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Life Is Strange Characters in Quarantine

I thought of this while waiting outside at Dairy Queen

Max: She’s been self-quarantining and having a good time of it. She hasn’t left home in… I don’t know, at least three months? Is Extremely nervous about the possibility of contracting the virus. She’s very cautious as a result, almost to the point of obsessiveness. Hasn’t been doing very many online hangout things. Her schoolwork is… not going great.

Chloe: She’s… kind of just going about life as usual. She’s avoiding masks like the plague; it bugs her to wear one. She’s, at the very least, kind of staying socially distant. Joyce has to keep reprimanding her.

Rachel: Hasn’t been heard from in two weeks. Nobody knows what happened to her. Her Discord has been set to Do Not Disturb for 29 days. She’s still turning in assignments, though. God knows how.

Kate: Is following all the rules and regulations to the letter. However, she is suffering, because she is deprived of hugs. She has missed two homework assignments. This is a very bad sign. She has one of those standard-issue surgeon masks, and she drew some cute cartoons on it.

Victoria: Is Trying. She’s still trying her very hardest to get all her homework and everything done. She’s still trying her very hardest to keep in touch with all her friends. As an extrovert, this has been very hard on her. She’s been following the rules to the letter, and will absolutely yell at you if you’re not wearing a mask.

Warren: Will Not Stop making memes about the virus and sending them to everyone. Attends all his online classes, but hasn’t actually done any work in three weeks. Wears his mask.

Nathan: Claims to have gone to a Covid party. Hasn’t been doing anything school-related, if he can help it. If he shows up to a Zoom meeting, expect his father to be lurking in the background. Wears a mask, but only over his mouth.

Brooke: Her mom got sick and her dad got furloughed. She’s having a really rough time right now. She’s being almost obsessively cautious. Turns in all her homework assignments, but doesn’t always turn them in completed.

Steph: Hasn’t done any homework since April. Only exists through Discord. Is running three separate DnD campaigns and is getting 3 hours of sleep a night at maximum. Hasn’t left her house in God knows how long.

Mikey: He’s chilling. He’s actually not having a tough time completing schoolwork because he actually has motivation and likes that he can complete it as soon as it’s assigned so that he has more free time later on. He’s been playing a lot of Minecraft. Almost never leaves his house.

If I had a nickel for every time I was traumatized by a queer-coded best friend apologizing to the main character of a kids’ show for opening a deadly portal after they betrayed the villain whom they were working for the past several months, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

TOH SPOILERS

YALL LUZ’S FIRST MESSAGE TO AMITY SAID “UR PRETTY” AND AMITY SAID YOU GOT IT?!?!! POOR LUZ WAS PROBABLY SO CONFUSED

Also I love their little tomogatchis it’s so cute AND OMG GHOST I LOVE THEM SO MUCH THEY ARE SUCH A GOOD LITTLE KITTY

Here’s what happened

I love them so much

Oh, I remember that day. Casey got in trouble at school for acting out. She was so upset about it. So the next day I picked her up early from school and I took her to Sal E. Sour Cream, and we had lunch together and it was special because we could never go there as a family because Sam hated it, you know, because of the lights and the noise and… Oh she was so happy.

Something I’ve always found rather curious about the Adventure Time fandom, specifically Bubbline shippers, is that nobody seems to talk about how the show slipped in what might be the most angsty, hardcore and emotionally raw Bubbline stories disguised as a wacky Rashomon-style recap in the episode Ketchup.

Like it’s pretty clear that Marceline is doing the whole ‘Lollipop Girl and Rockstar Girl’ puppet-show because she doesn’t want to traumatize BMO with what happened while they, Finn and Jake were gone, and also because she herself doesn’t want to revisit those memories directly.

But when we start reading between the lines and recognize that Marceline’s embellishments are really more to tone DOWN events, I think we get a very stark and raw depiction of what Marceline was doing when Patience set off Ooo’s elemental apocalypse.

Just to kick things off, how much does anyone want to bet that this joke translates to ‘Marceline and Bubblegum had a fight and Marcy was giving Bonnie some space… and because of that, Marceline wasn’t there to protect Bonnie when she was kidnapped by Patience.’?

Kinda adds another layer to Marcy’s whole ‘I was so afraid something bad would happen to you’ breakdown in Come Along With Me, doesn’t it?

Next we have ‘Rockstar Girl smacking off the potato-heads growing on her’ which pretty easily translates to; ‘while everyone else was getting overrun by the elements, Marceline was able to fight off the elemental contamination for possibly entire days while she tried to find a way to help Bubblegum’. And given what we see with Finn and Jake only able to resist the contamination for maybe a few hours at a time, and how willpower was one of the only things that could hold it off, that says a LOT about just how DESPERATE Marcy was to help Bonnie. I mean, you want a really hardcore and messed up image? Imagine if Marceline was actively cutting or RIPPING off the contaminated parts of herself to keep it from spreading and regrowing those parts with her vampiric regeneration?

Then we have ‘Rockstar Girl went after the Blue Tranch’, which I can only imagine translates to ‘Marceline going on a GOLB-DAMMNED WARPATH to hunt down Patience St. Pim’. And let’s remember that A. Patience was currently a super-charged Elemental and B. Marceline would still be fighting off elemental contamination herself, whether the Candification from Bubblegum, the Ice-ification from Patience, or even both.

I mean, when we think about it; ‘Rockstar Girl played some really loud music that the Blue Tranch didn’t like’ quite possibly translates to the most insane battle of the entire show. Like on one side we’ve got Patience St. Pim, seasoned Elemental who could already make Ice King look like an amateur, super-charged with elemental energy making her probably the most powerful Ice Elemental in thousands if not millions of years. And on the other side, we’ve got Marceline, consumed and possibly more than half-crazed with rage, fear and desperation to help Bonnie, going ALL-OUT with her numerous vampire powers, possibly some of her demonic powers, all while fighting off the encroaching elemental contamination.

And if ‘The Blue Tranch begged Rockstar Girl to stop and go away’ is anything to go by, I think we can assume that Marcy utterly WRECKED Patience’s SHIT. As in, Patience may well have ended this fight with an axe in her gut, a claw choking the life out her and Marceline threatening to devour her very SOUL if she didn’t tell her how to help Bonnie.

(Here’s another fun thought: Something that notably separates Patience from the other current elementals of Ooo is that whereas Princess Bubblegum, Flame Princess and Slime Princess are all physical manifestations OF their elements (Gum, Fire and Slime, respectively), while Patience is human. Yet when we see her during the arc, she seems to have lost her human body and assumed fully elemental form as well. Now we could of course assume that this is simply due to the elemental overcharge just like the others. Buuuuttt… what if Patience was FORCED to assume this new form because her human body could no longer SURVIVE after the utter THRASHING she received from Marceline?)

Finally, we of course have the end. Something which seems all too easy to imagine even with Marceline’s toning down of events:

Marcy rushing back to the Candy Kingdom as fast as she can. Even though she’s exhausted from her fight with Patience and the days spent fighting off the elemental contamination. To the point where now she can only barely hold it off and maintain her sanity. Perhaps she wonders if this is what it was like for Simon during their time together…

Even though she knows speeding back this fast is only draining her strength faster, but that doesn’t matter to her. Because what matters right now is the trinket, potion, or something or other clutched in her hand that Patience gave her. Something that Marcy can’t be sure will even work. But she hopes it will. That’s the only thing keeping her going, the only thing holding her together at this point.

A blind, desperate HOPE that this will save Bonnie…

When she finally returns to what was once the Candy Kingdom, Marceline finds the massive tower of gum. Perhaps like Finn and Jake later on, Marceline at first isn’t sure what she’s looking at and thinks Bonnie is at the top. So she flies right to the top in a burst of speed that drains her already dwindling strength even further.

And there Marcy finds Bonnie. Or rather, what Bonnie has BECOME. Perhaps she doesn’t even remember Marcy.

Perhaps for Marcy, this is like losing Simon all over again. Except instead of the father who raised and cared for her over ten years, it’s a woman that Marcy has loved for the better part of a millennium. A woman she was only just able to start loving again after so long. But now, just like Simon… she’s gone.

And this realization does what all the elemental power of Ooo could not.

It breaks Marceline.

Just like that, Marceline doesn’t even try to use the ‘antidote’ Patience gave her. Instead, perhaps Marcy gives Bonnie one last kiss and just… accepts the madness.

Because now, at least they can be together.

Take seven cold showers and only think of Band Of Brothers

YELENA BELOVA and KATE BISHOP Hawkeye | 1.06