Sam vs. Max

**Sam vs. Max** is the first installment of **FLATZONE**. It features *Life is Strange* chrononaut Max Caulfield rapping against *Until Dawn* survivor Sam Giddings. It was released on November 11th, 2019.

## Casting

Elliot Page as Max Caulfield

MyHarto as Sam Giddings

## Lyrics

I’ve got a debt to settle, so I’ll steal this case of Sam and Max,

But to pull your plug can’t match your mistreatment of the handicapped!

I’ll take my powers and tote ‘em - now, you’re speaking my language!

But you can only see the future. I can actually change it!

Your cliché’d shit floats the main-stream! No otters in the pool!

Previously, on Life is Strange, I rewinded time before it was cool!

So try your best to scare me with a jumpscare or three! But I can’t tell a lie;

Your prank cut down the Washington family like cherry trees!

You’re waging warren me? Don’t mind if I do drive-in a diss or two

And slander your pansy fanservice worse than when you kissed a dude!

Chloe haunts the back of your head, guess now your girlfriend ghosts you,

I’ll tattletale to TellTale that your copied plot arcs don’t move!

Bring Blackwell to Blackwood and this dead-beat would be dead,

Your actions don’t have consequences when you rewind! We reset!

Now this square comes full circle; Hipster douches better watch their step

Go hide your tears in the rain. Boom! Butterfly effect.

## Outro

### **Max:**

**I’ve got a debt to settle, so I’ll steal this case of Sam and Max,**

*(Max’s first two opening lines reference a moral decision in Life is Strange Episode 3: Out of Time. In this episode, Chloe, Max’s partner, has a massive debt owed to a drug dealer Frank Bowers who is threatening her with violence if she doesn’t pay it soon. To pay off her debt, she suggests stealing the money owned by Blackwell Academy that just so happens to be saved for making the campus more handicapped accessible. Max starts with a reference to this by bringing up her own ‘debt,’ in this case meaning she owes Sam a battle, but the only thing she’ll be stealing is the victory for the battle. She also slips in a nod to the classic cartoon duo Sam and Max, who are amateur detectives/crime-stoppers like this battle’s Sam Giddings and Max Caulfield.)*

**But to pull your plug can’t match your mistreatment of the handicapped!**

*(To tie in the reference to the handicapped fund, Max also brings up her experience in an alternate timeline where Chloe’s father, William, never died in a car crash - but Chloe herself wrecked her car as a result, leaving her paralyzed and eventually asking Max to pull the plug on her life support and kill her. Max struggled with this decision, but says she won’t have the same troubles with ending Sam, while also claiming that to literally kill a disabled person wouldn’t be as offensive to the handicapped as Sam’s treatment of Josh. Josh is one of Sam’s friends who reveals himself to be the masked tormentor that had been torturing Sam and her other friends. However, Josh was mentally ill, suffering from psychotic depression and schizophrenia. That doesn’t stop the rest of Until Dawn’s cast from kicking him, tying him up and eventually leaving him to his death at the hands of the Wendigos. Max is essentially accusing Sam of thinking Josh was expendable because of his mental illness and letting him die a painful death as a result.)*

**I’ll take my powers and tote ‘em - now, you’re speaking my language!**

*(Max wields the ability to rewind time, either through short increments or through long gaps of time using Polaroids. She makes a pun on ‘totem,’ with to ‘tote’ meaning to carry her powers with her and show them off. Totems are items from Until Dawn that allow the player to see the upcoming outcome of decisions they might make. Since this allows the player to peek into the future of the game, Max excitedly refers to time-travelling as ‘her language,’ or something she’s familiar with.)*

**But you can only see the future. I can actually change it!**

*(However, she compares her powers to the totems; Max can rewind unfavorable outcomes and, using Polaroids, totally rewrite history all together. Meanwhile, totems in Until Dawn only let the player see an outcome to avoid, not letting them change that decision after it’s been made.)*

**Your cliché’d shit floats the main-stream! No otters in the pool!**

*(Max accuses Until Dawn of being cliché due to it’s constant references to other horror tropes, like Josh’s mask, the faked ghosts, jumpscares and eventually the Wendigo’s. To be ‘mainstream’ is to fall in line with popular culture, but Max makes a pun on the ‘stream’ portion of the word to claim Until Dawn plays off of already popular horror franchises. She finishes with a line referencing her and Chloe’s playdate in the Blackwell pool, where Chloe teases Max as ‘an otter in her water’ compared to herself being a shark, something Max replicates by claiming Sam isn’t allowed in her pool.)*

**Previously, on Life is Strange, I rewinded time before it was cool!**

*(When starting a new chapter of Life is Strange, the line ‘previously, on Life is Strange’ is said before a brief glimpse summarizing the other episodes. Max uses this opening line here to claim she was rewinding time before it became popular, playing off of other media like Back to the Future or Bill & Ted [which came out before Life is Strange, of course, but are existing fictional media in the LiS universe itself]. This line is based on a generic stereotype for hipsters, that being claiming that they ‘liked something before it was cool.’ Max is identified as a hipster constantly throughout Life is Strange, which is supported by her retro style and niche interests.)*

**So try your best to scare me with a jumpscare or three! But I can’t tell a lie;**

*(Max challenges Sam and Until Dawn as a game to try scaring her with a jumpscare, something often looked down on as cheap gimmicks in horror games. She follows into the next line with a quote from first President George Washington, ‘I can’t tell a lie…’)*

**Your prank cut down the Washington family like cherry trees!**

*(To lead into a pun on George Washington’s last name, who he shares with Josh Washington and his sisters, Hannah and Beth. At the beginning of Until Dawn, Sam’s friends pull a prank on Hannah that leaves her running out of the house in embarrassment, Beth following her, with the both of them being cornered by a Wendigo and brutally killed. Later, because of that same prank, Josh would bring everyone back to the mountain and end up killed himself. Essentially, the Washington family were all killed as a result of Sam’s friends pranks, who she herself was not a part of… but still made no effort to stop. A common wives tale about George Washington is that as a kid, he cut down a cherry tree and then was unable to lie about it. Likewise, Max accuses Sam of cutting down the Washington’s metaphorical ‘family tree’ like a cherry one.)*

### **Sam:**

**You’re waging warren me? Don’t mind if I do drive-in a diss or two**

*(Sam enters the battle with a pun referencing the Life is Strange character Warren Graham. The next line also focuses on Warren, beginning with a play on words for ‘drive-in,’ meaning both a movie theatre and to literally ‘bring something in.’ Warren spends the most of Life is Strange badgering Max about going to a movie drive-in to see Planet of the Apes with him.)*

**And slander your pansy fanservice worse than when you kissed a dude!**

*(Warren has a very obvious crush on Max as well, something several characters in the game acknowledge including Max and Chloe both. Warren was originally written with no ending where he actually gets any love back from Max - however, after the character was [somehow] met with warm reception, the writers changed the scripts to allow the player the option to kiss Warren before saving Chloe. ‘Fanservice’ is a term usually used to describe parts of a story that are completely out of nowhere and only exist to appeal to fans - Warren’s kiss certainly fits this mold, as Max spends the whole game talking about how much she doesn’t share Warren’s affections. Sam references this odd change of script by claiming the fanservice ‘slandered’ Max’s character by taking away her solely LGBTQA+ representation to appeal to straight players, and implies she will diss Max in an equivalent way.)*

**Chloe haunts the back of your head, guess now your girlfriend ghosts you,**

*(Life is Strange has two endings: in one, Max rewinds time back to the start of the game when she saved Chloe from being killed by Nathan Prescott. Chloe being saved created a massive time anomaly manifesting in the breaking of reality and a colossal storm that destroys the town, so Max in this ending chooses to save the town as Chloe begs her to by letting Chloe die. As she loved Chloe, she is heartbroken by this and the game ends with her attending Chloe’s funeral. During this scene, the track ‘Spanish Sahara’ plays, which has a line in the chorus ‘I’m the ghost in the back of your head.’ Sam teases that Chloe’s death, either at the beginning of the game or in the ending, haunts Max like a ghost - but to ‘ghost’ someone is to not respond to their messages. Chloe and Max were friends since childhood, but after Max moved, she dropped out of touch with Chloe despite her constant texts and attempts to reach out. This absence in Chloe’s life becomes a recurring tension between the two after Max returns.)*

**I’ll tattletale to TellTale that your copied plot arcs don’t move!**

*(Sam threatens to contact a different game-producing company, TellTale games, implicitly to tell on something bad that Max did. TellTale games is best known for The Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us and other choice-driven games, given them a reputation as the central creators of choose-your-own-adventure games. As a result, games like Life is Strange or Until Dawn are often compared to them, but Sam directly calls Life is Strange a rip-off of the TellTale format; accusing her storylines of dragging on by referencing the ‘Don’t Move!’ mechanic in Until Dawn. In the game, a character will often find themselves in danger of being killed should they be noticed or move too much, thus the ‘Don’t Move!’ sections require the player to hold their controller still while the screen flashes that exact message.)*

**Bring Blackwell to Blackwood and this dead-beat would be dead,**

*(Sam draws a parallel between the locations of both rappers - Life is Strange takes place predominantly at Blackwell Academy, while Until Dawn takes place in the Blackwood forests. Sam implies that if Max tried to survive in her mountain, she’d die thanks to being too adjusted to comfortable school life. Calling her a ‘dead-beat’ is again in reference to her ghosting Chloe.)*

**Your actions don’t have consequences when you rewind! We reset!**

*(A common theme in Life is Strange is the message ‘this action will have consequences,’ appearing whenever a choice is made. However, in almost every choice for Life is Strange, the player can rewind what happened and replay the section to achieve the outcome they prefer - thus, Sam doesn’t really believe Max’s actions have any consequences. There is no rewind mechanic in Until Dawn, and the only way to reverse decisions would be to reset the game entirely due to the auto-save mechanic preventing the player from going back and reloading a save file.)*

**Now this square comes full circle; Hipster douches better watch their step**

*(Until Dawn was primarily a Playstation release, with different segments of the game requiring that the player mash a certain button on the controller. Playstation controllers famously use shapes instead of the usual letters of other consoles, including a square, a triangle, an X, and a circle. To be ‘a square’ is to be boring, something Max’s character is often accused of, and to come ‘full circle’ means to wrap up loose ends. Sam also teases at Max’s own boasting of being a hipster by making a pun on ‘Step-Douche,’ Chloe’s nickname for her abusive step-father.)*

**Go hide your tears in the rain. Boom! Butterfly effect.**

*(Sam tells Max to leave the battle and cry, implicitly in the middle of the storm she created so no one can tell she’s in tears. ‘Boom! Butterfly effect.’ Is a direct quote from the character Chris in Until Dawn, something foreshadowing both games heavy themes regarding butterflies. Since Max’s storm was created through the butterfly effect, and then literally reversed through a photo of the butterfly, the storm Max would be hiding her tears in would be a result of the butterfly effect. There’s also a line from the bully character Victoria as she impersonates Max, “I’m Max Caulfield and I’m so sensitive butterflies make me cry.” Thus, if Max were to cry because she saw a butterfly, that’d be the butterfly’s effect.)*