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thealexchen · 3 years

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i’ve actually read both of the articles that you mentioned earlier! I could see where both of them were coming from at varying points, though shannon liao’s struck me as a tad harsh, as someone who felt very seen by Alex, particularly with regard to her asian-american identity, and the cultural details and familial attitudes you see displayed throughout the game (especially in episode 5.) I could see why others would like them to be more overt, but they’re still present & relevant as is, imo.

I'm happy you read and enjoyed them! Well, since we’re on the subject, I might as well give my fuller thoughts about all this. This answer got horrendously long, so I'm putting it under a read more. I really wanted to talk about this more fully, so thank you for sending this ask!

I definitely see Robert's point in his article. Alex didn’t need to be Asian for the story of True Colors to be told, but it’s still meaningful that she is so that Asian fans and fans of color can look up to her and feel represented. The Chens buck a lot of stereotypes too: Mrs. Chen was not a “tiger mom” and her kids and husband remember her fondly. Mr. Chen doesn’t push Alex and Gabe to excel in school, and in fact neither Alex nor Gabe went to college, but they still had happy futures. Alex isn’t the best friend or the Asian schoolgirl or the dragon lady or the Asian nerd. But at the same time, when Robert says "Alex never really talks about her thoughts on Chinese culture,” that’s like— well, what’s wrong with talking about it? Why not talk about it more explicitly? The words “Asian” and “Chinese” and “Vietnamese” aren’t even used in the game when "gay" and "lesbian" were, and that's a little disappointing.

I figured people would figure out Alex was at least Chinese because of her last name, but I saw some streamers unsure of what Alex’s ethnicity even was (“Alex is… Chinese, right?”). That was disappointing because Asians tend to be treated as a monolith when we’re so internally diverse. Also, it’s completely possible to miss that Alex and Gabe are also half-Vietnamese. Their mother’s name is Giang “Wendy” Chen, a Vietnamese name, but that’s only in the credits. There’s far less Vietnamese (and Southeast Asian) rep than Chinese, so I wish that had been made more explicit.

In Life is Strange 2, Sean and Daniel’s struggles (personal and institutional) were centered around their identity as half-Mexican boys. True Colors almost seemed to be going in the opposite direction in that Alex’s Asian heritage never really becomes plot-relevant, but Alex and Gabe’s background comes into focus in the last chapter.

Part of Shannon’s critique was that because Alex’s parents aren’t in the picture, the game can’t explore Asian culture through a familial lens. There is some truth to that: for children of immigrants in particular, their parents are their strongest (and sometimes only) link to their race and culture. I thought a big missed opportunity was exploring Alex’s possible sense of isolation and struggle to reconnect with her Asian heritage after being separated from her family.

After growing up with two Asian parents, eating Asian food, celebrating Asian holidays, likely speaking Asian languages, etc. it would have likely been disorienting and lonely for Alex to suddenly be raised by non-Asian foster parents and lose all those traditions all at once. Possible comments like “I really miss Mom’s pho” or “Do you know how difficult it is to find hoisin sauce in the stores around here?” could have inferred more at that specific kind of loss and isolation in Haven Springs. The game touches upon this very briefly when you look at Gabe’s shrine, and Alex does comment “I don’t even know if I’m doing this right… but I felt like I had to do something.” In this way, I find it especially poignant that she still held onto cultural traditions after so long.

But I still thought Shannon’s critique was overly harsh. The little details really do add up, like in Alex’s childhood home, and meant a lot to me too. And most importantly, there was representation behind the scenes too: Alex was voiced by two(!) Asian American women and the lead writer, Felice Kuan, is Chinese. I think Alex naming her mouse Shu-shu was my favorite detail. Because it’s the one detail you can’t miss. Every streamer remembers Shu-Shu’s name and loves how cute she is and they can probably infer it’s a Chinese term. It just is so visible and empowering in that way and my heart felt warm every time I heard someone say “Aw! Shu-shu!"

But that doesn't mean Alex's Asian heritage didn't matter at all. I really appreciated that Alex's backstory still mattered because she came from a poor, working-class immigrant family. Her life circumstances were used for drama, but none of Alex's suffering was racially motivated and that felt tastefully done. I’m gonna paraphrase a comment I saw on alliebeemac’s playthrough of episode 5: "It's no coincidence that both Alex and Ryan lost their mothers at a young age, but because Ryan's father was a military veteran and had a high-paying job as a Typhon foreman, he got to keep his childhood whereas Alex's entire world was torn apart... And if you want to look at it even more metaphorically, the white patriarch Jed was able to preserve his own image as a hero and 'good old boy' of Haven by literally sacrificing an immigrant family to the mines with the expectation that nobody would come looking for them. Whether you're an immigrant or whether you're a foster child, the system is saying 'we don't care about you.'"

And at the end, Alex tells Jed, "You want to look away and pretend the men you hurt weren't people. But I won't let you.” It's a deliberate stand against Jed (a white man)’s dehumanization of poor laborers, including her Chinese immigrant father. Jed isn't explicitly portrayed as a racist, but his actions come from a privileged, and subsequently racist and classist place. For me, it worked better than LiS2's portrayal of racism because it was subtler and more personal. Alex stands up against Jed out of a personal sense of justice for her brother (and her father).

Do I wish we had more? Yeah, absolutely. I wish Alex got to actually speak Mandarin or Vietnamese in the game because that's so rare in games, even though I knew that would be unrealistic because Erika Mori is Japanese. I wish the character artists had at least made a version of Alex and Gabe’s models without shoes, because it just didn’t look right to see them wear shoes in the house (especially in bed??) and even LiS2 had Sean and Daniel in their socks in some scenes. I wish Alex and Gabe talked more about their family while Gabe was still alive and Alex could have had that comfort of someone who misses the food and customs they used to celebrate. But like I said, one piece of media isn’t gonna please everyone. And Asian representation in particular is so tricky because not only is there not enough of it, but Asian Americans are so diverse and come from so many different backgrounds. Children of immigrants are going to feel more connected to their Asian heritage than third or fourth gen kids or mixed race kids for example. Everyone is going to have a different definition of “Asian culture” and “accurate representation.”

But on a meta-level, it really means so much to simply have an Asian face on the box of a major Western game ❤️ Like even just seeing the way Alex's eyes crinkle when she smiles or how other characters find her attractive (like Steph’s note during the LARP preferring Alex’s natural black hair), it feels so affirming. It’s incredible to see an Asian girl be called the hero of her own story, to see her succeed and fail and cry and laugh and fall in love and kiss another woman and be comfortable in her bisexuality. It acknowledges that the queer community includes Asians, that Asian girls can also be curvy, that Asian girls can and do struggle with mental health. And like Erika Mori said, Alex is a fully-realized character and that’s what makes her so compelling, first and foremost. She also has a strong moral compass and dreams and fears and is such an incredible role model for people of all backgrounds, and that’s what makes her identity as a queer woman of color so much more meaningful.

#life is strange true colors #listc #asian representation #answered asks #anon #alex chen #gabe chen #chen sibs #life is strange #true colors #true colours #lis: tc #life is strange 3 #my post

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lewishamil10n · 4 years

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Why don't you like Cameron? Just want some salt,I'll even spill mine. She was oftentimes too emotional, and whined a lot,besides being too preachy and hypocritical. That could've been ingredients for a great character, IMO,but the writers didn't handle her character well. What makes even more jarring was how Chase and Foreman had great writing, and their flaws fucked them over. And her infatuation with House... Wtf was that,should've lasted for 1 season at the very most,but alas.

i actually loved cameron in the beginning! i thought she was sweet, kind, and empathetic -- all the things you’d want your doctor to be. she even reminded me of my best friend, who’s a doctor with a personality similar to cameron’s. i liked that there was a “heart” element to the team, someone to keep the balance between the puzzle aspect, the careerist aspect, and the patient aspect of medicine.

what began annoying me was her hypocrisy. i can understand self-righteousness and a strong moral compass. i cannot stand hypocrisy. cameron tended to act like her beliefs and morals were more important than the others’. i also didn’t like how judgy she acted towards patients, and how she could almost never separate her emotions from her work. i know it sounds harsh, but if you’re in medicine, you have to compartmentalize. feeling your patient’s pain is one thing, but that should end the moment your patient is out the door. you cannot take on all of your patient’s suffering and expect that it won’t affect you. cameron couldn’t do this, and she’d end up judging the patient because of it, or projecting on them.

i found her fascination with broken men intriguing, honestly. it says something to the kind of person she is that she’d marry a man with a terminal diagnosis despite knowing he’d be dead very soon. that in itself is not a bad thing, but when you look at the bigger picture, it’s definitely a pattern with cameron. she thinks she can fix people with kindness and love. that’s admirable on paper; doesn’t always work out that way in real life. she was infatuated with house because she felt attracted to his pain. she thought if only he would let her love him, she could fix him and take away his pain. she never actually tried to... understand the pain. when he rejected her, she had a whole phase of giving up on love, and she began her friends with benefits thing with chase. or to be accurate, coworkers with benefits.

because they weren’t friends. cameron had shown interest in chase’s past only because of her fascination with “broken” people. he loved her, though. he genuinely, from the bottom of his heart, loved her. it was childish the way he went about it, but it was sincere. and she eventually said yes, and they began dating, but here’s the thing -- throughout their relationship, it never felt like she loved him. he was infatuated, always had heart eyes on around her -- and she seemed like she was going through the motions. she seemed like she’d settled for him because he was around, and “safe” to love, and he loved her. she still kept her walls up. she still made him fight just to be let in. she went into that relationship already anticipating that it would end, which is why she kept her first husband’s sperm and was so reluctant to let go of it. like she always figured chase was temporary.

i won’t lie, i did like her again when she finally began letting chase in and when she realized that she loved him enough to destroy her first husband’s sperm. but their marriage lasted barely a couple months, man. yeah, what he did was major, but she basically accused him of turning into house, which is just... not accurate. i doubt house would’ve ever given enough of a shit about dibala to do what chase did. she was the one who kept saying dibala didn’t deserve to live, and then when he actually died, she made like chase was now some evil heartless murderer. the difference is that she never had the conviction to act on her beliefs, she just liked preaching them to anyone with working ears. chase, on the other hand, did what he believed was right, knowing the consequences would weigh heavy on him. he knew he would suffer, he knew he’d never be the same again, but he did it anyway, because he believed it was the right thing to do.

cameron has always lacked that. foreman has always had the guts to stand up to house. chase didn’t at first, but he developed a backbone later. chase had the conviction to follow through on his beliefs even when the consequences could be life-ruining. cameron has never, not once, done that. it’s hypocrisy to constantly rail about injustice and morals and righteousness and then never actually do something about it. and then when chase was finally as fucked up as the men cameron likes to pursue, she left him, because it finally got too real. it’s one thing talking about it; it’s entirely another to do it. and she couldn’t handle the reality of being in a long-term relationship with someone who actually needed help. she always had this romanticized view of messy, flawed people, and then when she realized her husband was one of them in a way much realer than “oh he had a shit childhood”, she turned tail and ran.

chase asked her if she’d ever loved him, and she said, “i don’t know!” which she later amended to “i did, i did love you, i don’t know why i said that.” the thing is, though, her first emotional reaction was much more believable. and chase was right, it wasn’t just the dibala thing that had her running. she was always going to compare him to the six months of marriage she had with her first husband, and he was never going to measure up to that ideal because all of it was the honeymoon period. with her first husband, she never ever got into the real part of marriage, the one that happens when the passion fades and you have to actually live with each other. chase never stood a chance. the entire relationship felt like she was only in it because she didn’t think she was ever going to find anything better. and chase loved her, he loved her so much he was willing to leave PPTH after dibala, where he’d always been happy, just to please her. it says a lot that she would ask that of him just so he’d somehow remain aligned with her morals, and not his, knowing that he’d do anything she asked just to keep her forgiveness and love.

cameron was an interesting character mostly because of how static her personality was. she never really changed, not like how chase and foreman did. both of them developed, grew into themselves, evolved as they learned new things. cameron didn’t. season 6 cameron was pretty much the same as season 1 cameron, minus the obsession with house. and it’s not even that her idealism was annoying -- masters was idealistic. adams was idealistic. but these two weren’t hypocritical about it. masters left house’s department the moment she realized she couldn’t stay without compromising her morals. and adams was always open to change, to having her beliefs challenged, and she evolved accordingly. cameron remained exactly the same, while everyone around her changed, and that’s what led me to dislike her.

#anti allison cameron #sort of?#house md #anonymous #asks

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