(WRITING COMMISSIONS OPEN!) Buried at Sea

Alright, so. If anyone were to ask people I know personally, they'll know that, since the announcement of Before the Storm, I was never in love with the idea of a prequel. I usually find prequel stories to be wastes of effort, because most people don't know how to properly handle them. Prequels often fall into the trap of "well, they can't go too crazy, or it'll contradict what happens in the original," and boy howdy does Before the Storm suffer from that. But that's also the least of it's issues.

There is a world out there where Before the Storm is a better game, with a good story, and solid writing. But I mean with 0 hyperbole that it embodies everything wrong with franchise prequels, and actively contributed to issues with LiS going forward.

I want to also quickly nip the idea that I dislike the game for being very Amberprice centric in the bud. The relationship between Chloe and Rachel is a core part of Chloe's backstory in the first game. She actively calls Rachel "(her) angel" when talking about her with Max. It was always something that, at least on Chloe's side, was a big deal. And if there was anything I wanted out of a prequel, it would be an exploration of that relationship. Instead, we got a surface level, rushed optional lesbian romance in a game about two girls with daddy issues.

Before the Storm spends a lot of it's time not telling a real story, and just being mostly a vibe, and if you like that, all the power to you. But I didn't. There's flashes of genuinely good shit in there, but it's buried under a bunch of questionable decisions, and a story that, frankly, didn't need to be told.

Episode 1 is basically the first meeting between Chloe and Rachel, and it has some genuinely good stuff in it. Sure, it's not how I'd have handled it by the end, but there's some solid attempts at making stuff work. Barring the cringe of making Chloe flip off a sign as the game opens, and the inciting incident of the overall plot being so contrived, there's some solid ideas present.

Chloe's lashing out and smashing stuff in the Junkyard after Rachel ditches her, after feeling seen for the first time in a while by someone, only to stop dead in her tracks when she sees her dad's car? That scene is genuinely cinema. Gives me goosebumps. It's the kind of thing that, in my hypothetical rewrite of Before the Storm, I would keep. It's a powerful moment. It's stuff like that where I think Deck Nine knocked it out of the park.

BtS is genuinely at it's best when we get to see Chloe's grief on full display. We get to see how the death of her father haunts her. I imagine that, if we didn't have an actor's strike likely impacting how the game was written, we could have seen "Max" scenes with a similar kind of vibe. Chloe's a character who, in her own mind, lost everything in the span of a week. I wish the game was more focused on that stuff; the game should have focused more on Chloe's increasingly self-destructive means of coping with the empty pain she feels.

Instead, we spend a lot of time with Rachel, who, frankly, is written in a way that doesn't do justice the concept of her character. Rachel is functionally the Laura Palmer of the first Life is Strange, and unlike Fire Walk With Me, which reinforced a lot of the ideas of who Laura Palmer was described to be in Twin Peaks whilst also giving us a peak behind the curtain of who she was, Rachel Amber is just made into a generic angsty teen who has some people skills. We spend time learning about Rachel's family drama, and her dad's goofy ass plot to have a drug dealer kill his ex, Rachel's Mom, out of selfish desires for his crumbling picturesque family life to remain in tact.

The issue with a lot of this is we know how it ends. We know Rachel goes behind Chloe's back to schmooze up with Frank (who is waaay too fucking old for her), and tries to do something similar with Jefferson, only to end up dead in a junkyard because of Nathan overdosing her. We know that Chloe, in half of the playthroughs of LiS1, gets shot and killed in a bathroom by Nathan. We should have focused entirely on Rachel and Chloe's relationship, and Chloe's grief. Instead, we got a plot about how the truth can sometimes hurt, and how sometimes ignorance is bliss.

A lot of people really gas up The Play, but I can't really get behind it. It's not because I think it's a scene that can't work, but in the context of the game, it just doesn't. Chloe has known Rachel for less than a week by the time the play scene happens, and the two are written to be so into each other that they plan to run away together only days after meeting? Really?

Now, I get Chloe latching onto Rachel. Chloe is a person in emotional pain, with issues about abandonment especially. She feels Max abandoned her by moving away and falling out of touch. She feels her dad abandoned her by dying in an accident. And she flips her fucking shit when Rachel seems to abandon her in that scene I mentioned being one of the best in the game. Chloe wants someone to see her, to promise to never leave, because she believes she needs that so badly. I've been there, I find that relatable. But I also understand that a new friendship burning this hot and quickly, let along a romance burning that hot and bright, is liable to blow up in her face. And it does by the time the original game rolls around.

In my hypothetical "perfect" version of BtS, the story would take place over the span of the 3 years Rachel and Chloe are together. We'd see the closeness between them blossom over the course of years, and how the relationship isn't perfect. We'd see how Chloe has some codependency issues born from her abandonment issues, and how she fails to see the problems with Rachel because of that. We could see Rachel being a bad influence, enabling Chloe's bad habits, because Rachel could also be going through stuff. We could have her family drama be in the background. In my head, if BtS were 5 episodes of vignettes, told over the span of the 3 years, we could have had all of the moments that were good in BtS, more implied history between the two, and we could cap it off with an emotional final episode that hammers home the tragedy of Amberprice.

I want to spare all of the nitty gritty details for a potential video essay on the topic of Before the Storm (which would go into more depth than this ramble post), but my big final twist of the knife in my hypothetical version of an ideal Before the Storm? The final episode taking place right when Rachel goes missing. In that version of BtS, we saw the bond between them grow over a larger time span, even if only in snippets, and then we end by ripping it away from you. We, the player, would know what happened to Rachel, but Chloe wouldn't. We'd see her life, again, fall apart. Steph and Mikey? They leave town to go to college. Her relationship with David hits it's lowest point. If we had to keep Elliot, we could have that blow up too.

The core idea of that take on the concept of a LiS1 prequel, seeing Chloe go from the girl we see in the Episode 3 Flashback in LiS1, to a girl in an unhealthy but stable place because of Rachel, into the bitter, broken, pissed at the world girl who desperately wants someone to stay by her side we see in LiS1? I dunno, that would be impactful. It wouldn't have to be a dramatic, large stakes story. It'd just be watching the gradual withering of a person, to reinforce why Chloe is the way she is in the original game. A girl who is hung up on the pain she feels, and the escape that Rachel provides.

I've always, always viewed Amberprice as a relationship that is somewhat toxic. Not in the sense where one is clearly abusive or overly manipulative, but more so in the sense that both parties draw out as much bad from one another as they do with the good. People who seek comfort, but not stability. A relationship that is doomed to fall apart, but in the moment is like a firework in the night sky. A band-aid over a deep wound. A disposable fix.

I know Amberprice people will likely not take to that reading well. That's fine. I'm not against the relationship, I just think that Before the Storm is very bad at conveying the image of Rachel, both from Chloe's incredibly biased perspective, and from outside of it. I can't buy into their relationship because it lacks that meaningful passage of time. I buy into Pricefield because the two of them have a history. A rocky one, sure, but a history that plays off of how the two complete one another. That "completion" doesn't need to be romantic, per say, but it's reinforced by the creators of that relationship's own words.

I know some people don't think a prequel to LiS1 works, and Before the Storm doesn't help. It's easily a game I could bitch about for literal hours. But I'm only mad because, like with a lot of creative things that genuinely spark ire in me, I can vividly see a better version of the thing in question. A version that gets it. I think prequels and sequels could work for LiS1. While I have low expectations for Double Exposure (and Reunion by proxy), I don't hate the idea of a sequel to the original game. I think there are stories to tell with these characters that respect the original intent of them. Before the Storm failed, and based purely on what I've heard, Double Exposure also failed, but I know there's good ideas in the trainwreck of bad ones that are these games, because I can see them in Before the Storm. One day, I'll go into depth via a rewrite outline to show what I mean.

Something that I've had nearly my entire life to contend with is the idea of fandom, and with it, how specific fandoms have impacted my life. Some for good, some for bad.

For instance, I've been told things like "the Sonic fandom is so toxic" but I just think it's full of young neurodivergent people who don't know how to properly articulate things, so they come off as a bit intense. Unless it's the Sonic Shipping fandom (cause lord knows that's a whole other can of worms), they've been pretty chill to me. Sure, I bicker with members of the fandom from time to time, but I hold little ill will to the not-shipping parts.

An example of a negative fandom experience I've had is the Undertale community. Back when the game was new, I got pressured super hard by people I knew personally who loved the game, and when the game didn't click with me (I just don't really like it), I got bombarded with a "you must have played it wrong" type of reaction, and long story short, I lost actual friends over their unwillingness to accept that I just didn't fuck with a game they loved, and was left with a deep resentment for the game because of the fanbase.

All of this is to say that I have positive and negative relationships with fandom... which leads me to the Spider-Man fandom. While I could apply this on a macro scale to just western "cape comic" fans in general, because Spider-Man is my favorite super hero, it should go without saying that I have a lot more experience with the Spider-Man fanbase... and how utterly horrible it is.

If you've only ever engaged with the movies, cartoons, and video games, and you don't bother with comic books because you, frankly, can't be arsed to read like, 1000+ comics about Peter Parker alone, I can totally understand. Lord knows that's a herculean task, and while you could theoretically jump in wherever, it's still daunting nonetheless. I'd actually implore you to, in fact, never pick up a comic book. Ever. Or at the very least, stay the hell away from conversations about Spider-Man with diehard comic fans, cause unless you are in perfect sync with their ideals on how Spider-Man should be, you'll have to deal with a lot of backlash over a difference of opinion.

I was first exposed to the Wallcrawler when I was 5 at the birthday of my best friend at the time, via the PS1 video game. From there, I'd go on to play the game a ton when I got to rent it from a Blockbuster, and from there, the rest is history. I saw the first Raimi film when I was 7, and I read my first Spider-Man comic, the debut issue of the Scorpion, around the same time. From there, I'd go about reading as many comic books featuring the character as I could find. Mostly by reading pirated copies online when I was about 12, and it would take a long time, but I eventually had read everything available at the time.

I participated in long lost forum (like, I genuinely couldn't find them years later) discussions and the like whilst I read, and things were great. I was young, but I was enjoying myself. Sure, I'd not like everything people liked, but things were still mostly civil...

Then, One More Day happened, and all hell broke loose.

Everyone, and I do mean basically everyone, was losing their collective shit about it. Threads about how horrible it was, and posts about wanting to kill Joe Quesada were fucking everywhere. JMS was shit on, which is wild to think now, for something he ultimately was forced to do. It was a disaster, and it's hard to believe now that this was 18 Years Ago.

And I... well, I didn't care. I had just turned 13 when I had finally read One More Day... and I didn't really care about what happened. I mean, sure, the story is pretty bad, but I had read what I thought were worse Spider-Man comics before. But when I dared say as much in the forums and chats that were previously relatively civil... needless to say, I was treated pretty horribly.

I was called everything from a fake fan to other colorful things that I won't repeat cause, uh, yikes. I was told that I should end my life, and that I was unlovable... when I was 13 and not at all in a good place mentally... over my opinion of a fucking comic book. All because I didn't care that Spider-Man had his marriage annulled. All because I was fucking 13, and marriage was the last thing on my mind.

I stopped reading Spider-Man for a while after that. The mental strain I was put under from dozens of strangers treating me, a mentally ill 13 year old, like dirt over something I loved made reading it hurt too much.

Years later, I would pick up Spider-Man again, just after Superior Spider-Man had just wrapped up. I had been still enjoying the cartoons (sans Ultimate Spider-Man), games and movies up to that point for the most part, and decided to give reading the comics another shot with the new #1 of the relaunched Amazing Spider-Man.

The books weren't mind-blowing, but I was engaged at the time. I had also begun catching back up with things I had missed in my comic book sabbatical. I wasn't super impressed, but I was still engaged to a degree. I had jumped in more or less when they had introduced Silk, and I was like "oh hell yeah."

Cindy Moon was a character that instantly hooked me, because I loved the idea of a new Spider-Woman-esc character who had a unique dynamic with Peter. I am one of the people who didn't mind the whole "pheromones" thing, because I was invested in seeing where it would lead. I am a firm believer that nearly any idea in fiction, within reason, can result in a good story if the right writer was involved...

And then it went nowhere.

I tried to resume my general view of things, and I was met with pushback. I had stopped letting people really get to me as much, and would argue against the people who would act like I was less of a fan for not liking the traditional MJ/Peter dynamic, and preferring the idea of the character going in a newer direction instead of trying to go back to a (now long gone) status quo. It didn't really have to be with Cindy, I just wanted things to progress in some way.

And then they didn't.

While stuff certainly happened, none of it beyond the initial hook of an idea really grabbed me. This is why I think Dan Slott is a good "ideas guy" but not the best writer when it came to executing on those ideas. Spider-Verse, for all of it's problems (and it has a lot of them), was overall solid, but what came after was mostly just kinda mediocre slop. And it didn't help that I had less than stellar interactions with Slott on Twitter (which, to be fair, were unpleasant cause I was pretty bitter with life at the time), so I was just burnt out by the end of 2016.

I was tired of the fandom bickering, I was tired of Marvel not progressing things, and I was just overall done with comics. I haven't really committed to reading much in the way of comics beyond the odd "I wonder what's going on right now" moods I get in sometimes. Marvel is a company that I could write a whole long as post about on their own. How the company, especially when it comes to Spider-Man, drags things through the mud, either because of unspoken malice for their fans, or just plain ineptitude. Things have just been miserable for a long time when it came to Peter Parker in particular, and it would take more than pressing undo on OMD to fix that, but I digress.

I had actually planned on making a post going over the complaints people had about "too many Spider-People" and why I think the arguments they make are dumb. I would have gone on to talk about how the real issue is that Marvel's inept creative decisions have lead to characters being less interesting, and having less opportunities to find their place in the Spider-Man mythos. How even the big names like Miles Morales struggle to find an identity of their own outside of gimmicky bullshit. How they keep introducing new characters despite not really completely fleshing out the old ones.

And I opted against it in favor of this.

See, to this day, I still see Spider-Man fans complain. I see them constantly complain about things like how they keep blueballing them on the Peter/MJ relationship, the existence of Paul, the amount of Spider-People, the miserable way Marvel treats Peter... and much more. And barring the last point about the miserable writing for Peter (it's gotten ridiculous from what I've seen over the last 9 years, honestly), I think this is ridiculous.

Why? Simple: because they have a fix for their problem.

And what is that solution? Also pretty simple: STOP. BUYING. THE. COMICS.

Spider-Man fans biggest problem is that they are unable to just wash their hands of the comics, to just stop buying them. To actually vote with their wallets, and just not bother to support something they clearly don't like. I'd say they should then support things like the "new" Ultimate Spider-Man, where Peter is married to MJ and has 2 kids... but Marvel was always gonna end that book eventually. They always end those kinds of things eventually, because it takes focus away from the mainline book, which is what they want you to buy.

So the Spider-Man fanbase, despite being miserable and full of bickering and infighting over shit like whether or not Peter should get back with MJ or not, among other things, is still just sitting there and taking it, like good little sheeple. They continue to complain about a product, saying how shit it is, only to keep buying the product.

Fans don't want to accept that the Powers That Be over at the House of Ideas really just don't give a shit about what they want. Marvel doesn't care if you hate Paul, or want Peter and MJ to be married again, or if you hate how they treat Ben Reilly in recent years, to give an example of something removed from the OMD related shit. Marvel is going to keep doing it because enough people keep buying the books. And these fans don't want to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, they outgrew the book for now. They're unable to accept that they should take a step back, remove it from their pull-list for a while, and hope everyone else does the same.

But they won't. They won't do that. They'll keep buying a thing that makes them miserable, and they'll keep complaining before repeating the cycle like an insane ouroboros of self-sabotage. They won't just move on, knowing that the people in charge of Spider-Man won't bend the knee to them, and will instead just jingle keys in their faces for short term gains.

I gave up on the comics years ago because I realized they weren't really for me any more. I came to the conclusion that fans of the comics also negatively impact my ability to enjoy things, so I scarcely interact with the Spider-Man fandom... which I consider to be the most repulsive fandom I've ever had the displeasure of interacting with. And because I said that, they won't listen to me when I say they just need to let go and stop supporting the books. Because they're a bunch of addicts for outrage. They chase the next high of hating Marvel instead of going out and just finding something else to read.