Safi, Max, Chloe: A Love Triangle Across Timelines | Life is Strange: Reunion
“Safi Loves Max, and It’s Complicated”
After finishing Life is Strange: Reunion, I realized the game threw a curveball, and instead of catching it, it hit me square in the face. That’s the best way I can describe it. I’m talking about Safi.
Safi is one of the most misunderstood characters in the game, because of her actions in the first game, with shapeshifting into people to get revenge on everyone who was involved with covering up Lucas’s plagiarism scandal, in which he stole Maya Okada’s work. Safi’s best friend. The people involved were Safi’s mom, Gwen, and Vinh. But her focus on revenge was against Lucas.
Safi, throughout Reunion, displays grief. Even within Double Exposure, she carried immense grief from finding out what her mother did. Not only did Safi lose her best friend, but her mother is a huge betrayal. Yasmin was covering up scandals, and she convinced Gwen to email the publishers to retract from publishing Safi’s poetry because some of her works revolved around her best friend, Maya Okada.
But that’s not the focus of this topic. I’m focusing on the love Safi has for Max. The way she acts around Max in Reunion, and what she says, how she says it, and what she wrote in her journal about Max.
Now, Safi said it herself, she’s suffering from intrusive thoughts, and like Chloe, she gets pulled into the “Overlight” world. Moses came up with the name for that world, so I’m going to use it.
Safi and Chloe, because of the combining of the two timelines, both of them experience their deaths as part of their memories. It became a part of them, and it even confused Chloe. Chloe keeps separating the different versions of her who experience the whole figuring out who killed Rachel, and the different experiences with Max. Loving Max.
Safi is going through the same conundrum. She has all those various experiences from the different timelines of Max killing her, and who knows how many variations of Max trying to save Safi or save Caledon. We chose the middle ground of combining all the timelines to save both Caledon and Safi.
From everything I've seen and listened to and read, she is leaning toward being in love with Max. This goes into the territory of a unique love triangle. Because Max is her best friend. And the same situation is with Chloe and Max. They are best friends. So, this is complicated.
Safi shows signs of a bit of jealousy. During the conversation at the turtle between Max and Safi, the question was asked why Safi returned. Safi answers in a more vulnerable tone, no sarcasm:
“The sad truth is, I’m here for you.”
When Max is quiet and just looking at her, Safi gets a bit flustered about it and responds:
“Oh, don’t give me that dewy-eyed look. I can’t decide if it makes me want to kiss you or murder you.”
She hid her truth behind her usual sarcasm in that moment. I think she does want to kiss Max.
However, Safi is defensive because Max told her mother that she was on campus.
It was the same scene where Max gave her students the assignment of talking to people they find interesting and trying to take their picture. It’s also the same scene where Max chooses to set an example for her students and decides to ask the woman sitting by the tree reading, if she can take her picture.
The whole exchange between Max and the Southern-accented woman was charged. I mean, there was a playfulness to it that I read as flirting. Then I realized it was Safi and it made sense if you played Double Exposure because Safi used to sit by that same tree and read intensely. I saw that little detail, but it was the chemistry or flow that Max and the girl had. It was just too much flow for strangers. And Safi is a flirt.
I’m going to be honest, I wish we would get an inner dialogue of Safi in all those moments. I have a hunch she thinks as much about Max as Max and Chloe think about each other.
It’s no wonder when Safi reminds Max of what really happened at the Overlight world. At that moment, Max saw Chloe in the distance, and Safi accused Max of forgetting about her entirely. And that the reason for combining the timelines wasn’t for Safi, it was to save Chloe. That’s why I see Safi as acting from a place of jealousy.
I picked the dialogue that Max wanted to save them both, and she cares about both Safi and Chloe. Max is naïve and a bit selfish, but one thing is certain: she didn’t go through all those hardships in Double Exposure for Chloe; she was trying to save Safi.
Safi has also gotten caught up in grief and most likely wrapped in that jealousy, to realize Max risked herself for her. That whole frozen lake scene in Double Exposure was enough. And in it was the perfect scene to show us how Max’s powers evolved. Safi helped Max’s powers evolve.
And that brings me to what Safi wrote in her journal. The page was dedicated to Max. Her realizing Max is using her powers again. But it was also about asking the question, “What is she up to? And how Chloe is involved.” But the important part is right after that. Safi wrote a poem, and that poem is about Max.
“Taking my hand, you pulled me
Out of the frozen lake
Into the raging storm.
You were the dashing hero.
I was the damsel, saved.
And I was the monster, vanquished.
You rescued me from the rocks
Then chained me to them.
You made me feel alive, but I know
I died
(I did)
I died”
I was stunned after reading this on stream. Poems are very personal. And this is how Safi feels about Max and how she sees her best friend.
“Out of the frozen lake, into the storm” refers to that lake scene in Double Exposure, which I talked about. “You were the dashing hero. I was the damsel, saved.” That’s how she saw Max after that scene. The choice of words, dashing hero. Damsel. I’m interpreting that as how young girls fantasize about a knight in shining armor saving the damsel in distress. She was playing at that, to describe that moment.
But imagine the feeling she must have had once you realize the context of it. Those are romanticized words. The rest is this back-and-forth frustration of how she views herself and how Max continues to rescue her, only to be trapped again. “You made me feel alive, but I know I died.”
It’s all those combined memories that are fracturing her. She even thinks the better part of herself is locked in the Overlight world. But how she talks about Max is the frustration of loving someone and being angry at them at the same time.
When Safi talks with Chloe, she says it, that Max doesn’t experience any of the consequences of messing with time and reality. Her frustration is real between those two dominating emotions of love and anger. She tells Chloe:
“I know you love Max. I love her, too. But where has that love ever gotten us? Mindfucked, chewed up. Half-dead.”
However, this all happened after Max refused to leave with Safi, when Safi begged her to leave with her and to forget about the fire and trying to save everyone. She’s desperately trying to have someone choose her for once.
After getting rejected, she tries to convince Chloe to choose her. To leave with her. And this leads them back in the Overlight world, where Chloe had to convince her not to unalive herself. Safi wanted to die.
But the scene that broke me wasn’t that; it was the scene where Safi tries to convince Max to leave with her. The desperation in her voice was palpable.
Max is trying to explain why she can’t give Safi what she wants. Wanting to save the people from the fire, because they are going to die. And she says:
“That should be enough for you.”
Safi counters desperately:
“I should be enough for you.”
She continues to plead, stuttering on her words:
“Please? I-I’ll be good. I…I won’t shapeshift, I won’t… I won’t lie. Just please… I don’t wanna be alone.”
And Max was the person she truly focused on. She was even compromising on bringing Chloe along. Meeting up with Diamond. And even bringing Moses along to try to convince Max to leave with her. Even though she tried to convince Chloe to leave with her as a last resort an effort to convince someone to choose her, all the real energy and emotion went to Max.
So, is Safi in love with Max? Probably.
But love comes in various forms. And I do think Safi’s feelings for Max are above friendship. Max is probably the person she would ride and die with. However, Safi has to realize that Max has already been doing the ride-or-die bestie thing from day one.
The story is really revolved around the love story of Max and Chloe, but Max and Safi would be an interesting one. Chloe and Safi are so alike, and they love the same woman. Max.
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