Alternative Character Interpretation: Chief Walsh. While he is intended to a Hate Sink, how unpleasant he is open to debate since many of his negative qualities are only heard second-hand from other characters. One prominent example is the fact that he took Scarlett's side during Tanner's murder and put out a warrant for Kate despite Grant stating that Walsh frequently practiced racial profiling on himself and his sister. Is Grant an Unreliable Narrator trying to garner sympathy from Jesse? Is it a misunderstanding (given that the Emersons are new to the town and hostile with the Sterlings, from whom Walsh most likely takes bribes)? Or is it that Walsh does dislike the Emersons but dislikes Kate even more? It's eventually revealed that he's protecting the Sterlings because he was involved in their drug smuggling scheme and is simply trying to cover his own butt.
Flynn O'Malley. He is either a charming bad boy with a sympathetic back story, or a short-tempered hot head whose eagerness to get aggressive causes more harm than good.
Grant Emerson: A charming man who is surprisingly humble despite his elite status, or a stalker level creep who constantly acts like he and Jesse are in a relationship.
Naomi Silverhawk: A strong and independent woman who is dedicated to justice, or a stickler for rules who is too afraid to get her hands dirty. However, this has changed since she was fired and becomes more amenable to acts of vigilante justice.
Mrs. Harleney. Her habit of calling out Jesse for their clothes and offering the Premium outfit of the chapter is either endearing or annoying. Some people started in the former category and then jumped to the latter after an incident where she waits at Jesse's bed right after they wake up to offer the outfit.
The decision to save Jeff Duffy, Pierce Sterling, or let them both die. It all depends on how much sympathy the player can muster for them after learning of their criminal natures. There's also the debate between which one of them is potentially worse than the other. Is it Pierce, the man who has illegally smuggled drugs for decades and has most of Birchport under his control? Or is it Duffy, a psychotic killer whose motivation is to avenge his mother who was murdered by an associate of the Sterlings?
Kate becoming a love interest. One group of fans fully supported the idea because they liked her character design and believed that she had good chemistry for Jesse given that they were college roommates and old friends. Another group of fans was completely against the idea given that Kate barely appeared in the book and believed the supporters only wanted her to become a love interest due to her slight resemblance to Quinn from Endless Summer. A third group of players felt that Kate's introduction as a love interest was too little, too late because most of her premium scenes show her in a strictly platonic relationship with Jesse.
On one hand, there are players who think the story is better of remaining a stand-alone because there's no more story left to tell once the mystery has been solved. On the other hand, there are players who want it to become an anthology series like the It Lives series because of the engrossing story.
After spending an entire book seeing multiple characters (most notably Kate, Flynn, and Jesse themselves) being harassed, bullied, insulted and screwed over, seeing Bryce being blown up by the fireworks in Chapter 9 feels oddly euphoric.
Seeing Chief Walsh and Margaret Sterling being arrested to answer for their crimes and subsequently shot by Duffy is this after seeing them ruin the lives of everyone around them.
Having the choice to leave either Duffy or Pierce or both to death is this after Duffy's reveal as the mastermind and Pierce's complete callousness at Kate's disappearance.
Scarlett Emerson has a decent fanbase due to her character design and sassy personality, despite her suspicious behavior, classism, and being a Gold Digger.
Despite being a psychotic murderer, Jeff Duffy is often viewed as one of the best villains that Choices has ever come up with. Instead of being evil for the sake of being evil, he is a Well-Intentioned Extremist that is targeting a corrupt family and their associates.
Kate O'Malley is this for her character design and personality as well as being a complete Woobie despite literally disappearing after the first chapter and only appear sparingly in flashbacks. Fans were clamoring for her to turn out to be alive (which she does in Chapter 7) and/or be a love interest (which she does in Chapter 16).
Thanks to his Dark and Troubled Past, Nikolai's popularity instantly shot up after Chapter 12 to the point that most readers took the Premium choice to save him.
Fan Nickname: A few fans jokingly refer to Birchport as Bitchport due to the way some of the characters behave and the way their eyes saw the name.
Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite Word of God confirming that Kate isn't a Love Interest, Kate/Jesse is as popular, if not more so, than the three canon pairing due to the copious amount of Ship Tease between them as well as Kate's own popularity as a character (as seen on Ensemble Darkhorse). The Premium choice to stay in Birchport with her in the finale was met with much applause from the fandom.
Fanon: Despite being Jossed in Chapter 14, fans still support the theory that Nikolai is Bryce's real father, based on how Bryce looks nothing like Pierce or Tanner.
Fans guessed that the person who broke into Kate's apartment in Chapter 3 is Flynn long before the reveal in the next chapter.
A significant number of fans were predicting that Jeff Duffy would end up being the culprit, mainly because he seemed like such a ridiculously unlikely suspect.
Everytime a Premium sex scene comes up, jokes about Agent Kim being forced to hear them erupt from the fandom.
Mrs. Harlenay's obsession with getting Jesse to dress in new outfits has reached memetic status in the fandom.
The screenshot where D.A. Mac Hornby calls out Jesse for sleeping around with the Love Interests instantly became widespread in the fandom.
Jeff Duffy's psychotic grin.
Chief Walsh telling Jesse that they and Naomi deserve each other for getting on his nerves. This has led to people joking that Walsh ships the two of them.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many fans resent Scarlett Emerson's disappearance from the story (aside from being mentioned during Kate's trial and another brief one in Chapter 16) after the Fourth of July gala, when she expressed her resentment of her family's status as Birchport's second-richest, thus making her a clear suspect in Birchport's mysteries.
At the end of Chapter 7, Jesse and Naomi find Kate inside a cabin, with her kidnapper implied to still be around, and Flynn being severely injured in the dark wood after the kidnapper had attempted to run the three of them over... But nope, next chapter reveals that nothing happened, and Flynn reunites with Jesse, Naomi and Kate at the hospital.
Given that D.A. Mac Hornby can potentially call out Jesse for starting a relationship with Grant, Flynn, or Naomi, fans believed a fun plot twist would be the Sterlings or Walsh hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on Jesse. However, the situation is never brought up again and neither Jesse or their love interests express concern about the situation.
Fans believed that the final battle against Duffy would have been more dramatic if he had Tony Rez and Scarlett Emerson working for him. Rez was a low-level criminal who could be easily persuaded into working for a villainous mastermind, and Scarlett expressed her jealousy of the Sterlings and easily could have benefited from Duffy's crimes.
The Woobie: Kate O'Malley. She met the man of her dreams and is about to marry him but is constantly harassed, embarrassed, doubted and demeaned by Scarlett and every single one of the Sterlings (including her own fiancé), forced to return to a town that she hates, has her brother sent to jail before she went to college, discovering that her fiancé might be cheating on her and finally disappeared (and strongly likely to be kidnapped) at the day of her own wedding. During the time she was gone, Tanner was murdered, it's confirmed that he was cheating on her with Scarlett, most people in town resent her even after disappearing, and it turns out she really was kidnapped and locked in a basement for days. When she was hospitalized afterwards, Walsh falsely accuses her of faking her kidnapping and arrests her, which isn't helped by Judge Winters denying bail to her during her first trial. And just after her release, Duffy drops his facade and kidnaps her with the intention to kill her after learning that she's pregnant with Tanner's child.
◊. Usually in contrast with his in-game status as "town's most eligible bachelor" or Jesse having the choice of saying how hot he is.
