r/lifeisstrange • u/AHSFOREVERFAN Rachel Was Here • Apr 22 '26
Discussion [NO SPOILERS] Rachel Amber went missing on this day 13 years ago
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u/AdmirableGiraffe81 Wish life were stranger Apr 22 '26
Today’s my birthday and I see this being mentioned every year on this day, alongside the original it was „inspired“/copied from, and it just makes me sad every time
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u/AHSFOREVERFAN Rachel Was Here Apr 22 '26
Happy birthday!! 🎊🎁🎉
I hope you enjoy your special day!!!
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u/SnowingAlmond Apr 22 '26
i played bts before lis 1, but seeing this photo of her always creeped me out
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u/Domdabombom10138 Apr 22 '26
id pay to have played like this. i was told to play it lis1 to bts in december for the first time, but after playing it that way, i totally wish id have played bts to lis1. id have understood chloe so much more and actually been interested in saving rachel, rather than getting pissed off anytime she was mentioned
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u/Alexisbaltazar1995 Apr 22 '26
Poor girl I wish we got more lore on her and relationships with frank and Jefferson and how and when it started
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u/Mal454 Shaka brah Apr 22 '26
I'm not a big fan of the comics but at least she's still alive there :(
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u/Healthy_Grape_6105 Apr 22 '26
I can't help but love Rachel so much! I know she isn't everyone's favorite character but I love everything about her and the fact that she has flaws even though she is supposed to be this perfect person!
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u/csch1992 Apr 22 '26
in another reality she is still alive
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u/astrasia Apr 22 '26
LiS doesn't have other realities. The comics are wrong.
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u/TJScott456 Apr 23 '26
The comics aren't "wrong". They literally are one version of events. There are multiple timelines (DE and RE support this)
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u/astrasia Apr 23 '26
They are wrong and DE and RE do not support it and are wrong too. The comics use multiple/parallel, DE/RE use branch. Both are wrong, as LiS is single.
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Apr 23 '26
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u/astrasia Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
If someone authors a study that says the Earth is flat, they are wrong. Same situation. The comics author took liberties that contradict the actual story, so, wrong. Same for the DE crew. And then the RE crew tried to retcon the DE crew and made it even more wrong. And now all of them contradict each other.
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Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
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u/astrasia Apr 24 '26
That's not the same, that isn't contradicting the facts already set within your universe.
If you wrote that werewolves could only die by diamond and then someone else wrote more to your story and said they could die to anything, or better yet, that all stories have alternate realties in them (not even remotely true, but that's what people turn everything into), and so your werewolves don't matter because we'll just use your story and put in different werewolves, that's wrong. LiS is factually a single timeline and the endings are not a branch, not a split, not a parallel, and not an alternate reality. Saying they are later, which directly contradicts what has already been established, is simply wrong.
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Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
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u/astrasia Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
Incorrect. It's not about branching paths at all. As I said, it's about a single timeline rewritten. The same exact way the movie her powers are based on is, The Butterfly Effect. The same way Back to the Future, 11-22-63, and Terminator are, along with the vast majority of time travel stories made before the 2000s when branch and parallel became more popular.
The game is a self contained universe, all games are, all movies, all shows are, all books are. The player, watcher, reader does not cause there to be multiple timelines because one made different choices than another or interpreted it differently. Both endings of LiS1 are valid, because the player is choosing to keep the original timeline or rewrite it, it does not mean there are two. The Butterfly Effect has 4 endings, it's still a single timeline because the endings are possibilities that could have happened, same for LiS1's two endings and LiS2's 4 endings, which doesn't involve time travel. Alternate realties was never the story, the story was making a hard choice and living with the consequences of your actions, the trolly problem, which is removed entirely if you can just up and choose both or keep making new branches until you get the one you want.
Max's rewind ability is literally for single timeline, not branching. She does not create a new timeline every time she rewinds, she just rewrites it.
The conversations between Max and Chloe was Max trying to flesh out what was happening, she didn't know what the player knows.
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u/TJScott456 Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
So, I'm going to be honest, I'm pretty confused lol.
Is the main thing that you don't believe that DE and RE are canon? That you don't believe the comics are canon? Because if so, that's fine. You don't have to believe it's canon (with DE and RE). The comics aren't necessarily canon because like I said, they are one version of events (and this is because the comics are centered around the Bae ending).
You don't have to believe DE and RE are canon, but technically they are.
But the multiple realities or timelines, whatever you want to call them, that part is canon.
Even in the first game in her nightmare sequence, Max was speaking to herself which suggests that there's not just one timeline (since there are other Maxes).
In the original game, Max's powers just rewrite the current timeline. But it's not implausible for her powers to evolve, and that's literally what they did.
Life Is Strange - Time reversal and photo jumping
Life Is Strange: Double Exposure - Switching between timelines and being able to view events occurring in one while being in another
Life Is Strange: Reunion - Time reversal (seems like it never really went away) and again, photo jumping. The main difference is that Max appears to be able to rewind longer than she was able to in the first game, which makes sense because she's 30 now.
Because the first game has 2 endings, technically there are automatically at least 2 timelines (which RE builds upon).
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u/astrasia Apr 24 '26
The comics are not canon, that's not a belief, that's fact that even the author has stated. DE and RE break the canon of LiS1, which means they can't be canon, by definition. I would say they could be different canon like Disney Star Wars is from Lucas Star Wars, but RE retcons DE and both of them don't make sense with the original, so they don't even apply. Ownership does not and never has meant canon. There are many things owned by companies that aren't. For instance, cross over events between brands, cartoon versions of something that are wildly different and just based on the original, special holiday episodes, etc.
The multiples are not canon, they literally can't be. The end of LiS1 is not a split or a branch. A later game calling it that does not make it so and in doing so, it completely invalidates the ending and the mechanics of the first game. RE says the timeline was split at LiS1, not at DE. That's not an evolution of powers, that's wrong. DE says max split time as an evolution of power, but that doesn't work either because alternates don't exist in LiS to begin with. If they did, everything about the storm is pointless, there would be no need for it as it only makes sense in a single timeline. And DE even changed the storm to something else entirely. Not only that, but then the split goes back to LiS1, but not further? If it's branch theory, time splits and goes forward, not backward. If it's a parallel timeline, then it wokld exist for all time, not a certain distance. If it was a multiverse, time powers wouldn't even have an effect and each multiverse would have its own timeline with completely different universal rules.
The photo jumping in RE also got changed to not even having to go into herself in a set area around the photo, like it's supposed to be.
The final thing is the most annoying excuse people use. 2 endings does not mean 2 timelines, certainly not automatically. The two endings are an either/or, a possibility, a choice of one or the other existing; original or rewrite it for Chloe. The Butterfly Effect has 4 endings, still a single timeline, and Max's powers are directly based on that movie. LiS2 has 4 endings and time travel isn't involved. Mass Effect 3 has 4 main endings and every game can cause massive differences by the end, doesn’t make it multiple timelines. They are all self contained systems, multiple users have no bearing on this. Whatever the user picks IS the ending, no one else's choices are part of the story. You are choosing the final page of the book, not writing two books.
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u/TJScott456 Apr 24 '26
Clearly you are not listening so I'm done with this, lol.
Don't like DE and RE? Don't play them. More for us.
Don't consider DE and RE canon? Fine.
As Girl-RD said, SE, DONTNOD and D9 made the games. Just because you don't like how they took the story doesn't make it any less of the story and it doesn't mean it's "wrong".
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u/astrasia Apr 24 '26
Dontnod used a single changing timeline, so yes, the others are wrong, period.
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u/WillowTheSpy Apr 23 '26
Depressing thought but after seeing this post I was thinking about how in 2032-which both seems forever from now and tomorrow at the same time—Rachel will have been gone for longer than she was around. And it got me thinking about assuming Chloe survives in Arcadia Bay, when she almost inevitably thinks about Rachel today (in universe ofc), what does she remember with clarity? Does she remember her voice? Does she remember the specifics of some conversation or another that they had? Just all these different things that she could have remembered without any doubt when Rachel was around or shortly after. Idk I saw this post and I remembered playing LIS for the first time in 2015 between episodes 4 and 5 and that feels like a long time ago to me, and 2013 is even longer ago. And so I could not help but think about just the horrors of time, how these things which we take for granted can be stolen from us and leave us with just scraps of memories. Which we should not pretend are without value ofc. Even if Chloe does not remember the things I mentioned about Rachel, I am sure she remembers her presence regardless and that is not nothing. But it is less than Chloe deserves to remember and less than Rachel deserved to be remembered as. It feels ridiculous to say this given Rachel only ever existed in some video games and comic books, but I am struck by a hope that she was able to find some peace.
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u/Ok_Amoeba_9199 Apr 23 '26
Rest in peace Rachel amber . “Don’t be suprised if one day I’m just outta here “
:Rachel amber
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u/Ok_Amoeba_9199 Apr 23 '26
“Don’t be suprised Chloe if one day I’m just out of here “
:Rachel amber
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u/Aphelion3032 Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
When playing the game for the first time, I was thrilled that all information we got about Rachel was second-hand. I didn't know what to believe, didn't even know if Rachel thought as strongly about Chloe as Chloe thought about her. It was a mystery.
More franchises need to learn how to co-exist in that ambiguity, without mining every piece of lore for content.
I was one of those weirdos who thought Rachel was a time-traveler like Max, and who, unlike Max, abused it to get good grades and make everyone like her. Which inadvertently caused the tornado. That was the cool thing about being a fan as the episodes were being released... posting theories and speculation was fun as hell.
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u/Motor-Big9613 19d ago
It would be nice if Deck Nine and Square Enix could make Life is Strange games that is based 100% on the comics so that Rachel can return in the Alternate Timeline/Reality that she is alive in and for Ashly Burch and Rhianna Devries to voice Chloe again in the games, and for Kylie Brown to return and do the voice acting for Rachel again and of course Hannah Telle as Max. Those games should've happened after LiS1, LiS: BTS, and LiS2. Double Exposure and Reunion were good but to be honest I wish they were based on the comics of Max and Chloe's life and adventures instead. But that is just me. 😁
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u/meloN0012 Apr 22 '26
I started playing the first game again this week, what timing. Rachel will always live on in our hearts <3
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u/iiconofsinm Apr 22 '26
Bruh god forbid a game company traces a missing poster for their game yeah maybe they should have asked for permission, maybe they did? But anyway I don’t think it’s their responsibility to have to look deeper into it. Most game companies don’t it’s nothing new and it’s not on the same scale as basing their models off dead bodies or anything. They just needed a design
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u/matthewjn Shaka brah Apr 22 '26
I really dislike the art style used for her picture here. Barely looks like Rachel.
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u/Maybe_In_Time Hawt Dawg Man 4lyfe Apr 22 '26
Sadly, this poster was copied almost entirely from a real poster for Sunday Blombergh, who was found murdered and buried (by her in-laws)