Alex Chen

Alexandra "Alex" Chen is the deuteragonist of Life is Strange: The Guardian. After eight years apart, Alex reunites with her brother Gabe Chen and establishes a new life in the midwestern 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.

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.
 * Empathic 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.

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.

Trivia

 * Alex's singing voice is provided by singer-songwriter and Twitch streamer mxmtoon, who is a self-described Life is Strange fan.
 * The [[Media:Alex Outfit Pack TC.jpg|pre-order bonus outfits]] for True Colors indicate that Alex's favorite animals may be cats.
 * The deluxe edition for True Colors includes clothing inspired by Chloe’s Misfit Skull, Sean’s Wolf Squad, Daniel’s Space Mission, and Max’s Jane Doe outfits.
 * In Chapter 4, one of Alex’s optional outfits is a Hawt Dawg Man t-shirt.
 * Alex's guitar seems to be based on and  guitars. The brand inscription looks very similar to the Fender logo appears to read "Gender", which may be a mix of the two brands.
 * Alex is the second oldest playable protagonist in the series so far, being 21 years old throughout the events of the game. Steph Gingrich is the first oldest, being 25 years old. Max Caulfield is the third oldest, being 18 years old in her respective game. Chloe Price is the fourth oldest, being 16 years old in her respective game. Sean Diaz is the fifth oldest, being 16 years old in his respective game. Chris Ericksen is the youngest, being 9 years old in his respective game.
 * Unlike Max Caulfield and Daniel Diaz, Alex had discovered her powers prior to the game's events. As implied by the flashbacks in chapter 5, Alex's abilities manifested through tragic circumstances, similar to how Max and Daniel's did.
 * She is the third protagonist that can channel her power through her hands along with Max and Daniel.
 * Similarly to the previous Life is Strange protagonists, with the exception of Chloe Price, Alex is bisexual as well, being able to romance with both men and women and chooses the person depending on player choice.
 * Alex's zodiac sign is the Cancer.

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