langfield

[langfield]

Bambi.

[langfield]

Id love to hear your thoughts on Sean & Finn bestieee

thank you for the submission!! as for sean and finn … drum roll please …

i ship it! i don’t think this is very surprising of me? while it’s certainly not my otp or anything ( i care very little for romance in lis:2 overall, daniel is mine and sean’s lifeblood ) it is something i enjoy! i always romance in life is strange games and for me, finn is my temporary partner for sean.

what made you ship it?

initially, i didn’t like finn or cassidy as love interests. not for the, ah, ‘age reason’ people commonly crash out about? i care very little for that. they are clearly around sean’s age to begin with and, obviously, none of them are out here keeping track of ages or birthdays and stuff … those things don’t really matter when you’re homeless and on the move like they are. if finn or cassidy truly thought that sean was a child, or too young for them, or something, they wouldn’t have flirted with him and the likes -- they’re not predators, they never act weirdly towards daniel, and it’s absolutely silly to get all hell bent on how finn and cassidy might or might not be legal adults by a few years … it’s fine. there’s probably a few year age gap at worst, and that’s normal? also it isn’t like sean’s marrying either of them? but i digress! my dislike mostly came from their overall ‘hippie’ vibes -- any character who excessively uses drugs and acts out clashes with me, a person who has lived with addicts all my life! so finn and cassidy weren’t it.

yet i did warm up to finn after romancing him. his personality isn’t my favorite but he has a hopeless romantic dreamer quality to him that i’m immensely fond of! the fact that sean is someone he would describe himself as ‘obsessed’ with tickles me … i enjoy that sort of narrowed fixation in my ships, so that element really caught me off guard and had me reevaluating the dynamic. finn is also very clearly in love with sean -- maybe not in the way sean deserves, or in a way that’s normal, however seeing how fiercely finn cares for the other boy endeared me too. cassidy’s nonchalance about sean overall has always been my biggest setback with her … sean wants forever, he wants rings and to settle down one day, and he’s so clearly a romantic as well … wants to be one, anyway, when he’s allowed. he has your typical teenage fantasies of ‘forever.’ but cassidy does not fulfill this for sean, and neither does finn, although he comes marginally closer at least. you really get the vibe that these two loved each other and seeing sean’s angst about it, about finn and finn’s stupidity when he knows finn is so, so smart, is absolutely heart wrenching. i want sean to be loved, plain and simple, and finn wanted to provide that even when he was technically incapable of doing so. what’s not to like? their hospital scene right before sean breaks out is also bittersweet in many ways … as someone who always plays low morality sean, i just think he fits better with finn more than he does with cassidy in general. sean gets finn, and finn gets him, because they’re both two people who want to get their happy ending after constant beat downs so badly they’re willing to try anything, like the desperate souls they are, and it’s beautiful. i find sean romance in lis:2 fascinating because it’s less about whose endgame for me and more about sean getting to explore a part of himself he will never truly have access to … i want him to kiss someone for the first time and i want him to love another and wishfully dream up scenarios where he gets a life with them! him having that experience matters to me, so shipping sean is ‘important’.

in a similar vein, sean getting to talk about his bisexuality to his dead dad in a dream makes me cry. as someone who is queer and whose dad died before i could properly come out to them, it hits me in a way that’s hard to articulate? here is a vulnerable young boy who has the world on his shoulders and yet all he wants to do is tell his dad, whom he loved and looks up to, that he’s into boys as well as girls … sean wants his dad to still love him despite it, and he wants to know that for sure. it’s also the first time we actually see a lis protagonist struggle with their sexuality and talk about it in some way, so the exploration of that queerness gets all the bonus points. i’d ship finn and sean for this alone, really.

what are your favorite things about the ship?

i feel like i basically covered that above, although to reiterate : sean. i do love finn and their moments, but what finn’s romance says about sean takes priority! and their relationship does a lot for sean’s character … cassidy’s does less, which is why i don’t ‘ship’ them so to speak, even if i do believe he has a massive crush on her. finn represents sean finally acknowledging his bisexuality, finn represents sean’s deep desire for a happy end goal even if the means are deplorable in other people’s eyes, finn represents sean’s brotherhood with daniel, finn represents sean’s failures, his successes, his love for others but his selfish instinct to protect himself and daniel first even at the expense of said others, etc etc. finn is sean’s first kiss and his first heartbreak that really cracks sean in two -- his little drawing about how they could’ve had the world if finn wasn’t such a fuck up is such pointed, immaculate angst it’s hard not to lap every inch of it up. sean loves finn and he hates finn for being an idiot. he admires and respects finn yet is jealous of him being close to daniel, when he himself cannot be. it’s so simple in a character way and complicated in a plot way … and i suppose those are my favorite things about it!

is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

i don’t engage much in lis:2 shipping because it’s not my scene but the age thing is stupid. i talked about it above too ( whoops! ) so i won’t repeat myself but it’s just so … silly. i guess my other unpopular opinion is that i don’t believe finn is sean’s soulmate or his endgame. i don’t think they’ll ever be together in the way they’ve both dreamed of and i think that finn was mostly a stepping stone for sean more than anything else. obviously, i support shippers who believe that sean and finn find their way back to each other and date and live out their beach dreams in mexico, but i personally just can’t see it given their characters. they’ll always love each other though, and look back on their time together with the utmost fondness and despair. they mattered to each other at one point in time and that’s what’s most prominent to me, and is all i need or want from this ship.

[langfield]

Okay here’s an ask game

Send me a ship and I’ll answer three questions based on if I ship it or not.

Ship It

What made you ship it?

What are your favorite things about the ship?

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

Don’t Ship It

Why don’t you ship it?

What would have made you like it?

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

[langfield]

fun little reminder that i personally love double exposure and miss it greatly actually

[langfield]

It's the way we have Joyce posting this and Max thinking she understands her and kind of feels the same.

And then, we have Vinh already showing support, interest, and fully accepting Max's baggage in the end.

[langfield]

fun fact i have other accounts where i post about the lis games and i can mainly be found at @recaul ( max ) and @strangeis ( multi ) … be warned they are rp blogs so while i’m fine with metas / notes / to be deleted stuff being liked or even rb’d please be mindful of my threads which are not for liking or rb-ing!

[langfield]

as much as i’ve grown to really like lost records i do think it’s a little telling that a decent majority of the people who relentlessly praise it do so in an effort to prove how bad de is lol. i’ve never seen this much talk about tell me why, for example, and that’s a game focused heavily on a transman and his queer identity :/ oh, and did i mention it’s a story about the wishy-washy nature of memory? like … lost records does deserve more fanfare but it’s very obvious a big push for it to be popular is based in the fandom hatred of double exposure and this ideology that dontnod is somehow full of superior writers in comparison to all of decknine’s poor employees — which is also why fans have stopped bitching abour lis:1 now, despite the immense criticism leveled towards said media after ep5 released. idk! just sort of grates on me and lessens my enjoyment of lost records in turn

[langfield]

ngl it's a little sad how the LIS1 fandom says they love complex messy female characters, but Victoria as a character a lot of times is treated as a taboo character which feels unfair. like you wanna talk about layered characters, but people cannot handle Victoria. people are allowed to talk about her and her importance too.

[langfield]

stretches of dryness, expansion of you

[langfield]

when it comes to double exposure critique, i really do try to hear it out — because the game isn’t perfect ( and really, has any de fan said it was? ) and there’s many holes to stick your fingers into, plot wise and theme wise. there is much to be desired and it’s not wrong to bring attention to that, no matter what your more petty grievances are! but when pricefielders claim that there’s just so many things wrong with the game outside of chloe’s absence, and yet everything picked at either circles back to chloe or is criticism based on things they believe the story doesn’t provide but, factually, does? it is hard to take it seriously. some of these fans didn’t play the game or they played it quickly and with their eyes closed — and it definitely shows in their repetitive echo chamber. it shows in the overall hypocrisy where fans rally against the idea of de fans claiming certain things to be true ( like people caring more about chloe’s character than max’s ), acting as if it’s unjust observations or unfair ones, when they then turn around and just admit such things to be true without a second thought. these behaviors of reducing max to chloe’s girlfriend and nothing more has always been obvious, and calling that out isn’t cruel or crazy : it’s merely a statement of consistent actions via the lis:1 rabid fans. are all pricefielders like this? absolutely not. shipping doesn’t inherently rot ones brain and many people are able to put that aside to engage in a media without rose colored goggles on. but the loud majority is, and it’s indeed irritating to see and engage with.

it comes down to : no, chloe not being in the game isn’t de’s main problem nor is it even a fraction of the game’s flaws. but yes, most of people’s dislike or criticism of de does in fact stem from chloe’s absence and the lack of pricefield focus. this shows in the things people just outright confess to, the absolute abhorrent way characters like amanda and vinh have been treated throughout minor comments or even fanfiction, and the sudden postive appraisal of the first life is strange game when many fans were at odds with said media after episode five. and while i think it’s perfectly fine to not like double exposore and to base it solely upon pricefield or chloe ( everyone is entitled to their opinions ), what isn’t fine is to act like de fans are making shit up when claiming that a lot of the hate is about the inherent chloe favoritism in this fandom. discrediting critique that boils down to ‘my ship died’ / ���well my fave isn’t in it’ isn’t bad on anyone’s part and it shouldn’t be treated like us de fans are somehow being unreasonable when expressing discontent at the discussion surrounding the game, and how deeply biased it all is. pricefielders have showed their ass with harassing real life poc and queer people over an imaginary gay ship, and have repeatedly demeaned a cast mostly comprised of poc and queer characters as well. and, frankly, they’ve always done this anyway, so none of this is exactly surprising besides the fact it’s been almost a decade of nonstop toxicity at this point. de fans aren’t trying to claim the game is perfect by pointing out these behaviors and i’m very, very tired of people acting like we are.

personally, i’d love to see more nuanced double exposure discussions. i’d love to see this game discussed for what it is rather than what it ‘should’ve been’ … i’d love to see more opinions about the characters, or the dynamics, or the plots, or — etc etc! but as it stands, everything about the game boils down to a general upset over max and chloe rather than anything else. it kills nuance and it does nothing but put us in an internal loop of feedback that barely scratches the actual surface of double exposure. if you don’t care to discuss it, then great! if you hate it, that’s fine! but i truly need these types of fans to stop acting like they know a god damn thing about de when they obviously played it with their eyes closed the whole way through lol. having opinions is all well and good no matter if you’ve consumed the thing or not, until people start acting like they’re genuinely airing unbiased critique instead.

I might get jumped for this, but the reason people don’t like Double Exposure is because Chloe isn’t in it. That’s it. There might be a few exceptions with actual criticism, but the majority of the Life is Strange community keeps saying it’s "bad writing"—which, let’s be real, people from outside the Life is Strange community and even some in the community can see that LiS 1 has bad writing. But most fans either defend it blindly without actually understanding what the other person is saying, or they just resort to ad hominem attacks.

Take Before the Storm as an example. It’s about Chloe, and it got good reviews. Meanwhile, Double Exposure didn’t. Why? Because Chloe isn’t in the game. I wholeheartedly believe that if Chloe were the main character of Double Exposure, it would’ve been received way better.

A lot of Pricefield shippers don’t like the fact that Max can have her own game that focuses on her. They don’t like the idea that Max can live and thrive by herself without Chloe. If you really think about it, Life is Strange 1 was more about Chloe and Rachel. Max and Chloe’s friendship was just there, with some emotional moments and them having fun, but nearly the whole game revolves around saving Chloe. And Before the Storm is entirely about Chloe.

And before anyone says Deck Nine "disrespected" Chloe—no, they were just being logical. A lot of people underestimate the trauma both Max and Chloe endured and think it could all be solved by them going to therapy and magically being fine. That’s not how trauma works. What they went through isn’t something you just get over, especially if you were in a relationship. Double Exposure literally mentions Chloe every episode. But some people don’t want references or grief—they want Chloe herself.

As a diehard Warren fan, I was reaalllly upset with him not being in it at all, but it didn’t take away from my experience with Double Exposure, and I didn’t dwell on it either. Not to mention Pricefield shippers have a lot of content compared to Grahamfield shippers. They have LiS 1, Before the Storm, the comic book series, a bit of LiS 2, and also a lot of references from conversations and texts about how Max and Chloe’s relationship proceeded after the events of LiS 1. Meanwhile, Grahamfield shippers got nothing. Yet Pricefield fans still complain. In my opinion, it’s a tad bit selfish.

Yes, I do agree that Double Exposure has bad writing, but when that criticism is coming from a Life is Strange fan, it just seems a bit contradictory to me.

[langfield]

personally i don’t think max being the protag of de is a problem? i understand people who think that safi would’ve made a great protagonist and i agree with that -- but i also think she works best as a non playable entity in de. while maya’s, vinh’s, and safi’s stories would be fun to explore i do not necessarily think it’s full game material? it was rather mundane seeming besides the whole book stealing shit and maya killing herself … and as for safi on her revenge tour post book canceling, i struggle to see how that would work either because safi works as an isolated party the entire time and nobody would’ve been willing to help her anyway, considering everyone’s stances on it afterwards. and safi deciding to choose peace would feel so odd because she has way more healing to do than de allows and fits better as a character who leaves the narrative after it’s wronged her repeatedly. there’s also the case of the lis protag standard which would be two love interests and with maya dead and vinh’s relationship with safi unable to ever be any sort of end game, it’s like … well who would they pick? i do think there’s more max could’ve done in the narrative and i do think it’s obvious that she was a cash cow, but i’ve never struggled with her inclusion in de the way most seem to tbh. in fact it’s her being there that helps fuck everything up and causes a climax of any kind ( safi was sort of lost without max’s investigation skills and wouldn’t have ever thought to go on stage to spill her truth without her, etc etc ) — of course, people can be creative and imagine different scenarios! it’s the fun of projects and rewrites! but also max not being there causes more of a hole than anything at this point imo

[langfield]

this is the kind of things i be posting to twt btw like when i say i’m a lot more colorful on there i DO mean it lmfao

[langfield]

gonna be honest it’s absolutely amusing how many de fics have max either straight up cheat on amanda with chloe or something similar and the comments are always eating it up … but you just KNOW that if anyone wrote max committing some kind of infidelity with amanda while seeing chloe again people would be so pissed about it lmfao

[langfield]

as someone who loves safield immensely ( and is a firm believer that those two were in love with each other in game ), i will say that i actually agree with safi not being a love interest in de? honestly, i think explicitly heavy handed romance scenes would’ve dampened so much of what makes them special in my eyes … mainly because them loving each other so entirely speaks more volumes than if the game made a specific turn towards romantic or platonic affection? like, safield thrives in de without a specific label and while existing in that ‘are they?’ dichotomy. and, on the other hand, i just can’t think of any way they could’ve made a safi romance arc work with max’s and safi’s character directions. safi was always going to leave at the end and max was always going to stay. and, on top of that, as much as they both care for each other, there were many things standing in their way : themselves, other people … their respective ghosts. i much prefer safield being a slowburn in the sense that safi would become a romance option later on, as it gives safi and max room to breathe with other charactera and to find themselves more.

plus, lets be honest, safi’s plot would feel cluttered as all hell if they added a romance plotline on top of it ( my girls were already dealing with a lot, i genuinely cannot comprehend them acting upon their feelings in game ).

[langfield]

When we were talking about Steph, you mentioned you used to hate the LIS games?? What's the story there, if you don't mind me asking?

it’s totally fine to ask, so thank you for being interested! i might’ve mentioned it before ( or made a post about it briefly ) but essentially i spent most of my life loathing the life is strange franchise. it wasn’t an ire i kept burning or anything, seeing as it was mostly a backseat dislike that could maybe turn into a rant or two if the games were brought up to me in any regard. but to backtrack a bit, i did originally like the first game : i was there when it first released and obsessively watched jacksepticeye’s playthrough every time it updated, as well as a few others at the time. choice based games were my jam then, and still are now, so it’s hardly a surprise i was eagerly devouring a new title in a genre that was mostly dominated by telltale games at the time. while i can’t recall any of my old thoughts about life is strange, i do at least remember enjoying it for a while … until i eventually didn’t.

to be slightly vulnerable here, my dad passed away in 2015 during the month of may. so if i’m remembering correctly, only three episodes of lis:1 would’ve been out at the time? regardless, i was rather young when he passed, and my life took a violent upheaval afterwards — meaning that a lot of that time is a blur to me. what isn’t a blur, however, is how the game slowly became soured for me via fandom perception and my own personal experiences. for example, i’ll just say that i really clashed with chloe’s character after losing my own father, who i lost at a much younger age than she lost hers in game. i won’t get into it, but i was so mad that a fictional character was allowed to act so immature about her dad’s death at nineteen, years after he died, while i ( who wasn’t even close to eighteen yet ) was forced to spend so much of my life holding back those ugly feelings and grief. my rather critical views on chloe mainly come from that original clash actually, and while i’ve slowly learned to love her now, i did spend a lot of time rolling my eyes at her immaturity and ‘whining.’ to me, she had it so good and couldn’t even appreciate it. while she had a loving mother, her childhood home, and was able to briefly attend an amazing academy … i was homeless, with a drug addict as a mother, and missed most of my basic schooling because of those two factors. me and chloe just clashed too personally at the time for me to be able to step back and view her more objectively.

besides that, i became disillusioned with pricefielders very quickly as well. i don’t remember not shipping pricefield, but i definitely didn’t ship it enough and therefore i could never find a place within the fandom because of it. max was also a character that i did not care about at the time ( which is funny to think about now that she’s my favorite character in the lis universe lol ), so all the content about those two was never really my thing. i remember really loving before the storm and rachel amber, and that further divided me from most of the vocal majority because, back then, hating on rachel was considered the appropriate thing to do. people demeaned her for pricefield, for max, and painted her out to be some sort of master manipulator with no heart of her own : a critcism i absolutely hated to see and got defensive over. basically, i was someone who had a lot of ‘unpopular’ opinions at the time. i preferred amberprice over pricefield, i liked caulscott ( which i still do, but cannot remember why i liked them initially? ), and didn’t particularly find the game as profound as everyone else seemed to. i don’t remember it moving me at all back then? regardless, i was young and very ‘hipstery’, so i was quick to fall into some of the criticisms that hit the game later — in a vindictive way that is rather embarrassing to think back on, if i’m honest.

since i couldn’t see the game like everyone else did, i instead hated it. i agreed when people said the dialogue was cringy. i nodded along to the ‘chloe is toxic and abusive’ claims. i immediately high fived anyone who said max was a boring protagonist and concurred to the fact that life is strange was janky, cliche, and had absolutely atrocious writing. and even though i loathed fanon, i also believed in the ‘warren is a stalker’ takes simply because it made the game look bad and poorly executed, which is a view i obviously enjoyed. basically i was a kid and easily influenced, and refused to have any thoughts of my own. hating the once popular thing was cool, and i had ample reasons to be discontent with the media at the time, and so i was eating up whatever antis were saying about the game. there’s even a distinct memory of me trying to play the first episode two years ago, and not being able to get past the parking lot scene because i genuinely couldn’t stop viewing it as a chore to get through … which is why i now know, without a doubt, that your mindset going into a game does indeed effect how you perceive it more than anything else : which is why you see me so heavily encouraging people to play double exposure with a generous lense rather than a dreadful one. ( trust me, it does matter! )

but to get to the point, yes, i hated the first game up until 2024 actually. i don’t think i ever hated life is strange 2? i just didn’t care for it at the time, if i remember correctly, despite rewatching berleezy’s playthrough religiously. although i did fall into popular opinions once again, opinions such as ‘daniel is so evil’ and ‘the racism is so cartoonish’ … takes that i don’t even remotely agree with anymore, by the way. so i didn’t hate it, but i didn’t love it, so my stance was as stagnant as ever. that is until true colors — a game i watched playthroughs on and then bought to play with my mother the year it released.

true colors hit at the time. i don’t know how to explain it exactly, but alex’s backstory regarding the foster care system and cps really hit home for me because i have dealt with that for most of my life, as well as with most of my immediate family. i could see a lot of my loved ones in alex or in gabe or even in john chen himself. i was moved by alex’s power and the struggles of human emotion : that constant disregard of one’s own feelings to prioritize someone else’s, and the relative numbness that never seems to leave you in response to such behaviors. i related to a family broken by the system and a girl whose worst habits were encouraged by everyone around her, because those flaws of hers were good for everyone else. and, frankly, alex finding a town that accepts her and finally getting that stability she wasn’t ever allowed at the end ( despite everything, despite being ‘so old’ by society’s standards ) was particularly important to me in the moment. it’s a very hopeful ending without much sorrow attached, and while i can criticize that now, i did love that happy indulgence at the time. i loved there being no sacrifice, finally, and i loved seeing one of these protagonists win without a bittersweet aftertaste. for what it was, true colors was perhaps the first lis game i really clicked with and enjoyed initially, so i’ll always have a special place for it in my heart for that. even if it doesn’t hit like it used to anymore.

obviously, true colors didn’t change my mind on life is strange as a franchise. i played it, got emotional over it, thought about it for a good while after, and then moved on. i never thought i’d care for the series so intensely until double exposure : a game i didn’t even want to play ( because max caulfield? a lis:1 character? who cares, i thought ) but a good mutual of mine seemed to love it, and then i was bored one day, so i then obviously thought why not? i didn’t expect it to suck me in like it had and i definitely couldn’t have predicted it’d make me return to all the games and start seeing them more favorably, but hey, it did. suddenly i loved lis:2, suddenly i enjoyed playing lis:1, and suddenly i can’t stop jumping between these games and characters for the life of me. it all just clicks now? especially lis:1, which was made better by double exposure’s take on max and chloe respectively, or at least for me anyway. honestly, it’s so crazy to think about nowadays … i have come so far and in such a short while. just goes to show that your opinions on something are always very malleable, whether you think so or not. sometimes a media will hit you later than when you consumed it. or sometimes extra additions do go a long way.

i hope this answers your question somewhat! and i do hope this puts a lot of my opinions and views into perspective, given my now exposed lis hater background … i have hated these games and i have loved them, and a lot of my outlooks on the games comes from both of those feelings, not just one of them.

[langfield]

freaks ( there was no tissues )

[langfield]

i think it’s very easy to get caught up in safi’s bad traits because they’re so obvious — because they define her as she is now, when she’s betrayed and hurt. but i do believe that the story yasmin and safi’s father share on crosstalk about how safi, when little and unburdened, climbed a tree to try and get to a cat ; an action that resulted in her hurting her arm in a pretty bad way when she inevitably fell. and the whole ride to the hospital all she could ask through her own pain was if the cat was okay … she made no comments on her own pain and instead was still back there with that animal she was trying to save, to love, and could only worry about the cat despite needing to worry about herself instead. it says a lot about her, honestly, when you really think about it.