Life is Strange: True Colors All about Alex Chen

Alex Chen

Alexandra Chen (born: July 10th, 1997), better known simply as "Alex", is the main protagonist of Life is Strange: True Colors. After eight years apart, Alex reunites with her brother Gabe Chen and establishes a new life in the mid-western town of Haven Springs, Colorado. Her fresh start at Haven is shaken by the sudden and mysterious death of her brother.

Personality

Alex is described as sharp, witty, and hardened from her time in foster care (children must be in order to survive). Due to the nature of her powers, she is also highly observant to her surroundings and sensitive to the needs of others. While initially shy towards most people she meets, she is generally friendly and approachable. Alex has always put the needs of others first rather than confronting her own emotional turmoil. As a consequence, strong negative emotions can take a great toll on her well-being.

Appearance

Alex has short black hair stylized into a pixie cut with a large protruding bang swept to her left. She wears large red glasses, diamond earrings in her earlobe piercings and two helix piercings with silver hoops on her right ear, and a silver stud in her left nostril piercing. She has two small tattoos on her right hand, one of a shooting star and a shield on her middle finger. She wears black nail polish and dresses in a blue denim jacket with three different patches, a navy blue hoodie with a yellow bird and lettering over a black shirt with long sleeves, black skinny jeans and brown hiking boots. However, she also has a selection of other outfits she can choose to wear in her room.

Background

Alex Chen was born on July 10, 1997, to John and Wendy Chen. Alex lived in Portland, Oregon with her parents and older brother Gabe. When Alex was ten, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. At one point, Alex was visiting her mother in the hospital where Wendy told her how proud she was of her and that she was going to have to be strong for both her father and Gabe. Wendy then gave Alex a locket containing pictures of her and Gabe before passing away. When Alex was 11, her Dad and Gabe got into an argument over John losing his job. Alex tried to defuse the situation by suggesting they sell their records and her guitar in order to pay the bills, but despite her best efforts the argument continued to esculate and soon turned physical, resulting in John unintentionally hitting Alex and knocking her to the ground. John, after realizing what he just did, told Alex and Gabe that he couldn't do this anymore and that someone would come by to get them. After pleading with John to stay, Alex throws her mother's locket at him out of grief and despair. John briefy stops to pick up the locket before walking out the door, leaving them for CPS. Alex was then taken into the foster care system, and when she was 12, Gabe was sent to juvie. Over the next few years, Alex was moved between orphanages, group homes, and foster parents. Around this time, Alex developed her empathy powers. At some point, Alex ended up at the Helping Hands Group Home where she remained until moving to Haven Springs.

Powers

Abilities

Empathy: Alex has the ability to detect and feel the emotions of people around her. Emotions regularly project as color-coded auras to her, with purple representing fear, red representing anger, blue representing sadness, and yellow representing joy.

Aura Detection: Alex can detect auras coming off of people and/or objects. She once used this to navigate the dark collapsed mine tunnel she was trapped in and find her father's locket.

Emphatic Telepathy: When reading someone's aura, Alex can hear the thoughts they're having in correlation with their emotions as well. This allows her to discern a person's innermost thoughts, such as when she was able to read one woman's mind and learn that there were 731 jelly beans in a jar.

Psychometry: Alex can tap into emotional auras on certain objects and/or people to access memories attached to them. If she comes across a particularly strong aura, she can reach out and connect with it, allowing her to enter a state called "Nova," which transforms the world around her into a reflection of that person's psyche, experiencing fragments of their thoughts and memories.

Emotion Absorption: By concentrating hard enough, Alex can remove certain emotions from targets by absorbing their strong feelings, but she will eventually experience the absorbed emotion herself.Limits

At the beginning of the game Alex claims that she cannot turn off her empathy and often acts up whenever a person experiencing a strong emotion appears near her. After the first chapter, however, she seemingly gets over this.

Alex has to be in close range with someone to see their emotions and hear their thoughts.

Consequences

Since she feels what others feel, Alex becomes heavily influenced by them. An example of this is when Mac barges into Gabe's apartment and beats him up unprovoked, Alex began to feel his anger herself and despite her attempts to fight the intense emotion, it overtakes her to the point where she attacks Mac and accidentally punches Gabe when he tried to intervene. Finally, when she takes an emotion away from someone, it becomes a part of her briefly, like if she takes Charlotte's anger and hears Gabe's call to Mac, she gets in a fit of rage that causes Steph and Ryan to leave the room.

Although she has well-meaning intentions, Alex taking someone's essential emotions, such as grief, and speeding up the process can cause more harm than good, essentially leaving them numb like an empty shell. On a positive note, her taking away someone's fear could give them the confidence they need to convince them to see the errors of their ways and do what's right.

Symbolism

Spirit Animal

Alex's spirit animal seems to be that of a yellow canary that is present on her default outfit at the start of the game. Canaries usually symbolize joy and freedom, with yellow being the color of joy when Alex uses her powers. They are also songbirds, which ties into Alex's talent of being a singer/musician.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2955229468

All about Alex Chen