#caulscott

Thank you so much !! 💕 I'm sorry Anon, it took me a while to get to your request. I figured that with the LIS : Reunion announcement, now was the perfect time. So here’s my humble contribution in support of the Nathan enjoyers who probably won’t be seeing him in this new game either haha. We’re in this together !

Life is Strange is, at its core, a story about photography.

Max and Nathan are the only two students in their class who are defined by photography; not just talented, not just interested in it, but dependent on it. They both need it like air. There's an unspoken connection there that the game never explicitly names, despite how obvious it is once you see it.

Sure, Victoria’s life revolves around photography too, but for her, it’s largely about status and vanity. And Chloe, while supportive, doesn’t seem to fully understand Max’s passion beyond a few passing comments and the gift of William’s old camera—which, honestly, feels more like a touching coincidence than true understanding of her friend's passion.

Max and Nathan, though, have the potential to uniquely relate to each other through their passion for photography. Their styles are polar opposites, yet I think they’re driven by the same core desire: to capture how they feel inside, to externalize their inner worlds.

Nathan photographs death, decay, and suffering because that’s the world he’s trapped in; the slow drowning he feels existing every day. His work feels like self-portraiture through horror.

Max, on the other hand, photographs quiet moments of beauty and authenticity. As she says herself:

“I’m happiest when I’ve got a great image in my lens. I’m not lonely, not afraid…” (Ep. 1)

Both of them are trying to make meaning of their anxieties and loneliness through their art. Both are trying to capture their emotions and make it all visible and tangible. The way they literally cover their walls with their own work is, to me, one of the most powerful parallels in the game.

This leads me to another parallel I don’t see discussed often: Jefferson’s fixation on both Max and Nathan for their artistic eye.

Nathan doesn't just latch onto Jefferson. Jefferson latches onto Nathan, too. He recognizes Nathan’s hunger immediately— not just for personal and fatherly approval, but for artistic validation. Jefferson realized he was the first adult who truly saw that desperation, and he exploits it. He even admits as much:

“[Nathan] tried so hard, but you can’t just throw a few subjects around and expect a cohesive style or theme… But he had an eye for shadows.” (Ep. 5)

Max is similarly drawn in by Jefferson’s photographic style, which makes her vulnerable to his influence. And he's drawn to her, too, in a way he isn't to Victoria or Kate or even Rachel. From the moment he meets her, Jefferson fixates on her like a hawk, just as he did Nathan. He sees something special in her:

“…You do have a gift… to frame the world only the way you envision it.” (Ep. 1)

He also recognizes her anxiety, her self-doubt as an artist, her awkwardness— and uses all of it to push her in the direction he wants. Sound familiar?

And you could argue that Jefferson’s praise of Max was just a means to an end—a way to lure her into the Dark Room. But that same manipulation tactic was exactly how Jefferson also lured in Nathan:

“I told him what he needed to hear. In return, I had access to the Prescott fortune. Who do you think paid for this glorious dark room and equipment? How else could I get all these hip new drugs for my subjects?” (Ep. 5)

The point stands: Jefferson saw Max and Nathan as uniquely artistically-minded and vulnerable individuals who he could take advantage of. He did genuinely see them both as talented artists...

But also as uniquely hungry for personal and artistic approval due to each of their strong passions for photography, in a way that he could exploit each of them for his own goals.

Which also makes you wonder— if Max had grown up in a chaotic and unhealthy environment like Nathan’s, would she have also acted out in similar ways to him?

If Max had been in a more vulnerable position — and if she had met Mr. Jefferson earlier — how susceptible might she have been to Jefferson’s manipulation, too?

Because of these commonalities, I genuinely believe Max/Nathan has the potential to be a non-toxic, mutually supportive ship. They could understand each other through their art and help each other— Max's anxieties and loneliness, Nathan's chaos and self-destruction.

Canonically, Max actually does show an understanding and a desire to understand Nathan's photographs — she saw the artistry in them, even if she called them "creepy", even while she suspected him of horrible crimes.

So what if they’d met before those crimes began? (That question is the core premise of my fic, Seraph and Sentinel)

And finally, one last detail: Nathan stealing Max’s photograph. Why did that image mattered to him at all? What did he see in it? What did he recognize?

Maybe he saw someone doing, in her own way, exactly what he was trying to do with his own work; capturing reality and genuine emotion. Reaching out through an image and hoping, quietly, that someone else might understand.

Don’t you think about it?

Well, I do. A lot.

First of all, it’s interesting that in this particular storyline, before we even get the chance to properly search Nathan’s room, he actually hints at what might be inside during the conversation with him and Victoria right before Kate tries to jump from the roof:

“V: Oh, please do. Take a selfie of this moment.”

“N: Yeah, Max. So I won’t forget you.”

I have several theories concerning this. First of all, we all know that Nathan is a kleptomaniac—he can’t resist stealing things, even despite the amount of money he has. He steals the Tobanga (we’ll get to that later), and he steals Kate’s memorial if she dies — which might suggest that he feels guilt. So did he steal Max’s photograph out of guilt after he trashed her room? That’s a theory I’ve seen often, but I don’t think it’s that simple.

Going back to Tobanga; Arcadia Bay was created based on Tillamook Bay, a real place. A Native American tribe also lived there, and their legends tell stories about thunderbirds and whales, creatures that were described as having enormous size and power. Their actions are used to explain storms and earthquakes. The shaking of the land and floods from the sea symbolize the battle between the thunderbird and the whale (and in many versions of the myth, the thunderbird actually kills the whale, too). Nathan is known to be symbolically connected to whales, since they began dying on the day of his death, and he calms himself by listening to whale songs.

Nathan tries to steal the Thunderbird statue. And the photograph of Max that he chooses, out of all the possible ones, shows her at a football game wearing a sweatshirt with the “Thunderbirds” team logo. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

I had some ideas about Tobanga having some influence on Max receiving her powers or perhaps influencing the apocalypse in some way, but I don’t think that’s very important. We also know that Nathan saw the storm in his dreams, just like Max did—they simply cut that content off from the final version of the game.

So what do we have? Max as the thunderbird, unaware of her power, and Nathan as the whale, sensing the approach of death, where the storm ultimately becomes the inevitable outcome of their existence within the same system.

Nathan is impulsive, but his impulses are always drawn to symbols, whether they represent guilt, mystery, or inevitability. He doesn’t just steal things, he’s full blown appropriates them, trying to take control over what frightens him. He doesn’t know who Max really is, but he clearly senses that she is directly connected to everything that’s happening. And the photograph he chooses seems far too precise to be random, where Max is literally marked with the symbol of a creature that, in mythology, is associated with storms, disasters, and the collision of forces.

Nathan doesn’t steal because he wants to, but because he’s trying to freeze something, to hold onto something, to stop at least something in a world where it feels like everything has slipped out of control. Stealing Max’s photograph, for him, is an attempt to claim control over what he instinctively senses as the source of the catastrophe. It’s also important that the photograph appears only in the branch where Max decides to report him to the principal: she becomes active, she interferes, she openly opposes Nathan for the first time, and that’s exactly the moment he notices her.

Referring back to his earlier line (“so I won’t forget you”), it no longer sounds like a threat, but almost like panic, as if he already knows that forgetting her, or what she brings to this town, will be impossible. The cut content about his dreams makes this even more painful, I think, because Nathan, like Max, saw something, he definitely knew something. But unlike her, he received neither the ability nor a way out—only a premonition and the certainty that he has completely lost his mind. And that’s why he breaks.