Love is strange

I honestly forgot abt this. I personally wouldn’t call it fully finished but this is about as far as I got <3

life is strange is one of the prettiest games ever

Wanted to do something a bit light hearted again this week as I'm still working on writing for two other uploads . . . also I wanted an excuse to rework a previous diner based piece, hope y'all enjoy and have a great weekend!

The way Michel Koch wrote Rachel Amber in Life is Strange is not comparable to how Laura Palmer was written. Rachel wasn’t built as a truly complex character — she was framed almost like a sociopathic teenager, someone fundamentally manipulative and morally questionable.And that’s a problem, because even characters who did far worse things, like Laura Palmer, were given real humanization. In Twin Peaks, Laura is allowed to express herself, to reveal her contradictions and her pain. In her diary, she talks about wanting to be a good person like Donna, remembering who she was before everything went wrong, and she expresses that with genuine emotional weight. On top of that, her story includes severe abuse, even within her own family. The audience is given not just her actions, but the context behind them.Rachel never gets that.Instead of being humanized, she is gradually villainized — which is even more troubling considering she is a minor. The narrative never gives her a direct voice or the space to explain herself. At the same time, Chloe Price’s perspective — someone who truly loved Rachel — is constantly framed as unreliable, as if it were just emotional projection or illusion.Meanwhile, the game ends up validating, directly or indirectly, the perspectives of violent men like Frank Bowers, Mark Jefferson, Nathan Prescott, and David Madsen — characters who are given context, justification, and even moments of humanization. This creates a clear imbalance: those who commit harm are explained, while those who suffer are reduced to mystery or suspicion.The result is still visible today: more than a decade later, Rachel is widely disliked by parts of the fandom — largely because she was never given the chance to be fully understood.This also connects to how the game handles the relationship between Chloe and Max Caulfield. The representation is extremely limited. Moments of intimacy are rare, and when they do happen, they come with conditions — Chloe can kiss Max while tied to Rachel’s imagery or in extreme situations, like being close to death. The game doesn’t hesitate to depict violence against women, but struggles to show affection between two girls with the same openness.That imbalance extends to the endings as well. No matter the choice, Max and Chloe’s outcomes are defined by loss and suffering. There is no clear space for their relationship to exist fully and openly.In the end, the narrative contradicts itself. If Rachel wasn’t even minimally good, if there was no genuine love or sincerity, then much of the story’s emotional core loses its meaning. Turning her into a manipulative figure doesn’t add depth — it makes real empathy harder to access.What was missing was true humanization: showing how her environment, relationships, and circumstances shaped who she became, much like what was done with Laura Palmer. Giving her voice, context, and internal conflict.Instead, what we get is a story where Chloe’s emotional truth is weakened, while versions of Rachel shaped by problematic characters are given more narrative authority. And that’s not a small detail — it fundamentally shapes how the audience understands who Rachel is.This isn’t just about one character. It’s about narrative structure. When a story chooses which voices are more credible, it also decides who deserves to be understood — and who can be dismissed.And in this case, Rachel was dismissed.What makes this especially serious is that it doesn’t exist only in fiction — it mirrors patterns that already happen in real life.When a story frames a teenage girl like Rachel Amber as manipulative, unreliable, or responsible for what happens to her, it echoes a very real social tendency: minors, especially girls, are often blamed, discredited, or reduced to stereotypes instead of being listened to. Continued in part 3...

They were the best of friends <3