Every Christmas, I visit my parents in another state for a couple of weeks. I usually return home a few days before the new year to prepare for an annual New Year’s party that I host for my friends. During these few days, I often have some spare time to just chill and enjoy time off work. Back in 2015, I used this time to look through my Steam backlog to see if there were any interesting games I hadn’t gotten around to playing yet. While browsing, I was reminded that I picked up an episodic adventure game during Steam’s summer sale earlier in the year. I checked the store page and saw that all of the episodes were now released, so I figured I should give it a shot. The game is called Life is Strange.
I was immediately hooked. The game is played from the perspective of Max Caulfield, a photography student who is returning to her hometown of Arcadia Bay to take a class from a famous photographer. At the very start of the game, while in class, Max has a vision of an enormous storm approaching the town. Later that day, she ends up in a situation in the school’s bathroom where she witnesses a bully pull a gun on another student and shoot them. In that moment, she reaches out to try to help and is flung backwards through time until she is back in the classroom. She pieces together that she has the ability to rewind time, and starts experimenting a bit with this newfound power. Once the class ends again, she retraces her steps from earlier, and manages to use her rewind power to save the other student from her fate. That student is later revealed to be Max’s estranged childhood fiend, Chloe Price.
At the time, the game seemed to challenge a lot of the modern conventions of video games. Many other games of this genre were fast paced and reactive, and they often had you advance through dialog without spending a lot of time thinking about your choices. The idea was to get you to go with your gut feeling on what you should say in any given situation. In Life is Strange, however, that’s not the case. The game doesn’t impose any time limits on your responses, and you can use Max’s rewind ability to redo entire conversations over and over again until you get the outcome you want.
At first glance, this may seem like an odd design decision. After all, if you can keep redoing conversations until they are perfect, then why would anyone stick with an outcome that is less than perfect? I think the game relies on you approaching it in this way. You are actively encouraged to rewind until you are happy with the outcome. As the game progresses, however, it becomes clear that many of the conversations do not have that perfect outcome you are searching for. No matter what you say or do, your actions will have consequences. Even some decisions that seem very one-sided early on can end up having a significant impact on how the story unfolds in later episodes. And on top of all of that, the decisions keep getting more difficult to make. There were several points in later episodes where I had to just put the controller down and think through it for a few minutes.
Behind those game mechanics is the mystery of a missing person. After Max and Chloe reunite, they start searching for Chloe’s friend, Rachel Amber, who seems to have disappeared. Throughout the course of the game, you learn of Chloe and Rachel’s relationship and see Max and Chloe start to fall in love during their adventures — all while uncovering the truth about Rachel’s disappearance and looking for a way to stop the incoming storm.
Note: If any of that sounds even somewhat appealing, I highly recommend checking Life is Strange out. (And avoiding spoilers!)
Alternatively, Innuendo Studios has a good video summarizing the events and analyzing the game’s bizarre combination of genres, called Superposition: The Genre of Life is Strange.
After finishing the game, I couldn’t help but feel a bit down. Since the story was over, so too was my time with the characters — but that alone shouldn’t make me feel this sad. The story also seemed to really resonate with me, but I couldn’t quite figure out why. I felt like I identified with the main characters, but this is a story about time traveling lesbians trying to find a missing person — what part of that would be relatable to me in any way? It’s not even a genre I typically enjoy, both in terms of video games and narratives. So why did I like it so much? Why can’t I stop thinking about the game for several weeks after completing it? Do I really relate to the characters? In what way? My life seems nothing like theirs! What started as a chill way to pass the time during the holidays sure had me asking a lot of difficult questions about myself.
I spent a significant amount of time trying to answer those questions. I replayed the game three more times over the next couple months, exploring all the different conversational routes available. I also spent a lot of time in online communities for this game, particularly the subreddit dedicated to the series. At some point after those additional playthroughs, I felt things start to click a little, and I finally asked myself the question: “Am I transgender?”
For context, this is something that had been in the back of my mind for a very long time, but I had never asked myself that question so directly before. My thinking was that this could explain why I identified so much with the characters and with the story. This could also explain why I felt down after finishing it. What I was feeling could be described as a sort of romantic yearning for a type of relationship that felt impossible for me. But being in that type of relationship is only impossible if I’m a man. If I’m actually a woman, then I was simply yearning for a romantic relationship that I identified with.
Within a day of asking myself that question, as I was browsing the Life is Strange subreddit, I found a post where someone else was literally saying the same thing. They mentioned how the game made them realize they may be trans. At this point, I started to doubt myself. Since there’s one other person like that, maybe it can just be an effect the game has on some people? Even with that denial in mind though, I decided it would be worth pursuing further. Thus began a long three years of questioning and exploration.
While I have had thoughts about being transgender throughout most of my life, I never had the language to understand or express it. When growing up, the only trans representation I found was through comedy — and it was not positive. Trans characters were always treated as the punchline of a joke. Other characters would always react with disgust when interacting with them. Looking back now, even some of my favorite shows featured pretty horrific transphobia. Shows like Family Guy, Futurama, South Park, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, etc. The central message was always that trans people were meant to be mocked, laughed at, vilified, and treated like absolute shit. In that kind of environment, it’s no wonder I wasn’t able to figure things out. Who would want to identify with someone that only seemed to exist as a joke?
Note: For more information on how trans characters were represented in media over the years, I recommend Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, or Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia by Lindsay Ellis.
Thankfully, there was an increase in positive trans visibility in the years leading up to my questioning. This gave me the language needed to better understand myself — the language I was missing when growing up. All of that made it a lot easier to navigate through this phase of my life.
I started digging into what it means to be trans, and tried to find information on how I could figure out if I’m really trans. I learned about hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and it’s effect on secondary sex characteristics. I didn’t know that human beings were naturally capable of handling both masculine and feminine hormones, regardless of chromosomes — something that I still find incredibly fascinating! Since most of the discourse about trans people in media was always about surgeries, I had just assumed that any changes would require surgical intervention. But by starting HRT, you could essentially induce a second puberty to naturally alter those secondary sex characteristics.
Immediately after realizing I could be trans, I also started to grow my hair out. I had been feeling increasing unease as I was getting older regarding my receding hairline, which would often cause a sort of existential dread when looking at myself in the mirror. Learning that HRT could halt this hair loss made me even more interested in transitioning, even though I hadn’t even admitted to myself that I was trans yet.
During this time, I also started to experiment with gender presentation. I bought more feminine clothes, some wigs, and some makeup. The first time I got dressed up in a feminine outfit and wig with full (but very amateurish) makeup, I actually smiled at myself in the mirror, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before in my life. I legitimately felt happy about the way I looked.
But throughout this whole questioning period, I felt incredibly ashamed of myself. The media that was available to me when growing up was essentially telling me over and over again that it really isn’t a good idea to be trans. Because of this, I didn’t want anyone else to know that I was questioning my gender. This in turn caused me to become increasingly distanced from the people in my life, and I was left feeling almost completely isolated while I was figuring things out.
As 2016 came to a close, I decided that my new year’s resolution for 2017 would be to definitively confirm if I was trans or not. But, as that year came to a close, the best I could do was admit that I was probably trans; I still wasn’t completely convinced. But even then, I still decided to move on to the next question: “Should I transition?” (In retrospect, it’s hilarious to me that I did technically admit to myself that I’m trans by moving on to the next question like this!)
Answering that next question was proving to be even more difficult. In this time, I did a lot more experimenting with gender expression. I also questioned my sexuality, considering if I could just be a gay man in denial. But no matter how I looked at it, I just wasn’t attracted to men, and I couldn’t see myself taking on a “male” role in any relationship.
During this time, I felt like I wasn’t really making any progress. 2019 rolled around eventually, and I found I still couldn’t answer the question. I was still missing a piece to the puzzle. Fortunately though, when reading through posts and comments on Reddit, I eventually found my way to a bizarrely titled subreddit, egg_irl. I had seen this linked a few times in threads where someone “jokingly” says they wished they were a different gender. By the third or so time, I was curious enough to check it out.
What I found was a subreddit filled with memes that are all about people wanting to be another gender. It turns out “egg” in this context is referring to trans people who haven’t figured out that they are trans yet, or who are in denial about it. As I scrolled through the posts here, I found myself relating to a vast majority of them. Up until this point, I had been trying to figure myself out without engaging with the trans community directly — but that had only been able to get me so far.
Note: Cassie LaBelle wrote an excellent blog post describing this subreddit titled EGG_IRL.
What this subreddit taught me about myself, is that I relate to other trans experiences. That’s what I was missing! I was already somewhat confident that I was trans, and I at least wanted the effects of HRT, even if I didn’t necessarily know if I wanted to transition. But this new revelation — that I so strongly related to the experiences of other trans people — finally got me to admit to myself that I am, in fact, transgender.
Having figured this out, I reviewed some of the HRT research I had done previously, and finally decided that I did want to transition. While hanging out in these trans spaces, someone brought up that you can start HRT through informed consent here in the United States. After some quick research, I found that there was a place nearby that I could go to to start transitioning.
Unfortunately, this realization had me make one last ditch attempt to suppress my feelings. Being a programmer, both as a career and as a hobbyist, it’s not uncommon for me to pursue fairly pointless programming projects in my free time. But in an attempt to suppress any thoughts and feelings regarding transition, I started doing what I think is best described as binge programming. When I got home from work, I would spend all of my time writing code for another project, using a framework that was incredibly frustrating to work with. This project was quickly looking like something I wouldn’t even use, and it would just be thrown out later on anyways. But I kept doing it. I only took breaks to use the bathroom. I would continue programming even while eating, and I would try to stay up as late as I possibly could so that I would fall asleep almost immediately when I went to bed. I was desperately trying to continue to suppress the idea that transition was literally just a phone call away.
Thankfully, my attempts to suppress these thoughts failed after about a week of this unhealthy activity. On a Sunday night, I broke down into tears and decided that I have to do it. That if I have even a chance of being happier with who I am, and not constantly loathe the body that I’m in, I should take that chance. Since my work schedule allowed me to work from home on Mondays, I decided I would use my lunch break the next day to make the call and see if I could start on HRT.
This was easily the most difficult phone call I’ve ever had to make in my life. I hadn’t come out to anyone at this point, so it was the first time I would tell someone else that I’m trans. It took me about 30 minutes of just staring at the dialer on my phone to work up the courage to make the call, but I finally did it. I scheduled an appointment for Friday of that same week.
By the next Monday, I had my first dose in hand. I won’t go too far into the medical details here, but I started noticing some subtle effects within a few hours of taking that first dose. After the next couple of days, I felt this overwhelming sense of calm that I had not experienced before. I felt like I was able to finally relax for the first time in my life! I actually felt comfortable by merely existing. And to this day, I still feel this way.
It wasn’t until I started taking hormones that I finally realized just how miserable I was before. It’s mind boggling to me that cisgender people don’t have to struggle this much just to feel comfortable in their own bodies — that this is the way people are supposed to feel, all the time. I feel very fortunate to finally be able to experience this.
And so, that’s how an impulsive decision to play a video game over Christmas break led me on a three year journey of self discovery and acceptance. While my transition is far from finished, I at least know that I am finally on the right path.
