Originator [Life Is Strange | Urban Fantasy Quest]

[Alobomb]

Character Sheet
Character Sheets are a very heavy WIP​

Max Caulfield Chloe Price Kate Marsh

• 
  
  Bio Powers Skills

  • WIP
    
    Spoiler: Rewind

    Max's rewind powers are a strange beast. On the most basic level, Max is able to raise her right hand and turn the world - the universe, really- back in time. At this point in the story, having been practicing for about 70~ days, she can turn back time to the tune of a minute and thirty seconds from the Point of Rewind with very little stress. With effort, a nosebleed, and potentially risking passing out however, she can go back as far as five minutes.
    
    Sounds simple, yes? Here's where it gets messy. Max herself is not affected by the Rewind, not physically. On the one hand, this allows her to "teleport," if she is standing at point A at 12:30, moves to point B at 12:31, then rewinds back to 12:30 while at point B, to anyone observing her before 12:30 she will appear to "teleport" from A to B.
    
    She is also able to take small objects with her. For example, if she were to steal a key from a security guard, then rewind to before the security guard turned the nearby corner, the key would "teleport" off of the security guard's belt into her hand.
    
    Unfortunately on the other hand, this also means if she was to get shot by that security guard, and then rewind, any damage to her internal organs would simply remain. As would the bullet, incidentally, since it is in her "possession."
    Spoiler: Soft Photojump

    A "Soft" Photojump can be performed on any photograph that contains Max's image. By performing a Soft Photojump, Max is essentially sending her present consciousness into the body of her past self. A soft photojump can last from a couple hours to a full day or two, this is one of Max's most unpredictable, and arguably most dangerous to her mission, powers, so she has avoided experimenting with it too much.
    
    Any changes in events while in a past self's body will ripple through to the present. The issue is that once the time limit on the soft jump is up, Max's "present" consciousness is ricocheted back to the moment she made the photojump. Or rather, she is ricocheted to where the her from this new reality's body is in this new timeline, where she fully and permanently replaces that version of herself.
    
    Assuming the photograph she used to jump back still exists (see: dangerous to her mission if it doesn't) she can still jump back and follow the "canon" sequence of events in order to reset it back to her more familiar timeline.
    Spoiler: Hard Photojump

    A "Hard" Photojump is one of her most powerful abilities. It can be performed on any photograph that was taken by Max. By performing a Hard Photojump, Max's "present" consciousness jumps back to her body at the point of the canon timeline that she took the photograph at. Any events that passed between the moment the photograph was taken and when the Hard Photojump were performed for all intents and purposes cease to exist. Save for in Max's memories, that is.
    
    It is this kind of Photojump that Max performs at the start of this quest, where, for the first time, it does not work as intended.
    Spoiler: Budget Time Stop

    Discovered when Max attempted to only pull on one of the usual tumult of threads she pulls on to rewind. Allows her to 'stop time' for herself with all the limitations of a rewind, including duration and inability to move objects that were not small enough to have on her person as she entered it. Also being assumed that it means something around her is being rewound while all else is frozen, could be very bad or noticeable if the wrong thing gets picked at random to be rewound.
• 
  
  Bio Skills

  • Backtalk - When Chloe interacts with anyone antagonistically where she has a specific goal for the conversation, she has a chance of... kind of going off. Works best with figures of some authority. High chance she'll get what she wants, earning either a grudging admiration or halting bitterness from the person in question in the process, low chance it will go very, very wrong and make the situation a hundred times worse than you thought possible.
• 
  
  Bio Powers Skills

  • Head In The Books - Kate's used to spending hours poring over hard to decipher texts, trying to work out meaning from the words of people who've long since discarded such basic concepts as 'incremental improvement,' and 'not being an expert in their field.' She also likes to read medieval books on magic sometimes, when she's not doing homework. She might be less computer savvy than Chloe, but she knows how to get from No-Knowledge to Sufficient-Knowledge, and knows how to take detailed notes about how she got there.

Currently Based Out of

Spoiler: Chloe's Room, Madsen Household

Description Traits Facilities

• Chloe's room is the archetypal image of a rebellious teenager's room. Detritus, from unwashed clothes to empty beer bottles, litters the floor, and an assortment of what could be uncharitably considered 'junk and knick knacks' cover every shelf and raised surface in the room. Despite all of that though, or possibly because of it, it might be your favourite place in Arcadia Bay. Something about the room is intrinsically calming, and you always feel centered after a night here.
• +Homey - Sleeping here is relaxing, and it's rare for you to have a poor night's sleep, especially when you share the bed with Chloe. A home cooked Joyce breakfast in the mornings doesn't hurt either.
  
  +Will's Vines - Speaking of calming, something about the scent of the overgrown houseplants downstairs seems to leave you clear headed and aware, even if you're otherwise exhausted. Can be good if you ever need to cram for a test after a long day. Hah, as if.
  
  -Messy - Needs one base action a turn dedicated to cleaning up the mess that Chloe and Kate somehow manage to consistently accumulate. Maybe you can eventually convince one of them to help though?
  
  -Slow WiFi - This sucks, man
• Big Cork Board - Great for conspiracy theories and tracking evidence. Tell me about Pepe Silvia!
  
  Chloe's Laptop - It's a fairly recent laptop, good enough to run most games if you set the graphics low enough. I'm not super interested in using it for gaming though.
  
  Backyard? - It's got potential. Weird time to choose to develop my green thumb though.
  
  David's Garage - It's big, and you're enough in David's good graces at this point that you could probably convince him to let you do just about anything with it, as long as he can still park his muscle car in there. Insert compensating joke.

Base in Progress

Spoiler: The Dark Room

Description Traits Facilities

• Floor 1
  Floor 2
  Originally used as a photography studio and kidnapping den by Mark Jefferson, and in your timeline Nathan Prescott. You, Chloe, and Kate discovered that the Bunker is significantly more expansive than you'd previously known. With several strange facilities, you're not quite sure how to feel about everything. At least it's secure, for now.
• +Secure - One way in, one way out, and a plethora of early warning sensors you can disable or bend to your own use.
  
  +Expansive - The Prescotts did not skimp on the bunker. Lots of space to grow, very self sufficient, and lots of versatile facilities.
  
  -Bad Memories - No shit, eh? This can be alleviated through redecorating and changing the look and feel of the space, but your nights here will be very uneasy until then. Severity lessened due to honesty with Chloe and Kate.
  
  -Something in the Shadows - No, no. It's nothing, right?
• 7x Empty Rooms
  2x Dark Room Rooms (To be repurposed)
  3x Bedrooms with en-suites (Unfurnished aside from en-suites)
  1x Barracks
  1x Kitchen/Dining Room (Unfurnished aside from stove/oven and dishwasher)
  1x Bathroom
  1x Communal Bathroom/Shower
  1x Utility Room
  2x Prison Blocks
  1x Prison 'Rec Room'

 

[Alobomb]

Cast List
(Contains spoilers for the games)

Spoiler: Max Caulfield

Maxine Caulfield
September 21st, 1995

Max is a student at Blackwell Academy, where her focus is on photography. She was born in Arcadia Bay, but moved to Seattle for her teenage years before returning. Before gaining her time powers, she was thought of as a geeky, quiet wallflower. After gaining them, she used them to improve her reputation, and hopefully the lives of those around her. She's sometimes considered nosy, which by her own admission, may indeed be the case.
Over the course of the week of October 7th to 11th, 2013, she rekindled her friendship with her childhood best friend, Chloe Price. During that initial week she developed a crush on Chloe. She traveled back in time first out of anger and defiance at the fate that seemed pre-destined for her best friend, but as loops wore on she found herself genuinely falling for the blue haired woman. Now Max finds herself in an unfamiliar version of her hometown, trying to protect the one she loves.

Spoiler: Chloe Price

Chloe Elizabeth Price
March 11, 1994

Chloe Price is a resident of Arcadia Bay, and a former Blackwell student. She's known, somewhat stereotypically, for her rebellious attitude and risk-taking behavior. While she was always known as a witty child, her resentful, rebellious behavior only started as a teenager. When Chloe was 13, her father, William Price, died in a car accident. His vehicle was stricken by an oncoming 16 wheeler, killing him instantly. A few short days later, Max and her family moved to Seattle from Arcadia Bay, leaving Chloe alone.
Chloe became withdrawn and bitter, unwilling to open up or connect with Joyce, her mother, and not maintaining any close friendships at school. She had previously been a well above average student, especially excelling in science, but during this time her grades distinctly suffered.
In 2010, she befriended fellow Blackwell Academy student Rachel Amber, an aspiring model from LA. The two became extremely close in a very short period of time, and by most accounts, were dating each other. That same year, she was expelled from Blackwell Academy.
In 2013, not that long before Max Caulfield returned to Arcadia Bay, Rachel Amber disappeared. She and Chloe had been secretly planning and putting together funds to run away from Arcadia Bay together. This rocked Chloe to the core, and she was certain that Rachel had run away from something without her, for some reason. Even after the investigation was closed and Rachel declared an indefinite missing person, Chloe still would spend hours each week putting up missing person posters around town.
In October of 2013, she reconnected with her childhood friend Max Caulfield when she moved back to Arcadia Bay. Over the course of the week when Max received time powers, she found herself falling for her former best friend.

Spoiler: Rachel Amber

Rachel Dawn Amber
July 22, 1994

Rachel Amber was a former resident of Arcadia Bay, and former student of Blackwell Academy.
She was known by the community to be infectiously charismatic, someone who was able to blend in or talk with anyone.
To many people's surprise her best friend was one Chloe Elizabeth Price, local rebellious teen. Rachel apparently felt as though Chloe was the only person who was "real" with her, who talked to her without the pretensions of social norms and treated her as just a person.
Rachel was passionate about modelling, theatre, fashion, and a wide array of other creative pursuits.
Her dream was to become a model in LA, and by all accounts she was moving well towards that dream when she disappeared.
As Max and Chloe discovered after reconnecting and beginning to investigate her disappearance, Rachel Amber had been in relationships with both local drug dealer Frank Bowers, and local Blackwell Professor Mark Jefferson.
Through their investigation, it is revealed that Rachel had been killed by an accidental drug overdose on the part of Nathan Prescott, who had done so in an attempt to impress his sociopathic "father-figure," Mark Jefferson.
Mark Jefferson was incensed, but helped Nathan cover up the murder.

A Lot More Will Be Added
(this is difficult)​

 

[Alobomb]

-snip-
As a meta-note, I hate to keep bringing the tone down Alo, but this probably isn't an in-the-car conversation. Although if it's reasonably safe that we won't be overheard, you could have the first part of the plan take place in the Junkyard for better tonal consistency.

Click to shrink...

Think of it less as a meta-note and more an instruction on when you'd like Max to bring things up IC. I take write-ins and plans as less of an in-character mental step-by-step that Max has consciously thought of (though sometimes it will, in part, manifest in the narrative as this), and more of a guide to what, narratively, you would like Max to do and when. When usually boils down to the rough order that they are listed in (with occasional re-ordering if there's no specific mentions or clearly implied direction of order), so if you do think a conversation would be better off on the ride to a location or after the ride there, don't hesitate to say so, I don't consider it micro-managey, merely a.... catalyzation of what you want happening. I'm not worried about tonal consistency in a conversational sense, if Max brings something up at a bad time due to Questor's instructions, people with her will react accordingly.

In this case, I would've taken it as "Conversation first in Price Household, followed by car ride and questions." While writing I would remember that someone (@Markala I believe?) mentioned not asking possibly angering questions while Chloe's driving, so I'd likely save Frank and "Possible Hostile" points for after the ride.

You'd have to be more clear with a fairly definitive answer on when to do the first part of the conversation though. Even with a fairly significant power to rewind time, if Max gets to the junkyard and doesn't feel safe about being overheard, she can't exactly go 30 minutes back in time back to have the talk at Chloe's house

Ultimately, quests are interesting because of the interplay between QM and questors. I'm interested in telling the story, and certainly have my own ideas pertaining to what will happen, but I'm equally as interested in all of you interacting with, and no doubt defying aspects of what's in my head (and planning documents lol.) I suppose if it makes sense, when writing an update there's a hierarchy of actions that goes:

1. "Random" Events (or story stuff that takes precedence, basically)
2. Questor input
3. The background noise of the story itself. Moving around, other character's responses, etc.

This kinda sets the stage for how I'll write an update and where/when things will happen with or without your input.

This post ended up a lot more rambling than I wanted it to be, and is not at all intended as a rebuff towards you Spector, but I hope that sheds a bit of light on how all y'alls input influences the quest.

 

[Alobomb]

Alright, I got my Omake done, so let me know what you think of it. Just a quick warning: this is pretty dark, so if you don't like that you might not want to read it. Enjoy.

Click to shrink...

Oh shit, that was excellent Blueshift. I always imagined the way Jefferson would react to that kind of situation would be pure cowardice, the kinda pathetic begging and pleading for his life/not to be turned in. Your interpretation is 100x more bone chilling, and using him as a way of turning a mirror onto Max to make her consider her actions is really clever, awesome awesome work. Has been added to the OP.

This was interesting. It's up to Alobomb to say whether it's canon or not

Click to shrink...

Warning for long rant about silly things, TL;DR at bottom.
I have some mixed thoughts on the topic of canonicity as a whole. When it comes down to it, what do we define as canon? If we take the original application of the word to the Biblical canon, it comes from the Greek work for "rule" or "measuring stick." In that case it refers to what is considered by the largest group of worshipers to be the "authoritative scripture", i.e the scripture that is believed to be "true" and applicable to reality. Funnily enough, things become infinitely more complicated once we apply this same idea to modern fiction.
Take Game of Thrones, a show I haven't watched, for example. George R.R Martin's books can be considered to be the Canon of the ASOIAF series so we'll take that as the base level of "canon" here. Let's go one step "removed" from that and look at the TV show, Game of Thrones. In it, plot elements from the books are changed, character's motivations and personalities take on entirely different tones or bents, and it of course gets it's own "anime original ending" to borrow a phrase. Does this make it a non-canon piece of media? Or does it make it it's own canon as a separate entity from ASOIAF? Is it technically a fanwork?
Let's follow this one step further. As of the end of 2018, the first book of ASOIAF had sold 44 million copies in North America since publication. The average live viewership per episode of Game of Thrones throughout it's whole run was 32.8 million. Taking into account that a large portion of the audience likely did not watch each GoT episode live, I think it is safe to assume that Game of Thrones likely has a much larger consumer base than ASOIAF does. Assuming that we take them as two separate takes on the same universe, does the larger fanbase of the TV show (and therefore the larger amount of people who consider it to be "true") mean that the TV show is "more" canon than the books? Or does the books status as the Originator (roll credits) of the media universe and authorship by George R.R Martin mean that it inherently has more canonicity than the TV show, no matter how much larger the TV show fanbase becomes than the books?
To pivot entirely, there are fanworks out there that I personally believe to be necessary for the full experience of various pieces of media. Both Life is Strange and Homestuck fall into this category. If I personally take these fanworks I consider to be intrinsic to understanding some character's characterizations to be canonical, do they not become so for me? Is canonicity then not an objective property, but a subjective one? What if the author comes right out to me and says "no, Detective Pony is not an accurate assessment of Dirk's personality." Obviously I can disagree and deny this, but will I then be somehow objectively incorrect by doing so? What if 90% of fans believe the fanwork to be "canonical" when the author still disagrees? Who's right?
(Spoiler: I think it's each individual person who's correct about their own canon.)
All of that to say, canonicity is fluid, even moreso when time travel is involved in-universe, and even moreso when it's a form of collaborative writing, such as a quest. It can be useful nomenclature to keep track of what has or hasn't been confirmed to have happened in a story, but if that is so non-self-evident that it needs that kind of label to confirm it, there's probably bigger issues at play lmao.

TL;DR What's canon or not isn't up to me, all I have control over is the thread of story I'm writing, not your interpretation of it or others. The world that Max is in cannot be easily confirmed to be similar enough to her previous loops that any information this would mean she knew would be relevant. For all omakes it's up to the individual reading them whether they want to apply them as canon or not. Personally, I really like Blueshift's omake, and I can absolutely see it as canonical, but I also ain't gonna "confirm" that or force it on you guys, it's your story (almost) as much as it is mine.