After Max chose to spare Chloe's life at the expense of Arcadia Bay, the two decide to leave their broken home town and make a new life for themselves.
Ten years later, they cross paths with a powerful individual who seems to know more about the unusual world they were unwittingly thrust into all of those years ago.
That person is Director Jesse Faden of the Federal Bureau of Control.
AWE Arcadia Bay by Rogue_Demon
is a Control/Life Is Strange Crossover fanfic that can be read here on Archive of Our Own.
AWE Arcadia Bay provides examples of:
- Abandoned Playground: The Cult worshipping The Monolith had set up shop in an abandoned amusement park in Ukraine.
- Ad Hominem: When Emily calls her out for her tactlessness, Underhill responds that her blatant crush on Jesse is unprofessional and can cause problems if she doesn't learn to control it better. Emily recognizes this and turns it on her."So, ad hominem it is then, you just made this personal, bitch." Emily closed in on her target.
"Oh, I'm sure Darling taught you all about that didn't he? Raya!" Emily punctuated her point by deliberately using the other doctor's first name. She knew it infuriated her. - Adaptational Explanation: In Life Is Strange, the hurricane that devastated Arcadia Bay was supposedly a Clock Roach that manifested because Max used her rewinding ability to save Chloe's life. Here it's actually an AWE (Altered World Event) caused by a manifestation of the Hiss possessing Rachel Amber's corpse, with her iconic blue feather an Altered Item used as a conduit to achieve this goal. This would further imply that Max's Time Rewind Mechanic powers were a symptom of all the unusual activity that happens in-game (the off-season snow, the solar eclipse, the dead birds, the beached whales, and the optical illusion of the full moon) rather than the cause.
- Adaptational Villainy:
- While Sean Prescott was a ruthless capitalist seeking to gentrify Arcadia Bay and was an abusive dad to his son Nathan, here he's revealed to have been fully aware of Jefferson's "activities" and is involved in a Cult dealing in paranatural phenomena and is an enemy of the Bureau. He also confesses to Nathan that he sent Jefferson to try and kill him for his failure, literally throwing him at Jefferson's feet.
- While Mark Jefferson was a Serial Killer and a Sadist who drugged and photographed innocent women, here he's also involved in Sean Prescott's paranatural criminal enterprise, his "art" all a part of an experiment to create an Object of Power.
- Arc Words: "Nam que tempus!"translation The phrase is engraved on the Lightning Gun Jesse finds in Chernobyl, and Ahti says it to Max, which triggers a montage of past and future events.
- Artifact of Doom: Rachel's blue-feather earring is an altered item that causes anyone who touches it to become possessed by the Hiss.
- Assimilation Plot: When Orzai discovers the existence of the paranatural outside of The Monolith by invading Jesse's mind, he decides that he would be able to control the world if he were to assimilate them into the Monolith's authority. If the visions he gives Jesse are any indication, his vision of a world in his image are far from rosey.Orzai: Your Board, this... Hiss that lurks in the back of your mind, manifesting your deepest darkest fears. These other... Mythical things you and your Bureau have discovered and so selfishly tried to contain for yourselves. They could be so much more if only they were brought under the control of the Monolith! Our approach before was so... basic... blunt... uneducated. But soon, we will infiltrate and convert everything, bringing them under the one true power of the Monolith! Together we will open the great gate, and open up the new world to us! But first, we take care of you...
- Benevolent Boss: One of the changes Jesse made as Director was to make options of the cafeteria's menu 24/7 accessible. While it seems minor, this was done because it's very easy for its staff to lose track of time (both because time acts wonky in the Oldest House and there are no windows that help establish a timeframe), allowing its staff to enjoy breakfast when they really need it.
- Berserk Button: Apparently, Trench demoting Emily is one for her.Emily: I mean, COME ON! I am a scientist, not a child! And I had thought that the fucking rangers had a handle on site security! Like, you can’t expect one person to manage site containment, scientific readings AND fucking site security!
- Bond Villain Stupidity: After Orzai manages to mind-control Jesse, who he learns has overcome paranatural brainwashing before via mind-reading, he gloats about how he plans on doing the same to Emily. This leads to her snapping out of his control and using Polaris to purge the Monolith through him, destroying him and the Monolith.
- Crossover Cameo: Apparently, Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows works at the New York Times.
- Demoted to Extra: In Life Is Strange, Mark Jefferson is the Big Bad, having manipulated Sean and Nathan Prescott to his own ends. Here, he's Sean's loyal follower whose "art" was all done in their attempt at creating an Object of Power, being captured by the Federal Bureau of Control after he scrubs all trace of Sean from their bunker.
- Desecrating the Dead: When Trench has a psychometric vision of what Nathan did to Rachel, he puts a few rounds from the Service Weapon into the dead man's skull, reducing his head to a bloody paste.
- Elemental Motifs: The Monolith's resonance is characterized as a form of white lightning.
- Evil Stole My Faith: The first thing Kate does when she joins the Bureau is throw away her rosary into the nearest trashcan, her experience in the Arcadia Bay AWE, the reality that the paranatural exist and the actions of her hypocritical mother all resulting in her abandoning her family's religion.
- Expy: The Monolith is named after the similarly-named MacGuffin from S.T.A.L.K.E.R., being a reality warping supernatural entity associated with the Chernobyl disaster characterized with radiation and white lightning and worshipped by a cult that wants to spread its influence to the rest of the planet.
- Fantastic Recruitment Drive: After surviving The Monolith, Jesse and Emily get the idea of remaking the Prime Candidate Program into a less "invasive" version of the original program, finding and recruiting parautilitarians voluntarily.
- Fire Keeps It Dead: Trench has the bodies of everyone killed in the Arcadia Bay Altered World Event burned to prevent possible Hiss manifestations.
- Foreshadowing: Jesse crossing paths with Max and Chloe are foreshadowed when she hallucinates a blue-butterfly (an animal that represented Chloe in Life Is Strange) after she defeats The Monolith.
- Grew a Spine: After Max manages to talk Kate out of her suicide attempt, Kate's mom tells her that they intend on sending her to a Christian School away from her friends, acting as though it was all because Kate lacked the proper faith, downplaying the help her friends gave her and denying whatever role she had in Kate's darker moments. Realizing that her mother seems to care more about their family's reputation than her own daughter, Kate calls her out on her hypocrisy.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: As they struggle to find people for the Prime Candidate Program, Jesse reasons that they are trying too hard and they should just "let it happen." This is based on experience, as she has been known to get lucky in the Oldest House and paranatural phenomena runs more on faith than deduction.Jesse: Sometimes, I feel like if the house, or the board, wants us to find something, we will find it. Maybe we just need new information that hasn't come up yet?
- Hypocrite: When Emily rebuffs Dr. Evans' inappropriate flirting, she gets defensive and tells Emily to stop acting like a "bullied school girl" and "grow up".
- Hypocrite Has a Point: While Emily points out that she isn't one to talk (having allegedly pined for Dr. Darling in the past), Underhill is right that Emily's blatant crush on Jesse is both unprofessional and problematic.
- Insufferable Genius: After managing to save Jesse's life, Underhill goes on to remark that it would have been wiser of Jesse to send more rangers to Chernobyl, both for her own health and for the medical expenses, and that the mission was a waste of Bureau time and money. Emily calls her out for her tactlessness.
- Invisible President: While the President seems only to have a vague awareness of the FBC and what they do, it seems that they have little say in what the FBC does. Their gender is never given, this showing just how little they matter outside of the occasional information regarding paranatural threats.
- Kill the Host Body: While a Hiss-Possessed Rachel was fine with destroying Arcadia Bay to get to her killers, she ends the storm and dies all over again when she realizes that Chloe would be a casualty.
- Lightning Gun: After defeating Orzai and The Monolith, Jesse finds an Object of Power that takes the form of a 19th century Winchester rifle that shoots lightning instead of bullets.
- The Man Behind the Man: Sean Prescott is behind a lot of seemingly unrelated incidents that have been on the FBC's radar, from Mark Jefferson's serial-kidnappings and killings to Orzai's Monolith-Cult.
- Married to the Job: As big of a crush Emily has on Jesse, she had long since accepted that "[t]he Bureau would always be her first and final love[,]" convinced that no one would actually want her.
- Mean Boss: The first time Emily Pope had met Director Trench, he gives her a hard time over her efforts to contain the AWE in Arcadia Bay and humiliates her in front of her colleagues before having her relocated to the Oldest House as a researcher, revoking her license for field work after having just gotten it.
- Mythology Gag: Two cases of potential candidates for the Prime Candidate Program Emily finds include the Mexico Border Massacre of 2017 and the Bright Falls AWE.
- Nay-Theist: Being the Director of the FBC, Trench has had lots of experience with religious behavior and god-like entities, having a direct connection to the closest thing to a god the FBC has ever encountered (The Board), though he seems to look at organized religion with contempt. Not so much the belief, so much as he finds the common ideas of God incompatible with the mind-bending reality he's grown used to. Considering Kate's own Crisis of Faith, she isn't all that offended.Trench: I never liked overly religious types. It was only solidified in the Bureau. Knowing the reality of the world we live in, no god created in our imagination could ever conceive such things.
Kate: I think... I am starting to feel the same way. - Phlebotinum Overload: Jesse purging The Monolith through Orzai overclocks them in a way not unlike being in a microwave, killing Orzai and nearly killing Jesse.
- Plot Armor: When Jesse investigates The Monolith with a team of highly-trained Rangers, the plane is shot down and Jesse manages to be the only one that makes it out alive. Even when she barely survives gunshot wounds, broken bones and radiation burns that would cripple a normal person for life after the mission, she manages to heal phenomenally fast no worse for wear.
- The Power of Love: Just as Orzai succeeds in brainwashing Jesse, she immediately snaps out of it when he decides to go after Emily next.Jesse: You. Dare. Touch. Her. KEEP AWAY FROM HER!!
- Real Event, Fictional Cause: It's implied that the Chernobyl Disaster was an altered world event, either have been caused by or resulted in the creation of an Eldritch Abomination called The Monolith.
- Relationship Upgrade: After a brief fight over Max choosing to save her over Arcadia Bay, they leave to stay with Max's family as girlfriends.
- Red Pill, Blue Pill: Trench gives Kate this option after questioning her after the hurricane in Arcadia Bay (even referencing the trope and the movie it was named after directly): either sign an NDA and pretend nothing happened, or join the Bureau. Having nothing but her Control Freak mother waiting for her should she take the former, she takes the latter and joins the Bureau.Trench: The Blue pill. Officially, we never had this conversation. And my bureau was never here. You sign an NDA and we hand you back to your family and continue living a normal life.” Kate sagged slightly in her chair as she leant forward to glance at the document. The red pill. You come and work for me, and the Federal Bureau of Control. You become part of the organisation tasked with containing and controlling paranatural items and entities, for that days like today become the exception rather than the rule. You can have a completely new life, a new Identity, should you wish. And I can show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Ha! See what I did? Can't say the old man aint funny sometimes.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Jesse's parautility seems to give her some level of immunity to Max's Time Rewind Mechanic, having a brief memory-flash of Emily being shot before Max undid the event.
- Shout-Out: Jesse refers to her idea of remaking the Prime Candidate Program into a Fantastic Recruitment Drive as "FBC Avengers."
- Too Dumb to Live: Fredrick Langston not only responds to a random Englishman claiming to be an agent for a British FBC-equivalent (but is actually an agent working for Prescott) who contacted him on the internet, but he spills a lot of details about the Bureau (the Director's name and Pope's relationship with her, Bureau jargon, how they operate, etc.) without questioning his motives for any of it. Even the spy found how easy it was disappointing.
- Twofer Token Minority: Chloe throws in that she's a lesbian when being interviewed for a mechanic job, meaning she's a twofer as a diversity hire (gay and a woman).
