The System Is Down Podcast Review

 

On May 1, 2017, a strange, funny, and uncomfortable man, by the name of Dan Smotz, released the first official episode of his new podcast The System Is Down, a lovely show that discusses politics, conspiracy theories, and religion. Its tagline is ‘Question everything, and stay uncomfortable’.  Today, it has a total of 21 episodes, with the 21st having come out today.  Right off the bat, this sounds like a passion project of yet another crazy conspiracy theorist with the intention of scaring the crap out of people with stories of evil government plots, potential prologues to a third world war, and chemicals in your Oreos to make you compliant. I’m happy to say that this is not the case.

I happen to know Dan personally (or at least I think I do), but that fact will in no way make me biased in the way I write this review.  What I will say however, is that Dan has something good going on here, whether I know him personally or not. His unapologetic and sometimes humorous approach to sensitive and uncomfortable material makes him one of a special few, and his desire to listen to the opinions of other people and take them all into account rather than lashing out is undeniably refreshing and sometimes even amusing to listen to.  He recently succeeded in doing what’s considered almost impossible these days: putting a Democrat, Libertarian, and Republican together in one place and having them discuss their sides and where they stand politically, making for a surprisingly civil conversation that at times was even inspiring.

The use of the word ‘inspiring’ leads me to my next point, which is this: Dan does not do his discussions to feed you fear or get you paranoid (God knows we have enough of that already).  He does the discussions to make you think.  He wants you to listen and then debate different uncomfortable topics so that they’re not blissfully ignored, and he kicks that trend off in a handful of episodes by taking a step back and allowing his guests to chat, some of whom have never talked to each other before and are now being given the opportunity to.  He doesn’t claim that he’s right about anything he says concerning different topics, and though he has no problem admitting that he disagrees with certain things, he doesn’t tell his guests that they’re wrong but instead encourages them to keep going.  By the time I’m done listening to each episode, I’m usually anxious to hear what he does next.  It can really feel like a breath of fresh air at times.

As I’ve said before, just because I know Dan personally doesn’t mean I’m going to be biased, and that will be proven through a few negatives I have to throw out there concerning this podcast.  Thankfully, there are very few and, in my opinion, aren’t deal breakers to drive you away from listening. This is Dan’s first go at a long-term podcast, so a few hiccups aren’t surprising to run into along the way.  It’s pretty clear throughout the first couple episodes that he was trying to find his footing and figure out how exactly he wanted it to pan out, so the topics don’t feel as thoroughly pre-planned or organized as they get later.  Granted, when it all comes down to it, this is a podcast with people having discussions like any ordinary discussion would be, so it’s inevitable that conversations will go off in random directions, but in the end I couldn’t help but ask what the point was half of the time.  Thankfully, Dan does find his footing before he even reaches the tenth episode.  He not only manages to organize the discussions better, but also brings in people with more defined platforms (the producers of the upcoming film ‘Generational Sins’ for example), making the discussions a cleaner back-and-forth than a group of people talking over each other.

This is more of a fact than a negative trait about the series, but the last thing I should note is that this podcast is not for everybody.  If listening to conspiracy theories makes you feel anxious and edgy and perhaps even depressed, then this probably isn’t for you.  This show is not a ‘conspiracy’ podcast as Dan states in his latest episode, but conspiracy theories are brought up from time to time and they’re often not pretty to listen to, and Dan doesn’t try to sugarcoat them to make them pretty.  To my knowledge, he doesn’t want to depress anyone either, but discussing topics that many would consider to be uncomfortable means being raw and honest about reality, and being raw and honest are two things Dan encourages for in this podcast.

All in all, this is a solid podcast that talks (mostly) about uncomfortable things but has good intent behind it.  While it’s not the most perfect podcast out there, it displays a lot of promise for even better things to come, and I applaud Dan for his efforts.  Dan, I forgive you for your Rogue One: A Star Wars Story review.

You can visit the podcast’s website to read about it, listen to it, and even look through some of Dan’s merchandise at http://www.tsidpod.com/.  Or you can check out the podcast’s forum on Facebook at ‘The System Is Down Forum’.  Remember, question everything and stay uncomfortable.

 

 

The Five Love Languages Book Review

 

A little over a week ago, I sat down and started reading The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman.  Almost a week later, I finished it, which is the fastest I’ve read a long book like this in a long time.  I’m aware that it’s a pretty old book now at this point, though to be fair, it has been released several times over the years in a more updated format to keep up with the times and connect better with our current generation.  I was obviously no exception.  I read the latest revised edition from two years ago and found myself intrigued the entire time while reading.

Now, the author Chapman has come out with several other versions of the book meant to be targeted specifically towards different demographics like singles, men specifically, and women specifically.  Not a single one of his versions however was for people on the autism spectrum.  This is not a criticism from me though.  I’d like to point out that even though the author probably didn’t have people on the spectrum in mind while writing the book, this doesn’t at all mean that people with autism won’t be able to understand any of it.  In fact, as someone who’s on the spectrum myself, I found this book to be a lot more helpful than most others I’ve read dealing specifically with relationships between people on the spectrum.

Without getting into the nitty gritty details about each love language, I will just list the basic five explained in this book: acts of service, physical touch, receiving gifts, words of affirmation, and quality time.  While some of the chapters focusing on these love languages happen to be shorter than others, there’s no shortage of information here.  Gary Chapman takes every love language and gives a meticulously thorough explanation for each of them and offers some helpful suggestions on how to approach each of them, whether it’s how to explain to your significant other what your primary love language is or how to speak your significant other’s ‘love language’.  I didn’t finish the book thinking that he should’ve elaborated more.  To back up Chapman’s thorough approach, he explains the reality of the five love languages and how effective they are when used by telling real life stories about couples that have come to him for advice and were told to be more diligent in speaking each other’s love language.  The results usually turn out positive.  It makes me want to meet with and talk to Chapman myself.

On top of the thoroughness of his topics and the stories to back up his claims, the book is written in a clear, straightforward manner.  At no point did I feel like the writing style was too complex for its own good.  It felt like I was reading the world’s longest blog post.  It’s organized, easy to follow, and straight to the point.  Most of the chapters explain a specific love language, tell a few real life stories, then has a list of suggestions at the end to try and speak your significant other’s love language (all of which I admittedly took screenshots of with my phone).  Finally, at the end, there’s a quiz you can take that helps you determine what your primary love language could very well be if you don’t know it already.  Granted a few pages of words probably can’t set in stone exactly what your love language is, but if you’re not lying when you answer the questions given, the results are most likely as closely accurate as you can get.  I for one found the quiz to be extremely helpful, and made it easier to discuss the love languages to my own girlfriend afterwards.

To cap off, I should note that the book’s premise assumes that you’re already married (hence why there’s a singles version out there).  If you don’t feel like seeking out the singles version but aren’t sure if you’re ready to read this book because of its assumption, I can assure you that it really doesn’t matter.  It would still prove very helpful if you’re in a dating relationship.  A few parts of it only apply to married couples yes, but those segments are honestly few and far between, and what stuff is there that only applies to marriage may not be helpful to you at the time, but you’ll at least have that knowledge for when you are married.  It certainly doesn’t hurt to do research ahead of time.

All in all, this is an easy 10 out of 10 for me, and while this might’ve not been the most autism-centric post, I also love reviewing books whenever I read a good one, and I think even people on the spectrum should read this. If it helped me, it should help others too.

What If You Don’t Feel A Sense Of Direction?

 

One of the things that stuck out to me the most in my diagnosis report was that I was described to be someone with a lack of sense of purpose and direction in my life, and being uncertain about major life issues.  At the time, this was understandably a discouraging part of it.  I mean, the report was basically implying that I was going through an existential crisis, like I was wandering aimlessly through life without a sense of meaning or any idea of what I wanted to do with my life.

In a certain regard, the report was correct.  At the time the report was made, I was going through a very trying time in my life where depression, anxiety, and loneliness were common traits day after day.  While I’m certainly a lot better now, and have improved in more ways than one since then, I still sometimes struggle with trying to figure out what exactly is my purpose in life and what I’m here on this earth for.  Now, the traditional Christian perspective would say that you’re here because God put you here and your actions are meant to glorify Him and point in His direction.  While this is all well and good and there’s certainly nothing inherently wrong with that, the Bible also says that God has a plan for your life.

That last part seems comforting enough.  Okay, so God has a plan for my life, meaning I’m guaranteed to get something meaningful done while I’m here  Cool.  So what’s there for me to worry about exactly?  For me personally, I struggle with timing when it comes to just about everything.  When nothing is getting done within the timeframe that I want things to happen, it worries me and makes me slightly paranoid.  I grow more hyperaware of how I’m spending my time but I don’t know what to do at the moment in order to fix that.  I know that I want to get published, but almost every book I start I never finish, and when I try ‘harder’ to write a book, I tend to lose interest fast.  Because of my narrow interest in variety, I’m stuck on trying to do only two or three things.  I’m more of an ideas person than someone who actually gets things done.

I love talking to people and getting to know as many as I can, and I usually look at things from a very psychological standpoint, so not only do I tend to analyze people and their actions but I also tend to analyze characters from movies, books, and video games.  Sometimes I’ll analyze a movie, stop for a while, then go back to it a year later and either just go over everything I’ve gone over before or tackle it from a completely different angle.  This is one reason why I feel like I would spend a good use of my time writing essays or doing video essays (with the latter, that would technically mean writing an essay first).

So I know that I have talents even if they don’t spread as wide or have as much variety as I might like.  The question is, how am I going to utilize my talents to make something meaningful out of them?  Additionally, how am I going to muster the motivation to do this?

Yeah, this isn’t one of my how-to posts with solutions and all that, but a personal ponder of mine that I was having today.  Maybe these were exactly the kinds of words you needed to read.  Maybe you’re having the exact same trouble as I am and you find it comforting to know you’re not alone, in which case I’m glad I can give you that feeling.  For everyone else, I’m sure you can relate in one way or another.  I believe we all reach a point in our lives where we don’t know where we’re going or what we want to do, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of for that.  The trick to combating uncertainty is to do something, be it big or small.  It can be a paper describing exactly how you feel, it can be an essay, it can be a job search.  Something is bound to get you back on your feet and get you started with something, and I’m going to try doing the same.

Four Things That Autism Is Simply Not

I’ve been thinking a lot lately on two different things: one being certain aspects of the autism spectrum and the second being my own personal beliefs, but by melding the two things together, I realize some ways in which they’re connected.  That being said, I’m going to make a list of some of the things autism is not.  Usually people make a list about what autism is not, including things like a disease, a person incapable of being married and having kids, one who can’t live independently, etc.  With this list, I’ll actually be tackling a couple different nots.

Autism is not the thing that defines what you’re capable of believing and what you’re not.  It is not meant to determine your faith and whether or not you believe in God.  Let me take that fact and narrow it down a bit to something basic but very important.

Autism does not make decisions for you.  At the end of the day, you’re still a human being capable of making decisions like everyone else.  The only difference is that you might not understand at first what the right decision is.  You might not know at first what decision is best for you.  This is not unlearnable however, which leads me to my third point.

Having autism does not mean you’re incapable of learning how to improve in different areas of your life.  Just like how you might not understand how to make good decisions at first, when it comes to improving yourself in different parts of life, it may take more discipline and a different way of approaching it.

Having autism does not mean you’re doomed to make the same bad decision every time a choice comes to you.  It doesn’t mean you’re fated to make the same bad choice over and over again.  This is where learning to improve and understanding the right choice to make comes in.  This is one area where I’ve struggled the most in my ‘autistic’ life.  I’ve made bad decisions repeatedly to the point where whenever it happens again I think to myself ‘well of course I did that’.  This is not a good place to put yourself, because by doing this, you’re basically accepting the fact that making bad decisions is just a part of who you are and there’s no hope in getting better.  Then once you put yourself in that mindset, with the fact that the autistic mind tends to be obsessive with certain thoughts, you might end up obsessing over that, which will make yourself feel worse.

If it sounds like I’m talking down to you or scolding you, I assure you that this is not the case.  Autism is not many things but it is many things too.  Just because you’re on the spectrum and can’t make a decision the same way like others doesn’t mean there isn’t one or more ways out there where you can.  Most people on the spectrum can learn how to do the important things in life.  The only difference is that sometimes they have to learn differently than others.  The alternatives may not always be as easy, but I believe it’s worth it, even if I might not see it that way at first in the moment.

 

 

Atypical Season One Review

A new Netflix series came out on Friday called Atypical.  This short, eight-episode show tells the story of an eighteen-year old man named Sam Gardner who has autism and is looking for a girlfriend.  This premise alone should make for a simple and sweet mini-series with a good story and act as a potential eye-opener for people who aren’t very familiar with the autism spectrum.

It should.

Atypical proves that just because a show tries to make things interesting by having its main protagonist be autistic (excuse me, ‘a person with autism’ as the show tosses around at one point) doesn’t mean that it’s an automatic winner.  This is especially true if the show insists on stuffing in extra subplots that a) don’t belong, and b) completely takes the focus off of what this show is supposed to be ultimately about.  Now, this isn’t to say that the show has no positives at all, so in order to keep this review from getting too deep into pessimism, allow me to start with the good things.

The Good Things

Most of the cast turns in a pretty stellar job as their respective characters, adding some exceptional layers to the story that helps you root for them.  While this is not the case for all, the best standouts were Keir Gilchrist as Sam and Michael Rapaport as his dad.  Keir portrays a person on the spectrum in a believable and convincing way.  His lack of emotional range and facial expressions works well here, and as someone on the spectrum myself, it didn’t feel like the character was just doing exactly what the actor was doing.  Acting.  It felt neatly grounded and even heartbreaking at times.  I felt sorry for him when he made a mistake and people put him down.  I laughed at some of the times he took things literally or misunderstood certain phrases (the harmless stuff, not some of the mistakes he made that had deeper consequences).  It was relatable, which made a sizable chunk of the show worth watching.  Michael does an excellent job as Sam’s father, making it clear that his character really just wanted to connect with Sam even when it seemed impossible to and that he wanted to be there for his family after a time when he wasn’t.  Personally, I ended up rooting for him the most and felt very sorry for him when he got screwed over (more on that later).

Like I said above, the portrayal of Sam’s character was done in a convincing way that I agreed with.  His weaknesses remained consistent throughout the show, which could’ve actually not happened if the writers really didn’t pay close attention.  Sam’s sister Casey gets her own story arc that weaves itself well into the events of the show, and shows us what it can be like for a neurotypical person to have an autistic sibling.

The Bad Things

Unfortunately in this really brisk first season, a large portion of it is wasted on a pointless subplot where Sam’s mother is cheating on his father for reasons that don’t make sense.  Even if you could piece together the reasons better than I can, none of them could justify the mother’s actions, especially when you follow the father’s character arc and recognize how faithful he has become to his family.  None of the marriage drama and the cheating ties into Sam’s story at all, and is nothing more but filler to add more drama in a soap opera-y fashion.  The only reason why I managed to put up with it was because I wanted to see the mother get found out.  This show doesn’t disappoint with that once the moment finally comes, but it still doesn’t justify the whole arc to begin with.

Lastly, this show got the TV-MA rating.  Why?  I don’t ask this because there’s nothing MA about it (which there is, albeit lighter than the usual fare), but because I wonder why they felt the need to reach this level in the first place.  One of the most mysterious aspects about the Netflix exclusives these days is their insistence on being on an R-rated level.  Cut out the affair subplot and more than half of the jokes about women in this show, and you have a more innocent show that’s at least TV-14 about an autistic young man looking for a girlfriend.  The “character” of Sam’s friend Zahid is nothing more than a lady’s man wanting to get lucky with any and all girls he can win over, and constantly gives Sam advice about sex.  The show does nothing to counteract these things and point out that there’s more to it than that, but instead seems to endorse it at almost every turn.  Whenever a good, legitimate point is made in the show, a bad one swoops in and replaces it in almost an instant, so I consistently found myself going through a rhythm of finding myself relaxed with the show one minute and then getting bummed out the next.

So all in all, the show has its moments, but there were too many things bogging it down for me.  This is a shame, because I think this show has one of the most accurate depictions of a person on the milder side of autism I’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, the good gets pounded down oftentimes by a cheating wife and an abundance of sex jokes that come off as immature and degrading.

This show gets a 5.5 out of 10 from me.

Side-Note: I’m probably going to have an article out that focuses more on the specifics of Sam’s autism in this show and how much it either comes close to the real thing or how far from it.

Life Is Strange Analysis Part 3: Making It All Matter In the End

Hey guys!  I’m finally back with the third and final part of my analysis of the video game Life Is Strange, where I will be tackling one of the most controversial areas of the whole game.  It plays as honestly one of the major factors of the game that pulls the whole thing down from a lot of its credibility to a lot of people.  I am talking about the ending.  At this point, I am completely shying away from being spoiler-free and will be discussing some very significant details having to do with the end of the game, so please don’t continue if you don’t want to know the end of the story.

Spoilers start.  At the very end of the game, Max Caulfield (and you the player) have two choices: save the town of Arcadia Bay from a gigantic tornado and sacrifice Chloe so that the tornado doesn’t even happen, or sacrifice Arcadia Bay so that Chloe can still live.  After all the different decisions you made throughout the game, it has all come down to just two major event-shaping decisions.  This is actually where a lot of people had a problem with the game.  How did any of your decisions throughout the game mean anything if there’s only two endings lined up in the end?  How does any of it matter if either everyone except Max and Chloe die or Chloe dies and time resets so most of what happened didn’t happen?

These questions can easily be overturned by pointing out one simple but very, very deep fact.

Max (and the player controlling her) still went through everything this game threw at her.  Let’s examine the ‘Sacrifice Chloe’ ending first.  While going back to the moment near the beginning of the game when Chloe was shot and killed means the other characters lost their experiences, Max hasn’t lost hers.  Ultimately, this game was Max’s story.  It was all about discovering the dangers of messing with time and other people.  The other students at Blackwell were there to serve more as plot devices than anything else, and Max learned so much about them whether the experiences remain in the timeline or not.  While the events of the timeline are gone, Max’s character growth is not.  When the game ends, we can go on believing that Max will make the right decisions moving forward.  She will start doing things differently, one of those things being not hugging the past so close but choosing to look forward to the future.

Another example I can think of for this kind of storytelling and character development is X-Men: Days Of Future Past.  Wolverine goes back into the past to prevent the murder of the creator of the Sentinels, and by doing so, it changed the present in more ways than he had expected, which in a lot of ways meant changing the timeline so that certain key events throughout previous X-Men films didn’t happen (the whole thing of X-Men 3 as an example).  While people may declare that the previous X-Men films are now completely meaningless because of this, it’s important to realize that Wolverine still experienced the previous films.  He still has that knowledge and he still grew from it.  His memory was not erased in the process of coming back into the present after leaping into the past.  I always believed that most of the X-Men films leading up to that movie was Wolverine’s story anyway.

If there’s one thing I can criticize about the ending, it’s the fact that if you choose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay and Max and Chloe leave the town behind and go wherever they want to go, won’t the storms follow them?  If Chloe was truly fated to die, wouldn’t the storm be a curse that Max and Chloe won’t be able to leave behind until the right choice is made?  These are questions that I had with that ending, adding more confusion to the second ending than what is already there.  If you choose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay, it’s a signal that Max (and even the player) learned nothing throughout the course of the game (even though the game really slams the point over your head during the last hour of the final episode).  It’s also an indicator that the ‘Sacrifice Chloe’ ending is actually the canonical one (proven further by the fact that its a longer, slower ending.

What’s that famous saying?  ‘Life is a journey, not the destination’.  The journey is about the journey itself, not the finish line in the end.  It’s the experiences that matter, and even if they’re made irrelevant, you don’t forget about them.  Everything that Max experienced throughout the game is something that will stay in her memory, even if it doesn’t remain in the memory of others, which actually gives Max something that nobody else has.  Life is a journey, and it is indeed strange.

Life Is Strange Analysis Part 2: The Character Of Chloe Price

 

I wasn’t joking in my last article when I said that, to me, Chloe Price from Life Is Strange is the best video game character I’ve ever had the pleasure of getting to know.  Revan from Knights Of the Old Republic would be another great one, but one of the biggest reasons I love the character of Chloe so much is because of how grounded she is.  Allow me to explain.

When we first see Chloe, Max Caulfield doesn’t recognize her, and for understandable reasons.  Over the years, she has completely changed her physical appearance, and in a lot of ways, her own personality.  Her father died when she was younger and her mother marries someone else that she doesn’t like at all, her best friend Max practically abandoned her and didn’t write back whenever Chloe wrote letters to her, and her newer best friend Rachael one day disappears without a trace.  It is at this point that Chloe feels completely and hopelessly alone.  She gets mixed up in the wrong crowds, falls into a drug addiction, takes medication for depression, and changes her appearance much to the dismay of her stepfather.

In more ways than one, she has become a different person, and Max notices this when she comes back into her life.  She realizes how much of her friend’s life she has missed while she was gone, and she carries the guilt of having not been there for Chloe when she really needed someone.  The game effectively shows us exactly how Chloe has changed, and we get to feel that change through Max’s eyes.  When we first get to explore Chloe’s room, Max realizes how much Chloe has changed and we “feel” it, even though we as the players personally have never known Chloe up until now.  Because of this, it just shows how effective and powerful the writing and the atmosphere are.  We sympathize for Chloe, even though so many of her actions are questionable.

In short, Chloe should remind us of someone in our own lives.  Most of us have someone in our lives that we’ve known for a long time and have noticed him or her change pretty drastically as we grow up.  It’s inevitable that people change, whether we can accept that or not.  We can choose to back off or we can choose to stay by that friend’s side, but whatever we do when it comes to our friends, we have to accept that things and people change, as painful as that may be at first.

Spoilers coming up: By the end of the game, Chloe has been as fleshed out as she could quite possibly be (something the prequel Before the Storm will have to try and top).  She has reached a point now where even though she acted like she didn’t care about anybody throughout the story, she’s willing to do the selfless, sacrificial thing to save everybody from certain destruction by tornado.  If it means that Max would have to travel back in time and allow Chloe to get shot by rich kid Nathan Prescott, then so be it.  She is a character that has truly changed, because not only is she willing to save everyone (which would include her stepfather), but she’s also willing to accept her own fate and demise.  While she spent the majority of the game only looking out for herself, she is finally willing to be the sacrifice for everyone.  On top of that, before Max rewinds back to that fateful day when Chloe gets shot, Chloe gets to know that someone cared about her enough to never leave her.  Not again anyway.  End Of Spoilers.

To finish off, I’d like to share one of my favorite parts of the whole game involving Chloe.  It’s a sequence where she’s not talking or even doing much at all.  At one point, Chloe asks you to turn on her stereo and leave her alone for a little bit while she “medicates” (smoking grass).  When you turn the stereo on, the song that plays is called “Santa Monica Dream”.  In a way, it pretty much exactly captures Chloe’s own grief because of separation.  She lost her dear friend Rachael.  Together, they planned on ‘ruling the world’ and becoming famous away from their home town of Arcadia Bay.  Though you don’t know about all of that yet at this point in the game, the song is a clear hint towards Chloe’s own past and trials.  That’s one of the best things about this game.  So many of the different components that make up the game are symbolic one way or another.

Life Is Strange Analysis Part 1: Max Caulfield’s Nostalgia And Insecurity

 

I just recently beat the video game Life Is Strange for the first time.  With the release of its prequel Before the Storm coming out soon, I felt it was appropriate to say a few things about this game and what it means to me in real life.

I first discovered the game through a friend who had beaten it and said some positive things about it, so I made the worst mistake one can make when he’s drawn to a new video game: I watched a gameplay miniseries of someone else playing it instead of seizing the opportunity to go out and get it myself (I didn’t realize it was available for Mac at the time).  I can say now that watching someone play a game is not at all the same as playing it yourself.  If you haven’t played the game yet and you’re interested, please don’t make the same mistake I made.

Moving on, though I regret watching someone else play it first, I still really fell in love with the story and the characters involved.  The soundtrack was also amazing, and I made it a goal to find all the music tracks so that I can listen to them whenever I want to.  The music offered a significantly peaceful atmosphere that easily makes you feel so relaxed and immerses you in the story gently, while not being too gentle as to overshadow the conflict that is the story.

This article will mainly focus on how I can relate to the main character, Max Caulfield.  A young woman attending a senior school called Blackwell Academy in the small town of Arcadia Bay.  One of the most beautiful things about this game is that Arcadia Bay, despite the game having very low-res textures, draws you in and makes you a part of the world that this game has created.  In almost no time at all, the game convinces you that you want to live in Arcadia Bay, despite the sinister points in the story that eventually follow.  Max is eighteen years old, has a passion for photography, and clings onto those sweet thoughts of nostalgia and how much the past means to her when it came to her experiences with her best friend Chloe Price (more on that character in Part 2).  She is shy, mostly introverted, and very laid back.  Most of the insults that are thrown at her simply bounce off because she’s more than willing to just move along and keep herself contained within her own little world.

So what is it about her that reminds me so much of myself?  Well first, its that nostalgic world that she has built up for herself.  While she’s taking a class for photography, she takes her own pictures with an old-fashioned Polaroid camera (I’ll admit I’d still love to have one of those today) rather than going the digital route and taking pictures with her phone like most other people.  She even takes selfies with her old camera, so on one hand she’s kind of there in our modern times, but on the other hand she’s about two or more decades behind.  To me, this is somewhat of a reflection of my own possessions and where they rank with our times.  While I do own a few Blu-Rays, most of my movie collection consist of normal DVDs.  The only gaming console that I own besides the games I have on my Mac is an old original Xbox, and if my phone is somehow out of commission, I’ll dust off my thirteen-year old alarm clock.  It was only a couple years ago that I was using an old PC laptop from 1997 to write my own stories.  I don’t have my own conscious motto, but if I do somewhere in my mind it’s this: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  I’ll use whatever works and whatever serves my goals.

Secondly, throughout the game, it’s clear to us as the players that Max has a low rate of self-esteem.  Almost the entire cast of characters is responsible for saying things about Max both directly and indirectly that are either meant to lift her up or tear her down, and when things are said to lift her up, Max often counteracts with words to tear herself down.  She’s a character that receives time travel powers (somehow), is responsible for saving friends of hers multiple times, and is determined to bring the ‘bad’ people to justice.  Unless the player always makes certain decisions that makes her out to be a jerk, Max has a good heart and wants to do nothing but help others that need it.  Despite all of this, Max is not one with a big ego.  She beats herself up consistently, and the harsh words coming from the more unpleasant characters in the game don’t help her at all.  In my own personal experience growing up, I’ve had people who’ve built me up and others who have torn me down.  When people say things that build me up, oftentimes I don’t feel like I deserve those encouraging words, and when people say things to tear me down, oftentimes I believe I deserve those words.  It’s usually a constant battle.  It’s a weakness that can be found in a lot of people, and it’s why encouraging words are always so important in our daily lives.  In order to truly love and help others, we have to love ourselves first.  One of the most beautiful things about the game is actually the fact that Max never reaches a point where she thinks ‘yes, I am an amazing person’ or ‘yes, I am a terrible person’.  What she thinks of herself by the end is left pretty ambiguous, but we know that every time her friend Warren calls her ‘Super Max’ and every time (Spoiler) the sinister Mark Jefferson (End Spoiler) tells her ‘you can do so much better’, you can guarantee that that leaves an impression on her, as it does everybody else.

There’s so much more that can be said about Max, but those were some of the things about the character that really resonated with me.  It’s refreshing to see a character with similar challenges live and learn such as Max in the game, and better yet, you get to go on that journey with her and influence the decisions that she makes.  Though it’s not without its flaws, Life Is Strange is a fantastic game and ranks up there with my favorites such as The Last Of Us and Knights Of the Old Republic.  For Part 2, I will be writing an analysis article on Chloe Price and why she is my all-time favorite video game character.  Yep, you read that right.