#lis thoughts

[lisupandowntown]

In the past 13 months since I started this blog (technically since I started the blog lisupanddown that I had to stop using in favor of this one), I have written 135 stories. How is that even possible? What important aspects of my life have I been comprehensively ignoring? The world may never know . . .

But honestly, it's mostly because all of you and the support I've gotten here. So thank you.

[lisupandowntown]

What's coming next

Logan/Adam unlikely bonding

Noa and Jeremiah talking about the Drew situation

Rory and Noa's engagement party (meet their parents!)

Drew's POV about what's going on with him and Jeremiah

I know the emeto scenario in the first fic, but still unsure about who's going to get sick, and why (may not be emeto I need to write a good fever lol).

There will be other fics in between and I'd love a few ideas if anyone wants to see something specific. Does not have to relate to the plot but if it's wildly out of order it may be harder to do. But happy to write a standalone minific that could take place at any time.

[lisupandowntown]

halfway through my next fic - Gabe’s going down - but I’m at work and have to be working. And I just want to write. That is all; just needed to complain for a second. Resume your previously scheduled activities.

[lisupandowntown]

On my list

Not necessarily in order:

Logan and Noa (Logan sick from accidentally getting gluten)

Avery and Adam (Avery sick) This is almost done

Group food poisoning on someone's birthday

Noa and Rory situation where he gets sick and there's angst. This is a combination of an idea @bellysoupset gave me to push the "Rory overprotective" narrative a bit and a couple of asks for Rory and Noa where she doesn't believe he's sick.

Drew sick while running errands with Jeremiah - something domestic-blisslike. This one may change

Big, BIG angsty thing I want to write but I'm not ready yet.

And as always, taking requests. I can't promise I'll get to all of them - sometimes it's just a question of something "hitting" right in the moment.

[lisupandowntown]

I'm going to be away for a couple of days - went out of town to be with a friend who is having surgery. Very glad to be here with them but already having major FOMO about what you will all be writing. Hope to be back by Monday.

[lisupandowntown]

to all my lovely anons and non-anons who have been sending me messages and requests - I want to assure you I’m not gone. Life and work have gotten very busy and I’m going away next week for a much-needed vacation somewhere warm. But I’m still writing and planning and writing some more. Logan’s final bit has been kicking my ass but I hope to have that finished before the end of the weekend and I’ve got some other things up I’m excited to write. I know this time of year is tough for a lot of people (me included), and I hope you are all kind to yourselves. You are all awesome and deserve all the good things. Love, Lis

[lisupandowntown]

@bellysoupset mentioned Gabe getting sick in full work attire and I realize I forgot to have him loosen his tie. And damn it, of course he did because the pressure against his throat was nauseating. So while he was walking back to his office the first time he was tugging at it until it stopped squeezing his Adam's apple. You're welcome.

[strawberrythighddemon]

The Web We Weave With Our Choices | Life is Strange | Choice-based Games With Consequences

Sometimes I write to make sense of the patterns I see. The quiet ways choices shape people, the invisible threads that pull a life in one direction or another. Games like Life is Strange don’t feel totally fictional to me. They feel like mirrors of our reality. They show how one decision, one absence, and one moment of cowardice or courage can ripple outward and alter the fate of an entire community. And maybe that’s why I return to those stories that mirror that. They remind me that nothing happens in isolation. Every choice has a cost, and every cost lands somewhere.

There’s a reason choice‑based games like Life is Strange pull me in so deeply. They operate on a truth most people ignore: every choice ripples outward. Not just through your own life, but through the lives of the people orbiting you. We talk about “karma” as if it’s mystical, but really it’s just the long shadow of consequences — good or bad — moving through a community.

Good choices have consequences. Bad choices have consequences. The difference is simply which ones you can live with. Shame and guilt cling to the ones you can’t. But either way, the impact rarely stops with you. That’s the part people forget: the indirect causation, the correlation, the way one person’s decision can quietly rearrange the lives of dozens of others.

Even something as mundane as life expectancy in the U.S. reflects this. The South dies younger than the Northeast, but not because of some inherent flaw; it’s the indirect impacts of stress, poverty, and repeated natural disasters. Florida gets hit with hurricanes every year. Homes lost. Keepsakes destroyed. People displaced. People killed. Trauma compounds. Infrastructure crumbles. Poverty deepens. Crime rises. Resources shrink. And all of that shapes the lifespan of entire regions.

Life is Strange mirrors this perfectly. Sean Prescott shutting down major employers didn’t just inconvenience Arcadia Bay; it destabilized the whole town. People lost jobs, homes, and stability. Crime rose. Families scattered. One wealthy man’s choices created a slow, grinding collapse.

In Before the Storm, we see the fallout up close. Nathan is abused by his father and bullied because of his last name; the sins of the father are placed on the son. Drew North’s father loses his job because of Sean Prescott, and suddenly Drew is boarding at school, Mikey is living with him, and their father is in a homeless shelter. Drew’s aggression toward Nathan is wrong, but it’s also understandable: he’s a teenage boy carrying the weight of homelessness, responsibility, and fear for his little brother. That pressure has to go somewhere.

And then there’s Chloe. The character people love to misinterpret. There’s a willful ignorance around how the environment, trauma, and parental choices shape a child. Life is Strange makes it painfully clear that every dialogue choice, every action, every moment of connection or disconnection alters the outcome.

People love to debate “what if” scenarios, but the game shows us plainly: even if William had lived, Chloe’s life still bends toward a similar kind of suffering. The big choices matter, but the small ones — the daily ones — matter just as much.

Joyce, for example, made the choice to hand over the role of disciplining her daughter to a stranger. That’s not just a mistake, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of her own child. Joyce and Chloe never had the deep emotional connection Chloe had with William, and instead of building it, Joyce outsourced the hard parts to David. She justified it by saying she worked so Chloe wouldn’t have to, but that strips Chloe of agency. Chloe could have worked part‑time, learned responsibility, built meaning, and found purpose. Joyce never considered that. She treated Chloe’s life as something to protect from hardship rather than something to help her shape.

And I can’t help wondering: what did Joyce want for herself? Why didn’t she pursue it when William was alive? Why didn’t she build a sustainable life for herself and her daughter before everything fell apart?

I’ve met so many daughters who worked from adolescence to help maintain a household. Some still support their mothers and siblings well into adulthood. Joyce’s issue isn’t that she needed help; it’s that she never articulated what kind of help she needed. What she really wanted was someone to discipline her daughter for her, not someone to help her run a home.

And then there’s David. The moment he claimed the house was his, Joyce corrected him, but she should never have been in that position to begin with. The game quietly tells us that David hit Chloe. That’s assault. Full stop. And Joyce didn’t protect her. If Chloe had gone to the police, nothing would have happened. Worse, Joyce likely would have made Chloe apologize to the man who hurt her.

Anyone who justifies that needs to take a long, hard look at themselves.

Is David a bad person? No. But he’s not a good one either. His worldview is twisted by his upbringing, by the military, by the narrow lens of law enforcement, environments that teach you discipline equals protection, violence equals boundaries, and control equals safety. It’s not evil, but it’s deeply damaged.

And Life is Strange doesn’t shy away from showing how damaged people damage others.

People forget they were civilians once; people who walked from one place to another without a firearm strapped to their body, without the paranoia or the posture of someone expecting violence. I walk out every day without a weapon, and luck still brings me home. But then again, I’m a woman, and women learn early to make choices that keep us alive. I trust my gut. If something feels off, I leave. It’s simple. It’s survival. It’s not the same as the people who move through the world carelessly, puffed up with false toughness.

David reminds me of those men, the ones who mistake rigidity for strength. That arrogance, that fixed mindset, doesn’t just harm them; it harms everyone in the household. David harmed Chloe. But he wasn’t the only one who set her on the path toward her own undoing.

Max did, too.

Max’s disappearance — her choice to ghost Chloe — had the most significant indirect impact on Chloe’s life. Chloe had to grieve alone. Every choice she made afterward spiraled her into new forms of pain. The same pattern shows up with Rachel Amber. Her desperation to escape Arcadia Bay, her need to be the center of attention, made her vulnerable to Mark Jefferson and Nathan Prescott. But society doesn't do anything about the solution to reducing the possibilities of predators forming in society, and giving them a breeding ground to thrive.

Don't ever blame the girl; blame the system that allows predators to thrive. And those same systems who breeds them. Rachel was a victim of the rules of society and what women are expected to be. Rachel understood her placement in life, and her beauty gave her plenty of social capital to get what she wanted, even though it would lead to her end. And all this really began with her father lying to her about her past and her mother. He carried a covert judgment of others and a quiet superiority. You could feel him waiting for the chance to call Chloe a bad influence. People who wait for opportunities to weaponize something against someone else aren’t open‑minded; they’re just looking for justification to reject them. And of course, class plays a role: Chloe from a lower working‑class background, Rachel from an upper‑middle‑class one.

People focus on behavior they don’t like, especially when it comes from girls and women. Society punishes emotional expression — anger, grief, frustration — especially when it’s raw, especially when it’s loud, and especially when it’s honest. A woman who speaks assertively or with heat is labeled “aggressive,” while a passive, pleasant performance is treated as the ideal. But that’s not real. Reality is messy. Emotions are messy. They’re not meant to make others comfortable. They’re meant to signal that something is wrong.

Chloe’s anger is a signal. She’s grieving her father, and she’s grieving her mother; not because Joyce died, but because Joyce abandoned her emotionally. Joyce handed discipline to a stranger. She chose loneliness over her daughter. Loneliness is devastating; it makes people desperate. And desperation leads to terrible decisions. Joyce became partner‑centered instead of child‑centered. She forgot the priority: her daughter, her blood, her family.

Protecting Chloe from school trouble is one thing. Protecting her at home is another. Joyce failed at the second. She brought someone unsafe into her home. And chose to take David's side over Chloe's. And that choice had consequences, too. It helped set the stage for Chloe’s fate, being shot by Nathan in the bathroom.

There’s no “right” answer to the final choice: sacrifice Chloe or sacrifice Arcadia Bay. But I’ve wondered if Joyce, given full clarity, would have chosen to save her daughter. I think she would have. If she could see every choice and every consequence laid bare, I believe she’d forfeit her own life to save Chloe. I know parents who have lost children, and if given the choice, they would take their child’s place without hesitation. But we don’t live in a world where those choices are offered.

Choices matter. They can’t be made carelessly, because they ripple far beyond us. We forget we’re not alone. Our choices affect the people we love, and the people they love, and sometimes entire communities. Choice‑based stories whisper this truth to us. They remind us that consequences are inevitable. The real question is whether you can live with the choices you’ve made. If you can’t, then you made the wrong ones, and you either learn to live with the damage, learn to be more mindful, practice redemption without expecting reward, or you let yourself rot under the weight of it.

That’s why I love Life is Strange.

It teaches you — quietly, insistently — how important it is to be mindful of your life and the people around you, especially the ones you care about.

When I look at these characters — Chloe, Rachel, Max, Joyce, David — I don’t see fiction. I see the real world reflected back at me. I see how fragile people are, how easily they break, and how they break each other. And I see how much damage comes from choices made without awareness. Maybe that’s why these stories stay with me. They remind me to move through my own life with intention. To pay attention to the surrounding people. To understand that my choices don’t end with me. They ripple all around.