as Sara. Physical disability and chronic illness, though? That's something I do know well.
We plan on talking more about how the gaming industry lacks understanding of disability and disabled people in the future, so stay posted.
We're super glad you enjoyed, and I know Sara will appreciate the support of their work on Everything Is Political, too!
- Errol
I think that the game's depiction of disability, both physical and including mental illness, gives us a lot to unpack. I think in some ways it's done well, definitely in that it offers some very realistic situations of misogynistic and ableist violence, both interpersonally and institutionally, for us to read and engage with as we will.
In some ways it could probably be better- the idea of the butterfly effect and the idea that 'your actions will have consequences' is quite amorphous and purports to be moral or philosophical rather than political. While the developers talk about there being no right or wrong decisions, there are inevitably times when the narrative seems to be passing moral judgement on certain decisions or actions. And in that sense, I think it's important to say that there actually ARE right and wrong decisions sometimes. It's less explicitly or self-consciously political than LIS2, which I think is a big part of the trouble. As opposed to LIS2, the audience of LIS1 doesn't often seem to think of this as a political game, which is a huge problem in our culture. I think that has a lot to do with racism but I digress.
In any case I think this game is hugely significant in that it's encouraged games to tell these kind of stories and paved the way for games to portray these issues, and it's had a huge influence in that regard. As we talk about in the video a bit, personally I actually find player and community reactions to the text and representations of disability in the text particularly interesting, not just the text itself. They're really indicative of misogynistic and ableist trends that are normalised in our culture and our thought. Choice based narratives like this offer a really interesting insight into how people justify their actions and what kinds of thought are normalised in our world.
-Sara
You guys have really outdone yourselves here, well done
Sorry for my English in advance (I'm French). I haven't watched the whole video yet but Chloe's analysis is brilliant. I have autism and always thought Max was too, I don't think you mention it. Hannah Telle (VA of Max) in an interview said she sees max on the autism spectrum. What do you think ?
No need to apologise! We're delighted that people from different backgrounds are watching our videos and engaging with them 💜
We didn't discuss seeing Max as autistic in this video, we just discussed her as having anxiety, but thank you for sharing that with us! It's interesting because since making this video, while there is still some usefulness in using BPD or anxiety as frameworks to analyse Chloe and Max, we've become more critical of diagnostic categories and psychiatry in general. We discuss this more in our videos on Tell Me Why and Life is Strange: True Colors! At the moment we would say that we find 'Disability' and 'psychiatric abolition' more useful political frameworks, and engage less with diagnostic categories, if that makes sense.
Campaign for Psychiatric Abolition has some great resources that can get you started on reading more about this if you're interested: twitter.com/cpabolition?s=21&t=Na0F2Littj5EyH6Vf8jP4g
Thank you for this really good video ! It is so interesting and it makes us think. That's true that I primarly thought that accepting Chloe's request in the seconde timeline because I considered that we had to respect her "choice". But It's true that this "choice" is guided by the ableism around her.
I've just discovered your channel and I really love it ❤
So I'm going to change my choice in episode 4 right now !
Thank you so much for watching and for the kind comment! 💜
I highly disagree with the points made about the Sacrifice Chloe ending, I get that she did not deserve it, no one does, maybe just Jefferson, but by saving the town I'm not saving it for the corrupt people in it, I'm saving it for the good hearted people there, I remember someone on Reddit saying, that sacrificing Chloe is Max's hardest choice, harder than sacrificing the town, because she chooses to give the other people happiness by having their loved ones with them, while she'll be alone.
It's not a selfish choice in any way, or a wrong one, neither is saving Chloe, this attitude of saying that one is bad and good is detrimental to understanding all the themes of the game.
Also wanted to add that justice is served in both endings, Mark Jefferson is locked up with no mention of him having been released, there is a mention of Nathan being possibly released which I hope never happens either, at least not soon. Both endings are supposed to be taken as a new beginning from which Max can heal, shown through the fact that she smiles in both endings.
Huh, looking through the lens of disability and colonialism might be the only time I've considered the "bae" ending to be the better choice. Unfortunately with the way the narrative is structured, I consider the bay ending to be the one that makes the most sense
If you look very closely at the game there isn't just one narrative, there are multiple ones and they clash with each other. They lead to different outcomes as to what's the "right" choice in the end and all of them have some plot holes
I understanded better the game story through your video. Your voice is great to listen. Plus I have a mental health problem 2 and a half years now. I can understand you, I'm from 🇬🇷 Greece.
fascinated by all of this, particularly the discussion of the politically charged nature of the bae vs bay choice, which I never really noticed before--how it has that same confrontation with unchangeably violent power structures as the lis2 ending. lis2 just made it all so much more explicit, like you said (and probably got a lot of flack for it in the process). also the revolution there is more "televised" in that in Blood Brothers, the closest save Chloe parallel, you actually see Daniel's power--a pretty good "storm" example--in use, with at once a lower body count and much more graphic violence)
Ah that's such an interesting analysis! I love comparing Daniel's power to the storm, and looking at these revolutionary metaphors. Charlotte and I (Sara) play through LIS2 on the channel and discuss the question of "political violence" a lot in that playthrough, especially in terms of what it means to teach your brother to conform or to resist, as well as the difference between the necessity of revolutionary violence and violence for violence's sake. I do think some of these questions are very present in the first game, but something about white girls and brown boys and their experiences which invokes really different audience reactions, huh...
@@GameAssist It really does.
love all of this! i wish, i could articulate myself as well as the other commentators have 😅❤
Thank you 💜💜💜 Please don't worry about that at all, we appreciate your comment so much!
Wow, What brilliant video!👏
Thank you! We're so glad you liked it. - Errol
@@GameAssist thanks for the reply 😁
good a time as any to slobber over how good the va is in the storm conversation. like. fuck.
Oh it's so emotional every time 😭
This was SO good. I love this game so much, and there things I missed that you went over in this analysis. Before this video, I was passively "Sacrifice Chloe". I am now VERY MUCH ACTIVELY YEAH FUCK THAT TOWN SO BAD.
Incredible video essay. I didn't necessarily agree with every point you made, but I will be thinking about this video and chewing it over for weeks. Chloe is one of my comfort characters, and I've never been able to put into words why it hurts when a fictional character I like is interpreted as this nasty, selfish person. I also headcanon both her and Max as autistic and ADHD and Kate as ADHD as well 💜
yo, interested in why you think Max is autistic and ADHD? cause i hard related to her character as an 11 year old guy when the games came out, and now, after being a smiliar age to them, am incredibly sad cause i feel i am even more represented by her? sorry for the ramble
Love this! And your reason for bae over bay summed up in ways i previously couldn't express so eloquently why i too chose Chloe without hesitation . The world was against us for nothing, and why would I choose to sacrifice her when nothing was her fault. Never did anything say for certain that Chloe was the reason the tornado came.
Love the video so far, although I disagree with most of it. So a couple of notes/questions from me:
- 7:22 "mental health issues are often codes as feminine" can i get some kind of source for this? It's not something I think I ever encountered.
- your definition of disability is worded poorly. "these effects may or may not include..." is completely useless in a definition as it neither widens nor narrows the definition, you could include eye color in that list and it wouldn't change the definition.
- your definition of disability seems a bit too wide. as an example, "being an asshole" can be interpreted as a neurological and/or developmental conditions without official medical documentation that will affect someone long term, primarily through discrimination and exclusion by society.
- the different treatment Chloe and Nathan get at Blackwall is in my opinion less gender-related and more class-related (a bit of marxism shining through here). As an example, we would expect the difference to shrink if Chloe was male (that's the gender-based part) but we suspect it would almost vanish if the Prices were as rich as the Prescots.
- restricting your teenage daughter's access to morphine which you work two jobs for to even afford is ableism? I mean, I see the issues with the power dynamic there, but the notion that the inverse would be the more ethical action is ignoring a whole array of factors at play here.
- 30:40 really? you realize you're looking at a fictional photo within a ficitional game. there is no picture, there is no dog, there is no photographer and there is no disabled dog owner... this is just grasping at straws to badly support a point that's been weak to begin with.
- 32:55 you allow it? I can hardly imagine a worse expression to use when talking about personal agency
- then how would a school like Blackwall pay hommage to the native american history of the area it's built in, if they don't have a couple of native american kids to sprikle across the campus? Basically, the ability to be sincere with the native american imagery is dependent on the racial profile of the students?
- Finn and Cassidy are based on real people, so are DONTNOD the assholes here or the real people they were based on? Also, racial segregation of hairstyles is not something I can agree with and I'm certainly not going to shave off my mohawk over it...
- how do you bring race and gender into the trolley problem when it is as neutral as it can be? The trolley problem is exactly the same for every person in the world
- certainly, degrading hundreds of people to "metaphors" makes killing them easier, but I find that line of reasoning very concerning. It's something I'd expect in the manifesto of some kind of domestic terrorist and certainly not something you use as an argument in this discussion without investigating the deeper implications of what such an argument entails.
- 46:10 so you suggest not giving her agency over her own fate? Because she's disabled, we can chose what happens to her, she can't.
That was a lot. Great video, thanks
The whole point of online video essay is to open up angles of discussion.
You know I finished LIS1 the same year I finished Flash Season 1 as well as coming off from reading Flashpoint.
So my decision was heavily influenced by Barry Allen. Haha... Soooo Bay over Bae.
I know this video is nearly 4 years old at this point, but it was absolutely phenomenal, but I do take umbrage with the final section to a degree, and maybe it's just because I take it so personally as someone who was the healthcare proxy to my terminally ill mother and had to make that very real decision just a few days after doing it in game.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, she battled back and forth for years with it. Eventually is spread, first to her spine, fracturing it permanently and causing her never ending pain, and then up her spine to her brain. She was given 4 months to live sometime in late August/September 2015. She was put onto hospice care and allowed to return home to live out her remaining days.
I was still living with my mother at the time, having dropped out of college and having to help support her I was privy to all her health concerns, medications and all that. As a result she made me her healthcare proxy, and gave all the legal stuff to my sister who knew more about that stuff and had moved out over a decade before.
On February 25th, 2016 I started playing Episode 4. I remember when I got to that part in the alternate timeline I paused the game, laid down and cried. I sat there for an hour if not 2 deliberating what to do, and ultimately I chose to assist in her overdosing to morphine as she was dying a slow and painful death to lung failure. Who was I to deny the dying request of someone I loved?
On February 29th, 2016 (I will forever remember leap years, yay /s) my mother became unresponsive and struggling to breathe. I immediately called 911 in a panic, the paramedics took her to the ER, and I got dressed in non pajamas, gathered up her hospice binder, and drove to the hospital. When I got to the hospital I gave them the binder and they asked me, right then and there, "Do you want us to start resuscitation or not?" at that moment time seemed like it froze, she had it that she did not want to be resuscitated, but ultimately it was my call to make... After a moment of panicking and debating I told them not to resuscitate... after all, who was I to deny the dying request of someone I loved?
Even before cancer my mother had a life long struggle with health issues, and we talked about death a lot growing up. Even as a kid she told me "I want American Pie by Don McLean played at my funeral, I want to be cremated, if you want a headstone somewhere to remember me that's fine, but I want to be cremated, and if I ever get to the point where I cannot enjoy life, I want to die" She even raised us in a way that we could take care of ourselves in case she ever passed away, had us learn to prepare non cooked foods by 10, how to cook by 13 or so, how to do laundry and all that kind of stuff.
It still haunts me by the way. "What if I discovered her sooner?" "What if I chose to resuscitate her?" "Did she know what was happening?" "Did I kill my mother?" on top of that this was late at night, around 10pm, and by the time I was able to call my sister and get a hold of her it was nearly 3am. My sister finally convinced me around 6am to go home and get some sleep, her bf drove me home...she passed away a few hours later, so I'm also haunted by not being there when she died...and the way they let her die? Morphine. They just gave her morphine to kill the pain and let her pass away.
And when I played episode 5 on February 27th and I was faced once again with the possibility of Chloe dying again, I again paused, and cried, and this time I chose to keep her alive. Not because I enjoyed the less quirky and more physically disabled Chloe more, but because she wasn't already dying a slow and painful death. You could argue with all the times she almost dies (or does die and you rewind) that it's no different, but there is a key difference. You have the choice to stop her from getting to those points, you don't have a choice to stop Chloe from dying from her lungs failing outside of resetting the universe.
And while I may not be as physically disabled as some, I've had chronic lower back pain since I was 12, I have asthma, I've had major depression, chronic depression and anxiety since I was a kid. I have undiagnosed ADHD, possibly on the spectrum according to my autistic friends, and possibly more mental health issues from all the trauma I have, ranging from abandonment to CSA and the non stop bullying I got as a kid, including getting the shit beat out of me on several occasions by bullies.
All this to say, the final section felt like a personal attack, and I disagree with it.
Edit: also I related so much to Chloe to the point that when I chose to name myself after coming out as trans, I named myself after her. So its not like I viewed her as disposable or anything, I just related to her that much.
We appreciate you sharing your story, and I'm so sorry for your loss. I think we could have made it clearer, in retrospect, that we didn't intend to make a moral or ethical judgement about euthanasia in whatever someone's individual circumstances might be. Since making this video I personally have had to euthanise my cat, for a host of reasons, and I actually talked about my complicated feelings about this when streaming Telltale's The Walking Dead recently (we'll be uploading the vods to our vod channel). But the political point we are making does stand - why do people campaign for "the right to die" but not for universal housing or allowance for disabled people? It's unavoidable that the promotion of euthanasia has dire material consequences, which is plainly the eugenics of disabled people. This is not an individual moral or ethical judgement, as each case is different, but it is a political and systematic reality, and culture is not detached from that reality. The normalisation of euthanasia in culture is part of why we don't ask the right questions, why instead of campaigning for liveable conditions for disabled people and the abolition of a disablist capitalist system, so many people are campaigning for them to die. And with this in mind, the decision whether or not to euthenise Chloe must be made with these political, material considerations in mind, as any quandary is not abstractly philosophical but exists within a material and political context, just as I argue regarding the trolley problem. And the right questions must be asked: can we really know if Chloe would want to die if she had access to school, social life, independence and autonomy, regardless of her physical condition? In retrospect this point could have been made clearer, but there were strong raw feelings on our part against euthanasia from us as disabled people, which unfortunately may have come across as judgemental. To be clear we are not passing judgement on individuals, however it was our intention to challenge the underlying disablist beliefs which underpin broad political support for euthanasia, and this holds true. I myself upon having my beliefs about euthanasia before working on this video questioned realised how much I had internalised disablism, and shifted my point of view. My political view holds true because the material reality has not changed, but since having a personal deeply painful experience of having to arrange end of life care for my pet, this has also shifted me to a more empathetic place towards understanding when someone has a dependent who is terminally ill.
If you and others are interested in learning more from a disabled-led group which challenges the normalisation and political use of euthenasia as part of a project of eugenics against disabled people, check out Not Dead Yet: notdeadyet.org
- Sara
thank you so much for sharing your story. thank you for your strength in sharing these words because it genuinely helps others and hopefylly yourself. Thank you and i hope youre happy and helahty
Hard to watch but interesting, I havent played the game, but I already heard about the iffy handling of disability, but wow it is worse then I imagined.
Thank you so much for watching and commenting! Despite the issues with disability and Native representation LIS is still one of my favourite games, I think it’s definitely worth playing and experiencing for yourself if you want to!
-Sara
Chloe Price is a misunderstood character by her haters.
thank you
I love to listen to this video cause it makes it seem that life is strange is so much more than what is it. I personally see chole as very privilige white girl.
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chill on warren, otherwise cool video
I can appreciate this video although I feel it just hightens the holes in LIS's writing. If your theories were in fact how the writing team intended for us to view Chloe then they should have written that more planly into her character. An audience shouldn't have to conjure up as much extra content as you have to understand a character. As a result we have a large rift in the fandom; regarding Chloe Price. People who can see and identify these issues with Chloe tend to like her, while those who can't don't. I'll opt to stick with what's presented in game as Chloe's character, and give her a strong no thanks.
Yeah I’m probably gonna be hated for saying this but um… Chloe is a terrible person and the writers try to make you like her. And I firmly believe that a part of the reason why this isn’t widely seen is because it’s a lesbian relationship. So people are willing to let it slide. Even though Chloe is self centric, manipulative, unwilling to hear both sides, wants to rob from the disabled, can’t even pay her drug dealer, potentially even a murderer to said dealer, etc…She has no story arc and her wanting to die in the end feels really forced.
Uricksaladbar has 2 pretty good videos on how toxic and destructive Chloe and Rachel are as characters.
I think your looking at this wayyyyyy too far into the story and need to dial it back a notch.
I assure you 8 out of 10 acknowledges Chloe’s personality is problematic. Everywhere you can see people pointing out the recklessness, manipulation, lack of appreciation and so on. But do remember she also has likeable traits. Almost like the writer is presenting a real flawed person just like most people irl.
No she isn’t. Chloe loved and cared about Max. Did you not play the same game?