TELL ME WHY: What Happened the Night of Mary-Ann's Death? 

I'd just like to note that if you are reported for child abuse/ neglect (in the US), it is not automatically an issue of removing the children permanently from your care. Social Services (when utilized correctly on all sides) is only interested in the best needs of the children, which means that often they will respond to reports by helping the parents get access to community support that they need that would alleviate the problem (like getting them help with food, getting bills paid, family therapy, etc.). Even if the children are removed from the home, it is often a temporary thing, while they give the parent an opportunity to do what they need to do to make their home healthy for the children to return (They might often give the parent a list of things they must achieve, such as getting in touch with community services, getting a job, getting so many hours of therapy, etc.). Fiction likes to depict "Social Services was called." as equivalent to "Your children will be permanently removed from your care, and you will never see them again."; and that is part of the problem in real life, because people believe this and become frightened and try to hide or run, rather than trying to work with them to find a solution in the best interests of the children. I cannot speak of what it is like in Alaska or what would have likely happened in their specific case, but I felt the need to point this out, since it was a key element in the decisions made in the climax of the story. Just like most support services, Social Services doesn't have to be your enemy; and they try to be there to help families and individuals through difficult times, not to be home wreckers with the government on their side.

Warning: Major Spoiler ahead. This is the tricky part about memories. As kids they are so deep in a web that we sometimes cant trust them. Thats why we turn back to our elders and ask how it went down so we can understand them. This is also the reason why their memories are so different. Memories fade and change over time. Even small details. I truly believe Toms version to be correct even though he couldnt hear her. He knew her though. She didnt wanna kill her kids as she didnt wanna lose any more kids. Look at all those good night stories. She truly loved her children and couldnt bear losing another one. At first i thought she wantet to kill tom that night as she had to know hed be back at some point. But out of fear of losing her children. (Again!) she tried to commit suicide. In the letters we found it already was clear that her children wouldve been taken care of. As evidenced by Eddy himself he took alyson in and would have had no problems taking Tyler too. Whoever he decides to be. But Mary-Ann couldnt take it anymore. The hostility from Tessa. Being abandoned by Tom. Losing Leo. Sam being unable to help. Eddys ignorance. Mary-Ann mustve felt really lonely and most likely tried to kill herself. But then Tyler saw her and she followed him with a gun in hand. I saw a comment down here, and i know its late but when Mary-Ann did load her shotgun, she was already DEVASTATED. She was already done. No one is likely to think rational and diploamtically when in a state like this. Especially when you sold yourself to the point of ending your own life. Making peace with life and ready to die. Alyson misunderstood the scenario, of course she did. She was a child. A child which thought her dear sibling is going to die if no one is going to help. Of course she thought like this, before all this happened, Mary-Ann hid his Diary, said no to everything, complained she didnt get through to them (Which is why she didnt have "the Voice, but was aware they had them of some sort) So she knew there was a tendency for hostility. At the pier she thought of protecting someone, in my opinion this makes Alysons deed still SELF DEFENCE. Its all coming down to how she felt. She felt threatened and any Judge can see why. But the case was never fully investigated as we do it. Then there was Tom, who couldve saved Mary-Anns life but instead of helping he fucking RAN AWAY. Self Defence doesnt necessarly needs to end in DEATH. You can still be charged for failure of assistance that way. Tom commited Failure Of Assistance. He didnt help Mary-Ann. She was out of combat. She was no threat anymore. You dont need the threat to die in order to execute self defence. This is how i feel about what went really down. In the end, Tom killed Mary-Ann in some way. By letting her drown and bleed to death. Tom is btw a idiot to believe that Alysons reputation would be gone if this comes out, even the town cant be so stupid. They know they were kids. Which is evidenced by how Michael and Eddy react when telling them (either Alyson or Tyler) who killed Mary-Ann. Eddy is shocked but understands and Michael is like "Yeah cool bro lets kiss anyway"

IMO Mary-Ann did not intend to shoot anyone. Let's reconstruct the sequence of events: - Tom starts stalking Mary-Ann's residence and is spotted by the kids; - Mary-Ann loads her shotgun and confronts Tom the next time he shows up at the house; - during the confrontation, Mary-Ann threatens to divulge Tom's secret; - Tom responds by threatening to take the kids away from Mary-Ann; - realizing this is the only way to bury the secret, Tom makes good on his threat; Tessa calls the police; - undeterred by the threat, Mary-Ann digs in and prepares for further standoff; Tyler sees her loading the shotgun; importantly, this is not the first time Mary-Ann is holding the weapon; - extremely important: the only report of Mary-Ann mumbling and speaking incoherently comes from Tom who is not interested in telling the truth; - in reality Mary-Ann remained peaceful and tried to calm her daughters while holding the shotgun with one hand. It is important to understand the general message of Dontnod games. In LIS2 the brothers face the rampant racism, xenophobia, grotesque religiosity of small town USA. 'Dead place' Beaver Creek and 'Nosy nosy place' Haven Point are painted in gloomy colors and openly ridiculed. Delos Crossing is precisely that kind of xenophobic small town. Note how Tyler is demonized by virtually everyone the moment he steps in. Once again, the artistic princess Mary-Ann is brutally confronted by the archetypal American small town. Dontnods know their depiction of American xenophobia met with fierce criticism. So this time the devs play a game on you while you play their game. They try to trick you into siding with the xenophobic town and believing Mary-Ann really is that crazy suicidal freak everyone in town knows she is.

This video is very enlightening and I'd feel that it significantly contributes to the understanding of players who have only played through the game once. Thank you for finally satisfying my desire to think about the plot of this game, maybe I'll also check a few other details I overlooked on my only playthrough sometime.

the choices that are presented are up to the person playing the game and the choices that they made while they played. Also the only person that you can truly feel bad for is Sam because he actually loved Mary-Ann. Also it makes you think that if Mary-ann wanted to off herself she would have just stayed at the bottom of the lake seeing as we find out that the stab wound is superficial so she could have swam to the surface of the water but she didn't.

i don't think she wanted to kill them, but she was clearly not well, i think she "saw" tom in tyler after he cut his hair (and having argued with him days early made her got mad) and after alyson appeared there she got back to herself. So i think the end is more a mix of the two endings, first she wanted to kill tyler (not for being tyler, but for remembering her of tom) and after alyson was there, she regret what she did

I'm so glad I could provide the footage and thumbnail!

she was kinding suicide she didn't want tuler to be scare of her so she him to stop but forgot she was holding a weapon

I choose she don't threaten tyler because I would like them to have thought they did had a loving mother

This was great! It's awesome to see a video from you, and I definitely hope you will continue doing more in the future. In terms of what really happened, I agree with you that we'll never really know and in some ways that was the point. I don't think Mary-Ann could have written her note to the twins that long ago, because I didn't get the impression Tyler had been using "Ollie" for a very long time. However, I also think it's a mistake to apply any rational thought to Mary-Ann's behavior that night. She was clearly undergoing a severe mental health episode, and perhaps even vacillated between the idea of killing just herself or taking the twins with her. Regardless of the particulars of what happened, I think that Tom is a major villain and culpable for Mary-Ann's death. I also think that Tyler and Aly were justified in believing Mary-Ann meant them harm. Although we have no evidence she physically abused them, there is definitely evidence of verbal and emotional abuse (and I would say, neglect). I think her so-called friends could have stepped up to help her so that it didn't turn into a case for CPS, but that didn't happen. I also think Tessa was being strictly malicious in her report, but I don't think she was necessarily wrong in her conclusion that Mary-Ann was (at the time) unfit. Anyway, sorry for rambling, I have a lot of thoughts on this. Really enjoyed your analysis and so cool to see you posting content again.

30:17 this hits home waaaay too hard as a late blooming trans boy who has had an extremely emotionally abusive home situation, does the tilting phone thing, and is subtly median plural (there are a handful of blog posts around that try to explain median plurality, its sort of like not quite multiple personality split but also definitely not 'singlet'. Other people don't notice it outwardly, it's mostly an internal thing for me). Really, I didn't realize I was a trans guy until adulthood for a myriad of reasons, dissociation, narrow rigid narratives about trans experiences in the aughts that were important for trans rights but also didn't encompass the full range and type of trans related feelings like what I was having, and so on. Also your vid says everything I was thinking about the ending and way more that I didn't even *think* of! Like, I wanna delete half my rambly ass comments I've made on ending vids and just be like "ignore my incoherent mess, this guy explained my shared opinion perfectly" 😅 And now that I'm thinking more about Tom Vecchi I'm pissed that they decided to go with us chosing between Tom and Alyson. I think the two major memories we choose from could make sense, but because we are fed one through the vehicle of Tom, of course almost no one wanted to pick that one. Even tho I already agree with the twins memory, I forget that one of the reasons is because Tom is a f**king piece of sh*t and they made it so obvious he was making things up for his own gain. Even if his version of events were right by pure chance, I still confidently believe that he made up what he said. I honestly wish that we had to pick between Alyson and Tyler. It felt like things were gearing up for that to be the big final choice too. I think it would have made it a more even split of players in which memory to choose, even though I would still pick the murder-suicide version of events as I think it makes the most sense in my opinion. And it would have made having to pick which twin to believe be this compelling thing, like it was for having to choose with their smaller memories. If the worry is "but then they would not want to stay in contact" I disagree, Tyler already makes clear that he's set on what he thinks happened and that whichever Alyson chooses, he's okay and it's more about her healing rather than the "ultimate truth".

Nice to hear your voice again and your analysis of Tell Me Why. Keep encouraged and know that you are appreciated. Can’t wait for the next Life Is Strange video from you.

I honestly love your content, because its always so interesting what your thoughts, opinions and theories are!

I agree, in Toms version we can see her loading TWO shells into the gun, which wouldn't make sense if she only wanted to take herself out.

i'm a bit late but this video is great, your analysis is very solid and we agree on everything, you just got a new suscriber! i haven't find many vids discussing a beautiful game like tell me why, (currently making my own), so thank you, it made me happy, i'll be watching you other ones cause you seem to love lis as much as i do, nice work, keep going:)

To be brutally honest, I think the biggest question is if Mary-Ann wasn't trying to kill her children, why would she still be holding a gun? If you want to comfort someone the very first thing you do should surely be to throw it down? I have severe depression, but it doesn't deprive me of my ability to have empathy. The simplest answer in this case is usually the correct one - she was trying to kill her children.

Nice seeing some familiar faces in this comments section. I just finished chapter 3 for the first time a week ago and re-played the whole game on Twitch to get other options Friday and Saturday, so now that I've done 2 playthroughs and talked a little about the game I'm looking up any interesting videos people may have made on it. I remember seeing this in my sub box awhile back. Didn't recall it being 40 minutes though. O_O I only looked at it monentarily bc since I was procrastinating on chapter 3 I didn't want to see a spoiler in the title or thumbnail or whatever. But yeah... watching now...

I originally thought the plot was mainly about transphobia but it was kinda about suicide and the aftermath

I've just finished the game and now I'm browsing all the videos with game analysis, alternate ending and so on. Great video, giving lots of insight to the whole story.

Thanks for your thoughts, it’s been a couple weeks since I played the game, but it still hasn’t left me and a truly thoughtful video was exactly what I needed. One more thing I’d like to add to the pile in favour of „Tyler‘s memory“. The obvious option for guardians of the children if Mary-Ann had suicided would have been Tessa and Tom. I think Eddy stepping up was a bit of a twist, actually. And we know that Mary-Ann never would’ve wanted Tom to get his grubby hands on her kids, and she probably also would’ve not wanted Tessa to mess with Tyler’s identity. So, leaving the kids behind wasn’t really an option, was it? The attic puzzles were named even in the „Tom‘s memory“ ending as proof that she didn’t mean to take her kids along, but I don’t think that’s true. For one - how would they have ever known about it? Also, I don’t think the attic would’ve been much use for two grieving children. And as you point out, it was built long before the fateful night, not in the couple days when things turned really dire. I think she always intended them to find the attic as adults, after she had gone in a natural way. The second thing I felt the need to comment on: there was a hint somewhere that Mary-Ann had the voice too. Sadly I cannot remember exactly where it was. I think I noticed it during the attic puzzles, but it could’ve been in the notes there or in the book of goblins. 🤷‍♀️ But even if she hadn’t, it makes complete sense that Tyler heard her earlier words echoed. (In my opinion more sense than a loving mother saying „I’m going to kill you“ to her cowering child.) We know from Ally‘s hallucinations that their mental state can blur the line between the voice and their emotions. So, Tyler might’ve heard Mary-Ann say she was going to kill him even if she didn’t. The fact was that she was pointing a gun in his direction, which even in Tom‘s version was the case. I don’t know about you, but I don’t Point weapons at people I’m trying to comfort. Ally had every reason to assume that Mary-Ann was about to kill Tyler.

I loved this :') your videos are always so detailed and you truly care about the characters you talk about To be honest I thought the conclusion and Tom' s version felt so off Like it doesn't fit right

can't watch the whole video now but that was a great intro, one thing i found interesting was that people were comparing Mary Ann to be a possible Family Annihilator. One hint to that was how she had a party for the kids and stuff.

One thing in my first playthrough, maybe ch 2, a memory comes up where Tyler admits to taking the blame that he killed their mother which alludes to him knowing it's not true.

Woooo new content!

At the end of the day, no matter how you look at it, we need to know why Mary-Ann had the gun and what she planned to do with it.

God less then a minute in and I already love your sense of humour 🤣🤣

Wait wow a channel based around Life is Strange gameplay and analysis? I'm subscribing! I love your TMW video so much, like seriously this thing is kinda a masterpiece imo, but I wasn't sure if I should subscribe since I figured it was a one-off, but I love that your channel seems to be mainly about games like LiS, and you could probably expand to other very similar narrative based games (like Beyond: Two Souls, or Until Dawn, or the Telltale Walking Dead games) if you wanted. Not pressuring, just thinking out loud how those games are kinda in a similar vein as TMW and LiS. I love this particular type of gameplay-genre thing that is basically like "Movie, but the runtime is as long or short as the creators desire" [alas, within budget of course]. Speaking of which, they said they cut the side character Fireweed counselor Aaron out when they had to shrink the story down from 5 chapter arcs to 3 chapter arcs due to budget constraints and I will forever cry about that because I actually really wanted more from Aaron and he really was gonna have a full in person appearance in the game, I'm so crushed we missed out on that. **Edit** (I reread my comment and started thinking lovingly about this genre again lol, here are more thoughts) Additionally, the immersive + emotionally investing effect of the primary gameplay being choices that influence the story. I'm more invested if not only is the story good, but my choices (or even gameplay as a feature of the video game meduim inherently) make me feel instantly more easily invested in ANY character. I could even be invested in characters I diametrically oppose if they're also written particularly well & thus "feel" believable, like Bojack Horseman (omg hfhdhs, not me splitting up my run-on sentence into two separate sentences specifically so I can pretend I had a good enough reason/segqay to mention a tv show character instead of an actual video game character hdhfhdhdhsjs).

I hated this game at first because of the story, but after watching several videos my mind is open. This one seals the nail in the coffin as I need to play this again to learn more.

The point of the entire story is it doesn't matter what "Really" happened. Moving on is the important thing. There is a reason a trans man is a central character in this game. It's because he is the embodiment of transitioning to the next phase in ones life. Same with the memories - it matters less what happened and more finding a way to come to peace with the past to transition into the next part of life.

Wow what a perfect explanation

Yo SerratedCucumber can you help me out? I want to know why I was banned from the Discord

uwu whats this

HIs name was Olivia! Duh! Which is great because once upon a time when I wanted kids that's what I wanted to name my first daughter.

A game about two ungrateful, lying and over-emotional kids murdering their single parent...

Thought this game was gonna be more entertaining than it was, my throat was shoved with liberal ideals as became bored with reading children's books that were way longer than they should have been