Timetravel and Cocoons

CW: Internalized transphobia, dysphoria

Spoilers: Life Is Strange

I am going to talk a bit about one of my favorite games, Life is Strange. I already know the story as well as all the ending, but it is a game that I continue to come back to. While this will discuss the game, things I liked about it, things I dislike about it, it's not a game review. Rather the game is used to tell a story of how fiction can tell us things about ourselves. This is a story about self discovery, and what this games told me about who I am.

Chrysalis

In 2014 I went to Pax East, it was my first year going, and I was honestly not much of a gamer. I have a lot of good memories from those two days, but one event in particular stuck out. My friend and I attended a panel for a game made by a studio in France that I had never heard of. The game involved a heavy amount of choice and having repercussions for said choices. "This action will have consequences".

Knowing it was primarily a interactive story rather than a game, I decided to buy it a few days later. I quickly got through the first two episodes and anxiously waited for the third one to come out. By the end I was hungry for more interactive media that told stories like Life is Strange.

The game follows Maxine Caulfield, who discovers her "time rewind" powers by saving the life of her childhood friend, Chloe Price. There are cataclysmic events that take place: a storm threatens to level the town, an eclipses take place when none should, beached wales are found along the shore, and a double moon appears.

The pair have an adventure together, grow closer and of course because this is the game industry we gotta stop short of it being explicitly gay. Even so, it's nice seeing a relationship rekindle after so many years apart. In the end, Max realizes the only way to save the town is to sacrifice Chloe. It's a bittersweet ending with people continuing their lives unharmed, but Chloe is gone leaving an emotional hole in everyone's hearts.

...at least, that's what I chose the first time I played.

Out of time

It would be years later before I fully realized why I felt such strong emotions while playing this game. I didn't understand why it was so important to me that Max and Chloe were more than friends, I didn't understand that feeling of longing when I played it. Why did I want to be like Max? Was there a sort of desire to relive highschool (no, highschool sucked)?

Those questions sat there. They sat there as I replayed the game so many times I lost count. I could not figure out what was making me cry every time I played it.

A prequel ("Life is Strange: Before the Storm") came out a few years later, this time it followed Chloe rather than max. In this prequel, I noticed there was something about Rachel Amber that I caught on to. She had a complicated relationship with her parents, she was afraid to disobey them, and I could understand that, it mirrored my relationship with my own parents.

It wasn't until summer of 2020, when we were all stuck at home due to covid, that I finally started to figure things out.

Dark room

The first few months of 2020 were a really bad time for me. I was unable to see people and was alone with my thoughts and body, I had a harder time distancing myself from my dysphoria. I was drinking a lot more, and my usual apathy for living evolved into self harm. I eventually came to terms with who I was, but it took until october until I could even admit to myself that I might, possibly, be transgender. It wasn't until January that I actually called an informed consent clinic to get started on hormones.

Hormones were a wild ride. It was like...well, escaping a the basement of a deranged kidnaper, during a hurricane in a POS truck driven by your mentally ill friend with blue hair.

Polarized

I replayed the game a few months after beginning hormones, and about a week after coming out to my coworkers. The game had a different tone this time.

Instead of the story following a wonderful relationship cut short. It's a story of hardship and giving up other relationships for one that is far more valuable.

When the time came, I chose Chloe.

After finishing the game I was lying awake in bed, wondering why I would do that so differently, what had changed about me. I started realizing that, in addition to helping me discover that I was more a girl than I am a boy, the game reacted differently to my new priorities in life.

Life is Strange for me was like a polaroid selfie, it showed me things about myself that I couldn't easily see on my own.