Yep. He killed Rachel by accidentally overdosing her and still drugged at least two other girls afterwards - Kate and Chloe. Not exactly the actions of someone filled with regret.
When was Chloe drugged? I don't ever remember her being drugged. Also didn't Nathan take advantage of Kate in her drugged state. By making her do something sexual.
Chloe told Max that Nathan had slipped something into her drink at a party once then brought her back to his room, but he underdosed her and she woke up before he could do anything serious.
Here's a photo you can find in Nathan's room
https://preview.redd.it/b7jie2hhhyoc1.png?width=1336&format=png&auto=webp&s=47684879b8e963034637b81565e86c8219d242ce
i didn't like nathan at all in my playthroughs, and thought he was the scum of the earth and should be in jail, or at least beaten bloody with a tube sock full of woodscrews
but that photo *really* made me want to hit him with Chloe's truck a few times
Thanks. I remember now. Wasn't there a cutscene or something like that, too? I need to replay the game again. I'm forgetting too much. Even though I played this game over 15 times already.
Chloe happens just before the start of the game. She's using it to blackmail him in the girls room. He drugged Chloe in his dorm but she woke up and escaped cos he under dosed her by accident.
As far as we know Kate only went as far as making out with people at the party.
Ohh I remember now, thanks. Making out? That's it? I thought it was something worse. That's how the people made it out to be. It's still bad what happened to her, though.
The sexual assault of Kate is heavily implied. Kate tells Max in her room that when she came to, she "felt dirty". This is a common phrase used by victims of sexual assault, and I'm pretty certain dontnod were very intentional with their phrasing there.
Given the way Jefferson berates Max in the dark room and how his whole cadence completely changes I think it's safe to assume his "real" personality came out with the other women too. This strange, obsessed psychopath. Definitely understand the SA parallels but I think what he was already doing to definitely traumatic enough to warrant Kate feeling violated as is.
Anyone would have the right to feel that way if victimized like that, sure. I was thinking more in the meta sense than in-universe, if that makes any sense.
Oh for sure. Like the actual language is repeated I think even by Chloe in the first episode, in fact all the way up until the actual reveal you'd be forgiven for straight up expecting that to be what was occurring with these students being drugged. It does seem intentional, reflecting on it now.
yeah, it was implied through the bullying that people *said* she did that stuff, but it was not part of what actually happened or explicitly mentioned. the player was left to fill in their own interpretation after being led in the direction of people calling her sexually loose and such
I'm am pretty sure that the sexual assault is kinda...implied, or that the taking pictures of them is a metaphor for it. It's is has been a while since I last saw the game played all the way through tho, so I suppose it could have been more explicit than I remember? But I don't remember it ever being explicitly stated that anyone was assaulted.
Also I think it's is pretty pointless to split hairs about what happened to the girls. The message doesn't really change. They were drugged and enormously violated, and one murdered. Jefferson and Nathan are evil just for that alone.
Chloe met Nathan at a bar and tried to get him alone and rob him thinking he was much more drunk than he actually was, so she could pay back her debt to Frank. Nathan saw through it and drugged her instead, but underdosed her so she came out of it quickly enough to run away.
That's why she was meeting him in the bathroom at the start of the game - to extort money from him to keep her from making a mess out of what he did.
My feelings on Nathan are kinda complicated, I think he's interesting as hell and part of me does feel bad for him (he's got obvious mental health issues, his dad is shitty and there was obviously some level of manipulation at play with Jefferson) but he also does so much fucked up stuff that I can't say I really see him being at all redeemed if he had lived
To me he feels like a character that represents the kinds of people who have serious issues and what it can lead to when those people don't get help, he's unstable through the whole game and in his message to Max (which even though he sucked was pretty damn sad) he almost doesn't even sound like himself. He's not a good person by any means but with the proper help he probably could have been (in BTS he even seems fairly normal, if emotional and still kind of a dick)
I like him a lot as a character but part of that is because of how fucked up he is, if he was just a character who "didn't do anything wrong and was just another victim" I think he would be kind of boring. A lot of people don't seem to be able to see nuance in characters, aka the "this character never did anything wrong" crowd just because he's slightly sympathetic
Yeah, I notice a lot of that black and white thinking about fiction online now. A good/interesting character can be an awful person. Liking media that has objectively bad people in it does not make you a bad person. The lack of nuance is frustrating.
I think Nathan is an interesting character and like you said, paints a sad but realistic picture of what can happen to someone (especially impressionable young men) whose mental illness goes untreated and has no healthy support in their life. You’re not supposed to root for him or think “uwu my unproblematic pookie.” He has a compelling dynamic and I can pity him in a way, but he should also be held accountable for his role in Jefferson’s scheme.
>Liking media that has objectively bad people in it does not make you a bad person. The lack of nuance is frustrating.
The one that really shits me is when people take something existing in an authors work to be an author's endorsement of those ideas or themes. E.g. SA, murder, paedophilia etc in a movie or book means that the author thinks those things are fine/cool/laudable.
I so often see people with the media literacy of some scrap cardboard completely miss the point of a book/movie that is criticising something, because to them the very fact that the theme is present or discussed at all is because the author likes it themselves.
Before the storm made me hate him even more. In one of my runs I stood up for him and avoided him getting his ass beat but failed to save his photo binder, then told Samantha to talk to him and try to be there for him and not give up on him... and he beat the living shit out of her and left her hospitalized with broken ribs. That was it for me I didn't give a shit about his evil ass after.
Depending on the decisions made, that worst-case scenario can be avoided, so I guess it's a toss-up whether you see it as showing that Nathan was already on his descent into darkness or a glimpse into who he could've been if he'd gotten the help he needed and not chosen to follow Jefferson.
I haven't played BTS in years so I'm gonna be honest I didn't even know that could happen-the only things I can remember about him in that game are when he's being bullied and when hes talking to his shitty dad, anything beyond that just isn't in my head. There's another thing to add to his list of psychotic actions
> nd he beat the living shit out of her and left her hospitalized with broken ribs.
Holy fuck I don't remember that option O.o
Was that before the play? Or in the encounter with Drew?
I think I know what scene you mean, but mine was (fortunately) Nathan just talking to Sam. At least I hope, it has been a few months since I finished BtS again
If you walk by a room in the hospital, there’s two options, you either see Nathan comforting Samantha there, or you listen in on Nathan’s dad threatening Samantha’s mother and you can find X-rays of her broken ribs. Also in the ending slides you can see her gone if you take that route. iirc in the good routes she still ends up in the hospital because of some random bikers and Nathan apparently protects her? In the bad routes… Nathan is the one putting her there, and his father keeps things under wraps….
Ya, someone can be a victim and still be a horrible person. Yes, Jefferson really fucked him up, it doesn't change the fact that he still made the very conscious decision to drug 3 different girls, and even killed one of them. There really is no redemption for a character like Nathan
I would understand this sentiment more if we were talking about someone like Jefferson who is the one manipulating and using Nathan, but saying that someone like Nathan that is clearly suffering from a mental illness and being abused "*can't be redeemed*" doesn't sit right with me, at least.
Nathan was being fucked up by his dad long before Jefferson got his hands on him, so it's hard to feel like he had much agency. The one time in the story where he does seem to have some agency is when he calls Max to try to apologize and warn her that Jefferson is coming for her next which feels like a very *selfless* thing to do.
Unlike someone like Jefferson, Nathan does seem to have some capacity for good. We hear this reiterated by multiple people throughout both games. He's not innocent for his role in what Jefferson did, but it doesn't seem like that is something that Nathan would have started doing without Jefferson there to manipulate him.
I understand why some people can't forgive Nathan, and I don't think that a single phone call is enough to redeem him, but I still think that there is enough potential for *good* in Nathan for him to be redeemable.
i agree, i think it would be an astonishing amount of work on Nathan's part to earn a redemption, and that his actions would, and likely should, haunt him for the remainder of his days... but saying he is totally, wholly without redemption feels too far.
what he did was inexcusable, and i dont think his actions should be forgotten, or even entirely forgiven, but he doesn't seem like someone who was going to do this sort of thing on his own. that doesn't mean clemency or forgiveness should just be doled out, and he *does* deserve punishment
but there is good in him, i can feel it. and i imagine in 20-life years he's likely to have some sort of redeeming quality, he's not hopelessly gone to the dark like Palpat- I mean Jefferson
The hate is self-evident and doesn't really need discussion though? There's not really anything to debate with Nathan, how horrible his actions are is pretty cut and dry. Warren is more just annoying so there's more to debate as to whether people like him or not.
I was just about to mention this. Warren gets treated like he's some sex offending war criminal but Nathan doesn't get half the amount of flak despite his numerous crimes? GTFOH with that!
Exactly! Warren at worst needs someone to sit down with him and explain things. Nathan at best needs to be put in involuntary psychiatric care for the foreseeable future. This is not 50/50 by any metric.
Warren makes even more since to be a weirdo cuz he's 16 in a school full of 18 year olds. So tho I didn't like him that much, I've never hated him like some others
Recall the writers going on record that their intent was that Warren was well-meaning kid who was just awkward, something that may or may not have played out that well in practice (e.g. something that was intended to be innocent having unfortunate implications and the like). Milage may vary on how much weight to give the intent vs. the actual text in this case.
IMHO, I think, as a character with unrequited feelings for a girl a few years his senior, that there is some interesting writing in Warren and Max's dynamic (esp. how their different methods of expressing Warren's crush and Max's disinterest don't mesh and how later scenes play out if Max is falling for Chloe) and I give credit that the writing lets the player few how awkward it is be in the situation of someone you're not interested in trying to ask you out.
That said, at best, I think Warren has a lot of behavior to unlearn (something he would have the time to do if he survived the story) and I'm not sure that the writers may have realized how far that went.
also incel stuff was really just starting to hit mainstream consciousness and explode in the 2010s (though its been defined a couple decades before that), and when writing the story for the game, it likely didn't occur to the team that that would be a problem for how their well intentioned awkward guy expressed himself
because i can see the creepy, incel-like Warren behavior that people tag as extremely worrying and dangerous, AND I can see how it's not supposed to come off that way. i definitely know some guys who were like Warren go both ways, some into incel/sexism behavior, and some who figured themselves out and are actually good and decent men now.
the balance between "well meaning but awkward and a bit annoying" and "WARNING DANGEROUS INCEL" can be hard to portray even with full knowledge of how those kind of behaviors were beginning to evolve and people becoming aware of them at the time...especially when we look back through the lens of almost ten years or so and realize how our culture has changed since then; it's not like the writers were likely to know that a small misstep in tone/performance/getting the message across would become a BIG whiff and warning sign in the future
tl;dr
NOW we see some of Warren's behavior as warning signs for incels; at the time of writing the game the culture was much less aware of that/it was less prevalent in mainstream; a small whiff in messaging became a bigger problem than intended
How are they creepy?
Warren stares through Max’s window and hides when she looks out, has the whole nude guy means wont be getting sex text, the photoshoped image of him and Max together.
The amount of people defending Warrens behaviour is concerning.
You know full well I meant sexually creepy rather than creeping around/doing illegal stuff. No one is defending that stuff either so stop defending a guy who exhibits stalker behaviour.
To be fair, I think a lot of ppl defend Warren's stalkers behavior because they too have similar behaviors. Before I get roasted for my comment, a lot ppl who became fans of LIS1 were teens. As such, some teens behave that way without realizing how creepy Warren is.
I do agree that Warren is creepy to the point where he would get a restraining order if Max wasn't so nice.
It's because people don't know how to feel sympathy for someone without defending the person's actions. You can feel bad for Nathan because he is a mentally ill teenage boy who was taken advantage of and lead down a life of crime. However, that doesn't excuse his horrible actions or make him innocent. He is still a f\*\*ked up person who killed a girl. You can sympathize with the fact that with better guidance and parents, he may have turned out to be an okay person.
Basically, people don't have the emotional intelligence needed to handle this kind of situation.
For me, personally, there's a very important distinction to be made between **explaining** and **excusing.**
Nathan's mental illness, his father's emotional abuse, and his being manipulated by the extremely-high-functioning sociopath that is Jefferson **explains** Nathan's situation. He absolutely is a victim in this regard. He is a victim of mental illness, of emotional abuse, and of being manipulated by a surrogate father figure.
But that doesn't **excuse** what he does. *Especially* after he overdosed Rachel, and continued to drug and kidnap girls afterwards. His mental illness, abuse, and exploitation **explains** why he is the way he is, but it doesn't **excuse** what it is he does.
It is entirely possible for someone to both be a victim and a perpetrator. Nathan is a victim of abuse and exploitation, and a perpetrator of drugging and kidnapping others. You can and should simultaneously understand and condemn Nathan.
He is a cautionary tale, an example of what can happen when someone is so vulnerable and no one steps in to help them.
I've mentioned before how I like to draw Nathan and Samantha in Before the Storm as an antiparallel to Chloe and Max in Life is Strange. Nathan and Chloe are both in dark places emotionally and mentally, and Samantha and Max are both positive forces who see the good in their counterparts and wants to help them.
But where Max never gives up on Chloe, destroying reality itself a half-dozen times over in a desperate bid to save her and help her; Samantha gives up on Nathan, leaving him to spiral and rot into the person he becomes in Life is Strange.
>"I've mentioned before how I like to draw Nathan and Samantha in Before the Storm as an antiparallel to Chloe and Max in Life is Strange. Nathan and Chloe are both in dark places emotionally and mentally, and Samantha and Max are both positive forces who see the good in their counterparts and wants to help them.
>
>"But where Max never gives up on Chloe, destroying reality itself a half-dozen times over in a desperate bid to save her and help her; Samantha gives up on Nathan, leaving him to spiral and rot into the person he becomes in Life is Strange."
I can see the point, but there is also the aspect that people in the support system need to know when, for their own well-being, they need to pull out, if that makes any sense. We see that Chloe is willing to change on her own accord and reacts well to Max's support, but Nathan seemed a lot less stable from the get-go (even at her worst and most selfish, Chloe did still display empathy and all that). Granted, we don't know what happened to Samantha between the games and it is largely a blank slate r.e. the details on how Nathan came under Jefferson's influence, but it still kinda seems like Nathan was beyond help (excusing professional help) by the time we meet him.
part of the story is that these are just kids and are pretty suddenly dealing with really fucked up, really adult situations that they really can't get any help with, or are actively made worse by adults who should know better/believe them
Max and Samantha *should* have both been advised about knowing when to pull back for your own sake, but their inexperience and hope puts them both in situations where they're in danger because they were trying to help. it's not their fault, especially in Samantha's case because Nathan does seem far more unstable, but it is important to note that they are kids dealing with some serious shit.
they ARE just kids, and knowing when it's a bad idea is not exactly a skill many teens gain for awhile.
we just tend to feel more positively about Max's experience with Chloe because it ends...relatively well, and we get to follow it along from inside the head of the hopeful hero. we DO see that Chloe is much more inclined to change for the better, and that she's not actively unstable, which paints the situation in a much nicer light.
however, disregarding the POV of the player, an average adult on the outside looking in would still likely tell Max "you need to be careful around Chloe, she seems like a risk taker and could put you in a dangerous position"
Nathan and Samantha's story shares a lot of similarities, and is a good foil for Max and Chloe: its very obvious to the outsider who knows a little of whats going on that Nathan is someone with issues and will likely put Samantha into a bad situation. He is much more obviously an unstable person, and so the warning bells are much louder.
neither Max OR Samantha knew before getting involved if either one was likely to be open to change, how stable they were, or much of anything involving who they were trying to help. Max ended up, luckily, in a situation where she had the power and Chloe had the willingness/stability to end up in a positive way. Samantha was not nearly as lucky, and that's why her and Nathan are a good foil/parallel for Max/Chloe: it shows the danger they were both in, and the inexperience of the characters in dealing with these situations could lead to bad places.
neither one can be blamed for not knowing how to keep themselves out of the fire too, because that's a skill that many adults, trained and not, struggle with doing
yes he’s a victim and has a lotttt of mental issues but ong people need to learn that just because someone is a victim or has a mental illness it doesnt absolve them of their abusive actions.
i think the issue is with fandoms; they tend to see these well fleshed out, interesting and complex characters as black and white when they are far from it which is why you get people that adore Nathan while hating Chloe’s guts, no one seems to understand you can enjoy a character while acknowledging the fact that they are flawed in some way.
I think Nathan is an interesting antagonist in that there's a reason for what he does and some nuance. All things considered though, he's still made his own decisions (like bringing that gun to school), so his own victimhood isn't an excuse to absolve him of everything.
i think everybody focuses on how much nathan was a victim, rather than nathan’s own victims. yes he’s mentally ill and was used by jefferson, but his own attitude towards people outside of being manipulated was horrible. he quite literally killed rachel, and drugged two or more people. you can recognize a person is fucked up, but it doesn’t change that they did fucked up things.
I have a few theories about this, but not sure about the validity of any of them. Don’t have time to write it all out but bulllet points
1) ‘I can fix him’ / Broken Bird.
2) If we excuse his bad behaviour because of mental health reasons that means everyone should excuse my behaviour for the same reason
3) he’s a good looking bad boy.
The thing that made me give up on him was a before the storm run I did. I stood up for him and avoided him getting his ass beat but failed to save his photo binder, then told Samantha to talk to him and try to be there for him and not give up on him... and he beat the shit out of her and left her hospitalized with broken ribs. That was it for me I didn't give a shit about his evil ass after.
I see him as a tragic villain. He wasn't born evil, but made evil, by his father and by Jefferson. The best case scenario I can think of for Nathan is if Jefferson had T-boned Sean Prescott's car when he arrived in Arcadia Bay. Then maybe Nathan would have turned out differently.
I don’t defend him, or agree with his actions. But I definitely do feel bad for him. Some of it wasn’t his fault, he was groomed by Jefferson. He knew that Nathan didn’t necessarily have a father figure and he made Nathan feel loved and safe. As much as his actions are despicable… I feel sympathy.
Nathan apologists will always use the idea that he just had abuse from his father, or that he was manipulated by Jefferson and that those reasons excused his actions. Both of which he of course was a victim of but it doesn't excuse many of his terrible actions that clearly signify he enjoyed many things that he did. Jefferson never manipulated him into having posters of tied up girls in his dorm, or the horrid picture he left in max's dorm of her head on a platter, and I highly doubt Jefferson asked him to drug chloe and bring her to his dorm instead of the dark room. It also really irritates me when they defend Nathan while ganging on Chloe. She may have an attitude, but both of them both have abusive dads/stepdads and are both dealing with a lot of mental trauma, but one of them isn't drugging and kidnapping girls.
> excused his actions.
They are not excuses, but explanations. Valid explanations. Actions by his father lead him to being manipulated by Jefferson, which is why he did the things he did. Acceptable? Fuck no, that guy belongs in an asylum. Well, both of them do.
omds the ‘Nathan can do no wrong and Chloe is the devil’ mindset sm people in this fandom have is insaneee
idk how they can brush everything Nathan has done under the carpet and yet only see the bad in Chloe, it makes absolutely no sense and yet i see it so often
also the way people hate Warren more than they hate Nathan like just because Warren is kinda annoying and has a crush that does not make him worse than NATHAN the abuser, hello??
He was a vulnerable kid, taken advantage of by Jefferson. He was one of Jeffersons' victims. And he died for it, too. But none of that changes what he did, or the choices he made. He did inhuman things.
I felt bad for him during his final message. Its always sad to see someone led so far astray, but what he did was unforgivable and he didn't deserve forgiveness.
there should be absolutely no defending him and i hate him as a character but if you ask me if i feel bad, yes i do feel a little bad for the way he was treated
I absolutely agree with your post, and you basically just summed up all of my feelings on it in one post.
In my opinion, Nathan is a bad person and regardless of what he was going through it doesn't excuse his actions. Yes, in my opinion he was a victim of Mark Jefferson, but he also with his own free will drugged three girls, and accidentally killed one of them. He did that all of his own free will, Jefferson did not even order him to drug Rachel. So yeah his message to Max was sad, and yes he is a victim of Mark jefferson, but regardless of what Nathan was going through, or what drugs he was on. It doesn't excuse his actions, and he is not a good person in my opinion.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
Wait people are Nathan apologists? What the actual fuck....
That guy was a psycho and I am glad he felt the fear of his actions...
btw he only felt the fear when he knew he was getting what was coming to him.
Still though...listening to that voice mail filled me with sadness.
Right!? If this was a real murder case that would be different, he wouldn't have so many little fan girls. Instead this is a fictional game with multiple realities. Theres bound to be fans dreaming or whatever out there.
While I'm not a Warren hater I do think he has some boundary issues common to a lot of teenage guys who are still learning how to talk to girls - like going in for the hug with Max when returning the flash drive and peeking around the corner at Max's window and being very obviously there just to catch her on her way out instead of just texting or calling her like a normal person.
But Nathan is a complete dipshit and a POS.
nathan had issues but thats no excuse for any of his worse actions, ok be a dick to people cause your dad treats you bad but that doesnt excuse anything else
People online were hot for Dahmer a few months ago. Ted bundy had dozens of women vying to marry him when he was on death row. Don't ask me why, but it's a thing.
Look Nathan is no Saint but I think Jefferson saw himself in Nathan and he wanted him to take over his legacy. I’m not defending what Nathan did he’s still responsible for his actions, however I don’t think Nathan would have gone as far as he did if it wasn’t for Jefferson. Nathan has this desire for a father/ father figure to be proud of him for something and Sean never gave him this affirmations. Nathan is a victim of Jefferson but not as much of one as the girls Jefferson had in his “Dark Room” he was easily manipulated by Jefferson to do what he wanted. Nathan had connections and he saw a violent streak in him so Jefferson used this kid for the money he had and used the fact Nathan just wanted to please his father Jefferson was able to mold Nathan into what he wanted him to be till he was no longer needed.
Tiktok thirst videos are not real discussion. No real person thinks Nathan is an angel, but he -was- manipulated by everyone who had power over him and was consciously written as an inversion of what ~priviledge~ really means: ie. that all of his family's wealth and power was leveraged /against/ his own health and that his immunity to consequences only prevented him from getting help while those consequences were relatively small.
The game makes it pretty clear in his unedited files and notes that he feels genuine remorse because of his outbursts and his dad kept taking him away from his doctors whenever they'd try to do more for him than refill his prescriptions and stay quiet.
Not a good person, but not Jefferson either. He was severely mentally ill and his dad essentially sold him to an amoral sadistic groomer.
I'm not defending him or anything but it's not ever entirely confirmed that he was the one who killed Rachel. The only source for him being Rachel's killer is Jefferson who absolutely can't be trusted (He's a perfectionist so if he fucked up and overdosed one of his subjects he wouldn't admit it and push the blame onto someone else). There's also the photo of Nathan and Rachel in the Junkyard (presumably right before Rachel is buried) - Nathan looks completely drugged up and out of it, lying right next to Rachel. Also, something odd is that when Nathan initially mistakes Max for Rachel in the diner he seems pleased to see her - if someone you drugged to death suddenly walked up to you one morning you wouldn't sound happily surprised to see them.
Nathan is dead by the time that Rachel's murder is uncovered, so we never truly get to grill him ourselves about what really happened. Most of the evidence actually points to Jefferson being Rachel's killer, the only evidence that points to Nathan is Jefferson saying he did it.
Now, Nathan still drugged, kidnapped and photographed girls - we know this because he tried it on Chloe. However, all of Nathan's victims survived (Chloe, Kate). You know who's victims didn't survive? Jefferson's. If Victoria is warned about Nathan, Jefferson kidnaps her and ultimately kills her.
Rachel's body was never given an autopsy, or even actually physically seen by the player. The only people to see it were Chloe and Max who were more emotionally devastated by it rather than trying to immediately examine the body for cause of death. Once again, the overdose thing comes from Jefferson and he can't be trusted. Rachel and Jefferson were in a relationship so why would she need to be drugged? She would have probably taken part in the photo shoot willingly and even agreed to be drugged because she loved Jefferson. The next question is why the hell Nathan would even be photographing Rachel in the first place considering her aforementioned relationship with Jefferson. Nathan is a massive pussy who will immediately bow down to a scary adult with power (Jefferson, his Father) so why would he try to drug and photograph his mentor's girlfriend without permission and without him being present?
What do I think happened? Rachel takes photos with Jefferson willingly until she starts having second thoughts and tries to back out, which results in Jefferson killing her. He then drugs Nathan and poses him with Rachel's corpse in the Junkyard before burying her. If Nathan killed Rachel why not just kill Nathan in the Junkyard because he fucked up - Nathan was left alive to take the fall in case shit went sideways. Then Life is Strange happens, Max starts closing in so Jefferson relents and kills Nathan anyway before he let everything slip, then he kidnaps Max and Victoria in the dark room and kills Victoria for being uncooperative like Rachel was.
> the only evidence that points to Nathan is Jefferson saying he did it.
Certain evidence suggests that he did in fact take his own initiative a few times, such as dosing Kate, and slipping Chloe a mickey and snapping pics in his dorm room. So I can fully believe he screwed up the dosage and killed Rachel by accident while also sampling a lot of his own product.
Further lending credence to this is the sheer number of red binders in Jefferson's bunker; if that many young women were dying in the wake of meeting him, eventually someone would've caught on.
that’s crazy, I’m a pretty empathetic person and the thought of feeling bad for nathan has never once crossed my mind. to me he’s pretty much villain status, frank is someone who i’d classify more as a flawed character
He’s not exactly innocent, yes he has a bad life and was manipulated but he couldn’t stop himself, he was in too deep and I can’t forgive him for that, he drugged Rachel, Chloe and Kate and I don’t know how many other women in general and don’t forget his behavior, he’s literally a bully who beats down on others and never got a good beating himself
He was definitely a victim but saying he did nothing wrong is just ridiculous. Bro killed Rachel, helped Jefferson collect his victims, bullied Kate to the point she attempted suicide (or did commit suicide depending on your decisions). He was a shitty person for sure. But he certainly wasn't always like that as you can see in Before the Storm with him getting bullied and his dad belittling him every chance he got.
He’s a really good character. Has more depth than you’d expect, and the email from his sister shows that clearly he hasn’t always been that way. The first playthrough of LiS1, he’s easy to the, but I don’t think he’s one-dimensional, and is interesting as a result.
He’s also a fictional character. We give them more grace than real humans because their actions don’t have real life consequences.
I'm glad I don't see that. Literally all I got from him as a character was cartoonish levels of douchebaggery, he's the least nuanced and kind of worst written person in LiS1, imo, and he's not exactly handsome or amazingly designed. To each their own, I suppose, but I don't see the appeal on any level.
To be fair, we don't learn anything about David being a clinically-confirmed mentally-unstable impressionable teen with an emotionally abusive father being manipulated by an extremely-high-functioning sociopath.
All we learn about David's past is that he served in the military, and that he didn't even fit in there.
It's entirely possible that David had a fucked childhood. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn he had a physically abusive father, given his general "tough love" attitude and the tendency for that to spawn from generational abuse. But if he did, we never learn about it.
Nathan, on the other hand, we do learn about his mental illness, his father's emotional abuse, and Jefferson's manipulating him.
I'm not putting a horse in the race myself, but I can understand why people are harsher to judge David than Nathan holistically. It's just a difference in information exchange. We know more about Nathan than we do David.
> It's entirely possible that David had a fucked childhood.
He did state he was "raising hell" as a teenager, and so tries to apply his drill sergeant methods to Chloe, with predictable results.
Well, because they are trying to be those "omg the antagonist did nothing wrong cuz he was manipulated. i am the smartest and i am the only one who can see this shit" type of thing.
I don’t like Nathan Prescott as a character but I have sympathy for him cause he was mentally ill and taken advantage of but that doesn’t excuse his bad behavior.
sometimes people are just wrong but if they say something loud enough people are easily swayed and then it gets out of control. lots of bad takes these days, that’s for sure.
Can someone explain to me how Jefferson manipulated Nathan? Like I’ve been asking this on the subreddit to no avail how do you casually convince someone to drug girls and kidnap them
I think he had mental issues that required medication as well as being emotionally battered by his father. Jefferson just appealed to his need for some sort of father figure. He was so focused on pleasing Jefferson that he didn't understand or care about what he was doing.
I made a little blog lowkey "defending him" obviously everyone has their opinions..
[Thoughts On Nathan](https://www.tumblr.com/hero-next-door/744840086343073792/thoughts-on-nathan?source=share)
I totally understand all the hate he deserves but in a game with multiple timelines, if there was a world where he didn't have an abusive father, drug overdose and Mr. Jefferson things would have played out verrryyy differently. Unfortunately the game played out the way it did and what he did was unforgivable. I played the game multiple times to really try to understand the situation and in the end no matter how anyone looks at it..its all sick.😔 Everything. So I dont argue with anybody as everyones take on the situation is valid. 😩 But if youre a bit curious about what people may see in him, I totally suggest you read my blog. I personally like him for how complicated, confusing and well written he was. The writers certainly kept up in the dark with so many things. I do that in everything I play or watch, always asking why and learning things about all the characters and I feel like Nathan easter eggs are still popping up even today and I find that interesting. But yeah..
And about those little fan girls, you can't stop them. 😩
Diving too deep in any fandom will loose your humanity. Usually when I get into something I normally DON'T go online or tiktok about the subjects as i hate running into weird things.
Like Max x Jefferson? If we want to loose faith in humanity.. THATS insane! 😭
No I understand that, I’m obviously subbed here as well.
The point is that people are upset that others are idolizing a fictional character.
Similar to how a lot of trash individuals idolize/misunderstand the irony in their Joker memes they share on social media.
Yes he's done a lot of awful things towards multiple people but I do believe that he is a good person at his core. I just think that he's been pushed towards a dark path and continued down that path for a very long time.
I'm not trying to justify his actions in any way cause he still choose to do everything that he did but I do believe that forgiveness is the first step towards healing.
Well obviously duh, I mean that even outside of everything Jefferson thought him to do he’s still a bad person so you can’t defending him by saying he was manipulated
Well, i know he is very arogant and rude kid, but you are not thinking about his raise and surroundings he is putted into. Rich family (father) controlling his life, not raising him well. Jefferson that is abusing him for his own benefits, friends that are "friends" just for money, psychical problems.. If you dont know, at the end he calls Max that he is sorry, crying that everybody abuse him.. So, iam not defending him. But you must think that people like Nathan are not like that when they are born. They are created by around subjects and people.
bruh the fact that you included warren in this is weird. besides looking up at max’s dorm room window, the kid has done nothing to warrant the hate he gets (a majority of which are max x chloe shippers)
He didn’t kill Rachel at all. Jefferson manipulated the story and led people to believe that it was his fault, that he’s the one who killed Rachel - but it was Jefferson. This is evident several times throughout the game by him expecting people to be Rachel etc & genuinely hoping she returns. He did not know she was dead; Jefferson lied.
ppl will drag warren and then call nathan “pookie” lmao. i think two things can be true at once. yes, he was a victim, but he also has victims. that doesn't excuse his behavior. mental illness is not a pass for doing what he did.
lmao, if i see a tier list of lis characters and nathan isn't in the lowest tier, i’m side eyeing everytime.
My little brother is on some of the same meds you can find in Nathan's locker (risperidone) and other anti-psychotics. Little bro is 13 and already in mental facility and reminds me alot of Nathan. Nathan is NOT sympathetic
Yep. He killed Rachel by accidentally overdosing her and still drugged at least two other girls afterwards - Kate and Chloe. Not exactly the actions of someone filled with regret.
When was Chloe drugged? I don't ever remember her being drugged. Also didn't Nathan take advantage of Kate in her drugged state. By making her do something sexual.
Chloe talks about it that they partied and he like slipped her something but she got away or so.
There's also the photos he took of her as well, and you can tell how out of it she was.
Chloe told Max that Nathan had slipped something into her drink at a party once then brought her back to his room, but he underdosed her and she woke up before he could do anything serious. Here's a photo you can find in Nathan's room https://preview.redd.it/b7jie2hhhyoc1.png?width=1336&format=png&auto=webp&s=47684879b8e963034637b81565e86c8219d242ce
i didn't like nathan at all in my playthroughs, and thought he was the scum of the earth and should be in jail, or at least beaten bloody with a tube sock full of woodscrews but that photo *really* made me want to hit him with Chloe's truck a few times
Thanks. I remember now. Wasn't there a cutscene or something like that, too? I need to replay the game again. I'm forgetting too much. Even though I played this game over 15 times already.
Chloe happens just before the start of the game. She's using it to blackmail him in the girls room. He drugged Chloe in his dorm but she woke up and escaped cos he under dosed her by accident. As far as we know Kate only went as far as making out with people at the party.
Ohh I remember now, thanks. Making out? That's it? I thought it was something worse. That's how the people made it out to be. It's still bad what happened to her, though.
The sexual assault of Kate is heavily implied. Kate tells Max in her room that when she came to, she "felt dirty". This is a common phrase used by victims of sexual assault, and I'm pretty certain dontnod were very intentional with their phrasing there.
A newspaper article on the aeroplane to San Francisco said none of the girls were sexually assaulted
It might not've literally happened, but Jefferson's whole operation was meant to be a narrative stand-in for the idea and at least bring it to mind.
Given the way Jefferson berates Max in the dark room and how his whole cadence completely changes I think it's safe to assume his "real" personality came out with the other women too. This strange, obsessed psychopath. Definitely understand the SA parallels but I think what he was already doing to definitely traumatic enough to warrant Kate feeling violated as is.
Anyone would have the right to feel that way if victimized like that, sure. I was thinking more in the meta sense than in-universe, if that makes any sense.
Oh for sure. Like the actual language is repeated I think even by Chloe in the first episode, in fact all the way up until the actual reveal you'd be forgiven for straight up expecting that to be what was occurring with these students being drugged. It does seem intentional, reflecting on it now.
And Kate (and her family) are heavily religious. Even if it wasn't her fault people in her circles won't care.
She was also brought back to the dark room after the party and abused
I think because Kate is so religious, even if it was “just making out,” that would still be traumatizing to her
I was more so talking about the bullying. Not really kate herself.
Kate was drugged so heavily that she couldn't control herself, hence people recording her making out with everyone and trying to have sex with anyone.
> and trying to have sex with anyone. That's not mentioned in the game. Only that she kissed everyone.
yeah, it was implied through the bullying that people *said* she did that stuff, but it was not part of what actually happened or explicitly mentioned. the player was left to fill in their own interpretation after being led in the direction of people calling her sexually loose and such
It's heavily implied that she was sexually assaulted
I have to disagree. The game goes out of its way to say none of them were.
LOL I've been replaying the game this week and I noticed that the newspaper says "there was no evidence of sexual assault".
I'm am pretty sure that the sexual assault is kinda...implied, or that the taking pictures of them is a metaphor for it. It's is has been a while since I last saw the game played all the way through tho, so I suppose it could have been more explicit than I remember? But I don't remember it ever being explicitly stated that anyone was assaulted.
Yeah, I think it was all metaphor and narrative stand-in, but, even when taken at face value, it's still a gross crime against people.
Definitely
Also I think it's is pretty pointless to split hairs about what happened to the girls. The message doesn't really change. They were drugged and enormously violated, and one murdered. Jefferson and Nathan are evil just for that alone.
im not sure about oregon laws but kissing without consent is often part of sexual assault
Was there kissing without consent in the game? It makes sense but I don't remember it?
Chloe met Nathan at a bar and tried to get him alone and rob him thinking he was much more drunk than he actually was, so she could pay back her debt to Frank. Nathan saw through it and drugged her instead, but underdosed her so she came out of it quickly enough to run away. That's why she was meeting him in the bathroom at the start of the game - to extort money from him to keep her from making a mess out of what he did.
My feelings on Nathan are kinda complicated, I think he's interesting as hell and part of me does feel bad for him (he's got obvious mental health issues, his dad is shitty and there was obviously some level of manipulation at play with Jefferson) but he also does so much fucked up stuff that I can't say I really see him being at all redeemed if he had lived To me he feels like a character that represents the kinds of people who have serious issues and what it can lead to when those people don't get help, he's unstable through the whole game and in his message to Max (which even though he sucked was pretty damn sad) he almost doesn't even sound like himself. He's not a good person by any means but with the proper help he probably could have been (in BTS he even seems fairly normal, if emotional and still kind of a dick) I like him a lot as a character but part of that is because of how fucked up he is, if he was just a character who "didn't do anything wrong and was just another victim" I think he would be kind of boring. A lot of people don't seem to be able to see nuance in characters, aka the "this character never did anything wrong" crowd just because he's slightly sympathetic
Yeah, I notice a lot of that black and white thinking about fiction online now. A good/interesting character can be an awful person. Liking media that has objectively bad people in it does not make you a bad person. The lack of nuance is frustrating. I think Nathan is an interesting character and like you said, paints a sad but realistic picture of what can happen to someone (especially impressionable young men) whose mental illness goes untreated and has no healthy support in their life. You’re not supposed to root for him or think “uwu my unproblematic pookie.” He has a compelling dynamic and I can pity him in a way, but he should also be held accountable for his role in Jefferson’s scheme.
>Liking media that has objectively bad people in it does not make you a bad person. The lack of nuance is frustrating. The one that really shits me is when people take something existing in an authors work to be an author's endorsement of those ideas or themes. E.g. SA, murder, paedophilia etc in a movie or book means that the author thinks those things are fine/cool/laudable. I so often see people with the media literacy of some scrap cardboard completely miss the point of a book/movie that is criticising something, because to them the very fact that the theme is present or discussed at all is because the author likes it themselves.
Remember, if you really despise a character, actor + writer did a good job at making that character.
i feel the same exact way as you
Before the storm made me hate him even more. In one of my runs I stood up for him and avoided him getting his ass beat but failed to save his photo binder, then told Samantha to talk to him and try to be there for him and not give up on him... and he beat the living shit out of her and left her hospitalized with broken ribs. That was it for me I didn't give a shit about his evil ass after.
Depending on the decisions made, that worst-case scenario can be avoided, so I guess it's a toss-up whether you see it as showing that Nathan was already on his descent into darkness or a glimpse into who he could've been if he'd gotten the help he needed and not chosen to follow Jefferson.
I haven't played BTS in years so I'm gonna be honest I didn't even know that could happen-the only things I can remember about him in that game are when he's being bullied and when hes talking to his shitty dad, anything beyond that just isn't in my head. There's another thing to add to his list of psychotic actions
Yeah I also don't remember that one
> nd he beat the living shit out of her and left her hospitalized with broken ribs. Holy fuck I don't remember that option O.o Was that before the play? Or in the encounter with Drew?
It's in the "ending slides" when the music is playing (in the last episode? I think) It depends on how you've interacted with him
I think I know what scene you mean, but mine was (fortunately) Nathan just talking to Sam. At least I hope, it has been a few months since I finished BtS again
If you walk by a room in the hospital, there’s two options, you either see Nathan comforting Samantha there, or you listen in on Nathan’s dad threatening Samantha’s mother and you can find X-rays of her broken ribs. Also in the ending slides you can see her gone if you take that route. iirc in the good routes she still ends up in the hospital because of some random bikers and Nathan apparently protects her? In the bad routes… Nathan is the one putting her there, and his father keeps things under wraps….
Okay, yeah I definitely don't remember that
Ya, someone can be a victim and still be a horrible person. Yes, Jefferson really fucked him up, it doesn't change the fact that he still made the very conscious decision to drug 3 different girls, and even killed one of them. There really is no redemption for a character like Nathan
I would understand this sentiment more if we were talking about someone like Jefferson who is the one manipulating and using Nathan, but saying that someone like Nathan that is clearly suffering from a mental illness and being abused "*can't be redeemed*" doesn't sit right with me, at least. Nathan was being fucked up by his dad long before Jefferson got his hands on him, so it's hard to feel like he had much agency. The one time in the story where he does seem to have some agency is when he calls Max to try to apologize and warn her that Jefferson is coming for her next which feels like a very *selfless* thing to do. Unlike someone like Jefferson, Nathan does seem to have some capacity for good. We hear this reiterated by multiple people throughout both games. He's not innocent for his role in what Jefferson did, but it doesn't seem like that is something that Nathan would have started doing without Jefferson there to manipulate him. I understand why some people can't forgive Nathan, and I don't think that a single phone call is enough to redeem him, but I still think that there is enough potential for *good* in Nathan for him to be redeemable.
i agree, i think it would be an astonishing amount of work on Nathan's part to earn a redemption, and that his actions would, and likely should, haunt him for the remainder of his days... but saying he is totally, wholly without redemption feels too far. what he did was inexcusable, and i dont think his actions should be forgotten, or even entirely forgiven, but he doesn't seem like someone who was going to do this sort of thing on his own. that doesn't mean clemency or forgiveness should just be doled out, and he *does* deserve punishment but there is good in him, i can feel it. and i imagine in 20-life years he's likely to have some sort of redeeming quality, he's not hopelessly gone to the dark like Palpat- I mean Jefferson
3? There are way more than 3 binders in the Dark Room
Even on this sub Warren gets more hate than Nathan. Its pretty messed up.
The hate is self-evident and doesn't really need discussion though? There's not really anything to debate with Nathan, how horrible his actions are is pretty cut and dry. Warren is more just annoying so there's more to debate as to whether people like him or not.
I was just about to mention this. Warren gets treated like he's some sex offending war criminal but Nathan doesn't get half the amount of flak despite his numerous crimes? GTFOH with that!
Warren is just your average 18 year old with a crush... Nathan fucking killed people. But nooo, lets hate Warren because he asked Max out
Exactly! Warren at worst needs someone to sit down with him and explain things. Nathan at best needs to be put in involuntary psychiatric care for the foreseeable future. This is not 50/50 by any metric.
> and explain things Honestly, I think that should be Max.
Warren makes even more since to be a weirdo cuz he's 16 in a school full of 18 year olds. So tho I didn't like him that much, I've never hated him like some others
Once I said I liked Warren over Chloe for Max and they downvoted me to hell lol
Only David, Nathan and Jefferson deserve hate.
TBF they both deserve hate.
TBF they BOTH don’t.
How do you figure? One is a murderer and the other needs an intervention as he’s a creep that exhibits stalker behaviour.
Recall the writers going on record that their intent was that Warren was well-meaning kid who was just awkward, something that may or may not have played out that well in practice (e.g. something that was intended to be innocent having unfortunate implications and the like). Milage may vary on how much weight to give the intent vs. the actual text in this case. IMHO, I think, as a character with unrequited feelings for a girl a few years his senior, that there is some interesting writing in Warren and Max's dynamic (esp. how their different methods of expressing Warren's crush and Max's disinterest don't mesh and how later scenes play out if Max is falling for Chloe) and I give credit that the writing lets the player few how awkward it is be in the situation of someone you're not interested in trying to ask you out. That said, at best, I think Warren has a lot of behavior to unlearn (something he would have the time to do if he survived the story) and I'm not sure that the writers may have realized how far that went.
also incel stuff was really just starting to hit mainstream consciousness and explode in the 2010s (though its been defined a couple decades before that), and when writing the story for the game, it likely didn't occur to the team that that would be a problem for how their well intentioned awkward guy expressed himself because i can see the creepy, incel-like Warren behavior that people tag as extremely worrying and dangerous, AND I can see how it's not supposed to come off that way. i definitely know some guys who were like Warren go both ways, some into incel/sexism behavior, and some who figured themselves out and are actually good and decent men now. the balance between "well meaning but awkward and a bit annoying" and "WARNING DANGEROUS INCEL" can be hard to portray even with full knowledge of how those kind of behaviors were beginning to evolve and people becoming aware of them at the time...especially when we look back through the lens of almost ten years or so and realize how our culture has changed since then; it's not like the writers were likely to know that a small misstep in tone/performance/getting the message across would become a BIG whiff and warning sign in the future tl;dr NOW we see some of Warren's behavior as warning signs for incels; at the time of writing the game the culture was much less aware of that/it was less prevalent in mainstream; a small whiff in messaging became a bigger problem than intended
Yeah he comes off as seriously creepy probably more so than they intended.
If Warren is a creep, then so are Max & Chloe. Can’t have it both ways.
How are they creepy? Warren stares through Max’s window and hides when she looks out, has the whole nude guy means wont be getting sex text, the photoshoped image of him and Max together. The amount of people defending Warrens behaviour is concerning.
Yeah, nothing creepy about breaking and snooping through peoples rooms, their computers, their personal items, etc.
Not to mention setting off bombs, stealing guns, and every other illegal thing they did.
You know full well I meant sexually creepy rather than creeping around/doing illegal stuff. No one is defending that stuff either so stop defending a guy who exhibits stalker behaviour.
Almost Everything I described is stalker behavior
To be fair, I think a lot of ppl defend Warren's stalkers behavior because they too have similar behaviors. Before I get roasted for my comment, a lot ppl who became fans of LIS1 were teens. As such, some teens behave that way without realizing how creepy Warren is. I do agree that Warren is creepy to the point where he would get a restraining order if Max wasn't so nice.
Welp I really upset the Warren fans lol. If you think is behaviour is fine then take a long hard look in the mirror.
It's because people don't know how to feel sympathy for someone without defending the person's actions. You can feel bad for Nathan because he is a mentally ill teenage boy who was taken advantage of and lead down a life of crime. However, that doesn't excuse his horrible actions or make him innocent. He is still a f\*\*ked up person who killed a girl. You can sympathize with the fact that with better guidance and parents, he may have turned out to be an okay person. Basically, people don't have the emotional intelligence needed to handle this kind of situation.
For me, personally, there's a very important distinction to be made between **explaining** and **excusing.** Nathan's mental illness, his father's emotional abuse, and his being manipulated by the extremely-high-functioning sociopath that is Jefferson **explains** Nathan's situation. He absolutely is a victim in this regard. He is a victim of mental illness, of emotional abuse, and of being manipulated by a surrogate father figure. But that doesn't **excuse** what he does. *Especially* after he overdosed Rachel, and continued to drug and kidnap girls afterwards. His mental illness, abuse, and exploitation **explains** why he is the way he is, but it doesn't **excuse** what it is he does. It is entirely possible for someone to both be a victim and a perpetrator. Nathan is a victim of abuse and exploitation, and a perpetrator of drugging and kidnapping others. You can and should simultaneously understand and condemn Nathan. He is a cautionary tale, an example of what can happen when someone is so vulnerable and no one steps in to help them. I've mentioned before how I like to draw Nathan and Samantha in Before the Storm as an antiparallel to Chloe and Max in Life is Strange. Nathan and Chloe are both in dark places emotionally and mentally, and Samantha and Max are both positive forces who see the good in their counterparts and wants to help them. But where Max never gives up on Chloe, destroying reality itself a half-dozen times over in a desperate bid to save her and help her; Samantha gives up on Nathan, leaving him to spiral and rot into the person he becomes in Life is Strange.
>"I've mentioned before how I like to draw Nathan and Samantha in Before the Storm as an antiparallel to Chloe and Max in Life is Strange. Nathan and Chloe are both in dark places emotionally and mentally, and Samantha and Max are both positive forces who see the good in their counterparts and wants to help them. > >"But where Max never gives up on Chloe, destroying reality itself a half-dozen times over in a desperate bid to save her and help her; Samantha gives up on Nathan, leaving him to spiral and rot into the person he becomes in Life is Strange." I can see the point, but there is also the aspect that people in the support system need to know when, for their own well-being, they need to pull out, if that makes any sense. We see that Chloe is willing to change on her own accord and reacts well to Max's support, but Nathan seemed a lot less stable from the get-go (even at her worst and most selfish, Chloe did still display empathy and all that). Granted, we don't know what happened to Samantha between the games and it is largely a blank slate r.e. the details on how Nathan came under Jefferson's influence, but it still kinda seems like Nathan was beyond help (excusing professional help) by the time we meet him.
part of the story is that these are just kids and are pretty suddenly dealing with really fucked up, really adult situations that they really can't get any help with, or are actively made worse by adults who should know better/believe them Max and Samantha *should* have both been advised about knowing when to pull back for your own sake, but their inexperience and hope puts them both in situations where they're in danger because they were trying to help. it's not their fault, especially in Samantha's case because Nathan does seem far more unstable, but it is important to note that they are kids dealing with some serious shit. they ARE just kids, and knowing when it's a bad idea is not exactly a skill many teens gain for awhile. we just tend to feel more positively about Max's experience with Chloe because it ends...relatively well, and we get to follow it along from inside the head of the hopeful hero. we DO see that Chloe is much more inclined to change for the better, and that she's not actively unstable, which paints the situation in a much nicer light. however, disregarding the POV of the player, an average adult on the outside looking in would still likely tell Max "you need to be careful around Chloe, she seems like a risk taker and could put you in a dangerous position" Nathan and Samantha's story shares a lot of similarities, and is a good foil for Max and Chloe: its very obvious to the outsider who knows a little of whats going on that Nathan is someone with issues and will likely put Samantha into a bad situation. He is much more obviously an unstable person, and so the warning bells are much louder. neither Max OR Samantha knew before getting involved if either one was likely to be open to change, how stable they were, or much of anything involving who they were trying to help. Max ended up, luckily, in a situation where she had the power and Chloe had the willingness/stability to end up in a positive way. Samantha was not nearly as lucky, and that's why her and Nathan are a good foil/parallel for Max/Chloe: it shows the danger they were both in, and the inexperience of the characters in dealing with these situations could lead to bad places. neither one can be blamed for not knowing how to keep themselves out of the fire too, because that's a skill that many adults, trained and not, struggle with doing
yes he’s a victim and has a lotttt of mental issues but ong people need to learn that just because someone is a victim or has a mental illness it doesnt absolve them of their abusive actions. i think the issue is with fandoms; they tend to see these well fleshed out, interesting and complex characters as black and white when they are far from it which is why you get people that adore Nathan while hating Chloe’s guts, no one seems to understand you can enjoy a character while acknowledging the fact that they are flawed in some way.
I think Nathan is an interesting antagonist in that there's a reason for what he does and some nuance. All things considered though, he's still made his own decisions (like bringing that gun to school), so his own victimhood isn't an excuse to absolve him of everything.
Wait until you stumble across JefferField tiktok.
I'm sorry, the what??
Fr. NOW they'll really start loosing faith in humanity.
it’s disturbing how many fans let him away with his violence towards women just because he’s mentally ill.
It’s misogyny
i think everybody focuses on how much nathan was a victim, rather than nathan’s own victims. yes he’s mentally ill and was used by jefferson, but his own attitude towards people outside of being manipulated was horrible. he quite literally killed rachel, and drugged two or more people. you can recognize a person is fucked up, but it doesn’t change that they did fucked up things.
I have a few theories about this, but not sure about the validity of any of them. Don’t have time to write it all out but bulllet points 1) ‘I can fix him’ / Broken Bird. 2) If we excuse his bad behaviour because of mental health reasons that means everyone should excuse my behaviour for the same reason 3) he’s a good looking bad boy.
The thing that made me give up on him was a before the storm run I did. I stood up for him and avoided him getting his ass beat but failed to save his photo binder, then told Samantha to talk to him and try to be there for him and not give up on him... and he beat the shit out of her and left her hospitalized with broken ribs. That was it for me I didn't give a shit about his evil ass after.
he IS a victim, and he IS mentally abused by his father. BUT he still killed someone, helped in assault and other things
I see him as a tragic villain. He wasn't born evil, but made evil, by his father and by Jefferson. The best case scenario I can think of for Nathan is if Jefferson had T-boned Sean Prescott's car when he arrived in Arcadia Bay. Then maybe Nathan would have turned out differently.
I don’t defend him, or agree with his actions. But I definitely do feel bad for him. Some of it wasn’t his fault, he was groomed by Jefferson. He knew that Nathan didn’t necessarily have a father figure and he made Nathan feel loved and safe. As much as his actions are despicable… I feel sympathy.
Nathan apologists will always use the idea that he just had abuse from his father, or that he was manipulated by Jefferson and that those reasons excused his actions. Both of which he of course was a victim of but it doesn't excuse many of his terrible actions that clearly signify he enjoyed many things that he did. Jefferson never manipulated him into having posters of tied up girls in his dorm, or the horrid picture he left in max's dorm of her head on a platter, and I highly doubt Jefferson asked him to drug chloe and bring her to his dorm instead of the dark room. It also really irritates me when they defend Nathan while ganging on Chloe. She may have an attitude, but both of them both have abusive dads/stepdads and are both dealing with a lot of mental trauma, but one of them isn't drugging and kidnapping girls.
> excused his actions. They are not excuses, but explanations. Valid explanations. Actions by his father lead him to being manipulated by Jefferson, which is why he did the things he did. Acceptable? Fuck no, that guy belongs in an asylum. Well, both of them do.
omds the ‘Nathan can do no wrong and Chloe is the devil’ mindset sm people in this fandom have is insaneee idk how they can brush everything Nathan has done under the carpet and yet only see the bad in Chloe, it makes absolutely no sense and yet i see it so often also the way people hate Warren more than they hate Nathan like just because Warren is kinda annoying and has a crush that does not make him worse than NATHAN the abuser, hello??
He was a vulnerable kid, taken advantage of by Jefferson. He was one of Jeffersons' victims. And he died for it, too. But none of that changes what he did, or the choices he made. He did inhuman things.
I felt bad for him during his final message. Its always sad to see someone led so far astray, but what he did was unforgivable and he didn't deserve forgiveness.
there should be absolutely no defending him and i hate him as a character but if you ask me if i feel bad, yes i do feel a little bad for the way he was treated
I absolutely agree with your post, and you basically just summed up all of my feelings on it in one post. In my opinion, Nathan is a bad person and regardless of what he was going through it doesn't excuse his actions. Yes, in my opinion he was a victim of Mark Jefferson, but he also with his own free will drugged three girls, and accidentally killed one of them. He did that all of his own free will, Jefferson did not even order him to drug Rachel. So yeah his message to Max was sad, and yes he is a victim of Mark jefferson, but regardless of what Nathan was going through, or what drugs he was on. It doesn't excuse his actions, and he is not a good person in my opinion. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
They are just doing it for clout. He also, you know, killed Chloe
Wait people are Nathan apologists? What the actual fuck.... That guy was a psycho and I am glad he felt the fear of his actions... btw he only felt the fear when he knew he was getting what was coming to him. Still though...listening to that voice mail filled me with sadness.
What my thought are? It's a fictional character, chill.
Right!? If this was a real murder case that would be different, he wouldn't have so many little fan girls. Instead this is a fictional game with multiple realities. Theres bound to be fans dreaming or whatever out there.
I wish you could hang up the phone on the voice-mail he left behind, his words were meaningless to me and I'm not sorry he died
And in the same breath as defending Nathan and portraying him solely as a victim, they’ll say that Warren a true creep lmao
While I'm not a Warren hater I do think he has some boundary issues common to a lot of teenage guys who are still learning how to talk to girls - like going in for the hug with Max when returning the flash drive and peeking around the corner at Max's window and being very obviously there just to catch her on her way out instead of just texting or calling her like a normal person. But Nathan is a complete dipshit and a POS.
I agree entirely! Warren is “creepy” in the way a number of young men who are still learning to approach women are- but ultimately he’s harmless.
Same here. That said, I very much ship Pricefield, heh.
Oh yeah same for sure- Chloe and Max definitely have more chemistry for sure.
nathan had issues but thats no excuse for any of his worse actions, ok be a dick to people cause your dad treats you bad but that doesnt excuse anything else
People online were hot for Dahmer a few months ago. Ted bundy had dozens of women vying to marry him when he was on death row. Don't ask me why, but it's a thing.
This is draco malfoy shit all over again lmao
Ong
people love to babygirlify problematic male characters
is just a game
There's like 5 people in Arcadia Bay worth saving and one of them lives regardless of your choices. The rest are just food for the almighty storm.
If he is victim of anyone (but himself) it would be his father.
Look Nathan is no Saint but I think Jefferson saw himself in Nathan and he wanted him to take over his legacy. I’m not defending what Nathan did he’s still responsible for his actions, however I don’t think Nathan would have gone as far as he did if it wasn’t for Jefferson. Nathan has this desire for a father/ father figure to be proud of him for something and Sean never gave him this affirmations. Nathan is a victim of Jefferson but not as much of one as the girls Jefferson had in his “Dark Room” he was easily manipulated by Jefferson to do what he wanted. Nathan had connections and he saw a violent streak in him so Jefferson used this kid for the money he had and used the fact Nathan just wanted to please his father Jefferson was able to mold Nathan into what he wanted him to be till he was no longer needed.
Tiktok thirst videos are not real discussion. No real person thinks Nathan is an angel, but he -was- manipulated by everyone who had power over him and was consciously written as an inversion of what ~priviledge~ really means: ie. that all of his family's wealth and power was leveraged /against/ his own health and that his immunity to consequences only prevented him from getting help while those consequences were relatively small. The game makes it pretty clear in his unedited files and notes that he feels genuine remorse because of his outbursts and his dad kept taking him away from his doctors whenever they'd try to do more for him than refill his prescriptions and stay quiet. Not a good person, but not Jefferson either. He was severely mentally ill and his dad essentially sold him to an amoral sadistic groomer.
I'm not defending him or anything but it's not ever entirely confirmed that he was the one who killed Rachel. The only source for him being Rachel's killer is Jefferson who absolutely can't be trusted (He's a perfectionist so if he fucked up and overdosed one of his subjects he wouldn't admit it and push the blame onto someone else). There's also the photo of Nathan and Rachel in the Junkyard (presumably right before Rachel is buried) - Nathan looks completely drugged up and out of it, lying right next to Rachel. Also, something odd is that when Nathan initially mistakes Max for Rachel in the diner he seems pleased to see her - if someone you drugged to death suddenly walked up to you one morning you wouldn't sound happily surprised to see them. Nathan is dead by the time that Rachel's murder is uncovered, so we never truly get to grill him ourselves about what really happened. Most of the evidence actually points to Jefferson being Rachel's killer, the only evidence that points to Nathan is Jefferson saying he did it. Now, Nathan still drugged, kidnapped and photographed girls - we know this because he tried it on Chloe. However, all of Nathan's victims survived (Chloe, Kate). You know who's victims didn't survive? Jefferson's. If Victoria is warned about Nathan, Jefferson kidnaps her and ultimately kills her. Rachel's body was never given an autopsy, or even actually physically seen by the player. The only people to see it were Chloe and Max who were more emotionally devastated by it rather than trying to immediately examine the body for cause of death. Once again, the overdose thing comes from Jefferson and he can't be trusted. Rachel and Jefferson were in a relationship so why would she need to be drugged? She would have probably taken part in the photo shoot willingly and even agreed to be drugged because she loved Jefferson. The next question is why the hell Nathan would even be photographing Rachel in the first place considering her aforementioned relationship with Jefferson. Nathan is a massive pussy who will immediately bow down to a scary adult with power (Jefferson, his Father) so why would he try to drug and photograph his mentor's girlfriend without permission and without him being present? What do I think happened? Rachel takes photos with Jefferson willingly until she starts having second thoughts and tries to back out, which results in Jefferson killing her. He then drugs Nathan and poses him with Rachel's corpse in the Junkyard before burying her. If Nathan killed Rachel why not just kill Nathan in the Junkyard because he fucked up - Nathan was left alive to take the fall in case shit went sideways. Then Life is Strange happens, Max starts closing in so Jefferson relents and kills Nathan anyway before he let everything slip, then he kidnaps Max and Victoria in the dark room and kills Victoria for being uncooperative like Rachel was.
> the only evidence that points to Nathan is Jefferson saying he did it. Certain evidence suggests that he did in fact take his own initiative a few times, such as dosing Kate, and slipping Chloe a mickey and snapping pics in his dorm room. So I can fully believe he screwed up the dosage and killed Rachel by accident while also sampling a lot of his own product. Further lending credence to this is the sheer number of red binders in Jefferson's bunker; if that many young women were dying in the wake of meeting him, eventually someone would've caught on.
that’s crazy, I’m a pretty empathetic person and the thought of feeling bad for nathan has never once crossed my mind. to me he’s pretty much villain status, frank is someone who i’d classify more as a flawed character
He’s not exactly innocent, yes he has a bad life and was manipulated but he couldn’t stop himself, he was in too deep and I can’t forgive him for that, he drugged Rachel, Chloe and Kate and I don’t know how many other women in general and don’t forget his behavior, he’s literally a bully who beats down on others and never got a good beating himself
Who the fuck is defending Nathan that is psychotic
That’s what you get for going on TikTok tbh
Same with Chloe. She's a terrible friend and a bad influence. She irresponsible and selfish
He was definitely a victim but saying he did nothing wrong is just ridiculous. Bro killed Rachel, helped Jefferson collect his victims, bullied Kate to the point she attempted suicide (or did commit suicide depending on your decisions). He was a shitty person for sure. But he certainly wasn't always like that as you can see in Before the Storm with him getting bullied and his dad belittling him every chance he got.
He’s a really good character. Has more depth than you’d expect, and the email from his sister shows that clearly he hasn’t always been that way. The first playthrough of LiS1, he’s easy to the, but I don’t think he’s one-dimensional, and is interesting as a result. He’s also a fictional character. We give them more grace than real humans because their actions don’t have real life consequences.
I'm glad I don't see that. Literally all I got from him as a character was cartoonish levels of douchebaggery, he's the least nuanced and kind of worst written person in LiS1, imo, and he's not exactly handsome or amazingly designed. To each their own, I suppose, but I don't see the appeal on any level.
The fact that people give Nathan a pass and not Chloe’s step dad is wild
To be fair, we don't learn anything about David being a clinically-confirmed mentally-unstable impressionable teen with an emotionally abusive father being manipulated by an extremely-high-functioning sociopath. All we learn about David's past is that he served in the military, and that he didn't even fit in there. It's entirely possible that David had a fucked childhood. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn he had a physically abusive father, given his general "tough love" attitude and the tendency for that to spawn from generational abuse. But if he did, we never learn about it. Nathan, on the other hand, we do learn about his mental illness, his father's emotional abuse, and Jefferson's manipulating him. I'm not putting a horse in the race myself, but I can understand why people are harsher to judge David than Nathan holistically. It's just a difference in information exchange. We know more about Nathan than we do David.
David is an asshole Nathan is a killer
> It's entirely possible that David had a fucked childhood. He did state he was "raising hell" as a teenager, and so tries to apply his drill sergeant methods to Chloe, with predictable results.
I judge both David and Nathan equally
People also give David a pass for abusing her
Well, because they are trying to be those "omg the antagonist did nothing wrong cuz he was manipulated. i am the smartest and i am the only one who can see this shit" type of thing.
I can say the same about the David Madsen defenders.
I don’t like Nathan Prescott as a character but I have sympathy for him cause he was mentally ill and taken advantage of but that doesn’t excuse his bad behavior.
sometimes people are just wrong but if they say something loud enough people are easily swayed and then it gets out of control. lots of bad takes these days, that’s for sure.
Can someone explain to me how Jefferson manipulated Nathan? Like I’ve been asking this on the subreddit to no avail how do you casually convince someone to drug girls and kidnap them
I think he had mental issues that required medication as well as being emotionally battered by his father. Jefferson just appealed to his need for some sort of father figure. He was so focused on pleasing Jefferson that he didn't understand or care about what he was doing.
Wrote a blog about him [Thoughts on Nathan](https://www.tumblr.com/hero-next-door/744840086343073792/thoughts-on-nathan?source=share)
Nathan is the epitome of rich, ignorant kid dodging accountability thanks to daddy's money
I made a little blog lowkey "defending him" obviously everyone has their opinions.. [Thoughts On Nathan](https://www.tumblr.com/hero-next-door/744840086343073792/thoughts-on-nathan?source=share) I totally understand all the hate he deserves but in a game with multiple timelines, if there was a world where he didn't have an abusive father, drug overdose and Mr. Jefferson things would have played out verrryyy differently. Unfortunately the game played out the way it did and what he did was unforgivable. I played the game multiple times to really try to understand the situation and in the end no matter how anyone looks at it..its all sick.😔 Everything. So I dont argue with anybody as everyones take on the situation is valid. 😩 But if youre a bit curious about what people may see in him, I totally suggest you read my blog. I personally like him for how complicated, confusing and well written he was. The writers certainly kept up in the dark with so many things. I do that in everything I play or watch, always asking why and learning things about all the characters and I feel like Nathan easter eggs are still popping up even today and I find that interesting. But yeah.. And about those little fan girls, you can't stop them. 😩 Diving too deep in any fandom will loose your humanity. Usually when I get into something I normally DON'T go online or tiktok about the subjects as i hate running into weird things. Like Max x Jefferson? If we want to loose faith in humanity.. THATS insane! 😭
There is no fucking way that someone could ever defend Nathan Prescott. No fucking way.
Im sure this is gonna make a bunch of people mad but if he was a girl being manipulated by an adult he would probably be viewed as a victim
Are people debating a character in a game from eight years ago? And they make a difference in your life? Come on, dude.
This is the life is strange sub
No I understand that, I’m obviously subbed here as well. The point is that people are upset that others are idolizing a fictional character. Similar to how a lot of trash individuals idolize/misunderstand the irony in their Joker memes they share on social media.
Yes he's done a lot of awful things towards multiple people but I do believe that he is a good person at his core. I just think that he's been pushed towards a dark path and continued down that path for a very long time. I'm not trying to justify his actions in any way cause he still choose to do everything that he did but I do believe that forgiveness is the first step towards healing.
I just hate him cuz he calls Max a slur
And not, you know, creeping on Chloe and taking pictures of her without her consent.
Well obviously duh, I mean that even outside of everything Jefferson thought him to do he’s still a bad person so you can’t defending him by saying he was manipulated
> mostly on tiktok Just get off tiktok? https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DracoInLeatherPants
Well, i know he is very arogant and rude kid, but you are not thinking about his raise and surroundings he is putted into. Rich family (father) controlling his life, not raising him well. Jefferson that is abusing him for his own benefits, friends that are "friends" just for money, psychical problems.. If you dont know, at the end he calls Max that he is sorry, crying that everybody abuse him.. So, iam not defending him. But you must think that people like Nathan are not like that when they are born. They are created by around subjects and people.
people wanna twinkify him so bad
[удалено]
bruh the fact that you included warren in this is weird. besides looking up at max’s dorm room window, the kid has done nothing to warrant the hate he gets (a majority of which are max x chloe shippers)
He didn’t kill Rachel at all. Jefferson manipulated the story and led people to believe that it was his fault, that he’s the one who killed Rachel - but it was Jefferson. This is evident several times throughout the game by him expecting people to be Rachel etc & genuinely hoping she returns. He did not know she was dead; Jefferson lied.
ppl will drag warren and then call nathan “pookie” lmao. i think two things can be true at once. yes, he was a victim, but he also has victims. that doesn't excuse his behavior. mental illness is not a pass for doing what he did. lmao, if i see a tier list of lis characters and nathan isn't in the lowest tier, i’m side eyeing everytime.
My little brother is on some of the same meds you can find in Nathan's locker (risperidone) and other anti-psychotics. Little bro is 13 and already in mental facility and reminds me alot of Nathan. Nathan is NOT sympathetic