The Queer Reader 101 booklist started as a joke between my girlfriend and me. I say started, because now there’s an actual stack on my bedside table: The Price of Salt (Patricia Highsmith), Valencia (Michelle Tea), Written on the Body (Jeanette Winterson) and Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Andrea Lawlor). I’ve added some Eileen Myles and Ivan Coyote, and Angela Steidele’s Gentleman Jack. But since I’m a slow and distracted novel reader, so far I have only begun each of these, dipping in and out, taking breaks.

I spent one of those breaks replaying the video game Life Is Strange—a title that, in 2015, shook up what the word ‘game’ could mean. Life Is Strange (Dontnod Entertainment/Square Enix) could be described as a supercharged choose-your-own-adventure novel—a ‘walking simulator’ where the emphasis is on narrative experience over traditional gameplay. I first played the game around the time of its release, a time when I felt—in my job, my relationships, my body—I had very little power of my own. It was a most soothing form of escapism that the protagonist, Max, could rewind time just enough to make small changes that had a cumulative effect on the story’s ending. With the help of a cheerfully heavy-handed butterfly effect, Max inadvertently disrupts the spacetime continuum—threatening her college town, Arcadia Bay, and everyone who lives there.