Asexual Representation in Life is Strange Part 1: Double Exposure

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back. My name is Courtney. I am here as always with my spouse, Royce, and together we are the Ace Couple. And I am very excited for this episode because we get to talk about one of my favorite franchises. Today we are talking about Life is Strange and the asexual representation that can be found within. Some of you who are quite familiar with this franchise may be surprised to hear that, because they are a bit tucked away, but we are going to talk about them because they are quite lovely. Now we’re going to be focusing on sort of two pieces of media today and two different ace characters that are all within the same franchise.

Courtney: Life is Strange started and is primarily known as games, and I think we’ll give sort of an overview of what the games franchise is, because there– there are some crossovers between the games in certain characters here and there that are relevant to our discussion today. But there is also a supplementary book in the franchise that is not only written by an aspec author but also includes an aspec character. So let’s get into it. Life is Strange, I love it so much. How long ago do you think it was that we played the first game?

Royce: I’m not exactly sure. The first game was released across 2015, because they released the different chapters at different points in time, so it was five chapters. We didn’t play it until after everything was out. Let me see here. Our Steam says we last opened it in 2018. I don’t know if that’s quite right or if we had opened it after having played through it a bit. That might be the time frame.

Courtney: How would you describe the games to someone who hasn’t played them before?

Royce: Well, I think it’s technically an adventure game, but not of the point and click variety. It is three dimensional. It’s story driven. It involves a lot of you, as the character, walking around and interacting with a variety of interactable things in the world, whether that’s talking with people or, you know, investigating objects in the vicinity, sort of a thing. And it’s a type of game where a lot of your interactions with people carry forward. And the central mechanic of the first game is a sort of short-term, time-limited time reversal method. You can go and talk to someone, learn a few bits of things, flub the conversation, rewind time and try again with new information that you learned the first time. And that’s sort of the puzzle mechanic that is built into the game is redoing things until you get them right.

Courtney: Yeah, this is like late teenage year, sort of artsy, sort of hipster-ish girl in a new school suddenly develops powers and is at a school, is trying to figure things out. There is sort of an overarching mystery in the background that you’re kind of trying to figure out. But you’re also developing your own relationships, talking to people, getting to know them. And your decisions do have consequences, and sometimes they’re minor consequences and sometimes they’re totally major and can massively impact the story or other characters. And I love games where your decisions have real consequences. It’s also extremely queer. Every single iteration of the Life is Strange game– Because that very first one was a revelatory game for me. If I were to try to make a list of top favorite games, I’m sure that first Life is Strange game would be on it.

Royce: That’s probably the first thing you had played in that genre, right?

Courtney: I mean, I’d played actual point-and-click adventure games.

Royce: Yeah, but something that interacted in this way, that was presented in this way, that had this kind of story beat. Because it was also– We’ve talked about the entire franchise, even the games that don’t carry the Life is Strange brand but are very similar.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And Life is Strange 1 went hard.

Courtney: So hard.

Royce: The stakes were pretty high. It was very emotional. There is a lot of trauma in the story.

Courtney: I love a game that includes a moral quandary. And some of the, like, biggest decisions that you can make in this game are very much like trolley-problem set in a real scenario after you have gotten to know these characters. And so it is emotionally devastating in all of the right ways. I love it so much.

Royce: The idea of the butterfly effect is very present in this game.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And so, young character with powers, in a new environment, with – I should say – new powers, is struggling to hold everything together, while every choice just has a ripple effect somewhere.

Courtney: It is funny because a butterfly is an actual motif in this first game, and so if the little, like, butterfly wings flap in the corner, it means like this decision will have consequences. And so they’ll tell you something will have consequences even if it was a seemingly innocuous conversation, so that just sort of like spikes your anxiety in a way that I love out of a game. I love feeling that anxiety. But a lot of our friends have also played and really enjoyed this game, including some members of our D&D party. So it was really funny one night, while we’re playing D&D, and Royce, you found that ‘this decision will have consequences’ butterfly, and just popped that in the group chat after they did something.

Royce: Yeah, we–

Courtney: Hilarious.

Royce: We co-DM and there are times when one person is sort of running it and the other one is doing background stuff.

Courtney: Heckling.

Royce: Yeah, it was my turn to shitpost in Discord.

Courtney: [chuckles] But it is an extremely good game. And every single one of these games– So that that was the first one which, of all the ones we played, I do think is still my favorite, but I have enjoyed every single one that we have played of this so far. And there are… the fourth one came out recently?

Royce: Yeah, that’d be correct.

Courtney: Of the actual Life is Strange franchise. Now there are games that could be in the Life is Strange franchise if they did the licensing that way.

Royce: Yeah. It was: Life is Strange; then there is a prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

Courtney: Lesbian Punk Simulator.

Royce: Life is Strange 2; Life is Strange True Colors; and then Life is Strange Double Exposure, which was the most recent one that had come out.

Courtney: But they all have their own prequels though. Like Life is Strange 2 kind of had a prequel, Life is Strange 3 kind of had a prequel.

Royce: Uh… The Life is Strange 1 prequel was a full game, the other two were just little things.

Courtney: Smaller, yes.

Royce: Yeah. Almost–

Courtney: And feature a non-main character.

Royce: Yeah, they were, they were– I consider them more of like demoware. Like, “Here’s this new upcoming thing to be excited about. We’re going to show you a little bit of the setting without really spoiling anything.” But a couple of the others – Tell Me Why and Twin Mirror – we played both of those.

Courtney: Tell Me Why was so good, that one won a lot of awards for its trans representation.

Royce: Those were both made by the studio that made the first Life is Strange, Dontnod. I want to say that they were published under different IPs due to, like, studio or publisher licensing things, or platform licensing things. Very similar games though. Similar vibes.

Courtney: Yeah, for the purposes of this episode, we can probably cut out Life is Strange 2 entirely. It’s not really relevant to anything we have to talk about today. But Life is Strange 1, 3, and 4 all sort of feed into one another. In that very first game, Max is the character you play and she is the one with powers. Another prominent character is Chloe. She’s the one that you play in Before the Storm, and she doesn’t have powers, but we do– We have started calling Before the Storm just Lesbian Punk Simulator because, since you don’t have the mechanic to rewind time, instead you just have the mechanic to like–

Royce: Trash talk, I think, is what they call it.

Courtney: Trash talk and graffiti. [laughs] Like you can just tag something, you’re just carrying around a bottle of spray paint and that’s an option. Or someone ticks you off and you can just lay into them.

Royce: The sort of situations, in the past game, where you would rewind time are basically like an active charisma check.

Courtney: [laughs] Just chew them out. And, I guess, spoilers for the game for any of you listening to this who haven’t actually played it, because I think we do kind of need to talk about the way the first one ends in order to properly talk about it.

Royce: Isn’t the official cutoff for spoilers is 10 years? When something is 10 years old, you don’t get spoiler tags anymore.

Courtney: Gosh… and it’s 10 years old already.

Royce: It’s 10 years now.

Courtney: That doesn’t feel correct, but I suppose we–

Royce: If we played it a few years late, but still.

Courtney: Wow.

Royce: But we are saying, hey, we’ve played six games in this, like, extended universe.

Courtney: And read a book, yes. So when I say this game is very queer, it sort of treats every character as if they are, or at least could be, bi. And the thing is, it’s not an equal bisexual like, !I’m equally likely to choose a man versus a woman love interest.” Because in the first game, even though there is technically a guy that you could flirt with, even if you do choose to do that, he’s kind of just a guy. He is kind of just gonna be an afterthought, just a side comment to the main game. Because the other love interest is Chloe, who was like your childhood best friend and you lost contact and now you’re re-establishing contact–

Royce: Tropes.

Courtney: And learning who you are as new people. And she can just stay your best friend Chloe or she can be a little something else. And that is just like so obviously the better choice. If you’re going to choose a romantic interest at all, that is– that is like the obvious choice. And they kind of just throw in like, “Or here’s a guy that kind of likes you, if you want that.”

Courtney: But the game itself culminates with the big trolley problem decision. Because– Well, presumably because all of these time shenanigans are happening, you’re rewinding time, you’re using your power more and more often, you’re trying to use it in bigger ways. The theory is it creates this big, literal storm, this city-ruining storm that is coming to Arcadia Bay, where this is set. And you kind of get a decision. Because you’re– you’re kind of always trying to save Chloe’s life. The very first time you learn you have time powers is when she gets caught up with the wrong guy who, like, brings a gun to school and confronts her in the bathroom, and you save her life using these brand new time powers. And you’re like, “Huh, interesting.” But then the world’s just trying to kill Chloe. Like talk about tropes, like, “Well, you didn’t die when you were supposed to, so now something else is going to try to kill you.”

Royce: Suddenly you’re in a Final Destination game.

Courtney: And you keep saving Chloe. And things get worse and worse and bigger and bigger. And so then this massive storm happens and your final choice is kind of do you let Chloe die or do you save her at the expense of all of Arcadia Bay? And the answer is you do. [laughs]

Royce: But that is an important thing to note, because everything that spins off from this, in this franchise, everything that extends from this game, mentions Arcadia Bay. It’s mentioned in 2, just in passing, as a thing that’s referenced. There are characters who were in Arcadia Bay when the storm happened, that are in other areas of the franchise. And all of those bits of extended media either have to make a decision– either they declare one of the choices canonical, which is pretty much – if they have to make that choice – it’s always Arcadia Bay got destroyed, or they basically carry your choice forward. And they have kind of two paths. So the most recent game, Double Exposure, has you select, I believe, what happened.

Courtney: Yeah, and that actually ended up becoming very controversial, which we’ll talk about when we get into that game. But the Life is Strange community will often use the refrain Bae Before Bay. That’s B-A-E before B-A-Y. That means you saved Chloe, you drove off and lived happily ever after with her, while you’re both still grieving because, like all of your family and friends died. But at least you have each other! So we– we were in the Bae Before Bay crowd.

Royce: Not everyone died in the storm.

Courtney: Not everyone, but a good number.

Royce: It was a big storm.

Courtney: A good number of them died in the storm. And so it was an extremely good game. But yeah, in Life is Strange 2, there’s just sort of a really passing reference to Arcadia Bay. But in the third one, Life is Strange: True Colors, a character from Arcadia Bay becomes a main character, and that is Steph.

Royce: Don’t we run into Max and Chloe very briefly? Or did we just, like, barely miss them in Life is Strange 2? I thought they made like a little cameo.

Courtney: We don’t see them. We see Chloe’s stepfather.

Royce: Oh okay.

Courtney: And he mentions them like he’s like on the phone with Chloe or something.

Royce: Okay, I vaguely remember seeing, like, maybe a picture of the two of them.

Courtney: Yeah, but we don’t like talk or interact with them. But Steph is such a great character, because you would not have met her unless you played Before the Storm. Because in Before the Storm, when Chloe’s going about, Steph is friends with Chloe, they know each other, and there is totally a moment where, as you’re playing Chloe, you’re just like on this school campus and Steph is DMing a D&D game. And you have the choice to sit down and play with them, and you can play like a little battle out. And it’s so good. And so– Is that right? Steph isn’t actually in the main game for that very first one.

Royce: I think that’s correct.

Courtney: Yeah, so that– that’s your first introduction to Steph. She’s amazing. And so if you had played Before the Storm, you see Steph far more prominently in Life is Strange: True Colors. And Steph actually becomes a possible love interest for your character in True Colors. So she’s far a more prominent character. You get to know her better. She works at, like, the local radio station, tucked back in the record store in this very tiny like mountain mining town. And it is actually between those two games, between Before the Storm and Life is Strange: True Colors, that the book we’re going to talk about takes place. Because this book is called Steph’s Story and revolves completely around her. And her– this– this period of her life between these two games. And it’s very good. And if you liked this franchise, and especially if you liked Steph, you should absolutely read it. But Steph is a lesbian. The character you play in that game is clearly, at least potentially, bi.

Royce: ‘Life is Strange’ bi.

Courtney: ‘Life is Strange’ bi.

Royce: The ‘video game protagonist has options’ bi.

Courtney: Yes. And I had said at one point, because Tell Me Why– which is very Life is Strange-esque, has extremely good trans representation, we’ve got some really good lesbian representation, we’ve got all these potentially bi characters. I said at one point, years ago, that I want a Life is Strange game with a prominent ace character. I said that I wanted it, I put it out into the world, and I think we got it. We at least got our foot in the door for Life is Strange: Double Exposure, which is the newest one. And the thing they did weird with this one is they brought Max back. This is the first time they have repeated a main character.

Courtney: So from that very first game you are playing Max again, just several years later. And that’s why picking your option is controversial, because you can say at the beginning like, “Yes, Arcadia Bay got destroyed” or Chloe died, but either way, now you are single, you are alone in a new place, you’re starting a new job. And so some people were upset about that because they’re like, “I picked Bae Before Bay. Why didn’t you honor the fact that we are now with bae?” Which they do kind of go into. Like you did have a relationship with Chloe for some time. You have all these photos of traveling around with her. You talk about her, you mentioned her. So like, it’s not as if that relationship never happened, it just didn’t work out. Which is, honestly, kind of realistic, because they were both like 18. 18 and went through immense traumas together. So Max is still a Life Is Strange bi in this game, and they once again have like: here are two kind of love interests. you pick your favorite. And this isn’t relevant to the actual ace character in this game, but I did take a picture of this. I wish I could remember the context. What was this guy’s name, though? And that was kind of scummy. Was it like Vincent, the Abraxas Guy?

Royce: I believe it was Vinh, the oddly older seeming leader of a – quote – ‘secret society’ on campus.

Courtney: Well, he wasn’t, like, oddly older. He like– he was, like, employed there. He worked for the headmaster.

Royce: He worked there, but he wasn’t, like, going to– He wasn’t in class anymore, right?

Courtney: No, he just, like, works there. So we’re on a college campus for this game, but we’re older than the students because, like, Max is an artist in residence. Like, she got a residency here. And so a lot of the people that we talk to are, like, either– who are, like, friends with us are either, like, PhD students, or they’re professors. Vinh works in the office as a secretary, but he– I took a picture of him sitting on a couch in his office and these two options in the decision tree are just: be sexy or don’t be sexy. [laughs]

Royce: Oh right, yeah. To flirt with the inappropriate person here or not. But that’s what we kept commenting on, because we started playing this game trying to figure out what this guy’s deal was. Because he’s not a student, he works for the university, but he’s the head of a group of people who are mostly students and is seen flirting with students. And it seemed like some boundaries were being crossed.

Courtney: Yeah, well, this Abraxas Club is like this super secret club. Like they’re trying to do this secret society thing with it. And the character I actually want to talk about is a member of Abraxas, and she is a younger student. Diamond Washington. And she seems to be among a minority of women who are a member of this club. She’s also a Black woman. Vinh is Asian, but I think a lot of the just male students that we see who are a part of this are white. And Diamond is basically trying to wrest the presidency from Vinh because she doesn’t like the direction the club is going. And as you talk to her, she sort of says she wants to bring it back to a place where it’s more about social justice and more about activism. So we kind of get an impression that maybe they used to be more politically active than they are now. And now they’re just doing their, like, little secret society bullshit with their little, like, secret puzzles and secret handshakes and things.

Courtney: And this is cool, because Diamond– I have waited for someone to actually write an article about this. I actually pitched an article to a website that ghosted me. I was going to write this article because no one else was. Diamond is demisexual as hell. So obviously demisexual, without saying the word. Or gray-ace perhaps, but definitely on the asexual spectrum. And it’s possible to miss. It’s possible to miss, but if you are the kind of player that we are, where we’re immersing ourselves in this story, we’re trying to see as many things as we can, we’re trying to read all the papers on the desk and get all the clues–

Royce: We definitely approach these sorts of games in a, like, ‘clear the environment’ sort of mentality. Give the room a good walk, make sure you inspect everything. And part of that is curiosity in the story, because that’s how you get the full story. Part of it is like there are some times in some of these games where, if you don’t do that, you come to a decision completely unprepared.

Courtney: Yes. But we– yeah, we also just like the game so much. And when a new one comes out, we tend to play it for like hours each day until it’s done. So it’s nice to spend as much time as we can on it. But since a lot of this game is discovering clues, trying to learn things, solve the mystery, you can try to eavesdrop on people, you can read notes that are left out on a desk, you can read social media posts from people that you know.

Royce: The eavesdropping thing is complicated. Max’s powers are different in this game.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: Her time travel powers don’t really work the way they used to anymore, and a different variation on that has opened up.

Courtney: Now it’s all timelines. Which is kind of interesting based on the first game, because that first big decision can change things for every subsequent game. So now you can kind of see different timelines. If this thing happened, here’s where people are now, here’s what they’re doing. So you can flip back and forth between the timelines and kind of try to gain more information that way.

Royce: You can also, if you focus, hear what’s going on in your current location in the other timeline, and that’s how you eavesdrop.

Courtney: Yeah. So it’s extremely cool and I liked it. This game was not nearly as well received by the wider community as previous ones have. I will say that I liked it, I had fun with it, and I’m extremely excited for what comes next. And I hope it does come next. Because I swear, they used my rule of three for doing ace rep without using the word. Whoever created Diamond Washington listens to our podcast or has heard my advice spread out into the world. Oh, what? Is that so shocking? Is that so impossible to conceive? Mean to me. [laughs]

Royce: You went from ‘I willed this into existence’ to ‘someone was distinctly listening to me.’

Courtney: Yeah, I will take credit for this. This is all my doing. You are welcome. Because if you don’t do all these things, if you don’t play in the way where you leave no stone unturned, this could all be missed. And normally I could critique that at least a little bit. Even if it’s done well, I could say like it clearly wasn’t important enough to the story that it’s totally missable. But we’re gonna put a pin in that. For now.

Courtney: Diamond is not a fully missable character. You will interact with her. You can even help her with some things. If she wants to overthrow Vinh in the presidency, you can kind of decide like, “Yeah, I’ll help you get some dirt on him,” or I’ll help you in your little scheme. So you can make that choice to kind of help her along. She’s also a student of one of your best friends, Moses. Moses is a professor here on campus and you, like, start the game knowing these are your two best friends, Moses and Safi. But here’s how they rule-of-three’d it in a way that I think is very good. Because even if you didn’t see all of them, you could potentially see at least one or two. So they’re out there. If you put them all together, it paints an undeniable picture. I think this is going to be recognizable to any ace out there, even if it might potentially go over the heads of some allo people who aren’t particularly knowledgeable about aspec things.

Courtney: But the first thing we find, which I believe is in the library of campus, is a letter that Diamond has written, and it reads: “Dear Moses, don’t laugh, all right? I know what you think of therapy. The brain is unknowable and the soul isn’t a thing. Your words, not mine. But this is an exercise, which means I shouldn’t have to worry about you shredding my thesis. Funny, isn’t it? Even when I’m writing something for my own emotional health in a letter that’s meant only for me, I imagine your voice in the back of my head, always asking questions, always pushing me. So here it is, in all its messy glory. I have feelings for you. There, I said it. I knew I was falling for you on our first trip to Everett when you helped me find Orion, three bright stars, and you put your face close to mine. It was your first lecture. Your words so warm on my neck.”

Courtney: [keeps reading] “I didn’t know about Tony then or about how much I’d want to be close to you after that. So, yes, I have feelings for you, and yes, I struggle with them every day, but I have to move on. You’ve got your love and it’s time I find mine elsewhere. Even if I don’t want to, even if it’s hard to, even though you’re the first person I’ve liked that actually makes sense. I’ve had crushes before – big ones – and I’ve tried sex, but I never really understood what it was like to actually want that with someone until I met you. I don’t know if I ever will again, or if anyone will ever love me if I decide I don’t want to do that again. Am I really just supposed to give up? Be alone forever? Love always, Diamond.”

Courtney: You know what I also just realized? A long time ago, like over a decade ago at this point, there were some members of the Ace Community who were trying to, like, assign different types of aces to a different suit of cards, and some people adopted it. It was popular in some little pockets. But a lot of people were also like, “Eh, mine doesn’t really fit in there,” or “I’m a different kind of micro label that doesn’t fit in very well, so I don’t really like it.” Or it was also because, um, I believe the Spade was for like aroaces, but a lot of– a lot of aces, whether or not they were aro had already kind of adopted the spade as a symbol, so some people were like, “I don’t want to stop using this because I already have been.” But a lot of people did like it, and Diamond, I believe, was demisexual. A coincidence? Probably.

Royce: What is the only one out of the four that are sometimes names? Have you ever met some dude named Club?

Courtney: No, but I want to. I’m picturing, like, big guy, bruiser type, man of few words secretly has a heart of gold. That’s Club. [chuckles] So that’s the first clue that you can find. And again, potentially missable. But then we have Diamond talking to a classmate of hers, Reggie, and you can kind of eavesdrop on their conversation. And this isn’t even doing timeline shifting shenanigans, like sometimes people are just talking at the bar and you can just sort of stand close to them and overhear what they’re saying. And this is very much what that was.

Courtney: And it starts with Reggie just kind of asking her like, “Oh, what are you gonna do?” And she’s like, “I’m not gonna do anything.” And he ends up saying, “Well, clearly, doing nothing is just making you miserable. Maybe you should just tell him.” To which Diamond responds, “Are you bananas? That is the last thing I am going to do.” And like this is the interesting thing about this game, you’re piecing together all these clues, sometimes about the main mystery, but also sometimes just character details about different people in this universe. So they aren’t even mentioning Moses yet, so if you had missed previous clues you might not necessarily know what they’re talking about yet until you investigate further. And Reggie’s like, “Well, you have to see him every day. So how are you going to get over him?” And she goes, “Well, I’m not.” To which he responds, “This is why I keep telling you you just need to get laid, get him out of your system.”

Courtney: Which– I cringed when he was saying that line, because I had already read the letter, and I was like, “Ooh, Diamond is definitely ace and that is not a thing you say to an ace person.” And she responded appropriately, exactly in line with what my expectations would be. She, like, lets out a frustrated, like, “Argh!” And says, “I keep telling you that doesn’t help, that is not what I’m looking for.” And him, still not getting the clue, says, “I’m not saying go out and find your soulmate or anything, I’m just saying – you know – a long weekend, have a little fun.” And she very bluntly says, “That doesn’t work for me.” Reggie’s like, “Yeah, well, I guess it’s just different for guys.” And she’s like, “This isn’t a gender thing, Reggie, I think I’m just built different.”

Courtney: And then, regardless of whether or not you stood on the periphery long enough to hear that whole conversation play out, you do have the option to walk up to Diamond and Reggie and say hey to them and start a conversation. And when you walk up as Max, Diamond says something along the line, just asking like, “Have you ever fallen for the wrong person?” Or something like that, and Max is like, “Show me someone who says they haven’t and I’ll show you a liar.” And Diamond says, “Well, I didn’t think I wanted anybody before. Reggie says I should just move on, and he’s right. I just haven’t felt that way with anyone ever. And I don’t know if I will again.” And then in a decision tree moment, you have the option to either say ‘give it time’ or you can say ‘maybe that’s okay’. I didn’t go back to see what happens if you say give it time, but when we chose ‘maybe that’s okay’, then you say something very nice like, “Well, maybe you won’t feel this same way about someone else, but you’ll meet other people and you’ll feel a new way about them. And it’ll be different, but it’ll also be great in its own way.” And Diamond just sort of says, “I really hope you’re right.” And that’s where that conversation ends, should you choose to engage in it.

Courtney: So at this point I am like: not only did you outright say that she has tried sex before and it doesn’t really work for her until she met this one guy, she had no idea what it even meant to want to have sex with someone; she doesn’t know if she will likely feel this way about him before because this is such a rare and, dare I say, conditional experience for her. But then you even have the sort of well-known ace microaggression happening later on, where she’s like, “Yeah, I’m really struggling with this situation and this emotion,” and some guy’s like, “You just got to get laid.” And she’s like, “No, that doesn’t work, that’s not the thing.” But then you have all of the signs that are often misinterpreted when we don’t have the language of asexuality to use. Because then you have, like, the option of just saying like, “Yeah, you’ll meet someone else.” Like it’ll happen for you. But you’ve also got, “Oh, yeah, well, you know, it’s different for guys. Guys can just go out and get laid, maybe because you’re a woman, maybe that’s why it doesn’t work.” And she’s like, “No, that’s not it either. I know that’s not the case. I am still different from other women that I know.”

Courtney: And so at this point I am more than convinced that this is extremely intentional on the part of whoever wrote this character, that she is an ace who has not discovered the language for it yet. And it’s being done in such a tactful way that I can so clearly see what they’re going for. But then they came in and gave the third confirmation. Rule of three. And these were all in different ways too. We had a letter, we had a conversation you’re eavesdropping on, and now we have a social media post from Diamond. Three different times, three different places, three different methods of getting this information that, when put together, have such a clear story. But she posts: “I swear to God, if you’re thinking of giving me ‘dating advice’ – in quotes – maybe shut up instead. – quote – ‘Just get back out there’ isn’t the flex you think it is.”

Courtney: To which Reggie responds to that and is like, “Diamond, are you sub tweeting me when I’m literally sitting right next to you?” And she says, “Not just you, Reggie. Everyone who – quote – ‘means well’ doesn’t seem to know me as well as they’d like.” So now we’re getting a picture of she’s heard this before. Everyone else is saying the same thing to her, and no one actually gets how she feels. And this is not helpful. And he responds, he’s like, “Well then, tell me, talk to me.” And she said, “I would. I will once I figure out how to put it into words.” There we go. She knows she’s different, she knows she is queer. She knows this is not just what everyone else is feeling. This isn’t an allonormative experience that she’s having, but she doesn’t have the words for it yet.

Courtney: And I already knew before she said that I was like, “She doesn’t have the words for it yet!” From that very first letter that was my interpretation of it, and now it is all but confirmed. So I am so delighted Diamond is so clearly an ace character in the Life is Strange franchise. Which I have been dying for, for a long time. And let’s take that pin out of the fact that all of this is missable to some degree. Because that could and would be a critique of mine. However, there was a little post credit scene and maybe, Royce, for the sake of brevity, since you talk in fewer words than I do, do you want to give everyone just a brief outline of the plot and how we sort of ended? So that the post credit scene makes sense.

Royce: Well, the super brief story plotline, basically all of these games, in some way shape or form, revolve around some sort of tragedy. There’s some sort of tragedy that– some sort of mystery that’s trying to be solved or event that’s trying to be avoided. It’s usually someone died.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: Usually someone died at some point in their vicinity and that is causing a problem. Well, a big part of Max timeline hopping is a woman, Safi, who died.

Courtney: And she started like– Before this game starts, it’s set up like this was one of your best friends since coming here, like Safi and Moses.

Royce: Yes, and so in one timeline Safi is dead. In the other she isn’t. And Max is trying to figure out what is going on. Why are my powers all weird? How can I reconcile these? And basically keeps ending up at a point in the timeline where there is another Arcadia Bay style storm surging behind her and she is holding a gun at Safi.

Courtney: Yes.

Royce: And she’s trying to figure out, like, what had to happen for me to get to this point.

Courtney: Yeah, so it– There’s an element of like history repeating itself. Like, “I’ve been through this before. I don’t want to, but I know what has to be done,” kind of a thing. But it’s also worth mentioning that Max loses her time rewinding powers after the storm of the first one. Like, she just does not have those powers anymore. So she started this game thinking she was just once again a mundane human with no powers. So when she gets this double exposure, this timeline hopping sort of ability, that is brand new again. It’s not what her original power is. But it’s the first time she’s had a power in a while. And all the other Life is Strange games, someone does have a power, but it’s different every time. So this is clearly a universe where some people just have powers and they all kind of have different powers. But we’ve never seen, yet, multiple people with powers in the same game.

Royce: Right. And in this instance we find out eventually, towards the end of the game, that Safi also has an ability, she can shapeshift basically into other people. And that the usage of powers is causing this instability, this chaos that brings the storm. And at the end, regardless of what choices you made, there is a post credit scene where Safi is alive and Max and Safi are not exactly happy with each other. [Courtney chuckles] And Safi basically goes like Professor X or Magneto, like, “I’m going to assemble a team of superpowered people.”

Courtney: Yeah, well, one– one thing that’s consistent from the first game, people who have powers, who start using them with increasing regularity, start becoming more unstable and getting nosebleeds. So like we saw that happen with Max in the very first game and we see it once again in this Double Exposure game. But because that’s like a clue that we know this is what happens to people who have these powers, in the post credit scene we see Diamond sitting on a bench alone, sort of having a fit with a really bad nosebleed. And I was like, “What? Diamond has powers? What was she doing this whole time? What are her powers? How has she been using it?” Because we haven’t seen any evidence of this. At least with Safi, we knew there were weird instances of people being seen doing behaviors that didn’t seem right, people saying like, “Oh well, I saw you here that day.” “Well, I wasn’t there that day.” So we knew that was weird. But for a while we thought it was because of weird timeline shenanigans.

Royce: Yeah, we thought it was a manifestation of Max’s powers causing, you know, like multi universe instability, sort of a thing.

Courtney: Yeah. But then we learned Safi is literally just shape-changing into other people to fuck with them. So we do learn that’s like– wow, okay, they have conversations, they both understand by the end of this that they both have powers. They clearly have different goals and different ideas for what to do with these powers.

Courtney: So we see Safi in this post-credits scene, come up to Diamond and hand her a tissue and be like, “I’ve seen nosebleeds like that before, I know what that means.”

Courtney: And she basically says, like, “I know why you’re having that nosebleed, so you can run or you can follow me and get some answers, your choice.”

Courtney: And then we just see Diamond take a moment where she clearly seems so lost and confused but conflicted, and she thinks for a moment and then she stands up. And I was like, oh my god, are we going to get more Diamond in the next game? It really seems like it. And then after that it says like Max will return or something. So I don’t think they’re planning on making Diamond, like, a playable character in the next game. I think they’re probably intending to keep it as Max. But the setup seems to be Max versus Safi. And Safi is clearly recruiting other people with powers. And I don’t think we really know why she seems nefarious in her intentions, but we don’t really know what she’s doing.

Royce: It’s been long enough that I may have lost a bit of the narrative, but I vaguely remember the vibes of, “Well, we can do more than ordinary people, so we should do more.”

Courtney: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Royce: We should use our powers for our own ends.

Courtney: It’s like, “We’re gods.” [chuckles] Like definitely that, but I don’t know, past that vibe what the end goal is, other than, like, maybe it’s literally just world domination, who knows? But–

Royce: Life is Strange number 5: X-Men.

Courtney: Yes. [laughs] And so this presents an opportunity to see other people from previous iterations of the franchise, if she’s just going about recruiting other people. It definitely gives us a cliffhanger of like, wait, what is Diamond’s power? And so I think they have every intention of showing us more of Diamond. Which I also think is a cool way, in a game where they have carried some characters over to different games, to have someone, you know, young, questioning, doesn’t have a vocabulary yet, and you present it so many times to still give us a clear picture, and then maybe give us another opportunity, pushing her into the future, where maybe she has discovered the vocabulary and she is a little bit more self-assured.

Courtney: I think that’s a really cool way to show character development across different iterations in a franchise like this. So that could be really really cool, and I have been extremely excited to see where they go with that and what they do with this character. Who is so clearly ace and nobody is talking about it. So clearly ace! However, I’m nervous because I’ve been seeing articles lately about how Double Exposure flopped and lost them a lot of money. I think it has been their least successful game in this franchise. And I’m very scared. If they don’t make another one because of finances, I’m going to scream and cry and riot because I was promised more Diamond!

Royce: Yeah, it does say that it was a large loss, but the– I mean, the ratings aren’t awful. I’m seeing sevens and eights mostly. Which, yeah, they have had other entries that were really strong, and sometimes a pure sequel is really hard to get right in a way that’s satisfying for everyone.

Courtney: So that, to me, that is an obviously ace, probably demisexual character who doesn’t have the vocabulary. But they made it very clear what she is and what part of her life she’s in and what part of this self-discovery she’s in. And we were promised more of her. That would be such a strange post-credit scene to have if she is never seen or mentioned again. Like very clearly, one way or another she is going to come up and be probably more integral to whatever the initial plot is. Because she’s very present in this game, lots of things are happening around her, we can interact with her, but we’ve also kind of got our own things going on with these powers and with Safi, and… So if she becomes even more entangled with Safi, or even if she tries to go to Safi and decides that this isn’t for her, maybe she teams up with Max and she is very social justice oriented and we don’t really know how nefarious Safi is going to be with this. But either way, it sounds like we have been promised more of this character.

Courtney: And since they even had her social media posts saying like, “I will talk to you about this once I know how, once I have language for it.” I would really like to see that too. Because this franchise is extremely queer. So we really really do need some ace representation to get in there. And this is the first one in a video game and it started and is primarily a video game. But they have all these supplementary pieces, like the book, which I think we’re now going to have to make this a part two. Because we’ve talked about it a lot. But this book, Life is Strange: Steph’s Story, is just really nice. If you’re someone who likes the story and the tone and the vibe of Life is Strange, the author, Rosiee Thor, I think, strikes the tone perfectly. Like the dialogue, the bits where they’re showing text chains, like it sounds like characters from a Life is Strange game. It sounds like Steph, who is a character that we’re familiar with. So the author did an extremely good job with that.

Courtney: So, if you like the story for the story and the characters and it’s not necessarily always about the mechanics or it’s not necessarily about the powers, because Steph does not have power, she is just a character in this universe. So we really enjoyed reading it and we will talk about it more next episode because there is also an ace character in that book, which is technically still the Life is Strange franchise. But being a book, I don’t actually know what numbers are for books like this that are, you know, based on video games. At least a video game like this. I mean, from what I understand, like the Five Nights at Freddy’s books are really popular with kids and people who are way too into the Five Nights at Freddy lore.

Royce: Yeah, really big mainstream things can sell just about any accompanying media. I will say that the Wikipedia page for the Life is Strange series has about a paragraph on books, of which there are four, and that’s about all the attention it gets, so.

Courtney: Well, because we also realized while we were reading this book that there are comics, I believe? Because we were reading that some of the characters in the book are also like crossover from the comics, which we did not read.

Royce: Correct. There is a comic series that has been running since 2018. There are a couple points in times where they took a break for maybe a year or so, but.

Courtney: Because, yeah, this is a situation where, like, if, if a main franchise is known as one type of media, but then they also do branch out and have different types of media, like, so much love to the authors and the creators who participate in that and add elements of their own perspective, add a wider diversity of characters that didn’t get attention in the games themselves. So much love to that. That’s so needed. But I always also want the main, like the– the biggest piece of media with the most eyes on it within a franchise to actually, like, acknowledge us also. So I’m happy that at the time that we’re recording about the asexual representation in Life is Strange that we have both. We have this novel with a great ace character who I really like, and we also have Diamond in Life is Strange: Double Exposure. And hopefully Diamond in the next Life is Strange game also. So definitely do tune in next week. We’ll talk about Life is Strange: Steph’s Story, and by extension a little bit more about Before the Storm and Life is Strange: True Colors. And a little bit about D&D, because Steph as a character has inspired us in some ways. So tune in and we will talk about that.

Courtney: But for today we are going to leave you off, as always, with our featured MarketplACE vendor of the week, and that is Blanket Ghost’s Pop Up Shop. Where you can get acrylic charms, prints and miscellaneous merch created by an aspec artist. If you are listening to this and have listened this far, I assume you’re probably at least somewhat of a gamer. There are some fun pieces of merch based on other games here. Uh, specifically, one of the Pride fandom charms that I purchased is from Twisted Wonderland, which I’ve only played a small amount of because I have friends who play this game, and I was peer pressured into downloading it. But it is– It’s like Disney villains, but yassified.

Courtney: There’s a little cat called Grim who’s very cute and has blue fire coming out of his ears, and you can get little Pride charms with Grim holding different Pride flags. Of course, I got the Ace one, but they have an Aro one, Non-Binary, Trans, Progress, Bi, Lesbian. All of our favorites and some other just magnificent pieces of artwork revolving around a few different fandoms. So definitely check it out. Links, as always, are going to be in the show notes on our website and the description on YouTube. That is all for our Life is Strange talk today. Lucky us, we get to talk about Life is Strange even more next week. I can’t wait. See you then. Goodbye.