This article contains major spoilers for Life is Strange: Double Exposure.
When Safi is murdered in Life is Strange: Double Exposure’s first chapter, Max sets out on a quest to discover the cause of her best friend’s death. As she hops between timelines, searching for clues, one name keeps popping up: Maya Okada. And, the more Max digs, the more she finds information that ties this former Caldeon student to the university’s star professor, Lucas Colmenero.
Maya died by suicide four years before the events of Double Exposure and, though Safi’s mom and Caledon president, Yasmin, tries to deny it if you ask her, Maya was Safi’s best friend. As Max investigates Maya’s death, Vinh suggests that Lucas was to blame for Maya’s death. Not that he actually killed her, but that his actions led her to suicide.
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Lucas’ Hidden Manuscript Is Life Is Strange: Double Exposure’s Biggest Twist
In chapter three, Max infiltrates Lucas’ office and finds a manuscript stashed in the locked drawer of his characteristically grandiose golden typewriter. When Max studies the manuscript, she finds that the pages were written by Maya. But, they’re nearly identical to Lucas’ hit novel, Wilder Beasts Than These. The truth is clear: Lucas plagiarized the only acclaimed work he ever produced. And the student from whom he plagiarized it killed herself as a result.
But, it’s also clear that Lucas didn’t act alone. Yasmin worked to protect Lucas, allowing him to publish the book unimpeded and continue on as a professor at Caledon. She also urged Maya and Safi to keep quiet about Lucas’ theft. She bribed Vinh with a job as her assistant in exchange for him putting out a statement that called Maya’s mental health into question. Maya’s work was swept under the rug, and Caledon got to have a literary star as a professor.
It’s the darkest story thread running through Double Exposure, and I like that about it. I like that this coverup has become a dark secret at the heart of Caledon University. Horrifying truths lying under a picturesque veneer is a theme I’m drawn to in fiction. It’s why I love Twin Peaks, and enjoy works influenced by David Lynch like Alan Wake 2 and I Saw the TV Glow. And, it’s part of why I like the Life is Strange series. The first game has a subplot involving a teacher who is kidnapping and photographing high school girls before he murders them, after all, and the second takes shots at immigration and policing in the United States.
So, I don’t object to the darkness of the Maya-Lucas storyline. Instead, I’m questioning the logistics. The game makes clear that Wilder Beasts Than These is Lucas’ only successful book. He struggled to make a name as a writer before it, and hasn’t written anything since. So, why was he so valuable to Caledon?
Why Do All This To Protect A Middling Author No One Has Heard Of?
The timeline is iffy, but it seems that Wilder Beasts Than These came out and found success after Maya’s death. Safi says, “My silence catapulted Lucas f***ing Colmenero to literary stardom, and sent Maya to an early grave.” That suggests that they knew the book was plagiarized prior to publication. So, why was Lucas worth protecting? He was a mediocre writer, not the superstar who would soon drive English department enrollment. If he was presented as a George Saunders or Zadie Smith-style author-professor, with multiple acclaimed and bestselling works, then Yasmin would have a solid motive to protect him. You don’t want to kill the golden goose. But, a guy who has a book coming out in the future that could at some point become a success? Eh.
Lucas is tenured, which could complicate terminating him. But, it wouldn’t make it impossible in the face of a serious ethical breach like this.
It’s not like there aren’t many, many qualified, talented writers applying for professorships. MFA programs pump out a few thousand candidates per year who are trained to teach at the college level. Academia has become increasingly difficult to break into in the past few decades, so firing the guy who plagiarized his student’s work and bringing someone new onboard seems like a no-brainer. Keeping him around doesn’t seem worth the trouble of potentially dealing with the scandal down the road.
It also isn’t a case of the university siding with a white man over a woman of color, which would simplify the power dynamic at play here. Maya is Asian-American, Lucas’ family hails from Chile, and Yasmin — the person making the call — refers to herself as Arab. Though academia is still overwhelmingly white in the United States, Caledon’s faculty is pretty diverse, so it’s not as simple as a homogeneous power structure standing against a marginalized student.
The timing just seems strange here. Ignoring the pleas of a student who was clearly plagiarized to benefit a professor who hasn’t yet published his defining work? I just don’t see the motivation.
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